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| “Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante” – A 2006 artwork by Chinese artists Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi and Zhang Anjun |
DDGD
May 25, 2016 – With an homage to William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”
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Brought to you by…
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Syria – the country that used to be: Too many coveters, yet few who
actually gave a damn.
Index of Global Delirium
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9.2
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The Index reflects the state of delirium
in a particular country using a 1 to 10 count, with 10 denoting the highest
level of delirium. Levels of delirium change on the basis of current
development in said country, such as instability, terrorism, elections,
sports events and the like, as well as relevant global developments such
financial meltdowns, certain leaks, and stock market indices. Countries shown
above are among those where fluctuation in the national and local indices
have a greater global impact than is the case with other countries. Note:
levels of violence and delirium do not always coincide. Indeed, a country can
have a high delirium level even though it is relatively stable.
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The IGD have held steady this week as the
global drama failed to rise to the levels of heated rhetoric, and sanguine
expectations. Entrails crossed for next week.
Featured Quote
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| “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!” ―Shakespeare, The Tempest (Miranda) |
"The entire world saw the large scale
detention and death in the Ceasar photos, and despite all of this, there was no
reaction." Nadim Houry,
Human Rights Watch
The Deliricon
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The Delirica
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Gleeful Delusions: Gorbachev says
US was ‘rubbing its hands with glee’ after Soviet Union’s demise. Listening to Russian
officials speak today you’d think that the Soviet Union has somehow reemerged
more empowered than ever. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whatever
gains Russia made over the last few years as a result of the Obama
administration’s frivolous attitude towards foreign policy change little in the
overall balance of power between the two countries, and can hardly save Russia
from its growing problems at home. Real success is one that happens at home and
that translates into better living conditions and more opportunities for growth
for all. In that sense, Russia is a greater failure than it has ever been. The
annexation of Crimea and the occupation of parts Syria and Ukraine are of
little consequence here. Russia needs to undertake serious and far reaching
political, economic and administrative reforms to withstand the growing
structural pressures within and prevent its implosion, instead, Putin and Co.
are promising salvation through imperial glory. And herein their folly. If the omens are
bad for Europe, they are even worse for Russia. Our folly, as expressed through the
policies of the Obama administration, lies in thinking that the consequences of
Russia’s eventual failure is something that we need to manage tomorrow. In
reality, we need to start managing it now, and standing up its growing foreign
militancy and adventurism is a good starting point.
The Daily Delirynth: “Hell is empty and all the devils are
here.” ―Shakespeare, The Tempest (Ariel)
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| Alamut citadel, located in the middle of the Elburz mountain, is historically known as birthplace of suicidal operations in the 11th century. |
“Past IS Prologue” Islamic
Terrorism Was Born on This Mountain 1,000 Years Ago. This little
historic tidbit provides us with a useful definition for Islamist Terrorism:
the means by which a small yet ideologically motivated group of ardent
believers seek to compensate for their small demographic imprint as they pursue
what is essentially an expansionist agenda.
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| Hizbollah supporters attend a memorial ceremony on Tuesday at the Sitt Zeinab Shiite Shrine in Damascus for slain commander Mustafa Badreddine, who was killed in Syria last week. AFP |
The
Shredding of the Damascene Tapestry: Hizbollah’s
intervention in Syria has left its leaders exposed. Opposing the Shiazation
of Damascus is not a fight against religious freedom but one against tyranny
and occupation. For we are not dealing with religious conversion here, but with
the importation of Shia fighters from Lebanon Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, along
with their families and their resettlement in a traditionally Sunni-majority
city, where Sunnis made up to 95% of the population before the Revolution, with
the express purpose of changing the demographic realities of the city. The
Sunnis may not become a minority anytime soon, but the way is not over yet, nor
is this process of Shiazation. There are those who would point out to the
existence of political and economic purposes for this endeavor to undermine the
role of religiously and sectarian zealotry. But they would be wrong. Zealotry
is critical not only for mobilization purposes but also as a motivating factor.
The religious dimension is not subservient to the political and economic ones,
but intricately intertwined with them. Add in an element of national identity
to the matter (Arabs vs. Persian, vs Kurds. vs Turks. etc.), and traditional
class dynamics to the mix, and the picture gets even more complicated.
The Great Muddling Through: Syria conflict:
Deadly blasts rock Assad strongholds. This attack is already being used
by the Shabbiha to take revenge against the majority Sunni IDPs now residing in
Sahel, especially in Tartous City. More attacks could pave the way for a major
campaign to ethnically cleanse the Sahel. This could make the Sahel areas more
manageable for the Russians and Iranians and their local supporters. Or, if
there were enough sleeper rebel, IS or Nusra units embedded in the region, it
could mark a step towards plunging the Sahel areas into the quagmire of civil
war from which they have thus far been spared, for the most part. For now, this
could be nothing more than an attempt to convince Russia & Co. of the need
to honor the August deadline on the beginning of transition in Syria. The
possibility that the regime could have orchestrated such an attack to keep its
loyalists in check cannot be easily dismissed either, as the regime has been
guilty of these tactics before, and as local ire against pro-Assad officials
has been on the increase of late. Still, one would expect, and hope, that
things would get slightly clearer on this score by August.
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| Thank Heavens! "Full fathom five thy father lies" -Shakespeare's "The Temptest" (Ariel) |
The Fascist League: These
Syrian-American Christians Love Trump Because They Say He's Like Assad. Is it fair to
judge a candidate by his supporters? Sure, if one is monitoring emerging and
inherent trends among the supporters, rather than individual behaviors. Fascist
and racist trends are already well-established among major segments of Trump
supporters, and Trump’s silence in this regard is deafening and revealing.
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| “Shipwreck” by Jan Toorop (December 20, 1858 - March 3, 1928), Dutch painter |
The Great Unmooring: In
defense of Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy supremo. “It's easy to list
the areas in which the administration’s foreign policy could have gone better.
Buoyed in part by the euphoria of Obama's own historic victory, many in the
administration probably became too optimistic about the 2011 "Arab
Spring." In Syria in particular, they tacitly encouraged uprisings without
any intention of following through with serious military support.” Why is
it that every analysis of the Obama administration foreign policy ends up
mentioning Syria only as a footnote, when it is, in fact, Obama’s biggest foreign
policy failure, the one that truly captures the nature of his alleged doctrine and
exposes it as the exercise in amoral behavior gone haywire that it was/is? That
“thing” in Syria is Patient Zero, the Turning Point that marks the true beginning
of the 21st Century – no more fin de siècle stuff. We have taken
the plunge, no matter how unwillingly, into the thick of it: the Great
Unmooring of the World.
Wrong Instinct: Obama’s fatal
fatalism in the Middle East. Persistent open-ended engagement is a thankless
task and the source of much headaches, but it is also what keeps us relevant,
and capable of influencing the unfolding various developments and, at times,
even dictating outcomes, in manner that both serves our interest and
encapsulates our values. Even, if the ultimate goal is containment of certain
crises and their potential fallouts, the feat cannot be achieved without continuous
engagement. The simple truth is: while some of their calculus was right, the
realists simply had the wrong instincts, and ended up adopting policies that
made outcomes far more negative in nature than they could have been.
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| “Fatalism” by Jan Toorop (December 20, 1858 - March 3, 1928), Dutch painter |
They are these wrong instincts that made
the Obama administration become party to the bloodletting in Syria,
perpetrating a war that it could have probably prevented or, at the very least, stopped in its
early phase, and they are these instincts that are now threatening to transform the
U.S. into a full-fledged culprit in massive ethnic cleansing campaigns that are
about to unfold in Raqqa (Kurds
targeting Arabs) and Fallujah (Shia militias
targeting Sunnis). The U.S. might be targeting the Islamic State, but Kurdish and
Shia militias will be targeting the Arab Sunni population in general.
On The Good Fringe of Things, Comfortably: The myth of the
'moderate Muslim' Deconstructing the mythic "good versus bad" Muslim
paradigm. And of course, when you are a Muslim trying to deconstruct one
mythic “good versus bad” Muslim paradigm, it’s somehow obligatory to create a
new one, one that reflects a different set of ideological predilections:
A front that has expanded under a
Democratic White House, expedited by an outwardly progressive administration
that enables Muslim liberals or democrats to engage in a fashion impossible
under a Republican White House.
Therefore, while expansion of
the surveillance state under Obama is reality-politik, his party affiliation and
racial identity broadens the net of who can serve as a native informant, and
specifically, the "progressive Muslim informant" or counter-radicalisation
proponent.
Indeed, Muslim American engagement
with former president George W Bush was limited to fringe voices from the right
or "establishment scholars", who traded academic objectivity for
influence with the establishment. The vast majority of Muslim Americans, while
Bush was in office, distanced themselves from these native informants.
So the “moderate” Muslims who engaged the
progressive Democrats were apparently dupes and knaves, while those who engaged
the Bush administration were “fringe voices,” in other words, “bad.” The good
Muslims, therefore, must be those who avoid any political entanglement with the
Establishment, Left and Right – which would make them the good fringe, I
guess. Or, perhaps neo-Anarchists, a la Chomsky – the aspiring alternative
establishment that, in the meantime, enjoys the legitimacy of being on the good
fringe of the spectrum. This is not deconstruction. This is mythmaking. No,
this is justification for staying on the fringe, the fucked-up fringe, and
railing against the unjust world whose main powers keep categorizing us as they
see fit. But railing doesn’t change the world. Only engagement does. And we can
only engage who is – the real not the illusion. Meanwhile, if we want to sort
ourselves differently, perhaps, it’s time to learn ow the sorting gets done.
Hint: it’s not done from margins.
“This thing of darkness I acknowledge
mine.” Russia's
Nuclear Ambitions in the Middle East “Getting Power by Providing Power”. Those
who think that the Iran Deal was a victory for nonproliferation have little
understanding of human nature. But what does it matter, by the time they
acknowledge that, if they ever did, it will be too late to do anything about
it.
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| The world is built by refugees “Now I will believe that there are unicorns, that in Arabia there is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix at this hour reigning there.” –Shakespeare, The Tempest (Sebastian) |
“Asem, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee,
was a university student before his country’s civil war. He dropped out to
become a paramedic. During a mission to rescue injured civilians, a shell hit
his ambulance, and his world went dark. When he came to, Asem realized his leg
had vanished into the vortex of loss and destruction that is today’s Middle
East. A year later, Asem taught himself how to use a 3D printer in three weeks
and how to code an Arduino in three days. “You’ll see my new skills better and
better,” he proclaimed proudly. He had produced two low-cost, open-source
healthcare solutions for other disabled victims of conflict: a 3D-printed
prosthetic hand and an ultrasonic echolocation device for his friend Ahmad, who
was blinded by sniper fire in Syria. Asem rapidly absorbed expertise in
advanced technology in order to help those who had lost everything. He found a
path to dignity and purpose as a volunteer for Refugee Open Ware (ROW), our
consortium for humanitarian innovation.“ ROW gives people hope to live,” he
said. “We changed the life of an amputee to become a good thing in this world.”
Also, Syrians use
pedal power to get electricity flowing. “In the areas around the capital Damascus, where
hundreds of thousands of Syrians are living under a four-year regime siege with
almost no electricity at all, people have found ways to make their own power.
War-torn Syria is now awash with solar panels, fuel made from plastic bags and
even bicycle-powered batteries.”
The Exotic Observations & Propositions
of Delirian Mundi
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Known to those
of his followers seeking his canonization and entry into the Valtheon of
Deliriology, as Agnus Mundi, and to his detractors as Ranae Dei and even
Capra Satanae, Delirian Mundi’s writings, mixing satire and philosophical
reflections, continue to be polarizing, inspiring both adulation and
ridicule. Bearing this in mind, we, the editors at DDGD, continue to publish
these previously unknown series of “exotic observations and propositions,” as
Delirian himself referred to them, as part of our continuing commitment to
instigate debate over sensitive issues.
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* What makes every period that we live
through feel so surreal is our ability to keep repeating all the mistakes and all
crimes of the past, to adhere to all the troubling modes of thought and behavior,
and to keep behaving like the perennially infantile beings that we are, and yet,
somehow, looking back on things, we can more often see that progress, even
moral progress, has somehow been made.
Featured Tweet(s)
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Featured Video(s)
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Cartoons: The Cauldron
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ЯeveЯsed Polarity – A Guest Blog
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A
delirium-inducing celebrity-related thingy, imagined even real, real even when
imagined, and completely irrelevant, even when maintaining the appearance of
purpose. Notice: All celebrities appearing here, even the
fictitious ones, are real, but not necessarily actual, and all their statements
and quotes, especially those deemed libelous, for whatever unenlightened
reason, are their own, even when they are factious but somehow actual, and have
absolutely nothing to do with the author of this blog, or the editors of ЯP, no
matter how delusional he/they may seem at times, or happen to be, for real.
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How does a person with great vision
express himself? ЯeveЯsed Polarity wanted to know. But having vowed not to
impose ourselves on her Poultriness, Mrs. Qim Qardashian, we went to the next best
available alternative: her current beau, Mr. Qanye West, who graced us with
this statement:
A great man with a great vision has only
two choices when it comes to expressing his vision to the world: he either lies
uncontrollably or blabbers uncontrollably. Honesty is no longer a trait that is
appreciated, nor is comprehensibility. Meanwhile, delusions of grandeur,
justified or not, are the real-mind expanding drug of our time. This is what
gives one a survival edge, what makes social Darwinism, in its purest unmitigated
form, possible. Just think about it. Or is too real for you?
Theatrum Ad
Vere Stultum
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A series of
post-postmodern takes on the "classics," new and old, starring the
world’s and history’s most (in)famous public figures. Notice: All
characters in these scenes even the fictitious ones are real, and all their statements,
especially those deemed libelous, are their own and have absolutely nothing
to do with the author of this blog, no matter how delusional he may seem at
times, or happen to be, for real.
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| Scene from all-female all-nude performance of The Tempest in NY City’s Central Park |
William Shakespeare, The Tempest: A Modern Syrian Version: Act 30 –
Scene 321
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Spectator 1
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Hey, look over there. A
shipwreck.
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Spectator 2
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Close. It’s actually all that
is left of Syria.
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Spectator 1
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Wow. What happened? Where are
the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples?
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Spectator 2
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They all dissolved into thin
air, like the baseless fabric of all promises of succor made.
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Spectator 1
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I see. Instead of acting on Never Again, a little bit of
history just repeated itself.
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Spectator 2
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Indeed. Our indulgence has set the monsters free again. For the past
is nothing more than a never ending prologue to more of the same.
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Spectator 1
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And for all too many of us today the revels are now ended, a bit prematurely
perhaps.
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© Ammar Abdulhamid 2016
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“As you from crimes
would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.” –Shakespeare’s “The
Tempest” (Prospero)
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