#Bashir al-Assad

[lightdancer1]

I do love getting moral lectures on bigotry from the Goebbels gang of modern Arab fascism:

Because evidently true bigotry toward the Arab world is not noting that its people suffer at the hands of genocidal despots who slaughter non-Arab and non-Muslim communities whenever the other tricks of despotism fail. It's not noting that these people are genocidal demagogues who appeal to either the greater Arab nation or the Ummah and mostly the latter because Arabism has always been a niche opinion. It's not noting that genocide is bad even in Arabic and using the slogans of the Quran instead of English and using the slogans of the Cross, or German and appealing to the Volksgemeinschaft.

No, true bigotry is insisting that the Arab world can do better than Omar Al-Bashir, Bashir Al-Assad, the late Saddam Hussein, Nuri Al-Maliki, the late Muammar Gaddafi, or Egypt's vainglorious strutting military dictators.

Real bigotry in this view is accurately describing a genocidal pattern and noting that Islam was spread by empires much as Christianity was, a thing to which both the Islamist and the Arabist appeal in different ways with the Ummayyads and Abbasids. Real bigotry is condemning genocidal fascists instead of dancing on the graves of their victims and writing them off as the worthwhile detritus of the historical record.

When I want Dr. Goebbels to bash me for not being nice enough to latter day Himmlers I'll have crossed a line of morality that nobody halfwitted and half-moral could accept, let alone those who aren't. I refuse to follow the moral principle to praise pyramids of skulls because 'muh understanding of the Arab world is pitiful and I couldn't define how Islam works or what Arab culture is to save my life but I will screech bigotry because I love fascism as long as it's sufficiently foreign I can pretend it's anything else'.

[sauolasa]

Siria, il presidente Bashir al-Assad al vertice della Lega Araba

La riabilitazione del paese a distanza di dodici anni dalla sospensione per la repressione delle proteste anti-regime

[mariacallous]

The Spectator asked me to write about George Galloway’s victory in Rochdale. I found it hard to feel anything but despair about working-class Muslim voters, who once again turned out in huge numbers for a white saviour and tankie[i] who had saluted Saddam Hussein, Bashir Assad and Vladimir Putin.

After all these years of exposure, no one has the right to feign ignorance about Galloway’s record. It’s not that his supporters do not know who Galloway is. It is that they know but do not care.

A large chunk of Muslim voters and an element on the white left adore him because he hates Israel and that is​ all that matters.

There’s a lot of drivel going around this morning that Galloway’s victory is a disaster for Labour. In the short-term that cannot be true.

Leave aside that Labour got into such a mess it did not even run a candidate, an analysis by Prof Rob Ford of Manchester University, and friend of this Substack, shows that Labour seats with a large Muslim vote are safe.

In the long run, though, it is a different story.

Lyndon Johnson is meant to have said that the skill you need most in politics is the ability to count. As the Muslim population grows and as Palestine becomes not one issue for the wider left but the issue, left politics will change

Here is how I ​see it

The Rochdale by-election raises a question that Labour will find hard to duck in government: can a European left-wing party survive without a pro-Islamist foreign policy? They can’t win with one, as Jeremy Corbyn proved twice. But the shocking success of George Galloway last night shows that the arguments of the Corbyn years have not been settled.

No one can pretend they do not know who the loudmouthed old ham really is after all this time. Just before Muslim voters propelled him to victory, Galloway received the endorsement of none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party (BNP). 

To use an overused label correctly for once, the BNP is genuinely neo-fascist. And yet Griffin had no qualms in recommending that his followers ‘get out and vote for George Galloway’ and ‘stick two fingers up to the rotten political elite and their fake news media cronies’.

 Like cocktails before a dinner party, obsessions about Jews bring all the extremists together.

What better illustration could you have of the horseshoe theory?

Admirers of dictators admire each other. Galloway ‘saluted’ Saddam Hussein, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Muslims. He praised Bashar al-Assad, as the Syrian president’s forces slaughtered the country’s Sunni Muslim population, for maintaining the ‘fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs’ – the grandiosity of Galloway’s pompous language was in inverse proportion to the misery Assad inflicted.

None of this concerned Muslim voters in Rochdale. Opposition to Israel was all that mattered.

There’s an argument doing the rounds this morning that Labour’s disastrous performance was just a blip. Galloway is a narcissist, it runs, who won’t last long. Muslim voters responded to his anti-Iraq war campaign and gave him victory in Bethnal Green in the 2005 general election. He was out by 2010. He won the Bradford by-election in 2012, and the voters rejected him in the 2015 general election. The voters of Rochdale will almost certainly do the same later this year.

Labour sounded confident. ‘George Galloway is only interested in stoking fear and division,’ the party told the BBC. Labour will ‘quickly’ select a new candidate for the upcoming general election, the spokesman said, adding the party wants to deliver the ‘representation and fresh start that Rochdale deserves’.

I am sure they will. Labour’s poll lead is so great, it can afford to be confident. But Rochdale raises a question about how Labour will deal with the obsessions of a large section of the left once in power, which are unlikely to go away.

The best way to think about it is to look at the threats to MPs and the endless denunciations of Keir Starmer. They are absurd on the face of it. Labour is in opposition. It has no influence over the Israeli government or Hamas whatsoever. What it says is supremely irrelevant.

But the explosion in rage makes sense if you see the anti-Starmer campaign as an attempt to bolster the chances of independent left-wing candidates and to change party policy. (For one, Jeremy Corbyn, kicked out of the party in October 2020 will be thinking of running in Islington North after Galloway’s victory.)

To date it has been a mess. Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer, says​ that the Labour leader and his team had simply not thought about Israel when they gave Benjamin Netanyahu a blank cheque after the Hamas atrocities in October. My guess is that they were so appalled by Labour’s anti-Semitism scandals of the 2010s they swung to the opposite extreme.

You can see how extreme they became by watching a YouTube clip from four months ago of Starmer telling Nick Ferrari that Israel had the right to ‘cut off power, cut off water’ to civilians in Gaza. It has been played tens of thousands of times by Starmer’s opponents. 

Now he has spoken to the Israeli left, government figures in Qatar and Jordan, and the Biden administration and has embraced a standard centre-left suspicion of Netanyahu as a result.

I could go on about the Labour leadership’s naivety. How can you not have a settled view on the Israel/Palestine question when Israel so dominates leftist thinking? When, indeed, supporting Palestine is now for a large faction on the left almost the definition of what it means to be left-wing? It’s astonishing.   

It is equally astonishing that due diligence did not spot that the official Labour candidate held views about Jews that weren’t just anti-Israel but were simply racist. Now Labour has moved on, and I can easily see a Labour government offering full diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian Authority as a compromise.

But that is no more than a Conservative government is likely to do. The activists are crying ‘from the river to the sea’ on the streets, and the Labour left do not want compromise. They want Labour to be like France’s largest left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI), which is for electoral, as well as ideological, reasons pro-Islamist.

LFI repeatedly declined to call Hamas a terrorist group (a conclusion the EU came to about Hamas a full 20 years ago). Their initial communique on 7 October used Hamas’s own language about itself, calling the attack ‘an armed offensive by Palestinian forces’ that came ‘in the context of the intensification by Israel of the policy of occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem’.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party can’t win a presidential election any more than Corbyn could win a general election.

And as with Corbynism, its foreign policy is not just about Palestine but includes a softness towards Vladimir Putin and the other dictators George Galloway salutes. On the other hand, LFI captures a large chunk of the Arab-French vote because it is pro-Islamist. And no French left-wing party can succeed without that vote.

Labour is so far ahead at present it can shrug off the mess in Rochdale, and predict with assurance that it will retake the seat at the election.

It can say it has learned from its mistake in underwriting Netanyahu and his extremely right-wing government and moved on.

In power, however, things will be different. What Labour says and does will finally matter, and elements in its electoral coalition will be making their demands very clear.

Labour hopes that Joe Biden’s ceasefire initiative will work, and that Israel will just go away as an issue.

That hope, as anyone who knows the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948 will guess, is likely to be vain.

This is the conflict that never goes away.

[dxcinhx]

hey, sorry to bother you but i thought you might like to know that you eva bartlett (post about youtube deleting her channel) is a well-known Kremlin mouthpiece, Bashir Al Assad supporter and conspiracy theorist. NGO B'Tselem's channel, documenting Israeli crimes against Palestinians is still up, so it's probable that her channel got deactivated bc of the pro-Russian propaganda she posts instead?

thanks for letting me know anon, i've been looking her up and i'll take down the post

[admiralpaco]

Do not trust anything Jackson Hinkle says without confirming from other sources. They are an Alex Jones tier conspiracy theorist and have received direct support from the likes of Bashir Al Assad (dictator of Syria). They have supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They have appeared on Tucker Carlson in support of what he calls MAGA-communism: a union of the far-right and authoritarian supporting leftists.

I will say this: know who you're reblogging, especially in the middle of a conflict. It's really easy to spread either propaganda or amplify malicious actors. I acknowledge I haven't cross checked any of the claims here, but Jackson Hinkle is among the more malicious actors out there on what is considered the left. He is not a friend to leftist causes. Again, with what little influence I have I ask this: Do not trust anything Jackson Hinkle says without confirming from other sources.

[maximuswolf]

Battlefield 3 shamelessly plagiarizes CoD 4: Modern Warfare

Battlefield 3 shamelessly plagiarizes CoD 4: Modern Warfare When you break it down the plot is almost identical. The only difference is in the execution and even that is very similar. Let’s break it down:Cod 4:Spec Ops team discovers evidence of Russia selling a possible nuke to a group of insurgents.The leader of the insurgents, a warlord named Al-Assad, launches a coup and takes power.The US Marines invade to kill or capture Al-Assad.Al-Assad detonates a nuke.Spec Ops team captures Al-Assad and learns he was given the nuke by a Russian.The Russian tries to launch a nuclear attack on the US.Spec Ops team stops the nuclear attack and kills the Russian.Battlefield 3:US Marine witnesses Russian involvement with an Iranian insurgent group.The leader of the insurgents, a warlord named Al-Bashir, launches a coup and takes power.The marines invade to kill or capture Al-Bashir.The marines discover Al-Bashir has a nuke.Marines capture Al-Bashir and learn he was given the nuke by a Russian.The Russian plans to launch a nuclear attack on the US.The marines stop the nuclear attack and kill the Russian.It’s literally the exact same plot with a different coat of paint. Submitted October 19, 2024 at 10:37AM by blakhawk12 https://ift.tt/CNxqX1s via /r/gaming

[ultrajaphunter]

WANTED:

The arrest warrants issued for Syrian President Bashir al Assad in relation to the 2013 use of chemical weapons on civilians at Ghouta, Syria.

France claims international jurisdiction in the prosecution of war crimes & crimes against humanity. https://jurist.org/news/2023/11/france-issues-arrest-warrants-for-syria-president-and-officials-over-2013-chemical-attacks/

[the-cybersmith]

Fundamentally, it comes down to incentives.

This isn't just about Russia/Ukraine... if you don't want more situations like this, you have to make them costly to the people who instigate them. If that cost is simply in terms of death and impoverishment to ordinary people, then it cannot be paired with ANY AMOUNT of territorial gain.

Dictators will gladly send thousands of their citizens into the chasm of death for the sake of a few more hectares of land.

Vladimir Putin is still living in a big fancy house, drinking wine and eating caviar. However much the economic sanctions have affected ordinary Russians (there are disagreements here, some say a lot, some say not much) they haven't affected the one man who actually matters.

Short of targeted assassination or extraordinary rendition, there is no way to directly punish Vladimir Putin, and he cares very little for indirect punishments. If he gains ANY territory, he will consider this a net win.

And so will Kim Jong Un, and Bashir Al Assad, and Justin Trudeau, and Winnie The Pooh, and Ali Khamenei.

They will consider this as evidence that if you spend enough pawns, you can get territorial concessions out of it.

Okay, so as the typical ignorant American, I have four thoughts about Russia's war against Ukraine that I think are pretty plausible:

Vladamir Putin is a dictator, and having him bring a previously democratic country under his rule through war would be an unequivocal loss for any kind of left-wing or, for that matter, morally permissible politics at all;

If we wish to prevent that outcome, arms shipments to Ukraine are obviously and directly connected to that goal, i.e. the more military strength Ukraine has, the better they will be at fighting off Russian military aggression and ending the war on terms favorable to them;

Both the Ukrainian government and individual Ukrainians have strong reasons to be skeptical of the Russian government and any overtures from Russia. Given the nature of this current assault, people will ask, "If Russia gains something from any peace agreement, what stops them from spending a few years nursing their wounds, improving their position, and then invading again, eventually killing Ukraine with the death of 1,000 cuts?" Avoiding such a situation seems like a sensible and in fact crucial goal for Ukraine.

Notwithstanding the above, I don't really see how you have any end to this war that isn't some kind of negotiated peace, because what on earth is the alternative? Ukraine conquering or extracting an unconditional surrender from Russia seems basically impossible to me.

I'm a very ignorant, simple man, perhaps one of these points is wrongheaded somehow.

But I will say that they strike me as a fairly reasonable set of statements that a sensible person might at least start with as their assumptions.

So it's very strange and frankly disconcerting to me how much English language rhetoric I've run across which treats one or more of those points as not only wrong, but as so insanely, obviously, crazily wrong that the person practically rends their garments in despair at the thought that anybody could possibly believe such obvious hogwash.

I've seen people treat each of those four points as so obviously wrong that they aren't even worth rebutting, which I really can't wrap my head around.

I mean one or more might be wrong but surely none of them are totally insane?

[informationpadho]

please read if you interested in world politics and whats going on middle east rigion 

[secotm]

Back around the time I was leaving high school a new comic strip came to my local paper. I won’t name it because it ended over a decade ago, I believe, and it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

But it’s always stuck in my mind because it was, from the very beginning, so uninspired that I had to wonder how the guy behind it thought that he had what it took to make a daily strip. The first strip that ran in my paper, possibly the first strip period, showed the main character pouring himself a cup of coffee. Pause. Then he starts drinking from the coffee pot.

That’s the best he had to offer out of the gate. That’s his ‘Hi, I’m a comedic artist’ introduction, something I’m almost positive came from a Garfield strip. And it never got better than that.

I didn’t wonder how he got printed; ‘tepid’ is the mean all producers and publishers strive for. But as I asked, how did this guy not have any self-doubt or self-criticism? Did he never stop and say to himself ‘This is garbage. I have no ideas even halfway funny.’?

Part of me envies that. I’m in the middle of Camp NaNoWriMo now, and from the first day I’ve been telling myself my story is shit and no one will want to read it.

But really, for all the crap Millennials get for being the ‘Everyone gets a trophy’ generation, there’s nothing new about unqualified artists, entertainers or leaders being elevated beyond their merit.

Which brings us back to Jerry Holbert. Yet again. Up above there’s two consecutive cartoons, neither of which have an opinion or adequately make a joke. An editorial cartoon only needs to hit one mark, and Holbert so  consistently can’t manage either.

Republicans don’t like trade wars? Maybe point out none of them are challenging Trump on kicking one off. Aliens were behind the chemical attack in Syria? I hope that made sense to Holbert when he jotted the idea down after waking up in the middle of the night.

I honestly want to know where Holbert got the idea that he could hack it as an editorial cartoonist. Does he not know what this medium requires? Does he think political humor is just ‘Look at this silly thing happening today?’

Or does he not care? Occam’s Razor, I guess.

[mysharona1987]

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

[beyondthecusp]

Israel and the Golan Heights Against the World

Israel and the Golan Heights Against the World

  President Trump’s declaration of recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights has been received warmly, politely and with a feeling it will prove a temporary United States position. We cannot argue against their logic claiming that another President will come along and rip the decision up and claim that the United States backs fully the United Nations in demanding that Israel do as…

[unknownworlds4]

Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism: What does it mean?

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine drags on, many have called on the United States government to label the Russian Federation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. The impacts of this action would be catastrophic for Russia.

What is Terrorism?

Let’s begin by defining what Terrorism is. The United Nations has defined terrorism as Criminal acts intended to provoke a state of terror in the general public, which under no circumstances can be justified. Is Russia guilty of this?

Absolutely. Ever sense the unprovoked invasion began, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian civilians, destroying apartments buildings, hospitals, and shopping centers. Missile attacks in Mariupol, Chernihiv, Kramatorsk, Odessa, Kharkiv, Kremenchuk, Chasiv Yar, and Vinnytsia have resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties. The Russian government also has a long history of aggression both inside and outside of the country. This includes the support of the brutal regime of Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad, allegedly organizing the murders of various dissidents such as Boris Nemtsov and Anna Politkovskaya, conducting war crimes during the Second Chechen War between 2000 and 2009, and involvement in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine in 2014.

State Sponsors of Terrorism

Beginning in the 1970’s, the United States Department of State has maintained the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism”. Countries included on this list have been alleged to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international Terrorism”. Inclusion on the list imposes strict unilateral sanctions that the US government can also make allied nations and trade partners follow. The countries that are currently on the list are North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Cuba. Countries that have been on the list in the past include Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, and Sudan.

Results of being Designated a Terrorist State

Being included on this list is followed by unilateral sanctions. Bear in mind, some of these are already in place due to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war:

A ban on arms-related exports

Controls over dual-use items, requiring a 30 day Congressional notice for good or services that could significantly enhance the country’s military capabilities. Dual use items are products that have both civilian or military applications. This includes vehicle parts, chemicals, mechanical equipment, and electronic components.

Prohibition on economic assistance of any kind

Requiring the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions

Lifting diplomatic immunity to allow families of terrorist victims to file civil lawsuits against the country in American courts

Denying companies and individuals tax credits for income earned in terrorist listed countries

Denial of duty free treatment of goods exported to the United States

Authority to prohibit any US citizen from engaging in a financial transaction with a terrorist listed government without a Treasury Department license

Prohibition of Defense Department contracts above $100,000 with companies controlled by Terrorist list states

The main sanction that would happen if Russia were included would be to its reputation. Jason Blazakis, former Director of the U.S. State Department Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office in the Bureau of Counterterrorism and Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, stated in an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, that Russia being designated a terrorist state would be the “ultimate sanction”. Think about it. What country would want to be doing business with a terrorist state? Many nations would cease trade or any other operations in Russia very quickly. Any governments that continue to do business with Moscow would be subject to secondary sanctions. “It would also have the added benefit of getting more companies to de-risk from Russia. That would likely include US and non-US companies. Businesses don’t like operating in countries that are state sponsors of terrorism” Blazakis stated. Although many companies have ceased operations in Russia already, those that haven’t would flee in droves.

As you can see designating Russia as a terrorist state would have catastrophic impact on the Russian economy. The “nuclear economic option” so to speak. Maybe this would finally get the point across to Russia that their invasion is unjustified and immoral. I will also list charities you can donate to to help Ukraine. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

World Vision

International Medical Corps

Save the Children

Action Against Borders

Project HOPE

International Rescue Committee

Heart to Heart International

CARE International

Razom for Ukraine

Voices of Children

Come Back Alive

Serhiy Prytula Foundation

United24

Hospitallers

Army SOS

[lightdancer1]

With the low standards of today's socialist movements I wonder how long until there's a Neo-Confederate wing

After all, in terms of its ideology the Confederacy was both dedicated to the destruction of the United States and the largest, most successful anti-capitalist movement in US history. Modern day socialists rationalize defending Ayatollah Khameini and Vladimir Putin and Bashir Al-Assad and North Korea. Why wouldn't they find a way to turn the Confederacy into a socialist ideal, too? Especially factoring in that from 1862 onwards it was the implementor of the most socialist de facto programs in US history because if it didn't do this it would have fallen in a year.