FOCUS | Don't Bet Against Syria's President, a Ruler Willing to Destroy His Country to Remain in Power
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=31019"><span class="small">Robert Fisk, The Independent</span></a>
Saturday, 14 March 2015 10:27
Fisk writes: "How has Bashar Hafez al-Assad survived these past four years? Ever since the Syrian revolution of 2011, his overthrow has been predicted by the greatest statesmen of our day, by the finest journalists, by the most anonymous of 'senior diplomats.'"
Robert Fisk. (photo: unknown)
Don't Bet Against Syria's President, a Ruler Willing to Destroy His Country to Remain in Power
By Robert Fisk, The Independent
14 March 15
ow has Bashar Hafez al-Assad survived these past four years? Ever since the Syrian revolution of 2011, his overthrow has been predicted by the greatest statesmen of our day, by the finest journalists, by the most anonymous of “senior diplomats”. What is the man’s secret?
It’s difficult to remember how swiftly he became the West’s latest Arab Hitler, his repressive government a regime of war crimes, his beautiful wife transformed overnight by the world’s press from the “Rose of the Desert” to Lady Macbeth of Damascus. Laurent Fabius, France’s least eloquent foreign minister, even told us that Bashar does not deserve to live “on this planet”. But Bashar has survived in another universe. It’s called the Baath party, and its satellite is the army.
The government’s Syrian Arab Army is a machine which in four years has lost 46,000 of its soldiers to a revolution that was supposed to have replaced the Assad dictatorship with one of those democratic, secular, pro-Western, human-rights-obsessed states of which we all dream but which, alas, does not exist in the Middle East. Instead, Syria’s heroic freedom fighters – extolled by a media which had already feted the romantic liberators of Libya – transmogrified into a black-cowled Salafist cult which chopped up their own Muslim people, decapitated Western hostages and burned men alive, roasting Syrian corpses on spits long before it broadcast the immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot.
Assad has remained in total control of a movement which combines nepotism, socialism, corruption, brutality and courage. (photo: AFP/Getty)
But first, the Baath party. Officially, it’s the child of the Syrian-Iraqi Baath (“Renaissance”) movement whose Christian-Sunni Alawite founders intended to create a secular, socialist, revolutionary organisation which would both guarantee the rights of a post-colonial Arab population and secure regimes which would be united in opposing “Zionism” and the West while maintaining close relations with the Soviet Union. It proved as much a fantasy – and as infantile – as the West’s own aspirations for the region. In reality, the party became a massive security apparatus whose raison d’être – in both Syria and Iraq – was the preservation of the regime. Inevitably, the party split and the pseudo-socialist autocracies of Iraq and Syria sought to destroy each other. But while Saddam’s Baath party was eventually crushed by the United States – no Arab country could ever have achieved this – Hafez al-Assad and, after his death in 2000, his son Bashar remained in total control of a movement which combined nepotism, socialism, corruption, brutality and courage in about equal measure.
The very military-political matrix of the party in Syria, which controlled at least four levels of intelligence officials, ensured that internal opposition to the regime – even from within the Assad family – was impossible. While Assad father-and-son remained steadfast (one of their favourite words) in demanding land for peace with Israel – a policy which could only display the hopeless nature of Yasser Arafat’s peace-before-land negotiations – Syria’s moral integrity could survive. But once the Arab Awakening moved like an earthquake across the Middle East, political opposition to the Assad family manifested itself in hundreds of protest demonstrations.
Whether the ruthlessness of the government’s suppression led to the civil war – or whether, as Bashar’s supporters claimed, foreign and Islamist groups were armed and killing Baathists – has still to be fully investigated. Certainly, Syrians fought back with weapons once violence was used against them. But Jabhat al-Nusra and other Islamist groups emerged from the slums of Damascus and Aleppo and Raqqa long before foreign fighters arrived in Syria from Iraq. Even in 2011, NGOs were reporting that armed Islamists could be found in the suburbs of Homs.
But the West sought to promote an alternative government, refused to countenance the continuation of Assad’s rule and even urged the opposition to cut any remaining relations with the regime. Weapons poured across the border for the large number of Syrian military deserters in the so-called “Free Syrian Army”, which formed yet another of those supposedly pro-Western guerrilla armies that have littered the Arab world in modern history only to be defeated, suppressed or betrayed at a later date.
The Baath party fought back with its own militias, and the Syrian army, corrupted by 29 years of occupation in Lebanon, was turned into a formidable fighting force not just by the government but by an officer corps of largely Sunni Muslim officers loyal to – but not part of – the largely Alawite (Shia) Assad regime. And it is the Syrian army – ruthless, increasingly better-trained and now allowed almost unheard-of freedom in its tactics and command decisions – which now allows Assad to rule. Repeatedly, Bashar al-Assad has praised his army, honoured its “martyrs”, even appeared on stage before hundreds of photographs of his dead soldiers, well aware that if the Baath party is the foundation of his regime, the army is its only viable defence. Its soldiers have acquired that frightful quality which every rebel must have: they like fighting – and, therefore, they want to win.
And Russia helped. Vladimir Putin loathes Islamists as much as the Americans and Europeans – some of his remarks suggest an almost racial hatred of Muslims – but he admires anyone who stands and fights. While the elected dictator of Ukraine fled for his life during the Kiev revolution, it was not lost on Putin that Assad stood his ground in Damascus and kept his head when all around him were losing theirs. The Russians know the strength of the Syrian army – just as they appreciate the gravity of its huge casualty lists – for many of the officer corps were trained at Soviet academies in Moscow; and, ironically, in Simferopol.
The West maintains that Assad’s forces use chemical weapons. (photo: Getty)
Civil wars engender crimes against humanity. Blood sticks to everyone’s hands. War crimes adhere to government and anti-government forces, however much we would like to tell the good guys from the bad guys. There was a time, just three years ago, when European newspapers carried stories of Syrian anti-Assad fighters marrying female comrades, of opposition snipers marrying the nurses who healed their wounds, while government snipers killed children. The stories were both true and false. Syrian soldiers also married into military families and opposition bombers slaughtered schoolchildren.
The West still maintains that Assad’s forces use chemical weapons – even after the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that all Assad’s declared chemicals had been destroyed, with the help of the Americans. But the deal to emasculate Syria’s strategic deterrent – its chemical capacity – was struck to allow Washington and London off the hook. Their threat to bomb Assad out of Damascus was hollow – and Assad’s self-confidence blossomed. Those who hero-worshipped the original Syrian opponents of Assad (brave men indeed) are now creating a new and dark scenario for us, in which Assad has all along encouraged the Islamists – indeed allied himself to Isis – via a series of secret but mythical negotiators, and in which Assad’s army fights only its internal opponents and lets Nato bomb Isis to its heart’s content. But Assad’s army is fighting Isis – south of Qamishleh, for example, and north-east of Latakia – and its soldiers have been shot into mass graves by the black-hooded men of the “Islamic Caliphate”.
So who will win? At first, we supported the opposition and hated Assad. But now that Isis is ruling much of Syria (though few of its cities) and killing Christians and Westerners, we hate Isis even more than we hate Assad. That’s why we bomb Isis but didn’t bomb Assad. And as long as both “sides” think they can still win, the war will go on for another year or two. Or three. Which means that Assad survives. But after perhaps 300,000 dead, would that be a victory?
Congress's Approval Rating No Longer Detectable by Current Technology
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
Saturday, 14 March 2015 09:32
Borowitz writes: "After a challenging week for the legislative body, the approval rating of the United States Congress has shrunk to a point where it is no longer detectable by the technology currently available, a leading pollster said on Friday."
Members of US Congress. (photo: Reuters)
Congress's Approval Rating No Longer Detectable by Current Technology
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
14 March 15
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
fter a challenging week for the legislative body, the approval rating of the United States Congress has shrunk to a point where it is no longer detectable by the technology currently available, a leading pollster said on Friday.
Davis Logsdon, who heads the highly regarded Opinion Research Institute at the University of Minnesota, said that his polling unit has developed highly sensitive measurement technology in recent years to gauge Congress’s popularity as it fell into the single digits, but added that “as of this week, Congress is basically flatlining.”
“At the beginning of the week, you could still see a slight flicker of approval for Congress,” he said. “Then—bam!—the lights went out.”
Logsdon said, however, that people should resist drawing the conclusion that Congress’s approval rating now stands at zero. “They may have support in the range of .0001 per cent or, say, .0000001 per cent,” he said. “Our equipment just isn’t advanced enough to measure it.”
Logsdon said that the swift descent of Congress’s approval rating below detectable levels has surprised experts in the polling profession. “A couple of years ago, when they shut down the government, I wondered, What could they possibly do to become less popular than this?” the pollster said. “Now we know.”
Kim Jong-un Feels Snubbed by Absence of Letter From Republicans
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
Friday, 13 March 2015 13:34
Borowitz writes: "The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Tuesday that he feels 'snubbed' by the decision of forty-seven Republican senators to write a letter to Iran but not to him, the official North Korean news agency reported."
Kim Jong-un. (photo: AFP/Getty)
Kim Jong-un Feels Snubbed by Absence of Letter From Republicans
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
13 March 15
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
he North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Tuesday that he feels “snubbed” by the decision of forty-seven Republican senators to write a letter to Iran but not to him, the official North Korean news agency reported.
In an unusually forthcoming interview with the Korean Central News Agency (K.C.N.A.), Kim said it was “hurtful” that the Republicans would send a letter to one of the United States’ most longstanding enemies while “totally snubbing” another.
“Let’s just call it what it is: they’re playing favorites with enemies,” Kim said. “I try not to take things personally, but it’s hard to see them sending letters to Iran without feeling a little bit hurt.”
Kim said that over the past two days he had his aides checking his mailbox on an hourly basis in hopes of finding a letter from the Republicans, but now he has “pretty much given up hope.”
“Honestly, I thought I’d at least rate a text or something, but … ,” he said, his voice trailing off.
“I don’t like to beat myself up, but part of me is like, ‘What does Iran have that I don’t have?’ ” he said. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like, when you actually get nuclear weapons, people start taking you for granted.”
Why Fast Track for the TPP Is a Bad Idea: Corporations Don't Need More Rights
By David Korten, YES! Magazine
13 March 15
resident Obama is currently pressing members of Congress to pass Fast-Track authority for a trade and investment agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If Fast Track passes, it means that Congress must approve or deny the TPP with minimal debate and no amendments. Astonishingly, our lawmakers have not seen the agreement they are being asked to expedite.
The TPP is presented as an agreement to increase U.S. exports and jobs. But what is really at stake is democracy—in the United States as well as in the 11 other Pacific Rim countries that are parties to the TPP.
Given past agreements on which the TPP is modeled, including the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), TPP provisions will likely have significant implications for nearly every aspect of American life—including intellectual property rights, labor and environmental protections, consumer safety and product labeling, government procurement, and national resource management. Given the way these agreements are crafted, we can be quite certain that the implications will favor corporate profits over human well-being. And once the agreement is approved, its provisions will trump national and local laws, including the U.S. Constitution, and will not be subject to review or revision by any national legislative or judicial body—including the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is expected that the TPP will include an Investor State Dispute Settlement provision that gives foreign corporations the right to sue governments for lost profits due to laws—such as environmental standards and safeguards for workers—they claim deprive them of revenue they might otherwise have received. Such claims are settled in tribunals comprised of trade lawyers whose identities are secret. The rulings of these tribunals pre-empt national laws and the decisions of national courts and are not subject to review by any national judicial or legislative body.
Also in the mold of NAFTA and similar previous pacts, the TPP is being drafted in secret. The main players at the negotiating table are trade officials from the party countries and representatives from the world’s largest global corporations.
Since negotiations began in 2005, the public, press, and members of Congress and their staff have been denied access to the TPP meetings and to drafts of the agreement. In stark contrast, according to a 2014 report by The WashingtonPost, 566 advisory group members can view and comment on proposals. Of these members, 480 represent industry groups or trade associations and dominate the most important committees.
The secret gatherings of unelected government officials and corporate representatives in which agreements like the TPP are negotiated have become de facto transnational legislative bodies, drafting international laws the democratically elected legislative bodies of signatory countries then rubber stamp.
Because such sweeping provisions supersede the U.S. Constitution, one might expect that their approval by the U.S. Congress would require the same high bar as a constitutional amendment. At a bare minimum, approval should be subject to the same review, debate, and approval process considered essential for any normal piece of legislation. Yet our elected representatives have time after time voted to approve such agreements under expedited rules that trade away the rights of people in favor of the rights of global corporations.
But expanded trade not only means more exports; it also means more imports. Previous similar agreements have produced greater growth in U.S. imports than growth in U.S. exports. The result is a net loss of jobs, especially industrial jobs with good pay and benefits, and the closure of many small businesses. President Obama’s assurance that this time will be different carries little credibility, based on this historical experience.
These agreements are written by global corporations such as Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, HSBC, and JPMorgan. These companies are not in the business of creating jobs and benefiting small businesses. They are in the business of maximizing their own profits. In regard to small businesses, the agenda is to capture their markets, buy them out, or squeeze them to the bone as captive suppliers and contractors.
Because these trade and investment agreements are not in the public interest, their corporate and governmental sponsors go to great lengths to keep the negotiations secret. If the TPP provisions were truly beneficial, there presumably would be no need to press the members of Congress to expedite approval under Fast Track rules before the public and members of Congress have seen the text.
Members of Congress will surely receive copies of the TPP documents before their final vote on the actual agreement. But these agreements are typically more than a thousand pages of detailed legalese meaningful only to experienced trade lawyers. If past experience is any guide, our lawmakers will have little time to read the agreement, let alone do a meaningful assessment of its implications or discuss it with constituents before it is called to a vote.
The time has come to end the use of international agreements to strengthen corporate rule. In the case of the TPP, passing no agreement is better than passing one that undermines democracy, economic justice, the environment, human health, and small business. We have no need of stronger protections for corporate rights. Rejecting Fast Track will create the opportunity for a long-overdue public conversation on a new framework for international trade and investment agreements that strengthen democracy, hold global corporations accountable to the public interest, secure worker rights, raise working conditions, and strengthen environmental protections in every signatory country.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has just released a report called “Principles for Trade: A Model for Global Progress.” The principles it outlines provide an excellent starting point for such a conversation:
Protect the authority of national legislative bodies to set trade policy
Restore balanced trade
Put workers first
Stop currency manipulation
Secure each nation’s right to give preference to national procurement
Protect the environment for future generations
Prioritize consumers above profits
Assure the right of national judicial systems to settle legal disputes with investors.
Secure affordable access to essential medicines and services
Respect human rights
Provide a safety net for vulnerable workers
As the vote on Fast Track approaches, this is a good time for citizens to call for a national and global public conversation about economic policies that put the interests of living people, living communities, and living Earth ahead of corporate profits.
It is also the right time for each of us to let our members of Congress know where we stand on Fast Track and the TPP and that we are paying close attention to how they vote.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
Galindez writes: "There is a larger campaign for Elizabeth Warren on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire than there is for any other prospective candidate."
Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)
Will Elizabeth Warren Change Her Mind?
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
13 March 15
keep wrestling with this question. Before Elizabeth Warren’s interview in January in Forbes Magazine, I thought the odds she would run were 50/50. While she kept saying she was not running for president, she stopped short of saying she wouldn’t. It was clear to me that she knew what reporters were trying to get her to say, but she refused. She has also been acting like a candidate for president, as she did when she joined Joe Biden, Jim Webb, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley at the International Association of Firefighters Legislative Conference & Presidential Forum on Monday, March 9th.
It is true, she has not done the traditional things a presidential candidate would have done by now. She has not formed a presidential exploratory committee she could use to start raising funds. She has not hired any staff yet. But does she have to? In 2015 the game has changed.
There is a larger campaign for her on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire than there is for any other prospective candidate. In Iowa there is a staff of 8 that includes a state director, four regional field directors, and three campus organizers. There are two offices in Iowa, one in Cedar Rapids and one in Des Moines. The state field director, Blair Lawton, was a regional field director in Iowa for Obama in 2012. There is staff on the three major university campuses, Drake University, University of Iowa, and Iowa State. They are holding visibility events (even in zero-degree weather) and what they are calling “emergency caucus meetings.” Phone banking and outreach to past caucus-goers is under way.
In New Hampshire, the state director and veteran organizer Kurt Ehrenberg was most recently legislative and political director for the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, and previously served for seven years as the Sierra Club’s representative in New Hampshire and the other New England states.
Most prospective candidates are polling in single digits. Warren, despite saying she isn’t running, is polling at 19%. That is a strong number. Obama had already declared by this time in 2007 and had surged to 25% in the polls. Warren has not declared and is already close to 25%.
Nate Cohn of The New York Times wrote a thoughtful piece March 10th arguing that Warren could not build the kind of coalition that Obama built. He argued that she would not get beyond the traditional liberal/progressive base that supported past candidates that fell short.
I think he is dead wrong. None of the candidates he mentioned – Bill Bradley, Gary Heart, Paul Tsongas, or Jerry Brown – had the populist message of Elizabeth Warren. Only Brown had any outsider appeal.
Cohn said there is no hot-button issue like the war in Iraq for Warren to capitalize on. I believe there are issues that Warren champions that a candidate who people believe is genuine can ride to victory.
Income Inequality
Even the Republicans are talking about income inequality in their speeches. Their solution is the same old entitlement reform, meaning Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, and every other social program being cut. Elizabeth Warren has credibility on this issue. She has been talking about how the system is rigged for the wealthy since she emerged on the political scene. She is ready to fight, and only one other candidate has the credibility on the issue that she has: Bernie Sanders, who despite actively campaigning can’t get out of single digits in the polls. I always hear the same thing when talking to progressives here in Iowa, including “Run Warren Run” supporters: “Bernie is great but most people are not going to vote for a Socialist.” If Warren doesn’t run and Bernie does, he will do a fantastic job of raising the issues, and I would love to see a groundswell of support. Sanders may even be better than Warren on some issues, but Warren has struck a nerve with the American people that Bernie hasn’t.
Student Loan Debt
Elizabeth Warren: “Rising student-loan debt is an economic emergency. Forty million people are dealing with $1.2 trillion in outstanding student debt. It’s stopping young people from buying homes, from buying cars and from starting small businesses. We need to take action.”
In my opinion she has to go further than she has so far on this issue. I understand that she is trying to take action in the Senate that is achievable and knows the votes are not there for free college education for all. Her leadership on the issue has not gone unnoticed, and despite her age, I think young people would return to the polls for a Warren candidacy. She has fought to lower interest rates, to allow the current debt to be refinanced at lower interest rates. I would think that a candidate Warren would have bolder proposals and, because she has already fought so hard, would have credibility on the issue.
Bank Reform
Elizabeth Warren: “Today, if a Wall Street bank goes out and makes the wildest bet on earth, it will keep the profits if the bet pays off and you and I and millions of other American taxpayers could be on the hook if the bet falls short. But if a family gets into trouble, if a family loses a job, if they’ve been tricked into some crazy payment scheme or if someone in the household has gotten sick, the answer is that you are on your own. The same is true for small businesses – you are on your own. Those are the rules we’re operating under, and those rules are wrong.”
This is her appeal. She articulates better than any other politician what so many people in America are feeling. When Elizabeth Warren talks about injustice people believe her. When Jeb Bush talks about it people are skeptical.
Trade
There is a huge opening here for any candidate who is not Clinton. All of the Republicans are free-traders, and so is Hillary. Labor has got to be searching for a way to find someone who can win the White House who is not for more trade deals that will ship jobs overseas. O’Malley, Webb, and Sanders will try to fill this void, but would labor be wise to back a candidate who hasn’t shown that they have what it takes to win? The TPP will likely be signed by President Obama before he leaves office. If it isn’t, Hillary or any Republican would likely sign it. In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Elizabeth Warren blasted a provision in the deal called the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, an independent, international court with the power to force the U.S. government and American corporations to abide by its rulings. “The name may sound a little wonky, but this is a powerful provision that would fundamentally tilt the playing field further in favor of multinational corporations. Worse yet, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty,” said Warren. On the same day, the AFL-CIO announced plans to freeze political contributions to Democratic lawmakers who support fast-track trade authority for Obama. Hillary Clinton supports the trade deal.
Nate Cohn is right: Elizabeth Warren can’t build Obama’s coalition, but she can build a different coalition, a coalition that is fed up with the rigged system. She won’t need 80% of the African American vote to win the nomination. There are plenty of white voters who are fed up with the different rules for those at the top.
Hillary Clinton leads the polls and is the favorite to become the next president of the United States. There is no doubt she would make a better president than anyone in the GOP field. Not being a career politician, I believe Warren needs convincing that she is up the task. The American people are looking for a champion who has not been a career politician, that is part of her appeal. I believe that every time Warren says no, it is because she doesn’t want to run for president. Hillary, Bernie, Jeb, and the rest want to be president. Elizabeth Warren may not want the job. When someone is appointed to direct a recovery project after a national disaster, it is a job they wish they didn’t have to do. If Elizabeth Warren realizes that her country needs her to lead, she might just just answer the call.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian,
and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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ow has Bashar Hafez al-Assad survived these past four years? Ever since the Syrian revolution of 2011, his overthrow has been predicted by the greatest statesmen of our day, by the finest journalists, by the most anonymous of “senior diplomats”. What is the man’s secret?
fter a challenging week for the legislative body, the approval rating of the United States Congress has shrunk to a point where it is no longer detectable by the technology currently available, a leading pollster said on Friday.
he North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Tuesday that he feels “snubbed” by the decision of forty-seven Republican senators to write a letter to Iran but not to him, the official North Korean news agency reported.
resident Obama is currently pressing members of Congress to pass Fast-Track authority for a trade and investment agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If Fast Track passes, it means that Congress must approve or deny the TPP with minimal debate and no amendments. Astonishingly, our lawmakers have not seen the agreement they are being asked to expedite.
keep wrestling with this question. Before Elizabeth Warren’s interview in January in Forbes Magazine, I thought the odds she would run were 50/50. While she kept saying she was not running for president, she stopped short of saying she wouldn’t. It was clear to me that she knew what reporters were trying to get her to say, but she refused. She has also been acting like a candidate for president, as she did when she joined Joe Biden, Jim Webb, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley at the International Association of Firefighters Legislative Conference & Presidential Forum on Monday, March 9th.
