SaudiArabia: Growing Protests against Regime

[freepalestine]

some news herehttp://angryarab.blogspot.co.uk/



Mohamed al-Nimr: It’s About Qatif Not Iran


A protester holds up a picture of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr during a rally at the coastal town of Qatif, against Sheikh Nimr's arrest 8 July 2012. (Photo: Reuters - Stringer)
By: Shahira Saloum
Published Thursday, July 12, 2012
When the issue of Qatif in Saudi Arabia is brought to the table, it immediately brings with it the conflict between the Arab Gulf states and Iran. Some claim that the district is a card in the Islamic Republic’s hand, as it manipulates its “tools” to destabilize the kingdom.

But a closer look at the region and its people quashes all these allegations. In Qatif, marginalized Saudi citizens are yearning for equality and justice. Their demands are part of the calls for reforms throughout the country. It is not true that they are secessionist. This is what Saudi dissident Mohamed al-Nimr told Al-Akhbar. He called on moderates to halt the deterioration of the situation following the arrest of his brother [Shia sheikh] Nimr al-Nimr and on the Saudi authorities to safeguard itself through reforms, rather than blaming Iran for all its troubles.

Saudi dissident Mohamed al-Nimr, brother of prominent religious figure Nimr Baqer al-Nimr who was arrested by Saudi authorities in Qatif a few days ago, told Al-Akhbar it was unlikely that the situation will blow up following the arrest of his brother.

There is sympathy with Iran in the eastern region. It is not a secret that it is confessional. Also, Iran’s achievements as a resistance front attracts people.“The grounds are not prepared for such an eruption,” he said, indicating that the side responsible for the latest incitement was the extremist Wahhabi current.
He mentioned that the sheikh’s health is not reassuring and that “he should be transferred to the Security Forces Hospital in Riyadh, where they have detention wings. But we have not been able to contact him or receive information on his situation.”

He spoke about the incitement surrounding the arrest in Qatif. Nimr claimed that the extremist wing was the side that sparked the news about his brother a few days before the arrest took place.

Nimr explained that there are tens of thousands of Salafi detainees in prisons. They were saying, “How could you allow this rafidhi [“rejectionist”/Shia] to remain free and throw us into prison.” Sheikh Nimr had been under surveillance by the authorities for two years and was being closely monitored.

He believes that the security escalation in the eastern region a few days ago was due to the reckless behavior of the authorities. The arrest was meant to lead to clash. “We had hoped the authorities would act wisely and calmly.”

Nonetheless, Sheikh Nimr had raised the level of his discourse recently. But his brother said that his words were within the framework of freedom of opinion and he never called for any action against the authorities.

As for the accusations against his brother, saying he called for separation from Saudi Arabia and joining Bahrain, Nimr maintains that Sheikh Nimr never called for secession. His words were misrepresented and the rumors were false.

“We are demanding our rights. If you do not want to give them to us, let us secede,” the sheikh had said. His brother held that the issue was conditional. It was not based on a practical program or actual intent. Rather, it was in the framework of a reaction to the events in Medina [the clash between the police and Shia pilgrims during the Hajj], which created tensions in Qatif.

Concerning the recent reports about sleeper cells that Iran intends to activate, Nimr maintains that Arab countries always use Iran as a scapegoat so they can avoid responsibility for their own problems.

“There are real problems inside Saudi Arabia, questions of rights, rampant corruption, and calls for reform. These issues should be solved first,” he said.

Nimr added that “Iran aspires to be a regional power. Therefore Saudi Arabia should safeguard its interior through reforms, and not to pin its troubles on the outside.”

At the same time, he admits that there is sympathy with Iran in the eastern region. It is not a secret that it is confessional. Also, Iran’s achievements as a resistance front attracts people. Saudi Arabia should immunize itself against outside interference through reforms.

Tensions escalated in Qatif and Ihsaa following the arrest of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Thousands of people protested, calling for the overthrow of the regime and the release of the sheikh. Two people were killed and dozens were injured.

Nimr said it is unlikely that the situation will continue to deteriorate. He said “moderate positions in the Saudi Interior Ministry should address the case politically, not as a security issue.”

As for the proliferation of weapons in the region that could lead to an eruption, Nimr held that weapons are available throughout the kingdom. But the grounds are not set for an [armed] escalation, because most Shia intellectuals reject armed action and insist on peaceful struggle. Extremists are a minority and their armed action is merely rhetorical, he said.

Most Shia intellectuals reject armed action and insist on peaceful struggle. Extremists are a minority and their armed action is merely rhetorical.He mentions several other reasons for the unlikelihood of an escalation. “Things cannot erupt militarily, since the balance of power is very unfavorable, in the first place. Also, the culture of violent action is nonexistent,” Nimr said.
But at the same time, he agrees that the levels of popular unrest and sectarian tensions are very high, in addition to the events in Bahrain.

Family ties exist between the two sides and every family in Bahrain has relatives in the eastern region of Saudi. The events in Bahrain have an inevitable impact. This was evident recently, when protesters [in Bahrain] named an action after Sheikh Nimr.

Nimr did not separate the Qatif question from the kingdom’s other issues. He saw that the conditions for an escalation are not unique to the eastern region.

All the districts are facing economic, social, or political issues that could lead to an eruption. This is in addition to the problems of the princes who feel marginalized due to the inflation of the royal family.

“Princess Sara Bint Talal’s requesting asylum in Britain and the scandals exposed by ‘Mujtahid’ (@mujtahidd), a member of the royal family, on Twitter indicate the resentment and confusion within,” he claimed.

Elaborating on the issue, Nimr said that “the appointment of Prince Salman as crown prince irked many of his brothers.”

The Saudi dissident reaffirms the demands of the people of Qatif, saying they are among the Saudi citizens who are active within the reform current. Although their demands are related to a sect, they fall within the calls for reforms nationally.

Ending sectarian discrimination falls within the framework of reforms and equality. “Not a single Shia was ever appointed, even for one hour, in the government, since the establishment of the kingdom. In addition, Shia are forbidden from senior positions. As for the distribution of wealth, this is a problem on the national level.”

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/mohamed-al-nimr-it%E2%80%99s-about-qatif-not-iran

saudi riots
Saudi protester, policeman killed in Qatif

Published Saturday, August 4, 2012



A Saudi protester and a policeman were killed in overnight clashes in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province, the interior ministry announced on Saturday.

"A security patrol came under heavy gunfire from four armed rioters on motorbikes" in the district of Qatif, ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki was quoted by official news agency SPA as saying.

Policeman Hussein Zabani was killed while another, Saad al-Shummari, was wounded and hospitalized, he said, but provided no evidence for the claims.

"Security forces hunted down the armed rioters who were on motorbikes and exchanged fire with them," he said. "One of the four caught was wounded and he died while on the way to the hospital."

Saudi official media often describe anti-government protesters as rioters and witnesses said the men were participating in a protest that took place in Qatif late on Friday.

Two Shia protesters were killed earlier this month, triggering attacks on government buildings in Qatif.

Saudi Arabia is an overwhelmingly Sunni country, but Eastern Province, home to much of the country's massive oil wealth, has a large Shia minority.

The residents of Qatif have long complained of marginalization in the country and have demanded regional autonomy and democracy in the autocratic kingdom.

(Al-Akhbar, AFP)
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/saudi-protester-policeman-killed-qatif

[cynicles]

Nothing against any of the other uprisings going on right now, but the idea of an uprising in Saudi Arabia really send delightful chills up my spine in the a way the other couldn't.

[REDSOX]

Victory to the resistance against the House of saud

[Beeth]

Muslims are very good people, but countries like Saudi project such a negative image. And many bigots use that to attack Muslims. Hope progressive Muslims can replace this theocracy.

[Rafiq]

Muslims are very good people, but countries like Saudi project such a negative image. And many bigots use that to attack Muslims. Hope progressive Muslims can replace this theocracy.

"Muslim's" aren't a homogeneus interest. I hate this cheap soft Islamism "Yahur, Muslums are gud ppl just some make uz look bad". The problem isn't opposing stereotypes. The problem is this recognition of the "Umma" or of the "Muslim people". It's reactionary, class collaborationist shit. And no, it's not simply Saudi Arabia, it's Islamists in general. Look back at the Middle East in the 60's and 70's. Did anyone in Western Media talk about "Muslims"? No, they spoke of "The Arabs" or X "Far left group involved in X act of terrorism" or X nationality or X reactionary rightist group. Religious internationalism is a thousand times more reactionary than Conservative Nationalism.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[RedHammer]

I have to agree with Rafiq to a large extent.

Anyway, this is great. An uprising in Saudi Arabia is directly counter to American interests; let's see how the empire responds to this (probably hypocritically)

[agnixie]

>I hate this cheap soft Islamism "Yahur, Muslums are gud ppl just some make uz look bad".

Plus this basically walks right into the bullshit "these godless commies aren't real arabs/persians/afghans" which fueled the NATO backed destruction of the democratic republic of afghanistan.

[Threetune]

Nothing against any of the other uprisings going on right now, but the idea of an uprising in Saudi Arabia really send delightful chills up my spine in the a way the other couldn't.

Does this mean that you do in fact support the US, Saudi, Israeli backed uprising in Syria that is going on right now?

[Spirit]

I'd like to see USA bringing democracy to S.A.

Oh, wait...

[agnixie]

Does this mean that you do in fact support the US, Saudi, Israeli backed uprising in Syria that is going on right now?

"Are you a fascist, comrade Zinoviev"

The first news I had about these protests was last month ish, there had been five killed (:( ) and few hundred wounded by the police, anyone have an update on the situation in the streets?

[cynicles]

Does this mean that you do in fact support the US, Saudi, Israeli backed uprising in Syria that is going on right now?

Yes, that's why I hate the Saudi regime, because of its and qatari backing for the jihadist faction in the uprising. Of the fact that you think the entire uprising is because of imperialists is pretty racist and belittling to Syrians. But I'm sure you have some quote from Stalin all ready to go to justify your closet racism.

[Threetune]

Yes, that's why I hate the Saudi regime, because of its and qatari backing for the jihadist faction in the uprising. Of the fact that you think the entire uprising is because of imperialists is pretty racist and belittling to Syrians. But I'm sure you have some quote from Stalin all ready to go to justify your closet racism.

Please tell us which part of the ‘uprising’ in Syria is not being cheered-on, actively supported or armed by one or the other faction of foul bankrupt war-mongering imperialism? It would be good to know if you have miraculously found a couple of revolutionary communist divisions massing in the mountains outside the control of the reactionary rebs.

It would also be interesting to know where you get your information in order to make the statement “… I hate the Saudi regime, because of its and qatari backing for the jihadist faction in the uprising.”
Yet elsewhere you say, “… any genuine cohesive popular movement for positive change has been cannibalized by sectarians, the regime and apathy.”

So proving that it’s you who’s “belittling to Syrians” in fact! The hopeless whining pessimism in your statement speaks volumes about your crushed anti-communist middle class world outlook and you’re sour flailing about firing off accusations to large for such a small troll like you to handle.

http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news...hange-in-syria (http://www.anonym.to/?http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-a-comment/syria/1673-how-the-us-bankrolls-the-propaganda-for-military-intervention-and-regime-change-in-syria)

[cynicles]

Cannibalize wasn't the right word, what I should have said was marginalized. I also stand by my accusation of racism since this idea that Syrians have both no reason to hate murderers like the Assads or can't stage their own uprising is rooted in the same racism that prompted western journalists to give credit to Gene Sharp for the Egyptian uprising. Also I never claimed to know where the communists in the revolution but I doubt it would matter to you since you'd just accuse them of being anticounist if they didn't offer 100% support to Assad. I also get my information from one of the few sources I trust on this at the angry Arab news service, I may not agree with Dr. Abukhalil anarchism but he's the only one on this issue not acting like a sectarian brat, regime apologist or placing blind faith in either the opposition or unverified information. I see neither of the bolder states as wrong, it's no secret that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are giving material support to fundamentalist sectarian reactionaries in the armed wing of the opposition. In addition to that this situation is clearly spiraling out of control at this point as it heads towards civil war. Not the civil war of one class against another but an effective 'lebanization' of Syria.

Finally, I find the accusation of being apart of this class or that class hilarious at best and poor trolling at worst. It shows that you have to, as you have been and you sock puppet as well, rely on personal attacks to win an argument. I've seen you leverage baseless accusations in the past and now you whine when someone throws the ball into your court. But since I have no problems coming down to your level I'll say this. You're not even a caricature, your arguments amount to little more then accusations of this class or that class that you know no one can either prove or disprove, while calling anyone who doesn't fall into your dogmatic cult thought anticommunist all while throwing up the worst kind of crass third worldist politics under the guise of Marxism all over these forums. I'm the troll? Take a look in the mirror.

[cynicles]

what did he say [on this thread]that was racist?

He accused me of supporting Saudi, Israel and US baselessly so I accused him of being racist for removing agency from Syrians because of his belief that the uprising was fabricated by outside powers. It wasn't, that's insulting just as it was to ascribe credit to Gene Sharp for the Egyptian uprising, regardless of how either of them has turned out.

[Threetune]

He accused me of supporting Saudi, Israel and US baselessly so I accused him of being racist for removing agency from Syrians because of his belief that the uprising was fabricated by outside powers. It wasn't, that's insulting just as it was to ascribe credit to Gene Sharp for the Egyptian uprising, regardless of how either of them has turned out.

Nothing against any of the other uprisings going on right now, but the idea of an uprising in Saudi Arabia really send delightful chills up my spine in the a way the other couldn't.
Nothing against any of the other uprisings going on right now,
Nothing against any of the other uprisings going on right now,
Nothing against any of the other uprisings going on right now,

This is your position.

[cynicles]

Yes, I forgot to disparage the other uprising therefore I support the sectarian insurgency in Syria threetune, you're absolutley right. I'm a big secret anti-communist because I don't follow the dear leaders positions on everything. Please dictate for everyone here the position I'm supposed to have.

*throws threetune a cookie*

[Threetune]

Yes, I forgot to disparage the other uprising therefore I support the sectarian insurgency in Syria threetune, you're absolutley right. I'm a big secret anti-communist because I don't follow the dear leaders positions on everything. Please dictate for everyone here the position I'm supposed to have.

*throws threetune a cookie*


Even you people will learn to get over your defeats as the class struggle irons out all the subjective silliness that you are still messing about with.

[cynicles]

Yep, you're absolutely right threetune, subjective blah blah and whatnot when class struggle comes. If only I could be more like you.

[Threetune]

There it is, wallowing in nonsense again, the hallmark of the reactionary buffoon. Telling lies and pretending to be clever when you have nothing even half-way sensible to say about the rapidly unfolding crisis of capitalism that is daily dragging more and more people into its maelstrom.

Utterly and totally incapable of producing a rational answer to any and all polemic about revolutionary theory, you clown about for the crowd flaunting your ignorance as a badge of honour following the big boys about to make em laugh. Any reactionary anti-communism will do for membership of this ‘left’ gang. And you are indeed an hysterical example of ‘left’ inability to analyze the class struggle, mostly because you don’t recognise it, in the same way you don’t recognise socialism as the answer to capitalist mayhem.

More than this – this "left" comic falseness plays right into the hands of imperialism in defending the Saudi Arabian thugs.
Most glaring is the contribution of the assorted Trotskyists, and their wooden-headed "rank-and-file-ism", willing to swallow any cobbled-together "street movement" with a few CIA-supplied "freedom" banners as a genuine "peoples' revolt" giving it a propaganda boost just when the West's Goebbels campaign is faltering badly.

Even with the "anti-NATO invasion" caveat from some of them – (though some of the most deranged even support or imply support for such an attack!), – their continued acceptance of every stunted up and luridly exaggerated Western press lie and innuendo, building a tower of alleged regime "atrocities" on a foundation of unverified, unprovable and never investigated or cross-examined rumour and accusation by nameless "activists", actually aids and supports the Western sabotage and chaos.
Philosophically this pretence of being "against a war by NATO" while supporting some alleged on-the-ground "actual struggle" requires greater contortions than even the gold medal gymnast at London 2012 will achieve.

"Opposing an invasion" is a completely useless gesture if at the same time these Trots "denounce" the Damascus government with the shallow capitalist supplied label of "dictators", unquestioningly regurgitating every trumped-up allegation and unprovable "hundreds of civilians killed" poured out in tide of rumour-as-fact all over the front pages, building up a momentum of hysterical demonisation with such skill it would have sent Goebbels back to junior school.
It is a philosophical fig-leaf to hide their total capitulation in the teeth of the aggressive Western media onslaught loading responsibility all the "atrocities" onto the shoulders of the Damascus government.

They either did not happen, were perpetrated by the rebels themselves or are responses to the mayhem – and crude and heavy handed as that is, it is no more than might be expected once a major civil war has been stirred up.
The artificially provoked revolt in Syria, as with the laughable Libyan pseudo-"uprising" before it, equally generated by Western subversion and violent attacks on police stations and state forces from the very first days, is gullibly declared by the Trots to be a "peoples" cause, despite the evidence that has poured out of the foulest ragtag gangs of sectarian reactionaries, criminals, adventurers and outright provocateurs and agents who have mixed and mingled with stirred up sections of the multi-sect population.

The "protestors" have been violent from the beginning and it is a NATO-CIA lie to continually refer to "peaceful demonstration for democracy".
Media analyses somberly suggesting the situation "could become a civil war" are equally disingenuous, aiming with such comments precisely to provoke such an outcome.
It has been clear from early on that arms and finance have been smuggled across the border to the "Free Syrian Army" (a name reeking with CIA special operations planning – like the "Movement for Democratic Change" in Zimbabwe, the "colour revolutions" etc etc) not to mention numerous special agents.

Does anyone seriously believe that the most aggressive and well organised secret service in the world, Mossad from the fascist Zionists just across the border (and actually still occupying the Golan Heights) is not up to its elbows as well??????
All these forces have been used to play on and ignite the underlying grievances, discontents, hatreds and fears which are imposed and generated constantly throughout all ordinary life everywhere under capitalism (including Ba'athist bourgeois nationalist capitalism), always potentially ready to explode into antagonisms, racism and conflict, and now deliberately inflamed, since the beginning of last year, with mysterious hidden snipers (filmed by the Syrian government but rapidly dismissed and covered-up by a biased Western media), ludicrous hyping up of tiny demonstrations filmed in close-crop and presented as "popular protest" (in stark contrast to the tens of thousands clearly in Tahrir Square and Cairo streets for example or in the Tunisian cities), lurid alleged "atrocities", fascist intimidation of city districts etc etc.

And this hodge-podge, following directly on from the even more obvious reactionariness of the anti-black racism, monarchism, gangsterism and petty bourgeois Nazism of the Libyan "rebellion", breaking down post-"revolution" into squabbling tribalism and local gangsterism, is to be called a "fight for democracy"?????

And anyway what "democracy" has there ever been, or can be under capitalism – which has only ever been the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie hidden behind a slick manipulated parliamentary façade?
It is a completely un-Marxist disarming nonsense in itself to swallow such a notion.

The hypocrisies and false hand-wringing "concern for human rights" and the "rule of law" would be a sick joke at the best times from a system which is built on slavery and genocidal occupation of other people's lands (wiping out or enslaving the Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Maoris, most Tahitans, and tens of millions of Africans, Indians and Chinese) and which in the twentieth century has given the world over 400 coups, assassinations, installed fascist stooges, large-scale massacres and horrifying bloody wars like Vietnam and Korea, killing millions directly and through ghastly chemical and biological war; which has developed, uses, and trains thousands of agents and stooges in, the vilest torture and killing terror techniques and illicit assassinations from the now-renamed but still running School of the Americas in Fort Benning and other CIA and intelligence centres, (and see the latest Kenya Mau-Mau castration and roasting alive (!!) torture trials in the UK as just one example from many of the foul mass brutality and callously inhuman savagery inflicted by British colonialism eg); which has run dozens of 'deniable' mass-murders such as the Indonesian massacre of one millions suspected communists in 1965 or the killing of thousands in El Salvador and even more in Guatemala; which uses 'legal' frame-ups where it will work (Paraguay impeachment of the reformist "left" president most recently eg), and which routinely and regularly blitzes and slaughters the benighted Palestinians victims of the 1947-8 theft of their lands by colonialist Zionism, continues to steal by settlement the tiny fragments some of them have left, and keeps most of them confined under siege in concentration camp conditions in the Gaza strip, subject to constant harrassment, attack and regular pogrom violence.

It is a disgusting pretence underlined even further when it exploits much of the world's 7 billion people into dirt and desperate starvation poverty (annually killing millions more), to maintain its fabulous power, consumerist pointlessness and insane luxury for the tiny minority.

It is even greater humbug when the hollow tin-plate "rebellion" is not-so-secretly armed and financed and trained by the foulest undemocratic feudal tyrannies on earth in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Sheikhdoms and the reactionary NATO-controlled forces in Turkey, most of them still fresh from shooting down and torturing their own "revolts" (always quickly taken off the bourgeois press front pages).

These stooges have been well protected by Western military and political support for decades, and in the case of Egypt, well financed too, unlike either Syria or Libya which are hated for their anti-imperialist stance (erratic and inconsistent as it is).
Things are becoming so blatant that even a few petty bourgeois individuals in the bourgeois press itself have begun to question what is going on with some interesting new exposés – (also quickly "down-paged" naturally) of how the bourgeois media and press machine is supposedly "falling down on objective reporting" or "allowing itself to be misled", (a misleading euphemism itself when what is described is a major campaign of deliberate brainwashing to stampede of public opinion in the "democratic" West behind the warmongering).

Like much Trot-influenced "liberal" bourgeois press reporting, it still begins with the biased assumption that "opposition to Assad" is automatically correct.
Even so, the piece highlights some of the sinister behind-the-scenes connections and manipulation which conjured the whole foul Syrian mess into existence and slightly edited down, is worth recording at length:

http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news...hange-in-syria (http://www.anonym.to/?http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-a-comment/syria/1673-how-the-us-bankrolls-the-propaganda-for-military-intervention-and-regime-change-in-syria)

[cynicles]

Yep, you're absolutely right, threetune scores another win by striking down the forces of reaction on the ever important battlefield of Internet forums.

[Threetune]

Yep, you're absolutely right, threetune scores another win by striking down the forces of reaction on the ever important battlefield of Internet forums.

And this is how you think a Luxemburgist should present their politics, is it? You are fooling no one.

[cynicles]

And this is how you think a Luxemburgist should present their politics, is it? You are fooling no one.

Absolutely, you got me. Now that you've found me out the revolution is saved.

[Threetune]

Absolutely, you got me. Now that you've found me out the revolution is saved.

What? You and your western middle class ‘left’ mates have nothing to do with 'revolution' in theory or practice., so what on earth are you on about?

[Threetune]

Do the people who influenced your development still have any responsibility you?

[cynicles]

Yep, whatever you say.

[Threetune]

Yep, whatever you say. :lol:

It is telling that the (Trot supported) "rebels" in Syria have been threatening the same no-trial war-crime treatment for Assad, with not a murmur from the alleged "rule of law" upholders of the Western capitalist politicians and "statesmen" (or the Labourites and Trots).

But if the revisionists at least avoid being overwhelmed by the demented hurricane of "atrocity" lies and strident potentially pre-invasion Nazisms about "the world community losing its patience with Assad" etc from the likes of jumped-up little squit William Hague and (telling its own story) feminist icon Hilary Clinton, their ridiculous and wooden museum-Stalinist notion that the Assad Ba'athist regime in itself represents a possible future for Syria's masses is just as misleading.

Correctly denouncing the artificially provoked street fighting in Syria as the counter-revolutionary mayhem it is, financed and armed from the most reactionary imperialist quarters in the Gulf States, is marginally better than the Trots but museum-Stalinism's bizarre insistence that Ba'athist capitalism is "progressive" and to be supported unconditionally as a "step forwards" for the working class, is simply wrong.

Such a wretched nonsense, effectively elevating the Ba'athist opportunist petty bourgeois nationalism and its reluctant and sporadic anti-imperialism and vacillating anti-Zionism to the same level as Marxism itself, demonstrates either a complete failure to understand the ABC of revolutionary science or rampant opportunism and retreat from Leninist perspectives (or in fact both).
It is as opportunist and misleading as the overt sourness of the Trotskyists, and comes to no better conclusion then the same "No to NATO invasion" stop-the-war-ism only from a different direction and with much huffing and puffing about "taking a stand".

This time the pacifism is based on the idea that if only Syria was to be left alone, ("Hands off Syria") it would be able to advance the interests of the working class.

This is most dire reformism on two grounds. Firstly because it overtly supports the notion that the Assad Ba'athist government is "good for the working class" because Damascus has previously put through some social reforms and under pressure from the Arab Street, has partially backed forces taking on Zionism, particularly in Lebanon.

Secondly and worse, it reinforces the notion that such a solution would be possible at all rather than explaining the overwhelming hurricane force of the capitalist crisis which is driving everything into the greatest slump disaster of all time.
Assad Ba'athism, for all its annoyances to imperialism, caused by its anti-Zionist stance particularly and general refusal to capitulate completely to Washington diktat, is still a bourgeois nationalist regime that is unsympathetic to revolutionary Marxism-Leninism at best, certainly not helpful to it, and potentially very hostile, which has been vacillating, weak and indecisive in taking forwards its anti-Zionism and at times has colluded and compromised with US imperialism (during the first Gulf War onslaught on Saddam Hussein for example, which it sat out).

It is because it still runs a capitalist state that it has been unable to overcome the mix of contending interests and sectarian hostilities that Washington and its Western media campaign have successfully been able to play on.
In the former Soviet Union, with hundreds of regional and national interests, such local and regional antagonisms were largely overriden for 70 years by the greater universal ambition of building socialism, even with the less than inspiring leadership of Stalinist revisionism.

In fact national cultures had their first ever real chance to flourish and show off their talents after centuries of Tsarist feudal oppression and suppression.
Only with the liquidation of the Soviet workers state and re-establishment of oligarch capitalism have all the old wounds and national antagonisms re-opened, most horrifically in the valid Chechen national liberation struggle, inflamed by the heavy handed "anti-terrorist" military crudeness apeing of the West by Putin's Bonapartism.

Syria is being victimised by Washington (and its UK sidekick) for imperialism's general warmongering purposes because it is a convenient target and hated by fearful Zionism (which is obviously in the whole situation up to its elbows); to suppress the real Arab revolt beginning in Cairo; to further genocidally suppress the desperate Palestinian struggle; to punish their help to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to undermine the next and bigger target Iran.

So there is every reason to want to see all that come a total cropper, part of the vitally neededdefeat for imperialismand its world oppression which alone will open up more opportunities for revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, and the building of worldwide planned socialism, the only way out of catastrophic world meltdown and disaster.
Butdefeatfor imperialism it has to be made crystal clear, is nothing to do with support for Assad, as the Lalker/Proletarian Stalinists argue it for example.

Leninist understanding has always been completely clear that while standing clearly in the fight against the reactionary imperialist enemy, it should simultaneously make clear to the working class that it places no faith at all in such a petty bourgeois leadership, let alone tell the working class that it is a "progressive" and should be supported as a way forwards.
Strike together but march separately is the principle, most subtly demonstrated by Lenin's clear tactical understanding of the need for the Bolsheviks to stand alongside the duplicitous Kerensky bourgeois government in August 1917 to fend off the attack by the Tsarist monarchy restorationist general Kornilov while making very clear to the working class that Kerensky was not to be trusted one centimetre (as was rapidly proven).

That is not anything to do with some sly evasion of the horrors of the now raging civil war or philosophical attempt to "have your cake and eat it" by avoiding the need to "really support" the Syrians.
If it happens that the Assad regime gives the imperialist plotting a major setback then so be it – any source of defeat for the great monopoly capitalist world domination is welcome and there is no other in this situation.
The same arguments – still unanswered by the Stalinist, were being made at the beginning of the Iraq war. (This from EPSR 1179 08-04-03):

"To still claim to "prefer victory for the existing Iraq state to victory by the US-UK coalition", causing Trot critics to happily conclude that "military support" for the Saddam regime was at last being conceded, is chaotic anti-Leninist political confusion.

To make it clear that fostering any confidence at all in Ba'athism would be a backward step for international anti-imperialist understanding, as well as a potentially catastrophic delusion, permanently, - the whole notion of "preference" needs abandoning as historically misleading and philosophically muddled.

Approaching the nastiest warmongering contradictions ever posed by imperialist system economic crisis, the defeat of the West's world domination is the utterly vital necessity for all mankind, dwarfing all other considerations.
Pedants who argue that defeat for the US-UK coalition "necessarily implies" calling for a victory for Saddam, or at least an expression of political/military "support" for Saddamism, are missing the wood because of all the trees around.

It is a consistently logical Leninist position to be for the defeat of extremist Kornilov reaction by any means whatever, while remaining at the same time 100% focused that no confidence whatever should be fostered in the Kerensky regime which might, for its own rotten interests, play some part in bringing about that defeat.
It is simply totally misleading to talk about "preferring" a Saddam regime victory to an imperialist one.

In the longer-term history of this greatest inter-imperialist warmongering crisis now looming over the Earth (as the most disastrous economic "overproduction" crisis ever, unfolds), it is simply the earliest possible setbacks and humiliations for Western imperialism's blitzkrieging hysteria and arrogance, by any and every means, which will seriously matter for civilisation in the end.

The Leninist grasp of the other all-round requirements of anti-imperialist struggle, implied by such an understanding of the need for the defeat of Western warmongering domination, would quickly and easily attend to everything else that needed doing, such as toppling the wretched Saddam regime, subsequently.

But in the wider picture, such specific tasks facing world socialist progress are just a distraction if over-emphasised, remaining temporarily incompleted details in a vast list of things needing to be done worldwide.

And such confused concentration on one small issue ("political support?"; "military support?"; "suspend anti-Saddam struggle?"; "not suspend anti-Saddam struggle?"; "prefer a Saddam victory?"; etc, etc) also betrays astonishingly small-minded fussing (over, effectively, "victory for socialism in one country") considering how such groups love to knock Leninism over its alleged "mistake" in the one case where "one country socialism" really could have been key to world revolution in Lenin's dialectical grasp (later made meaningless by Stalinist Revisionist degeneracy).

All this logic-chopping pedantry about Iraq's specific fate really IS single-issue posturing of a "one-country-socialism" daftness in the present context of WORLD revolutionary tasks against the ever-widening world warmongering imperialist crisis. It is reformist tinkering. In 1917, the priority was to not let extreme reaction bring a complete halt to the revolutionary process.

To that end, the need to overthrow Kerensky gave way to the need to defeat the Kornilov rebellion. In 2003, the priority for the whole world is to see US imperialism defeated as soon as possible, wherever possible. If it happens during this monstrous Nazi blitzkrieg on Iraq, so well and good. Continuing to take up arms against the Saddam regime in the midst of its resistance to the US forces' drive on Baghdad WEAKENS the chances for US imperialist defeat in this first of many military adventures to come (as imperialism thrashes about in the turmoil of insoluble economic crisis of "over-production").

All-out for the defeat of US imperialism does not imply the slightest "support" for the Saddam regime, or create any illusions that it does not remain a weak, vacillating, and reactionary regime, - the target for resumed direct overthrow-struggle the moment that the far more reactionary threat to mankind from rampant Nazi US imperialism has been damaged as best possible in the immediate situation around Iraq."


The Pan-Arican theorising about the entire Arab Spring as a giant US conspiracy is just as wooden as the fake-"lefts" above.
The convolutions and elaborations now being set out by assorted semi-anarchist and black nationalist pan-African theorists lose touch completely with the basic Marxist understanding of the world being in the state it is in because of the class domination and exploitation of society, and of the contradictions that causes eventually exploding in revolution.
In the latest "Arab Spring all done by the CIA" theory, what possible reason would Washington have to stir uprevolt againstitself when it had the major parts of the regions locked down by Zionist smiting threats and stooge gangsterism in the biggest and most dangerously potentially revolutionary country next door?


To get war going? But it has always been able to do that with the thinnest of excuses like the Gulf of Tonkin "marine attack" nonsense setting going a near decade of the Vietnam War, or the non-existent" Racek massacre to trigger the blitzing of Serbia.
The answer is you would not upset that apple cart – the Egyptian revolt was agigantic shockto world imperialism, even greater than the spontaneous rebellion which toppled the Shah in Iran in 1979 and it has been trying to deal with it ever since, with long-planned Libyan and Syrian counter-revolutionary turmoil then deliberately stirred up to confuse the picture and intimidate the entire region.


Egypt was funded with billions of dollars in aid and arms every year, to keep the monster Mubarak in place and the military which has managed to keep the crucial levers of state power in its hands despite throwing the virtually dead old dictator to the masses as a sop, is still being funded.
Apart from the sheer irrational pointlessness of these elaborations, they, like the absurd complications of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, betray a deep underlying petty bourgeois defeatist hopelessness, and contempt for the rising world revolution, by suggesting that the Third World is not really capable of such uprising, and heading everyone off into a view of a world essentially controlled and manipulated by the CIA.


It betrays a complete contempt for the masses and total failure to grasp the significance of the giant crisis now tearing the world open and shattering the capabilities and confidence of the ruling class.
Conspiracy there is a-plenty in the ruling class's constant manipulations and lies, – the whole racket of "democracy" and parliament is one centuries-long continuous hoodwinking fraud of opportunism and corruption veiling the armed violence and financial bullying of the actual bourgeois dictatorship which rules in reality, and the details above reveal how they have set Syria going, part of constant worldwide subversion.


But they are notin control. Syria and Libya are desperate panic moves by an Empire besieged in all directions.
All these above nonsenses stem from the complete failure to grasp the significance and extent of the overwhelming world crisis of capitalism. It is precisely this unstoppably unrolling crisis and the gigantic escalation of the Third World revolt it has triggered that leads to the desperate Western intervention in Syria as it tries to intimidate, confuse and suppress the Cairo mass upheavals, and general growing revolt everywhere.

The fake-"left" will argue that they do talk about the crisis and to some extent they do now that its financial impact is unavoidably obvious (after years of belittling such Marxist explanation from the EPSR as "irrelevant", "old hat" or "hysterical crisis-ism").


But they make just token and half-digested references to economic crisis, usually thrown in at the end of an analysis, or confined to academic accounts woodenly re-stating parts of Karl Marx's great dissection of capitalist economics and contradictions.

But even these infrequent longer analyses are always disconnected from the great sweep of world events, and particularly from the drive to war.

The ferment of world revolt in different countries is always analysed separately as things-in-themselves, "the Greek situation", "the Egyptian revolt", "Syria", the anti-austerity struggle in Britain, Spain's economic sovereign debt collapse etc etc etc.
But they are all intertwined parts of the same historical breakdown of the centuries long class rule of capitalism, an enormous unfolding disaster.

But none of the "lefts" really begin to grasp, let alone explain, the gigantic epochal scale of the world economic disaster now unfolding.


This is not only the "worst collapse" in a century requiring a "fight against austerity" but a world-shattering breakdown of the entire profit-based way of doing things, everywhere and for all time.
It is a cataclysmic disintegration whose impact has only just begun to be felt and it is utterly unsolvable for capitalism, which despite its pretences and continued going through the motions, is almost paralysed by the enormity of the disaster and failure facing it.


It is the underlying driving force of all history as Marxism has always understood.
The devastating runs of international bankruptcies which erupted in the Credit Crunch of 2008, when the entire world economy teetered on the edge of the abyss, have only been "stabilised" by the insane "Quantitative Easing" programme for a moment.
Behind its lying pretences of "cleaning up the debt mess" and "properly regulating" the banks etc etc the ruling class knows there is no solution at all to this disaster.


Quantitative easing is only making matters one hundred times worse. The dam will burst with even more devastating consequences because of the mountains of additional worthless credit. Crisis has finally reached surface in an historically sudden and devastating collapse – a revolutionary point solvable only by a complete revolutionary transformation of human production.