No to western intervention in Syria, for a socialist solution

Over the weekend the rhetoric has been ramped up by the west and military action is looking a growing possibility. I felt I needed to write this blog to oppose this and put my reasons why. There has been a flow of western leaders condemn an apparent chemical attack in Syria by President Assad. A lot of similarities to the claims of WMD’s are quite stark. John Kerry the secretary of state for the US government has recently come out with this. “US Secretary of State John Kerry has condemned what he termed the "moral obscenity" of the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons against its own people. He said footage of the alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus was "real and compelling" and "undeniable". He said President Barack Obama was considering a response. It comes hours after UN chemical weapons inspectors came under attack near the Syrian capital. The team was dispatched to five sites around Damascus where hundreds of people were reported to have been killed on Wednesday. "What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality," Mr Kerry said in a televised statement on Monday. The US administration had additional information about that attack that it would make public in the days ahead, he added. He said the delay in allowing UN inspectors to the sites of the alleged chemical weapons attack were signs the Syrian government had something to hide.” I myself am very wary of believing what the west has to say. Not because I’m anti western but their track record speaks for itself. The unsubstantiated charges that the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad carried out a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus killing large numbers of civilians have all the hallmarks of a staged provocation aimed at provoking Western intervention. Reports of the attack were made by Western-backed opponents of the Assad regime early Wednesday, just as a United Nations chemical weapons inspection team, admitted to Syria by the government just 72 hours earlier, began its work. Indeed, according to the opposition sources reporting the chemical weapons attacks, they took place in Eastern Gout in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, just a few miles from where the UN inspection team is headquartered. Initial contradictory reports of the alleged attack put the number of victims at as few as 20 and as many as 1,300. Why the Assad regime should choose such a moment to launch large-scale chemical attacks—under the noses of the UN inspectors—and what motive he would have for doing so, under conditions in which his military has been inflicting a series of defeats on the US-backed “rebels,” has not been explained in any of the extensive media coverage of these unverified allegations. Nonetheless, the US and its NATO allies, the principal supporters of the bloody war for regime change in Syria, lost no time in issuing condemnations and demanding an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, which convened behind closed doors in New York Wednesday afternoon. The White House issued a statement declaring itself “deeply concerned by reports that hundreds of Syrian civilians have been killed in an attack by Syrian government forces, including by the use of chemical weapons.” Together with its allies in London and Paris, it called for both the Security Council session and for the UN team on the ground in Syria to immediately investigate the report. Proponents of direct US intervention in the Syrian civil war went further. The Washington Post rushed an editorial statement onto its web site declaring: “If the allegations of a massive new attack are confirmed, the weak measure adopted by President Obama in June—supplying small weapons to rebel forces—will have proved utterly inadequate.” The newspaper concluded that Obama must respond to the alleged chemical attacks by “ordering direct US retaliation against the Syrian military forces responsible and by adopting a plan to protect civilians in southern Syria with a no-fly zone.” Sounds familiar? Yes it does the very same language was being used in Libya when there was a no fly zone put in place that has done nothing in the long term to maintain stability and prosperity in the region if anything its made things worse. Not that we can equally believe the Assad regime either who have come out with this The Syrian government and its military, which have repeatedly insisted that they would not use chemical weapons against the population, denied the charges made by such US-backed outfits as the Syrian Opposition Centre. The Syrian Foreign Ministry issued a statement charging that the cooperation between Damascus and the UN inspection team “didn’t please the terrorists and the countries supporting them, which is why they came up with new false allegations that the Armed Forces used toxic gas in Damascus countryside.” Syria’s ambassador to Moscow, Riyad Haddad, told the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS that the charges were false and were designed to reproduce the “Iraqi scenario,” i.e., a direct US military intervention in Syria. “Our Armed Forces have never used chemical weapons and all fabricated concoctions in this respect aim to disorient international observers and defocus their efforts in achieving the set goals,” said Haddad. “It is no secret for anyone that all these falsifications that appear from time to time about the use of chemical weapons are nothing but an attempt to repeat the scenario that was used in the past with regard to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” the ambassador added. There can be no support for western intervention or for President Assad either or the rebels who the west did support briefly. Socialists must support independent workers organisations to control their own destiny. Socialists do not support Assad or the ‘rebel’ leadership. We would give all necessary political and active support to workers on the ground fighting for a common front on a class struggle programme which is badly needed. With references and extracts from http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/22/syri-a22.html and www.socialistworld.net

G8 Summit, no to austerity, for a socialist alternative

www.socialistworld.net, 17/06/2013 website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI End the rule of big business, poverty and war Article courtesy of comrade Niall Mulholland, CWI The leaders of the most powerful nations in the world will soon descend on Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, for the 17-18 June G8 Summit. We can expect much empty rhetoric from David Cameron, Barack Obama and other world leaders about how Northern Ireland is a model for ’peace, stability and growing prosperity’, which the G8 wishes to emulate on an international level. Nothing could be further from the truth. Northern Ireland has some of the highest rates of poverty and joblessness on these islands and society remains divided along sectarian lines. The huge security operation surrounding the summit is like the worst of the ’Troubles’. Thousands of armed police and military equipment will flood Fermanagh. These repressive measures are an attempt to intimidate workers and young people from protesting against the G8’s policies. And there is a lot to protest! The G8 heads of state lead the way in making the working class pay for the crisis of their capitalist system. Austerity policies have caused Depression-era conditions in Greece, which will soon be repeated in Cyprus. Mass unemployment stalks the EU, officially at nearly 20%. Youth joblessness in Spain is over 60% and around 80% in Greece. The G8’s austerity policies are not working. Most of Europe is in deep recession or facing economic stagnation. The US has feeble growth but also falling wages and rising social inequality. The G8 represents the opposite of ’prosperity, peace and stability’. Under the capitalist profit system, almost half of the world’s population struggles to live on less than $2.5 a day. The G8 represents the super-rich 1%. The ’great philanthropist’ Bill Gates, of Microsoft, has total wealth estimated at $66 billion, which is enough to end world poverty and still leave him with change. One of the G8’s stated purposes is to "save" African people from starvation - by corporate land grabs and control of the continent’s markets! The G8 also represents a system that causes war and environmental destruction. Since the economic crisis began, a staggering $1.75 trillion was spent by world powers on the highly lucrative arms industry. Working class The current Turkish uprising, which started in Taksim Square, is encouraging anti-G8 protesters in Belfast and Fermanagh, despite the security clampdown. The magnificent movement in Turkey has the potential to bring together working people across ethnic and national divisions, linking up with the organised working class, to become an unstoppable force to change society. The ’G8 Not Welcome’ campaign, initiated by the Socialist Party in Northern Ireland, will hold a demonstration in Enniskillen on 17 June, the first day of the Summit. This protest, with trade union backing, will bring together Catholic and Protestant youth, socialists, trade unionists and others. But marching together is not enough. A workers’ alternative to the G8 and pro-big business parties is needed in Northern Ireland, Britain and everywhere. The Socialist Party in Northern Ireland, like the Socialist Party in England and Wales, is an affiliate to the CWI. It calls for mass opposition to G8 policies and the local sectarian-based parties and their cuts. The CWI campaigns for jobs, homes, a living wage and decent benefits. It fights for socialism - democratic public ownership and planning of the major industries and banks which would unleash colossal wealth and resources for the benefit of the ’99%’ - to end the rule of big business, poverty and war.