Putin and Trump have convinced me I was wrong about the twenty-first century

 

May I suggest to Mr. Reich adding a third name to his brilliant and obvious logic, Netanyahu of actual Israel.....  O.D.

It's the 29 of December 2024, and with sorrow I would like to add, two names to the list, ex-president of Syria, Bashar Assad, and still the actual president of the U.S. Joe Biden, all of these political personalities make our actual 21st century look like some four or five centuries old and not where we would like it to be, somehow humanity thought it was beyond barbarity, but maybe we're not. 

Events in the Middle-East and elsewhere, genocidal wars, and grandiose political dreams happening all over, is surely a reminder that our times are not civilized and our human species is not what we were hoping for, maybe in another two or three centuries we might be if we manage to survive.  

I'm recopying the blog, as I find it still very relevant. 

Robert Reich - Published March 12 2022 on Substack.

I used to believe several things about the twenty-first century that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s election in 2016 have shown me are false. I assumed:

Nationalism is disappearing. I expected globalization would blur borders, create economic interdependence among nations and regions, and extend a modern consumer and artistic culture worldwide.

I was wrong. Both Putin and Trump have exploited xenophobic nationalism to build their power. (Putin’s aggression has also ignited an inspiring patriotism in Ukraine.)

Nations can no longer control what their citizens know. I assumed that emerging digital technologies, including the Internet, would make it impossible to control worldwide flows of information and knowledge. Tyrants could no longer keep their people in the dark or hoodwink them with propaganda.

Wrong again. Trump filled the media with lies, as has Putin. Putin has also cut off Russian citizens from the truth about what’s occurring in Ukraine.

Advanced nations will no longer war over geographic territory. I thought that in the “new economy” land was becoming less valuable than technological knowhow and innovation. Competition among nations would therefore be over the development of cutting-edge inventions.

I was only partly right. While skills and innovation are critical, land still provides access to critical raw materials and buffers against potential foreign aggressors.

Major nuclear powers will never risk war against each other because of the certainty of “mutually assured destruction.” I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable.

I fear I was wrong. Putin is now resorting to dangerous nuclear brinksmanship.

Civilization will never again be held hostage by crazy isolated men with the power to wreak havoc. I assumed this was a phenomenon of the twentieth century, and that twenty-first century governments, even totalitarian ones, would constrain tyrants.

Trump and Putin have convinced me I was mistaken. Thankfully, America booted Trump out of office — but his threat to democracy remains.

Advances in warfare, such as cyber-warfare and precision weapons, will minimize civilian casualties. I was persuaded by specialists in defense strategy that it no longer made sense for sophisticated powers to target civilians.

Utterly wrong. Civilian casualties in Ukraine are mounting.

Democracy is inevitable. I formed this belief in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union had imploded and China was still poor. It seemed to me that totalitarian regimes didn’t stand a chance in the new technologically driven, globalized world. Sure, petty dictatorships would remain in some retrograde regions. But modernity came with democracy, and democracy with modernity.

Both Trump and Putin have shown how wrong I was on this, too.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians are showing that Trump’s and Putin’s efforts to turn back the clock on the twenty-first century can only be addressed with a democracy powerful enough to counteract autocrats like them.

They are also displaying with inspiring clarity that democracy cannot be taken for granted. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It’s not what governments do. Democracy is what people do.

Ukrainians are reminding us that democracy survives only if people are willing to sacrifice for it. Some sacrifices are smaller than others. You may have to stand in line for hours to vote, as did tens of thousands of Black people in America’s 2020 election. You may have to march and protest and even risk your life so others may vote, as did iconic civil rights leaders like the late John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr.

You may have to knock on hundreds of doors to get out the vote. Or organize thousands to make your voices heard. And stand up against the powerful who don’t want your voices heard.

You may have to fight a war to protect democracy from those who would destroy it.

The people of Ukraine are also reminding us that democracy is the single most important legacy we have inherited from previous generations who strengthened it and who risked their lives to preserve it. It will be the most significant legacy we leave to future generations — unless we allow it to be suppressed by those who fear it, or we become too complacent to care.

Putin and Trump have convinced me I was wrong about how far we had come in the twenty-first century. Technology, globalization, and modern systems of governance haven’t altered the ways of tyranny. But I, like millions of others around the world, have been inspired by the Ukrainian people — who are reteaching us lessons we once knew.

As always, my many thanks to all for following my blogs and chosen articles. Pls. stay safe and well.

STOP USING YOUR GUT FEELINGS AND START USING YOUR BRAIN.

 

A quirky story I heard decades ago has always stuck with me and I think it explains why everything in the world is like it is.

Supposedly, a hypnotist put his subjects into a trance and told them that when they woke up, they should close the window but without remembering he’d told them to do so. Each subject closed the window shortly after coming out of their trance.

But when asked why they closed the window, none of them admitted they didn’t have a reason for their action. Everybody came up with a plausible explanation, like claiming the room was too drafty.

We do this all the time

We would like to think we are logical people who base our decisions on facts. But I don’t think that’s the case. Instead, we do things because we feel like doing them, and then we invent a reason to explain why we did it.

Sometimes we do this because we are lying. Maybe you tell your boyfriend you only looked at his phone because you wanted to check the time and then found all his cheating texts by accident.

But sometimes we manage to convince ourselves that our motivations are pure, even though they’re far from it. One example would be claiming you voted for Trump because you believed he’d improve the economy, when really you just couldn’t bring yourself to vote for a woman of color.

Part of an article by the talented 

Michelle Teheux

Copied from the exciting site "Medium Daily Digest". 

All my thanks to my good readers.  

THE SAD REALITIES OF DICTATORSHIPS AND OLIGARCHIES ......

 

*Apartment rented for 60 years*

Assad Library.. Assad Park.. Assad Dam.. Assad Hospital.. Assad Lake.. Assad Airport.. Assad City.. Assad Syria.. Assad Army.. Assad University.. Even the currency has a picture of Assad on it.. *May God have mercy on our poet Nizar Qabbani who used to hide and mean what he said*!!!
*This country is a furnished apartment*!!
This country is a furnished apartment, owned by a person called Antarah.
He stays drunk all night at her door, and collects rent from her residents.
He asks to marry its women, and shoots at the trees.
And the children... and the eyes... and the breasts... and the fragrant braids...
This whole country is a personal farm for Antarah.
Its sky, its air, its women, its green fields.
All the buildings here are where Antarah lives.
All the windows have a picture of Antarah.
All the squares here bear the name of Antarah.
Antarah lives in our clothes... in the loaf of bread...
In the cola bottle, and in our dying dreams..
A deserted deserted city..
There is not a mouse, an ant, a stream, or a tree left in it.
Nothing in it amazes tourists except the official approved image.
To General Antarah..
In the lettuce and watermelon carts..
On buses, at the train station, at airport customs...
On postage stamps, on football fields, in pizza restaurants...
And in all categories of counterfeit currency..
In the living room.. in the bathroom.. in the toilet..
On his happy birthday,
In his lofty, extravagant, walled palaces...
There is nothing new in the life of this colonial city.
Our sadness is repeated, our death is repeated, and the flavor of coffee on our lips is repeated.
Since we were born, we have been trapped in a round bottle of culture...
Since we entered school, we have only studied one autobiography.
Tell us about Antarah's muscles..
And the generosity of Antarah... and the miracles of Antarah...
In every cinema, we see nothing but a boring Arabic film in which Antarah plays...
Nothing - on the morning radio - we care about..
The first piece of news in it is about Antarah.
The last news in it is news about Antarah.
Nothing - in the second program - except:
Playing the qanun - from the works of Antarah.
And an oil painting of Antarah’s scribbles.
A bouquet of the worst poetry in the voice of Antarah.
This is a country where intellectuals give their voice.
To the master of intellectuals, Antarah..
They beautify his ugliness, chronicle his era, and spread his thought.
And they beat the drum in his victorious wars.
There is no star on TV except Antarah.
With his graceful body, or his expressive laugh..
One day dressed as a duke or a prince... one day dressed as a poor toiler...
One day on a helicopter... one day on a Russian tank...
One day on his track..
One day on our broken ribs..
No one dares to say "No" to General Antarah.
No one dares to ask the scholars in Medina about Antarah’s ruling.
The options here are limited, between going to prison or going to the graveyard.
Nothing in the city of 150 million coffins except...
Reciting the Quran, the big tent, and the awaited funerals..
Nothing, except a man selling - in a bag - tickets to enter the grave,
His name is Antarah.
Antara Al-Absi.. He does not leave us for a single minute..
Sometimes he eats our food... and sometimes he drinks our drink...
Sometimes he sneaks into our bed... and sometimes he visits us armed...
To collect the rent for our rented country 

A sarcastic short poem by the great Syrian poet "Nizar Qabbani" It's an older poem, so I'm not sure if he specifically meant the defunct Bashar Assad, his late father, or most Arab regimes, even in our actual times, many international super powers, including Russia and America,  But surely very appropriate for this time after the demise of the last Assad's regime, and the ascendence of many authoritarians like him all over.   Originally in Arabic, translated by Google and me, to be shared by my good readers.     My many thanks to all. 

TO SUM IT UP ......

 

How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it            

PEACE....

By Jeffrey D. Sachs* – Common Dreams

American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal.

In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

In our age, it is Israel and the U.S. that make a desert and call it peace.

The story is simple. In stark violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinian Arabs. When Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel labels the resistance “terrorism” and calls on the U.S. to overthrow the Middle East governments that back the “terrorists.” The U.S., under the sway of the Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel’s behalf.

The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011.

Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil, Russia’s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for decades by the U.S. and Israel.

Before the U.S.-Israel campaign to overthrow Assad began in earnest in 2011, Syria was a functioning, growing middle-income country. In January 2009, the IMF Executive Board had this to say:

Executive Directors welcomed Syria’s strong macroeconomic performance in recent years, as manifested in the rapid non-oil GDP growth, comfortable level of foreign reserves, and low and declining government debt. This performance reflected both robust regional demand and the authorities’ reform efforts to shift toward a more market- based economy.

Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.

In the immediate two days following the collapse of the government, Israel conducted about 480 strikes across Syria, and completely destroyed the Syrian fleet in Latakia. Pursuing his expansionist agenda, Prime Minister Netanyahu illegally claimed control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and declared that the Golan Heights will be a part of the State of Israel “for eternity.”

Netanyahu’s ambition to transform the region through war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our eyes. In a press conference on December 9th, the Israeli prime minister boasted of an “absolute victory,” justifying the on-going genocide in Gaza and escalating violence throughout the region:

I ask you, just think, if we had acceded to those who told us time and again: ‘”The war must be stopped”– we would not have entered Rafah, we would not have seized the Philadelphia Corridor, we would not have eliminated Sinwar, we would not have surprised our enemies in Lebanon and the entire world in a daring operation-stratagem, we would not have eliminated Nasrallah, we would not have destroyed Hezbollah’s underground network, and we would not have exposed Iran’s weakness. The operations that we have carried out since the beginning of the war are dismantling the axis brick by brick.

The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear. Israel’s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office. The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel (and the US) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce so-called “peace for peace” by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted Israel’s land claims.

The Clean Break strategy asserts, “Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years—is legitimate and noble,” and goes on to state, “Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…”

In his 1996 book Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu set out the new strategy. Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel’s fighting for it. As he elaborated in 2001:

The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.

Netanyahu’s strategy was integrated into U.S. foreign policy. Taking out Syria was always a key part of the plan. This was confirmed to General Wesley Clark after 9/11. He was told, during a visit at the Pentagon, that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Iraq would be first, then Syria, and the rest. (Netanyahu’s campaign for the Iraq War is spelled out in detail in Dennis Fritz’s new book, Deadly Betrayal. The role of the Israel Lobby is spelled out in Ilan Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic). The insurgency that hit U.S. troops in Iraq set back the five-year timeline, but did not change the basic strategy.

The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010’s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending.

Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the late 1970s onward. Yes, Osama bin Laden later turned on the U.S., but his movement was a U.S. creation all the same. Ironically, as Seymour Hersh confirms, it was Assad’s intelligence that “tipped off the U.S. to an impending Al Qaeda bombing attack on the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.”

Operation Timber Sycamore was a billion-dollar CIA covert program launched by Obama to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. The CIA funded, trained, and provided intelligence to radical and extreme Islamist groups. The CIA effort also involved a “rat line” to run weapons from Libya (attacked by NATO in 2011) to the jihadists in Syria. In 2014, Seymour Hersh described the operation in his piece “The Red Line and the Rat Line”:

“A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”

Soon after the launch of Timber Sycamore, in March 2013, at a joint conference by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, Obama said: “With respect to Syria, the United States continues to work with allies and friends and the Syrian opposition to hasten the end of Assad’s rule.”

To the U.S.-Israeli Zionist mentality, a call for negotiation by an adversary is taken as a sign of weakness of the adversary. Those who call for negotiations on the other side typically end up dead—murdered by Israel or U.S. assets. We’ve seen this play out recently in Lebanon. The Lebanese Foreign Minister confirmed that Hassan Nasrallah, Former Secretary-General of Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire with Israel days before his assassination. Hezbollah’s willingness to accept a peace agreement according to the Arab-Islamic world’s wishes of a two-state solution is long-standing. Similarly, instead of negotiating to end the war in Gaza, Israel assassinated Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

Similarly in Syria, instead of allowing for a political solution to emerge, the U.S. opposed the peace process multiple times. In 2012, the UN had negotiated a peace agreement in Syria that was blocked by the Americans, who demanded that Assad must go on the first day of the peace agreement. The U.S. wanted regime change, not peace. In September 2024, Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly with a map of the Middle East divided between “Blessing” and “Curse,” with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran as part of Netanyahu’s curse. The real curse is Israel’s path of mayhem and war, which has now engulfed Lebanon and Syria, with Netayahu’s fervent hope to draw the U.S. into war with Iran as well.

The U.S. and Israel are high-fiving that they have successfully wrecked yet another adversary of Israel and defender of the Palestinian cause, with Netanyahu claiming “credit for starting the historic process.” Most likely Syria will now succumb to continued war among the many armed protagonists, as has happened in the previous U.S.-Israeli regime-change operations.

In short, American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality.

All this is in the service of a profoundly unjust cause: to deny Palestinians their political rights in the service of Zionist extremism based on the 7th century BCE Book of Joshua. Remarkably, according to that text—one relied on by Israel’s own religious zealots—the Israelites were not even the original inhabitants of the land. Rather, according the text, God instructs Joshua and his warriors to commit multiple genocides to conquer the land.

Against this backdrop, the Arab-Islamic nations and indeed almost all of the world have repeatedly united in the call for a two-state solution and peace between Israel and Palestine.

Instead of the two-state solution, Israel and the U.S. have made a desert and called it peace.

*Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

A fantastic and very factual analysis by Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, Fantastic as it comes accurately from within the think tank of the U.S. by one of the leading political analysts of the Western world, again copied to the blog from a forward, sharing it to the benefit of my good readers.   All my thanks to all.  

Syria’s Stunning Fall to Rebels

 

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

December 10, 2024

Syria’s Stunning Fall to Rebels

The swift and stunning rebel conquest of Syria has been met with a mix of elation and uncertainty among citizens, Damascus-based Madjid Zerrouky and Nissim Gasteli report for Le Monde.

“At a checkpoint on the freeway to Damascus, only a group of children, playing soldiers, stood there, while, around them, the roadsides offered the ghostly sight of a routed force: The Syrian regular army,” Zerrouky and Gasteli write, noting the strange scenes. “Immobilized tanks lay, motionless, across the emergency lane. Several all-terrain military vehicles stood here and there, their doors splayed open, as if they had been looted. At the foot of one of them, the lifeless body of a man in green fatigues lay face down, a symbol of the last stand of the regime's loyal soldiers—before many of them deserted, precipitating the regime's downfall. They had abandoned their uniforms, which lay along the roadside, under the many Syrian flags that flew alongside those of the regime's sponsor, Russia.”

It was a lightning advance for rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al Qaeda offshoot that launched its first major attack on regime forces on Nov. 27 and wrested control of the county in less than two weeks, as CNN’s Antoinette Radford explains.

Despite the surprise of many global onlookers, Alexander Clarkson wrote recently for the World Politics Review that “the dynamics that led to the rise of HTS and the collapse of Assad’s position have been building for a long time in rural villages and urban neighborhoods across northern Syria, the product of bitter historical legacies” that have left the north especially resentful of Assad’s torturous regime. At Project Syndicate, Barak Barfi writes that Assad’s government had been rotting from within: “[A] regime with so many similarities to the Sopranos could never concede its coveted rents, even if doing so would have brought social harmony. Like the fictional mafia family, Assad’s regime relied on kickbacks from wealthy business owners and shaking down foreigners. … Today, Syria earns almost twice as much from illicit exports of the amphetamine captagon as it does from legal trade.” After the rebels seized Aleppo two weekends ago, Middle East expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma suggested to Al Jazeera that underpaid Syrian soldiers likely were miserable and didn’t want to fight.

Meanwhile, some observers fear Syria “could descend into a strict fundamentalist Islamic state similar to Taliban-led Afghanistan, although the country’s new leaders have made pronouncements that seek to dispel that fear,” writes NPR’s Scott Neuman, hearing from Chatham House’s Sanam Vakil.

Of the rebels and their leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (his nom de guerre), CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh, Gul Tuysuz, Brice Laine, Lauren Kent and Eyad Kourdi write: “Inside rebel-controlled territory in Syria, it’s clear he operates less like a wanted man and more like a politician. After forces loyal to him took control of Aleppo, he made a public appearance in the city’s historic citadel. Jolani says he has gone through episodes of transformation through the years. ‘A person in their twenties will have a different personality than someone in their thirties or forties, and certainly someone in their fifties. This is human nature.’” (Indeed, Jolani made those comments in an exclusive interview with CNN last week.)

Assad’s fall was welcomed, in particular, by two groups of people: longtime detainees in Assad’s network of prisons (and their family members) and the many refugees from Syria’s civil war. As Le Monde’s Zerrouky and Gasteli report, haggard prisoners emerged into the daylight, and refugees began to stream home past former checkpoints. An Al-Monitor headline notes jubilation among Syrian refugees in neighboring Lebanon.

Assad’s State of Terror

Assad’s regime is known for its many atrocities, including the use of chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and starvation against its opponents. CNN’s Clarissa Ward reports that as soon as the regime fell, desperate family members flocked to Syria’s notorious Saydnaya Military Prison—referred to as a “human slaughterhouse”—to search for disappeared loved ones, rifling through prison paperwork in attempts to locate them.

While many Syrians rejoiced at the regime’s fall, The Economist writes, “Thousands of others took no time for celebration. They headed straight for the prisons, thrown open by the rebels, in a desperate search for friends and family. Some had disappeared into Mr Assad’s labyrinth of secret jails and torture chambers more than a decade ago. Outside Damascus the traffic was stalled for miles on the road to [Saydnaya], a town in the mountains north of the capital, which was the most notorious site of the regime’s abuses. Rebels with rifles were acting as impromptu traffic wardens.”

“Saydnaya … held an especially dark place in the Syrian imagination: a facility of industrialized cruelty, it has long been synonymous with torture, death and despair,” Raya Jalabi, Sam Joiner, Alison Killing, Peter Andringa and Chris Campbell write for the Financial Times. “In a 2017 report, Amnesty International found that many of the tens of thousands of people who have been detained there over the decades were locked up for offences as simple as congregating in small groups during the 2011 uprisings that descended into war. They were subjected to routine beatings by prison guards that included brutal sexual assault, electric shocks, bone crushing and more. Rights groups say that dozens of people were secretly executed every week in Saydnaya, with Amnesty estimating that up to 13,000 Syrians were killed there between 2011 and 2016. An estimated 20,000 people were detained in the prison, it said.”

Lessons From the US Disaster in Iraq

As HTS and its leader Jolani begin “to coordinate a transfer of power that guarantees the provision of services,” as a statement put it, Fareed pointed out last night on CNN’s The Situation with Wolf Blitzer that the rebels appear to be avoiding a significant mistake the US made after its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Under a process known as “de-Baathification,” the US dismantled Saddam Hussein’s conquered government and military, rather than incorporating its members into a new state. That left Iraq with large contingent of jobless, dispossessed young men—many with military or weapons training—and sowed the seeds of a brutal sectarian civil war that raged alongside an anti-US insurgency. So far, Fareed noted, HTS appears to be doing the opposite, accepting the surrenders of former Assad-regime officials. (The Syrian embassy in Moscow, for instance, is open—under the Syrian resistance flag.)

Israel Seizes the Moment

Israel—which has warred with Syria in the past, including over the disputed Golan Heights along the two countries’ border—has seized the opportunity to strike Syrian military targets. The IDF claims to have destroyed Syria’s navy overnight. The Jerusalem Post and Reuters report: “Some 70%-80% of the capabilities of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's military have been destroyed. Most of the strikes were in southern Syria and around the city of Damascus, targeting Syrian army bases, with an emphasis on air defense systems and stores of surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles.”

Of particular interest to Israel will be chemical and other weapons that it does not want smuggled to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, The Economist notes. But incursions into the Golan Heights, the magazine argues, were “neither justified nor necessary.”

Middle East Geopolitics, Reshuffled

What does Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s fall mean for major players in the Middle East—both those within the region and the large foreign powers with interested stakes?

For one thing, the rebel advance is a distinct blow to Russia. As Natasha Hall of the Center for Strategic & International Studies told Fareed on Sunday’s GPS, Russia was seen abandoning a key ally. Russia joined Syria’s civil war in 2015, contributing to Assad’s brutal recapture of Aleppo and obtaining for itself, in the process, control of an airbase and a warm-water port—far south of the icy Baltic Sea and the Turkey-obstructed Black Sea—seen as important to Russia’s ambitions as a global military power. Russia’s Cold War-style attempt to gain influence in the Middle East has now collapsed, Maxim Trudolyubov and Dan White write for the Wilson Center’s Russia File blog.

The only bigger loser than Russia is Iran. At the Middle East Institute, Fatemeh Aman notes that Syria has been a lynchpin in Tehran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”—a network of allied militias and proxies across the region, including Assad’s Syrian government. Along with Russia, Iran-backed Hezbollah had helped to keep Assad in power as war raged in the 2010s. “The sudden downfall of Assad’s government not only disrupts Iran’s strategic foothold in the Levant but also challenges its influence in the broader Middle East region,” Aman writes.

Turkey may be the big winner, Laura Pitel and Ayla Jean Yackley write for the Financial Times. “It remains unclear to what extent Ankara backed the lightning offensive of the past two weeks that on Sunday toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad,” they write. HTS “has a complicated relationship with Turkey. But many analysts are convinced that [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan, who once called the Syrian president a ‘butcher’, stands to gain politically and economically from his newfound position as the most influential foreign actor in the country following the fall of Assad, who was backed by Russia and Iran.” Turkey’s construction sector will cheer its potential access to the business of rebuilding Syria, Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute tweets. (Tol has noted elsewhere that Turkey’s construction sector is a supportive political base Erdoğan likes to reward.) Tol has written before for Foreign Affairs that Erdoğan’s agenda in Syria has included “getting rid of the millions of Syrian refugees who have made their way to Turkey over the years”; countering Kurdish nationalism, as US-backed Kurdish forces control much of northeastern Syria but are viewed by Ankara as a domestic problem in Turkey; and consolidating power at home and influence in the region.

As for the US, the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister tweets that the case has never been stronger for keeping a small contingent of US forces in Syria—which President-elect Donald Trump, during his first presidency, sought to withdraw.

And as for the region as a whole, Rajan Menon writes cautiously for The New Statesman: “Post-Assad Syria raises many questions. Considering what has happened since 27 November,” when the rebels began their advance, “it is prudent to avoid predictions.” Ruslan Suleymanov writes more certainly for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russian-politics blog Politika: “Syria will become part of the multidimensional conflict between Russia and NATO. Erdoğan has demonstrated repeatedly that he’s happy to use his influence over issues that are painful for Russia to improve relations with the West … Syria looks set to become a significant addition to this list, strengthening [Turkey]’s hand in its relations with both Russia and the West.”

Copied from a forwarded article, by the good political analyzer Fareed Zakaria, he surely captured from different sources the essence of what is happening nowadays in Syria, the real test is the future, near and long, to see how matters could develop and who are the real orchestrators and beneficiaries of this situation, whether Syria will remain unified or fragmented along the rest of the area is surely to be looked at carefully.     As always my many thanks to all. 

POSSIBILITIES FOR THE MIDDLE-EAST NEAR FUTURE......

 
Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Iran: Trump's new Middle East advisor reveals his vision to "Le Point"

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW. "Le Point" managed to get in touch with Masaad Boulos. For the first time, he gives a French media his analysis of the main crises shaking the region.

Interview by Armin Arefi

Published on 03/12/2024 at 18:33

It's the president's surprise. Donald Trump announced Sunday that he had appointed Lebanese-American businessman Masaad Boulos as his Middle East adviser. Aged 53, this longtime Republican, who built his fortune selling cars in Nigeria, is none other than the father of one of the American president's sons-in-law. He was propelled into the American billionaire's inner circle after the marriage, in 2022, of his son Michael Boulos to Tiffany Trump, one of the president-elect's daughters.

In an exclusive interview with Le Point, Masaad Boulos analyses the various crises shaking the region and explains the approach that the new American administration will take.

• Le Point: How does it feel to be President Trump's new Middle East advisor?

• Masaad Boulos: It is a great honor to have been appointed by President Trump to be part of his team, and at the same time it is a great responsibility to have to work on a region that has been suffering for some time. The vision is to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East. We have four years to work and we hope to achieve something that will be sustainable for the future and generations to come.

• What do you think is the most urgent issue in the Middle East?

• The first issue on which there has been a very important development is the agreement concluded a week ago between Lebanon and Israel, which was facilitated by the United States and France. It is a historic agreement for both countries, the importance of which will be measured in the weeks and months to come. It is very comprehensive and covers all the necessary points. There was a misunderstanding at the beginning, especially in Lebanon, where it was believed that this document only covered the region located south of the Litani River, but this is not true at all. It deals with the entire country, with the disarmament of all armed groups, both militias and paramilitary groups.

The text is very specific about the application of UN resolutions, whether 1701 or 1559. Thus, only a certain number of institutions have the right to hold weapons in Lebanon, including the Lebanese army, internal security, customs services and the municipal police.

• If you do not name it, you are denying Hezbollah the right to hold weapons. How can you prohibit it from doing so on the ground?

• This is a very good question, which is not an easy one. Let me tell you first that according to some estimates, nearly 70% of strategic weapons and missile and drone depots have been destroyed during this war. As for what remains, it is normally the Lebanese state and therefore the Lebanese army that has the role of disarming the militias and paramilitary groups. Now, we know very well that this process cannot be achieved overnight, and that it will take months, if not longer.

The ceasefire agreement adopted by the Council of Ministers in any case gives the Lebanese army full latitude to begin implementing it. Under the text, the Lebanese army is also responsible for controlling the flow of weapons from the Syrian border, Beirut airport or the port of the capital, which are now under its control.

• But does this agreement still hold, with the Lebanese authorities denouncing numerous violations of the ceasefire by the Israeli army?

• Yes, that's true, but we see the same thing on the other side. It's not a surprise. We are currently in a 60-day test period, and the text of the agreement itself talks about the right of each party to defend itself.

• What role exactly does the United States play in monitoring this ceasefire agreement?

• What is very important in this agreement is the monitoring committee responsible for its implementation. Within it, the United States and France must verify that all its details are actually implemented on the ground. Because if Resolution 1701 was not implemented at all when it was adopted in 2006, it is precisely because there was no mechanism at the time to ensure its implementation. An error corrected by this agreement.

• Do you think that Lebanese MPs should hurry up to appoint a President of the Republic as early as January 9?

• We think they have time. On January 9 (the date on which Parliament is scheduled to meet), it will be two years and two months since there was a president in Lebanon. In my opinion, the Lebanese can wait another two or three months to do things properly, within the framework of a comprehensive and comprehensive agreement. There is no need to hurry up and elect just anyone, anyhow. On the contrary, we must try to ensure the participation of the absolute majority of the representatives of the Lebanese people and not obtain the election of a president with only 65 votes.

• What do you mean by a global agreement?

• An agreement that includes all the reforms needed to rebuild Lebanon, its institutions – judicial and security –, respect for democracy and the Lebanese Constitution, as well as the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. All these aspects are very important. It will also be necessary to have a certain vision of the Council of Ministers and to know who will chair it, which parties will be represented, what their restructuring program will be, including on the economic and fiscal level. Finally, it is necessary to ensure that the opposition, which today makes up almost half of Parliament, is well represented.

• In Syria, how do you analyze the recent breakthrough of Islamist rebels in Aleppo?

• It is very complicated to give one's opinion. Frankly, things are happening so quickly in Syria, and can change from one hour to the next. There will of course be roles to play, on the part of Turkey, Russia and, of course, the United States and other countries in the region, including Iran, but I prefer not to go into details at the moment because developments are too fast.

• Will the next American administration wish to facilitate a transition of power in Damascus or, on the contrary, rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad?

• I can't tell you.

• President Trump spoke on Monday about Gaza, giving Hamas an ultimatum to release Israeli hostages. How does he plan to differentiate himself from Joe Biden on this issue?

• The President is very clear that there is no reason today to delay the release of the hostages. The war is practically over. There is practically no more significant military activity. The only issue that remains is the hostages, and the parties have already agreed on several occasions on an exchange between hostages and Palestinian prisoners. There may still be disagreements over some Palestinian personalities, but apart from that, both sides have agreed on the broad outlines of an agreement.

The president therefore believes that the hostages must be released immediately and that there must be no further delay. According to him, their fate should not be linked to other issues related to the day after in Gaza. Several countries are currently helping to achieve this goal, whether it is Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, or even Turkey. Because it is well known that some representatives of Hamas are currently in this country.

• Does this mean that you think Turkey should replace Qatar in the role of mediator between Israel, the United States and Hamas?

• No, I mentioned Turkey because it is now home to Hamas officials and has influence over them. I am not talking about this country to provide some kind of leadership on this issue. Of course Qatar plays a very, very important role. It has been very clear that it is prepared to continue to play this role, as has Egypt.

• There are many questions about the future of Gaza, as some Israeli ministers openly talk about recolonizing the Palestinian enclave. What is your opinion?

• As you know, we are currently in the transition period and we do not have the right to really interfere in the foreign policy of the United States, while the Biden administration is still in power and managing American diplomacy. We only give our opinion and cannot demand anything.

That being said, there are several plans today and we cannot say that a final decision has been made, although it could happen in the future. What President Trump expressed yesterday in his tweet is that we should not link all issues related to the future of Gaza to the hostage issue. The first thing is to release the hostages immediately and carry out this exchange. Afterwards, we can deal with all the other points.

• Do you believe that the issue of hostages should not be linked to that of a ceasefire in Gaza?

• No, it is certain that this is the framework within which the hostages will be released, namely a temporary ceasefire. The main lines of the agreement have already been established and there are only very small details to be settled on a few names, the number of people released [on the Palestinian side] and the period over which the exchanges should take place. A road map has already been established for implementation over one or two months within the framework of a ceasefire. But as you know, the guns have practically fallen silent in Gaza, even if there are small clashes that break out from time to time. There is no longer any significant military activity.

• Is northern Gaza not still completely besieged by the Israeli army?

• Yes, yes, of course. That is why this agreement, which we have all seen or heard about, is part of a temporary ceasefire.

• In the West Bank, could the new Trump administration support the pure and simple annexation by Israel of this Palestinian territory as demanded by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich?

• Every person has the right to express themselves with their personal ideas. But at this point, President Trump has not yet publicly addressed these issues, and his administration has not yet put in place a policy related to all of these details. What I can tell you is that starting January 20, there will be a very clear and very specific policy on this subject, which we will all have to respect.

• Will President Trump be able to move forward on reviving the Abraham Accords by securing the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel without obtaining a Palestinian state in return?

• I think the issue of a road map that would lead to a Palestinian state is an important part of the discussions between the United States and Saudi Arabia. It is certainly a very important point, but it is important to remember that Saudi Arabia is not demanding the creation of a Palestinian state today, but it is asking for a vision and a road map for it, that's all. If you look at the plan that was proposed in 2020 by President Trump ("the deal of the century", editor's note), it spoke very clearly about an eventual Palestinian state.

• Was this Palestinian state not reduced to a mere shadow of its former self?

• It must be remembered that the details were rejected by both sides, by the Israelis and the Palestinians. But I am speaking here only of the principle of a Palestinian state that President Trump's proposal then evoked. Today, the president's priority is to resume discussions on the Abraham Accords, with, of course, Saudi Arabia first. Because we know very well, and the president has said so, that once we reach an agreement with Saudi Arabia on Israel, there will be at least twelve Arab countries that will be immediately ready to follow suit.

If you look at the plan that was proposed in 2020 by President Trump, it spoke very clearly about an eventual Palestinian state.

• Is Iran the main challenge of Donald Trump's second term?

• President Trump is very clear that he absolutely does not want Iran to have a nuclear program. Of course, he is going to put his “maximum pressure” on Iran again, and you have seen that already. Right after he was elected, Iran started changing its policy in the region. We saw it with the deal in Lebanon, and we see it now in Syria.

The Iranians have already begun to change their regional policies, and President Trump has said several times that he is ready to begin negotiations for a new nuclear deal.

• What is Donald Trump's position on regime change in Tehran?

• He did not talk about regime change, but only about a nuclear deal, and the fact that he was ready to engage in serious negotiations with the current regime. But there are three very important points for him: Iran must absolutely not have nuclear power; Iran's ballistic missiles pose a risk not only to Israel, but also to the Gulf countries; and finally the problem posed by Iranian proxies (groups acting as proxies for Iran, editor's note) in the region, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq or Yemen. Apart from these three axes, President Trump did not talk about regime change.

This article or interview was forwarded to me in French, supposedly given by Mr Masaad Boulos to the French "Le Point" with Google's help I've translated it to facilitate reading the thoughts and strategy of the new Trump administration, at least in regard to the  M-E. As Mr. Masaad is now officially one of its members. 

As always, my many thanks to all my good readers.  

EXECUTING THE END GOAL OF THE PLAN.....

 

 

STRUGLE OR ANNIHILATION.....

 

The announcement by the fascist Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, and his Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, of their intention in the occupying state to "impose Israeli sovereignty" over the entire West Bank, i.e. annex and Judaize it, if Donald Trump takes office as President of the United States, did not surprise us. The entire Israeli path since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 has been moving in this direction. The "Deal of the Century" plan that Trump proposed in his first term included the annexation of Israeli settlement colonies, including large areas of the so-called Area C. Netanyahu's military preparations to maintain the occupation of the Gaza Strip did not surprise us either. Since the beginning of the Israeli war of extermination in October of last year, we warned that Netanyahu intended to prolong the war until Trump was re-elected, and that he would push forward plans to liquidate the Palestinian cause and rights through extermination, settlement, normalization, annexation and Judaization.

In any case, the overall behavior of the Zionist movement since the occupation of the West Bank, including Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, has been moving in one direction: preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and gradual annexation and Judaization, starting with Jerusalem and then extending to the rest of the West Bank. The Oslo Accords and Western talk about the two-state solution, without exerting any pressure on Israel to implement it, were nothing more than a delay in time to give Israel enough time to implement its settlement expansion and to undermine any possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state. Israel did not hesitate to pass laws, one after the other, with the consensus of its parties, in government and opposition, towards annexation and Judaization, including military orders and rulings, the Nationality Law, and finally the law preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israel, as some claim, did not need October 7 (2023) to do all of this, as it has done so for 57 years, and even 76 years since it committed the first Nakba against the Palestinian people. Now, with the arrival of the Trump administration, with its extremist Zionist evangelical elements, the extremism of the statements of some of its pillars, such as the nominated US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, and the proposed Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, exceeds the statements of Netanyahu and Smotrich, who believe that the circumstances are ripe for implementing the Zionist movement’s dream of Judaizing all of Palestine.

Huckabee's statements that there are no Palestinians, that they are an entity invented to "steal the land of Israel", that there is no West Bank, but rather Judea and Samaria, and that the illegal settlements are Israeli cities and towns, mean one thing: there is no international law, no international humanitarian law, and no value to the resolutions of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Therefore, the world lives according to the law of the jungle, and whoever has power can do whatever he wants.
After all of this, and after the countdown to annexing the West Bank, and the escalation of the ethnic cleansing process in the Gaza Strip, what is the value of continuing to talk about “international legitimacy,” the “two-state solution,” and the “peace process”? What is the value of the Western hypocrisy about a peaceful solution and negotiations, when it gave Israel money, weapons, and political protection to brutally attack the Palestinian people, and even gave it time and political and diplomatic deception to weaken the Palestinian people’s resistance to the plan of liquidation and annihilation to which it is being subjected.

The arrogant Israeli ruling system believes it is omnipotent, despite its failure to achieve its goals.

The most important question: How will the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and all those who claim to be concerned with international law, human rights and democracy respond to the Israeli annexation declaration? ... The Palestinian people have only one choice: to resist the criminal plan and refuse to surrender to it, by uniting their ranks in a unified national leadership on a combative and militant program that mobilizes the energies of all components of the Palestinian people wherever they are. The issue has become to be or not to be, to resist liquidation or annihilation. The official establishment no longer has any pretext to continue clinging to the illusion of a compromise solution, a two-state solution, and "American mediation." If it does not overcome these illusions, the Palestinian people will overcome them.

On the Arab and Islamic levels, there is no longer any justification for failing to sever all relations with the rogue Israeli entity, expel its ambassadors if they exist, cancel all normalization agreements with it, join a global call to impose sanctions and boycott on Israel, and treat it as the apartheid and racial discrimination regime in South Africa was treated. No country can ignore the facts or escape the inevitable choice, either to stand with fascism that commits the most heinous war crimes, or to confront it and support the Palestinian people’s right to freedom, to remain in their homeland, and to self-determination. There is no middle ground between these two options.

The arrogant Israeli ruling system believes that it is omnipotent, despite its failure to achieve its goals in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and the West Bank, a failure that it tries to compensate for by killing civilians, children and defenseless women, and by brutally destroying the necessities of life. It is unable, and will not be able, to learn from the lessons of history. Its adoption of the zero-sum option, i.e., all or nothing, expresses arrogance and shortsightedness at the same time. Before Netanyahu and the current Israeli rulers, many tyrants appeared and committed countless crimes, and ended up in the dustbin of history after inflicting enormous tragedies on their own peoples.

From After Israel announces the annexation plan... struggle or annihilation
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/

 Sent by a good friend, a powerful article by Mr. Barghouti, depicting clearly the reigning mood among many if not most Palestinians, more so after the war of annihilation conducted against them by Israel.
As always, my many thanks to all my good readers.