Update: We’re over halfway there, folks. Thanks so much!
It is time for the annual Informed Comment fundraiser (or as I tend to think of it, an opportunity for those readers who can and would like to contribute a voluntary yearly subscription).
Those of you who donated last year supported several important trips to the region so as to have first-hand, on-the-ground impressions that would help me interpret the news.
Philosophy and Mission of Informed Comment
Years ago I decided that I did not want to put “Informed Comment” behind a firewall and charge a subscription fee for it. That just isn’t who I am. In my own view, 9/11 kicked off a long crisis between the United States and the Muslim world that I felt a duty to attempt to interpret and analyze for both publics, not just for well-heeled elites. This is a democratic blog, for the people and in dialogue with the people, for the common weal.
Opposition forces said that Syrian fighter jets bombed the town of Halfaya near Hama on Sunday. The bombs struck a crowd standing in line to buy bread, and some 200 victims are said to have been killed, and dozens more injured.
The attack on Halfaya likely was the regime’s response to its fighters confronting the pro-government shabiha militias based in two largely Christian towns nearby. The shabiha death squads are formed of Alawi Shiite criminal gangs who used to be used by members of the ruling al-Assad family for smuggling and extortion. The upper echelons of Syria’s Baath government are filled by members of the Alawi Shiite minority, which forms about 10 percent of the population. Most Syrians are Sunni Arabs, but about 35% belong to religious or ethnic minorities.
Arabic language reports allege that most of the victims were children. Videotape of the horrible death toll emerged on the web, though as with all news from Syria it cannot be independently verified.
That many victims were children does make sense, since it is common in the Levant for families to send them with some coins to buy bread.
Also over the weekend, opposition fighters in Aleppo took over yet another regime military base, using the cover of a heavy fog. The al-Hawa base had housed 120 infantrymen. They regime’s position in the north of the country seems to be collapsing, since it has lost control of trunk roads leading north from the capital of Damascus, cutting remaining troops off from resupply. The regime also now faces difficulty in receiving Russian and Iranian weaponry and ammunition, because of the fighting at Damascus airport.
UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi went back to Damascus on Sunday, but had to fly into Beirut and go overland because of clashes near Damascus’s international airport. Opposition leaders told the Arabic press that the time for a political solution has long since passed.
With every passing month, the Syrian state seems to control less and less territory and to hold the loyalty of fewer and fewer of its citizens. The only question seems to be when Damascus will finally rise up and move against the presidential palace.
Egyptians went to the polls again Saturday in the second round of the constitutional referendum. The provinces or governorates that voted in this round were disproportionately rural, and early returns suggested a big “yes” vote, perhaps as high as 70% or so. Rural areas are strongholds of the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist forces, though there are significant rural populations who reject the Brotherhood’s brand of Islam. The highly urban governorate of Cairo, a megalopolis of 19 million, rejected the constitution in the first round, last week.
In this round, the rural governorate of Minufiya rejected the constitution, and it barely squeaked by in Port Said, a center of leftist and labor activism. Critics of the process alleged irregularities at the polls, including campaigning and intimidation by Muslim Brothers or Salafis.
The turnout was again disappointingly low, about 32 percent according to initial estimates. It had been about 34 percent in the first round.
Many Egyptians opposed to Muslim fundamentalism boycotted the vote or just couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for it. Some, as with the Copts, were intimidated. Given that the constitution passed with 56% in the first round, and it was known that the governorates involved in this one were even more in favor of the Brotherhood, many leftists, liberals, centrists and supporters of the old regime may have stayed home out of despair. These figures show the lowest turnout of any post-Mubarak vote.
Since total “yes” vote from both days came in at about 64% if initial projections hold true, and the total turnout was 33%, only 21% of Egyptian voters actually approved this constitution, which restricts unions and provides no protection to women’s rights, and which seeks to subordinate secular law to Muslim canon law and abolishes civil law with regard to personal status matters.
It provoked massive protests before the presidential palace, which ended in violence when Muslim Brotherhood cadres attacked liberals and leftists.
During the past two Fridays, there have also been clashes between fundamentalists and their opponents in Egypt’s second city, the Mediterranean port of Alexandria. Confrontations on Friday left some 77 persons injured.
The country will now move to parliamentary elections by late February. But street protests against the constitution and the way it was imposed will likely continue. Whether fundamentalists can do as well in these elections for the lower house of the People’s Assembly remains to be seen; some reports suggest that President Morsi’s high-handedness has damaged the Brotherhood’s reputation with voters.
“If we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been or can be enjoyed by us without having first cost labor. And inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all the ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Reader Bill Chase wrote me that “The National Archives official also included a parenthetical note at the end of the document, in [Robert Todd] Lincoln’s hand: “the foregoing scraps…were written by Lincoln between his election to Congress in 1846, and taking his seat in Dec. 1847.” He says it was printed in a manual he was given when working as a civil servant in the 1940s, but later was excised.
The tone deaf and horrifyingly self-serving speech given by Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association on Friday cast a pall over our holiday season. At a time of national mourning and determination finally to rein in the plague of semi-automatic weaponry infesting our society, the speech was an exercise in blaming everyone but the lobby that has so effectively shielded the semi-automatic manufacturers and retailers from regulation. Here are the ways the NRA grinch stole Christmas this year:
1. Blamed video games for massacre of 6-year-olds and elementary school teachers. No evidence video games implicated.
2. Blamed movies for massacre of 6-year-olds and elementary school teachers. No evidence movies implicated.
3. Urged creation of 100,000-strong new Federal bureaucracy of armed school guards, which implies big tax increase. Thanks, Wayne! (And did not mention that Columbine had an armed guard or that Virginia Tech has its own police department.)
4. Condemned “gun-free schools” policy as insane.
5. Scaremongered about rise in violent crime. Murder rate in US cut in half since 1990, but did not mention that firearms murder rate remains highest among advanced countries.
6. Condemns confusion of semi-automatic guns with “machine guns.” Does not mention how many bullets a minute a semi-automatic gun with expanded clip can shoot.
7. Seems to call for armed adult volunteers to show up at our elementary schools to engage in vigilante ‘guarding’ of them. Are these likely the people we want in our schools?
8. Wants cordons around schools instead of gun control.
9. Offers to train elementary school children in use of firearms.
10. Does not mention that semi-automatic rifles were designed for military use and are not necessary for hunting, or that they are banned for civilians among all our NATO allies.
Welcome to Informed Comment, where I do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.
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