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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Syria at the U.N.: Russia ‘Defending Justice and the Rights of Humanity’ by Invading Ukraine

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2022/09/26/syria-at-the-u-n-russia-defending-justice-and-the-rights-of-humanity-by-invading-ukraine/

Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty

Syria Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad’s address to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday was a funhouse-mirror view of the world from the vantage point of a brutal dictatorship.

In Mekdad’s long view, all of Syria’s problems have been caused by Israel and its hegemonic Western allies, Russia was merely trying to “defend itself” when it invaded Ukraine, and China was taking “necessary measures to defend its sovereignty” when it menaced Taiwan with provocative military exercises.

Mekdad’s thesis was that Syria’s grueling 11-year civil war and humanitarian disaster were entirely the fault of Western nations seeking to “impose their hegemony over other countries, to hoard the resources and wealth, and to implement their straitjacketed agenda by investing in terrorism, and by importing lethal weapons, and putting a stranglehold on economies.”

Mekdad blamed “terrorism, and the coercive measures imposed by Western states, and the plundering of the wealth of the Syrian people” for Syria’s massive human rights crisis, blaming the West for an estimated $107 billion in losses to the oil and gas industry, as though the Syrian dictatorship would have used every nickel of that lost revenue for humanitarian aid.

Mekdad claimed Syria, and other outlaw regimes, have faced “occupation and war” under the pretext of “spreading democracy and supporting human rights.”

In Syria, Mekdad accused the West and Israel of supporting “terrorists” masquerading as “moderates who are seeking freedom,” while cynically using those terrorist forces to undermine the supposedly noble and compassionate regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

“The war against Syria was ultimately an attempt by the West to maintain control over the world, but this war, which aimed at breaking the will of Syria and isolate it from the world, has failed,” he declared.

Much of Mekdad’s speech was an extended rant against Israel, which he accused of endless “human rights violations” and support for terrorism. In his view, Israel’s strikes against the Iran-backed terrorists Syria harbors were wanton attacks against innocent civilians.

“These Israeli practices are crimes and it is unacceptable for these crimes to go unanswered. Those responsible should be held accountable. We stand by the brotherly Palestinian people as they fight to free their occupied territories, and to establish their sovereign independent state throughout their territory, with Jerusalem as capital, but also to guarantee the right of Palestinian refugees to return home,” he said, laying out a string of non-starter demands.

“We also support the Palestinian effort to become a full-fledged member in the United Nations. This is something we have looked forward to for a long time. We hope that some members of the Security Council will not undermine these efforts,” he added, alluding to the likelihood that the U.S. and its allies would veto such a move.

Mekdad accused Israel of committing “the worst systemic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law,” including alleged support for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, and “plundering of natural resources in the Golan Heights, where Israel ahs buried nuclear waste and taken over land to set up wind farms.”

Israel has long dismissed accusations from Syria that it buried nuclear waste in the Golan Heights as “nonsense.” Israel did build wind farms in the Golan and is currently debating plans to expand them. Mekdad may have delivered the only speech during the U.N. General Assembly during which windmills were criticized.

“The Golan Heights is in the heart of every Syrian. Our right to recover the entire Golan territory up to the 1967 border is an undying right, guaranteed in accordance with international law and relevant U.N. resolutions,” Mekdad declared.

The Syrian foreign minister demanded that all “illegal military presence” in his country must “cease immediately.” He was primarily referring to Israel and the Golan Heights, although later he got around to briefly criticizing Turkey for invading Syrian territory to fight Kurdish militants.

Mekdad warned “separatist militias” in Syria must abandon all hope of receiving “aid and support” from foreign powers.

“Those who do not work with their homeland have no homeland,” he declared.

Mekdad strongly supported Russia, Iran, and China, fellow members of the rising axis of ugly dictatorships that are rejecting the post-World War II international consensus on human rights in favor of a China-led “multipolar world order” that recognizes the legitimacy of governments that bomb their own cities into oblivion and herd citizens into concentration camps, if such measures are deemed necessary to preserve order by the ruling party.

According to Mekdad, the Syrian dictatorship strongly supports Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, to “defend itself and secure its national territory.”

Russian military intervention was the major reason Assad was able to remain on his throne in Damascus, so the regime’s support for Russia, after most U.N. member nations condemned the invasion of Ukraine, soared to delirious heights.

“We are convinced that the Russian Federation is defending not only itself, but justice and the rights of humanity, the right of everyone to reject unipolar hegemony,” he said.

Mekdad was only slightly less obsequious toward China, wholeheartedly supporting its “position with regard to foreign interference in its domestic affairs in Taiwan and Hong Kong.”

He said China should take all “necessary measures to defend its sovereignty, in particular with regard to the unprecedented escalation and provocation carried out by the United States of America,” by which he was presumably referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan in August.

Mekdad also demanded the United States submit to all of Iran’s extreme demands and restore the Barack Obama nuclear deal, which he incorrectly stated the U.S. withdrew from “illegally,” demanded “the end of American military maneuvers on the Korean peninsula,” condemned sanctions against Cuba and various other countries, and demanded “the lifting of all unilateral coercive measures imposed by the West everywhere in the world.”

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