Shit Show

RL Stephens has posted his position on how the DSA should respond to the war in Syria, http://www.dsausa.org/npc_debate The use of the word “debate”, I suppose, is meant to convey the fact that this is an individual member’s opinion. But considering the amount of text at the top and bottom of the post I co-authored with Jason Schulman, http://www.dsausa.org/the_case_for_solidarity_with_the_syrian_revolution_dl, it hardly does the job of making this point clear. I’ll be focusing on what I find wrong with Stephens’ post, for a history of the revolution, the class character of the Arab Spring countries, the barbarity of the regime and how the left, and the West as a whole, betrayed the people of Syria, see: ...

This article was originally posted on Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog but was taken down after threat of litigation by Max Blumenthal. It is reproduced here in full. ​During his recent tour of Europe, disgraced former Trump strategist Steve Bannon declared “Italy is in the lead.” Amid the historic resurgence of the Italian far right that returned right-wing populist Silvio Berlusconi to prominence, Bannon fantasized about “the ultimate dream” of unifying the anti-establishment Five Star Movement with the far-right League (formerly the Northern League) through a populist movement. ...

When I finally decided to read Postol’s “analysis” and its addendum of the released White House report about the chemical weapons attack on Khan Shaykhun I thought I had to be looking at the wrong White House report. I searched and asked around, thinking there is no way this is the report Postol is referring to in his writing. The reason it is so baffling is the points Postol is arguing against in his assessment do not exist in the report. ...

The tweet 24 hours before CW attack Some are spreading the lie that a media source tweeted out about the attack 24 hours before it occurred. No, this tweet was not supposed to go out after the chemical weapons attack on Idlib: غدا انطلاق حملة اعلامية لتغطية كثافة الغارات الجوية على ريف #حماة واستخدام #الكلورالسام بحق المدنيين.<a href=“https://twitter.com/hashtag/%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%81%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A9_%D9%8A%D8%AD%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%82?src=hash”>#ريف_حماة_يحترق — فراس كرم - مراسل 📺 (@feraskaram01) April 4, 2017 ...

After DeBoer’s post I ended up reading the Hands off Syria Coalition - Points of Unity Statement closer. One quote that really stuck out: It is not our business to support or oppose President Assad or the Syrian government. This statement is signed by hundreds of leftist groups, but could easily be mistaken for something on ronpaul.com. These organizations aren’t actually right wing isolationists. You won’t find similarly callous remarks in their publications when Mubarak was overthrown. ...

I feel I have to start with a quote from Freddie’s first piece on Syria and the left because it is a peak into the alternate universe he is in: That anyone who didn’t press for all-out war on terrorism – whatever that meant – was guilty of tacit support for Al Qaeda was a given. This is in defense of Rania. This Rania: The last one being a response to Anand Gopal, who has been to rebel held Syria before, not given a tour by a regime handler, who had pointed out there were groups besides al Qaeda in Idlib. ...

In Patrick Cockburn’s latest article, There’s more propaganda than news coming out of Aleppo this week, he writes: It was convenient for the international media to broadcast the videos and Skype interviews from east Aleppo as if they had been given as freely as in Copenhagen or Edinburgh. I suppose this statement is fitting given Cockburn was one of the witnesses before the British House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings in 2015 to testify on Syria, all of whom were not Syrian. ...

Today MRZine published a post from Louis Allday titled Controlling the Narrative on Syria. The purpose of which is to bring to our attention the real victims in the Syrian revolution, the journalists defending the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad. I am not sure what you are supposed to call someone who only bends over backwards to absolves Assad of responsibility other than an Assadist. They aren’t neo-cons attempting to shield a partner from international scrutiny for their own benefit. ...

There has been a lot of talk about identity politics after the Clinton’s loss in the general election. Liberals continued their attacks and, likely purposeful, distortions on what many on the left have been saying. In no way is anyone on the left suggesting that Democrats have been too strong on the issues of sexism, racism, homophobia or transphobia. If anything, we have been consistently critical of the Democrats for having only superficial support for those struggles and the inability of liberalism to truly confront the institutions that perpetrate and reproduce these injustices. ...

Today while watching football I glanced over at “faux anti-imperialist Twitter” to see them all sharing this post by Stephen Gowan, “The Revolutionary Distemper in Syria That Wasn’t”. It continues the nauseating distortion and outright lies expected from those so-called leftists looking to deface the Syrian revolution. He relies on the same “protesters are rioters” and fear-of-Islam rhetoric common on the right, while treating regime sources as accurate and using the lives of Syrians in an “upscale district of Damascus” as evidence of youth support for the government – so much for Marxist analysis! ...