The Kurds in Syria
Philip Roddis
Attempts by Third World leaders to establish independent control of their economies, in preference to their economies being used as spheres of profit-accumulation for the sole direct benefit of foreign investors, is almost invariably met by the opposition of investor-dominated foreign governments.” Stephen Gowans
Adrift on an uncharted ocean we call Life, humans seem drawn to the illusion of certainty like wasps to an open jam jar. God is good! … I think so I am! … Brexit will be dandy/a disaster! … Bashar al-Assad is a Demon/a Saint! … Kurds Good, everyone else Baad!
A self proclaimed spiritual teacher I turned to for life guidance – and still do, since the truths he spoke remain untainted by his own failure to walk the talk – said often that the path of spiritual inquiry is a journey from thinking we know to knowing we don’t. Which is flat out comical when pretty much the first thing you encounter on the spiritual scene is a bunch of know-alls trying to pass off as humble.
Not all, to be sure, but way too many. Me, I never did like the word ‘spiritual’ – too many insipid or downright daft connotations – but substitute ‘existential’ and the proposition works fine.
I don’t mean we fear not knowing per se – only when we are desperate to know. In the context of Syria some are happy with not knowing but it soon becomes clear why. They don’t care, and when we’ve ceased to care the tension of wanting to know, while realising we can’t, disperses like a mild headache after codeine.
That’s what makes cynicism in all its forms attractive. It’s the opium of the intelligentsia.
But I’m talking Syria, not psychology.
Most folk are brainwashed – sorry, no other term will do – into accepting a ludicrous narrative on this unfortunate nation, recipient of imperialism’s wrath for reasons I’ve gone into many times and will do so again in a moment.
When we couple that inability to bear not knowing with another human attribute, laziness, it’s not hard to grasp why we like binary narratives. We want our good guys good, our bad guys bad, and ne’er the twain shall mix. Bob Dylan had a point. On Desolation Row, his metaphor for the human condition, everyone is shouting, which side are you on?
And once we’ve raised our flag on what it pleases us to call The Truth, comfort floods in, if only the bleak comfort of “It’s All Shite”. Like a cornered beast we’ll go for anyone threatening that comfort, however logical and evidence based their approach.
The more so given another very human attribute, ego. Once I’ve raised my flag on The Truth, challenge it and you challenge me.
I just might have to take you out.
*
I’ll get to the Kurds shortly. First let me set out my take on Syria’s ordeal, in light of the above – and the facts that (a) our best knowledge about anything is necessarily provisional; (b) access to facts in this crime scene of a country is limited by on-the-ground realities, and by the tight fit of market-driven media agendas with those of Wall Street and Western imperialism.
In a July post on Israel, I wrote:
First, [imperialism must] install privileged groupings, beholden to the distant power, in those nations whose resources are plundered. Hence a Shah of Iran or King Hussein of Jordan, loathed by the peoples on whom they’d been foisted. Hence puppet monarchs in Egypt prior to Nasser, in Libya prior to Gaddafi and in Iraq prior to Saddam. Hence too the House of Saud.
Second, divide-and-rule, always of the essence, is all the more so in a Middle East whose most numerous people, Arabs, should they transcend their differences, could control the gateway to the East and the world’s greatest concentrations of its key commodity. Such a coming together is to be averted by all available means.
For instance by doing as Britain and France did, and carving the Arab world into artificial states as WW1 synchronised the fall of the Ottoman Empire with the rising importance of oil – which is why on the one hand Nasser’s pan-Arabism, on the other Ba’athist Iraq and Syria, had to be crushed with help from Israel and, in Syria’s case, ‘moderate Islamists’.
Or by favouring minorities – Kurd, Alawite, Druze, Maronite – much as a gerrymandered Six County statelet played the orange card whenever Protestant and Catholic workers found common cause in Belfast’s linen mills and shipyards.
Or by recognising that of the three currents – Arab socialism, communism and Islamism – vying for hearts and minds on the Arab Street, only that last lends itself, albeit with attendant risks, to co-option by imperial designs.
That is from my review of a book arguing that Israel offers the West a beachhead from which to control the middle east. I’ll return to this idea. I see it as highly germane to our being primed to view the Kurds in a particular way.
But back to Syria, a state created by European powers – as had been Iraq, Kuwait, Libya and so many other Arab entities for the divide-and-rule reason given. In this context the importance of Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein can hardly be overstated, likewise the necessity of his humiliation by Israel and the West in the years from Suez 1956 to the Six Day War of 1967.
Nasser’s pan-Arabism inspired not just his own generation of Arabs but, even more important, the next one. Though his reining in – a fatal heart attack at fifty-two merely the coup de grace – was arguably a crueler end even than Saddam’s and Gaddafi’s, he fired future Arab leaders just as Simón Bolivar had fired Latin America’s anti-colonialists of the nineteenth century, and anti-imperialists of the twentieth and twenty-first. Among that next crop of leaders were Muammar al-Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad.
The common denominator? Ba’athism, which we can here read as Arab socialism. All sought to negotiate for their states, in the context of cold war and imperialism, a degree of protection by the USSR while insisting on a uniquely Arab path. To this end they rejected both marx-leninism and, with tragically less success, the ‘free market’ ideology of Western powers as advanced by IMF, WTO and World Bank.
And where those agencies didn’t do the trick, by lethal sanctions and force of arms under cover of humanitarianism.
Prior to the dismantling at terrible human cost of Iraq and Libya, and the severe mauling plus ongoing occupation and creeping balkanisation of Syria, all three states displayed two striking features. They raised living standards, literacy levels and welfare infrastructure while promoting secularism and retaining state control of key economic sectors. None of these things, that last in particular, endeared them to Western ‘advisors’ increasingly in the grip, after the 1973 OPEC crisis, of Chicago School orthodoxies road tested in Pinochet’s Chile.
The second striking feature? All three were marked by the ruthlessness with which opposition – communism and violent Islamism in particular – was suppressed. These were hardly models of the Open Society but at their stage of development as imperialised, postcolonial nations it is my view that such a state of affairs could exist only in the abstractions of armchair idealists.
In Syria under Hafez al-Assad, the Muslim Brotherhood resisted Ba’athist reform at every turn while the West, its agendas in the region hidden from its own peoples, watched with bemused ambivalence.
I’ve written elsewhere on the schizoid relations Zionism and imperialism have with Islamism. Think WWI and Lawrence of Arabia. Think cold war Afghanistan, Israel backing Hamas against Fateh, and that faustian bargain with Riyadh. Think ‘moderate Islamist’ Kurds in Syria.
All these relations are driven, on and off and more or less covertly, by a range of motives that include: oil; oil pipelines; Israel’s need as a usurper and expansionist state to sow division; Washington’s visceral mistrust, rendering salafism the lesser evil, of ‘Arab communism’.
*
I spoke of the brainwashing narratives through which independently minded Arab leaders are vilified in Western media. By such means is Chomsky’s manufacture of ‘consent’ (including for war and sanctions) engineered. Certainly they reach saturation levels in the cases of Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad Junior – Chavez and Maduro too – but propaganda is only half the story.
The other half is that few in the West have experienced destitution. Yes, baby boomers like me remember the haunted look of mothers with too much week and not enough money. I recall – I’d be seven or eight – the despair and humiliation on the face of one whose kids I played with, as she left a local grocer’s under the silent gaze of a line of customers, having failed to get milk and a few other items on tick.
But destitution of the kind which in the thirties stalked the Gorbals, Bowery and slums of every Western city? Which came hand in hand with rickets, polio and TB? Few alive today remember such things. For that we must turn to Steinbeck, Orwell and those harrowed and haunted faces captured in the lens of Dorothea Lange.
(Though it is once again on the march with the fall of the Soviet Union and with it the business case, rooted in a cold war drive to win hearts and minds, for caring capitalism.)
Our ignorance of poverty combines in a perfect storm with existential realities sketched out at start of this post. And with Western media’s simplistic narratives, their lies of omission and the willingness of their deskbound columnists – they have no reporters in Syria – to mix allegations that make little sense, other than comic book evil-for-evil’s-sake villainy, with just enough truth or plausibility to make them stick.
We hear of torture, show trials and scant regard for habeas corpus. We do not hear of raised living standards, universal literacy or other upsides of Ba’athism. We hear of executions and disappearances but not of the many Daraa protestors who drew a clear distinction between a popular leader, and the system he’d inherited and sought – always a dangerous endeavour – to liberalise.
Nor of those who gave Bashar the thumbs-down when, their demands for greater freedom hijacked by Islamists, his initial response was deemed namby-pamby, lacking the steel of the old man: a Hafez now remembered – truly, folk are fickle! – with fond respect.
We hear Bashar al-Assad is a tyrant but not that he won an internationally observed election in 2014. We hear the mass of his people want shot of him but not that credible experts – among them two former UK ambassadors, UN weapons inspectors and former CIA agents – challenge the claims against him. (As in many cases do elementary logic and such fragments of evidence as have come to light.)
And we hear barrel bombs are vile, but not that they stand in relation to white phosphorous used by the IDF in Gaza, and depleted uranium used by America wherever it damn well pleases, as flint tipped spears to automatic rifles.
I can’t be sure none of the accusations against Damascus is true. Neither can you. What I can be sure of is that those making them combine staggering hypocrisy – Extraordinary rendition? Abu Ghraib? – with a venality toward the middle east abetted by the silence of ‘our’ media?
But such questions aside, and regardless of whether or to what extent those charges are true, we rush to judgment because the idea that repression might coexist with genuine desire to raise a people en masse from the greater tyranny of poverty is way too much nuance.
What we want are nice simple accounts of third world leaders with the one-dimensionality of Enid Blyton’s creations; the goodies squeaky clean, the baddies reassuringly loathsome.
*
Speaking of squeaky clean it’s time to consider the Kurds. I’ve done the heavy lifting so needn’t take long. The Kurdish issue is far from clear cut but for my narrow purposes just two questions apply. One, why have the Kurds been sold to us since the first Gulf War and especially since the Daraa protests of 2011 as goodness incarnate? Two, what would be the impact of ‘autonomous’ Kurdish territories inside Syria?
The mainstream answer to the first question is that these are our brave allies in the war on ISIS.
(For the counterview, subject as ever to my health warnings about our drive to embrace, either way, the illusion of certainty, try this from Sarah Abed, this from Stephen Gowans, or this from a Vanessa Beeley who, unlike mainstream media, has a presence in Syria. That does not make Beeley an unimpeachable source, but does give her the right to be taken seriously.)
I’ve already sketched out in general terms why we should be suspicious of so hard a sell on the cuddliness of Kurds. We might add – since of late it is rare to hear mention of Kurdish fighters in Syria without the word ‘brave’ attached – that attributions of courage and cowardice are often irrelevant. Hitler was twice awarded an Iron Cross, the second time on the recommendation of his Jewish commanding officer. Often ridiculous too.
During the ‘Troubles’ it was de rigeur for a British politican to describe any act of terror by the Provisional IRA as ‘cowardly’, as it is now de rigeur to apply that descriptor to any suicide bombing on Western or proxy targets.
More specifically, the West’s chief enemy in Syria has never been salafist terror but Ba’athism.
The removal of Assad is an aim that predates, for reasons easy to fathom if we are so minded, the Daraa protests. On empire frustration at economies closed off to Wall Street, Naomi Klein’s account in Shock Doctrine of what happened to post invasion Iraq is a model of highly detailed investigation.
For the pipeline aspect try this; for Israeli and Western hydrocarbon grabs in the Golan, the Economist.
All this, mark you, before we even get to Syria’s geopolitical significance in light of the wider issues of China’s One Belt One Road, Russia’s post Yeltsin resurgence, and the fears both raise on Wall Street.
Given these things, and a century of willingness to work with salafism “for the greater good”, it takes immense but sadly not rare naivity to buy the notion that swathes of Syria are stomping grounds for the West and its proxies – all, unlike Russia and Hezbollah, uninvited – for the sole reason that ISIS must be defeated.
Had defeating ISIS been the priority for America and its junior partners, President Trump would have had every backing for his initial desire to work with Putin to that end. Instead warmongers in both parties combined with deep state, military-industrial complex and ‘liberal’ media to halt such an idea in its tracks. Hence Muellergate. Hence Ukrainegate.
Had defeating ISIS been the priority for America and its junior partners, resolving the situation which initially sparked this post would be easy. That situation being Trump’s abandoning the YPG and YPJ to an Ankara preparing to crush them as brothers in arms to a PKK it sees in much the same way Britain saw the IRA, Sri Lanka the Tamil Tigers.
And the easy resolution?
Call me a dupe, but unlike many people I do not automatically rule out all possibility of RT (née Russia Today) being worth a read from time to time.
In this case, what it had to say on October 7 – Worried for Kurds in Syria abandoned by US? Here’s an obvious solution but it will make Washington hawks MAD – may be judged on its merits:
What happened in August 2016 should have … been a clue – and offers a possible way out of the present conundrum. Back then, Turkey invaded from the north in ‘Operation Euphrates Shield’, attacking the Kurds from the rear just as [they were] launching a major push against Raqqa. The US did nothing to stop this. Only when the Syrian Arab Army – accompanied by Russian observers – stepped in to create a buffer zone between the Turks and the [Kurdish led] SDF, did the invasion stop.
While Ankara thinks nothing of attacking the Kurds, it is hard to imagine it would dare open fire on Syrian troops or the Russians fighting alongside them. The obvious solution for the Kurds is to make a deal with Damascus and secure the protection of the Syrian government that the US could never provide. This would keep them safe, while keeping Damascus happy and Ankara without grounds to object.
The only ones displeased by this would be regime-change advocates in Washington – but that’s their problem.
So there’s my cautious response on the first question: why are the Kurds sold to us as goodness incarnate? Again I stress that it is offered not as Absolute Truth. Simply as more likely, on both evidential and logical grounds, than the mainstream accounts on offer. (Accounts dismayingly accepted and relayed by most of the far left, but that’s a tale for another day.)
My second question, on the consequences of ‘autonomous’ regions inside Syria, should be a no-brainer. Recall that I said earlier:
Israel offers the West a beachhead from which to control the middle east. I’ll return to this idea. It is highly germane to our being primed to view the Kurds in a particular way.
To the fury of Washington, Whitehall and Quai d’Orsay their attempt to remove Assad – as they had removed Saddam and Gaddafi, and as they wish to remove the Ayatollahs in Tehran – was thwarted by Russia’s decisive intervention.
Needless to say, this did not lead to philosophical – you win some/you lose some – acceptance of defeat. The West is still very much in the game of seeking to control Syria and the wider region; a game it has been in for a century.
For that section of America’s ruling class prepared to go for broke in Syria, Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump was a serious setback.
Yes, as noted already, Trump’s oft stated willingness to work with Putin has been reined in. (In this regard Robert Mueller’s falling flat on his face as the Russiagate narrative unravelled does not greatly matter. Trump has spent most of his first term on the back foot and that’s what does.) But all talk of going eyeball to eyeball with the world’s second military power, to see who blinks first, is for now on ice.
Bogging the Syrian Army and its Russian allies down in an endless war of attrition is likely to be causing headaches in Moscow, but yet another aspect of the smoke’n mirrors at work here is the difficulty of assessing the cost to Putin’s popularity. In any case steady SAA gains since 2016 mean that without Western boots on the ground in serious numbers – politically unthinkable – or Russia pulling out – ditto – Damascus cannot be brought by slow degree to its knees.
Which leads us to option three: Syria’s balkanisation, with calls for autonomous regions for the Kurds analogous, on a smaller scale, to the gathering momentum for a Zionist state in the first half of the twentieth century. Analogous in the appeal to ancient nationhood. Analogous in the usefulness to the West of a beachhead within a fragmented Syria.
And this, I believe, answers that second question. Just one last thing. There’s a growing trend on the liberal left to speak in glowing terms of a women’s cooperative movement in a Kurdish controlled Rojava the world seems to have forgotten sits firmly within the borders of Syria. Vice Magazine – its co-founder insistent that‘we’re not trying to say anything political …’ – hails The Most Feminist Revolution the World Has Ever Witnessed.
Other responses from liberal, socialist, anarchist and feminist outlets have not all been quite so gushing but the trend is the same. Rojava ticks all the boxes for Western progressives. Kurds good! Feminists good! Cooperatives good! Me, I shudder. I feel hairs standing at the back of my neck. I fear that yet again we are being played, our best instincts co-opted for imperial ends.
I haven’t been to Rojava but am willing to believe there’s magic in the air, the kind that always breaks through in revolutionary situations – which to some Kurdish eyes this may well seem to be. I dare say Kurdish patriarchs are worried, and seeking by gross means or subtle to rein in the ringleaders. I dare say – I’m guessing of course – that Kurdish capitalists mutter darkly of the threats of communism and anarchy.
Seen through the narrowest of lenses, this all looks to the good to progressive eyes. The more so when the owners never thought to question the premises on which Syria was so grievously violated. But then, didn’t the brightest and most altruistic of western youth once give the same rapturous welcome to another wonderful ideal: the kibbutzim of Israel?
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
A Venezuelan paints a clear picture of the Kurds and why they should be thankful that their country Syria doesn’t allow Turkey to kill them.
https://nomadicthoughts.blogs.sapo.pt/lets-mourn-the-kurdish-faith-by-luis-21338
Thank you very much for your comment, but although I stand 100% for Venezuela and Syria, I am not Venezuelan, I’m Portuguese (yes, that pitiful vassal state of the US )
Consider reading Thierry Meyssan’s 3-part essay “ALL THAT IS HIDDEN FROM YOU ABOUT TURKISH OPERATION “SOURCE OF PEACE”.
It is an extensive and detailed resume of “The Kurdish Question” not to be missed:
https://www.voltairenet.org/article207992.html
“The unanimous international community multiplies its condemnation of the military offensive in Rojava and watches helplessly as tens of thousands of Kurds flee, pursued by the Turkish army. However, no one intervenes, considering that a massacre may be the only possible way to restore peace, given the inextricable situation created by France and the crimes against humanity committed by Kurdish combatants and civilians.” — Thierry Meyssan
I have been following the occasional youtube videos of SyrianGirl, for around 10 years – well before the actual war started there at the behest of the British, French and US Governments, all of which I find completely disgraceful. The panopoly of lies, constructed largely by The British Government and their agents re Syria White Helmets etc is completley disgusting. Her latest effort is Brilliant too. Everything she has said has been confirmed by the likes of Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley who had the courage to go to Syria, independently as real journalists to interview and observe what was really happenning, rather than the lies and propaganda, promoted by the entire Western Media, the most disgraceful of which came from our own BBC, that I used to be a massive supporter of, and know some of the people who worked there (some of who’m are couragous – especially the… Read more »
Elijah Magnier’s magnum History of the Kurds, current front runners in Stateless Minority Sympathy Stakes
https://ejmagnier.com/2019/10/15/winners-and-losers-in-the-turkish-attack-on-kurds-in-syria-part-1of-3/
Good to see Syrian Girl back with a little masterpiece of video explanation. Vivid red lipstick adds pleasure for lip-readers.
Comparing to previous videos/appearances, she had a lip job done. Why? Does the cuase require lips like Angelina Jolie? The truth about Syria is also known to all non-gullible people on earth. But I do understand the need for an income and more viewers of lips equals more as revenue.
What I do like though is the apparently Chinese T-Shirt.
NOT1, I think she is aiming to enlighten the gullible rather than preaching to the already enlightened. Hence the careful presentation with lots of pictures, maps and rhetorical inflexions of her voice. More power to her lips and now that peace is coming to Syria may she get back to her science studies.
PS re Syrian-Australian Girl’s Chinese Teeshirt, here is my edited clip from one of her fellow Ozzies, who used to post on OffG quite a lot:
“Mulga Mumblebrain on October 15, 2019
The prime motivation is to paint China as ‘the New Nazis’ here in Austfailia, where the tsunami of racist and ideological Sinophobia just grows and grows”.
So even when she returns to her science studies, she will still be reminding the ‘Giant Subtropical Cockneys’ that other peoples are also people.
What importance is there in her hair style or appearance?
Should she apologise for being an attractive woman?
I’m interested in what she has to say, not her lipstick or her eye liner.
And what she says makes a lot of sense.
More than I’ve ever heard in our MSM.
This sort of sneering and sniping is becoming more prevalent.
And it isn’t confined to the ladies any more.
The Independent was sneering at Assange for wearing a pink shirt.
The Guardian was sniping at Snowden for having a “wispy, not very manly” beard.
Gently, dear Mark, gently! I have always had the greatest respect for that young lady — even more so after learning she is a Science student. And I do not put up Links unless I think they further the cause of Truth and Justice. But we need not be always long-faced with seriousity.
“Tread lightly for you tread upon my jokes” — with apologies to WB Yeats
Trump imposes sanctions on NATO ally Turkey; Erdogan calls for NATO help in Syria
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/10/14/United-States-imposes-sanctions-on-Turkey-Erdogan-calls-for-NATO-help-in-Syria/2571571050747/
Interesting and not impossible given the British “liberal” media narrative of a likely “humanitarian catastrophe” if Syria acts to retain their own land.
The only contribution I can make today is a caption to the image above:
“There will be no cheating”
“…the idea that repression might coexist with genuine desire to raise a people en masse from the greater tyranny of poverty is way too much nuance.”
The eternal curse of a vicious, id-driven ambition (politely known as ‘aspiration’) on any superego-driven venture towards idealistic communalism. Not that it matters much any more: “Who cares what tips the rockets I send up, it’s not my business where they come down,” says Commandant Nevil Shute von Braun.
We hear Bashar al-Assad is a tyrant but not that he won an internationally observed election in 2014. —- Really? El Salvador had elections in the 1980s that most people would categorize as “demonstration elections” in Chomsky’s terms. How can you have a real election during a civil war, as was the case in El Salvador? Anybody who ran against the American-supported candidate Duarte would have gotten a bullet in the head. The candidate who ran against Assad agreed with him on all the key questions, including the need to exterminate the Sunni rebels. If this is your idea of a fair election, it just goes to show that you have a double-standard. When the USA-backed regime tramples on human rights, you join in the condemnation. But when Putin backs a dictator, he is defended against all charges: bombing hospitals, using chemical attacks, murdering prisoners, imposing starvation sieges, bombing hospitals… Read more »
“But when Putin backs a dictator, he is defended against all charges: bombing hospitals, using chemical attacks, murdering prisoners, imposing starvation sieges, bombing hospitals and all the rest.”
Bombing the already bombed hospitals all over again? Has the man got no shame? Has the country got an unlimited defence budget?
Ah, but that’s because Russian bombs automatically home in on any hospital in the area.
They are all programmed to do this by Roboronexport.
By contrast, American star spangled democracy bombs are designed by Raytheon to spread peace and justice and universal happiness, in an ethical and politically correct way, with due regard for diversity issues. They also work wonders for people’s love lives. All the scientists agree on this.
Children in Yemen are known to exclaim, “We’re so grateful that we’re being bombed with those nice American star spangled democracy bombs! So much better than those nasty Russian bombs!! How lucky we all are!!!”
Everybody knows that evil dictators demonstrate their fearsome malevolence by using “barrel bombs”. American democracy bombs, by contrast, are made from 100% recycled depleted uranium, which accounts for their uniquely peaceful and humanitarian properties.
I don’t know what the problem is with barrel bombs.
They were invented by our Zionist friends, so they must be okay.
Unless you’re anti semitic, or something.
How can you have a real election during a civil war, as was the case in El Salvador?
How can you have a real election during a civil war, as was the case in Nicaragua?
Maybe you can tell us about the great war for democracy waged by Reagan’s contras, against the evil Sandinista government. Any similarities to the current situation in Syria, are of course entirely coincidental.
Louis I’ve been quite open to the possibility that presidential election was rigged. Assuming you haven’t cherry picked your way through my piece, you’ll know I do not regard Ba’athist states as models of openness and pluralism. But you speak of the worthlessness of any election held in what you call a civil war. (I don’t, for reasons I make clear, but otherwise take your point about when is, and when is not, an ideal time to hold an election. IMO Damascus had a stark choice: wait possibly years for what essentially was a plebiscite on Bashar’s legitimacy, or hold it on terms and in circs far from ideal butwhose fault tis that?) I spent many hours reading accounts of that election. No evidence did I find of electors frog marched at gun point to polling stations, whereas I did find that nations sending observers declared the election fair. I’m… Read more »
On the so-called election results in Syria, I’ll let Michael Karadjis offer up some cogent reasoning to take at least a small measured pause on the issue: Quote begins: In 2017, some believe “free elections” occur in fascist dictatorships Anderson also claimed that Assad had been “elected” at an “election” held in 2014, and from memory one of the questioners even asked why we shouldn’t accept the results of a free election. This is indeed a unique occasion in leftist history when people who have rejected oppression and repression all their lives, and made great efforts at understanding how even our own bourgeois democracy is deeply flawed, uphold an “election” farce run by a murderous dictatorship. Aside from the fact that the only candidates allowed to stand against Assad were two nobodies, allowed precisely because they were Assad clones (to be allowed to stand, the first condition was that a… Read more »
Hi Norman. Good to hear from you. I’ll try to be brief here since I’ve been asked to review a forthcoming book on Syria. That review may usefully double as the fuller response your contribution deserves. Re that election, and Ms Beeley, you will be aware – from my intro, and my multiple caveats on the dangers of taking too fixed a position, of being Too Knowing. I read your commentary as provided in the piece you link to and will do so again, at greater leisure and with greater care, as soon as I can. Unlike Mr Proyect you show both courtesy and a grasp of nuance. Take your comments on the White Helmets. You give credit where due to their critics, while taking issue with said critics’ failure to grasp that it is unhelpful and simplistic to see WH as homogenous and uniformly evil. (A recent conversation with… Read more »
In my previous reply I failed to respond, even briefly, on the 2014 election. As I said to Louis Proyect, I’ve seen no evidence of Syrians intimidated into voting. Disgust with a charade would have led to high abstention rates, no? FWIW, here’s US Green and Vietnam veteran Ajamu Baraka on the issue: “First, it became clear that substantial numbers of non-Alawite people and communities support the government. And even those elements of Syrian society that were not enthusiastic supporters of the government grew to understand that the legitimate indigenous opposition had been displaced by powerful non-Syrian forces from the U.S. and the Gulf States who provided material, political and diplomatic support to an opposition that not only had tenuous ties to the country but seemed only committed to waging war. This convinced many that the only politically consistent option was to support the government, as an expression of support… Read more »
On the question of calling for ‘international solidarity:’ some on the ‘left’ use it as a rationale for supporting imperialist intervention; that isn’t the kind of ‘international solidarity’ I stand for. I stand against all forms of oppression and repression to which ordinary people may be subjected, regardless of whom or what may drive that oppression and repression, whether committed by Western Imperialism or by, as you would put it, ‘the forces, however flawed, on the receiving end of its wrath.’ You see, the problem I have with your stance is how it hinges on your eminently abstract and general principle of “however flawed.” The trauma caused by imperialist oppression and repression is in no wise more nor less than the trauma caused by an autocratic regime waging war on its so-called citizens. You object to a call for ‘international solidarity’ on the grounds that it legitimizes in one way… Read more »
You see, Norman, the problem I have with your stance is how it hinges on your incorrect reading of what I am saying. You write: “You object to a call for ‘international solidarity’ on the grounds that it legitimizes in one way or another the ‘greater’ violence of Western.” Wrong. I do not find you – or for that matter Proyect – guilty of supporting the West’s greater violence. I find you both, and much – not all – of the far left guilty of the lesser offence of seeking some ‘third way’ to be pulled like a rabbit from a hat. The call for international solidarity is all very noble but in the here and now we may as well get down on our knees and pray. Your other points I find confused. You say if Russia isn’t imperialist then it isn’t capitalist. Wrong, rendering the observation of your… Read more »
“Your other points I find confused. You say if Russia isn’t imperialist then it isn’t capitalist. Wrong, rendering the observation of your final paragraph irrelevant. Of course Russia is capitalist – as is Bangladesh.” Of course Russia is capitalist — as is every bloody nation currently in existence on the planet. And that is the point. Just because every nation is capitalist doesn’t mean that from the standpoint of its military potential, which exists only to enforce its capitalist prerogatives, either against a capitalist competitor or a recalcitrant population, or alongside an equally opportunistic ally, that it equally matches all other contending capitals. Some national factions are more organized and better supplied than others to impose their will internationally. In the meantime, the weaker, dominated or contained national capitals bide their time while exerting themselves to develop the wherewithal to either merely preserve their rank in the international pecking order… Read more »
LouisP. would be better off trolling for Greta and the livelihood of Albino Porcupines.
Lesson number one for any troll & controlled opposition is, that you MUST mention the KIDS ! LouisP.eeing myself laughing at this renewed pathetic attempt at GASLIGHTING.
Off you trot and let us know as soon as possible, if you see an albino porcupine bombing hospitals and all the rest: and remember, if you want to really tug at heart strings, you’d best be sure to mention the baby albino porcupines . . . 🙂
Louis, “How can you have a real election during a civil war…?” But the whole intention of an election is to establish which party has the democratic right to govern a country at a given point in time. Surely a time of civil conflict is precisely the circumstances in which that is all the more important in the hope of bringing that conflict to an end or at least establishing the democratic will of the people. Let’s face it, President Assad was on a hiding to nothing. If he hadn’t held the election I am sure there would have been complaints about his failure to hold democratic elections. The issue of the legitimacy of the election proceedings is a separate issue and I look forward to seeing what specific evidence you come up with to support your concerns about malpractice, as requested by Philip (Roddis). If, as you contend ,… Read more »
Ukraine held an election in the middle of a war (after taking the precaution of first banning all opposition parties.)
This was perfectly acceptable and a triumph of democracy when Washington’s bought and paid for puppets duly won.
I agree whole heartedly, unfortunately this isn’t really the website for such utterances as it has a fair amount of Putin fan boys
unfortunately, the zionist troll infestation seems to be increasing.
Louis Protect, Unrepentant twat of the Tony Blair Ilk.
Roddis has a much better understanding on what is going on in Syria than most writers. A few years ago, I watched an excellent documentary “The Gatekeepers” where a French film director interviewed the last five heads of Sin Bet. All of them were clearly highly articulate and clever but one made the point that Israel would win every battle but would eventually lose the war. I think that point has come and that a complete reversal of present aims should be undertaken as the forces around them, battle hardened over many years, are becoming stronger rather than weaker and will soon pose a very real threat. Now is the time to start rebuilding all the shattered countries and infrastructure and to prepare for the new silk road and all that that will bring. A few years ago when reading about molten fluoride thorium reactors, the thought came to me… Read more »
“Simplistic I know but there is a simple solution to everything.”
Vogons.
@Brian Eggar: “Israel has the technical expertise in abundance and Iran has the resources.” I hear White Man speaking. Or Wellmeaning White Woman, genus Hilarienses, the more dangerous species on the Anglo Zio Capitalist Globe. “Take up the White Man’s Burden, Protect your captured Peoples, Half devil and half child.” Great White Protector thinks: Fuzzy Wuzzy Woggy is not advanced like we are. We have the Right to Protect them. And it is only Right they should reward us for the “technical expertise” which we “have in abundance” and they have not. Let them give us their “Resources” and we, who are “The Only Democracy in the Middle East” and “A Light Unto the World”, shall guide them away from their deviltry and their childishness. Methinks I behold my good Jewish Communist friend, Prof.Guido Pontecorvo who was consulted on education by the Islamic Revolution half a century ago and advised… Read more »
Better believe it!
But where’s his M.S.G.A. baseball cap, vexarb?
Oh, that’s right – he isn’t a childish and insecure buffoon who needs to use cheap props to get his point across.
:o)
You got it, Gwyn. Neither does he do Stupidly Come Dancing onto a conference platform like our own dear PM, the Clergyman’s Daughter.
Gaah! I’d completely forgotten about that abomination involving the Clergyman’s Daughter! The horror!
Nor does Bashar al Assad get stuck on a zipline and look foolish for doing so.
Unfortunately Britain is stuck with a Prime Minister who did.
(You Brits really should have left BoJo hoist with his own non-exploding petard.)
He’s making the evil White Supremacy OK sign. That proves he’s really a nazi.
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/okay-hand-gesture
Milosevic, more likely a natural physiological trait found in some people who think delicately and deeply about important and complex problems. For instance, a French Chef will make that sign when a dish has been prepared to perfection. Classical music conductors often make this sign to signify a moment of silent concentration. Another instance: Philip Glass, while composing “Einstein on the Beach”, studied photos of the great thinker and noticed him unconsciously making the same instinctive gesture from childhood onwards. Try putting the tip of forefinger to the tip of your own prehensile thumb, and you might feel this: I belong to Homo Faber, more delicate and more thinking than my cousin apes.
Is it really possible that you imagined that a suggestion that the President of the Syrian Arab Republic was a “white supremacist”, was intended seriously???
http://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/OP32VIX6U42JBLYGVOBBFQDEXI.jpg
Mark, no; but I thought some nerdy readers might like to be reminded that Dr.Assad’s gesture is a characteristic of Homo sapiens and Homo Faber (Man the thinker and Man the maker). Like our little ankle bone which enables us to stand upright and make such a delicate gesture with our opposed finger and thumb.
“Tread softly for you tread upon my jokes”.
Tommy, mind the door doesn’t hit your arse on the way out…
Y.N.M.S @ynms79797979
Urgent || British media: Brutish special forces preparing to leave Syria
But here it’s more like “Kurds Bad, Headchoppers Good!”
sure sign of a disinfo shill: fake quotations of claims that absolutely nobody has made. When you can’t refute people’s actual arguments, just make up some ridiculous bullshit, falsely attribute it to them, and attack them on that basis, while assuming that nobody will notice. CIA disinformation tactic #17.
Slušaj Slobu,samo ću to jednom reći…
I’ve been here for 3 years. Disinfo my arse. I love some articles on OffG and post my approval accordingly.
What really gets my goat is:
Right wingers
nNeoliberals
neo-Marxists
Troskyists
neo-Bolsheviks
Ultra Serbs
Tossers
When I see their mad comments here or elsewhere, I post accordingly. It’s not disinfo, it’s a difference of opinion. I realise that’s hard for an Ultra Serb to handle, but that’s your problem.
Frank Speaker / Iskren Govornik
Jon Snow and Ch4 News tonight desperately trying to “avert the humanitarian disaster” of Syria retaking control of their own country.
If rumours of a Ruassian, SAA and the Kurds striking a deal is true, then I’m happy. This is something I’ve been hoping for for a long time.
I dont blame the Kurds for taking help from the Americans when their imminent slaughter was being televised live on TV.
If it was a game played by Russia to dupe the Turks and the Americas from acting rashly, then well played. They have similtaneously caused the removal of US troops out of Rojava whilst creating rift within NATO and the GOP.
Also, though not popular on these boards, fuck Trump.
Well said Moosy.
Saying anything bad about Trump here will get you down voted as well as pointing out facts. As Trump would tweet, “SAD”
try harder, troll.
“Attempts by Third World leaders to establish independent control of their economies, in preference to their economies being used as spheres of profit-accumulation for the sole direct benefit of foreign investors, is almost invariably met by the opposition of investor-dominated foreign governments”
Why so shy?
Independent control of their economies .. is usually met by CIA and State department operations, sanctions, regime change, napalm, agent orange, depleted uranium, massacres and drones.
Again, why so shy?
You could ask Stephen Gowans. He authors books, and blogs energetically. His email address is in the public domain.
Philip, for a moment I thought you had digressed to analyse the UK’s take on justice. 🙂
Great article.
Nice!
Lol, exactly the same crossed my mind, JudyJ. Assange’d, being the take on UK justice 🙁
Damn good Philip, and much appreciate the links to the articles by Sarah Abed, Stephen Gowans, and Vanessa Beeley. Various times I’ve visited anarchist sites over the last few years only to find almost uniform, effusive praise for both Rojava and Afrin. I can’t recall seeing anything critical of the Kurds in Syria except one time a brief statement that the YPG were ‘regrettably allied with Washington’. These articles just didn’t sit right with me. The 0.01% are playing us all the time, everything is smoke and mirrors – they will use anyone or any group of people for their sordid geopolitical ends that inevitably involves more pillaging of the Planet. What else is new? For some reason kept thinking of Extinction Rebellion as I read this. Don’t ask me why, I just did. Have to agree with you that most people don’t care, and don’t want to know. They… Read more »
Extinction Rebellion has Little Greta.
The Kurds have female soldiers who seem to spend most of their time as extras in Channel 4 puff pieces.
And also on a number of allegedly anarchist and socialist sites I’ve looked at in the past. The penny dropped Mark. Lots of slick PR and propaganda pieces everywhere that by sheer coincidence (!) dovetails with the narrative of the Empire. Odd that, aye.
Well it could be coincedence. Do you actually think there is no possible case for the Kurds plight that ISNT driven by western zionism/propaganda? Maybe it is a 100% coincedence – its as likely as saying it is 100% just PR propaganda.
This is what I think Bob. I believe nearly all these groups have been infiltrated by the intelligence agencies, combined with a highly romanticised view of the Kurds – as a bulwark against capitalism and imperialism as well as a high level of gullibility amongst members of these groups. I have seen some reference The Guardian or BBC for petes sakes.
I also believe there is an intense yearning amongst some on the Anti Capitalist Left (incl. Anarchists) for some ‘Beacon Of Hope’ somewhere… anywhere.
I also noted some of these groups, or writers even admitted the Kurds were being supported by the United States! That was deemed… “Regrettable”. Yet it didn’t ring alarm bells with them. Why? Surely no one could be that blind as to why the United States was there.
Just curious, but “That does not make Beeley an unimpeachable source”, why would you say that??
She’s human.
Fine journalism, Philip.
(What you said)
“Rojava ticks all the boxes for Western progressives. Kurds good! Feminists good! Cooperatives good! Me, I shudder. I feel hairs standing at the back of my neck. I fear that yet again we are being played, our best instincts co-opted for imperial ends.”
Made my hairs stand up, too, just thinking about the sickening charades: worst of all, it is not just idle fear, moreover, we know the media of old and how empires were ‘reportedly’ established, (with requisite brainwash to finance same), the only difference today being, that the empires are more corporate and transcend any form of sovereign governance in ‘Media Wars’, to ‘win’ over idle minds of populations supporting wars.
Great article. Does anyone know what America’s plans are for the 8 or 9 illegal bases they have in Syria?
They’re going to convert them into luxury vacation condos for Israeli war criminals.
And for British Middle East peace envoys?
Thanks, Phil – great article.
Much to ponder before commenting.
Syrian Kurds and Syrian army strike a deal?
Hopefully, Because I regard the Kurds, Syrian Army under Assad, Russia and Iran, as being a more reliable coalition than anything Turkey or the US/UK/France is involved in. Erdogan is an incredibly arrogant, evil person who would wipe out every single Kurd if he could. Given half a chance, Turkey would do to the Kurds what they did to the Armenians.
I heard it was also the Kurds who did for the Armenians.
“I have contacted the Enemy, and He is Us”. — Pogo Possum
Yup, the Ottoman Turks and Kurds worked together to get rid of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Orthodox Christian communities in many parts of the Ottoman empire during WW1. The Christians were suspected of disloyalty and the Ottoman government was under the influence of the nationalist Young Turks movement, many of whose members were probably quite extreme in their views. Many parts of southeast Turkey where Kurdish people currently live were ethnically purged of Armenian and Assyrian communities.
Of course, this collaboration did later have its costs: when the Ottoman empire was replaced by the Turkish Republic, shorn of its empire in the Levant, it expected all Muslims in its territory to adopt Turkish nationality, culture and language. You’d be surprised at how many Turkish people have non-Turkish ethnic origins. Even President Erdogan himself has admitted to having Georgian ancestry.
Erdogan freeing Kurdish imprisoned ISIS could be another coffin in the EU as soon the return to their passport countries when they start creating their mayhem amongst the many European infidels.
nail in the coffin
The Self-administration of Northeastern Syria, a Self-important political wing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/IDF), announced on October 13 evening that it had reached a deal with the Damascus government.
https://southfront.org/kurdish-led-sdf-says-it-reached-deal-with-damascus-syrian-army-marches-towards-kobani/
I think I would prefer to hear from Damascus as to what exactly has been proposed and agreed……
I don’t want to make the mistake of blaming the victim, but Arab countries, or at least their leadership, generally do themselves no favours. They are always willing to fall for the divide and rule games of outside powers, and this has remained constant for a thousand years. You could say they deserve all they get. In the 11th century, Europe was relatively backward and unsophisticated compared to the cities of the Levant. When the First Crusade began in 1096, Arabs viewed the Frankish invaders as little more than bandits. They thought they would steal some livestock and clear off. But they stormed the cities of Syria and massacred the population of Jerusalem in 1099 – almost by default. Why? Because there was a civil war going on at the time between Sunni and Shia. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I have spoken to a lot of Sunni moslems… Read more »
mark on sunni moslems:
This is the reason they have been invaded, conquered, humiliated and exploited by outsiders for centuries.
LOL!!! Your “victims” started out from one town in a remote desert with a band of a few dozen and managed to conquer a quarter of the globe permanently thanks to their robber ideology legitimizing about anything -for Arab men. Moroccan Berbers never spoke Arab in the past, nor did Egyptians or Bangladeshi nobles. Due to non-evolving religious strictures their inventiveness was killed off so they ended up hiring tech and weapons from outside with booty. Oil was their $avior.
The vast majority of people in Bangladesh still don’t speak Arabic in their daily lives outside the mosque if you care to look, Antonym.
Yes they speak Bengali, not Urdu or Punjabi as rump Pakistan wanted. The “pure” ones want to speak Arabic, have Arabic names, titles (Sheikh etc): more status.
My point is that various invaders have pressed cultural elements on them by brute force, and some succeed. If mark wants real victims, there is a bunch.
At last – Antonym seems to be offering some of the real Sunni Muslim victims that Mark was referring to previously, and from his own favourite Middle Eastern country that he (Antonym) is always wanting to drag into the Off-Guardian comments forum even when no-one else has mentioned it.
Pakistan is solidly in Asia, not the ME. Even Israel and Jordan are in Asia.
Do ready V.S. Naipaul’s 1981 “Among the Believers” for actual victims.
@Mark: “Arab countries, or at least their leadership, generally do themselves no favours.”
Dr.Assad, MD, Syria, maintained a high standard of social welfare while successfully resisting a vicious nine-year onslaught by “the irresistible armed might” of NATZO.
The Rev.Nasr’Allah, Lebanon, set up social services while successfully resisting a series of vicious invasions by Israel, Britain and the U$A.
The late lamented Pres.Gadafi, Libya, set up the highest _general_ living standard in Africa before succumbing to a particularly vicious onslaught (even by F UK U$ standards) under the “irresistible armed might” of NATZO.
Now name your non-Arab leaders, and the favours they have done your non-Arab country. (Failing that, you can name the favours they have done themselves)
I don’t understand the last sentence. I have a great deal of respect for Hezbollah, Nasrallah and his predecessor. They stood firm and showed what was possible against powerful hostile foreign actors and their local satraps. But Hezbollah makes my point for me. They took on Israel in the 2006 war, which was supported by Bush and Blair. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Dictatorships, Egypt and Jordan were openly supporting Israel and scheming to destroy Hezbollah. Traitors like Siniora in Lebanon were also in bed with Israel and working against the interests of their own people. One of the reasons for the effectiveness of Hezbollah was secure communications. They laid a fibre optic cable Israel was unable to tap into. Siniora demanded that this be removed to please his Zionist masters, though Hezbollah ignored him and treated this quisling stooge with the contempt he deserved. Hezbollah and Assad are the exceptions… Read more »
Or, take the required action in your own country (an “outside power”) that would prevent the government that represents you from participating in machinations intended to ‘shaft’ other countries and their peoples.
As Philip wrote above, “And once we’ve raised our flag on what it pleases us to call The Truth, comfort floods in, if only the bleak comfort of “It’s All Shite”.” It’s comfortable to blame the victims and reject any responsibility; they bring it on themselves, what can we do? It’s All Shite.
This pattern of betrayal and backstabbing goes back to the 1948 war in Palestine, indeed long before then. Palestinian organisations had been crushed by the British colonial administration, to hand the country over to Zionist rule. The Zionist terror organisations began a carefully pre planned campaign of ethnic cleansing, committing massacres and atrocities of a Nazi character on a Nazi scale. It is part of Zionist mythology that “seven Arab armies” then invaded the country. In fact, the response from surrounding countries to the Zionist genocide was weak, pathetic, pitiful. Small contingents from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq entered the country only after the genocide had been taking place for several weeks. In all, they totalled 21,500. Many were volunteers acting on their own initiative. They were opposed by 65,000 Jew terrorists, outnumbered 3:1. Not surprisingly, they lost, though they did what they could, and saved Jerusalem and the… Read more »
As Israeli historians have acknowledged, Zionist militias began attacking Arab towns and villages and expelling the inhabitants in December 1947. Arab armies did not declare war until Israel was established in May 1948, by which time 250,000 Arabs had already been kicked out of their homes and off their land.
Mention these facts in public and you risk being called vile names.
Never met anyone before who also resents the word spiritual.
The religions are a curse because they promote emotional thinking over rationale. There will be no peace, in Syria or anywhere, until people can shake off the religions. No banning, no prohibition – just coming to the conclusion that religions are superfluous and shackles.
Willmers, your 19th century rationalism is wearing threadbare, and the holes are showing through. The religion of Dr.Assad and Mrs.Assad, the religion of Allah the Compassionate, is at the core of their social conscience. 20th century Humanism is a milksop remnant of that nourishing Bread and Wine which is the Body and Spirit of Christ.
Or alternatively you could see all that stuff about the Body and Spirit of Christ as an earlier version of 20th century Humanism. We constantly find new words to describe the same basic feelings and concepts. (And feelings and concepts are not completely separate either.)
George, that is true, concepts evolve and keep the imprint of their former shape. But Humanism is a very narrow niche-occupier of the spiritual and social movements which led from Hinduism through Buddhism and Hellenism to Christianity and Islam. Humanism is stuck ca.20 BC with the pedestrian rationalism of Lucretius and a comfortable hedonism like an Edwardian armchair and a good cigar. Communism is equally narrow in its rationalism but has more vigour because closer to the Sermon on the Mount and the Cleansing of Money Changers from the Temple. What we are seeing today in Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Russia is the spiritual force of two religions — Islam and Christianity — standing up against the materialism of Mammon. Humanists haven’t a hope of standing up to Mammon — they would have to get up from their armchair.
“Every humanism is a failed God” Jacques Derrida. Every humanism is a failed God: up to and including the Existential Humanism of Sartre (on whom Derrida was commenting). Why? Because the individuated independent human (a recent invention) is not human. And is incapable of maintaining the illusion of freedom of independence whilst remaining fully human. “No man is an island” John Donne. What is the common thread of the *philosophia perrenis*? Not the timeless, unchanging, independent ground of all Being that some suppose. The common thread of all *philsophia humanis* is the transcendence of the Self …to die unto Self. What do we suppose replaces the small rational independent self – some super Self – the Maha-Atman, the Tathagata, the Christ? When we fully embrace our vulnerability, our feelings, our emotions, our irrationality, our stupidity, our weakness, and realise just how independently alone and weak we are: something amazing happens.… Read more »
Exactly, religion builds walls, encourages supremacy and elitism, is used to control people.
Excellent piece. I might add that from the halls of Chattam House ,Brookings Institute ,Council of Foreign Relations and the Atlantic council in the mid ninties had all put out op eds on what is occurring Today. reflect one moment the term balkinisation was born from the crimes against humanity purported by the our western nights in shining armour NATO when the bombed Belgrade back to the stone ages in the Yugoslavian war. The reason I mention the aforementioned western fascistic thinktanks is they were alluding back then on perpetual war and total disintegration of the nation states that were not part of the Antlantacist anglo-zionist sphere of influence. Also known as the Wolfawitz doctrine. When one applies a little intellectual honesty and really does some full on research it was all by design in order to keep pax-amaericana top dog. Dedollirization is now in full swing and the petro… Read more »
Hammer&Sickle, I agree with everything you say, but kindly allow me one little correction. The term Balkanization did not start with the rape of Yugoslavia by NATZO at the end of the 20th century. It started with the rape of Mesopotamia by Britain at the start of that same century: The Century of Anglo Zio Capitalist Resource Wars.
The Brutish Foreign&Colonial Office had a slogan around 1900: “Mesopotamia is Oil; Serbia is the Gateway to Mesopotamia”. So they destabilised the Balkans, engineered an incident at Sarajevo, and that’s where the term came Balkanization came from.
I agree with ur argument but the term Balkan kinfd of gives it its origin.
Have a great day.
Cheers
Hmm, ’twas only the other day I found this article by War Is Boring:
The Kurds Won’t Let Their Women Soldiers Anywhere Near the Front Line
It seems that the majority of women fighters in the Peshmerga really are fighting … for the right to able to fight on the front-line at all.
I do not know why this new agenda is being pushed, that suddenly the Kurds are bad, and that Kurdish/Yazidi women do not actually fight. Is this being pushed by US/UK propaganda which wants to make us feel sorry for “poor little Turkey” our NATO ally?
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-19/kurdish-troops-fight-freedom-and-womens-equality-battlegrounds-across-middle-east
The article I linked to was written in 2014 so it’s not very recent.
The release of ‘thinking we know’ is not into knowing we don’t know – which if you pause a moment reveals itself a contradiction in terms – because to know cannot be a state of lack – but it can reveal a presumed self to be lacking foundation in truth BECAUSE truth is known. But as a knowing that is in itself formless and yet responsive to asking, or enquiry as innate supporting intelligence of self-awareness. Why then don’t we ask and receive? Because from the presumption of thinking we know, our questions are framed statements that ask for nothing or merely for confirmation and reinforcement of our invested and often non-negotiable beliefs. This is to say we can invest identity in a sense of possession and control that runs counter to our true Good, and interpret negative results as caused by our true nature, so as to war against… Read more »
@Brian Steere: “framed statements that ask for confirmation and reinforcement of our invested and often non-negotiable beliefs”.
That’s a good description of Scientific Hypothesis but with one important difference — scientific beliefs are “heavily invested” for sure: with a little blood sometimes, much sweat and a few tears. But scientific belief is never “non-negotiable” in the face of fact and logic.
@vexarb You are stating your ideal and presuming it as a given that scientific institution and establishment – unlike any other human endeavour – is able and willing to question its founding and funding beliefs, open to new evidences that do not support the accepted model which includes peer acceptance, career opportunity, public credibility, regulatory protections and personal identity or world-view. The phrase scientific belief is a doublethink or oxymoron. Scientific explorations and discoveries may bring interpretation that causes beliefs to change, but the act of accepting ideas as true is the willingness or decision to act from their acceptance. this is a decision of the human heart – or more often a default of assigning the power of the heart to the thinking that most aligns with survival – because deferring to faith in the cult of experts is felt easier and in some sense safer than standing in… Read more »