Gaza, Stop the War Protests, George Galloway and Anti-Semitism.

Owen Jones means well but he comes across as a studenty sort who is trying to stake out the politically correct position in such a way that would ensure the anti-war protests remain nice and inclusive instead of polarising Muslims and Jews on the issue of opposition to Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza.

As a consequence, Jones produces a series of high sounding generalisations which do not address the specific content of the utterances made by those opposing Israel or why they could be construed as veering towards a dislike of Israelis because of who and what they are.

'..antisemitism needs to be treated very seriously indeed. Attempts to belittle it are dangerous, allowing the tumour to spread unchecked. But...Israel’s assault on Gaza has highlighted another danger too  It has often been debated whether the charge of antisemitism is concocted against anyone who supports Palestinian justice or criticises the actions of the Israeli state'.

Evidently, there are vested interests at stake in defending Israel no matter what it does. There are arms contracts, large volumes of trade and Britain and Israel cooperate on security projects whereby they can learn how to use sophisticated technology to contain the threat of terrorism.

As a consequence, it is convenient to accuse those criticising Israel as 'anti-semtitic'. But, then again, the word 'Islamophobia' is deployed in a similar way to mean a critic of an Islamist political movement, a person critical of Islam as a religion, or somebody who does not like Muslims.

Words and their meanings matter. To be against Israel's policy is to be anti-Israeli or, better, against Israel's policy on Gaza'. The danger of using words such as 'anti-Zionist' is that they could be taken to mean being against far right Israeli nationalism or against the existence of a Israel as a country.

The fact is that it is sometimes difficult to work out whether those 'taking a stance' against Israel are not rationalising darker motives not necessarily related to the actual situation in Gaza: a brutal but regional conflict but not the site of some cosmic battle between world historical forces.

Leaders of the Stop the War Coalition themselves are hardly paragons of peace. George Galloway's rhetoric is often violent and intemperate. His defence of Gaza and refusal to 'accept Israel' is not about anti-semitism but he likes to give his Bradford West electors the impression he rejects its right to existence.

With Galloway ( whom Jones never criticises due to the need to retain 'solidarity' no doubt ) the Gaza conflict provides an opportunity to advance a career in the doldrums after the Soviet Union fell and his attachment to Hamas and Hizbollah comes from their opposition to the US Imperialists.

This is a form of solidarity that works negatively. Hamas and Hizbollah are only aligned in opposition to Israel and so is Galloway. In fact, neither movement has much time for each other in the context of the Sunni-Shia sectarian division that have opened up over the conflict in Syria.

One reason Israelis and their Jewish supporters feel 'picked on' is that while Muslims across the Middle East are in the process of murdering one another on a large scale, there is a perception that most Muslims in the West unite on loathing Israel and that there must be a sinister agenda against them in Europe.

'One retort repeatedly offered is that Israel is itself the source of antisemitism; that its brutality towards the Palestinian people encourages hatred against the Jewish people. This is a nonsense, like rationalising anti-Muslim prejudice as the inevitable consequence of Islamist fundamentalist terror; responsibility for prejudice lies with the prejudiced. Most of us are quite capable of opposing brutality without turning into bigots. Racism needs to be eliminated, not excused'

It may well be a nonsense but it is nevertheless a rationalisation that is implicit in the sort of placard that is often held up by Islamists on anti-war marches. Jones refers to the infinite world of idealistic 'oughts' without looking at the grubby reality of what 'is' to be found on the 'anti-war left'.

One example would be the placard that reads 'Stop the Genocide of Gazan children'. The implication could be ( beyond mere hyperbole ) that if Israel is committing the genocide of the children, then maybe some genocides are better than others because they do not target only children.

Genocide talk as regards Israel, as opposed to the more obvious and provable accusation of war crimes, tends to have a sinister edge to it. If Israel is held to committing genocide, especially of children ( forget the adults then ), then, perhaps, Hitler should have finished off all Jews.

So there are no grounds for the assertion 'most of us' are able to oppose brutality without turning to racial hatred. The historical record nowhere bears that out as an absolute certainty. And if racism is considered a form of evil, then evil is an ineradicable part of human existence.

Wherever, one group so defined on the basis of ethnicity, creed, religion or race has leaders playing on unique victimhood the better to advance one set of power claims against an 'existential' rival or enemy, then aggressive instincts of hatred can, indeed, be rationalised.

So there is little purpose in mentioning the real effects of anti-semitism by pointing to the Jobbik in Hungary and by ignoring the sort of irresponsible propaganda that does inflame feelings against Israelis in Britain as opposed to their government ( not least as a great majority support it over Gaza )

So Jones focuses ( rightly) on the need of a British anti-war movement over Gaza to put pressure on the British government on arms exports and so on. But he goes on to provide his own form of deflecting attention away from intolerant forms of activism within Britain by pointing to anti-semitism elsewhere.

Hungary is a convenient choice because Jones knows that there are very few Muslims living in this Central European nation. So he can position himself as anti anti-semitic without needing to deal with its existence within Britain, even if it is bound to be exaggerated by uncritical apologists for the Israeli state

So Douglas Murray was no doubt trying to smear the entire protest march against Israel's war on Gaza as being 'anti-semitic'. The problem is unless the anti-war movement ( such as it is ) rejects intemperate demagogues such as Galloway, amongst others, it is always going to play into the hands of established interests.

The problem is that 'anti-war protest' really often means an ideological siding with Islamist forces as opposed to the more obvious point of a protest which should be focused on trying to advocate Britain is not complicit in what Israel is doing in pursuing war not diplomacy.

The 'anti-war movement' contains leading figures who, even if they may not peddle anti-semitism, do come out with absurd conspiracist ideas on geopolitics and the Middle East whether on Gaza ( or even on ISIS as being backed by Israel ) that feed a paranoid world view.

The existing 'Stop the War Coalition' is simply headed by a coterie consisting of the dregs of the communist left whose tendency to rationalise totalitarianism ( Galloway and journalist Seumas Milne being the supreme examples ) discredits anti-war causes and puts off sane conscientious people.

It is possible to be against the war crimes committed by Israel and against the insane suicidal strategy of Hamas. But in the 'Stop the War Coalition' this sort of nuance is not permitted and only those propaganda slogans that boost outrage and hatred are promoted.

It's depressing but the reality is that there is never going to be a sensible open discussion of Israel and Palestine that does not lurch into accusations of complete collective guilt and innocence on one side and counter accusations, spiralling paranoia, outrage and pyschopathological venom :i.e. pure hatred.

The real question is :Who benefits ? Clearly, those making a career from demagogy such as Galloway on Iranian funded Press TV, neurotic ex-revolutionary leftists who need a cause to glom on to in order to raise them from otherwise wholly deserved obscurity as leaders of sectarian revolutionary utopian cults.

Yet the impossibility of a sensible debate without platform posturing and soundbites from the self appointed 'anti-war' types benefits those defending Israel unconditionally as they can point to the opposition to Israel as Hamas supporting maniacs and 'extremists'.

Blair's Speech on Islamism: On the Reaction.

The response to Blair's speech consists of the usual dreary political bores and hack journalists trying to muscle in so as to gain credibility from lauding it as either sage wisdom and a fundamental moral stance or else as the utterings of an evil demonic warmongerer.

On the pro-Blair side, Denis McShane is wholly mendacious when he claims 'Just read Blair speech. Ignore headlines. This is Fulton Mark 2. Bien pensant left then refused to challenge Stalinism. Orwell knew better'. Well, if it's read correctly, the speech is clearly Orwellian in the negative sense.

For example, Blair refers to 'extremist Islamism' when he supports the Egyptian military government's coup against the Muslim Brotherhood and omits to mention the way it massacred protesters in the streets of Cairo. At the same time he refers to the Islamists opposing Assad in Syria as 'Opposition'.

The use of euphemism and clipped soundbite statements makes what was a bloody coup sound as though part of a mere political transition, with no mention of the killings, arbitrary imprisonments, use of torture; that is, the actual reality of events in Egypt in August 2013 to the present.

'The revolt of 30 June 2013 was not an ordinary protest. It was the absolutely necessary rescue of a nation. We should support the new Government and help. None of this means that where there are things we disagree strongly with – such as the death sentence on the 500 – that we do not speak out'.

The use of two negatives in one sentence is used to insinuate that Western governments have, in fact, spoken out about the political murders carried out by a government backed by western governments when the US and EU have refused even to call the coup in Egypt a coup.

Orwell defined doublethink in 1984 as 'Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them'. In Blair's case, Islamism is 'extreme' when it threatens western backed regimes but Opposition needing support when that benefits power interests.

In Syria, Blair makes it clear that even if people are aware the enemies of Assad contain a lot of the vicious jihadists that would be opposed as part of a global force for evil if theyy were not fighting on the side dedicated to removing an ally of Iran and Lebanon's Hizbollah.

'We are now in a position where both Assad staying and the Opposition taking over seem bad options. The former is responsible for creating this situation. But the truth is that there are so many fissures and problems around elements within the Opposition that people are rightly wary now of any solution that is an outright victory for either side'

This entire paragraph is written with lots of abstract nouns in a deliberately vague way so as to obscure the fact that the 'extreme Islamists' Blair sees as a global menace elsewhere are an important part of the armed insurgency at war with Assad's forces in Syria.

As a consequence, Blair calls for an agreement with Assad that would 'see him stay on for a period', after which he would be called on to go, as if that would somehow solve the Syrian civil war and that the entire conflict hinges on the malign will of one leader.

'Should even this not be acceptable to him, we should consider active measures to help the Opposition and force him to the negotiating table, including no fly zones whilst making it clear that the extremist groups should receive no support from any of the surrounding nations'.

Note again, the abstract language that concentrates on what western powers can do to get rid of Assad and only adds in the essential fact later that jihadists in Syria are part of the Opposition and are backed by Turkey ( a NATO power ), Qatar, a major Gulf ally and investor in London, and Saudi Arabia.

To grasp the very dangerous nature of global power politics and the race to control resources, of which the Second Iraq war was a prime example, requires understanding first if the sort of insane geopolitical agenda and propaganda deployed by Blair can stand any chance of being opposed.

For just as preposterous are those posing as 'anti-war' and principled by drawing attention to Blair's hypocrisy instead of to the fundamental reality behind the reason why Blair supports the Egyptian military against the Muslim Brotherhood and, like the rest of the political class, Islamists against Assad in Syria.

That reason is clearly oil and gas for reasons spelt out by Blair himself,

 'the Middle East remains of central importance...it is still where a large part of the world’s energy supplies are generated, and whatever the long term implications of the USA energy revolution, the world’s dependence on the Middle East is not going to disappear any time soon. In any event, it has a determining effect on the price of oil; and thus on the stability and working of the global economy'.

 However, George Galloway, the Bradford MP for RESPECT, claims via Twitter,

'Under pressure @TheBlairDoc the war criminal Tony Blair has finally lost it. And in the heart of "the City" for which he sacrificed us all'.

The fact that Blair chose to give the speech in London in Bloomberg's HQ hardly amounts to evidence that Blair invaded Iraq to benefit the City or financial interests. That could sit well with those keen on conpiracy theories and who watch his shows on Iran's Press TV but it's a mendacious claim.

Ben White calls for protest against Blair,,

'After yet another much publicised op-ed by a man who should be scribbling his musings in a prison cell, it is time we sent a message to Tony Blair. A petition is, perhaps, a strange choice of protest form given Blair's track record in laughing off popular opinion. But at the very least, it will remind him that for every corporation and foreign government willing to top up his bank account, there are many more people wishing he would simply Shut Up and Go Away'.

Until Blair is put in a prison cell or formally indicted as a war criminal, Blair is not going to go away and he simply is not going to care what a group of nonentities think or write on a petition calling on him never to speak in public again. Britain has free speech and is a democracy. He can say what he likes.

Few on the 'anti-war' left or those protesting against Blair really want him to shut up as they enjoy the sensation of outrage, wearing bloodied Blair masks, yelling 'Bliar' and feeling themselves morally superior to Him ( as if this somehow needed continual in group affirmation ).

Such protests ignore the fact that Blair joined the US invasion in 2003 so as to guarantee Britain's energy security, to safeguard the supply of cheap and plentiful oil that underpins the high octane consumer society many protesters and most British citizens enjoy.

The conversion of Blair into a sort of Emmanuel Goldstein figure is a convenient one that diverts attention away from the fact that the political class backed the war in Iraq or that the interest Britain has in the Middle East is closely bound up with energy interests and investment in the UK economy.

The most important thing to recognise if Britain is going to repudiate the sort of politics represented by Blair is that it needs to aim at energy independence and not to depend so much on states such as Qatar for liquified natural gas and petrodollars to boost London's property market.

Even so, the easy explanation for Blair's involvement in Iraq or calls for intervention ( 'it's all about profit for corporations and the super rich' etc ) are so stupid that they play into the hands of those such as Blair who can laugh off that form of 'public opinion' as mere 'conspiracy theorising'.

Blair: Energy Geopolitics and the Global Struggle with 'Islamist Extremism'.

Blair's speech on the need to combat 'Islamist extremism' on a global scale is both deluded and dangerous. For a start, Islamism is a broad political trend. By adding the flexible word 'extremism' as a means to differentiate which Islamists are acceptible ( or not extreme ) is a formula for open ended conflict.

Far from Blair being an irrelevance in this sense, the former Prime Minister is advocating a foreign policy that many are in fact pursuing at present but with a more robust attitude. As with anything Blair proclaims, the aim is to safeguard his legacy and to make out that he was right all along about the need for a 'Global War on Terror'.

In order to do that Blair empahasises the need for correct propaganda and framing of the global conflict, one quite obviously about western access to resources such as oil and gas from the Middle East and Africa. Thereby, opinion can be mobilised on the basis of a moral cause and purpose instead of being seen as ruthless realpolitik.

"The important point for western opinion is that this is a struggle with two sides. So when we look at the Middle East and beyond it to Pakistan or Iran and elsewhere, it isn't just a vast unfathomable mess with no end in sight and no one worthy of our support. It is in fact a struggle in which our own strategic interests are intimately involved; where there are indeed people we should support and who, ironically, are probably in the majority if only that majority were mobilised, organised and helped.

Amidst the evident absurdity ( a struggle by definition involves two sides and not one, though it may involve more than two ), Blair is agitating for western intervention ( i.e meddling ) in the affairs of all states where Islamism is a force to try and impose the right ( that is to say pro-western ) government in power.

There is an Orwellian doublethink inherent in a strategy which means supporting Qatari and Saudi Arabian use of Islamist jihadists in Syria to fight Assad but backing the Egyptian military against the Muslim Brotherhood, even when it carries out a coup and guns down protesters in the streets of Cairo.

The reason why that freedom to define Islamists as 'extremists' or not is important for Blair is clear; those Islamist militants who threaten western oil and gas interests across the globe ( Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt ) are 'extremists' who pose a danger to energy security.

However, those Islamists in lands such as Syria who are used as proxies to remove leaders such as Assad who leans towards Russia and Iran are not 'extremists'. No, the jihadists in Syria are part of a battle for freedom. Not least, the pipeline interests Qatar and Turkey have for a Syria without Assad.

This is what is meant when Blair opines,

'what is absolutely necessary is that we first liberate ourselves from our own attitude. We have to take sides. We have to stop treating each country on the basis of whatever seems to make for the easiest life for us at any one time. We have to have an approach to the region that is coherent and sees it as a whole. And above all, we have to commit. We have to engage".

Whether British people like it or not, Blair still represents the way global politics is heading ( at least as far as British politicians are concerned ). Spouting 'warmonger' or 'Bliar' is both boring and doltish. The need is to understand what Blair means and what interests are truly at stake.

For the fact is that Blair joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of a geopolitical move to control it's large oil reserves in the period before shale oil and gas had become big business in the US and energy independence a goal. Put bluntly, unless alternatives to oil and gas are found, western intervention in the Middle East is set to go on.

Blair, after all, makes energy security the first and foremost of his reason to 'engage' with the Middle East, as,

'it is still where a large part of the world’s energy supplies are generated, and whatever the long term implications of the USA energy revolution, the world’s dependence on the Middle East is not going to disappear any time soon. In any event, it has a determining effect on the price of oil; and thus on the stability and working of the global economy.'

While Blair can be criticised for Iraq, it's no use turning him into a hate figure as though British people could pretend their high octane consumer lifestyles where somehow disconnected with the need for stable and falling oil prices. That's a lesson Blair learned after the road haulier's strike of 2000 over petrol prices threatened his government

Syria: The Propaganda War and 'Shocking Escalation'

William Hague continues to deploy loaded language in relation an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime, the word regime being accurate but hardly more than the continuous misuse of the word 'rebels' instead of the more neutral term 'insurgents'

Hague calls it a 'shocking escalation of the use of chemical weapons'. which he then followed by calls for the need to "wake up to... its murderous and barbaric nature". "I hope this will wake up some who have supported the Assad regime, to realise its murderous and barbaric nature."

What is so ominous about this is that he has prejudged the situation by putting the blame firstly on the Assad regime full well knowing that the UN inspectors have not established the facts and that the chances of them being able to get to Ghouta to verify the claims can be preempted by propaganda.

Hague is merely compounding the mistakes he has already made in continually repeating 'Assad must go' from early on in the civil war and trying to make Assad's departure a precondition of any peace negotiations at a future Geneva Conference earlier in June 2013.

When Hague refers to 'those who have supported the regime' he is referring to Iran and Russia. With Fabius threatening "a reaction that could take the form of a reaction with force ”, they are dangerously ratcheting up the prospect of violence. For the target of this threat is ultimately Iran.

The fact is though, there is nothing that either France or Britain could do without US approval. The danger is that they are putting Washington is a position where Obama's 'credibility' is on the line after he made it clear in 2012 that the use of chemical weapons would cross a 'red line'.

Even if this were a chemical weapons attack, there is little the West could do to remove Assad that would not make the situation on the ground worse. Arming the FSA would only increase the potential for arms falling into the hands of Al Qaida who would then try to capture these weapons themselves.

It is not completely implausible that the attack was not caused by nerve gas but by riot control agent unleashed by the FSA as a last ditch attempt to get Western intervention. By all accounts prior to this attack they were being rolled back by Assad's armies and Hizbollah.

The International Business Times reported a short time ago,

'Gwyn Winfield, editorial director at CBRNe World, a magazine specialising in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons, told IBTimes UK that it is difficult to identify an agent by the signs and symptoms alone.

"We can say there is some form of chemical used. But until we take blood samples, samples of the soil and the water in the area we can't say that a chemical agent has been used," he said.

"It can be a riot control agent, like in the recent Egyptian case of the tear gas used in the back of a van that killed 36 prisoners. We have the same symptoms in the children and casualties."

Winfield said he finds it "suspicious" that in the week UN inspectors enter the country with the acquiescence of Assad, the Government welcomes them with a chemical weapons missile barrage.

"It is not impossible that some faction in the Free Syrian Army did it to get attention or maybe it was an accident by an inexperienced operator who may have not realised what he was doing."

The security expert said there are numerous cases of riot agent used in a lethal way, for example in confined spaces and not to disperse a crowd.

He added that the idea that the FSA is single and unified is "a myth," because "there are different factions and something like that could be a win/win for them: launch the attack and raise amount of profile of their cause by the UN."

Winfield said that more than 570 victims, if confirmed, are a lot of people in a not densely populated area. "It means the attack targeted a large area and it is not an isolated incident. If there are 570 fatalities it would suggest that evidence of what it is will not be hard to find."

This seems a pretty fair summation of the situation.

Further Thoughts

The fact Hague is prejudging this alleged use of chemical weapons to be just that and proof of previous claims that were not independently verified is packed tightly into the soundbite 'shocking escalation' which presupposes the Assad regime had already been using it

Words matter. 'Escalation' was an essentially Cold War term used in relation to a war between two nuclear powers with 'weapons of mass destruction'. Hague is using is to mean an increase from a previous level of destruction by Assad against 'rebel held' areas using 'WMDs'.

The entire point of any strategy to contain conflict and good diplomacy is to prevent 'escalation' because it implies a potentially unstoppable process or what has been called an 'irrational escalation of commitment' , as in when gamblers make poor decisions or businesses 'throw good money after bad'.

Hague has been committing himself to playing for the highest stakes from early on ( 'Assad must go' ), he seems irrationally fixated on promoting a foreign policy that could not be attained by anything other than arming the 'rebels' and so intensifying the conflict.

As any weapons that could be supplied directly to the insurgents against Assad would necessarily fall into the hands of Al Qaida fighters itching to get their hands on chemical weapons ( or so it has been supposed by some reports and intelligence briefings ). It's possible this is another 'pretext' to arm the 'right rebels'.

This whole episode still seems too convenient; the FSA was in retreat, and the UN inspectors entered Syria a week before Assad is accused by the FSA that a chemical weapons attack has killed 1,400 exactly a year after President Obama claimed this would cross a 'red line'.

After being seen to be weak and 'indecisive' on the Egyptian coup by those such as domestic opponents as John McCain,the danger is that Washington will be forced to go further than it might otherwise have done by the hawkish and rather sinister rhetoric of Hague and Fabius.

If this alleged chemical weapons attack turns out not to have been one or not the work of Assad, as is very possible, then certainly Hague must resign from his position. Yet the amount of choreography between Hague and Fabius very may have already involved Washington as it 'ponders the options'

And this is a chilling thought.

Think Tank Propaganda and 'The Case for Intervention' In Syria.

After William Hague pushed the case for intervention in Syria, in getting the EU embargo on arms to Syria lifted, many US neoconservative think tanks have stepped up the propaganda that backs or "advocates" such a cause to be embraced. Two pieces of propaganda presented themselves this week.

The first propaganda piece was written by David Schenker who wrote,

This week, British Foreign Secretary William Hague issued a statement describing the lifted arms embargo as "a clear signal to the Assad regime that it has to negotiate seriously" in Geneva, warning that, "all options remain on the table if it refuses to do so". Let's hope he's serious ( my italics )

William Hague is serious. He, like Shencker, is serious. This is precisely the problem. Intelligent people following messianic policies based on the pseudo-reality of groupthink, that is encouraged by 'think tanks' when 'gaming' ,and the advocacy of 'solutions' that displaces independent thought.

Such propaganda is easy to dissect.It is important that people learn to read propaganda closely and dismantle the assumptions and scan the language closely to replace it will self evident truths as opposed to simplistic propaganda falsehoods masquerading as 'analysis'.

The mechanisms of indoctrination and thought control are advanced by certain rhetorical tricks. For example,

Despite overwhelming odds and this heavy toll, Syrian rebels made some remarkable gains on the battlefield......Lately, however, opposition forces experienced setbacks as Assad's allies – Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah – have reinforced the regime.

The obvious thrust here is to insinuate that by backing the heroic 'rebels', the 'opposition' would overcome 'setbacks' and 'win' while the most likely result is to ratchet up the carnage to levels reached in Iraq after the US and UK invasion of 2003.

Opposition forces are termed 'rebels' when the objective term would be 'insurgents', one better applied to Hizbollah no less than the Sunni militias and jihadists. Those that US based think tanks and their model pupils such as Hague tend to follow blindly as they have no real independent ideas.

The BBC too needs to drop the use of the term 'rebels' and use the word 'insurgents' instead.

Another mechanism of propaganda is the premise of a false unity of purpose that is not evident in reality but is pre-supposed to be true so that any assertion that contradicts this can be used to ram home hard the propaganda about 'doing something' as as one concerted exertion. 

 Until now, the EU and the US have done relatively little to suggest they really want the opposition to win.

The EU and the US are not some Orwellian power block termed Oceania. The US and UK have continually suggested they want to insurgents to win and the opposition to win ( even if the blood price is somewhat high ). Clinton and Hague repeated 'Assad Must Go' from very early on in the Syrian conflict.

In fact 'regime change' has been the Game Plan from the outset. To pretend that this has not been the case is to ignore the reality that US and UK goverments have been demanding 'Assad Must Go' and at the same time sending the CIA and MI6 to help funnel arms to the insurgents.

...the ( Geneva ) conference will discredit the opposition's political leadership in the eyes of the rebels, and further fragment an already hapless political opposition. In any event, Assad has no intention of quitting Syria.

This presupposes the opposition's political leadership was not marked by divisions in the first place and contradicts the fact that there are opposition forces in the military struggles against Assad that has led the Revolutionary Movement to disown the Syrian National Council as unrepresentative.

There is no singular political opposition in the singular but oppositional forces both in the military struggle and in politics.

...the dangers of continued western inaction – including the destabilization of both Lebanon and Jordan, and/or the leakage of Assad's chemical weapons to terrorist organizations – far outweigh those associated with providing weapons to the rebels.

The dangers are incalcuble in ramping up the military conflict and civil war without a means to bring about an end to the war as Schenker himself admits is one likely to go on for a long time. It will draw in the Great global and regional players to keep backing their proxies.

This is a far more dangerous situation as it leads to a slippery slope where the Global Powers feel compelled to defend their 'credibility' as partners and refuse to back down as the outcome of the struggle in Syria becomes more and more a global one about hegemony in the Middle East.

It seems many do not understand how this could destabilise not just the Middle East but the peace of the globe. In many cases, there is an indifference to the scale of the civilian casualties that will occur if the conflict is accelerated through becoming a general geopolitical proxy war for dominance in the Middle East.

Kori Schake's so-called 'analysis' of the conflict in Syria and what 'the West' is supposed to 'do' about it is also propaganda of a transparently a neoconservative sort that throws in words such as 'humanitarian' simply to rationalise the messianic foreign policy of John McCain.

The chilling thing about this is that there really might be an alternative worse than Barack Obama. There is an almost insane lack of reality to the world inhabited by the neoconservative in which knowlege and caution is replaced by fanaticism and purely abstract geopolitical formulations.

As an explanation for what 'the West' is to do, what it 'could, 'ought' or 'should do', this geopolitical wish thinking is worse than useless as analysis. As a document stating how and why those itching to intervene in Syria want to and what they are prepared to do it is of great value.

The west has interests at stake in Syria: protecting people from predatory governments and stopping the proliferation of heavy weapons. We should protect our allies the friendly states around Syria, and work to reduce the pressure on them.

Evidently, the West has interests in Syria: protecting oil supplies from the destabilising effects enabled by Saudi Arabia and Qatar in backing the Sunni insurgents and forestalling the construction of the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, The two Gulf States started backing jihadists before Hizbollah entered the conflict

Forestalling an eruption of Sunni-Shia violence and a deeper schism serves regional stability, and similarly, people will be safer after exposing Iranian malfeasance and cutting supply lines to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran was never going to voluntarily allow 'friendly allies' of the US such as Saudi Arabia arm Sunni insurgents to take out their main ally in the Middle East. Moreover, the black farce is that the liberated Iraq has returned Shia dominated governments under Maliki favourable to Iran and Syria.

Saudi 'malfeasance' is as great as Iranian 'malfeasance' but, in accordance with doublethink, Saudi Arabia is a 'friendly ally' and Syria is a land in need of 'humanitarian assistance' through doing what every responsible humanitarian organisation has said the US should not do-i.e arm the insurgents.

A humanitarian rationale is also the strongest case for changing Russia's policy, a precondition for the Obama administration. Russia is concerned about violent Islamism in the Caucasus; we should invite them into a positive role, emphasize the goodwill they can earn by assisting Muslims in Syria.

Russia does not generally care much for humanitarian rationales but in asserting its national interests as best it can. If it is not in Russia's interest to allow Assad to fall ( as Schake suggests is the reason for Russia intervening ) then why would they 'want' to assist undefined 'Muslim's in Syria ?

The tired 'humanitarian' rhetoric' is making the populations of Western countries weary as militant think tankers and politicians pretend that shoddy UK and French realpolitik in relation to Syria is anything to do with caring about the civilians trapped in an appallingly savage conflict.

As this utterly deranged claim proves,

Arming the rebels is an unattractive option, given the increasingly radicalized factions, but rebel forces are strong enough to protect camps, provided that we protect against the Assad regime's air and rocket forces. The government's main advantage is heavy weaponry; therefore we should shoot down any combat aircraft the government uses. Missiles from stand-off range, cratering runways, or impeding their electronics and communications would all work to this end. We probably could not prevent missile weapons, but we should retaliate against any unit that fires them, degrading their forces with time, as Senators Levin and McCain have suggested.

Clearly, the alleged delivery of Russian anti-aircraft missile would forestall that possibility and the prospect of ramping up the stakes in Syria and triggering off the destruction of globe via World War Three is of little importantance. Such interventions would ensure permanent peace.

...rebel forces are strong enough to protect camps...Opposition groups should be permitted to run the camps, giving them the chance to gain experience governing and public legitimacy. Humanitarian assistance would give us routine working relationships with rebels, allowing us to identify both jihadists and positive leaders

That would go like clockwork, of course. Ensuring the big mass slaughters and reprisals. Just as in Iraq where ethnic cleansing by Shia militias was allowed by the US as the price of stabilising a country ripped apart by sectarian violence.

The Dark Art of Spinning,

It's difficult to not have contempt for Lord Peter Mandelson who introduced the dark art of political spin into British political life and created the Tony Blair product. There is no point buying the memoirs of this self-important fool now he's got his boring memoirs published.

In the dying days of New Labour after the debt fuelled consumer boom his regime engineered, Peter Mandelson returned in 2008 to power without even being elected and found again the Third Way. It was as much drivel then just as it is now. In his Hugo Young lecture he opined,

...the inherent rationalism of markets makes any role for the state in industrial policy unwise.

It is important that Britain continues to make a vigorous case for an open industrial activism that engages with globalisation and competition rather than trying to shut them out.

How it is possible to engage with abstract nouns and what 'open industrial activism' can mean in practice is curious. For if markets are rational and the state cannot have a role, then where the 'activism' comes from is mysterious.

Markets are extraordinary tools, but they are not possessed of unique or infallible wisdom. Innovative businesses, especially in technology and manufacturing, can require substantial investment.

So this could mean that the government does have a role to play when Mandelson wants NuLab to take credit for debt fuelled consumer booms but not when the markets go wrong as they have during the recent slump.

That's basically what Mandelson means in plain English. The rest is simply a warbling Orwellian corporate version of the Newspeak in 1984. When people rebranded New Labour as NuLab they knew their Orwell with English Socialism reduced to Ingsoc.

What Madelson's brand of banal waffle also proves that politicians resort to jargon because they aren't that important other than as obfuscating intermediaries between the global money markets and a bewildered public.

Government itself has simply become part of an 'enabling state' in which large scale corporate capitalism dominates every aspect of people's lives and designer revolutionaries fake enthusiasm for impersonal transactions.

Democracy is exercised merely through what brands a consumer buys and this propaganda is merely in the marketplace for cliches lapped up by those who want buzzwords to do the thinking for them.