RAMIN MAZAHERI—Historical reminder: This peaceful coexistence changed in places like Syria only when the French & English came along in the 19th century, bringing their racism, religious intolerance, identity politics and privileged statuses for minority Christians, etc.
WESTERN EXCEPTIONALISM
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BILL VAN AUKEN—In the same address, Tillerson declared that the Monroe Doctrine “is as relevant today as it was the day it was written.” This nearly 200-year-old canon of US foreign policy supposedly endowed Washington with the right to use force in preventing outside powers from establishing a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
Initially invoked as a US policy of opposing any attempt by European empires to re-colonize newly independent countries in Latin America, it was turned into a declaration of a US sphere of influence and became the rationale for some 50 direct US military interventions along with a series of CIA-backed coups that imposed fascist-military dictatorships over much of the region in the second half of the 20th century. -
In line with the Syrian Arab Army’s operation to liberate Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus — a part of Syria occupied by various Salafi-jihadi groups since 2012 — this mainstream media coverage has lost the plot; painting a picture of an upside down world in which murderous sectarian fanatics are depicted as rebels, while the army fighting them, a conscript army that draws its soldiers from every part of the multicultural and multi-faith mosaic that is Syrian society, is depicted as a latter day Waffen SS: an army of invasion and occupation instead of liberation.
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PETER KOENIG—This will go on no doubt. Russia will interfere, hoping to stop the onslaught, while the US bases in the north will grow and not let go – one of the principles of the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) is make no concessions, pursue your target no matter what… Russia be better aware of this unbendable doctrine. “The no matter what” could mean: If we go down, the world goes down. Then there are the seven countries that have to fall, of which the 2007 “Democracy Now” broadcast by Wesley Clark testifies. Syria is one of them. Lebanon is under simultaneous threat. Fortunately, Russia has just signed a military defense agreement with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
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JASON HIRTHLER—Thanks to this artful disguise, the West can stage interventions in nations reluctant to adopt its platform of exploitation, knowing that on top of the depredations of an exploitative economic model, they will be asked to call it progress and celebrate it. Washington, the metropolitan heart of neoliberal hegemony, has numerous methods of convincing reluctant developing nations to accept its neighborly advice. To be sure, the goal of modern colonialism is to find a pretext to intervene in a country, to restore by other means the extractive relations that first brought wealth to the colonial north.