| Very interesting video.
I would be interested in your thoughts about it, because the connections with your stance in this thread are not immediately obvious to me.
Mr Sharro seems to me to represent the position I also take: self-determnation is the principle at stake, as he says. To me there is a flavour of neo-colonial thinking peeking out of the undergrowth. It bothers me.
I know very little about Syria. I understand it has been a one party state since 1963: and that it is a tapestry in terms of population. That brings to mind Yugoslavia, and if that is in any sense a good parallel then we should be very careful when we meddle. The collapse of the authoritarian regime in Yugoslavia after Tito died led to the "ethnic cleansing" and the horrors of Kosova etc. It is perfectly possible to point to those things and use them as a justification for intervention. But we are arguably at a very different stage here. The regime has not yet collapsed and so the "uprising" aims to overthrow that regime. The question is, who has that aim? We are told that it is "the people": but do we know this? Mr Sharro says that there is not as yet a very widespread demonstration of support. It is perfectly possible that this is because of fear: if so then the movement will grow of itself, and I do not think there is much evidence that the Syrian government has the means to prevent that, if it is truly based in the whole people. That is a little naive to say: because totalitarian regimes do manage to survive through oppression, to some extent. But that is not the whole story: I would argue that in every such case the imposition is not done entirely through suppression. It is also done through propaganda and through a reflection of some other, perhaps legitimate, concerns. A regime can exploit those, of course: but there has to be something to work with, I suggest.
But given the "mosaic" population (to use Mr Sharro's term) I would like to see some evidence that this is not a movement grounded in one or other of the disparate groups, rather than the expression of the aspirations of one of them. Because if that is the case then it is not a good prognosis.
I am not saying this is the case: I have no idea at all. But it disturbs me. At present there are uprisings of various kinds in various countries. In the arab world our media and governments appear to be presenting these as seamless expressions of democratic aspirations which are the same in all of these places. That is where I think the "neo colonialist" mindset is seen. I do not have any reason at all to suppose that Egypt and Libya and Bahrain etc are homogeneous: indeed I find the proposition quite startling. I understand that there is a thread of "pan-arabism"; and that it is strong was shown by attempts to merge some of these countries in the past. That it is not the strongest force is amply demonstrated by the failure of those attempts, to my way of thinking. In face of that it seems simplistic to the point of reckless to assume that all of these developments are the same: and that they are all automatically worthy of support from "democratic" regimes outside the region and the country concerned. That might be true: but it is not something I am happy to accept without much more undrstanding of the forces in play. Those elements include who the insurrectionists are and what they want: but they also include who the interventionsists are, and what they want. As I said, I am far from persuaded this is altruistic: though that is the moral high ground Mr Sharro identifies as the propaganda aim. In the case of the "shadow communications networks" story it seems to be working.
The US state department's web site overview of Syria notes that the Syrian government's control over communications is largely "cosmetic" because most of the people have found ways around it already. That may or may not be true. The things I have read about the cutting of access to the internet appear to say that this lasted about 24 hours: though there was some question as to whether it might be something that would be done in series, possible on Fridays. I did not find any sensible explanation as to why the regime might do that: and you can certainly argue that it is wrong that a regime should be able and willing to do it for any period at all. But it is not the succesful oppression which has been presented and it really does seem to me to be a propaganda coup for the west rather than a substantive issue in Syria.
If Mr Sharro is right and this uprising is not organised it is perfectly possible that it is factional. I have no idea. But if it is then the technology cannot be provided to the "Syrian people": it must be provided to a group. Who? How do we choose? Can we choose? I am reminded of American support for the contra's in Nicaragua. It was presented as support for a popular uprising against an oppressive regime there too. It was nothing of the sort. Similarly in Chile, so far as I recall. You are correct in drawing a distinction since intervention there was military as well as subversive: but this is the problem I have. I do not think that distinction represents a change: as I said, I think it is propaganada. If there were not military interventions in other countries in the region I might think otherwise: but there are, and I don't. What I do note is that people, people like you, are not readily persuaded that military intervention is justifiable: and that is a problem of domestic politics for both the USA and the UK: the people do not want that for various reasons, and it is getting harder and harder to command the finance and the support for these wars. It not so hard with this kind of thing and it serves to persuade that we have some legitimate business intervening: so long as it is not "boots on the ground". But once the principle is accepted there is scope for escalation: another point Mr Sharro drew out very well. These things have a logic and a momentum of their own.
On another tack: You have taken an interest in Spain and in Greece. There seem to be popular uprisings there too. On the face of it there are differences, because the governments there are elected. But what is the substantive difference? Well it lies in the fact that that the army and police are not deployed against the people. Hmm.... well they are, so it lies in the fact that they are not deployed in the same way,; they are for maintenance of law and order rather than for slaughter. Or something. I am not trying to establish that there is no difference: but I am saying that it is quite hard to identify that difference, and that if the "uprising" in Greece should escalate I do not think the government's response would necessarily be different in practical terms: governments do not like riots in the street and they do not always say to themselves: we got it wrong if the people are this angry: we better listen and change what we are about. It is more usual to deploy the army and the police to restore order using whatever level of force is required. I do not imagine that the US and the UK and other western countries would set out to support the insurrectionists in that case: and if it should happen that the Greek government cut off internet access I do not think suitcase computers would be smuggled in by the US government. Be nice if that was likely but I don't think it is. Of course it is hard to imagine that any western government would even try: maybe it is not possible, even. I don't know. But in the hypothetical any such intervention would not be seen as legitimate by those governments: and unfortunately I think that is largely because these people are not "johnny arab".
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