Ok. Thought so , but that did help clarify things. So The Syrian People & The Regime are pretty much the same thing?
As well as continuing to be an apologist for Assad's atrocities, you're further revealing yourself as a fucking idiot who doesn't recognise what sort of nonsensical poison you're coming out with.
Even if we were to accept that some of the opposition are foreign-inspired jihadhis, what I'm objecting to is your categorising all the opposition and everyone who is killed or injured by Assad's atrocities in this way.
In typical totalitarian fashion, you're dismissing everyone who Assad considers an enemy as being a foreign backed extremist who needs to be purged from Syria by whatever means he sees fit.
"the beaches are very busy"? Google image search of 'syria beach' brings up a very disturbing mixture of things. Beautiful beaches though.
No explanation, because it cannot be explained away .
He has a point though, Assad isn't nearly as unpopular as we might suppose and if he did agree to supervised elections then the West might find itself in a bit of a pickle.Ok. Thought so , but that did help clarify things. So The Syrian People & The Regime are pretty much the same thing?
Funder of the Shabiha.
What do all these forms of tashbih have in common? The use of raw force to govern, both domestically and regionally, without any proper form of democratic representation? An ideological discourse divorced from reality and realistic possibilities? The accumulation of wealth through the state with utter disregard of the law?
The answer is separation.
The separation of gain from effort, of words from their meanings, of positions from qualifications and aptitude. In its essence, tashbih negates the value of work and the laws that link labour to income and production to wealth. It prevents the production of intelligible discourse. It prevents the practice of a politics that generates representation and binds private interests with the wider interests of the state.
He has a point though, Assad isn't nearly as unpopular as we might suppose and if he did agree to supervised elections then the West might find itself in a bit of a pickle.
al-akhbar said:But even if we grant Assad the benefit of the doubt regarding his ascension to power, what about the actual policies Assad implemented? Are they as socialist and anti-imperialist as Assad apologists would like us to believe? During his first decade of rule, Assad attempted to reverse whatever remained of Baathist socialism. He was a much more effective agent of neo-liberalism than his father was. Whatever non-neo-liberal realities apologists point to, they have nothing to do with the Assad regime. On the contrary, they have managed to survive the regime and were not borne by it.
To continue to insist on blanket support for Assad under the pretense of an anti-imperialist stance is to confuse anti-imperialism with blind support for nationalist elites. Furthermore, a refusal to conflate the two is not an invention of “liberal armchair intellectuals” as some first wayers claim. Such a refusal was substantively formulated by one of the pillars of anti-colonial thought, Frantz Fanon, whose name is conspicuously absent from the political lexicon of Assad apologists. Long before neo-liberal elites had come to power, Fanon warned against the excesses of nationalist bourgeois elites in using anti-imperialist or anti-colonial discourse to disguise their own comprador role in consolidating imperialist structures of control.
Really useful & interesting. Ta.
Ok. Thought so , but that did help clarify things. So The Syrian People & The Regime are pretty much the same thing?
Is he the preferred choice? There is no doubting he still has support but do the majority/large numbers of Syrians support him/the regime or do they see a return to something like the pre-war status quo as preferable to civil war. The Assad's were perfectly willing to use repression/torture but what did this mean for most Syrians? How many were untouched by it or at least coped without too much hardship compared to the state of the place now? Perhaps giving all the forces aligned against it and how far off a victory for "the moderate opposition (hate that term)" and the chance for something better rather than something far worse under JAN, Daesh or others. Perhaps it is a vote for the carnage to stop or a chance to go home.Aye, bunch of murdering bastards, no doubt, yet given these people existed,( and still do) that Assad is a barrel bombing murderous dictator, as was his father, given all this and the cronyism and graft associated with the family regime, how come he is still is the preferred choice of the majority of Syrians?
This is the question I have been looking to understand.
I'm not seeking to explain it away because it has absolutely nothing to do with my point that you are citing examples of anti-Assad forces who you claim are foreign-backed or jihadis, or even foreign-backed jihadis (and examples of all those things clearly exist), and then attempting to use that to demonstrate that everyone killed or maimed by Assad must be one of them.
In other words because there are some people who Assad might regard as legitimate targets (though how anyone is a legitimate target for torture or indiscriminate killing by barrel bombing of civilian areas, you haven't yet explained), you're happy to accept that everyone he regards as the opposition, or even those who get in the way of attacks on those he regards as the opposition, are as deserving of their fate as the worst foreign-backed jihadis.
You haven't only come out with this shit on this thread, this is your standard defence of various supposedly anti-imperial strongman regimes who are above criticism in your eyes, so any criticism, justified or not, is dismissed as motivated by support for western states (that last in itself is patently ridiculous considering the real positions of those you accuse of it).
And this is utterly typical of justifications for the mass murder of totalitarian regimes the world over. Like you, those doing it are usually so in thrall to their totalitarian ideology, you don't even recognise you're doing it, but everyone else can see it and is disgusted by it everytime you open your mouth or type out your apologism.
There is no Syria any more. There's a coastal redoubt where the Alawite regime is contained and is becoming a vassal state of Russia. There's the Kurds to the north and the rest of it is basically like the worst bits of Fallout 4.
There's no putting it back together now. The idea that there will ever be a nation in the 2011 borders of Syria again is ludicrous.
2012 article on the political vacuity of 'anti-imperialist' Assad cultists. He does them a bit too much credit by saying that they invoke Lenin to support their arguments - I think australiansyriangirl476 youtube channelism is more their level m8.
Is he the preferred choice? There is no doubting he still has support but do the majority/large numbers of Syrians support him/the regime or do they see a return to something like the pre-war status quo as preferable to civil war. The Assad's were perfectly willing to use repression/torture but what did this mean for most Syrians? How many were untouched by it or at least coped without too much hardship compared to the state of the place now? Perhaps giving all the forces aligned against it and how far off a victory for "the moderate opposition (hate that term)" and the chance for something better rather than something far worse under JAN, Daesh or others. Perhaps it is a vote for the carnage to stop or a chance to go home.
I've no problem at all with someone opposing anyone, no matter who they are . What you are so irked by is a taken for granted western sponsored narrative being challenged in the first place .
If you ..or anyone else..support overthrow and regime change in Syria then the onus is on you to show us what and who you realistically envisage taking power in Syria, and how thats going to happen .And what thats going to be like . And why you're so convinced the Syrian people want that too.
The efforts of yourself and your likers in that regard are utterly fucking pathetic, risible . You can't point to any " opposition " that isn't contaminated up to its bollocks with jihadists and foreign imperialist backing . You can't point to any alternative political programme for syrian governance other than sharia in one form or another .
If the Syrian state is overthrown it spells a holocaust for its people , its identity and its traditions. And for the people next door in Lebanon too .You know this full well ,it's glaringly obvious, so it's safe to assume you regard this as a price worth paying by the people you want to see "liberated ". In light of that I find your po faced moralising as cynical and vacant as Cameron's .
Take out the head choppers and then take a deep breath and think.On the "unicorn army":
Sic Semper Tyrannis : The army that will never be...
Basically it's Assad's army or the head choppers. Take your pick.
Assad should be locked up somewhere for good. Then perhaps they might have a chance.
Assad should be locked up somewhere for good. Then perhaps they might have a chance.
Assad should be locked up somewhere for good. Then perhaps they might have a chance.