Posts by chris
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Hard News: The GCSB and the consequences…, in reply to Sacha,
That’s what I heard, though recently it’s been bandied about that she’s considering plying her trade in other fields:
Rebecca Kitteridge, NZSIS director, recently said a reality TV show similar to Border Patrol would show Kiwis they had nothing to fear from her agency
Assuming she can inject this same type of off the wall irreverence it's sure to be a hit.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to SteveH,
but it seems incontrovertible that the genesis of the current situation in Syria was Assad’s brutal treatment of peaceful protesters.
What is incrontrovertible is that from when the first protests began on February 5th there was a 5 week period leading up to March 18th where protesters weren’t being shot at. What should arouse suspicion in the inquiring mind is that unlike comparable events in other countries where protesters are shot at, these ‘protesters’ were not swayed by the guns and kept coming back for more day after day for months.
As categorised in former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell’s memoir; “Arab Spring was really a spring for al-Qaeda”, summarised here:
In the case of Syria, the security vacuum facilitated the rise of ISIL. Not only did these nefarious groups have goals, unlike the street protesters, they also had an agenda to achieve their goals. Terrorism stole the moment away from the legitimate protesters. What the world witnessed was the ultimate terrorist hijacking.
When regime oppression against the protesters turned violent, only the fundamentalists were willing to fight, and even die, for their cause – not the middle-class teachers, doctors, or taxi drivers marching peacefully for change on the streets.
The fundamentalists and terrorist groups saw an opportunity to oust secular autocrats in the region, not as a way to bring in pluralistic democracy, but as a way to implement their perverse interpretations of Islam, and in the case of ISIL, to establish an extremist caliphate.
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Moved house 25 times – be that across town, to another city or another country, barely ever through choice. We’ve only been here about six months and from time to time I still wake up wondering when I’ll be saying goodbye to this place too, so there’s seldom a day goes by when I don’t pinch myself and deeply appreciate that this one’s 4life and that (fingers crossed) we might get to see some of these young trees reach maturity. Thanks so much for this thread Russell, it’s provided some sorely needed focus amid the turmoil.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to SteveH,
“Architect” may imply a degree of foresight and planning that wasn’t actually present, but it seems incontrovertible that the genesis of the current situation in Syria was Assad’s brutal treatment of peaceful protesters.
Closer to my point certainly. These things are generally the result of a perfect storm of conditions. Violent clashes or peaceful protesters – depending on reports.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Russell Brown,
Are you hinting at a conspiracy?
I just follow the Guardian [Jan 2012].
Alas, not in every case. When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation. Qatar’s royal family has taken one of the most hawkish lines against Assad – the emir has just called for Arab troops to intervene – so it was good that The Doha Debates published the poll on its website. The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go.
The key finding was that while most Arabs outside Syria feel the president should resign, attitudes in the country are different. Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war
As you said:
Assad probably still had the support of a majority of the population, if only for the sake of peace
More recently
Many who supported the original anti-regime protests say they were hijacked by outside powers long ago. Now they just want an end to the struggle, remote though the prospect seems.
So yes, this happened:
In 2011, the Assad regime cracked down brutally on a pro-democracy movement that gained momentum after the arrest and torture of some teenagers who had written some revolutionary grafitti. Government soldiers fired on people who assembled in huge protests that, at the time, were solely demanding democratic reforms.*
here:
Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday.
I’m not sure about this:
But it seems pretty clear that Assad began and escalated the violence.
I understand there is something of a disconnect which encourages those of us in a democracy to depict the leaders of totalitarian regimes as evil Bond villains (that’s assuming we don’t have a FTA with them), more interested in bloodshed than preserving the oppressive stability of their own regions.
If the Urewera 18 had been as bad as was reported and not been caught and had incited mayhem causing the PM to impose martial law I doubt very much that we would classify Helen Clark as the architect of the New Zealand civil war.
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But if the West joins Russia in backing the Assad regime as the lesser of two or three evils, it will be lending support to the original architect of Syria’s civil war
So Assad’s incumbent administration designed a civil war to potentially oust itself and decimate its country while allowing verifiable information that it was the architect of these events to be widely disseminated via western media.
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Up Front: How I Learned to Stop Worrying…, in reply to James Littlewood*,
the constructivists [...] Can one argue for Being Anything You Want, and at the same time expect prescribed proportions of Each Kind of Thing? I guess so.
Being one of two things is further along the road to being one of many things than being sub of one thing. But I gather there's a diversity of opinion.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
the sum total of his punishment was a $130 court-costs bill.[…]Judge Grant Fraser accepted a conviction or any negative publicity might jeopardise the record deal.
Must be a meagre deal. We face stiffer penalties for going 21km/h over the speed limit.
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It’s about having enough women to provide a representation of the diversity of women.
Brilliant. Hopefully less men might also lead to a better representation of the diversity of men. A little leeway for X wouldn’t hurt.
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Polity: Cold, calculated and cynical, in reply to Seriatim,
I suspect Little was implying ONE decent house each to LIVE in, before bothering about anyone (of any kind of surname) acquiring further houses for profit!
Thanks for the update. Now about those detainees...