An Experiment in Research Methods

An Experiment in Research Methods

Stepping Away

by MARY SOJOURNER

The world outside my writing room window is diamond bright. Gleaming black ravens hop and posture around the corn chips and unshelled peanuts I’ve scattered for their breakfast. Conan, a ferocious tassel-eared squirrel half a raven’s size, scoots down the apartment wall and dashes into the birds. They step aside. If I were prone to anthropomorphizing, I would conjecture that they are muttering, “Sheesh, it’s that pushy kid again. Humor him.” Conan stuffs corn chips in his cheeks and races off.

There’s a flash of sapphire. A Steller’s jay drops down to grab one of the peanuts. He gobbles one, then grabs a second and flies off. “Hey,” I say, “you’ll choke.” He’s back in a forager’s heartbeat and I find myself wondering about that first peanut. Did he swallow it whole? Did he tuck it somewhere behind his beak?

My friend VultureWoman (VW) and I had talked the night before. (Name has been changed to protect the still-trying-to-survive-in-Academia.) I’d told her about speaking to a class on community organizing and activism and being stunned at how little the younger students knew about the most recent history in the field. I’d done a quick and dirty survey, handed out file cards, asked them nine questions. The seventh question was two-part: how many hours do you spend looking into a screen of some kind — hand-held device, computer internet, television? How many hours do you spend in three-dimensional, five-senses reality? I’d read the cards after class. All of the students spent at least half their time looking into a screen. Many spent hours more on the internet than in the real world. The older students logged in only a little less.

VW and I talked about how quickly Facebook had become ubiquitous, how many other sites now provide the option to link to Facebook pages, how fewer and fewer of our friends were e-mailing, much less phoning, much less showing up for face-to-face time. I said that too many of the activist groups I belong to had stopped sending email notifications. They post on Facebook and that’s that.

I had wondered if it was my age affecting how I see the metastasis of tech-communication, but VW is fifty-five and most of my other friends are younger than fifty-five. I told VW I was frightened. I used the word metastasis. Later, I remembered the 1978 remake of an old sci-fi movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It had terrified me. There was possession by alien beings and a woman’s experience of watching everyone she knew and loved occupied by Other. Years later, I’d listened to Rory Block’s mournful song, The Last Leviathan, and felt the absolute emptiness of all solo survivors. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered who of us was left living full-time in the three-dimensional world of our five senses. I knew I wasn’t.

I watch the Steller’s jay grab a dozen more peanuts. As suddenly as he’s dropped down before my window, I want to know where he’s putting those extra peanuts and I want to leave my meditation and jump to the internet to find out. I sit tight. What if I didn’t have internet access? How would I find out about those extra peanuts? I finish my meditation and make a plan.

Research Protocol: 1) Use all tools but the internet to hunt for the answer; 2) Use the internet to hunt for the answer.

11:05 AM: Find phonebook hidden in stack of papers. Look up Arizona Game and Fish. Call number listed. Warm-voiced woman answers phone. Asks me specifics of what I want to know so she can direct my question to the right person. (No ads pop up anywhere in my line of vision, just pigeons flopping down outside the window to scavenge leftovers.) She sends me to Andi Rogers.

Andi picks up on the second ring. I ask my question. She answers immediately: “Steller’s jays can stash peanuts in a pouch in their mouths. They don’t swallow them whole.” Andi tells me she loves researching and working with corvids and has created PowerPoint programs for both adults and kids that she gives at Willow Bend, one of our local environmental centers. We swap stories about amazing corvids we have known. I tell her the bigger research reason for my call — that I am comparing the sensory experience of researching in real life versus internet research.

While I watch ravens, pigeons, jays and squirrels outside my window, Andi and I talk about the layers of our talk and the layers of our researching: she had used the internet to research parts of her presentation on corvids, had walked the Ponderosa forest for other parts. She tells me that Game and Fish are creating a new get-folks-out-on-the-ground opportunity, AZ Watchable Wildlife Experience, with sites along our Urban Trail and further out that will provide interpretive signs, telescopes, and viewing; and a brochure with maps, photographs, site info, and seasonal wildlife-watching tips. She offers to send me the flyer. We exchange emails and laugh at the irony. I volunteer to help writing the brochures and signs. She accepts. We say good-bye.

It is 11:20 as I hang up the phone. In fifteen minutes, I’ve talked with two smart helpful women. I’ve had my question answered. I’ve learned more than I asked for. I’ve watched real birds and a squirrel do what they’ve done for much longer than I or the internet has existed. And, I’ve volunteered to help in a project close to my heart.

11:44 AM: I log on, type “Steller’s jay feeding behavior” into Search. Google, who knows too much about me (Google ranks its findings based on what it knows about the searcher; my more conservative friend and I both researched “U.S. involvement in Afghanistan” and Google sent him a vastly different series of links than they sent me), gives pages of options, only two of which are germane. A dozen ads scroll down the sides of the page. I click on the first option and do not learn my answer, though I find other interesting information about Steller’s Jay foraging behavior. The second link yields nothing. I check a few other links. The answer is not there. I log off at 11:49 AM.

I begin to write this piece. I log in three times during the writing: once to find Invasion of the Body Snatchers, once to find The Last Leviathan, once to re-read the flyer for AZ Watchable Wildlife Experience. Without the internet, I would have called the reference desk at the library. The librarian, of course, would have found my information on the internet.

I feel trapped. Twenty years ago I lived in the real world. Now I, like the young students I spoke with, spend too much of my day online. I don’t have an iPhone so when I’m away from my old roll-top desk, I live with all my senses, but I eat lunch with friends who turn away to check their smart phones; I hear stories of moms and kids who text each other relentlessly; I hear a story of a five-year-old with his own — uh — Wee Pad? (Break to online research Wee Pad. Two minutes to discover there are kid iPads, though none are called Wee Pad. Betcha some enterprising reader is already creating one and has a marketing plan in place.)

It’s time to step away. I turn and look out the window. Tiny gray and black birds peck in the snow outside my window, hunting for particles of corn chips and peanuts. I wonder what species the birds are. I reach up on top of the desk and open Roger Tory Peterson’s Western Birds…

Mary Sojourner is the author of the novel Going Through Ghosts (University of Nevada Press, 2010) and the memoir She Bets Her Life (Seal Press, 2009), among her many books. She is a National Public Radio commentator and the author of numerous essays, columns, and op-eds for dozens of publications. Sojourner is a Contributing Author for New Clear Vision.

The New Face of the Regime

Dynastic Succession in North Korea

by BRUCE CUMINGS

I was in Singapore when Kim Jong-il died on 17 December, so I was reading from a salutary distance what passed for expert American commentary. “North Korea as we know it is over,” according to a piece in The New York Times written by a specialist who had served in the George W Bush administration; the country would come apart within weeks or months. Another asked how could the callow son grapple with octogenarian leaders in the army — wouldn’t there be a coup? Might Kim Jong-un “lash out” to prove his toughness to the military? Others worried that a collapse might require US Marines on Okinawa to swoop in to corral loose nukes (a key mission for several years).

The Obama administration fretted about a power struggle, something Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had spoken of after Kim’s stroke three years earlier. The model seemed to be the USSR after Stalin died, or China after Mao. They ignored what happened when Kim Il-sung died in 1994 — which was nothing.

My first visit to North Korea was in 1981. I flew from Beijing and hoped to go out through the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian railway. Consular officials said I should obtain a visa at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang. When I got there, a friendly (read KGB) counsellor offered me cognac and inquired what I might be doing in Pyongyang. Then he asked what I thought of Kim Jong-il, who had just been officially designated as successor to Kim Il-sung at the 6th Party Congress in 1980. “Well, he doesn’t have his father’s charisma,” I said; “He’s diminutive, pear-shaped, homely. Looks like his mother.” The counsellor replied: “Oh, you Americans, always thinking about personality. Don’t you know they have a bureaucratic bloc behind him, they all rise or fall with him — these people really know how to do this. You should come back in 2020 and see his son take power.”

It was the best prediction I’ve ever heard about this communist state-cum-dynasty, even if Kim Jong-il’s heart attack at 69 hastened the succession to Kim Jong-un by a few years. North Korea has known only millennia of monarchy and then a century of dictatorship — Japanese from 

1910-1945 (in the late stages of colonial rule Koreans had to worship the Japanese emperor), and then for the past 66 years the hegemony of the Kim family.

On the grandson’s birthday, 8 January (his birth year, 1983 or 1984, still seems to be a secret), Pyongyang television ran an hour-long documentary attributing to him every North Korean virtue and identifying him with every place or monument visited by Kim Il-sung, but especially White Head Mountain, the vast volcanic peak on the Sino-Korean border, mythical fount of the Korean people, site of some of Kim’s anti-Japanese guerrilla battles in the 1930s and purported birthplace of Kim Jong-il in 1942. Most interesting, though, was Jong-un’s body language: tall, hefty, grinning, he already looked like a politician, at home with his sudden role as “beloved successor”. Gone was the dour, dyspeptic, cynical, ill-at-ease Kim Jong-il, swaddled in a puffy ski jacket, his face hidden behind sunglasses. Jong-un, in looks and style, is the spitting image of his grandfather when he came to power in the late 1940s; he even shaves his sideburns up high (the documentary showed photos of Kim Il-sung with the same haircut). It was as if his DNA had passed uncontaminated to the grandson (as no doubt the regime wants its people to believe).

Korean culture is steeped in the ceremony, ritual, literature, poetry, folklore and gossip of royal families — especially which son will succeed the king. Many did so at a young age. The greatest of the kings, Sejong, under whom the unique Korean writing system was promulgated, took office in 1418 at the age of 21, assisted by the regency of his father. Like Jong-un, he was the third son: the eldest son was banished from Seoul for rudeness, the middle son became a Buddhist monk. Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-il’s first son, was caught entering Japan under a pseudonym (hoping to visit Disneyland, it is said), and lives in Macao. Almost nothing is known about the middle son. Neither appeared at their father’s funeral.

Honour matters

Asians dislike anything that damages or threatens their dignity, their honour. In North Korean eyes, the prestige of the nation is bound up with the image of the leader. On the way in from the airport in 1981, as we sped by Kim Il-sung billboards, my friendly guide had one solemn admonition: please do not insult our leader. (I hadn’t planned to.) The leader’s ideology, then and now, waschuch’e, which means to put Korea first. The scholar Gari Ledyard has written that the second character used in writing chuch’e, when joined to the word for nation — kukch’e — was classically used to mean national dignity. Ledyard writes: “The kukch’e can be hurt, it can be embarrassed, it can be insulted, it can be sullied. The members of the society must behave in such a way that thekukch’e will not be lost. This sense of the word resonates with emotions and ethics that spring from deep sources in the traditional psyche.” In North Korea this idea is alive and well — often displayed in overweening pride and grandiose monuments, but at bottom, in an insistence on national dignity.

The penultimate Korean king, Kojong, was just 11 when he took the throne in 1864, guided by his father — a powerful regent known as the Taewon’gun — until he reached maturity. During his regency, his father reenergised the dominant ideology (neo-Confucianism), practiced a strict seclusion policy against several empires knocking at the door, and fought serious wars against both France (1866) and the US (1871); two years later the new Meiji leadership in Japan came close to invading Korea. This was the Hermit Kingdom at its height; and kukch’ewas a prominent concept under the Taewon’gun.

But when Kojong came of age he sought modern reforms, signed unequal treaties opening Korea to commerce and tried to play the imperial powers off against each other. It worked for 25 years, and then it didn’t: opening up merely staved off the predictable end — the obliteration of Korean sovereignty in 1910. At the Revolutionary Museum in Pyongyang, fronted by a 60-foot statue of Kim Il-sung, visitors encounter a paean of praise to the Taewon’gun, stone monuments from his era meant to ward off foreign barbarians, and tributes to Korean “victories” against the French and the Americans.

During the recent funeral procession, Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law, Chang Song-t’aek, walked behind Kim Jong-un. Chang, 65, has long been entrusted with command of the most sensitive security agencies. Behind him was Kim Ki-nam, now in his eighties, who was a close associate of Kim Il-sung. Three generations walked solemnly alongside the vintage 1970s armoured Lincoln Continental carrying the coffin of Kim Jong-il, while strolling on the other side of the limousine were top commanders of the military. North Korea is modern history’s most amazing garrison state, with the fourth largest army in the world.

Mourning ritual

The rituals were very similar to those when Kim Il-sung died. Pundits and officials had said the same then: Newsweek ran a cover story, “The Headless Beast” (18 July 1994), the US military commander in the South said the North would “implode or explode”, and the imminent collapse of the regime became a CIA mantra. Almost two decades later, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is still here. And in a few more years, it will have been in existence for as long as the Soviet Union. Yet a few months before Kim Il-sung’s death, I heard a US scholar of North Korea tell a conference that when Kim died, the people would rise up and overthrow the regime. Instead the masses wept in the streets — just as they did when King Kojong died in 1919, touching off a nationwide uprising against the Japanese.

After his father died, Kim Jong-il disappeared, causing rumours of power struggles. He was doing what the heir-apparent prince was supposed to do under the ancien regime: mourn his father for three years. By the 50th anniversary of the DPRK’s founding in 1998, it was clear that Kim Jong-il was in full charge, and he launched its first long-range missile to mark the moment. He often said that communism had fallen in the West because of the dilution and erosion of ideological purity. North Korea has turned Marx on his head — or put Hegel back on his feet — by arguing that “ideas determine everything”, a formulation the Taewon’gun’s neo-Confucian scribes would have liked.

Will Kim Jong-un follow the same mourning ritual? So far he has not. He has visited military units and appeared in public. It is in his interest to lay low and gain experience while the old guard runs the country. With US and South Korean presidential elections later in the year (the current South Korean president, a hardliner whom the North loathes, cannot run again), top leader Hu Jin-tao stepping down in China and Putin’s election now less of a certainty in Russia, biding his time is smart. He has become the face of the regime, hoped to be more agreeable to the public than that of his father.

My Soviet informant was right: I had been wrong about the significance of bodily appearances. Whatever he looks like, the king can do no wrong: he can even hit eagles on his first golf round (as Kim Jong-il was claimed to have done). In a classic European text, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957), Ernst Kantorowicz wrote that there were two kings: the frail, human and mortal vessel who happens to be king, and the perfect eternal king who endures forever as the symbol of the monarchy. The Koreans made the dead Kim Il-sung president for eternity, all imperfections erased, and now his elaborate mausoleum is the most important edifice in the country. Will Jong-un’s face, so similar to his, make people quickly forget about Kim Jong-il, whose 17-year reign brought flood, drought, famine, the effective collapse of the economy, and mass starvation leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths? He had one singular, if dubious achievement: the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

We all, consciously or not, live within and search for a usable past. Kim Jong-un may not yet be 30, but if my Soviet interlocutor is right, we are going to see his face for a long, long time.

Bruce Cumings is chairman of the History Department at the University of Chicago and the author, most recently, of The Korean War: a History, Random House Modern Library, 2010.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

A Foot in the Door

China Steps Up in Syria

by PETER LEE

The conventional picture of US policy in the Middle East is of a hellbound train rushing toward war with Iran, pulling burning coaches filled with European passengers howling praise of Western values out the windows at horrified bystanders.  Actually, I think it’s more like a monster truck exhibition.  Lots of sound, fury, testosterone, and bravado, but just spinning wheels, spewing mud, roaring in circles, and going nowhere.

What is very interesting is that China, usually an apostle of non-interference, believes it has something to contribute to the Syrian situation, probably for two reasons: 1) it needs to road-test some new approaches to managing and accommodating dissent in anticipation of the day when Arab-Spring type upheavals become an important factor in China and 2) the current situation is so screwed up the Chinese feel they can make a genuine contribution.

Though Russia has the lead role as defender of the Syrian regime, China has been following the situation closely.  One of the appendixes to the infamously suppressed Arab League report on Syria listed representatives of foreign media who had been allowed into the country; a large number of them were Chinese, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them, as Xinhua is known to do, were wearing intel hats in addition to their journalist roles.

Interestingly, the Angry Arab news service noted an interview Al Jazeera Arabic did with China’s Foreign Ministry desk officer for Syria and remarked: “ His Arabic is as good as the best Arabic speakers.  It is incredible.  I never ever met an American diplomat with this fluency.  I mean that.  And his pronunciation is so excellent that it carries no trace of a Chinese accent.”

Maybe the Chinese—highly dependent on Saudi and Iranian oil, with a government apparatus largely insulated from global and Israeli pressure, and providing generous human and financial resources to a foreign service designed to help China navigate through a dangerous neighborhood without the crutch of a dominating military presence—knows the Middle East better than we do?

For the sake of American peace of mind, maybe we’d better stick to the image of the PRC team as amoral, callous, resource-grubbing apparatchiks who know the address of every Chinese restaurant in the Middle East but little else.

Anyway, Syria represents an interesting case in the dynamics of great power diplomacy and rivalry in the Middle East.  My take on the situation is that the United States is willing to let the GCC chew up Syria as a consolation prize for not going all out on regime change against Iran.  China, I feel, has a diametrically opposite mindset: it thinks it has placated Saudi Arabia adequately on Iran (mainly by hosing Iran on energy pricing and not stepping up in a major way to crack the sanctions blockade that is beggaring the Iran’s economy and its citizens), so they feel they have the right to be treated as grown-ups with ideas worth listening to on Syria.

Since the West believes it has a monopoly on moral and political wisdom, that’s probably not going to happen.  But it’s interesting that the Chinese are trying.

According to the authoritarian playbook preferred by China, Syria’s President Assad is doing the right things: driving a wedge between the “loyal opposition” to his rule and hard-core rebels and revolutionaries through the use of targeted amnesties and concessions; forcefully isolating and suppressing violent political dissenters; incrementally escalating the use of military force to regain control of militia-held strongholds like Homs; and offering a way out with a new constitution.

Perhaps he has done the right things, but not in the right way; or perhaps not enough.  As the harsh crackdown approaching its first-year anniversary, the Assad regime has profoundly alienated a significant portion of its population.  Reconciliation and stability is going to take more than a new constitution, delivered with a pat on the head and an apology from the government.

A necessary and dangerous process of accommodation and power sharing will be needed.

China perhaps has grasped this point even more clearly than Russia, or the Assad regime itself.  As Syria and Western/Arab policy on Syria lurch from crisis to crisis, China may watch for opportunities to advance its strategy.

This weekend, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun will visit Damascus to try to create some space for a “third path” political strategy, one that eschews both regime change and perpetuation of the status quo for a process of evolutionary reform keyed on the new constitution.

The draft Syrian constitution is a multi-faceted political document.  It accommodates a multi-party system, addressing a key grievance of many moderate Syrians, but still offers the Ba’ath Party various advantages.  It outlaws “religion-based parties,” in order to wrong-foot  Assad’s mortal enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, but stipulates that the president must be a Muslim, in order to appease conservative Muslims.

Assad has announced a referendum on the new constitution will be held on February 26.

It would be very interesting to see how the constitutional referendum played out, and what level of support the government could still command after a heavy-handed one year crackdown.

But it is unlikely that Assad’s enemies inside the country, in the West, the Gulf Coordinating Council (GCC), and Turkey will allow the Syrian government to use the referendum to buttress its legitimacy and demonstrate a capacity to guide the nation out of its political impasse.

As is inevitably the case, any effort by the Syrian regime to gain political-reform traction was met with determined “it’s too late/atrocity of the day” propaganda pushback designed to pre-empt any impetus toward reconciliation.

Even as the referendum was announced, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland (the wife of neo-con Robert Kagan and previously a national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney) stated that Assad’s departure was the only viable option; a WINEP pundit dismissed the referendum as “window dressing”; CNN reported “the vast majority of accounts from within the country say that al-Assad’s forces are slaughtering civilians en masse”; and Western media uncritically passed on the opposition’s idiotic accusation that the Syrian air force had bombed the government’s  own diesel pipeline (which somebody, presumably of the aggressively violent opposition whose existence the West stubbornly refuses to acknowledge, apparently blew up).

Assad’s announcement of the pushed up date for the referendum (it was originally expected to happen in March) was probably a response to the latest escalation in regime-change activity, the “Friends of Syria” conference to be convened in Tunisia on February 24.

Assad’s foreign antagonists, deprived by a Russian/Chinese veto of the opportunity to further delegitimize the Assad regime through the UN Security Council, will use the Tunisian conference to formalize a case for humanitarian intervention in Syria—a moral imperative that justifies, even demands disregard for conflicting demands of treaties and international institutions when necessary–under the “responsibility to protect” or R2P doctrine similar to the one used for Libya.

In a parting gift to the anti-Assad forces,UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay raised the specter of a International Criminal Court indictment against Assad, of the sort which complicated the situation in Sudan, closed the door on a negotiated exit for Gaddafi, and would make any sort of negotiation with Assad virtually impossible.

The Fact-Finding Mission, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, and I myself have all concluded that crimes against humanity are likely to have been committed in Syria. I have encouraged the Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. All Member States must ensure that these crimes do not go unpunished. 

Pillay also issued a demand for humanitarian access that could form the cornerstone of West/GCC justifications for Syrian intervention:

International and independent monitoring bodies, including my Office and the independent Commission of Inquiry must also be allowed into Syria. And humanitarian actors must be guaranteed immediate, unhindered access. [emphasis in original]

There will be no “no-fly zone” for Syria; Assad has assiduously and, one would imagine, intentionally, avoided the use of air transport and air support in his security operations, thereby denying a pretext for the West and GCC to come in with a “no-fly zone,” which in Libya quickly morphed into a “no drive zone” and then into an “attack any government target of tactical or strategic value zone”.

To get around this obstacle, if the French have their way, humanitarian intervention would involve creating a “humanitarian corridor” to deliver food and medical supplies to Homs, thereby driving a stake through the heart of the Syrian regime’s claim to legitimacy and national sovereignty and energizing the opposition…at least that portion of the opposition whose strategy relies on foreign intervention to collapse the Assad regime.

In the western media, only the Syrian National Council, or SNC, exists as the voice of Syrian opposition.  The real situation is considerably more complicated and opposition to Assad is by no means typified by the SNC.

In fact it is a remarkable testament to the bankruptcy of the West/GCC’s Syria policy that the horse they have chosen to back is, to a large extent, a corrupt congeries of exiles with virtually no presence inside Syria and dominated by the Sunni Islamist militants of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has languished in exile for almost three decades.

At the end of January, 2012, Foreign Policy’s Justin Vela wrote:

A wide range of activists and diplomats are voicing concerns with the SNC, criticizing its lack of cohesion and effectiveness. While the majority of them have not given up on the council, they paint a picture of an organization out of touch with the protesters on the ground and dominated by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

“No one from the SNC has influence inside Syria. Most members of the SNC are jumping on a train that started from the street,” says Ammar Qurabi, a Syrian human rights activist…

The most divisive issue surrounding the SNC, however, clearly remains the prominent role played by the Muslim Brotherhood. “The Muslim Brotherhood is the only party in town,” says the Ankara-based Western diplomat.

The Brothers have been exiled from Syria for 30 years after losing a bitter armed conflict with the regime in the 1980s, and some activists distrust its outlook on democracy and the future composition of a post-Assad government…

It appears that the Brotherhood’s insistence on overthrowing the Assad government is informed by its awareness that, whatever feelings Assad has about accommodating the aspirations of democratically-inspired dissidents, they do not extend to the MB.

The Brotherhood’s best hope for a major, indeed dominant political role inside Syria requires regime collapse and the exploitation of the MB’s superior discipline and organization in the ensuing chaos to establish itself as the voice of conservative, orthodox Sunni Islam (the dominant confession in Syria) as their associates did so successfully (and to the chagrin of many secularly-inclined liberals) in Egypt.

Despite its lack of a Syrian presence and its apparently sectarian character, the SNC has been recognized as “the legitimate interlocutor of the Syrian people” by 16 governments, including the United States, several EU countries, and several Arab states.

Reading between the lines, however, most countries are anxiously trying to reconcile their desire to see Assad fall with a queasy awareness that the SNC is perhaps a sectarian, Islamist train wreck ready to happen.  The only authority to give the SNC full recognition is similarly named (and equally shaky) Libyan National Council.  The rest of the 16 nations have offered vigorous lip service to the SNC in an effort to buttress its prestige, but have as yet declined to recognize it as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

It seems the main function of the SNC is to vocally implore—and thereby justify—foreign intervention in Syria.

Though unheard in the West, there are other opposition groups that don’t share the Muslim Brotherhood’s maximalist rejection of negotiation with the Assad regime.

The main in-country dissident organization, the National Coordination Committee, accepts a platform of negotiations with Assad.

In fact, the head of the SNC, Burhan Ghalioun, attempted to achieve a unified opposition with a significant presence both  inside and outside Syria by allying with the NCC.

Justin Vela describes the outcome of Ghalioun’s attempt to abandon the no-negotiation/ foreign-intervention franchise in favor of a broad-based movement:

One particularly damaging stumble occurred when SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun signed a draft agreement with the National Coordination Committee, a Syrian opposition group largely based inside the country, in an attempt to unite the two groups. The agreement rejected foreign military intervention and called for dialogue with the regime, conditions that infuriated many Syrian activists. In the face of widespread opposition, Ghalioun backed away from the agreement.

The PRC has, for the most part, let Russia take a leadership role in making the anti-regime-change case for Syria.

However, on February 4, China’s Global Times posted an op-ed, “Third Path” for Syria, which laid out a vision for a resolution of the Syrian crisis that called for compromise—and an active role for China:

History shows regime changes in restive regions mean endless turmoil and uncertainty. Therefore the Syrian opposition does not need to be that ambitious. Threats against al-Assad will persist as they always have. Compromises on critical issues in exchange for a “soft landing” of his country seem to be a good deal for him.

Interestingly, the article—which may not represent a formal policy of the Chinese government but undoubtedly represents at the very least the informed view of a faction within it—hinted at a decoupling from Russia’s approach, seemingly characterizing Russia, but not China, as a die-hard supporter of Assad [A]l-Assad is backed by the Russians. If a war between Western and Russian “agents” occurs in Syria, as is speculated to happen by some in the European media, it would be an arduous and prolonged battle… China is obviously seeking to assume an active role. The busiest mediators on the world stage are not necessarily stronger than China.

Russia can be an ally in advocating a “third path.”

The Global Times op-ed can be regarded as a warning to Russia, which, through its vigorous and vocal defense of the Assad regime, has become identified as its uncritical and committed ally.

More importantly, it presented China not only as an impartial mediator, a role that Russia had sacrificed; it stated that China’s willingness, in contrast with its usual abhorrence of “interference in the affairs of sovereign states” to “assume an active role,” and even have Russia follow its lead.

Statements of Wen Jiabao also fed into this narrative:

“On the issue of Syria, what is most urgent and pressing now is to prevent war and chaos so that the Syrian people will be free from even greater suffering,” Wen told a press conference after a China-EU summit in Beijing on Tuesday.

“To achieve this goal, China supports all efforts in consistence with the U.N. charter and principles, and we are ready to strengthen communication with all parties in Syria and the international community and continue to play a constructive role,” Wen said, adding that China would “absolutely not protect any party, including the Syrian government,” Chinese media reported.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of Western observers, Wen is not signaling that he is ready to throw Assad under the bus.  Rather, the PRC is trying to save Assad—or, more accurately, promote a peaceful, incremental resolution to the Syrian crisis that leaves the current power structure reformed but to a significant degree intact—by positioning itself as an honest broker in the dispute.

Differences in the Russian and Chinese approaches can be seen in the choice of interlocutors among the non-SNC opposition.

Russia, with deeper ties to the current regime, appears to be placing its hopes for political resolution of the crisis on the “patriotic opposition”, a collection of eleven small parties closely associated with the Ba’ath Party and allowed to function even under the restrictive Section 8 of the current Syrian constitution.

In an article written in January 2012, a Russian journalist described a certain amount of political ferment he observed during a recent trip to Syria:

At present there are three main trends in the Syrian patriotic opposition – democratic, liberal and left, which is mainly a communist one. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party is the most influential party among the democratic forces. … the party’s program is more conservative in comparison with the Baath’s program. Nevertheless there are no differences of principle between the two parties. ..

The liberal trend of the opposition is represented by the recently registered secular democratic social movement led by Nabil Feysal… He is an outright opponent of the Islamic fundamentalism, supporter of the liberal democracy. His goal is to turn Syria into “Middle Eastern Denmark”.

The National Committee for the Unity of Syrian Communists is the most influential component of the left (communist) trend of the opposition within the country…headed by Qadri Jamil, a prominent Syrian economist and the professor at the Damascus University. He is the only representative of the opposition who entered the committee on the design of the new constitution…

It is not difficult to characterize these political parties (including one that defines itself as “more conservative than the Ba’ath” and having “no differences of principle” with the ruling party) as part of the regime’s strategy to hopelessly muddy the opposition waters and retain the upper hand in a multi-party environment.

Nevertheless, Qadri Jamil, the Syrian Communist, is the focus of friendly interest from Russia.

Jamil led a delegation to Moscow in October 2011. The Russian media carefully noted his rejection of foreign intervention, and obligingly publicized his opposition bona fides:

“Any interference in Syria’s domestic life will be interpreted as occupation”, the head of the delegation representing the Syrian opposition, Qadri Jamil, told journalists in Moscow.

“We are ready to do everything to stop violence and sit down for talks”, -Jamil said, adding that dialogue is the only possible way to settle the crisis.

Mr. Jamil stressed the importance of a new constitution for Syria, as well as reforms required to meet the needs of Syrians.

The opposition also demands the release of all political prisoners, including those detained during the recent riots.

Although Qadri Jamil is apparently the Syrian regime and Russia’s great hope for a peaceful transition to a multi-party future, he apparently enjoys no standing in the Syrian dissident and activist community.

China, on the other hand, appears to be turning to the considerably more credible (but equally opposed to foreign military intervention) National Coordination Committee as its preferred interlocutor with the forces of change transforming Syria.

In February, as the SNC-promoted and West/GCC backed UN resolution furor was nearing its height, China made the interesting decision to receive Haitham Manna, “vice chief coordinator and spokesperson abroad”of the NCC in Beijing, give him a meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun, and publicize the meeting with an official news release.

Furthermore, on February 10 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted spokesperson Liu Weimin’s response to two questions concerning Haitham Manna’s visit on its website, all indications that the NCC is, at least for China, in play.

Liu’s responses also promoted China’s position that it can interact with all Syrian opposition forces, including the SNC:

China has been in touch with major Syrian opposition groups over a stretch of time. During Chinese Special Envoy on the Middle East Issue Ambassador Wu Sike’s visit to Syria last October, he met with leaders from the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change and other Syrian opposition groups. China has also made contact and maintained interactions with the National Council of Syria.

Reading between the lines, one can make the following deductions about the PRC’s calculations on Syria:

First, there is no clear consensus within the global community, in the Arab world, or even among the opposition for collapsing the Assad regime.

It looks like the US and Turkey are increasingly keen on Assad accepting a Yemen solution (obligingly floated by Tunisia)—for Assad to drift off into exile so the West can declare victory and turn its attention to other, easier matters while the locals slug it out for pre-eminence under the watchful eye of the Syrian army.

However, Assad, still enjoying a significant measure of support from Russia, China, and Iran, doesn’t seem willing to go anywhere.

There is a window of opportunity for the PRC to promote its desired outcome: reform of the Assad regime and its survival as a reasonably stable ally for China in the Middle East.

Second, the West, if not the GCC, is having second thoughts about its stated enthusiasm for acting as the SNC’s paymaster, arms supplier, and political and diplomatic ally.

The unpleasant experience in Egypt implies that catapulting the intransigent Muslim Brotherhood into a position of political advantage is not necessarily the formula for creating a stable, pro-Western, Israel-friendly democracy in Syria.

More worryingly, al-Qaeda’s enthusiastic attempt to piggyback on the spiraling unrest in Syria—and the car bombings in Aleppo which, if not the work of Zawahiri’s minions, can probably be traced back to al-Qaeda’s Gulf-funded Sunni Islamist fans in western Iraq—are a warning that backing the feckless SNC in an agenda of regime collapse is not going to be the carefree, Iran-bashing romp so many interventionists are advertising.

Third, if the US and Turkey are sufficiently squeamish about the possibility of negative outcomes in Syria, they may not facilitate the flood of arms, money, and advisors the Gulf states would probably be ready to unleash in order to implode the regime.

Fourth, there is a possibility that, as the crisis drags on, more activists and dissidents will decide they will not want to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood and its creature, the SNC.  The SNC might split, leaving the MB in a marginalized rump organization while the secularists, liberals, and moderates i.e. those more likely to be willing to negotiate a political resolution with Assad migrate to the NCC (the possibility hinted at by Burhan Ghalioun’s abortive alliance between the SNC and the NCC).

The one observation that can be made about strategies relying on four contingencies is that they rarely work out.

For the West, the political benefits of posturing against Assad may well outweigh any qualms about the adverse consequences of further empowering the SNC and militarizing the conflict.

Nevertheless, even if China’s offers to mediate come to naught, the costs to China are minimal.  If Assad’s regime collapses, so be it; China has its foot in the door of the New Syria through the NCC.

In any case, events inside Syria might soon escape the ability of anybody to control them—not Assad, not China or Russia, not the SNC, and not the GCC, NATO, or the West.

A poster (“who recently left Syria and has been working with opposition activists”) declared on the Syria Comment website of University of Oklahoma professor Josh Landis:

The Real Opposition in Syria is Not the Syrian National Council or Free Syrian Army

The real opposition is maturing and growing in influence inside and on the ground away from the influence of Qatar, Turkey, Saudi, France or the US. It is a matter of time before the regime gives way. Soon the SNC will be simply remembered as something like one of the many Iraqi opportunistic opposition groups that mushroomed just before the war on Iraq…New more realistic, mature, civic and political powers are taking shape on the ground and will be emerging as powerful players soon. Even if the regime survives this round, there will be new rounds between an exhausted regime and new re-envigorated opposition groups. Forget the SNC and the FSA [Free Syrian Army] if you want to talk about the future.

In other words, maybe the real opposition in Syria is someone we’ve never heard of.  And maybe that’s a good thing.

PETER LEE is a businessman who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing about international affairs. Lee writes frequently for CounterPunch and can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo

Thou Shall Not Kill (Thyself)

The Suicide State

by URI AVNERY

AFTER THE founding of Israel, God appeared to David Ben-Gurion and told him: “You have created a state for my chosen people in my holy land. This merits a great reward. Tell me what you wish, and I will grant it.”

Ben-Gurion answered: “Almighty God, I wish that every person in Israel shall be wise, honest and a member of the Labor Party.”

“Dear me,” said God, “That is too much even for the Almighty. But I decree that every Israeli shall be two of the three.”

Since then, if a wise Israeli is a member of the Labor party, he is not honest. If an honest Israeli is a member of the Labor party, he is not wise. If he is wise and honest, he is not a member of the Labor Party.

THIS JOKE was popular in the 1950s. After 1967, another much less funny formula took its place.

It goes like this: many Israelis ask God for their state to be Jewish and democratic, and that it will include the entire country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. That is too much even for the Almighty. So he asks them to choose between a state that is Jewish and democratic but only in part of the country, or a state in all the country that is Jewish but not democratic, or a state in the entire country that is democratic but not Jewish. To which I would add a fourth option: A Jewish and democratic state in the entire country, but only after driving out all the Arabs – some 5.5 million at this point, and growing quickly.

This is the choice facing us today as it did almost 45 years ago. It has only become more sharply defined.

For any foreseeable future, the fourth alternative can be excluded. The circumstances which led, in 1948, to the expulsion of more than half the Palestinian people from the territory that became Israel were unique, and not likely to return in the coming decades. So we must deal with the present demographic reality.

The current government is determined to prevent any peace that would compel it to give up any part of the occupied territories (22% of pre-1948 Palestine). There is no one around who would compel them to do so.

What remains?

A state that is either non-democratic or non-Jewish.

As things stand, the first possibility is certain to be realized, or, rather, to realize itself. This needs no conscious decision, since it is the default situation that already exists de facto.

This means, to use the popular catch phrase, an apartheid state: a state in which every instrument of power is in the hands of the Jewish-Israeli majority (some 6.5 million people), with limited rights for the 1.5 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. The Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, some four million, are granted no rights whatsoever – neither national, nor human nor civil.

The present state of “temporary” occupation can last forever, and is therefore ideal for this purpose. However, a future Israeli government, an even more nationalist one, could change the formal situation by annexing these territories to Israel. That would make, in practice, no difference.

As many Israelis see it, this situation could go on forever. The official slogan is: “We have no partner for peace”.

But can it really last? The Palestinian population throughout the country is growing rapidly, soon enough it will constitute the majority. The idealists who embrace this as the “One-state Solution” believe that the Apartheid State will slowly turn into a “state of all its citizens”.

If, after decades of oppression, civil war, atrocities and other plagues this really came into being, it would quickly turn into a Palestinian state, with a Jewish minority, like the Whites in present South Africa. It would be a negation of the whole Zionist enterprise, whose core purpose was to have one place in the world where Jews would be a majority. Most Jewish Israelis would probably emigrate.

For an Israeli, this would mean national suicide. Yet it is the inevitable outcome if the state continues on its present course.

IF A person wants to kill himself, as is his right, he has many ways to do so: poisoning, shooting, hanging, jumping from the roof etc. As a state, Israel also has several options.

Apart from the external ticking bomb (the “One-state Solution”), Israel also has an internal ticking bomb, which may be even more dangerous. Like the first option, the second one is already well on its way. If the first option depends at least partly on outside factors, the second is entirely self-made.

When Israel came into being, Orthodox Jews were a small minority. Since Ben-Gurion needed them for his coalition, he gave them some privileges which looked cheap to him. The Orthodox got their own education system, financed by the state, and were exempted from army service.

Some 60 years later, these privileges have grown to gigantic dimensions. To compensate for the lives lost in the Holocaust, and to increase the Jewish population, the Israeli government has encouraged natural increase by generous children’s subsidies. Since the religious of all shades have reproduced much more than any other Israelis (except Muslim Arabs), their part in the population has grown by leaps and bounds.

Orthodox families generally have 8-10 children. All these go to religious schools, where they study exclusively religious texts and don’t acquire any skills useful for working in a modern society. They don’t need them, since they do not work at all, devoting their entire lives to the study of the Talmud. They don’t need to interrupt their studying of the dead texts, because they don’t serve in the army.

If these were marginal phenomena in the early days of the state, they are now rapidly leading to a national emergency. Right from the beginning, almost all government coalitions have relied on the religious parties, because no party has ever won an overall majority in the Knesset. Almost all governing parties had to bribe their religious partners with ever increasing subsidies for children and adults, thus encouraging the growth of a population which neither serves in the army nor does any work.

The absence of the Orthodox from the labor force has severe effects on the economy, attested to by world financial institutions. Their absence from the army – as well as the absence of the Arab citizens, who are not drafted for obvious reasons – means that soon almost half the male population will not serve. This compels all the others to serve three full years, and then to do reserve duty for many more years.

Also, very soon, half the first grade pupils in Israel will be religious children, destined for a life without work, without paying taxes or serving in the army – all this paid for by the taxes of the diminishing number of the non-Orthodox.

Recently, after deepening unrest between religious and non-religious in Bet Shemesh, 25 km west of Jerusalem, the secularists demanded that the town be divided into two, one half Orthodox and the other secular. The Interior Minister, himself a leader of an Orthodox party, rejected this outright. As he candidly explained. since the Orthodox do not work and cannot pay municipal taxes, they cannot sustain a town of their own. They need the secular to work and pay.

This grotesque situation exists throughout the state. One can calculate when the whole edifice will come crashing down. International financial institutions as well as Israeli experts foretell disaster. Yet our political system does not make any change possible. The hold of the religious parties is as strong as ever.

Another method of suicide.

A THIRD method is less dramatic. Israel is rapidly becoming a state in which normal people just may not want to live.

In his monumental opus on the Crusades, the late British historian Steven Runciman maintained that the Crusader state did not collapse because of its military defeat, but because too many of its inhabitants just packed up and went back to Europe. Though many of them belonged to the 4^th and even 8^th generation of crusaders, the Crusader state had lost its attraction for them. The state of perpetual  war and inner stagnation drove them out. The state collapsed when many more went away than came to join.

The Crusaders felt a stronger sense of belonging to Christendom than to the local Kingdom of Jerusalem. Today, many Israelis feel themselves first of all as Jews, belonging to a world-wide people, and only in second place Israelis.

That makes emigration easier.

A state without democracy, without equality, condemned by itself to an endless war, dominated by religious fanatics, with the gap between the abject poor and a handful of immensely rich growing from year to year – such a state will look less and less attractive to bright young people, who can easily find a better life elsewhere, while retaining their Jewish identity.

That, too, is a kind of national suicide.

I AM not, by nature, a prophet of doom.  Quite the contrary.

We can easily avert all these dangers. But first of all we must recognize them and see where they are leading us.

I believe that the people of Israel – the Israeli nation – have the will to survive. But in order to survive, they must wake up from their apathetic stupor and change course – turning towards peace based on the two-state solution, separating the state from religion and building a new social order.

In the Jewish religion, suicide is a sin. It would be ironic if future historians were to conclude that the “Jewish State” committed suicide.

URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.