Well-known British journalists write on Syria from the safety of Istanbul, Beirut and Cairo. Few actually get inside the country, so their information is gained at second-hand, often from Al Jazira and Al Arabiyah broadcasts, which reflect the views of Qatar and Saudi Arabia respectively.
Some members of the House of Lords, however, have tried to see for themselves what is happening, by going there and listening to a wide variety of Syrians. They have included retired Bishop Nazir Ali, Baroness Cox, Lord Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury), and myself. Together we seek to be a voice for the voiceless. We have guarded our independence by paying for our own travel and expenses.
My personal conclusions are as follows:
1: Despite inflation, for most Syrians life in 2017 has improved from what it has been in the previous five years. Refugees are beginning to return.
2: We noticed particularly the friendship and cooperation between Muslim Imams and Christian clergy. Despite some atrocities by extremists, Muslims and Christians go on living alongside each other, as they have done for centuries. For example, in the mainly Christian town of Maalula, there are two functioning mosques. Both leaders and ordinary people want common citizenship for all, and a secular constitution, allowing everyone to thrive.
3: Many people whom we met asked for the removal of economic and other sanctions. These, they said, harm the people without having much impact on their Government.
4: Most people we met support a political solution to the war. Peace, if it can be achieved, would restore both agriculture and industry. It would bring back tourists of all kinds. Syria is potentially a rich country.
5: In my opinion the UK should restore at least low-level diplomatic relations. This would help to prevent undue influence by Russia, Iran, Turkey and China. The case of Tehran provides a precedent for doing so. Restoring some relations would assist us in regaining the influence we have lost.
If you can discuss the above points with your MP, please do so.
There are numerous reasons why discussion is impossible, apart from the top-down dictate that “debating” must rule to the exclusion of all but 5-yearly pencil-cross marking a piece of “voting” paper with a self-&-professionally-politically-biased name.
(1) Cooperatively-Participatory democracy does not exist anywhere in the World; neither does cooperatively-participatory democratisation.
(2) No (British, American, European nor “Western”) establishmentarian, politician nor Lifeplace-leader – has yet been both willing & able and successful in openly and publicly recognising, publicly discussing, and publicly co-scrutinising, the worst threats now increasingly facing all Humankind-Civilisations and this Earth’s very own Life and Lifesupports themselves.
(3) All religions and Cultures make possible, and generally dominant, the gravely extinction-risking control-ploy of excluding both formal-argumentation-&-moral-reasoning, and Method III ‘No-Lose’ Cooperative Needs-&-Hows Recognition and Cooperative Problem Solving,
from their deliberations and processes.
(4) It is also a core-governance and education disease-sign
that every “power-pyramid” is goaded by a complex and very covertly-constituted frame-&-network of Deliberate-Delusioning
[principally that, like the pigs who were more-equal than all other animal-species in “Animal Farm”, so now in “Human Farm” we are dominated by open-ended and ‘dangling’ delusionisms
e.g that many human beings are actually more-than-one-human-being each; and that they “therefore earn more and must be fed, armed, protected, and paid, many times more than their one-human-being real lifesupportive need – and must be given all the luxuries as well as the plentifully excessive “needs” and “rights” of more than one-human-being each ….
That is why both your Rational and your Religious efforts to “improve” murderously inhumane governances and “services” around the World
( of which Syria’s plight is but one – and may well have already been deliberately planned, by the self-concealing miniscule-world-dominating Elite, to end at a definite future date
whilst that same 5000-year-old domineering-elite continues planning other wars to start and to have a finish date too) –
that is why all of our peace and holistic-health building efforts have failed,
it is why they are failing,
and it is why as long as that 5000-year-old top-down destructively short-termage win-lose competitive adversarism –
from a self-perpetuated and constitutional ly deluded and deluding tiny-elite
holds sway,
our common-peoples’ peace and holistic-health-building efforts,
and your governancially-hugely-more-costly “duties”
are all doomed to continue “media-grandstand-showily”
but life-on-the-ground and human-developmentally
abysmally failing.
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For a practical human-civilisation-sustainworthying solution
visit not-for-profit, power, nor prestige “voluntary Earth-citizens” http://lifefresh.net
“A New Sustainworthying Earth-Civilisation: Foundations & Constitution” .