The port of Oktyabrsk is situated on the left bank of the Bug River, 58 km. north of the entry to the Black Sea. Close to the city of Nikolayev, this anonymous Ukrainian port could not seem further from the strife-torn Middle East.
Yet in the last year, Oktyabrsk has played a key role in the international structure that enables the survival of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. It is the main point from which ships bearing the Russian arms that underwrite the Assad regime’s survival set off undisturbed on their journey to the Syrian coast.
Huge balls of fire and mushrooms of smoke seen on the latest videos from Homs indicate that the Syrian army is using more powerful weapons in its assault on the remaining rebel strongholds in the city.
This is what the daily shelling of Homs used to look like when the Baba Amro district was still under rebel control:
February 8, 2012
Explosions seen on the latest videos look rather different:
Hitler’s Nazi Germany signed a “non-aggression” agreement with Stalin’s USSR in 1939 (the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”). It meant nothing. It was a worthless peace of paper designed to ease the Nazi’s eventual conquest and extermination of all peoples in the Soviet sphere of influence: “Of the Soviet Union’s 190 million people, Hitler intended to kill 150 million and the rest would be made slaves for the invaders.” The Nazis did kill millions of Russians and Eastern Europeans. In the same way, Nazi Germany’s “alliance” with segments of the Arab/Muslim world was a short-term lie: The Germans considered North African Arab Semites to be sub-human inferiors whom I’m sure they would’ve eventually exterminated. As is so common in the current Arab/Muslim world, ignorance reigns, and Libyans don’t even know that Allied soldiers actually saved them from eventual extermination by defeating the Nazis in WWII’s north African theater. Libyan Islamists have ignorantly desecrated Allied soldiers’ tombs because of the silly, accidental Koran-burning incident in Afghanistan:
A furious mob has desecrated dozens of Commonwealth War Graves in a Libyan cemetery amid continuing fury in the Middle East over the burning of the Koran by U.S. soldiers.
Headstones commemorating British and Allied servicemen, killed during World War II campaigns in the Western Desert, lay smashed and strewn across Benghazi Military Cemetery. …
There is no “Arab Spring.” It is indeed an Arab winter in which hateful, violent Islamo-fascists are trying to take over the Middle East.
1. Dewy-eyed predictions of democracy within the year proved to be as silly as they appeared to be back then. Instead, a power-hungry military leadership shows it will do whatever necessary to remain in the saddle.
The obsession of the EU, the USA, the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Russia and even the Vatican to interfere in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy reminds me of the treatment of a Big Brother who has failed to do right in his past and thinks that he can make amends by forcing little brother to make all the sacrifices that Big Brother never has and never will make to satisfy a guilty conscience.
The apparently imminent eclipse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has re-ignited hope among some Western commentators concerning the so-called Arab Spring. The entry of Libyan rebels to Tripoli is being depicted in some circles as the removal of a major obstacle to the onward march toward freedom alleged to be taking place this year throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Some of the more enthusiastic observers are now turning their hopeful gaze toward Syria. They hope that with liberty victorious in Libya, the Assad regime will be the next to fall.
“Please release me let me go for I don’t love you anymore To waste our lives would be a sin Release me and let me love again.”
–”Please Release Me Let Me Go”
Perhaps the most important policymaking development of the last month has been President Barack Obama’s increasingly visible loss of a lot of the foreign policy elite, including considerable segments of the State and Defense departments. Why this is happening is one of the most interested-and highly neglected-stories of this period.
As the Afghan war enters its final and most decisive phase, India’s strategic position in the country has turned a full circle. Having maintained a close relationship with the post-Taliban government for years, New Delhi suffered a humiliating setback last January when its warning against the folly of making a distinction “between good Taliban and bad Taliban” was summarily ignored by the Afghanistan Conference in London.[1]
At a stroke, Pakistan squeezed its nemesis from the evolving security architecture by persuading the West that the time had come to incorporate the “moderate” faction of the Taliban into Afghanistan’s future state structure and to give Islamabad a key role in mediating this process.[2] Meanwhile, despite its best attempts to keep a low profile, India and its nationals have been increasingly targeted by extremist forces in Afghanistan. The Indian embassy in Kabul was struck twice over the past two years, and guest houses frequented by Indians were attacked with nine Indian nationals killed.[3]
Russia is the ally of deadly enemies of Israel. Senior Russian officials have met with the political leader of Hamas, Moscow cooperates with Teheran and supplies Syria with rockets, knowing quite well that some of these weapons end up in the hands of Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is hardly possible to define the Putin-Medvedev regime as a developed democracy. It is a kind of Byzantine form of government with a democratic facade.
On March 11, before the United States and its allies launched attacks against Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, Dirk Vandewalle, a professor in the department of government at Dartmouth College and author of A History of Modern Libya, spoke to the Middle East Forum via conference call, explaining why it is not in U.S. interest to engage Libya militarily.
While I admire the courage of brave Russians standing up to Stalin, er, ah, Putin, the below-detailed story, “Rare anti-Putin rally held in Moscow,” is not a significant sign of liberalization:
Up to 500 protesters from left wing and liberal anti-Kremlin opposition groups gathered on Moscow’s Pushkin Square to call for Vladimir Putin’s removal, kicking off what they said was the start of a campaign to oust him. …
Clinton is right: “Russians” in Israel don’t really want peace, that kind of peace which Bill Clinton imposed on Serbs in Kosovo.
Clinton’s words that Russian-speaking Israelis are an obstacle to reaching peace can be understood in different ways. Excluding their emotional component, it is necessary to recognize that the immigrants from the former Soviet Union are most opposed to the Israeli/Palestinian peace process (or what is implied by this term). Let’s look at the root of this phenomenon.
Recent years have witnessed the rise of irregular but frequently intensive opposition to U.S. global preeminence by Russia and China. In their own ways, and in pursuit of their own interests, each of these authoritarian governments has established an informal alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran. For its part, the Khamenei regime in Tehran continues to view the United States as the “Great Satan” and works against American interests by engaging in international terrorism,[1] aiding in attacks on U.S. and coalition personnel in Iraq[2] and Afghanistan,[3] working to derail any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,[4] and most of all by seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
, spoke to the Middle East Forum via conference call, explaining why it is not in U.S. interest to engage Libya militarily.
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