From Brazil & Palestine ... This is the Syrian Revolution

In this blog post I want to recommend two new films on the Syrian Revolution, both available on YouTube.

The first is From Brazil... This is the Syrian Revolution , a 29 minute video about support for the Syrian revolution that is growing among activists and workers in Brazil. It was produced by a Marxist organization in Brazil and has some very good theoretical presentation by Valério Arcary @ 19:26 and Angel Parras @ 21:26. Most of the documentary is in Portuguese with English subtitles and it was published on 14 November 2013.

The second is Budour Hassan: Palestine and the Syrian Revolution and is the 13 minute presentation that Palestinian activist and writer for the Electronic Intifada Budour Hassan did on the relationship between the Palestinian and Syrian struggles at a teach-in on 17 November 2013.

From Brazil... This is the Syrian Revolution

Documentary Film produced by the Unified Socialist Workers party (PSTU)- the Brazilian section of the International Workers League- Fourth International (IWL-FI), a revolutionary marxist organization. The film documents the campaign of solidarity with the Syrian Revolution that started on November 2012, and is still ongoing.

The campaign of solidarity with the Syrian Revolution was organized by the federation of trade unions and popular movements (CSP-Conlutas)- the main federation in opposition to the Workers Party (PT) in government.

The documentary covers activities of solidarity during the first phase of the campaign (November 2012-February 2013).

Budour Hassan: Palestine and the Syrian Revolution

Budour Hassan presentation to the teach-in "Syria in the Context of the Arab Uprisings". November 17th, 2013.
MENA Solidarity Network - US
[Transcript here]

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

a small Victory: Mother Agnes-Mariam bites the dust

Brian O first broke the news to me:

Stop the War have finally surrendered

and he sent me a link to this statement from the British based Stop the War coalition, which began:

Over the last few days a campaign has developed over the invitation we extended to Mother Agnes -- a nun from Syria, who leads a campaign called Mussalaha (Reconciliation) -- to speak in London at the International Anti-War Conference on 30 November organised by Stop the War Coalition.

Mother Agnes has now withdrawn from speaking at the conference.

I have already written about Mother Agnes-Mariam's history as a tool of the Assad Regime and the many reasons she should not be welcome at an antiwar event in a recent blog post here. It seems that mass pressure on Stop the War coalition prompted the change. Mother Agnes-Mariam explained her withdrawal in a letter:

Some may feel that an injustice will be done if I speak at your conference. Others may think that injustice will be done if I do not. Because my participation in your conference may be used by some to distract from your valuable efforts towards peace, non-violence and reconciliation, I believe it best to withdraw from participation.

Both Stop the War coalition and Agnes-Mariam are a bit cryptic as to the reason for the withdrawal but Brian O speaks of a firestorm of criticism that found a home on their facebook page. He writes:

I think this was probably the first "cyber-occupation" - basically we had a spontaneous "Occupy Stop the War" movement which turned their Facebook page into an ongoing Syria teach-in/ debate (I had well over 200 posts in my mailbox when I cleaned it up). It obviously wasn't going to stop, so they had to pull up the draw bridge.

Check this facebook page out for yourself and you will see the many hundreds of comments the controversy generated. Bob From Brockley pointed out the reasons people opposed her participation in an anti-war event in his blog, 17, November 2013. He also suggests this blog as a source of further information:

Her invitation provoked outrage from Syrians and supporters of the Syrian revolution, as "Mother Agnes" has been a widely disseminated mouthpiece for the Assad regime's propaganda, including vigorously denying some of Assad's war crimes. (Of pictures of dead children in Ghouta, for example, she claims they are only sleeping.) Her lies are widely promoted by Russian media sources, by Christian news agencies, and by the LaRouche network. There are also live allegations about her own involvement in war crimes, and in the regime murder of journalists. Below the fold, I have pasted some information about her, but some good starting points are Linux Beach, Democratic Revolution, and Pulse.

He also exposed the fundamentally pro-war stance of the "Stop the War" coalition with regards to Syria. This was also a point made many times in the facebook discussion:

While this is not true of all the speakers at the event, it is clear that the main organisers of Stop the War are not anti-war at all. They are just opposed to the US getting involved in wars. The opening words of the conference publicity are these:

In a historic setback for the organisers of the War on Terror, protest and public opinion helped stop a new war on Syria.

Do they not realise that war has been going on in Syria for well over two years, that over 120,000 people have been killed, that 5 million people are displaced in Syria, that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been forced to flee the country? How can "anti-war" people claim that as any sort of achievement?

They also continue to equate any military action against the Assad forces with an attack on Syria. This is a way of taking sides in a civil war and portraying the Assad regime as a defender of Syrian sovereignty.

There is also a growing movement on the Left that is in support of the revolution in Syria and it was active in this struggle. Gilbert Achcar, Louis Proyect, Robin Yassin-Kassab and more than fifty others signed An open letter to the Stop the War Coalition that read, in part [Updated 25/11/13 to reflect final text]:

News recently broke that the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) invited Mother Superior Agnès Mariam de la Croix to speak at its November 30 International Anti-War Conference. Fellow guests included MPs Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn and journalists Owen Jones and Jeremy Scahill.

Responding to a firestorm of protest, Jones and Scahill vowed to boycott the event if the Syrian-based nun spoke alongside them. Eventually she decided to “withdraw” from the conference and StWC issued a statement without explanation. Nor did it divulge why anyone would object to a Syrian cleric’s participation in an ostensibly pro-peace event.
...
Having a massacre denier and apologist for war criminals like Mother Agnès speak alongside respected journalists such as Jeremy Scahill and Owen Jones is not only an insult to them and their principles. It is also, more insidiously, a means of exploiting their credibility and moral authority to bolster hers, both of which are non-existent. No journalist should be sharing a platform with Agnès when she stands accused of being complicit in the death of French journalist Gilles Jacquier by his widow and a colleague who accompanied him into Homs during the trip arranged by Mother Agnès in January 2012.

Given that her UK speaking tour is still scheduled to last from the 21st to 30th November we, the undersigned, feel compelled to express our profound and principled objections to those who give a platform to a woman condemned by Syrian pro-peace Christians for greasing the skids of the regime’s war machine.

The Syrian American Council has also been active in exposing Mother Agnes-Mariam and opposing her propaganda tour. See this link for more details: ACTION ALERT: Stop the Mother Agnes-Mariam Assad Propaganda Tour

SAC has been working closely with Syrian Christians for Peace in this campaign. Last month SCP called Mother Agnes-Mariam "an Assad agent in the clothes of a nun." They said more, including this:

Agnes, the so-called “nun”, has been working for Assad within and outside of Syria. She’s been a frequent traveler whose constant goal is to support Assad, demonize the revolution, and present false testimony. She has recently visited Israel and conducted interviews with Israeli media, in effect begging Israeli leaders to let Assad (and his blood-stained regime) be. She professed her love for Israel, at the behest of her masters, Assad and Hezbollah.

We, Syrian Christians at Syrian Christians for Peace, furthermore have some documents that prove Agnes has been collecting donations for expatriate Syrian Christians and has not provided any of them with information on the uses the money is put to. Therefore, we demand that the Catholic Church stop Agnes from doing any further harm in the name of the Church. We ask that she be excommunicated and prevented from speaking in the name of the Order of Carmelites. The reason is that she has been capitalizing on her religious position, in the service of Assad instead of Christ.

Mother Agnes-Mariam has already done Los Angeles on her most recent world tour. She spoke before about a hundred people at a church in North Hollywood on 9 November, here is a picture from that event:

John Parker, a panelist in the pro-Assad "Eyewitness Syria" event I covered here, reported on it for Workers World:

In a packed Los Angeles church on Nov. 9, Mother Superior Agnes-Mariam of the Cross from Qara, Syria, spoke to an audience of mainly Syrian-Americans and anti-war activists as part of her U.S. and Canada tour. She presented an alternative view to the corporate, pro-imperialist media’s depiction of the situation in Syria concerning the “rebel” forces and their impact on the people there.

My understanding is that she doesn't just present an "alternative view," she presents an alternate reality in which Assad is a good guy and everyone who opposes him is a terrorist, but I can't say directly because they wouldn't allow me into the room. I drove all the way to North Hollywood on a Saturday evening, and you must know WLA traffic these days to know what that means, to find that their previous policy statement that "No one would be turned away" had been replaced by "We reserve the right to refuse anyone." Apparently that meant me because AA4Syria officials turned me away at the door. They wouldn't even accept my ten dollars. Well, John Parker did say that anyone opposed to the Mother was pro-NATO:

Pro-NATO forces in the United States have accused her of complicity with the Syrian government

and why should they let pro-NATO forces into an anti-war event? While Workers World Party is decidedly pro-Assad, and his flag is flying at every Syria event they sponsor, John Parker falsely calls me pro-NATO and he rejects the idea that Agnes-Mariam is pro-Assad:

Mother Agnes said she isn’t taking sides and wants to protect everyone in Syria from government or rebel violence, but she must report that rebel forces are killing civilians, which the media never mention.

If it has been your experience that the media never mentions rebel violence, then maybe you also inhabit John Parker's wonderland were all the other stories from Moscow and Damascus ring true. This is also Mother Agnes-Mariam's alternate reality or "alternative view."

Some members of the Syrian American Council and Syrian Christians for Peace were able to get into this event however but only because they weren't recognized by the person at the door at the time. There has also been some controversy over how this event came to be in the church in the first place. I was told by one SAC member that the priest didn't know the event was taking place and when some church members opposed it they were threatened.

There is also this:
Eyewitness Account: A Not-So-Warm Welcome at Mother Agnes-Mariam’s Talk in San Francisco, CA

We have seen before the strong arm tactics employed by Assad supporters in the peace movement. From this report on the “The Workshop on Global and Regional Implications of the Syrian Crisis” which took place at Lehigh University on 2 November we get this picture of how Assad supporters conduct themselves at events they don't control. Steven Heydemann is from the United States Institute of Peace. Mohammed Ghanem is with SAC:

Heydemann said he believed that “the credible threat of an American military strike is now gone.”

“Opposition military elements long since vetted by the United States received little, in fact, in terms of arms, equipment, and training,” he said. “The regime’s supporters, however, are motivated. Iran needs the Assad regime to ensure it will be of service to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Tehran’s first line of defense against Israel, and Russia’s Putin wants Assad to survive as a symbol of a resurgent Russia. What is left, then, to discuss about Syrian political transition at Geneva?”

“The U.S. is not seen as a strong backer of the opposition when you compare the U.S. backing the opposition to Russia backing Assad,” added Ghanem. “The opposition does not trust that it will be able to achieve much in Geneva because it knows it won’t have a strong ally at the table, and Assad will have an ally.”

Even still, some audience members draped the Syrian Arab Republic flag—the flag of Assad’s regime—over auditorium seats in Zoellner’s Baker Hall and expressed their outrage of the U.S.’s support of the opposition. Three audience members were eventually escorted out of Baker Hall after initially being approached and asked to quiet down by Barkey.
... A group of Syrian-Americans in Bashar al-Assad T-shirts and draped in Syrian flags adorned with Assad's face repeatedly heckled and interrupted speakers. In the final session, they aggressively interrupted and denounced a Lebanese journalist, with one ultimately throwing his shoe at the stage. The panel degenerated into a screaming match, until police arrived to clear the room.

It is very good that the debate over Syria is now beginning in earnest in the Left in the US and UK. To this point, the pro-Assad forces have been able to have influence only because of the silence of the Left. Their views can not survive the debate and their support of fascism can't survive the sun light. So let the struggle continue!

What's next in Southern California? Perhaps a campaign against KPFK's minimal and one-sided reporting on the Syrian conflict?

UPDATES 20 November 2013: Ken Hiebert informs me that a Mother Agnes-Mariam event planned for 11 November in Vancouver did not take place although a meeting planned for Hamilton, Ontario, 1 December, is still on.

The Facebook page Protest Against Mother Agnes' Pro-Assad Propaganda Tour has announced that they will be going forward with a protest in spite of the withdrawal. Dima Moon says:

Thanks to all of you who will be joining our protest. As the title says we are protesting against Mother Agnes pro-Assad propaganda tour. Yesterday Stop the War Coalition announced in a statement that Mother Agnes has now "withdrawn" from the conference. That's a great success for our campaign. However, we are still protesting so all other venues in the UK reject to offer their platform for a war-criminal propagandist.

We also want a clear position from Stop the War Coalition on Assad's war on his own people! Not only being passive but also inviting Assad's apologists to talk at their conference is not acceptable from a Coalition that describes itself as "anti-war"!

Hope to see you all there! we will update you shortly about the event's exact time and other arrangements!

More, later...


Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

UPDATED: Syrian American Council takes on Agnes-Mariam

Flush with the success of striking a deal that allows him to get away with the gas murder of over a thousand people by promising never to do it again, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has joined his on-going military offensive with a "charm" offensive in the West.

Mother Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, a Carmelite nun from the Monastery of St James the Mutilated in Syria, is touring the United States and speaking wherever they will have her.

She is a well known Assad regime propagandist who abuses her religious credentials for credibility. I have written about her before and will have more to say near the end of this piece.

A number of famous and lesser known US Leftists, who had taken the road to Damascus and been given the guided tour, have also been travelling the United States and singing Assad's praises. They include Cynthia McKinney, former congressperson and Green Party presidential candidate, Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General and current Worker's World Party leader, Dedon Kamathi, KPFK Pacifica radio host, and John Parker and Sara Flounders from Ramsey Clark's International Action Committee. When they came to Los Angeles, members of the opposition Syrian American Council were there to make sure the revolution's viewpoint was represented and they plan to be there to greet Mother Agnes-Mariam when she speaks in Los Angeles this Saturday.

Satuday's edition of Mother Agnes-Mariam "North American Speaking Tour" starts at 7:00PM and is titled "What is Really Happening in Syria Today?" and is to be held at Jesus Sacred Heart Church, 10837 Collins St, North Hollywood, CA 91601. Her tour is being sponsored by the Syrian Solidarity Movement and this Los Angeles appearance is being hosted by Arab-Americans For Syria.

Syrian Solidarity Movement is 501c3 non-profit based in California and run by Paul Larudee, an Iranian born US political activist. He is a former Ford Foundation project supervisor and a US government advisor to Saudi Arabia. He is also an organizer with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine and one of the founders of the Free Gaza movement. In May he led an international delegation to Damascus that was suppose to include Dennis Kucinich, and did include writer Franklin Lamb, Nobel Peace Laureate Malread Maguire, Michael Maloof of World Net Daily, and 16 others.

Paul Larudee's support for the Assad dictatorship is naked and twisted. He thinks a dictatorship is a better form of government for resisting US imperialism. As he wrote in a recent Counterpunch article:

The U.S. will attempt to coerce or overthrow any independent-minded government, but an autocratic regime has a better chance of resisting because its repressive apparatus will crush dissidence before it has a chance to breathe.

Paul Larudee completely supports Assad's attempts to crush dissidence. So just be clear on this point - fascism does have its supporters - and this tour is being promoted by supporters of fascism. Which brings us to the group which I think of as Assad's equivalent to the German-American Bund which was so opposed to intervention and so supportive of Hitler just prior to US involvement in World War II.

Arab-Americans For Syria is a strong supporter of the Assad regime. They proudly wave the Assad flag at the "Hands Off Syria" rallies they sponsor and they attempt to shout down anyone with an opposing viewpoint. There have been indications that some members of this group work in closely with the Syrian intelligence services, the Mubrakat. That may be in some dispute but what is clear is that AA4Syria repeats the Assad line word for word. Writing about AA4Syria leader Riad “Ray” Saeid last year, Armen Georgian had this to say:

At first, Ray sounds reasonable. He calls for peace and dialogue. “A dead Sunni, a dead Shi’ite and a dead Christian all smell the same after three days,” he says. But his repeated and impassioned insistence that his rivals are “al-Qaeda sleeper cells; Wahhabis who consider me an infidel” fails to stick.

The Syrian American Council represents that opposition in Southern California and they are not al Qaeda. SAC was founded in 2005 and is the largest Syrian-American community organization in the US with 19 chapters nationwide. It has come out solidly in support of the revolution and in opposition to the Assad regime. The Los Angeles chapter has been growing and ramping up its activities. Recently it is starting to step up its activities.

Opposing the vicious Assad regime is not without its special dangers, even for Syrians as far away as California. After pianist Malek Jandall performed a Syria benefit concert in Los Angeles, his parents were attacked in Homs, Syria and their home was sacked. But such intimidation has failed to stop Syrians who oppose Assad from speaking out.

Most recently SAC has been exposing the real role and purpose of Mother Agnes-Mariam and protesting her speaking tour. They have started an online petition to Stop Mother Agnes-Mariam’s Assad Propaganda Tour or get a fair opportunity to present both sides. So far this campaign has met with good success. Venues in Northern California have reached out to SAC to provide an opposing view at the events and the Vancouver Syrian-American community was successful in having the Mother Agnes-Mariam event scheduled at the Unitarian Church in Vancouver for 11 November cancelled all together!

They have also been getting more organized in Southern California and growing as a result. Since they know Mother Agnes-Mariam's reputation as an Assad Regime apologist, they know she can't be depended upon to tell people "What is Really Happening in Syria Today" so they are mobilizing supporter of the revolution to show up in numbers and set the record straight. You are invited. 

This is precisely what they did a few weeks ago when AA4Syria joined with the International Action Committee to host "Eyewitness Syria" at the Glendale, CA public library on 19 October 2013. Ramsey Clark, John Parker and Dedon Kamathi spoken on a panel moderated by Johnny Achi of AA4S and they all supported what they saw as simply a struggle between the legitimate government of Syria and foreign terrorists backed by the West. That Johnny Achi echoes Bashar al-Assad can be seen even in this synopsis of an interview he did on KPFK. You won't need to consult the whole interview:

Arab Americans for Syria activist Johnny Achi on KPFK radio June 29, 2013 on Obama's terrorist mercenaries beheading of a Franciscan priest and his two assistants by foreign jihadists. This month has seen an escalation in sectarian atrocities committed by insurgents,(foreign mercenaries) who have been publicly armed and supported by America, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other actors.

See CNN exclusive: Catholic monk not beheaded by Syrian rebels, friar says for an exposure of this particular Assad regime fable.

According to Johnny Achi, 95% of the militants in Syria are foreign fighters. Since he is peddling this kind of mythology, the last thing he wants to see at his pro-Assad events is a bunch of Syrians who oppose Assad.

"No one will be turned away"
That is what it said on the fliers and all the publicity for the IAC & AA4Syria "Eyewitness Syria" event, but when SAC members and other supporters of Assad's opposition showed up, some sporting the colors of the revolution, these Assad apologists changed their tune and tried to exclude them. In spite of promises to do it different this time, they reverted back to the same tactic some of the same forces used at an "Eyewitness Libya" event two years ago. I reported on that in No Libyans allowed at ANSWER Libya Forum.

They attempted to apply shabiha tactics, including intimidation and thief, to anyone who openly opposed the Assad regime or sought to expose the fallacy of their narrow version of the "facts." They stole the revolutionary scarf of one SAC member, threaten to call the police on me and others, and tried to keep us out of a public event in a public library by bullying and physical force. In the end, it took the deployment of a Glendale police sergeant and 5 units to assure us access and keep the peace.

A more personal and detailed account of events of that night has been published on Not George Sabra, Really under the title Syrian American Council and Clay Claiborne Battle LA Shabiha.

SAC rep Anisa Abeytia interviewed after Glendale event | 19 Oct 2013
The Truth Must Be Told has also posted the major presentations of the panel members to YouTube including Johnny Achi, Coordinator of Arab Americans for Syria, John Parker, West Coast Coordinator of the International Action Center, and Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and founder of International Action Center.

More on Mother Agnes-Mariam
I had occasion to write about Mother Agnes-Mariam in June in Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire's Syria Connection and what I said then is worth repeating:

Opinions vary as to the role of Mother Agnès-Mariam. For example The Irish Times carried this charge against her by a Jesuit who had lived in Syria for 30 years:

Nun on Irish visit accused of peddling 'regime lies' about crisis in Syria Mary Fitzgerald
Sat, Aug 18, 2012, 01:00
AN ITALIAN Jesuit expelled from Syria in June due to his outspoken criticism of government violence has accused a controversial nun who visited Ireland last week of peddling “regime lies” about the crisis there.

Fr Paolo Dall’Oglio, who lived in Syria for 30 years and has been heavily involved in interfaith work in the country, described Mother Agnès-Mariam as “an instrument” of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “She has been consistent in assuming and spreading the lies of the regime, and promoting it through the power of her religious persona,” he told The Irish Times yesterday. “She knows how to cover up the brutality of the regime.”

During her four-day visit to Ireland last week, Mother Agnès-Mariam, who is superior at the Melkite Greek Catholic monastery in Syria, gave media interviews in which she claimed Christians in Syria were facing “extinction” and that rebels battling Assad were predominantly foreigners linked with al-Qaeda.

Fr Dall’Oglio, who has spent time with opposition activists in several restive parts of Syria, said these claims were “ridiculous” and constituted regime propaganda.

“I have been there, I know the people, including the youth, who are working for the revolution, and I know that what she is saying is insane. It corresponds with the regime version of the facts,” he said. More...

Her reputation as an Assad dictatorship mouthpiece has even made it to YouTube. Ali Haider, a video activist, has produced this critique of Maquire's hero:

ASSAD AND MOTHER AGNES MARIAM; UNHOLY ALLIANCE, SYRIA 18+ These notes accompany the video:

Published on May 10, 2013

Mother Agnès-Mariam of the Cross is, arguably, the Christian equivalent of Shaikh Ramadan Al Bouti. She is very vocal in talking about "the foreign fighters" who came to Syria and started beheading people but she has no issue with Assad forces and sectarian gangs committing the worst atrocities against civilians since the days of Crusaders and Mongols. We don't know if she is an active paid agent for Assad propaganda masters or she is just doing this for free. One explanation is that she, like many other from the Christian minority, bought Assad's claim that he protects the minorities in Syria. She and many others from those minorities forgot that there is no future for them without the Syrian majority and we are not talking here about the Sunni majority but about Syrians who had enough of the Assad's and their affiliated gangs and who wanted their country to be free and democratic. Those are the real majority and they will prevail. Those who sided with the tyrant or preferred to sit on the fence are the real minority regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliation. We wanted to remind Mother Agnès that the tyrant uses his loyal servants for a specific reason then he dumps them. We saw how many senior Syrian officials either "committed suicide" or had "a heart attack" out of nowhere. We wanted also to remind everybody, Assad's sect included, that helping tyrants is immoral and punishable here and in the hereafter.

On 26 May 2012, after the Houla massacre happened, Mother Agnès-Mariam's outlet, Vox Clamantis, issued a press release claiming that the Syrian army was not in the vicinity of Houla and did not bombard the area.

Investigations and reports by the United Nations, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch all concluded that the Assad regime was behind the massacre. The 15 member UN Security Council unanimously condemned Syria for the attack and Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. announced that they were expelling Syrian diplomats in response to the massacre, which all but the most die-hard Assad supporters blame on his reign.

The Committee to Protect Journalists implicated Mother Agnès-Mariam in the murder of a journalist, Gilles Jacquier, by the Assad regime. Pulse Media reported:

Dead journalists and Sister Agnès-Mariam August 21, 2012
The attacks on media personnel affiliated with the Syrian regime has been rightly condemned. But not enough is said about the regime’s more systematic policy to co-opt and in some cases deliberately trap journalists for propaganda purposes. Most shocking however is the role of Sister Agnès-Mariam, the regime-affiliated nun who has been feted both by the far left and the Christian right.
...
Hammouche and Jacquier were among a group of 15 journalists allowed into Syria on government-issued visas facilitated by Sister Agnès-Mariam de la Croix, a Lebanese nun of Palestinian origin with close relations to the Assad regime. Sister Agnès had helped arrange a reporting trip to Homs on January 11, although she declined to accompany the group, saying her absence would help them move freely. Jacquier resisted the Homs trip, believing it unsafe, but Sister Agnès urged him to go or risk losing the opportunity to renew his visa beyond the initial four-day period, Hammouche told CPJ in an account consistent with news reports. More...

Gilles Jacquier became the first western journalist killed in the Syrian Civil War. He was killed in Homs on 11 January 2012.

One of Mother Agnès-Mariam's more extreme claims can be heard here in her own voice:
Syrian rebels took bodies from hospital to stage massacre

"People told us that they have seen militias carrying out from the national hospital in Taldou, corpses on blankets of the Ministry of Health, carrying them to assemble them in a mosque."

The Assad regime has used every means at its disposal to promote its narrative in the mainstream media and even the Catholic Church has unwittingly played a role:

For example, in March, Agenzia Fides, an official Vatican publication, republished (almost verbatim) material provided by the Syrian propaganda website "Syria Truth." The article claimed that jihadists had expelled Christians from Homs. This information eventually found its way into outlets such as the Los Angeles Times. When we demonstrated the dubious veracity of these claims, Syria Truth went ballistic. A subsequent McClatchy article corroborated our refutation.

Middle East Forum wrote on 12 June 2012; they also wrote about Mother Agnès-Mariam:

Like Nizar Nayouf of Syria Truth, Mother Agnès-Mariam often assumes the slick veneer of a moderate; she even wrote an open letter to Assad about the condition of people affected by the fighting in Syrian hospitals. It's hard not to conclude that Mother Agnès-Mariam is little more than another Assad propagandist using her religious credentials to push a particular narrative.

According to the Swiss newspaper Le Courrier, Agnès-Mariam was "comfortable among [Assad's] security services," and she told their reporter it was hoped he could "dismantle the propaganda of Western media." Thierry Meyssan also conducted a revealing interview with Mother Agnès-Mariam about Middle Eastern Christians. During the interview, the mother superior repeated the typically farcical Assad line that the dictator was truly trying to "reform."

Agnès-Mariam told Meyssan that she "deplored the fact that the so-called opponents didn't accept President Bashar Al-Assad's invitation to debate with him the series of reforms which he is in the process of carrying out."(Of course, it would be of no consequence to the sister (who never recanted her earlier statements) that in leaked private e-mails Assad told his wife, "We are going to adopt [a plan that left him in power] instead of the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media [i.e., actual democratic reforms].")

Mother Superior Agnès-Mariam continued by claiming that the opposition was just a puppet in a conspiracy guided by foreign powers.

Why Mother Agnès-Mariam appears so strongly in Assad's corners is a matter for speculation. A flower child in the sixties, Agnès-Mariam had "a kind of revelation" in the eighties that eventually, in 1994, led her to move to Qâra, Syria "to breathe new life into an ancient monastery of the sixth century that lies in disuse." If that is the case, she may well feel that her ability to continue her life's work is dependent on her staying in the good graces of Bashar al-Assad.

More recently she has been implicated in the mass murder of civilians in Moadamiyyah, which was the site of a sarin gas attack in August. As reported by EAWorldView:

In the past month, the Assad regime has allowed three parties of traumatized and starved civilians to be evacuated from Moadamiyet al-Shaam, to escape the regime military’s own daily bombardment and crippling siege which has killed and injured large numbers of residents, as well as leading directly to endemic chronic malnutrition and disease among the civilian population, with a number of residents, mostly children, dying as a result, During another attempted evacuation in the same period, conducted with the assistance of known regime propagandist and ally Mother Fadia Lahham (also known as Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross), regime forces fired directly at the waiting women and children, killing three and injuring dozens more.

And now she is coming to Southern California to tell us "What is Really Happening in Syria Today."

Be there or be square:
Jesus Sacred Heart Church
7:00 - 10:00PM 9 November 2013
10837 Collins St.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

UPDATED 7 November 2013: We have this report from SAC Northern California Board Member Ziad A:

Eyewitness Account: A Not-So-Warm Welcome at Mother Agnes-Mariam’s Talk in San Francisco, CA
7 November 2013

At the event, I held a sign that read, “Stop Mother Agnes Propaganda. She is an Assad Agent disguised as a Nun!” I went to the front of the audience and held the sign for all to see– including Mother Agnes-Mariam.

I asked her if she was ready to denounce Assad who is responsible for killing more than 150,00 people. Before she had a chance to respond, I was attacked by three or four people who were using all kinds of profanity toward me. Two guys held my arms behind my back and one guy put his hand on my throat and they started shoving me out of the Church. At that moment, I felt like if they could’ve killed me and gotten away with it, they would have!

The police were outside, but they seemed to take the side of the Assad-loyalists. I explained that Mother Agnes was a liar and that over 150,000 people are dead in Syria and I was here for peace and wanted to exercise my right of ‘Freedom of Speech’. The Assad-thugs insisted I was provoking them by holding up a sign on private property, but I responded and said I was invited by the event’s moderator, Paul Larudee.

I am thinking of pressing charges against the people who violently ushered me out of the Church. I can’t believe this is happening here in our country!

Radio Free Syria is inviting you to email Mother Agnes-Mariam directly:

Now you can email Assad's nazi nun, 'Mother Agnes Mariam,' and give the frocked fascist a piece of your mind about her support of genocidal totalitarian dictatorship in (an abuse of) the name of Christianity. We would recommend creating a bogus/special address for this task; regime personnel have a habit of tracking and harassing regime critics.

• 
  

  Dear Mother Agnes

  
  

  We have confirmed Mother Agnes-Mariam's email address is darantakia@hotmail.com. Send her videos and pictures of Assad's atrocities and let her know what you think of her.
  
  Send a copy of the email to dearmotheragnes1@gmail.com and we will post the best messages/responses here.

Peter Bouchaert of Human Rights Watch debunks Mother Agnes-Mariam claims that the gas attack videos were faked in this BBC News report:

Mother Agnes: Syria's 'detective' nun who says gas attack film faked
1 October 2013
...
"There's just no basis for the claims advanced by Mother Agnes," says Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, which has produced many detailed reports on Syria.

"She is not a professional video forensic analyst... we have found no evidence to indicate any of the videos were fabricated."

One by one, Mr Bouckaert rejected the claims, saying:

• There were tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the Ghouta area of Damascus, according to very regular reports received by Human Rights Watch
• Children were often sleeping in the basements of buildings in significant concentrations because of the intense shelling and that is why so many died (Sarin gas accumulates at low levels)
• The dead and those injured in the chemical attack were moved from place to place and room to room both at the clinics and ultimately for burial
• There were many men and women who were victims of the attacks. But there were separate rooms for the bodies of children, men and women so they could be washed for burial
• Almost all of the victims have been buried
• Human rights researchers have spoken to the relatives of Alawite women and children abducted by rebels. None of them said they had recognised their loved ones in the gas attack videos

While Russia's motives for promoting Mother Agnes's research, regardless of its accuracy, are obvious, what motivates her?

She is accused of being an apologist for the Assad regime - something she denies.

But she has accused the rebels of committing atrocities before.

It seems her motivation may be fear - that the Syrian government will eventually be overthrown by militant Islamist groups, jeopardising the future of the minority Christian community in the country.
More...

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Blonde on Blonde: Diane Sawyer's racism shows in Roma child abduction

The look on her face after being "saved"

The four-year-old little blonde-haired, blue-eyed gypsy girl living in a Roma camp near Larissa, Greece, that the world has come to know as Maria, was abducted from the only family she has ever known by Greek authorities on 16 October 2013.

In a era were a dozen children are murdered every day in Syria without notice, the plight of little Maria quickly became an international headline. This is the way Diane Sawyer introduced the story on ABC World News on Monday 21 October 2013:

Next tonight the mystery of a girl known as Maria, a little girl with blue eyes found inside a kind of camp in Greece. How did she get there with those people and who are her real parents?

As far as Diane Sawyer was concerned, this Roma couple couldn't possibly be the "real parents" of such a "little blonde girl."

There are some 10 million Roma people spread throughout Europe, mostly in gypsy enclaves. As the crisis of capitalism has dug its claws deeper into European society, the Roma people, who are generally darker than most white Europeans, have become a favorite whipping boy. Like the Latino immigrants in the United States, they have become the targets of increased harassment and deportations as the powers-that-be seek to deepen divisions among the exploited.

In a variant on the NYPD "Stop & Frisk" policy, the European authorities often carry out sweeps for guns and drugs in Roma camps. Like "Stop & Frisk" (for guns and drugs?), this justification for racist harassment is a double fix. It implies the criminality of the people being harassed and it says that harassment is being done for the protection of the white majority.

With her family in happier times for Maria

The police in Greece were involved in one such search for guns and drugs in a Roma camp when they happen instead on a child that they decided shouldn't be there. The reason they decided the girl they named little Maria, didn't belong there, was that unlike all the other dark haired children in the Roma camp, little Maria had blonde hair and blue-eyes. Diane Sawyer had Alex Perez covering the story in Greece:

It's her distinctive blonde hair and blue eyes that may have saved her, her young face being seen around the world.

There is no doubt that the conditions of little Maria's life were terrible, as they are for poor children all over the world, but the ABC News reports showed little concern for the conditions of Roma children in the camps generally, or improving those conditions. The whole point seemed to be that little Maria, with her blonde hair and blue eyes, didn't belong with "those people," that she should be "saved." Accordingly, they strove hard to portray Maria's life among the Romas negatively. When they showed a video of little Maria dancing with neighbours, it was "a haunting home video" and "she looks out of step in her own world." Alex Perez continued:

Police thought she looked nothing like the couple who claimed to be her parents. A DNA test proved she was not theirs. Today they charged this gypsy couple with abducting her, accusing them of falsifying the paperwork for several of their 14 children.

Authorities are also trying to figure out who their parents may be. The couple argue the child's mother gave the young girl to them and that they adopted her. As word spread, authorities here in Greece tonight say they were inundated with calls from around the world including the United States, many from desperate family members searching for their little children.

It should be noted in the margins somewhere that ABC News and Diane Sawyer are defining "real parents" as only those who provided DNA to the child. Adopted parents, no matter how legal the adoption, foster parents, no matter how real the love, and step-parents, never mind the trials, can never be considered "real parents" in the eyes of these representatives of the Disney Corporation. That is a very important subtext to Diane Sawyer's reporting on this story.

When DNA tests proved 39-year-old Christos Salis and 40-year-old Eleftheria Dimopoulou were not the biological parents of Maria, the couple that had raised her from infancy, and my neighbours accounts, given her good care, were arrested and charged with kidnapping and fraud. They have four children although it is said that they claimed fourteen with state agencies. They remain in jail still.

Little Maria was taken into the custody of state authorities and has not been publicly seen or heard from since. She was turned over to a Greek charity, Smile of the Child, and a worldwide search for her "real" family was launched. On Tuesday Diane Sawyer told us "Authorities have taken her DNA, and are investigating whether she is a victim of human trafficking." in a segment titled "Finding Out the Truth About the Little Girl Named Maria." We are told that even "The FBI is investigating" "the mystery surrounding the little blonde girl Maria discovered living with a family in Greece." Never mind that this "mystery" is based entirely on the authorities, and the medias, refusal to believe anyone who actually knows the child. Alex Perez continues his report:

Today, we took a trip to the Roma or gypsy neighborhood where Maria was living. As you arrive, the first thing you see, children. Many, dirty.

On the street where Maria lived emotions were running high. We came to the family members that are in the house. They're extremely upset, saying what's been said are nothing but lies. Authorities are investigating whether Maria was a victim of human trafficking.

The people who actual knew and care for little Maria are very concerned but they are of no account because they are Roma. On Diana Sawyer's show, the view is very upbeat:

The fact that Maria has been identified and rescued is a miracle in and of itself with statistics stating one to two percent ever get rescued. It's a miracle.

A little girl has been abducted from her family by state authorities for entirely racist reasons and ABC News calls it a miracle!

Maria's birth parents with sibling

When the birth parents did come forward, Sasha and Atanas Ruseva, they turned out to be another dark haired, dark skinned, Roma couple in Nikolaevo, Bulgaria. They confirmed the story that Maria's effective parents had told authorities already, which was that the birth mother, Sasha Ruseva, who was working as an olive picker in Greece and already had seven children when Maria was born, gave the infant to Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou because she did not feel that they could raise her themselves. The Ruseva's now have nine children, even without Maria. One of their biological children has blonde hair, like Maria and one has red hair.

"I gave my child away because we were hungry," Ruseva said.

"[The Greek woman told me]: 'Give me this child, I will take care of it. You can come and take it back anytime you want'," Ruseva claimed.

"I intended to go back and take my child home, but meanwhile I gave birth to two more kids so I was not able to go back."

The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

Hospital birth records show a baby girl was born to Mrs Ruseva on January 31, 2009 – the same date given as the birthday by the Roma couple who claimed the girl as their own.

Two of Maria's siblings by the Rusevas

Dark-haired parents can give birth to blonde and red headed children if both parents carry normally recessive genes of the other colors. This simple understanding of how genetics works, even for Roma people, has been lost of authorities bound to simplistic notions of race, not only in Greece but also in Ireland, where, amidst the hysteria generate by the "blue-eyed child abducted by Roma" headlines, another Roma couple had their blonde haired seven-year-old taken from them for three days. Even the birth certificate they produced was ignored until the DNA tests came back. In that case, the family was "devastated by the ordeal" and "her mother had not eaten for three days" according to the Daily Beast.

The Irish police must have gone on an anti-Roma rampage in the wake of the Greek story because they also took another blonde-haired Roma child, a little boy this time, from his parents until the DNA results proved he was theirs.  Like the Greek police, the Irish police had decided, on the basis of eye-color, hair-color, and skin-color that the child did not belong to that family. There is a bit of irony in this because the Irish have long been known as the niggers of Europe but it would seem that the Roma are the new niggers of Europe and the Irish are all too eager to join in the queue and pile on with the other whites, a trait they have also exhibited on this side of the Atlantic.

The way this story has been played up in the media has had the effect of promoting racist hysteria against Roma across Europe. There have also been reports of skin heads in Serbia attacking a Roma couple because their child had lighter skin than they had.

This was a new play on the white supremacist, King Kong theme, that the darker people covet and will steal the blonde-haired, blue-eye girls. That is the fear that Diane Sawyer was especially good at promoting. That is why they said that she had been "saved," why ABC News called it "a miracle" and "a global beacon of hope" for all the other lost little blonde girls the media has dwelt on over the years.

Without anything like a shred of evidence. they implied that Maria had been bought and would be sold, simply by dropping hints:

Authorities have taken her DNA, and are investigating whether she is a victim of human trafficking.
...
Authorities are investigating whether Maria was a victim of human trafficking. 30 million people worldwide are trafficked, 80 percent women and children.
...
We have the proper authorities investigating to identify trafficking rings.

That was three mentions, in just one segment! In case you didn't get the message that Diane Sawyer thinks that the Roma couple are kidnappers and little "blonde angel" a victim of human trafficking. Tuesday, 22 October, ABC News Good Morning America ran with the headline:

4 US Families Believe 'Gypsy Girl' Is Theirs

Families around the world hold out hope after a Greek couple was accused of kidnapping a young girl.

They even entertained the irrational suggestion that Maria could be the missing child of a desperate Kansas City couple, a child that would be only two-years-old now. Then they went on to report:

Now, the Roma couple appeared at the courthouse behind me. They are both headed to jail. While police continue hunting for Maria's real parents.

This trafficking charge is ridiculous on its face because poor Roma families don't exchange children for money among themselves and no one obtaining an infant for trafficking raises it for four years without selling it, but it remains the only fig-leaf protecting the authorities from the most acute embarrassment.

Even though the facts are as the Roma couple that raised Maria said they were all along and the birth parents have confirmed this, little Maria remains with the child charity that has been given custody of her while the adoptive parents remain in jail because they continue to suspect that Maria was exchanged for money. The birth parents have had their seven minor children taken away from them by authorities in Bulgaria.

The mythology is that the Roma take people's children but the reality is that there has been a long history of that state taking Roma children from their parents as is the case here. One example, between 1998-2002 502 Albanian Roma children went missing from a state run children's institution in Athens. The disappearance has never been adequately investigated but it has been suggested that they might have been given to human traffickers.

This little blonde Roma girl in Ireland was said to have been crying and "very upset" by her ordeal. It's hard to believe that it could be otherwise for a young child taken away from her family. That is why it is hard to believe the authorities reports about the current happiness of little Maria since she was taken from her family.

But for the authorities and the media, who both serve the same masters, this episode was not really about the welfare of little Maria or any child. It was about stoking the fires of racism among a people that are themselves being pressed hard by the capitalist crisis. What this episode shows is that while both the authorities and the media claim to be color blind, they are ready and willing to drop that façade in an instance when it suits them.

Fault is with Capitalism, not the Companies it keeps!

One of the reasons you have not heard from me in a few days is that I have been dealing with a mild case of shingles. Fortunately, I got good care at the Venice Family Clinic [in Santa Monica], so it looks to be of very short duration.

VFC tells me that the so-called shingles vaccine, while a real money maker, isn't all that effective and probably not worth the cost, but quickly getting on an antiviral after an outbreak can make a big difference, including greatly shortening the course of the disease, and most importantly, mitigating the chances of long-term nerve damage.

They gave me an appointment the day after the rash broke out and immediately put me on antibiotics and antivirals. They had me come back the next day and confirmed shingles. That was 16 days ago, now its just about gone.

Funny thing I discovered about shingles. The 'baby-boomer' generation may be its last big hurrah, rid willing. Shingles, may also be called "chicken-pox's revenge" because it is caused by the same virus that gave you chicken pox as a child. To get shingles, you have to have had chickenpox. While, you may have thought you cleared your system of the chickenpox virus long ago, more than fifty years in my case, it has all the while been lurking in the roots of nerves, waiting for an opportunity.

"Moles bury very deep into the fabric of Western society and they are very dear to Moscow Center because it may be ten on even twenty years before they are use."

They don't know exactly what causes the virus to turn on again, although age obviously has something to do with it. Moscow Center has nothing to do with it. I just like John LeCarre. 

Shingles was less prevalent in the past because as children got chickenpox. Exposure to them acted as something of a booster shot to adults that had chickenpox before, making it less likely that they would suffer from shingles later on. Children who now receive the chickenpox vaccine, won't get chickenpox and can therefore never get shingles. I, and maybe you, on the other hand, are in the "got you" generation. Having had chickenpox as a child, I was shingles eligible, but since my children got the chickenpox vaccine, I never got my booster, making me a candidate for the new class of very expensive anti-virals.

Medicine is full of such contradictions. Another, much more serious one is how our very success in treating all kinds of aliments with antibiotics is coming round to haunt us.

Why Capitalism can't kill the Superbug
Frontline is running a story on PBS about the looming danger of gram-negative bacteria "Superbugs" that are proving to be immune to antibiotics and are starting to kill people all over the world at an accelerating rate.

This is a species level problem, and to the extent that other animals share in the benefits of our medical technology, a planet level problem.

There are many aspects to this problem which the show addressed. One struck me as driving home the fact that while many on the Left seem to target the large corporation as the root of the problem, this is not the case. The root of the problem is the system of capitalism.

This was a segment on Pfizer's attempt at a cure, which sounded formidable.

By the time humanity was presented with the challenge of the superbug, Pfizer was one of only three major drug companies still doing new research into antibiotics. Capitalist economics don't favor investment in new drugs designed to be used as little as possible as compare with drugs that will keep you alive as long as you use them.

Nevertheless, Pfizer, which calls itself "the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company" saw the growing need and felt a social obligation to see to it, according to company representatives interviewed by Frontline. This was, after all, the company that made its bones on penicillin and has always been a leader in antibiotic and anti-fungal medicine.

To make a long story, short, see Frontline for the details, the company spent hundreds of millions on it, built a fantasy new research center for it in Groton, CN, put top people on it for years but eventually they have had to face the fact that this superbug was also proving to be very resistant to private investment dollars being thrown at it. They closed the Groton research center and disassembled what many considered the finest anti-superbug pipline in the world.

To me, all the Pfizer people interviewed, from the corporate officers to the top scientist, sounded very sincere in their desire to beat this bug but in the end, Pfizer operates in a capitalist system where it is hard to justify investing more into an enterprise than is likely to be returned in profit. Hell, thanks to the Dodge brothers, shareholders can even sue you for doing that.

The moral of this story is that if the superbug takes us all down, it probably won't be because we don't possess the collective capabilities to defeat it but because the current organization of these capabilities [forces of production] won't allow us to defeat it.

But then, that's pretty much the way it is with every problem we face.

My next blog will be on Diane Sawyer's reporting on the Roma child case and what that tells us about racism at ABC News and beyond. I'm thinking about calling it "Blonde on Blonde."

Then, back to Syria, in Glendale,Ca I will report back on how the other half of the PSL/WWP split tried to keep revolutionary Syrian's out of their Syria forum.

More, later...