The Enemy Never Changes

The start of the Geneva II talks on the Syrian Crisis illustrates the fact that for the Western media the only issue in the ‘war on terror’ is religion. The ideological factors involved in the American-led campaign to oust President Bashar al-Assad, as well as in demonstrations around the globe are whited out.  News channels will mention in passing that in Turkey or Egypt there are also ‘leftists’ on the street, but the word has no ‘consistency’, it’s just a label. Similarly, in the case of Syria, the fact that the Alawites are the least dogmatic Muslims, that the Baath is a socialist party and heads the only Arab secular state, is ignored.

This obfuscation makes it look as though religious demonstrators are not interested in equity, and reduces the ideologically motivated demonstrators to a rabble. In truth, although the world has often been wracked by religious wars, ‘revolts’ have most often been about equity, the many against the few - or the other way around, and capitalism is no more ‘the end of history’ than is communism or socialism.  

Often my posts provoke accusations of pro-Russian ‘propaganda’, however they are the result of decades of observation that included six years living behind the Iron Curtain, studying (systems theory), reading and writing about international affairs and comparing various news media. 

Those who a few days ago criticized my linking the events in Kiev to the upcoming Olympic games in Russia, fail to realize that news today is almost always part of a big picture rather than an isolated event. Knee-jerk reactions, or accusations of ‘having an agenda’ often follow blogs that imply approval of Russia’s international positions. They hide the reality of both class warfare and the dire threat of planetary ruin.  

Still committed to ‘growth’, President Putin does not meet my standards for ecological sanity, but on RT there is no such thing as a sound bite.  The journalists on ‘capitalist’ Russia’s international news channel are free to discuss any subject in detail, including decentralization and cooperatively run industries. Equity is a theme that runs through everything from documentaries to interviews, and both Russian and international news.

Yesterday, Oksana Boyko, one of RT”s keenest minds, discussed the need for more direct democracy with Roslyn Fuller, an Irish professor of international law who sells photos of her body to support whistle-blowers.  If Fuller appears on CNN, she will come across as an entirely different person from the one who held a wide ranging discussion of law and parliamentary, as opposed to direct democracy with a skeptical and even provocative journalist. 

Alas, even the blogosphere is almost entirely devoted to dissecting American politics and the misdeeds of the system, as if its two oceans made the United States truly independent of the rest of the world. That was how multi-lingual former ambassador Charles Freeman aptly phrased it recently to Oksana Boyko.