Syria, Dilemma
And then this, via the daily Perlentaucher, which strikes me as a sadly accurate assessment of the dilemma, by the Syrian philosopher Sadik J. Al-Azm in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) in my quick translation, this morning:
“The international discourse on Syria is shaped primarily by concerns for the protection of minorities: Christians, Kurds, Alawites, Druses, Ismailis, Turkmen, Circassians and others. It is however the majority — the Sunnis — who are horribly set upon by the army units, the militias and the Scud-missiles of a small minority that holds absolute power as well as the wealth of the whole country in its hands.”
(Visited 76 times, 1 visits today)
Poasis II: Selected Poems 2000-2024
“Todesguge/Deathfugue”
“Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021)”
“Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello”
“Conversations in the Pyrenees”
“A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly.” Edited by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh
“An American Suite” (Poems) —Inpatient Press
“Arabia (not so) Deserta” : Essays on Maghrebi & Mashreqi Writing & Culture
“Barzakh” (Poems 2000-2012)
“Fox-trails, -tales & -trots”
“The Agony of I.B.” — A play. Editions PHI & TNL 2016
“The Book of U / Le livre des cormorans”
“Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan”
“Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones”
“Paul Celan: Breathturn into Timestead-The Collected Later Poetry.” Translated & with commentary by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
I suspect, sadly, that any cease fire will come, like those of the past in the Middle East, at the end of a cheque signed by the U.S. and borrowed from who knows whom. Religious warfare, or violence carried out in the name of religion, tends to have a rather long life span, centuries in fact. Religion is the the problem as it seems to want to become radical faster than an anarchist can throw a cobblestone. Perhaps if those of a more moderate belief would get off their bottoms and step to the forefront things might change. Why do I doubt this?