Slipping under the corporate-media’s news radar this week was the referendum in Syria, on Sunday, to approve a new constitution. The turnout was 57.4 per cent, and a whopping 89.4 per cent voted in favour. The new constitution limits the presidency to two 7-year terms (I assume with a re-election in between, otherwise it would be one 14-year term – but I could be wrong), and introduces multi-party elections.

The referendum was extremely significant primarily because it bolstered support for al-Assad from Russia and China. Out of Moscow came news that the Russian Foreign Ministry viewed the results of the constitution as evidence “of the support the Syrian Government enjoys by its people” and viewed opposition groups as “lacking popularity”, and without a “right to speak on behalf of the Syrian people”.

As mentioned, and as far as I could make out, the UK or US corporate-media didn’t really cover the occasion, and it is not really hard to work out why that would be the case. Obviously, the governments of Britain and the US want to create a general perception that al-Assad can only be overthrown with force; such a perception cannot be maintained if everyone comes to believe that the Syrian Government is voluntarily instituting democracy. The official UK/US/EU narrative would be undermined and damaged in a severely disadvantageous way. The justification for war would clearly and widely have been seen to have dissipated.

The truth is that neither the British, the US, or the EU Government want freedom in Syria. Instead, they want to impose their own puppet government. They can only do this by force, because if the choice of their government was left entirely to a majority of Syrians, all indicators suggest that it would – unless and until it sold out to external corporate influence – represent their sovereign independence against the interests of the international gangsters who run the governments of the Progressive West.

So, when the Syrian referendum was mentioned this week by the corporate media, it was mentioned in ways that derided it, belittled its significance, or made out that it was some kind of device by al-Assad to avoid being displaced by that inevitable war that the West are so keen on – as Fox News put it “a gesture by embattled President Bashar Assad to placate those seeking his ouster”.  In another example, in the Belfast Telegraph, which was one of the very few places I could read a straight up and down report about the result of the referendum, a reporter sneered at the turnout, implied that the result was not to be trusted, and interpreted the fixed terms presidency as a contrivance for al-Assad to stay in power, rather than liken it to a theoretical checks and balance that is akin to the American system:

Despite the seemingly impressive result – there has been no independent verification – the government in Damascus conceded that 57.4 per cent of voters had bothered, or had been able, to cast their ballots. The result, if adopted, will allow President Assad to stay in power for another 16 years.

The reference to al-Assad staying in power until 2028 is talking about the way his current term ends in 2014, but is not counted as being part of the new system; hence, under the new constitution it is possible that he could be president for another 16 years. Yes, this does seem a bit like self-preservation, and there is perhaps more than a little bit of that involved, but the significant point that critics of al-Assad should concede (but don’t) is that from 2014 onwards, theoretically speaking at least, no one will be able to be President of Syria for life ever again.

In addition, the turn of phrase in the Belfast Telegraph regarding the turnout is meant to smear the Syrian Government. It is trying to give the impression that the Syrian Government had to admit that not many people were willing or able (because of the fighting, we suppose) to vote in the referendum, and the implication is that the Syrian Government intimidated opposition so that they wouldn’t vote, and the the result should not be seen to be imbued with democratic authority. However, this is quite unfair because the turnout figure, if it is right, is actually quite good, and it’s ironic that defaming commentary about it comes out of a paper that is based in the island of Ireland, which is a place that has given us many such-like events by which we can compare and contrast the circumstances around the Syrian referendum. Compare the Syrian turnout, for instance, to the 53 per cent for the first Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (the EU Constitution by another name) held in June 2008, and the 59 per cent for the second Irish referendum held in October 2009.

As we know, the Irish voted against the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, and because the EU Government, and all the EU member state governments didn’t like the result, Ireland had to vote again so that a “yes” could be got. Indeed, the Irish had been due to vote on the original EU Constitution (as we in the UK were due to) before its wholesale rejection by French and Dutch voters – which gave the Irish Government an excuse not to embarrass their EU masters, and themselves, any further. They, like all the governments of the other member states, had already signed the treaty; ratification was meant to follow, and it was probably meant to follow easily, which says it all about what European politicians think of their electorates.

Indeed, the entire process of enshrining an EU Constitution was widely recognised, except by those who had decided to be wilfully ignorant, as an offense against the democratic will of the people of many nations. It spoke volumes about the dictatorship that was and still is the EU Government and its regional assemblies that were formerly known as national governments.

And what do you think that the very same ruling class are saying about the Syrian referendum on a constitution? What do you think that they think about a statement of intent to institute the sort of representative democracy that they themselves despise? (Following quotes from here).

“The referendum in Syria is nothing more than a farce,” said Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister. “Sham votes cannot be a contribution to a resolution of the crisis. Assad must finally end the violence and clear the way for a political transition.”

Mr Hague dismissed Sunday’s Syrian “referendum” as of no relevance to international efforts to impose a “diplomatic and economic stranglehold on the Assad regime” to “choke off support for its campaign of terror”.

Indeed, as a collective statement about the prospect of Syrian democracy, on Monday the EU imposed new sanctions on al-Assad’s country, which consist of  

freezing the assets of the country’s central bank, restricting trade in gold, diamonds and precious metals, introducing a ban on cargo flights into the EU, and blacklisting seven individuals close to Mr Assad.

As Ron Paul said, sanctions are an act of war, and the EU is at war with Syria; they are also at war in a truer form with British personnel on the ground surreptitiously fighting alongside Islamist mercenaries (which Clinton has now admitted to). Naturally, being at war with Syria, the EU does not care about measures to democratise the country - whether is is a sincere attempt or not. The EU itself is not a democracy, but a tyranny that is at war with Syria to capture its resources, and to bring the territory into its remit of control through a proxy. There is no member state in the EU that is a democracy. Further afield, their American Progressive ally is not a democracy either – which has been made all the more clearer to so many people this presidential election cycle as they see caucuses and primaries stolen from the only candidate who would put an end to America’s militarism and expansionism.

The US isn’t a democracy, and this is why the government there would also berate an expression of Syrian free will that threatened to get in the way of an invasion plan:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Sunday’s vote “a cynical ploy.”

“It’s a phony referendum, and it is going to be used by Assad to justify what he’s doing to other Syrian citizens,” she said in an interview with CBS News in Rabat, Morocco.

With special regards to our own dictatorship in the UK, the irony of William Hague denigrating an opportunity to vote on a constitution is one that all should notice. Hague is of a political party that gave a “cast-iron” guarantee on a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and then reneged on the promise. When he spoke to rule out a referendum, he called it “a bad day for democracy”; yes, Hague and the other Tories were and are bad for democracy, as he admitted.

Hague blamed decisions in other European capitals on making any referendum redundant, but it wasn’t redundant, and there were other more radical agendas that could have been put to the British people, like leaving the EU entirely. However, a referendum on EU membership was ruled out once and for all in 2011 when Cameron stated, like a true dictator, that he knew what it was that the British people wanted:

“It’s not our view that there should be an in/out referendum,” the prime minister said. “I don’t want Britain to leave the European Union.

“I think it’s the wrong answer for Britain. What most people want in this country, I believe, is not actually to leave the European Union, but to reform the European Union and make sure the balance of powers between a country like Britain and Europe is better.”

Right here are the spewings of an arrogant tyrant. Cameron is the dictator who won’t let his people have a say about their democratic future while al-Assad, and whatever baggage he carries as a supposed archetype of autocracy, has just moved to let his do exactly that. To rub salt in UK wounds incurred by referendum-refusal, the Irish, our closest neighbours and kin, are allowed referenda on a regular basis on account of how parts of their constitution haven’t been superseded by the EU. In fact, this week we learn that they will get another one, this time about the EU fiscal treaty – which I am sure that, by threats of economic implosion, they will be suitably frightened into voting for. In the end, their vote, their free choice, will be illusory because the “no” vote will be maligned and made untrendy, and the processes of EU integration will have received some token democratic blessing. Dictatorships only allow people to vote when they will vote for what the dictatorship wants.

And if we are going to analyse this fairly, we should perhaps ascribe the same idea to the Syrian referendum, and, especially considering the baggage that al-Assad does have, we should not rule out the possibility that his democracy will only be the illusory sort that already exists in the West and even in Russia. But if al-Assad is not making a genuine attempt to turn his country into a republic after the American fashion, then make no mistake, he would be, in his real scheme, no worse or no better than the likes of Putin, Cameron, or Obama; all would be equally unconcerned with, and wary of true representative democracy.

What people really need to do in the UK is realise that there is a beam in their own eyes before trying to take the splinter out of the eyes of the Syrians. There is a dictator at home, there is a whole raft of them, and they all need to be overthrown before we worry about all the other dictators in all the other countries in the world.