Thurs. 6 Oct. 2011
HINDUSTAN TIMES
Ø Arabs embrace Steve Jobs and the Syrian connection………1
INDEPENDENT
Ø We can't control Syria – and we shouldn't try…………...…..3
NYTIMES
Ø With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend………………………………………..…….6
IRISH TIMES
Ø Armed opposition to Assad emerges…………...…………..10
NAHAR NET
Ø Report: Syrian Salafists Holding ‘Secret’ Talks with Christian Officials in Lebanon……………………………..13
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Ø Syria: Statement on Zaynab al-Hosni………..……………..14
WALL st. JOURNAL
Ø U.N. Veto Spurs New Syria Push……….…………………15
NATIONAL POST
Ø Send a message to Assad…………………………………...18
TORONTO STAR
Ø Enabling Assad’s crimes…………………………………...20
HUFFINGTON POST
Ø Syria's Double Diplomatic Muscle………………………....22
WASHINGTON POST
Ø At the U.N., a blow to Syria’s freedom…………………….25
Ø Syrian thugs try to intimidate the U.S. media……………...27
GUARDIAN
Ø Syria attacks 'media fabrications'…………………………..31
AP
Ø Bible Manuscripts From Damascus Go On Rare Display….33
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Arabs embrace Steve Jobs and the Syrian connection
Hindustan Times,
6 Oct. 2011,
While the world mourned the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs in California, many Syrians were quick to claim the computer genius as one of their own on Thursday through a little-known connection to his biological father.
Jobs, who died of cancer at the age of 56 on Wednesday, was given up for adoption soon after his birth in San Francisco to an American mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, and a Syrian-born father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali.
Jandali, 80, a former academic, has told how Schieble's "tyrant" father refused to allow his daughter to marry a Syrian and so the baby was adopted by a married couple from California, Paul and Clara Jobs.
Only in recent years did Jandali, born in the Syrian city of Homs and latterly an executive of the Boomtown Casino in Reno, Nevada, realise that the Apple chief was his son.
"Without telling me, Joanne upped and left to move to San Francisco to have the baby without anyone knowing, including me," Jandali told the New York Post in an interview in August. "She did not want to bring shame onto the family and thought this was best for everyone."
With Jandali out of the picture at the outset, many Syrians were unaware of the connection between Apple and their homeland until recently. But they were quick to embrace Jobs when news broke of his death.
Users of the social networking site Twitter were also quick to draw parallels with Syria's uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which has cost more than 2,900 lives, by a UN count.
"Wrong Syrian"
"The wrong Syrian died today," said one Twitter user, echoing sentiments of the Syrian leader's bitter opponents.
"A sick world we live in when Steve Jobs has to die of cancer and Bashar al-Assad remains Syria's cancer," another opposition supporter said on the website.
Others hailed Jobs, whose Syrian links have been little mentioned until now, as "a great Arab American" and "the most famous Arab in the world".
In Syria, some people, who all declined to give their full names, said Jobs would have been unlikely to have had such a stellar career if he had lived in the land of his father's birth, where the Assad family has ruled for 41 years.
"I felt sad, not because he is of Syrian origin but because we will miss the inventor and his inventions," said Rana, a 21-year-old student. "But I think that if he had stayed in Syria, he would not have invented anything."
"This is sad and we will miss a lot of his achievements, but the company will continue," said Ali, a website designer. "If he had lived and died in Syria, he would not have accomplished anything."
A 28-year-old Damascus resident, who gave his name as Ahmed, said he was happy to learn that Jobs had Syrian antecedents, although he was unable to afford any of Apple's products.
"I think that if he had lived in Syria he would not have been able to achieve any of this, or else he would have chosen to leave Syria," Ahmed said.
Other Syrians regretted that Jobs had no roots of his own in his father's homeland.
"The sad thing is that he had lived and died abroad, and humanity lost him," said Maneh, a 27-year-old bank employee, who posted an image of the Apple founder on his Facebook page.
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We can't control Syria – and we shouldn't try
International Studies
Adrian Hamilton
Independent,
Thursday, 6 October 2011
They watered it down three times but still the Russians and Chinese vetoed the UN Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad for suppressing his own people. Cue for outrage from all the western governments. Alain Juppé, the French Foreign Minister, declared it "a sad day for the Syrian people" and a "sad day for the Security Council".
Susan Rice, the US representative to the UN, who walked out of the vote, went even further, calling it a "cheap ruse by those who would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with the Syrian people". The Syrian protesters, she declared, would now know who the true obstacles to their hopes were.
Well, steady on. China and Russia may be in part driven by a desire for pragmatic gain. Given Russia's behaviour in the Caucasus and Chinese treatment of the Uighars, no one could call either of them friends of Islam. But their view on this vote was influenced more than anything by their response to events in Libya. They went along, by abstention, with a UN resolution supporting direct military intervention because Colonel Gaddafi had become so unpopular and his actions so brutally oppressive that it was unwise to look as if you supported him. They now feel – not without reason – that the UN resolution in the case of Libya was used to justify military intervention for the purposes of regime change and they now don't want that to happen in Syria.
The western response to the unfolding tragedy of Syria has been the opposite. To the Europeans and the US the success of operations in Libya in toppling Gaddafi has only made them, and France and the UK in particular, all the more eager to ride the Arab revolution as it spreads.
The high rhetoric of the moment partly reflects the knowledge that, at present, the West can't intervene militarily in Syria. Any such action would have too many consequences in the region and would not – unlike Libya – have the support of the Arab League.
But the rhetoric also reflects a hunger by western leaders after Libya to ride this wave and to be seen to be cresting it. David Cameron and President Sarkozy feel themselves the victors in Tripoli and would care to seem the same in Damascus. If push came to shove and world opinion really turned against President Assad as it turned against Gaddafi, then they would be up for military action as Moscow and Beijing fear. But without the international consensus they are determined to be seen to be "doing something" to support the democratic cause.
The problem is that there's not very much they can do to influence events directly. Sanctions sound good but, in practice, as we know from Iraq, Zimbabwe and Burma, tend to reinforce the ruling regime rather than undermine it. You can make life more uncomfortable, and certainly more restrictive, by imposing sanctions on individuals but when it comes to trade and oil, the more you confine trade, the more it benefits the elite at the expense of the general public.
You can try, as the West did with the National Transitional Council in Libya, to help mould an alternative democratic opposition. Britain and France, as well as the US, are desperately trying to do this in Syria by helping with the creation of the Syrian National Council. But, again as we know from Iraq, such efforts are easier in theory than in practice.
Talking to the BBC this week, the US ambassador to Syria, William Burns, urged the protesters not to resort to arms but to keep their demonstrations peaceful. But this is just wishful thinking. Of course it would be nicer, not least for the West, if there could be a peaceful change of government in Syria. But regime-change is a game of power and the Alawite minority rulers have at the moment the weapons and the forces to keep the lid on revolution so long as it is peaceful and so long as Damascus and Aleppo remain under tight control. That may not last, as tightening economic circumstances turn the middle classes against the regime. But change now may only be possible by force of arms and army desertions.
The Assad regime is finished. Of that there can be little doubt. The best hope for peaceful change is an Alawite decision to let the family go as the price for keeping clan power. But even that now looks doubtful as the bitterness over the deaths across the country hardens into a desire for revenge.
There is nothing very much that the outside world can do but look on from the sidelines, hoping that the oppressed can overturn their oppressors with as little bloodshed as possible. But we can't stop it. The honest thing would be to moderate the posturing and admit it.
Tories can't have it both ways on Europe
The Tories are getting themselves into a muddle over Europe. On the one hand the Chancellor, George Osborne, and the Prime Minister want the eurozone to become a more cohesive and federal whole. On the other hand, they also don't want a tighter eurozone centre to start excluding and dominating those, like ourselves, on the fringes.
Well, you can't have it both ways, although politicians will always try. And the interesting thing at the moment is that you needn't try. Greece has undermined the support for an ever-closer EU run from Brussels. But it has also, as the Chancellor and PM admit, made its value to the British economy ever clearer. The future of Europe is an open question, if only we'd get in there to suggest answers.
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With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend
NEIL MacFARQUHAR
NYTIMES,
5 Oct. 2011,
UNITED NATIONS — By vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning Syria for its oppression of antigovernment forces, Russia and China effectively tossed a life preserver to President Bashar al-Assad, seemingly unwilling to see a pivotal ally and once stalwart member of the socialist bloc sink beneath the waves of the Arab Spring.
A double veto at the United Nations is rare, in this case driven by similar if not exactly parallel concerns in Moscow and Beijing about losing influence in the Arab world as one authoritarian government after another built on the now-faded Soviet model collapses.
“They are gambling that Assad can hold on now; it seems to be an expression of confidence that he can cling to power,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution.
Russia enjoys military and commercial deals with Syria worth billions of dollars annually, plus its alliance and only reliable Arab friend give it an entree into the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. In addition, Moscow maintains perks left over from its superpower days, for instance, a naval base at Tartus, Syria, that accommodates visits by warships like Peter the Great, a nuclear-powered missile cruiser, during its Mediterranean jaunts.
China worries that the reverberations from falling Arab despots will inspire civil disobedience at home.
But beyond those concerns, and a stated interest in averting violent change in Syria, China and Russia are also increasingly allied in shutting down what they see as Western efforts to use sanctions and other economic measures to put the United Nations seal of approval on Western-friendly regime change.
There is a sense in both capitals that the West in general, and the United States in particular, is feeding the protest movements in the Arab world to further its own interests, experts said. Both the Chinese and the Russians are determined to reassert their long opposition to anything that smacks of domestic meddling by outside powers.
In that effort they have been joined by emerging powers like Brazil, India and South Africa, which have formed their own alliance and as current members of the Security Council all abstained from the Syria vote late Tuesday. Lebanon, where Syria holds sway, also abstained.
The resolution itself was toothless, demanding that the violence in Syria stop. The draft underwent repeated dilutions, which dropped all but the most vague reference to sanctions as a future possibility. But even that drew objections, in part because the cloud of Libya cast a long shadow over the Syria deliberations. The Russians and the Chinese said they felt bamboozled after a resolution they thought was meant to protect Libyan civilians became what they condemned as a license to wage war on the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. They are determined to avoid that in the Middle East and anywhere else.
Western diplomats said the consequences of the Libyan resolution were clearly laid out before the March vote.
Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador, told the Security Council on Tuesday night in his speech explaining the veto, “The demand for a rapid cease-fire turned into a full-fledged civil war.” He said that NATO bombed targets like television stations and oil facilities that were not a military threat to civilians.
Mr. Churkin said the veto was prompted by political differences over the use of force endorsed by the Council, rather than Syria’s long ties to the Soviet Union and any economic or arms sales losses. Indeed, Mr. Churkin seemed to go out of his way after the vote to distance Russia from the bloodshed fomented by the Syrian government while noting that unlike others, Moscow does not “cast aside old allies in a single breath.”
But there is a long history of close military and commercial ties. Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, was educated in Moscow and relied on the Soviet Union for weapons during the many Arab-Israeli wars. He died in 2000. Reports by Russian news outlets put current arms contracts at $4 billion. Beyond jet fighters and tanks, Russia has varied interests in Syria, like oil and gas and cement. Russia is ranked as the country’s fifth-largest trading partner, experts said.