Syria elections: Always Disparaged by the Meddling Imperial West

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Janice Kortkamp

You can't fool all the people all the time, but the US keeps trying, starting with its own population.

The election for Syria's President begins for ex-pats tomorrow and in Syria on the 26th of May.

The US, UK and other western countries will no doubt dismiss the election results because:

1) most surely current President Dr. Bashar al-Assad will win, and
2) because the US has no puppet candidates in the race.

Also, the "great champions of freedom and democracy" - the governments of the US, UK and Germany - are forbidding Syrians in their countries from voting.

The US et al will NOT condemn any elections for leader in their great ally, best weapons buying customer, and the current killers of Yeman - Saudi Arabia - you know why?

Because Saudi Arabia has no elections for leader! Never have, never will have elections because Saudi Arabia is, and has been, ruled by a single family of absolute dictators whose power is protected by the US and UK in perpetuity.

The photos are from the Syrian Presidential elections in 2014. (After almost four years of brutal, Western-backed Salafist war against the people of Syria, with the aim of regime change.)

It was semi-miraculous that they could hold them at all at that time. This was prior to the Russians coming in to help fight ISIS and al Qaeda. The "rebels" still held much of the country and were creating one mini "Saudi Arabia" after another in their areas, usually driving out religious minorities - often killing them outright; establishing a harsh interpretation of sharia law as the rule of law including having many Saudis as the sharia court judges; forcing women to be fully covered (in secular Syria women may wear what they wish) ... while the US and its allies were calling them "freedom fighters".

The US backed "freedom fighters" refused to allow their people to participate in the 2014 election. Some of the groups like Ahrar al-Sham (that's received advanced weapons and all kinds of other support from the US) put up billboards proclaiming "Democracy is haram" (forbidden by Islamic law).

Not only did Obama, Biden, Hilary Clinton, and John Kerry's favorite headchopping "moderate rebels" refuse to let their people vote, they made many attacks on Syrians who were voting. They killed a reported 150 people that day at voting centers or on their way to them.

The Syrian election was observed by many foreign delegations but it was the results in Lebanon which really proved their validity. The turnout was massive among Syrian ex-pats and refugees, braving a punishing summer heat wave and some standing in line for 15 hours. There was much singing and dancing. The lines were reportedly almost 2 km long and the polls had to open the next day to handle the flood. Now retired Virginia state Senator Richard Black met with Syrians in Beirut and some women showed him where they had nicked their index finger with a sharp knife so they could vote for Bashar al-Assad with their blood. Western journalists in their reporting of the huge crowds with often jubilant voters tried in vain to portray them as being forced. What a horrid and criminal joke western 'news' media is.

And still the US and other western countries, determined to undermine the legitimacy of the Syrian government and leader in their hoped-for regime change terrorist-proxy war, condemned the election as invalid.

The democratic structures there are imperfect but they are there which is more than can be said for America's puppet regimes in the region.

So cheers to you Syria and may God be with you. Who leads Syria is not for the hypocritical war mongering West to decide.

Janice Kortkamp, an antiwar, anti-imperialist Virginian, is a citizen journalist, forced to assume mass communications functions due to the collapse of honest journalism in the US and much of the Western world. Janice in her own words: "I'm an independent researcher and writer regarding the Middle East, particularly Syria. I've traveled throughout much of Syria in five, month-long trips, usually on my own with Syrian friends as translators and guides."

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CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Since the overpaid presstitutes will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality. After systematically corrupting the entire media, thereby hijacking the mainstream narrative, corporate power, led by the US, has practically killed democracy wherever it managed to survive, including in the US itself, easily one of the most heavily propagandised nations in history. The consequences of this disgraceful situation can be seen everywhere, and that’s why the fight for the truth has never been so vital. We stand on the edge of an ecological abyss precipitated by a cancerous industrial system devoid of any moral restraints. Furthermore, dripping hypocrisy, the West has unilaterally declared war on China, Russia and Iran, which threatens a nuclear confrontation, plus other nations like Venezuela or Cuba that also dare to resist the tyrannical diktats emanating from Washington. It’s clear that war, ceaseless propaganda, and the immiseration of the working class is the chosen solution of the empire managers to the capitalist system’s incurable crisis, a crisis rendered all the more intractable by the computer revolution which has only deepened capital’s legendary “overproduction” contradiction.

In this ridiculously uneven struggle between people’s voices like Caitlin Johnstone, Jonathan Cook, Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, Glenn Greenwald, Abby Martin, Jeff Brown, Godfree Roberts, the Grayzone team, the folks at Consortium News, and others of equally impressive merit, and the capitalist system’s Orwellian media machine, our role must always be to help distribute far and wide what these journalists produce—to act as “influence multipliers”. There’s power in numbers, power that the enemy cannot hope to match. This is the primal power that the masses possess and which the oligarchs fear. Put it to use by becoming an influence multiplier. Repost this material anywhere you can. Send it to your friends and kin. Discuss it with your workmates. Liberation from this infernal and mendacious system is in your hands.

—The Editor