imperialism

When it comes to hypocrisy, the pro-war Western ‘liberal’ is in a class of his own. While professing opposition to racism, the pro-war liberal is cheerleader for the most dangerous and deadly form of racism in the world today - contemporary US/Western imperialism. Article by Neil Clark, first published at https://www.rt.com/op-edge/362533-racism-war-west-imperialist/

A racism that is scarcely reported, but which has laid waste to entire countries and killed millions - and which now threatens to drag us into potentially catastrophic military confrontation with Russia.

"We do not pretend to tell Syrians what is right for Syria, just as Syria has respected the Palestinian right to liberate Palestine since the time of the Nakba. However, we declare that the enemies of Syria are the enemies of Palestine, and those who bear arms against the Syrian people and the Syrian army – regardless of their names and affiliations – are mere pawns that serve Israel and its project to divide and control the Arab region. The people who abduct, murder and slaughter in Syria are the enemies of the Arab nation, just like Israel, with which they share goals and criminal nature."

Candobetter.net Editor, Sheila Newman: The statement published in full in this article (which the reader may wish to sign) is the result of an international effort by many individuals to try to help stop the destruction of Syria and the creation of more refugees and stateless persons. It supports the Syrian government and expresses solidarity with the Syrian people. It identifies imperialist forces, including Israel, as trying to divide and reconquer the Arab nations. My understanding is that this statement arose in part out of the fact that Syria has resettled many Palestinians where other states refused, but that political opportunism has caused some Palestinian factions to undermine Syria. I am running this statement because it is anti-war and helps to define the position of Syria in contrast to the deforming lens that Australian and other European Press and governments apply continually. I do not support any anti-Jewish sentiment, but I acknowledge Israel's role in this problem, along with the roles of United States, NATO and Australia. Peace.

Statement of Palestinian groups and individuals in the occupied homeland, refugee camps and the diaspora about the global war on Syria

We are Palestinians and Palestinian organizations that declare our solidarity with the Syrian people in their historic struggle for survival, now in its fifth year. We are in a unique position to understand and appreciate the challenges facing our Syrian brothers and sisters, because we face the same challenges.

We understand what it means to have our lands and our property taken by foreign usurpers. We understand what it means for millions of our people to be driven out of their homes and to be unable to return. We understand what it means for our interests and our national rights to become the plaything of the most powerful nations on earth. We understand what it means to suffer and die in defense of our sovereignty and human rights.

We do not pretend to tell Syrians what is right for Syria, just as Syria has respected the Palestinian right to liberate Palestine since the time of the Nakba. However, we declare that the enemies of Syria are the enemies of Palestine, and those who bear arms against the Syrian people and the Syrian army – regardless of their names and affiliations – are mere pawns that serve Israel and its project to divide and control the Arab region. The people who abduct, murder and slaughter in Syria are the enemies of the Arab nation, just like Israel, with which they share goals and criminal nature.

We therefore reject violence and murder against the people and state of Syria, which has nothing to do with any just demands; rather it merely seeks to destroy the Syrian state. Any attack on Syria is an attack on the Arab nation, and a true national opposition is one that commits to its country’s principles and flies its flag, and that doesn’t receive orders from abroad.

The Palestinian and Syrian struggles are not religious struggles. We respect a state that guarantees freedom of religion without preference for any faith over any other. Dividing Arab communities into conflicting sects only serves the Israeli regime and allows it to implement its plots for the region.

While Palestinian refugees have suffered and are suffering in many places, Syria has welcomed them and granted them all the rights of Syrians except the right to vote. We are grateful for this policy of brotherhood/sisterhood and can do no less than to reciprocate with our solidarity for Syria in its time of greatest need. It is the least we can do.

The cynical and genocidal policies of NATO and its proxies in the Middle East have as their main policy to destroy the last remaining independent nations and forces that are not compromised by complicity with Zionist and imperialist forces. These nations and forces wish no harm to others, yet their mere existence is intolerable to Zionism and imperialism. It is our duty to stand with Syria and all nations and movements that resist the intruders and seek an independent course and policy for the benefit and interest of our own people and not to become puppets of foreign powers.

We therefore stand with Syria in its efforts to repel the foreign invaders and the countries that are creating, training, financing, arming and supporting the terrorist groups in Syria. We call for the expulsion of these groups back to their own countries, and for their supporters to devote their resources to improving the lives of their own citizens in their own countries rather than destroying the lives of our citizens in our countries. Like the alien and racist Zionist regime, these criminal countries and their leadership must be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for waging illegal wars against sovereign states and peoples, including Palestine, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

More than 1000 Palestinians and Palestinian organizations from across the world have signed this statement, and we now welcome all persons and organizations [whether Palestinian by blood or by heart] to add their names. Just fill in below and submit.  Thank you for your support.

by Stephen Gowans. Originally published on Global Research on 1 November 2013 as Friends of Syria or Friends of Imperialism?. This article includes main points.

"Friends of Syria" would deny Syrians the right to choose this man to be their President.

The Friends of Syria—an 11 country coalition ranged against the Syrian government—favors what it calls a "democratic" transition in Damascus. There are multiple problems with this.

The coalition says that the current president, Bashar al-Assad, must have "no role in Syria." How odd that an ostensibly democracy-promoting coalition should dictate to Syrians who it is who can't be president of their country, rather than democratically leaving the question up to Syrians themselves.

The Friends of Syria—an 11 country coalition ranged against the Syrian government—favors what it calls a "democratic" transition in Damascus. There are multiple problems with this.

The coalition says that the current President, Bashar al-Assad, must have "no role in Syria." How odd that an ostensibly democracy-promoting coalition should dictate to Syrians who it is who can't be president of their country, rather than democratically leaving the question up to Syrians themselves.

Equally strange is that half of the coalition members do not support democracy in their own countries. Five of the 11—nearly one-half—are not, themselves, democracies, but are monarchies and emirates (Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) and one, Egypt, is a military dictatorship.

The formal democracies that make up the coalition's other half—the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey—are not promoting democratic transitions within the territories of their coalition partners, limiting their intervention to Syria alone.

Yet, while Syria has hardly conformed to the Western model of a multi-party democracy, it is not at all the undemocratic dictatorship it has been made out to be. It is not, for example, a Saudi Arabia. It has a parliament. It is anti-colonial and anti-imperialist. And parts of the state, much to the annoyance of the US State Department, remain committed to socialist goals. Presidential elections are scheduled for 2014. Any Syrian, so long as he or she meets minimal basic criteria, is free to run. If Syrians don't want Assad, they'll be free to toss him out then.

On the other hand, coalition member Saudi Arabia is a family business. The Saud family calls the shots. There's no chance they'll be tossed out in elections, since they'll never have any. If Washington were truly interested in cobbling together "Friends of" coalitions to promote democratic transitions in undemocratic countries, it would have long ago put together a Friends of the Saudi People group.

Not that the United States ought to be ranging the globe, foisting its brand of democracy on others. Rather, its selective commitment to democracy promotion (only in countries not under its thumb but not in satellite states), speaks volumes about what US foreign policy is really about—and just how far removed from a meaningful democracy the US version is.

Equally fatal to the idea that the Friends seek democracy in Syria is this: one of its number, Egypt, is ruled by a government installed by the military, after it ousted a democratically-elected government. The charge that Syria's Assad has to go because he is killing his own people (insurgents) hasn't stopped the Egyptian military from killing demonstrators who call for the restoration of their elected government. They deserve the appellation "pro-democracy protestors" more than do the Islamist insurgents who used turmoil in Arab countries to inspire a return to jihad against the secular Arab nationalists in Damascus.

And what of the coalition's formal democracies? All are former colonial powers. They cared not one whit about democracy when they held the greater part of humanity in colonial thrall, including the people who lived in what is modern day Syria. By their actions and duplicity, they've revealed themselves to care as little about democracy in the Arab world as they did when four of them (the Turks, Italians, British and French) ruled Arabs by edict from afar.

Six former colonial powers in a coalition with five tyrannies, telling Syrians who they can't have as president, supporting a group of exiles who wait in the wings for the signal to traipse onto the Syrian stage as Washington's marionette, is hardly the picture of democracy-promoters. If you believe otherwise, then democracy is nothing but a euphemism for imperialism, an emotionally appealing word tossed around as a cover for the very negation of what the Friends of Syria profess to seek.