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On 1/18/17 10:07 AM, Prashad, Vijay via Marxism wrote:
Dear Friends,

I have a report on the current trend of Iranaphobia, an unbalanced
and often factually challenged sentiment towards Iranian ambitions in
West Asia. You can find it here:
http://www.alternet.org/world/trump-iran.

Warm regards, Vijay.



"Certainly there are reports of ‘demographic transfers’ (as the UN says) of people from the Damascus suburbs of Daraya and Moadamiyah – but these have not been on sectarian lines, more on political lines (rebels have been moved to Idlib, as from Aleppo)."

This is a distinction without a difference. Assad never had problems with the Sunni rich. But it was the rural poor that was his nemesis. In places like Daraya, the revolt was mounted by Sunnis not in order to claim victory on a confessional basis as if which descendant of Muhammad represented true Islam. They revolted because life had become intolerable due to a withdrawal of support for Syria's countryside as I pointed out here:

https://louisproyect.org/2016/12/14/the-economic-roots-of-the-syrian-revolution/

Assad conducted ethnic cleansing the same way that Israel does, to banish insurgents to a remote region where they could cause no harm. If the Palestinians were reconciled to second class citizenship, there would have been no need for a Nabka. Since they weren't, they had to be driven out of Israel for the most part.

What Vijay obviously refuses to recognize is that in the name of secularism, diversity and enlightenment values, Assad is carrying out the same kind of ethnic cleansing as Israel. If the Sunni poor, the overwhelming majority of the country, had consented to live peacefully under a family dynasty that was driving down their standard of living mercilessly under a neoliberal regime, there never would have been a reason to force Syrians to go into Idlib, which is turning into the equivalent of the West Bank.

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