Κυριακή 19 Ιουνίου 2022
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Russia's Barbarism in Ukraine Started in Syria. It Is Still Ongoing.
Russia's Barbarism in Ukraine Started in Syria. It Is Still Ongoing.
The mass graves and bombed-out cities targeted by Russian forces in Ukraine have shocked the civilized world, and rightly so. But to millions of Syrian war refugees, and Syrian-born Americans like myself, Vladimir Putin's barbaric assault on Ukraine is less a shock than it is a grim reminder of the overwhelming destructive forces he and his fellow dictator, Syria's Bashar Al-Assad, unleashed on our home country over a decade ago.
The West's response to Putin's murderous invasion of Ukraine has been swift, decisive, and unequivocal. Yet the ongoing Syrian crisis, which began in 2011 when protesters rose up against Assad's repressive government, is now, tragically, all but ignored. It's a mistake to see these two conflicts as separate. The failure of the United States and its allies to stand up to the Russian-backed Assad government years ago opened the door for Putin to wage all-out war against Ukraine. And unless Western leaders commit to helping Syria's opposition topple Assad and achieve the Syrian people's aspiration to transition to democracy, the world will remain needlessly vulnerable to the whims of dictators.
In the first years of Syria's civil war, opposition forces made steady progress, gaining control of large segments of several provinces, including Aleppo, Idlib, and Deraa. That all changed in 2015, when Putin came to the aid of Assad. What followed was one of the most horrific airstrike campaigns in history. Putin's forces didn't just bomb military targets -- they intentionally bombed schools, hospitals, and markets, killing 24,743 defenseless civilians, by one estimate, and leading to the world's largest refugee crisis since World War II.
All told, 6.6 million Syrians have fled their country since the beginning of the war, and an additional 6.7 million have been internally displaced.
My own brother, along with his wife and children, were forced to flee the Damascus suburb of Ghouta to avoid the bombings and a terrifying chemical attack that killed scores of their neighbors. They joined tens of thousands of Syrians who fled to overcrowded and unsanitary refugee camps in Idlib.
These joint Russian-Syrian assaults were critical in helping Assad stave off opposition forces and remain in power. But for Putin, they were a proving ground for tactics and technologies he would later deploy in Ukraine. Not only did the Syria campaigns allow Russia to test out new weapons systems and refine their disinformation techniques. They also offered Putin a sense of how the West might respond should he use these strategies in the future.
And it's here that the connection between these wars is most critical. Had the United States and other Western countries rallied behind Syria's opposition, and worked with allies in the Middle East to help rebel fighters beat back the Assad regime, it would have sent a strong message to Assad and Putin both. Specifically, it would have shown these dictators -- and others around the world -- that targeted assaults on helpless civilians won't be tolerated, no matter where they occur.
But no such response materialized. In fact, at no point has the United States ever provided enough support to the Syrian opposition to even remotely threaten Assad's power, much less Putin's. In effect, Putin was permitted to perpetrate horrific war crimes against the civilians of another nation with impunity. Is it any wonder he believed he could do the same in Ukraine?
Thankfully, the West has finally taken notice, showing solidarity with those fighting for their freedom in Ukraine, and demanding action from their leaders in the form of much-needed military support and economic sanctions. But an effective response to Putin's uncivilized behavior can't ignore his past and ongoing crimes against the Syrian people.
It's time for the West to make up for its failure in Syria, and finally provide my home nation's opposition forces with the support they need to beat back both Assad and Putin and achieve the Syrian people's desire to transition to democracy.
Dr. Tarek Kteleh is a practicing medical doctor, president of Rheumatology of Central Indiana, and a member of Citizens for a Secure and Safe America, a nongovernmental organization whose mission is to promote security in the Middle East and democratic progress in Syria. He is the author of The Six Pillars of Advocacy: Embrace Your Cause and Transform Lives. The views expressed are the author's own.
critique
"Neither Lebanon nor Gaza, think of the retirees" ..
"Neither Lebanon nor Gaza, think of the retirees" ..
This "reactionary" -by the left and Iranianleft criteria- slogan, drips like a poison in the "anti-Zionist" false consciousness of the (iranian and west) far left, freezes them, because they see where the Iranian people are going, and they do not like it. Let leftists be careful, but they are not careful, and so they will lose again.
The "west-east" divide may in fact be an alienative determination/definition, and may have to be overcome in the future, but at the moment eastern totalitarianism is the worst, first and foremost for the eastern peoples themselves who live within its chains.
Σάββατο 18 Ιουνίου 2022
Neutral puppet but puppet of Putin.
Παρασκευή 17 Ιουνίου 2022
Avaze Mahali, Yare Mehraboon
With my poor knowledge of music, however, I can understand the multitude and complexity of the changes and rhythms in this Iranian folk song. Surely, however, I can understand why a stupid left-wing sectarian when he hears the word ''folk'', can not understand that this (Iranian) ''folk'', for example, can not be compared and paralleled with the ''folk'' that haunts him like a ghost and has led him to ideological spells, like those of the idiot-fool-idiots "autonomous Marxists" who grow in Germany like cabbages with which German-Marxist cabbage soups are made.
I see a left idiot, playing the good kid in the Turkish rapist.
The end of a blackmail, or, all pigs have the same face.
The end of a blackmail.
Turkey uses immigrants on the Greek-Turkish
border as a weapon, sometimes at their own risk, but Greek society must
overcome its fear and accept them now all, in a fraternal way, overcoming the
trap of its heterodetermination by the Turkish state trap.
But here I must emphasize something:
The
only ones who do not have the right to judge us (apart from the Turkish
state, of course) are the "solidarity" westerners (and Greeks)
"solidarity" and extreme leftists who did not say ANYTHING about the
decision of the hegemonic nation-state-vampire in Europe, Germany, which
DECIDED at the critical moment to close the Greek-Northern Macedonian
border, and thus to stop the free flow of migrants-refugees to western
Europe (some would also stay in Greece), converting my country
(especially some islands in the eastern aegean) in a closed-open
concentration camp for immigrants-refugees.
Το νεκρό Όνομα..
Αυτοκαθορισμός : Το νεκρό Όνομα..
Η αποτυχία αναβίωσης ενός νεκρού κεντρικού Ονόματος μέσω τής πρόσθεσης εμβόλιμων και μη-οργανικά συνυφασμένων με αυτό κατηγοριακών προσδιορισμών, δεν είναι η τελευταία φάση θανάτου του.
Δεν το έχουν κατανοήσει μερικοί «εκ γενετής αθώοι» ότι μια «αυτοκριτική» και μια «μετατροπή» δεν αρκεί για να απαλείψει τις ευθύνες και να δικαιολογήσει μια τόσο ακραία βίαιη διαδοχή των οικείων κεντρικών σημασιών τους.
Ακόμα δε χειρότερο είναι να νομίσει κάποιος από αυτούς τούς «εκ γενετής αθώους» ότι θα αρκούσε έτσι απλά μια πλήρης αποποίηση ευθυνών για «λάβαρα» και πρακτικές που οδηγούν μέσω τής πλήρους αφέλειάς τους στο θανατικό χωρίς καν λόγο, η οποία θα μπορούσε να υπάρξει με μια μεταφορά τής ευθύνης αυτής στον εχθρό, πάλι.
Κανένας λογικός άνθρωπος, κανένας άνθρωπος με τσίπα, δεν θα μπορούσε να δεχτεί ότι μπορεί να υπάρξει ένας «άλλος» εθνικοσοσιαλισμός, αφού το βάρος των εγκλημάτων αυτού τού τερατώδους δεν μπορεί να αποκολληθεί από το όνομα του, ούτε το όνομα του μπορεί να αποκολληθεί από το βάρος των εγκλημάτων που έγιναν υπό την σκέπη του.
Όμως, υπάρχουν πολλοί ακόμα στον άγιο οικείο χώρο μας (κομμουνισμός) που δεν τους έχει περάσει καν από το μυαλό η ιδέα ότι κάτι ανάλογο αν και ηπιότερο (είναι δόξα αυτό το «ηπιότερο»;) συμβαίνει και σε μας, ή σε αυτούς (αν δεν με δέχονται στην πίστη τους) όσο ακόμα υπάρχει προσκόλληση σε ονόματα, σύμβολα, κεντρικούς συμβολισμούς, αλλά και στρατηγικές ιδέες περί ολικής απάρνησης τού πολιτικού στοιχείου τής κοινωνίας.
Η ενοχλητική προσκόλληση σε σύμβολα και λάβαρα που έχουν ακυρωθεί αμετάκλητα, και δεν ξεκολλάνε από την κακή τους χρήση όσα ξόρκια κι αν κάνεις, δεν είναι απλά εμμονή, μαγικοθρησκευτική προσκόλληση, αλλά εντέλει σημαίνει, ως εμμονή, ένα σημάδι ότι δεν έχουν εγκαταλειφθεί κεντρικές στρατηγικές ιδέες και βλέψεις που είναι αυταρχικές.
Πέμπτη 16 Ιουνίου 2022
On the fantastic tale that “the Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022” By Michael Karadjis
Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis
We’ve all heard it time and time again. Whether it is an argument in support of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, or just as often, opposed to it but claiming both sides are equally at fault, we hear that that “the Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.”
Here’s just one example among thousands of examples regurgitated, with never a simple fact-check, all over the left and right media: According to pro-Putin writer Max Parry, “For what the late Edward S. Herman called the ‘cruise missile Left,’ the 14,000 ethnic Russians killed in Donbass by the Ukrainian army since 2014 are ‘unworthy victims,’ as Herman and Noam Chomsky defined the notion in Manufacturing Consent.”
The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have over-reacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.
Therefore, even many of those who oppose the Russian invasion equally oppose the Ukrainian resistance, and in particular its receipt of arms, because if Ukraine gets the upper hand, it will just continue to do to the “ethnic Russians” what it was previously doing, the same as what Russia is now doing to “the Ukrainians.”
While not quite as colourful as Putin’s claim that Ukraine was committing “genocide” against the ethnic Russians in Donbas, these claims are nevertheless serious and merit clear examination.
…………………………………………………
Let’s look at the claim again:
“The Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.”
Is any of this true?
Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 lost their lives in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number have been wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.5 million people have fled the region. But what of the rest?
“The Ukrainian army killed.”
Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, and various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.
“ethnic Russians”
Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.
But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians. In reality, according to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the numbers killed in Donbas from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021were:
4,400 Ukrainian troops
6,500 Russia—owned separatist troops
3.404 civilians
So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2022.
However, what about the last part:
“between 2014 and 2022.”
Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.
But implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level.
In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. Let’s just look at the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022.
The OSCE report ‘Civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine 2016’ shows there were 88 fatalities in 2016, including 37 from landmines, unexploded ordinance etc.
The OSCE report on civilian casualties covering 2017 to September 2020 shows 161 fatalities over those almost 4 years, of which the majority (81) were from landmines, unexploded ordinance etc. Note that both sides lay landmines; indeed, the UN has characterised the Donbas as one of the most mine-contaminated areas in the world.
The year by year figures were 87 fatalities in 2017, 43 in 2018, 19 in 2019, and 12 to September 2020.
The OSCE report as of 11 January 2021 reports “The total number of civilian casualties in 2020 stands at 128: 23 fatalities and 105 injuries.”
The OSCE Status Report as of 13 December 2021 reports “since the beginning of 2021, the SMM has confirmed 88 civilian casualties (16 fatalities and 72 injured)” in 2021.
Of these 16 fatalities in 2021, 11 were from the first half of 2021: according to the OSCE Status Report as of 14 June 2021, “Over the past two weeks, the SMM corroborated four civilian casualties, all injuries due to explosive objects. This brings the total number of civilian casualties that occurred since the beginning of 2021 to 37 (11 fatalities and 26 injuries). The majority of the casualties (27) were due to mines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive objects.”
Meanwhile, the OSCE Status Report as of 6 September 2021 reported “a fatality, bringing the total number of confirmed civilian casualties since the beginning of 2021 to 62 (15 fatalities and 47 injuries).” Hence, of the 5 fatalities in the second half of the year, 4 were before September.
From these three 2021 reports, we see a continual decline in fatalities in Donbas: 11 in January-June, 4 in June-September, 1 in September-December.
This trend continued into 2022. The OSCE Status Report as of 7 February 2022 reports “The Mission corroborated reports of a civilian casualty: a 56-year-old man suffering a leg injury as a result of small-arms fire on 29 January 2022 in the western part of non-government-controlled Oleksandrivka, Donetsk region. This is the first civilian casualty corroborated by the Mission in 2022.” In other words, to 7 February 2022, 2 weeks before the Russian invasion, there had been zero fatalities in Donbas.
Therefore, this is the trend in what Putin calls the “genocide” of the ethnic Russians in Donbas, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides:
2016 – 88 deaths
2017 – 87 deaths
2018 – 43 deaths
2019 – 19 deaths
2020 – 23 deaths
2021 – 16 deaths, including:
– 11 deaths (Jan-June)
– 4 deaths (June-Sep)
– 1 death (Sep-Dec)
2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).
As we can see, the rate of death has continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.
The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.
But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.
…………………………………………………………….
The aim of this is not to let the Ukrainian government and army off the hook. Both the Ukrainian army and the Russian-backed separatist militia have committed war crimes (mostly in 2014-15).
There is also room for criticism of the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s virulent Ukrainian nationalism, as a major factor leading to opposition among parts of the Russian-speaking population in the east; the fact that the Maidan was confronted by an anti-Maidan in the east was in itself an entirely valid expression of democratic protest. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed militia, armed by Russia, involving the direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weaponry, arbitrarily seizing control of parts of eastern Ukraine.
Simon Pirani argues that neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary and in fact the “social aspirations” of the two “were very close,” but “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”
It is important to understand that the Donbas is ethnically mixed; according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians form 58% of the population of Luhansk and 56.9% of Donetsk; the ethnic Russian minority accounts for 39% and 38.2% of the two regions respectively. How ironic that Putin supporters justify the flagrant Russian annexation of Crimea by pointing to the 58% ethnic Russian majority there, when Ukrainians are the same size majority in Donbas! The ethnic Ukrainian population is then evenly divided between primary Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers, but language does not equal ethnicity, and neither language nor ethnicity equal political opinion. Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin found that in the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia, the majority against. Of the majority against, some 30% supported some kind of autonomy, while a quarter wanted no special status. But in the Ukraine government controlled two-thirds of Donbas, while the same percentage (around 30%) favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just being in Ukraine with no special status (almost none supported joining Russia).
Hence neither ethnic composition nor opinion shows these are “Russian” regions that favour separation or even necessarily autonomy; they are very mixed in all aspects. The bits that have been seized therefore (the fake ‘republics’) are entirely arbitrary – there was no basis for these seizures in terms of any “act of self-determination;” and since the armed conflict took off after these seizures, neither can they be justified as being in response to some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan.
The foreign-backed militarisation of the anti-Maidan on the one hand polarised views on the edges, while on the other driving away the middle, including a large part of the original anti-Maidan civilian population; and the more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian, political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any genuine expression of valid opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies. Alienation from this reality, combined with the war itself, led to literally half the population fleeing Donbas – 3.3 million of the original population of 6.6 million – either to other parts of Ukraine, or to Russia.
In this context, it was entirely valid and expected that the Ukrainian armed forces would attempt to regain these regions conquered by separatist militia backed by a foreign power. Of course, one may criticise Ukraine’s reliance on military means to regain these regions, almost inevitable given that its virulent Ukrainian nationalism precluded a more political approach. But to lay most blame on this military response rather than the foreign-backed military aggression it was responding to is hardly logical. Whatever the case, the continual and decisive reduction of fatalities, injuries and ceasefire violations between 2015 and 2022 – from 3128 civilian fatalities in 2014-2015 to 0 in early 2022 – puts the lie to not only Putin’s claim that his bloody invasion, with its countless thousands of deaths, millions uprooted and cataclysmic destruction, was in response to “genocide” of “ethnic Russians,” but also to the more subtle plague on both your houses case that the Ukrainian army was waging a relentless war against “ethnic Russians” in Donbas.
Στοιχείο για την παραγωγή.
Ιωάννης Τζανάκος