The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[Morty]

This "Marxists and leftists for everything in practice that the neocons and the neoliberals are for" genre is quite polished and professional. Not surprising, I guess, since links to higher education institutions would be a matter of course.

[American Dream]

There may be a few neocons and neoliberals that oppose whacked out cyber cults of the sort that Laura Knight-Jadczyk runs, but I doubt that the vast majority know anything about it.

[Morty]

There may be a few neocons and neoliberals that oppose whacked out cyber cults of the sort that Laura Knight-Jadczyk runs, but I doubt that the vast majority know anything about it.

Nor would they have any interest in whacked out cyber cults of the sort that Laura Knight-Jadczyk runs, except to the extent that they can be used to discredit opposition to US activities in Syria.

[American Dream]

Of course the Baathist boosters can be counted on to do everything they can to help with the process. Their credulousness, lack of rigour and confused politics have made them very useful, indeed.

[Morty]

Mass graves discovered in Aleppo. No interest from western media. (6.30minutes)

[Grizzly]

obviously ^^^ Fake News ...

[Sounder]

Morty wrote...

This "Marxists and leftists for everything in practice that the neocons and the neoliberals are for" genre is quite polished and professional. Not surprising, I guess, since links to higher education institutions would be a matter of course.

So one has to wonder what it is that can motivate such voluminous (similar) production coming from different directions. One glaring element to be noticed is the unity produced between the trans-national corporatist class and those that claim to speak for the 'left', by the obsession to destroy nation states.

While the TNC's have clear motivation to weaken sovereignty of nation states, the motivation of the 'left' is, shall we say, less well thought out, that is if the left has anything whatsoever left to do with concern for the well being of the common person.

"No Borders" may have intrinsic appeal, but please lets not let the cart get ahead of the horse.

[American Dream]

Why do people who claim not to be "right nor left" end up parroting far right talking points so very often?

[American Dream]

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.”

Later on the same program he Skyped with a young woman who, along with Jones, would pen the alt right’s alt-history of the Syrian war. The version of history Donald Trump would use to build his world view. The young woman who Jones hosted called herself, Syrian Girl Partisan aka Mimi Al Laham aka Maram Susli, a pro-Assad youtube commentator who had been releasing English language videos since the beginning of the uprising. Her commentary condemned the Syrian opposition, and was designed to make inroads with the American far right.

“I’m not gonna come here and deny that the government wasn’t a dictatorship, it wasn’t corrupt, that, you know, that people weren’t angry with it. I’m not gonna say that there wasn’t a legitimate reason for people to want to create that change but the fact is that was totally exploited and even pre planned by the foreign agendas, the US, NATO, basically the global elite as you call them.”

As Jones emphatically agreed and Mimi went on.

“It’s absolutely undeniable that little children died in Damascus three days ago and that the images are shocking and anyone cannot deny that and I’m not gonna comment on the Nature of the gas that was used I’m gonna leave that to experts. and I also don’t want to implicate the rebels as a whole…. I don’t want to implicate them directly because I’m sure some of them have families that live in that area and I believe that they themselves are pasties to a global game that they are cannon fodder for and the powers that be have managed to convince them that they are going to get armed that they are going to get no fly zones… they want to divide Syria up into mini states and they wanna crush any rogue state.” Alex answered this by saying “Yes any state that isn’t run by Goldman Sachs!” Laham’s words about “letting the experts decide” were the opening chapter to a saga that is far stranger than fiction.

Mimi al Laham as she was known, also had her own YouTube channel, where she would espouse her pro regime views. One video in particular seemed geared to a certain kind of American on the other side of the globe. The Video was entitled “why the New World Order hates Syria.” In other videos Mimi would would brag about her contacts inside the Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-regime hacker syndicate widely believed to be the product of one of Syria’s dozen or so intelligence agencies. She even announced a major hacking scandal as it occurred, a very clear sign that she maintains direct contact with the Syrian Electronic Army.

That same day as bodies and samples were being collected in Damascus it became clear that several hundred civilians had died from exposure to a large quantity of Sarin gas. Diplomacy was heating up, in August and September of 2013 it came to a head. Suddenly the Obama administration was backed into a corner. Obama’s notorious red line on the use of chemical weapons had been breached in spectacular fashion. The president who had vowed to act if Assad used chemical weapons found himself trying to rally support for punitive military action from an obstructionist congress. As US ships sailed into the Mediterranean in anticipation of orders to shoot, it seemed like an aerial intervention was imminent. As the world held its breath, state sponsored hackers went into action against a variety of US-based websites.

In early September hackers identifying themselves as the “Syrian Electronic Army” took over Marines.com and posted the following “This is a message written by your brothers in the Syrian Army, who have been fighting Al Qaeda for the last 3 years. We understand your patriotism and love for your country so please understand our love for ours. Obama is a traitor who wants to put your lives in danger to resume Al Qaeda insurgents. Marines, please take a look at what your comrades think about Obama’s alliance with Al Qaeda against Syria.” Images were posted of men in various US military uniforms holding signs over their faces which read “I will not fight for Al Qaeda in Syria” and “I didn’t join the Marine corps to fight for Al Qaeda in a Syrian Civil war.” Charges have since been filed against two Syrian citizens, Ahmed Umar Agha, and Firas Darder, both thought to be affiliated with the Syrian Electronic Army. Obama was ultimately unable to get support for military action from congress or his European allies. An ad hoc deal under which Syria would supposedly dismantle it’s chemical arsenal went into effect, ultimately taking a direct confrontation with the Assad regime off the table. Damascus saw this as a green light and acted accordingly.

Continues at https://pulsemedia.org/2016/12/29/down- ... bbit-hole/

[kool maudit]

Why do people who claim not to be "right nor left" end up parroting far right talking points so very often?

1. Who has claimed to be this?

2. A lot of people are to your ostensible right (although in this case you are supporting the neoliberal consensus, which while perhaps to the left of its populist/right opposition in some tangential ways is not "left" in any sort of rigourous historical sense), and given your passionate activist nature, positions that are merely to your right may appear far right to you; other people actually are far right.

3. One of the problems with your posts is that they often employ argument by association, stigmatization, group affiliation, and so on. You will very rarely engage with point-by-point rebuttals, but will much more often speak of large groups, sometimes even groups of RI members, whom it is simply assumed must be disavowed by virtue of their nature. The issue with this argument-style is that it leaves the original point unaddressed.

4. You are wrong to toe the Western line on Syria, and wrong to oppose peace-by-way-of-the-continued-existence-of-the-Assad-regime. You have raised a great many points as to why this regime is bad, most if not all of which I agree with, but precisely zero as to why it is worse than the fragmentation and terrorist control seen in Iraq, Libya, and wartime Syria. Perhaps your idealism has failed you in this instance. Aleppo really was liberated, and this really is less bad. The opposition had become ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and the nature of their rule was and is actually worse than Baathist authoritarianism.

5. To paraphrase Adorno, there can be no moral argument for Western intervention as a means of improving Middle Eastern states after Iraq and Libya.

[American Dream]

My main beef here is with cheerleading Assad- and the associated cheerleading for Putin. Neither represent the sort of politics that I would support.

I consider these to be peculiar obsessions of the Far Right, though admittedly some tankies are on board and even some befuddled liberal/progressive types. I suspect a significant part of this relates to the Kremlin's purse strings, especially in Conspiracyland and in various tendencies within the Far Right.

I don't personally cheerlead Western intervention- and neither do I indulge much in magic wand fantasies. Mostly I think that if we are to build an effective anti-War/anti-Imperialism movement it must have a healthy amount of skepticism about the designs of Russia, Syria, Iran etc., as well.

Ba'athism is bullshit, as is Putinism.

[kool maudit]

Well, I don't agree with you.

In any realistic sense this is binary, with two actors: the Putin/Assad front and the Western/NATO one. The former promises a return to the authoritarian-yet-infrastructurally-functioning state of pre-war Syria and the latter an uncertain mixture of potential conflict with a nuclear superpower (Russia has more right to be there, under international law, than does NATO as it is defending a recognized government), territorial fragmentation, ISIS/Al Qaeda rule, and so on.

Although the choice is gloomy, the former will offer more peace and plenty to more people, and will visit death and horror on fewer people (not none).

At this point, speaking of third ways and innovative solutions and new routes forward outside of Syria is an exercise that can only burnish the speaker's domestic political credentials and/or bolster one of two factions above. This is a high-level geopolitical conflict and it is constrained by the nature of its belligerents; it truly is binary.

As to the right, the far right, the Kremlin, and the rest, you enjoy the categorization talk too much; the only important group distinction (on a discussion forum) is between the correct and the incorrect, the true and the not-true.

I believe my claim -- that "the former will offer more peace and plenty to more people, and will visit death and horror on fewer people (not none)" -- is true.

[American Dream]

Realpolitik has a certain internal logic but seems to end up condoning mass murder, again and again. I'm a grassroots person and I want to help build a grassroots movement that eschews both #1 set of murderous/controlling bosses as well as #2 set of murderous/controlling bosses. Right now, the bosses in various nations are going to do what they want, so it's most important to build a movement based on generally good principles, which the (alleged) Right/Left fusion people are extremely lacking in.

[Sounder]

AD wrote...

Why do people who claim not to be "right nor left" end up parroting far right talking points so very often?

Pray tell, what is it within what I wrote that 'parrots' far right talking points. The thing is AD, you are the one that sees the world through 'talking points', not me. Anyway a parrot cuts and pastes, I use my own words, stupid though they may be at times.

So one has to wonder what it is that can motivate such voluminous (similar) production coming from different directions. One glaring element to be noticed is the unity produced between the trans-national corporatist class and those that claim to speak for the 'left', by the obsession to destroy nation states.

While the TNC's have clear motivation to weaken sovereignty of nation states, the motivation of the 'left' is, shall we say, less well thought out, that is if the left has anything whatsoever left to do with concern for the well being of the common person.

"No Borders" may have intrinsic appeal, but please lets not let the cart get ahead of the horse.

How do you reconcile the unity in goals shared with TNC's, with the contempt you claim to have for the ruling class AD?



My reasoning is simple and has nothing to do with politics or ideologies.

A primary logical truth is that armaments are designed to, and indeed do kill people.

If a billion or so dollars of armaments are shipped to and within the borders of a sovereign nation, then very many people are going to get killed.

The people that shipped those weapons and support those weapons being given to jihadists are the ones standing on morally questionable ground.

All else is western exceptionalist propaganda making yet more excuses for killing.

Why would any self-respecting person want to be a propagandist for empire?

[American Dream]

I apologize if I offended you personally. I agree with you about American weapons- they kill people. So do those from the Gulf States, Iran, Russia and everywhere else. I support the refugees and those caught in the crossfire, et al.

I don't want to fight with you, so I'm going to let it go at that.