Syria: what we know and what we don’t

2 May

“Ba’athism promotes a unified Arab state through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary government and the creation of one-party states, and rejects political pluralism …  it is a secular ideology that supports socialist economics to a varying degree, and … Read More »

Monbiot on Syria

26 Apr

Media Lens today: It is hard to believe that just three weeks ago the entire corporate media was in uproar over Syria; specifically, about the need to ‘do something’ in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, … Read More »

Mother of all Bombers

14 Apr

Not entirely unrelated, a very good and very honourable friend – a liberal who despite cash worries of his own stumps up £5 pcm to help the Guardian in its hour of need – accuses me of tunnel vision on … Read More »

Debating Syria

8 Apr

Apropos my two most recent posts, on Syria in the wake of Idlib and on the US strikes at Homs, Steve Spencer, a friend for close to forty years, emailed his doubts about my defence of Assad’s government and the … Read More »

US attack on Homs

7 Apr

Yesterday I posted on chemical weapons at Idlib. I wrote: [The terrorists] are losing and, aided by corporate media in the west, have everything to gain by giving Washington, London and Paris a way of selling more direct intervention, posing … Read More »

Idlib chemical weapons attack

5 Apr

Why do we buy the increasingly nonsensical reality-inversions of corporate media, including the sixth form apologetics of the liberal press? Because, I believe, the idea of our leaders as agents, conscious or otherwise, of the most predatory forces on the planet … Read More »

Am I Islamophobe? Not any more.

11 Feb

Like most people I’m a mix of clever and stupid. I’m good on abstract thinking, verbal reasoning and synthesising disparate information to draw robust – if at times startling – conclusions, via cogent arguments that engage with relevant realities. Not … Read More »