I demonstrated as an angry mob destroyed the U.S. embassy. I’m sorry.

 Mohammed Alaa Ghanem:

 'Ambassador Crocker and I share one thing in common: we have both seen the Assad regime’s brutal tactics firsthand. But while I responded by risking my life to sow the seeds of revolution as a pro-democracy activist, the ambassador has drawn closer to Assad, even though that could mean thousands of additional deaths of innocents at the hands of the regime. Some days, I wonder how the ambassador and I could have reached such radically different conclusions. But I will never regret my decision to seek the Assad regime’s overthrow, regardless of how many times I must face its hard-fisted brutality again.'

Assad Policies Aided Rise of Islamic State Militant Group

 'The Islamic State, which metastasized from a group of militants seeking to overthrow the Syrian government into a marauding army gobbling up chunks of the Middle East, gained momentum early on from a calculated decision by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go easy on it, according to people close to the regime.

 Earlier in the three-year-old Syrian uprising, Mr. Assad decided to mostly avoid fighting the Islamic State to enable it to cannibalize the more secular rebel group supported by the West, the Free Syrian Army,...'

West poised to join forces with President Assad in face of Islamic State

 Cockburn is given the front page to smear the opposition in Syria as ISIS and excuse Assad his murderous spree. Shame on the Indie.

 'Air strikes are not the only way in which the US, Britain and their allies among neighbouring states could weaken and isolate Isis, but in doing so they would necessarily undermine other rebel groups. Key to the growth of Isis and, in particular, the import of thousands of foreign fighters has been the use of Turkey as a point of entry.

 Determined to get rid of President Assad, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has kept Turkey’s 550-mile border with Syria open, giving the jihadists, including Isis, a safe haven over the last three years. The Turks are now saying Isis is no longer welcome, but Ankara has not moved seriously to close the border by deploying troops in large numbers.

 A complete volte face by the US, Britain and their allies in their relations with the Assad government is unlikely because it would mean admitting that past support for the Sunni rebellion had contributed to the growth of the caliphate. Mr Freeman says that he doubted that “the liberal interventionists and neoconservatives who had pursued regime change in Syria were capable of reversing course. To do so would require them to admit that they bore considerable responsibility for legitimising pointless violence that has resulted in the deaths of 190,000 Syrians.” '

Revolution, narratives, and solidarity

 ' “It was a miracle” – Yassin-Kassab insisted on the issue of sectarianism – “that, in a country in which sectarianism was kept alive to divide and rule for so many years, a non-sectarian freedom movement was born in 2011. The regime has an interest in the Alawi minority being scared of a sectarian conflict in order to secure their loyalty.” Talking about the situation he had witnessed on the ground, Yassin-Kassab then described what in his view has now become the day-to-day “normality” for the Syrian people: “as a journalist, you don’t need a fixer to find you an ‘interesting’ story: every single woman, child or man has a traumatising story of repression to tell. Torture, death, house burnings, people killed in front of their relatives, bombs falling on schools, hospitals and crops: it’s not special, it’s the normality.” '

Australia going to 'unthinkable' lengths to return Syria detainees

 ' “I was very open and frank with the transferees [asylum seekers], I described the options that they have and I was clear that they would not be settled in Australia or a third country. I did say that if they chose to return home the department would work to get them home safely, with no guarantee of any time frames. The transferees were visibly upset and quite anxious, they were quite adamant that I would be sending them home to their death.”

 It is understood none of the five Syrians on Manus Island went ahead with the repatriation. A number of them have been on a long-term hunger strike and all were split up within the centre to “keep them quiet”.

 “There isn’t a ‘mere likelihood’ that these people will be persecuted on returning to Syria. It isn’t even a ’50/50 chance’. There is an absolute certainty that these people will be harmed or killed upon their return, and the government’s reaction is to push them to go home without even listening to their claims for asylum.” '

Fathers of ISIS

 Ziad Majed:

 'ISIS, an abominable, savage creature, is thus the product of at least these six fathers. Its persistency depends on the continuation of these aforementioned elements, particularly the element of violence embodied by the Assad regime in Syria. Those who think that they should be impartial toward or even support tyrants like Assad in the fight against ISISism fail to realize that his regime is in fact at the root of the problem.'

Power To The People

 Just now on BBC News. Henry Crumpton: "The best allies we have are the people in Syria and Iraq, and we need to find ways to empower them." "And more weapons, into the hands of the people we think will use them correctly?" "That is correct. Bashar al-Assad does not represent the Syrian people. We need to reach out to the local leaders and empower them. The US has a lousy record, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya."

In Aleppo, Bread Lines and Disenchantment with the FSA

 Steven Sotloff:

 'The FSA first marched into Aleppo promising to end the arbitrary arrests carried out by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to restore public order after months of fighting. But residents say it has proved ill-equipped to solving such seemingly simple problems as distributing bread and fuel.'

 This is what happens when a revolution is stalled. Sotloff wrote on Twitter a couple of months later:

 'If #70000 dead isn't ‪#‎redline‬ enough, whats a few dozen by‪#‎chemicalweapons‬? Not advocating anything in ‪#‎Syria‬ but after 2yrs stop tiptoeing.'
[https://twitter.com/stevensotloff/status/327528104912367616]

"ZOMG OBAMA TRAINED ISIS!!!1!"

 'It’s a sad day in professional journalism when reputable corporate outlets ape ignorant conspiracy-mongering by twits like Mark Steel who claimed that the U.S. is bombing the same people it trained, but here we are.

 "The Terrorists Fighting Us Now? We Just Finished Training Them" is the tantalizing headline of Souad Mekhennet's article in The Washington Post.

 We can agree with this article’s subtitle, "the enemy of our enemy is not our friend" without resorting to sleight-of-hand tricks and deliberately confusing different revolutions in different countries and conflating all angry Muslims with beards and guns regardless of ideology, sect, group affiliation as one big potential Daesh.

 This last point is especially insulting because it is predominantly Sunni Muslim fighters from the Free Syrian Army and Islamic Front who have been the vanguard of the war on Daesh, having lost 7,000 men in the fight since January 2014 after Syria’s civilian freedom fighters got fed up with torture, assassinations, and public executions by Daesh and launched a second revolution.'

An Arab counterrevolution in decline

 When someone is blaming Qatar for ISIS, it is to deny the Syrian revolution, because it is to cast the armed defence to Assad's attacks, Qatar doing as much as any country to support the Free Syrian Army in that mission, as some foreign military conspiracy by America's allies.

 'The counterrevolution reached its climax in 2013, after the abortion of democracy in Egypt, faltering steps of political transition in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, and the success attained by a sectarian alliance in halting the progress of the Syrian revolution and the abortion of the popular uprising in Iraq. Because Turkey decided, in the first year of the Arab uprisings, to align with the camp demanding change and democratic transition, because a broad spectrum of Arab opinion viewed what had become known as the ‘Turkish Model’ with admiration, and because Qatar played a visible role in granting financial, media and moral support to the revolting countries, both Turkey and Qatar were targeted together with the Arab revolution countries.

 The rapid and easy victory of the 2013 coup in Egypt puffed up the Arab counterrevolutionary movement with arrogance, confirming the belief in its main centres that it was capable of achieving miracles and in re-establishing the status-quo ante in the Arab world. The counterrevolutionary forces acted without any reservations, made no attempts at subtlety or discretion, and did not bother to consider the immense destruction, countless victims and the amount of blood spilt as a result of the tumultuous suppression of the will and aspirations of the people.'

Note 31/3/25, link originally posted August 2014, but appears here as February 2015.

Syria death toll 'more than 191,000'

 The truth, but told in a simplified way, could mean that this is meant as a pretext for an American invasion, rather than Syrians getting the arms they need to stop it. There hasn't been paralysis, there has been massive foreign support for Assad, and a meaningless amount for those fighting him.

 'The killers, destroyers and torturers in Syria have been empowered and emboldened by the international paralysis.'

 The false equivalence, the confusion of ISIS with the Syrian revolutionaries to make the latter inseparable from the régime that commits genocide against them.

 'Both the Syrian government and Syrian rebel groups have been accused of war crimes by the UN.'

I Was Gassed by Bashar al-Assad

 'I am a survivor of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attacks of Aug. 21, 2013. One year ago today, my heart stopped for 30 minutes after I inhaled nerve gas launched by Assad regime forces on my hometown of Moadamiya, a suburb of Damascus. The scene outside my front porch that morning was like something from Judgment Day:

 Neighbors I had known my whole life were running, screaming, and writhing in agony as an invisible killer claimed their lives.'

What should be done about ISIS after the beheading of James Foley?

 Owen Jones' turn to lay on the bullshit.

 'The counter-history favoured by supporters of western intervention is that these are the grim consequences of failing to support “moderate” Syrian rebels. Given that weapons provided by the CIA to such groups ended up in Isis’s hands, this is surely naive.'

 I followed the link*, and then followed the link** they gave [it was actually a broken link with the Washington Post's story link pasted on the beginning. I don't expect Owen Jones got that far]. Eventually you end up at the Wall Street Journal***, which does report that one lot of light weapons was seized by ISIS from the FSA. Weapons you can get anywhere in the Middle East, that the lightly armed FSA couldn't protect. And alongside repeated stories of ISIS and the real rebels fighting, we have this, "ISIS fighters have adopted a strategy of dropping back—taking rear positions—as rebels with the FSA alliance leave for front lines to fight government forces, allowing ISIS to build a presence in towns and villages left without security or services." Owen Jones is wilfully ignorant of what is going on in Syria. And is a bit gutless in hinting that we should ally with Assad, but only openly arguing for a "rational" debate.

 'As for Syria: well, it is no longer far-fetched to imagine a rapprochement between the west and the Assad dictatorship. Because Isis has proved so successful in spreading terror, it will be difficult to have a rational debate about how to defeat them. But a rational debate is exactly what we need.'

*[http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/mosul-is-burning-and-iraq-…/]
**[www.longwarjournal.org/…/…/report_american-supplied_arms.php]
***[http://online.wsj.com/…/SB100014241278873248077045790829241…]

James Foley Speaks About His Visit To Idlib Province

 "They are just throwing shells into the city. They are not targeting the FSA or anything, they are just trying to terrorise the population. It isn't really effective, the next day there was a huge protest, a public burial, the Free Syrian Army appears to be well supported and trusted in Maarat al-Numan."

Justice elusive year after Syria gas attack

 ' "There has been an intention, from the beginning, to bury the Syrian revolution," said Hassan Taqieddine of eastern Ghouta, the Damascus suburb struck a year ago by an early morning barrage of rockets carrying chemical agents.

 Taqieddine, who was among activists who rushed to evacuate and help casualties from the attack, said he is still haunted by images of the dead.

 "And here we are, a year later, still getting bombed with barrel bombs, warplanes and chlorine, and no one cares." '

 Mariana Morena:

 'I do remember that morning one year ago today, in which the images of Assad's slaughter with chemical weapons over Ghoutta circulating across social networks, seemed to come from a horror movie. I had never seen anything just like that, even though we had been witnessing more than two years of killings by the 'Shabiha' in the Syrian neighborhoods, the kidnapping of activists and their atrocious torture in the dungeons of the regime, and the bombing of hospitals and precarious clandestine makeshift hospitals. Never such an ominous regime had struck me in account of its irrevocable will to massacre.

 The Syrian regime had been dictatorial for more than forty years, but in the last four it would deepen its fascist character beyond the limits of our logic and human sensibility. Any day, any time one would expect the machine to stop, one would expect Bashar saying "enough, we've killed enough", but no, the bombings haven't stopped, death hasn't stopped in Syria, not even the use of chemical weapons that the Nobel Peace Prize Obama established as an absurd "red line" to warn Bashar that he could not implement all that horror whatever the hell he wanted. But Bashar has continued killing children, women, elderly, unarmed civilians only because they committed the more reckless action of our world when, being weary of the lack of freedom, bread and social justice they took to the streets and squares about four years ago, to demand that Bashar and his regime should resign.

 Almost four years now from the beginning of the revolution for freedom, and on the first anniversary of the genocidal attack with chemical weapons in Ghoutta, that massacred more than 1,400 civilians as they slept and left thousands with severe and irreversible damage, the Syrian People won't kneel. Long live its heroic struggle! The blood of their martyrs will have not been spilled in vain. The dictatorship will fall, along with all dictatorships that nowadays curtails the dignified life of the Arab peoples.'

Barack Obama is following the jihadists’ script

 No, what they have done is move into the rebel won areas with weak governance because they don't have the weapons to defend themselves, let alone resist ISIS which had no distraction of fighting Assad. Occasionally fighting Assad over control of oil reserves which they then sell back to him.

 'But why is Isis in Syria? To overthrow the Assad regime, of course, which is what we too are trying to do, is it not?'

 Robert Fisk is more openly pro-Assad than ever. An apologist, not a journalist.

 'A soldier serving, of course, in the army of the Assad regime we have all sworn to overthrow.'

 I see Chuck Hagel mentioned the $500 million the Americans have promised to the FSA at a press conference, though nothing on any specific actions to stop ISIS in Syria now. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs did warn of other sophisticated terrorist groups in Syria, presumably Jabhat al-Nusra, and some of them may be forced into the arms of ISIS as their fight against Assad is discounted, while others may think the fight against Assad should take priority over maintaining their ideology.

 If the rebels are crushed in Aleppo by ISIS, it isn't going to look good for the administration, even though they are distancing themselves from any suggestion they'll work with Assad. The logical step would be to pressure the Iranians to give up on Assad, but I'm expecting more that they do the minimum to remove ISIS from Syria, while letting Syrians go to Hell.

 If they really were mad for a struggle against ISIS, they'd have levelled ISIS' headquarters in Raqaa. Maybe they will now, ISIS seems to think that hostage threats will keep Obama in line, overestimating the willingness of the world's great imperial power to have sand kicked in its face. Obama did take out Osama after all. But that may be it, the convenience of allowing the Russian and Iranian mess to continue in Syria outweighs any liberationary impulse.

 'Rejecting a recent suggestion, Rhodes ruled out a rapprochement with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to confront a mutual foe.'
[http://www.theguardian.com/…/general-john-allen-obama-isis-…]

Updates

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'An alliance of the British Labour Party, Tory back benchers, UKIP, the BNP, the US Congress and the Tea Party helped Obama step away, and to hand the Syria file to Putin’s Russia – the same power arming the criminal. So the genocide continued, and continues, to the mood-music accompaniment (in the liberal-left press) of absurd conspiracy theories, racist slanders, and willed deafness to the voices of those suffering.'

A year ago tonight

 Rime Allaf:

 'Hundreds of victims, no blood. Assad has used chemical weapons of some sort. Save Syria.
Eastern Ghouta this morning, Damascus.'

Syrian rebels reinforce northern strategic town

 'Abu Maryam had hardly finished his interview when a warplane roared overhead. A military commander started shouting and ordered the soldiers to deploy. The warplane flew over the city several times before firing a missile, wounding four civilians and destroying houses.'

 That's one of Assad's warplanes, acting in concert with the Islamic State assault on the rebels.

 ' "This tumor needs to be removed immediately. They've harmed the image of Islam a lot. We had never been defeated by the regime until they showed up," said an opposition fighter who was stationed with his colleagues in the agricultural fields in Marea.'

Hope fades for Syrians one year after chemical attack

 'People hoped that the West was finally coming to save them," says Majed. "But instead, they gave Assad a green light to kill more, using other types of weapons.

 It is to the world's shame that it witnessed such a massacre and remained unmoved. We don't seem to matter to anyone. This issue about human rights and democracy is only a lie that the West and UN use when it suites their interests.

 The world has failed the Syrian people. After the chemical attack I saw many men around me turn to extremism. The disappointment caused by the West's inaction created a fertile recruiting ground for extremist groups, who told those who had lost their loved ones that they were their only hope. People want a way out of the violence Assad is inflicting on them.'

With James Foley in Maaret Al Nouman

 "A few of my good friends with James Foley in Maaret Al Nouman, Idleb Nov 2012 shortly after town was liberation."

 Here's one of James Foley's tweets about the brutality of the Assad régime:

 "Saw what looks like white phosphorus or other incendiary dropped on old citadel of ‪#‎MaaratalNuman‬ In a city w/ almost no civs left Why?"
[https://twitter.com/jfoleyjourno/statuses/271281076956168195]

Journalists live in peril to keep hope of freedom alive

 ' “We want to show we are having a real revolution,” Mansour said. “We are not all Islamists. We are not all ISIS or Dash.”

 Serriah was imprisoned in 2006 for five years for taking part in some of the early protests against the Bashar al-Assad regime and was released just after the uprising of 2011 began. He joined up with the opposition, smuggling medical supplies and wounded soldiers from the Free Syrian Army around Damascus to secret clinics. He was arrested again, and spent three more months in prison.

 “Seeing or hearing the tortured people is more difficult than torture itself,” he told me, with Mansour translating. “Because you only hear them screaming and you see them and you can do nothing, just watching. And also, at the same time, you are waiting for your turn to be tortured.” '

West must work with Iran to defeat Isil

 Malcolm Rifkind:

 'Think of the Second World War when Churchill and Roosevelt allied themselves with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler.'

 I think of after the Second World War, when the superpowers carved up Europe, and did no more than protest ineffectually when the other put down revolts in its own sphere of influence.

One Big Question Surrounds The Murder Of James Foley

 ' "Until recently, James Foley was thought to be in hands of pro-Assad forces. If Assad is handing over Westerners to ISIS to be killed, it indicates Assad feels cornered, looking for leverage," BBC's Kim Ghattas tweeted, adding that the assessment jibes with what her sources in Damascus have told her recently.

 Ghattas added that Assad providing Foley to ISIS "would confirm Assad tacitly working [with] ISIS and silence any suggestions Assad is the better alternative." '

Intervention? More like Ceaseless Escalation

 Two untruths to point out here. We can't stand by does not mean any action is better than none, arming the FSA would forestall any need for a military intervention, not encourage it. And the link to 'covert action' (only linking to 'overt action') tells us nothing about 2013, it is a link to Susan Rice in June 2014 hinting at lethal aid to Syrian rebels. That's all the writer has to say about Syria, their struggle against dictatorship is made invisible in favour of talking about other conflicts.

 'In 2013, another popular front of interventionists clamored for action, this time in Syria—and all while repeated their favorite mantra: “We can’t just stand by and let this happen, can we?”

 It is on this point that we need to correct our language. For it was common knowledge that in 2013, like in 2011 and 2012, “we” were not just “standing by and letting things happen” in Libya or Iran. And with regard to Syria, “we,” like the Saudis and Qataris, had already been intervening—with covert action and diplomatic support—to overthrow the Asad regime.'
*[http://english.alarabiya.net/…/Obama-aide-hints-at-lethal-a…]

Iran compromises in Iraq, but won’t in Syria

 Saudi Arabia and Qatar are claimed to fund ISIS or "other extremist groups", when in fact they've been supporting, intermittently, the revolutionary forces fighting Assad. The fits in with the lie that the military struggle against Assad is a choice made by regional powers which has nothing to do with the original aims of the revolution, when it is the defence of that revolution against Assad's assaults that has created the Free Syrian Army, and the lack of support for the FSA that has seen power leech away to other groups.

 Now we see this come full circle, with the sectarian killers in Syria turning into the West's allies in the War on Terror. The Iranian forces in Syria are still attacking the Free Syrian Army and other anti-Assad brigades, they haven't had one engagement with ISIS. This is a recipé for a bad settlement in Iraq, and a continuation of the genocide in Syria.

 'By contrast, far from making concessions in Syria, Khashoggi told NOW he believed the Iranians would in fact seek to exploit the ongoing jihadist atrocities in northern Iraq to reinforce their and Assad’s claims to have been battling a “terrorist” insurgency in Syria during the last three years, thereby gaining support from an international community increasingly alarmed by the rapid rise of Sunni jihadist groups such as the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State (IS).
“The Iranians and [Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and others will probably be talking now about how they have been right all along, how Islamic extremists are the problem, not Bashar,” said Khashoggi.

 “And I’m sure some will be asking the question: is it time for the Saudis and Iranians and Americans to cooperate together?”

 Sure enough, in an op-ed Sunday, British Prime Minister David Cameron argued the “international community” should partner “even with Iran” in its political and military action against the “shared threat” posed by the IS.'

Don't forget Syria's chemical attacks victims

 'Sadly, to this day, there hasn't been any attempt to help those who fell victims. For more than two years the survivors are living under the siege that is laid by the Assad-Regime and pro Iranian militias on these neighborhoods.

 Bashar Al Assad and his regime have survived without any punishment.
Not only is the regime still using chemical weapons, it also has cut any connection of the people in the besieged areas from the rest of the world.

 We want to shed a light on these crimes, and put pressure on the international community to strip the Syrian regime from these means of mass killing and put Assad and his subordinates before the International Criminal Court, and most important help the chemical attacks victims that have been forgotten by the international community.'

Assad regime uses CWs against civilians again, world ignores it again

Ruth Numpty:

 'Atmane, ‪#‎Daraa‬ province, 19-08-2014: Assad's warplanes again fired missiles containing chemical substances, believed to be chlorine gas, against civilian areas in the early hours of this morning, this time in Atmane in Daraa province, with heroic paramedics seen in this video footage treating some of the victims in the town, already devastated by daily regime aerial and heavy artillery bombardment.

 The Assad regime continues to routinely deploy chlorine gas and other internationally outlawed chemical weapons against civilians with impunity since these are, conveniently, omitted from the UN's list of CWs proscribed for its use.
The world media, as always, ignored the regime's latest use of chemical weapons, which is now routine, preferring, as always, to recount the Assad regime's narrative.

 This Thursday, August 21st, is the first anniversary of the Assad regime's largest chemical weapons attack to date, on the Ghouta region of Damascus province, in which over 1,450 people were killed, mostly women and children; as with all of Assad's other victims, these have been effectively dismissed as 'collateral damage' by Obama and the rest of the 'international community,' as much as by Assad and his more overt allies.'



 Note 1/4/25, comments from Ruth Numpty may have been on a Facebook post rather than the Youtube video itself.

Understanding the Unthinkable War

 Sadik J. Al-Azm:

 'There was nothing sudden about the transformation of the peaceful protests into armed “civil conflict.” It was the result of the abandonment of the protestors by the international community in spite of the escalating violence perpetrated by the Assad regime, the solidarity of Syrian soldiers with ordinary people, and the predictable influx of armed extremists to a desperate situation.

 The armed counterparts of the coordinating committees, dispersed all over Syria, forced the regime’s storm troops to spread themselves thin, scattering and exhausting them as they shuttled suddenly from Dar’a in the south to the Turkish border in the north and then back south again. This is why we heard that troops invaded, occupied, and then retreated from Dar’a at least twenty times during less than fifteen months.



 “Why do you bother to criticize, oppose, and protest, when you know we are invincible, with a will of steel that crushes anything and anyone that stands in its way? Find something better to do than dabbling in hopeless politics and opposition.”

 The revolution has destroyed this omnipotent image both within the regime and outside of it. That is why Assad had to call on Hezbollah militias from Lebanon and paramilitary Shi’a organizations from Iraq and Iran to bolster his hold on the country. That is also why his storm troops, Hezbollah, and the other militias struggled so long to take a small, rural town such as Kusair, in spite of their far superior numbers and firepower.

 In Syria the regime, state, army, and party on one side, and the popular uprising on the other, are the primary combatants. There are no indications of sectarian contest. Syria’s Druzes are not about to attack their Sunni neighbors in Hauran, nor are the Sunni preparing to invade en masse Ismaeli or Christian territories, nor are the Ismaelis readying themselves to violently settle old scores with the Alawi community and so on. Neither did any Syrian community, sect, or ethnicity mobilize itself collectively to fight on the side of the regime or to defend it.



 Syria is not in a condition of generalized civil war. If a historical precedent or analogy is needed, recall Hungary’s armed revolution against the Stalinist regime there in 1956—a revolt crushed by Russian tanks much as Syrian tanks aim to crush today’s. As Hungary’s revolution unfolded, no one said that the country was in the throes of a civil war because Hungarian was killing Hungarian.

 So what is trampled underfoot in Syria right now is the majority and its rights, about which no one seems to speak outside of Syria. Underlying this silence is the assumption that the Sunni majority is just waiting for the right moment to assault the minorities of the country, to persecute and oppress them. But, right now, all Syria, needs rights, protection, concern, and attention.

 This international discourse about protection of Syria’s minorities takes me back to the Europe of the nineteenth century, with its famous gunboat diplomacy. Every European power worth its salt was searching for a minority in our part of the world to adopt and protect: France, the local Roman Catholics and Alawis. Russia, the Greek Orthodox. Britain, the few Anglicans and Protestants along with the Druze minority, and so on.'

Special Report on Use of Chemical Weapons in Damascus Suburbs

 Dr. Majed Abu Ali:

 "The hard thing was not the death, itself; It was the panic in people's eyes. Usually in such cases we ask for evacuation; however, there were hundreds of thousands of civilians in a besieged area; no evacuation was possible.

 What was harder than that is watching a three-month baby girl dying and not being able to help her. In Douma alone, 22 martyrs could've been saved, were the required medical supplies available one month ago."

Fear brings the enemies of Isis together at last

 Patrick Cockburn continues his slanders against the Syrian opposition to Assad. They aren't supposedly going to fight Assad and ISIS, they have been and are right now. Meanwhile Cockburn's option Assad, seems to have finally launched an attack Raqqa, where ISIS are based, hitting the city's water supply. While there are any Syrians left that won't bow to dictators, Assad and ISIS will find it easier to attack them than each other.

 'This coming together of old rivals and enemies in opposition to Isis is happening in Iraq, but not yet in Syria where the US, Europeans, Turks, Saudis and Qataris continue with their old bankrupt policy. This is to get rid of or least weaken President Bashar al-Assad by backing a moderate military opposition that is supposedly going to fight both Mr Assad and Isis. Unfortunately, this group scarcely exists except as a propaganda slogan and a consumer of subsidies from the Gulf. Isis dominates the Syrian opposition and that domination grew greater last week as it captured the towns of Turkmen Bareh and Akhtarin, 30 miles from Aleppo.'

 And how lonely is Assad?

 'The present US policy of leaving Mr Assad (backed by Hezbollah, Iran and Russia) to battle Isis alone poses high risks.'

No Red Lines

 President Obama: "Some communities had to be protected, in case there was a chemical attack, and they didn't have hazmat suits."

 The US after 9/11, not Syria. He didn't mention Syria at all, just talked about "working with our key partners in the region and beyond."

 "We're willing to engage with regional partners, so that we can craft an anti-terrorism strategy." Could be talking about Iran. "Iraq will have a variety of partners."

A Real Syria Policy Starts with Saving Aleppo

 'A strong showing of strategically significant Western support to our Syrian resistance would not only create battlefield gains, it would reinvigorate free Syrians everywhere and spark an expansion in our recruitment of fighters to defeat ISIS and Assad. We do not want to be ruled by brutal Islamists any more than we want to be ruled by a ruthless dictator. Provided with military support, we can succeed in our ongoing fight against both. For us, it is victory or death.'

Why fight ISIS in Iraq, not in Syria?

 'The Syrian opposition has been calling for many months the Friends of Syria Group to arm its brigade to bring down the Assad regime and stop the daily butchering and ethnic cleansing of Syrian civilians in various parts of the country. Fears that sophisticated weapons have reached the hands of extremists have prevented action, while Syrian regime aircraft kept pounding cities and villages outside the control of the regime with all kind of ammunition, and the list is long.'

The Syrian Revolution Is Running Out Of Room

 Western-backed and Western-armed appear to be two entirely different concepts.

 'Despite supporting the rebels, Western powers have refused to arm them in case the weapons fell into jihadist hands. Syrian rebels and regime opponents have not hidden their bitterness at seeing the United States strike IS in Iraq.

 "There is a feeling of anger because for three years Syria has been massacring its people and committing crimes against humanity," Oqaidi said. "The world stood there with arms folded." '

Oliver's Army

 Should President Obama send the National Guard to Ferguson, Missouri, to prevent the racist police force oppressing the black community?

 I bumped into a friend who used to be in the Socialist Workers Party yesterday morning, and we got to talking about Syria. It didn't start well. I asked him if he knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar didn't fund the Islamic State. He didn't. The late Tony Cliff used to start speeches by saying, "Here is the balance of class forces in the situation." How can you presume to pass judgment on any political event, but especially the most significant conflict of our time, when you have no knowledge of what is going on there at all? I don't know that much. I remember seeing Yalla Souriya comment on Twitter once, in a comment aimed at Joshua Landis, that if you hadn't been to Syria in the last six months, you could only see 5 or 10% of the picture.But compared to people like that I'm the font of wisdom.
And how they do presume is to talk about another conflict, and assume that the forces are all the same. In this case Kosovo, "The Albanians appealed to the Americans to help, they started bombing, the Serbs were forced out."



 Now there are a number of things to say here. Firstly, I don't know a lot about Kosovo. If somebody puts a convincing argument about the balance of forces, casualties, and so on, I'm open to change my mind, and form more of an opinion than I do at the moment.But I know that there are still a lot of Serbs in Kosovo, particularly in Mitrovice, that they are not being daily killed by the Albanians, that they are unwilling to integrate with the new state - generally, there are always some exceptions who reach between communities - rather than being in fear of fascist terror from their new overlords. It can be hard to expect Serbs to learn an alien language like Albanian so that they might live in bilingual harmony, but that was what was always expected in reverse in the old Yugoslavia.

 For independence-minded Kosovans the result has been a huge success. They are free, grateful to war criminals like Tony Blair for bringing it about, but not irretrievably beholden to the West because of some Faustian pact to give them the illusion of independence, while Halliburton was given the economic power in perpetuity. I remember one resident of Belgrade writing at the time that the bombing wasn't a joke, but the casualties were very limited, and might be a price worth paying for Kosovo's freedom. When airstrikes were proposed last year, none of the opponents would tell what the size of the death toll would be, just that you don't know what would happen once the bullets start flying.You can see the contradiction here with knowing how things are going to turn out because all imperialist interventions are the same. I would bet that fewer people were killed in Belgrade in 1999 than have been killed by Assad, by a long, long, way. Mentioning such things become moralism when it is about those revolting outside the Western sphere of influence, it would be a righteous condemnation of injustice, if it were Israel, or South Africa, or Ferguson, Missouri.

 Chomsky's distinction between worthy and unworthy victims, "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy," is turned on its head, and doesn't look any prettier when it repeats the stories of the Russian and Iranian states, who Syrians know as their enemy, as they are helping Assad to commit genocide against Syrians. To presume to tell Syrians that they need to be protected from the Americans. That would be like telling the people of Ferguson that they need to be protected from the National Guard. It would be objectively on the side of the racists. Never mind that supporters of the Iraq war used to tell the Left that we were pro-fascist for not going along with Bush and Blair, because that was a very different conflict that was a war of choice for Iraq's oil.



 Should Obama send the National Guard to Ferguson? It should be at least two questions. Is it a good thing, and should it be opposed? I think as a capitalist and imperialist institution, the federal US government is a pretty poor instrument of liberation. So, no, it would generally be an option I'd propose, though I would not being telling people that it was a problem on the same order of magnitude as the local cops, because that would be nonsense.

 Should it be opposed? If there is the possibility that black people can control their own streets, as I heard suggestion on the BBC earlier, then go for it. If there isn't then you can welcome the breathing space the National Guard provide, without thinking that they are there to do anything but create the conditions for the cops to be in control again.

 It would be nice if people looked at Syria with a relevant and nuanced approach. Syria isn't a country run by the Americans. It used to be a Russian client state, it has become so dominated by Iran since the revolution started that it is hard to say whether Assad or the Iranians are in control now. That's one reason the Americans were never going to invade, that there wasn't going to by some magical power by which mission creep converts any intervention into the Iraq war; they don't go fucking with other Great Powers vital interests all the time. They want to make money, and that doesn't happen so much if you have a Cuban Missile Crisis every five minutes. So every time Assad's violence has reached a new level, the Russians have claimed they will get upset by any American response, and the Americans have backed off. Along with all the other pressures, such as that not to get involved in Middle East wars, it forces any "intervention" to a minimum.

 And "intervention" is a conflation that needs constant unpacking. Just as I'd rather see the residents of Ferguson in control of their streets, I'd rather see the Free Syrian Army armed than any American bombing. Doing the first in 2012 would have obviated any need for the latter, and it doesn't help when Westerners proudly proclaim, "I'm against Western intervention," that buries the argument that the Syrian people have a right to the arms they need under a mountain of shit about the evils of America. That arming the FSA was a feasible solution is now becoming a major argument in mainstream American political discourse. Partly because it's a useful partisan tool against or to distinguish from Obama, partly because it is the truth. Phyllis Bennis was telling al-Jazeera (TV station funded by the fairly reactionary monarchy Qatar. They aren't funding ISIS, you doofus. Nor is Saudi Arabia, the corrupt reactionary monarchy that was Osama Bin Laden's enemy. Have you got this straight yet?) that the US government never did anything good, that it wouldn't do any good to send more guns to the region. It is true that there have been fewer genuine resistance movements outside its sphere of influence to support, the way the Soviet Union sent arms to liberation movements in Africa and Central America - without anyone on the left saying we need to stop those imperialist interventions.But here is one, and anti-aircraft weapons would have put an end to the constant bombing of civilians.A war the rebels have been close to winning, where now even sections of the Alawite community are turning against Assad, as a corrupt régime becomes ever more unequal and unstable as the war goes on. There is a rare intersection between the actual need to stop genocide, the US ideology of freedom, and a people already trying to take control of its destiny.



 Phyllis Bennis also claimed that we had no way of stopping weapons going to Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS. That's the reverse of the truth. A proper supply of weapons would give the FSA proper command and control, a stability that would attract those who have wanted a revolution of dignity from the beginning. People claim, as Phyllis Bennis did, that they favoured the early revolution, but it is all different people involved now. That's largely not true, often those claiming to have been in favour in 2011 were just as bemused then as they are now. And it is the same people, just that those fighting against the Assad régime - and you can't eat and drink and reproduce your existence if you can't make it through the day without being tortured or killed - have become more Islamist because there were no secular alternatives, and have parasites like ISIS appear who leech off the revolution without fighting Assad, because there is not the support to actual rebels to resist this. They have been resisting ISIS and Assad the best they can, but it doesn't help when ignorant Westerners pretend they don't even exist.

 When social workers or burglary victims worry about involving the police a similar argument occurs. You don't want to do it, but sometimes there is no choice. One example of this came in 1969 in Northern Ireland. The security forces, at the behest of the sectarian Protestant state, had killed Catholics and provoked rioting. The British government sent troops in , with the excuse of protecting Catholics. Eamonn McCann wrote an editorial for Socialist Worker saying, "The British troops have been presented in the press as restoring “law and order” and welcomed by the Catholic population. Certainly the mass of Catholics, after three days of bitter fighting were relieved to see the RUC and the Specials withdraw, and to this extent were glad to see the British troops. But it should not be thought that the presence of British troops can begin to solve their problems." I think that would be a good way to look at Syria. Now that Syria has been allowed to fester, there is the basis for a backlash of support for the worst kind of imperialist intervention, because the policy of Hands Off Syria has clearly been seen to fail.

 The only way to take this to a better place is to propose a better alternative. Some of those arguing that this could have worked in 2012 say it won't work now, which may be a sign of their opportunism, they just want to blame rather than propose action. Certainly Syria is in a mess inconceivable two years ago. But there is an irreducible minimum of support for more secular outcomes. And the sharpening of divisions with the rise of ISIS has inspired the rebels to greater unity in fighting them and Assad. It is hard now, it may be very hard now without the Americans getting involved in some way. But having been through the myth that they were going to destroy the Middle East and start a war with Russia last year, I'm now more willing to look at what is actually proposed on a case-by-case basis to see whether actions would be good for the Syrian people or not. Better that Syrians have control, but away with the suggestion that the Americans are the force Syrians need to resist in the here and now.

Sunday Morning Live

 'Should we arm the Kurds?'

 Lindsey German on the TV now. "I have sympathy for the Kurds and I'm against ISIS, but this is down to Bush and Blair's invasion. It's about the arming of ISIS that's been going on by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, opening the border."

 George Hargreaves points out he doesn't want bombing, but arming of the Kurds. Makes no difference to Lindsey, every time is the same to her. And, "we have to remember where ISIS come from, from Western intervention in Syria."Somebody (Ayan Rahman?) has the sense to say, "we've got to stop talking about events of ten years ago. People are dying because of ISIS in Iraq today."