A rush to judgement? A one-off attack? Or maybe the start of a major military offensive in Syria? Scholars, analysts and journalists offer their opinions on the Trump administration’s decision to attack the Syrian military on Friday [7 Apr 2017].
Rick Sterling, investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement
“The attack that was carried out today will help the terrorists. There is a big difference because in Eastern Syria the US has been kind of halfheartedly attacking ISIS in around Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, not nearly as intensely and with as many deaths as were doing in Mosul, of course. This was an attack on a Syrian air force base. What it will do is it will make it more difficult for the Syrian air force to attack terrorists in the area around Homs, which has been under threat.
The OPCW [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] got a Nobel Price for managing the complete elimination of prohibited chemical weapons by Syria in 2014. It was an amazing achievement. The chemical weapons were all destroyed on a US vessel, and they were carefully inspecting those chemicals to see if they could identify sarin that matched up with the sarin that was used in Damascus thinking that they could find the proof that way, and of course they did not. The investigations of the best American journalists, Seymour Hersh, Robert Parry, and others, the group from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] concluded that it was not Syrian government, it was the armed opposition that carried out this sarin attack, the chemical weapon attack in 2013. The statements from the Trump administration are nonsense.”
“If what Trump was really doing here was simply laying down a marker that, “I am a big dog; that I am tough; I am going to stand up and now we can get around with serious discussion for settling this war. I think that door remains open.” But frankly, that door was already open. It was wide open. I thought that was where we were going; where we beginning to cooperate with the Russians in planning the offensive against ISIS in Raqqa, hitting Al-Qaeda in Idlib. Now we in effect have delivered a military strike against the people that are fighting against ISIS and Al-Qaeda. It doesn’t make any sense.
The only silver lining I see in this particular action is that by using the cruise missiles and not using aircraft that the Russians and the Syrians would have been obligated to try to shoot down, and might have succeeded in doing so, we have avoided at least a direct clash with the Russians. Maybe this is all scripted. Maybe this is all some kind of Kabuki Theatre to get to precisely that kind of negotiation. But I think it is a very hazardous and not a very smart way to go about it.”
DETAILS: Putin regards strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation, carried out under invented pretext – spox https://t.co/hs3x3GYhx1
I think at a time when the Syrian government, together with Russian forces, is pushing, making some headway against ISIS, this move by the Americans seems to give some leeway to the ISIS movement. But at the heart of the dispute is whether or not chemical weapons are deliberately being used by the Syrian government, and there is an accusation that the Russians would be behind it. But I think that needs to be evidence based. I don’t think that the Russian government as well, as the Syrian government, has anything to gain by using chemical weapons at a time when they are already gaining headway.
The other side was is that the evidence of chemical kind of spread is because there of an army depot that has been hit, and that depot was in fact storing toxic chemical materials. The whole story needs to be evidence-based. Coming back to the [UN] Security Council: I think there was an international consensus that the chemical weapons cannot be used. So I think all sides including the Americans, the Chinese, the Russians can agree on that. But it is one thing to agree on that, but another to blame it directly on the Syrian government, on the Russian government without any evidence…
You can’t bomb another sovereign country, no matter what the grounds. First, you would have to have the permission of the country’s government. Second, if it involved a disputed issue you would have to refer to the UN Security Council, and the Security Council would have to conduct an investigation. What has happened here is a rush to bombing without even an investigation as to who was responsible for the chemical weapons incident, nor any kind of coordination between the US and Syrian governments … Many are asking in Washington today: Who made this decision?
Gwenyth Todd, former political adviser to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet and former US National Security Council Middle East adviser to the Clinton and George W. Bush administration
Various people in Washington have been saying off the record that this was a one-off attack; that it was done because Trump did want to show that he does have some power in the middle of the chaos, that he is doing something; that he can make things happen. And this was sort of the smallest thing he could do in response to this very big story, which is horrific in and of itself. There were civilians who were clearly killed by some horrible chemical. But to jump to the assumption that it was Assad is really a leap, especially given the fact that Assad did have no motive to use chemical weapons and every motive not to.
‘US missile strike is appropriate response to barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by Syrian regime’ – UK govt https://t.co/yuer6qeeTx
Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran
First of all, the US and its European allies, if you recall, gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons to use with impunity against the Iranians and his own people. No one complained back then. The BBC and Western media outlets were completely silent. In fact, the people who carried out those atrocities, those who gave the weapons – they are in the US; they are in the European capitals; they are senators; they are people in power; they are influential; they are in think tanks. No one is out to punish them. This is utter hypocrisy.
In the UN Security Council, the US did not want an investigation. It is obvious. They and the Western media, which is cheerleading, basically are out to hurt the Syrian government, and they will justify it in any way possible, and the Western media will be completely obedient. Possibly one reason why Trump carried out this atrocity and this war crime was because of the pressure he was facing in the US. He wanted the mainstream media, which has been attacking him for months now, to support him. Just like President [Bill] Clinton, when he was under pressure because of Monica Lewinsky, he carried out an airstrike on a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan, claiming that they made chemical weapons. He was trying to distract attention away from his own problems. In the same way, I think Trump is trying to gain popularity.
URGENT: Russia suspends flight safety memorandum over #Syria after US missile strike – Foreign Ministry https://t.co/q0LGTVxcdb
Martin Jay, Beirut-based journalist and Middle East expert
History is repeating itself. It is often the case with new presidents who are coming to office and take knee-jerk reactions with regards to foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. If you look back at George W. Bush and his anxiety to rush to move into Iraq in the Second Gulf War, he told Tony Blair: “Look I don’t need to stick around and wait for the UN to get its act together, I just can do it on my own.” I think that is what is happening now. It is a sensational story… and American presidents don’t seem to be learning from history itself or the errors of their ways.
[Trump] doesn’t really seem to understand how polarized the Middle East is. He seems to be sometimes shooting the wrong side. The problem with hitting Assad is that you immediately give the benefit to those who are fighting him. On the ground, we shouldn’t forget that in the last few months Assad has started to hit extremists in Northern Syria once again. So for Trump to go ahead and bomb military installations of the Assad forces – you’re giving the upper hand to the extremists who are fighting them. He is sort of shooting himself in the foot…
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is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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">Robert C KoehlerRobert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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">Roger Kotila PhDProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
