The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:06 pm

dada » Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:36 pm wrote:But the point I was making upthread was about the poor rationale at the core of the arguments in defense of Bashar's regime, it being some sort of bulwark against the tide of western imperialism. Because it simply isn't. Bashar's plan for Syria is westernization.

So the whole line of thinking is undermined at the base, makes every post in support of the regime look foolish as a result. I mean ask yourself, would you take any argument seriously that began on such a ridiculous premise?


I have no answer to the pre-loaded question framed in such simple terms, reducing the entire issue to "defending" Assad. Undermined at its base, as it were. And westernization is not synonymous with U.S. hegemony. Not playing.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby DrEvil » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:12 pm

Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:25 pm wrote:I largely agree with the preceding bit from dada, although...

The one telling a story which contains the others is the one who has control of narrative.


Eventually that story will prevail, but right now that story is a nascent one among others. The current prevailing narrative maintains its control via being the chief programmer of our unconscious aspect of mind. This is illustrated by the reliability of the introduction of notions of; OMG, we have to do something about this great suffering, while not recognizing that those appeals to righteousness are the precise thing driving the suffering in much of the world.

...snip...


You mean like you cheering for Putin and Assad going after the baddies in Syria?
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby dada » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:23 pm

I do agree, sounder, that resorting to emotional appeal is a tactic for trying to sway opinion. The problem with using this point to make a case, in my opinion, is that it's a self-righteous stance to cry 'foul' when it is used. It's an appeal to self-righteousness against appeals to self-righteousness.

And either way, I think self-righteous, emotional appeal have already been taken into account, written into the larger narrative.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby dada » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:28 pm

Elvis » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:06 pm wrote:
dada » Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:36 pm wrote:But the point I was making upthread was about the poor rationale at the core of the arguments in defense of Bashar's regime, it being some sort of bulwark against the tide of western imperialism. Because it simply isn't. Bashar's plan for Syria is westernization.

So the whole line of thinking is undermined at the base, makes every post in support of the regime look foolish as a result. I mean ask yourself, would you take any argument seriously that began on such a ridiculous premise?


I have no answer to the pre-loaded question framed in such simple terms, reducing the entire issue to "defending" Assad. Undermined at its base, as it were. And westernization is not synonymous with U.S. hegemony. Not playing.


Yes, I know. None of that was the point. Look where the narrative control of this discussion has gone, and how easy it was for me to do it. That was my point.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:54 pm

A glaring contradiction of the not pro-Assad but very pro-Assad position becomes clear when the state of Israel is contrasted with the Syrian state. Where ethnic cleansing, torture, maiming and murder would never be condoned for one, they are most always made invisible for the other.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:58 pm

There are distinctions that make a difference here. Chief of which is Syria belongs to Syrians, not to my unconscious desire to be or be seen as being righteous.

As indicated up-thread, there is a neglected history here of a US proxy wanting to claim Syria for their caliphate. This is supported by even the most 'liberal' voices despite the fact that Syria is the only middle-eastern country that vigorously supports women's rights.

And that shows the power of the programming.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:30 pm

AD wrote...
A glaring contradiction of the not pro-Assad but very pro-Assad position becomes clear when the state of Israel is contrasted with the Syrian state. Where ethnic cleansing, torture, maiming and murder would never be condoned for one, they are most always made invisible for the other.


What is glaring to you is mere rhetorical shine to me. Here let me dull that for you. Many people have a natural aversion to stealing. Israel is theft. The Muslim Brotherhood are trying to steal Syria to fulfill their sorry ass myth, hmmm, just like the Zionists in Israel.

If nasty stuff is condoned for one and not the other it is because one is resisting a thief while the other is a thief and thereby is legitimately less deserving of sympathy.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby DrEvil » Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:35 pm

Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 8:58 pm wrote:There are distinctions that make a difference here. Chief of which is Syria belongs to Syrians, not to my unconscious desire to be or be seen as being righteous.

As indicated up-thread, there is a neglected history here of a US proxy wanting to claim Syria for their caliphate. This is supported by even the most 'liberal' voices despite the fact that Syria is the only middle-eastern country that vigorously supports women's rights.

And that shows the power of the programming.


Uh-hu. That must be why they still have Sharia law in family matters, or why marital rape is legal. Good by middle eastern standards, sure, but that's a pretty low bar to clear.

And what about Lebanon and Israel?

And that shows the power of the programming.


This is pretty hilarious coming from you. Do you still think the entire Pacific is dead because of Fukushima or that the word of one fisherman trumps a century of measurements on rising oceans? And how about them underwater volcanoes?
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby dada » Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:12 pm

Yes, I have to disagree with the statement, "There are distinctions that make a difference here."

I'm just showing how this works. Like the magician that breaks the magician's omerta and gives away the secrets of how stage magic tricks are done. I'm no magician, though. Not fond of magicians, at all.

Writers of larger narratives are actors, not reactors. The lesser narratives are all reactive. To understand how this works, one first needs to fully comprehend what actual, effective action is. This isn't Bush-era 'we make history, you just report it.' That strategy has been turned against itself, may have been working against itself without realizing it from the start. Ineffective, reactive action.

An effective act is always a creative act. An act that isn't creative only has the appearance of action, but is reactive. The creative actor has the initiative, the passive reactor retreats into defensive posturing.

The narrative mafia isn't going to come after me for betraying the code and giving away the secrets of narrative control, of course. Surkov doesn't hide his strategy, either, he puts it out there for all to see. Who sees it, though? He does it mockingly, knowing it doesn't matter at this point, who sees. I do it for different reasons. Assume there are others who don't telegraph their moves. They just go about their larger narrative business.

I would say that Surkov has figured out the Chinese strategy, and has adopted it with his own creative variations. But who understands the Chinese strategy. Really understands it. Not many. But this is why Surkov knows it doesn't matter if he reveals his tactics of narrative control. I'd suggest studying Art of War chapter 6, lines 23-34, to see what I'm getting at. But who will? And who will really understand.

26. How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy's own tactics--that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.

27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:26 pm

Meanwhile, BBC coverage today is over the top...'hundreds of thousands of civilians expected to flee the Syrian army'.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:40 pm

Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:30 pm wrote:AD wrote...
A glaring contradiction of the not pro-Assad but very pro-Assad position becomes clear when the state of Israel is contrasted with the Syrian state. Where ethnic cleansing, torture, maiming and murder would never be condoned for one, they are most always made invisible for the other.


What is glaring to you is mere rhetorical shine to me. Here let me dull that for you. Many people have a natural aversion to stealing. Israel is theft. The Muslim Brotherhood are trying to steal Syria to fulfill their sorry ass myth, hmmm, just like the Zionists in Israel.

If nasty stuff is condoned for one and not the other it is because one is resisting a thief while the other is a thief and thereby is legitimately less deserving of sympathy.


This is the logical conclusion of reactionary nationalism: ethnic cleansing, torture, maiming and murder are to be be condoned when convenient, because any and all victims are declared inherently guilty of "terrorism" and/or unimportant because they are essentially property of "their" government. There is no legitimate dissent, no innocent bystanders, nothing. The contradictions are blindingly intense.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:54 pm

AD wrote...
This is the logical conclusion of reactionary nationalism: ethnic cleansing, torture, maiming and murder are to be be condoned when convenient, because any and all victims are declared inherently guilty- of "terrorism". There is no legitimate dissent, no innocent bystanders, nothing. The contradictions are blinding, most of the way around.


Actually if you are trying to steal what is not yours, you are a thief and not the victim.

And please do tell, is warlordism preferable to nation states?
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:49 pm

Image
Mizyed was one of the lucky ones. He and his family are now adapting to life in a refugee camp in Lebanon

Number 72 knew help wasn't coming. He was just another number among thousands of detainees. Repression and corruption was a way of life, and the people of Homs, like Mizyed, had to bow to the regime's supremacy. A wave of protests calling for reforms had engulfed the Arab world in 2010 and the Syrians, too, had stood up and challenged their regime, Mizyed among them.

The protests attracted the wrath of the regime. Right at the top of Assad's coterie was and remains Jamil Hassan, the chief of the air force intelligence, which ran the most notorious detention centers where dissidents were "interrogated." As if the degrading treatment of thousands of inmates wasn't enough, in an interview in 2016, General Hassan said he would have liked to have quelled the opposition through even harsher means.

Had Bashar emulated his father Hafez' severity in dealing with the uprising, the general said, the war would have ended much earlier, a reference to Hafez' crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood-instigated rebellion in the early 1980s.

Mizyed didn't remember '82. However, he became aware of Assad junior's ruthlessness when images of maimed teenagers from a neighboring province, Daraa, appeared on television screens. They were tortured for drawing anti-regime graffiti.

He supported the locals who armed themselves to protect the town of Baba Amr from Assad's excesses. However, he asserts, he never picked up a weapon and only helped the Free Syrian Army in their civil and humanitarian campaigns.

Then a piece of shrapnel pierced his eye, partially blinding him — a result of Assad's bombing campaign on Baba Amr. He was on his way to a hospital when two Syrian soldiers stopped his vehicle. "Don't you know it is unsafe to drive these days?" said one of them. It was their type of joke.

A perpetual nightmare

They escorted him to Saydnaya prison, one of General Hassan's detention centers, the first stop on what would be a long and excruciating ordeal. Recounting the tortures ordered by General Hassan, he said: "They electrocuted me three times a day. Once my toenail popped out with the impact."

Then, one day in February 2013, the brigadier at the detention center called for him. They let him have a shower and gave him new clothes.

His first feeling was relief. Relief from the smell of which he reeked, from the daily ordeals. That day, he was someone, even if they were going to kill him.

He couldn't comprehend why they let him go, but all of it came to an end, abruptly. Later he found out that he might have been released in a prisoner swap mediated through the elders of Homs. The rebels had released two Russians weeks before, in exchange for rebels and their supporters who were still alive in captivity.

Image
Mizyed doubts that that the Syrian regime's perpetrators will ever pay for their crimes

He walked to Lebanon with his family among hordes of others seeking safety and now lives in a refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley.

Now, five years later, the wounds have healed but the scars are still visible, evidence of the crimes committed against his body.

He was, he says, robbed with impunity of any semblance of dignity. There is no apparent route to trial for his perpetrators. Russia and China have vetoed a UN move to refer the Syrian regime to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.


More: https://www.dw.com/en/syrian-detainee-n ... a-44998055
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Sounder » Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:30 pm

Thanks for including the Homs background element.

Yet like i said; it's impressive how quickly and consistently the self-righteousness triggers are activated.

But westerners have no righteousness to be self-righteous about. They are empty vessels with less credibility by the day, and that is how narrative collapse happens.

Pretty neat how non-belief in property rights and other suchlike 'nationalist' concerns makes theft into a non-problematic event. Not even worth talking about.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:36 pm

The state - an introduction

Image

States come in many shapes and sizes. Democracies and dictatorships, those that provide lots of social welfare, those that provide none at all, some that allow for a lot of individual freedom and others that don't.

But these categories are not set in stone. Democracies and dictatorships rise and fall, welfare systems are set up and taken apart while civil liberties can be expanded or eroded.

However, all states share key features, which essentially define them.


What is the state?

All states have the same basic functions in that they are an organisation of all the lawmaking and law enforcing institutions within a specific territory. And, most importantly, it is an organisation controlled and run by a small minority of people.

So sometimes, a state will consist of a parliament with elected politicians, a separate court system and a police force and military to enforce their decisions. At other times, all these functions are rolled into each other, like in military dictatorships for example.

But the ability within a given area to make political and legal decisions – and to enforce them, with violence if necessary – is the basic characteristic of all states. Crucially, the state claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, within its territory and without. As such, the state is above the people it governs and all those within its territory are subject to it.


http://libcom.org/library/state-introduction




The state does not have an essence. The state is not a universal nor in itself an autonomous source of power. The state is nothing else but the effect, the profile, the mobile shape of a perpetual statification or statifications, in the sense of incessant transactions which modify, or move, or drastically change, or insidiously shift sources of finance, modes of investment, decision-making centres, forms and types of control, relationships between local powers, the central authority, and so on. In short, the state has no heart, as we well know, but not just in the sense that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it has no heart in the sense that it has no interior. The state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities.

— Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics
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