Show Transcript: Victory to Syria!

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On the occasion of the Syrian Arab Army's (SAA) success in breaking the brutal ISIL siege of the city of Deir Ezzor, Back in the USSR celebrates the victories of the Syrian people and army in resisting the American-led imperial project of regime change and exposes the forces that have sought to destroy this proud and independent nation for the past six years.

Opening Theme

Play Song 1: Syrian National Anthem

Welcome brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, to Back in the USSR, I am Siegfried, and I just want to say, long live the Syrian Arab Army and long live the Syrian Arab Republic.  These are words seldom spoken in Western countries and, quite frankly, its sinful that they’re not.  Syria is a small heroic country that since 2011 has withstood six years of siege by one of the most powerful US-backed coalitions ever assembled: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Canada, Germany, in fact just about every country on the planet besides a relatively small number of steadfast anti-imperialist nations, backed the overthrow of the legitimate, democratically elected government of Syria.  Tens of thousands of terrorists from more than one hundred countries traveled there, equipped with sophisticated American anti-tank missiles, Israeli tactical equipment, and hundreds of tanks drawn from surviving Warsaw Pact military stockpiles in Eastern European NATO states like Bulgaria and Croatia.  And yet the Syrian government is still in power, and it’s winning. 

Just this past week, the Syrian Army, backed by Russian air strikes, lifted the brutal three year ISIS siege of the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, and already humanitarian convoys are reaching the nearly 100,000 citizens who have been trapped there for more than thirty-six months, withstanding non-stop bombardment and incessant attacks.  I’ve heard the lifting of the siege of Deir Ezzor being compared with the 1944 lifting of the siege of Leningrad when the Red Army finally broke through Nazi lines and ended the horrific ordeal of the people there.  I think it’s a very apt comparison to make, and certainly the ordeal of Deir Ezzor’s defenders, who have remained steadfast against overwhelming odds for over three years of battle, will be remembered as one of the greatest epics of gallantry in modern military history.  Just listen to this clip of Syrian Army soldiers from when the siege was first lifted on September 5^th.

(Play SANA “First scenes from the Syrian Army’s lifting of the Deir Ezzor Siege”)

And this victory is only the latest of many for the Syrian Army in 2017.  Earlier this year we witnessed the Syrian Army’s liberation of the ancient city and UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra from ISIS, in December 2016 we saw the liberation of Aleppo from terrorist groups that were backed by the CIA and the Pentagon, and all over Syria operations continue to expel the foreign-backed militias that have been bringing such death and destruction to the country over the course of the past six years.  Listen to this Press TV news report from when the Syrian Army liberated Aleppo.

(Play Mohamad Ali, Press TV, “Syrian Army carrying out clean-up OP in East Aleppo”/RT Lizzie Phelan “Street celebreations in Aleppo on news of the Syrian Army’s retaking the eastern part of the city”)

The fight for liberation was and remains brutally hard, and Syria has lost much, listen to this report by Press TV journalist Mohamad Ali from March of this year when the Syrian Army liberated Palmyra, which, as I said, was a UNESCO world heritage site that was almost completely wrecked by the so-called Islamic State.

(Play Mohamad Ali “Press TV’s reporter shows the extent of the damage to Palmyra”)

To illustrate still further what the Syrian people were up against in this struggle for survival, I’m going to play another report from Mohamad Ali from back in January, when the Syrian Army liberated the Wadi Barada Valley near Damascus, freeing it from terrorists who had cut off the Syrian capital’s water supply and effectivelyhold millions of people hostage.

(Play Mohamad Ali, Press TV, “Syrian Army takes control of Wadi Barada Valley”)

For the Syrian people, who have suffered and endured so much, victory is finally in sight.  That’s something that should be celebrated, and yet the Western media continues to do what it has done from the start of the conflict: demonize the legitimate government of Syria, make false accusations about the use of chemical weapons, whitewash the brutal actions of the terrorist groups fighting against that government, and go all out encouraging Western military intervention against a sovereign nation on so-called “humanitarian grounds”.  And thus the media reveals itself to be just as much a part of the war on Syria as the Pentagon, the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and all the state and non-state actors who have brought nothing but terror and death to what was once a peaceful nation.

Well I want to get the record straight tonight.  Long live the Syrian people and victory to the Syrian Arab Army! Your long march is finally coming to a close.

Play Song 2: Gary Og “Something Inside so Strong”

Play Song 3: Hussein Al-Deek “Ana Souri, Ana Arabi”

You’re listening to Back in the USSR.  Now, I’ve talked about the Syrian conflict on a number of occasions on this show, afew weeks ago I played an interview that journalist Max Blumenthal did with The Real News Network in which he unpacked a lot of the media deception surrounding Syria, and in particular how some Western leftists have ended up siding with the US-led project of regime change in Syria – even people who in the past vehemently opposed the Iraq War.

People like Amy Goodman.  Who will actually be giving a talk in Guelph next week, and I have to say, regardless of what her progressive credentials are in America, her reporting on Syria has been abyssmal: repeating mainstream media lies about chemical weapons and alleged atrocities without giving a critical perspective or any sort of counter-point, uncritically interviewing members of the Western-based Syrian opposition who, like the Western-based Iraqi opposition before them, openly call for US-military intervention to oust a legitimate government of a sovereign state, and just generally being pro-imperialist.  It’s really disgusting, and she and her collaborators should be ashamed. 

But of course they’re far from alone, even leftist political organizations, some who still dare to call themselves “socialist”, have jumped on the regime change bandwagon since 2011.  I’d like to share this one article with you from the Greanville Post which not only exposes how the CIA backed some of the most murderous rebel groups in Syria, but how some psuedo-leftist groups like the ISO ended up as stooges for American foreign policy.

(Read: “The abandonment of the CIA’s Syrian “rebels” and the pseudo-left accomplices of US imperialism” by Bill van Auken)

Play Song 4: Garbage “Stupid Girl”

Well, brothers and sisters, I think that last song pretty much expresses how I feel about the positions of those leftist organizations, not to mention Amy Goodman, on this particular issue.  Collaboration with imperialism is something no leftist should ever do, and when they do it deals a blow to every kind of progressive change.

But another thing that article in the Greanville post highlights is the truth that this war was effectively manufactured outside Syria.  That political crisis in 2011 that saw protests and which led to the major democratic reform of the country’s constitution did not have to become a war.  And in contrast to the Western media’s repeated lies, it was not the Syrian government that caused it to become a war.  The Egyptian government killed far more people in street demonstrations in 2011 than the Syrian government did and today there is no war consuming hundreds of thousands of Egyptian lives.  No, this was a war made outside Syria and imported very, very deliberately by the CIA, the US-government and its regional allies, primarily Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.  They gave the insurgents guns, gave them training, gave them billions of dollars worth of aid, imported legions of foreign fighters from just about every continent, and completely prepared the ground for the rise of groups like the so-called Islamic State and the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front. 

This was an imperialist war of aggression from the start, the destruction of a sovereign nation by proxy, a sovereign nation that was founded on an anti-colonial ideology of Arab unity and which has historically defied US hegemony in the region.  This made it a target, just as Venezuela and Cuba are targets because of their defiance of American hegemony in Latin America.  And the media of course has played its role in demonizing Syria as a “rogue state” just like it did with Iraq, and its reporting on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government very nearly did clear the way for an Iraq War 2.0.  There is nothing new about these tactics, its classic imperialism at work.  I’d like to play a short song about that, it was sung by a group of IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland during the conflict there, and it expresses profound solidarity with all the victims of imperialism wherever they may be, understanding that they all face a common foe.  It’s called “Monsters, Devils, and Strangers”.

Play Song 5: BIK “Monsters, Devils, and Strangers”

Now in a little while I’m going to play a talk by Canadian writer Stephen Gowans about his recent book entitled “Washington’s Long War on Syria”, explaining the history of the conflict and of Western intervention in the country, but first I want to play this Press TV interview with London-based writer and activist Catherine Shakdam, director of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, who is another person who has bravely spoken the truth on Syria and consistently confronted the warmongering propaganda machine of the Western media.  Please stay tuned to Back in the USSR.

(Play Catherine Shakdam, Press TV “Advisor to Syrian President, War Almost Over”)

You’re listening to Back in the USSR, and to follow up that talk by Catherine Shakdam, I’d like to play a clip of the Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett, who has just been fearless, absolutely fearless in her reporting of the conflict, busting through all manner of media lies, particularly surrounding the battle for Aleppo, a city that she herself visited.  This year she did a cross-Canada tour that I’m proud to say that my comrades from the Communist Party of Canada helped facilitate.  This is from when she spoke at a UN press conference in 2016.

(Play Eva Bartlett, “Canadian journalist on the lies about Syria, UN Press Conference, December 9, 2016”)

Play Song 6: Bruce Cockburn “If I had a Rocket Launcher”

(Play Stephen Gowans, Montreal Book Launch, May 2, 2017 “Washington’s Long War on Syria”)