Thread: Syria

Originally Posted by Hanna

You have completely misjudged my view of the USA. Your prejudice of somebody who dares to critisize your country, other than expressing a very polite "scepticism" is what's naive.

If your family members had been killed by drone planes in the name of "anti-terrorism", if you had a military base of a foreign country in your backyard, lost your legs in napalm bombing, inhaled Agent Orange while being carpet bombed by a country from the other side of the planet.... or your country had been set up and manipulated for years by a foreign power... etc ad infinitum --- then you'd probably feel a bit more than "healthy scepticism". You know perfectly well that your country are doing these kinds of things. Mine doesn't.

I currently have and have had, throughout my life, American expat friends and acquantances. I admire many things about the USA as I repeatedly mention. I normally see no reason to discuss this with them, any more than I'd discuss the excesses of Stalinism with a Russian aquantance. But obviously, if I am asked my opinion about it, I would not hesitate to express it.

However this is a forum where we talk about international politics so obviously this is the kind of topic that comes up, not what American artists, what American technology I admire or my respect for American history.

As an English speaking person with access to only, or mainly English speaking media, you are probably not aware that a good half of the world's population, including, no doubt, many people in Russia share my views - which are by no means extreme.

This is getting tiresome and a bit of a waste of time though. If you want to write me, and the billions who share my view off as nut jobs because they do not appreciate the foreign policies of your country, by all means do. But when it all comes tumbling down, or some *real* nutjob gives the USA gets a taste of its own medicine, don't say nobody warned you.

I honestly have no idea how this has any relevance to Syria. I wasn't aware that this thread was about U.S foreign policy (which believe it or not, a lot of people in the U.S. don't agree with either).

Originally Posted by Hanna

You have completely misjudged my view of the USA. Your prejudice of somebody who dares to critisize your country, other than expressing a very polite "scepticism" is what's naive.

See this is the point, Hanna. I've argued only with what you have written in this here thread, while you have argued not with anything I've actually said, but with a caricature of me that you've constructed in your little head based on absolutely nothing but my nationality, and all the assumptions that you think automatically flow from that. I have said nothing, on this thread or any other, to give the impression that I object to anyone criticising "my" country, or to in any way otherwise inform you of my political views, and yet you have repeatedly suggested, first implicitly and now explicitly, that my responses are somehow based on nationalist, patriotic, or general pro-western sympathies.

As it happens I don't have a nationalistic or patriotic bone in my entire body, and I'd be very surprised if my antipathy to the US and British states is in any way less than yours. For the record, I think the US is an utterly corrupt, socially abhorrent, militarily belligerent kleptocracy whose foreign policy is as damaging and divisive as it is hypocritical, while the British state is its moribund, rather pathetic little side-kick that rides the coat-tails of the US in order to stave off irrelevance and allow its odious ruling classes to go on deluding themselves that they have even a smidgeon of the influence wielded so brutally across the globe by their great-grand-pappas and great-grand-mammas. The labels "British" and "Scottish" are as meaningless to me as "Northern Hemispherical". When the referendum on Scottish independence comes I will be voting "yes" not out of love for bagpipes, whisky and haggis, but specifically because Scottish independence will diminish the British state, essentially put a full-stop on the Empire, and hopefully fatally undermine the remaining international standing and arrogance of Westminster and the vermin who infest it.

But see, even having hopefully established my anti-Western bona fides, here's the crucial thing: None of that has the slightest bearing on my opinion on the Syrian government, or Bashar Al-Assad, or on the nature of the conflict there, or the question of whether or not the US is ultimately behind the uprising there, or whether a badly-photocopied and anonymous map proves anything either way, which is the subject of this thread.

I am not arguing with you because your posts are anti-British or anti-NATO or anti-American, I am arguing with because your posts are absurd, unreasonable, silly, childish, and hysterical.

If your family members had been killed by drone planes in the name of "anti-terrorism", if you had a military base of a foreign country in your backyard, lost your legs in napalm bombing, inhaled Agent Orange while being carpet bombed by a country from the other side of the planet.... or your country had been set up and manipulated for years by a foreign power... etc ad infinitum --- then you'd probably feel a bit more than "healthy scepticism". You know perfectly well that your country are doing these kinds of things. Mine doesn't.

Aside from the fairly obious fact that a Swede has no more insight into what it feels like to experience the things you list than a Brit, what part of any of this do you assume I disagree with? Please show me any post of mine from any thread that suggests I think the UK in any way superior to Sweden, either in the past or the present. You want to play western atrocities poker? Fine, I'll see your drone attacks and agent orange and raise you Dresden, the Mau Mau revolt, the invention of concentration camps during the Boer War, Sinchon, No Gun Rai, almost the entire history of the British Empire and almost the whole of post-war US foreign policy. I've spent my entire adult life arguing with British nationalists and British Empire revisionists and their mouth-breathing US counterparts and I know the story chapter and verse, so I'll take the Pepsi challenge with you any time you like, sweetheart.

So you see, we totally agree on the qualities of the North-Atlantic, Anglo-Saxon alliance. But where does that leave us regarding the topic at hand? Absolutely nowhere! Because whether or not we like or support NATO (tool of imperialism) or Barak Obama (massive hypocrit) or the Iraq War (unjustifiable adventurism perpetrated by messianic lunatics) or David Cameron (effete, gutless, over-privileged rich-boy) or Henry Kissinger (the most malignant, disgusting figure in the whole of US history) or Winston Bloomin' Churchill (grotesque, incompetent ultra-imperialist clown who would rightly have been remembered as an idiot and a monster had his legacy not been saved at the last minute by the emergence of Hitler), or any other figure, action, or quality of the past or present has, or at least should have, no logical bearing whatsoever on how we feel about Syria, or Assad, or for that matter Gadaffi, or Vladimir Putin, or China, or anything else. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a tactical statement, not a logical one. It's perfectly possible for two scumbags to exist concurrently. It's perfectly possible to oppose the US and at the same time consider the Syrian regime to be a bit rum, just as it's perfectly possible, and without the slightest internal contradiction, to view the BBC as biased and basically unreliable while at the same time considering RT to be just as bad or even worse.

I currently have and have had, throughout my life, American expat friends and acquantances. I admire many things about the USA as I repeatedly mention. I normally see no reason to discuss this with them, any more than I'd discuss the excesses of Stalinism with a Russian aquantance. But obviously, if I am asked my opinion about it, I would not hesitate to express it.

However this is a forum where we talk about international politics so obviously this is the kind of topic that comes up, not what American artists, what American technology I admire or my respect for American history.

As an English speaking person with access to only, or mainly English speaking media, you are probably not aware that a good half of the world's population, including, no doubt, many people in Russia share my views - which are by no means extreme.

There you go again with your binary-thought assumptions. You know nothing at all about me except that I'm British, yet you think you've got me all figured out based only on that one fact. OK then, once again, for the record, aside from several places in the UK I've lived and worked in Russia, and in Ukraine, and in Croatia, and in The Netherlands, and in Canada. I'm quite comfortable speaking in English and Russian and can follow news broadcasts in Ukrainian and Dutch, and French at a push. The only TV reception I have at home is satellite reception from Hotbird/ Eutelsat because a) my wife wants Russian-language TV, and b) I am a BBC refusenik, having risked a large fine and a criminal record by refusing to pay my TV license for the past 18 years.

This is getting tiresome and a bit of a waste of time though.

I agree. So how about you get back to the point by answering the question I asked you several posts ago, and which you dodged with another one of your mindless non-sequiturs, and explain why it's possible for sponteneous protests to have errupted in Egypt and Bahrain - US allies - while it's impossible for sponteneous protests to have errupted in Libya and Syria - US enemies - and can only have been the work of US agencies.

If you want to write me, and the billions who share my view off as nut jobs because they do not appreciate the foreign policies of your country, by all means do. But when it all comes tumbling down, or some *real* nutjob gives the USA gets a taste of its own medicine, don't say nobody warned you.

I don't write you or anyone else off as a nutjob because you "do not appreciate the foreign policy of my country", I've written off specific things you have written on this forum because what you wrote was specious, sophomoric bilge.

@Astrum & zedeeyen:

Whatever !!!!!!


Regarding Syria, here is an interesting comment regarding the Turkish jet that was shot down by Syria, inside of Syrian airspace

Originally Posted by http://www.rt.com/news/assad-turkey-jet-israel-274/

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told a Turkish newspaper he regretted the downing of the Turkish military plane, which escalated tensions between the two countries.

­“We learned that it (the plane) belonged to Turkey after shooting it down. I say 100 per cent ‘I wish we had not shot it down’,” the Cumhuriyet newspaper quoted Assad as saying in an exclusive interview published on Tuesday.


“The plane was using a corridor which Israeli planes have used three times before. Soldiers shot it down because we did not see it on our radar and because information was not given,” the Syrian president explained.


“Of course I might have been happy if this had been an Israeli plane,” Assad said.

So basically, for better or worse, what he is saying is that:

• The plane was well inside Syria's airspace
• The Syrians believed the plane to be Israeli, since Israel has been flying in the exact same part of Syrian airspace in the past, and since Syria has bad experiences of Israel bombing their nuclear power facilities in the past.
• They realised afterwards, that the plane was in fact Turkish and immediately realised it had been a huge mistake to shoot down the plane, stating clearly that had they known the plane was Turkish and not Israeli, they would not have shot it, and they wished the whole incident had not happened.

I am strongly in favour of Israel's right to exist and always defend that. I do not necessarily support everything that Israel does in respect to its neighbours such as Syria. While I sympathise with Israel's worries about Syria and nuclear weapons, the coup where Israel annhilated Syria's nuclear facilities is not something I support. I don't care much for Syria's comment that it would have been happy that the plane was downed, had it been Israeli...

However, it's well known that Syria and Israel are old enemies, and I personally think that this explanation makes sense, is true and explains what happened with regards to the downed jet. This is not the lies that some of us remember from the Cold War, or the propaganda hype from the War against terror.

What possessed Turkey, under these tense conditions to do a recognisance trip in Syria's airspace, using the same routes as they are no doubt aware Israel uses, is an interesting question.

• Where they looking for something special, if so, what?
• Where they testing the waters to see what Syria would do.... If so, for what purpose?
• Was it a deliberate provocation intending to lead to this exact outcome.... in that case, what is the agenda?

Does anyone know why Turkey so suddenly turned against Syria, when they previously had good relations, and while Syria is deliberately looking for partners in the Middle East, according to themselves, Iran among others.... in light of the lack of progress in their EU negotiations? Turkey seems to have done an absolute u-turn and now stirring things up, rather than mediate with a neighbour they previously had no particular issue with...

Does anyone know why Turkey so suddenly turned against Syria, when they previously had good relations, and while Syria is deliberately looking for partners in the Middle East, according to themselves, Iran among others.... in light of the lack of progress in their EU negotiations? Turkey seems to have done an absolute u-turn and now stirring things up, rather than mediate with a neighbour they previously had no particular issue with...

Turkey is a member of NATO and an American ally.

Turkey is worried about a potential flood of refugees over the border in the event of a full-on civil war, and is also starting to experience a swing in public opinion against Assad and some protests in support of the rebels stirred up by the Muslim Brotherhood. They've been front-and-centre in condemning the Syrian authorities' crackdown since it started, and warned Assad back in May that Turkey would intervene if there was anything like a repeat of the 1976 Hama massacre.

Seems to me they've done a U-turn like pretty much every other country in Europe - because the Syrian government wasn't killing people before and it is now.

Originally Posted by Marcus

Turkey is a member of NATO and an American ally.

And those "shuttles" who bring goods from Turkey and distribute them in Russian markets are working to improve the economy of Turkey, supporting NATO and ultimately the US; hence they are the hired agents of the US imperialism.

Originally Posted by Crocodile

And those "shuttles" who bring goods from Turkey and distribute them in Russian markets are working to improve the economy of Turkey, supporting NATO and ultimately the US; hence they are the hired agents of the US imperialism.

Вы правы. вся мировая экономика работает на США.

Originally Posted by Marcus

Вы правы. вся мировая экономика работает на США.

Yeah, I'm tellin' ya, that'sa whole evil green paper, mate. Makin' ya wanna g'dam work when ya shouldn't, eh? That'sa g'dam slavery, pal. Take another beer, mate, let's stay free and watch some more boobs of those g'dam cheerleaders on that g'dam TV.

Zedeeyen, when I read your post I found that I agree with a lot of the sentiment you detail. When I came to that realization, I developed some high expectations for your output. And I was let down. Not because I disagree with you, but because you failed to meet the commitments you set for yourself, and by proxy, your reader.

At the outset you said you would refrain from attacking the character of the other debater. Yet you could not entirely restrain yourself. On that note, as your reader I took issue with:

"little head"
"sweetheart"

Those are directed at the debater, markedly at odds with your stated intent.

And as an American, I took issue with:

"mouth-breathing counterparts"


Over and above that: I like Hanna, and despite the fact that we often disagree, she's proven herself in the past to be a skilled, interesting, and largely polite debater. In sharp contrast, in your text I felt that I was receiving far less of your interpretations of the sociopolitical landscape in your post, and far more of a bolus dose of a pied angst; whether it's political angst in general, or a response to how you feel you were treated in the above posts, I can't suss out. But if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say, maybe you were mad. I'd like to see what you can do on this topic sans ire; I'd be interested in reading it.

Thanks KidK! For what it's worth, I usually enjoy your posts and I respect you as a debater. Just as well I did not read that post, probably. I don't bother reading rants directed at individuals, even if that individual is me. And it doesn't bother me if these lads believe that I am stupid or conceited. There are certain people whose opinion of me I care about, and then there are those who are welcome to believe what they want.

I only participate here because it's enjoyable for the most part; for me to learn from others, to share my own experiences or give others something to think about. I'd say that 80% of what I know about modern Russia and Ukraine, I've learnt in this forum! Certain long term members have really got me thinking with their ideas and viewpoints on Russian and world politics. I changed some of my stereotypes and preconceived opinions on Russia past & present, and of Russians. When it's not enjoyable I just don't bother participating for a while!

Originally Posted by Crocodile

Yeah, I'm tellin' ya, that'sa whole evil green paper, mate. Makin' ya wanna g'dam work when ya shouldn't, eh? That'sa g'dam slavery, pal. Take another beer, mate, let's stay free and watch some more boobs of those g'dam cheerleaders on that g'dam TV.

Can you make a serious comment, please, Croc?

Would you like the Marines to land in Damascus tomorrow, and subtract another number from the Axis of Evil list?
Should Russia and Putin broker a deal that makes everyone happy?
Or Kofi Annan and the Arab League?
Or Ban Ki Moon and the UN (but how to deal with the Chinese and Russians with veto powers....)

Or do you agree with my viewpoint, that each country is responsible for its own destiny and should be left alone to resolve its own problems.... or live with the consequences? It's not for us to meddle in the internal politics of Syria - it is between the Syrian people and their leadership. If the Syrians are unhappy enough, the situation will change, like it did in many other countries that had revolutions. It's patronising and meddling for one country to interfere in the affairs that take place within the borders of another sovereign state.

"Axis of Evil members" - official map as of 2002




"Outposts of Tyranny" per Condolezza Rice's speech in 2005



Erm.... Zimbabwe and Belarus on the same map... reality check?


General Wesley Clark plan as of 2002:

Iraq --- Check
Syria ------In progress
Lebanon ----unsure
Libya --- Check
Somalia ------Check
Sudan ------In progress
Iran ------ Next likely target!

(Afghanistan, at that point was already taken care of. North Korea, which borders both China and Russia, interestingly did not make it onto the regime "take down" list. Wonder why?)

Based on the above, I for one think it's pretty obvious that Syria had it coming..... (and I am somehow not surprised that North Korea and Iran want nukes as a deterrent. None of the countries where the regimes were taken out, had it.)

Originally Posted by kidkboom

Zedeeyen, when I read your post I found that I agree with a lot of the sentiment you detail. When I came to that realization, I developed some high expectations for your output. And I was let down. Not because I disagree with you, but because you failed to meet the commitments you set for yourself, and by proxy, your reader.

At the outset you said you would refrain from attacking the character of the other debater. Yet you could not entirely restrain yourself. On that note, as your reader I took issue with:

"little head"
"sweetheart"

Those are directed at the debater, markedly at odds with your stated intent.

Well, technically, I made no such commitment. What I said was "I've argued only with what you have written in this here thread", which is in the past tense.

But I take your point all the same. Yes, I was snippy.

And as an American, I took issue with:

"mouth-breathing counterparts"

That wasn't directed at Americans in general. It was directed at the specific set of Americans who hold equivalent views to the group of flag-waiving, history-whitewashing fellow Brits I was insulting

Over and above that: I like Hanna, and despite the fact that we often disagree, she's proven herself in the past to be a skilled, interesting, and largely polite debater. In sharp contrast, in your text I felt that I was receiving far less of your interpretations of the sociopolitical landscape in your post, and far more of a bolus dose of a pied angst; whether it's political angst in general, or a response to how you feel you were treated in the above posts, I can't suss out. But if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say, maybe you were mad. I'd like to see what you can do on this topic sans ire; I'd be interested in reading it.

As it happens, I like Hanna too, I just find her insistence on responding to my points not with counterpoints, but with insinuations based on my nationality, to be extremely tedious. I don't think I've really left her anywhere to go with that now though, so we'll see how it goes eh?

Originally Posted by Hanna

Would you like the Marines to land in Damascus tomorrow, and subtract another number from the Axis of Evil list?
Should Russia and Putin broker a deal that makes everyone happy?
Or Kofi Annan and the Arab League?
Or Ban Ki Moon and the UN (but how to deal with the Chinese and Russians with veto powers....)

Or do you agree with my viewpoint, that each country is responsible for its own destiny and should be left alone to resolve its own problems.... or live with the consequences? It's not for us to meddle in the internal politics of Syria - it is between the Syrian people and their leadership. If the Syrians are unhappy enough, the situation will change, like it did in many other countries that had revolutions. It's patronising and meddling for one country to interfere in the affairs that take place within the borders of another sovereign state.

The Syrians are unhappy enough to go out and protest against the regime while knowing the regime murderers may take them out and they may not come back home that day. But they don't seem to be able to really change anything without external help. Till the help comes, the number of victims will go up on and on and on... Do you really think it's ok to put up with all those murders just to save {save what, by the way? that murderer Assad's ass or whatever else?} ?

Marcus: Главная вина Сирии - ее относительная независимость от США и связи с Россией и Китаем.

Maybe. Officially, the главная вина of Syria (as far as I know) is its support of Hezbollah, which does NOT recognize Israel's right to continue existing.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Maybe. Officially, the главная вина of Syria (as far as I know) is its support of Hezbollah, which does NOT recognize Israel's right to continue existing.

So, rephrasing this a little bit
Independence of Republic of Abkhazia (thus it's existence) is not recognized by many countries including the US, but it is recognized by Russia. Does that mean that Russia has a "right" to invade the US based on this denial of recognition?
Hezbollah is in Lebanon BTW, does this mean Lebanon will be next ? Oh, wait, Lebanon doesn't have oil, Syria does, how silly of me


From what I see the States prefer Israel's friendship over Syria's but I'm certainly not sure that is is the right move in this century. Israel is pretty much the same aggressor as Syria. Economy of Israel is already developed and I don't think it is needed to be supported, Syria however would have been a risky but good investment

OK Hanna, I'll bite. I'll try to keep it respectful if you will.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Would you like the Marines to land in Damascus tomorrow, and subtract another number from the Axis of Evil list?
Should Russia and Putin broker a deal that makes everyone happy?
Or Kofi Annan and the Arab League?
Or Ban Ki Moon and the UN (but how to deal with the Chinese and Russians with veto powers....)

What I hope will happen is that there will be enough of a lull in the fighting to give the Assad government a bit of breathing space so that they can implement at least some of the reforms they've been promising for years and diffuse the situation enough that the violence will just fizzle out and fade away.

I really don't think that's likely though.

I think the most likely outcome is more violence and a messy civil war. I don't think we'll see any NATO bombing campaign unless Assad does something really stupid and alienates the Russians, but I wouldn't bet against Turkey getting involved unilaterally in a limited way.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Or do you agree with my viewpoint, that each country is responsible for its own destiny and should be left alone to resolve its own problems.... or live with the consequences? It's not for us to meddle in the internal politics of Syria - it is between the Syrian people and their leadership. If the Syrians are unhappy enough, the situation will change, like it did in many other countries that had revolutions. It's patronising and meddling for one country to interfere in the affairs that take place within the borders of another sovereign state.

No, I profoundly disagree with this.

Firstly, countries do not and cannot exist in complete isolation. They have neighbours, ideological friends and enemies, trading partners and competitors, customers and clients. They interact in a million different ways with the outside world and vice versa. Every action a government takes has direct or indirect consequences well beyond its own borders. They cannot help "meddling" in each others affairs at some level - even just selling or providing food or medical supplies to one side in a conflict could be construed as support for that side and therefore "meddling" - so the question is not whether countries should be left alone, but to what extent they should be left alone. And once you've broken past that absolute, the world is all shades of grey from then on.

Secondly, countries are not gestalts - simple entities that act with a defined purpose and can be assigned "rights" - countries are chaotic collections individuals all pulling in different directions, most of whom are just trying to get on with their lives and mind their own business, and any "right" a country has is an expression of the aggregated rights of the individuals therein. To believe otherwise is to consider the citizen to be property of the state. And to treat the suffering of these people as none of our business simply because the conflict is confined within a single country is morally akin to knowingly allowing a woman to be repeatedly beaten by an abusive husband or a child to be repeatedly raped by an abusive father simply because the violence is "domestic", and therefore none of our business.

In fact, I find it incredible that someone who (rightly) expresses moral outrage at the suffering of the victims of US' crimes in such graphic and emotive terms can be so sanguine and dismissive and lacking in empathy concerning the suffering of victims of their own governments. It suggest to me that either your outrage at the crimes of the US is insincere, or else you've somehow lost track of the moral framework that caused you to develop that outrage in the first place.

Of course, just to avoid any possible confusion, I am not arguing that countries have a right to military interfere in each other at will, just that there are occasions where it can be justified and that absolute opposition to any such action is wrong-headed.

Originally Posted by Hanna

"Axis of Evil members" - official map as of 2002




"Outposts of Tyranny" per Condolezza Rice's speech in 2005



Erm.... Zimbabwe and Belarus on the same map... reality check?


General Wesley Clark plan as of 2002:

Iraq --- Check
Syria ------In progress
Lebanon ----unsure
Libya --- Check
Somalia ------Check
Sudan ------In progress
Iran ------ Next likely target!

(Afghanistan, at that point was already taken care of. North Korea, which borders both China and Russia, interestingly did not make it onto the regime "take down" list. Wonder why?)

Based on the above, I for one think it's pretty obvious that Syria had it coming..... (and I am somehow not surprised that North Korea and Iran want nukes as a deterrent. None of the countries where the regimes were taken out, had it.)

This is absurd, deficient reasoning on so many levels.

You've taken an aggregate list of tinpot dictatorships towards which the last US government expressed antipathy and are now pointing at the few who have been overthrown as proof that the US is behind this particular case, completely ignoring a) any internal factors b) the actions, interventions, policies and "meddling" of every other country and super-national organisation on the planet, and c) all the other uprisings against various other tinpot dictatorships - some of which were allies of the US - that have happened during the same time frame. Over the last couple of years there have been mass protest movements right across the Arab world - in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Oman, and Yemen, and in the decade since the first axis of evil speech there have been domestic conflicts, revolutions or mass protest movements in lots of other places - in Azerbaijan, in Georgia (twice, actually), in Ukraine, in Madagascar, in Kyrgystan (also twice), in Niger, and in any number of other countries depending on your specific criteria.

There is no useful correlation at all here, except the rather obvious fact that revolutions tend to occur in tinpot dictatorships.

Besides which, the fact that there are countries on the lists you quoted that are of no strategic value to the US and which were sited solely on human rights grounds undermines your entire US-imperialist narrative right from the word "go" anyway. Of course, were the US to get directly involved in say Burma or Zimbabwe I'm sure it wouldn't take long for those of the America is responsible for everything persuasion to discover some strategic importance there too. I often think the oil companies are wasting their time employing geologists to find oil. They should employ conspiracy theorists instead, they can find oil anywhere.

And, once again just to be clear, I am not arguing that your general conclusions are incorrect, only that the evidence you are presenting here does not support them. I'm disagreeing with your reasoning, not your moral instincts.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Can you make a serious comment, please, Croc?

Here's my very serious comment. If someone thinks the US is ultimately behind just about any turmoil that happens on our planet, that is called paranoia.

Originally Posted by Crocodile

Here's my very serious comment. If someone thinks the US is ultimately behind just about any turmoil that happens on our planet, that is called paranoia.

у меня паранойя?

Originally Posted by Marcus

у меня паранойя?

Я не указываю на личности, я лишь выражаю своё мнение. С моей точки зрения, радикальное сведение всех совокупностей взаимосвязанных процессов к упрощённой системе сверхценных идей (таких, например, как гегемония США) является по своей сути параноидальным.

Originally Posted by Crocodile

Here's my very serious comment. If someone thinks the US is ultimately behind just about any turmoil that happens on our planet, that is called paranoia.

If that's your comment it is not very relevant, since nobody here has made any such claim.

The whole discussion stems from the fact that I and a few others stated that we believe that evidence seem to be indicating that the US together with certain EU countries might have a finger in supporting the rebels in Syria through things like favourable media cover, weapons (possibly), and local logistics/communication support. Nobody is denying that there are plenty of locals who are unhappy.

However as reported by channels like RT, there are also plenty of locals who think that the rebels are troublemakers/terrorists/opportunists and are happy with the system as it is, or prefer gradual change.
There is so much propaganda going on in both camps that I doubt even the Syrians themselves understand the situation and have an idea of who wants what.

I saw a story which claimed that the majority of Syria's Christians were behind Assad, for example, stating some credible sounding reasons for this, and interviewed regular people who expressed their views with passion.

I also made a comparison with Bahrain which has also experienced a very passionate Arab spring which ended in brutal suppression in this mini country that happens to be the host of a large US navy base. 1500 Saudi troops entered Bahrain fully armed and stopped the protests. Hundreds have died (which is a very large number per capita, in a country as small as Bahrain). The story is totally ignored in Western media whereas the coverage of Syria is non stop. Yet the countries are fighting for exactly the same things - democracy or more political influence for regular people and improved social justice. There has been torture, disappearences and killings.

Armored tanks patrolled villages on the outskirts of Manama and forces shot tear gas canisters at demonstrators around the city as the government sought to suppress further demonstrations and the retaking of Pearl Square, the site of the uprising one year ago today. The Bahraini government has received continued support from the US and UK throughout the year-long crackdown, including arms sales. Al-jazeera (Photo: Reuters)

***

Reuters reports:
Armored vehicles patrolled Bahrain's capital on Tuesday in a security clampdown to deter protesters after overnight clashes outside Manama on the first anniversary of a forcibly suppressed pro-democracy uprising.

Originally Posted by Hanna

evidence seem to be indicating that the US together with certain EU countries might have a finger in supporting the rebels in Syria

Evidence you say? I think we don't have any reliable evidence whatsoever. We are pretty much left out to interpret the situation as we see fit. I personally see more involvement of the EU countries in the Arab spring and less involvement of the US. The most prominent example - Egypt, which government had been loyal to the US for so many years. There was absolutely no reason for the US to change the situation to what it is now. Or was it? But, still there is strong opinion that the US is behind all those events. And how it is explained? Because, the US is dictating each and every European government what to do, so apparently every action the EU countries take would ultimately be devised by the US. All the economic tensions (which ultimately drive the big politics and military interventions) between the EU and US are just being written off. That means the logic stops and the paranoia rules. Does it make sense?

Now, to the point the Syrian uprising is inspired from outside of the country. You see, the foreign politics is all about that. It's not really about "let's leave each other to do what they want" as you go on insisting. There's simply no such thing. The countries merge and divide, conquer each other and gain independence over time. It is a very complex process and what a modern patriot would perceive as his motherland, was in fact an enemy of his ancestors who died in an attempt to keep independence, but failed. There seems to be no indication that won't happen in the future. For the very least, the countries inspire revolts in the other countries for their benefits. Some people say Kaiser Germany financed the driving forces of both Russian revolutions of 1917 during the WWI to topple Russian government and weaken Russian Army. And they succeeded as Russia withdrew from the WWI as soon as bolsheviks came to power. That was their first decree - the Decree on Peace. This way Germany eliminated their second front and were able to continue the war. The evidence, eh? But, subsequently all that was perceived as a very positive step in Russia. And, later on bolsheviks not only inspired revolts, but provided very real military intervention in the countries which comprised the Russian Empire. Of course, for the benefits of the workers and the peasants. But, then you think there was a lot of positive things in the USSR. So far so good for the "let's just leave each other's countries alone"? Such things, as much as other meaningless terms such as "national interests", do not exist in the real world.