Syria

[hym 358]

No, we don't buy our water from the Turks, we actually sell it to Jordan. The mostly dry area you mentioned is the Syrian desert, Uninhabited.

Before you start considering cutting the water supply of the people as a solution (or the Euphrates river if that's what you meant?), why don't you think about stopping Russia and Iran from selling tanks oil to the regime first. Not to mention the billions of ammo and all the missle systems, thanks a lot Potin!

BTW the reason we don't have a leader is that it all started out as a peacful people revolution, when you fight for freedom everybody becomes a leader.

Fair enough. Completely inconsistent with all the reports I have heard over the years, but I guess that's always a possibility. My apologies.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Ambassador defects.

Sprung another leak. Will Assad go down with the ship?

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Confirmation by a military observer.

And what, Mr. Annan, did you think was going on??? Where there's smoke there is usually fire. Do you need a mortar shell to arrive in your lap?

Removing Assad will no longer settle this. The Arab League now has to show if it has any guts, and put some boots on the ground in there. They are certainly all well-enough equipped to do so. This is not a job for NATO nor any of our closer allies.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Military action?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the attack cast "serious doubt" on President Bashar al-Assad's commitment to the peace plan.

Mr. Ban and the diplomatic corps just don't get it. The Arab League are playing "see no evil, ... " for fear of opening the giant oil drum of worms they are sitting on.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Massacre? What Massacre?

Assad and Co. don't deny the action, but say reports are overblown.

Update:

Red Cross states it is now a civil war.

The Geneva Convention now applies if this is accepted. As the article states, this can lead to war crimes trials later.

  Edited July 15, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Barbarossa 51]

.

[Easy Bakes 253]

No updates in a week?

Noone mentioned

this

[samima 92]

Syria is bieng torn apart.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

PM escapes.

Only in office for a couple of months. Assad must be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

And now, things become a little clearer.

"Correspondents say "axis of resistance" refers to Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza."

The last time I heard the word "axis" the reference was to Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Le plus ça change, le plus c'est la même chose. (French proverb).

(or "There is nothing new under the sun" - Ecclesiastes)

If there really is an alliance of powers with Iran as the new Germany, I think the world should not look for "peace in our time".

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

One step closer to complete chaos.

So the UN "observers" have left. They were powerless in any case. What is needed is a peacemaking/peacekeeping force from the Arab League. The AL has never been known to field such a thing, but if they really want to be like the rest of us it is time to step up to the plate. If we have Muslims trying to pacify Muslims then we have a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the Sunni/Shia rift, among other schisms, still hang over Islam like a pall of greasy smoke. The lack of a central authority for this religion is causing great harm.

Judaism is no better. Look at Israel with the factions mostly divided on religious lines forming political parties. Their governments are almost like day flies, but they do try to have a representative government in the fractured Knesset.

Both of these world religions lack a unifying authority which can be universally hated/loved. There is definitely something to be said about the Vatican.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I hope and pray for the best but honestly, I expect my worst fears to come true with Syria.

[LexusInfernus 908]

One step closer to complete chaos.

So the UN "observers" have left. They were powerless in any case. What is needed is a peacemaking/peacekeeping force from the Arab League. The AL has never been known to field such a thing, but if they really want to be like the rest of us it is time to step up to the plate. If we have Muslims trying to pacify Muslims then we have a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the Sunni/Shia rift, among other schisms, still hang over Islam like a pall of greasy smoke. The lack of a central authority for this religion is causing great harm.

Judaism is no better. Look at Israel with the factions mostly divided on religious lines forming political parties. Their governments are almost like day flies, but they do try to have a representative government in the fractured Knesset.

Both of these world religions lack a unifying authority which can be universally hated/loved. There is definitely something to be said about the Vatican.

I doubt that having 'Muslims pacify Muslims' is gonna work. The problem for Syria is that it still has a clan structure, and that a lot of people there identify themselves with their clan. As long as there is no real national identity there will never be peace. Every time one clan will gain the upper hand, put a dictator in place and the whole process of revolution starts over again. Those clan identities need to disappear and be replaced with a national Syrian identity. That is a major condition for lasting peace and stability in Syria.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

One step closer to complete chaos.

So the UN "observers" have left. They were powerless in any case. What is needed is a peacemaking/peacekeeping force from the Arab League. The AL has never been known to field such a thing, but if they really want to be like the rest of us it is time to step up to the plate. If we have Muslims trying to pacify Muslims then we have a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the Sunni/Shia rift, among other schisms, still hang over Islam like a pall of greasy smoke. The lack of a central authority for this religion is causing great harm.

Judaism is no better. Look at Israel with the factions mostly divided on religious lines forming political parties. Their governments are almost like day flies, but they do try to have a representative government in the fractured Knesset.

Both of these world religions lack a unifying authority which can be universally hated/loved. There is definitely something to be said about the Vatican.

I doubt that having 'Muslims pacify Muslims' is gonna work. The problem for Syria is that it still has a clan structure, and that a lot of people there identify themselves with their clan. As long as there is no real national identity there will never be peace. Every time one clan will gain the upper hand, put a dictator in place and the whole process of revolution starts over again. Those clan identities need to disappear and be replaced with a national Syrian identity. That is a major condition for lasting peace and stability in Syria.

Then what is needed is a marketing campaign to define the Syrian identity that overrides clan identity. How to do this is beyond me. Each "citizen" of Syria has to be more proud of his citizenship over his clan membership. It is going to be a long haul getting all these stiff-necked people to buy into this idea.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Then what is needed is a marketing campaign to define the Syrian identity that overrides clan identity. How to do this is beyond me. Each "citizen" of Syria has to be more proud of his citizenship over his clan membership. It is going to be a long haul getting all these stiff-necked people to buy into this idea.

what is required is good old nationalism.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Then what is needed is a marketing campaign to define the Syrian identity that overrides clan identity. How to do this is beyond me. Each "citizen" of Syria has to be more proud of his citizenship over his clan membership. It is going to be a long haul getting all these stiff-necked people to buy into this idea.

what is required is good old nationalism.

Since the clans have no loyalty to their country, they sure wave the flag around a lot. Nationalism in some senses is not the answer.

What is needed is for all these people to get together (if they ever would without killing each other) and agree to have a country not a set of warring satraps. The Brits did it in India in the 17-1800s, but communication wasn't as good in those days. Much harder to do it now, and colonialism is really, really dead. Maybe the social networks can help instead of hinder this, but that would take something really powerful.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Its shame we cant all get along and respect every ones religion.

one of my favorite moments from Babylon 5

  Edited August 18, 2012 by Easy Bakes  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

One of the greatest problems of great religious movements is its growing pains. Islam is now where Christianity was in the middle ages: fractured and argumentative with itself, with many "heresies", and lots of violence. The timing is about right. The Hejira was about 600 years after the founding of Christianity.

It is too bad that people won't pay attention to history. They could save themselves so much angst.

[LexusInfernus 908]

One of the greatest problems of great religious movements is its growing pains. Islam is now where Christianity was in the middle ages: fractured and argumentative with itself, with many "heresies", and lots of violence. The timing is about right. The Hejira was about 600 years after the founding of Christianity.

It is too bad that people won't pay attention to history. They could save themselves so much angst.

Except that despite the actual religious violence in Europe was rather minimal, and the heresies were mostly efforts of a weakening church to gain a grasp again on Europe, which was at that time advancing and progressing, while in the Middle East we only see stagnation, and much much more religious violence. Really, if you study history closely, youll see that there are almost no parallels between Islam and Christianity.

  Edited August 18, 2012 by LexusInfernus  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

We won't be fooled again?

China to the U.S. war hawks. 'Not another Iraq'.

[JanYpe 17]

One of the greatest problems of great religious movements is its growing pains. Islam is now where Christianity was in the middle ages: fractured and argumentative with itself, with many "heresies", and lots of violence.

...this would be as opposed to the Christian nations, which have spent the last 1500 years living in peace and harmony, and definitely did not fight any war, commit any genocides or oppress any part of the world, right?

Except that despite the actual religious violence in Europe was rather minimal, and the heresies were mostly efforts of a weakening church to gain a grasp again on Europe, which was at that time advancing and progressing, while in the Middle East we only see stagnation, and much much more religious violence. Really, if you study history closely, youll see that there are almost no parallels between Islam and Christianity.

Minimal religious violence in Europe? Would you like to clarify just how your reached that conclusion? Because if you actually were to study history closely you would see religious violence lay waste to vast swathes of the continent.

  Edited August 23, 2012 by JanYpe  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Maybe you don't consider what happened to Moorish Iberia to be in Europe? Or you have some other continent in mind, like Antarctica?

[LexusInfernus 908]

Minimal religious violence in Europe? Would you like to clarify just how your reached that conclusion? Because if you actually were to study history closely you would see religious violence lay waste to vast swathes of the continent.

Well lets see. First of all, the idea that religion caused all these wars in Europe. Mostly nonsense. Especially after the peace of Westphalia, and the introduction of the Balance of Power, religion played no role of significance in starting wars. Although it was always the convenient scapegoat that could be used to set up one group of people against the other. Than there were things like the inquisition and witch trials. Alright, those did have a mostly religious character (although Im quite sure both the inquisition and the witch trials were used a lot in order to get social outcasts and minorities. And the actual amount of people getting killed in witch trials and the Inquisition in all of Europe was pretty minimal.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

^ Depends on your universe of discourse doesn't it? If you look at the period starting around 20 A.D. and coming forward to the Renaissance, you'll find quite a lot of clerical court executions, some of them by simply dropping the victim into an oubliette. They died of thirst pretty quickly in one of those.

Of course, the Church never executed anyone. They turned the victim over to the "secular arm" which was only too willing to be the executioner, whether it was by simply making the person vanish or in an auto da fe.

  Edited August 24, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[LexusInfernus 908]

^ Depends on your universe of discourse doesn't it? If you look at the period starting around 20 A.D. and coming forward to the Renaissance, you'll find quite a lot of clerical court executions, some of them by simply dropping the victim into an oubliette. They died of thirst pretty quickly in one of those.

Of course, the Church never executed anyone. They turned the victim over to the "secular arm" which was only too willing to be the executioner, whether it was by simply making the person vanish or in an auto da fe.

Sure, Im not saying there never happened any religious violence, but often people make it out to be that Europe until the enlightenment was only fighting wars and what not over religious disputes. Most conflicts, even those involving the church were more about politics and power than actual religion.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

^ Depends on your universe of discourse doesn't it? If you look at the period starting around 20 A.D. and coming forward to the Renaissance, you'll find quite a lot of clerical court executions, some of them by simply dropping the victim into an oubliette. They died of thirst pretty quickly in one of those.

Of course, the Church never executed anyone. They turned the victim over to the "secular arm" which was only too willing to be the executioner, whether it was by simply making the person vanish or in an auto da fe.

Sure, Im not saying there never happened any religious violence, but often people make it out to be that Europe until the enlightenment was only fighting wars and what not over religious disputes. Most conflicts, even those involving the church were more about politics and power than actual religion.

Agreed, it is mostly greed. However, the Church provided many excuses to wage war over some slight, while the real matter was the cupidity of the protagonists. The ultimate failure of diplomacy is warfare. Nothing like a good assassination to get things going.

This was true up to at least WW II, when a certain madman plotted to simulate a border incident. The Korean conflict was the same with the 'religious' excuse of the spread of the communist ideology. In fact, the South was just better land and the North wanted it.

After that most wars have been over trivialities and trumped up excuses. Look at the mess in the middle east caused by a British snivel serpent in 1917 and still ongoing.

[JanYpe 17]

Minimal religious violence in Europe? Would you like to clarify just how your reached that conclusion? Because if you actually were to study history closely you would see religious violence lay waste to vast swathes of the continent.

Well lets see. First of all, the idea that religion caused all these wars in Europe. Mostly nonsense. Especially after the peace of Westphalia, and the introduction of the Balance of Power, religion played no role of significance in starting wars. Although it was always the convenient scapegoat that could be used to set up one group of people against the other. Than there were things like the inquisition and witch trials. Alright, those did have a mostly religious character (although Im quite sure both the inquisition and the witch trials were used a lot in order to get social outcasts and minorities. And the actual amount of people getting killed in witch trials and the Inquisition in all of Europe was pretty minimal.

Well after the peace of Westphalia, sure. But that's a lot like saying there haven't been any world wars since 1945, so the 20th century was a peaceful one. Even a conservative estimate puts the civilian death toll of the wars of religion in France and the German states at 10 million.

Were there other factors that led to the violence in Europe? Sure. But the same goes for literally every other conflict. You can't point at religious violence in one region and then totally ignore what happened in your own.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Minimal religious violence in Europe? Would you like to clarify just how your reached that conclusion? Because if you actually were to study history closely you would see religious violence lay waste to vast swathes of the continent.

Well lets see. First of all, the idea that religion caused all these wars in Europe. Mostly nonsense. Especially after the peace of Westphalia, and the introduction of the Balance of Power, religion played no role of significance in starting wars. Although it was always the convenient scapegoat that could be used to set up one group of people against the other. Than there were things like the inquisition and witch trials. Alright, those did have a mostly religious character (although Im quite sure both the inquisition and the witch trials were used a lot in order to get social outcasts and minorities. And the actual amount of people getting killed in witch trials and the Inquisition in all of Europe was pretty minimal.

Well after the peace of Westphalia, sure. But that's a lot like saying there haven't been any world wars since 1945, so the 20th century was a peaceful one. Even a conservative estimate puts the civilian death toll of the wars of religion in France and the German states at 10 million.

Were there other factors that led to the violence in Europe? Sure. But the same goes for literally every other conflict. You can't point at religious violence in one region and then totally ignore what happened in your own.

10 million is not a lot of people if you then look at the death toll of all the wars fought over purely political reasons. Again, I wasnt saying there wasnt any religious violence, Im merely saying that compared to other causes of violence, religion plays a relatively small role. And it only became obvious that wars were fought over political reasons after the peace of Westphalia as that introduced the balance of power, which subsequently became pretty much the sole reason for wars in Europe, up until WWI. And thats not to say that religion was never used to play out one group of people against another, but the motives for this were almost always political. In reality, Anyways, before the peace of Westphalia, its gets a little more foggy, as the church is often involved. Then again, the church and the monarchs were involved in a power struggle over how power should be divided, so again, political power was the real reason for all this fighting, and religion was merely an excuse.

  Edited August 24, 2012 by LexusInfernus  

[IL. 1,043]

One of the greatest problems of great religious movements is its growing pains. Islam is now where Christianity was in the middle ages: fractured and argumentative with itself, with many "heresies", and lots of violence. The timing is about right. The Hejira was about 600 years after the founding of Christianity.

It is too bad that people won't pay attention to history. They could save themselves so much angst.

Yes, it is too bad that people won't pay attention to history.

When Europe was in dark ages, the Islamic civilisation was in it's golden ages and the world's super power(the known world at least).

Now, many muslim countries are in their dark ages.

If you take a deep study on Islam and study it, you will find that there's nothing wrong with it, on the contrary in encourages science and hard work (yes that is jihad too, hard work and searching for the truth and knowledge is also jihad) and etc... it is just the fanatic groups, some are naturally formed, and others are made (like Al-Qaeda made in USA, and Taliban made in Afghanistan by USA help(if you just take a look on how afghanistan was before USA kicks in for oil)), are who try to translate the Quran and interprate in the wrong way and etc...

(*)In fact, fanatism doesnt only exist in relegions, but even in sports, music, anything...you always see fighting in stadiums because a football team lost from time to time, or a fan attacks hes favorite singer, or even try to kill him, etc...

& the funny part is, all humanity are the same, and it is happening all over the world, and all over the history.

Another point i have to say, is that Islam doesnt have a central commend center or something like that like in christianity, so you can't have a pope or a church ruling, but you can have some radical groups ruling over however (go back to (*) ).

If you want to start a thread about the violence, it's reasons, the view of Quran about it and the statements of the prophet Mohamed (pbuh) about it, it will be ok.

One more thing is that, you can't just say that the reason for violence is the relegion only, there are many factors, esspecially in our day, economy, wars and politics(every country USA invaded left fanatic groups and cells behind it, Iraq and Afghanistan are the biggest examples for it), education, it's place on the map (either isolated or not), etc...

Also you can't compare relegions to each other by time, time is always relative, just like people, some people becomes mature at the age of 20 or 25, others become mature at the age of 35, and some others never become matter ennuf intill it's too late.

& if you say that Islam is the problem, then, how come the Islamic civlisation flourished once and hold the light-house of knowledge to pass it over later to Europe, and then compelty falling apart in the 18th century till now.

Today things are changing, the world is changing, the balance of power is also changing, and the east asian countries are slowly taking over.

Revolutions starting to rise all over the Arab world.

Some revolutions are meant to succeed, some others are not, wich are made, or a conspiracy as some call it.

Personally I think that it is a conspiracy, the opposite parties are all united, and funded by USA and Israel, what more proof do we need?

If Bachar Al-Assad, leaves, it will be a mess, as it is said here before, Syria have alot of relegions and relegion fractions in it, like shia, sunnu, alawis, christians, jews, etc...

It may be another Iraq, it may be not.

Israel will sure find it a golden chance to expand maybe, on some of the syrian lands, invading it, and having a chance to attack Iran, but that is far too dangerous and a big move, so I don't think so at least not any time soon, after all Iran is Syria's allie, and who knows what will happen if Bachar leaves or Israel kicks in after that, there may be a war over Syria between Iran and Israel there.

The whole middle east area is a time bomb, Saudi Arabia is a time bomb too, and after it, all the arab gulf.

In the last few monthes, the number of social networks users in Saudi Arabia rised by 3000%, yes 3000% not 300%.

Not to mentions some riots that happened in the east of the kingdome.

Things may change there, and may lead to the project of the new middle east map (I assume that you know it), or lead to democratic countries or facist regimes wich is less likely, because the two other possible scenarios wich are, chaos, or terrorism, or another dictator, will lead to the new middle east as USA and Israel planned.

But because of the importance of the saudi arabia and oil and etc.. I don't think that the main powers of ther world will let that happen, or maybe they will, and that will lead to another economic crisis, and maybe a big change in the balance of the power, but that is not very likely.

One more thing, the least thing to think about, is the relegion...

Maybe you don't consider what happened to Moorish Iberia to be in Europe? Or you have some other continent in mind, like Antarctica?

Indeed, during the Muslims rule in Spain, all the three relegions lived in peace together, working together as a one country.

Not to mention that most jews left with Muslims when the Christian forces kicked Muslims out, because they knew that they will be tortured.

& the best proof for that is the high number of jews in North Africa before the establishement of Israel.

^ Depends on your universe of discourse doesn't it? If you look at the period starting around 20 A.D. and coming forward to the Renaissance, you'll find quite a lot of clerical court executions, some of them by simply dropping the victim into an oubliette. They died of thirst pretty quickly in one of those.

Of course, the Church never executed anyone. They turned the victim over to the "secular arm" which was only too willing to be the executioner, whether it was by simply making the person vanish or in an auto da fe.

Sure, Im not saying there never happened any religious violence, but often people make it out to be that Europe until the enlightenment was only fighting wars and what not over religious disputes. Most conflicts, even those involving the church were more about politics and power than actual religion.

& that is exaclty one of the reasons that caused the fall of the Islamic civilisation, and those disputes about power and kings' and presedents' assasination till today in the arab countries.

[IL. 1,043]

Another thing I want to point out btw, as far as I know, the native Americans, and their whole culture was destroyed, because of relegion fanatism, all their scribts were burned too, and that reminds me of what the Church ordered when they took back Spain, they burned all the books that they found, and the rest of them were translated and stored in churches without saying their origin or their writers.

I don't want to be unfair or something, but something like that happened in the Islamic civilisation once, a city called Samarqand (not sure), was a great large city, with alot of libraries, it was one of the knowledge's light-houses, but later, it was fully destroyed, and all books were burnt, and the city lost it's glory, because of the relegious fanatism (go back to (*) to see more about fanatism,), and the same way the Baghdad Astronomical Observatory was destroyed, Baghdad to be later conquered and destroyed by Mangolians, destroying all the libraries and everything.

So here I mentioned events from both sides, when Spanish or Spaniards burned books and killed a whole culture, and while muslims destroyed themselves at some time.