We know that Bashar Assad has a professorial verbal style, has a tendency to become defensive and stubborn, and is dull, tedious and violent. And we know that regime change is in the air, if not exactly planned, then not exactly spontaneous either. And we know the opposition, after we strip away the propaganda, is made up of Kurdish separatists, Marxists and other very left wing elements. But all in all, we know little about them and they us. And that goes for much of the Islamic world. We saw Nancy Pelosi acting as tourist in a Damascus market picking market fresh, and George Clooney in a movie, and maybe it began with William Beckford’s Vahtek in the late eighteenth century when the Caliphe and gay pride rode magic carpets, but our knowledge is limited. We take Sam Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations on good faith. Years ago, when Mubarak was a going concern he was on state visit around the Super Bowl in late January 1983 he was asked who he favored. Mubarak had no clue what the reporter was referring to, Super powers? the bowl or pot as political metaphor with the Arab getting cooked in it. Does the Arab world always know the stage managed theater that seems almost well, Shakespearean. Like the Orientalist artist, does the West keep repainting variations of the same picture?
---Jean Leon Gerome.---Le Marché aux esclaves English: Slave Market Deutsch: Der Sklavenmarkt Date vers 1866
This excerpt I believe originated in China….just like George W Bush’s “coalition of the willing” had a duty to promote a political transition that would see President Bashar al-Assad step down….
Image:http://orangejar.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html Read More:http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2012/02/09/medvedev-to-sarkozy-on-syria-avoid-hasty-unilateral-steps.html---Baseem Rayyes. ---The West has been trying to persuade Moscow to support a resolution effectively authorizing a military operation but Russia has repeatedly insisted that the Western drive for a stronger crackdown on Syria is preparation for a “Libyan scenario.” Russia, one of President al-Assad’s firm supporters during the uprising against his regime, indicated earlier this week that it would veto the draft resolution calling on Assad to step down. Moscow has proposed its own draft, which the West criticized as being too soft.
…Clinton gave her directive to the whole world while visiting Bulgaria, one of the 10 poorest countries of Europe, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of less than US$53 billion in 2010, the Per Capita Income of $13,449 and the General government gross debt as high as 19.7% of the country’s GDP. The purpose of interposing Bulgaria’s poor economic conditions is not to denigrate the country or its people, but to show that US Imperialism with its plans of domination, destruction and plunder uses even the most poverty-stricken nations to turn against other struggling countries such as Syria, Iran and not too long ago Libya to accomplish its criminal purpose. Following in the footsteps of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Company just before the invasion of Iraq, Clinton lashed out at Russia and China as a stepping stone to declare “faced with a neutered Security Council we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with our allies and partners….”
Read More:http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/general/100412/syria-art-market-damascus-beirut-dubai---Until recently, such intergenerational arts initiatives were unnecessary in Syria. Its closed form of socialism meant that the state was the main educator in the arts and younger artists were tied to older ones through a state-sponsored system of tutelage. But for the past few years, Syria has been reforming economically — moving progressively away from socialism toward a more market-driven economy. This shift is having a profound effect on the country's artists and its contemporary art.---
As Niall Ferguson has mentioned, there are other alternatives to American style democracy that can compete with dictatorship. Models such as Singapore’s authoritarian democracy being one of them. Technocracies with freedoms and restraints, perhaps the future for China and the type of model at least as a transition in countries like Syria. But Syria, to use the Kissinger idea, is a lever in a global balance of power to be invoked against a China as a regulator of international relations in the future. That is, small, economically small potatoes, chump change, but with value in the West’s ability to check China’s geopolitical aspirations in central, eastern Asia. The line in the sand as posited in the Iraq War no.1.
Read More:http://www.warchat.org/history/history-middle-east/yom-kippur-war.html---At the Golan Heights Israel also met with success. The Syrians were forced to retreat and the land was taken back. Through the main road from Tiberias to Damascus they came to within 35 miles of Syria’s capital. The UN brokered a cease-fire on 24th October. It sent its own peacekeeping force to the highly sensitive areas. Between January and March 1974 Israel disengaged itself from the Suez region but they kept their hold on the Golan Heights. Here a buffer zone was created so that in no way could the Arabs enter the home territory of the Israelis.---
from the article: …I think we have seen this movie before. The first character that appears on the stage is a spokesman for the Arab League (AL). It makes no difference whether he is elected or appointed by the Saudi Arabian King and Prime Minister and more importantly he has received Hillary Clinton’s or General David H. Petraeus, the Director of the CIA’s blessings. Following his assignment, the Arab League emissary who has been ushered to the UN General Assembly room by Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, pleads for establishing a “no fly zone” to save the lives of the innocent Syrians for God’s sake!…
Read More:http://www.middleeast.org/pictures/list.cgi?start=1680---Samia Halaby's drawing, "My Pal Palestine," exhibits Palestinian resistance and protest to the apartheid wall and occupation. (Al-Awda NY)---
…If there is no contest to the resolution well-prepared by the US government, then Washington gets to work and with the help of the coalition of the willing, permission in hand, begins the bombarding of Syrian logistics, every kind of arms depot, the electrical grids, the factories, food depots, water reservoirs, city sewer systems and schools and hospitals. Does this scenario have precedence? Yes, about six months after extracting the license to impose a “no fly zone” over Libya, the Western powers with carpet bombings flattened that country, liberated the country’s light sweet crude oil and succeeded to install one of the senior ENI SpA executives (Italy’s major oil company) a
bya’s oil minister and in two months the Western oil companies were sucking out 1.3 million barrels a day. Read More:http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB10Ak01.html
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