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Neo-nazis supporting Al-Assad

Discussion in 'General political debates' started by ungovernable, Oct 1, 2013.

  1. ungovernable

    ungovernable Autonome Staff Member Uploader Admin Team Experienced member


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    A lot of neo-nazi and far-right groups supports Al-Assad's regime all over the world, it's nothing new. But what do they get in return ? This article explores an interessing theory backed up with facts...

    http://www.vice.com/read/are-greek-neo- ... e=vicefbus

    Not every report that comes out of Syria is bad news for Bashar al-Assad, the country's president. While the world's media worries about recently radicalized jihadists flying from England to Aleppo to gun down the embattled leader's soldiers, there's another type of international engagement playing out in the country—and this time, it's playing out in the regime's favor.

    Since the conflict began in 2011, far-right groups from across the world have been courting the Syrian government. On the slightly more moderate end of the scale, BNP leader Nick Griffin rode into Damascus a few months back to have his photo taken with the prime minister, Wael Nader Al-Halqi, and publicly rail against the Free Syrian Army. On the more extreme end, fascist Greek mercenaries may now be training in Syria to help defend Assad and have formed a European support network to spread pro-regime propaganda.

    Just over a month ago, the Irish-Greek blogger Glykosymoritis sent me an article translated from the right-wing Greek newspaper, Democratia. The clipping contained an interview with an obscure far-right group called Black Lily, who were making bold claims about having a "whole platoon of volunteers [who] are fighting side by side with Assad's government forces."

    I spent the subsequent weeks emailing the group, looking for pictures or video evidence to prove that their fighters are on the ground. The group's responses were guarded, as they were apparently worried for the safety of their members, but their claims weren't totally implausible. "These days, more Greeks are in Syria with the Syrian Armed Forces," they told me. "Very soon we are going to have news."

    Although it might seem odd, the story isn't particularly shocking. Assad's door has been open to far-right groups for years. In 2005, five years after Bashar had assumed power, American white nationalist and KKK grand wizard David Duke visited Damascus to give a televized speech where he attacked Israel and told the Syrian leader, "Your fight for freedom is the same as our fight for freedom." The regime was charmed, and clearly happy to play host to an American Holocaust denier who would back their dislike of Israel.

    Unfortunately, any similar kind of direct link between Assad and Black Lily was hard to establish; my contact was guarded, using the name Sebastian Fulidis—presumably a pseudonym taken from a Greek soldier who'd fought for the Nazi special forces. The source quickly let me know that I wouldn't be able to travel to meet the group while they were supposedly training for war in Syria.

    The newspaper clipping had talked Black Lily up, claiming that the "Greek nationalist socialists […] fighting alongside Assad's regime are far more dangerous than the Golden Dawn." Given what we now know about the Golden Dawn's sideline in being genuinely dangerous, I wanted to find out whether Black Lily live up to the hype.

    The group subscribes to autonomous nationalism, a postmodern far-right subculture that often blends anarchist aesthetics with militant far-right and anti-capitalist rhetoric, focusing heavily on direct action rather than electoralism. As Third Positionists, they see themselves as being beyond the notions of left and right, and offer support to separatist movements in hopes that we can all one day end up living in a world with rigidly defined ethnic and nationalist boundaries. (While flirting with these same ideas, a younger Nick Griffin visited Libya in the late 1980s to try to gain support for the "political soldier" faction of the National Front to which he belonged at the time.)

    The newspaper clipping I was sent claimed that Black Lily have been in touch with their "Syrian brothers in arms" for years, before describing how they have now joined the fight alongside the regime: “Fighters from all over Europe joined the ranks of the Syrian Army and civil defence in mass," it read, "among them many Greeks. Greek fighters have participated in all major battles that commenced in [the] south and west of the country [over] the last two years, and so far no casualties have been reported. It's not a coincidence that, in the fierce battle that took place in al-Qusayr, beside the praise for the heroic Hezbollah, the Greek fighters received credit for their bravery as well."

    Of course, considering the convenient lack of casualties, there is no definitive proof that Black Lily's claims are true. However, they're devoted to prove their allegiances, saying that Syria has a strong cultural link with Greece (the largest Christian group in the country is the Greek Orthodox church), and when pushed on the number of fighters they have on the ground, they told me that they have a platoon fighting in Syria who, according to their interview, "found loads of ID documents and passports of compatriots of Barack Obama" on dead rebels after the battle in al-Qusayr.

    The group also says that thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, and Polish nationalists have declared themselves ready to defend Assad, which might seem like another work of fantasy, but could also have some basis in truth: a rebel blogger recently wrote that he'd encountered mercenary military advisers from Russia and Eastern Europe. "They are not sent by the armies of these countries," he wrote, "but they have a military background. This is what is making things in Ghouta so hard—they can attack from so many areas because of their large numbers, and when we kill some of them, more want to come to Syria and fight."

    In the past, far-right Greek mercenaries have fought in the Balkans—more specifically, a former Greek army officer and a former Greek police officer who were charged with killing two Albanians during a cross-border raid. So previous examples of the same kind of people waging war overseas aren't unheard of.

    My Black Lily contact also "revealed" that they are part of the European Solidarity Front for Syria (ESFS), a group that has organized protests and rallies in support of Assad across the continent. The ESFS have also held talks about Syria in Italy—hosted by the fascist group CasaPound—that have been exposed as fronts for fascist Third Positionist group meet-ups, with Belgian Third Positionist Ruben Sosiers listed as the main speaker at a June event in Rome. Flags from CasaPound, the ESFS-affiliated Sempre Domani and the fascist-inspired group Zenit were all on display at a later meeting.

    The ESFS boasts of erecting 17 billboards in Greece, and their Facebook shows all the slick merchandise that is available to their supporters. More worryingly, they've been invited into Italian schools to speak about the situation in Syria.

    Looking at their branches in France, Spain, and the Czech Republic, it quickly becomes clear that this European network of fascists ostensibly looking to help Assad may also be securing money from the Syrian government, helping them to spread their niche philosophy. Hundreds of flags, posters, and flights to Syria don’t pay for themselves, and the autonomous nationalists would be able to gain greater resources through their Syria campaign than they are usually capable of mustering. In short, they may be using the civil war there as a method of fundraising.

    While the ESFS have been able to make contact with pro-Assad members of the Syrian community, it's unclear whether the people who have shown up to their protests in Rome and other European capitals are fully aware of who is behind them. One thing that has been made clear by a number of photos is that the ESFS have infiltrated larger antiwar protests, passing themselves off as anti-war activists, and have built some support within Syrian migrant communities.

    Scratching beyond the rhetoric, it's clear that the ESFS' predominant common cause with Assad is an entrenched sentiment of anti-Zionism—their shared hatred of Israelis. Tellingly, Black Lily’s interview in the newspaper clipping ends with a call to action for "ZOG" (Zionist Occupation Government), an anti-Semitic conspiracy that claims Jews run the world. "We call all these people with open minds to support by all means the patriotic forces of Syria," it reads, "and understand that they have to ready themselves for the incoming storm that is approaching toward them fast because of the plans of the local Zionist occupation government back home."

    The fact that fascists are traveling to Syria is currently one of the country's smallest problems—myriad shadowy groups and political motivations play in the conflict, but as Assad becomes more desperate, the presence of idealistic Europeans with large networks of activists could become a much larger concern.
     
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  2. Rebellious twit

    Rebellious twit Experienced Member Experienced member


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    this isn't something you hear in the mainstream press...Scary as fuck too.. :|
     
  3. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Of course you can't get any definite or positive confirmation--because it simply isn't true.

    Here's a much better explanation of what's really going on and who supports Assad. The link to his article was posted on Twitter by Carlos @Agent_of_Change

    http://www.invent-the-future.org/2013/0 ... ng-bashar/


    September 23, 2013

    Syria
    Decriminalising Bashar – towards a more effective anti-war movement

    On 10 April 1993, one of the greatest heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, Chris Hani, was gunned down by a neo-fascist in an attempt to disrupt the seemingly inexorable process of bringing majority rule to South Africa. Although direct legal culpability for this tragic assassination belonged to only two men – a Polish immigrant by the name of Janusz Waluś and a senior Conservative Party MP named Clive Derby-Lewis – the crime formed part of a much wider onslaught against the ANC and its allies. This onslaught – paramilitary, political, legal, psychological, journalistic – was not primarily conducted by fringe lunatics such as Waluś and Derby-Lewis, but by the mainstream white political forces and their puppets within the black community (such as the Inkatha Freedom Party). The leaders of the ANC, and particularly the MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed liberation movement with which Chris Hani’s name will forever be associated) were subjected to a wide-ranging campaign of demonisation. This campaign created conditions such that political assassinations of anti-apartheid leaders became expected, almost inevitable. Of course, the more ‘dovish’ leaders of the main white party, the National Party, were quick to denounce Hani’s assassination; but the truth is that they were at least partly responsible for it.

    Speaking at Hani’s funeral, Nelson Mandela spoke of this phenomenon: “To criminalise is to outlaw, and the hunting down of an outlaw is regarded as legitimate. That is why, although millions of people have been outraged at the murder of Chris Hani, few were really surprised. Those who have deliberately created this climate that legitimates political assassinations are as much responsible for the death of Chris Hani as the man who pulled the trigger.”

    Turning to the current situation in Syria, we see a parallel between the “climate that legitimates political assassinations” in early-90s South Africa and a media climate that legitimates the “limited military strikes” being planned in Washington.

    The Syrian state has been under direct attack by western imperialism for the last two and a half years (although the US and others have been “accelerating the work of reformers” for much longer than that). The forms of this attack are many: providing weapons and money to opposition groups trying to topple the government; implementing wide-ranging trade sanctions; providing practically unlimited space in the media for the opposition whilst effecting a near-total media blackout on pro-government sources; and relentlessly slandering the Syrian president and government. In short, the western media and governments have – consciously and deliberately – “created this climate that legitimates” a military regime change operation against Syria.

    An anti-war movement that takes part in war propaganda

    Building a phoney case for imperialist regime change is, of course, not unusual. What is really curious is that the leadership of the anti-war movement in the west – the people whose clear responsibility is to build the widest possible opposition to war on Syria – has been actively participating in the propaganda and demonisation campaign. Whilst opposing direct military strikes, they have nonetheless given consistent support to the regime change operation that such strikes are meant to consummate.

    Wilfully ignoring the indications that the Syrian government is very popular, Tariq Ali – perhaps the most recognisable figure in the British anti-war movement – feels able to claim that “the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people want the Assad family out”. Indeed, he explicitly calls for foreign-assisted regime change, saying “non-violent pressure has to be kept up externally to tell Bashar he has to go.”

    Rising star of the British left Owen Jones used his high-profile Independent column of 25 August this year (just as the war rhetoric from Cameron, Hollande and Kerry was reaching fever pitch) to voice his hatred of the “gang of thugs” and “glorified gangsters” that run Syria, before worrying that “an attack could invite retaliation from Iran and an escalation of Russian’s support for Assad’s thugs, helping to drag the region even further into disaster.” Jones evidently doesn’t know very much about Syria, but that doesn’t stop him from participating in the Ba’ath-bashing: last year, his response to a bomb attack in Damascus which killed several Syrian ministers was the gleeful “Adios, Assad (I hope)”.

    According to Stop the War Coalition national officer John Rees, “no-one can minimise the barbarity of the Assad regime, nor want to defend it from the justified rage of its own people.” Any objectively progressive actions ever taken by the Syrian government (such as its support for Palestine and Hezbollah) are nothing more than “self-interested and calculated acts of state policy” – which claim is rather reminiscent of the Financial Times accusing Hugo Chávez of “demagogy” in pushing for land reform in Venezuela!

    Rees is only too clear that the number one enemy for Syrians is the government, and that pro-west sectarian Saudi-funded rebels are a secondary enemy – a position virtually indistinguishable from the Israelis, who state: “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” Further, Rees believes that what is really needed is to “give the revolutionaries the chance to shake off their pro-western leaders and defeat Assad.” That’s presumably if they’re not too busy eating human hearts or murdering people on the basis of their religious beliefs.

    These are not isolated examples. It is decidedly rare to find a British anti-war leader mentioning Bashar al-Assad and his government in anything but an intensely negative light. Bashar is “brutal”; he is a “dictator”; he should be indicted at the International Criminal Court. Frankly, this leader of independent, anti-imperialist Syria is subjected to far more severe abuse from the mainstream left than are the leaders of Britain, France and the US. In the imperialist heartlands of North America and Western Europe, the defence of Syria has been left to a small minority, although thankfully the (far more important) left movements in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere have a much richer understanding of anti-imperialist solidarity.

    At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious: if you’re trying to spread anti-war sentiment and build the most effective possible movement against military action, then taking part in the demonisation of the country under threat is probably not a very smart strategy.

    This campaign of propaganda, lies and slander has been very effective in creating a public opinion that is ambivalent at best in relation to the attack that is under preparation. Whilst most people may be “against” bombing Syria in principle, to what extent are they passionate enough to actually do anything to prevent this criminal, murderous act from taking place? Two million people marched against war in Iraq (and given the right leadership, they would have been willing to do considerably more than just march); yet no demonstration against war on Syria has attracted more than a couple of thousand people. Would thousands of people be willing to participate in direct action? Would they be willing to conduct, say, a one-week general strike? Would workers follow the great example of the Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride and actively disrupt imperialist support for regime change? Highly unlikely. And this is because all they have heard about Syria – from the radical left to the fundamentalist right to the Saudi-sponsored Muslim organisations – is that Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator whose overthrow is long overdue.

    OK, but haven’t we just prevented a war?

    In the light of the House of Commons exhibiting an unusual level of sense by voting against Cameron’s motion authorising use of force against Syria, some anti-war activists were quick to claim that the “sustained mass power of the anti-war movement” has “undoubtedly been a decisive factor.” Members of this movement should “recognise what we have achieved in recent weeks : we have stopped the US and Britain from waging a war that, if the British parliament had voted the other way, would already have taken place, with who knows what consequences.”

    Now, optimism and jubilation have their place, but they shouldn’t be used to deflect valid criticism or avoid serious reflection. Anybody who has been involved in the anti-war movement in Britain over the past decade will have noticed the level of activity steadily dwindling. Just two years ago, we witnessed a vicious war fought by the western imperialist powers (with Britain one of the major instigators) in order to effect regime change in Libya. Over 50,000 died. Murderous racists were brought to power. A head of state was tortured and murdered , while imperialism celebrated. Decades of development – that had turned Libya from a colonial backwater into the country with the highest living standards in Africa – have been turned back. Stop the War Coalition weren’t able to mobilise more than a tiny protest against this war, and yet we are expected to believe that, two years later, Britain suddenly has a vibrant and brilliantly effective anti-war movement capable of preventing war on Syria? This is obviously not the case.

    Regardless of how much attention the British public pays to the anti-war movement, the fact is that public opinion in the west is only a small factor in the much larger question of the balance of forces. Syria is different to Libya in that it has powerful allies and that it has never disarmed. Furthermore, it shares a border with Israel and is capable of doing some serious damage to imperialism’s most important ally in the Middle East. This makes military intervention a highly dangerous and unpredictable option from the point of view of the decision-makers in Washington, London and Paris.

    The uprising was supposed to take care of this problem. A successful ‘Arab Spring’ revolution – armed, trained and funded by the west and its regional proxies in Saudi, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan – would have installed a compliant government and would have constituted an essential milestone in the imperialist-zionist regional strategy: the breakup of the resistance axis and the overthrow of all states unwilling to go along with imperialist diktat. This strategy – seemingly so difficult for western liberals and leftists to comprehend – is perfectly well understood by the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah: “What is happening in Syria is a confrontation between the resistance axis and the U.S./Israeli axis. They seek aggression against the resistance axis through Syria in order to destroy Syria’s capabilities and people, marginalize its role, weaken the resistance and relieve Israel.”

    Beyond the Middle East, a successful ‘revolution’ in Syria would of course be a vital boost to the US-led global strategy: protecting US hegemony and containing the rise of China, Russia and the other major developing nations.

    And yet, in spite of massive support given to the armed opposition; in spite of the relentless propaganda campaign against the Syrian government; in spite of Israeli bombing raids on Damascus; in spite of a brutal and tragic campaign of sectarian hatred being conducted by the rebels; in spite of the blanket support given to the rebels by the imperialists and zionists; the Syrian Arab Army is winning. The tide has clearly turned and the momentum is with the patriotic forces. Hezbollah have openly joined the fray. Russia has sent its warships to the region and has demonstrated some genuine creative brilliance in the diplomatic field in order to prevent western military strikes. Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and others have been immovable in their demands for a peaceful, negotiated solution to the crisis.

    Nobody in imperialist policy circles expected things to turn out like this. The ‘revolution’ was supposed to have succeeded long ago. As a result, the western ruling classes have moved from a firm, united policy (i.e. help the rebels to victory and then ‘assist the transition to democracy’) to chaos, confusion and division. There are hawkish elements that want to bomb their way to victory, and there are more cautious/realistic elements that realise this would be an incredibly dangerous course of action for the western powers and for Israel. Imperialism is faced with a very delicate, even impossible, balance: trying to preserve its increasingly fragile hegemony whilst actively attacking the global counter-hegemonic process. It is a case of “damned if they do and damned if they don’t”.

    Such divisions within the ruling circles in the west are to be welcomed, but it would be an act of significant deception to claim victory for a western anti-war movement that has persistently refused to ally itself with global anti-imperialism.

    Decriminalise and defend Syria

    If we are going to build an anti-war movement capable of mobilising people in a serious way to actually counter imperialist war plans for Syria, we cannot continue with the hopeless “neither imperialism nor Assad” position, which is designed to avoid the obvious question: when imperialism is fighting against the Syrian state, which side should we be on?

    A far more viable anti-war slogan is: Defend Syria from imperialist destabilisation, demonisation and war.

    But can we really defend this brutal, oppressive, repressive regime? Wasn’t the much-missed Hugo Chavez just being a bit of a nutcase when he expressed his fondness for “brother President Bashar al-Assad” and worked to counter the offensive against Syria by shipping fuel to it?

    As with so many things, we have to start with a total rejection of the mainstream media narrative. The country they paint as a brutally repressive police state, a prison of nations, a Cold War relic, is (or was, until the war started tearing it apart) a dignified, safe, secular, modern and moderately prosperous state, closely aligned with the socialist and non-aligned world (e.g. Venezuela, Cuba, DPR Korea), and one of the leading forces within the resistance axis – a bloc that the imperialists are absolutely desperate to break up.

    In the words of its president, Syria is “an independent state working for the interests of its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests of the West.” For over half a century, it has stubbornly refused to play by the rules of imperialism and neoliberalism. Stephen Gowans shows that, in spite of some limited market reforms of recent years, “the Ba’athist state has always exercised considerable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of enterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on foreign investment, and restrictions on imports. These are the necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and to chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign interests.”

    The Syrian government maintains a commitment to a strong welfare state, for example ensuring universal access to healthcare (in which area its performance has been impressive) and providing free education at all levels. It has a long-established policy of secularism and multiculturalism, protecting and celebrating its religious and ethnic diversity and refusing to tolerate sectarian hatred.

    Syria has done a great deal – perhaps more than any other country – to oppose Israel and support the Palestinians. It has long been the chief financial and practical supporter of the various Palestinian resistance organisations, as well as of Hezbollah. It has intervened militarily to prevent Israel’s expansion into Lebanon. It has provided a home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, who are treated far better than they are elsewhere in the Arab world. In spite of massive pressure to do so – and in spite of the obvious immediate benefits that it would reap in terms of security and peace – it has refused to go down the route of a bilateral peace treaty with Israel. Palestine is very much at the forefront of the Syrian national consciousness, as exemplified by the Syrians who went to the border with Israel on Nakba Day 2011 and were martyred there at the hands of the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces.

    True to its Pan-Arabist traditions, Syria has also provided a home to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in the aftermath of NATO’s 2003 attack.

    Whatever mistakes and painful compromises Ba’athist Syria has made over the years should be viewed in terms of the very unstable and dangerous geopolitical and economic context within which it exists. For example:

    It is in a permanent state of war with Israel, and has part of its territory occupied by the latter.

    While it has stuck to the principles of Arab Nationalism and the defence of Palestinian rights, the other frontline Arab states – Egypt and Jordan, along with the reactionary Gulf monarchies – have capitulated.

    It has suffered constant destabilisation by the western imperialist countries and their regional allies.

    It shares a border with the heavily militarised pro-western regime in Turkey.

    It shares a border with the chronically unstable Lebanon (historically a part of Syria that was carved out in the 1920s by the French colonialists in order to create a Christian-dominated enclave).

    Its most important ally of the 70s and 80s – the Soviet Union – collapsed in 1991, leaving it in a highly precarious situation.

    Its economic burdens have been added to by longstanding sanctions, significantly deepened in 2003 by George W Bush, specifically in response to Syria’s support for resistance movements in the region.

    Its economic problems of recent years have also been exacerbated by the illegal imperialist war on Iraq, which created a refugee crisis of horrific proportions. Syria absorbed 1.5 million Iraqi refugees and has made significant sacrifices to help them. Given that “Syria has the highest level of civic and social rights for refugees in the region,” it’s not difficult to understand how its economic and social stability must have been affected.

    In recent years, Syria has been suffering from a devastating drought “impacting more than 1.3 million people, killing up to 85 percent of livestock in some regions and forcing 160 villages to be abandoned due to crop failures”. The root of this problem is the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, as one-third of Israel’s water is supplied from Golan.

    Given the number of different religious sects and ethnicities within Syria, it has never been difficult for the west and its regional proxies to stir up tensions and create unrest.

    While there is clearly a need to enhance popular democracy and to clamp down on corruption and cronyism (in what country is this not the case?), this is well understood by the state. As Alistair Crooke writes: “There is this mass demand for reform. But paradoxically – and contrary to the ‘awakening’ narrative – most Syrians also believe that President Bashar al-Assad shares their conviction for reform.”

    So there is every reason to defend Syria. Not because it is some sort of socialist utopia, but because it is an independent, anti-imperialist, anti-zionist state that tries to provide a good standard of living for its people and which aligns itself with the progressive and counterhegemonic forces in the region and worldwide.

    Tasks for the anti-war movement

    If the anti-war movement can agree on the need to actively defend Syria, then its tasks become relatively clear:

    Clearly explain to the public that this is not a revolution or a civil war, but an imperialist war of regime change where the fighting has been outsourced to sectarian religious terrorists. It is not part of a region-wide ‘Arab Spring’ process of “overthrowing reactionary regimes”; rather, it is part of a global process of destabilising, demonising, weakening and removing all states that refuse to play by the rules. It is this same process that brought about regime change in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Congo, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil and elsewhere. This process was described in a very clear, straightforward way by Maurice Bishop, leader of the socialist government in Grenada that was overthrown 30 years ago: “Destabilisation is the name given to the newest method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and violence… Destabilisation takes many forms: there is propaganda destabilisation, when the foreign media, and sometimes our own Caribbean press, prints lies and distortions against us; there is economic destabilisation, when our trade and our industries are sabotaged and disrupted; and there is violent destabilization, criminal acts of death and destruction… As long as we show the world, clearly and unflinchingly, that we intend to remain free and independent; that we intend to consolidate and strengthen the principles and goals of our revolution; as we show this to the world, there will be attacks on us.”

    Stop participating in the demonisation of the Syrian state. This demonisation – repeating the media’s lies against Syria, exaggerating the negative aspects of the Syrian state and downplaying all the positive things it has done – is totally demobilising. It is preventing the development of a meaningful, creative, courageous, audacious anti-war movement.

    Campaign for an end to trade sanctions on Syria.

    Campaign for an end to the arming and funding of rebel groups by the British, French and US governments and their stooges in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait.

    Send peace delegations to Syria to observe the situation first hand and report back. The recent delegation by Cynthia McKinney, Ramsey Clark, Dedon Kamathi and others is an excellent example that should be emulated.

    Campaign for wide-ranging industrial action in the case of military attack.

    Support all processes leading to a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the Syrian crisis, reflecting the will of the vast majority of the Syrian people.

    The defence of Syria is, at this point in time, the frontline of the struggle worldwide against imperialist domination. It is Korea in 1950, Vietnam in 1965, Algeria in 1954, Zimbabwe in 1970, Cuba in 1961, Nicaragua in 1981, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Palestine since 1948. It’s time for us to step up.

    Further reading

    Patrick Seale’s biography of Hafez al-Assad, ‘Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East’, provides an excellent overview of 20th century Syria and a very balanced, detailed depiction of the Ba’athist government.

    The following articles are also particularly useful:

    Alastair Crooke: Unfolding the Syrian Paradox

    Asia Times: A mistaken case for Syrian regime change

    Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: Assad Foreign Policy (I): A History of Consistence

    Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: Assad Foreign Policy (II): Strategies of Confrontation

    Monthly Review: Why Syria Matters: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad

    Stephen Gowans: Syria, The View From The Other Side

    Stephen Gowans: What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels

    Up-to-date anti-imperialist analysis of the Syria crisis can generally be found at Workers World, Liberation, FightBack, Lalkar, Socialist Action, Global Research, Pan-African News Wire, Proletarian, What’s Left and ASG’s Counter-Hegemony Unit.
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I also highly recommend the book, Slouching Towards Sirte, by Maximillian Forte, to understand what really happened in Libya, how it came about, and why the US and Israel are trying to do the same thing in Syria.

    I expect to see anti-Assad propaganda in the mainstream media and in naive "leftist" circles, but not here on APN.

    Fascists don't support Assad, they support fascist anti-Assad regimes like the USA and Israel. Anti-fascists don't ally with fascist regimes. None of the major powers allied against Assad can be considered part of the global resistance against imperialism because they are imperialists. Even if there really are one or two neo-Nazis claiming to support Assad, there are fascists from 83 different fascist countries fighting in Syria to overthrow him , and they are all, including Al Qaida, being armed, funded, and/or supported by the US, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other repressive regimes. Standing with Assad are Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries which do not have fascist governments. That neo-Nazis would ally themselves against fascist regimes and support a socialist regime makes no sense at all.

    Yes, the fascists trying to kill Assad and destroy Syria are going to try to enlist your sympathies by saying that the Devil himself supports Assad, when they're not claiming that Assad himself is the devil.

    That's what they said about Hani, Allende, Guevara, Lumumba, Sadaam, Gaddafi, and every other resistance leader that imperialism murdered. How many times will people fall for it?
     
  4. Spike one of many

    Spike one of many Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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  5. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Nov 13, 2011
     
    Is it? I looked at their front page and found this:

    http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/2013 ... in-africa/

    They obviously feel the same way about Blacks that Jews do.

    But they also feel the same way about Jews as both they and Jews do about Blacks.

    These are some mighty confused people. If they were really against people of color, they would be supporting Israel, because they're on the same side.

    The thing is that, just like Jews, they're not egaitarian, just like Jews, they're not secular, and they're just as racist as the Jews they hate.

    Oh, and by the way, the Israeli Supreme Court denied a petition for a Jew to have Israeli on their passport instead of Jewish, because Israel has two classes, citizens and nationals. Nationals have Israeli nationality, but only Jews have Israeli citizenship. So Arabs can be Israelis, but only Jews can be citizens of Israel. Which means that there's no point in saying Zionists when Israel insists that the proper word is Jews. Arabs and Blacks cannot be citizens of Israel because they're not Jews.

    In some cases, people might actually be Jews, at least in their own minds, the way that many people in the US believe that they're Jews just because they were born to Jewish parents, were circumcized (if male), study Torah, go to synagogue, and observe all the Jewish rituals. But if they went to Israel, unless they're Orthodox, they would have to undergo conversion to Orthodox Judaism if they wanted to marry, because only Orthodox rabbis can perform marriages in Israel and they don't recognize people who aren't Orthodox as real Jews. So the average US Jew would have to convert to Judaism before Israel would consider them a Jew.

    I don't see that any country has ever benefitted by having been attacked by the United States. The US not only cannot export democracy, it doesn't seem able to manufacture any at home.

    Syria is no threat to any other country, it is just standing in the way of Israel's plans to destroy Iran. If that's why neo-Nazis are supporting Assad, they're right.

    As for the Russians, if the US and Israel manage to destroy Syria, the way they did Iraq and Libya, then Iran is next, and then Russia and China.

    At the moment, Obama has a bigger Gulag (prison system) than Josef Stalin ever had.

    But Putin seems to have posed for a photo op with a right-wing biker gang that the Kremlin is supporting.

    I just started reading a new book from AK Press, Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism, by Michael Schmidt.

    There are some anarchists (Anarchists Against The Wall) in Israel. There are some anarchists in the United States. But they don't seem to support their governments, in fact they activvely oppose their governments. But the overwhelming majority of the population in both places haven't got a clue.

    The majority of people in the US seem to want health care. But they gleefully demonize any foreign leader who provides free health care as a Communist and applaud their assassination. They want access to higher education but gleefully support bombing to smithereens any country that has free higher education.

    I don't know everything--nobody can. But I know that Obama is much worse of a war criminal than Assad or than Gaddafi ever was. That Iraq is much worse off now than under Sadaam.

    On the other hand, I'm not a pacifist and I know we can't always pick our fights.

    Great little article here about that:

    Days of Teargas, Blood + Vomit

    http://seanswain.org/days-of-teargas-blood-vomit/

    I know that I'm getting tired of seeing the US demonize one foreign leader after another, assassinate them, and bomb their countries to rubble. It costs trillions of dollars and the only people who benefit are the arms dealers. I know that for the money the US has spent invading Afghanistan, it could have bought that country a hundred times over, owned every bit of land, and made every person there a hundred times as wealthy as they were before, but then it wouldn't have limited the profits exclusively to arms dealers. Only killing and bombing does that.

    Assad didn't attack anybody. He couldn't possibly have as many chemical weapons as the US does, the US being the number one user of chemical weapons in the world. He isn't a danger to his neighbors like Israel is. I'm sure he has his faults, because everyone does, but he isn't set on taking over the world like Obama and Netanyahu.

    I'm going to read this little book, Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism. I want to know about places in the world where people care more about people than about money or power.

    Three things that I'm not going to do are go fight in Syria , ask people for money to support anyone fighting in Syria, or help demonize Assad.

    I did, however, just send ten bucks to Sean Swain, and asked for permission to repost "Days of Teargas, Blood + Vomit" to my little website. I like his writing. He doesn't seem the least bit confused about who the fuckweasels are or how to deal with them: http://seanswain.org/about-sean-swain/

    If I wasn't so lazy maybe I'd email him and ask if he has an opinion about Assad and Syria. I know he has an opinion about me because there's another article on his website, that I haven't read yet, entitled, "Armchair Anarchists Suck." So I guess he doesn't like me. I don't mind. I even had an armchair, but had to give it away because my back went out and I couldn't sit in it.

    From an anarchist standpoint, I'd guess that anarchists have a better survival chance under Assad than under a NATO-supported Islamic government. But there's no way that neo-Nazis or anarchists have anything to gain in Syria. It only takes a few days to bomb a country to rubble. I'm getting tired of it happening to one country after another. If you want to go to Syria, go, but don't ask me for money or support. Since there are neo-Nazis that support Assad, maybe there really are anarchists who support Islamic extremists like Al Qaada. But if they think that what happened to Iraq and Libya is anarchy, they don't understand the concept. Both countries now are utter chaos based on racist and religious violence. That's not what anarchy's about.

    Hands off Syria!

    -------------------------------------------------

    The US government is not shut down.

    You'll know it if the government ever does shut down, because then it will shut up.
     
  6. Spike one of many

    Spike one of many Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    What's so hard to understand? They are against blacks and they are against jews, any commonalities they happen to have are purely incidental and inconsequential. It doesn't mean they're on the same side.
    By the same logic if I am against one regime (Assad, USA/Israel), does that mean I automatically support the other?? Assad is the lesser of the two evils but I'm not about to support him. Neither do I support USA/Israel.
     
  7. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Thanks, Spike.

    What's hard for me to understand is why StegoSaurus posted a message from sombody who wants to go fight against Assad in Syria and wants us to donate money to support that.

    By "supporting" Assad, I mean that I have, at least on Twitter and occasionally here on APN, been trying to help counter the propoganda demonizing him.

    I did the same thing when it was Gaddafi under attack, but it didn't do any good. Gaddafi, the last bulwark against US/AFRICOM recolonizing Africa, is gone and Libya is rubble run by racists.

    Maybe I'll be doing the same thing for whoever is leading Iran when the US and Israel decide to attack him (theyre sexist, so it will be a him), and then again when the US/Israel attack Russia. The demonization always precedes the attack. It's a deliberate pattern, demonize someone to get public support, then, bomb the shit out of the whole place until there's nothing left but religious fanatics killing each other.

    Maybe what I'm trying to say is that Assad isn't just the lesser of two evils, he happens to be the current target of global imperialism.

    There really are sides in Syria, and those who are anti-Assad are on the wrong side as far as I'm concerned. For me, the problem is global imperialism, and Assad is not an imperialist, he's their current target.

    I think Carlos' article made it clear that if you help demonize somebody, you're helping kill them.

    Those the imperialists wish to destroy, they first demonize, dehumanize, and accuse of killing their own people. But it is the US/Israel that kill their own people, Palestinians (unlike most Jews in Israel, whose origins are best explained in Israeli Shlomo Sands' book, The Invention of the Jewish People, the outrage over which has become muted in Israel because there isn't a single point in it that they can refute), actually are a Semitic people. it's a linguistic term, and Obama's government kills Blacks here in the US every day, if we want to talk about somebody killing their own people.

    So if I want to oppose global imperialism, I have no choice but to take sides and support Assad, at least to the extent of trying to counter the propaganda against him. It may be the very least I can do, but it is a little better than doing nothing at all. I cannot be indifferent and just ignore what's going on.

    So I guess I support Assad because I oppose US/Israel. It isn't just that I don't support US/Israel or that I don't support global imperialism, I oppose both and therefore support whoever they target and whatever resistance there is.
     
  8. Rebellious twit

    Rebellious twit Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Assad gassed innocent civilians, you and i look at things diffirently i guess... i think the argumentation that you are using:that" my enemys enemy is my friend" that those people are our allies who are against the US like that ...it's the same if we support the taliban i think the arguement is flawed because we don't share the same ideological thoughts or goals around this with Assad, Assad wants the Rebels Crushed and he is using the islamists as propaganda to make it look like a fight against islamic fundementalism

    supposedly "the left wing resistance" that is supporting Assad are stalinists and communists who thinks it's better without US involvment or the rebels, therefore they support assad and not the people itself who is trying to get rid of assad, i support the anarchists and radicals who are trying to get rid of the islamic fundementalists and nationalist groups involvment and Assad.

    You Arn't an anarchist if you don't support the masses fight and their fight for liberation against assad and his forces and against the imperialism from the west and israeli involvment.

    This is my last post for this thread as this is just continuing as a vicious cycle between dumb arguments to defend Assads Right to fuck with the Masses...
     
  9. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Assad gassed civilians, and much evidence to suggest that he did not. Had there been ANY evidence that Assad gassed civilians, the UN would have given approval, the US Congress would have given approval, the US would have already bombed Syria and the UK would have supported it.

    Every unbiased report shows that the masses in Syria support Assad. He couldn't have held off armed invaders this long without mass support. Some don't like him, but they prefer him to any other options available.

    Maybe you still believe that Sadaam had WMDs and that Gaddafi's troops were raping women? (There weren't even enough Gaddafi troops, had every single one of them spent 24/7 raping women, to rape as many women as are raped by our own troops in the US military and by civilian rapists in the US all the time, including many raped by cops.)

    I'm very glad that you don't think I'm an anarchist, because whatever you think an anarchist is, isn't anything I'd want to be.

    So you won't post again to this thread, you'll start a new thread? Whether you continue to post under the same login, create a new one, or get others to post for you, you will continue to post anti-Assad propaganda to APN because that's what you do.

    As for your "anarchists and radicals" who you say oppose Islamic fundamentalists, nationalists, and also oppose Assad, they're no different if they really exist, than the so-called revolutionaries who demanded that people support them in ousting Gaddafi and insisted that once that was done they could get rid of NATO by themselves. Ask the global superpower we oppose, to kill this little guy we also oppose, because we can't do it ourselves, but then trust us to get rid of the bigger guy who helped us. No, sorry, if you are opposing the same guy that US/Israel is opposing, I'm not going to trust you or help you.

    You're really cracking me up now. Are Assad supporters neo-Nazis or Communists? Or just anybody who won't kill for Israel and spread CIA propaganda?

    Say it, Mr. Dinosaur. I'm your enemy because I won't help you kill Assad and destroy Syria. I'm your enemy because I won't spread and will always try to refute CIA lies and propaganda. I'm your enemy because I won't let you get away with using APN to try to enlist sympathy for helping US/Israel kill Assad without challenging your crap.

    And since I seem to be almost alone in doing it, maybe you'll succeed and I'll fail. You and your kind have almost always succeeded up to now, with a few exceptions such as Cuba, Viet Nam, Algeria, Venezuela, Iceland, etc., but your power seems to be waning. Assad hasn't gassed his own people, and unlike the people opposing him, he has never attacked anyone else. The lies about Assad are the same old tired lies we were told about Sadaam and Gaddafi. People are starting to see through them. Israel gasses Palestinians all the time, but I don't see you racing to overthrow Netanyahu. The United States has gassed more people than any other country in the world, but I don't see you racing to overthrow Obama. Both the US and Israel are accusing Assad of what they do every day, and you believe it? You think that killing Assad will make the world a better place for anarchists or for anyone except the US & Israel?

    Come to think of it, if there was any way that I could help you get to Syria to fight Assad, I wish I could do it (but I certainly wouldn't trust you enough to send money). The US & Israel have been stalemated by Russia and the Syrian army is mopping up the last of the foreign invaders (those left over when the foreign invaders haven't killed each other). I'm sorry you're not among those foreign invaders, so you could find out what the masses in Syria really think of you. Syria has taken in millions of refugees from Iraq and Libya, so the Syrian people know what happens to a country when its leader is overthrown by foreign invaders. The Iraqis who opposed Sadaam found themselves much worse off without him, as did the Libyans who opposed Gaddafi. The Syrians weren't fooled. They'll fight you to the death and it won't be their death this time.
     
  10. ungovernable

    ungovernable Autonome Staff Member Uploader Admin Team Experienced member


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    Dude, yes it IS true. Far-rights groups and neo-nazis from all over Europe supports Assad and it is a very well known fact, especially in France where the far-right held protest to support Assad a couple of times. AFAIK Assad also got an huge support inside the italian neo-fascist scene, among others the Casepound fascists openly supports him. They're also doing the same thing with Ahmadinejad. Some fascists even took a plane to meet the regime leaders. Talk about it with europeans antifas, like i said it is a very well known fact that far-right openly supports Assad.

    Israel is every neo-nazi's worst ennemy. One of the things that makes them stand for countries like Syria or Iran is actually their opposition to Israel...

    WTF, this quote is disgusting, you are clearly being anti-semitist and i suggest you should retract. You are making huge generalizations and putting everyone in the same basket. I wouldn't expect to read this on an anarchist forum. The least of the thing is to make the difference between jews and zionism. Pretending all the jews are bad is as worse as the neo-nazis speech...

    So you are going to let Israel define what is a jew ? This "explanation" is not an excuse for your earlier anti-semitist bullshit...

    Btw, even if Israel requires you to be jew to have citizenship, it doesn't means jews outside israel are not real jews... So what about them ? They're also "racist, not secular and not egalitarian" just because of Israel ?

    Man, i bet you also think all arabs in arab countries are terrorists and mysogines just because thats what their leaders does... What if i would say all americans are assholes because of what their government does ?

    Assad is at war against his own people, he's murdering children and women and using chemical weapons. Now are you also going to pretend that everything we heard about Syria isn't really happenning ? Everything is lies ?

    There is a revolution going on in Syria and we anarchists must support our comrades fighting against the regime. There are a couple of anarchist groups in Syria who supports the ongoing revolution and i think they are better suited than us to judge wether this revolution is good or not.
    I'm definetly not positive for an US intervention, but unfortunatly in 2013 a revolution against a regime like Syria is impossible without some kind of external help, wether it is weapons or just a no-fly zone.

    lol, pretending the US would invade Russia and China doesn't help to make your analys sound serious... Are you kidding me ? A war between US and Russia or China would mean a 3rd world war, nuclear war and probably extinction of mankind. Why the fuck would they do that ? I'm the first to critise US and their world politics but let's stay serious, things like that won't ever happen.

    The only reason Russia is against military actions against Syria is because they have a pipeline in the country and a naval base in the area...

    Because a country provides education and health doesn't excuse the attrocities they have comitted and doesnt means it makes them a good regime... Take Cuba for example, free healthcare and education but a bloody dictatorship...

    Now that's just fucking ridiculous. Stop believing the conspiracy bullshit you read all over the internet. This theory comes up everytime there is a war somewhere, there's always some conspiracy freaks that pretends things never happenned. The use of chemical weapons like agent orange was confirmed by many independant sources, including independant journalists, united nations and others. And before you pretend that the United Nations are part of the conspiracy to hide the truth, remember that the United Nations insisted that they NEVER HAD the evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMD. In Iraq case you could clearly see that the USA was lying but in the Syria case there are TONS of evidences.

    K. So what about them ?
    https://www.facebook.com/syrian.anarchists

    Just google "syrian anarchists". There are many of them in Syria.

    From your link : "Sean ran for Ohio Governor in 2006 and 2010"

    It's a civil war and you pretend that opponents have a "better survival chance" ? Thousands are being killed every weeks.

    Then let me use the same logical than you : i guess i support the syrian rebels because i oppose dictatorship and bloody regimes, thefore i support all freedom fighters who are standing against it.

    Dude inform yourself, there has been MANY evidences and nobody can close the eyes on it anymore. Even if he didnt use chemical weapons, this fucker is bombing his citizens everyday.

    I don't agree but even if this was true, who the fuck cares ? Masses supports government in israel, too... He held off the resistance only because he has weapons, army, planes, and power. And nobody agreed to provide rebels with weapons yet (except saudi arabia, unofficially).
    Pretending that the revolutionaries are "invaders" is once again just repeating the regime's propaganda. There are not invaders, there are syrians who are sick of their regime.

    Wtf, so now you are saying that US imperialism is "our kind" just because we're against bloody dictatorships ?



    Not sure if i will continue debating here. You've pushed it way too far with your anti-semitist bullshit and the way you believe word for word the syria's regime propaganda makes me believe you will never change your mind or even start questionning yourself... You seem to consider that anybody attacked by the USA is de facto an innocent that we should defend.... C'mon... USA may be evil but it doesnt means that the regimes they target is good...
     
  11. ungovernable

    ungovernable Autonome Staff Member Uploader Admin Team Experienced member


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    As your question regarding wether syrian anarchists prefer before or after Assad's regime, maybe let the syrian anarchists speak for themselves...

    Syrian Anarchist Challenges the Rebel/Regime Binary View of Resistance
    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1861 ... resistance
     
  12. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    If you're calling me an anti-Semite, check yourself, because what you really mean is self-hating Jew. But I am anti-Semitic and I openly admit it. I don't hate Jews, I hate Judaism, the same way that I hate anything that is hierarchical, elitist, divisive, sexist, racist, and imperialist.

    I was born and grew up Jewish and supported Israel. It wasn't until I understood that the way Israel is treating Palestinians is the same way that Nazi Germany treated Jews, that I began supporting the Palestinian cause.

    I'm an atheist, not a Jew, and I have friends who were born in Israel and not only left Israel, but also turned away from and against Judaism because it is inherently hierarchical and racist.

    A lot of people in the United States believe that they're Jewish, but Israel doesn't recognize them as Jews--if they go to Israel and try to marry, they have to undergo a conversion to Judaism (Orthodox Judaism) the same as non-Jews. As long as they stay away from the Jewish state, they are free to continue believing that they are Jews, but if they go to the Jewish state, they have to convert to Judaism like any other non-Jews.

    As for letting Israel define who is a Jew, I didn't let them, they are the Jewish state and they did it themselves. They don't call themselves the Zionist state, so why should I?

    There has been a lot of fake CIA propaganda trying to demonize Assad, but it has been thoroughly debunked.

    There are anarchists in the United States also, and we oppose the US government. If there was a Tea Party revolution here, would you fight against the government along with the Tea Party? The neo-Nazis would, and I think you would too.

    When the only possible outcome is for a place to end up more fascist than before, it doesn't make sense to support such a "revolution."

    Saddam had WMDs (he didn't), Gaddafi's troops raped women (they didn't), and now Assad gassed his own people (he didn't). There were children who died but there's a nun who proved that it wasn't Assad's doing. The CIA knows how to demonize people--they do it again and again whenever the Rothschild/Rockefeller elites want to destroy another sovereign country. But with a little attention it is possible to prove that their propaganda is as fake as the US government's 9/11 story. Yes, there are videos of planes, but they don't match and they're doing things that planes cannot possibly do.

    IF APN wants to ban me for being anti-Semitic, that's fine with me. I'm 73 years old and I don't change my mind about things without years of serious study. And I don't want to be around when you start echoing the CIA/Mossad propaganda demonizing whoever is the head of Iran before the US/Israel invades and destroys it. If you want to believe that you're opposing global imperialism when you're helping it, that's your right--in the US you can believe that the earth is flat if you wish.

    But banning me won't make it so.
     
  13. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Are anarchists better off in Iraq now that Sadaam is gone?

    Are anarchists better off in Libya now that Gaddafi is gone?

    Anyone who thinks anarchists would be better off in Syria without Assad, is ignoring the contemporary facts on the ground of global imperialism.

    Do you really think that Saudi Arabia is supporting the opposition to Assad because they're more democratic than Assad?

    Okay, so Al Qaeda, and anarchists are joining the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in opposing Assad, while neo-Nazis are supporting Assad.

    Can you guess what would happen if Assad was gone and the Islamists, neo-Nazis, and anarchists were free to do whatever they wished in Syria?

    Think about it. Because the moment Sadaam was gone, the groups in opposition to Sadaam started killing each other (and now, more than ten years later, they're still killing each other). The moment Gaddafi was gone, the groups in opposition to Gaddafi started killing each other (and killing every Black person they could find). That leads you to believe that if Assad was gone the Islamic fundamentalists, the neo-Nazis, and the anarchists opposing Assad would lay down their arms and create a better place with equality for all?

    Or do you think that once Assad was gone, the small, disorganized group of anarchists in Syria would be able to defeat Al Queda (also known as al CIA-duh) and the neo-Nazis?

    You're only united for or against Assad as a temporary convenience so that you can be free to kill each other, and the smallest, most disorganized group with the least foreign backing (anarchists) isn't likely to prevail.

    But there's no arguing with believers on a crusade, whether they're left or right.

    Go back and look at the parts of my comment that you didn't quote and respond to. Those are the arguments you have no answer to.
     
  14. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    If you believe that anarchy is chaos and all against all, then the overthrow of Sadaam did bring about anarchy in Iraq.

    If you believe that anarchy is chaos and all against all, then the overthrow of Gaddafi did bring about anarchy in Libya.

    If you believe that anarchy is chaos and all against all, then the overthrow of Assad would bring about anarchy in Syria.

    But if you believe that anarchy is chaos and all against all, then you really don't know anything about anarchy.
     
  15. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Syria has a state of emergency?

    We have one in the United States too. It is called the PATRIOT Act.

    Student protesters were watched in Syria?

    They were watched at Kent State here too--through the scopes of the sniper rifles that killed them. More recently there was that cop nonchalantly using bear spray against protesters. And the cops violently evicting the nonviolent Occupy Wall Street camps.

    Syria doesn't have as large a portion of its population in prison as the US does.

    Assad hasn't been anywhere near as repressive as recent US presidents.

    I'm hearing the pot calling the kettle black.

    Obama does kill his own citizens. And his government (cops) kills US citizens every day.

    But Assad is the problem?

    Obama thinks so. Netanyahu thinks so. Saudi Arabia thinks so. And anarchists agree? If I don't agree I'm not an anarchist?

    :lmao:
     
  16. ungovernable

    ungovernable Autonome Staff Member Uploader Admin Team Experienced member


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    Congratulations, you are the Dany Balint of the anarchist scene. Whoever you are doesn't excuse your anti-semitism, thats really sickening on an anarchist forum..

    Ok so you're saying that we shouldn't take part in a revolution as soon as there are people with different ideas fighting with us ? So the anarchists shouldnt have fought for a revolution in Spain, 1936 ?

    Oh yeah right i forgot, the rebels gased their own troops. Makes so much sence.

    Listen, even if Assad didnt use chemical weapons, there would be millions of other reasons to support a revolution against his regime. How the fuck a so-called anarchist can support Assad's bloody regime ? Opposing to war is a thing, supporting the regime is a whole different thing.

    LOL the evidences about the chemical weapons doesn't come from USA, CIA or Mossad. The first one to reveal the use of chemical weapons in Syria was a french journalist, then it was confirmed by independant organisations and then finally by the United Nations.

    You're totally brainwashed by the propaganda of a tyranical regime...

    Totally off-topic comparison. Iraq was a war, it was a military intervention against a regime.
    Syria is a civil war. The people are overthrowing the regime by themselves, the regime isn't being overthrown by a foreign power.

    Who the fuck are you to pretend the population doesn't have the right to rise against their tyrans ? How is it "progressive" to support a dictatorship ?

    Love americans who think they can tell the rest of the world the best way they have to live.... :lmao: Did you ever talk to a syrian anarchist ? To lybians ? To egyptians ? To tunisians ?
    I have family from tunisia, friends from egypt and i've talked with syrian anarchists. And i know for sure that we don't have any right to tell them what to do and how to live.

    Your conspiracy freak bullshit doesn't make any sence... We're not in 79-89 anymore, there isn't any alliance between CIA and Al-quaeda anymore -_-

    Are you kidding me ? You didn't even answer 20% of what i have posted, when i brought arguments like "United Nations didn't lie about Saddam Hussein's WMD so why would they lie about Syria" then you just ignore me and you keep repeating the same bullshit over and over again, pretending everybody is part of a big conspiracy with the CIA

    As for your so-called "arguments" that i didn't answer, it's because i have a life and i have better things to do than debate with a random dude on the internet whos conviced there is an huge conspiracy... From the beginning i knew there was nothing to do and that you wouldn't question yourself or change mind.

    Where the fuck did i mention that the ongoing revolutions in arab countries had anything to do with anarchism ? Where did i say that i expect an anarchist society to come out of these revolutions ? Stop putting words into my mouth.

    As for the last part, i have no lessons to receive from someone who think it isn't contradictory to be an anti-semitist anarchist. I'm very glad to NOT be part of your definition about what is anarchism because i want nothing to do with people who openly claim to be anti-semitist.


    If you feel the need to fool yourself futher then maybe you could explain your alex-jones-lookalike-theory. Why would the whole occidental world want to do something against Syria if it's not because of the atrocities comitted by Assad ? Why did they do something against Gadaffi ? (please don't answer it's because of oil because i will laugh really hard :lmao:)
    If they have any interest in Syria then why didnt they do something yet ? If they want Syria then why the USA refuses to invade the country ? How the fuck can they take the control of Syria if they refuse to send troops ?

    You're going to say it's because they need Syria to invade Iran ? Are you kidding me ? Please take some geo-political classes or something. USA already got Iraq and it's right next to Iran. Their best allies, Saudi Arabia, is also a neighbor of Iran. Kuwait and Qatar, two other neighbors, are also USA allies. Of course they also control Afghanistan who's just another neighbor of Iran.

    [​IMG]

    Look at the map. Why the fuck would the USA need Syria to go to Iran when they already have Iraq and most of Iran's neighbors ?


    I'm against all wars. But i will always stand on the side of the oppressed people and never with the oppressors, like Nestor Makhno said. And in this case the oppressed are clearly the syrian people rising against their tyrans.
     
  17. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    So because you know people in Tunisia and Egypt, you think that both are better off than before their "Arab Spring" revolutions?

    I didn't say that anarchists shouldn't have fought in Spain, but I will point out that the end result was 40 years of Franco and fascism.

    Did you know that when a Jewish boy baby is circumcized, an important part of the ritual is when the mohel, the guy who performs the circumcision, sucks the blood off the baby's penis?

    David Sheen in Israel has asked whether this ritual is followed when an adult male converts to Judaism and has to be circumcized. So far there had been no answer.

    Look at the map yourself. The US never did manage to control Iraq, only to turn it from a stable country to an unstable country. The US cannot mount a war against Iran from Iraq because the US doesn't control Iraq. And Syria is stronger than Iraq was and could easily interfere with US attempts to destroy Iran on behalf of Israel.

    Do you know that Egypt has recently destroyed 90% of the tunnels that the Palestinians relied on to smuggle in food during the blockade of Gaza?

    I think the false allegation was about gassing civilians, including children, but if it was about gassing troops, the "rebels" have been killing each other for a long time. They consist of a lot of different groups, each fighting for supremacy, and at present Al Qaeda seems to be the strongest. At least 46% of the opposition to Assad are foreigners and their weaspons and funding don't come from Assad but from outside Syria.

    I'm not saying that you shouldn't take part in a revoution just because there are people with different ideas fighting with you. If you have a chance, even the remotest possibility of winning, go for it. But if the most likely outcome is that those different ideas will prevail, perhaps you should think about it. I'm sure that if there was a Tea Party revolution to overthrow Obama in the United States, you'd join it, despite the fact that they have different ideas. But if I was fighting a revolution I'm not sure I'd appreciate volunteer allies whose ideas were diametrically opposed to my own, because once I won, I know they'd immediately start fighting against me. So I might let them help me for a while, but I'd eliminate them as quickly as I could. And people with their heads up their butts don't make very good fighters and are easily eliminated.

    There are several people I'm following on Twitter right now who are in Syria and many in Egypt. In fact one of my Tweeps in Egypt, someone I've been following since their Jan 25th revolution, Tarek Shalaby, warned Egyptions not to vote and told them that the elections wouldn't improve their situation. Where do you suppose he got a subversive idea like that? Do you think that the elections which Obama and Hillary suggested made for a more democratic Egypt? Have you been following events there lately as the same military junta Mubarak headed has aquitted him and is now killing off the Muslim Brotherhood?

    If there are millions of reasons to oppose Assad's regime, there are billions, no trillions of reasons to oppose Obama's regime. Why not join the Tea Party and start a revolution here?

    I consider Obama to be a tyrant. But if some other capitalist imperialist country set out to overthrow him and sent troops here who started killing civilians, I wouldn't join them. My goal isn't to overthrow Obama, but to abolish the system of capitalist imperialism.

    Obama is a tyrant, but if the King of Saudi Arabia sent troops to overthrow him, I wouldn't join them because the Saudi king is almost as cruel a dictator as Obama. He just hasn't killed as many innocent people, but then he has a much smaller country and a much smaller military. I have no doubt that he'd like to kill as many innocent children as Obama, if he could.

    No matter what Assad is, did, or does, he cannot begin to compete in the cruel dictator killing civilians category with people like Obama and the Saudi king. He never seems to have wanted to. His people were better fed, better educated, and had better health care than people in the USA. Not entirely free, the way everything was free in Libya, but then Assad didn't have the oil billions that Gaddafi had.

    Are you a Zionist? You seem very upset that somebody might be anti-Semitic. But no, let me guess, you're not anti-Semitic, but you're also not a Zionist? You just believe the hasbara that anyone who criticizes Israel or Jews is an anti-Semite and that being anti-Semitic is unacceptable. It is acceptable for Israel to deport non-Jewish Blacks who were granted asylum back to the countries where they face torture and death, because Netanyahu isn't Assad. He may have different ideas, but he opposes Assad just like you do.

    To understand what happened in Libya, read Slouching Towards Sirte, by Maximillian Forte. He's on Twitter if you have any questions for him. And then at least read this review of Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya – Lessons for Africa in the Forging of African Unity, by Horace Campbell: http://zeroanthropology.net/2013/10/05/ ... -campbell/

    Assad is not a much of a tyrant as Obama or the Saudi king, and the people of Syria weren't as oppressed as we are. Assad's regime didn't kill as many Syrians as Obama's regime does, and certainly never imprisoned as many. Assad doesn't drone bomb innocent children every day while letting kids in his own country go hungry like Obama does. If you want to stand on the side of the oppressed, you'd know that the people of Libya when Gaddafi was alive had free health care, free housing, free education, and many other freedoms that the people of the United Police States can never begin to dream of. Economic freedoms. Freedoms that capitalist imperialism hated them for. In helping Obama overthrow Assad, you'd be helping a greater tyrant overthrow a lesser one. How can that be called standing with the oppressed?

    Do you remember when the troops of that cruel dictator Sadaam Hussein invaded a hospital in Kuwait and tore premature babies from their incubators and tossed them on the floors? Everyone remembers that, but it never happened. It was a PR scheme and the woman who claimed to have seen it was the daughter of a wealthy and poweerful Kuwaiti who paid the PR firm to come up with a scenario that would generate public support. By the time people found out it was a lie and had never happened, it was too late because the Kingdom of Kuwait retained the right to the oil it has stolen from Iraq and Sadaam was dead. Iraq, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, no longer has running water, electricity, or any security whatsoever, and may take hundred of years to recover, if it ever does. All because people wanted to stand with the oppressed, but they didn't know that THEY were the oppressed. Even people who were imprisoned and tortured under Sadaam have admitted that things were never as bad under Sadaam as they were after the US invasion.

    Many of the countries that seek NATO/US help in overthrowing cruel dictators are totally unaware that those dictators were financed and installed by the USA and that they and their cruelest torturers were trained at the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC).

    More US citizens are killed by the Obama regime every year than the total number of Syrian citizens that have ever been killed during Assad's regime. Okay, so the US citizens Obama's regime kills in the US are mostly Black and Mexican or Puerto Rican, so you might not think that "we" are oppressed, just that some people in the US you don't consider to be part of "us" might be oppressed. I consider them to be part of us, so I feel that we are much more oppressed than the Syrians, because our government kills more of us than Assad kills Syrians.

    I'm not sure why I keep recommending books. Obviously you don't care enough to read them, or you already would have.

    Spain wasn't the only place where Communists managed to divide and weaken anarchists, leading to fascist victories. It was Communist Party policy in those days to ignore fascists and eliminate anarchists. The Communists rightly saw (and still see) anarchists as the real threat to statism. Fascists are fellow statists, so Communists preferred fascist victories to anarchist victories.

    Syria is a first world country, not a third or fourth world country. Libya was the richest country in Africa with a standard of living higher than that of England. Iraq was a modern first world country also, although that "cruel dictator" Sadaam Hussein ran a secular country and imprisoned, tortured, or even killed any Al Quaeda terrorist he caught, just as Obama does. But he needed evidence, not just suspicion, and allowed due process, which Obama does not.

    And the US not only is still supporting Al Qaeda in Syria, but Obama has sent them arms and money (sometimes through third countries like Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and Saudi Arabia), but US Congressmen recently posed for photo ops with known Al Qaeda leaders in Syria. Many people have questioned why the US is sending troops to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, but supporting Al Qaeda in Syria.

    I'm talking to a wall here, so I shouldn't waste my time and energy.

    Maybe people in Canada aren't as oppressed as people in the USA. Maybe your government doesn't kill as many of its own citizens as ours does (unless they happen to be indigenous, in which case, of course, they don't really count), and you even have socialized medicine and a smaller prison system, so you might not be any more oppressed than Syrians. But don't kid yourselves that you're less oppressed. If you want to stand with the oppressed, there are a lot of people fighting against the tar sands pipeline. Not that they have any chance of prevailing in a capitalist police state, even one less repressive than the USA, but you're welcome to go stand with them.
     
  18. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Heman Wallace, one of the Angola 3, died of cancer three days after being released. Albert Woodfox is still in prison. The Angola 3 all experienced 30 to 40 years of solitary confinement and other tortures, for a crime they didn't commit. Robert King was released from Angola and is still alive. He was with Herman Wallace at the end. When King spoke here in San Diego a few years ago, he echoed Harriet Tubman.

    A member of the audience asked how he could be so calm and not be enraged after what he'd gone through.

    King said that he had been in maximum security. But, he said, we on the outside are not free, we're just in minimum security.

    In order to be free, people first have to know that they're not.

    I used to know a guy who had gone to Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against the fascists. Many of them died. When those who survived got back to the US, they were labeled "premature anti-fascists" and punished because they had fought fascism outside of that very small window during WWII when the US temporarily stopped practicing fascism for a few years and fought against Hitler's Nazi regime, which it had previously supported, and has subsequently supported in exile. The US rescued many Nazi war criminals in Operation Paperclip, brought them to the US or an allied country, and installed them in high level government policy making positions. You've heard of Reinhard Gehlen? Werner Von Braun? There were at least a thousand.

    One who wasn't as lucky was Adolf Eichmann. His defense at Nuremberg, thenceforce known as "the Eichmann defense," was that he wasn't guilty and shouldn't be punished because he was just following orders. The Nuremberg tribunal did not find that to be a valid defense. But when asked why he wouldn't prosecute Bush and Cheney for war crimes after he'd been elected President, Obama said, and the Military Commissions Act enacted into US law, that people who were just following orders should not be punished for war crimes. Yes, Obama adopted the Eichmann defense, but since there was no greater superpower in the world, there was nobody around any more who who hold it invalid. What Obama did not say was who gives US Presidents their orders. It's an interesting question.

    I wish I could visit Canada. I'd like to see what it is like to live in a country where people are less oppressed than in the United States. But I don't want TSA touching my junk, so I don't fly. And I'm not healthy enough for long train, bus, or car trips. But I'd like to experience what it is like when the NSA can't intercept your phone calls and everything you post online. I'd like to see a country where the cops don't kill their own peaceful unarmed citizens every day just because of the color of their skin. I'd like to see a country that doesn't have a bigger prison system than Josef Stalin had. I'd like to be in a country that doesn't use torture as both domestic and foreign policy. I'd like to see a country that doesn't put people in prison for refusing to testify against people who wrote about or discussed trying to stop a big corporation from poisoning their air, water, or food. It must be wondeful not to be oppressed. I'd like to be in a country that doesn't spend more than half its budget on military adventurism while 48% of its children live below the poverty line and one in four families are on food stamps. But it must also do something to your brains, because I don't see helping my oppressor overthrow a lesser tyrant as "standing with the oppressed," I see it as standing with the biggest global superpower and the greatest oppressor on the planet.

    On the other hand, maybe Canada isn't as free as I imagine. You must have total media censorship there is you've never seen Obama threatening Assad and demanding that Assad be overthrown. It has been all over TV here for a long time. Everyone in the US knows that Obama wants to overthrow Assad and that Obama supports the "rebels." How free is Canada if they've been censoring that on Canadian media? And when was the last time that the US stood with the oppressed instead of being a capitalist imperialist oppressor? Has there been a revolution here and nobody told me? Or do you really believe that "humanitarian intervention" bullshit? There's something wrong when a foreign leader is accused of killing their own people, and then the humanitarian interventionists go in to save lives and bomb entire cities with all the civilians in them. Maybe the reason for intervention is that the tyrant isn't killing enough of his own people and we can kill more of them?
     
  19. punkmar77

    punkmar77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    I have to disclose to the forum that Mark is my personal friend and I both respect and admire him, he is of Jewish heritage but chooses to stand adamantly against Zionism and the Jewish religion, I don't always agree 100% with his views but I enjoy his radical wisdom much more often than not, that being said, Assad is a dictator and he is the State personified, as an anarchist I support my Syrian anarchist brothers and sisters in their fight to bring Assad down regardless of what the U.N or Obama or any other State power wishes or what Al Qaeda and the CIA have up their sleeves...its a no brainer Mark, this anarchist fight is much older that the recent conflict and just because these assholes have jumped on the bandwagon doesn't mean we will abandon the anti-state struggle.
     
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  20. fubarista

    fubarista Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Nov 13, 2011
     
    The anarchist fight is old, but not in Syria. There may be a few anarchists there, but from what I gather most are not anarchists but radicals with anarchist tendencies.

    Assad may be a dictator, but he is not a scruel and ruthless a dictator as Obama. Iraq was destroyed because the US succeeded in portraying Sadaam as a dictator, when he had done much more for his people than any US president had done and was a lot less repressive. Libya was destroyed because the US succeeded in portraying Gaddafi as a dictator when he was in fact the most benevolent leader in Africa. When a cruel and merciless dictator like Obama, with a prison system bigger than Stalin had, whose regime kills its own citizens every day (when people say Assad kills his own citizens, they don't mean that he personally goes around killing people, they mean that his regime, the military and the cops, do it for him), who runs secret torture prisons where people are indefinitely detained without due process, who has invaded and destroyed many countries, who drone bombs innocent people including children every day, and who heads the only developed country in the world without a national health care plan--only corporate nsurance plans that might or might not pay for some health care--tells me that somebody with less blood on their hands is a dictator, particularly if the pot calling the kettle black has been proven to have lied many times previously, I won't buy it.

    Sadaam Hussein may have been a cruel dictator. His regime did torture and kill people (his torturers, like most in the world, were trained by the USA and the USA supported him because the USA likes to have allies to whom it can send people it wants tortured), but the US sanctions and the US invasion killed MILLIONS of Iraqis and left that modern, prosperous country with nothing but rubble and sectarian violence.

    Say that Assad did gas his own people, which not even the UK or the UN believe, as there is no evidence, only another sexed-up story like there was with Sadaam. If so, we supplied the gas, just as we had with Sadaam, and we sell chemical weapons to dictators all over the world. We're the world's biggest arms dealer. We're the world's biggest user of chemical weapons.

    Assad hasn't been beheading people the way the Saudi king does all the time. Why is the US still friends with the Saudi dictator but wants to oust Assad? We installed Pinochet. We supported Mubarak. We installed the Shah. If there has been a cruel dictator anywhere in the world in the past few decades, the US probably overthrew a more benevolent leadeer and installed the crueler one.

    If Iraq, Libya, and Syria hadn't been on the list of seven countries that the Project for a New American Century (many prominent US Jewish Zionists were involved in that) drew up long ago and said that we had to destroy, and if we hadn't been going through that list and destroying those countries one by one, it might be different.

    If Syria had a history of anarchist struggle and a significant number of anarchists, that would be different also.

    If there was even one chance in a billion that ousting Assad might further the cause of anarchy, rather than just destroying yet another country, that would be different too.

    Ousting Bashar al-Assad would be just another in a long string of victories for US imperialism, and that's something I won't support.

    I'm reading Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism by Michael Schmidt. There are countries all over the world with a long anarchist tradition, many I hadn't been aware of. I hadn't know about the strong anarcho-syndicalist traditions in Japan or China. There are dozens of countries all over the world with strong anarchist and/or anarcho-syndicalist traditions, but Syria isn't one of them.

    You and I both support the Anarchists Against The Wall in Israel. But there is no significant anarchist consciousness in Israel. Over a million Israelis, the largest gathering ever in Israel, just turned out for the funeral of a rabbi who had said that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews and should either be enslaved or killed. How many anarchists are there in Israel? In a civil war in Israel, anarchists could not prevail because they don't have the support of the masses. Neither do the anarchists in Syria. The way to support them is by trying to raise public consciousness, not by civil war. If a civil war broke out in Israel between the Orthodox government and non-Orthodox Jews, the anarchists would have no support on either side.

    The "rebels" in Syria have not only been killing civilians, they've been killing each other. The ones with the most support, the ones with the most people, the most weapons, and the biggest foreign backing, are Al Qaeda. Any anarchist who goes to Syria to fight is more likely to be killed by Al Qaeda than by the Syrian army. Unless, of course, they join up with Al Qaeda, since they have the same goal of ousting Assad.

    Obama is a much crueler tyrant than Assad. But there's no revolution here because there is very little mass consciousness. We have a lot more anarchists here than in Syria. But if there was a Tea Party revolution, there would be no point in anarchists joining with the Tea Party to oust Obama because the outcome would not favor anarchism in the USA. Nor would the Tea Party welcome our help in their revolution, because their goal would be to oust Obama and have a more right-wing government, while ours would be to abolish the government.

    The US has ousted a lot of dictators, but in not a single case has it furthered the cause of anarchy. Helping a greater tyrant oust a lesser tyrant isn't something that I think anarchists should do.

    If there were anarchists in Iraq who wanted to oust Sadaam, where are they now?

    If there were anarchists in Libya who wanted to oust Gaddafi, where are they now?

    If there are anarchists in Syria who want to oust Assad, watch and see what happens to them if Assad is ousted.

    I'm unsubscribing from this topic, Mar.
     

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