Did the Syrian Revolution Have Popular Support?

by William Van Wagenen | Aug 3, 2022

In the mainstream view, the armed groups fighting the Syrian government since 2011, collectively known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), were part of a Syrian revolution that represented the Syrian people. At the same time, the Syrian government, or Assad regime, allegedly represented only a small number of loyalists, in particular from President Assad’s minority Alawite community. Such a view undergirded demands by Western and Gulf-funded think tank scholars, who claimed that the Syrian people wished for FSA groups to be armed, and even for Western military intervention on behalf of the FSA, whose fighters they sympathetically described as rebels.

Did the Syrian Revolution Have Popular Support?

Africa taken for ‘neo-colonial’ ride

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram – Jul 26, 2022

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 26 2022 (IPS) – Like so many others, Africans have long been misled. Alleged progress under imperialism has long been used to legitimize exploitation. Meanwhile, Western colonial powers have been replaced by neo-colonial governments and international institutions serving their interests.

Africa taken for ‘neo-colonial’ ride

Ukraine claims 60 dead, 100 wounded, in blasts on Crimea as satellite images show destroyed Russian aircraft

Kerch Strait Bridge, Crimea.

by Clara Weiss, WSWS, Aug 13 2022

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs, claimed on Thursday that 60 pilots and technicians had been killed and 100 people wounded in a series of explosions at a Russian Saki air base on the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula on Tuesday. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the air base has housed the Russian 43rd Independent Naval Assault Air Squadron.

Ukraine claims 60 dead, 100 wounded, in blasts on Crimea as satellite images show destroyed Russian aircraft

Related:

Does Ukraine Have A Stash Of Domestically Developed Ballistic Missiles?

Video via Made in Ukraine

Pentagon acknowledges sending anti-radar missiles to Ukraine; they are already in use

Colin Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy, said at a press briefing that the US had sent “a number” of the missiles without specifying how many the US has provided or when they were sent. Kahl did not explicitly say what type of anti-radiation missile was sent.

A defense official told CNN the type of missile sent was the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).

China Is Better Than The USA: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

China Is Better Than The USA: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

I always mentally translate “the CCP” to “you can stop reading here, I’m just blindly regurgitating empire propaganda.”*

The party of the Chinese government is called the Communist Party of China, the correct abbreviation for which is CPC. But there’s no need to use that when “the Chinese government”, “Beijing”, or “China” would do just as well. The only reason to say “CCP” or “Chinese Communist Party” instead of the normal words people use for other governments would be if you wanted to de-legitimize the government of China.

The CIA, Universities, and Anti-Communist Marxism

On this week’s release of “On the Barricades,” host Maria Cernat speaks to the French-American writer, cultural critic, and activist, Gabriel Rockhill. Gabriel completed his graduate studies under the direction of Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Alain Badiou, and is now a professor of philosophy at Villanova University. Gabriel’s work in academia led him to a very close understanding of the bourgeois cultural and intellectual apparatus for its fundamental, historical role of bringing leftist thinking in line with the interests of the corporate elites and capitalist order. He wrote an article called “The CIA and the Frankfurt school’s anti-communism,” the content of which is the starting point inspiration for today’s discussion.

The CIA, Universities, and Anti-Communist Marxism

Amnesty’s State Dept, CIA Links Make Report on Ukrainian Army Crimes All the More Damning: Observer

Amnesty’s State Dept, CIA Links Make Report on Ukrainian Army Crimes All the More Damning: Observer

Amnesty International’s report on the Ukrainian military’s deployments inside civilian areas and the employment of tactics which endanger civilian lives is all the more damning given the organization’s anti-Russia bias and links to the US government and intelligence services, US journalist and political commentator Don DeBar believes.

Amnesty International Ukraine office director Oksana Pokalchuk resigned over the report, accusing the watchdog of creating materials “that sound like support for Russian narratives,” demanding it be deleted and rewritten, and blasting it for failing to “take into account the position of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.”

Related:

Amnesty International report exposes Ukraine’s violations of international law, deliberate use of civilians as human shields

Significantly, the Ukraine office of the organization vehemently opposed the publication of the report. Its head, Oksana Pokalchuk, declared, “We did everything we could to prevent this report from going public.”

The fact that Amnesty International ended up releasing the report despite serious internal divisions and immense political pressure indicates that the real situation on the ground in Ukraine is, if anything, far more disturbing than even what this report suggests. It should also be noted that the German news magazine Der Spiegel, which has played a prominent role in the anti-Russia war propaganda in Europe, admitted in a report on Friday, rather grudgingly, that its own reporters had made similar findings as Amnesty International and that the conduct of the Ukrainian military “raises legitimate questions.”

In a rare moment of truth, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov recently described his country as a “testing ground” for Western arms manufacturers, which have reaped major profits from the tens of billions of dollars in money for weapons that NATO has pumped into the Ukrainian military.