‘Left’ imperialism over anti-imperialism every time.

These leaders have recently been trying to take credit for the heroic work of the Syrian people’s resistance and of diplomats from a number of countries, principally Russia, who between them managed to stall the all-out war plans of US and British imperialism. StW has been quick to claim a victory for itself, however, insisting that ‘anti-war activity’ by its members stopped the invasion.

If only that were true! In reality, meaningful mobilisation by StW against the barbaric assault on anti-imperialist Syria, and in support of the Syrian people’s desperate struggle to maintain their freedom from superexploitation, has been notable only by its complete absence.

What ‘anti-war’ activity there has been (the odd meeting and petition) was rendered worse than useless by the StW leaders’ hysterical repetition of all the imperialists’ lies about how evil and tyrannical Syria’s leaders are – a repetition that plays right into the hands of imperialism by seeming to justify its hoped-for invasion on ‘humanitarian’ grounds

In reality, far from being an evil ‘dictator’, Bashar al-Assad is a popular leader, head of a freely elected, national-unity coalition government that firmly opposes imperialist meddling in Syria. In Britain, however, where imperialist moguls reign supreme, such simple facts are never aired in the corporate mass media.

Not so much with the peace and love

In line with imperialism’s ‘no tolerance’ policy towards the truth, the initially publicised list of speakers for the StW conference was nearly all firmly anti-Assad. One unexpected and notable exception was Mother Agnes, a carmelite nun who lives in Syria, and who has been working to establish temporary ceasefires between government and terrorist forces in order to help civilians escape from battle zones.

Living in Syria, she understands that the vast majority of Syrians support their government against the proxy terrorist forces that have been armed, funded and directed by western imperialism. Living in Syria, she can see through the claims of the terrorists and their backers that the Syrian government launched poison-gas attacks on its own people, and so has asked some very pertinent questions about the spurious claims of the warmongers.

Why, asked Mother Agnes, were there no terrorists among the dead? Why were there so many children in an area that had been mostly cleared of civilians? Why were the same dead children appearing in pictures of gas victims that were supposed to be from different sites? And why were parents of children that had been kidnapped by terrorists many miles away able to identify their children in the gory pictures that were served up to the world’s media as proof of President Assad’s ‘brutality’?

This first-hand knowledge of the situation in Syria has led Mother Agnes to ask another, entirely logical, question: Why would the Syrian government need to use poison-gas attacks when it is clearly winning the war using conventional weapons, and when its soldiers are welcomed as heroes and liberators by Syrians who have been forced to live under terrorist control?

Such an outrageous adherence to facts and logic has made Mother Agnes a target for all kinds of scurrilous attacks, with her many detractors in the imperialist world claiming that she is everything from anti-muslim and an apologist for war crimes to just plain stupid. Human Rights Watch, a thoroughly pro-imperialist organisation, has been particularly vocal in trying to besmirch Mother Agnes’s motives and reputation.

Labour careerists run for cover

Another equally pro-imperialist outfit that has been indulging in a frenzy of abuse against Mother Agnes is political weblogpulsemedia.org. The man who runs Pulse is Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, a fervent supporter of FSA and al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria who has openly called for imperialist bombing of the country.

In a piece for Al Jazeera US, he opposed the idea of ‘non-intervention’ and concluded that an “externally imposed solution is less egregious than dooming Syria to prolonged war”. So rabidly pro-war is Ahmad that he has even accused StW’s supine leaders of a “dogmatic opposition to western intervention and disregard for suffering Syrians”!

Pulse targeted the two ‘biggest’ names (in that they both make a living as high-profile ‘left-of-centre’ commentators in the corporate media machine) on the conference platform, subjecting Jeremy Scahill and Owen Jones to a tweeting assault that they did not even attempt to resist. Ahmad told these career-minded worthies that they would be sharing a platform with a ‘supporter’ of the ‘tyrant Assad’: a woman who ‘lies’ for the cruel regime that is murdering thousands of Syrians daily – a war criminal, no less!

Scahill and Jones didn’t take much pushing. All their ‘anti-war’ convictions were quickly overcome when faced with the prospect of national media headlines linking them to the stated enemies of imperialism, and they went running for the exit with all haste. These two fearless activists were not going to share a platform with an apologist for war crimes, the conference organisers were told. In double-quick time, Mother Agnes was off the list and Scahill and Jones were back on.

We are not sure how Mother Agnes came to be invited by StW in the first place, but she would have been the only speaker to have brought the authentic voice of the Syrian majority to this supposedly ‘anti-war’ event.

Having big ‘names’ and acceptable politics is much more important to Corbyn, German, Murray, Rees and the rest of the clique that runs StW, however. None of them want to risk getting labelled as ‘pro-Assad’, either! Clearly, that would be a total career killer in an imperialist country like Britain, whose rulers are still desperate for the overthrow of Syria’s fiercely independent government – by whatever means necessary.

Let us suppose for a minute that Mother Agnes really is just a mouthpiece for President Assad, and that Assad himself is every bit the demon that imperialism paints him as – would that really be enough to stop Jones and Scahill from speaking alongside her?

Owen Jones, like StW chair Jeremy Corbyn, is a member of the Labour party. Both men call on British workers to support, join and vote for a party that is drenched in the blood of millions of innocents – victims of imperialist wars their party has launched while in office or has supported when playing the role of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition.

Not to mention the blood of untold millions who have died as a direct result of the looting of their countries by British corporations – or even the thousands who have died in our own country as a result of NHS privatisation and other welfare cuts. Whether in or out of office, Labour has consistently supported all these murderous activities of our ruling class.

The idea that someone from this filthy stable is really fussy about sharing platforms with war criminals is laughable. After all, Jones has shared platforms with Labour politicians who were key architects of the invasions and genocides in Iraq and Afghanistan – some of the worst crimes of the modern era.

New leadership needed

Far too many ‘leaders’ in the trade-union, labour and peace movements in Britain are of the same ilk. Are they merely gutless seekers of ‘pelf and place’ who dare not stick their necks out for fear of losing existing or anticipated careers? Or have they intentionally worked their way into positions of leadership just so they can hold back the development of a realstruggle against imperialism in Britain?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. In politics, motivations are irrelevant; it is the outcome of their actions on which our political leaders and activists must be judged. What we need to understand is that, whether accidentally or on purpose, StW’s leaders always manage to come down on the side of imperialism, helping to demonise the victims of imperialist aggression and to neutralise the opposition to imperialist war at home.

Mother Agnes has single-handedly demonstrated that Stop the War is not about stopping the war; it is about keeping the anti-war movement within limits that are acceptable to the imperialist warmongers. It is about the warmongers keeping the masses of anti-war activists under tight control.

Until we have exposed and replaced these bankrupt careerists who control our movement, we will be unable to mobilise British workers to fight effectively against imperialist war, no matter how genuine we are in our desire to do so, nor how much the British people might agree that the wars are wrong.

Typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Yolanda was one of the deadliest ever to hit the southeast Asian nation. It struck in early November, and has left a trail of suffering and devastation, whose effects will doubtless be felt for years to come.

According to still incomplete figures, at least 5,500 people are dead. Around 15,000 people are thought to be missing and the possibility that they may yet be alive decreases with each passing day. Tens of thousands more are injured and tens of millions of people, in mostly impoverished parts of the country, have been adversely affected by the typhoon and its aftermath.

Speaking of the great famine that hit that country in the 1840s, there is an Irish saying that ‘God sent the potato blight but the English sent the famine’. Typhoon Haiyan is another example of how a natural disaster has been grossly compounded by imperialist depredations.

The increasing prevalence and severity of such natural disasters is widely believed to be connected with climate change. Yet the developed capitalist countries – those most responsible for the problem – meeting at an international conference in Warsaw at the very time that the typhoon hit, once again refused to shoulder their responsibilities to the majority of humanity and the planet by agreeing to realistic emissions cuts. As even the New York Times put it:

“From the time a scientific consensus emerged that human activity was changing the climate, it has been understood that the nations that contributed least to the problem would be hurt the most.” (‘Growing clamour about inequities of climate crisis’ by Steven Lee Myers and Nicholas Kulish, 16 November 2013)

What the US imperialists have rushed to do – under the guise of lending a humanitarian ‘helping hand’, of course – is toput their boots back on Filipino soil as part of their strategic attempt to encircle socialist China and to defeat the Filipino people’s war.

Under the guise of ‘relief work’, some 13,000 US military personnel and some 50 US warships and military aircraft, including the nuclear-powered super-carrier USS George Washington, have been dispatched to the former US colony, along with more than 1,000 Japanese troops. The US was forced to close its giant military bases in the Philippines in 1992, but the reactionary government has hosted 72 visits by US warships and submarines to Subic Bay in the first six months of this year alone.

Yet despite this massive military presence, the New York Times reported:

“But while hard-hit urban areas are finally getting adequate supplies to stave off hunger and thirst, the region’s rural hinterland has been largely left to fend for itself …

“Rural areas, however, are still neglected. Perhaps most desperate are the far-flung islets whose residents, isolated from the country’s main islands, already live from hand to mouth.” (‘Relief supplies pour into Philippines, but remote areas still suffer’ by Andrew Jacobs, 16 November 2013)

The New People’s Army, by contrast, has declared a unilateral ceasefire and is focusing all its efforts on mobilising the people to help themselves in rebuilding their lives. A local chapter of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) noted:

“We condemn the gross incompetence and unreadiness of the Aquino government, even though weather forecasts had already warned days in advance of the category 4 superstorm and the expected massive flooding from the storm surge …

“There are more than 10,000 military and police troops in Eastern Visayas, but the Aquino regime is loath to shift them away from ‘counterinsurgency’ operations and make them actually useful by clearing roads, building shelters, repairing infrastructure, and restoring agricultural production.”

A true end to the misery of the Filipino masses will only come with the victory of the revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and the NDFP.

Proletarian

“If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8, King James Bible)

Right now, the key link in the chain of developments in the Middle East is the humiliating failure of imperialism to overturn the progressive and secular Arab state of Syria by means of either proxy or direct war.

This setback for Anglo-American and French imperialism is creating enormous opportunities for anti-imperialist forces to assert themselves throughout the region and beyond. This is so whether the context is the continuing rout of terrorist forces in Syria itself, the related progress of the Egyptian revolution, the improving relations between Hamas and Iran, the mounting contradictions between Washington and Saudi Arabia, the appearance of a nervously conciliatory US stance towards Iran, Ankara’s growing irritation with the antics of its former jihadist protégés and the complex interplay with and between various Kurdish forces in Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

In every case, Washington’s failure to overturn the Syrian nation either by proxy war or by boots on the ground is sending shock waves throughout the region, weakening the very structures of oppression that imperialism has sought to bolster.

The joke Syrian National Council (SNC) continues to fiddle whilst its fond hopes of lucrative ministerial posts go up in smoke, announcing yet more preconditions that ‘must’ be met before these nobodies will condescend to attend the long-avoided peace conference in Geneva. Meanwhile, 13 anti-Assad brigades under the leadership of the al-Qaeda-endorsed al-Nusra Front have denounced the SNC and are pushing for the imposition of sharia law.

Abrupt moves to pull the plug on some of the material support given to even the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ have forced such a somersault on the CIA that at least one high-ranking official has resigned in high dudgeon.

Bombing Syria: Israel pushes its luck

Israel is continuing its sporadic bombing raids into Syria, with the sixth attack this year coming at the end of October. Such attacks, the latest supposedly aimed at ‘Russian missiles destined for Hizbollah’, are, as ever, flagrant breaches of international law, which Israel will ‘neither confirm nor deny’ and which the supine UN is ignoring.

But such random acts of brigandage, whilst strong meat and drink for a section of the Israeli electorate, are doing nothing to alter the strategic balance of the war, and could end by inviting unwelcome consequences for the warmongers.

This is now starting to raise qualms in some domestic quarters. Gideon Levy wants to know: “How far can Israel stretch the rope until it snaps, hitting it in the face? Will Russia stay silent forever in the face of the bombing of weapons of its manufacture, in the possession of its allies? Will America always remain quiet when Israel interferes in Syria, inciting the war there – especially at a time when President Bashar Assad keeps his word meticulously in getting rid of his chemical weapons ..?” (Haaretz, 3 November 2013)

Whilst the zionist tail may sometimes appear to be wagging the White House dog, in reality, the tail has little or no future without its imperialist paymaster.

Saudi puppets left to dangle

Much the same applies to the rotten comprador sheikhdoms propped up by imperialism, with Saudi Arabia lolling at their head.

Assorted feeble scions of the royal house of Saud have been venting their spleen against Washington, whingeing that the deal on chemical weapons is designed “to give Mr Obama an opportunity to back down” and that Obomber “had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and [on] the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011”.(‘Saudi Arabia warns of shift away from US over Syria, Iran’, Reuters, 24 October 2013)

But when Saudi Arabia turned down the chance of a two-year stint on the UN Security Council in a fit of pique over Obama’s inaction, this self-defeating grand gesture only confirmed Riyadh’s enraged impotence. The only remaining trump card – messing with the oil supply – could also be the last card these superannuated relics ever get to play.

Erdogan left to clean up the mess

US imperialism’s retreat from war with Syria appears also to have triggered a significant shift in Turkey’s role. Having previously been leaned on to provide logistical back-up for the proxy war, thereby turning its border areas into a playground for terror gangs, Turkey is now waking up to the grim morning after, with Washington rapidly upping sticks and Ankara left to clear up the mess on its own.

In mid-October, Turkey actually shelled the positions in Syria of the same jihadist headbangers it had only yesterday been backing. Whilst Ankara’s stated position is still for the overthrow of President Assad, Erdogan is only too keenly aware how deeply unpopular Turkey’s involvement has been with his own people.

Now that Obama is seen to be throwing in the towel, the pressure is on for Ankara to reconsider its policy of blind loyalty to imperialist interests. Rumours that Turkey has taken steps to mend fences with Iran, turning over to the government Iranians found to be spying on behalf of Israel, suggest at the least that Erdogan is hedging his bets.

More worrying still for the West is Turkey’s announcement that it is thinking of buying a long-range air defence system, not from any of its Nato ‘allies’, but from a Chinese defence company subject to US sanctions on account of its alleged cooperation with the DPRK.

These straws in the wind, suggestive of the decline of the US as a global power and China’s corresponding rise, can offer little cheer to Uncle Sam.

And of course, to cap everything else, all these cracks opening up in the axis of oppression are being faithfully mirrored closer to home in a veritable firestorm of mutual recrimination unleashed in the wake of revelations that Washington has been routinely spying on all its continental European allies without exception.

Hamas mends fences with Tehran?

Whilst the US retreat spreads mutiny and disarray in the imperialist ranks, there are some hopeful signs that the axis of resistance, weakened in some measure by the imperialist manipulation of sectarian frictions, now has the opportunity to emerge stronger.

Israel and its friends have long gloated over the confusion within anti-imperialist circles spread by the position adopted by Hamas in relation to Syria, Egypt and Iran. Swayed by confessional ties, some in Hamas were moved to support the armed struggle against Syria, continued to stand with the Muslim Brotherhood after the Egyptian revolution had succeeded in overthrowing it, and leant succour to the islamist terror gangs roaming the northern Sinai – in the process compromising the tunnels upon which the besieged Gazan population depends for its survival. (See related article in this issue.)

But here, too, the steadfastness of Syria in seeing off the threats and bluster of imperialism may be having a salutary effect. According to WorldTribune.com, on 14 October, Mussa Aby Marzouk, the deputy chief of the executive council of Hamas, acknowledged on Syrian TV station al-Mayadeen that the organisation had been wrong to oppose Assad’s government, in consequence of which Hamas decamped from Damascus in 2011. It is also reported that Iranian assistance to Hamas, apparently cut back earlier, has once more been increasing in recent months.

Try as it might to weaken and divide the resistance forces that rise up to confront its criminal wars of oppression, the imperialists will find that it is their axis of oppression that will disintegrate under the dual pressure of economic crisis and anti-imperialist pressure, and the axis of resistance that will triumph.

Death to imperialism!
Victory to the axis of resistance!