Geopolitical Outlook

Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus, Syria. The following below is an addendum to and expansion of the second paragraph of the previous blog entry, " Geopolitical Context Matters pt. 2 - Slouching Towards Syria ". Generally speaking, the West -- but especially America -- is a bastion of ignorance when it comes to the Arab and Muslim world, with two extremes: the right-wing who see Islam as a race (rather than a religion) and a civilizational threat and equate all Muslims with Osama bin Laden. While the liberals and the 'left' also see Islam as a race and think that Wahhabism is just a mere expression of victimhood. Contrary to a popular narrative that is uncritically accepted by Western liberals and leftists, Wahhabism is not an expression of victimhood. Sunni Muslims are also not inherently or naturally predisposed to such an ideology. While racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment is rife with far-right circles who take a racially-charged approach and t...

Illustration by political commentator and cartoonist, Bill Purkasthaya. Original image found here . Geopolitically-illiterate radlibs in the West still seem to be under the delusion that the Kurdish YPG and PKK -- nothing more than just another set of U.S.-backed terrorist proxy forces -- are the "most oppressed-est", matriarchal-pantheist, utopic peoples like the blue Na'vi people, which are fictional sentient extraterrestrial humanoids found in the film Avatar . Supposed Kurdish "victimhood" is quite the fashionable trend in many Western "progressive" circles these days (despite it being wholly ahistorical and largely exaggerated or outright fictitious), so much so that they are angry at the thought of U.S. troops pulling out of Syria and ending support for the Kurdish Contras even though it should be seen as a positive. The Syrian Arab Republic are the real effective fighting force against ISIS, not the Kurds (an imperialist propaganda constr...

The Joker movie is not an incel movie or an "angry straight white male" movie. It's a film about class consciousness and alienation under capitalism, especially late stage capitalism. The fact that it is receiving a lot of backlash from Forbes (and other elite publications like it), "alt"-rightists, and 'social justice warriors' (sjw's) alike makes it all the more intriguing. It most definitely is not the "Hollywoke"-kind of film that is, figuratively speaking, force-fed to the masses. Examples of "Hollywoke" films include those found in the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe, the post-Lucas Star Wars films (also Disney-owned, and sans George Lucas' input), and the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. It also most certainly is not an appeal to white nationalists and/or hardline reactionaries. And so here we have a refreshing cinematic piece of art. Watch Jason Unruhe's review of the film in the video above. (Warning: the re...

Pictured left to right: Hafez al Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. Several years before his death on June 10, 2000, the late Syrian Arab Republic President Hafez al Assad (father of Bashar al Assad) lamented bitterly that, "When France entered our countries they were united [as one: Syria]. When it left they were disunited [partitioned into four separate countries.]" Prior to Syria liberating itself from French colonialism, with the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party taking power, and establishing the independent Syrian Arab Republic, the French (and the British) had divided the formerly single, united nation into four separate countries, effectively redrawing the world map in the years between 1918-1923. These four countries were: mainland Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. In fact, Palestine used to be Syria's southern third province and was actually called Southern Syria. As for Jordan: the British created it as a kingdom for the Hashemite...

Hollywood celebrities invest in stocks and bonds, accumulating capital in various ways, and have ownership in certain markets. They are not productive workers and do not actually create or generate any value. In fact, their disproportionately high wages come from the musicians who play the instruments,  those who do the sound-engineering, and those who write their songs for them -- if they are singers; in which case, it helps their brand if they place their names in the list of songwriters, even if they wrote little to none of the content. If they are Hollywood actors, it comes from those who write their scripts and work on the set production. Not only that, but the surplus value that is generated comes from consumers who buy their products. And if they have clothing lines and other merchandises attached to their names, they often rely on superexploitative sweatshop labour in Third World countries. Of course, there are some famous entertainers who don't even do anything th...