Skip to main content
"Almost half of European Union (EU) member states have flouted an EU-wide suspension on arms transfers to Egypt, risking complicity in a wave of unlawful killings, enforced disappearances and torture..."
Risking complicity? Oh, that impartial Amnesty!
EU Member States Complicit in Killing and Torture

Here is the bigger picture:
"Thanks to ... three kingdoms – Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran – the policies of the powerful international powers have prioritised stability: thus effectively sponsoring the states’ transformation into security agencies, and permitting them to eradicate their subjects if they get out of hand, and not interfering with the internal matters of the dynasties and juntas which rule over their citizens’ lives. This prioritisation of stability has benefited despotic regimes, including the Assad regime, and has never been in the interest of the populace and their demands and political activities.
Isn’t this, rather, the most important source of the antiquated, which controls all other sources?
Overall, the fast-moving current of antiquation that is engulfing us all appears to be a result of three springs merging into one: the spring of religion, which offers legitimacy to existing and soon-to-exist despotic authorities; the spring of despotic states that receive assistance and legitimacy from a world system centered around stability; and the spring of this world-system itself, which acts as a pillar for different forms of discrimination, privilege and prejudice. The antiquated is a mixture of discrimination and prejudice protected by force, which in turn protects privilege. It is the face of rising reactionarism in today’s world.
I am referring to the interlacing of three factors. The US and the West more generally, including Israel, dominate the world system; it is Syria’s bad fortune that Russia too is a partner in this domination. I am inclined to consider the world system as the dynamic source of antiquation in our lives; the source of reactionary tendencies, including religious brutality and states’ despotism. That is because the strongest archaic is the archaic of the strongest. The democratic West is the patron of Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is largely thanks to the democratic West that al-Qaeda was established (which emerged from jihadi movement in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in 1980s), and the West is the structural supporter of state despotism, even when it may make the political choice to not support some such states."

— Yassin Al-Haj Saleh,  (born in A-Raqqah in1961) is a Syrian writer, intellectual and former political prisoner. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...
Post a Comment
Read more
"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond.  Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package.  It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...
Post a Comment
Read more

UK

"We are all in it together" A letter from a doctor to Boris Johnson published a few months ago: ' Johnson has contributed to thousands of deaths ' Related 'The greatest global science failure for a generation' 'Herd immunity' or lockdown
Read more

Finance

"The hegemony of finance—the most fetishized form of wealth—is only maintained by the public authorities’ unconditional support. Left to itself, fictitious capital would collapse; and yet would pull down the whole of our economies in its wake. In truth, finance is a master blackmailer. Financial hegemony dresses up in the liberal trappings of the market, yet captures the old sovereignty of the state all the better to squeeze the body of society to feed its own profits. " (my emphasis) —Cédric Durand, Ficticious Capital , 2017, p. 155 
Read more

Against Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism in Venezuela

“The current confrontation in Venezuela today is not between left and right.” “We are witnessing the transition from a government with authoritarian tendencies to a dictatorial regime.” “This is not a government ‘backed’ by the military, but, as Maduro himself has said, the government is led by a ‘civilian-military-police alliance’. “Those who continue to support Maduro, including parties and movements of the Sao Paulo Forum or the spokespersons of Podemos in Spain, are causing severe damage to the left in the region and the world. They are damaging anti-capitalist struggles in the broadest sense.” The US embargo is ‘in violation of international law’. This is a useless statement repeated a million times, and it has come back again during the ongoing Israel’s genocidal war. “[A]fter the failure of the current, self-defined “socialist” governments, Venezuelan society tends to associate any reference to socialism or the left with the corruption and authoritarianism of the Maduro governme...
Post a Comment
Read more