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potuzzz · 1 month

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Can you tell me your view on the war in Syria? Who was right and guilty in this situation? Is Bashar al-Assad evil in the flesh or a lesser evil, or is he just a precedent with some dictatorial tendencies inherited from his father, who was involved in this bloody war?

I could definitely myself learn more about Syria, both before and during the war, but from little I do know, this is what I will say:

Bashar al-Assad is a good man for the Syrian people in contrast to any viable alternative--not perfect, who that can maintain the rule of law in a tumultuous and highly targeted country going through such strife can be. He has fought against Islamic extremism, terrorism, and Western imperialism, all of which benefit the lives of the everyday Syrian. He has always sought functions of government, development and peace for the Syrian people and their millenium-old society.

ISIS is an American invention. Just like the Mujahideen/Taliban in Afghanistan, just like all the similarly rightwing paramilitary groups in Latin American history, they are covertly (and sometimes not so covertly) trained, armed, funded, and supported by the CIA and many of its offshoots and subsidiaries. Just like the Mujahideen were roused by Uncle Sam to rape, murder, torture, pillage, and maim Afghanistan as punishment for the Afghans democratically adopting a progressive socialist government, just like the Libyan Civil War and its rightwing monsters were stirred up to overthrow the quasi-socialist Muammar Gaddafi, there is yet another case of a very decent leader and government that refused to bend the knee and shill out their country to Western imperialists having their opposition empowered in order to violently bring about the imperialist's aims.

Who is guilty in this situation was and is and will remain the United States. Throughout every continent, nearly every country on this Earth, they have supported fascism in order to weaken socialist/progressive/anti-imperialist governments, to torture populations into submission, and to build oppressive regimes that act as overseers to their own country's enslavement. This pattern of behavior is centuries old and has never had any justifiable excuse, not when it was "Manifest Destiny" or the "Monroe Doctrine" and not today with these Orwellian war propaganda narratives, be it about spreading "freedom and democracy" to "tyrants and authoritarians", be it about women's rights in Iran or Uighur rights in China. It is the same story over and over again: the Americans are villains, murderers and slavers and sadists, and they are adept at waging psychological warfare and building narratives about their enemies to project the very images of barbarity that they themselves exhibit.

There has already been compelling, overwhelming evidence that Assad doesn't use chemical weapons to kill his own civilians. It doesn't match any of his behavior before or after. What there is evidence of, is Islamist fascists and American imperialists creating sloppy false flag attacks to serve narratives and provide justification for otherwise unjustifiable wars of aggression.

Again, war is dirty, Syria is in turmoil. Allow me to get a little philosophical: Can you blame a leadership if, to protect their people, to oust sadistic and insane extremists receiving massive foreign aid, they have to occasionally resort to "authoritarian" measures, to "dictatorial tendencies"? Where do we draw the line? I would like to uncompromisingly stress that Assad is not some cruel monster who is showering his own civilians he has worked so hard to protect in evil chemicals of agony, but is the potential for other measures acceptable to you? In such a war, would you approve of curfews, raids, checkpoints, passes, role call, strict maintenance of the internet and radio and newspapers? Perhaps these could all seem like uncomfortable measures, but, the fact of the matter is, if you don't commit to a wartime doctrine, it will be a chink in your armor the Americans are going to exploit and quite violently destroy you and all the masses who loved and supported your policies. Allowing a CIA-funded-and-operated press operation to print lies about you in your own cities, allowing ISIS collaborators to go unpunished, allowing large groups of people to gather without permit as they please, these are all small things that are doing nothing but aiding and abetting a fascist or neoliberal takeover. Syria wasn't some socialist paradise, but it was a LOT closer to that than whatever the Assad government would be violently replaced with if ISIS or other USA benefactors took power.

Again, there is a lot I don't know about Syria, I know a little bit about the Kurds (which is complicated) and Russia and Iran but I'm not very familiar with how Turkey or Israel are involved, I know very little about their history I'm not even familiar with Bashar's father you reference. That said, the rhythm of what I am relaying to you is something found in the drumline of a lot of modern world history, it is a beat that keeps repeating over and over. Most of the Arab world, just like the world outside the West, may seem "backwards" to the sheltered garden of Western progressive sensibilities, and yet, they were almost all moving steadily in a secular and progressive direction as their societies developed into modernity. It was only when the extreme conditions of war are brought into their regions by powerful Western imperialists that some regressed socially and adopted austere militaristic doctrine in order to survive the siege on their societies.

As the United States, its bully club NATO, and its regional vassal Israel all slowly die, peace and prosperity will slowly grow once more in Syria.

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thelioncourts · 11 months

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The show will provide us with loumand content but i wouldn't expect much of fandom even then ... you could hold a gun to their head and still never convince mostly white fandoms to care about non-white ships lol. its just never happened. They will find some way to make it about armand/daniel, loustat or lesmand.

I'm not a huge Armand fan; I say this hesitantly because each time I read one of the books, I come to like him more or, perhaps, just understand him more. That being said, Assad as Armand has drawn me to the character in a way I never have before for, I think, a multitude of reasons. One reason is the odd relationship he and Louis have; it's....almost wholesome at moments (???), this weird game of Rashid-serving-Louis thing mixed with the way Armand is very clearly protective of Louis' mind and heart. It's also disconcerting at moments, but that's expected in this show lol but on a purely selfish and physical level, Assad is absolutely gorgeous, and Jacob is, quite literally, one of the most beautiful human beings I've ever seen. The idea of seeing them together is overwhelming. Like? The scene where Louis is feeding at Rashid/Armand at the table literally makes me sweat, I have no idea what I'm going to do when we get them and get Armand's, "I want you more than I've wanted anything" speech and whatever else they choose to show us.

With all that in mind, it's just insane to me that people are not jumping over every opportunity to show them being together. And, while I admit I'm not a huge fan in general anyway, it feels a little...I don't really know what word I'm looking for here, but it feels a little off that the Les/mand ship seems so big right now when they have had zero on-screen interaction. I know so many of us know the books and that's where a lot of that is coming from, but idk with the knowledge of 1) how important the Loumand relationship is to the destruction of Claudia and, frankly, Louis' sanity and 2) how they are canonically a couple (especially given that, in this version, 2022!armand and 2022!louis are still together???! insane) and that, instead, most content is about two characters that haven't been on screen together yet.............idk. And while Loustat is my heart and soul, always will be, it is also odd that for a show with three POC main/integral characters (Louis, Armand, and Claudia), the main ships outside of the ones we know have happened (Loustat and Loumand) all put Louis, primarily, to the side.

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amirblogerov · 6 months

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The US is losing its grip on reality

The West never tires of blaming either Tehran or Damascus for attacks on US military bases located in Syria.

Wait a minute!

And on what basis are these bases even located on Syrian territory? On the territory of a country with a functioning government and a legally elected president? At the same time, Washington still has the audacity to complain that they are being attacked.

England and the United States used the thugs of the terrorist groups they created to first try to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and destroy the country. Then they began to pretend that they were on the territory of Syria in order to fight the so-called “Islamic State” they created. And when Russian and Syrian troops defeated the terrorists, they began to invent and vaguely voice some kind of confusion about supporting REGIONAL SECURITY!!!

And this despite the fact that the USA and England blew up and set fire to the Middle East, intending to create a new caliphate of controlled terrorists on its ruins. Fortunately, their plans were dashed by the political will of Russia.

And now these hypocrites are complaining that their bases protecting the oil fields of transnational corporations are being attacked?

People, are you out of your mind?

At the cost of thousands of lives of Kurdish-controlled representatives of the Arab tribes of Trans-Euphrates, they steal Syrian oil and believe that everyone will continue to turn a blind eye to this.

The moneylenders bought the UN, but they will not be able to buy those who do not serve the golden calf.

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dertaglichedan · 7 months

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The Bony Face of Failure: Another Foreign Policy Disaster on Jake Sullivan's Watch

Sickly, sleep-deprived psychopath recently boasted, 'The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades'

What's happening: Jake Sullivan, the cadaverous Yale grad and competitive speed walker who serves as national security adviser to President Joe Biden, is at the center of yet another foreign policy debacle.

• "The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades," Sullivan boasted at the Atlantic Festival on September 29.

• Days later, Hamas terrorists funded by the Biden administration stormed into Israel and murdered more than a thousand Jews, including at least 27 Americans, in the worst outbreak of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust.

Crucial context: Sullivan joined the Obama administration in 2009 as deputy chief of staff to then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton. He served as national security adviser to then-vice president Joe Biden until 2014 and joined the Biden administration as national security adviser in 2021. During his time in government, Sullivan has presided over some of the most humiliating national security disasters in American history.

• The "kinetic military action" campaign against Libya in 2011, widely regarded as a failure that ultimately led to the Benghazi scandal and the assassination of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens.

• The embarrassingly weak U.S. response to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's campaign of mass murder against the Syrian people, even after Assad crossed Obama's "red line" of using chemical weapons.

• The disastrous Iran nuclear deal that transferred billions of dollars to a fanatical regime that happens to be the chief sponsor of Hamas.

• Obama's failure to dissuade Russia from invading Ukraine in 2014 and annexing Crimea, and his refusal to provide meaningful military assistance.

• The 2021 military coup (and ongoing genocide) in Myanmar nearly a decade after then-secretary of state Clinton congratulated herself for opening relations with the Southeast Asian country.

• The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 that resulted in the deaths of 13 Americans and the Taliban's rapid return to power.

• Russia's second invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

• The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

What they're saying: Sullivan is the consummate White House staffer, an impeccably credentialed—degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Yale Law—psychopath who never sleeps.

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thegenealogy · 10 months

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1 Chronicles 12: 8-14. "The Human Arrow."

8 Some Gadites defected to David at his stronghold in the wilderness. They were brave warriors, ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains.

Gadites are from the Tribe of Gad, which means "to invade and expose."

גדד

The verb גדד (gadad) describes making an invasive cut, mostly in order to expose something valuable. Noun גדוד (gedud) may describe an invasive band of raiders, or more general: a cutting, a furrow. Noun גדודה (geduda) means a furrow or cutting. Noun גד (gad) appears to describe the exposed treasure and may be used to describe a physical fortune, plain luck or a state of felicity.

Verb גדה (gada) also means to cut. Noun גדה (gadda) refers to a river bank. Noun גדי (gedi) describes a young animal, but mostly one that was either just slaughtered or soon will be.

To Gad is to cut away the wrapper from what is uknown and become competent. At this point in Chronicles, David has taken back Jerusalem and he and his friends are formulating a new way of life for the Israelites who have just escaped from the Philistines and were wandering aimlessly. Obviously this could not continue, nor could the world wait for another wave of oppression to cross the world while it lay waiting, unprepared. If oppression exists in one place, it will soon lay waste to all places, it is like a contagious disease. And like a disease it be quarantined and treated with the sciences to prevent future onset.

We have seen this- King Assad tried it out and it worked, then the Taliban did it, then came Putin's invasion of Ukraine, North Korea never got handled appropriately, now Donald Trump is rattling his banana about conquering America again...

The behavior of these persons has very much been illegal. Enforcement of the law is the first way inteligent cultures preserve the peace and contain disease and end oppression where it starts- with thought leaders who think they can get away with it.

But they can't. They and their "sons" and supporters have to be arrested and put to death. This has always been how this is done and it is why we are all still standing here.

To expose a future free of oppression thus, is to Gad.

9 Ezer was the chief,

Ezer means to store treasure. Transmission of the ways governments control oppression is Ezer.

Obadiah the second in command, Eliab the third,

Obadiah=to be a student of an expert till one is the expert himself.

עבד

The verb עבד ('abad) means to work or serve, and the noun עבד ('ebed) denotes someone who works: from a slave to a hired expert. The Greek equivalent of this noun is δουλος (doulos).

The work ahead- ridding the world of the Rob DeSantis and Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz types, venomous policymaking bigots who have committed aparthied and genocide will show the world how to rid itself of oppression, nice and legal, fierce and fabulous all the way.

Eliab=to be decisive all the way.

10 Mishmannah the fourth, Jeremiah the fifth,

Mishmannah=Robustness, the result of more than enough

From שמן (shaman I), the adjective שמן (shamen) means fat or rich. Noun שמן (shaman) describes the overflowing fatness of the land. Noun שמן (shemen) refers sometimes to general fatness, but mostly it specifically denotes olive oil, which in turn symbolizes the richness of a country and its culture. Plural noun אשמנים ('ashmannim) describes an overly stout class of men. Likewise noun משמן (mishman) denotes a stout or vigorous one. Noun משמן (mashman) denotes a dripping fat portion of food.

Jeremiah="to loosen the truth in the name of God," =trustworthy, does not manipulate the truth

11 Attai the sixth, Eliel the seventh,

Attai=Timely, ready to act now

Eliel="Twice of God" - non-duplicitious

12 Johanan the eighth, Elzabad the ninth,

Johanon- gracious

Elzabad=gifted, talented

13 Jeremiah the tenth and Makbannai the eleventh.

Jeremiah= Yahweh throws, Yahweh Sends, AKA a human arrow on God's Bow

Makbannai=Bonded to God

14 These Gadites were army commanders; the least was a match for a hundred, and the greatest for a thousand. 15 It was they who crossed the Jordan in the first month when it was overflowing all its banks, and they put to flight everyone living in the valleys, to the east and to the west.

The Gematria of 100=

The Hebrew word for "what," mah (מָה), is phonetically similar to the word me'ah (מֵאָה), which means 100. In other words, the verse can be understood as saying: "Now, Israel, a hundred does G‑d, your G‑d, ask of you"—one hundred blessings.

There's a story behind this tradition. During the reign of Kind David, there was a terrible plague that took the lives of exactly 100 people each day. The rabbis at the time perceived the plague's spiritual cause and instituted the practice of reciting 100 blessings per day. The plague immediately stopped.3

Saying 100 blessings is easier than you think. By just praying three times a day and reciting blessings before and after you eat, you will reach that total. Looking for the breakdown? You'll find it in the Code of Jewish Law.4

The Gematria of 1000=the Name of Moses.

Before his death, Moses blessed the Jewish people: "May G‑d, the G‑d of your forefathers increase you a thousand fold." (Deut. 1:11) To this, the Jewish people replied, "Moses! You are setting a limit to our blessing (by limiting it to a thousand fold increase)! The Holy One, blessed be He, has already promised Abraham: 'I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth' meaning, if a person can count the dust of the earth, so will he be able to count your offspring. (Gen. 13:16) Moses replied, "What I said is my own blessing [i.e. the maximum extent to which I can bless you]. But as for G‑d, He will indeed 'bless you as He spoke of you.'" (Rashi, ibid.)

To understand this, let us note that the numerical value of "Moses" [in Hebrew, "Moshe" = 345] is the same as that of the divine name E-l Sha-dai.

"Moshe" is spelled: mem-shin-hei = 40 + 300 + 5 = 345.

"E-l Sha-dai" is spelled: alef-lamed, shin-dalet-yud

When these names are spelled out and the kolel is added, their numerical value is 1000.

To cross the Jordan at age 13, the age when the capability for reason in boys begins to fully develop is when we start to worship the untapped inner greatness God has hidden in each of us. The Jordan overflowing its banks on day one is the onset of semenarche it is also the beginning of scary scary times= the flight to the valleys to hide, unless one is forced to take the journey on the other side, and travel all the way around the compass from East "awakeninng" to West "enlightening."

For this we need professional and personable adults who are capable of understanding the truth and relaying it appropriately at the appropriate times and prevent the onset of fear of the future.

To use all of one's resources to launch persons of any age into a life of unmanipulated truth is the liturgy behind the 11 Warriors.

And while it seems harsh and heavy handed, all the Holy Books of every faith say put a stingy, hard hearted man who is determined to seek state power for the purposes of oppression right straight down into the ground. He and his trains of thought must not die of natural causes.

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mariacallous · 11 months

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s appearance at the Arab League summit on May 19 capped a monthslong effort to reintegrate the dictator, and his country, into the politics and economics of the Middle East. This process wasn’t encouraged by the United States, which continued to oppose Assad—but it wasn’t exclusively the product of a decline in U.S. influence in the region relative to China and Russia, either. Instead, it’s been the result of a shift in priorities among countries in the region. Though some regional actors, primarily Qatar, object to mending ties with the regime, others, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), are shifting towards pragmatism after years of funding anti-Assad militias.

Some nations in the region, such as Oman and Iraq, never cut ties with the Assad regime. Of those who did, the UAE began its campaign for normalization back in 2018, when it reopened its embassy in Damascus, Syria’s capital. Jordan has also made its own efforts to work with Syria on border security, but the greater wealth and regional power of Saudi Arabia and the UAE confer proportionate influence on regional dynamics; the Saudi government in Riyadh invited Assad to the Arab League summit and may be pushing Cairo to normalize its own ties to Damascus, though there has been regional pushback on both fronts.

“At a time in which Arab states such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia are asserting their autonomy from Washington and diversifying their partnerships on the international stage, Abu Dhabi [UAE] and Riyadh’s relationships with Russia are increasingly important to the Emirati and Saudi leadership,” said Giorgio Cafiero, the CEO of Gulf State Analytics. “Normalizing relations with Syria serves to bring these [Gulf Cooperation Council] members closer to Moscow, but of course this is not their only motivation for warming up to Damascus.”

Indeed, rather than merely being the proxy battleground of a 21st-century Cold War with the United States on one side and Russia and China on the other, the Syrian regime is at the center of questions of regional stability and security, on a range of issues from the drug trade to managing relations with Iran.

Assad has been internationally isolated since the regime began ruthlessly cracking down on its domestic uprising during the Arab Spring; but its isolation became more pronounced in 2019, when the United States enacted the Caesar sanctions, which targeted individuals and entities doing business with the regime, including in the petroleum and natural gas industries. Syria’s economy was in deep distress by 2020, with an estimated 80 percent of people living in poverty and 40 percent unemployed, according to New York Times reporting. The effect of sanctions, a decade of war and a terrorist insurgency, and regional economic crisis had decimated Syria’s economy.

The spiraling economy and isolation made way for Syria’s illicit captagon trade and cemented the influence of Iran and Russia.

A 2022 report from the New Lines Institute on Jordan’s attempts to normalize relations with Syria detailed the challenges of those efforts, particularly in relation to the captagon trade. Though accurate details about captagon production and trade are difficult to determine, the drug likely brings in billions for the regime. Assad and his network, including many members of his family, control captagon production; then, smugglers take it through a variety of routes, including through Jordan, to markets in the Gulf countries.

“What the actual figure is is difficult to estimate, but I would say [what] the Assad regime gets to their own pockets is, I believe, no less than a billion dollars, while the market value of that industry could be over $10 billion,” Karam Shaar, an independent analyst on Syria’s politics and economy, said. “However you look at it, this actually exceeds Syria’s legal exports. That’s playing a pivotal role in the way countries in the region are looking at Syria and how to deal with it.”

The counterfeit captagon makes its way throughout the region. It travels primarily through Jordan and Lebanon, but Saudi Arabia reported the highest number of seizures from 2015 to 2019—in 2019, nearly 146 million tablets, compared to 23 million in Jordan, the next highest reported amount, according to a 2021 UN report. Though Arab nations may hope to control the illicit captagon trade through negotiations with Damascus and investing in a licit Syrian economy, there’s no reason to believe that the Assad regime is willing to give up what has become lucrative business, should widespread normalization be on the horizon.

Wealthy Gulf nations and the countries that rely on them may also try to blunt Iran’s influence over Syria and in the region, by mending ties with Damascus and working with Tehran. But, as Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International and Middle East analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency said, this isn’t the first time they’ve made such attempts.

“There were repeated attempts to ‘flip’ Syria, before the war, to move away from Iran and into the Saudi-led sphere,” Lund said in an interview. But the nations attempting that maneuver “were just frustrated, time and time again, and I think probably they realize at this point, first of all, that Assad is not going to budge on core issues like Iran. He needs Iran; he’s not going to step away from Iran. And he’s not going to be a reliable negotiator that delivers everything that he promises to do.”

Iran and Syria have made strange bedfellows for decades; though the hard-line Islamic Republic and the nominally secular Assad regime may superficially have little in common, they have long shared similar ideologies regarding Israel and the United States and both countries’ influence in the region overall. The Syrian civil war has shown the strength of that relationship and its importance to the survival of the Assad regime.

Iran provided Syria with military assistance against Israel in 1982, kicking off the longstanding interdependence between the two nations. Iran provided the Syrian regime with weapons, training, and other military assistance against Israel and, throughout the civil war, opposition forces. Meanwhile, Syria is a key transport route to get weapons and supplies to Hezbollah, the Iran-supported Shia militia based in southern Lebanon.

In 2006, the two countries signed a mutual defense pact, which at the time seemed little more than show; however, during the Syrian civil war, assistance from Iran and Russia has proven to be devastatingly useful to the Assad regime. Prior to the war, Iran also took advantage of Syria’s opening economy, investing billions in infrastructure and other projects there in 2007. Iran extended a $1 billion line of credit to Syria in 2015, and $3.6 billion in 2013 to buy goods such as fuel and consumer products, including food, Reuters reported.

Iran is again investing in Syria; the two nations signed multi-year agreements related to infrastructure and trade earlier this month. As one of the key factors keeping the Assad regime intact and in power over the past 12 years, Iran’s primacy of place in Syria is unlikely to change.

“Iran is deeply embedded,” Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. “They’re not going anywhere.”

Other countries might in the future see opportunities to make money rebuilding in Syria, after more than a decade of war as well as February’s devastating earthquakes in both Turkey and Syria, which reduced much of the country to rubble. The UAE in particular may see opportunities for construction projects.

Ultimately the political stability that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are seeking from Assad will come in the form of autocracy, which has now been cemented as the regional norm. Though leaders such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi aren’t mass murderers like Assad, none of the countries seeking to renew ties with Syria are democracies. In a sense, welcoming Assad back into the fold marks, with grave and craven finality, the end of the Arab Spring.

But there are still countries in the region that have yet to welcome Assad. Qatar and Egypt, in particular, have their own specific and dynamic reasons for ambivalence toward Syria.

Qatar is the most significant—that is, the wealthiest—stumbling block to Syria’s regional reintegration. As Cafiero noted in a recent piece for the Stimson Center, Qatar certainly seems keen to preserve its relationship with the United States and the broader West, hence its position on Syria. But Qatar also vocally and practically supported anti-Assad forces. It’s also less likely to bow to pressure from Gulf powers after the UAE initiated a blockade against it in 2017; that crisis was resolved in 2021, but Qatar came out of it more closely aligned with the United States, Cafiero wrote. Still, pressure from Turkey and Iran could eventually push Qatar to accept reconciliation with Syria down the line.

As for Egypt, Sisi “doesn’t seem to have clearly defined objectives in seeking to normalize relations with Assad, but Cairo has been uncomfortable for some time with the idea of a regional regime being ostracized for authoritarian rule and committing brutalities,” Dareen Khalifa, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, wrote in an email. “That said, Sisi has been keen not to take unilateral steps toward Assad (which is part of his overall cautious foreign policy approach that aims to maintain a balancing act with all key regional and international actors).”

Egypt may also try to extract funding from its Saudi and Emirati benefactors in exchange for renewing relations with Assad; though Egyptian officials have met with their Syrian counterparts, there’s been no official announcement about what the outcome of those meetings will be.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have clearly stated that they’re not interested in a relationship with Damascus and won’t remove sanctions. But they’re not going to stop other countries from renewing ties either, diplomats in the MENA region have reported, even though there is as yet no plan to pursue an agreement ending the war.

For Assad, the normalization trend legitimizes his criminal, repressive rule, and although there are reportedly some expectations on the table for renewing ties—that the regime will stem the captagon flow, repatriate refugees, manage violence at the borders, and move away from Iran’s orbit—there are currently no milestones, no timeline, no metrics for success, and no enforcement mechanisms to ensure the regime makes any changes in its behavior toward either its neighbors or the Syrian people.

The Assads—both Bashar and his father Hafez, the previous president—have terrorized generations of Syrians, with no long-term consequences and no justice for murdered, tortured, and displaced people.

Under Hafez al-Assad, government forces killed as many as 40,000 people in the 1982 siege on the city of Hama; thousands of people were disappeared or held as political prisoners and tortured in the notorious Tadmor military prison. There has still been no fact-finding mission and no effort toward justice for the victims and their families. Under Bashar al-Assad, it’s estimated that half a million people have been killed and 6.9 million people displaced internally; approximately 14.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance; and in May alone, the Syrian Network for Human Rights recorded at least 226 arbitrary arrests, including of women and children.

With Arab countries taking a pragmatic approach and the rest of the world essentially turning its back, the chance of accountability and lasting peace for Syria’s people is as good as nonexistent. While some Syrians are hoping for a move—any move—to help stabilize the cratered economy and bring a peaceful resolution to the war, many see normalization as a betrayal unlikely to yield results.

“When we first protested in 2011, we didn’t ask permission from anyone, and we didn’t take into [consideration] the regional and international environment surrounding Syria,” Ibrahim Aboud, a displaced person from Maarat al-Numan city in Idlib province, told Al Jazeera in May. “We are determined to achieve the goals of the revolution and liberate Syria from the Assad regime and its thugs.”

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ljones41 · 3 years

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"WITHOUT REMORSE" (2021) Review

"WITHOUT REMORSE" (2021) Review Three years ago, Amazon Prime premiered a series about the adventures of C.I.A. analyst, Jack Ryan. After two seasons, the series has yet to adapt any particular novel by the character's creator, Tom Clancy; it pretty much set up Ryan's origin story. Recently, Amazon Prime released "WITHOUT REMORSE", an origin tale about another one of Clancy's characters - namely "John Clark".

Anyone familiar with Clancy's Jack Ryan novels would know that "John Clark" is former U.S. Navy SEAL operative John Kelly, who became a black ops agent for the C.I.A. The character has appeared in two Clancy film adaptations - 1994's "CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER" and "THE SUM OF ALL FEARS". However, "WITHOUT REMORSE" marked the first time in which Kelly/Clark served as the main protagonist in an adaptation of a Clancy novel. This should not be surprising since the movie is based upon Clancy's 1993 novel of the same title. "WITHOUT REMORSE" begins in Aleppo, where Senior Chief John Kelly and a team of other Navy SEALs led by Lieutenant-Commander Karen Greer rescue a CIA operative taken hostage by a suspected pro-Assad paramilitary group. The situation escalates when the SEALs discover that the operative's captors happened to be Russian military. The latter apparently retaliates against the SEALs for the mission by sending Russian FSB operatives to kill several members of the SEALs. They managed to kill two members of the team. When they break into Kelly's home to kill him, they accidentally kill his pregnant wife Pam, not realizing that Kelly was in the basement. He manages to kill all of the FSB operatives inside his home and badly wound the last survivor, who manages to escape, before enduring near-fatal wounds himself. With the help of Lieutenant-Commander Greer and reluctantly, the C.I.A., a vengeful Kelly decides to go after the surviving FSB agent and discover the truth behind the attacks on his SEAL team. I have never read Clancy's 1993 novel, but I have read a detailed synopsis of its plot. Needless to say, screenwriters Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples made some major changes in the 2021 adaptation. Unlike the novel, the death of Kelly's wife played a role in the conspiracy that loomed over the Aleppo mission. In fact, the literary Pam was a drug mule/prostitue whom Kelly had befriended and whose death he wanted to kill after she was raped and murdered by her drug-dealer/pimp. The Aleppo mission was basically a replay of a mission involving Vietnam War P.O.W.s and a K.G.B. mole. To be perfectly honest, I found Clancy's novel rather convoluted. Kelly's narrative arc seemed to be torn between the plot line involving Pam and the drug-dealer/pimp and the situation regarding the P.O.W.s, with no real connection between the two. Sheridan and Staples made a wise decision to combine aspects of Clancy's two narrative arcs into one plot line for the movie. Another aspect about "WITHOUT REMORSE" I find interesting is that Amazon Prime had decided to produce a movie about the John Kelly/Clark character. The fact that the company started with an adaptation of a novel about the character's origin only makes me wonder if it has plans for the Kelly/Clark character to make his appearance in a future episode or season of "JACK RYAN". Or . . . if Amazon Prime has plans for Ryan to appear in another production with Kelly/Clark as the lead. Both Ryan and Kelly/Clark are known as the two biggest characters in Clancy's literary "Ryanverse" franchise. And the pair became close friends and colleagues as well. Not only did "WITHOUT REMORSE" prove to be an improvement on the 1993 novel's plot, it also featured some first-rate action sequences. Actually there were two action scenes that really impressed me, thanks to Stefano Sollima's direction. One of those sequences featured the SEAL team's efforts to rescue the C.I.A. operative in the film's opening scene. I thought it was well handled. But I was especially impressed by Sollima's handling of the movie's last action sequence that featured Kelly and the others' efforts to find the fourth FSB operative in Murmansk. I believe this sequence was enhanced by the cast's performances and Sollima's efforts to convey a sense of impeding doom for the SEAL team. Most of the performances featured in "WITHOUT REMORSE" struck me as solid, but not particularly mind-blowing. These solid performances came from the likes of Brett Gelman, Lauren London, Lucy Russell, Luke Mitchell and surprisingly Colman Domingo and Guy Pearce. I say "surprisingly" in regard to Domingo and Pearce, considering that both actors are usually known for delivering outstanding performances - even in supporting roles. I thought both actors did not seem to be putting much effort in their performances. However, I enjoyed the performances of Jodie Turner-Smith, who portrayed Kelly/Clark's commander Karen Greer and Jamie Bell (lead Michael B. Jordan's former co-star from 2015's "FANTASTIC FOUR"), who portrayed C.I.A. officer Robert Ritter. I thought Turner-Smith did an excellent job in conveying both the warmth and commanding presence of Greer. And Bell was excellent as the ambiguous and at times, manipulative Ritter. I certainly had no problems with Michael B. Jordan's portrayal of the vengeful Kelly. I thought he did an excellent job of conveying his character's emotional journey from a man satisfied with his life, grief, revenge and finally willingness to start a new path. If I had to choose two scenes that I really enjoyed, they were Kelly finally facing his grief over his wife's death and his confrontation with the movie's main villain. As much as I enjoyed "WITHOUT REMORSE", I must admit that I had two problems with Sheridan and Staples' screenplay. Both were featured in the film's finale. Kelly, Greer, her SEAL team and C.I.A. officer Robert Ritter went to Murmansk in order to find the last FSB operative who had survived the attack on Kelly's home. After Kelly, Greer and her SEAL team managed to survive what proved to be a trap, the movie focused on Kelly discovering who was truly behind the Aleppo mission, the attacks on Kelly, his wife and two other SEAL operatives; and the Murmansk mission. Needless to say, this hunt for the "Big Bad" felt like a rush job. I truly wish they had taken the trouble to convey how Kelly learned who was responsible for the conspiracy behind the Aleppo and Murmansk missions, along with the murders of the two SEAL operatives and Pam Kelly. Also, the main villain's motives behind the conspiracy struck me as unoriginal. I have seen this scenario used in so many political thrillers over the years that it seemed a pity that Sheridan and Staples' screenplay could not be more original. Yes, "WITHOUT REMORSE" had its flaws. But flawed or not, I still believe that it was an improvement over Tom Clancy's original 1993 novel. I have to give credit to Stefano Sollima's energetic direction, a solid screenplay by Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples; along with a first-rate cast led by the always excellent Michael B. Jordan. I do not know if this movie will be considered part of Amazon Prime's "Ryanverse", but a part of me hope so. It would be a waste if it was not.

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hellyeahomeland · 3 years

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Hi Sara. In the commentary section to the news about ‘Essex Serpent‘ on MacRumors user CJ Dorschel who worked as a consultant for Homeland reveals details about re-writing and re-shooting of parts of season 5 because CBS/Showtime thought they were too close to reality after what happened in Europe in 2015. With the information given there the title of episode 5x11 reads like a joke for insiders. There is also a lot about why and how Quinn’s letter got into the show.

Omg, this is kinda wild. Here’s the full text:

I was a consultant with show runner Alex Gansa on seasons 4 and 5 while a field agent in Berlin. Many of us in the IC were consultants. Gansa really wanted to tap into the sociopolitical global thread and much of what was written and shot was done a year before a season aired. I remember in season 5 in Berlin the main story arc and climax included [SPOILER ALERT] attacks on numerous European cities, not just Berlin and Quinn (Rupert Friend). It was written and filmed in 2014/early 2015. Then came the Paris attacks in November 2015 and CBS/Showtime met with Gansa, Danes, and a few of us to discuss what should be done as the show paralleled exactly what was happening and it the material would have aired right after the attacks. We had to rewrite the ending and removed Paris, Brussels - numerous EU capitals and cities - and changed the climax for the season. Otto’s attempts at discrediting Carrie (Danes) were not due to romantic interests - he was secretly funding Syrian‘s fighting al-Assad in Syria to atone for his past families associations with Nazi Germany and thought his financial and other support was to overthrow Assad and stop his Russian funded war against those who opposed him (Putin has his own interests in the Middle East - the only warm water naval port Russia has in the Mediterranean requires the Ukraine and access through the Middle East hence Russia’s support of middle eastern princes and nations). That all came back to haunt him as they attacked Europe instead. The entire ending had to be scrapped and reshot within weeks. We removed everything but the attack on Berlin and focused on Quinn and Carrie and the aftermath and made Otto’s intentions of removing Carrie as she was getting too close to his organizations work in Syria as a love interest. Rupert Friend wrote the letter that Claire Danes reads to him on a flight back for reshoots at Alex Gansa’s request. He put it in an envelope and no one read it until the scene was shot. Before the scene was filmed, production located an abandoned hospital outside Berlin and padded the walls of a room with used mattresses for a quick makeshift recording studio and Friend read the letter that was to be played during the scene. Danes read the letter while production played Friend‘s recorded audio on set - it was the first time anyone read/heard what Friend wrote. The reactions from Danes was her actual response to what Friend wrote for his character. They only did one take. So what you’re seeing in the hospital scene with Claire reading Quinn’s letter was one take and Danes’ actual emotional response. I remember the set was so quiet for a minute afterwards you would hear a pin drop. Quinn was supposed to have died in season 5 but fan response brought him back. I wasn’t involved in seasons 6 on. That always stuck with me. As for some who claim Danes isn’t a good actress - far from it. She was and is brilliant. She was very invested in the series as she is very sociopolitical active in life. The series finale with Danes’ character living in Moscow and looking over the wall of articles - those were all actual articles from countless newspapers and released documents of events since 9/11. A poignant commentary on real world events and wars that the series perfectly addressed. I’m very interested in Danes’ next project. I know it will be excellent and recommend everyone give Homeland a watch.

I had to read the bit about their original plan with Otto and Syria a few times to understand... that certainly does make the title “Our Man in Damascus” make so much more sense. From the comment it seems like the last two or three episodes needed to be reworked, but even without that rework, and going with something more simple, the season was too complicated. A spaghetti plot season, albeit one with an emotional core (Carrie/Quinn) that was rendered so completely moot by Quinn not dying.

Keeping Quinn alive for season six is the single biggest mistake this show ever made and I will never understand it. There is something intensely cruel about bringing him back because of “fan response” but in this totally altered way that no fan wanted. I don’t even like the guy all that much and I can say it’s messed up. But we’ve exhausted that conversation over the years.

I think we knew everything about the letter -- except for maybe the mechanics of how it was shot. Is it wrong that I don’t have much of a recollection of Claire’s emotional reaction and instead I just remember how amazing her hair looked and her cream-colored cardigan? Her Grim Reaper ensemble in the final scene is an all-time Carrie Mathison LOOK. She was serving.

#there are so many 'what ifs' for this show #what if they'd done the 'carrie helps brody commit suicide by murdering him' thing in s2 #what if they'd actually killed quinn at the end of s5 #okie dokie #i love 2 open the pandora's box of wtf happened from fall 2015 to spring 2017 on this tv program #but it's sort of boring around here lately #ask #hyh ask #anonymous #by: sara

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amirhandjaniiran · 4 years

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Israel-U.A.E. Diplomatic Deal Ratchets Up Tensions With Iran - Amir Handjani

Iran unleashed an angry broadside this weekend reacting to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, a deal signaling deeper cooperation between the Jewish state and Gulf Arabs to counter Tehran as it vies for regional influence.

In a nationally televised speech Saturday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said, “We warn the Emirates: Don’t open the region for the Zionist regime to step in.” If the agreement leads to expanded Israeli influence in the region, Mr. Rouhani said, “Things will change, and they will be dealt with in a different way.”

On Sunday, Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqeri, said Tehran’s attitude toward the U.A.E. will change fundamentally and that the armed forces “will also deal with that country with different calculations.”

The U.A.E. and Israel had been quietly forging commercial and security links for years before the two nations decided, at the urging of the Trump administration, to conclude a formal diplomatic accord.

The agreement followed a period of de-escalation between the U.A.E. and Iran, and the timing caught Tehran by surprise, according to Diako Hosseini, director of the World Studies Program at the Center for Strategic Studies in Tehran, which is affiliated with the presidential office.

“Trust has been lost to a great extent, and it won’t return quickly,” Mr. Hosseini said. Still, he said he thought the likelihood of imminent military action was low. “I don’t think we will see a radical reaction,” Mr. Hosseini said. “We should wait and see the outcome … whether the region will turn into a counterintelligence and counterespionage battlefield.”

The Emirati foreign ministry summoned the Iranian charge d’affairs Sunday and condemned the threatening rhetoric from Tehran, the ministry said in a statement.

Iran and the U.A.E. have a mutual interest in maintaining relations in some form. As Iran’s economy has suffered greatly under U.S. sanctions, the U.A.E. has provided a vital trade and banking channel for Tehran to keep up some level of foreign trade, which also benefits the Emirates.

During the past year, the U.A.E., which is within reach of Iranian missiles, has sought to reduce tensions that could lead to military confrontation. When explosions blew holes in four tankers near the Emirati port of Fujairah last year, Abu Dhabi didn’t blame Iran, even as Washington and Riyadh did so.

The tanker attacks were part of a series of incidents that have kept Iran and its adversaries at the edge of conflict.

Tensions peaked in January when the U.S. killed a top Iranian general in a drone strike in Iraq. Iran responded to the killing by launching more than a dozen missiles at a base in Iraq housing U.S. troops.

Some analysts predicted Tehran would respond to the Israel-U.A.E. deal by reinforcing links to regional militia groups, from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon and Yemen. Those groups have remained hostile to the U.S. and its Arab allies, and often served as Iran’s first line of defense—and offense.

Ali Fathollah-Nejad, an Iran expert at the Brookings’ Center for Middle East Policy, said the pact “solidifies the view in Tehran that there is an unholy alliance between some of its Arab foes—basically, Arab collaborators—with Israel and the United States.”

For Iran’s clerical-led government, resistance to foreign interference in the region has been an ideological cornerstone. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it has vied with Saudi Arabia for the mantle of leadership among Muslims in the Middle East. The two nations have long portrayed themselves as competing champions of the Palestinian cause.

As part of Thursday’s diplomatic deal with the Emirates, Israel agreed to temporarily suspend a plan to annex parts of the Palestinian-populated West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t take it off the table, though.

Iran has never been at outright war with Israel, but it funds a host of militias in Israel’s vicinity, including militant groups in Gaza, such as Hamas, and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.

In a phone call Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reassured the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, that the accord would only strengthen popular support for the Palestinian cause, according to the semiofficial Iranian ISNA news agency.

But in Iran itself, the Palestinian cause is of diminishing importance, particularly to the younger generation. Antigovernment protests have featured chants calling for Iran’s leaders to spend money at home instead of on revolutionary causes in Palestine and Lebanon.

Iran keeps a strong foothold in Syria, bordering Israel, after helping President Bashar al-Assad defeat the armed opposition. It has vast influence in Iraq through powerful militias that have fought Islamic State, U.S. forces and gained political power—and it maintains trade ties pivotal to both countries.

Iran has also forged ties with Turkey based on trade and shared enmity with the U.S.

Despite these deepening fault lines, the U.A.E. has so far taken a pragmatic approach by striking a tenuous balance between Tehran and its rivals.

The U.A.E. backed the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 international nuclear deal and impose crippling sanctions on Iran. It has supported forces opposed to the Iran-backed Houthis in the Yemeni war.

At the same time, the U.A.E. remains Iran’s fourth-largest export destination, according to the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mining and Agriculture.

“Iran will still have to deal with the U.A.E.,” said AmirHandjani, a nonresident senior fellow with the Truman National Security Project. “Most countries have relations with Israel, and Iran has relations with most of those countries.”

#amir handjani iran #amir handjani saudi arabia #amir handjani karv communications

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catholicartistsnyc · 4 years

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Meet Sister Desiré Anne-Marie Findlay

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Sister Desiré Anne-Marie Findlay is a Felician sister, dancer, writer and artist. She dances live on her Instagram (@sister_d) and blogs at Religious Life for Beginners. You can also catch her performances and videos about life as a religious sister on her YouTube channel.

In September 2020, Catholic Artist Connection’s Laura Pittenger spoke with Sister Desiré about dance, creativity in religious life, and how the Church can better serve its artists, particularly those of color. An edited and condensed version of that conversation is included below:

LAURA PITTENGER (LP): I have to tell you, I mentioned to a friend that I was going to interview a Felician sister about her art and my friend said, “Is this the sister who dances on instagram? I LOVE HER.” You have a lot of fans!

SISTER DESIRÉ FINDLAY (SDF): I joke with my friends that I’m like a “small big deal.” (Editor’s note: As of this writing, she has over 3,500 followers on Instagram. We think she’s a regular big deal.)

LP: Where are you currently living and where are you from originally?

SDF: I live in Pittsburgh, PA, but I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I also lived in California and Connecticut for awhile. Right now I live with one other sister in my community, which varies wherever I go. I’ve lived with 20 to 6 sisters at a time. My favorite was when there were three of us. It was a cool balance, we all traveled a lot, two of us we’d hang out and welcome the third back home, and another would leave and return and we’d welcome her home. it was like a seamless kind of movement.

LP: How did you become a dancer?

SDF: It started when I was very young. My mom put me in ballet at three years old. We lived in Germany because my dad was in the Air Force, and I remember being in ballet class, running around in a circle on my tiptoes, and I started crying. Maybe because everything was in German! So when we moved back to the U.S., she put me in gymnastics. I went back into ballet for seven years, and in high school I joined the dance team. I learned other dance styles, jazz and hip-hop, those are my fun energy-based dances, but ballet has stayed my favorite. But what I do now is contemporary, not classical.

LP: Who are some dancers that you admire and who inspired you as a child?

SDF: Actually it was more like gymnasts. There were two I remember: Dominique Moceanu and Dominique Dawes. I don’t even think I considered this as a child, but now that I look back on it, it makes sense because they both have darker skin, or darker hair, or are from a different culture. They both reflected me and my sister, we looked up to them. They were just so good, and we could see ourselves in them. Watching them, it was like I could see myself in performing arts too.

LP: In the interview you did with America Magazine last year [above] you mentioned that dance for you is like a prayer. Could you share a little more about that?

SDF: I never experienced dance as prayer until I was invited to do a prayerful dance for an event. I didn’t know that was possible or that dance could be anything other than performance. The event was a dance to celebrate sisters who had spent 60 to 75 years in the convent. When I noticed that I was inviting all of us in the community to speak with God through my dance, I was like - dance can do this? I can speak to God with my entire body. I didn’t know why I hadn’t been doing that.

I don’t do a lot of formal dance as prayer. I do lead group sometimes or on social media, and people can join in if they want. It’s spontaneous. I don’t choreograph unless i’m leading, but I like to just find whatever song is standing out to me at the time, and let it move me. Sometimes you hear songs that you have to move to, very prayerful songs, some by Audrey Assad, for example, that let us reflect on God and our lives. Sometimes a song will come to me and be in my head for awhile and I just need to dance it out, or I’m in a mood, and look through my songs on my iPad and see what songs I have.

For example, in Advent, The Piano Guys have this cover of O Come O Come Emmanuel that’s instrumental. (I love that song, even though we hear it all season, I don’t get tired of it.) For some reason their instrumental version was stuck in my head, their version. I could not stop thinking about it, and I thought I’d dance it out. Even though there were no lyrics to it, I really felt that song. The line about captives being set free - I could express that through my limbs, that freedom, to be captive and set free by this amazing God who came to be human.

LP: What kind of support within the Felician community have you received for your dance, and how do you think religious communities can benefit from having artists in them?

SDF: My community has been very supportive of me in many things already anyway, but I would say when it comes to dance, on a personal basis my sisters will ask me about it, or send emails or call, or just when I see them at gatherings - “How are you doing? I’ve been reading about you! Keep up good work.” Or they ask if I’ve been using my dance, if they haven’t seen it lately. The community invites me to dance for events, like the Transitus of St. Clare of Assisi - when she passed away and went to her Spouse in Heaven, we have a ceremony to commemorate that. They asked me to pray that out in dance. So they’re not just encouraging me to dance, but asking me to do it for gatherings.

I’m not the only artist. We have so many creative sisters. The sisters have the space to really pursue their creative skills or put them to use somehow. One sister does all our communications and designs our prayer spaces and booklets. She probably would have been like an interior designer or graphic designer, but here she is enhancing our gatherings with her talents. Sometimes you need something to look appealing to make people want to care. Creativity adds to life, I think, color, personality.

LP: There are so many religious orders out there. What drew you to the Felician sisters?

SDF: I was in college when I met them, it was on a 100-mile pilgrimage. I didn’t know it was going to be 100 miles, or that it was to pray for vocations. I’m not a detail person - God just knows how to work with me! God’s just like, “Come do this.” I signed up for the pilgrimage for the cultural aspect, to walk through pueblos. I love my New Mexican heritage. I had no thought about it being a Catholic pilgrimage. I met these two Felician sisters on the pilgrimage, and I had never heard of the order in my life. They were so different, one gentle introvert and one loud, happy extrovert. I love that they are just themselves. They don’t have to be anybody else, to be like or look like or act like each other. They can just be. So I thought, maybe I could be myself. I had thought of religious life before, to be able to pray and serve, that’s cool, but it was never something I thought I saw in my future, until I met them.

LP: What is the formation process like for the Felician sisters?

SDF: Entering the Felicians is a nine-year process, minimum. Other orders can take six years minimum. It deepens in intensity as you go, but the first year I was still going to school and living on my own, so I’d visit with them and had a director. Then I moved in my second year and learned about the community and the saints. I became a novice and learned more about spiritual aspect of the community and my spiritual life. And then after that, four years later, I made my first vows. That’s when I moved out and was a sister, living the vows, but it still wasn’t forever, I could still change my mind. That stage is six years by itself. This August 15, 2020, was my one-year anniversary of making final vows. So it’s been 10 years.

LP: How do you think the Catholic church can do better, starting right now, in supporting artists - and in your case, artists of color? Or Catholics of color in general?

SDF: I think even just this conversation, reaching out to us. Because we can try and create our own spaces to voice what we want to voice and share art we want to share, but unless we’re invited to share, it’s not going to get into a larger space. A Felician sister is a member of the The Stained Glass Association of America, and she said lately they’ve been getting calls from churches with predominantly Black parishioners with churches with stained glass of only white people, and they’re saying, “This doesn’t reflect our church, and Jesus wasn’t white, and we want diversity, how do we do that? How do we go about changing these windows? How do we invite artists of color into this industry? How do we bring more diversity in, to reflect the church we have?” It’s just by invitation, that’s where it starts. The sisters invited me to do this dance. Invitation.

LP: What would you say to someone who feels drawn to both their art or performance but also might feel a call to religious life? Do you think art can also be a form of vocation?

SDF: Like I said, I’m not a detail person, so I wouldn’t have looked up or researched anything. I go as my life unfolds. I don’t plan things. I know there are people out there who think they need to research everything - I didn’t do any of that. Everyone has a different way of discerning. When it comes to vocation and living your full authentic self, including your creativity, whatever form that takes, your passion - it could be immigration policy - there are ways to incorporate that into your vocation, whether you’re married, a sister, or a layperson. Do a little research and say, “Is that community open to that?” In some communities, everybody has the same ministry. In mine, you get to choose your own. There are communities where you can be an immigration lawyer. If I wanted to be a heart surgeon, I can be!

You have to know what your non-negotiables are. The goodness of God - He already knew my non-negotiable was my creativity, and I didn’t realize that. God led me to a community at the right time and in a way that spoke to me. I just said i’m going with it. Nothing else seemed to fit.

We have a style of dress we like to wear as Felician sisters, but we have an option. You can be more traditional, or you can wear a dress and make sure you wear a crucifix. There are some guidelines, but you get to choose. You can be an individual.

Pay attention to what speaks to you. Pay attention to what brings resistance in a community. Knowing that I can be so creative is part of what makes my vocation so fruitful. I can design notebooks! I can share things on social media on my own time. I never knew that’s what i wanted. After I realized dance could be prayer, I want everything I do to have that kind of meaning. That was my non-negotiable. God said, “I gave you these gifts.” It reminds me of the story of Abraham and Isaac. When I was going to enter the Felician sisters, I thought that I’d probably have to give up dance, God said, “I gave it to you.” I was willing to give it up, but God gave it back to me a hundredfold. I’ve gotten to teach dance here and abroad. I never thought I’d do anything like that.

LP: Do you have any words of advice for other Catholic artists who may be struggling right now amid the COVID-19 pandemic and everything else in the world?

SDF: I was very much struggling when all this started. I was used to traveling and meeting lots of people all over the place. I felt very seen, very heard. Suddenly I was in my own little world, and I didn’t have to get up or go anywhere. Before, I was being invited to spaces, but now I have to create spaces for myself. I wasn’t posting dance videos until the pandemic happened. I wanted to connect, but couldn’t in the ordinary way. My suggestion would be to create the connection that you feel you’re missing, because a lot of us were connecting in ways we were used to: coffee, concerts...

Whether we are an observer or an artist, we’re used to connecting through creativity. Now we have to find ways to share that creativity and enjoy it in different spaces. So to be open to those, it means a lot of technology. It still matters and makes a difference for others. I’ve felt a change in myself, being able to connect with people through technology and through Zoom dance group. At first I didn’t want to do it, but people were asking to experience dance as prayer. The Zoom group is open for anyone, but now I’ve just been doing Instagram and Facebook live. I just tried it for the first time last month. I didn’t know people were craving this different type of prayer experience until people started sharing it. Even when I was unwilling, God created this space for myself and other people and I get to share this gift. Here we are praying together, with openness.

#sister desire #sistah d #dancer #dance #catholic #catholic artist #catholic artist connection #pittsburgh #felician #felician sisters #religious life #women religious

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crimethinc · 5 years

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Why the Turkish Invasion Matters: Addressing the Hard Questions about Imperialism and Solidarity

In the following overview, we address some common questions about why it is important to oppose the Turkish invasion of Rojava and suggest an analysis of what it means for world politics.

For those who have not followed the intricacies of the situation in Syria, Turkey, and throughout Kurdistan, it can be difficult to understand what’s at stake here. We are fortunate that some of us have spent time in Rojava, Turkey, and the surrounding regions. We are writing from relative comfort, far from the massacres the Turkish military is enacting, but with our loved ones in Rojava at the forefront of our thoughts—along with everyone else who has suffered grievously throughout the Syrian civil war.

War doesn’t just involve bombs and bullets. It is also a contest of narrative involving propaganda and information control. The Turkish government has been censoring news reporting, cutting off internet access, and forcing social media corporations to silence its victims; it has even succeeded in tricking some ostensible leftists into legitimizing its agenda. All that we have to counter this is our own lived experiences, our international connections with other ordinary people like ourselves, and volunteer-driven projects like this publishing platform that reject all state and corporate agendas.

The timing of Turkey’s invasion has likely been determined in part by Donald Trump’s response to the impeachment inquiry. US Presidents have a longstanding tradition of initiating military interventions to distract from domestic issues. The Trump version of this tradition is to intentionally reignite a civil war by pretending to “end” it. Worldwide, the far right seems to be trying to co-opt “anti-war” rhetoric the same way they appropriated “anti-globalization” slogans, while actually intensifying military aggression and capitalism. This is the same looking-glass-world right-wing “isolationism” that we saw when Hitler was annexing territory in Europe. We seem to have progressed very rapidly from repeating the early 1930s to re-enacting the later 1930s.

The betrayal of the people of Rojava is so shocking that it has even humiliated many otherwise shameless US politicians. Unless we create significant pressure via disruptive direct action, we expect that the US government will wait until the ethnic cleansing of Rojava is a fait accompli before doing anything to respond. Whatever happens, the Turkish invasion has reignited a civil war that was drawing to a close, ensuring many more years of bloodshed throughout the Middle East. No compassionate human being could support this.

Graffiti in front of the courthouse in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 12, 2019.

“Shouldn’t anti-imperialists want the US to withdraw from Syria?”

Supporting Trump’s apparent troop withdrawal from Syria in the name of anti-imperialism is foolish, if not downright disingenuous.

US involvement in Syria looks much different than it has in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well over 100,000 US soldiers occupied Iraq for over half a decade. By contrast, at the very most, there have only been a couple thousand US troops in Syria—less than 2% the number deployed to Iraq. US soldiers in Syria serve an advisory role, carrying out airstrikes but never taking on frontline combat duty.

Even after Trump’s announcement that he is pulling the US military out of Syria, 1000 US soldiers will remain in the country. Opening the way for the Turkish invasion apparently required moving only 50 special forces personnel—it was just a question of shuffling them out of the way of Turkish bombs. In fact, the US military has sent 14,000 more troops to the Middle East since May, specifically bolstering deployments in Saudi Arabia. We are not seeing a troop withdrawal—we are seeing a policy shift towards permitting the extermination of comparatively egalitarian projects while supporting more authoritarian regimes with a troop buildup.

So anti-imperialists who see this as a win against US militarism are suckers, plain and simple. Trump has done nothing to downsize the US empire. He’s simply given Erdoğan go-ahead to build the Turkish empire, to carry out ethnic cleansing while US troops look on. This is hardly unprecedented in the history of US imperialism.

On another occasion, it would be worthwhile to examine the word “anti-imperialist” in greater detail. We frequently see this word employed by the partisans of some rival empire—typically Russia or China, but not only those. We may need to use a different word for those who are consistent in opposing all empires, state interventions, and forms of hierarchical power. Anti-colonial, for example. Or, clearer still, anarchist.

For years, we have heard statists from various corners of the left accusing anarchists of being tools for neoliberalism on account of the fact that we oppose the Russian, Chinese, and Nicaraguan governments as well as the United States government. This is bad-faith name-calling from people who may have a guilty conscience about their own outright support for authoritarian governments—the same way that Trump supporters like to allege that George Soros, a Jewish billionaire, is behind anti-Trump activity while they toady to a billionaire for free. It is absurd to accuse anarchists of being tools of neoliberalism for identifying the ways that China and Russia participate in neoliberalism; it is doubly absurd to accuse anarchists of being tools of imperialism for criticizing the US giving Erdoğan permission to invade Rojava.

The fact that some people who oppose US interventionism can be suckered into cheerleading when the US government gives another authoritarian government the green light to kill thousands of people illustrates the consequences of founding one’s politics opportunistically on incidental factors, such as opposition to a particular prevailing empire, rather than on ethical principles such as opposition to all forms of domination.

Heartbreaking naiveté from supposed anti-war activist Medea Benjamin—a tweet now soaked in blood.

“Are the Kurds just shills for the US?”

The fact that the US government so readily betrayed the people of Rojava undercuts the allegation that they are just pawns in a US strategy. Organizers in the region were pursuing the same agenda of multi-ethnic self-determination for many years before the US found it convenient to support their struggle against the Islamic State.

Should we blame groups like the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Rojava for coordinating with the US? Anarchists in Rojava have argued that the people there were forced to choose between being slaughtered by the Islamic State and working with the US government. Considering that they were nearly conquered by the Islamic State in 2014, it’s hard to argue with this.

When we look at the issue on an individual scale, we’re hesitant to blame a woman who, not being connected to a supportive community, calls the police when she is attacked. The police are unlikely to help her, of course—and relying on them only reproduces the structural factors that cause poverty and violence. But if we want people to adopt our total opposition to policing, we have to give them better options.

Similarly, if we want to live in a world in which people in places like Rojava will not welcome the support of the US government, we will have to offer credible alternatives via social movements and international solidarity campaigns. Anarchists have been seeking ways to do this for years. Right now, that means doing everything we can to impose consequences on Turkey and the US for this invasion.

“Do the Kurds support Zionism and Islamophobia?”

One of the chief hallmarks of the social experiment that has emerged in Rojava over the past several years is that, in contrast to the various forms of ethnic and religious nationalism so prevalent in the region, it is multi-ethnic and inclusive. A significant part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Rojava is Muslim. It may have been attractive for some Islamophobes in the US to support Kurdish resistance to the Islamic State while the US was endorsing it, but we should not blame the people in Rojava for this.

The Barzani Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has historically maintained good relations with both Turkey and Israel, but different Kurdish parties have very different agendas. There are many fair criticisms to be made of the PYD, SDF, and other structures in Rojava, but it’s a real stretch to accuse them of being Zionists. On the contrary, by and large, they deserve credit for being neither pro-Zionist nor anti-Jewish in a region where so many actors are one or the other.

“Did the Kurds betray the Syrian Revolution?”

As anarchists, we consider apologists for Assad beneath contempt. Those who explain away the original uprising against the Assad regime as a CIA operation are conspiracy theorists who deny the agency of the grassroots participants. Blessing tyranny with the name “socialism” and legitimizing state violence on the grounds of sovereignty is bootlicking, pure and simple. The original revolt in Syria was a response to state oppression, just like the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. We affirm the right of the oppressed to revolt even when there seems to be no hope of success. If not for this sort of courage, humanity would still be living under hereditary monarchs. For want of more such courage, our societies are descending deeper into tyranny once again.

Guided by the experiences of those who participated in the original uprising in Syria, we can learn a lot about the hazards of militarism in revolutionary struggle. Once the conflict with Assad’s government shifted from strikes and subversion to militarized violence, those who were backed by state or institutional actors were able to centralize themselves; power collected in the hands of Islamists and other reactionaries. As the Italian insurrectionist anarchists argued, “the force of insurrection is social, not military.” The uprising didn’t spread far enough fast enough to become a revolution. Instead, it turned into a gruesome civil war, bringing the so-called “Arab Spring” to a close and with it the worldwide wave of revolts.

The fact that the uprising in Syria ended in an ugly civil war is not the fault of those who dared everything to resist the Assad regime. Rather, once again, it shows that we were not courageous or organized enough to support them properly. The unfortunate outcome of the Syrian uprising illustrates the disastrous consequences of relying on state governments like the US to support those who stand up for themselves against oppressors and aggressors. The current Turkish invasion confirms the same thing.

Some people outside Syria also blame the Kurds for this failure. It strikes us as hypocritical that anyone who did not go to Syria to participate in the struggle would accuse the Kurds of sitting out the first phase of fighting. The only people from whom this charge carries any weight are the ones who participated in the first phase of the Syrian uprising themselves.

We are sympathetic to this frustration we have heard from Syrian refugees. We have learned a great deal from Syrians who took courageous risks in the revolution only to be forced to flee along the Balkan Route, ending up trapped in places like Greece and Slovenia. Many Syrian refugees have contributed admirably to social struggles in these countries—despite not being there by choice, despite the daily xenophobia and oppression they have confronted. Many of them have since been incarcerated or deported by racist border regimes.

From where we are situated, it is not easy to judge the decisions of the members of an oppressed minority in Syria, far from most of the fighting at the onset of the revolt, that has historically been betrayed again and again by other groups in the region. Perhaps, had Kurds and others in Rojava immediately joined in the struggle against Assad, it could have turned out differently. If that is true, then the lesson of this tragedy is that it is crucial to build trust and solidarity across ethnic and religious lines before revolt breaks out. This is yet another reason to concern ourselves with the fate of the various ethnic groups on the receiving end of the Turkish invasion.

Sadly, it is possible that even if the uprising had toppled Assad, Syria would be little better off today—look at Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Rather than simply replacing one government with another, the most important thing we can hope to accomplish in struggle is to open up autonomous spaces of solidarity and self-determination in which people can explore different ways of relating. To some extent, the experiment in Rojava accomplished this.

But even if the people in Rojava today were somehow responsible for the failure of the Syrian uprising, would they deserve to be slaughtered for this?

No, they would not.

The invasion has just begun.

“But I saw somewhere on the Internet that ‘the Kurds’ are involved in ethnic cleansing? Aren’t they holding people in detainment camps?”

Anywhere there are prisons—anywhere there is a penal system—there is oppression. We are prison abolitionists; we don’t endorse incarceration of any kind. At the same time, there are thousands of mass murderers among the ISIS captives who are determined to resume killing as soon as they are free. This presents a difficult situation for everyone who hopes to see multi-ethnic reconciliation and peaceful co-existence in the region.

In any case, there were jails in Iraq in 2003—and that didn’t keep us from trying to stop Bush’s invasion of Iraq. We don’t have to endorse everything the SDF or PYD is doing to oppose the military aggression of Turkey—a more carceral state.

Likewise, we have seen reports of violence in Rojava under the current “self-administration.” We don’t consider Rojava a utopia; as anarchists, we have criticisms to make about the political structures there, as well. But we have to see things in proper proportion. Relative to the brutality carried out by most of the other actors in the region, the SDF and related groups in Rojava have been comparatively restrained.

The detainment of ISIS fighters along with women and children from the Islamic State is hardly the worst thing that could have happened. From what some of us heard in Rojava during the final phase of the struggle against Islamic State territory, the only people anywhere in the world who wanted to take ISIS prisoners off the hands of the SDF were Iraqi Shia militias. Around the time of the capture of Baghouz, they were reportedly offering the SDF money and weapons in exchange for captured Iraqi ISIS fighters in hopes of taking violent revenge on them. To their credit, SDF declined to turn the captives over.

This is not to legitimize detainment, but to emphasize the intensity of strife and hatred in Syria and Iraq after so much war. Many of these captives would probably have been executed in short order by the Syrian or Iraqi governments, or tortured slowly and methodically by the Shia militias, rather than given food and medical care as they are in Rojava. Indeed, some in the region have criticized the SDF for being too soft on these prisoners. If Turkey or its Syrian mercenary proxies enable the ISIS detainees to escape and resume their former activities, everyone who argued in favor of executing the captives will claim to have been vindicated.

Click on the image to download a printable PDF of the poster.

“But Turkey says the organizations in Rojava are terrorists and claims to be threatened by them.”

It is absurd to argue that ordinary people in Turkey were really threatened by the experiment in Rojava. The US military had already agreed to oversee patrols all along the border—and many of those on the other side of that border are Kurdish people who have a lot in common with the people in Rojava. A free Rojava doesn’t threaten the Turkish people; it threatens Erdoğan’s regime and the oppression that Kurdish people face in Turkey. This is an ethno-nationalist war, pure and simple.

There has been violent struggle in Turkey between the Turkish state and Kurdish movements and armed groups for decades. Erdoğan believes that he can keep maintaining supremacy by force of arms, both inside Turkey and against the surrounding countries, continuing a legacy that includes the systematic genocide of over one million Armenians just a century ago.

Surely, now that Turkey has reignited the Syrian civil war, far more Turkish civilians are going to be killed than would have died otherwise. Hopefully, that will clarify for some people in Turkey that state militarism does not make them safer, but endangers them as well as those on the other side of the shells and bombs.

“But Turkey says it has to seize Rojava to resettle Syrian refugees there.”

It’s not clear exactly what Turkey’s plans are for the region, nor whom they hope to settle there; the majority of the Syrian refugees in Turkey are not from Rojava. Chiefly, Turkey would like to get defiant Kurdish people away from its borders in order to stifle Kurdish independence movements.

In any case, for Turkey to use military force to murder or displace millions of people and replace them with an entirely different population is the very definition of ethnic cleansing. The fact that they are announcing ahead of time that they intend to commit war crimes is shocking.

“Does opposing the Turkish invasion legitimize the US military?”

As anarchists, we don’t believe the US military can do any good in the world. But no one has to legitimize the US military to oppose a Turkish invasion. We are not calling for the US military to resolve the situation; we are calling out the parties responsible for this tragedy—the US and Turkish governments and all the corporations that help set their agendas—and pressuring them to put a stop to it.

When Hitler seized Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, no one had to affirm or legitimize any state government or agency to oppose those invasions. Rather, by making it as inconvenient as possible for anyone to stand by while such tragedies take place, we show our principled opposition to injustice.

Likewise, the betrayal of the Kurds should make it clear to anyone who still puts their faith in the US government—or any government—that we will only get as much peace in the world as we are able to establish by our own efforts, doing all we can to resolve conflicts horizontally while defending ourselves against the vertical power structures of those who aspire to rule.

Fallacies such as “If you’re against the Turkish invasion, you must be in favor of US imperialism” illustrate the pitfalls of binary thinking. It’s easier to understand what is at stake in this situation if we recognize that there are at least three basic sides to today’s global conflicts, each representing a different visions of the future:

Neoliberals of all stripes, from Lindsay Graham and Hillary Clinton to supposedly leftist parties like SYRIZA in Greece and the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil. Though they disagree about the details, they share a common aim of using networked global state governance to stabilize the world for capitalism.

Nationalists like Trump, Erdogan, and ISIS, who have made their complicity clear enough in the course of this affair. This category also includes Assad, Putin, and other demagogues who—like the neoliberals—are often at odds with each other, but all pursue the same vision of a post-neoliberal world of competing ethno-states.

Social movements for liberation that actually seeking to foster egalitarian self-determination based in autonomy and solidarity. Much of what we have seen in Rojava fits this category, though hardly all of it does.

When nationalists collaborate against a social experiment like the one in Rojava, calling for resistance should not mean endorsing the neoliberals who previously administered peace and war. On the contrary, we have to build up our social movements while breaking with both nationalist/militarist and neoliberal/reformist agendas. Otherwise, we will forever be manipulated by one or the other, either directly or out of fear of the other group achieving supremacy.

“How can we hope to stop Turkey, one of the world’s most powerful militaries?”

We may not succeed in forcing the US and Turkish governments to halt the invasion of Rojava. But even if we don’t, there are important things we can accomplish by taking action and valuable opportunities we will miss if we do not.

The invasion of Rojava is taking place against a global backdrop of intensifying nationalism, strife, and authoritarianism. We have to understand it as a single battle in a much larger conflict. Situating it in the context of the larger worldwide struggles taking place right now, we can identify several objectives that are absolutely within our reach right now:

We can show the complicity between nationalists like Trump and Erdogan and ISIS, and delegitimize them in the public eye by association with each other.

We can advance an anti-state position as the only reliable form of solidarity with targeted peoples against state oppression and colonialism—not just US imperialism, but also Turkish, Russian, and Chinese imperialism, among others.

We can legitimize and popularize forms of direct action as the only way to effectively pressure the authorities. When electoral politics has failed to offer any meaningful progress towards social change, we have to accustom people to other approaches.

If ISIS is able to escalate its activity again—if there is no peace or positive prospect in the Middle East for another decade—we want everyone in the world to know whose fault it is and that we did everything we possibly could to stop it.

The stakes are high, but if we fight hard, we can come out of this nightmare one step closer to a world without wars. Or, failing that, a world in which we are at least fighting in conflicts of our own choosing, not senseless tragedies like this.

A solidarity action in Flensburg, Germany opposing the Turkish invasion.

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administratorsharu · 4 years

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New World Order and God father(s):

Ancient civilizations believed in Supremacy i.e., derived by power dispensation of existing rulers either politically or diplomatically.

Power dispensation between the two Global Gaints (USAmerica & Russian Federation)and Blitzkrieg of collapsed economies were at underrated stage in the early year of 2020. The Gulf Monarchs tied hands themselves, unknown to this current scenario and Middle East countries facing war turmoil. Central Asia becoming war mongers.

The fall of prosperous Arab nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libiya, Syria, Yemen and Economically under previlaged Iran followed by Qatar on Global Sanctions are seeking a temporary bailout from the First world countries or G20. Never to forget the atrocities happened on Humankind during the dictatorial regime of Ladens, Saddams, Gaddafis, Khomeinis, Mubaraks and few Emirs and the Clintons, Bush's and Obamas till Trumps who continued to dominate and patriate those dictators with their ancestors. The Oligarchs of the Liquid Diamond (CRUDE Oil, a Liquid Fossil, most expensive in demand) perished and America became undeclared, self decorated AGENT who trades it accoss the Globe.

Following which few of the Monarchs in Kuwait, Saudi and Arab Emirates followed the Agent, equivocal and unopposed.

By accepting the hard fact, life is not normal for people in these Arab countries who are abundantly rich in Liquid Fossil i.e., Oil resources. My focus point on this precious liquid, which drew the War Dog America conquering these countries.

I would like to reiterate few of the 3rd World Countries too who were fallen dumfaced to the American strategy under Clinton and faced deep drubbing, CUBA, VENEZUELA Etc.

So called recently Developed and still developing nations like India, China, Japan Europe and South American countries, became the customers of America but not to the Original producer Of Liquid Diamond.

Russia, having said the world leader in majority of its share on this earth by Land Mass, Destructive weapons, Space Technology, abundant of natural resources, Including Liquid Diamond alongwith proven Natural Gas reserves.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Russia

Now the dominance of the World Order is clear. Irrespective of many sanctions Russia emerged as frontrunner in Weapons exports. Thanks to World's Largest Democracy and a diplomatically safest country INDIA and to CHINA, a Strong Policy maker. Also, Russia proved to be only gamble to majority of European Nations for their dependancy on Natural Gas on Russia, that is cheap and easily transited.

Now, few of the Monarchs are red eyed on Russian President, my most adorable name, that sounds really powerful, Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

The silent, all powerful, no nonsense, all whether ally of world's quarter of the population I.e., India and China.

The most decisive Nationalist, Stalinist, powerful ruler of all times in Russia. He who will be surpassing the Greatest Russian Warlord Joseph Stalin, his predecessor in coming days, once the referendum votes in mid or late 2020. The Russian Supreme court had approved the constitutional amendment for extending the President Terms till 2036, which makes him longest serving democratically elected leader ruling any nation and become Head of the state after elected.

Syria and Iran got blessings in disguise when Russian Air force backed the Bashar Al Assad regime and signed numerous treaties with Ahmedinejad respectively. At the time of sanctions on Iran by Donald Trump, so called last Agent, American President, who seemingly erroneous, impolite, and an ardent(passionate) dumb, Putin revoked the Price war between Saudi and other OPEC countries. Now no IRAN and QATAR to supply cheap Oil and Gas to the Rest of the World, Saudi King and Monarchs who are liberals per say to Americans, got their foot in mouth.

The great loss of trading and shipments business of the Agents made themselves struck in a recession and to bail their own country's economy themselves with $2 trillion. No IMF can support such huge package. Agents, so called Americans not only drew themselves but took majority of European nations too alongwith them.

Saudi Arabia, the leading producer as of now after Venezuela (largest crude Oil reserves proven, but not extracted) got into price war to cut the Oil output with Russia didnt heed the global attention. Lost the battle and dusted, Agents, influenced Saudis finally to accept a contract agreement with Russia on Oil Output standards according to latters requirements. This is the first time, a NoN OpEC country defining SoPs of an overseas terms in the history of world. This applies to all the treaties and agreements, even America couldn't make offlate.

Russian federation after the collapse of USSR in 1990s, the Chinese opened the market for foreign exchange and investments. India under PV narasihma rao diversified major economic reforms under able leadership of then Finance Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Only support to Russia was these two developing nations with opposite philosophies and prophecies.

After 21 years, first when a hardcore drunken master president, Boris Yeltsin called this ex-KGB agent Valdimir Putin to take charge of the Largest Country by land mass which couldn't be conquered in the history, RUSSIA.

Putin, waited for so many years, underwent so much of isolation, political drubbing, economic sanctions. Still emerged victorious and as the Real Boss, with help of two good friends. One, INDIA, under the leadership of a leader who democratically elected with huge majority for second term Mr. Narendra Modi and Second, CHINA under leadership of 1st ever President Mr Xi Jinping, after Mao Zedong who will serve in the President office for life.

Truth is, Russia emerged as Boss of the new World order without waging war and losing any of their resources.

(Sharathkumar)

http://administratorsharu.blogspot.com/2020/04/new-world-order-and-god-fathers.html

(The author has expressed his opinions and thoughts on the basis of facts that are published in mass media. Author also mentions Oil, in reference to Crude Oil as Liquid diamond in comparison to most expensive and demand quotient)

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englishchinesetranslations · 4 years

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Tulsi Gabbard: Wake Up And Smell Our $6.4 Trillion Wars

REALISM & RESTRAINT

Tulsi Gabbard: Wake Up And Smell Our $6.4 Trillion Wars

Meanwhile, her fellow Democrats appear abysmally unconcerned about the human and financial toll.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in August 2019. (Flickr/Creative Commons/Gage Skidmore)

NOVEMBER 29, 2019

DOUG BANDOW

The Democratic establishment is increasingly irritated. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, long-shot candidate for president, is attacking her own party for promoting the “deeply destructive” policy of “regime change wars.” Gabbard has even called Hillary Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.”

Senator Chris Murphy complained: “It’s a little hard to figure out what itch she’s trying to scratch in the Democratic Party right now.” Some conservatives seem equally confused. The Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry asked: “where is Tulsi distinguishing herself when it really matters?”

The answer is that foreign policy “really matters.” Gabbard recognizes that George W. Bush is not the only simpleton warmonger who’s plunged the nation into conflict, causing enormous harm. In the last Democratic presidential debate, she explained that the issue was “personal to me” since she’d “served in a medical unit where every single day, I saw the terribly high, human costs of war.” Compare her perspective to that of the ivory tower warriors of Right and Left, ever ready to send others off to fight not so grand crusades.

The best estimate of the costs of the post-9/11 wars comes from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. The Institute says that $6.4 trillion will be spent through 2020. They estimate that our wars have killed 801,000 directly and resulted in a multiple of that number dead indirectly. More than 335,000 civilians have died—and that’s an extremely conservative guess. Some 21 million people have been forced from their homes. Yet the terrorism risk has only grown, with the U.S. military involved in counter-terrorism in 80 nations.

Obviously, without American involvement there would still be conflicts. Some counter-terrorism activities would be necessary even if the U.S. was not constantly swatting geopolitical wasps’ nests. Nevertheless, it was Washington that started or joined these unnecessary wars (e.g., Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen) and expanded necessary wars well beyond their legitimate purposes (Afghanistan). As a result, American policymakers bear responsibility for much of the carnage.

The Department of Defense is responsible for close to half of the estimated expenditures. About $1.4 trillion goes to care for veterans. Homeland security and interest on security expenditures take roughly $1 trillion each. And $131 million goes to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which have overspent on projects that have delivered little.

More than 7,000 American military personnel and nearly 8,000 American contractors have died. About 1,500 Western allied troops and 11,000 Syrians fighting ISIS have been killed. The Watson Institute figures that as many as 336,000 civilians have died, but that uses the very conservative numbers provided by the Iraq Body Count. The IBC counts 207,000 documented civilian deaths but admits that doubling the estimate would probably yield a more accurate figure. Two other respected surveys put the number of deaths in Iraq alone at nearly 700,000 and more than a million, though those figures have been contested.

More than a thousand aid workers and journalists have died, as well as up to 260,000 opposition fighters. Iraq is the costliest conflict overall, with as many as 308,000 dead (or 515,000 from doubling the IBC count). Syria cost 180,000 lives, Afghanistan 157,000, Yemen 90,000, and Pakistan 66,000.

Roughly 32,000 American military personnel have been wounded; some 300,000 suffer from PTSD or significant depression and even more have endured traumatic brain injuries. There are other human costs—4.5 million Iraqi refugees and millions more in other nations, as well as the destruction of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community and persecution of other religious minorities. There has been widespread rape and other sexual violence. Civilians, including children, suffer from PTSD.

Even stopping the wars won’t end the costs. Explained Nita Crawford of Boston University and co-director of Brown’s Cost of War Project: “the total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the U.S. pays the on-going costs of veterans’ care and for interest no borrowing to pay for the wars.”

People would continue to die. Unexploded shells and bombs still turn up in Europe from World Wars I and II. In Afghanistan, virtually the entire country is a battlefield, filled with landmines, shells, bombs, and improvised explosive devices. Between 2001 and 2018, 5,442 Afghans were killed and 14,693 were wounded from unexploded ordnance. Some of these explosives predate American involvement, but the U.S. has contributed plenty over the last 18 years.

Moreover, the number of indirect deaths often exceeds battle-related casualties. Journalist and activist David Swanson noted an “estimate that to 480,000 direct deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, one must add at least one million deaths in those countries indirectly caused by the recent and ongoing wars. This is because the wars have caused illnesses, injuries, malnutrition, homelessness, poverty, lack of social support, lack of healthcare, trauma, depression, suicide, refugee crises, disease epidemics, the poisoning of the environment, and the spread of small-scale violence.” Consider Yemen, ravaged by famine and cholera. Most civilian casualties have resulted not from Saudi and Emirati bombing, but from the consequences of the bombing.

Only a naif would imagine that these wars will disappear absent a dramatic change in national leadership. Wrote Crawford: “The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries—becoming a truly ‘global war on terror’.”

Yet every expansion of conflict makes the American homeland more, not less, vulnerable. Contrary to the nonsensical claim that if we don’t occupy Afghanistan forever and overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, al-Qaeda and ISIS will turn Chicago and Omaha into terrorist abattoirs, intervening in more conflicts and killing more foreigners creates additional terrorists at home and abroad. In this regard, drone campaigns are little better than invasions and occupations.

For instance, when questioned by the presiding judge in his trial, the failed 2010 Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, a U.S. citizen, cited the drone campaign in Pakistan. His colloquy with the judge was striking: “I’m going to plead guilty 100 times forward because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims.”

Ajani Marwat, with the New York City Police Department’s intelligence division, outlined Shahzad’s perspective to The Guardian: “’It’s American policies in his country.’ …’We don’t have to do anything to attract them,’ a terrorist organizer in Lahore told me. ‘The Americans and the Pakistani government do our work for us. With the drone attacks targeting the innocents who live in Waziristan and the media broadcasting this news all the time, the sympathies of most of the nation are always with us. Then it’s simply a case of converting these sentiments into action’.”

Washington does make an effort to avoid civilian casualties, but war will never be pristine. Combatting insurgencies inevitably harms innocents. Air and drone strikes rely on often unreliable informants. The U.S. employs “signature” strikes based on supposedly suspicious behavior. And America’s allies, most notably the Saudis and Emiratis—supplied, armed, guided, and until recently refueled by Washington—make little if any effort to avoid killing noncombatants and destroying civilian infrastructure.

Thus will the cycle of terrorism and war continue. Yet which leading Democrats have expressed concern? Most complain that President Donald Trump is negotiating with North Korea, leaving Syria, and reducing force levels in Afghanistan. Congressional Democrats care about Yemen only because it has become Trump’s war; there were few complaints under President Barack Obama.

What has Washington achieved after years of combat? Even the capitals of its client states are unsafe. The State Department warns travelers to Iraq that kidnapping is a risk and urges businessmen to hire private security. In Kabul, embassy officials now travel to the airport via helicopter rather than car.

Tulsi Gabbard is talking about what really matters. The bipartisan War Party has done its best to wreck America and plenty of other nations too. Gabbard is courageously challenging the Democrats in this coalition, who have become complicit in Washington’s criminal wars.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author ofForeign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

#tulsi gabbard #gabbard #tulsi #usa #military #america #iraq #afghanistan #syria #middle east #war

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