Solidarity with Syria

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Opening Theme

Hussein Al-Deek “Ana Souri, Ana Arabi”

Well comrades, you’re listening to Back in the USSR on CFRU, and once again, in light of recent events in our world, it only further confirms what I’ve been saying on this show for the past three weeks: namely that anti-colonialism, the struggle against colonialism all over the world, remains the chief political task of our time, and something that all progressive people everywhere need to involve themselves in.  The independent sovereign nation of Syria was struck last week in a cowardly attack by imperialist powers, involving more than 100 cruise missiles fired from multiple warships and military aircraft.  The armed forces of Britain, France and, of course, the United States participated in this deadly assault on Syrian sovereignty and self-determination. These strikes were fully supported by Justin Trudeau and the Government of Canada.  The pretext these used was a familiar one, familiar to us all, that of “humanitarian intervention” and “weapons of mass destruction”.  And isn’t it quite the coincidence that only last month we had the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent utter devastation of that country on the basis of much the same imperial propaganda.  

 Brothers and sisters, the so-called “chemical attacks” that supposedly occurred two weeks ago in the city of Douma outside Damascus, and which the Western press and political elites were quick to pin on the legitimate government of Syria, have not even been confirmed to have happened.  As of now we don’t even know if they took place or not, let alone who is responsible.  As of now we have the word of Jaysh Al-Islam, a murderous terrorist organization that has been illegally occupying the city of Douma, and a few Syrian ex-pat organizations with ties to the CIA.  These are not credible sources.  Doctors on the ground in the Eastern Ghouta region have not reported treating anyone for chemical poisoning.  The UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which interestingly enough oversaw and confirmed the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles back in 2013, was invited by the Syrian and Russian governments to inspect Douma for themselves and carry out an independent investigation to confirm whether a chemical attack took place there or not.  The OPCW accepted and their team was due to arrive in Damascus on April 14^th, but, needless to say, the US Empire headed by the Trump Administration, along with its French and British allies, chose not to wait for the facts.  Instead they unleashed hell on multiple targets throughout southern Syria, including targets in the urban areas of Damascus and Homs.   

President Donald Trump was in quite a celebratory mood today.  He even echoed George W. Bush by declaring “mission accomplished” after the missile strikes, thanked Britain and France for their “wisdom and power”, saying the strikes had been “perfectly executed”.  Not without reason did the Syrian Foreign Ministry respond by saying that the strikes were aimed at “hindering the OPCW [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] mission’s work and preempting its results.” I think this is clear for all to see.  The US Empire wants domination, it does not want evidence that is likely to conflict with its own justification for war and conquest.  For example, one of the sites struck by US missiles was a research facility in the town of Barzeh outside Damascus that the Pentagon claimed was involved in chemical weapons production.  In reality it was producing antidotes to snake venom.

Even though the OPCW has been on the ground in Damascus for a full week now, it has still not investigated the site of the alleged chemical attack in Douma for reasons that remain unclear.  It is more than likely that the US and its allies are doing everything they can to frustrate, sabotage and delay the OPCW investigation for the reasons I outlined above.  For the evidence is running against them.  Now that Jaysh Al-Islam and other terrorists groups have been forced to withdraw from Douma, multiple independent investigators and journalists have been to the site of the supposed chemical attack, including the distinguished Robert Fisk of the British newspaper “The Independent”.  While the capitalist mainstream media bends over backwards trying to prove that there is evidence to justify these missile strikes on Syria, the people who have actually been on the ground in Douma have found nothing, literally nothing that proves a chemical attack even took place.  As this report by One America News discusses, all indicators point to this “attack” being staged by the terrorists in Douma as a last desperate attempt to get the imperialist nations of the West to militarily intervene to save them from being overrun by the Syrian army.  Have a listen.

The death toll from the imperialist assault on Syria last week is also not clear, but whatever the figure it would have most certainly been much worse had it not been for the brave efforts of the Syrian Air-Defense Forces.  According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 71 out of the 103 missiles that the U.S. and its allies fired at Syria were shot down before ever reaching their targets.  According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, the number of missiles that actually got through to their targets was less than 10.  Whichever figure is closer to the truth, it’s clear that without the heroic efforts of Syrian air-defense, the death and destruction would have been much, much worse.

But most heartening of all, after this brutal attack on their country, the Syrian people themselves remain undeterred.  That Saturday morning in Damascus they poured onto the streets to celebrate the triumph of their army in stopping most the missile strikes before they had a chance to do any damage.  One of them, Nedher Hammoud, 48, had jumped out of bed at the sound of the blasts the night before and clambered up to his rooftop. "I went out on my roof this morning and saw the missiles being shot down like flies," Mr Hammoud told AFP. "History will record that Syria shot down missiles - and not just missiles. It shot down American arrogance."Still in his pyjamas, Mr Hammoud scrambled to join the crowds of people heading to the famed Umayyad Square to show their support for Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.  Draped in Syrian flags and blaring patriotic tunes, hundreds of Syrians arrived at the square on bicycles, on foot and in cars.  A traffic jam had already started to form around the square, and young Syrians leaned out of their car windows to take selfies as military personnel looked on. "God is protecting you, Damascus!" some called out, and others chanted in support of Assad and the army.  Soldiers threw up two fingers to flash the victory sign near a car with pictures showing the president, his late father Hafez al-Assad and ally Hassan Nasrallah, who heads the Lebanese Hezbollah.  Amina al-Fares, 58, came to the rally dressed in black.  She said, "Trump thought we'd be in bomb shelters, but here we are in Umayyad Square." As the morning sun rose in the sky, car horns blared and people clapped, swaying back and forth to pro-army tunes.  They then went about their daily routines without fear.

The people of Syria are unbroken.  They’ve been under siege for years by the imperial powers and their local proxies, just as Iraq was, just as Yugoslavia was, just as Nicaragua was.  But they’re still standing tall.  And we on the left in the Western countries that have been besieging these proud people should and must offer Syria unconditional support in its anti-colonial struggle for self-determination.  I don’t care what your personal opinions are about the Syrian government or the Russian government, a real opponent of colonialism MUST take sides.  They must side with the colonized against the colonizer, whether that’s the Syrian people resisting the regime-change agenda of the American Empire or indigenous people putting their bodies on the line to stop the Kinder-Morgan pipeline on stolen native land in B.C.  That means giving full support to the forces fighting for Syrian self-determination against imperialism, and in is case that is the Syrian government and its allies.  I mean the Communist Party of Syria sure as hell does not agree with everything the Syrian government does, but that doesn’t stop the Party from defending the sovereignty of the country and the self-determination of its people in the face of imperialist aggression.  Many communists have fought and died over the past nine years since the war began in 2011, and they made that ultimate sacrifice to oppose colonialism.  People have to wake up and realize that.  Even if you don’t like Assad, because, let’s face it, the Western media’s done a brilliant job in demonizing that guy for the better part of a decade, including in the eyes of leftists who should know better, but once again, I don’t care: grow up, suck it up and stand in solidarity. 

And educate yourselves, goddamn it! There is far too much ignorance when it comes to this war in Syria and frankly the region as a whole.  Western leftists should also be standing in full solidarity with the Yemeni people as they resist a barbaric invasion of their country at the hands of Saudi Arabia, an invasion that is also fully backed and armed to the teeth by the West.  There are a lot of wishywashy leftists out there who claim to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people when they resist Israel colonialism and Apartheid, but who then proceed to condemn the Syrian people and government when they fight to defend themselves against colonialism.  By the way, the death toll last week in Gaza stood at 36 as Israeli snipers claimed 3 more lives this Friday and wounded another 969, 233 by live ammunition.  Islam Hirzallah, 28, died after Israeli snipers shot him in the stomach, Mohammed Hamada Hijila, 36, was killed in an airstrike in East of Shujaya, and Abdullah Al-Shehri, 28 years old, was killed by Israeli sniper fire at the eastern border.  4 more Palestinians died Saturday from an Israeli tank shell.  

The death toll in Gaza now stands at 39 as Israeli snipers claimed 4 more lives this Friday and wounded another 645, 200 with live ammunition. This Friday, a fifteen year old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, was shot in the head by an Israeli Sniper whilst simply standing, unarmed, near the Gaza border with other demonstrators.  Israeli Snipers also shot and killed three others, beginning with Ahmad Abu Aqel, a 25 year old unarmed man from Jabalia refugee camp. The sniper shot Ahmad with an internationally banned explosive bullet. Sa’d Abu Taha, 32 years old and Ahmad Rashad Al Athamnah, 24 years old, were also shot and killed by Israeli Snipers.

As I’ve been discussing for the past three weeks, these unarmed protests will continue until Nakba Day in May, Palestinian people demanding their right to return home to the lands that were stolen from them by Israeli settler-colonialism.  Western leftists overwhelmingly get that, they rightly support these demonstrators, but when Palestinian fighters in Liwaa Al-Quds and other military units fighting alongside the Syrian army, take the fight to the Israeli-backed terrorist groups operating in southern Syria, those same leftists have nothing to say.  Some of them even see Israel, a settler-colonial state built on stolen Palestinian land, and Syria, a formerly colonized country that has supported the Palestinian national cause for decades in the face of tremendous odds, as being somehow equivalent and equally worthy of condemnation and opposition.  And that is nonsense.  Besides, even parts of Syria have fallen victim to Israeli settler-colonialism, namely the Golan Heights which, like East Jerusalem and the West Bank, has been illegally occupied and illegally settled by Israel since 1967.  Now, through the support of Islamist militias in southern Syria, Israel aims to expand its grip on Syrian land still further.  As the Soviet Union’s staunchest ally in the Middle East, Syria has traditionally been the main obstacle to Israeli and American hegemony in the region.  This remains true today, even though the USSR no longer exists.

In conclusion, I would urge all leftists and progressives today to consider the words of a former CIA agent who saw the light of reason and turned, completely and irrevocably, against the imperial machine he had once been a loyal part of: “Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and abroad is impossible.  Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes of poverty and wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts that only socialist revolution can resolve.  Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice…It’s harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or to the other.” – Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, pg 597

(Play Damien Dempsey “Sam Jenkins” – about another man who refused to follow orders)

I would encourage all of you, all you comrades, to take action.  If there’s an anti-war rally in your area, go there.  If there isn’t one, help organize one.  It is our job as leftists in the imperial West to stand against imperialist intervention anywhere in the world.  There were massive protests against the Iraq War in 2003, but since then the anti-war movement in North America has collapsed.  It must be rebuilt and it must be rebuilt in a staunchly anti-imperial and anti-colonial form.  This is our task NOW.  Last Monday, the 16^th, the YCL and CPC held a demonstration outside MP Lloyd Longfield’s office in downtown Guelph where we held up a Syrian flag alongside signs proclaiming “no to war” and “HANDS OFF SYRIA!” We were showing our opposition to a Canadian settler-colonial government which has chosen to side with the American Empire in the destruction of a sovereign nation, just as it continues to oppress indigenous people in this country.  There were significant protests outside the American consulate in Toronto and that’s where I myself will be going tomorrow to take part in another rally in defense of Syrian self-determination.  Rallies like these have been happening all over, so stay tuned, stay informed, and BE THERE! TAKE ACTION! ORGANIZE! Because passivity and excuses cost lives.  That is the reality.  Anti-colonial struggle is the chief political task of our time, and, to paraphrase the great Irish anti-imperialist, Bobby Sands, all of us, whether we are currently politically engaged or not, have a role to play.  See you in the streets, brothers and sisters, let’s stand together and fight to win.

Syrian National Anthem

Michael Parenti “The Attack on Yugoslavia” (a country that was successfully dismembered and destroyed by imperialism, let’s not let that happen again)

Communist Party of Canada statement on Syria.