When Assad propagandists justify Syrian & Russian carpet bombing of civilians in Idlib & eastern Ghouta to rout out mercenaries & “head-chopping jihadists,” keep in mind that these little kids are who they’re talking about.
Our demands must be that Syria, Russia, & the US-coalition stop the bombing of civilians & for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.
(Photo from Nino Fezza)
It’s reported that yesterday Syrian & Russian bombers hit civilians in Douma with a chlorine gas attack. Several victims, including children, were treated for asphyxia.
It was estimated in July 2017 by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that nearly 20,000 children had been killed by Assad forces since 2011. Other estimates are as high as 50,000 children. That doesn’t include the several hundred children arrested, tortured, & murdered in Assad’s prisons or at schools used as detention centers. According to Syrian & international human rights groups, children have been targeted by Syrian & Russian forces. Since this mass murder is in the interest of Assad’s national sovereignty, it’s likely that when the debased antiwar movement led by ‘retired’ CIA, FBI, & former US military officers explain that to the families, they will understand the slaughter of their children is for the better good. When debased socialists come in with their Lenin quotes justifying Assad’s dictatorship, that will more than persuade those grieving parents that ‘all is well is this best of all possible worlds’.
The only principled demands are that Syria, Russia, & the US-coalition cease the bombing of civilians & for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military operations from Syria.
Photo is Syrian child in east Ghouta injured from Syrian & Russian bombing.
(Photo tweeted by Muhammed Najem)
Mosul, Iraq, “liberation” by bomber:
The US-coalition battle to retake Mosul from ISIS forces lasted from October 2016 to July 2017. No explanation has ever been given of who arms ISIS so that it can sustain control of cities or how those arms are delivered whilst the US is bombing cities under ISIS control. According to a 2017 US Pentagon report, over $1 billion of US arms has landed up in ISIS hands.
The US has never, in any war, made an accounting of civilians it has killed whilst ostensibly trying to liberate them by carpet bombing. Such an accounting would more than condemn the US for war crimes. But Iraqi civil defense authorities reported that 2,585 bodies of civilians were recovered from under rubble six months after ISIS forces had been routed from Mosul. That would explain why so many reporters spoke about the ‘smell of death’ that permeated Mosul after the “liberation.”
According to an Associated Press survey among Mosul’s gravediggers, morgue workers, & volunteers who retrieved bodies from the rubble, between 9,000 & 11,000 civilians were killed, mostly crushed to death, in the carpet bombing siege of Mosul. They have no idea how many hundreds remain buried in the rubble. The morgue estimates were over ten times higher than official death tolls by the Iraqi government & US-coalition forces.
The survey says it can’t be determined how many deaths each side was responsible for–whether civilians were killed & buried by US-coalition mortars, explosives, & carpet bombing or ISIS mortars & explosives. The question of where & how ISIS gets its weapons whilst being bombed becomes more imperative.
Photo is Mosul, Iraq being “liberated.”
US out of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen.
(Photo by Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP)
Astonishing fact: there has been no reporting of any kind for months, in some cases years, about US wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, & relatively little about Iraq & Syria. There has been no reporting of any kind about the millions of refugees from the Mediterranean to the US southern border. News is all about Trump’s tweets, that stupid book, or the porn star.
If media reported appropriately on the struggles of Palestinians, Kashmiris, the Rohingya or the several barbaric US wars, there would be no need for me to post so many things every day. But US media is so caught up with Trump & the porn star that the rest of us have to fill the breach. If I trim out my protests about Trump the Lump, then I can decrease the amount I post & I will try–except for occasional outbursts of ridicule & contempt.
You could write a hundred treatises about refugee rights & against forced repatriation to the killing fields of Arakan state, Burma but you could never speak as eloquently as these Rohingya children in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Who would ever harm a hair on their heads should be charged, arrested, & prosecuted before an international human rights tribunal & then sent up the river with no possibility of parole.
(Photo from Anayet Ullah Arman’s FB wall)
A tear gas shell explodes near this Kashmiri protester during a protest today in Srinagar against the surge in killings & other human rights crimes by Indian occupying troops. You can really see the full flowering of “the world’s largest democracy” in its assaults on unarmed protesters.
Stand with Kashmiris to demand an end to the occupation & self-determination for Kashmir.
(Photo by Saqib Majeed)
George Lakoff, the prestigious linguist at UC Berkeley, thinks Trump’s hate language is strategic manipulation. Maybe his career depends on such analysis but the rest of us recognize a demented, moronic hater when we hear one. He just opens his big fat trap & farts hate.
#ThrowTheBumOut
Reposted from January 13, 2017 because understanding Syria, the last Arab Spring uprising not yet defeated, matters for a resurgence of the Arab uprisings, Palestinian self-determination, & democracy in the entire Middle East:
*****
It must seem the epitome of arrogance for Syrian revolutionists & their supporters to disagree with almost the entire pantheon of western gurus: Noam Chomsky, Patrick Cockburn, Tariq Ali, Robert Fisk, Chris Hedges, Vijay Prashad, John Pilger, Glenn Greenwald, Glen Ford, Seamus Milne, Seymour Hersh, Ajamu Baraka. After all, these guys–& it is noticeable that they are all men–are the left intellectual avant-garde of the past 40 years, even outside the west. The problem with gurus is that they are not infallible & they don’t speak ex cathedra for “the left.” Sometimes when you scratch below the surface of their analyses, you learn they’re not that left at all. For every one of those celebrity journalists & authors there is an entire catalog of serious misjudgments long before they fell apart over Syria.
It’s no surprise they can’t distinguish between revolution & counter-revolution in Syria since not a one of them has any real credentials in that regard. They operate in elite circles, are accustomed to deference, & likely have no understanding at all of working people nor any respect for our capacities to enter history & change it. Like the lilliputian socialist groups who support Assad & carpet bombing of civilians, their writings reflect theoretical torpor & political inertia where they can no longer tell the difference between a political analysis of Syria & the conspiracy mongering of Global Research, complete with “reptilian Rothschild banksters.”
If the Islamophobia & anti-Semitism of Assadist apologia, including that of these gurus, doesn’t hit you in the face, if the demonizing of rescue workers & small children doesn’t sicken you, if marching for Assad & Russia with fascists & libertarians who believe “jihadists” & Jewish people are the problems in this world doesn’t horrify you, then maybe it’s time to accept that you were only on the left by a misunderstanding. The bandwagon is not a reliable guide in politics.
Photo is White Helmet rescue workers in Douma under aerial bombardment by Syrian & Russian bombers on January 8th, 2018.
(Photo by Al-Ajweh/AFP/Getty Images)
They’re zoning in on Trump with every intention to eventually get him out of the White House. They don’t need him anymore since he got the tax bill for corporations & millionaires but he’s screwing up every other thing they wanted from him & discrediting every agency of the US government. There’s no dignity left in DC & the US needs that to throw its weight around. The sucker had to cancel his state visit to England because of popular opposition. But the way they’re executing the ouster of Trump is unsavory & pollutes political discourse, making everything about his boundless amorality & not about the US electoral system that gave him an election he lost. Russiagate wasn’t the main problem in the election. It was the entirely undemocratic & stage-managed US electoral system that handed him an office he was obviously unfit to hold–& I’m not one to hold the US presidency in high regard nor did I see Clinton’s realpolitik as an alternative.
If media can’t keep their noses out of sordid gossip as part of discrediting his ugly ass, we should at least keep our attention on issues of substance. For heaven’s sakes, put that damn book away & stop the salacious gossip about his sexual habits. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t render it any more dignity than The National Inquirer would. If that’s all you can talk about instead of refugee rights, the Muslim ban, the several US wars, US support for Israeli apartheid, its alliance with Indian militarism, its de facto support for the Rohingya genocide & for Duterte’s death squads, maybe you’re not as political as you think. You certainly aren’t very useful to understanding what the hell is going on.
