The U.S. and its proxies in Europe are moving an enormous amount of weapons into Ukraine. But no one has an idea where those weapons will end up. It is likely that many of those will proliferate outside of the Ukraine and some of those weapons will inevitably hit those who now deliver them.
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This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
At the end of 2021, the global refugee population reached an unprecedented 26.6 million, with 68 percent of refugees coming from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced more than 4.3 million people in Ukraine to flee the country within just several weeks, making the exodus the largest movement of people in Europe since World War II.
Many large nongovernmental organizations are focusing on supporting the millions of refugees who are entering Poland. While the Polish government has been hospitable toward many white Ukrainians, it is holding some refugees of color who are fleeing Ukraine in detention camps. Meanwhile, governments and organizations in Romania and Moldova, both smaller and relatively lower-income countries compared to Poland, are scrambling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees with little outside support.
“It feels like the eye of the storm right now,” said Walker Frahm, chief operations officer of Lifting Hands International, an aid organization helping refugees achieve stability and self-sufficiency. Frahm, who had spent a week and a half in Moldova and Romania in mid-March, told Truthout that about a quarter of the 400,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine who had entered Moldova remain in the country of just 2.6 million. Since the country is unable to provide shelter space to all but a fraction of refugees, Moldovan families have generously volunteered their private homes to accommodate the vast majority of them. Frahm said he had heard reports of discrimination toward refugees from Ukraine who are of Indian, Roma and African descent in the countries, although he said he didn’t witness discrimination firsthand.
Frahm said most people fleeing Ukraine did not understand why the Russian government was bombing them, and saw their stay as short-term. “They don’t consider themselves refugees,” he said. “They say, ‘Yes, I’ve been forced from my home because of war, but we’re going to go back as soon as it settles down.’”
But as Putin’s invasion drags on, grassroots networks are making plans to support people for the long haul.
There is generally an outpouring of international support when crises emerge, with piles of aid accumulating at border crossings. On-the-ground organizations can quickly become overwhelmed unless they have proper places to store items. To solve this problem, an informal, loosely connected grassroots aid network of about a dozen groups is working on establishing supply chains and long-term warehouse aid hubs in Moldova, Romania and Slovakia, and hope to set up hubs at halfway points in places like the Netherlands and Germany.
“We could just hop around from crisis to crisis, chasing the news cycle, but from a human perspective, from an impact perspective, we want to make sure that we don’t disappear as soon as the news goes away,” Frahms explained. “We want to be able to continue meeting needs as long as they’re there.”
Before collecting aid, Lifting Hands International conducted an on-the-ground needs assessment to ensure refugees are receiving items that they actually want and need. Then, they advertised the needs through social media and an app called JustServe. People can purchase requested items and send them directly to Lifting Hands International’s warehouse in Utah or drop them off to about 60 drop-off points throughout the state — a network that Lifting Hands International had established while supporting Afghan, Syrian, and other refugees for years. Lifting Hands International volunteers pick up aid from the drop-off points, which are mostly volunteers’ homes, and bring it to the warehouse.
Once upon a time, we thought it might be hard to fill our humanitarian aid warehouse in Utah. Now we're afraid it isn't big enough!
THANK YOU to our Utah program staff, volunteers, drop-off locations representatives, donors, and partner orgs for keeping this warehouse full!
pic.twitter.com/62ZwMmLUC7
— Lifting Hands NGO (@LiftingHandsINT) March 17, 2022
Another group called Distribute Aid — a Swedish nonprofit that has specialized in providing logistical support for humanitarian relief in the U.K., France, Lebanon, Greece, the U.S., and elsewhere — coordinates shipments for grassroots organizations, including Lifting Hands International. “We have the time and the resources to actually look at what the import and export requirements are, to make sure that people are ready to get the cheapest shipping possible for them,” Nicole Tingle, Distribute Aid’s regional director for Europe, told Truthout. “And then they can focus on running their collections, doing fundraisers, making sure that they’re building out their programs and projects to the best of their abilities.”
Lifting Hands International and Distribute Aid will be sending their first joint aid shipment container with hygiene supplies and other nonfood items from Utah to an aid hub that had been a decommissioned event center in Iași, Romania. “Our aid that is going there will support some longer-term shelters where the initial support from community members is starting to peter out and they’re anticipating there will be many unmet needs as the war drags on,” Frahm said. They’ll be sending a container to Moldova soon, where the situation is increasingly desperate.
To minimize emissions, maximize efficiency and cut shipping delivery times, Distribute Aid is also developing a supply chain visibility tool that will take stock of what items grassroots groups have and need. “With our needs assessment surveys, we ask each group what they have too much of,” said Taylor Fairbank, Distribute Aid’s operations director, “and instead of every group having to contact every other group to figure it out, they just have to fill out our one survey, and then we can do the matching on the back end and suggest trades to them.”
But they are also connecting disparate groups with each other directly. “We’ve put a lot of groups that are in countries bordering Ukraine in contact with each other in WhatsApp group chats,” said Tingle.
Some newly formed grassroots groups are stepping up to meet the unique needs of marginalized people fleeing Ukraine.
Black Women for Black Lives is providing direct financial support to Black people fleeing Ukraine in the face of so-called “Ukrainians First” policies, whereby members of the African diaspora who were living in Ukraine when the war started are now being held hostage in the war-torn country while white Ukrainians are allowed to flee. “In just 5 short weeks, we’ve been able to help evacuate people out of Ukraine, help them pay for food when their city was under siege and even help them afford accommodation, transportation and medical aid,” the organization wrote on its fundraiser page. After raising more than £326,000 across several platforms and helping more than 2,000 people, BW4BL stopped raising funds on April 5.
Outright International, a global LGBTQ+ human rights organization headquartered in New York City, is accepting donations for local, vetted organizations that are helping LGBTQ+ people who are fleeing Ukraine to find safe shelter.
And while the refugee solidarity movement has been delighted to see a flood of solidarity for refugees fleeing Ukraine, they note that millions of Black and Brown refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere are still being detained in horrendous conditions across the world. A harrowing new investigative report by ProPublica, for example, revealed that U.S. shelters holding Afghan child refugees have been ill-equipped to provide them with culturally appropriate care. Some children are attempting to commit suicide, starting fights and running away, according to the report.
“These conditions are a choice that has been made again and again by political actors for their own gain — whether that be in attempting to unite voters against a common ‘enemy’ or using displaced people as bargaining chips in political disputes,” Tingle said.
In an op-ed for Al Jazeera, South Sudanese refugee, activist and writer Nhial Deng, wrote that he was pleased to see the world unite to support Ukrainians, but questioned where these world leaders, corporations and universities were when armed invaders attacked and burned his village 11 years ago. “Where were the people of goodwill offering for me to stay with them instead of being stuck in a refugee camp for a decade?” he wrote. “People can — when they want — respond to refugees at their countries’ borders with compassion and love, rather than suspicion, fear and indifference.”
Distribute Aid, Lifting Hands International, and others in the refugee solidarity movement hope that newly galvanized activists will make connections between the plights of Ukrainians and others who are forced to flee their homes.
While compassionate disaster relief efforts can make refugees’ lives easier, on their own, they ultimately won’t prevent the next mass forced displacement.
“People are fleeing climate change driven by for-profit companies, or wars driven by interests of imperialist governments,” said Fairbank. “The West is especially complicit in outsourcing the violence that is driving its economic growth on to poor Black and Brown countries and then punishing those who dare flee to safety. So not only do we have to create a welcoming atmosphere to those who make it to our borders, but we have to support grassroots movements in our own countries and around the world that are fighting back against politicians and companies who capitalize off these harmful conditions.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The leaders of a bevy of NATO-aligned countries have appeared in a collage that reads “Stand up for Ukraine.” It comes across blatantly as propaganda cooked by a corporate PR firm as part of the information war being waged against Russia.
My question to these upstanding, er … these people standing up, is: When have you stood up for, in no particular order:
This is, of course, an inexhaustive list. What follows is an analysis of what NATO types standing up for signifies for the first six listed countries above, along with two unlisted countries.
Palestine
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 10,165 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, and an additional 82 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians. This disregard for the life of the non-Jew is ingrained in many Talmudic Jews, as Holocaust survivor and chemistry professor Israel Shahak detailed in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years. If anyone needs convincing of this Jewish discrimination and racism towards non-Jews, then peruse the statistics at the B’Tselem website on home demolitions, who can and cannot use roads in the West Bank, the water crisis, and settler crimes against Palestinians.
On 10 April, Ghadeer Sabatin, a 45-yr-old unarmed Palestinian widow and mother of six, was shot by Israeli soldiers near Bethlehem and left to bleed out and die. Will any of the politicians standing up for Ukraine also stand up for Palestine? Image Source
Many of these Stand up for Ukraine types have been been glued to their seats during the slow-motion genocide by Zionist Jews against Palestinians.
Are Palestinians a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Syria
These Stand up for Ukraine types in their spiffy business attire have also been seated while backing Islamist terrorists in Syria. Americans later invaded and still occupy the northeastern corner of Syria, stealing the oil and wheat crops.
The UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet reported that more than 350,000 people have been killed in 10 years of warring in Syria, adding that this figure was an undercount.
Are Syrians a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Libya
In February 2020, Yacoub El Hillo, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Libya, called the impact of the NATO-led war on civilians “incalculable.”
Are Libyans a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Iraq
I have a vivid memory of a crowd of students gathered around a TV screen in the University of Victoria to cheer on the start of Shock and Awe in Iraq. The US-led war on Iraq was based on the pretext that Iraq had weapons-of-mass-destruction although the head UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had found Iraq to be “fundamentally disarmed.”
Chemistry professor professor Gideon Polya was critical of how the western monopoly media “resolutely ignore the crucial epidemiological concept of non-violent avoidable deaths (excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) associated with war-imposed deprivation.” Polya cites 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.2 million).
Abdul Haq al-Ani, PhD in international law, and Tarik al-Ani, a researcher of Arab/Islamic issues, wrote a legal tour de force, Genocide in Iraq: The Case against the UN Security Council and Member States, that makes the case for myriad US war crimes that amount to a genocide.
Nonetheless, US troops are still stationed in Iraq despite being told to leave by the Iraqi government.
Are Iraqis a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Afghanistan
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. The institute’s key findings are:
- As of April 2021, more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war.
- The United States military in 2017 relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.
- The CIA has armed and funded Afghan militia groups who have been implicated in grave human rights abuses and killings of civilians.
- Afghan land is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, which kills and injures tens of thousands of Afghans, especially children, as they travel and go about their daily chores.
- The war has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, and environmental degradation on Afghans’ health.
Are Afghans a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Yemen
In November 2021, the UN Development Programme published “Assessing the Impact of War in Yemen: Pathways for Recovery” (available here) in which it was estimated that by the end of 2021, there would be 377,000 deaths in Yemen. Tragically, “In 2021, a Yemeni child under the age of five dies every nine minutes because of the conflict.” (p 12)
The Yemeni economy is being destroyed and has forced 15.6 million people into extreme immiseration along with 8.6 million people being malnourished. Worse is predicted to come: “If war in Yemen continues through 2030, we estimate that 1.3 million people will die as a result…” (p 12)
Countries such as Canada, the US, UK, France, Spain, South Africa, China, India, and Turkey that supply arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE are complicit in the war on the Yemeni people.
Are Yemenis a lesser people than Ukrainians?
One could continue on through the above list of countries “invaded” and arrive at the same conclusions. The predominantly white faces of western heads-of-government in their suits and ties or matching jackets and skirts did not stand up for the brown-skinned people killed in the countries adumbrated. Most of these countries were, in fact, directly attacked by NATO countries or by countries that were supported by NATO. What does that imply for the Standing up for Ukraine bunch?
The Donbass Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk
And lastly, most telling, is just how many of these people stood up for Donbass when it was being shelled by Ukraine?
If France and Germany, guarantors for the Minsk Agreements that Ukraine signed, had not only guaranteed but also enforced Ukraine’s compliance, then, very arguably, no Russian recognition of the independence of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk would have been forthcoming and there would have been no Russian military response. But France and Germany did not stand up for their roles as guarantors of the Minsk Agreements.
Consequently, for all these politicians to contradict their previous insouciance and suddenly get off their posteriors and pose as virtuous anti-war types standing up for Ukraine is nigh impossible to swallow. Given that the historical evidence belies the integrity of this Stand up for Ukraine bunch, they ought better to have striven for some consistency and remained seated.
The post What Does Standing up for Ukraine Signify When Sitting on One’s Derriere for Violence against Others? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Investigation reveals former rebel-held areas are being levelled under the guise of mine clearance to make way for high-end developments – leaving refugees nothing to return to
The Syrian regime is bulldozing former rebel-held neighbourhoods in Damascus under the guise of mine clearance to make space for a “new Syria” of upmarket new building developments and pristine gardens.
An investigation by the Guardian, Lighthouse Reports, Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (Siraj) and Rozana Radio has analysed the almost wholesale demolition of Qaboun, a Damascus suburb, one of many neighbourhoods in the capital that is being cleared and redeveloped beyond recognition after former residents have either been displaced by fighting or become refugees abroad.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Former senior advisor the Secretary of Defense Col. Doug Macgregor joins Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate for a candid, live discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war and his time in the Trump administration when an Afghan withdrawal was sabotaged and conflict with Iran and Syria continued.
The post Former Top Pentagon Advisor Col. Doug Macgregor On Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from International Women’s Day in Istanbul to ‘kill the bill’ protests in Cambridge
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The Russian military invasion of Ukraine has devastated civilian centers such as schools and hospitals. Over 2.2. million people have fled the country, resulting in a dangerous refugee crisis in Europe as Russia refuses to guarantee the “humanitarian corridors” promised for civilians to safely evacuate. “What we’re talking about is repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, which is illegal under international law,” says Bel Trew, independent correspondent for The Independent, who has been reporting on civilians being targeted in other Ukrainian cities.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh. Hi, Nermeen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Hi Amy, and welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its third week with Russia continuing to attack civilian areas. Earlier today the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey but failed to make progress towards a ceasefire. The talks came a day after Ukraine accused Russia of bombing a maternity hospital and a children’s hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol. Three people including a child reportedly died in the strike; 17 were injured. At the talks in Turkey, the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov admitted Russia had shelled the hospital but claimed the building was being used as a base for Ukrainian fighters. The Red Cross described the situation in Mariupol as apocalyptic with many residents cuts off from food, water, power or heat for over a week. The mayor there says 1,200 civilians have been killed over the past 10 days but that figure has not been verified. During the talks in Turkey, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Russia to allow the evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol through a humanitarian corridor.
DMYTRO KULEBA: The most tragic situation is currently now in the city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. The city is being bombarded from the air. It’s being hit by artillery fire. And I came here with a humanitarian purpose, to walk out from the meeting with the decision to arrange a humanitarian corridor in and from Mariupol, from Mariupol, for civilians who want to flee this area of fear and struggle and humanitarian corridor to bring in Mariupol humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, Minister Lavrov was not in a position to commit himself to it, but he will correspond with respective authorities on this issue.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. We begin today’s show with Bel Trew. She is an international correspondent for The Independent usually based in Beirut. She has been covering the war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago. She is joining us now from Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bel. If you can start off by describing the situation where you are and then we’ll talk about Mariupol and what you understand is taking place there.
BEL TREW: I’m at the moment in Vinnytsia, which is a central city. It’s key for humanitarian aid delivery, but also it’s on the refugee trail because it connects the south of Ukraine, the east of Ukraine, the north of Ukraine to the west. So it’s a very, very crucial city. At the same time however it’s also under bombardment. I’ve just come back from the town’s main airport, Vinnytsia International Airport, that was hit apparently by eight different missiles. It’s totally destroyed. There is also a military base nearby that was destroyed as well. So we’re getting air raid sirens here every hour, pretty much, as well as the fact that this key route for humanitarian aid and refugees.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So far as you know, have civilian areas been targeted there and elsewhere where you have reported from? Can you talk about the attacks on civilian areas?
BEL TREW: In Vinnytsia, as i said, the International Airport, which is a civilian airport, was pretty badly damaged, but no one was there because of course most people are taking shelter in their basements at the moment. I have been basically going along most of western Ukraine, so even though the frontline is perhaps quite far away, of course the skies are still a problem for people here, which is why every Ukrainian I have met has said, “Please tell the West, ‘close the skies, create a no-fly zone.’” I was just in a town called Zhytomyr which is just next to Kyiv. It’s the key city before the west of Ukraine. There, we went around a school that had been damaged, a hospital that had been damaged and at least 10 residential homes. So even though that is not on the frontline, Russian troops are about 50 miles down the road, it’s still being bombarded from the sky. This is the key point that Ukrainians keep telling me, is that they cannot win this war if they have to worry about air strikes, missile strikes, shelling, if they don’t have that support from the sky.
AMY GOODMAN: Bel, I want to go to one of your video reports where you visited a school complex that had just been heavily damaged by a Russian missile.
BEL TREW: This is the main school for Zhytomyr. It caters to all ages. The ground floor is preschool but it’s also a secondary school. As you can see it was utterly devastated in a missile strike just yesterday. It’s unclear exactly what the target was, but this is very much a school.
AMY GOODMAN: That was our guest Bel Trew of The Independent. She also spoke to a 61-year-old caretaker of the school named Oleh.
OLEH: [translated] I have been working at this school for almost 15 years as a laborer. We were renovating this with our own hands, every year making it better and better so that the children could focus on learning. Now as we come here i’m speechless. I can’t say anything.
AMY GOODMAN: Bel Trew, take that larger and what he is describing.
BEL TREW: What we are talking about is repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure which is illegal under international law. It’s not clear what the target was of that strike. This is very much a school. Thankfully there were no children in it because of the war. But in that same town, as I described, a maternity unit was also destroyed, and several residential homes. Everyone I spoke to said, “Why is this happening to us? This is a hospital. This is a school. These are homes.” At least four people were killed. And actually in the hospital that I went to, they had to evacuate the pregnant women and a newborn baby to the basement just seconds before the missile struck. One woman actually gave birth in the middle of that strike because of the stress that she was under. They’re now having to build hospitals underground in the basements fearing further assault from the sky. So the question that’s on everyone’s lips here is, “Why are they targeting civilian infrastructure? Why are they targeting humanitarian corridors?” We’ve seen the horrendous footage from Irpin just outside of Kiev. But also of course as we have been talking earlier, Mariupol, the people here, they feel like it’s vindictive and deliberate.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Bel, from where you have been reporting, the areas you have traveled to, have you in addition of course to hearing about these aerial attacks, have you also, yourself, seen Russian troops or tanks on the streets?
BEL TREW: For me I haven’t actually seen the Russian troops yet because if you are that close to them then you are pretty much in no man’s land on the frontline. But certainly in the outskirts of Kyiv and other places in the east of the country they are seeing Russian troops. And of course on the coast, in areas like Odesa, they have got a large buildup of Russian ships as well because they are fearing a massive attack from the sea. So in terms of where Russian troop movement is, it’s on the ground, it’s coming from the sky, and also coming from the sea.
AMY GOODMAN: You have been trying to get into Mariupol. You haven’t been able to. You have been speaking with people like the Ukrainian Red Cross. Talk about what you understand is happening, and people right now—it was the focus of the talks in Turkey between the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers—Ukraine was hoping for some kind of ceasefire, safe passage for the people of Mariupol. Right before the broadcast it was bombed again.
BEL TREW: Yeah. When I spoke to the director general of the Ukrainian Red Cross—his teams by the way are responsible for opening those humanitarian corridors. They are the convoys that are on the ground, that are going in to rescue people. He told me they tried four consecutive days in a row to get people out of Mariupol, and every single time their convoy was hit by shelling. He said to me they couldn’t get even a single truck of food into Mariupol. They couldn’t get medical supplies. That’s why the attack on the hospital is so devastating because medical supplies are so low already. He actually told me that he estimates that people there have probably only got between three and five days left of food. We are hearing reports about people melting snow for water, and they don’t have any heating. And I will tell you, it is minus temperatures here. It’s extremely cold. It’s snowing. I cannot even imagine what it’s like to be under heavy shelling, to not have food, to not have any water, to not have any medical supplies, to not be able to get out and to be dealing with this freezing temperature.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Bel, as you know the U.S and the U.K. yesterday expressed concerns that Russia may now deploy unconventional and even chemical weapons. You reported from Syria, on Syria, for over a decade and people have drawn comparisons between Russian military strategy in Ukraine now and what it was in Syria. If you could respond to the concerns being expressed? Also your own experience reporting from Syria and now from Ukraine.
BEL TREW: This is the biggest fear for people here in Ukraine, is we’ve seen what Russia is capable of in Syria. Certainly I’ve been reporting on that crisis, as you said, for over a decade. Specifically since Russia entered the conflict in 2015, human rights organizations have documented the widespread use of banned weapons. I’m talking about chemical weapons, incendiary weapons, cluster munitions, barrel bombs, either directly by Russian forces or Syrian regime forces supported by the Russians. They have literally thrown everything at Syrian civilians. There is no concept of international law in Syria. So the fear that I have is I have seen what they are capable of doing in Syria. Can that happen in Ukraine? While the situation here is desperate, obviously international law has been thrown out the window, and Geneva Conventions have been trampled upon, I don’t think the worst has happened yet. That is my really big fear, is if Russia feels it is been put into a corner, it has been isolated to the world, I have seen what they have done in Syria. I’m very concerned for civilians here in Ukraine.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have any sense of the casualties? Russian casualties, the Ukrainians are saying they have killed 12,000 Russian soldiers. Russia saying there is nothing like that number. I think they have thrown out a number of 500. We don’t know how many Ukrainian military deaths there are, even Ukrainian civilian deaths. Do you have a sense of this?
BEL TREW: This is a big question, because of course we are seeing very many different narratives. As you aid, the Ukrainians are talking of over 10,000 Russian soldiers killed. The Russians are saying that’s not true at all. And frankly, we can’t verify it. We can’t get to those areas and count bodies. The United Nations I believe is saying over 1,300 casualties. That includes deaths and injuries they’ve documented. But they also have said to me, the officials have told me that’s a woefully low estimate. At the moment there’s whole areas we haven’t been able to access. The mayor of Mariupol has said that thousands of people within his own city have been killed in the last few days. No one can get there to even be able to verify that, and we have seen images coming out of that city of mass graves, of bodies just being put into trenches, basically. So I’m afraid that the death toll is actually much higher than we could ever have imagined, and we may not know that for weeks or even months to come.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to go to another of your reports for The Independent, this near the Ukrainian border with Poland.
BEL TREW: I’m about 40 to 50 kilometers away from the border, and this is the start of the line of cars to the border with Poland where people are beginning to flee. As you can see behind me, people have left their cars and are literally doing it on foot, 40 to 50 kilometers they have got to walk. It’s a 7- to 10-hour walk. People are doing this with their luggage, they’re doing it with their children, and they’re doing it with their pets.
PERSON: It’s too far for me, because the 40 kilometers, we have to go in by walk.
BEL TREW: Fifty.
PERSON: Yeah, 50 kilometers.
BEL TREW: And you’re going to have to walk 50 kilometers?
PERSON: Yeah.
PERSON: Like I said before, I feel shame. Exhausted, because it’s a long travel, and it’s not over, because for us, 14 buses.
PERSON: Fourteen buses, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a report of Bel Trew. Bel, if you can describe finally the Ukraine side of the border. We’re going to talk to the Norwegian Refugee Council on the Polish side of the border. Also, how are you personally staying safe? Journalist after journalist has been wounded, has been shot.
BEL TREW: Absolutely. Just to talk about the refugees on the Ukrainian side of the border, the scenes have been utterly devastating. I’ve seen families split up because they’ve got family members that are in areas that are under siege or now even occupied by Russian forces. I’ve seen mothers with their children but without their husbands or the fathers, because they’ve had to stay behind because of general mobilization, they’re of fighting age. I’ve seen children traveling alone. I met a 17-year-old boy whose mother and sister are now in occupied Kherson, his father is stuck in Odesa, because he has been signed up, and he himself is traveling on his own. On top of that, as I said in the report before, people were walking 10, 12 hours in the freezing temperatures to get to the border, and sometimes they were being turned back. We had people desperate to get on trains, people driving for days in cars across the country. It has been utterly extraordinary. This is an extraordinary refugee crisis as well.
To answer your second question talking about keeping safe, we have seen horrendous footage, for example of the British Sky News team who came under ambush. We’ve also heard about journalists down south near the coast who have come under fire as well. And as you’ve seen, humanitarian corridors are being hit by mortars which journalists have been present as they’ve been covering it. So really it feels like the international rulebook has been thrown out the window and anything is possible. So as a journalist, you’ve just got to take every security precaution you can, even though it’s a pretty difficult situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you wearing a bulletproof vest right now?
BEL TREW: Yes, I am, and the reason I’m actually wearing this is not necessarily because Vinnytsia, the city behind me, is dangerous, but it’s just because I have been at an airport which has been hit by multiple incoming fire, rockets or missiles, and there was an air raid siren at the time. So we just scrambled to put on our vests just in case, because that airport has been hit at least eight times, and standing there, I didn’t want to be hit again. But certainly Vinnytsia behind me is among the more safer places. It’s just that I literally just came from the airport that had been bombed relatively recently.
AMY GOODMAN: Bel Trew, we want to thank you for being with us, international correspondent for The Independent, usually based in Beirut, has been covering the war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began last month, joining us from Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Please stay safe.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When former U.S. President George W. Bush released a statement on Ukraine — “condemning Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine,” and calling on the American people to “stand in solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as they seek freedom and the right to choose their own future” — I thought to myself, Not now, man. You’re hurting more than you’re helping. And that’s because, as very few Americans will need reminding, the Bush administration took advantage of the public’s emotional vulnerability after the 9/11 militia attacks and preexisting racial dynamics to successfully fabricate the bogeyman of “weapons of mass destruction” and lead the United States to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of fighting terror.
As Russia is bombing Ukraine under the purported banner of “de-nazification,” so too is the U.S. still dropping bombs in the name of combating “terror.” According to the monitoring group Airwars, the United States Coalition in Iraq and Syria is responsible for at least one civilian death in Syria, AFRICOM declared a strike in Somalia, and the U.S. is alleged to have made a strike in Yemen — all this year. To underscore the devastation these airstrikes can have on local communities, The New York Times recently published a detailed report investigating this and how supposed Pentagon accountability measures are not actually functioning.
I think of statements like Bush’s as sort of “moral lemons” — stances that might look good at first glance, but actually don’t take you anywhere if you buy them. The U.S.’s “moral lemons” are actually a key part of the Russian disinformation strategy. Platforms like RT, Ruptly, Soapbox, Redfish, Breakthrough News, and more take advantage of the lack of accountability around U.S. war crimes to pump out social-media-friendly content on the subject alongside Kremlin disinformation.
Such disinformation includes claims that, for example, Syrian first responders are actually terrorists, or that NATO is entirely to blame for the invasion of Ukraine, or that distort legitimate concerns about the far right in Ukraine into sweeping claims aimed at justifying the military invasion. It’s remarkably successful, including with many people who are vocally against the “war on terror” and other U.S. wars and interventions — an issue area that is resource-scarce, shame and guilt-driven, and prone to burning people out. But it cannot be emphasized enough: The U.S.’s own imperialist hypocrisy is in a symbiotic relationship with Russian imperialist propaganda. They feed off each other as a means to stir up their own nationalism.
But left-oriented commentators are not the only ones who struggle to talk about war. Many more people will struggle to talk about war in a way that doesn’t reflect their own racial biases. For example, CBS News Foreign Correspondent Charlie D’Agata was swiftly condemned and later apologized for saying: “ [Ukraine] is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully too — city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.”
Nick Bilton at Vanity Fair said in a now-deleted tweet: “This is arguably the first war we’ve seen (actually seen in real-time) take place in the age of social media,” seemingly forgetting how the Syrian struggle against authoritarianism was so well-documented online, it directly led to dramatic growth in open-source intelligence investigation as a field.
And as Dalia Hatuqa pointed out on Twitter in response to a tweet by the AP regarding Ukraine and Gaza, biases go down to the prepositional level. “Notice the use of ‘in’ and ‘on’ here,” she says, illustrating how framing Israeli airstrikes as happening “in” Gaza as opposed to “on” Gaza makes it harder for the reader to suss out power dynamics underlying the occupation.
Indeed, most people in the U.S. have no idea how to talk about war. And in a country that pours investments into producing sophisticated drone weapons, developing and exporting policing methods, and recruiting young people into the military — not to mention killing millions of people through our military operations — conversations about war these days are relatively few and far between, except in moments like this one, when the issue tops international headlines.
Still, with the rise in popularity of the phrase “end endless wars,” it seems that most people in the United States say they don’t like war: An AP poll finds that 66 percent of Americans don’t believe the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting, for example, while a majority also don’t want the U.S. to take a major role in Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Despite the fact that war, weapons, and security are a foundational part of our culture and a primary financial priority (half of U.S. income taxes go directly to the Pentagon, where we collectively outspend the world on defense), people in the U.S. are currently unenthusiastic about war. So why can’t most of us talk about this central element of our society in useful terms?
To put it simply: Not liking war is not the same as being antiwar. Where war involves a style of conflict engagement that is rooted in domination, subjugation and armament, being antiwar involves a style of conflict engagement that is rooted in cooperation, collaboration and disarmament. This means many things, on the practical and spiritual level. For example, there are literal campaigns for nonproliferation and weapons disarmament. There is also the ability of disarming someone emotionally in order to de-escalate conflict.
But to help you imagine what antiwar work looks like on a societal level: The 2020 summer protests calling to defund and abolish police were under the politics of abolition, which itself is also antiwar, as abolition seeks to change the way we understand and engage in conflict, security and safety. Also consider the level of civil mobilization we witnessed in the lead-up to Biden’s inauguration: Almost every sector of society made a statement backing the peaceful transfer of power. The idea that an election could be stolen was so widely repugnant, it forced even “nonpolitical” organizations to take a stance.
Today, the level of civil noncompliance with the Russian state in support of Ukrainian sovereignty is astounding: In sports, banking, media, in meeting rooms and on the streets, people are speaking up and refusing to go along with “business as usual.” I cheer loudly for noncompliance against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian state in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and not without emotion: Russian bombing raids decimated Ghouta, Douma, Aleppo and many other cities in Syria.
And so, because I detest war, I have to push for the same treatment to be applied to all militarized offenses, from Yemen to Occupied Palestine to Syria to Myanmar and beyond. Call for a ceasefire and disarmament. Amplify strategic messaging on how to desert the army. Freeze assets of the wealthiest state backers. Pressure companies to drop contracts. And so on. This would mean noncompliance with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, the Assad regime and the Myanmar state, to name a few states, until disarmament.
This would, of course, mean noncompliance with the United States. And this brings us back to the heart of the issue of why it’s difficult to talk about war in this country. One point that people who are rightly skeptical of the United States struggle with goes something like this: Yes, Russian imperialism is bad, but I am in the United States and I am only responsible for the United States. Everything that is happening is all very sad, but we have to focus on resisting our own state’s aggression, since it’s being done in our name and is our primary responsibility.
Questions of the moral responsibility that U.S. citizens bear in regards to war, and their duty to act and in what ways, have been debated for many decades. But my instinct is that contemporary manifestations of this sentiment are influenced in no small part by the protests leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and protests continuing after the fact. Notably, on February 15, 2003, over 800 cities worldwide mobilized against the U.S. war on Iraq. It did not stop the United States. One glaring difference between this effort to stop war and other case studies is the degree to which we see the usual “neutral” or “nonpolitical” power players take a stance. I don’t believe we saw Coca-Cola cutting contracts with the U.S. military, or sports teams refusing to play the U.S. on the world stage — and it’s worth asking why. In a way, people are saying: We tried noncompliance with war before and it wasn’t enough to stop one of the most hellish campaigns wrought in our name.
While I can understand why any person might conclude “People in the U.S. only have to worry about the imperialism done in our names,” I do not advise anyone to stay there ideologically, as it’s a position rooted often in fear and is ultimately isolationist. Consider for example, that within our own country are people who have fled wars started by other imperial states — should we tell them to check their political realities at the border? Consider also that states themselves collaborate on policing, surveillance and military campaigns. Consider that wealth and capital also operate transnationally. And consider that people from war zones and the so-called “Global South” have been writing explicitly to U.S. left commentators criticizing our navel-gazing, or as Volodymr Artiukh called it in his recent letter, “U.S.-splaining.”
So, what should a U.S. antiwar left do today? Take advantage of this moment to educate on Putinism and Russian state propaganda. Acknowledge how the role of NATO is fitting into the conversation today, dispel myths, and offer resources to help more people learn about what it is. Promote the idea of Russians leaving or deserting the army while in battle, and amplify cases of Russian dissent. Connect with former Soviet Union organizations who share the same principles against war and work together on narrative strategy. Educate about the racial inequities of war — of how racial hierarchies play out at borders, of how Russia’s devastating years’ long military campaign in Syria was normalized. Update your geopolitical map: Russia is still bombing Syria, also has a military presence in Libya, backs Ethiopia in its war on Tigray and is the leading arms supplier to the Modi regime.
And at the same time, we must pour more resources into antiwar work, because without accountability, reparations and reconciliation for U.S. war crimes, it will continue to be challenging for us to talk about war. I’m particularly inspired by the youth-led energy of Dissenters, which is “building local teams of young people across the country to force our elected officials and institutions to divest from war and militarism” and working collaboratively to create new antiwar ecosystems. In addition to materially supporting groups like these, let’s also agitate at our workplaces to make it easier for workers to donate our time to antiwar work and thereby build more vibrant antiwar cultures.
Above Photo: Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova speaks during a news conference at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, Feb. 26, 2022. (Jose Luis Magana / AP). A MintPress News Analysis Found That In A Single Week Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, And MSNBC Ran Almost 1,300 […]
The post It’s Different, They’re White: Media Ignore Conflicts Around The World To Focus On Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
There are “two species” of refugee in Europe, philosopher Slavoj Žižek has warned. He was talking about a tweet – now deleted – from the government of his home country, Slovenia. The tweet attempted to draw a line between those fleeing the war in Ukraine from those who were fleeing wars in other parts of the world.
The tweet claimed:
The refugees from Ukraine are coming from an environment which is in its cultural, religious, and historical sense something totally different from the environment out of which refugees from Afghanistan are coming.
Describing this bizarre, racist position, Žižek wrote:
After an outcry, the tweet was quickly deleted, but the obscene truth was out: Europe must defend itself from non-Europe.
The evidence suggests this problem extends much wider, and goes much deeper, than just individual governments.
Slovenia’s was just one – very open – example of a wider problem. Ukrainian refugees fleeing the criminal Russian invasion deserve our solidarity. So do Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, and Palestinians. The only fundamental difference between them is their place in a made-up racial hierarchy. And that is deplorable.
As one Twitter user pointed out on 3 March, it’s possible to have solidarity with more than one group of people at the same time:
I think whilst the appalling situation with Ukraine continues, as we see the unveiling of racism and bias rearing their heads as the UK (particularly) focuses on the white 'civilised' victims of war, that those refugees who remain unsupported STILL NEED SUPPORTING.
— Knight of the Mace Daddies
(@HoydenSpark) March 3, 2022
Another was one of many sharing compilations of racist takes in the mainstream media:
People in #Ukraine are dying, have lost their homes, possessions & are fleeing as refugees.
Human tragedy in Europe is breaking my heart. Other thing breaking my heart is racism. White folks are killing white folks yet finding it hard not to be racist towards people of colour. pic.twitter.com/ZX0piJwCCU
— ADNAN (@Citizen_Adnan) March 4, 2022
In most cases these involved a level of surprise that war had come to “relatively civilised” country, not a place like Iraq or North Africa. Places we can only assume are ‘uncivilised’.
Little connection was made in these commentaries as to exactly why somewhere like Iraq, for example, has experienced years of war and violence. Did war magically appear in the Middle East? Or could it be connected to the US-led invasion in 2003? Or the centuries of colonialism beforehand?
There seems to be no space to look at this vital context in the mainstream commentary on Ukraine.
Žižek wasn’t the only scholar pointing out this contradiction. Professor of Middle East Studies Ziad Majed said the “magnificent solidarity and humanism” shown toward Ukrainians was vastly different to the “dehumanization of refugees from the Middle East”.
When you hear certain comments talking about ‘people like us’ it suggests that those who come from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa are not.
The Arab and Middle East Journalist’s Association (AMEJA) also condemned the double standard. It listed many examples, including those in the viral video above:
AMEJA condemns and categorically rejects orientalist [racist against Asian people] and racist implications that any population or country is ‘uncivilized’ or bears economic factors that make it worthy of conflict.
AMEJA said these kinds of comment spoke to a deeper problem in Western media:
This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.
The outpourings of concern for refugees from Ukraine are justified and welcome. Russia’s illegal invasion, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, is a war crime akin to the US invasion of Iraq and Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939:
Noam Chomsky on the Ukraine war:
‘The most crucial [fact] is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in 1939, to take only two salient examples.’https://t.co/50P4GioOmi
— Media Lens (@medialens) March 3, 2022
For those of us who’ve opposed wars and supported refugees for longer than a week, our job is to point out that putting a flag in your profile picture isn’t enough. Because every refugee is worthy of our support, and all wars of aggression should be opposed.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/President of Ukraine, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0.
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Washington, D.C., February 22, 2022 – Authorities in northern Syria should immediately release Ahmed Sofi, Dara Abdo, and all other members of the press detained for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
On Saturday, February 19, forces affiliated with the Democratic Party Union, the political party in power in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’s regional government, arrested Sofi and Abdo at their homes in Al-Hasaka governorate, according to multiple reports by their employer, ARK TV.
Sofi works as a correspondent for ARK TV’s parent company the ARK Media Foundation, and Abdo works as a correspondent for ARK TV and Radio Rêbaz, according to those reports. ARK TV and Radio Rêbaz both are Iraqi-based broadcasters affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Syria opposition party.
Authorities have not disclosed where the journalists are being held or the reasons for their arrests, according to those reports and KDP-S media director Khalid Ali, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.
Security forces previously detained ARK TV correspondent Sabri Fakhri and Yeketi Media reporter Bawar Malla Ahmad on February 5, as CPJ documented at the time. According to a Facebook post by his father, Ahmed was released on February 9. CPJ was unable to determine Fakhri’s status.
“Authorities in northern Syria must release journalists Ahmed Sofi and Dara Abdo immediately, as well as all other journalists being held for their work,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “The Democratic Party Union must allow the press to work freely, and ensure that political differences do not result in the harassment and detention of journalists and their families.”
Ali told CPJ that masked uniformed men raided Abdo’s home in the city of Al-Hasaka, and another group raided Sofi’s home in the village of Bana Qasr. The security forces arrested Abdo at his home, but Sofi was not at the scene, so they detained his son, which prompted Sofi to surrender himself in exchange for his son’s release, according to those ARK TV reports.
Ali referred to their detentions as “kidnapping,” saying he was not aware of any court order calling for the journalists’ arrests.
When CPJ called Kanaan Barakat, the co-chair of the Jazira region Interior Ministry, which covers Al-Hasaka governorate, he said that ARK TV and Radio Rêbaz both “have no license and can’t work in our region.”
He also accused both outlets of publishing “misinformation” and trying to “stir up discord and temptation.”
When CPJ called Riyad Yousif, co-chair of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’s Information Department, he said that he did not have any information on the journalists’ arrests “because those media outlets and their staff are not registered in our department.”
Ali told CPJ that he believed “authorities want to silence every different and free voice,” and said that the reporters were only trying to cover the realities of life in the region, “which are deteriorating in terms of freedom of speech and media.”
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The government promised to learn from Windrush, but citizens trafficked to Syria by Islamic State have also been abandoned
The government’s proposed new powers to strip people of their citizenship without notice rang alarm bells in communities across Britain. Despite being the first Muslim woman in our country’s history to serve in the cabinet, my family and I could be deprived of our citizenship without being told about it, and cast out of our home country if the Home Office believed this would be conducive to the public good. Two in five people from ethnic minority backgrounds could be at risk.
Successive British governments have torn down the basic belief that all British citizens in this country are and should be equal. The consequences of this government’s unprecedentedly broad use of citizenship-stripping powers have become even more clear to me after hearing directly from the families of British citizens detained in north-east Syria.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Following Russia’s troop build-up along Ukraine’s borders portending imminent invasion, Houthi rebels in Yemen backed by Iran, which is Russia’s most dependable regional ally in the decade-long Syrian conflict, have significantly escalated missile strikes on the oil-rich Gulf States with a nod of approval from the Kremlin in order to take pressure off Russia in the Ukraine stand-off by opening a second front in the veritable Achilles’ heel of the energy-dependent industrialized world.
To buttress the defenses in the Gulf, US F-22 fighter jets arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Saturday, Feb. 12, as part of an American defense response to recent missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeting the country. The Raptors landed at Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, which hosts 2,000 US troops. American soldiers there launched Patriot interceptor missiles and briefly had to take shelter after the missiles exploded in the airspace above the military base last month.
The deployment came after the Houthi rebels launched three attacks targeting Abu Dhabi last month, including one targeting a fuel depot that killed three people and wounded six. The attacks coincided with visits by presidents from South Korea and Israel to the UAE. Though overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis, the missile strikes targeting the Emirates has sparked a major US response. The American military has sent the USS Cole on a mission to Abu Dhabi.
To return the favor of opening a second front in the Gulf and acknowledging Russia’s steadfast strategic alliance with Iran in the region, the Kremlin issued rare condemnation of recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria as “crude violation” of Syria’s sovereignty on Thursday, Feb. 10, that up until now were tacitly tolerated by the Russian forces based in Syria’s Tartus naval base and Khmeimim airbase southeast of Latakia, and also pledged last month that the Russian Air Force would conduct joint air patrols alongside the Syrian Air Force that would pre-empt the likelihood of further Israeli airstrikes in the future.
“Israel’s continuing strikes against targets inside Syria cause deep concern,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “They are a crude violation of Syria’s sovereignty and may trigger a sharp escalation of tensions. Also, such actions pose serious risks to international passenger flights.”
Although Israel claims its air campaign in Syria is meant to target Iran-backed militias, the airstrikes often kill Syrian soldiers. Syrian state media said one soldier was killed and five more were wounded in the latest Israeli attack at Damascus, which occurred Wednesday, Feb. 9.
Russia has held talks with Israel on Syria, and said last month it would begin joint air patrols with Syria. The patrols will include areas near the Golan Heights in southern Syria bordering Israel, a frequent site of the Israeli airstrikes, and Israel is said to be considering discontinuing the strikes altogether or slowing them down significantly.
The Times of Israel noted that this marked a momentous change in policy for Russia: “Following the patrol, Ynet reported that Israeli military officials were holding talks with Russian army officers to calm tensions.”
The report added, “Israeli officials were struggling to understand why Russia, which announced that such joint patrols were expected to be a regular occurrence moving forward, had apparently changed its policy toward Israel.” The report claimed that Israel might limit its air campaign in Syria as a result of Russia’s “mystifying” change in the Syria policy.
Over the years, Israel has not only provided material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of the terrorists and mounted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the decade-long conflict.
In an interview to New York Times in January 2019, Israel’s former Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his recommendations in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched on the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September 2018.
In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purported rationale of the Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.
Nevertheless, Israeli military strategists’ “concerns” aside, it’s worth recalling that a joint American-Israeli program, involving a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes, aimed at taking out the most prominent generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and targeting Iran’s power stations, industrial infrastructure, and missile and nuclear facilities has been going on since early 2020 after the commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in an American airstrike at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.
As the US presidential race heated up in the election year, the pace and sophistication of the subversive attacks in Iran picked up simultaneously. In the summer of 2020, “mysterious explosions” were reported at a missile and explosives storage facility at Parchin military base on June 26, at power stations in the cities of Shiraz and Ahvaz, a “mysterious fire” at Bushehr port on July 15 destroying seven ships, and a massive explosion at the Natanz nuclear site on July 2, 2020 that reportedly set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least two years.
Besides wooing the Zionist lobbies in the run-up to the US presidential election, another purpose of the subversive attacks appeared to be to avenge a string of audacious attacks mounted by the Iran-backed forces against the US strategic interests in the Persian Gulf that brought the US and Iran to the brink of a full-scale war in September 2019.
In addition to planting limpet mines on oil tankers off the coast of UAE in May 2019 and the subsequent downing of the American Global Hawk surveillance drone in the Persian Gulf by Iran, the brazen attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia on September 14, 2019, was the third major attack in the Persian Gulf against the assets of Washington and its regional allies.
That the UAE had the forewarning of the imminent attacks was proved by the fact that weeks before the attacks, it recalled forces from Yemen battling the Houthi rebels and redeployed them to defend the UAE’s territorial borders.
The September 14, 2019, attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility in eastern Saudi Arabia was an apocalypse for the global oil industry because it processed five million barrels crude oil per day, almost half of Saudi Arabia’s total oil production.
The subversive attack sent jitters across the global markets and the oil price surged 15%, the largest spike witnessed in three decades since the First Gulf War after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, though the oil price was eased within weeks after industrialized nations released their strategic oil reserves.
It bears mentioning that alongside deploying several thousand American troops, additional aircraft squadrons and Patriot missile batteries in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the Abqaiq attack, several interventionist hawks in Washington invoked the Carter Doctrine of 1980 as a ground for mounting retaliatory strikes against Iran, which states:
“Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the responsibility for the September 2019 complex attack involving drones and cruise missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Washington dismissed the possibility. Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the complex attack from Iran’s territory.
Nevertheless, puerile pranks like planting limpet mines on oil tankers and downing a $200-million surveillance aircraft can be overlooked but the major provocation of mounting a drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for weeks was nothing short of showing red rag to the bull.
Unless Iran got the green light to go ahead with the attacks from a major military power that equals Washington’s firepower, such confrontation would have amounted to a suicidal approach.
Considering such a co-ordinated escalation in the Gulf by Iran and Russia, it seems a forgone conclusion that if the Kremlin decided to invade Ukraine, Iran, too, would mobilize its forces in the critically important volatile region to disrupt the global oil supply and put pressure on the energy-dependent industrialized powers to carefully consider their retaliatory measures against the Russia-Iran military alliance.
In fact, this was the precise message conveyed to Washington’s military strategists by the last month’s audacious Houthi attacks on targets in UAE, specifically the one targeting al-Dhafra airbase hosting US forces.
Regardless, the acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf in 2019 culminating in the “sacrilegious assault” on the veritable mecca of the oil production industry in Sept. 2019 should be viewed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun following the Ukraine crisis in 2014 after Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and Washington imposed sanctions on the Kremlin.
In addition, Russia’s membership in the G8 forum was suspended by the Western powers in March 2014 and Russian President Vladimir Putin was snubbed at international summits by the Western leaders, by then-President Obama in particular, an insult that the Russian strongman took rather personally.
The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015, after a clandestine visit to Moscow by General Qassem Soleimani, the slain commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force.
When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.
With the help of the Russian air power, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional allies.
Finally, a word about the venerated commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani who was assassinated in an American airstrike on a tip-off from the Israeli intelligence at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020. Soleimani was the most trusted aide of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his main liaison for holding consultations with Russia.
Not only did he convince Kremlin with his diplomatic skills to strike at Washington’s vulnerability in the Syrian conflict but he was also the chief architect of the audacious September 2019 attacks at the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
Reportedly, Trump initially rejected the Pentagon’s option to assassinate General Soleimani on December 28, 2019, due to apprehensions over full-scale confrontation with Iran, and authorized airstrikes on Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq instead.
But after one of frequent rocket attacks at the US embassy in Baghdad claimed by Iran-backed forces, Trump succumbed to pressure from the American deep state, led by the powerful top brass of the Pentagon, which had a score to settle with General Soleimani for giving the global power a bloody nose in Syria’s war.
The post Will Iran Strike at Global Oil Supply if Russia Invades Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This December, The Grayzone exposed how a shadowy communications firm, Valent Projects, enlisted a prominent YouTube influencer to front a covert state-sponsored influence operation designed to undermine critics of London’s pandemic policies. That company was founded by Amil Khan, a veteran of long-running and lavishly funded UK Foreign Office information warfare operations in Syria.
The post Propagandist For Syria Terror Proxies Compromised Amnesty International appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
February 15 2022 will mark the 23rd anniversary of the capture of , the co-founder of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
The PKK has fought for Kurdish freedom and autonomy since the 1970s.
was abducted by the Turkish state from Nairobi in 1999. He’d been forced to leave Syria – previously a PKK safe haven – the year before. The events leading up to ‘s capture have been dubbed an ‘international conspiracy’ by the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
has still been able to put across his ideas for a new society, as part of his legal defence writings. His ‘new paradigm’ – of a stateless direct democracy based on women’s freedom and an ecologically sustainable society – has inspired both the Rojava revolution in Northeast Syria, and the movement for democratic autonomy in Bakur (the part of Kurdistan that lies within Turkey’s borders).
A demonstration is planned in London on Saturday 13 February, calling for ‘s freedom. The Kurdish People’s Assembly of the UK tweeted:
This February marks 23 years that Abdullah Öcalan has been illegally detained, in conditions amounting to torture, on the prison island Imrali.
Join us at 1pm at Portland Place in London on 13 February to demand freedom for the 'Mandela of the Middle East'. pic.twitter.com/2GNTbtnW6h
— Kurdish People’s Assembly (@KurdishAssembly) January 20, 2022
Supporters of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are taking part in a “long march” across Europe to Strasbourg, calling for “Freedom for
Last December, I travelled to Istanbul and interviewed Ibrahim Bilmez for The Canary.
I was on the way to join a delegation to Bakur made up of radical journalists, including three of us from The Canary, as well as representatives from the Kurdistan Solidarity Network and defendant and prisoner solidarity organisations.
Bilmez has been ‘s lawyer for over 18 years. He told me:
the most important thing on the agenda for us at the moment is that we cannot get any news from Mr . That’s been going on now for eight months.
Bilmez told me that he was concerned about his client’s deteriorating health. According to Bilmez:
So eight months ago, news came on social media from verifiable sources saying that ‘s health was very bad, and that he could be close to losing his life… That was last March [2021]. And at that point they gave permission for his family to speak with him on the phone.
Bilmez said that has not had a visit from friends, family, or his supporters since 3 March 2020, and that even these visits had only been achieved by popular pressure. In the period immediately preceding the 2020 visit, there was a forest fire which had spread to the prison. Kurdish people in Turkey took to the streets and demanded proof that and his fellow prisoners were still alive, and this eventually led to the state authorising the visit.
‘s lawyers have not been able to visit him since August 2019. Again, those legal visits only came about because of the determination of the Kurdish movement. In 2018, thousands of Kurdish prisoners launched a wave of hunger strikes, demanding the end of ‘s isolation. According to Bilmez:
The reason that it was possible for the lawyers to actually visit in 2019 was because of the hunger strikes that happened in the prisons, by Leyla Güven from the [People’s Democratic Party] HDP and other prisoners. And that was what put the pressure on, so that lawyers would come and visit.
Leyla Güven‘s successful hunger strike lasted 200 days and almost led to her death. Last year, the state took revenge on her, sentencing her to a further 22 years in prison.
Bilmez said that between 2011 and 2019, there had been no lawyer visits permitted at all. has not been allowed any legal visits since 2019 either
Bilmez told me that there had been another hunger strike in Summer 2021, aimed at breaking the isolation of , but that a decision had been made early on to quit the strike. This was because – back in 2019 – said that he couldn’t endorse hunger strikes as a strategy, and called on the movement to find different ways to change things.
I asked Bilmez what the conditions were like for in prison. He said:
he was taken there in 1999, and until 2009 he was the only prisoner in that prison. After 2009, five other prisoners from the Kurdish movement were taken there as well, but they are in separate cells.
Now there are only four people left there [including ].
Bilmez said that the Turkish state is acting with complete impunity in ‘s case:
The government has done whatever it wants with him since 1999. No law applies, there’s no transparency there.
My comments might not come across as objective but – as a lawyer – I can say that it’s the case, and this is backed up by the report of the [Council of Europe’s] Committee for the Prevention of Torture. They visited eight or nine times, and that’s the basis of their report.
I asked Bilmez if he had faced criminalisation himself for representing
In November 2011, there was the biggest ever operation against lawyers in Turkey. Over 40 lawyers [who were connected to representing ] were arrested and had their houses raided in the middle of the night. They arrested lawyers from [the cities of] Diyarbakir, Ankara, Izmir and Wan, and took them to Istanbul.
35 of us were put into prison, including myself.
I was in prison from 2011-14. Now I have been released – with conditions – but the case against me is still ongoing.
The alleged crime was simply that we were lawyers for They allege that we’re a tool, a vehicle for his ideas and his organisation.
Bilmez said that – on the way to – he had been physically attacked by Turkish fascist groups, and that on one occasion:
a group of 50 or 60 fascists came to attack us with stones and sticks. The police were forced to protect us in some way, but they didn’t really put much effort into it.
that these attacks were done in coordination with the Turkish state.
I asked Bilmez if there was anything that people from the UK could do to pressure the Turkish government over ‘s situation. He told us that it was important to focus on the cases being taken outside Turkey:
We have cases with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
These international cases are very important. We’re constantly trying to open cases, or keep cases going – but still ‘s conditions stay the same. So it is very important to keep up the international pressure and awareness, and to raise your voice.
Bilmez gave examples of how international solidarity makes a difference. He pointed out:
One of the big unions in the UK, which has 1000s of members, specifically mentioned Abdullah at one of their big protests, to see this from here was very meaningful and very important.
Another example was that there was a boat full of activists who went from Athens to Napoli raising awareness about ‘s right not to be isolated. And that was done on the same day as when he had been taken captive in 1999.
These kinds of events are really important. In Turkey the law basically doesn’t mean anything in these political cases, and there’s no independent media here either. So that’s why international political pressure is so important.
According to Bilmez, the isolation of
The kind of violations that have happened in and with the wider Kurdish question – these have become the template for Turkey. This injustice that was acceptable in those spaces is now the norm in Turkey.
This first happened in obody raised their voice. So it has become the standard in Turkey. That the law is there to be bent.
The Kurdish Freedom Movement is calling for an end to the isolation of Abdullah as an urgent step. But, more than that, they want an end to his imprisonment. This is seen as a stepping stone to ending the oppression of Kurdish people, and to a radical democratisation of society.
According to Ayşe Acar Başaran, spokesperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Women’s Assembly:
The years-long isolation of Mr Öcalan is a manifestation of the government’s approach to the Kurdish issue. The government has dropped the democratic solution to the Kurdish problem following its alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP since 2015.
The HDP are part of the movement for radical democracy in Turkey, inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan
According to the Women Defend Rojava campaign:
we see that the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan is not limited to him as a single person – but with him an entire people, an entire movement is being tried to punish and destroy. The imprisonment of his person is vicariously linked to the attempt to suppress an alternative to patriarchy, fascism and capitalist modernity.
10,000 people are currently imprisoned in Turkey for connection with the Kurdish Freedom Movement. In 2016, Turkey was listed as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, and they are still being jailed in large numbers.. During our time in Turkey and Bakur, we spoke to many people facing prison for their political organising, as well as many families of prisoners. Emily Apple wrote in The Canary about just how wide ranging the repression is:
Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
A lot of the people we spoke to told us how important ‘s freedom was to them, that freedom for would also mean freedom for them and their loved ones. is widely seen as the key to restarting peace negotiations with the Turkish state.
Even after 23 years of extreme isolation – and all of the efforts of the Turkish state to silence him – still inspires revolutionaries not just across Turkey and Kurdistan but worldwide. It’s clear that the movement will continue fighting for his freedom, and for the stateless, radically democratic society that he envisioned.
Featured image is a screenshot from a video of a protest at the Durham Miners Gala
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Parliamentary report finds ‘compelling evidence’ of trafficking and highlights missed opportunities to protect vulnerable people later stripped of citizenship
There is “compelling evidence” that British women and children currently detained in camps in north-east Syria were trafficked to the country against their will, according to a new parliamentary report.
After a six-month inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on trafficked Britons in Syria, the report published on Thursday highlights how systemic failures by UK public bodies enabled Islamic State trafficking of vulnerable women and children as young as 12.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The recent rush of news reports about Balkan, Middle East and East European states scrambling to reestablish ties with Damascus would appear to signal the effective collapse of the decade-long Western policy of war, sanctions and isolation to end the rule of Bashar al-Assad’s Baath regime in Syria.
Syria’s southern neighbor Jordan opened its land border to trade in September as a precursor to a gas pipeline project that will run through its territory from Egypt to Lebanon. King Abdullah even took a phone call from Assad, much to the chagrin of the pundits on Syria whose opinions have formed the background music to American policy since the conflict began.
The Egyptian and Syrian foreign ministers held talks at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Algeria wants Syria to attend the next Arab summit and the UAE made a point of inviting Syria to take part in its World Expo that opened in October.
The post The Endless Failure Of The Syrian War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Aktham Naisse was a Syrian lawyer and human rights activist. He was president of the Committees for the Defence of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights (CDDL-HR), which he helped found in 1989.
He was first arrested in February 1982, when he was held for four months and tortured. In 1989 the CDDL-HR formed an underground publication, Sawt al-Dimuqratiyya (The voice of democracy). In 1991 the group called for free elections, leading to Naisse’s arrest in December 1991. In 1992 he was tried and sentenced to 9 years imprisonment in Sednaya prison. Released in July 1998, Naisse was not subsequently permitted to practice law.
In August 2003 Naisse was questioned and threatened by military security. The committee posted a public letter on the Internet, calling for the lifting of the state of emergency. On 8 March 2004 they led around 700 demonstrators in a peaceful sit-in in front of the Syrian parliament building in Damascus. Naisse and one hundred others presented the parliament with a petition against the state of emergency, signed by over 7,000 people.
On 13 April 2004 Naisse was arrested and returned to Sednaya prison. There he suffered a stroke, leaving him partially paralysed. He began a hunger strike, and was released on bail pending trial on 16 August 2004. After international appeals on his behalf, the court acquitted him on 26 June 2005.
Naisse won the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Award in October 2004and the 2005 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. [https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/96EB3030-144D-204E-3C6C-31CD4CA4501C]
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
Whilst Turkish President Erdogan was in Kiev on Thursday, ostensibly brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to defuse escalating tensions following the Russian troop build-up along Ukraine’s borders and the deployment of 3,000 US forces in Poland and Romania, Biden announced that the Islamic State leader had been killed in a special-ops raid in northwest Syria along the Turkish border.
“Last night, operating on my orders, US military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world: the global leader of ISIS. Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” a visibly jubilant Biden tweeted.
The details of the raid were sketchy but there were civilian casualties and one of the choppers involved in the operation encountered mechanical failure and had to be destroyed, as in the Bin Laden raid at Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 when one of the Black Hawks involved in the “secret operation” also encountered malfunction and was blown up by the Navy Seals Team Six that awakened the whole sleepy town.
According to the US government documents released in September 2020, Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, whose real name was Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla, snitched for the US military and identified dozens of fellow militants as well as the structure of al-Qaeda in Iraq, after he was arrested in 2008 and detained at Camp Bucca.
Three Tactical Interrogation Reports released by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) alleged that al-Baghdadi’s successor al-Mawla, who at the time was an al-Qaeda judge, gave the US occupation forces in Iraq the names of 68 al-Qaeda fighters that led to the deaths of several al-Qaeda members after the US military conducted raids to hunt them down.
According to the documents, al-Mawla was arrested in 2008 by the US forces and interrogated at Camp Bucca, a facility in Umm Qasr, southern Iraq, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also incarcerated. Several officials have since referred to it as a “Jihadi university” because of the training provided there.
The CTC said that al-Mawla was released in 2009 and only came to prominence when he became the leader of the Islamic State following the death of al-Baghdadi in October 2019.
As in the special-ops raid eliminating al-Baghdadi’s successor al-Mawla in the densely populated town of Atmeh along Turkish border in northwest Syria, it’s important to note in the news coverage of the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mass media was trumpeting for several years before the raid that the Islamic State’s fugitive chief was hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in northwest Idlib province, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front. He was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Barisha village, just five kilometers from the border.
The reason why the mass media scrupulously avoided mentioning northwestern Idlib province of Syria as the most likely hideout of al-Baghdadi and his successor was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists of al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
In fact, the corporate media takes the issue of Islamic jihadists “commingling” with Turkey-backed “moderate rebels” in Idlib so seriously – which could give Damascus the pretext to mount an offensive in northwest Syria – that the New York Times cooked up an exclusive report in October 2019, days after the Special Ops night raid eliminating al-Baghdadi, that the Islamic State paid money to al-Nusra Front for hosting al-Baghdadi in Idlib.
The morning after the night raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in October 2019 that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.
Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, the mass media news coverage of the raid deliberately elided the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village, just five kilometers from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed, belonged to Hurras al-Din, an elusive terrorist outfit which had previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.
Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact the regrouping of the Islamic State jihadists under a different name in northwestern Idlib governorate after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria in 2017 and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes in eastern Syria.
It’s worth noting that although the Idlib governorate in Syria’s northwest has firmly been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by al-Nusra Front since 2015, its territory was equally divided between Turkey-backed rebels and al-Nusra Front.
In a brazen offensive in January 2019, however, al-Nusra Front’s jihadists completely routed Turkey-backed militants, even though the latter were supported by a professionally trained and highly organized military of a NATO member Turkey. Al-Nusra Front now reportedly controls more than 70% territory in the Idlib governorate.
The reason why al-Nusra Front was easily able to defeat Turkey-backed militants appeared to be that the ranks of al-Nusra Front were swelled by highly motivated and battle-hardened jihadist deserters from the Islamic State after the fall of the latter’s “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in July and October 2017, respectively.
In all likelihood, some of the Islamic State’s jihadists who joined the battle in Idlib were part of the contingent of thousands of Islamic State militants that fled Raqqa in October 2017 under a deal brokered by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The merger of al-Nusra Front and Islamic State in Idlib didn’t come as a surprise, though, since the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front used to be a single organization before a split occurred between the two militant groups in April 2013 over a leadership dispute. In fact, al-Nusra Front’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was reportedly appointed the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the deceased “caliph” of the Islamic State, in January 2012.
Al-Jolani returned the favor by hosting both the hunted leaders of the Islamic State for months, if not years, in safe houses in al-Nusra’s territory in Idlib, before they were betrayed by informants within the ranks of the terrorist organization who leaked the information of the whereabouts of al-Baghdadi and his successor, leading to the killing of the Islamic State leaders in special-ops raids in October 2019 and on February 3.
In the book Rage, American journalist Bob Woodward has corroborated what was long known to be an open secret: the existence of a Faustian pact between Donald Trump and President Erdogan of Turkey in which the latter agreed to cover up the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and also let Washington hunt down Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in Syria’s Idlib, bordering Turkey, in October 2019. This was in return for Turkey mounting Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria with the permission of the Trump administration.
In an informal conversation with Woodward, Donald Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. “I saved his ass,” Trump said in 2018, according to the book. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
When Woodward pressed Trump if he believed the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination himself, Trump responded: “He says very strongly that he didn’t do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time,” Trump said.
“And you know, they’re in the Middle East. You know, they’re big. Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have the real power. They have the oil, but they also have the great monuments for religion. You know that, right? For that religion,” Trump noted. “They wouldn’t last a week if we’re not there, and they know it,” he added.
Regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, the Erdogan administration released American pastor Andrew Brunson on October 12, 2018, which had been a longstanding demand of the Trump administration, and also decided not to make public the audio recordings of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the assassination.
In return, the Trump administration promised to comply with Turkish President Erdogan’s vehement demand to evacuate American forces from the Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria, and the withdrawal was eventually effected an year later in October 2019.
In the Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, the Turkish armed forces and their Syrian proxies invaded and occupied 120 kilometers wide and 32 kilometers deep stretch of Syrian territory between the northeastern towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. It’s worth pointing out that although Turkish forces invaded northeast Syria in October 2019, the negotiations went on for almost an year since December 2018.
Trump immediately announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syria after losing the midterm elections in November 2018. But the Pentagon kept delaying the evacuation of American forces from northern Syria to appease Washington’s Kurdish allies.
However, once Turkish armed forces and allied militant proxies invaded northeast Syria in October 2019, the Pentagon was left with no other choice than to redeploy American forces to Kurdish-held areas al-Hasakah and Qamishli in northeast Syria.
Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was reportedly made during a telephonic conversation with Turkish President Erdogan on December 14, 2018, before President Trump made the momentous announcement in a Tweet on December 19. The decision was so sudden that it prompted the resignation of Jim Mattis, then the Secretary of Defense, according to a December 22, 2018, Associated Press report.
Considering the events surrounding the killing of al-Baghdadi in October 2019, it’s obvious that his successor, too, was betrayed by the Turkish patrons to extract geo-strategic concessions from the Biden administration. Due to Erdogan’s personal friendship with Biden’s political rival Trump, Turkish leader has repeatedly been snubbed by Biden throughout the maiden year of his administration.
But after letting the Biden administration eliminate the Islamic State leader and offering to mediate in the dispute between Russia and Ukraine to defuse mounting tensions in the Eastern Europe, Erdogan is trying desperately hard to prove to the Biden administration that Turkey is still a reliable NATO ally that could play a vital role in the global power rivalry.
The post How Erdogan Scapegoated ISIS Caliph to Appease Biden? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Shefa Salem (Libya), Life, 2019.
On 19 January 2022, US President Joe Biden held a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. The discussion ranged from Biden’s failure to pass a $1.75 trillion investment bill (the result of the defection of two Democrats) to the increased tensions between the United States and Russia. According to a recent NBC poll, 54% of adults in the United States disapprove of his presidency and 71% feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
The political and cultural divisions that widened during the Trump years continue to inflict a heavy toll on US society, including over the government’s ability to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Basic protocols to avoid infections are not universally followed. Misinformation related to COVID-19 has spread as rapidly as the virus in the United States, where large numbers of people believe sensational claims: for example, that pregnant women should not take the vaccine, that the vaccine promotes infertility, and that the government is hiding the data on deaths caused by the vaccines.
![Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay), Entoldado (La Feria) (‘Canopy [The Fair]’), 1917.](https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/rJ9-71B6dACsPPsGWCw0qD6Gaw2BBcbqk6Cov1H-YaX6WZ3xogLeNoOKqy0arHaq_dHar2NQt6wZ0Mdc43pEL3G57JxeCoxHT6lbXZHiyVLgl9qGV4AIaqlZSptY_X4O3iYq85gajn8LuogZHG1KFf18TZHOJxOgTwgEaExKIY9lVCHdOFOIfyn9yYlM3kgMoG6MAjJWoMk=s0-d-e1-ft#https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Joaquin-Torres-Garcia-Uruguay-Entoldado-La-Feria-Canopy-The-fair.-1917..jpg)
Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay), Entoldado (La Feria) (‘Canopy [The Fair]’), 1917.
At the press conference, Biden made a candid remark regarding the Monroe Doctrine (1823), which treats the American hemisphere as the ‘backyard’ of the United States. ‘It’s not America’s backyard’, Biden said. ‘Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard’. The United States continues to think of the entire hemisphere, from Cape Horn to the Rio Grande, not as sovereign territory, but, in one way or the other, as its ‘yard’. It meant little that Biden followed this up by saying, ‘we’re equal people,’ since the metaphor he used – the yard – indicated the proprietary attitude with which the United States operates in the Americas and in the rest of the world. It is this proprietary attitude that inflames conflict not only in the Americas (with epicentres in Cuba and Venezuela), but also in Eurasia.
Talks have been ongoing in Geneva and Vienna to dial down the conflict imposed by the United States and its allies against Iran and Russia. The US’ attempts to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s nuclear programme and to dominate eastern Europe have thus far not borne fruit. The talks persist, but both are hindered by the US government’s continued adoption of a narrative about the world that is premised on its hegemony and a rejection of the multipolar dispensation that has begun to appear.
Ramin Haerizadeh (Iran), He Came, He Left, He Left, He Came, 2010.
Early indications in the eighth round of the JCPOA talks in Vienna, which opened on 27 December 2021, suggested that there would be little forward movement. The United States arrived with the attitude that Iran could not be trusted, when in fact it was the United States that exited the JCPOA in 2018 (after it certified twice in 2017 that Iran had in fact followed the letter of the agreement). This attitude came alongside a false sense of urgency from the Biden administration to rush the process forward.
The US wants Iran to make further concessions, despite the fact that the initial deal had been negotiated over twenty long months and despite the fact that none of the other parties are willing to reopen the agreement to satisfy the United States and its outside partner, Israel. The Russian negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov said that there is no need for ‘artificial deadlines’, an indicator of the growing closeness between Iran and Russia. Ties between the two states have been strengthened by their shared opposition to the failed attempt by the Gulf Arab states, Turkey, and the West to overthrow the Syrian government, particularly since the Russian military intervention into Syria in 2015.
Aneta Kajzer (Germany), I’ve Got No Brain Baby, 2017.
Even more dangerous than the US’ hostile attitude towards Iran is its policy towards Russia and Ukraine, where troops are at the ready and the rhetoric of war has become more strident. The heart of this conflict is around the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) towards the Russian border, in violation of the deal struck between the United States and the Soviet Union that NATO would not go beyond Germany’s eastern border. Ukraine is the epicentre of the conflict, although even here the debate is unclear. Germany and France have said that they would not welcome the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, and since NATO membership requires universal consent, it is impossible for Ukraine to join NATO at present. The nub of the disagreement is over how these various parties understand the situation in Ukraine.
The Russians contend that the US fomented a coup in 2014 and brought right-wing nationalists – including pro-fascist elements – into power, and that these sections are part of a Western ploy to threaten Russia with NATO weapons systems and with NATO country forces inside Ukraine, while the West contends that Russia wishes to annex eastern Ukraine. The Russians have asked NATO to provide a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join the military alliance as a precondition for further talks; NATO has demurred.
When the German navy chief and vice admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach said in Delhi that Russia’s Vladimir Putin deserves ‘respect’ from Western leaders, he had to resign. It made no difference that Schönbach’s comments were premised on the notion that the West needed Russia to combat China – only disrespect and subordination of Russia are acceptable. That’s the Western view in the Geneva talks, which will continue but are unlikely to bear fruit as long as the United States and its allies believe that other powers should surrender their sovereignty to a US-led world order.
Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Kind People, 2004.
The movement of history suggests that the days of the US-dominated world system are nearing their end. That is why we called our dossier no. 36 (January 2021) Twilight: The Erosion of US Control and the Multipolar Future. In We Will Build the Future: A Plan to Save the Planet (January 2022), produced alongside 26 research institutes from around the world, we laid out the following ten points for a restructured, more democratic world system:
Adherence to these ten points would aid in the resolution of these crises in Iran and Ukraine.
Failure to move forward is a result of Washington’s arrogant attitude towards the world. During Biden’s press conference, he lectured Putin on the dangers of a nuclear war, saying that Putin is ‘not in a very good position to dominate the world’. Only the United States, he implied, is in a good position to do that. Then, Biden said, ‘you have to be concerned when you have, you know, a nuclear power invade… if he invades – [which] hasn’t happened since World War Two’. A nuclear power invading a country hasn’t happened since World War Two? The United States is a nuclear power and has continually invaded countries across the globe, from Vietnam to Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq – an illegal war which Biden voted for. It is this arrogant approach to the world and to the UN Charter that puts our world in peril.
Listening to Biden, I was reminded of Mario Benedetti’s 1985 poem, El sur también existe (‘The South Also Exists’), a favourite of Hugo Chávez. Here are two of its verses:
With its worship of steel
its giant chimneys
its clandestine sages
its siren song
its neon skies
its Christmas sales
its cults of God the Father
and military epaulettes
with its keys to the kingdom
the North is the one who commands
…
but here underneath the underneath
close to the roots
is where memory
forgets nothing
and there are people living
and dying doing their utmost
and so between them they achieve
what was believed to be impossible
to make the whole world know
that the South also exists.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On 30 August 2021, the United States’ 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan came to an end when the removal of American forces was completed. Although the withdrawal was botched, it was the correct move. The withdrawal is ignominious because it turns out that the much ballyhooed US fighting forces were, in the end, defeated by Afghan peasants. Has the US learned anything from its debacle in Afghanistan? One might gain an insight into that question by observing the debacle still ongoing in Syria.
Author A.B. Abrams provides an in-depth analysis on the US-led war in Syria in his excellent book World War in Syria: Global Conflict on Middle Eastern Battlefields (Clarity Press, 2021). WW in Syria documents the lead up to war in Syria, the precursors, the ideologies, the tactics, who the combatants are and who is aligned with who at different stages of the war, the battles fought, the impact of sophisticated weaponry, adherence to international law, the media narratives, and the cost of winning and losing the war in Syria for the warring parties. Unequivocally, every side loses in war. People are killed on all sides, and each death is a loss. But a victor is usually declared, and Syria with its allies has been declared as having won this war, albeit at a great price. However, the finality and clarity of the victory is muddled because Turkey and the US are still occupying and pillaging northern areas of Syria where they provide protection for Islamist remnants (or recklessly guard Islamist prisoners; as I write, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and US are fighting to defeat an Islamic State (IS) assault on a prison in northeastern Syria). In addition, apartheid Israel continues to periodically attack war-ravaged Syria.
Abrams asks why the West and Israel were bent on “regime change” in Syria. As Abrams explains, with several examples, nations that do not put themselves in thrall to the US will be targeted for overthrow of their governments. (chapter 1) “Syria was increasingly portrayed as being under some kind of malign communist influence — the only possible explanation in the minds of the U.S. and its allies for any party to reject what the West perceived as its own benevolence.” (p 10)
What is happening in Syria must be understood in a historical perspective. (p 55) Abrams details how imperialist information warfare brought about violent overthrows of socialistic governments in Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya. That tested template has now been applied to Syria. (chapter 2)
Abrams identifies four casus belli for attacking Syria: (1) being outside the Western sphere of influence, (2) to isolate Syria from Hezbollah and Iran, which would appease Israel and the Gulf states, (3) to remove Iran and Russia as suppliers of natural gas to Europe, (4) to isolate Syria geo-politically from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and (5) a new base for foisting Islamist (“Islamist” is used to refer to a political ideology rather than the faith of Muslims) groups against Western-designated enemies.
So Syria found itself beset by a multitude of aggressive foreign actors: key NATO actors Britain, France, the US, and Turkey. Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel were staging grounds for attacks. (p 99) The Sunni regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were also arrayed against Syria. At first, the mass protests — given fuel by Bashar Al Assad’s neoliberalism schemes (p 35) — served as a shield for covertly supported military operations. (p 107)
These state actors supported several Islamist entities. Abrams, who is proficient in Arabic, adroitly elucidates the complex and realigning web of Islamist proxies. Among these groups are Al Qaeda, Fatah Al Asram, Absay Al Ansar, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and IS.
Syria would not be completely alone as fellow Axis of Resistance members Iran and Hezbollah would come to the aid of Syria. Hezbollah directly joined in the spring of 2013 and it played an important role in the pivotal capture of Al Qusayr. (p 132) Thereafter, Iran would step up its involvement in defense of Syria. (p 134)
What will be a surprise to most people is the solidarity shown by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) toward its longtime partner Syria. (Albeit this is no surprise to readers of another of A.B. Abram’s excellent books, Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power. Review.) Gains made by the invading forces would be substantially rolled back with the entry of Russia, an event deplored by some leftists. Among the reasons for a Russian entry was fear of Islamist terrorism approaching its frontier.
With the advancing tide of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies, Westerners reacted by pressing for the establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria. However, having learned from Western manipulation of such a United Nations Security Council resolution during the war on Libya, in which Russia and China had abstained, Russia and China would veto any such attempt this time.
The enemies of Syria would engage in manufactured gas attacks abetted by disinformation. This pretext led the US and allied attackers to grant themselves the right to bomb Syria. Abrams responds, “It is hard to find a similar sense of self-righteousness and open willingness to commit illegal acts of aggression anywhere else in the world.” Abrams connected this extremism to “the ideology of western supremacism.” (p 174) Syria would relinquish the deterrence of its chemical weapons in a futile effort to forestall any future opposition-contrived chemical attacks attributed to it.
Although Hezbollah, Iran, the DPRK, and Russia were invited by the government of Syria, the western nations (without UN approval) were illegally attacking Syria. Among them were Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands, and Middle Eastern actors which included Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. (p 197) Israel was abetting Al Nusra. (p 199) The Syrian borders with Jordan and Turkey were supply conduits for the Islamists. (p 203)
The US planned to create safe zones in Syria with an eye to dismemberment of Syria. (p 204-207) Russia would up the ante, killing 150 CIA-backed Islamists in airstrikes, which the US criticized. (p 221) In apparent reprisal, an IS terrorist attack would down a civilian airliner over Egypt killing 219 Russian civilians. War is a dirty endeavor. Among their other crimes, Islamists used civilians as shields, poisoned water supplies, and carried out beheadings. American war crimes included using depleted uranium and white phosphorus (p 301).
With the US and Turkey competing to occupy land from the collapsing IS, the SAA was pressured to advance as quickly as possible in its lands.
Aside from internecine fighting among the Islamists, there were puzzling complexities described between different combatants. Turkey and the US were sometimes aligned and sometimes at loggerheads; the same complexities existed between Russia and Turkey (“a highly peculiar situation reflecting [Turkey’s] pursuit of both war and rapprochement separately but simultaneously.” p 348), and between Russia and Israel. Of course, given past and current history, any enemy-of-my-enemy alliance between Israeli Jews and Arabs against a fellow Arab country will certainly cause much head shaking.
Despairingly, the UN was also condemned for bias and being complicit in the western attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. (p 334)
Abrams criticized the American arrogation of the right to attack. He warned, “This had potentially highly destabilizing consequences for the global order, and by discarding the post-Second World War legal prohibition against crimes of aggression the West was returning the world to a chaotic order that resembled that of the colonial era.” (p 383)
In toto, Abrams finds, “Even though Syria prevailed, the West was able to achieve its destruction at very little cost to itself … meaning the final outcome of the war still represents a strengthening of the Western position at Dasmascus’ expense.” (p 384)
Israel’s War
A book review can only cover so much, and there is much ground covered in WW in Syria. Particularly conspicuous is the annex at the end of the book entitled “Israel’s War.” (p 389-413) This annex leads one to ask why there are no annexes on America’s War, Turkey’s War, Qatar’s War, Saudi Arabia’s War, UAE’s War, NATO’s War, or even the terrorists’ War. Why does Israel stand out? Prior to the recent invasion of Syria, it was only Israel that was occupying Syrian territory: the Golan Heights, annexed following the 1967 War, and recognized as a part of Israel by president Donald Trump in 2019 (quite hypocritical given US denunciations of Crimea’s incorporation into Russia). Syria does not recognize Israel, and it has not reached a peace agreement with Israel. Of Syria’s Middle Eastern allies, Iran does not recognize Israel; Lebanon signed a peace treaty with Israel under Israeli and American pressure, but Lebanon never ratified it. Hezbollah regards Israel as an illegitimate entity. Hezbollah is noted for the first “successful armed resistance on a significant scale to the Western-led order after the Cold War’s end” in 2006. (p 39) Thus, Israel views the arc from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon as a security threat. Since Israel is regarded by some foreign policy wonks in the US as its aircraft carrier in the region, that reason among others secures US “aid” and military support. That Syria will not bend its knees to US Empire is also a source of consternation to imperialists. After Egyptian president Anwar Sadat treacherously broke Arab solidarity, (p 21-26) Syria would find itself increasingly isolated. Given the rapacious nature of imperialism, Israel and its lobby have faced no serious opposition from within the imperialist alliance, allowing the Jewish State to pursue its plan for a greater Israel to which Syria, a country that does not threaten any western nation, is an impediment. Israel, writes Abrams, will continually seek to degrade the military capabilities of countries it designates as enemies. (p 406)
Closing
The situation in Syria still simmers. Those who scrupulously read the dispassionate account of WW in Syria will gain a wide-ranging insight into what underlies the simmering. It will also be clear why any attempt by western imperialists and their terrorist or Islamist proxies will not succeed in a coup against the elected Syrian government. Syrians will put up a staunch defense. Hezbollah and Iran will stand in solidarity, as will the DPRK. Having Russia, a first-rate military power, presents a powerful deterrence. In addition, China, no pushover itself, stands steadfast in support of its Russian partner. Thus the western imperialists’/proxies’ main goal has been thwarted; they have been shamelessly reduced to pillagers of oil and wheat and occupiers of small pockets of a sovereign country.
The post The Imperialists’ and Proxies’ War against Syria first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
So before Covid, a local school where one of my kids used to attend, had prominent race issues. Namely, teachers were being accused of being blind to obvious racist incidences against black students. The normalized notion of racism was so rampant that the school was forced to embrace some sort of deprogramming sessions by a parent-led committee on the issue. However, this committee itself was ultimately deemed rather racist in its own way by the school’s black alumni group. To me, at the end, it became rather obvious that the whole momentum was part of a corporate political campaign for the Democratic Party establishment. The same people who raised their fists and said “Black Lives Matter” turned out to be the supporters of Joe Biden who has bragged that he was the architect of crime bills and The Patriot Act—the very root of the school to prison pipeline, the racist, colonial “war on terror,” the prison industrial complex and so on. Is irony completely dead as “reality” continues to be stretched to fit the ruling class interests? In the end, I felt so dirty and violated to be a part of that committee’s activities.
Fast forward to the Black-Lives-Matter-only-if-
There are some harsh numbers regarding race-related matters and the Covid “vaccines”. In NYC, where Covid “vaccine” mandates are effectively shutting people out from indoor activities, roughly half the Black people have chosen not to receive the experimental injections. How can anyone justify segregating half the Black people from indoor activities? What is that? And what is wrong with businesses that, without a mandate, voluntarily exclude unvaccinated people from entering their premises when statistical risk factors for getting the illness in question range from obesity to old age to having chronic conditions. To be clear, the efficacy of the Covid injections are being debated by scientists and doctors vigorously, along with their safety issues. Yet, there are business owners who are calling themselves “community leaders” for being medical cheerleaders for big pharma, proud of being brown-nosed social climbers at the expense of those who make their own medical choices. And if we take the whole US, 40% of small Black-owned businesses have been wiped out. This whole virus event is a giant urban renewal push disguised as war on virus—don’t they realize what people have gone through with war on crime, war on drugs and so on?
The cozy Covid life for privileged, resourced people who can work from home or afford not to work is propped up in many ways at the expense of many who are suffering under the economic restructuring process for the oligarchy. An unprecedented wealth transfer from the already exploited population to extremely rich and powerful people has been ongoing for the past two years, while the kind of neoliberal restructuring they’ve been dreaming about has been implemented in the name of saving lives.
It’s really demoralizing to really understand that the mechanism of exploitation and subjugation is rather simple. The power of the wealthy oligarchs is so huge that they own everything. They own the media. They own the politics. They own the governments. They own the scientists. They own the military.
And the same people who own everything tell us that we have to respect the separation of powers, we have to rely on “representative democracy,” and we have to obey the legal system which is ultimately ruled by Supreme Court judges who are appointed by, well, the same people who own everything. Needless to say, the whole thing is made to divide us and consecrate the rich and powerful as priests of capitalism, because they own everything and all powers are designed to concentrate in their hands, while the people are effectively deprived of all power.
In the US, the power of the people is represented by two corrupt corporate political parties. I mean, they don’t really represent people, but they pretend that they do. The situation is so obvious and blatant that it is tedious to even mention, but the reality is that this mechanism of two corporate entities engaging in ritualistic battles within a strictly curated capitalist framework has been so effective in staging the appearance of “democracy” that it is hard to discuss the social dynamics in the US without it. No matter what ideological leaning one has as an American, the larger than life theater of historical myths, dramas, glories of wars, nationalistic emotions and the reverence of the American flag are likely to be a part of the internalized authority which builds its footings in the minds and the bodies of those who are born on this land.
Today, many of the rich and powerful are associated with the Democratic Party—for example, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Bill Gates, and so on. This is strange because it is the Republican Party that is supposed to represent business interests. Recent numbers also indicate the trend: “Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,000 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress“.
Anyway, it really doesn’t matter because when people play politics—meaning you cheer for one of the corrupt political parties—you are not supposed to talk about how money controls social institutions and how our values, beliefs and norms are determined by the interests of the ruling class, and how the economic caste order effectively enforces capitalist imperatives to perpetuate the reign of money and violence.
Believe it or not, today, this sort of understanding is labeled as “conspiracy.” Right, you are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut case if you happen to call out corporate crimes, their criminal conspiracies and so on and so forth. How obvious can it get? Rich people dominate corporate politics with the good old righteousness of exceptionalism, and a colonial attitude with the kinder, gentler face of liberal politics, and it is perfectly OK to call a simple Marxist analysis of exploitation a “conspiracy.”
The tendency to obscure the mechanism of capitalism is mirrored exactly among many of those who oppose the overwhelming push for Covid lockdowns, Covid “vaccine” mandates and so on. For many of those who stand on the other side of the virus event, the entire mobilization is described as a “communist takeover.” That’s right. All those diehard capitalists who have been conspiring to perpetuate their interests through World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank and so on are communists now. How convenient? You can’t have capitalism without opportunism.
But the whole thing makes perfect sense. Both ends of the capitalist spectrum, fascists and social democrats, have always struggled to perpetuate capitalist hegemony together. At the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to perpetuate the capitalist caste hierarchy and their righteous positions within it. One step with the left leg goes forward as the right leg moves forward to balance the momentum of the imperial hegemony — just as the hopelessly corrupt Hilary Clinton gives birth to a Donald Trump Presidency, which, in turn, gives the Democratic Party a reason to exist. Left, right, left, right, the empire moves forward as it gently shifts its weight left to right. As they march the imperial-scape together, they sing derogatory smears against any revolutionary momentum. Both sides are free to argue and fight as long as they adhere to the imperial imperatives of capitalism. The corporate media ensure that the narratives are told to fit this dynamic. Those who do not belong to the dynamics are portrayed as “others”–fringe extremists to be demonized from multiple angles.
How does the empire gain its mythical aura of authority? Easy. They play a good old protection racket scheme against unsuspecting “good people.” For example, they tell people that terrorists are coming, while “secretly” funding the killers in ways which are not so secret to the people. People get the idea: “Oh I see. we have to pay the protection fee. Otherwise, we get fucked up.” Or, for example, they tell people that plague is coming, and force people to get injected with special medicines. If the people refuse, their jobs are taken away, their families are split apart, you can’t eat at a restaurant and so on. They can effectively turn everyone into a dangerous element with an infection until proven “healthy” by the designated means of the authority. There goes the presumption of innocence along with informed consent out of the door.
This is a big deal. There is a huge reason why an authority must prove someone guilty without a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, people can be arbitrarily accused of committing any crime and then punished for it. And without informed consent, people can be forced to drink Cool Aid just because they are told to do so. Moreover, as soon as the feudal overloads deal with the life and death of the people, they effectively consecrate themself as gods. A politician would claim that Covid “vaccines” are sent by God. Cultural figures would start accusing those who refuse the medication of “defying the law of nature,” defying “science” and so on, effectively turning Bill Gates and the rest of the snake oil salesmen into gods of our times.
So now it seems that even this pretend “democracy” is being taken away by the acceptance of decrees under an “emergency” just like any other fascist take-over.
Colonizing humanity and nature
How is it even possible, though? The capitalist assaults come in stages. First, it attacks to destabilize, infiltrate and tear communities apart. It destroys the fabric of communities and turns vital institutions useless. It cultivates the ground on which the invaders can turn themselves into the new providers of artificial social relations, resources and facts. Then the colonizers embark on domesticating people with their own beliefs, norms and values to exploit them and subjugate them.
Social institutions are taken over by capital. As they lose their functions for the people, they are further bought and sold by the oligarchs to transform themselves into machines for the ruling class interests. In every step of the process, people are mobilized to destroy and reassemble their own institutions only to be domesticated by the resulting fake institution for the ruling class. Corporate NGOs, corporate think tanks, paid academics, paid scientists, corporate politicians are always ready to help in this regard. This is how education has been taken away from the people. This is how healthcare has been taken away. This is how politics has been taken away.
The people’s institutions are intentionally deprived of resources so that they must rely on the rich and powerful to function. Then, privatizing and corporatizing transform the institutions into entities for profit, indoctrination and domestication. The more you struggle financially, the more you are likely to be trapped in a cycle of exploitation—an ironic reality imposed by the capitalist hierarchy in which those who could gain the most by overthrowing the establishment are pressured the most to obey the capitalist imperatives. Meanwhile those with privileged positions are conditioned to protect the status quo. Hierarchies of ideas, ideologies, religions, and people are formed. The caste system built by all elements permeates the empire—what’s good for the empire naturally floats as the opposing elements sink systemically and structurally. People are forced to compete in serving the interests of the oligarchs regardless of the ultimate consequences to them.
This is how people are indoctrinated to hate the system that gives power to the people—socialism, and are forced to crave the system that strangles them—capitalism. Here is a brief summary of how socialism is actively demonized in our society:
1. Point out results of imperial assaults against socialist countries and claim socialism doesn’t work.
Examples:
2. Claim that no ideology, country or government is perfect, in order to ignore the injustice and inhumanity systematically and structurally imposed on the entire capitalist hegemony and beyond by the western ruling class.
Examples:
3. Utilize an emotional personal anecdote in demonizing “socialism” in its entirety, totally ignoring its inner workings to forward the interests of the people, imperial dynamics and so on. Reactionary voices of those who betray their countries of origin in seeking to secure positions within the empire are often promoted by the capitalist media.
Examples:
4. Simply rely on propaganda lies concocted by capitalist social institutions.
Examples:
Where is this giant monster swinging right to left, guided by the selfish motives of the ruling class, going? Is it going to put us all in a digital prison as it continues to digitalize, financialize, and transhumanize, colonizing humanity and nature? Is it going to declare a war against China? These are very significant concerns, but it is unlikely that they will be on the table for all of us to examine anytime soon. Our thoughts and ideas are constantly, systemically and structurally beaten into shapes by layers of capitalist institutions over and over so that they fit into the capitalist framework. Then the momentums of pros and cons are safely exchanged within the imperial framework at the expense of the people who struggle to secure their livelihood within it.
When we are beaten by the capitalists, we are put against each other. As we fight back, we are forced to attack our fellow community members as our institutions are further colonized as I described above. In the corporate political theater billions of dollars are spent in picking between hardened corporatist Joe Biden, and “reality TV show star” Donald Trump, but we cannot embrace the political institution which can truly function as our own—such a drastic shift is firmly demonized, again, as “socialism,” “communism,” Marxism and so on.
Look at how doctors and nurses are forced to be complicit in the ongoing virus event. They are forced to limit treatment options. Effective early treatments such as Ivermectin or HCQ, which have saved countless lives in other countries, are being ridiculed as snake oil, because as long as there are effective treatments for the virus, the experimental gene therapy drugs can’t have emergency use status. All this goes on as Covid “vaccine” deaths are blatantly covered up in the US and in other Western countries. The health professionals are forced to put people on deadly ventilators, deadly remdisivir, and deadly sedatives—the real reason why there are so many deaths in the US, along with the fact that obesity is a hidden killer in patients with seasonal respiratory illness. The more they try to protect their positions within the institution, the more they compromise the whole institution. Doctors, scientists and the rest of the healthcare professionals who wish to protect the institution by speaking the truth about the virus and experimental injections are censored, harassed and fired for doing so, while those who obey are forced to be complicit in failing their patients with profit-oriented protocols.
This is what the system does when it’s driven by, and for, the oligarchs.
Their exploitive schemes create crises on many fronts—environmental crisis, health crisis, housing crisis, economic crisis, psychiatric crisis, you name it. The ruling class officially designates a chosen crisis to impose prepackaged corporate “solutions” for more profits, more power grab and readjustment of the capitalist trajectory. In the process, they destroy vital social institutions and reassemble them for domestication. Nothing else matters other than the chosen crisis and the associated corporate schemes. Other crises deepen as the capitalist trajectory is recalibrated and the capitalist hierarchy is readjusted. They will not run out of crises as long as they exploit and subjugate. Crises are not predicaments for those who can buy their way out of anything, they are opportunities for them. And they have nothing to lose in the process. We are forced to do their work of destroying our own institutions. We are forced to do their work of turning them into our cages. They can buy most of anything, and if they can’t, they destroy it, then they can simply buy and sell any remaining elements, repackage them as something else and sell them back to the people.
See how it works?
As we further lose our connections to ourselves, to each other, to our community and nature, we are freely subjected to propaganda and indoctrination through ruling class sanctioned entities. Psychology has been applied to adjust individuals to the hardships of capitalist behavioral conditioning. Sociology has been applied to shape collective behaviors within the capitalist framework. Economics has been applied to justify the capitalist domination. Politics has been applied to ritualize the normalization of the feudal hierarchy. Now, we see science being applied to shift the trajectory of exploitation and subjugation.
Our behaviors are largely based on establishment-supplied social relations, facts, culture, and so on. We don’t generally act because we perceive actual events in our lives. Most of us go through our lives on auto-pilot mode within the structurally sanctioned capitalist framework. The Covid event clearly shows this aspect of our lives. People wear masks, social distance and follow lockdown measures when clearly stipulated; however, at the personal level, most of us do not act like there is a deadly plague out there. The masks, very possibly contaminated with the “deadly virus” are thrown away everywhere without being treated as biohazard materials. People wear masks only to enter a restaurant, then take them off to eat with strangers stuck in an enclosed space. As soon as we are born into our society, we learn to perceive the capitalist framework as our guiding principle over our actual perceptions. This makes us extremely vulnerable to top-down mobilization, as we see with the virus event. As soon as we are systemically and structurally forced into following instructions, then facts, our perceptions, and experts’ opinions become totally irrelevant before the decrees coming out of the establishment. The process of colonization of humanity and nature has been ongoing for generations, deeply affecting how we are, and it is accelerating.
Being deprived of our actual perceptions based on material reality, and the subsequent manufacturing of our perceptions based on the imperatives of the ruling class interests contributes to acute divisions among dissidents as well. The urgency of capitalist oppressions together with marginalization of ideological positions has often cornered those who voice their concerns into prescribing “solutions” based on their own condition, regardless of the consequences to others. This often happens over class lines, or against those who are victims of imperial violence. The classic example was seen during the imperial war against Syria. Many anti-war dissidents had taken a position in support of the US military intervention of Syria to varying degrees due to the western demonization of the Syrian government, western propaganda that glorified the US backed terrorists as victims of Syrian violence and etc. (Those who stand with enemies of the empire are strongly urged to amend their anti-imperial positions. This urging comes from across the spectrum; for instance, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and others who are considered “dissidents” adamantly demonized leaders of targeted countries and repeated official propaganda narratives justifying the toleration of violence against those countries–By the way, both Chomsky and Hedges also hold starkly discriminatory opinions against unvaccinated people, echoing their strong condemnations of the middle eastern leaders.)
This has resulted in acceptance of the US military attacks and the US support for violent opposition groups inside Syria. Those American people who insisted on saving the children of Syria by bombing Syria and by supporting brutal terrorists, who would behead children, failed to see the great sacrifice paid by the majority of Syrian people, who were in support of their government and their military. Activist communities were split into pieces, while the momentum greatly exacerbated the US led war against the Syrian government. The situation began to turn as independent journalists—Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett and others—started to report from Syria on the actual situation—in which the majority of the Syrian people have approved the determined government policy against the west backed terrorists and the US colonial policies which had strangled Syrian people on many grounds.
The war on virus, which has directly targeted our entire society, as well as the global dynamics, has presented itself as a great divider among us. Our alienated perceptions have effectively prevented our ability to understand the course of action taken by others. The excruciating hardship of those who wear masks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, or more, to keep their jobs, or the anger and bitterness of those who were forced to be vaccinated against their will to remain employed, or the predicaments faced by those who chose to be fired for their medical choice, are not shared by those who do not share the circumstances and perspectives. The virus event kept people away from each other, prevented freedom of speech, and prevented freedom of assembly while deeply dividing people on many grounds. It is appalling that US media outlets actually told their audience to cut their ties to friends and family members who are not vaccinated. Anger, frustration, fear and hatred have been boiling in our communities.
Sadly, the situation is not any better among those who oppose the draconian virus measures. For example, some people see anyone who complies with a government mandate as an enemy, even if non compliance would have meant a total loss of livelihood. I’ve seen a sad instance in which a bar owner, who courageously spoke against the government “vaccine” mandate for his customers, was mocked and ridiculed for complying with the strict mandate, though not doing so could have resulted in loss of his business. This sort of atmosphere effectively prevents constructive community actions. It prevents natural growth of genuine social relations among the people based on creativity and practical means. The real struggle involves real observations of facts and spontaneous reactions to associated events. Ultimately, it cannot be prescribed by those who stand outside of the particular circumstance. Without the existence of a genuine institution for the people to coordinate overall strategies and educate people about the mechanism of exploitation, this sort of arbitrary behavior of purging would emerge only to exacerbate alienation and division among those who should be united to counter the ruling class assaults. What Lenin said in last century still stands on this regard. It also cultivates a defeatist attitude to embrace martyrdom as the only plausible goal of resistance.
The establishment understands this mechanism very well. That is why organized efforts of socialists, communists, and Marxists have been vehemently attacked by the US empire. As long as we stand with the establishment in demonizing any potential to build revolutionary momentum, we are bound to stay within the framework of the exploitation. Our goal is to change the exploitive system to the one that benefits our mutual well-beings. We are not the enemies of each other. On this point, we have a lot to learn from the Syrian government, which has been allowing reconciliation between those who took weapons against the people and those who lost their family members by the violence.
Anti-Chinese sentiment
I have already written briefly about China and the virus event here, and here. This topic continues to be crucial because China continues to present itself as the biggest obstacle to the western capitalist hegemony. Although China is fully integrated in the global market economy, it continues to resist western domination of its social fabric through western neoliberalization and financialization. This makes total sense if we understand the very reason why China opened itself to the market economy—it has done so to put its economic activities under the guidance of the Communist Party of China. It allows China to grow economically in providing for its people while preventing western propaganda infiltration, development of western guided black market, and western capitalist restructuring of Chinese social structure.
That is why we are flooded with anti-Chinese rhetoric today.
All western wars are ultimately imperial in nature. War on virus is not an exception. Those who operate within the capitalist framework— including those who claim to resist the lockdowns and the experimental Covid injections—express their disdain toward the imperial enemy as a gesture to express their allegiance to the empire even when they must oppose their feudal overlords.
Historically, the western capitalist mobilizations—war on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror and so on—that reshape and perpetuate its structural integrity occur in tandem with imperial dynamics. The slogans and talking points have always included anti-communist/anti-socialist elements.
The war on drugs was about destruction of minority communities as much as about destruction of Latin American movements to defy the US hegemony. The war on terror ended up destroying the middle eastern countries which have cooperated with the US hegemony to varying degrees. The US simply does not tolerate an alternative system that demonstrates the viability of social relations outside of the imperial framework. Millions have perished. One out of hundred people became refugees. Countries were destroyed. The momentum of war on terror exacerbated institutionalized racism and structural violence within the US as well, ultimately depriving people of legal rights through the National Defense Authorization Act, the Patriot Act, installation of the surveillance state, militarization of police and etc.
China has experienced capitalist onslaughts of colonialism, colonial wars, chemical/biological attacks, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns, regime change operations, trade embargoes, trade sanctions, economic war and more even before it embarked on the path of socialism with its revolution.
China has seen it all.
There is a reason why we keep hearing “China is complicit,” “the Chinese system is coming,” and “China is violating human rights” over and over. Because the war on virus follows the same rule. It restructures our society to perpetuate the oligarchy, and the momentum of exploitation and subjugation parallels the imperial violence against targeted countries. This is why hundreds of military bases are surrounding China, while multiple propaganda projects are being carried out—Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur, continued lies about Tiananmen Square, outright deceptions stating China has killed millions of its own people.
As long as the movement of resistance being built in the west stays within the framework of imperial exploitation and subjugation, ultimately, it will serve the empire very effectively. The oscillation between fascism and social democracy applies within imperial dynamics as well. For example, within the imperial framework, Nazi Germany was cultivated by the US industries to assault USSR, its failure to do so then became a justification for the US to construct its imperial hegemony. Famously, Nazi scientists and even some political figures were absorbed into the US empire (see Operation Paper Clip). The current atmosphere emerging is not new or any more deadly than the imperial essence, itself. This dynamic is crucial to understand. Failure to do so would allow another oscillation within the empire which could perpetuate the empire. On the surface, China seems to be a part of the momentum generally referred to as the “Great Reset.” However, meanwhile, the western allies in the pacific are also arming themself to encircle China militarily. China is under tremendous pressure to accept western led financialization and neoliberalization of their social structure. The situation greatly echoes how USSR and its allies were subjected to containment and encirclement. China seems to recognize the dynamics very well as I explain shortly.
Or, down the road, the fascist “Great Reset” might grow into a modern day economic Nazi to give a legitimacy to its counterpart within the western hegemony just like how the US achieved its imperial status after the WW2. The history could certainly rhyme. Such a possibility can’t be ruled out, but who wants to become another Nazi to be destroyed by the empire? All players understand these dynamics. The US won’t allow its own allies to threaten its own interests, while some allies are very eager to please the empire by playing their role in enforcing imperial imperatives—see how draconian measures in pushing big pharma vaccines, along with digitalization, financialization and the rest of the 4th Industrial Revolution, are forcefully forwarded in Australia, Canada and so on.
Perhaps the role of Israel in the imperial dynamics should be pointed out here to illustrate the dynamics. The violence which has been inflicted by the Israeli regime against neighboring countries and beyond serves the war-based US economy while punishing those who defy the imperial hegemony. Israel plays a violent guard dog for the empire under US protection, takes on the blame for it and sustains itself in this imperial relationship. Israel has been faithfully playing its role in the war on virus by relentlessly vaccinating its people while introducing various associated measures as well. Again, understanding the war on virus requires understanding imperial dynamics.
Meanwhile, China clearly understands its position within the imperial dynamics. China is not about to impose on itself a deadly neoliberal restructuring such as the USSR suffered as it was being demolished. China is not about to accept colonial war on its soil in any form including biological attacks, proxy war or economic war. If China sees its economic sphere as a part of its socialism with Chinese characteristics, it stands to reason that China would have to confront the waves of the western socio-political-economic restructuring associated with the virus event appropriately.
It’s none of western business if China decides to prepare itself for potential western biological attacks with any measures it deems necessary considering that the US owns the biggest pile of WMDs along with hundreds of bio weapon facilities across the globe, along with the history of actually using such weapons during the Korean War and on other occasions.
It’s none of western business if China develops its own Covid vaccines and virus measures in order to protect its financial sovereignty against western waves of Covid-related neoliberal restructuring and financialization.
It’s none of western business if China ends up succeeding in all of the above and turning the occasion into an opportunity to strengthen its economic viability, scientific progress and international presence with the overwhelming approval of its people.
Parasites devouring paralyzed hosts
Twisting around fear and putting people against each other in consecrating the unconditional authority of corporate entities over families torn apart, communities destroyed, and individuals rendered hopeless and hateful is not anything nature meant for us humans.
We are looking at parasites devouring paralyzed hosts. This is the very essence of an inhumane social formation called capitalism described precisely by Karl Marx. It is revealing that the formation is called “communism” even by those who claim to “resist”.
Again, the colonized institutions ultimately act as cages for capitalism. They work together to recalibrate the caste system.
Over and over we’ve been deceived. We are mobilized to play ritual battles on political theaters. We are mobilized to play “activism” on social theaters. We are mobilized to play good citizens on cultural theaters. We are mobilized to fight “others” on colonial theaters of war. As long as we run around within the framework of the oligarchs, we just shift the blame among ourselves and we keep fine tuning the very feudal hierarchy that traps us as expendable beings.
The wealth and power hoarded by the parasitic minority never belong to them. They are blessings of nature and humanity belonging to the harmony among us. Those oligarchs have only one thing—they are astronomically richer than the rest. They monopolize what belongs to us all in order to domesticate humanity and nature. But life can’t be contained by their primitive cage. So they have been modifying life to fit within the narrowly defined framework of their own kingdom. We became dumber, we are less brave, we are more cynical and hypocritical. None of it is acceptable from any angle from which we look at it. The current social formation is extremely destructive to our species. If we fail to grasp the situation, gene therapy drugs, psychotropic drugs, behavioral conditioning and so on will be fully used to exacerbate the situation, commodifying our minds and bodies as our lives are more and more digitized and financialized. If we become the products to be consumed, we are subjected to planned obsolescence, reduced quality, reduced diversity and so on just like any other items around us. They spread their tentacles in taking over social institutions. They freely attenuate and amplify the roles of institutions in orchestrating the material reality to suit their interests. Again, they paralyze people with illusions, lies, deceptions, drugs, carrot and stick and eat us alive. We do not deserve this parasitic social formation.
We need a system which firmly ensures that the material reality reflects a harmony of man and nature. For one thing, the ridiculous rituals of corporate politics, corporate slogans for health, and so on have no place in getting us out of this feudalism of money and violence. How can we all step back a little and take a look at what is really going on, calling out the parasites for what they are? How can we recognize that the same colonizers who destroyed countries across the globe have embarked on psychological asymmetrical urban warfare against us? We are told that we are all in this together only to find ourselves shooting each other. We are told to flatten the curve only to see our communities flattened to be swallowed by corporate entities. How can we build our communities with social relations based on our needs? How can we build social institutions which can help us build a social formation that serves us all?
The parasites devour the hosts because they do not have the ability to engage in the creative process of life. They must lie and deceive to imprison the subject population so that the captive beings are forced to construct the kingdom for the parasites. Parasites are not the all-seeing gods which they present themselves to be. In order to survive and embrace the blessings of the universe as one of the species on our planet, we must recognize this destructive state of being and somehow move beyond it.
We are hardly the only ones screaming. We are a fraction of a huge momentum of humanity continuing to make a point about our species’ obvious predicaments. The following words came from George L. Jackson shortly before he was murdered in California’s San Quentin Prison (I thank John Steppling for mentioning the quote recently):
Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
— George L. Jackson, Blood in my Eye, January 1, 1972
Like Fred Hampton said:
… you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.
— Fred Hampton, Speech delivered on April 27, 1969 (Movement Vol. 5. No. 12, The Movement Press, January, 1970)
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
After Arab Spring protests erupted in the Middle East in 2011, toppling longtime dictators of the Arab World, including Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Yemenis also gathered in the capital’s squares demanding removal of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Instead of conceding to protesters’ fervent demand of holding free and fair elections to ascertain democratic aspirations of demonstrators, however, the Obama administration adopted the convenient course of replacing Yemen’s longtime autocrat with a Saudi stooge Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Having the reputation of a “wily Arabian fox” and being a Houthi himself, Ali Abdullah Saleh wasn’t the one to sit idly by and retire from politics in ignominy.
The post Yemen Conflict: Blowback Of Obama’s Botched Syria Policy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Costa Rica
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The conviction of a former Syrian intelligence officer for crimes against humanity by a German court is a ground-breaking step toward justice for serious crimes in Syria, Human Rights Watch said today. The judgment is a meaningful moment for civilians who survived torture and sexual abuse in Syria’s prisons.
On January 13, 2022, a German court delivered its judgment in the trial of Anwar R., a former member of Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate, one of the country’s four main intelligence agencies commonly referred to collectively as the mukhabarat. Anwar R. is the most senior former Syrian government official to be convicted for serious crimes in Syria.
German prosecutors accused Anwar R. of overseeing the torture of detainees in his capacity as head of the investigations section at the General Intelligence Directorate’s al-Khatib detention facility in Damascus, also known as “Branch 251.”
The judges found Anwar R. guilty of committing crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison. Following the verdict in the case, Anwar R. has one week to appeal.
“More than 10 years after the violations were committed in Syria, the German court’s verdict is a long-awaited beacon of hope that justice can and will in the end prevail,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “Other countries should follow Germany’s lead, and actively bolster efforts to prosecute serious crimes in Syria.”
Human Rights Watch issued a question and answer document and a feature article on the trial and how it is situated in the larger context of the Syrian conflict on January 6, 2022. The trial against Anwar R. and Eyad A., who was found guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in February, began in April 2020 and was the first anywhere in the world for state-sponsored torture in Syria. Eyad A.’s appeal against his conviction remains pending.
Syrian survivors, lawyers, and activists have been central to making this trial a reality, not only pressing for justice but laying the groundwork that makes justice possible, Human Rights Watch said.
More than 80 witnesses testified, including former detainees, former Syrian government employees, German police investigators, and experts in Syrian affairs. The testimony included well-documented accounts of torture and sexual abuse in Branch 251, descriptions of mass graves, and details of Syria’s government policy to violently crack down on peaceful protesters in 2011. Several of the witnesses were able to identify Anwar R. in the courtroom.
One of the major challenges of this trial was witness protection. Several witnesses living in Germany and other European countries cancelled their appearance in court out of fear for their lives and safety, or that of their families. Several witnesses, some who were also victims, testified that they feared a risk to themselves and their families given their role in the trial. German authorities should ensure that witnesses and victims are sufficiently informed about their rights to protective measures, including to appear anonymously before the court.
Tens-of-thousands of people have been detained or disappeared in Syria since 2011, the vast majority by government forces using an extensive network of detention facilities throughout the country. The Syrian government continues to detain and forcibly disappear thousands of people.
Many of those detained have died from torture and horrific detention conditions. Comprehensive justice for these and other unchecked atrocities in Syria has been elusive. Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court. And in 2014, Russia and China blocked efforts at the United Nations Security Council to give the court a mandate over serious crimes in Syria.
The trial of Anwar R. and Eyad A. is possible because Germany’s laws recognize universal jurisdiction over certain of the most serious crimes under international law. That allows for the investigation and prosecution of these crimes no matter where they were committed and regardless of the nationality of the suspects or victims. Universal jurisdiction remains one of the few viable pathways to justice for crimes committed in Syria.
Germany has several elements in place to allow for the successful investigation and prosecution of grave crimes in Syria. It has above all a comprehensive legal framework, well-functioning specialized war crimes units, and previous experience with prosecuting such crimes. Countries with universal jurisdiction laws should establish specialized war crimes units within law enforcement and prosecution services, and ensure that such units are adequately resourced and staffed.
“Germany’s trial against Anwar R. is a message to the Syrian authorities that no one is beyond the reach of justice,” Jarrah said. “The Koblenz case has shown that with other avenues blocked, national courts can play a critical role in combating impunity.”
The first such reaction came immediately, see: https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/human-rights/after-german-conviction-of-syrian-official-focus-may-turn-to-swedish-trial-of-iranian/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/13/germany-conviction-state-torture-syria
https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/first-criminal-trial-worldwide-on-torture-in-syria-before-a-german-court/
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
Anwar Raslan stands accused of overseeing mass torture, rape and killings from 2008 through 2012, at the start of Syria’s ongoing civil war. As a member of the Syrian secret police, he was in charge of interrogations at a government prison in Damascus. Now, Raslan is being tried in Germany under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows countries to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, even if the accused is not one of their citizens and the crimes were not committed on their soil. If Raslan is found guilty, it would mark the first time in history that a high-ranking officer of a government that is still in power is convicted of crimes against humanity.
Reporter Luna Watfa and special correspondent Adithya Sambamurthy delve into what’s at stake in the potentially precedent-setting trial in a story for PBS NewsHour in collaboration with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Reporters: Adithya Sambamurthy, Luna Watfa
Producer: Adithya Sambamurthy
Editor: David Ritsher
Exec. Producers: Amanda Pike, Sara Just
Senior Producers: David Ritsher, Morgan Till, Richard Coolidge
Graphics: Kojo Boateng
Editor in Chief for Reveal: Sumi Aggarwal
Legal Counsel: Victoria Baranetsky
Director of Photography: Adithya Sambamurthy
Sound: Hannes Marget
Gaffer: Alexander Schmutzler
Additional Camera: Christian Eichenauer, Alexander Schmutzler, Eleanor Power
Pool footage provided by Ruptly
Additional Archive: Associated Press, Getty Images, Archive.org
ANCHOR INTRO: And now to Germany, where the world’s first trial against a high ranking former officer in the Syrian regime for crimes against humanity, is heading toward a verdict.
Anwar Raslan was in charge of interrogations in a government prison while working for the Syrian secret police. He stands accused of overseeing mass torture, rape and killings, at the start of Syria’s ongoing civil war.
From our partners at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, reporter Luna Watfa and special correspondent Adithya Sambamurthy have the story.
And a warning to our viewers: This story contains graphic images from inside Syrian prisons.
NARR: Hussein Ghrer is getting ready for his day in court.
Ghrer is a plaintiff in the trial against Anwar Raslan, a high ranking officer of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, for crimes against humanity.
Hussein Ghrer, plaintiff: It’s something we’ve been waiting for, for a very long time. We thought it’s never going to happen, but then when it happened, you tell yourself, it’s a dream, it can’t possibly be true.
NARR: In Syria, Ghrer blogged about his support of Syria’s wave of the Arab Spring, which began in March 2011…and has led to nearly 11 years of civil war.
For his support of the demonstrations, Ghrer says he was imprisoned and tortured at al-Khatib, one of the largest in a labyrinth of government prison complexes in Syria.
Hussein Ghrer, plaintiff: For me, the psychological torture was worst. The psychological torment is in waiting for the next session of torture. As a detainee I was always waiting for the next torture session. Asking all sorts of questions. Being between life and death. It was a difficult situation.
NARR: Ghrer was imprisoned for about three-and-a-half years. After his release in 2015, he fled to Germany, joining nearly a million Syrians who were granted political asylum by then Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.
And that created the conditions for this historic trial to take place in a German courtroom in Koblenz.
Most participants in this landmark trial, from the 2016 joint plaintiffs, to key witnesses and Anwar Raslan himself arrived in Germany as refugees in the last six years.
Patrick Kroker is co-counsel to Hussein Ghrer, and 13 other plaintiffs in this case, who allege being detained and tortured at al-Khatib, when Anwar Raslan led the interrogations unit there.
Patrick Kroker, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights: I mean, each and every story is very different, but there are some very common elements to them. It was really more about breaking the physical and psychological existence of the person by harming them, beating them with objects, hanging them on the wall, electrocuting them.
NARR: Raslan, whose face cannot be shown due to German privacy laws, is charged with at least 4000 counts of torture, at least 30 counts of murder, 26 counts of bodily harm, two counts of hostage taking and three counts of sexual violence, from the time he was in charge of interrogations at the al-Khatib prison.
The defense claims that Raslan had no real power to stop the abuses at al-Khatib.
Raslan says he did what he could to help civilians detained under his watch, and that he defected and fled Syria as soon as he could.
Kroker says he had initially hoped that a case of this magnitude would be referred by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Patrick Kroker, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights: In 2015, it became clear that the political chances of there being such a referral to the court aren’t there anymore, simply because Russia vetoed any attempt to refer this in the UN Security Council. And then China went along with that. So at that point in time, it became clear no international court for Syria, at least at this point.
NARR: So the prosecutors used a legal principle called universal jurisdiction to try the case in a German court instead.
Universal jurisdiction states that countries have a duty to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, even if the accused are not their citizens, and the crimes were not committed on their soil.
Germany’s embrace of universal jurisdiction grew out of the Nuremberg Trials at the end of the Second World War.
Allied judges tried prominent Nazi leaders for their roles in planning and executing the Holocaust and other war crimes. The tribunals created the legal definition of genocide and layed the foundation for contemporary international human rights law.
21st century Germany has adopted a very expansive definition of universal jurisdiction, giving prosecutors and judges a lot of leeway in trying such cases.
To meet the threshold of crimes against humanity, prosecutors have submitted evidence and testimony to the court, that details the industrial scale of torture employed inside Syrian government prisons.
These include some 30,000 images smuggled out of Syria by a former military photographer code-named Caesar.
A forensic examination of these images showed that detainees were beaten with blunt and sharp objects, shot, and exposed to electric shocks and burns.
The Caesar photos form an important part of the evidence, not only in the case against Anwar Raslan, but in future cases to come.
The next trial in Germany is due to start a week from today.
And criminal complaints against high ranking members of the Syrian government have been filed in four European countries that allow universal jurisdiction.
Prosecuting these cases has created a need for authorities to work more closely with Syrian refugee communities.
In this workshop in Berlin, Syrians now living in eight countries across Europe are being instructed by Professor Thomas Wenzel, on how to collect evidence that would hold up in court, and how to encourage potential witnesses to come forward and cooperate with law enforcement.
All of the workshop participants used to be legal professionals in Syria.
Prof. Thomas Wenzel, Medical University of Vienna: You see this is a scar of an African patient, it’s not the greatest picture, but you can tell from the ruler placed next to it exactly that it is 6cm, you wouldn’t be able to do this by simply taking a picture. This kind of basic documentation is useful in court
NARR: Workshop organizer Usahma Felix Darrah, believes the trial in Koblenz has been a watershed moment- and that it is paving the way for Syrians to play a crucial part in the quest for justice through national courts in Europe.
Dr. Usahma Felix Darrah, Friends of the Syrian People: You have to understand how much hope really rests on this kind of work. This is the only semblance of justice that many Syrians have seen, in nine years of a very very bitter war. The war is still ongoing, and we have Syrians that are playing an active role in actually making accountability happen. Our plan is to document testimonies of survivors, of victims, and of witnesses, and to systematize those in a manner that can be usable in a court of law.
Prof. Thomas Wenzel, Medical University of Vienna: When speaking with a witness, we always need to ask, was a doctor there? If a doctor stands by when someone is being tortured, and says, stop, now you need to take a break, and now you can continue, that doctor is classed as a torturer.
NARR: Even advocates say that it’s too early to determine if these efforts are scalable, and whether European courts using universal jurisdiction will become a routine alternative to international tribunals, in prosecuting war crimes cases.
But back in Koblenz, Hussein Ghrer is clear that under the circumstances, this process is the best way forward.
He’s on his way to court, to give his closing statement in the case against Anwar Raslan.
Hussein Ghrer, plaintiff: I feel nervous, it’s the first time ever, a case against a member of the Syrian regime, and it’s unusual that a plaintiff like me gets to give a closing statement in front of the judges.
Insha’llah I can deliver my message inside.
NARR: The state prosecutor has called for a life sentence for Anwar Raslan, with no possibility of parole after 15 years.
Should Raslan be found guilty, it would set a precedent, marking the first time in history that a high ranking officer of a government that is still in power, is convicted of crimes against humanity.
For Reveal and PBS Newshour, I’m Adithya Sambamurthy in Koblenz, Germany.
Anchor outro: A verdict in the trial is expected tomorrow.
A High-Ranking Officer Has Never Been Convicted of Crimes Against Humanity While His Government Is Still in Power. That Could Change This Week is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
August 2020 U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed 10 Afghan civilians. (Credit: Getty Images)
The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004. But President Trump stopped publishing them after February 2020, shrouding continued U.S. bombing in secrecy.
Over the past 20 years, as documented in the table below, U.S. and allied air forces have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles on other countries. That is an average of 46 strikes per day for 20 years. This endless bombardment has not only been deadly and devastating for its victims but is broadly recognized as seriously undermining international peace and security and diminishing America’s standing in the world.
The U.S. government and political establishment have been remarkably successful at keeping the American public in the dark about the horrific consequences of these long-term campaigns of mass destruction, allowing them to maintain the illusion of U.S. militarism as a force for good in the world in their domestic political rhetoric.
Now, even in the face of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, they are doubling down on their success at selling this counterfactual narrative to the American public to reignite their old Cold War with Russia and China, dramatically and predictably increasing the risk of nuclear war.
The new Airpower Summary data reveal that the United States has dropped another 3,246 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (2,068 under Trump and 1,178 under Biden) since February 2020.
The good news is that U.S. bombing of those 3 countries has significantly decreased from the over 12,000 bombs and missiles it dropped on them in 2019. In fact, since the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces from Afghanistan in August, the U.S. military has officially conducted no air strikes there, and only dropped 13 bombs or missiles on Iraq and Syria – although this does not preclude additional unreported strikes by forces under CIA command or control.
Presidents Trump and Biden both deserve credit for recognizing that endless bombing and occupation could not deliver victory in Afghanistan. The speed with which the U.S.-installed government fell to the Taliban once the U.S. withdrawal was under way confirmed how 20 years of hostile military occupation, aerial bombardment and support for corrupt governments ultimately served only to drive the war-weary people of Afghanistan back to Taliban rule.
Biden’s callous decision to follow 20 years of colonial occupation and aerial bombardment in Afghanistan with the same kind of brutal economic siege warfare the United States has inflicted on Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela can only further discredit America in the eyes of the world.
There has been no accountability for these 20 years of senseless destruction. Even with the publication of Airpower Summaries, the ugly reality of U.S. bombing wars and the mass casualties they inflict remain largely hidden from the American people.
How many of the 3,246 attacks documented in the Airpower Summary since February 2020 were you aware of before reading this article? You probably heard about the drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians in Kabul in August 2021. But what about the other 3,245 bombs and missiles? Whom did they kill or maim, and whose homes did they destroy?
The December 2021 New York Times exposé of the consequences of U.S. airstrikes, the result of a five-year investigation, was stunning not only for the high civilian casualties and military lies it exposed, but also because it revealed just how little investigative reporting the U.S. media have done on these two decades of war.
In America’s industrialized, remote-control air wars, even the U.S. military personnel most directly and intimately involved are shielded from human contact with the people whose lives they are destroying, while for most of the American public, it is as if these hundreds of thousands of deadly explosions never even happened.
The lack of public awareness of U.S. airstrikes is not the result of a lack of concern for the mass destruction our government commits in our names. In the rare cases we find out about, like the murderous drone strike in Kabul in August, the public wants to know what happened and strongly supports U.S. accountability for civilian deaths.
So public ignorance of 99% of U.S. air strikes and their consequences is not the result of public apathy, but of deliberate decisions by the U.S. military, politicians of both parties and corporate media to keep the public in the dark. The largely unremarked 21-month-long suppression of monthly Airpower Summaries is only the latest example of this.
Now that the new Airpower Summary has filled in the previously hidden figures for 2020-21, here is the most complete data available on 20 years of deadly and destructive U.S. and allied air strikes.
Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the United States and its allies since 2001:
| Iraq (& Syria*) | Afghanistan | Yemen | Other Countries** | |
| 2001 | 214 | 17,500 | ||
| 2002 | 252 | 6,500 | 1 | |
| 2003 | 29,200 | |||
| 2004 | 285 | 86 | 1 (Pk) | |
| 2005 | 404 | 176 | 3 (Pk) | |
| 2006 | 310 | 2,644 | 7,002 (Le,Pk) | |
| 2007 | 1,708 | 5,198 | 9 (Pk,S) | |
| 2008 | 1,075 | 5,215 | 40 (Pk,S) | |
| 2009 | 126 | 4,184 | 3 | 5,554 (Pk,Pl) |
| 2010 | 8 | 5,126 | 2 | 128 (Pk) |
| 2011 | 4 | 5,411 | 13 | 7,763 (Li,Pk,S) |
| 2012 | 4,083 | 41 | 54 (Li, Pk,S) | |
| 2013 | 2,758 | 22 | 32 (Li,Pk,S) | |
| 2014 | 6,292* | 2,365 | 20 | 5,058 (Li,Pl,Pk,S) |
| 2015 | 28,696* | 947 | 14,191 | 28 (Li,Pk,S) |
| 2016 | 30,743* | 1,337 | 14,549 | 529 (Li,Pk,S) |
| 2017 | 39,577* | 4,361 | 15,969 | 301 (Li,Pk,S) |
| 2018 | 8,713* | 7,362 | 9,746 | 84 (Li,Pk,S) |
| 2019 | 4,729* | 7,423 | 3,045 | 65 (Li,S) |
| 2020 | 1,188* | 1,631 | 7,622 | 54 (S) |
| 2021 | 554* | 801 | 4,428 | 1,512 (Pl,S) |
| Total | 154, 078* | 85,108 | 69,652 | 28,217 |
Grand Total = 337,055 bombs and missiles
**Other Countries: Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia.
These figures are based on US. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of bombs and missiles dropped on Yemen (only through September 2021); the New America Foundation’s database of foreign air strikes in Libya; and other sources.
There are several categories of air strikes that are not included in this table, meaning that the true numbers of weapons unleashed are certainly higher. These include:
Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly air strikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.” The largest pool of air strikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported air strikes in Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many missiles were fired in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.
AC-130 gunships: The U.S. military did not destroy the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in 2015 with bombs or missiles, but with a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.
Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks. A-10s can fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an area with deadly and indiscriminate fire. But that does not appear to count as a “weapons release” in U.S. Airpower Summaries.
“Counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” operations in other parts of the world: The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West African countries in 2005, and has built a drone base in Niger, but we have not found any systematic accounting of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.
The failure of the U.S. government, politicians and corporate media to honestly inform and educate the American public about the systematic mass destruction wreaked by our country’s armed forces has allowed this carnage to continue largely unremarked and unchecked for 20 years.
It has also left us precariously vulnerable to the revival of an anachronistic, Manichean Cold War narrative that risks even greater catastrophe. In this topsy-turvy, “through the looking glass” narrative, the country actually bombing cities to rubble and waging wars that kill millions of people, presents itself as a well-intentioned force for good in the world. Then it paints countries like China, Russia and Iran, which have understandably strengthened their defenses to deter the United States from attacking them, as threats to the American people and to world peace.
The high-level talks beginning on January 10th in Geneva between the United States and Russia are a critical opportunity, maybe even a last chance, to rein in the escalation of the current Cold War before this breakdown in East-West relations becomes irreversible or devolves into a military conflict.
If we are to emerge from this morass of militarism and avoid the risk of an apocalyptic war with Russia or China, the U.S. public must challenge the counterfactual Cold War narrative that U.S. military and civilian leaders are peddling to justify their ever-increasing investments in nuclear weapons and the U.S. war machine.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
With Syria still embroiled in its own war, Israel has been actively rewriting the rule book regarding its conduct in this Arab country. Gone are the days of a potential return of the illegally occupied Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty in exchange for peace, per the language of yesteryears. Now, Israel is set to double its illegal Jewish settler population in the Golan, while Israeli bombs continue to drop with a much higher frequency on various Syrian targets.
Indeed, a one-sided war is underway, casually reported as if a routine, everyday event. In the last decade, many ‘mysterious’ attacks on Syria were attributed to Israel. The latter neither confirmed nor denied. With the blanket support given to Israel by the Donald Trump administration, which recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights of 1981, Israeli reluctance to take credit for the frequent and increasingly destructive and bloody air raids has dissipated.
Briefly, some in the Israeli government were concerned by the possible repercussions of the advent of Joe Biden to the White House in January 2021. They worried that the new president might reverse some of the pro-Israel decisions enacted by his predecessor, including the recognition of the “Sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” due to the “strategic and security importance to the State of Israel”. Biden, a long-time supporter of Israel himself, did no such thing.
The initial concern about a shift in US policy turned into euphoria and, eventually, an opportunity, especially as Israel’s new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is eager to break the Right’s historic dominance over the Jewish settlement movement in occupied Palestinian and Arab lands.
“This is our moment. This is the moment of the Golan Heights,” Bennett declared triumphantly at an Israeli government cabinet meeting held specially to officiate plans regarding the further colonization of the Golan on December 26.
The following statement by Bennett speaks volumes about the context of the Israeli decision, and its future intentions: “After long and static years in terms of the scope of settlement, our goal today is to double settlement in the Golan Heights.” The reference to ‘static years’ is an outright rejection of the occasional freezing of settlement construction that mostly took place during the so-called ‘peace process.’ Bennett – who, in June 2021, was embraced by Washington and its western allies as the political antithesis to the obstinate Benjamin Netanyahu – has effectively ended any possibility of a peaceful resolution to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Golan.
Aside from predictable and clichéd responses by Syria and the Arab League, Israel’s massive push to double its settlement activities in the Golan is going largely unnoticed. Not only Israel’s right-wing media, but the likes of Haaretz are also welcoming the government’s investment – estimated at nearly $320 million. The title of David Rosenberg’s article in Haaretz tells the whole story: “Picturesque but Poor, Israel’s Golan Needs a Government Boost to Thrive.” The article decries government ‘neglect’ of the Golan, speaks of employment opportunities and merely challenges Bennett’s government on whether it will “stay the course”. The fact that the occupation of the Golan, like that of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, is illegal under international law is absent from Israeli media coverage.
Namely, Israel’s main focus currently is to normalize its occupation of Arab land entirely. But if that mission has failed over the course of 54 years, can it succeed now?
For Israel, the illegal settlement enterprise, whether in the Syrian Golan or in occupied Palestine, is synonymous. It is inspired by deep-rooted ideological and religious beliefs, compelled by economic opportunities and political interests and assuaged by the lack of any meaningful international response.
In the case of the Golan, Israel’s intention was, from the onset, to expand on its agricultural space, as the capture of the fertile Syrian territory almost immediately attracted settlers, who set the stage for massive agricultural settlements. Although the home of merely 25,000 Jewish settlers, the Golan became a major source of Israeli apples, pears and wine grape production. Local tourism in the scenic Golan, dotted with numerous wineries, thrived, especially following the Israeli annexation of the territory in 1981.
The plight of the steadfast Golan Arab Druze population of nearly 23,000 is as irrelevant in the eyes of Israel as that of the millions of occupied Palestinians, whether under siege in Gaza or living under a perpetual occupation or apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Golan population is equally isolated and oppressed but, like the Palestinians, continues to resist despite the heavy price of their resistance. Their hardship, however, is likely to increase with the expected doubling of the Jewish settler population.
Israel is, of course, aware that popular uprisings will eventually be mounted in response to its latest colonial endeavors, but various factors must be giving Bennett the confidence to continue with his plans. A major source of reassurance is that it could take Syria years to achieve any degree of political stabilization before mounting any source of challenge to the Israeli occupation. Another is that the Palestinian leadership is in no mood for confrontation, especially that it is, once again, on good terms with Washington, which has resumed its funding of the PA soon after Biden’s inauguration.
Moreover, in Israel, the anti-settlement movement has long subsided, crystallized mostly into smaller political parties that are hardly critical in the formation or toppling of government coalitions.
More importantly, Washington has no interest to initiate any kind of diplomatic efforts to lay the ground for future talks involving Israel, the Palestinians and certainly not Syria. Any such attempt now, or even in coming years, would represent a political gamble for Biden’s embattled administration.
Israel understands this absolutely and plans to take advantage of this opportunity, arguably unprecedented since the Madrid talks over thirty years ago. Yet, while Bennett is urging Israelis in their quest for settlement expansion with such battle cries as “this is our moment’, he must not underestimate that the occupied Palestinians and Syrians are also aware that their ‘moment’, too, is drawing near. In fact, all popular Palestinian uprisings of the past were initiated at times when Israel assumed that it had the upper hand, and that people’s resistance has been forever pacified.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
