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[ by Charles Cameron — of tweets, and telephones, and terminal points with teletype equipment ]
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The White House RTs Rouhani, Rouhani RTs State.

Is this a “sign of the times”?

Was any bookmaker offering odds on this happening?

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Would I have been excited enough to want to write it up if I’d just found out, fifty years ago, that the White House had a “red telephone” that connected directly to the Kremlin?

I doubt it — but this article from the Smithsonian, There Never Was Such a Thing as a Red Phone in the White House informs us that it wasn’t a question of telephones either — it was…

two terminal points with teletype equipment, a full-time duplex wire telegraph circuit and a full-time radiotelegraph circuit.

Now — why am I feeling just a tad saddened by that tidbit of lifelong learning?

[ by Charles Cameron — with modesty for all ]
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Some while Back, I posted a piece titled Concerning the enforcement of morals, in which I quoted the upper section of this DoubleQuote:

The lower panel comes from one of Aymenn Al-Tamimi‘s tweets today, in which he offered us a glimpse of an Islamic State of #Iraq and ash-Sham pool party near Latakia in Syria.

That’s it: fair and balanced modesty.

[ by Charles Cameron — in recognition that Photoshop is a weapon that can turn enemies into friends, at least within Photoshop! ]
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How to describe this? It’s a DoubleQuote in Two Tweets from Phillip Smyth in which [Almost] the Same Photo of a Guy with an Israeli Rifle Poses on Both Sides of the Conflict around the Sayyida Zaynab Shrine in Southern Damascus:

So the guy in the original photo does a bit of an enantiondromia thanks to Photoshop…

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For some in depth reading:

On the Shia side of things, see Phillip Smyth‘s Hizballah Cavalcade posts at Jihadology.

For the same on the Sunni side, see Aymenn Al-Tamimi‘s Musings of an Iraqi Brasenostril series, also on Jihadology.

And for both and all else, well, there’s always Aaron Zelin‘s Jihadology itself!

[ by Charles Cameron — with regard to Mothana: the voice of sanity is not easily heard in the asylum ]
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Here’s most everything you need to know about the complexities of the Middle East, spelled out in two simple war games:

Sources:

McCain plays poker during Syria war hearing

Detail from Yemeni Politics — The Board Game

**

The Yemen politics game was the work of 24 year old Ibrahim Mothana, who died this week. His moving NYT op-ed about his beloved Yemen in June last year told us:

Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair. Robert Grenier, the former head of the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, has warned that the American drone program in Yemen risks turning the country into a safe haven for Al Qaeda like the tribal areas of Pakistan — “the Arabian equivalent of Waziristan.”

Anti-Americanism is far less prevalent in Yemen than in Pakistan. But rather than winning the hearts and minds of Yemeni civilians, America is alienating them by killing their relatives and friends. Indeed, the drone program is leading to the Talibanization of vast tribal areas and the radicalization of people who could otherwise be America’s allies in the fight against terrorism in Yemen.

His written testimony for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights can be found in this Guardian post from Glenn Greenwald in May of this year.

Mothana had many admirers across the spectrum, as this tweet from Gregory Johnsen attests:

The only thing I've seen @joshuafoust and @ggreenwald agree on in a long time is how tragic the loss of Ibrahim Mothana is to us all.

— GregorydJohnsen (@gregorydjohnsen) September 6, 2013

We mourn his loss, and ask for peace.

[ by Charles Cameron — AQ & Friends have adopted another of our technologies against us — this time it’s branding — what’s next — gamification? ]
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Aymenn J Al-Tamimi tweeted to alert us to the ISIS school bag today, with the comment:

Yes, folks, it’s real: Islamic State of Iraq & ash-Sham school bag for kids going to ISIS schools in #Syria.

This in turn reminded me of the Al-Qaida version of an Adidas logo. — I don’t recall who pointed us to the logo image, but Joshua Hammer talks the same design in A New Turn in Tunisia?— published in the NYRB this July:
July:

Yassin wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with jihadist imagery: on the front, a map of Syria with a Kalashnikov- carrying fighter from the Jabhat al-Nusra, the radical Islamic rebel group in Syria that has recruited many fighters from Tunisia; on the back, a portrait of Osama bin Laden accompanied by the legend “Jihad Is Not a Crime.” A picture of the World Trade Center, with a jet about to strike, adorned his shoulder. It suggested the Adidas logo, but instead of “Adidas,” it read “alqaïda.” “The police threw me in jail for wearing my T-shirt, and held me for four days,” he told me, grinning. “But they had to let me go, because there is no law against defending my views.” What were those views? “Al-Qaeda represents Islam, and al-Qaeda defends Islam,” he replied. Despite the incendiary messages on his T-shirt, Yassin insisted that he had entered a pacifist phase. “I’m doing dawaa, making people aware of their religious obligations,” he told me. “I’m not killing people.”

Do they buy these things at Target (TGT)?