Fra Hughes was recently at a trade union event in Damascus.

The General Federation Trade Union of Syria hosted the World Federation Trade Union Conference in Damascus on September 9-10, 2019.

I was privileged to attend.

After a 20 hour trip I spent a total of five days in Syria’s capital meeting fellow delegates, many of whom represented their respective trade Union movements from the Middle East and Africa. Many western delegates were there, including myself on fact finding missions to ascertain exactly what is happening on the ground in Syria and by extension the wider region. I have visited Syria a total of four times in 2010, 2013, 2017, 2019.

The conference focused on the war on Syria, the sanctions and how they have impacted on the trade Union movement, the workers, their families and broader society.

With my UK comrade Issa at the Sahara Conference centre Damascus

To date over 10,000 public sector workers have been killed, 30,000 wounded and over 3,000 kidnapped for ransom, many considered dead, by those seeking to destroy Syria, to foment regime change to facilitate the balkanisation of Syria with the creation of a second Libya. A country gripped by civil war, daily dragged back into the abyss of conflict

The beneficiary of these wars of aggression both economic and physical are Israel, America, and the West for their own strategic geo political ambitions. To see the expansionist dreams of Zionism come to fruition. A white European colonisation of Palestine.

I met with President Bashar al Assad for a second time, an affable, engaging clever man who spent over two hours outlining the range of enemies arrayed against his country to include illegal EU, American sanctions, illegal American -Turkish bases and troops in Syria.

An agreed communiqué was delivered at the end of the two day seminar.

Closer ties with Venezuelan Lugansk, Iran, Russia and China were to be explored, as these Sovereign nations are also subject to various forms of cold war attack.

I visited the liberated town of Maaloula where ISIS had destroyed some of Christianity's oldest chapels, Icons and relics, where Aramaic the language of Jesus is still spoken.

The people had been brutalised and many summarily executed.

The people of Syria are determined to remove the foreign threats from Syrian soil and free all areas under occupation to include the Israeli illegal occupation of the Golan Heights.

I visited again the old town bazaar/souk and saw how Syrians really live in harmony and tolerance. I saw Syrian Arab Army personnel protecting the people.

I engaged with Syrians who demanded an end to the foreign backed inspired and financed war of aggression and they called for an end to the sanctions so the country can return to peace and rebuild its economy infrastructure and civil society.

Sentiments I wholeheartedly endorse.

Please do not believe the lies perpetuated by the likes of Talkback, BBC, CNN the Guardian etc.

Syrians want to live in peace.

They overwhelmingly voted for President Assad in the elections 2014.

Let’s stand together against imperialist aggression wherever it manifests in the world. Say no to war, no to sanctions, no to military interventions!

⏭ Fra Hughes blogs @ The North Belfast Journal: A View From Napoleon's Nose.


World Federation Trade Union Conference Damascus


Fra Hughes was recently at a trade union event in Damascus.

The General Federation Trade Union of Syria hosted the World Federation Trade Union Conference in Damascus on September 9-10, 2019.

I was privileged to attend.

After a 20 hour trip I spent a total of five days in Syria’s capital meeting fellow delegates, many of whom represented their respective trade Union movements from the Middle East and Africa. Many western delegates were there, including myself on fact finding missions to ascertain exactly what is happening on the ground in Syria and by extension the wider region. I have visited Syria a total of four times in 2010, 2013, 2017, 2019.

The conference focused on the war on Syria, the sanctions and how they have impacted on the trade Union movement, the workers, their families and broader society.

With my UK comrade Issa at the Sahara Conference centre Damascus

To date over 10,000 public sector workers have been killed, 30,000 wounded and over 3,000 kidnapped for ransom, many considered dead, by those seeking to destroy Syria, to foment regime change to facilitate the balkanisation of Syria with the creation of a second Libya. A country gripped by civil war, daily dragged back into the abyss of conflict

The beneficiary of these wars of aggression both economic and physical are Israel, America, and the West for their own strategic geo political ambitions. To see the expansionist dreams of Zionism come to fruition. A white European colonisation of Palestine.

I met with President Bashar al Assad for a second time, an affable, engaging clever man who spent over two hours outlining the range of enemies arrayed against his country to include illegal EU, American sanctions, illegal American -Turkish bases and troops in Syria.

An agreed communiqué was delivered at the end of the two day seminar.

Closer ties with Venezuelan Lugansk, Iran, Russia and China were to be explored, as these Sovereign nations are also subject to various forms of cold war attack.

I visited the liberated town of Maaloula where ISIS had destroyed some of Christianity's oldest chapels, Icons and relics, where Aramaic the language of Jesus is still spoken.

The people had been brutalised and many summarily executed.

The people of Syria are determined to remove the foreign threats from Syrian soil and free all areas under occupation to include the Israeli illegal occupation of the Golan Heights.

I visited again the old town bazaar/souk and saw how Syrians really live in harmony and tolerance. I saw Syrian Arab Army personnel protecting the people.

I engaged with Syrians who demanded an end to the foreign backed inspired and financed war of aggression and they called for an end to the sanctions so the country can return to peace and rebuild its economy infrastructure and civil society.

Sentiments I wholeheartedly endorse.

Please do not believe the lies perpetuated by the likes of Talkback, BBC, CNN the Guardian etc.

Syrians want to live in peace.

They overwhelmingly voted for President Assad in the elections 2014.

Let’s stand together against imperialist aggression wherever it manifests in the world. Say no to war, no to sanctions, no to military interventions!

⏭ Fra Hughes blogs @ The North Belfast Journal: A View From Napoleon's Nose.


26 comments:

  1. A utter whitewash of a regime that has tortured and killed 13,000 in its gulag; who are serial users of chemical weapons ordinance on defenceless civilians and who with its Russian allies are serial bombers of hospitlas and aid convoys.

    The most charitable thing I can say about this excreable apologia for the 21st century most prolific mass murderer is that the author is performing the role of useful idiot that Sydney and Beatrice Webb performed for Stalin in the 1930s.

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  2. I read this this morning and it has jarred with me all day ... submissions have been made to The Hague against al Assad -but for Russia there would be an arrest warrant out for him to put him on trial as a war ciminal. The left have lost the plot altogether and make Boris the Imbecile look like the lesser evil to vote for.

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  3. Christy - it is not the only thing the Left has lost the plot on. Its approach to political Islam left a lot to be desired. Assad is a war criminal - little difference between him and Netanyahu. These particularisms that the Left go in for as opposed to a universalism rooted in the Enlightenment, is cause for despair.

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  4. AM

    Yes and how they reconcile the incompatibility of Islam (and other religions) with gender equality or sexual orientation and honour killings. I wont be surprised to hear that they reached out in solidarity with neo-fascists who are also marginalised and oppressed by mainstream society.

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  5. The post 9/11 left ethos (or the Chomskyite, Stop the War, Pilger left) is see no evil, hear no evil where atrocites are committed by "anti-Western", "anti-imperialist" forces.

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  6. Barry

    The left has always been guided by the mantra 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. The left's decision makers need a reality check because making friends with a dictator and war criminal are bankrupt of any values or integrity.

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  7. Barry,

    What is your source for Noam Chomsky and John Pilger turning a blind eye or deaf ear to atrocities committed by anyone left or right?

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  8. Christy,

    Hasn't US and British foreign policy been guided by that mantra for decades?

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  9. Eoghan

    In "Indochina After the Cataclysm" published in the early 1980s, Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman as much as whitewash the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia.

    More recently, Chomsky defended the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and the Srebinica massacre denier Diane Johnstone. In none of his turgid works in which he frequently cites his previous works in footnotes; you will find no condemnation of any tyrannical regime that is not allied to the West as his mission is always opposition to US foreign policy right or wrong.

    John Pilger has praised Putin as "an anti-fascist); given covet to his war crimes in Eastern Ukraine and defended Slobodan Milosevic; again on purely anti-Western grounds.

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  10. Eoghan

    Take your pick from this indictment of Chomsky's defence of Serb Nationalist ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts:

    http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/chomskydenial.htm

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  11. Steve R

    An account of one survivor's of Assad's gulag in which it is reported that 100,000 people have passed through the Caesar programme.

    https://www.thenation.com/article/how-one-man-survived-syrias-gulag/

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  12. Eoghan

    So? that is not a mitigating fact it doesnt change or add different perspective to the Left sucking up to Assad.

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  13. Barry,

    Where in their book "Indochina After the Cataclysm" does Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman whitewash the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia? Your assertion, your proof. And didn’t Chomsky make clear he only defended Robert Faurisson’s right to free speech:

    “I made it explicit that I would not discuss Faurisson’s work, having only limited familiarity with it (and, frankly, little interest in it). Rather, I restricted myself to the civil-liberties issues and the implications of the fact that it was even necessary to recall Voltaire’s famous words in a letter to M. le Riche: ‘I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.’”

    https://chomsky.info/19810228/

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  14. Barry,

    Where exactly did Diane Johnstone deny the massacre of Srebrenica?

    Because she wrote about this in Counterpunch (since The Guardian wouldn’t permit her reply):

    “For example, I have never made any claim as to the number of victims in Bosnia, but simply pointed to the fact that among various estimates, the media has preferred to accept and repeat the highest, which was offered without any evidence by the information ministry in Sarajevo. Since my book was published, a serious study by Norwegian experts for the Hague Tribunal has estimates the overall number of casualties of the Bosnian war at 102,622 persons, of which 55,261 were civilians and 47,360 militaries at the time of death (no ethnic breakdown). That is a lot, but it is not ‘over 200,000’, as Vulliamy and others go right on repeating, usually with the implication that all were Muslims.”

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/11/14/the-origins-of-the-guardian-s-attack-on-chomsky/

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  15. Barry,

    What’s wrong with citing your previous works in footnotes? Must you always reinvent the wheel? And despite what you say, here is Noam Chomsky’s condemnation of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin’s tyrannical USSR regime that, except for WWII, was not allied to the West:

    -The Soviet Union Versus Socialism
    by Noam Chomsky
    Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1986

    https://chomsky.info/1986____/

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  16. Barry,

    If as you say Noam Chomsky’s “…mission is always opposition to US foreign policy right or wrong”, then why did he say this about his and Edward Herman’s research on Cambodia?

    “Our main conclusion was: You have to tell the truth — don’t lie about our crimes denying them, and don’t lie about their crimes exaggerating them.” --Noam Chomsky

    https://chomsky.info/20090327/

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  17. Barry,

    Can you give your sources for John Pilger praising Putin as "an anti-fascist” and for giving cover to Putin’s war crimes in Eastern Ukraine? And why wouldn’t and shouldn’t Putin be an “anti-fascist”? Isn’t Putin Russian and doesn’t Russia have a long history of being slaughtered by fascists Ukrainians and others? And aren’t some Ukrainians themselves, in addition to Pilger, sounding the alarm bell about all this?

    “Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine”
    by Lev Golinkin

    https://www.thenation.com/article/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/

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  18. Barry,

    Also, where has John Pilger defended Slobodan Milosevic for purely anti-Western reasons? And while you are at it: what’s the difference between Milosevic trying to prevent the breakup of Yugoslavia and Lloyd George putting down the Irish revolution or Abraham Lincoln putting down the Southern Confederacy? And who do you think killed more people? Is it really just a matter of your unionism good, their unionism bad?

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  19. Barry,

    I think it’s amusing that you of all people would cite an SDS Weatherman as your source:

    Roger Lippman

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Lippman

    Oh well, that's the power of confirmation bias.

    Me thinks though that you’ve been had so read it and weep:

    Chomsky and his critics

    https://mondoweiss.net/2016/02/chomsky-and-his-critics/

    This from that same website in case you missed it:

    Keith on February 26, 2016, 6:45 pm
    ROGER LIPPMAN- ”When you return from your travels and you get around to reading what I actually referred to, I’m sure we will be interested to hear what you have to say about the facts.”

    Roger, let me be blunt. I know who and what you are. You are a cheerleader for imperial interventions which you try to excuse as humanitarian. Yugoslavia was the first and precedent setting in a serious of murderous and destructive interventions including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine.

    [read the whole quote here for yourself]

    https://mondoweiss.net/2016/02/chomsky-and-his-critics/


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  20. Christy Walsh,

    I never said it was a mitigating fact.

    It is just an indication of your selective bias and critique.

    Now what’s your proof of “…the Left sucking up to (Junior) Assad” like the right did with senior Assad?

    Because US President George H.W. Bush sucked up to Syrians in Iraq War 1991:

    Main article: Coalition of the Gulf War
    (see picture of Syrian flag flying ahead of military advance)

    “Coalition troops from Egypt, Syria, Oman, France, and Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#Coalition_forces_enter_Iraq

    And senior Assad was far worse than junior Assad.

    For instance, see the 1982 Hama massacre:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre

    So what armies are Chomsky and Pilger leading into battle here? LOL!

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  21. Eoghan

    Your insistence on what-aboutry does not detract from the author's apparent pride in being photographed shaking hands with Assad. Or notably, by holding the World Federation of Trade Unions Conference in Damascus is an active demonstration of solidarity with the Assad regime; and perhaps even a pathetic attempt at normalisation. Either way there is a clear show by the left to legitimise Assad's regime by holding the conference in a war zone.

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  22. Christy,

    The speck is in your own eye because your outrage is selective.

    Hence your use of modifiers here, i.e. “…apparent pride”, “…and perhaps even”.

    Because you don’t know and you know you don’t know.

    So instead you smear by inuendo a political activist and writer you disagree with.

    But just about all activists and politicians utilize “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy.

    It is the basis of many political alliances.

    Here is a photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983:

    https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

    And who can forget Winston Churchill sucking Josef Stalin’s dick in public?

    However, as much as I detest Winston Churchill….

    I would never say he took apparent pride in doing that or perhaps even normalized Stalin.

    Churchill did what he thought he had to strategically do at the time.

    Get in bed with the lesser evil to stop a greater evil.

    Never a fail safe strategy for anyone but there it is.

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  23. Eoghan

    So what greater evil is being prevented by getting into bed with Assad?

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  24. Eoghan

    Comprensive account of Pilger's, Chomsky's and other "leftist Intellectuals" defence of the genocidaires in the Balkans and Syria.

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  25. Eoghan

    Get a better dictionary, for example, you incorrectly refer to my use of words: "Hence your use of modifiers here, i.e. “…apparent pride”" it is a pretty definitive statement by me -it means 'clearly visible pride'.

    Just to confirm that I am not misunderstanding you; what you are saying here is that the left are prepared to legitimise the Assad regime because the right has a long history of doing the same thing with othet tyrants and despots??

    Again correct me if I am wrong; your attempt at reasoning is that 'because' the right befriend unsavory tyrants and war criminals the left is justified in resorting to the same standards? So much for respecting the rights of Assad's civilian victims.

    The left is now a discredited political alternative and your weak attempts at what-aboutry in defence of the left's solidarity with a war criminal, is not helping your cause --it just making you look unsavoury.

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