NO LONGER THE PRESIDENT, NEVER THE PRINCE: STOP CALLING TRUMP ‘MACHIAVELLIAN’

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Bashar al-Assad, catholic church, David Ignatius, dictators, Donald Trump, far-right, featured, Florence, Italy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Kafka, Machiavelli, Medici, morality, oppression, Orwell, patriotism, political correctness, political theory, politics, republican, resistance, The Prince, tyrants, US congress, US presidential election, USA, virtù, Washington Post.

By Howard Green

The last days of Trump have come at last, heralding an inevitably vast amount of journalistic analysis. Trump has been criticised continually through his presidency from many angles by commentators across the media spectrum. Now, as we seek to understand the terrifying exceptionalism of the past four years, classical political thought has once again reared its head. In order to criticise Trump, many invoke writers who have become associated with a collective anxiety – Orwell, Kafka, and, most frustratingly, Machiavelli. Niccolò Machiavelli and his writings have been associated with despotism and evil ever since his works were placed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by the Catholic church. But to describe Trump as Machiavellian is a misunderstanding of the controversial but frustratingly correct political theorist who warned against tyrants like him.

SLAUGHTER AND MASS DISPLACEMENT IN IDLIB

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged #Save_Idlib, Aleppo, Bashar al-Assad, bombing, bombs, ceasfire, drones, featured, Hama, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Idlib, Iran, islamic relief, israel, Nato, propaganda, putin, raed al-saleh, Russia, saraqib, save idlib, state media, Syria, syria campaign, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, terrorism, turkey, UN, united nations, white helmets.

by Sarah Edgcumbe

“Children and anybody with a free spirit have become terrorists in the eyes of the world.” My Syrian friend and I are discussing the current situation in Idlib. We are both exasperated that the world is standing idly by as thousands of innocent people are murdered or made homeless. Idlib, a governorate in North West Syria, is often portrayed as home exclusively to terrorists and violent Islamist extremists. My friend’s reference to “a free spirit” is his description of the people who participated in the Syrian revolution: those who dared to demand a free and peaceful life including the right to participate in democratic elections and to exercise freedom of speech and assembly without fear of being arbitrarily detained, tortured, executed or otherwise disappeared into the Syrian regime’s nightmarish prison system.Continue Reading

WHAT WE CALL A TERRORIST SHOULD APPLY TO POWERFUL STATES AS WELL

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged arrest, Bashar al-Assad, BDS, Diyarbakir, featured, Gaza, human rights, Iran, Iran Revolutionary Guard, israel, Kurd, Kurdistan, occupation, Omar al Bashir, palestine, PKK, racism, refugee, RSF, Saudi Arabia, state terror, state violence, terrorism, Trump, turkey, UAE, war crimes.

by Sarah Edgcumbe

In April of this year, President Trump further demonstrated his ineptitude as world leader, and cemented his status as an intellectually defective moron, by designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Yes. Trump has designated a sovereign country’s state forces “terrorists” despite his single-handed destruction of the Iranian Nuclear Deal, wholehearted support for Israeli aggression and murder of unarmed Palestinians, and the fact that U.S state forces have unjustifiably slaughtered millions. The pot is definitely calling the kettle black. Continue Reading

RUSSIA AND THE SYRIAN PROBLEM

Posted on March 2, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Andrei Karlov, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, ceasfire, Crimea, daesh, drones, featured, Hezbollah, humanitarian corridor, Iran, israel, Jaysh al-Islam, Nato, propaganda, putin, Russia, state media, Syria, terrorism, Trump, turkey, Ukraine, UN, united nations, withdrawal of US support.

by Gunnar Eigener

Content warning: mentions drone attacks, conflict, and terrorism.

While the US President, Donald Trump, has made it clear that the US presence in Syria was to carry out the extermination of Daesh, Russia’s intentions have always been to support their ally, Bashar al-Assad. Last September the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, made a surprise visit to Syria to announce that Russia had succeeded in its mission. While both might be correct, it is Putin who is in a more difficult position and the risk that Russia will be dragged further in has become ever more likely.

Syria was an opportunity for Putin’s Russia to flex its muscles on the international stage again after creating trouble in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. Having already interfered in the election in the US and potentially in other elections in Europe, Russia remains largely unchallenged. Sanctions brought about by the US Congress do little to curb the ambitious plans of a nation seeking to relive past glories. Russia continues to forge relations with former satellite states and the lack of US involvement in NATO does nothing to deter the risk of another cold war breaking out in Eastern Europe. Yet, as with so many Western states, Russia has found itself stuck in the political and religious quagmire that is the Middle East.Continue Reading

ALEPPO: A TRAGEDY WE WON’T LEARN FROM

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Abdul Mohsen bin Walid bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Aleppo, Amnesty International, Bashar al-Assad, Britain, CIA, cold war, Darfur, democracy, ethnic cleansing, human rights, Iran, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, media, media bias, Mujahideen, nationalism, obama, rebels, Russia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Syria, UN, US.

by Gunnar Eigener

Content warning: mentions genocide, conflict, death.

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilisation.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

As Aleppo draws its last few timid breaths, the global community sits back and watches as four years of war, suppression and ignorance engulf an ancient city, certain to go down, alongside the likes of Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur, as an abject failure of Western governments to fight the oppression of human rights and democracy that they have so carefully and vocally pronounced their desire to protect. Continue Reading

FANNING THE FLAMES OF WAR IN SYRIA

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged barack obama, Bashar al-Assad, burkini, Hilary Clinton, Iran, ISIS, Islam, islamophobia, Julian Assange, Lebanon, Libya, middle east, nuclear, oil, Ottoman Empire, Saudi Arabia, Syria, terrorism, turkey, US, US presidential election, war, WikiLeaks.

By Faizal Nor Izham

While Islamophobia continues to run rampant on the streets of Europe, one critical aspect that tends to be overlooked by the mainstream media when it comes to the Western world’s relationship with the Middle East is the steady stream of armed aid the former provides to pro-Western regimes in the latter. Understanding the main source of grievances in the Arab world may offer us a clue as to why there is so much tension stemming from the Middle East today. For example, it’s no secret that the British government has for a long time been highly complicit in its arms dealings with Sunni Saudi Arabia, often used by the oil-rich kingdom to exterminate Shi’ite Houthi rebels in Yemen. And even more recently, leaked emails from Hillary Clinton also indicate that she is fully supportive of fanning the flames in Syria even further through the export of arms to extremist groups such as ISIS.

THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD IS SHORT

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged #DontBombSyria, #ParisAttacks, aistrikes, Ankara, army, Bashar al-Assad, Beirut, bombing, daesh, Daniel Heath Justice, Instanbul, IS, Islam, Islamaphobia, Maiduguri, media, media bias, memory, middle east, MSM, nation, nonviolence, politics, privilege, propaganda, racism, refugee crisis, selective memory, Syria, terrorism, violence, West.

by Ellen Musgrove

Cherokee writer and academic Daniel Heath Justice writes in The Kynship Chronicles that ‘the memory of the world is short, and death rides hard in the forgetting.’ Being indigenous and queer, Justice knows very well the selective amnesia of the nation-state, and the resistance that demands.

Such an introduction may seem obscure, but this perceived obscurity demonstrates the problem I want to discuss. The same nation-state amnesia is imbricated in “western” society’s selective mourning of recent terror attacks, the current refugee crisis, and now renewed military intervention.

Bashar al-Assad

NO LONGER THE PRESIDENT, NEVER THE PRINCE: STOP CALLING TRUMP ‘MACHIAVELLIAN’

By Howard Green

SLAUGHTER AND MASS DISPLACEMENT IN IDLIB

WHAT WE CALL A TERRORIST SHOULD APPLY TO POWERFUL STATES AS WELL

RUSSIA AND THE SYRIAN PROBLEM

ALEPPO: A TRAGEDY WE WON’T LEARN FROM

FANNING THE FLAMES OF WAR IN SYRIA

THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD IS SHORT

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