Tag: regime change

‘Red Hand’ Revolt in Serbia: People Power or Color Revolution?

For six weeks now, Serbia has been rattled by what purports to be a student rebellion, leading to the prime minister’s resignation last week and rumors of a snap election. Students from sixty-three colleges of five state and two private universities, as well as four high schools, have emerged as the biggest challenge to the Progressive Party rule – and fueled rumors of yet another “color revolution.”

On Thursday, thousands of students rallied in the capital, Belgrade, and set out to Novi Sad – the second-largest city in Serbia and the site of a tragedy that has served as the trigger for the entire crisis. The concrete canopy of the Novi Sad railway station, built in 1964 but recently renovated as part of a bullet-train project, collapsed on November 1 and killed fifteen people.

Serbia is the largest of the six successor states of the former Yugoslavia (Kosovo, a breakaway Serbian province that the United States and its allies consider the seventh, doesn’t count). Belgrade has no intent of joining NATO, which bombed Serbia in 1999 to occupy and detach Kosovo, and officially aspires to join the European Union – but has so far refused to go along with the bloc’s sanctions regime against Russia.

All of this has obviously made Serbia a place of considerable interest to Moscow, Beijing, Brussels and Washington alike. President Aleksandar Vucic has managed to parlay his balancing diplomacy into a flow of infrastructure and industrial investments, such as the high-speed train project to the Hungarian border.

Opposition parties backed by the West have long accused the Progressives of skimming funds from these construction projects – as they have done while in power – and quickly seized on the Novi Sad tragedy to demand resignations and arrests. They followed the same playbook as in 2023, when a mass shooting at a Belgrade school was harnessed into “Serbia against violence” protests to demand regime change. Vucic responded at the time by calling a snap election, which the Progressives easily won, however.

At first the Novi Sad protests looked like another street performance that would fizzle out. Everything changed when students of two Belgrade university schools walked out of class on November 21. The following day, a group of theater students blocked the street outside their school, and got into a fight with several motorists who tried to get through. The incident triggered a domino effect at Belgrade colleges, with self-appointed “student soviets” (plenum) eventually demanding the arrest and identification of the attackers – who they claimed were ruling party activists – and the release and full pardon of all students involved in the fracas.

Since then, student groups have blocked strategic streets in Belgrade for at least fifteen minutes every day, around the time of the canopy’s collapse. They have also expanded their demands: for the government to publish all the records related to the railway station’s reconstruction, and to increase the higher education budget by 20%.

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‘Scorecard, Scorecard, You Can’t Tell al-Qaeda Without a Scorecard’

When I was a child attending Cleveland Indian baseball games at the old Municipal Stadium a thin man in an Indians’ baseball cap ran up and down the aisles hawking scorecards and calling out, “Scorecard, scorecard, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”

He was right. The scorecards would give you the player’s name, number, and position. Then you would open to a page where you could engage in the fine art of keeping score, tracking the runs, hits and errors, through esoteric notations on the scorecard.

Baseball has changed over time. Designated hitters changed the game’s strategy; limits on visits to the mound and the pitch clocks sped up play. Scorecards are now digital. And the Cleveland Indians changed their name to the Guardians.

Which brings me to Syria.

The topic of Syria seems to have the full attention of the Senate Intelligence committee when it comes to reviewing the deposed Assad Regime, but lacks an understanding of the role that the CIA has played in putting al-Qaeda, or whatever you want to call it, in the driver’s seat in Damascus.

Yes, you read that right, U.S. tax dollars, errantly or not, poured into the hands of jihadists, al-Qaeda consorts, motley adventurers and soldiers of fortune, with the end of ousting Assad.

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Syria’s De Facto Authorities Execute ‘Sweeping’ Neoliberal Reforms

The self-appointed transitional government in Syria is undertaking sweeping internal reforms, including privatizing state-run enterprises and laying off a third of the public sector, as authorities say they are shifting to “a competitive free-market economy.”

In an interview with Reuters, ex-officials of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) who are serving as cabinet ministers for transitional President Ahmad al-Sharaa – former ISIS and Al-Qaeda commander Abu Mohammad al-Julani – say they have a “wide scope” of plans to shrink the state, including removing thousands of “ghost employees.”

“The goal is to balance private sector growth with support for the most vulnerable,” interim Minister of Finance Basil Abdel Hanan told the British outlet.

Hanan previously served as economy minister in Idlib’s HTS-led administration. During this time, the group financed its operations by imposing high taxes on citizens, including taxes on humanitarian aid delivered by the UN. Reports from Arabic media in 2022 disclosed that HTS authorities funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into Turkiye by confiscating humanitarian aid shipments and subsequently selling them on the black market.

The Syrian officials also told Reuters that they want Syrian factories to “serve as a launchpad” for global exports.

Nonetheless, discontent is growing throughout Syria due to the layoffs, despite the assurances from western-backed officials. “My salary helps me manage basic needs, like bread and yogurt, to sustain the household. If this decision goes through, it will increase unemployment across society,” stated Adham Abu al-Alaya, one of the many public sector workers currently on a three-month paid leave while their job status is evaluated.

The reforms also come as the country is gripped by a wave of sectarian killings and executions carried out by armed groups under the command of the transitional government’s Military Operations Department.

“[The killings are] normal and may continue for two or three years,” Sharaa said behind closed doors, according to Syrian sources who spoke with The Cradle.

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Did a Trump executive order just cripple the global US regime change network?

With federal funding paused to USAID, pro-Western media outlets from Ukraine to Nicaragua are panhandling for donations, and a multi-billion dollar regime change apparatus is in panic mode.

Among the flurry of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in the first days of his administration, perhaps the most consequential to date is one titled, “reevaluating and realigning US foreign aid.”

Under this order, a 90-day pause was instantly enforced on all US foreign development assistance across the globe – excepting, of course, the largest recipients of US aid in Israel and Egypt. For now, the order forbids the disbursement of federal funding for any “non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors” charged with delivering US “aid” programs overseas.

Within days, hundreds of “internal contractors” at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were placed on unpaid leave or outright fired, as a direct result of the Executive Order. Washington Post contributor John Hudson has reported organization officials brand Trump’s directives on “foreign development assistance” a “shock and awe approach,” which has left them reeling, uncertain of their futures. One nameless USAID apparatchik told him, “they even removed all the pictures in our offices of aid programs,” as accompanying photographs attested.

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The Moral Depravity of U.S. Sanctions and Embargoes

In the December 29, 2024, issue of the conservative Wall Street Journal, the paper’s longtime columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who also serves on the Journal’s editorial board, wrote an article harshly criticizing the dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. Quoting a State Department statement issued in January 2021, she points out that the Cuban communist regime is a murderous supporter of terrorism that lets the Cuban people “go hungry, homeless, and without medicine.”

O’Grady also also points out that Cuba is a supporter of the dictatorial regime of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who has ruthlessly tyrannized the Venezuelan people, not only politically but also economically with the same type of socialist economic system that exists in Cuba. Harkening back to the popular post-9/11 U.S. “war on terrorism,” which replaced the previously popular “war on communism,” she points out that Venezuela is as big a supporter of terrorism as Cuba is.

O’Grady concludes her essay with the following statement: “Under Cuban political tutelage, eight million Venezuelans have fled the country, there are 1,900 political prisoners, and the five patriots inside the [Argentine] embassy are being starved to death. This is state-sponsored terrorism by any other name.”

Yesterday, the Journal published an editorial calling on the U.S. government to come to the support of the Venezuelan people. The editorial points out that “only Venezuelans can reclaim their democracy” but then adds this concluding interventionist line: “But a U.S. policy that restores sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports and puts maximum pressure on the regime would at least show which side America is on.”

Those two articles demonstrate much of what is wrong with the U.S. government’s foreign policy of interventionism, which, needless to say, is favored not only by  right-wingers but also by left-wingers.

Consider Cuba. For more than 60 years, the U.S. government has maintained a harsh system of sanctions against the people of that nation. We call it an “economic embargo” but that’s just another fancy word for the modern-day term of “sanctions.”

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How the West Destroyed Syria

RS: Why do you think the Syrian military and government collapsed so rapidly?

Peter Ford: Everybody was surprised but with hindsight, we shouldn’t have been. Over more than a decade, the Syrian army had been hollowed out by the extremely dire economic situation in Syria, mainly caused by western sanctions. Syria only had a few hours of electricity a day, no money to buy weapons and no ability to use the international banking system to buy anything whatsoever. It’s no surprise that the Army was run down. With hindsight, you might say the surprise is that the Syrian government and Army were successful in driving back the Islamists. The Syrian Army forced them into the redoubt of Idlib four or five years ago. But after that point, the Syrian army deteriorated, became less battle ready on the technical level and also morale.

Syrian soldiers are mainly conscripts and they suffer as much as any ordinary Syrian from the really dreadful economic situation in Syria. I hesitate to admit it, but the Western sanctions were extremely effectively in doing what they were designed to do: to bring the Syrian economy down to its knees. So we have to say, and I say this with deep regret,  the sanctions worked. The sanctions did exactly what they were designed to do to make the Syrian people suffer, and thereby to bring about discontent with what they call the regime.

Ordinary Syrians didn’t understand the complexities of geopolitics, and they blamed the Syrian government for everything: not having electricity, not having food, not having gas, oil, high inflation. Everything that came from being cut off from the world economy and not having supporters with bottomless pockets.

Syria was being attacked and occupied by major military powers (Turkey, USA, Israel). Plus thousands of foreign jihadis. The Syrian army was so demoralized that they really were a paper tiger by the end of the day.

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Lessons from Iraq, Libya, and Syria: Resistance, Betrayal, and Collapse

The tumultuous collapses of Iraq, Libya and Syria offer stark parallels and contrasts, shedding light on the complex interplay of foreign intervention, internal strife and the fragile dynamics of power in the Middle East.

At the heart of anti-colonialism lie two principles which, at first glance, seem to stand in direct opposition. The first calls for unwavering support of the global struggle for resistance and liberation against white supremacy and colonialism, a battle fought across borders and systems of oppression. The second prioritizes empowering the poorest workers and peasants, ensuring that wealth is redistributed to uplift those most marginalized.

Achieving both of these core principles is rare and remarkable. State-building efforts, including attempts at socialist state formation, are constantly pressured to compromise with colonial powers and transform into comprador states that serve external capitalist interests. Most succumb to this pressure swiftly. The coup against Ben Bella in Algeria and the betrayal of Lumumba by Kabila are just two of many examples.

Despite their flaws and criticisms, Saddam’s Baathist Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libyan Jamahiriya managed to uphold both principles. In stark contrast, Syria failed on both fronts, resulting in the hollowed-out, degenerated state under Assad. This stands in sharp contrast to Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, both of which resisted colonial destruction at the time. A telling indication of Syria’s failure is the complete lack of popular will to fight for the decrepit Baath regime once it falls.

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US Eases Restrictions For Syria In ‘Signal Of Goodwill’ To New Islamist Rulers

The US is planning to announce an easing of restrictions on providing humanitarian aid and other basic services such as electricity to Syria while still keeping crushing economic sanctions on the country in place, Reuters reported on Monday.

Reuters noted the “decision by the outgoing Biden administration will send a signal of goodwill to Syria’s new Islamist rulers and aims to pave the way for improving tough living conditions in the war-ravaged country while treading cautiously and keeping US leverage in place.”

Syria’s new government, led by extremist militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is calling for the lifting of the US sanctions, which impoverished Syria and prevented reconstruction after the end of the Syria war in 2019.

Washington is so far refusing to lift sanctions, despite its longtime support for HTS and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), a former deputy to slain ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Previously known as the Nusra Front, HTS was the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. The group enjoyed support from the US, Israel, Qatar, and Turkiye, which sought to use the group to topple the Syrian government led by former president Bashar al-Assad starting in 2011.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration approved the easing of restrictions over the weekend, saying the move authorizes the Treasury Department to issue waivers to aid groups and companies providing essentials such as water, electricity, and other humanitarian supplies.

The US-funded Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), and other Syrian activists lobbied heavily for the US to impose the sanctions, claiming they would only hurt Assad and other top Syrian officials, not Syrian civilians.

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2025, Iran Is Back in the U.S. Crosshairs for Regime Change

A new American president and a new Middle East configuration have brought Iran back into the crosshairs for regime change with an intoxicating vengeance.

The signs are that Iran is going to face intensified hostility from the U.S. over the next year for regime change.

The sudden fall of Syria and the isolation of Hezbollah in Lebanon – Iran’s regional allies – have made Tehran look vulnerable.

Anti-Iran hawks in the U.S. are cock-a-hoop about the prospect of regime change in Tehran.

The recent death of Jimmy Carter at the age of 100 puts in perspective how great a prize the Islamic Republic represents for Washington’s imperial desires. Carter was disparaged as the American president who lost Iran in 1979 as a crucial client state for U.S. power in the Middle East.

For over four decades, American imperialist power has sought to topple the Islamic Republic and return the Persian nation to the U.S. global fold.

Though, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken lamented last month, American “regime change experiments” in Iran have been a failure.

Now, however, there is renewed enthusiasm in Washington for the Persian prize.

The lust for regime change in Tehran has peaked with the dramatic fall of President al-Assad in Syria.

American lawmakers and Iranian exiles are publicly calling for the new Trump administration to get back to its maximum pressure campaign on Tehran because they believe there is “a perfect moment” for regime change.

During Donald Trump’s first White House (2017-2021), he revoked the Iranian nuclear deal of the Obama administration and ramped up economic sanctions in what was referred to as a policy of “maximum pressure.”

A growing chorus of Republicans and Democrats are urging the United States to seize the opportunity of a perceived weakened Iran to overthrow the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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How the Human Rights Industry Manufactures Consent for “Regime Change”

In the words of the United Nations, “human rights” range from “the most fundamental—the right to life—to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.” These rights are supposed to be “inherent to us all.” But this lofty ambition has become distorted, not only by the UN itself but by the whole of what Alfred de Zayas calls the “Human Rights Industry.”

This industry, headed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has multiple layers that include UN “expert groups” and “rapporteurs,” regional commissions like (in the Western Hemisphere) the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and tens of thousands of other non-governmental organizations.

In part, this industry still attempts to defend real human rights—the most topical example being the remarkable work of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese. But, take almost any other country as an example—such as the much less publicized case of Nicaragua—and the real purpose of most of the human rights industry is exposed.

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