Society

Why the interest in the roads to Raqqa?

Raqqa is in a fertile area by the River Eurphates, hence it becoming the self-styled capital of Islamic State. With the tide of the war having turned, the Syrian Army has been working its way towards Raqqa but the ground attack on Raqqa cannot come from just any direction the army wants. That is because more or less everything away from the vicinity of the Euphrates is desert.

In fact there are just two roads to Raqqa, one from As Sukhnah and the other from Deir Ez Zour.

Reuters reports today 5th September 2017, that the Syrian Army has reached Deir Ez Zour and broken the siege.

Syrian Army soldiers have been encircled and besieged by ISIS since 2014. Naturally, there was a fear that if ISIS captured the city, there would be a massacre. As it is, those soldiers are now free to become part of the onward advance to Raqqa once the whole of Deir Ez Zour is recaptured. It is not yet, and ISIS hold at least half of the city.

Apart from Syrian Army soldiers, Deir Ez Zour is home to 200,000 civilians, and that is going to present a difficult proposition to the Syrian Army, trying to disentangle ISIS operatives and sympathisers from ordinary civilians. Interviewing and processing 200,000 people is a big job.

Since Spring 2016 food has been air-dropped into the city under the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Without it, would there have been many deaths from starvation? It’s natural to ask how that aid will have affected the attitude of civilians who endured the siege.

Repeat a lie often enough and people will begin to believe it.

The moon is made of cheese

The moon is made of cheese. I mean, how many times would I have to repeat that before people began to believe it? And if I were king or prime minister or president with all the channels for disseminating information at my disposal and I said it, how long would it take before people began to believe it?

Come on, think about it. The sentence ‘Repeat a lie often enough and people will begin to believe it.’ is an example of a sentence said often enough. But is it true? Will people begin to believe a lie said often enough?

‘Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire’, is the other side of the coin. Accuse a man of something and unless he is proven beyond all doubt to be innocent, then some people will continue to believe there is some truth in the accusation.

That is as much a criticism of the dark, suspicious part of people’s minds as it is a saying that there is always something behind every suspicion.

And perhaps the lie perpetuated as truth appeals to the same part of people’s minds.

With our attention spans dwindling to zero, and with online shops wanting to deliver a frictionless experience, the keyboard and mouse have surely got to go. It’s just too much effort to tap the keys.

It will have to be done by voice. Commands and questions by voice.

We ask the computer to take us to Amazon, or Gap, or East, or whatever and then we ask for what we want.

‘Show me all the tops in green, size 12’
‘Home in on the one with the boat neck.’
‘I’ll have that one and the one in taupe.’

And that’s how it will go.

There is a story told in the Talmud to emphasise and explain how the tone in which something is said is often critical in understanding what is meant by what is said.

The background to the story is that the Talmud mandated that every landowner had an obligation to give a tithe to the priests (the Cohanim). But there was a lot that was left to the discretion of the landowner – which priest or priests, and what quality the tithe should actually comprise.

Now on this particular occasion the landowner needed to be absent for a few days. He appointed a manager who he left in charge of gathering in the figs and grading them into three qualities – best, middle, and poor.

Now it so happened that when the manager was in the middle of doing this, a priest passed by. The manager knew he should give a tithe, he knew that every landowner had an obligation to give a tithe – but which quality? He opted for the safe bet and gave from the middle quality.

When the landowner returned, the manager told him he had given a tithe to the priest, to which the landowner replied ‘Why didn’t you give him the best quality?’

Now you tell me what the landowner meant. You cannot and I cannot without hearing the tone of his voice.

Did he mean that the priest was such a worthy person and the landowner considered the obligation to tithe so important that the manager should have given the best quality figs?

Or did the landowner use an ironic tone because he begrudged giving the figs for the tithe or to this particular priest?

Did he mean ‘Why stop halfway – why didn’t you make an even worse decision than you did, and give the priest my best figs?

It’s all in the tone of voice – and that is what the story is intended to illustrate.