[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 23 February 2019 20:41.
Occidental Dissent, “President Trump Reverses His Plan To Withdraw From Syria”, 22 Feb 2019:
As I said in December, the Israel Lobby, the Pentagon and the GOP establishment would find some way to pressure Trump into reversing his withdrawal of troops from Syria:
“WASHINGTON — First, President Trump was going to pull all 2,000 American troops out of Syria immediately. Then he was going to slow down the withdrawal. Then he was going to leave troops in neighboring Iraq.
Now, in the latest about-face, Mr. Trump has agreed to leave about 400 troops in Syria — 200 in a multinational force in the northeastern part of the country and another 200 at a small outpost in the southeast, where they will seek to counter Iran’s influence throughout the country.
His decision to commit what one senior administration official described on Friday as a “couple hundred troops” to the multinational force, operating south of the Turkish border, came after European allies refused to send troops if the United States would not.
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, pressed the president to make the decision on Thursday, this official said, amid signs that the Pentagon’s negotiations to put together a stabilization and monitoring force were foundering on European resistance. …”
Such has been the story of the Trump administration:
– Big Ag and the Chamber of Commerce have gotten Trump to support increasing legal immigration
– Republican senators loudly condemned Trump for withdrawing from TPP and renegotiating NAFTA until he essentially replaced NAFTA with TPP
– The tax reform bill passed without closing the carried interest loophole
– The GOP Congress punted on funding the border wall half a dozen times
– Various immigration bills like Kate’s Law have died in the Senate
– Trump was persuaded to sign the 2018 Omnibus and to cave on the shutdown by Republican senators
– The GOP Congress passed heavy sanctions on Russia and Trump yielded to pressure from conservatives to arm Ukraine and expand NATO
– Trump was convinced by Ryan and McConnell to prioritize their agenda of health care, tax reform and welfare reform
At the end of the day, conservatives in Congress have prevailed on nearly every issue, and Trump has walked back his populist promises over and over again.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 09 February 2019 07:49.
TruthDig.Org., “The Venezuela Myth Keeping Us From Transforming Our Economy”, 7 Feb 2019:
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting significant media attention these days, after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview that it should “be a larger part of our conversation” when it comes to funding the “Green New Deal.” According to MMT, the government can spend what it needs without worrying about deficits. MMT expert and Bernie Sanders adviser professor Stephanie Kelton says the government actually creates money when it spends. The real limit on spending is not an artificially imposed debt ceiling but a lack of labor and materials to do the work, leading to generalized price inflation. Only when that real ceiling is hit does the money need to be taxed back, but even then it’s not to fund government spending. Instead, it’s needed to shrink the money supply in an economy that has run out of resources to put the extra money to work.
Predictably, critics have been quick to rebut, calling the trend to endorse MMT “disturbing” and “a joke that’s not funny.” In a Feb. 1 post on the Daily Reckoning, Brian Maher darkly envisioned Bernie Sanders getting elected in 2020 and implementing “Quantitative Easing for the People” based on MMT theories. To debunk the notion that governments can just “print the money” to solve their economic problems, he raised the specter of Venezuela, where “money” is everywhere but bare essentials are out of reach for many, the storefronts are empty, unemployment is at 33 percent and inflation is predicted to hit 1 million percent by the end of the year.
Blogger Arnold Kling also pointed to the Venezuelan hyperinflation. He described MMT as “the doctrine that because the government prints money, it can spend whatever it wants . . . until it can’t.” He said:
To me, the hyperinflation in Venezuela exemplifies what happens when a country reaches the “it can’t” point. The country is not at full employment. But the government can’t seem to spend its way out of difficulty. Somebody should ask these MMT rock stars about the Venezuela example.
I’m not an MMT rock star and won’t try to expound on its subtleties. (I would submit that under existing regulations, the government cannot actually create money when it spends, but that it should be able to. In fact, MMTers have acknowledged that problem; but it’s a subject for another article.) What I want to address here is the hyperinflation issue, and why Venezuelan hyperinflation and “QE for the People” are completely different animals.
What Is Different About Venezuela
Venezuela’s problems are not the result of the government issuing money and using it to hire people to build infrastructure, provide essential services and expand economic development. If it were, unemployment would not be at 33 percent and climbing. Venezuela has a problem the U.S. does not, and will never have: It owes massive debts in a currency it cannot print itself, namely, U.S. dollars. When oil (its principal resource) was booming, Venezuela was able to meet its repayment schedule. But when the price of oil plummeted, the government was reduced to printing Venezuelan bolivars and selling them for U.S. dollars on international currency exchanges. As speculators drove up the price of dollars, more and more printing was required by the government, massively deflating the national currency.
It was the same problem suffered by Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, the two classic examples of hyperinflation typically raised to silence proponents of government expansion of the money supply before Venezuela suffered the same fate. Professor Michael Hudson, an actual economic rock star who supports MMT principles, has studied the hyperinflation question extensively. He confirms that those disasters were not due to governments issuing money to stimulate the economy. Rather, he writes, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”
Venezuela and other countries that are carrying massive debts in currencies that are not their own are not sovereign. Governments that are sovereign can and have engaged in issuing their own currencies for infrastructure and development quite successfully. I have discussed a number of contemporary and historical examples in my earlier articles, including in Japan, China, Australia and Canada.
Although Venezuela is not technically at war, it is suffering from foreign currency strains triggered by aggressive attacks by a foreign power. U.S. economic sanctions have been going on for years, causing the country at least $20 billion in losses. About $7 billion of its assets are now being held hostage by the U.S., which has waged an undeclared war against Venezuela ever since George W. Bush’s failed military coup against President Hugo Chávez in 2002. Chávez boldly announced the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a series of economic and social reforms that dramatically reduced poverty and illiteracy as well as improved health and living conditions for millions of Venezuelans. The reforms, which included nationalizing key components of the nation’s economy, made Chávez a hero to millions of people and the enemy of Venezuela’s oligarchs.
Nicolás Maduro was elected president following Chávez’s death in 2013 and vowed to continue the Bolivarian Revolution. Recently, as Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi had done before him, he defiantly announced that Venezuela would not be trading oil in U.S. dollars following sanctions imposed by President Trump.
The notorious Elliott Abrams has now been appointed as special envoy to Venezuela. Considered a war criminal by many for covering up massacres committed by U.S.-backed death squads in Central America, Abrams was among the prominent neocons closely linked to Bush’s failed Venezuelan coup in 2002. National security adviser John Bolton is another key neocon architect advocating regime change in Venezuela. At press conference on Jan. 28, he held a yellow legal pad prominently displaying the words “5,000 troops to Colombia,” a country that shares a border with Venezuela. Clearly, the neocon contingent feels it has unfinished business there.
Bolton does not even pretend that it’s all about restoring “democracy.” He blatantly said on Fox News, “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” As President Nixon said of U.S. tactics against Salvador Allende’s government in Chile, the point of sanctions and military threats is to squeeze the country economically.
Killing the Public Banking Revolution in Venezuela
It may be about more than oil, which recently hit record lows in the market. The U.S. hardly needs to invade a country to replenish its supplies. As with Libya and Iraq, another motive may be to suppress the banking revolution initiated by Venezuela’s upstart leaders.
The banking crisis of 2009–10 exposed the corruption and systemic weakness of Venezuelan banks. Some banks were engaged in questionable business practices. Others were seriously undercapitalized. Others still were apparently lending top executives large sums of money. At least one financier could not prove where he got the money to buy the banks he owned.
Rather than bailing out the culprits, as was done in the U.S., in 2009 the government nationalized seven Venezuelan banks, accounting for around 12 percent of the nation’s bank deposits. In 2010, more were taken over. Chávez’s government arrested at least 16 bankers and issued more than 40 corruption-related arrest warrants for others who had fled the country. By the end of March 2011, only 37 banks were left, down from 59 at the end of November 2009. State-owned institutions took a larger role, holding 35 percent of assets as of March 2011, while foreign institutions held just 13.2 percent of assets.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 02 February 2019 15:44.
(((Schultz/Starbucks vulture capitalism - governmental collusion with NGO’s and tribal interests)))
I haven’t visited Morgoth’s for several months, and not for more than a moment in over a year… but having taken a peek today, a fine comment jumped out…
Augur Mayson rendered a fine comment in response to the question of why people hate journalists.
In regard to his example that the (((media))) conveniently promulgated Harold Schultz’ crypsis, referring to him as “a white man”, Augur might have added discussion of which (((Frame Games))) spilled the beans - it is still on line: [url=The Perplexing Case of Starbucks The Perplexing Case of Starbucks) about the scheme that Starbucks is involved in, making deals with black NGO leaders in order to buy-up inner city property on the cheap and then gentrifying it to turn huge profits in sales and rent. ...while these blacks were moved in as block busters to begin with by tribal elders who benefited by driving out Whites, taking advantage of driving down property values and welfare slum lording.
A Starbucks in your neighborhood means this racket is coming to your city.
One wonders, given Starbucks property vulturism, if Trump and his cronies don’t figure into the Schultz deal - as Kumiko surmised, they are mostly about a second tier of wealth, based on real estate investment, particularly U.S., and their concerns as such.
* I took the liberty to correct the malapopriative term, “left”, for him and replaced it with what it should be - “liberal”
Augur Mayson • 6 days ago
Because journalists enhance Jewish racial crypsis, is my current reason. They’re statists posing as rebels. The major media outlets either through commingling with the state or via self-interested owners of a certain ((( race ))) typically parrot whatever ridiculous claims are coming out of the government, either about domestic social issues or correctness of foreign policy. They are not some unelected but real check against government abuses. They are attack dogs. They are megaphones for the rich and the state. They are overwhelmingly leftistsliberals* and disproportionately Jewish.
For example, in America now the presidential election in 2020 is shaping up as follows: Trump for the Republicans, because it’s unprecedented for a party to not run an incumbent, unknown candidate for the Democrats, maybe Mrs. Clinton, maybe Joe Biden, maybe someone else, they have a young gay guy they’re trying to talk up now. And the only big independent as yet talked about in the media is former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who’s a Jew, who has used Starbucks to push progressive social policies. For example a few Blacks got thrown out of a Starbucks for presumed loitering; media uproar ensued, Schultz declared to do the exact opposite in future, now they have beggars out front, heroin needles in one bathroom and people giving birth in the other.
So this article in the Judenpresse in America talks up Schultz and says point blank he’s a White man.
“And at 65, he’d have to do that as an older white man who’s never run for office before and has zero national name recognition.” https://www.theatlantic.com...
False, as a CEO of a major corporation he had major exposure and name recognition only second to say Hollywood stars and politicians and media. So the journalist paints Schultz as an unknown (read: underdog, as in, a fetching backstory) and says he’s White when he’s really a Jew.
This is why I hate journalists. Plus if you have a Jewish war you’d like to wage in the desert for no good reason you can always count on the likes of CNN or the BBC to carry the load of b.s. you’re pushing.
NEW YORK: Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, credited with taking the company from small beginnings to an international behemoth, is stepping down as CEO to focus on new high-end coffee shops, handing the reins to Chief Operating Officer Kevin Johnson.
Schultz, 63, will continue to serve as chairman of the Board and will be appointed executive chairman effective April next year. He handpicked 56-year-old Johnson, the company’s president, chief operating officer and a 7-year member of the Starbucks Board of Directors, to serve as the new CEO.
The Seattle-based company said in his new role, Schultz will focus on the “next wave of retail innovation”, design and development of Starbucks Reserve Roasteries around the world, expansion of the Starbucks Reserve retail store format and the company’s social impact initiatives.
“I will remain Starbucks executive chairman, focusing full-time on the incredible growth opportunities we have in expanding Roasteries and building out our portfolio of Reserve stores and on Starbucks social impact agenda which will be a significant part of the focus going forward,” Schultz said in an investor and media conference call yesterday.
Schultz, who was named by Fortune magazine this month in its list of Businessperson of Year is credited with doubling the company’s revenues since he returned for his second stint in 2008, surpassing USD 20 billion for the first time over the past 12 months
Read more at:
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/55746311.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 31 January 2019 15:24.
Donald Trump is President of The United States because he vowed to overturn the Iran Deal for Israel. Overturning the deal was not in the interest of most of the world, except for Israel, Saudi Arabia and The Russian Federation. By contrast, the rest of the world was served by the deal in its business resource interests and more - while the focus on commerce and modernization served not only practical and humanitarian ends but also contributed to a gradual process of liberalizing Iran away from Islam.
Britain, France and Germany are taking steps in their rational interests to skirt the sanctions:
Skirting U.S. sanctions, Europeans launch trade mechanism for Iran
PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters), 31 Jan 2019: France, Germany and Britain have set up a mechanism for non-dollar trade with Iran to avert U.S. sanctions, although diplomats acknowledge it is unlikely to free up the big transactions that Tehran says it needs to keep a nuclear deal afloat.
Belgian students gather to call for urgent measures to combat climate change during a demonstration in Brussels, Belgium, 24 January 2019. According the police more than 35,000 students are taking part in the demonstration.
Thousands of Belgian school children skipped classes on Thursday (24 January) to flood Brussels in an unprecedented protest against global warming and pollution, vowing to miss school once a week until the government takes action.
Students banging drums and carrying signs decrying man-made climate change gathered around the European Parliament.
Police said the 35,000-strong gathering was the biggest turnout of recent times for a student protest in the Belgian capital, which is also home to European Union institutions.
“If we skip every Thursday, if we don’t go to school, the big people in our country and in the world will see that this is a problem,” said high school student Joppe Mathys.
Another student held a sign saying: “Be part of the solution, not the pollution.”
A nine-year-old girl, who gave her name only as Lalla and was with her teacher, said it was time people stopped driving cars and walked and cycled instead.
“Dinosaurs thought they had time too,” read one banner.
Belgian school students feel abandoned by their politicians so they have started a weekly strike for the climate. Their protests pose a major question about how young people are represented in politics ahead of the EU elections in May.
Brussels police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere said the student demonstration was the biggest in recent memory.
Broad protests started across Belgium on 2 December with a “Claim the Climate” march, when over 65,000 demonstrators called for Belgian and European leaders to adopt ambitious climate policies in line with goals set by the Paris agreement in 2015. That demonstration came before the COP24 UN climate summit in Poland, where a report was released ranking Belgium 31 out of 60 on the 2019 Climate Change Performance Index, or a “medium” performance in implementing the Paris agreements. Brussels has been regularly ranked as one of the most congested cities in western Europe in recent years due to Belgium’s high population density and large number of commuters.
That is also a mark of shame for a capital where the EU sets European climate policies.
Across the EU, road congestion costs the bloc one percent of its annual economic output, or €100 billion per year, according to the European Commission.
In the run-up to the UN climate conference, which began in Katowice in Poland on 2 December, many thousands of people demonstrated to support accelerating the phasing out of the coal industry. EURACTIV Germany reports.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 19 January 2019 06:07.
Jerusalem Post, “U.S. SIGNS ELIE WIESEL GENOCIDE PREVENTION ACT INTO LAW”, 16 Jan 2019:
The law is intended to prevent genocide and other atrocities that threaten national and international security.
Elie Wiesel speaks at a World War II tribute. (photo credit: REUTERS)
US President Donald Trump signed a law on Monday declaring that the prevention of genocide and other atrocities is “a core national security interest” of the United States, adding that it is also “a core moral responsibility.”
The Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, named for the world-renown Holocaust survivor and famed author, was signed into law by Trump after it passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in December.
The law is intended to prevent genocide and other atrocities “which threaten national and international security, by enhancing United States government capacities to prevent, mitigate, and respond to such crises.”
The new law obligates the US to mitigate threats to its national “security by addressing the root causes of insecurity and violent conflict to prevent the mass slaughter of civilians; conditions that prompt internal displacement and the flow of refugees across borders; and other violence that wreaks havoc on regional stability and livelihoods.”
The US will enhance its capacity to “identify, prevent, address, and respond to the drivers of atrocities and violent conflict” as part of its “humanitarian, development and strategic interests.” It also entails the establishment a Complex Crisis Fund that will deal with strengthening local civil society, such as human rights groups, and nonprofit organizations that are already on the ground, working to thwart and deal with atrocities as they occur.
According to the new law, “Appropriate officials of the US government” must consult at least twice a year with representatives of nongovernmental organizations and civil society actors in an effort to “enhance the capacity of the US” to identify the conditions that could lead to such atrocities, “including strengthening the role of international organizations and international financial institutions in conflict prevention, mitigation and response.”
It also “encourages” the National Intelligence director to give a detailed review of countries and regions at risk of genocide in annual testimony to Congress, “including most likely pathways to violence, specific risk factors, potential perpetrators, and at-risk target groups.”
The secretary of state is also expected to write an evaluation report every three years.
Speaking in December, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ben Cardin said that “America’s strength around the world is rooted in our values.”
“It is in our national interest to ensure that the United States utilizes the full arsenal of diplomatic, economic and legal tools to take meaningful action before atrocities occur,” said Cardin. “Earlier this month, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum identified Burmese military actions against the Rohingya as genocide. From Burma to Iraq, South Sudan to Syria, atrocity crimes tragically persist all around the globe.” He added that the Prevention Act will help ensure that the United States does a better job of responding earlier and more effectively to these heinous crimes. “I urge our House colleagues to pass this landmark legislation before the 115th Congress adjourns.”
Sen. Todd Young, an original co-sponsor of the law and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained that the US has a moral and strategic imperative to help prevent and respond to acts of genocide and other mass atrocities, and this legislation would ensure that the US government is better prepared to fulfill this serious responsibility.
Prior to the signing, Sara Bloomfield, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum director, said that “senators Young and Cardin’s leadership on the bill honors Elie Wiesel’s vision for the museum as a living memorial that would help save victims of future genocides and in doing so honor the victims of the Holocaust.
“This legislation is an important effort toward developing a bipartisan congressional blueprint for making ‘never again’ real by taking practical steps to mitigate the systematic persecution of vulnerable groups,” she said.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 12 January 2019 10:24.
United States Border Patrol at Algodones Sand Dunes, California, USA. The fence on the US-Mexican border is a special construction of narrow, 15 feet tall elements, that are movable vertically. This way they can be lifted on top of the ever shifting sand dunes (image Public Domain, Wikipedia).
Lest there be any misunderstanding, the position here is that the matter of a United States Southern border wall, fence, whatever, as any requirement of border control, is very important.
Border control there is particularly illustrative of a central matter, which is that border control is crucial to the management of populations in human and pervasive ecology; issues which include territorial carrying capacity - hence, at this border, the particular demographic is a secondary matter; salient there is the matter of Mexico’s massive population - Mexico City being among the most overpopulated cities in the world.
Nevertheless, the demographic and rule structure of The United States is already on a disastrous trajectory for Whites, will remain so, even with a wall on the south border.
While border control is essential at any rate, the worst case scenario of its instantiation would be that it will be used to lull complacency of propositional conservatism - “we Americans all being in the same relatively taken-care-of boat” - and further close us in and galvanize us into mulattoization; furthering the trajectory of those who left us susceptible for the Cartesian rule structure of the constitution and to the Jewry which weaponized it against our necessary discrimination both at the border and within the borders.
...galvanizing us with the demographic upshot of this manipulation unfortunately against a population that does have some warrant as native American behind them and which, for their nature, is highly ethnocentric. It is a demographic thus, which has been effective against integration with blacks, against integration with Whites, indifferent to Jewish violin playing; as such, in the most optimistic scenario, could be allied with other Asians and Whites against black power, Jewish supremacism and Islamic imposition over human ecological coordination (agreed, getting Mestizos to cooperate in ecological management is no small trick; perhaps Asians proper could help reason, coordinate and enforce such management).
Failing that is a default “alliance” by contrast in sudden, “conservative” implementation against Meztiso populations that looks suspiciously in line with Jewish interests against an Asian, Mestizo, White alliance as it would resist continued instigation of the Mulattoization of the broad mass of American Whites, while allying Jewry with increasingly rare White sell-out elites; whose precarious situation would be more and more prone to interbreeding with Jewry or the Mulatto mass.
An Anarchist in Syria Speaks on the Real Meaning of Trump’s Withdrawal
Analysis Current Events
Following Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that he is withdrawing US troops from Syria, we’ve received the following message from an anarchist in Rojava, spelling out what this means for the region and what the stakes are on a global scale. For background, consult our earlier articles, “Understanding the Kurdish Resistance” and “The Struggle Is not for Martyrdom but for Life.”
I’m writing from Rojava. Full disclosure: I didn’t grow up here and I don’t have access to all the information I would need to tell you what is going to happen next in this part of the world with any certainty. I’m writing because it is urgent that you hear from people in northern Syria about what Trump’s “troop withdrawal” really means for us—and it’s not clear how much time we have left to discuss it. I approach this task with all the humility at my disposal.
I’m not formally integrated into any of the groups here. That makes it possible for me to speak freely, but I should emphasize that my perspective doesn’t represent any institutional position. If nothing else, this should be useful as a historical document indicating how some people here understand the situation at this point in time, in case it becomes impossible to ask us later.
Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria is not an “anti-war” or “anti-imperialist” measure. It will not bring the conflict in Syria to an end. On the contrary, Trump is effectively giving Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan the go-ahead to invade Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing against the people who have done much of the fighting and dying to halt the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). This is a deal between strongmen to exterminate the social experiment in Rojava and consolidate authoritarian nationalist politics from Washington, DC to Istanbul and Kobane. Trump aims to leave Israel the most ostensibly liberal and democratic project in the entire Middle East, foreclosing the possibilities that the revolution in Rojava opened up for this part of the world.
All this will come at a tremendous cost. As bloody and tragic as the Syrian civil war has already been, this could open up not just a new chapter of it, but a sequel.
This is not about where US troops are stationed. The two thousand US soldiers at issue are a drop in the bucket in terms of the number of armed fighters in Syria today. They have not been on the frontlines of the fighting the way that the US military was in Iraq.
The withdrawal of these soldiers is not the important thing here. What matters is that Trump’s announcement is a message to Erdoğan indicating that there will be no consequences if the Turkish state invades Rojava.
There’s a lot of confusion about this, with supposed anti-war and “anti-imperialist” activists like Medea Benjamin endorsing Donald Trump’s decision, blithely putting the stamp of “peace” on an impending bloodbath and telling the victims that they should have known better. It makes no sense to blame people here in Rojava for depending on the United States when neither Medea Benjamin nor anyone like her has done anything to offer them any sort of alternative.
While authoritarians of various stripes seek to cloud the issue, giving a NATO member a green light to invade Syria is what is “pro-war” and “imperialist.” Speaking as an anarchist, my goal is not to talk about what the US military should do. It is to discuss how US military policy impacts people and how we ought to respond. Anarchists aim to bring about the abolition of every state government and the disbanding of every state military in favor of horizontal forms of voluntary organization; but when we organize in solidarity with targeted populations such as those who are on the receiving end of the violence of ISIS and various state actors in this region, we often run into thorny questions like the ones I’ll discuss below.
The worst case scenario now is that the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), backed by the Turkish military itself, will overrun Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing on a level you likely cannot imagine. They’ve already done this on a small scale in Afrin. In Rojava, this would take place on a historic scale. It could be something like the Palestinian Nakba or the Armenian genocide. I will try to explain why this is happening, why you should care about it, and what we can do about it together.
To understand what Trump and Erdoğan are doing, you have to understand the geography of the situation. This site is useful for keeping up with geographical shifts in the Syrian civil war.
First of All: About the Experiment in Rojava
The system in Rojava is not perfect. This is not the right place to air dirty laundry, but there are lots of problems. I’m not having the kind of experience here that Paul Z. Simons had some years ago, when his visit to Rojava made him feel that everything is possible. Years and years of war and militarization have taken their toll on the most exciting aspects of the revolution here. Still, these people are in incredible danger right now and the society they have built is worth defending.
What is happening in Rojava is not anarchy. All the same, women play a major role in society; there is basic freedom of religion and language; an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse population lives side by side without any major acts of ethnic cleansing or conflict; it’s heavily militarized, but it’s not a police state; the communities are relatively safe and stable; there’s not famine or mass food insecurity; the armed forces are not committing mass atrocities. Every faction in this war has blood on its hands, but the People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) have conducted themselves far more responsibly than any other side. They’ve saved countless lives—not just Kurds—in Sinjar and many other places. Considering the impossible conditions and the tremendous amount of violence that people here have been subjected to from all sides, that is an incredible feat. All this stands in stark contrast to what will happen if the Turkish state invades, considering that Trump has given Erdoğan the go-ahead in return for closing a massive missile sale.
It should go without saying that I don’t want to perpetuate an open-ended Bush-style “war on terror,” much less to participate in the sort of “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West that bigots and fundamentalists of both stripes have been fantasizing about. On the contrary, that is precisely what we’re trying to prevent here. Most of the people Daesh [ISIS] have killed have been Muslim; most of the people who have died fighting Daesh have been Muslim. In Hajin, where I was stationed and where the last ISIS stronghold is, one of the internationals who has been fighting Daesh longest is an observant Muslim—not to speak of all the predominantly Arab fighters from Deir Ezzor there, most of whom are almost certainly Muslim as well.
The Factions
For the sake of brevity, I’ll oversimplify and say that today, there are roughly five sides in the Syrian civil war: loyalist, Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish, and rebel.
At the conclusion of this text, an appendix explores the narratives that characterize each of these sides.
Each of these sides stands in different relation to the others. I’ll list the relations of each group to the others, starting with the other group that they are most closely affiliated with and ending with the groups they are most opposed to:
Loyalist: Kurdish, Turkish, jihadi, rebel
Rebel: Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish, loyalist
Turkish: rebel, jihadi, loyalist, Kurdish
Kurdish: loyalist, rebel, Turkish, jihadi
Jihadi: rebel, Turkish, Kurdish and loyalist
This may be helpful in visualizing which groups could be capable of compromising and which are irreversibly at odds. Again, remember, I am generalizing a lot.
I want to be clear that each of these groups is motivated by a narrative that contains at least some kernel of truth. For example, in regards to the question of who is to blame for the rise of ISIS, it is true that the US “ploughed the field” for ISIS with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and its disastrous fallout (loyalist narrative); but it is also true that the Turkish state has tacitly and sometimes blatantly colluded with ISIS because ISIS was fighting against the primary adversary of the Turkish state (Kurdish narrative) and that Assad’s brutal reaction to the Arab Spring contributed to a spiral of escalating violence that culminated in the rise of Daesh (rebel narrative). And although I’m least sympathetic to the jihadi and Turkish state perspectives, it is certain that unless the well-being of Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria is factored into a political settlement, the jihadis will go on fighting, and that unless there is some kind of political settlement between the Turkish state and the PKK, Turkey will go on seeking to wipe out Kurdish political formations, without hesitating to commit genocide.
It’s said that “Kurds are second-class citizens in Syria, third-class citizens in Iran, fourth-class citizens in Iraq, and fifth-class citizens in Turkey.” It’s no accident that when Turkish officials like Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu list the “terror groups” they are most concerned about in the region, they name the YPG before ISIS. Perhaps this can help explain the cautious response of many Kurds to the Syrian revolution: from the Kurdish perspective, regime change in Syria carried out by Turkish-backed jihadis coupled with no regime change in Turkey could be worse than no regime change in Syria at all.
I won’t rehash the whole timeline from the ancient Sumerians to the beginning of the PKK war in Turkey to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS. Let’s skip forward to Trump’s announcement on December 19: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.
Let me be clear: Daesh has not been defeated in Syria. Just a few days ago, they took a shot at our position with a rocket launcher out of a clear blue sky and missed by only a hundred yards.
It is true that their territory is just a fraction of what it once was. At the same time, by any account, they still have thousands of fighters, a lot of heavy weaponry, and probably quite a bit of what remains of their senior leadership down in the Hajin pocket of the Euphrates river valley and the surrounding deserts, between Hajin and the Iraqi border. In addition, ISIS have a lot of experience and a wide array of sophisticated defense strategies—and they are absolutely willing to die to inflict damage on their enemies.
To the extent that their territory has been drastically reduced, Trump is telling a bald-faced lie in trying to take credit for this. The achievement he is claiming as his own is largely the work of precisely the people he is consigning to death at the hands of Turkey.
(((Schultz/Starbucks vulture capitalism - governmental collusion with NGO’s and tribal interests)))
United States Border Patrol at Algodones Sand Dunes, California, USA. The fence on the US-Mexican border is a special construction of narrow, 15 feet tall elements, that are movable vertically. This way they can be lifted on top of the ever shifting sand dunes (image Public Domain, Wikipedia).
Elie Wiesel speaks at a World War II tribute. (photo credit: REUTERS)
