El avispero de oriente

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://blogs.elconfidencial.com/mercados/perlas-de-kike/2016-01-14/la-guerra-silenciosa-de-arabia-saudi_1135398/

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/15/the-slow-death-of-damascus/

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/arab-zero-point-cultural-struggle-by-sami-mahroum-2016-01

[wanderer]

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/arab-zero-point-cultural-struggle-by-sami-mahroum-2016-01

El mundo musulmán no ha conocido nunca nada ni remotamente parecido al Renacimiento o el Barroco; muchísimo menos el Siglo de las Luces.

Y de ahí vienen todos sus conflictos internos y con el resto del mundo...

[dmar]

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/arab-zero-point-cultural-struggle-by-sami-mahroum-2016-01

El mundo musulmán no ha conocido nunca nada ni remotamente parecido al Renacimiento o el Barroco; muchísimo menos el Siglo de las Luces.

Y de ahí vienen todos sus conflictos internos y con el resto del mundo...

En Occidente en un momento dado, se dijo: busquemos el conocimiento y vayamos a dónde el camino nos lleve.  El conocimento como bién por sí mismo, y si tenemos que enfrentarnos a la ausencia de Dios, pues lo haremos, y entonces algunos estarán a favor o en contra; pero nos enfrentamos al dilema.
En el mundo islámico (salvo quizás Turquía, y hoy en día creo que menos: he estado la semana pasada y les veo menos laicos que mi anterior visita hace 3 lustros) les gusta la ciencia, e ir de "modernos" y "occidentales", estudiar fuera... pero van con el freno de mano puesto.  Se saben la lección de memoria pero no la han interiorizado.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

... o la han interiorizado pero quien la exterioriza, la paga (cosas de castas)

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

http://blogs.elconfidencial.com/espana/por-si-acaso/2016-02-03/el-circulo-saudi_1145550/

[Lego]

Si esto no es una exageración (voltairenet es un poco como ZH a veces), entonces es un evento muy importante.   A game changer.

Bulgaria, Chipre, Grecia, Hungría y Rumania establecen un frente proisraelí en la UE



Bulgaria, Chipre, Grecia, Hungría y Rumania han establecido un acuerdo con Israel para defender las posiciones de este último en el seno de la Unión Europea.

El 18 de enero de 2016, esos cinco países europeos obligaron a los ministros de Exteriores de la Unión Europea a retirar toda referencia crítica a Israel del texto del comunicado mensual conjunto de dichos ministros.
 
Días más tarde, el 29 de enero, Chipre, Grecia e Israel llegaron a un acuerdo para la construcción de un gasoducto y exportar gas hacia la Unión Europea. Ello implica un vuelco total de la política de Chipre y Grecia, que se concreta por iniciativa del primer ministro griego Alexis Tsipras.

Me pregunto qué gas piensan vender los israelíes a Europa.  También si esos tres países europeos pueden realmente hacer tratados así de relevantes por su cuenta. En medio de una guerra muy relacionada con gasoductos a Europa, además. 

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

El ejército saudí es mediocre y si no sirve ni para controlar su frontera sur, mal podría dedicarse a aventuritas exteriores

(enlace con contenido sensible)

http://johngaltfla.com/wordpress/2016/02/12/graphic-video-shows-saudi-observation-post-wiped-out-inside-saudi-arabias-najran-province/

[Currobena]

[saturno]

El "manual" logistico de Al quaeda, por Bakr Naji

https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-the-umma-will-pass.pdf

La administración del caos, es decir la metodología para construir un Estado-Califato en la zona borderiza de los Estados modernos. Efectivamente, si has leido a Michael Mann, ves cómo instrumentaliza (y hasta fabrica) explicitamente el surgimiento de las fuerzas intersticiales que circulan y anidan en los sistemas instituidos.

Es como el manual que le daban a los soldados que desembarcaron en Europa en la WWII o en Irak -- aunque creo (sólo empiezo) que este va más bien destinado a oficiales y administradores

Nada (o muy poco, por ahora) de ideología. Y muchas claves para entender qué están haciendo. Y cómo.

(El meollo empieza en la página 26.)

___
[1] Michal Mann -- The Sources of Social Power

[Currobena]

Interesantes análisis sobre la retirada rusa de Siria y su partición futura. MPT, otro estado fallido.

The final issue that people have with this “premature” withdrawal is that it paves the wave for Syria’s partition. This is an issue that deserves to be addressed at length. The Road to Partition I appreciate the arguments that perhaps foreigners don’t have all that much business in poking their noses into the constitutional arrangements of other countries. All the more so if said countries belong to different civilizations and cultural traditions.
To the contrary, it is worth stressing that more than 70% of Syrians themselves oppose the division of their country across territories held by the government, the opposition, and even Islamic State (though this falls to 50% in YPG-held areas).
That said, the poll that revealed this didn’t feature a critical addendum: Would any of those groups still have been so deadset against division assuming that a faction they dislike was in charge of the central government? Hypothetically, if continued unity meant being ruled by the top dog from Idlib (to say nothing of Raqqa), I assume that support for a unified Syrian state amongst the cosmopolitan Alawites of Latakia would plummet to near 0%.
This is why I ultimately end up agreeing with former USN Admiral and NATO supreme commander James Stavridis that it is time to seriously consider partitioning Syria.
From the outset, I will reveal a dirty secret: Neither Turkey nor the Saudis actually want a partition of Syria.
If there is a de facto partition now, the Turks and Saudis will be left with a vast desert wasteland – poor, rural, backwards, heavily inbred and IQ-depressed even before the war; now utterly destroyed and teeming with dozens of warlords and tens of thousands of Islamist fanatics. Refugee outflows from Desert Syria will continue, or intensify further if the rebels now proceed to turn on each other. Should Far Right parties continue to consolidate their gains in Europe, that particular relief valve will be turned off, thus turning up the pressure on Syria’s more immediate neighbors. With a population that is now a quarter refugee and strongly influenced by Wahhabi sentiment, Jordan would be the next country primed for blowup. Turkey would be faced with the spectre of an independent Kurdish state abutting its restive Kurdish provinces. Like the Chaos Wastes, this benighted region will become the spawning grounds for new forcefully bred generations of Salafi militants. If Peter Lee is correct, Libya will be the location of choice to where they will now be “laundered,” but puppets do sometimes cut their strings and should Saudi Arabia see increasing domestic unrest as its oil money reserves dwindle then Islamic State might suddenly seem far too close for comfort.
In contrast, the areas currently controlled by the government can be built up into a reasonably well functioning and cohesive state. According to opinion polls, more than half of the population in all the governorates held by the government support Assad, but this figure falls to 39% in Aleppo, 27% in Raqqa, and a mere 9% in Idlib. Moreover, the government held areas have been far less ravaged by war, and though its demographic losses due to conscription and poor military performance have been very considerable, they are dwarfed by the scale of the horrors that have been inflicted upon areas held by the opposition, which have borne the brunt of the fighting, and the Islamic State, with its indifference to military casualties and inability to maintain basic infrastructure. Although the rebel held areas only account for about a third of Syria’s population, they have produced two thirds of its refugees.
This Coastal Syria will be small but politically stable, immutable to Wahhabi infiltration by virtue of a predominantly Shi’ite-Christian ethnic makeup that it could easily maintain by refusing to accept the repatriation of those refugees hailing from areas held by the opposition and Islamic State. Since repatriating them to Desert Syria will not be an option either, the infrastructure there being unable to support even the populations still residing there, they will instead wreck their havoc in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Western Europe – in a fit of poetic justice, precisely those countries most responsible for wrecking Syria in the first place. Coastal Syria will pursue close ties with Iran and Hezbollah and will seek to pepper itself with Russian and (perhaps, eventually) Chinese bases to further secure itself against Turkish, Israeli, and Western encroachment.
However, if Assad were to regain full control of Syria, this would be a poisoned chalice. The cost of repairing all the destroyed infractructure, rooting out radicalism, and providing welfare for millions more displaced people will be an unbearable strain on its already heavily beleagured finances, causing resentment in the Alawite heartlands and buying no love amongst people who will come to think of their defeated forebears as having pursued a noble Lost Cause. Most critically, there is absolutely nothing stopping the Saudis and the Turks from once again trying to topple a Syrian government strained from the costs of reconstruction, Sunni refugee repatriation, and demographically dominated by Sunnis in another 10-20 years time.
These are the reasons why for the Saudis and the Turks, the fundamental choice is about either Damascus or nothing. Preferably they would like to topple Assad outright and replace his government with some kind of Nusrastan – sharia with shopping malls – a full Assad victory is a clear second best. This, ultimately, is why they have refrained from directly wading into the conflict themselves, despite their obvious frustration with the entire situation. I suspect the Russians who advise Putin realize this and have no desire to play to Turkey’s and Saudi Arabia’s interests. Assad might not; from both his life story (an apolitical doctor promoted to the throne by the chance death of his elder brother) and his interviews, he strikes me as very straightforward character: Honest, civilized, not unintelligent, but not really cut out for the cynicism, deviousness, and paradoxes of geopolitics.
In this respect, the Russian withdrawal is if anything doing him and Syria a favor.

Hay más información en el artículo.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/generally-accomplished/

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Desde Turquía...

http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/merve-sebnem-oruc/2016/03/24/washingtons-syria-strategy-helps-splash-the-rest-of-the-world-with-mud

[wanderer]

Buen análisis:

http://blogs.elconfidencial.com/mundo/de-algeciras-a-estambul/2016-03-24/europa-no-existe_1172717/

[wanderer]

Algo que cada vez está más claro: nuestro "aliado", el turco Erdogan, tiene responsabilidad directa en los atentados del ISIS en Europa, al tiempo que Israel mira hipócritamente hacia otro lado:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-26/bombshell-king-jordan-blames-turkey-terror-europe-says-israel-looks-other-way-al-qae