Traces of sarin nerve agent - Times say. 

A secret British operation has smuggled out a soil sample which provides the first forensic evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, it was reported last night.

Government scientists working at the Ministry of Defence’s research facility at Porton Down, Wiltshere, found traces of “some kind of chemical weapon” after performing tests, according to The Times.

The tests at Porton Down reportedly concluded that the chemical traces were from a weapon rather than gas sometimes used by the Syrian security forces to put down protests.

“There have been some reports that it was just a strong riot-control agent but that is not the case - it’s something else although it can’t definitively be said to be sarin nerve agent,” one source told the newspaper.

The sample was reportedly smuggled out of Syria in a mission involving MI6 last month.

It was not clear whether the sample was from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, where more than 20 people were alleged to have been killed in a chemical attack last month.

Both the Syrian regime and rebel groups accused the other side of using chemical weapons but definitive evidence has not yet emerged to support either claim, or even to prove that chemical weapons were used at all.

The Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the reported tests at Porton Down.

On Saturday, two passengers on Cairo’s underground metro in their early 20s looked jaded, but they still shouted at the top of their voices, demanding an end to the “rule of the Supreme Guide.”

Calling him names, the two men went on a foul-mouthed outburst against Mohamed Badie, the man they believe had overruled Egypt’s elected President Mohamed Morsi and assumed effective control of the country.

The passengers, it transpired, were angry because they had been involved in a confrontation with Brotherhood members in front of the Islamist group’s headquarters in the Cairo district of Mokattam, a fortress that has long been spared street violence and attacks.

The presidential palace was a protest hotspot for several months, but it has now made way for the Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters, a building that lies on a hill which overlooks many parts of Cairo, in a reflection of the opposition’s belief that Morsi is largely subordinate to Brotherhood leader Badie, who keeps a low profile despite being the subject of constant speculation about his actual role in Egypt.

[…]

Perhaps Badie has something to prove to some disgruntled political activists, who seem to have almost forgotten Morsi in their chants, preferring to hurl a barrage of insults at a man they believe is more influential in the unofficial ruling hierarchy.

The West and the fundamentalists

Nasser’s defeat in the 1967 war and the progressives’ Mifailure to implement real achievements, both at the organisational level and in terms of their capacity to win over the Arab masses, created an atmosphere of receptivity to demands and projects opposed to progressive, emancipatory thinking. That situation was exploited by the reactionary wing represented by Arab states which faithfully followed the American agenda and set about supporting groupings of rigorously Islamic believers – as happened in Afghanistan, where America backed bin Laden and others like him in order to contain Communist influence.

From the start of the Seventies the Arab world was exposed to a disastrous attack by fanatical Islamist organisations which drove women back into the age of the harem and made the veil obligatory. At the beginning of the new century they went even further, promoting heretical innovations: the niqab and the burqa. Even today we aware and educated women are subjected to daily pressure and provocation which increase our fears and worries, making advancement towards a time of greater freedom and development even more complicated and difficult.

Money for Islamic clothing

At the start of the Seventies dictatorial Arab regimes, backed by America, allied themselves with Salafist groupings, making millions available for supporting and strengthening this movement. For instance, all those who wore so-called Islamic clothing received a monthly payment (fifteen dinars for a man, ten for a woman). For a man this clothing consists of a short galabaya and leather sandals together with a long untrimmed beard, and for a woman a headcovering and a long dark-coloured coat. Recipients were also given – free of charge – prayer-beads plus a splendid edition of the Koran and a prayer-mat.

To begin with these Islamic organisations concentrated on young people who had demonstrated the capacity for leadership and were in a position to exert influence on others. They also wanted to reach women at home. Meetings were arranged and cells formed in the houses of women from the lower middle class. Then attention turned to mosques, schools, and universities. All that happened thanks to financial and other assistance from Arab regimes loyal to the US, in the hope that this Islamic input would keep Arab society free of socialist ideas and progressive projects that called for emancipation in all spheres, beginning with liberation from Western influence and extending to the unleashing of the creative energies in society.

The intention was to enable society to prove itself in the arena of modern life and to become an independent, developed, and effective force, defending itself against both the West and its covetousness, and against Israel’s expanding racist demands.

Islamist training

However, the support from Salafist Islamists wasn’t limited to the provision of free clothing, monthly payments and meeting-places. Fertile ground was also prepared in primary and secondary schools. Islamists, both male and female, were given preference in the appointment of teachers, charged with influencing young pupils and students so that Salafist thinking and ideology became part of the children’s psyche and intellect. In addition youngsters received training in military discipline and the martial arts at special camps established in Arab states and in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Thanks to the organisational and financial possibilities open to them, and to great support among the population, from the early Seventies up to the present day these groups have succeeded in eclipsing progressive and emancipatory ideas, and in forcing liberals and socialists onto the periphery of society. They have also managed to repress the women’s movement, setting it back several decades.

The political contradictions that became apparent some time ago included the transformation of close links between America and its Islamist allies into a competitive and bloody conflict. The Islamists America had once called ‘Mujahedeen’ and supplied with money and arms for combating the Soviet camp now became ‘terrorists’. However, once their fighting spirit had been strengthened and support gained among both the general public and élites, Islamists, headed by al-Qaida, turned against America and its allies, setting about threatening Western interests and deploying violence against everything Western and Israeli.

Absurdly, though, the US and its allies only became aware of how dangerous this about-turn or trap was after the magic had been deployed against the magician and Salafist organisations began threatening to establish a strict Islamist regime, one that distances itself from the West and its adherents, opposes them, and shuts itself off from them in the same way as it acted against emancipatory and liberal thinking.

Long. But worth reading in full. I really need to gather different takes and compare. Arab Left’s genuine context and ‘better’ sides - really represented - not just consumed in just keep critiquing. But narrating its own history and perspectives. Might be important. 

So before doing comparison/check - I’m posting it. 

“In the first month and a half the rebels were really a united revolutionary group,” Abu Ismael said. “But now they are different. There are those who are here only to loot and make money, and some still fight.” Did Abu Ismael’s unit loot? “Of course. How do you think we feed the men? Where do you think we get all our sugar, for example?”

In the chaotic economics of the war, everything has become a commodity. Abu Ismael’s unit, for example, took a supply of diesel from a school compound, and every day his unit exchanges a few jerrycans of the precious liquid for bread.

Because Abu Ismael has a supply of food and fuel his battalion is more desirable than others in the sector. Commanders who are unable to feed their men tend to lose them; they desert and join other groups.

Bullets are equally important. When military installations and warehouses are looted the battalion that captures ammunition grows by cannibalising smaller, less well-equipped units that have no bullets to hand.

In a dark apartment in the Salahuddin neighbourhood of Aleppo we sat with a group of commanders who were discussing the formation of a new brigade that would bring their various battalions together. They soon turned to the topic of loot.

One of the commanders present had led an operation into the predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood of Ashrafiya in Aleppo, but according to several fighters who were there the action failed when the army counterattacked because the rebel support units that were supposed to reinforce the front instead turned their attention to looting.

“I want to know exactly what you took that day,” the commander of a small unit told the leader of the assault. The commander opened a notebook to write, while another man held a flashlight above his head. “As long as one fights while the others are busy collecting loot we can’t advance,” he said. “The loot has to be divided equally.”

The leader started to list the luxury cars and the weapons his units had found and taken, while the other commander wrote them down in the notebook. Some of the cars would be sold back to the owners – if they paid out a hefty ransom.

How to explain all this - is the issue to me. Though I expect the world and so called Syrian experts or Middle East experts - just really go as ‘That is the reality over there’.

Why can’t - do interviews on people - all or many people actually went through all this - and see how this ‘sectarianism’ - (or lack of ‘overall coordination capacity’) emerges and plays out - and sustains and solidifies? 

Should be doable. 

- 21 October 1993

And this is by far, the most intense ‘thinking’ piece by Edward Said I read - encountered. It’s really intense.

And that means - I say - readers have to think and seek way forward as intense - and expansive as the author did.

At some points, I do feel it sounds like he is really writing to his fellow Palestinians.

Bu then reality is - I really just don’t witness anyone actually thinking this intensely and expansively. 

But that’s always the case about humans. Unfortunately.  

One big name. 

It arrives among us just to be quoted and tossed around. Always impossible to find real successors.

(I’m so genuinely sick of this pattern, but that’s always the case.) 

[…] one can already see in Palestine’s potential statehood the lineaments of a marriage between the chaos of Lebanon and the tyranny of Iraq.

If this isn’t to happen, a number of quite specific issues need to be addressed. One is the diaspora Palestinians, who originally brought Arafat and the PLO to power, kept them there, and are now relegated to permanent exile or refugee status. Since they comprise at least half of the total Palestinian population their needs and aspirations are not negligible. A small segment of the exile community is represented by the various political organisations ‘hosted’ by Syria. A significant number of independents (some of whom, like Shafik al-Hout and Mahmoud Darwish, resigned in protest from the PLO) still have an important role to play, not simply by applauding or condemning from the sidelines, but by advocating specific alterations in the PLO’s structure, trying to change the triumphalist ambience of the moment into something more appropriate, mobilising support and building an organisation from within the various Palestinian communities all over the world to continue the march towards self-determination. These communities have been singularly disaffected, leaderlees and indifferent since the Madrid process began.

One of the first tasks is a Palestinian census, which has to be regarded not just as a bureaucratic exercise but as the enfranchisement of Palestinians wherever they are. Israel, the US and the Arab states – all of them – have always opposed a census: it would give the Palestinians too high a profile in countries where they are supposed to be invisible, and before the Gulf War, it would have made it clear to varions Gulf governments how dependent they were on an inappropriately large, usually exploited ‘guest’ community. Above all, opposition to the census stemmed from the realisation that, were Palestinians to be counted all together, despite dispersion and dispossession, they would by that very exercise come close to constituting a nation rather than a mere collection of people.

[…]

I’ve been following the way the crisis Egypt is being narrated and discussed, and there are some tropes and arguments that I think need refuting. 

- The opposition won’t negotiate.

All the Egypt media coverage I saw yesterday had the same headline: Egypt opposition rejects Morsi’s call to dialogue. But dialogue about what? Morsi either would or wouldn’t rescind his November 22 decree (he did, at the end of the day, ending an untenable situation in which he was entitled to issue legislation by decree, with no judicial review or appeal possible).

But he’d already said he would not postpone the rushed referendum and would not negotiate on the content of this very contentious constitution. So what was on the table to negotiate? Not to mention that it is hard for the opposition to accept an invitation to dialogue from someone who has just accused them on national TV of being paid saboteurs, based on false confession extorted under duress by his own cadres during extra-judicial interrogations. Morsi seems to have been bizzarrely acknowledging the fact that he is far from an honest broker when he decided to *skip*the negotiations to ensure their “neutrality.”

But for

1. domestic public
2. international audience

ElBaradei and National Salvation Front and April 6th and Ghonim and all - could have gone to just to meet and repeat their view, their demand, their voices again. 

Video all that, and come out of the meeting and say what you felt, and how and what you are going to do. 

Is it even just ‘going to meet’ - means losing face or putting Morsi/Brotherhood at higher social rank or giving them authority or something? 

Even if that’s so in Egypt’s social/cultural convention, these people can just try to change it. Go around. Run around. Talk. Meet. Come out and summarize result. Repeat. Got accused as foreign collaborator? Then refute. Widely. Repeatedly - go meeting President is the best opportunity for it - and meet and afterwards deliver again how much you care about Egypt. 

H.A. Hellyer also said it’s about the use of media (= PR).