PoliticsSyria: Transition: From peaceful protest to armed revolution ...

refWrite comment:  It looks like the Martin-Luther-King-style of protest, peaceful direct action, has only brawt a continuous slawter of Syrians opposed to the Alawite tyranny headed by Bashir Assad and his Baathist Party.  Finally, a rebel Free Syria Army, including increasing numbers of defectors from the regular Syrian Army, has emerged to visiblity — even in the suburbs of Damascus.  Jeremy Bowen and his Damascus team are digging up the facts "on the ground," as they say.  How much is the developing revolution, with Turkey's help but China's and Russia's resistance, following in the footsteps of the Egptian revoluttion? or the Tunian? or the Libyan? It is difficult to say, much less know, given the volatility of the situation/s in most of the Arab revolutionary states and rebellions where as yet control by the new forces is lacking, and the uniqueness of each.

What we do know of the Syrian uniqueness, Syrian exceptionalism (if you will), is its up-till-now connectedness with the Iran theocrats acting thru their allies in Lebanon, the Hesbollah Party there under Shia mullah, Nasrullah.  Insisting upon being in the governing coalition, Hezbollah has cultivated a parallel state (one m+t almost say).  Earlier Syria had cultivated it, now Syria is cultivated by it.  On the other hand, Turkey is sponsoring the Syrian Free Army, and Saudi Arabia as a good Sunni neibor which had opposed Hezbollah in Syria is now again a good Sunni neibor in Alawite-controlled Syria with its Baathist Party holding t+t to the reins of this now galloping steed.  A clan/tribe in Saudi Arabia is rushing assistance to its offshoot in sourthern Syria.

I think Syria will have its revolution, and Assad's tyrannous regime will be overthrown.  And from a long-term perspective I and refWrite can support it; what must come, must come.  But in the shorter term, it's provably most l+kly that the present tyranny of the minority will be replaced Egypt-style by a tyranny of the majority, most l+ly again a Sunni majority — or an alliance of Sunni and Shia l+n'd up against a minority consisting of Alawites, Christians, with splinters from the other main forces as well as secularists who want all sorts of religiously-motivated power configurations out of the way in the country's politics of the future.

Most distressing to me, is the report below carrying the sentence:  Assad "can still can count on most of the Alawite community he comes from - also on many Christians - and significant numbers of Druze and Kurds. "  But this was Assad's and his father's strategy all along — with %10 of the population belonging to the Alawite Muslim clans/tribes, and %10 of the population being Christians whose communities go back to the t+m of Saint Paul's mission to Damascus, to which total %20 was augmented by the communities of the Druze and the Kurds,  it only remained for the Alawite-dominated coalition to win to itself factions from the Sunnis and Shia.  The Shia as mentioned, already had linkages to Assad thru the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon, financed by the Shia mullocracy in Iran.  In this the Christians woud be ent+rly on the wrong s+d, except that some apparently are clearly on the s+d of the Syrian revolution, or woud l+k to be.  Hopefully, the revolution will turn nonsectarian tho united against Assad's Alawite Baathists; hopefully, the revolutionary forces will not freeze out the Christians, Druze, Kurds, and even some Shia, but instead welcome them.


— Politicarp, refWrite Frontpage political columnist

Follow @Owlb
general editor, refWrite Frontpage




28 January 2012 Last updated at 05:29 ET

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Syria rebels gain foothold 

in Damascus

by Jeremy BowenBBC Middle East editor, Damascus

Watch Jeremy Bowen's video reports from Syria over the past 10 days

Continue reading the main story

Syria Crisis

• Sliding into civil war?
• Complex and bloody drama
• Homs maps and videos
• Army under pressure

When the BBC team approached a checkpoint set up by the rebel Free Syria Army in the suburbs of Damascus, masked men with Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand grenades moved towards us - a few of them offering dates and biscuits.

It is customary to give mourners something sweet, and a funeral was about to start that they said they were protecting.

I had no idea before I saw them with my own eyes that the Free Syria Army was so active in and around Damascus.

Read more ... click the t+m stamp below ...

Politics: Religion: Islam wants a special status to protect itself from free speech, critical speech of it as a religion provoking critique

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National Review Online (December 13, 2k11)
Reposted here by Owlb

D.C. Islamophobia Conference Was a Bad Idea December 13, 2011 11:19 A.M. By Nina Shea   Yesterday marked the opening of the international conference announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a high-level meeting on Islamophobia that she co-chaired, held last July in Istanbul and hosted by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). At the time, Secretary Clinton described this week’s conference as a move to implement U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 on “combating [religious] intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.” This State Department conference, entitled “The Istanbul Process,” is proving to be a very bad idea. It remains to be seen whether speech limitations to protect religion generally and Islam specifically will be officially endorsed by the conference — similar recommendations have already been adopted by the OIC and by the EU conference participants — but, judging from the opening session, at least some of my misgivings seem well founded. The three-day conference was closed to the public, but I was invited to its opening session (as well as to the closing session to be held on Wednesday) by virtue of my being a commissioner on the official but independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Chatham House Rules,” which State directed us to abide by, forbid releasing anything about a specific delegation or quoting for attribution. To speak more generally, then: Legal and security officials of a delegation which will remain unnamed gave a sweeping overview of American founding principles on religious freedom and how they have been breached time and again in American history by attacks against a broad variety of religious minority groups — including now against Muslims. A raft of current cases were mentioned; America’s relative exemplary and distinctive achievement in upholding religious freedom in an emphatically pluralistic society was not. That same speaker reassured the audience, which was packed with diplomats from around the world, that the Obama administration is working diligently to prosecute American Islamophobes and is transforming the U.S. Justice Department into the conscience of the nation, though it could no doubt learn a thing or two from the assembled delegates on other ways to stop persistent religious intolerance in America. Across the room, smirking delegates from some of the world’s most repressive and intolerant regimes could be spotted, furiously taking notes. The Saudi Justice Minister was recently in the U.S. but unfortunately departed before the conference opened and won’t be making any presentation on how the Saudis stop religious intolerance. Nor will his delegation be making any apologetic mention of the Saudi ban on churches, its repression of its large indigenous Shiite population, its textbooks teaching that Jews should be killed, or its beheading yesterday of a woman for sorcery, in addition to another recent beheading of a Sudanese man for the same crime. Meanwhile, at U.N. headquarters in New York, a new resolution following on 16/18 has been introduced by the OIC and will soon be voted on by the General Assembly, where it will no doubt passed with U.S. approval. It singles out for praise regarding the promotion of religious tolerance one state — Saudi Arabia. — Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author with Paul Marshall of Silenced: How Apostasy & Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide. E-MAIL AUTHOR   |   ARCHIVE

COMMENTS   11

The Christian Post > Politics|Tue, Dec. 13 2011 10:13 PM EDT

US Meets With Muslim Countries That Want to Ban Free Speech in America

By Amanda Winkler | Christian Post Reporter

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PoliticsUSA: WikiLeaks: Reuters reporters finger Saudi King Abdullah vs Iran

Reuters reporters Arshad Mohammed and Ross Colvin (I geezered them via Yahoo! Nooz), they filed a story with their editors on the latest intrusion of WikiLeaks 'Hole, the guy who has stolen and assembled huge files of digital documents, from the USA govt.

The cables are the third huge release of classified U.S. data by WikiLeaks. U.S. officials believe they were passed to WikiLeaks by a disgruntled Army private, Bradley Manning, who had access to classified computer networks as a junior intelligence analyst in Iraq. Manning is now in a military jail, but authorities believe he provided the classified data before he was arrested. WikiLeaks has been parceling it out at intervals.

In the round I most remember the world's star info-blackmailer (said Leaker mentioned above) endangers l+vz of USA intelligence operatives a/o contacts in warzones (I've seen this possiblity impugned on fuzzy-evangelical s+t Jesus Creed, a spirituality + politics blog. The Leaker, l+k the nuke plants in Iran, shoud have been taken out long ago.

Instead, we are made privy to exchanges between Saudi Arabia (home of Islam's holiest shrines upon which country and king  is, therefore, incumbent the task  of the religiously-necessitated hosting of the annual Hajj from everywhere, including Iran, to Mecca, Saudi Arabia > ) hence Saudiland's King is exposed in the latest WikLleaks for using colourful langwij in regard to the status of Iran, and supplying inc+siveness of analysis and adv+ce to the USA -- that's what had happened.  But, the bigger question is What has since happened to his now-revealed adv+s ?   

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and now apparently the potentate of Bahrain, at the t+m, thawt the USA shoud do the bombing.  After all, the Saudi Monarch's decision that it was t+m to take out nuke-monger Iran fell on the deaf ears of the American political establishment, not least of all the Presidency.  Neither President Bush of the previous t+m, nor President Obana since, have deterred Iran.  Nor have they deterred the Saudi-financed expansion of Muslim mosques and schools in the USA where Saudiland's creepy Wahhhist state-religionists of the established Muslim sect control curriculum and textbooks, some of them qu+t nefarious to American values, whether secularist, or Christian.  Or Judaic.  Or Shi'ite for that matter (Shi'a compose 15% of Saudi Arabia's population, who feel they are maltreated as 2nd-class citizens). Or the United Arab Emirites (several of which have Sh'ite minorities, even a majority in one emirate with a Sunni monarach).  Or Alawite (Syria's elite minority, with Sunni, Shi'ite, and Christian subcurrents).  

WASHINGTON – Saudi King Abdullah has repeatedy urged the United States to attack Iran's nuclear program and [counter-attack] China-directed cyberattacks on the United States, according to a vast cache of diplomatic cables [cabled documents] released on Sunday in an embarrassing leak that undermines U.S. diplomacy. 

The more than 250,000 documents, given to five media groups by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, provide candid and at times critical views of foreign leaders as well as sensitive information on terrorism and nuclear proliferation filed by U.S. diplomats, according to New York T+mz.

The White House condemned the release by WikiLeaks and said the disclosures may endanger U.S. informants abroad. WikiLeaks said its website was under attack and none of the underlying [cabled documents] was visible there Sunday night, though some were posted by news organizations.

Among the revelations in Britain's Guardian newspaper, which also received an advance look at the documents along with France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais, King Abdullah is reported to have "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program."

First, the term "whistle-blowing webs+t WikiLeaks" hardly seems appropriate.  


Here's the longer version of the Mohammed and Colvin story that appears on an unofficial webs+t  section with many pages, a webpage devoted to the Royalty of Saudiland Royalty.nu -- The World of Royalty, carrying a version of  Mohammed-Colvin, Saudi King urged U.S. to attack Iran: WikiLeaks.


The story of the leak itself may be found here: Cables obtained by Wikileaks sh+n l+t into secret diplomatic worlds by Scott Shane and Andrew W. Lehren, NYT (Nov28,2k10)

Some of the cables [cabled documents], made available to New York T+mz and several other nooz organizations, were written as recently as late February [2k10],  revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks posted 220 cables, some redacted to protect diplomatic sources, in the first installment of the archive on its Web site on Sunday.

The author of this perfidy shoud be treated like the uncommon criminal he is, and shoud be taken out by a rogue CIA guy, or somebody, just as they do it in the movies.

-- Politicarp


More Info:


•  WikiLeaks on Iran: Arab world in fear of Iran, Borzou Daragahi (Nov28,2k10; updated Nov29,2k10) Los Angeles T+mz (original: "Iran must be stopped: Arab leaders implored U.S. to attack, WikiLeakes disclosures show by Borzou Daragahi and Paul Richter, via Daily Caller

•  Wikileaks and the Demise of the Diplomatic Cable Posted: 28 Nov 2010 08:22 PM PST (Kenneth Anderson posted to Volokh Conspiracy email newsletter) I think my Opinio Juris co-blogger Peter Spiro is probably right that one of the collateral consequences of Wikileaks is the demise, or anyway acceleration toward the demise, of the traditional diplomatic cable [cabled document]. But this episode will surely make cables look less attractive still. It’s one thing to understand that your work will come to light 25 years hence, when you (and your interlocutors) will either be dead or retired, too old much to care; or else flattered to see your handiwork become the stuff of history. It’s another to have to worry about something being disclosed that might affect your ability to function in your next post (or whether you’ll get one at all).    Wh+l you're on the email page, or on the webs+t, scroll down to: Saudis and Other Arab States Want U.S. to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Program Posted: 28 Nov 2010 04:28 PM PST (David Bernstein on Volokh Conspiracy)

•  perhaps more later ....


-- Politicarp