Six In The Morning

Rebellion at Stalemate, Waiting for Undecided Syrians to Make a Move

 

By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD

Published: January 4, 2013 

 BEIRUT, Lebanon — At his government office in the Syrian capital, Damascus, the civil servant avoids discussing what Syrians call “the situation.” But he quietly ponders his own private endgame, toying with defecting to the rebels, yet clinging to his post, increasingly sure there are no fighters worth joining. 

 

A multilingual former military officer, he says he is among many friends and colleagues who feel trapped: disenchanted with President Bashar al-Assad, disgusted by the violence engulfing Syria and equally afraid of the government and the rebels, with both sides, as he puts it, ready to sacrifice “the innocents.”

Mr. Assad remains in power in part because two years into the uprising, a critical bloc of Syrians remains on the fence. Among them are business owners who drive the economy, bankers who finance it, and the security officials and government employees who hold the keys to the mundane but crucial business of maintaining an authoritarian state. If they abandoned the government or embraced the rebels en masse, they might change the tide. Instead, their uncertainty contributes to the stalemate.

 

 

America the ungovernable

 January 5, 2013

 

Nick O'Malley

US Correspondent

 Without reforms, US Congress's deadly game of brinkmanship will continue, writes the Herald's United States correspondent, Nick O'Malley.

 

Two of the most powerful men in America crossed paths in the lobby of the White House last Friday.
"Go f--- yourself," said the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, to Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader.
Reid was startled, according to the account in Politico, which used a handful of interviews to piece together the moment. "What are you talking about?" he responded.

 

"Go f--- yourself," repeated Boehner by way of clarification.

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You can read a lot into such snarling profanity being tossed about only a few metres from the Oval Office.
You get a sense of the frustration and fog and the mistrust of the endless negotiations over the package of tax increases and spending cuts that became known as the fiscal cliff. And you can get a sense just how tough Boehner's past couple of months had been. Republicans had failed to win the White House and the Senate, and had lost ground in the House.

 

Palestinian Territories

Fatah party supporters mark anniversary in Gaza

Tens of thousands of supporters of the Fatah party have gathered in the Gaza Strip to mark the anniversary of the movement’s founding. This is the first time the party has held a rally in the territory since 2007.

Demonstrators gathered in a square in Gaza City on Friday waved both Fatah and Palestinian flags, with some carrying portraits of the party's leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Similar events were held in other towns across Gaza.
The fact that Hamas has allowed Fatah to organize the celebrations there is seen as part of efforts at reconciliation between the two sides, which have been at loggerheads since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. This came a year after Hamas won a parliamentary election.

‘Shoot Swabians’: Berlin berates its bourgeois invaders

Status as Germany’s capital of cool under threat after influx from provincial backwater

Tony Paterson

Berlin

Saturday 05 January 2013

Their dialect is famous for being unintelligible to most Germans.

Stereotypically, they are hard workers, miserly, and fastidious doorstep polishers, and they have flooded the trendiest part of Berlin with yuppie residents since the fall of the city’s infamous Wall over two decades ago.
The newcomers hail from a wealthy region in Germany’s south-west called Swabia. But their presence in the capital has now provoked a furious outburst from one of the country’s leading politicians, who has accused them of importing nauseating provincialism to metropolitan Berlin.

The broadside against Berlin’s Swabian community has been delivered by German parliamentary vice president, Wolfgang Thierse, a 69-year-old east-Berliner who has lived in the city’s now upmarket and Swabian-dominated Prenzlauer Berg district for over 40 years.

Arson deaths in Chile spark anti-terror measures

 President announces new anti-terrorist measures after attack on couple who owned land wanted by indigenous people

 Associated Press in Santiago 

  

An elderly couple whose family's landholdings in southern Chile have long been targeted by indigenous Mapuche people were killed in an arson attack on Friday. The president, Sebastián Piñera, quickly flew to the scene and announced fresh security measures, including the application of Chile's tough anti-terrorism law and the creation of a special police anti-terror unit backed by Chile's military.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which some Mapuche people repudiated as abhorrent. But Chile's interior minister said pamphlets condemning police violence and demanding the return of Mapuche lands were left at the scene. The presidentially appointed governor of the remote southern region of Araucania, Andres Molina, called the attackers "savages

Zim election dealt another blow

04 Jan 2013 00:00 - Jason Moyo

As the human rights head quits, doubts escalate over the country's readiness to go to the polls

Zimbabweans have begun 2013 still searching for clues as to whether this will be the year they face elections, with the resignation of the country's human rights chief only the latest in a string of hurdles leading up to a fresh poll.

President Robert Mugabe wants elections in March, but the resignation of Reginald Austin, the head of Zimbabwe's human rights commission, sets the stage for yet another fight.

The respected lawyer quit last Friday in protest at the lack of independence and resources given to the commission, which is tasked with curbing rights abuses. It is said Zanu-PF is already lining up an ally as his replacement, which would lead to a battle with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)