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Syria: Just A Few Reads
Just a few reads on Syria:
The reporting from Aleppo by Scott Petersen in the CSM is ridiculous. He somehow wants to explain that the inhabitants of Aleppo has now joined the insurgency. But he doesn't mention or explains why 200,000 people fled from the area where the armed insurgents from the outside came in. Instead he feeds us this nonsense:
But the anti-regime blood, it turned out, beat as strongly here as anywhere else in Syria, at least among activists determined to bring change.
What does that mean? Activists who came into Aleppo are as much anti-regime as activists elsewhere?
McClatchy does, as usual, much better journalism. This piece recounts the known case in which the insurgency simply murdered everyone it didn't like:
Other suspects haven’t been so lucky, explained a rebel commander in Damascus who uses the nom de guerre Abu Abdullah.
“We have had a big problem here with informers,” he said. “If a man is accused of being an informer, he is judged by the military council. Then he is either executed or released. In general, about two out of three are executed.”
The Telegraph reports on another split within the insurgency. It seems that the Saudis are now exclusively financing the Jihadist in the FSA while Qatar has turned away from the FSA and is now financing new and different groups which are in line with the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the same split seen in the support of parties in Egypt. The Saudi Wahabbi support the Salafis while Qatar is promoting the Brotherhood.
Al Akhbar has a piece about changes on the Lebanese-Syrian border. The Syrian army is finally acting there and replacing the ineffective border guards with real soldiers. This should make infiltration from Lebanon much more difficult.
Strong states – states that endure, are not wracked by instability, from urban riots to civil war – hold together in part by axial ideologies, a shared view of the world in the shape of religions and philosophies. These may deal with the supernatural (e.g. Islam, Catholicism), or less so (.. Buddhism) or not (.. Stoicism) or be more politically oriented (.. Fascism). I’d add free market-ism to a possible list.
In the Arab Spring we see disturbance and breakdown that clearly evidence ideological clashes, and explains the emphasis on Islam, as monotheistic religions are the social glue that has worked for thousands of years. Allah Akbar!
Colonialism, de-colonisation post ww2, then neo-colonialism (finance, globalization, intl. corporations, resource extraction, Aid, etc.) introduced new ideologies that ‘took’ somewhat haphazardly – or were adopted confusedly or even hypocritically: secularism, ‘democracy’, nationalism,- free market-ism…- egalitarianism, some forms of State W socialism / communism.
Syria is emblematic of this mix, taking into account that the basic structure was, 2010, very traditional – a tribal ruling class that leaves the upper merchant class free to do biz. in a collaborative scheme. (Not that that doesn’t exist in other forms in the W, or that such a brief description does justice to Syria..)
The previous Syria with Bashar as Ruler cannot be resuscitated. Impossible.
>… More prosaically, how would the inhabitants of Croydon or Blackpool feel if Cameron shelled them?
In the Arab Spring so far an emphasis on removing heads of state and a small part of the ruling core – family and close key figures – has been point no 1 on the agenda. That is a visible, consensual aim, from in- and outside.
Extra aims mostly concern the setting up ‘representative, democratic‘ Gvmt, which hides many a sin and power struggle, ideally frames and de-fangs them, that’s part of the ostensive, strident appeal – and corresponds to the W model which the W champions on a case-by-case basis in function of its own interests.
The outcomes of protests and rebellions have gone from total black-out (KSA) to speedy extinguishment (Iran) to continuing repression (Bahrein) to no consequent change (Yemen), to massive ongoing shakeups (Lybia) with Tunisia and Egypt somewhere in between, with others, such as Algeria, having their rebellion repressed in the past.
Considering humanitarian and neo-colonialist war as part of the grand geo-pol landscape we note similar. The USuk actions such as getting rid of the ‘dictator’ and establishing ‘democracy’ were unable to re-mold Iraq, and left Afghanistan a so-called Failed State. Considering all these events together shows that the line between internal dissidents / rebels and ‘foreign’ intervention is hard to draw, as aims are, for some, in some measure, shared, through ideological adoption or roots, self-interest, amongst other motives….
Posted by: Noirette | Aug 5 2012 18:59 utc | 36
Colm — I know you’d never want to inhibit one of your little rants by being constrained by truthfulness, but for anyone to read what you write and conclude that it makes sense, would depend on them not looking at my site and seeing whether your assertions match the evidence.
You write: “But again if all you read is the Qatari Monarchies News Channel it is not suprising [sic] that your views would be tilted.”
These are the sources I’ve cited in just the last few days: Beirut Daily Star, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, International Business Times, Associated Press, Counterpunch, 972mag.com, The Guardian, The Economist, BBC News, Jerusalem Post, Reuters, Moon of Alabama, New York Times, Haaretz, Wired, VOA, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Al-Monitor, TomDispatch, Huffington Post, Future of Freedom Foundation, London Weekend Television, SBS One, AFP, Energy Bulletin, Syria Comment, Daily Telegraph.
I do actually read the stuff I post — and a lot more besides. The idea that I rely solely on Al Jazeera is just an adolescent cheap shot from someone who prefers to snipe rather than construct a cogent argument and respond directly to criticism.
There is no publication or website that should be treated mindlessly as a reliable or unreliable source. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad does amazing reporting alongside plenty of undistinguished commentary and analysis — all on the pages of The Guardian.
There are however a few sources that can be relied on to produce pure propaganda — such as the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. One commenter above cites SANA as though one could rely on Syrian state media to gauge how much opposition there is to the Assad regime among Palestinians. Sorry, but that’s plain dumb.
Colm, when you talk about the “strong state appartus [sic] [the Assad family has needed] to defend themselves”, you’re really presenting yourself as an Assad apologist of the most disgusting variety. Do you really think that anyone who waves an anti-imperialist flag then acquires the right to torture those who dare engage in political dissent? You’re probably way too young, but you’re sounding like someone who would have supported Stalin.
And Bernhard, you write: “Paul Woodward has yet to see a war he doesn’t find good reasons for to support it.
Look at his coverage of Libya – pure imperialist bullshit.”
I’ve been running War in Context for over a decade, in opposition to the war on terrorism, against the war in Afghanistan, against the war in Iraq, against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and in support of people everywhere who have the courage to challenge authoritarian rule.
As Pham Binh at The North Star wrote recently: “Knee-jerk anti-imperialism leads to our enemies doing our thinking for us: whatever Uncle Sam wants, we oppose; whatever Uncle Sam opposes, we want.” It’s not a smart way of looking at the world.
Posted by: Paul Woodward | Aug 6 2012 0:00 utc | 40
Syriaonline
6 minutes ago
A report made by an anonymous person about the dark side of Homs due to long months under the control of the “revolutionaries” that is still hidden.
Homs at the age of freedom!
Friday August 3, 2012
When I go back in my memory to the first stages of the militarization of the “revolutionary rebels” in my country, Syria, and remember the media campaigns calling Syrian army to withdraw from all tension areas, imaging to the world that Syrian army is the problem that causes this tension, I get aware how evil, otherwise stupid, those personalities who signed petitions to call Syrian army to withdraw from those areas, and promoted in media with a large amount of crocodile’s tears in “compassion with Syrian people.”
It’s true that Homs is waking up from a terror nightmare, but the terrible stories of this nightmare are being spread out as a bad smell of a dead body after it was in a closed metallic box. People of Homs started revealing the bloody terrific painful crimes they where subject to during the long months they passed under control of the “FSA – Free Syrian Army”, or as I like to call it: Faschist Salafi Army, especially during the existence of the AL observers, who came for “peace” and insisted as a first condition the withdrawal of the Syrian army. Stories are being told about torture, beheading, dragging by a car, cutting bodies that are all documented, by those “revolutionaries”, “Jihadists”, “Opposition fighters” or any other name you choose for them, doesn’t matter. They committed all their crimes under license from the “Mufti’s – Muslim clerks” who are calling for Jihad against “Alawis” in Syria and legalize, on TV channels, even some secular ones such as the Lebanese channel Al-Jadeed TV (New TV) (indicating the Sheikh Ahmad Al-Asseer who is still performing his sit-in in the middle of the main street in Saida with too much tolerance of the government), even legalizing abduction of Allawi women and using them as odalisques! This is other than thousands of Arabic-Gulf websites who are calling for the same Jihad against Alawis in Syria. A huge media pressure, dedicating long hours to talk about Syria, always taking the side of the “rebels”, is promoting them and raising the international compassion with those “poor revolutionaries” in a weird, but usual, harmony with the maestro Uncle Sam.
It’s known that the plan of the “Revolutionaries of Homs” was to displace Christians and exterminating Alawis by a genocide, matching the slogan that used to be chanted by demonstrations lead by themselves: “Alawis to the grave, Christians to Beirut”.
The main brigade of this revolution in Homs was “Al-Farouq Brigade” whose boss is Abdul Razzaq Tlass. This plan has indeed started in Homs by exterminating Alawis from Sunni quarters (quarters known as Sunni but included some Alawi inhabitants).
A woman made a report, without revealing names for privacy and safety, about one of the victims, a girl who was kidnapped, as hundreds of girls as says the report, and had been brutally tortured and raped by those Jihadists across more than 3 months, before Syrian army has liberated her and others who have been lucky to remain alive, or may be the others who slaughtered were luckier because they only suffered for few time, better than suffering all the life of the effects of this brutal torture.
That girl, of an Alawi family who lived in a Sunni quarter, was kidnapped by members of “Al-Farouq Brigade” and was imprisoned in some of their dens, was subject to torture and brutal rape. It’s true she has been freed and is now at home, but her family thinks her status is desperate; she hasn’t talked a word yet; she has a psychological and physical symptoms. Physically she has some bruises and wounds, rupture in vagina and anus, bleeding in womb. Psychologically: Whenever she hears a sudden knock at the door, she rushes to the nearest coin, take off her panties and starts kicking her head by the wall till her fronts bleeds, as if she wants to tell (since she is still unable to talk) how she was treated there!
I wish I didn’t read this report, and since I’ve already done, I wish it is mere imagination, or even exaggeration, but unfortunately, it seems to be true, due to the several matching stories. Many people of Homs, Christians and Alawis, who flee to Damascus, talked about similar stories. I don’t know if Human Rights organizations will be interested, or they don’t consider humans all have the same rights, depending on how much they are “good boys” to USA… who knows!
Thanks again for the “Friends of Syrian people” who want to bring the “Saudi democracy” to Syria!
Signature:
A Syrian human… a “bad boy” for Miss Clinton and Mr. Cameron… but a good man for Syria
Posted by: brian | Aug 6 2012 12:34 utc | 49
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