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Ed Webb

The right to resist is universal: A farewell to Al Akhbar and Assad's apologists - 0 views

maxblumenthal.com/...l-akhbar-and-assads-apologists

Syria Lebanon politics media Assad propaganda journalists

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • the mere existence of Western meddling does not automatically make Assad a subaltern anti-imperial hero at the helm of a “frontline resisting state,” as Ghorayeb has sought to paint him. Nor does it offer any legitimate grounds for nickel-and-diming civilian casualty counts, blaming the victims of his regime, or hyping the Muslim Threat Factor to delegitimize the internal opposition
  • The long history of sacrifice and courage by the Lebanese and Syrian people in support of the Palestinian struggle — and in defiance of self-interested autocrats — crystallizes an important fact that should not have to be repeated: Palestine will never be free as long as the Arab world lives under the control of dictators.
  • In his address to the Syrian People’s Assembly on June 3, the dictator tried to hammer the theme home by using the term “terrorists” or “terrorism” a whopping 43 times. That is a full ten times more than George W. Bush during his speech to Congress in the immediate aftermath of 9/11
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  • In joining the Assad regime’s campaign to delegitimize the Syrian opposition by casting it as a bunch of irrational jihadis (ironically, they seem to have little problem with Hezbollah’s core Islamist values), Assad’s apologists have unwittingly adopted the “war on terror” lexicon introduced by George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, and the neocon cabal after 9-11. Not only have they invoked the scary specter of The Terrorists (gasp!) to justify morally indefensible acts of violent repression, like pro-Israel hasbarists, they have resorted to rhetorical sophistry to dismiss the regime’s atrocities as necessary evils, unfortunate accidents (what al-Amin called “mistakes”), or fabrications of the regime’s opponents (see Ghorayeb on “unsubstantiated allegations of war crimes.”)
  • Like the neocon chickenhawks who cheered on America’s invasion of Iraq from the offices of Washington’s American Enterprise Institute, none of Assad’s apologists appear to have done any journalistic fieldwork to support their opinions. Ghorayeb and Narwani seem to have confined themselves to Beirut, where Ghorayeb consults the writings of V.I. Lenin and Paulo Freire to back up her hallucinatory portrayal of Assad as a subaltern freedom fighter, while Narwani cobbles together a scattershot of YouTube clips and hearsay from journalists she hangs out with to justify the regime’s very own “war on terror.”
  • As a Christian who fiercely rejected sectarianism, Shehadeh’s very presence shook the Syrian regime. After he was killed, the army shelled the Christian neighborhood of Hamidyeh to prevent his funeral, then a gang of shabiha attacked a memorial service for him in Damascus that would have presented a rare display of Christian-Sunni solidarity. It was this sense of solidarity that appeared to threaten the regime the most. As Shehadeh’s mother reportedly said, “They feared him in life, and they feared him in death.”
  • A few years ago, while visiting the offices of the Nation Magazine, a publication I frequently write for, I reflected on what it might have been like to be working there during the 1930’s when its editorial leadership supported Stalin and willfully ignored his crimes. What were the internal debates like, I wondered, and how would I have reacted? The past few weeks at Al Akhbar have brought those questions back into my thoughts, and they are no longer hypothetical. The paper’s opinion pages have become a playpen for dictator enablers, but unlike the 1930’s-era Nation Magazine, there is less excuse for their apologia. Indeed, given the easy accessibility of online media produced by Syrian activists and journalists, there is no way for Assad’s apologists to claim they did not know about the regime’s crimes
Ed Webb

Cinema and the Arab spring: the revolution starts here | Film | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...cinema-and-arab-spring-ica

film Islam Muslims Arab arabspring Iran Turkey

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • "If you want to understand the emotive universe from which the Arab spring arose, cinema is a good place to start. Look at a film like Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention: there the director spits out an apricot pit at an Israeli tank and blows it up. The scene is both fantasy and prophecy."
  • I don't think the idea of Islamic cinema even exists in the west. Islam is presumed not to have a modern culture. I'd argue it's important that these films don't insist on any kind of stylistic unity – and that in nearly all of them Islam is portrayed as quite marginal. They argue against religiosity as a determining force. They're all about change, too, about modernity, which neocons like Francis Fukuyama say the Islamic world is incapable of
  • "If you want to be thought of as an auteur, you don't want to be categorised according to ethnicity or religion," Ahmad says. "By calling someone 'Islamic', you're meant to be taking away from their universal appeal."
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  • Some of the most provocative films owe more to pulp and lo-fi subcultures than to mainstream cinema: look at Omar Ali Khan's anti-yuppie, anti-fundamentalist horror flick Hell's Ground (2007), Halil Uysal's Tirej (2002), a mesmerising film about – and made by – Kurdish guerrilla soldiers, and Omar Majeed's Taqwacore (2009), about a bunch of dope-smoking Muslim punks in the US.
  • An alternative canon, curated by the Middle Eastern art magazine Bidoun, points to gems such as Peggy Ahwesh's Beirut Outtakes (2007), made up of film scraps from an abandoned cinema in the Lebanese capital; its combination of colour and decay, Hollywood and local celluloid, high and low culture captures the city's vivid history with panache.
  • Because the Arab spring was a revolution spread (if not created) by digital media such as mobile phones, Twitter and amateur video, it could be argued that more Muslims than ever before now associate political freedom with the moving image – rather than the printed word. What's more, the speed and sophistication of image-production by canny campaigners may also help to dispel some of the orientalist stereotypes that still circulate in the west.
  • "A lot of British Muslim kids are very keen to see themselves represented," he says. "They want to see they have a great culture. But often they go back to a glorious, nostalgic version of Islam that offers them only a narrative of cultural degeneration since the middle ages. Winds of Change should remind us that we have powerful and well-established critiques of religion from within our societies."
Ed Webb

Blaming Islam for ISIS: A convenient lie to prepare us for more war | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-prepare-us-more-war-757116395

Islam ISIS terrorism gwot opinion analysis US USA neocons media Iraq Syria military Baath empire

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • We can’t defeat ISIS if we misrepresent what and who ISIS actually is. Far from being the apocalyptic Islamist group that Wood contends they are, actual IS documents and blue prints reveal IS to be methodical state builders, led by secular Baathists – who aim to restore Sunni-Baathist power in Iraq. These documents also make clear that Saddam’s former generals (anti-Islamists) use Islam as a recruitment tool. “They [ISIS founders] reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face,” notes the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
  • recruits are drawn to ISIS for reasons that have little to do with extremist Islam. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the Caliphate,”
  • the media welcomes only those who blame Islam or “radical Islam” and not those who speak to the conditions that make ISIS appealing
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  • blaming Islam makes us feel good about ourselves. Blaming Islam is good for television ratings. Blaming Islam makes it easier to sell new wars
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