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COUNTERPUNCH, OCTOBER 20, 2017
One can debate whether to label the ideology that structured the Arab
nationalists’ economic policies as socialism, but U.S. officials
unquestionably regarded the economic demarche of the Arab nationalist
countries, including Syria, as socialist. As mentioned, some even went
so far as to brand Assad’s father, Hafez, an Arab communist. Others
described Syria’s economic policies under Bashar as inspired by Soviet
models.
— Stephen Gowans, “Washington’s Long War on Syria”
Late last year, a group of big-name investors — including Bill Miller of
Legg Mason Capital Management and Barton Biggs, managing partner of
Traxis Partners, a New York hedge fund — spent a week in Syria and
Lebanon. They met with top political leaders and local businesspeople
and were feted with elaborate dinners with the cream of society.
Traveling to far-flung corners of the world to get an early look at
promising markets has long been a staple of global investing. But Syria
— until recently a pariah state in the eyes of the U.S. — proved
irresistible, drawing an unusual array of money managers.
Long isolated from international finance, Syria is one of the last
remaining investment frontiers. It has a sizable economy, an educated
populace, and, lately, a new degree of openness to foreign investment.
“This was not a group of naive investors, and [I] have to say it opened
all our eyes,” said Steven Galbraith, a partner at Maverick Capital, a
$11 billion hedge fund.
-- Joanna Slater, “Syria Woos Investors From Half a World Away”, Wall
Street Journal, January 10, 2010
Published in April, 2017, Canadian blogger Stephen Gowans’s
“Washington’s Long War on Syria” is a 282-page full-throated defense of
Bashar al-Assad, who, according to the excerpt from the book’s
Introduction above, amounts to a heroic figure defending socialism just
as much as Fidel Castro did during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. In
a Manichean-like understanding of politics that permeates the openly
pro-Assad left, the world is divided between Good and Evil. On one side,
you have vintage Arab nationalism that stood up to Israel, exploited a
nation’s resources for the common good, opposed medieval Islamic
institutions, and generally took the side of people struggling against
imperialism everywhere in the world. On the other hand, you had
villainous Salafi jihadists funded by the Saudis and other Sunni states
in the Middle East who sought to kill “infidels” such as the Shia and
the Alawites. These mustache-twirling fiends were in turn backed by the
CIA and Israel. According to this scenario, the revolt that began in
2011 was nothing but a plot hatched by the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
to foment discord among a comfortable and untroubled Sunni population
that was unfortunately susceptible to demagogic appeals based on
religious dogma. It was not hardship that drove people to protest but
differences over who is entitled to speak in the Prophet’s name.
full: https://louisproyect.org/2017/10/20/16722/
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