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...

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...

When it comes to war-torn Afghanistan and the role played by the United States and its NATO allies, what comes first to mind for most is the ‘War on Terror’ campaign launched in 2001 by George W. Bush almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks. And understandably so, considering that the United States and its allies established a direct “boots-on-the-ground” military presence in the country that year. Not only that, but during the Bush-Cheney years, there was an aggressive propaganda campaign being played out across U.S. media outlets which used women’s rights as one of the pretexts for the continued occupation. The irony of this, however, is not lost on those who understand that the conflict in Afghanistan has a long history which, much like Syria, stretches as far back as the Cold War era — especially when it was the United States that  provided support  for the Mujahideen in destabilizing the country and stripping away the modernizing, progressive economic and social gai...

1. Cuba: "The Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba strongly condemns and rejects the attempt to impose through a coup a puppet government in the service of the United States in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and expresses its unwavering solidarity with the Government of the constitutional president Nicolás Maduro Moros." 2. Syria: "The Syrian Arab Republic condemned in strongest terms going to extremes by the US and its blatant interference in the affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, affirming full solidarity with the Venezuelan leadership and people in preserving the sovereignty of the country and foiling the hostile schemes of the US administration." 3. Nicaragua: " "The Great Homeland does not bend, it stands proud, with the Love of its Peoples, here no one surrenders! Viva Venezuela! Viva Chávez! Viva Nicolás! Forward, with Faith and Hope!" reads the statement." 4. Bolivia: "Our solidari...

A key figure in the history of U.S. foreign policy is the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist who served as former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. He was a highly influential figure in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although he was not the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan's presidency, he still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy's goals in upholding Washington's global monopoly. His strategy in carrying out U.S. foreign policy consisted of using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively resisted against Washington. One particular target was the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan , which was then under the progressive, anti-imperialist, and Soviet-allied government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Brzezinski was the architect behind the Mujahideen , which was compris...

Along with Nicaragua, the DPRK, and Jamahiriya Libya, one of the most unfairly maligned countries within Western 'left' circles in recent memory is Syria. Ranging from those who hail the U.S.-backed, foreign  jihadist terrorists as "moderate rebels"  -- to those celebrating the equally-reactionary and -sectarian YPG militias (also backed by the U.S.) in balkanizing and ethnically cleansing northeastern Syria in the hopes that they will fulfill the Anarchist wet dream of "beautiful utopian goals of democratic confederalism" -- it seems that Syria has indeed become a blank canvas upon which the Western left can project their fantasies. It is the new " Terra Nullius ," as author Maximilian Forte ( Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa ) describes. While sections of the Western left continue to make themselves useful idiots for U.S. imperialism, the legitimate Syrian government and the Syrian people inside of Syria are not ...