alanjjohnstone
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Sympo, i think i made it clear that the origins of the Syrian War were in the widespread unrest called the Arab Spring, which affected various North African and Middle East countries to various degrees over the course of some months. So yes we can say that there was deep discontent with the Assad regime but it is quite a different matter determining how many were prepared to take part in an armed rising.The areas that were more prepared to resist Assad's violent repression with armed struggle i think were the regions that had previously rebelled against the Ba-athists like Hama but i would not suggest that the majority of those who sought democratic reforms were intent upon any civil war.I know your opinion is as equally as valid as my own view but my interpretation was that only when the protests became militarised and the formation of the Syrian Free Army presented the opening for foreign powers to intervene. If it hadn't been US/UK/France then it would have been the Saudis and the Gulf States who financed, supplied and provided the mercenaries – the Jihadists – would simply upped their game. Turkey was permitting the free movement of the Jihadists.But without this direct aid to the rebels, i think Assad would have militarily defeated the SFA without the assistance of the Russians, the Iranians or Hezbullah. On the other hand, he may have temporarily contained the mass demonstrations and peaceful civil disobedience but he would have further alienated his own support which i said were also seeking change. And the set-backs the protestors would have inevitably faced could have been overcome with unity. The polarisation caused by the armed conflict such as the increased power of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadists drove many of the diverse communities to embrace Assad, whereas the Arab Spring was bringing them together in opposition to him.But this is my speculation, Sympo, and you perhaps differ on how you saw the scenarios panning out.Worth a readhttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-non-violent-approach-to-class-war.htmlhttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/violence-and-non-violence-1.htmlhttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/violence-and-non-violence-2.htmlhttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/10/rohingya-resistance.htmlA lot of reading on the desirability of non-violence but as one of my previous links pointed out in 2012
Quote:“Peaceful resistance is a must; if we use weapons we will not be able to succeed as we do not have enough weapons or soldiers,” said Khalaf Ali Al-Khalaf, a Syrian activist from Aleppo. “The military option will increase people’s pain. Providing people with arms will only increase death. The opposition must convince those requesting arms that there is a different method of resistance. We are facing an unusual regime so we have to use unusual methods.” The SNC claims to be representative of the Syrian people. That’s just not true," says Ms. Nseir, a SNC's spokesperson in Lebanon but nevertheless a critic of it. "They talk only about arming the rebels. They never talk about nonviolent resistance and they certainly do not speak for the ramadieen, or grey people, the silent majority who support neither the regime nor the armed rebels.”says activist Alloush. "The Free Syrian Army is a reality and we have to accept it. But that does not mean that we have to accept them as the leaders of this revolution. I know these people, and I know that many of them want to turn Syria into an Islamic republic if they get the chance.”A singer who uses the pseudonym ‘Safinas’ because she still lives in Damascus explains. "Our revolution has been stolen from us…We are fighting two regimes and two armies now."No-one needed to be a crystal ball reader to predict what happened in Syria but we were outside looking in with no influence other than the ineffectual blog posts we made
Quote:Marwan Jaber, a medicine student at the hospital, told reporters on the media tour that none of the patients that night had suffered chemical weapons injuries, but that they were asphyxiated by dust and smoke in the bombardment. Medical aid groups and the White Helmets rescue organisation have said such statements – already aired on state television in recent days – were made under duress.http://news.trust.org/item/20180416162536-sncnu/Again from past posts on this forum folk will know i question the impartiality of the White Helmets, who according to the Fisk report have already abandoned Ghouma and fled.
I won't be at conference, so can someone take the member of WSP(NZ) aside and badger him into contributing to the blog. Ply him with drink if you have to.
I also commend Richard Layton's weekly poem on the topic chemical warfare for the SOYMB blog which will shortly appear first thing morning.
As visitors to this forum know, i have openly admired the reporting of Robert Fisk many times and once again he brings his war correspondence experience to bear. So it is from knowledge of his integrity that i believe the credibility of his report.If we take the article as evidence, there was no staged video of the gas attack but also there was no gas attack.The event was the fog of war, not gas clouds. The cause of the panic was conventional bombing, producing horrific side-effects. ( I am minded how it must have resembled Dresden when the fire-bombing sucked out the oxygen and suffocated the inhabitants.)I am sure if Fisk, a journalist, concluded this, the smart brains in the intelligence/military departments of the West also understood this very quickly. So it does appear that the governments of the US, UK, France used a lie to justify an intervention, knowing delay and further investigation would reveal the real truth.Can we now try to determine the reason why "shock and awe-lite" was thought necessary at this very moment in time of Assad's imminent victory. What was to be gained by the Western Bloc demonstrating their air-power?
Yes.I hope you did read those three links, crucial to understanding the evolution of the Syrian Civil War
http://www.france24.com/en/20180504-sophian-aubin-maghreb-arabic-arabs-islam-jews-sepharadic-identity-tunisia-moroccoTwo widely held misconceptions persist about Jews from the Maghreb. The first is the belief that they are somehow alien to the region, almost like the European colonisers who arrived in the 19th century. Yet Jewish communities have been present in North Africa for hundreds of years. Their first recorded presence in the region dates back to the second century, at least 500 years before the Arab conquerors began their rapid outward expansion. But as more and more land came under Arab control, the Jews in the Maghreb, like other Berber groups indigenous to the region, gradually began to assimilate the Arabic language, without ever abandoning their Jewish faith. This happened across North Africa, in a process known as 'Arabisation'.The other is the idea that many Jews continue to live there. In Algeria, although precise figures are impossible to obtain, the Jewish population is all but extinct. In Tunisia, which was once home to a thriving community of around 100,000 Jews back in 1956, only 1,300 remain. As for Morocco, it may well shelter the biggest Jewish community in the Arab world, but it too has witnessed a mass exodus. Only 3,000 still live in the kingdom today.Zacharie recalls how presenting himself as a Tunisian Jew aroused a sort of kindness, and even fascination, amongst Tunisian Muslims. He adds that it was Muslims friends, more than Jews, who were the first to call him Tunisian: "When I explained to them that my father was Tunisian, the Muslims replied without hesitating: 'that settles it, you're Tunisian, and here you can feel at home.' "In the Maghreb, the ties that bind Jews and Arabs became so deeply entrenched that Arabic itself was used during Jewish ceremonies. According to a historical record dating from the 1940s, a Jew living in Fez, Morocco, explained how during religious celebrations, Jewish prayers in Hebrew were translated into Arabic, so that local Jews could actually understand them. What's more, in the Jewish liturgy in Morocco, the most sacred reference to God himself is made by saying 'Allah'.Full article herehttp://www.france24.com/en/20180504-sophian-aubin-maghreb-arabic-arabs-islam-jews-sepharadic-identity-tunisia-morocco
Quote:As for who will do the dirty work the traditional socialist answer has always been, "I will."Exactly…Cde. Brian Gardner is apparently on record saying that Matt will be doing all the dirty work
I think, as you point out, that both strategies are ultimately doomed to failure but i do acknowledge a difference in motives, one remains committed to capitalism and the other committed to the class warFactory occupations and workers councils are something i am sure will occur in the closing days of capitalism and the dawning of socialism….but as for now…these times seem too far-off still and we cannot foster the illusions and delusions that they are stepping-stones on the path to socialism. Argentina is offered as an example.https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/10/occupy-buenos-aires-argentina-workers-cooperative-movementBut once legitimised they appear to transform into conventional co-opshttps://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/03/23/argentina-worker-co-op-media-model-emerges/(an article that uses the term 'recuperated', a new word for myself.)
The Bahrain protests and the intervention of Saudi Arabian tanks to suppress the popular will would be another example of acquiescence of those so-called democratic humanitarian super-powers.Again our blog has posted a series of articles on how this was ignored for political reasons by the UK and the UShttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/search?q=BAHRAIN
Another video to watchhttp://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-43776015/syria-chemical-attack-girl-seen-in-hospital-video-speaksYou take your picks….
Sympo, the SOYMB blog has followed the Syrian situation from its earliest days when it began as part of the Arab Spring and was peaceful protests. In response to Assad's repression of those, some took to returning the violence, the origins of the Free Syrian Army.This militarisation of resistance created the opportunity for the intervention of foreign powers who indeed did incite a military-solution to remove Assad and regime-change. The escalation of civil disobedience to civil war can be placed at the feet of foreign powers, as can the arrival of foreign fighters freely permitted to infiltrate Syria.Here is the first blog on Syria from Aug 2011which should be read as an indication of its potential for peaceful changehttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/08/revolution-without-leaders.htmlAnother post from April 2012 that begins to show how the situation is being transformedhttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/04/syrian-struggle-for-democracy-is-on-two.htmlA year later the blog published this in Nov 2013“I think it’s definitely possible to see a revolution in the future. But if we don’t accept that we have lost now—that our revolution has stopped, or been put on pause, and that is a big dispute among activists—then that means that everything that’s happening now, and all the crimes that are being committed by Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, will be written in history as part of the Syrian revolution…"https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/11/talk-about-next-syrian-revolution.htmlI think these articles are invaluable sources in any history of the Syrian War, to blow the blog's trumpet.You are right that Syria always had the instability but also recall how it was feted and commended for participation in the First Iraq War to expel Saddam from Kuwait.I recognise fully the weakness of that blog statement in trying to explain from a working-class view a long protracted and complex civil war.
This one perhapshttps://smmsyria.com/2018/04/14/confirmed-participants-of-alleged-douma-chemical-attack-tell-process-of-footage-production/However, i wouldn't be swayed by the lack of evidence presented here, either.
The Gospel requires Christians to “denounce personal and social sins committed against God and neighbour in the name of the god money and of power for its own sake,” Pope Francis has written. He said, “the economy and markets have had a role in the excessive exploitation of common resources, increasing inequality and the deterioration of the planet.” “I have been able to see these contrasts more clearly than was possible in Argentina,” he said. The world has enough wealth to feed, house and offer medical care to all its inhabitants, but resources are concentrated in the hands of a few people and millions of others struggle to survive.“What I say and write about the power of the economy and finance is meant to be an appeal so that the poor would be treated better and inequalities would decrease,” Pope Francis said.A particular concern, he said, are the billions of dollars private individuals and companies make from manufacturing weapons, “funds that prosper from innocent blood.” People must become more aware of how the economy works and how much wealth is produced by exploiting people or the environment and by speculation or investing in money rather than in companies that employ people and produce useful products and services, the Pope wrote.http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/04/15/christians-must-denounce-sins-committed-in-the-name-of-money-and-power-says-pope/
Perhaps you mistook my comment as one that accuses you of hearsay, Dave. Not so.I am saying Lavrov cited bits and pieces of a report that has not been published and it is his interpretation of it, that is hearsay.The full report has not been made available to the media so it can be peer-reviewed. The company has made no comment on whether Lavrov quoted its findings accurately or inaccurately nor explained why its supposed findings were not included in the OPCW report.Lavrov's unsupported comments has not added any clarity but simply muddied the waters, further.He is claiming that Russia did not possess the technical means to carry out the attempted murders, therefore, is innocent. But that NATO did possess the capability and thus guilty.Unless it is to smear the Russian state, something less complicated to do in many other ways, I am confused about where is the UK motive? But i think i said it on this thread…spies lie…that is their trade.
