Category Archives: News

The intellectual level of Assadist debate: flipping the bird for Assad

Assadist fuck you memes

For those who think debating with Assadists can lead to breakthroughs in their cement heads, I received these two memes today:

Putin flipping me the bird was from an unknown Assadist who took umbrage at my criticisms but was at a loss for words because of diminished capacity.

The gorilla flipping one (or is he looking at his booger?) was from a friend (now former) after I removed an article he posted titled “Swedish Medical Association Says White Helmets Murdered Kids for Fake Gas Attack Videos” by Gordon Duff, a deranged libertarian who writes for SOTT the David Icke publication edited by Eva Bartlett.

See why I’m trigger-happy with the block button?

Netanyahu is shocked & outraged over Syria’s chemical attacks on civilians, especially on children. Does he think we’ve forgotten Gaza? The white phosphorus, the carpet bombing for weeks, the deliberate targeting of children?

Vijay Prashad the putz

How did Vijay Prashad come to be known as a hotshot intellectual on the left? The guy’s a long-winded putz who wrote a piece on Khan Sheikhoun that sounds just like Vanessa Beeley, Assad’s version of Hitler’s Leni Riefenstahl.

The only good thing you can say about him is that he will teach us not to defer, not to accept authorities without doing our own investigation.

That sound harsh? Not for a guy who tries to talk around the gassing of civilians.

This is the enormity of Assad’s war crimes at Khan Sheikhoun

Sabdul-Hamid Alyousef, held his dead twin babies (ALAA ALYOUSEF VIA AP)

We need to stare this man’s loss & grief straight in the face to understand the enormity of Assad’s crimes at Khan Sheikhoun. Abdel Hameed Alyousef lost his 9-month-old twins Aya & Ahmed, who he’s holding here before burial, his wife, two brothers, nephews–altogether over 20 members of his family who were buried together in a mass grave.

Assadists, including Eva Bartlett, have the psychotic gaul to say this is a hoax: “If dead children are paraded in front of cameras, it does not show a chemical weapons attack. It is proof of murder, someone massacred these children & their families.” Beeley calls them “alleged attacks” & blithers on about fake news & the White Helmets. Tim Anderson said “bearded jihadis” kidnapped hundreds of Syrian children & murdered them. These propagandists are falling apart before our very eyes, coming up with competing “alternative facts” because even Syria & Russia can’t get their lies coordinated.

Leave the counter-revolutionary dirt-balls in the Hands Off Syria Coalition to scurry around like vermin looking for a story to whitewash Syrian war crimes. Our historic mission is to rebuild the international antiwar movement on a principled program demanding Syria, Russia, the US stop the bombing of civilians in Syria. US, Russia, & all foreign military operatives out of Syria.

We cannot bring back this man’s family nor allay his grief–nor make up for the epic failure to build international solidarity with the Syrian revolution against dictatorship. The only thing we can do is commit to rebuilding the antiwar movement so the Syrian people can finish off the Assad regime without impediment.

Our deepest condolences to Abdel Hameed Alyousef & to all who have paid such a horrific price for freedom.

(Photo by AP)

Serious flooding in Kashmir

There is serious flooding in Kashmir which requires reporting, partly because of the way India handled the last major flooding episode. Even natural catastrophes are impacted by military occupation.

Maybe Kashmiris could post what we need to know since events in Syria are prepossessing. It is not a lack of concern but only a matter of time.

The lies Assadists tell to cover war crimes

Apr 4 2017 Khan Sheikhoun

Assadists are dragging out 3-year-old news reports (from mainstream media, no less, which they consider the very fountainhead of deceits) claiming that in 2014 the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) attested to the removal & destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. That’s true, but chlorine was not included in the chemical weapons ban & Assad continued to use it against civilians.

The OPCW investigative teams apparently had not shown due diligence–or at least were outsmarted by Assad forces hiding caches of chemical weapons–because since then OPCW reported traces of undeclared sarin & VX gas (another nerve agent) at a military facility in Syria & there have been several reports of chemical attacks by Assad bombers.

After the sarin gassing by Syrian bombers in Khan Sheikhoun, the OPCW today announced another fact-finding mission to Syria. They will be taking witness testimony & physical evidence for analysis. Meanwhile, Assad is free to continue chemical attacks with chlorine & has done so repeatedly according to doctors treating the victims & according to the reports of human rights organizations.

(Photo is from April 4th, Khan Sheikhoun)

US president Nixon denied this chemical attack in Vietnam: Assad has learned from history

9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc June 8 1972

Vietnam War, June 8, 1972: US ally South Vietnam dropped bombs with a mixture of incendiary napalm & white phosphorus jelly on children fleeing from the bombing of their village in South Vietnam.

Phan Thanh Tam, the boy in the left foreground, lost an eye. His sister, 9-year-old Kim Phuc was naked from having her clothes burned off by the napalm. She was not expected to survive the severity of her burns & has endured countless painful surgical procedures, including skin transplantations. The bombing killed two of their cousins & two other villagers.

Then US president Richard Nixon questioned the authenticity of this photo for the same reason Assadists deny Syria gassed civilians in Khan Sheikhoun. They do not want Assad’s war crimes used against him to expose the character of his dictatorship in the way this photo exposed US war crimes in Vietnam & strengthened international antiwar opposition.

(Photo by Nick Ut/AP)

Know who else beside Assadists denies Syrian bombers gassed civilians & who posts Global Research articles as documentation? David Duke, the white supremacist & former grand poobah of the KKK. If your allies are fascists, Hands Off Syria Coalition, eat it!

Assad has been carpet bombing civilians since 2011, including with sarin & chlorine gas & barrel bombs. His ally Russia uses thermobaric, bunker buster, & cluster bombs. But people who claim to be progressive are agnostic or outraged at accusations Assad gassed civilians in Khan Sheikhoun?

If you haven’t resolved your credulity problems in six years, you could be in a stupor state. Or maybe you really don’t care about war if there’s nothing in it for you. Most likely it means you’re an Assadist. Tough that. Hard to face yourself in a mirror knowing your affinity with fascists.

Nihilism is the hallmark of Assadism & the move toward fascism

So there’s the paid propagandists like Tim Anderson, Bartlett & Beeley who’ll say anything because they worship Assad. No measure of toadyism is beneath them. So of course, Assad did not gas civilians. But if he did, they deserved it. And the White Helmets made it all up anyway.

Then there’s the libertarian left like Margaret Kimberley, Ajamu Baraka, Glen Ford, Coleen Rowley, who like to talk hard-assed but can’t distinguish conspiracy from reality. They don’t worship Assad but if the US claims to be at odds with him, he’s their man & can do no wrong. They’re soft on Trump too & blame everything on Obama. Everything is a false flag in their jaded world-weary view.

Then there are the lost souls like Dahlia Wasfi who plays the agnostic on the gassing of civilians like that’s an acceptable stance, & Rania Khalek who talks through her ass. In the long run, it is agnosticism that is the most pernicious & years from now some will still be scratching their butts asking did Assad really gas civilians at Khan Sheikhoun or was that all US lies?

All of this treachery & idiocy combine to confuse & create nihilism as an attitude toward what can be known in an era when news reporting is instantaneous, international, verifiable in several different ways. You’d think we were living in an era when news came by pony express.

This issue of what can be known is not about what is possible, about the sources available, about investigative comparisons, about fake news & all that rubbish. It is about the triumph of libertarian theoretical methods, of speculation in place of scholarship, of obfuscation, conspiracy thinking & seeing false flags when you don’t know how to analyze or are too lazy or indifferent to try. It is the hallmark of a march to the right under a smokescreen of nihilism.

To understand who gassed the people of Khan Sheikhoun you have to look at what Assad, Putin, & the US Pentagon reported & see if any of it makes sense, at the video & photographic documentation, at reports on social media directly from Syrian activists. It is beyond dispute that Assad is guilty. If you want to continue playing agnostic or playing the smug supporter of Assad, it’s your right to ally yourself with fascism. Scratch your ass from here to hell.

But when history is written–& you better be damn sure we don’t intend to let you write it–you’ll have to face the music of your treachery. We don’t intend to let dictatorship win the propaganda war. We intend to rebuild the antiwar movement. We expect justice will be hard-fought but it will be victorious because we have seen the power of the Arab Spring, of Palestinian & Kashmiri Intifada & democracy is the future.