Saturday 3 August 2013
The Socialists Support the
War (August 4, 1914)
"The victory of Russian despotism, stained with the blood of the best of its own people, would put much – indeed, everything – at stake for our nation and its future development toward liberty. We must ward off this danger; we must protect our civilization and the independence of our own country"
Today it is the other way around. Those who were once international socialists defend Russian support for reaction and autocracy in Syria by conjuring a non-existent threat from the US and its allies.
Syria proves nothing has changed
since Bosnia and Herzegovina
A couple of years ago, I remember Kevin Ovenden, then assistant of George Galloway's, promote Davutoglu as a new sort of politician who was going to re-draw the politics of the Eastern Mediterranean for the better. Now Turkey's verbal support for the Syrian opposition has turned that geo-political analysis 180⁰.
Davutoglu doesn't actually propose any concrete support here. States are always better at calling for freedom in their rivals' countries than their friends', and better at providing diagnosis than cure.
Still, I did see an EA World View report* suggesting that the reason the rebels are doing better in the North than the South is that the US has less control over the Turkish than Jordanian border, and so more weapons are getting through the former.
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1JX71QvnnQ]
Friday 2 August 2013
How Obama can stop Syria
turning into another Afghanistan
Stop the War prints more pro-Assad lies.
"What could have turned into an Egyptian-style mass uprising dissolved instead into a series of local insurgencies in which religious minorities, particularly Christians, became targets of fighters sympathetic to or affiliated with Al-Qaida. Ancient communities were cleansed from their homes in the province of Homs. Churches were bombed. Dissenters, in a phenomenon alien to Syria, were beheaded. And women, who had traditionally enjoyed greater freedoms in Syria than in most other parts of the Arab world, were forced into the veil...deposing Assad from power now will not miraculously bring peace. The collapse of the state will instead carry the civil war to an even bloodier phase as the groups that are arrayed against Assad vie for power in post-Baathist Syria."
Italian priest fighting for peace in Syria
Father Paolo Dall'Oglio: “From day one, the Syrian regime chose violence, physical repression and deepening the action of torturing people in jail. They were consistent on their track of repression, that was their style for decades.”
Stunning Images of
Destroyed Syrian City
'The extent of the damage brought to mind the words of a United States Army officer who told the Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett, as they surveyed the ruined Vietnamese city of Ben Tre, pulverized by American bombardment in 1968: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” '
"In a rare, impassioned response to criticism, he said the UN simply could not tolerate armed groups killing the Congolese people."
[http://www.theguardian.com/…/…/01/un-congo-drc-goma-violence]
I suspect this will actually show what is wrong with boots on the ground interventions, it is because the governments in Kinshasa are exploitative and oppressive that groups like M-23 keep popping up. But this plan has the benefit that it doesn't annoy any Security Council members, and there aren't many Muslims in the Congo.
Wednesday 31 July 2013
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
UNFOLDING BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES
"This is Homs as you are “used” to seeing it each and every single day for almost 2 years. Under a hell-storm of shells and rockets fired by Assad’s forces. The residents and brave fighters of Homs have been able to hold out despite an 800+ day siege. However it seems that they will not be able to hold out any longer against the combined forces of the Iranian Military, Hezbullah Mercenaries, Assad’s regular forces and the ultra sectarian “National Defense Forces” all armed to the teeth with an endless supply of weapons and supplies from the Russian Military.
Yet despite all of the above. Despite the shells and rockets. Despite the massacres, both the ones committed and the ones yet to be carried out against them. Despite the hunger and misery. Despite it all … the people of Homs still come out to do what they did on the first days of this revolution. They came out to protest peacefully and celebrate their eventual freedom. Many of the people below, children included, know they will die, yet they also know that their deaths will not be in vain, that it will have been for the freedom of our country from tyranny few people on Earth have had the misfortune to wittiness and experience."