Month: December 2016

Syria and the Left: A Call to Arms

As the world’s imperial powers unify against Syrians, we offer suggestions for how those in the West can demonstrate solidarity with the besieged

by Charles Davis, Loubna Mrie, and Kareem Chehayeb

THE last year has been one of the worst in history for Syrians, whose country continues to be torn apart by dictatorship, the Islamic State, various rebel groups, and both U.S. and Russian imperialism. As the regime has solidified its grip on Aleppo–one of the last urban strongholds of opposition forces–the Islamic State continues to be a significant force in the country, as shown by its recapture of the ancient town of Palmyra.

The rise of Donald Trump and his desire to openly work alongside Russia and the Syrian regime as part of an escalated war on terror demands change with respect to how the Western left engages the issue of Syria. Some have spent years downplaying or even openly denying the well-documented suffering of Syrians, dismissing such reports as part of a ploy by Clintonites and liberal interventionists seeking to sell the world a no-fly zone that hasn’t come. The presidential election has all but settled this policy debate; moving forward, the left now needs to figure out how it can organize on behalf of those whom the world has united against. Rehashing the past while displaced Syrians are bombed and deported would be a historical dereliction.

Refugees need to be supported wherever they are, and imperial designs for the partition of their homeland–as well as the normalization of a hereditary regime that has killed hundreds of thousands–must be opposed. Meaningful solidarity could take a number of forms that the global left should pursue immediately, lest it continues to fail Syrians as it has for the last half decade.

Continue reading “Syria and the Left: A Call to Arms”

Down the Alt-Right’s Syrian Rabbit Hole

How a Chemical Attack in 2013 set the Stage for Trump’s Post-Truth Presidency, and How We Can Fight Back.

On August 21st 2013 rumors of a massive chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta, a rebel held suburb of Damascus began to emerge. A series of now famous videos which showed victims laid out on the floor shaking were uploaded. Over the next few day fragmentary details of a major sarin gas attack began to emerge in the western media. As  journalists started putting the pieces together an Austin based conspiracy theorist named Alex Jones went on air to present his own version of events with absolute certainty.

In retrospect the August 23rd episode of “The Alex Jones Show” is worth re watching, because it was a chilling precursor to the alt right movement that would shape how Donald Trump sees the world. Between segments hawking survivalist and pseudo medical products, listeners called in to speak with Jones. One caller ranted about fears that Obamacare death panels would kill his grandmother, Jones suggested Obama’s Muslim background made him a bad dog owner and a segment about the inappropriate conduct of the Clinton foundation ran (remember this was during the summer of 2013).

The the subject of Jones program that day was the sarin gas attack in Damascus, and he jumped right into it.

“The so-called US, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, that run this country, along with the Sachs, Cobergs, Gothes, and others, the Queen of England, the Dutch Queen others, that’s the main folks that own it all. They are openly taking the funding away from Egypt, and I’m not defending foreign aide, but the point is they are taking it away becasue they aren’t doing what they are told to turn it over to jihadis to just wreck everything.”

Continue reading “Down the Alt-Right’s Syrian Rabbit Hole”

Left-wing Argentinian Politician Condemns ‘Genocide’ in Syria

Juan Carlos Giordano of the ‘Socialist Left’ party condemned the ‘international genocide’ in Syria.

Juan Carlos Giordano, the Argentinian MP and leader of the ‘Izquierda Socialista‘ (Socialist Left) party, itself a member of the Trotskyist ‘Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores’ (Workers’ Left Front) coalition, gave a powerful speech on the situation in Aleppo at the Buenos Aires City Council.

On Twitter, Giordano said:

“My intervention in solidarity with the rebellious people of Syria against the genocide committed by Assad and Russia with the endorsement of imperialism.”

Here is a transcript of his speech, translated by Elisa Marvena:

My motion of privilege, that we have brought up in this parliamentary work, is about denouncing an international genocide. When one is asked in what way is an MP, the chamber of deputies of the nation affected? An international genocide! A crime against humanity perpetrated against the people of Aleppo, Syria, which we want to condemn. And this flag represents not the dictator Bashar al Assad, but the rebellious people of Aleppo against the dictatorship of Bashar al Assad. What has been named the Guernica of the 21st century, where bombs condemned by the international community have been dropped… on hospitals, schools… Where the civilian population has been murdered, [where] 95 per cent of all physicians have fled. Aleppo has been put under siege, food and medicine were not allowed to enter. The dictatorship of Bashar al Assad, the bombardment from Russia with the complicity of the United States and the complicity of the European Union, because this is a people that rose up against dictatorship as part of the Arab Spring in 2011 and [the situation] transformed into a civil war, provoking a humanitarian catastrophe. Therefore, we defend the people of Aleppo, the rebellious people of Syria against Bashar al Assad, against the bombardment and imperialist interference. And we are demanding that the national government break all diplomatic relationships with this dictatorship, corner the dictator and side with the rebellious peoples struggling with dignity against dictatorships in the world. Thank you, Mr. President.

Continue reading “Left-wing Argentinian Politician Condemns ‘Genocide’ in Syria”

To “leftist” admirers of Assad’s Syria

By Farouk Mardam-Bey

As a Syrian who has always identified politically with the left, I am particularly appalled by those men and women who call themselves left-wingers — and are therefore supposed to stand in solidarity with struggles for justice worldwide — and yet openly support the regime of the Assads, father and son, who are chiefly responsible for the Syrian disaster.

Following four months of intense bombardment by the Russian air force, Bashar Al-Assad’s army, along with Shiite militias hailing from everywhere and mobilized by the Iranian mullahs, have now finished ‘liberating’ Eastern Aleppo. Liberated from whom? From its inhabitants. More than 250,000 inhabitants were forced to flee their own city to escape massacres, as had the people of Zabadani and Daraya before them, and as will many more Syrians if systematic social and sectarian ‘cleansing’ continues in their country under the cover of a massive media disinformation campaign.

That in Syria itself wealthy residents of Aleppo, belonging to all religious sects, rejoice over having been rid of the “scum” — meaning the poor classes who populated Eastern Aleppo — is not surprising at all. We are accustomed to it: the arrogance of dominant classes is universal.

Continue reading “To “leftist” admirers of Assad’s Syria”

Greece is no place for refuge

It has been nine months since the introduction of the EU-Turkey deal, under which refugees arriving on Greek islands face the threat of deportation back to Turkey. Since then, thousands of refugees have been stuck in inhumane conditions, in camps lacking basic resources like heat and electricity, as they await to have their asylum requests processed. With the arrival of winter, the situation continues to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, UNHCR and the EU’s aid department (ECHO) have been accused of mismanaging millions in emergency funding earmarked for upgrading shelters, leaving thousands sleeping in freezing conditions in camps across Greece. On Chios, refugees have begun to protest against these intolerable conditions. ‘We all are fighting this battle with the leaders of Europe’s non-humanists. Yes, we are now one team fighting the lies and hatred, racism and the enslavement of human beings and the imprisonment of freedom,’ writes Mohammed, a refugee from Deir ez-Zor.

The following commentary, originally published in Politico last week, was written in response to the European Commission’s proposal to resume ‘Dublin transfers’ back to Greece.    

By John-Mark Philo & Ludek Stavinoha

In the same week as the world marked Human Rights Day, the European Commission announced its plans to resume the so-called “Dublin transfers” of refugees back to Greece. If the recommendation is adopted at Thursday’s meeting of European leaders in Brussels, EU member countries will be able to start returning refugees who arrive on their territory back to the country of their first entry into the European Union, wherever that may be.

Continue reading “Greece is no place for refuge”

How “Stop the War” and Patrick Cockburn justified atrocities in Aleppo

By Amr Salahi

Last week, as Assad’s forces and their foreign militia allies closed in on the last remaining opposition enclave in East Aleppo, the horrific crimes being committed during their assault became headline news across the world. In one massacre alone 82 people were killed and there were reports of children being burned alive.

Activists and civil defence workers in Aleppo uploaded photos and videos to social media and gave interviews to the UK media, telling the world that they were trapped and completely surrounded in East Aleppo. Nearly 100,000 people were herded by the Assad regime and its allies into an area of less than 2 square kilometres. The people in this tiny enclave were deprived of food, medicine, and electricity while barrel bombs and cluster bombs dropped by the Russian and Syrian air forces rained down on them.

Eventually, what was called an “evacuation” agreement was signed. This was a misnomer. The people remaining in East Aleppo were being given a choice. Either a horrific death at the hands of the regime and its militia allies or permanent forced displacement from their city to other opposition-held areas of Syria – where they would be subject to continued aerial bombardment by Russia and the Assad regime.

Continue reading “How “Stop the War” and Patrick Cockburn justified atrocities in Aleppo”

Trump has defeated the media, and here’s the picture to prove it.

The picture above, tweeted out last night by Politico co-founder Mike Allen, is one of the saddest images I’ve seen since Election Day.

 

Here are a couple more gems that followed.

The occasion of these tweets, in case you haven’t heard, was the off-the-record cocktail party Trump threw for his traveling press corps — the same reporters he mocked throughout his campaign, and continues to call a bunch of liars, along with the rest of the media. The same reporters who watched Trump single out one of their own at three separate rallies in front of his hopped-up crowds, knowingly and deliberately putting her physical safety at risk. These reporters were invited to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, to chat with him for a half hour over drinks, on the condition they don’t tell their readers (us) anything about what he says. Mike Allen thought we might be more interested in pictures of the fancy drapes at his exclusive beach club than his answers to boring policy questions, I guess. Continue reading “Trump has defeated the media, and here’s the picture to prove it.”

Anti-Imperialism Against Itself

A statement in solidarity with the multi-pronged Israeli assaults on Hezbollah and Hamas in 2006 read:

“We offer solidarity and support to the victims of th[e] brutality [in Lebanon and Palestine] and to those who mount a resistance against it”

The gist of the statement is that no matter how fundamentalist and sectarian someone is, they have the right to resist oppression.

Tariq Ali, one of the signatories, 9 years later would argue that in order to defeat ISIS,

“[Y]ou should be fighting side by side with Assad and the Russians . . . that’s the logic.”

In other words, we must join hands with other imperialists and mass murders to . . . fight imperialism. He went on to assert that

“This notion that there is a liberal third force is nonsense… 70,000 people collected together by the CIA, no, it’s not true, it’s a lie”

They just don’t exist, it’s a Muslim country after all!

Another signatory, Lindsay German, later went on to assert in 2015 that

“[T]he majority of the so-called “rebels” are and always have been foreign invaders and not domestic insurgents . . .”

Another signatory, John Rees—who in 2001 went as far as to argue that “whether or not to oppose imperialism” shouldn’t be premised “on whether or not we find the past or present behaviour of the [opposing] regime to be progressive”—would later insist that any rebel group in Syria that’s demanding arms and money from the West, the Gulf and Turkey shouldn’t be supported by the Left. By that logic, of course, the Spanish Republicans shouldn’t be supported for demanding arms of France. And the same would go for Hezbollah and Hamas who are both funded by Iran and, in the latter case, by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

 What a world, what a world!

Russia and the Syrian Regime are Documenting Their Own Crimes

In the era of “fake news,” Russian hacking, and “post truth presidency,” it can be hard to discern fact from fiction and propaganda from reporting. Over the past few years the smear and bullshit industry has been kicked into overdrive by state actors invested in spreading misinformation.

Propaganda is nothing new but as America comes to grips with the role of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election via hacks and so-called “fake news”, many are wondering what, if anything, can be done to counter these increasingly toxic and advanced strains of misinformation. Most worrying is the fact that US president elect Donald Trump seems to be a voracious consumer of fake information, at the expense of US intelligence agencies and other more rational observers.

This seemingly insurmountable challenge has left lawmakers scratching their heads, considering countermeasures and toying with the absolutely unacceptable notion of censorship. For those of us who oppose censorship but are still terrified by the plague of bullshit there is good news. Simply put, the best cure for Russian propaganda is Russian propaganda.

Continue reading “Russia and the Syrian Regime are Documenting Their Own Crimes”

The Palestinisation of the Syrian people

A woman, holding a placard reading "We support the Syrian people", cries as she stands among other Bosnians during a protest in SarajevoA slightly edited version of this article was published at al-Jazeera.

In solidarity with Aleppo, the lights on the Eiffel Tower were extinguished. Elsewhere in Paris, and in London, Amsterdam, Oslo and Copenhagen, people demonstrated against the slaughter. Turks rallied outside Russian and Iranian embassies and consulates in Istanbul, Ankara and Erzerum. The people of Sarajevo – who have their own experience of genocide – staged a big protest.

The protests are nothing like as large as they were when the United States bombed Iraq, but they are welcome nonetheless. If this level of support had been apparent over the last six years, it would have made a real difference. Perhaps it is making a difference even now. Public sympathy for the victims may have pressured Vladimir Putin to allow those in the surviving liberated sliver of Aleppo to evacuate rather than face annihilation. At the time of writing, the fate of the deal is in doubt, subject to the whims of the militias on the ground. If it works out and the tens of thousands currently trapped are allowed to leave – the best possible outcome – then we will be witnesses to an internationally brokered forced population transfer. This is both a war crime and a crime against humanity, and a terrible image of the precarious state of the global system. The weight of this event, and its future ramifications, deserve more than just a few demonstrations.

The abandonment of Aleppo is a microcosm of the more general abandonment of Syria’s

People gather during a protest to show solidarity with the residents of Aleppo and against Assad regime forces, in Casablanca

democratic revolution. It exposes the failures of the Arab and Muslim worlds, of the West, and of humanity as a whole.

Many Syrians expected the global left would be first to support their cause, but most leftist commentators and publications retreated into conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, and inaccurate geo-political analysis, and swallowed gobbets of Assadist propaganda whole. Soon they were repeating the ‘war on terror’ tropes of the right.

The Obama administration provided a little rhetorical support, and sometimes allowed its allies to send weapons to the Free Army. Crucially, however, Obama vetoed supply of the anti-aircraft weapons the Free Army so desperately needed to counter Assad’s scorched earth. In August 2013, when Assad killed 1500 people with sarin gas in the Damascus suburbs,  Obama’s chemical ‘red line’ vanished, and the US more or less publically handed Syria over to Russia and Iran.

Keeping to the ‘war on terror’ framework, the US bombs ISIS and others in Syria, hitting symptoms rather than the cause of the crisis. Europe, meanwhile, declares a crisis over the refugees arriving on its shores. So long as Assad remains in power, most of these refugees will not return home.

Continue reading “The Palestinisation of the Syrian people”