The chorus for re-legitimating Assad continues to grow bigger and louder, with two more experts joining the fray through an op-ed in the New York Times that appeared today. The two experts, Julien Barnes-Dacey, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Daniel Levy, the director of the council’s Middle East program, argue that:
Some of those who defend Obama’s policy in Syria and the Middle East claim that he actually knows what he is doing, and that by referring from overt intervention he is allowing various enemies of the United States to fight on Syrian and Iraqi territories, which serves America’s interests, or so they assert. But the things to which these “experts” seem to be oblivious here is the impact of the alleged policy on the Syrian and Iraqi peoples.
On August 27, 2014, the DC Arts Center hosted a dual event featuring Ammar Abdulhamid: the first was a short documentary titled “Syria: A Fire Within,” made by the American activist and filmmaker Emanuel Benhamou, and the second was a book-signing of Ammar’s new book “The Irreverent Activist.” The dual event also featured a brief Q&A with Ammar and Emanuel.
Continue reading “Launching “Syria: A Fire Within” and “The Irreverent Activist””
The Islamic State is evil returned – The Washington Post
Why are so many people waxing philosophical about ISIS and its evil when the Assad regime has been doing worse things for the last four years and when the industrial-scale slaughter reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps is being carried by its security apparatuses, with little philosophization on anyone’s part? No, I am not trying to deny, justify or minimize the atrocities committed by ISIS, I am just wondering why the soul-searching is only happening now and in its regard, not years earlier in connection with the mass atrocities perpetrated by Assad. I am wondering why some people can even stomach advocating cooperation with Assad against ISIS, even though the latter is obviously a symptom of the disease that is Assad. I am wondering about the selective nature of our moral outlook on things. Is morality meant to be so cynically utilitarian, just another means towards achieving a coveted material end regardless of any human cost? Isn’t morality supposed to set up guidelines for our behavior, rather than offering justifications for it? What is wrong with this world? No. Don’t talk to me about God and Satan, Santa Clause or the Evil Wizard. Life is nothing more than fucked up peopled doing fucked up things, as they try haplessly to fill the emptiness they nourish inside, to give meaning to who they are, while fear of the unknown surrounding them and constantly closing in on them gnaw at their minds and souls. We are all so pitiful, so disgustingly pitiful.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 