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.

In 1967, as a student at the University of Minnesota, I knew nothing about Palestine & Israeli colonialism. When the ’67 war began, the Minneapolis media began a hysterical pro-Israel campaign that disturbed me. I knew we were being played but didn’t know why.

Walking across the campus one day, I saw a lone Palestinian picketing with a placard & asked him why, hoping to clarify what the media frenzy was all about. He was probably scared & gruffly answered me “They stole our land” but refused to elaborate. It wasn’t much but enough for me to understand there was more to the story than the Star Tribune was reporting. So I sought out the full answer to my question & eventually became involved in the Arab-American student group to organize solidarity work.

Keeping in mind the impact of that one young man, I have gone out to protest alone many times if I’m unable to find others to work with. Antiwar work is very weak here although the potential is considerable. To my mind, there has to be a public response to Assad’s gassing of civilians. It is elementary politics. If anyone is interested in joining me or helping to organize a rally, please let me know. Otherwise I’m going out alone but the power is in numbers.

Some people like knock-down drag-out fights about politics. That wouldn’t be me. My mantra is that one of the arts of politics is knowing when to save your breath. So I do not engage with Assadists. The problem is not that they are ill-informed but that they are haters of Muslims, Arabs, Jews, women, & revolution against dictatorship. You can’t reason with that & I don’t want to try.

It’s one thing when Syrian Girl writes that a “Soros-linked group is behind the chemical attack in Syria & that it has all the hallmarks of a false flag” or when retired FBI agent-turned-antiwar-leader Coleen Rowley says there’s zero chance Assad gassed civilians. It’s a pity so many women have become apologists for Assad’s crimes, both as paid propagandists & unpaid flunkies.

It’s quite another thing when longtime antiwar organizers post that kind of crap along with Global Research articles & rubbish from Bartlett & Beeley to prove the gassing attack never happened or was done by evil fairies from outer space. That’s heartbreaking. But we’ll get over it because the antiwar movement must be rebuilt.

Political degeneration is heartbreaking to witness but not close to the horror of what Assad has done in gassing civilians. The international antiwar movement has to be rebuilt on a principled program of no US, Russian, or other foreign military intervention in Syria & Iraq. No Syrian, Russian, or US bombing of civilians.

If you can’t find a rally in your town to protest the gassing of Khan Sheikhoun, consider calling one or make a placard & hit the streets alone. The movement must be rebuilt without those who turn a blind eye to the bombing of civilians.

(Photo by Edlib Media Center, via AP)

In response to Russian support for Syria’s gassing of civilians, Putin supporters are doing their rendition of Nero fiddling while Rome burns: denouncing those who voted for Democrats.

That’s how you know they’ve never gotten off their asses to organize antiwar protests. Because the overwhelming majority of antiwar protesters vote for Democrats.

Russia is providing political cover for Assad’s gassing of civilians. How will Putin supporters “nuance” that?

Emergency protests around the world against Syria’s gassing of civilians & against US horrors in Mosul are in order. 

What do you bet Trump’s visits with Egypt’s General Sisi & Jordan’s Abdullah have everything to do with Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine? The one-point agenda: how to maximize betrayal of democracy & end popular uprisings against dictatorship.

The monstrous chemical gas attack by Syrian bombers on civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria has finally got the Assadists denouncing US war crimes in Mosul. Bait & switch is a sleazy legal maneuver but to use it to cover for a gas attack on civilians exposes them for the counter-revolutionary dirt-balls they are.

This is one of the babies who was killed in that gas attack. There is no dirty trick strong enough to cover for this & any attempt to do so marks one as the criminal defense of dictatorship & savagery.

Trump as candidate said a thousand times “Syria is not our problem.” His “our” here refers to the US government. The US Pentagon is in Syria up to its eyeballs with bombers, the CIA, special forces, mercenaries, & ground troops & has been for a long time as part of the counter-revolutionary force to pummel the revolution against Assad. Syria & Iraq are of a piece with US strategic goals in the Middle East & to principled antiwar activists Syria & Iraq are both our problems. We stand steadfast against Syrian, Russian, US bombing of civilians.

Many erstwhile US socialists & antiwar activists have gone over to the dark side to support Russian intervention in Syria & endorse Assad’s bombing of civilians to protect national sovereignty. They claim the US intervenes for regime change. They can only arrive at that deranged view by denying the revolution against Assad’s dictatorship. If they have an ounce of political coherence & integrity left, they should answer if they support Assad’s gassing of civilians. Or will they also change the subject to Mosul when they’ve been silent about Mosul for months?

The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement. Demand no US, Russian, Iranian intervention in Syria & Iraq.

(Photo by Firas Faham/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Many people really like Chris Hedges but I’ve always found him off a twist & kind of long-winded. It’s his misanthropy that bugs me, his elitism. He has an article out now titled “A Nation of the Walking Dead” about addictive habits among Americans. It’s his rendition of the stale claim that American workers are all doped up on consumer goods only he’s talking drugs & gambling.

Addiction is a social problem–a hell of a social problem. But it reeks of contempt to speak of millions of people as the “walking dead.” Who the hell does he think he is that he can talk about working people like that? The chances are that he hasn’t spent time among us ever in his life, that he comes from an upper class that disdains us & thinks we’re all losers. Pardon me if I resent the hell out of that.