Report is in! "Industrial scale" killings by Assad's forces. So now what?

They could argue that it impinges their arms sales... but theoretically they could assist his removal if we screwed with their trading, sure. Wouldn't the next fascist screwhead to take over Syria buy their arms from the same place? As usual, it's interesting the world powers that won't help out with this: Russia, China, Saudi Arabia.

 

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But America supports dictators as well, look at Saudi Arabia for just one of many examples.

 

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America and its allies should stop trading with Saudi Arabia as well, or there should at least be massive tariffs on goods imported from such countries. Stop picking on Canadian "dirty" oil, the Saudis won't even report accurate stats on how "clean" theirs is, and the profits from Canadian oil don't go into slaughtering infidels and herding women like cows. These kind of nuances and double standards in America's foreign policy shouldn't continue to be used as an excuse by dictatorships and chronic human rights abusers to expect access to western markets. What would Russia gain from watching the killing stop and another fascist ally crumble, if they know it'll only hurt their economic ties and prestige? As long as Putin wants Assad in power, that's where he will stay, even if he has to invite Russian "peacekeepers" in to personally bail him out.

 

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And this is precisely why I've been saying for years that the world needs an economic realignment. Clearly, kind words and flowery praise have failed to get the job done. We've given the olympics to Hitler, Soviet Russia, fascist China, and now Putin, but has it ever been shown to improve their inclinations toward basic human rights rather than simply serve as lucrative propaganda for domestic consumption? Zogby is reluctantly concluding that a forceful intervention may be required, yet US and world public opinion still seem to run heavily against such action. So what else comes between unconditional praise and military intervention if not economic sanctions?

Western Europe desperately needs to find another supplier for its oil and gas. They should start buying it from Canada instead of acting out on their jealousies by trying to shut it out as if Canadian oil was somehow dirtier than the oil produced by a third world country using rusty Soviet equipment. Once Russia loses its chokehold on the European energy market, then we need to move fast to cut them off from the rest of our economic ties, along with anyone who attempts to help them bypass sanctions, and force them to choose between supporting and arming Shia Islamist extremists at our peril, or cooperating with the West and giving up their absurd ambitions of becoming a major world power at everyone else's expense. Then we can do the same with the Saudis, Pakistanis and other Sunni extremists in turn, dry up the main sources of the Middle East's present conflicts.

 

Putin and Khamenei.

 

Syria is a scam. All part of the PNAC programme. They've wound up their former Mujaheddin Al Qaeda attack dogs to destabilize the middle east. Get the Soviets out and the PAX Americana/Zionist in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8

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Very cosy Assad and Kerry sit down to dinner.

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Isn't that nice.

 

Maybe we should have sent Mike Tyson in to go pull Assad's pants down on Syrian national TV, I'm sure that would have promoted far greater cooperation as opposed to handing out carrots.

The conspiracy theories just keep getting more and more convoluted. If it wasn't for groups like Al Qaeda and like-minded extremists, the Islam-Zionism conflict as we know it today probably wouldn't even exist in the first place. Listening to the Iranian camp and their allies, apparently the Sunnis had this grand master plan all along, where they get thousands of their own people killed in wars with Israel and kill millions more with Israel used as a convenient excuse, only to then suddenly turn around and ally with the Jews to permanently enslave themselves while simultaneously wiping out the Shias in one stroke. How can you possibly believe in this crap?

 

I used to think that the West - and the Communist East - had a moral obligation to involve itself everywhere. Actually, I still do. But unfortunately, it can't work. Other factions are aligned against the public good and always will be: Republican, Democrat, Saudi, neo-Marxist, reactionary, religious. For a modicum of effort, such factions can always effectively interfere with our moral and humanitarian objectives, and will do so for a plethora of reasons, including spite. So what is one to do?

In this age, I'm not even sure that I should write a solution down on the inter-tubes: apparently different factions of the government are watching, and it's not for nothing that they're not trustworthy. Expediency, not justice, is the watchword of our society. Association counts, honour does not.

Orwell warned us of this, did he not? And yet here we are. Who shall I blame? The uneducated classes? The fools? The partisans? The bilateralists? The intelligensia? The new republicanistas? (Are there any of them?) Anyway, I'm sure a public bonfire of the nouveaux Jacobines would enormously amuse the 1%ers.

 

Who do we blame for the Syria mess and related issues? I think we should accept some blame for ourselves as a collective society, that we've prioritized cheap goods and materials over democratic institutions. Greed and expediency are what created this situation we face today, where sworn enemies of the West are permitted to work hand in hand with some of our own supposed "allies" and "partners", and we do little more than register diplomatic protests. I think if we were willing to accept higher commercial prices, restore some of our own domestic manufacturing capabilities and accept some economic shocks in the short term, we could affect a great deal of positive change throughout the developing world.

Syria's rulers have an obvious taste for the high life. Russia serves as their enabler, and Russia's elites in turn depend on their ties with the West both for their lavish lifestyles and for generating enough economic activity at home to keep the discontented masses at bay. By cutting these ties at their source, the nexus between Europe and Russia, we can generate tremendous pressure on Russia's elites to modify their attitudes and behaviour, which in turn would force similar pressure on the Assad regime. We can likewise generate similar pressure on the Saudis, Qataris and all other wealthy, corrupt sponsors of Islamic extremists amongst the rebels, and indeed in a broader scope, I feel this is the only effective strategy that will push nations such as China towards moderation and liberalization. Seems to have worked wonders with the cocky ass regime in Iran so far, and we didn't need to fire a single shot at them.

The matter of dealing with Sunni and Shia religious hardliners will follow our dealings with the wealthier elites. In my view, their greatest weakness is that their devoid worldly vision leaves them heavily dependent on secular elites for anything that doesn't involve killing someone; they themselves offer no incentives for the enterprise and innovation which drive progress around the globe. Hezbollah doesn't make its own weapons (not the ones worth worrying about, at any rate)- they get shipped in from Iran and Syria, who in turn mostly acquire them from Russia and China. Extremists groups such as Hezbollah can't even afford to provide sufficient food for their own people without foreign assistance, so let's start addressing our issues at the sources and making some short-term sacrifices for the greater good, instead of tiptoeing around these issues and hoping they'll simply resolve themselves.