Syria

Protest WHO board seat for Syrian regime

Doctors and healthcare workers held a demonstration outside a hospital in the Syrian city of Idlib, to protest the election of the Bashar Assad regime to the executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO)—the latest coup for normalization of the regime. “How can we trust WHO [when] one of its executive board members is the murderer who is killing my colleagues?” said Dr. Salem Abdan, head of health services for opposition-administered Idlib. Read a banner at the protest: “We reject that he who destroyed our hospitals be represented on the executive board.” Idlib province is part of a remaining rebel-held pocket in the northeast of the country, where Assad regime warplanes have for years been bombing hospitals and clinics. (Photo of bombed hospital in northern Syria via Daily Sabah)

Watching the Shadows

Roger Waters: just another brick in the wall

In Episode 74 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rises to the odious duty of deflating an idol of his youth—former Pink Floyd frontman and creative genius Roger Waters. While he grandstands against the bombardment of Gaza, Waters spreads propaganda that seeks to deny and whitewash the equal and even greater crimes of Syria’s genocidal dictator Bashar Assad. Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall satirized rock stars who flirted with fascism, but Waters has now perversely turned into just what he was satirizing back then. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image via Wikipedia)

Syria

Syria: Kurdish forces fire on protesters —again

Kurdish forces shot dead at least eight protesters at the town of Manbij in northern Syria. Demonstrations broke out against military conscription by the Kurdish-led autonomous administration, amid growing discontent over economic conditions. A curfew was imposed on the town, as many shops heeded a call for a general strike. Representatives of the Kurdish administration and its Asayish police force held talks with Arab tribal leaders after the violence. A joint statement said military conscription will be halted pending review and dialogue. All detained protesters are also to be released under the agreement. (Photo: Sgt. Nicole Paese/US Army via Kurdistan24)

Syria

Syria: controlled elections amid crisis —again

Thoroughly controlled elections were held in Syria, with predictable results. Regime officials declared Bashar Assad the winner with 95.1% of the vote. Assad ran against two nominal challengers, with another 49 candidates disqualified. State media promoted Assad relentlessly; his posters were displayed on walls and billboards throughout regime-controlled territory. Several million Syrians within the country could not vote as they are outside regime-held areas. In opposition-held Idlib province, hundreds held protests against the “fake” elections, carrying the Free Syria flag. In another sign of resurgent opposition even within regime-controlled territory, a group of leading tribal and social figures in Daraa governorate (where the revolution first broke out a decade ago) released a statement declaring their rejection of the elections as “illegitimate.” (Photo of Aleppo ruins from UNHCR)

Syria

Syrian Kurdish militia fire on Arab protesters

Five are reported dead after Kurdish militiamen opened fire on local Arab residents protesting against a hike in fuel prices imposed by the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in northern Syria. Protests were reported in several towns in al-Hasakah province, including Qamishli, al-Haddaja, al-Rashidiya and al-Haddadiya. The Autonomous Administration overturned the planned price hikes in response to the protests. However, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the military alliance supported by the Autonomous Administration, issued a statement warning that “protesting activities should not be turned into means to strike at peace and security,” and implying that the demonstrations had been stirred up by “outside propaganda.” (Photo of Qamlishi protest: Ekrem Salih/Kurdistan24)

Syria

Syria stripped of voting rights by OPCW

Syria was stripped of its voting rights at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), after recent findings evidenced the regime’s use of poisonous gas throughout the nation’s civil war. A two-thirds majority of nations voted to strip the Bashar Assad regime of its rights and privileges as a member of the organization, including the right to vote at OPCW conferences. The OPCW, monitoring body for the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, has 193 members, 87 of whom voted in favor of suspension of Syria’s rights. Out of the 136 countries participating in the Conference of State Parties where the vote was taken, 34 states abstained and 15 voted against, including Russia, Iran and Syria. (Photo: SNHR)

Syria

Syria: Kurdish forces take Qamishli from regime

The local Kurdish Asayish militia announced that it has taken control of the last contested district of the northeast Syrian town of Qamishli from pro-regime forces. An Asayish statement said that after several days of fighting, al-Tay neighborhood is to be in their hands under terms of a truce with the pro-regime National Defense Forces (NDF), enforced by Russian troops and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Qamishlo District Council, an organ of the Rojava autonomous administration, issued its own statement, charging that NDF attacks on Asayish checkpoints were “evidence of their desire to inflame the discord among the components of the region…in particular the Kurdish and Arab.” (Photo of Qamishlo District Council reading statement: ANHA)

Syria

Podcast: humanitarian intervention reconsidered

In Episode 69 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reviews The Responsibility to Protect in Libya and Syria: Mass Atrocities, Human Protection, and International Law by Syrian American legal scholar Yasmine Nahlawi. While Noam Chomsky’s critique of “humanitarian intervention” has merit, those who parrot it act as if it simply ends the conversation—and, worse, engage in post-truth revisionism to deny mass atrocities entirely. The Nation magazine has repeatedly run lying propaganda that merely turns the realities of the Syrian war on their head, portraying the victims as aggressors. And contrary to the unseemly gloating about the chaos in Libya since the fall of Qaddafi, there is a good case that the situation there would be worse, not better, if there had not been a “regime change” war. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Destruction of Aleppo, via 7ee6an)

Syria

Russian rights groups protest Syria war crimes

The first-ever extensive report on the Syria war by Russian human rights groups has been released, highlighting the role of Moscow’s military intervention in the conflict and its impact on civilians. The report, “A Devastating Decade: Violations of Human Rights & Humanitarian Law in the Syrian War,” is the result of two years of research by Russian rights groups, including Memorial Human Rights Center, the Civic Assistance Committee, Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg, and the Youth Human Rights Movement. The report provides chilling first-hand testimonials of life inside besieged areas, aerial bombardment, chemical weapons attacks, as well as the widespread use of torture and deprivation in regime prisons. The report is critical of all parties in the conflict—including the US-led coalition—but especially focuses on the impacts of the Russian intervention. (Photo of Aleppo ruins from UNHCR)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast interview: Alexander Reid Ross

In Episode 66 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Alexander Reid Ross, author of Against the Fascist Creep and a fellow at the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), who has faced threats of litigation as well as relentless online harassment for his exposés of Russian propaganda and Red-Brown Politics. After his recent piece in the Daily Beast on leftist flirtation with the far right around conspiracy theories concerning COVID-19 and the war in Syria, the odious Max Blumenthal quickly retaliated with a piece on his Grayzone website charging in its headline that Reid Ross “works with ex-cops, CIA spies, and DHS agents.” This refers to the fact that former CIA, Homeland Security and NYPD officials are now also researchers with the NCRI. The accusation is hilariously ironic given that Blumenthal himself has shared platforms with former CIA analyst (and now a star of the conspiracy set) Ray McGovern. As well as (of course) avidly cooperating with Russian and Chinese state propaganda efforts. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Syria

Syria: outrage after Assad regime attack on hospital

Aid groups working in besieged northern Syria are expressing outrage after a hospital in the town of al-Atareb was destroyed by artillery fire. Six people were killed in the strikes, including a child, and at least 16 injured. The hospital was within the rebel-held pocket of Aleppo province, which has come under renewed bombardment by the Assad regime and Russia in recent weeks after a year-long lull in the fighting. The hospital was jointly supported by the International Rescue Committee and the Syrian-American Medical Society (SAMS). All the casualties were civilians. The IRC said in a statement: “Although SAMS shared the hospital’s coordinates through the UN’s notification system, it came under attack and has now been damaged so severely that it can no longer be used.” (Photo via Daily Sabah)

Syria

Syria: Lessons from Kronstadt 1921

In Episode 65 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers his presentation on the panel “Kronstadt 1921 and the Social Crises of 2021,” part of the online conference Kronstadt as Revolutionary Utopia, 1921-2021 and Beyond, marking the centenary of the Kronstadt uprising in revolutionary Russia. In March 1919, Russian naval troops mutinied and took over their island garrison as an autonomous zone, in solidarity with striking workers in Petrograd, and to demand greater freedom and power for democratic soviets (worker councils) against the consolidating one-party state of the Bolsheviks. When the uprising was brutally put down, this marked the first time that international leftist forces found themselves on the side of repression rather than rebellion. A century later, all too many on the international “left” similarly find themselves on the side of repression rather than rebellion in Syria. And the dictatorship of Bashar Assad, unlike the Russia of 1921, is by no stretch of the imagination a revolutionary state. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo mash-up with images from Rojava Breaking News and RFE/RL)