Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Middle East Page 11 of 20

Tales of Canadian Healthcare and Potential Russia/US War in Syria

By

On September 13, 2018

Comments

So, posting has been, errr, non-existent for a bit as I’ve been dealing with some (probably minor) healthcare issues.

Earlier this week, I had exploratory surgery and, later, an MRI. The total time for the exploratory surgery (entering the hospital to leaving) was about five hours. The total time for the MRI was two hours, of which I spent 45 minutes semi-dozing inside the machine.

Total price? $20 for some pain killers to take home with me after the day-surgery. Oxycodone (the generic form of Oxycontin), which is the first time I’ve had it (I’ve had plenty of morphine and codeine at various points), and, ummm, I can see why a lot of people get addicted.

Generally speaking the nurses, doctors, techs, and orderlies were all polite and efficient. The nurses and doctors at the day surgery stood out as particularly solicitous, which I appreciated. I haven’t always had the best experience with surgery (understatement alert), so getting the feeling that they cared and were competent was nice.

Contrary to the propaganda, all of this was relatively expeditious. I don’t have an urgent problem, so the process hasn’t been super fast, but it hasn’t been slow, either.

And this is Canadian healthcare.

Regular posting should resume soon.

Idlib province in Syria is a potential flashpoint between the US and Syria/Russia. The Syrians want to clear up the Al-Qaeda subsidiary there, and the Americans want to pretend they aren’t Al-Qaeda, and have been saber rattling and stating that Assad is going to attack chemically, and the US will retaliate.

Lots of stupid here, and a small–but real–chance of starting something nasty between the US and Russia, which the US might well lose, actually, since the US has fallen behind both on missiles and missile defense technology.

Let’s hope not. Not getting into a war in Syria with Russia was Trump’s main selling point, but he seems to have since become deranged about Syria’s Iran ties, because the US’s foreign policy, apparently, is about doing what Saudi Arabia and Israel want, not what is good for the US.

Sigh.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

White Helmet

By

On August 12, 2018

Comments

MANDOS Post

The Assad regime in Syria is ghastly, and I have no truck with the sort of leftism or anti-imperialism that lionizes it as some kind of grand resistance against imperialism — it is of the same sort of moral absurdity that attempts to paint Russia as anything other than a weaker rival imperialist competing with the US, as though it were a kind of moral paragon. You can make a case for or against a multipolar world in utilitarian terms (more stable or prosperous in some sense?), you can have ideological content preferences among the different imperialism flavours, but ghastly regimes are still ghastly and military imperialism always involves mass suffering. Whose catspaw the Assad regime is does not make it more or less criminal. Someone who wants its overthrow is not automatically an ideological fellow-traveller of ISIS.

On the other hand, I also have no patience for the neoconservative/liberal hawk tomfoolery that uses the Assad regime’s ghastliness (and the horror show that encompasses its victory for anyone who is seen as an enemy of the regime) as a reason to wash away the utter failure and downright evil of the intervention in Iraq. (Is this “virtue-signalling”? I’m under the impression that in some quarters, if you’re anti-Assad, you must be an interventionist.) I am not a pacifist, so in principle I accept that there is a case to be made, under very abstracted conditions, for a stronger military power to intervene to prevent suffering in another country. In practice, the conditions under which this leads to a better outcome are very rare–if they ever occur at all. The risks of creating a worse situation in Syria, given the experience in Iraq, are extremely high. The vested interests are strong, the risk of making a bad situation worse from a direct overthrow of the Assad government are overwhelming for that and other reasons.

Which leads me to the question of the White Helmets. I gather that a lot of people on the “anti-imperialist” side view them as propaganda catspaws of imperialists. The reason for this seems largely to be that they operate in areas held by forces opposed to the regime (this to me is perfectly legitimate — how could a rebel trust the government to conduct rescues?), organizational and media help is offered by foreign entities with vested interests in the overthrow of the Assad government (again, to me legitimate — I would accept such help if I were opposed to the regime and in dire straits), and they receive foreign funding (ditto). None of these indict the organization to me — victims of Assad’s attempt to retake forces held by opposition groups are going to need rescue from someone and frankly, publicity.

Now it appears that a large number of them have been given asylum by Israel en route to being distributed to other countries, as Assad looks to retake most of all of Syria. If they stayed, surely they would face criminal proceedings (or, probably, much worse) from the Syrian government. But a lot of anti-imperialist (pro-Assad?) commentators, including/especially on the left, seem to view this as a further indictment of the White Helmets. Naturally, there is considerable moral inconsistency in Israel’s action, to say the least, but that is not an ethical quandary for those who are fleeing Assad.

What are they supposed to do? Stay and face Assad’s torturers (which he definitely uses)?

It should generally be possible to accept the legitimacy of opposition to Assad, including (especially!), rescue of his enemies, while criticizing the vested interests that might seek to take advantage of his overthrow.

The Hilarious Saudi-Canadian Dispute & The Less Hilarious Terrorism Threat From Saudi Arabia

By

On August 8, 2018

Comments

So, the Saudis are very very upset that Canada dared suggest they not violate human rights.

This is the offending tweet:

It started with a bit of fair tit-for-tat: The observation that Canada doesn’t treat its indigenous people well. Totally fair and true.

But then the Saudis, errr, escalated…

The Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia was expelled. Fifteen thousand Saudi students in Canadian universities have been ordered to go home and Saudi citizens in Canadian hospitals are being airlifted to non-Canadian hospitals.

Saudi Arabia has also ordered all state related organs holding Canadian securities to dump them, causing a drop in the Canadian dollar.

My reaction to all this is amusement, truly at the laugh-out-loud level.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, is hilariously incompetent and foolish. He keeps over-reaching. He tried to take out Qatar with an embargo and failed. He’s got an ongoing war with Yemen which is going to turn into a genocide. He’s selling off income-creating state assets to try and turn around the economy, in a step which will actually reduce state income and not improve the economy enough to make a difference.

He locked up a bunch of his relatives and other powerful Saudis, appears to have tortured them (at least one to death), and forced them to pay ransom to be released.

He’s running Saudi Arabia. He’s clearly an extraordinarily dangerous megalomaniac.

And his people threatened Canada with a terrorist attack!


There is no way that tweet can be taken as anything but a threat.

As Magnier says, any terrorist threat, especially by the biggest source of terrorist funding in the world, Saudi Arabia, should be taken seriously.

But…yeah, I’m sorry, fuck bin Salman. He seems to be confused about how much power he actually has. Canada needs nothing from Saudi Arabia. Nothing. We have plenty of our own oil, and that’s the only thing that Saudi Arabia has that matters in the world today.

Money? We have too much foreign money flooding in. Saudi Arabia’s money is a drop in the bucket compared to the Chinese money that has made housing unaffordable in all major Canadian cities.

Our problem isn’t getting foreign money. Our problem is we need to get rid of most of it. And if the Canadian dollar drops some, that’s fine. We export a lot.

As for the terrorist threat, by the leading terrorist country in the world (the US is it’s only competition), well, I do take it seriously. After all, most of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia.

What Canada should do is just let it be known that if any attack that even remotely looks related to Saudi Arabia hits Canada, we’ll start supplying Saudi enemies with weapons–all the stuff that the Saudis don’t want them to have.

Oh, and as NATO members, we’ll blame Saudi Arabia, and state that an attack on one is an attack on all.

Saudi Arabia has only one card left that matters, other than terrorism: Selling oil in US dollars. That is it. Once the petro-dollar is broken (and it is going to be because other countries are moving to sell in something other than dollars), the US has no reason to continue supporting them.

Meanwhile, the rise of solar and electric cars means that the last oil boom is probably done, and if not, there’ll only be one more. Bin Salman’s desperate, and desperately stupid moves to try and diversify the economy won’t work: It’s too late and he’s doing it the wrong way.

The Saudi state will run out of money, and when states run out of money? That is when revolutions occur. Running out of money to pay the citizenry off and the enforcers is when it always happens.

Hopefully Bin Salman will be killed cleanly and not tortured, but I suspect a lot of his victims hope he gets a taste of his own medicine.

Saudi Arabia’s problems have almost nothing to do with foreigners making toothless observations about civil rights. Bin Salman should end his idiotic war in Yemen, stop picking foreign fights, then stand down and let someone competent take the reins. It’s the only chance his family has of keeping control of Saudi Arabia.

But, frankly, his family should lose control. Can’t happen soon enough. It’s just sad that so many people will suffer along the way. But that suffering is the responsibility of the Saudi royal family, not some powerless foreigners commenting on women’s rights who anyone with a sense of proportion would simply have ignored.

Pathetic.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

The Yemeni Holocaust

By

On June 4, 2018

Comments

We often ask, what would we do if there was another Holocaust? Surely we would do something? Surely, at least, we would not be complicit?

The question might have been answered in Rwanda, where the UN commander begged the UN for orders to intervene, orders which never came. The general, Romeo Dallaire, has spent the rest of his life curled around his failure to act despite orders.

Meanwhile, we have the blockade of Yemen, which despite claims, continues:

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, expressed his concern regarding the “recent decline of commercial food imports through the Red Sea ports” — adding that, if conditions do not improve, the number of Yemenis at the brink of starvation would rise from the current figure of 8.4 million to 18.4 million by this December. Given that there are approximately 28 million people in Yemen, a continuation of the Saudi-led blockade would mean that nearly two-thirds of the entire country’s population will soon face starvation.

Not sure how many of those who face starvation will starve to death, rather than simply sit on the edge of death, but millions of lives are at risk, this is deliberate, it is happening in slow motion, and the rest of the world is doing nothing.

Well, if they aren’t helping the mass murder, like America (and America was helping under Obama, so no, this isn’t a partisan issue.)

America could stop Saudi Arabia cold if it wanted to; and it certainly could at least not participate.

But, of course, we all know that in the run up to World War II no one cared what was happening to the Jews: we refused to let in Jewish refugee ships, after all. If all Hitler had done was the Holocaust, no one would have gone to war with him over that.

Not that the US needs to go to war; the simple credible threat of sanctions would bring Saudi Arabia to its knees. Nor does the US, post shale oil, need Saudi Arabia’s oil, but the Saudis, in any case, are no longer in a position to not sell. Their own society would implode in months.

Europe could do this too: SWIFT is located in Europe and subject to European law. Apparently Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, which Netanyahu has stated was 5 years from a nuclear bomb since the early nineties, was worth Europeans forcing SWIFT to cut them off (SWIFT objected), but not millions of Yemeni deaths.

Since Europe = Germany (no, don’t pretend, if Germany wants it, it happens), that means the Germans, having done the Holocaust are now sitting aside when they could stop millions of deaths, and doing nothing.

Lovely.

Well, I guess we’ll just watch.

And no, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince is not a good guy even if he has decided to let Saudi women drive.

The only bright lining on all this is that Saudi Arabia will be in civil war itself by 2030, I suspect.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer country.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Israeli Killings Are the Result of De-Humanization of Palestinians

By

On May 15, 2018

Comments

So, Palestinians protested moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and Israel shot and killed somewhere between 52 and 60 of them, and injured hundreds more.

The rule of international law (yes, I know, a dead letter) is that force must be proportional to threat.

This is disproportionate.

The simple fact is that too many Israelis now think of Palestinians as sub-human; animals to be killed if they are inconvenient.

Israel is an apartheid state. A large chunk of the population is denied their rights–including their right to vote. And both the West Bank and Gaza are, yes, open air prisons.

The two state solution is dead. I’m not sure it was ever viable, but it no longer is. Israel will either have to cleanse Palestinians from its territory (something the de-humanization is clearly working them up to) or Israel as a religious-ethnic state will, inevitably, end.

It is well noted that those who are abused tend to become abusers. The applicability to Israel is obvious and sad.

Still, while tragic, today’s events pale in comparison to what Saudi Arabia, with America’s assistance, is doing in Yemen.

Plenty of tragedies to go around on Earth.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Banal Hypocrisy of the Western Coverage of Israel

By

On May 10, 2018

Comments

So, I see the usual suspects, in response to a large attack by Israel on Iranian targets in Syria, are saying the usual, “I support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Really what they mean, of course, is “I’m scared of the Israeli lobby in my country, and of being called an anti-Semite if I dare say the truth.”

The truth is that Israel attacks other countries far more than other countries attack Israel.

The truth is that the Iranian missile attack the to which the Israelis were responding was actually in response to routine Israeli attacks on Syria.

The truth is that Iran is an invited guest in Syria and Israel is not.

Modern Iran has not attacked multiple neighbours over the course of its history. Israel has, and taken territory from them to boot.

The Golan Heights was taken from Syria, by Israel.

And, of course, Iran has no nukes, and Israel, which claims Iran wants them, does have nukes.

Our entire “conversation” about Israel and the region around it is based on hypocrisy, fear and guilt over the holocaust, as if because Germany killed millions of Jews, it’s ok for Israel to treat Palestinians and everyone else in the neighbourhood monstrously.

Israel should remember that “the powerful do as they will, the weak suffer what they must” was replied to “what you do to us, will one day be done to you, because seeing how you treat us, no one will trust you or have mercy on you.”

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Trump Pulls Out of the Iran Deal

By

On May 8, 2018

Comments

Yeah, so, it was a good deal and one of the very few real accomplishments of Obama’s foreign policy, possible only after Clinton was no longer Secretary of State.

The fear here is that this is part of a march to war against Iran, something many in the Republican party want, and something pushed hard by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

This was the danger of Republican win: Clinton was deranged about Syria, Trump is deranged about Iran. Both are allies of Russia, and Russia will not want to allow Iran to be destroyed by an American coalition. While the risk of a confrontation between the US and Russia is not as severe over Iran as it was over Syria, it is still very real.

Plus, of course, the Iranians don’t have nuclear weapons and just making enriched uranium didn’t mean they wanted nuclear weapons.

Fortunately, the Europeans are pushing back hard against this, and are willing to just cut their own deal. That may help somewhat.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Push for War with Syria (and Russia?)

By

On April 12, 2018

Comments

So, we have another allegation that Assad has used chemical weapons. I’ll be straight: The guy has everything to lose by doing so, and nothing important to gain, so I doubt it.

Virtually all the pundits are crying for war; Marcon is onside (and claims to have proof of the chemical attack), Tony Blair is onside, and so on.

Trump, having learned from past attacks that the only thing the media almost-universally likes that he does is bombing people, seems to be considering attacking, despite his past avowals that America shouldn’t be in Syria. For example:

Attacking Syria is insanity. Even if chemical weapons were used, it’s none of the US’s business, and yeah, as noted many times before, Russia is there, and war with Russia should be avoided.

The main reason that I didn’t endorse Clinton was that she was deranged on Syria and Russia, wanting a no-fly zone after the Russians intervened, appearing to personally hate Putin, and so on.

The Republicans and Trump, of course, are deranged on Iran instead.

Joy.

So, it’d be nice if the US would not overreact here. Syria’s been a nasty, unpleasant war, which is almost over now. Let’s keep it that way. The US should never have been involved in the first place, as they have no important interests in Syria and, well, war is bad and should be avoided in most cases.

Perhaps Americans could, in general, learn to mind their own goddamn business? The world, and the US, would both be better places.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Page 11 of 20

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén