I was in Damascus for almost a month and a half, yet it felt like a lifetime ago that I first got on the plane to go back home. There is something beautiful about hearing the call to prayer five times a day, of mixing with the people in the old markets and pushing your way through queues to get something from a shop. Whilst walking up the steep hill to get to our home, twice people slowed down to give me a lift to the top of the road. There seemed, in spite of the growing materialism of some parts of Syrian society, a genuine warmth and innocence in people. At times it could get suffocating, but once I regained my familiarity with how to deal with unwanted space invasions or nosiness, I learned to swim my way effortlessly through my home city. I had been exhausted before my return but now, for the first time in as long as I can remember, life seems good again.

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The death sentence of Tariq Aziz

I was quite surprised to hear that Tariq Aziz had been sentenced to death by the sub-standard Iraqi courts setup after the American occupation of Iraq. Compared to the other members of the Ancien Régime his hands were considered to be relatively bloodless. He was also, unusually for Saddam's other colleagues in the Iraqi Baath party, urbane, well-educated, articulate - and Christian. For all these reasons, it never really occurred to me that he might suffer the same harsh fate as the others. Yet such, it seems, is the nature of the beast.

It is a harsh, Chekhovian, justice which comes to my mind now. Not for the sham charges and ceremonial pomp surrounding the Iraqi courts and their comical judges, but for the dramatic end that has befallen this rag-tag gang of brave, yet ruthless, men who had risked everything - and done anything - to seize power, hold it, and finally to protect it from being wrenched from their fingers by American soldiers and mercenaries. They were all in it together, for better or for worse, and they nearly pulled it off. Nearly. Tariq Aziz is neither a monster nor a saint, but a man of his times. A fine comrade, loyal to his leader, and one who will die by the sword, as he lived by it. Like Saddam, he will hang not for any ridiculous moral judgements passed by those judges, but because he lost the war...

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On Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy

I'm progressing quite nicely with Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy whilst on holiday in Syria. One of the things I like about him is that his style is fluid and his thought lucid. Critical and irreverent, he approaches the subject like an intelligent layperson and with what can only be described as the common sense of the average "man on the Clapham omnibus". In spite of my admiration for his style, he is possessed of an annoying, and very English, smugness in his approach of the subject. This smugness is infused throughout his writing, his contempt for radical or revolutionary politics, particular affection for modern English and American philosophers, and utter disregard of Islamic or, as he calls it, Mohammedan philosophy to which he dedicates 9 pages only. Most of these 9 pages are concerning the history and religion itself, leaving at best a page or two to some of the more widely known philosophers such as Avicenna or Averroes.

It is unclear why he thinks that Western philosophers approached the topic any differently to the way Arab or Muslim philosophers did, or whether in fact he is even aware of the subject as well as he is familiar with that of Western philosophers. Still, one might comment, in a book on Western philosophy perhaps it is not surprising that so little be dedicated to Muslim philosophers. The answer to such a comment is that, in fact, Western philosophy until very recently was joined at the hip with Muslim philosophy and, not only would not exist without it, but also has absolutely no right in referring to Greek philosophy as an exclusively 'Western' tradition which was merely preserved for when the White Man was in a position to resume free-thinking. Russell's irreverence to dogma and intellectual dishonesty in all its forms leads him to make comments that the ignorant would call bigoted, and which make him all the more admirable for it, but he fails magnificently in dealing with a very important part of the history of philosophy and for this reason, more than any other, he is a prat.

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The Health Hazards of Being a Rebel Without a Clue

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and if the news report I came across on the Guardian today is true, then one 19 year old Syrian bloggeress is in a world of hurt right now. There's no reason why I should or shouldn't believe the charges against her are true, although based on my experience of dealing with Syrian bloggers, especially female Syrian bloggers, then naivety rather than any malice is probably the cause of her predicament.

If I am against apartheid in South Africa that does not mean I would have been caught dead wandering into a township. Even though I support Hezbullah and the Resistance, and recently visited the South of Lebanon, I avoided Hezbullah checkpoints like the plague for reasons which are obvious to anybody who knows me personally. And just because I have Che Guevara's face printed on a mug in my study, that doesn't mean I would have gone off to the jungle to meet him as he would probably have hung me by the balls, or I would have died of malaria. What I mean by all this is that politics isn't a game and these people don't have a sense of humour, nor do they have time for starry-eyed Palestine groupies who talk too much. Poor thing.

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The Special Tribunal for Lebanon and sanctions on Iranian officials - what does it all mean?

There is something particularly interesting about the coverage of Iran, Syria and Hezbullah in Western news media. In 2006 the media were near hysterical with their analysis of these key players in the stage we call the Middle East. Iran was ominous, threatening and dangerous. Hezbullah was almost terrifying in the mystique it exuded, and have-a-go analysts were falling over each other to give interviews about this movement. Yet in the last two years something has changed, particularly as Western impotence in the face of these countries and their growing power became more apparent. In 2008 America's stooges in Lebanon were utterly routed in less than 8 hours, in Iran the "Versace" activists and their Western cheerleaders learned the hard way that you cannot have a revolution using Facebook and Twitter, let alone with an absolute minority in a country which is still overwhelmingly pro-Ahmedinejad and pro-Islamic Republic. In Syria the idea of "regime-change" espoused by the Bush administration also failed, and the West's star player in Lebanon, Prime Minister Saad al Hariri, recently visited Damascus to present his credentials. Yet today, and across the Right-Left political spectrum that defines Western ideologies, newspapers deal with Iranian statements with an irreverance that borders on the comical. Articles regarding Iranian "boat-planes" are derided whilst statements by the Iranian president concerning the 9-11 attacks are, like his statements concerning Israel, taken out of context yet again. Statements made by Hassan Nasrallah are mostly ignored or treated with a certain contempt and skepticism, even Turkey's Erdogan is a subject of ridicule by the secular Turkish media, "Mr 1 minute", for his interjections with Shimon Peres, and for his principled positions concerning Gaza and the Palestinian people. In Syria, every now and then some silly article about silly Syrian activists is pushed to the surface of news coverage. In all fairness, Syria has received far less of the criticism, and this is mainly due to an excellent and politically savvy foreign policy that has defined this country as a player that can punch far beyond their weight.

So what can explain this change in the way the supposedly free Western media covers this Middle Eastern alliance? Well one possible answer lies in the dramatic shift in the West's psychology towards the region. People with a longer attention span than the last three months will recall the sheer terror and apprehension that the world felt prior to invading Iraq. Even within the region, the public stocked up on gas-masks, bread, supplies and water. Countries in Europe wondered if Iraqi missiles could reach their cities, the Israelis held their breath, and probably hovered a finger over their nuclear launch buttons. This awe with which an Arab and Muslim country was held with was eroded gradually over ten years of sanctions until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which dissipated it completely. Apparently George Bush believed it was "Mission Accomplished". Since then, this healthy awe has been building up again and is now unchallenged. The bully recognises that they cannot hurt people without being hit back, and this makes countries like the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany very nervous.

There will be a confrontation with Iran, Hezbullah and Hamas and this is unquestionable. This author firmly believes that prior to simply charging into battle with all guns blazing, there is a certain amount of preparation and public attenuation that must take place. Firstly, people are more at ease when they can ridicule that which once gave them fear. Secondly, generating weighty international legal paper-trails give military actions or sanctions an added justification. In this case we can see a meticulous construction of sanctions on Iran aimed at clearing the ground before the battle. Firstly there is the delegitimisation and ridicule of the regime, so that it would be more difficult for critics to oppose a war against that country; Secondly sanctions; Thirdly, targetting of key figures in the Iranian military-industrial complex in a list which, according to Secretary of State Clinton, will grow further with time; and finally, hard-biting international arrest warrants for key figures in Hezbullah through the politicised, and now discredited, Special Tribunal for Lebanon that was allegedly made to investigate the death of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri over five years ago.

What we are witnessing in effect is a tightening of the noose around the key players in the region. It is inevitable, and not just highly likely, that the future and shape of the Middle East will again be decided with arms as the West prepares a second attempt at beating the natives into submission. The only way to prevent a third attempt from ever being contemplated would be for Hezbullah, or Iran, to pull off a victory on a par with the Viet Minh's defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, a victory that would completely shock the political minds of the United States and her allies and impose a new political reality for the region, thus transforming it.

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I really enjoyed Amira Noweira's article on the anniversary of Nasser's death. It made some excellent points on the state of Egypt following his death while still mindful of the man's flaws. I found one paragraph particularly interesting, especially as I have pointed out this hidden, and growing, danger many times before on this blog.

The rich and mighty have deserted public education in favour of private institutions of learning that pride themselves on being non-Egyptian. In Egypt, we now have an amazing array of international schools and universities (British, American, Canadian, French and many others still in the offing), producing graduates who are more competent in foreign languages than in Arabic. All Nasser's schemes for according Arabic its rightful place as the national language of education have been overturned.

This is tragic but true. By the way, on the point of schools producing foreign stooges the Damascus Community "School" is still closed. I am thoroughly impressed with this fact.

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