Setting Up Priorities!

It is not clear to me yet whether all this grandstanding by the US and Israel vis-à-vis Hamas will actually amount to a full-fledged boycott. I hope not. Because moving against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran at the same time is simply untenable. The US has to prioritize, and has to prioritize right.

Hamas and Hezbollah (and Muqtada al-Sadr too, for he represents a part of the extremists’ alliance) can be neutralized through developments in the internal affairs of their countries, so that the focus should remain on Syria and, more importantly, Iran. Continue reading “Setting Up Priorities!” →

Managing our way through! – A few thoughts on the nature of our current dilemma

First posted on my short-lived blog Tharwalizations

Interest, principle, reality and time. What do we do when all these things conflict, and begin to push and pull us in different directions? How can we manage the crises that emanate from the complex interactions of these basic facts of our daily subsistence, our historical journey, our ongoing quest to know who we are, our continuing experimentation with the fabric of life and existence, in a desperate attempt at self-actuation and self-actualization? Continue reading “Managing our way through! – A few thoughts on the nature of our current dilemma” →

The Petulant Lot & their Not So Petty Challenge!

Syrian officials did not show any sign of real remorse for the failure of their security apparatuses to protect the Danish Embassy from vandals. On the contrary, they were defiant: it is the Danes who should apologize for even criticizing the arson of their embassy. For by doing so, they failed to appreciate the real efforts of the security people who took quite a beating for trying to protect the embassy of the infidels. Continue reading →

The Myriad Faces of Heresy!

“…it is highly unlikely that the Syrian regime will voluntarily effect any major changes in its general structure or its modus operandi. Half-hearted pressures on it to do so will probably not be enough. Still, a full-scale invasion with the goal of effecting a regime change, even with a good casus belli in hand, will most likely prove too problematic at this stage. Syria has a relatively new president who has been received with all due honors by many world leaders, including Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Prime Minister Gerhardt Schroeder, and French President Jacques Chirac. Syria’s relations with the world community are much more intricate and ambivalent than those of the Taliban or the Saddam regime, as we have noted earlier. The case against Syria will never be as clear-cut as that against Afghanistan or Iraq. A full-scale invasion of Syria would seem to require a U.S. administration that is even more oblivious to the rest of the world than the current Bush administration seems to be. Continue reading “The Myriad Faces of Heresy!” →