I remember many Assad supporters before they agreed with Syrian Girl; before they said Russian bombing was righteous because Assad invited Putin to bomb civilians; before they toured & promoted lying-assed propagandists like Bartlett & Beeley instead of Syrian revolutionists. I remember when they could distinguish reality from farce & lies.

Regrettably, I always watched as they retreated to sectarianism from internationalism & would only organize antiwar events if they were the honchos who called the shots; as they ignored working people & took up currying favor with union officials; as they started doing hero worship of Castro & Hugo Chavez instead of hard-headed political analyses; as they became cultists around some alpha-male guru.

It’s a shameful thing to start youth as a rebel, as a fighter against racism & war, only to end up in your senior years operating from obedience training like a whipped puppy & spouting Muslim-hating & anti-Semitic rubbish to oppose a popular revolution against dictatorship & support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.

One only hopes there’s a spark left of that old rebellion to shake them out of the torpor. Otherwise there’s a special place in hell just waiting.

It’s now clear: Trump will stay orange with raccoon eyes, bleached hair, & that look of smug contempt you just want to slap silly. No matter how many times you pinch yourself to awaken from a nightmare, he will still be Twittering inanities & bravado & will remain US president for four years–or until he’s impeached for improprieties even beyond that office–& we will still have to tolerate his insufferable snotty kids.

We’re in for a bumpy ride.

Merry Christmas to all my friends, including those who do not celebrate it as a religious holiday. We should think of it as a celebration of our common humanity, not as a doctrinal difference that divides us.

We sustained a rough year in 2016 but I am blessed by friends around the world who share a common vision that in unity human beings can create a world free of inequality, war, & detestable social hatreds of every kind. Our only chance is to never give up on the human race because all our children deserve a world filled with love & laughter.

I receive so many blessings throughout the year from you & cherish every one of them. I’m a great believer in their power & call on them often. Thank you so much.

My wish for all of you & your beloved is the same generous blessings you send me. For so many friends on the front lines of struggle against war, occupation, genocide, we wish also that your relentless efforts to educate us about your struggle will at last bring out the big battalions of international solidarity to stand with you & face the oppressors down.

May you all be blessed. Thank you so much for your friendship which educates & inspires me in so many ways.

This article from Al Jazeera by Malak Chabkoun discusses the necessity of polemically challenging Assad propagandists like Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley.

This isn’t a mean-spirited personal disagreement with either of them; on their own, propagandists don’t merit it but they speak for the Assad regime & the most reactionary political forces in the world. Nor is this a platonic dispute that can be handled in an Oxford Forum collegial kind of way.

This is a battle to defend the Syrian revolution involving millions of people against dictatorship & foreign military intervention. It is a historic battle that will decisively impact the Palestinian struggle against apartheid & colonialism, the future of democracy in the Middle East & reverberate around the world, strengthening or weakening struggles against war & crimes against humanity. That’s how important it is & is not an overstatement.

This is a political fight for the soul & integrity of the antiwar movement which leading activists are compromising by supporting dictatorship & abandoning the foundational principles of international solidarity so they can support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. No one gets to hijack the antiwar movement without a fight.

Some may find the polemics tedious & too tendentious. But not those who understand what is at stake.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/whitewashing-assad-allies-challenged-161223135228023.html

It’s hard to keep up with Vanessa Beeley in Syria: on Dacember 12th dining with Fares Shehabi, the Assad official for Aleppo, & fellow propagandists Pierre Le Corf, Andrew Ashdown, & Jan Oberg; on December 13th riding in with the Syrian Army to capture east Aleppo; then a day interrogating civilians trying to get them to finger the White Helmets. Singing for your supper keeps you busy in a war zone.

Next we know she’s in Damascus for a week where she spent an hour talking with Texas right-wing libertarian Ron Paul on his TV show. And then? No interviews, photos, audience with the great poobah Assad? Any meetings with regime officials we’d like to know about?

There were big doings in Damascus last week. Beeley was there on December 15th when Syrian authorities withdrew the journalist visa of Cecilia Uddén, the Swedish Radio Middle East correspondent, & forced her to leave the country for circulating ’false information.’ That would have concerned an independent journalist since Syria is ranked 177 out of 180 countries in the Reporters without Borders’ annual press freedom index. Beeley’s silence on this would suggest less independence & more propagandist hustler, especially when coupled with the photos of her with Assad & the over-the-top birthday wishes she sent him on social media.

Before she headed back to Aleppo she posted this about her day of interrogations in east Aleppo:

“The testimonies we filmed testified to starvation, wholesale deprivation of humanitarian aid, summary executions, torture & the use of civilians as human shields. Nusra Front were the overlord of the district, controlling an estimated 22 militant brigades funded, equipped & armed by NATO & Gulf states & condemning the Syrian civilians to a life of fear & imprisonment in their own homes.

“Women were married, raped & discarded en masse, children were imprisoned & anyone caught supporting the Syrian Government could be executed or imprisoned & tortured.”

She learned quite a lot in three days but of course she was embedded up the ass of the Syrian army. Beeley called her gruesome report the “very antithesis of the narrative being run by the corporate media” which she thinks favors the “jihadists.” It must have been the antithesis of what Cecilia Uddén reported too before Assad bounced her out of the country. The world looks forward to viewing those testimonies but we know it will take time for Assad’s propaganda factory to produce them.

Yesterday, Beeley traveled back to Aleppo accompanied by a Syrian army tank because she claimed there was increased ISIS activity along the road. Today she’s posting entire albums of well-dressed, well-fed jubilant children in east Aleppo celebrating their “liberation” around well-lit Christmas trees.

A week ago they were starving, war-traumatized & there was no electricity. Today that’s all behind them? In a chagrined tone she asks: “Why is western media painting the liberation of Aleppo as a grim doomsday scenario as the liberated citizens dance & celebrate in the street?” Must we remind her that for the first time western media & Beeley’s propaganda agreed on the doomsday scenario in east Aleppo?

There is a subtext to Beeley’s scenario that simply reeks of Muslim-hatred. Under the “jihadists,” children were human shields & women were “married, raped & discarded en masse.” Under the Christian Christmas tree, they were dancing in the streets. Pointing that out is hardly a defense of violent militias but only to suggest the sophistication & rancidity of Beeley’s methods of “journalism.”

This photo of east Aleppo was taken on December 13th. We’re wondering where they plugged in the Christmas trees.

(Photo by Omar Sanadi/Reuters)

It’s one thing that so many journalists went over to the dark side about Syria. They seem to have a peculiar obsession with head-chopping or maybe they got lost in distinctions between journalism & propaganda or thought the latter provided a more lucrative career. They’ll end up writing hack for Global Research, Mint Press, & Sputnik News. Inglorious but penny-ante.

It’s quite another when progressive & antiwar forces get lost in all that stuff & use discredited journalists writing for Global Research & Russian media for political direction about Syria. Worse than inglorious. It may not rise to the level of tragic since many have been politically lost for a long time. But it is surely a historic betrayal of antiwar principles to support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians to defend “Syrian national sovereignty” against a popular revolution to end dictatorship. That would be more criminal than tragic. It means a new antiwar movement must be built on the old principles.

I’m so tired of being “whipped into an anti-Russian frenzy” by mainstream media just to demonize Putin & delegitimize Trump. Thank heavens alternative media financed by George Soros are straightening us out & getting us to take a chill pill. That frenzy was wearing my ass out.

In the new progressive politics we gotta hate on somebody. Now that Clinton is out of the game, if not Russia, who? Tell us oh masters who we should be hating on.

PS: Can I go back to reading Dostoyevsky again? “The Idiot” is kind of de rigueur for modern times.

Advice for an era when distinctions between reality & bonkers no longer exist.

What kind of socialist is Vijay Prashad who quotes a contact in the Syrian armed forces & a staff member of the White House National Security Council for his analysis of Syria & advises Assad how best to handle Syria’s “internal contradictions”?

Time to roll into action again to support the cultural boycott of Israel, to educate & prevail on Aerosmith to honor BDS & cancel their slated performance in Israel next May 17th.

Every BDS campaign, I go through my list of FB friends to send an invite to like & share this wall. That’s 5,000 people & takes a lot of time. Don’t make me hunt you down & stalk you; just go to the page & do it already.

Palestinian self-determination against apartheid & colonialism is one of the most important struggles of our time & is seen by the forces of repression as a linchpin against democracy in the Middle East.

https://www.facebook.com/aerosmithboycottapartheidisrael/?pnref=story