The Media Is The Message

Of course the famous "McLuhanism" was "Medium is the message." in other words what medium we use to tell a story will shape that story. This documentary tells McLuhan's story: a 19th century man stuck in the 20th century and not liking it very much. 

Russian Motivations Part 2

I mentioned last Saturday that Russia had legitimate fears for their fellow religionists that now live in Syria. This explains a lot of Russian support for Syria. But there are other geopolitical reasons as well. 

There are regional rivalries in the area. Russia supports some governments and does not support others. For example Russia supports Armenia in its dispute with Azerbaijan over a province in Azerbaijan. 

On 23 August 1990, Armenia declared independence, becoming the first non-Baltic republic to secede from the Soviet Union. When, in 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved, Armenia's independence was officially recognized. However, the initial post-Soviet years were marred by economic difficulties as well as the break-out of a full-scale armed confrontation between the Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh War). The economic problems had their roots early in the Karabakh conflict when the Azerbaijani Popular Front managed to pressure the Azerbaijan SSR to instigate a railway and air blockade against Armenia. This move effectively crippled Armenia's economy as 85% of its cargo and goods arrived through rail traffic. In 1993, Turkey joined the blockade against Armenia in support of Azerbaijan.

 Who won the war?

The Karabakh war ended after a Russian-brokered cease-fire was put in place in 1994. The war was a success for the Karabakh Armenian forces who managed to capture 16% of Azerbaijan's internationally recognised territory including Nagorno-Karabakh itself. Since then, Armenia and Azerbaijan have held peace talks, mediated by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The status of Karabakh has yet to be determined. The economies of both countries have been hurt in the absence of a complete resolution and Armenia's borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan remain closed. By the time both Azerbaijan and Armenia had finally agreed to a ceasefire in 1994, an estimated 30,000 people had been killed and over a million had been displaced. 

The reason for the conflict is the status of ethnic Armenians within the old borders of Soviet Azerbaijan. Nagorno-Karabakh was in particular majority Armenian ethnically. 

So how does this relate to Syria? Azerbaijan is rich in oil, but is a landlocked country. Where will the pipelines go? If an agreement is ever given one logical route would be through Armenia, Turkey, and then Syria. The difficulty of negotiating such a pipeline should be evident. But from the Russian perspective this would be far superior than going through Georgia, an anti-Russian country to the north of Azerbaijan. For some reason Azerbaijan does not want to ship their oil through Russia! In the Middle East oil is always in the picture, even in countries that do not have oil like Syria. 

Look at the natural gas pipeline map from Egyptian gas deposits. Is it a coincidence that Homs, a major pipeline center is an area of conflict in the unrest in Syria?  

Another reason for Russian support of Syria flows out of the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has few warm water ports. What ports it does have tend to be in other countries like the Ukraine. Since 1971 there has been a Russian naval base in Syria.  This is an important point for Russia as it needs such bases for its navy. 

From the Russian perspective they have legitimate reasons to support the Syrian government. 

On Friday I plan to continue the series and talk about the propaganda that you see on both Network Television and Cable News. 

How Video Is Edited to Make A Political Point

While I have no plans to vote for Romney, I thought this editing of his speech was disgusting. It bears directly on what I wrote last Saturday about sinning by bearing false witness. This is High Tech Style lying. 

Russian Motivations in Syria Part 1

I have been accused of hating America and loving Russia. I find this amusing. My normal template on government is that the government is bad, but people are good. So my view is that the Russian and American governments are bad. All governments fight it out over geopolitical issues. Not all governments are 100% evil all of the time. Russia has perfectly reasonable motives for their policy in Syria mixed together with the normal trash; but today I will talk about Russia's religious reason for supporting Syria. 

While I would not describe Russia as a religious country, this has been changing. The city that we visit in Russia, Murom, Russia, is a center for the Orthodox faith. Murom has an old church made of wood, maybe the oldest wood church anywhere. It is a monastery center. Why am I talking about this in reference to Syria? The faith of most Russians is the same faith as most Christians in the Middle East—Orthodox. Russian Orthodox leaders have seen what happens when Islamists gain the upper hand, or even when they are an uncontrolled minority—Christians suffer. 

As a result of this fact the Russian Orthodox leadership supports Assad in Syria. They see him as a necessary evil to protect Christian minorities in Syria. The Christian refugees from Iraq are in Syria as well, and they have nowhere else to go. 

While this aspect has not received wide attention it is a very important reason why Russia continues to support Syria. From the NY Times:

It is clear by now that Russia’s government has dug in against outside intervention in Syria, its longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East. Less well known is the position taken by the Russian Orthodox Church, which fears that Christian minorities, many of them Orthodox, will be swept away by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the Arab Spring.

Patriarch Kirill IIn his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”

This argument for supporting sitting leaders has reached a peak around Syria, whose minority population of Christians, about 10 percent, has been reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition against Mr. Assad, fearing persecution at those same hands if he were to fall. If the church’s advocacy cannot be said to guide Russia’s policy, it is one of the factors that make compromise with the West so elusive, especially at a time of domestic political uncertainty for the Kremlin. 

Russia has very legitimate concerns for their co-religionists. Read the whole article if you want to know more about Russian internal politics. 

But as the article from the NY times I quoted makes clear, this is probably not Russia's primary concern. On Monday I will talk about Russia's geopolitical reasons for supporting Syria. 

2000 Years of Christianity

Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have had almost 2000 years of Christianity. Will this soon end? Probably. 

Iraqi Christians have had a long, and mostly peaceful, history in what is now Iraq. The first Christians in Iraq were converted by the early apostles. Church Tradition says that Thomas and Thaddeus were the founding apostles. It was a fruitful area for Christian missionaries because of the large number of Jews that were there. It is possible that Peter was there as well. It depends on how you interpret what Peter's first epistle means when it says that Peter was in "Babylon."

Here is what Wikipedia says about the recent history of Christian Iraqis. 

Prior to the Gulf War in 1991, Christians numbered one million in Iraq. The Baathist rule under Saddam Hussein kept anti-Christian violence under control but subjected some to "relocation programmes". Under this regime, the predominantly Assyrian Christians were pressured to identify as Arabs. The Christian population fell to an estimated 800,000 during the 2003 Iraq War.

What is happening now?

Half the Christian population has fled, with an estimated 330,000 to Syria and smaller numbers to Jordan. Some fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in northern Iraq.[5][9][10] Christians who are too poor or unwilling to leave their homeland have fled mainly to Arbil, particularly its Christian suburb of Ainkawa. 10,000 Iraqi Christians live in the U.K. led by Archbishop Athanasios Dawood who has called on the government to accept more refugees.

What we are seeing is nothing less than the end of Christianity in the Arab world. This is an unintended side effect of the various wars conducted by the West in the Middle East. 

How is bringing Democracy to the Arab world working out? Not so well. Just look at Egypt. The Moslem Brotherhood is winning election after election. The army does not like this and so we just had a coup in Egypt. The Brotherhood is not happy, they think they won the election. They probably did. 

A spokesman for Ahmed Shafik -- the last prime minister to serve under deposed President Hosni Mubarak -- said Tuesday that Shafik had won, state-run Nile TV reported. At a news conference, Mahmoud Abu Baraka said the campaign was certain it had the correct numbers. Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, claimed victory Monday. vowing to build an inclusive government. "No one's rights will be left out of it, and no one will dominate over the other," he said.

It may not actually matter who is elected: 

Under an interim constitutional declaration released Monday, the military council retains the power to make laws and budget decisions until a new constitution can be written and a new parliament elected. The declaration says Supreme Council members "shall decide all matters related to military affairs, including the appointment of its leaders." The president has the power to declare war, it says, but only "after the approval of the SCAF." That move came days after an Egyptian court dissolved the parliament and the military council announced it had full legislative authority.

The Arab Spring, orchestrated by the West, has brought nothing but chaos in its wake. 

I mentioned templates (the way we look at the world) and the necessity to reexamine them last Monday. What are the templates that we need to reconsider? 

The first template is that democracy is good; dictatorship is bad. Are we sure that is what we think? If you were an Iraqi Christian living in a settlement camp in war-torn Syria, would you long for the days of Saddam? You might. If you were an Egyptian Christian, who are about 10% of the population, and saw what happened to Christians in Iraq, are you sure you would not welcome the military coup that just occurred? You might.

There is another template that needs to be mentioned here as well. That template is that Arabs are Moslems. They usually are, but sometimes this is not true. The percentage varies from country to country: Egypt 10%, Syria 15%, Lebanon 50%, 200,000 Palestinians and many more scattered though the Arab world. 

The template Arab=Moslem is not true. (Note that Moslem=Arab is also an incorrect stereotype. Arabs are about 25% of Moslems worldwide.) 

We will see on Friday why the fact that dictatorships, not having a religious ideology at their base, protect minorities is important to understand how Russia is acting in the Syria crisis.