The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[tapitsbo]

Nice foreign-sponsored witch hunt you got going there, Mac

[MacCruiskeen]

Nice foreign-sponsored witch hunt you got going there, Mac

Ho ho ho, as Santa Claus said. No, tapitsbo, it's just SullivanJJ@state.gov informing the Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton that the USA is in alliance with the same group of jihadis that allegedly carried out 9/11, all on its own and unassisted by anyone @state.gov.

It seems Tulsi Gabbard is involved in the same foreign-sponsored witch hunt:

Tulsi Gabbard Verified Account
‏@TulsiGabbard

For years the CIA has directly & indirectly been arming so-called "moderate" rebels who are allied with al-Qaeda to overthrow Syrian govt.

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status ... 1161674753

^^ interesting short thread, that.

[tapitsbo]

True that. But this has been out in the open for an awful long time.

"Army of Conquest" command centres and all that. (and a million billion other pieces of unconcealed, undisguised information)

There's no easy way to clean house, is there?

Just a slow grind that will hopefully rearrange things a bit.

I do appreciate the irony of it being far, far harder to tie Al-Qaeda to 9/11 than it is to tie Al-Qaeda to the US State Department and CIA (or the equivalent french, german, israeli, british, saudi institutions... and so on.)

[MacCruiskeen]

As Michael Tracey said about Tulsi Gabbard's tweet:

1.

Michael Tracey @mtracey

Tulsi Gabbard
‏@TulsiGabbard

For years the CIA has directly & indirectly been arming so-called "moderate" rebels who are allied with al-Qaeda to overthrow Syrian govt

This shouldn't even be a controversial statement. It's easily demonstrable with basic facts.

2.

Michael Tracey ‏@mtracey 17. Dec

Tulsi Gabbard might have issues, but she's being relentlessly smeared by establishment liberals. So she must be doing something right.
48 Responses 471 Retweets 1.155 Likes

[tapitsbo]

Yeah "moderate rebels allied with al-Qaeda" isn't so much the issue when you have so many data points about co-ordination with AQ and IS themselves.

It's promising that the AKP government in Turkey that's been so involved in this mess seems to be a little more willing to co-operate and de-escalate with forces opposed to the campaigns they've helped sponsor. Faintly promising given all the other craziness going on there and around the world.

Even Harper getting succeeded by Trudeau seemed to result in a slight improvement in the Canadian posture towards the conflicts.

It's all moved horribly slow and I hope Trump can stick to his overtures about changing the agenda in the MENA wars. I'm a little anxious that he may be under pressure to re-escalate everything the way we feared from Clinton. Anxious because of some of the people involved in his campaign obviously.

At least "US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion" isn't true anymore, right?

But yeah, worth keeping in mind that "the Obama administration helped support IS" is being regularly cited as an example of "fake news" despite ample evidence to the contrary.

[MacCruiskeen]

Damn, Tulsi Gabbard is brave to state the obvious so openly. From June 2016.

https://medium.com/@TulsiGabbard/theres ... .f783obord

The whole short piece is well worth reading. The only bit I disagree with is this.

Unfortunately, most people don’t know that we’re actually waging two wars in Syria.

The first is the war to defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other jihadist groups. This is a war against the terrorists who have declared war on America, and one we must win.

The second is the counterproductive war to overthrow the government of Assad, an illegal war that has not been authorized by Congress, which we must end.

...

Because of course, far from being at war with those jihadis, the US is using them to overthrow Assad. As Sullivan pointed out to Clinton in that email in 2012, and as is now obvious.

But good on Tulsi Gabbard for going as far as she does go. It is encouragng to know that such politicians still exist in the US in 2016.

ON EDIT And anyway, in her recent tweets, she now emphasises precisely that point.

Long may she live.

[tapitsbo]

Yes it is great that she has said what she's said.

In Canada the left right and centre parties have all stuck pretty firmly to the funhouse mirror narrative about the Syrian war unfortunately.

Unlike the UK where Corbyn has contested the narrative, the Canadian NDP have lauded the White Helmets and nominated them for human rights awards...

[MacCruiskeen]

White Helmets, Bana Alabed, Moderate Al Qaeda. Lights dimmed on the Eiffel Tower...

No wonder our governments are now in such a hurry to shut down FakeNews sites.

[kool maudit]

The West and its house media organs are openly supporting the occupation of major Syrian cities by Al Qaeda.

I deeply suspect that the re-tasking of Palmyra by a heretofore exhausted ISIS came as a result of a Western dark-money injection meant to divert Syrian forces as the liberation of Aleppo loomed.

We are openly siding with the sort of quasi-state actors that lower homosexual men into vats of acid, that burn living men to their skeletons in cages, that maintain publications in which one can trade in captive women.

Shalmaneser would have blushed.

While such atrocities have always occurred in basements and torture-chambers throughout the world, their open practicioners and advocates now control areas of land comparable to European nations in size.

This is among the most shameful periods in American and European history and, yes, I am aware that is saying a lot.

[American Dream]

https://pulsemedia.org/2016/12/19/russi ... wn-crimes/

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.

Nowhere is this problem more apparent than in the Syrian war, which despite being one of the most recorded conflicts in history, is still the subject of a massive amount of orchestrated disinformation. As the evacuation of Aleppo kicks off Russia and the Syrian regime are franticly pushing to control the narrative through selective reporting and ad hominem attacks. Pro Regime outlets, Russian TV as well as some western apologists have consistently tried to downplay or obfuscate the reports of mass atrocities taking place in Syria. One of the most obvious propaganda tactics has been to attack the credibility of rescue workers and try to debunk evidence of indiscriminate airstrikes.

Fortunately, the disinformation frequently discredits itself.

In the wake of an airstrike against a UN SARC convoy earlier this year Russian television claimed that Russian forces did not know the location of the convoy and that no airstrike had taken place. Yet they also showed Russian drone footage of a rebel mortar being driven past the very convoy. Russians can’t have been unaware of the convoys location while simultaneously tracking it for proof that it was somehow a legitimate target. The UN subsequently provided satellite evidence that showed that indeed airstrikes had taken place.

Russia and the Syrian regime have claimed that they don’t target civilians yet they have dropped leaflets over Aleppo which threaten the population with extermination if they remain in their city.

There has also been an obsession with discrediting civilian voices coming out of Aleppo. Russia Today and InTheNow have both aired videos over the past 72 hours calling into question the validity of activists tweeting videos out of Aleppo, blatantly asserting that they themselves are part of a misinformation campaign. The implication has been that the activists are somehow linked to the west or are not in Aleppo.

The most startling example of this has been the campaign to discredit the twitter account run jointly by the seven year old Bana Alabed and her mother Fatimeh, from inside Aleppo. During a segment featuring RT’s Anissa Naouai for the Russian funded InTheNow tried to discredit Bana’s and other Syrian’s twitter accounts and pleas for help “it almost looks like a coordinated PR campaign.” This regardless of the fact that many journalists have been in direct contact in Bana and her mother and Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins has used geolocation to prove Bana’s precise location in Aleppo.

A subsequent RT segment featuring Murad Gazdiev attacked Alabed’s parents, “for all their concern for Bana’s wellbeing instead of fleeing east Aleppo the parents chose to take Bana deeper into rebel territory.” Gazdiev went on to try and discredit the notion that Bana’s family could have access to internet “the odd thing is how Bana’s parents seem to have a constant internet connection.” Gazdiev claims that while he was in government controlled Aleppo there was no internet yet Bana was still tweeting.

Of course tweets from RT’s own correspondents show that there is internet in Aleppo and anyone who has been to rebel controlled Aleppo knows that there are ways to stay online. Finally after complaining about being blocked by Bana and questioning why she would be “up at 2am,” Gazdiev did acknowledge that she is “a real girl in Aleppo being used as a tool in a war she probably doesn’t understand.” In other words Russian propaganda discredited Russian propaganda, Bana is real and in Aleppo, and Russia knows it.

One of the most frequent targets of disinformation and smear attacks has been Syria’s lauded Civil Defense group known as the “White Helmets.” Attacks from Russian outlets and apologists have been relentless. In a press conference held along with Syria’s UN delegation a Canadian blogger named Eva Bartlett claimed that no one had ever heard of the White Helmets in East Aleppo. Unfortunately for Eva Bartlett and Russia’s disinfo narrative RT also ran a segment where surrendered civilians—undoubtedly in a position where they could be coerced by nearby regime soldiers—claimed that the White Helmets were notorious thieves known to everyone. RT has also claimed that the White Helmets abandon civilians under the rubble. This is what Freud called the logic of dreams. The White Helmets which RT says don’t exist have been behaving terribly according to RT.

The fact checking website Snopes was so appalled by Bartlett’s dishonesty that they weighed on her false assertions that victims were being “recycled” and that Al Quds hospital cannot have been struck on two separate occasions.

The Syrian military itself is also a great source of corroborating information. Earlier this year after the White Helmets were struck in an attack, the Syrian armed forces posted a screen grab on their official Facebook page taking credit for the attack and boasting about “tearing apart” civil defense, yet regime and Russian outlets continued to deny targeting the group.

On Saturday the famous and beloved Syrian doctor Salem Abualnaser posted a powerful video from the roof of Al Quds hospital in Eastern Aleppo, showing the destruction around him explaining to the world why he chose to join the demonstrations in his home city of Tartus back in 2011 and why he is still in Aleppo. The subtext of this message makes it one of the most poignant pieces of footage filmed since the war began.

For several years the Assads themselves have been a great source of information on their own human rights abuses and lies. When the image of a shell shocked five year old, Omran Daqneesh in the back of an ambulance following a regime or Russian strike was seen across the world, Bashar Assad promptly dismissed the image as a fabrication during an interview with Swiss media. His wife Asma al Assad, however, had a different take, when she was questioned about the photo she did not dispute it’s authenticity. The Assad regime likewise has often claimed to be fighting ISIS in Aleppo, yet pro regime accounts consistently post images of dead fighters in Aleppo affiliated with other groups.

The regime has also dismissed all evidence that it is conducting mass displacement in communities like Daraya as propaganda, yet Syrian state television broadcast images of Bashar Assad visiting a completely bombed out and empty Daraya where he bragged “we have come here to replace the fake freedom which they tried to peddle during the beginning of the crisis- including here in Daraya- with true freedom.” This statement delivered in a completely empty street of a depopulated suburb was a direct denunciation of the peaceful protests that had taken place in Daraya in 2011 and furthermore it is an admission of guilt in the policy of displacement.
After the 2013 sarin gas attack on Eastern Ghouta Assad admitted to having chemical weapons during an interview with Dennis Kucinich for Fox News saying “it’s not a secret anymore.” The Syrian regime has always blamed the Ghouta attack on Syrian rebels in what they describe as a “false flag attack.” In the immediate aftermath of the chemical attack Russia Today initially aired segments calling into question weather or not the attack actually happened and Russian diplomats insisted that images of the attacks were faked.

Months later as evidence of the chemical attack became insurmountable, Russia Today aired a segment conveniently quoting “Russian diplomatic sources” saying that the Ghouta attack was the work of “an Al Qaeda linked group backed by Saudi Arabia.” Interestingly the segment contradicts previous Russian and regime assertions that the attack wasn’t real, by confirming that “one thousand and a half” people were killed. Curiously the regime has never been able to explain why they think the rebels have never again used their supposedly massive stockpile of sarin.

In recent weeks doubters and deniers have questioned the location and sincerity of activists uploading messages from besieged Aleppo. However as evacuations from rebel held Aleppo get underway more and more video evidence is emerging which proves that Aleppo was in fact full of civilians who were bombed indiscriminately. Activists and residents who’s location and validity have been questioned by doubters and state actors have been posting videos of themselves with civilians preparing to be evacuated in the easily identifiable green buses that have become a notorious tool of Assad’s policy of displacement. The videos posted by the activists the regime tried so hard to discredit either match the images of green buses taken from the regime side or are in easily identifiable locations. A video of evacuees running in terror seems to have escaped the attention of those openly mocking the besieged and terrified population.

The old axiom that “the first casualty of war is the truth” may be true, but sometimes you just aren’t looking hard enough.

[seemslikeadream]

Russian ambassador to Turkey shot and killed
Several other people were reportedly also injured in the attack, a day after protests in Turkey over Russia's military intervention in Syria
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38369962

WORLD
Russian Ambassador to Turkey Killed
A Turkish bodyguard apparently assassinated the diplomat as revenge for Russia’s war in Aleppo.
ROY GUTMAN
MICHAEL WEISS
12.19.16 11:39 AM ET
ISTANBUL — Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, was shot and killed in Ankara Monday by a gunman who cried out that it was “revenge” for Russian bombing that killed civilians in Aleppo, witnesses said.
Karlov was attending the opening of a photography exhibition at a city gallery close to the U.S. Embassy when the assailant approached him and fired at close range.
Turkish officials said the ambassador was taken to hospital, but reporters who attended the gallery opening said he had not been removed from the building. Russian state media has confirmed Karlov’s death.
The attack occurred shortly after 7 p.m. local time, and reporters arriving at the scene a half hour later said they heard gunfire from within the building. TV footage, captured on Turkish channel TRT, show Karlov doubling over and collapsing after behind shot from behind while addressing a crowd from a podium. The gunman, dressed in a suit and tie, then comes into view, raises a finger in the air and points his weapon at unseen targets off-screen. One eyewitness said that the assailant spoke Turkish.

A preliminary translation of his comments read as follows: "Don't forget Halep [Aleppo]! Don't forget Syria! Don't forget Halep! Don't forget Syria! You will not taste safety unless our fields are safe. Only death can get me out of here. Whoever has a share in this tyranny will pay for it one by one."
The gunman got into the building evidently as part of Karlov’s security detail, witnesses said. Several Turkish media outlets are now reporting his identity as 22 year-old riot policeman Mert Altintas. However, The Daily Beast cannot confirm this information.
According to Russian news website Gazeta.ru, the shooter allowed people to exit the art gallery after he shot the ambassador.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu arrived at the scene.
The assassination occurred on the eve of a scheduled meeting of Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers to discuss next steps in the Syria crisis after the Assad regime, with the help of Russian airstrikes and Iranian-commanded Shiite militias, captured rebel-held east Aleppo and expelled tens of thousands of civilians.
The last convoys were expected to move Tuesday, Turkish officials said.
Turkish-Russian relations reached a nadir in December 2015 after after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian fighter jet that had briefly entered Turkish airspace en route from a bombing raid in Syria. One of the pilots who ejected from the hit warplane was subsequently killed by Syrian rebels as he parachuted down.
The episode led to the suspension of trade, touristic and other commercial and a period of great acrimony between the two countries. Russia implemented a blockade on Turkish imports such as a cotton, and Vladimir Putin responded military, refocusing his intervention in Syria on destroying Turkish-backed rebels operating in the mountainous coastal region of Latakia and Idlib provinces.
Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan issued what amounted to an apology for downing the plane, Ankara and Moscow have revivified their relationship to a remarkable extent.
In August, Erdogan sought Russia’s consent to deploy Turkish forces into northern Syria as part of the months-long Operation Euphrates Shield, which was waged both to eliminate the presence of Islamic State militants at the Turkish-Syrian border but also to block any attempts by U.S.-backed Kurdish militias, seen as affiliates of a proscribed terrorist organization by the Turkish state, from carving out a separatist statelet.
Also, in yet another show of diplomatic rehabilitation, the initial ceasefire and “evacuation” agreement for trapped civilians and rebels in Eastern Aleppo was brokered by Turkey and Russia. Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and his Iranian patrons, were not consulted.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... illed.html

[Sounder]

This is better than the bullshit in between, so its worth a re-post.

kool maudet wrote...

The West and its house media organs are openly supporting the occupation of major Syrian cities by Al Qaeda.

I deeply suspect that the re-tasking of Palmyra by a heretofore exhausted ISIS came as a result of a Western dark-money injection meant to divert Syrian forces as the liberation of Aleppo loomed.

We are openly siding with the sort of quasi-state actors that lower homosexual men into vats of acid, that burn living men to their skeletons in cages, that maintain publications in which one can trade in captive women.

Shalmaneser would have blushed.

While such atrocities have always occurred in basements and torture-chambers throughout the world, their open practicioners and advocates now control areas of land comparable to European nations in size.

This is among the most shameful periods in American and European history and, yes, I am aware that is saying a lot.

And whats really weird is that some here side with the western exceptionalist propaganda that glosses over western sponsorship of these very regressive types. The only answer from these folk is more bullshit.

My guess is that racism drives their madness. Unconscious, of course.

[American Dream]

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2016/12/19 ... e-us-left/

Trump, Assad and the US Left

Posted on December 19, 2016 by oaklandsocialist

Much of the left in the US is basically taking the same position that Donald Trump is taking regarding Syria. As the New York Times reports: Trump’s position is “that the United States should focus on defeating the Islamic State, and find common ground with the Syrians and their Russian backers.” “My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS,” Trump has said.

Is this so very different from those on the left who see the Islamic State and al Qaeda (in the form of Nusra) as the only opponents of Assad? Is it so different from those who justify any crime against humanity in the name of combating the Islamic State fascists? What will they say if a Trump presidency actually does join forces with Putin & Co. in Syria? Will they support that?

Basically, these lefts have abandoned any class position. They see one, and only one enemy: US imperialism. The Russian capitalist state cannot be imperialist, according to them. That includes when it imposes itself on the people of Chechnya, using the same military tactics that the racist State of Israel used against the people of Gaza.

Same as the Stalinists of Old
These lefts are taking a position similar to that taken by the Stalinists and their liberal supporters back in the 1930s and ’40s. In the first place, any reports of the crimes of Stalin & Co. are purely capitalist propaganda. Second, that those who traveled to the Soviet Union as guests of the terrorist regime of Stalin and came back with glowing reports were “independent” reporters – as if the people of the Soviet Union then or Syria today would speak openly to these “reporters” for their torturer! But, most important, back in the era of Stalin his supporters argued, in effect, that the world working class must sacrifice its interests for the interests of the “socialist homeland”, which in reality meant the Stalinist bureaucracy.

“US Imperialism the One and Only Enemy”
Today, the defenders of Putin/Assad (and Rouhani and Hezbollah) make a similar argument: That the one and only battle that matters today is that against US imperialism (and its allies, including Israel). Therefore, anything is justified in opposing US imperialism, which is the only imperialist force in the world. They forget that every capitalist state is imperialist, or would be if it could. What is the Guatemalan state when it casts covetous eyes on Belize, with the desire to invade that country? What are both the Indian and Pakistani states with regard to Kashmir? How about the Brazilian state when it sent troops into Haiti to murder Haitian workers protesting in the streets? How about the Chinese state, when it expands into Pakistan, Africa and South America?

This is not an argument in defense of the Number One terrorist, imperialist state in the world: US imperialism. It’s simply saying that imperialism is an inherent part of capitalism everywhere.

Class Struggle
For these lefts, any crime is justified in combating the one and only enemy: US imperialism. When Putin and Assad use the same military tactics that Israel used in Gaza – basically leveling entire populated areas, bombing schools, hospitals and public markets – that is okay. That particular war against an entire people is okay. When the Industrial Workers of the World wrote: “The working class and the employing class (meaning the capitalist class) have nothing in common,” for these lefts that only applies to the United States. The representatives of the Russian, Iranian or Syrian capitalist class are our allies. The class struggle stops at the border of the United States.

Popular Uprising Became Militarized
Basically, what happened in Syria is that a mass, radical, popular rebellion against that stooge of the World Bank, Assad, became militarized. In such a situation, it’s nearly impossible for the masses of working class people to retain control. Who are the fighters against Assad now? We don’t really know, although as recently as last March, popular protests erupted throughout Syria against both the Islamic jihadists and Assad. But whoever they are, nothing can justify the mass slaughter being carried out by the air forces of Putin and Assad, nor the terrorism of the Shia terrorists, Hezbollah.

Inability to See Role of Working Class Leads to Abandonment of Socialism
The problem is that these lefts cannot see the working class as an independent force, as the subject rather than the object of history. As a result, they flail around, looking for some other force.

Support for Putin/Rouhani/Hezbollah/Assad is a betrayal of socialism just as much as is support for the US government. On either basis, it would be impossible to make the direct, worker-to-worker links that are so necessary to start to build a world workers’ movement against all these capitalist terrorists.

[Harvey]

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2016/12/19/trump-assad-and-the-us-left/

Trump, Assad and the US Left

Posted on December 19, 2016 by oaklandsocialist

Much of the left in the US is basically taking the same position that Donald Trump is taking regarding Syria. As the New York Times reports: Trump’s position is “that the United States should focus on defeating the Islamic State, and find common ground with the Syrians and their Russian backers.” “My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS,” Trump has said.

Is this so very different from those on the left who see the Islamic State and al Qaeda (in the form of Nusra) as the only opponents of Assad? Is it so different from those who justify any crime against humanity in the name of combating the Islamic State fascists? What will they say if a Trump presidency actually does join forces with Putin & Co. in Syria? Will they support that?

Basically, these lefts have abandoned any class position. They see one, and only one enemy: US imperialism. The Russian capitalist state cannot be imperialist, according to them. That includes when it imposes itself on the people of Chechnya, using the same military tactics that the racist State of Israel used against the people of Gaza.

Same as the Stalinists of Old
These lefts are taking a position similar to that taken by the Stalinists and their liberal supporters back in the 1930s and ’40s. In the first place, any reports of the crimes of Stalin & Co. are purely capitalist propaganda. Second, that those who traveled to the Soviet Union as guests of the terrorist regime of Stalin and came back with glowing reports were “independent” reporters – as if the people of the Soviet Union then or Syria today would speak openly to these “reporters” for their torturer! But, most important, back in the era of Stalin his supporters argued, in effect, that the world working class must sacrifice its interests for the interests of the “socialist homeland”, which in reality meant the Stalinist bureaucracy.

“US Imperialism the One and Only Enemy”
Today, the defenders of Putin/Assad (and Rouhani and Hezbollah) make a similar argument: That the one and only battle that matters today is that against US imperialism (and its allies, including Israel). Therefore, anything is justified in opposing US imperialism, which is the only imperialist force in the world. They forget that every capitalist state is imperialist, or would be if it could. What is the Guatemalan state when it casts covetous eyes on Belize, with the desire to invade that country? What are both the Indian and Pakistani states with regard to Kashmir? How about the Brazilian state when it sent troops into Haiti to murder Haitian workers protesting in the streets? How about the Chinese state, when it expands into Pakistan, Africa and South America?

This is not an argument in defense of the Number One terrorist, imperialist state in the world: US imperialism. It’s simply saying that imperialism is an inherent part of capitalism everywhere.

Class Struggle
For these lefts, any crime is justified in combating the one and only enemy: US imperialism. When Putin and Assad use the same military tactics that Israel used in Gaza – basically leveling entire populated areas, bombing schools, hospitals and public markets – that is okay. That particular war against an entire people is okay. When the Industrial Workers of the World wrote: “The working class and the employing class (meaning the capitalist class) have nothing in common,” for these lefts that only applies to the United States. The representatives of the Russian, Iranian or Syrian capitalist class are our allies. The class struggle stops at the border of the United States.

Popular Uprising Became Militarized
Basically, what happened in Syria is that a mass, radical, popular rebellion against that stooge of the World Bank, Assad, became militarized. In such a situation, it’s nearly impossible for the masses of working class people to retain control. Who are the fighters against Assad now? We don’t really know, although as recently as last March, popular protests erupted throughout Syria against both the Islamic jihadists and Assad. But whoever they are, nothing can justify the mass slaughter being carried out by the air forces of Putin and Assad, nor the terrorism of the Shia terrorists, Hezbollah.

Inability to See Role of Working Class Leads to Abandonment of Socialism
The problem is that these lefts cannot see the working class as an independent force, as the subject rather than the object of history. As a result, they flail around, looking for some other force.

Support for Putin/Rouhani/Hezbollah/Assad is a betrayal of socialism just as much as is support for the US government. On either basis, it would be impossible to make the direct, worker-to-worker links that are so necessary to start to build a world workers’ movement against all these capitalist terrorists.

Seriously, I gave you the benefit of doubt for a long time. I enjoyed the fact you prickled egos. Here, well, we're looking at yours. What gives AD? Are you for real? If so come out from behind the patented copy pasta and say what you really think. I'm not sure if you can any more.

My final understanding is that you are even more confused than I am or you are just another lying fucker. I'm trying to be honest, I never accuse another poster of anything unless I am guilty of the crime first. As a self confessed hypocrite, J'accuse.

[American Dream]

Ad hominem will get you nowhere...