DEFEND SYRIA AGAINST WESTERN IMPERIALISM & ITS “REBEL” PROXIES!

WORKERS CAUGHT IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF CAPITALISM: DON’T LET THE JINGOISTIC BEAT OF WAR DIVERT YOU FROM JUSTIFIED ANGER AT THE EXPLOITERS & THEIR BUDGET

ABBOTT/SHORTEN’S WAR AND “ANTI-TERROR LAWS” ARE BAD FOR WORKING CLASS PEOPLE

October 1 – The most fearsome force on the planet is once again slamming missiles into the Middle East. Over the last few weeks the U.S. imperialists have bombed Iraq. Last week, they and their Saudi, Qatari and other lapdogs started bombing inside Syria. That was done without Syrian government consent – a violation of Syria’s sovereignty. Shortly after this attack, the Syrian Foreign Minister asserted that: “We have already stated that we consider any violation of Syria’s sovereignty as aggression.”

Australia’s capitalist rulers could not wait to get involved. The Liberal government– with 100% support from the ALP “opposition” – deployed troops to the Middle East to join the U.S. before any other country. These forces include 200 special forces troops as well as a RAAF group with eight Super Hornet fighter- bombers. Today, Abbott announced that these forces would start operations.

When the U.S. and Australia invaded Iraq last time it was done under the bogus pretext of destroying non-existent nuclear weapons. This time the excuse is to destroy the fundamentalist ISIS (“Islamic State”) group. Except that ISIS was one of the Syrian “Rebel” groups built up and trained by Washington – both directly in covert camps in Jordan and indirectly via its Turkish, Saudi and Qatari allies – for the sake of its proxy war against Syria’s government. Indeed, U.S. support for ISIS was so blatant that prominent U.S. senator, John McCain, not only expressed support to ISIS leaders in a meeting with the Syrian “Rebels” in May last year that was shown on CNN but was even in a photo shoot with none other than ISIS leader – “The Caliph” – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi!

ISIS are indeed cutthroats who subjugate women and murder non-Sunni minorities in the regions that they control. Yet how little this war actually has to do with stopping extreme religious terror is highlighted by the fact that one of the close U.S. allies bombing relatively secular Syria to supposedly stop the “Islamic State” is itself the   most savage fundamentalist, “Islamic State” in existence, Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden from driving cars and hundreds of people – many exploited migrant workers – have been publicly beheaded in the last few years including for such “crimes” as adultery.

The fact is that ISIS could not have achieved its current strength without earlier Western support for its war on Syria and without Turkey helping ISIS forces cross through Turkey into Syria. ISIS was also bred out of the horror caused by the U.S./Australian occupation of Iraq. Support for these Sunni extremists was incited by the Sunni-Shia frictions caused by Washington repeatedly swapping sides from favouring Shia to Sunni communities in Iraq in a destructive game of divide and conquer.

When ISIS and other Syrian “Rebel” groups carried out horrific massacres against Alawis, Shias, Christians, Kurds and secular Sunnis, not only did Western regimes continue to back these forces but the Western media lionised these groups and sought to pin their atrocities on the Syrian government. Obama only decided to move against ISIS because it was turned against Washington’s more favoured Syrian “Rebel” groups and because ISIS in Iraq was threatening to overrun the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government – a regime subservient to the U.S. So now that Washington’s vicious ISIS attack dog has escaped its master’s control, the master is trying to reign in its monster. But the master is the biggest monster of all: a monster, indeed, of such gigantic proportions that, together with its Australian and other allies, it killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in its March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation.

Most importantly for Obama, the pretext of stopping ISIS allows them another chance to hammer the strategic Middle East into a region of total subordination to the U.S. – one where U.S. companies will have an exclusive grip on the oil valves. Thus, the U.S. used its intervention in Iraq to, within days, leverage the ejection of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Although himself a long-time Western puppet, Maliki occasionally pulled on his puppet strings too forcefully for the liking of the U.S.A – for example, by building relations with U.S. foe, Iran. So Washington used the weight of its latest intervention to have his premiership buried by rival Iraqi politicians.

Yet the most sinister plans of the U.S. and its allies are reserved not for Iraq but for Syria. The Western imperialists want to use this latest intervention to accomplish a longstanding push to depose the Syrian government which, although capitalist, is not compliant enough for Washington to accept. Thus, as part of the Iraq/Syria intervention, the U.S. has supplemented its already huge covert backing for anti-government Syrian “Rebels” by instituting a massive plan to openly arm and train in a Saudi camp so- called “moderate” Syrian “Rebels” – that is, all the largely fundamentalist “Rebel” factions who are still held firmly at the end of Washington’s leash. Neither the U.S. nor the “Rebels” have made any secret of the fact that the resulting greater power of the “Rebels”will be unleashed not mainly against ISIS but against the Syrian government. Indeed, it is likely that in the longer term if not sooner, the U.S. will slide over from hitting ISIS targets to bombing Syrian government forces directly. Washington is hoping that by blatantly impinging on Syria’s sovereignty through the air strikes, it may be able to even provoke a war with the Syrian government in the short term. At a meeting with White House guests, Obama threatened that if Syria attempts to attack any U.S. war plane the U.S. would take down Syrian air defences and overthrow the Assad government (The New York Times, 13 September).

However, utilising in Syria the model that they used to overthrow Libya’s Gaddafi government will not prove so easy for Washington. Although weakened by the years-long war against the “Rebels,” Syria’s military is still much stronger than Libya’s was. Furthermore, while the Gaddafi government did not have many strong allies, the Syrian government does have significant ones. Over the last three years, both socialistic China and Syria’s powerful ally, Russia, have used their positions as UN Security Council members to veto Western imperialist resolutions aimed at bolstering the “Rebels.” Indeed, following last week’s commencement of the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Syria, Iran and Russia both denounced the air strikes as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty. So did some leading Chinese state-owned media outlets which additionally warned Washington that China would not accept the air strikes being extended into direct attacks on the Assad government. Meanwhile, the Lebanese, Shia- based, Islamist group Hezbollah has for some time directly supported Syrian military resistance against Washington’s “Rebels.”

STAND AGAINST U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALIST MILITARISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND EVERYWHERE ELSE!

The U.S. rulers and their partners have not finalised their war strategy or even their exact war aims. But as bullies so used to getting their way through sheer brute force, their mantra is: When in doubt … bomb! Whatever exact strategy they come up with, we can be sure that it will be disastrous for the masses of the region and will be a threat to the toiling classes of the whole world. Given their contemptuous disregard for the peoples of the “Third World,” the U.S.-led forces will kill huge numbers of civilians as “collateral damage.” That is what they did during their “war on terror” in Afghanistan which saw NATO forces killing over 1,000 civilians per year during the height of the occupation and the Australian military commit its own atrocities like the 12 February 2009 massacre. It was then that, in Uruzgan, that SAS commandos killed five children by throwing hand grenades into a family home. Meanwhile, the more overt presence in the region of its U.S. senior partner will embolden the Israeli rulers to still more aggressively terrorise the Palestinian people. All this and the fact that they are now being targeted by the American imperialist monster, that symbolises injustice to so many, will only bring ISIS more recruits. That in turn will prolong the war which will allow the Western powers more opportunity to still more rigidly impose their will on the region. If they succeed in doing that and especially if they are able to manufacture regime change in Syria it will feed their appetite to openly devour other parts of the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Domestically in the U.S., Britain, France and Australia, the pumped up capitalist regimes will act still more arrogantly. Here that will spell more draconian attacks on the unions, Aboriginal people, refugees and the poor. That is why the working class and oppressed can only welcome any setbacks in the Syria-Iraq military campaign of their rulers. What is needed is a movement of the working class and downtrodden in the U.S.A, Australia and elsewhere to demand: U.S./Britain/Australia: Hands Off Syria and Iraq! U.S., Australian, British, French militaries Get Out of All of the Middle East! Defend Syria against Western imperialism, its Fundamentalist Arab Allies and its “Rebel” Proxies! All remaining NATO and Australian troops get out of Afghanistan now!

Even with 400 Australian troops still deployed in Afghanistan, Abbott and Shorten are just so excited to have the military involved in a new war. They see it as a chance to try out new weapons and whip up militaristic sentiments in the population. It is in good part through the jackboot of the military – or its threatened use – that the Australian capitalist class, which exploits workers at home, is able to still more ferociously exploit the workers of East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines and to rob these countries of their natural resources. Moreover it is no secret in ruling circles that just like Obama’s “Pivot to Asia,” the main target of Australia’s military build- up and the U.S. troops stationed in Darwin is the People’s Republic of China. Canberra and its senior partner in Washington is willing to risk the livelihoods of millions of Australian toilers – who rely on China’s booming state- owned

enterprises buying the lion share of Australian exports – in order to achieve their strategic goal of smashing socialistic rule in China. They understand that the continued existence of a workers state in China is not only a barrier to the unimpeded exploitation of China’s huge working population but an obstacle to the imperialist subjugation of the “Third World” masses. That is why it is crucial for the workers movement in Australia and the whole world to stand for the defence of socialistic China, however deformed it may currently be from the socialist “ideal.”

DOWN WITH ANTI-TERROR LAWS! DOWN WITH RACIST ATTACKS ON MUSLIMS AND OTHER “ETHNIC” PEOPLE!

To back its war drive, the Australian government has whipped up hysterical fears of a “terrorist threat” to Australians from ISIS. However, to date not a single person has ever been killed by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Australia. In contrast, racist state forces have killed hundreds of people. Let’s recall for example the February 2004 racist murder by police in Redfern of 17-year-old Aboriginal boy T.J. Hickey, the Palm Island beating to death in custody of Aboriginal man Mulrunji Doomadgee by a police sergeant and the horrific tasering to death by police of Brazilian student Roberto Curti in 2012 for allegedly stealing biscuits.
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Some extremist supporters in Australia of the Syrian “Rebels,” emboldened by government and media support for their cause, have conducted attacks on supporters of the Syrian government. Although these attacks were indeed frightening, they pale in scale compared to the violence that has been unleashed in Australia by white supremacist groups and extreme racist individuals. Let us remember the terrible violence that racist rioters at Cronulla Beach unleashed against Middle Eastern, South Asian and Aboriginal youth in December 2005. Then there is the series of horrific racist bashings and murders of Indian students and taxi drivers – and Chinese students as well – that made headlines five years ago but have actually continued unabated since. It is the far-right groups and violent racists that constitute the real terrorist threat in Australia! However, the Australian authorities have done next to nothing to stop these forces. Typical of the “resolve” of police to stop racist terrorists was seen a couple of years ago when a young Korean man surnamed Cho was attacked by racists in the southern Brisbane suburb of Runcorn. Local cops “investigating” the incident insulted him saying that Asians are stupid and silly and shouldn’t walk around at night.

The contrast between the authorities’ acceptance of racist terrorism and the extreme police mobilisation when they conducted raids against alleged ISIS supporters on September 18 could not be greater. With media fanfare, a huge 800-strong police and ASIO contingent raided homes in Sydney and Brisbane. Yet, after all that only two people were charged and one just for a lack of a firearms permit. The police claimed that the other person who was charged was part of an ISIS plot to behead random civilians. The media gleefully hyped up that claim into a hysterical fear campaign about “Muslim terrorists.” Nevertheless, the police story is yet to be proven and seems to be full of holes. For one, the police claimed that the alleged terrorist group had hatched their plot months ago during which time they had been under surveillance. Yet just six days prior to the raid when Abbott raised the “terror threat” level to “high” he had insisted that, “We have no specific intelligence of particular plots” (News.com.au website, 12 September). Given that the raids were launched just four days after Abbott announced the deployment of combat troops, many suspect that the raids are simply a stunt by the government aimed at justifying the new war. Muslim community members who protested against the ferocity of the raids in a 500-strong rally in Lakemba noted that the police had violently roughed up women and children during the operation.

Just like most Aboriginal people have always felt, more and more Muslim people in Australia are seeing the police as the terror threat that they most fear. Their fears were reinforced when Victorian police shot dead Muslim teenager Numan Haider last week. Backed up by the government and media, police claimed the shooting was an act of “self-defence” after Haider had stabbed two officers. Yet, again many question marks exist over the police story. Outrageously, Haider’s grieving family have since received death threats. The hyped-up, racist government, police and media campaign has encouraged extreme racists to go on a violent stampede against anyone who looks Muslim. Racist cowards have shoved Muslim women on the streets and ripped off their headscarves. The fascist Australia Defence League has called for a new Cronulla riot. Racist idiots have targeted Sikh Indians because they think that their turbans mean that they are Muslim. Meanwhile, the homes of Muslims have been scrawled with racist insults. In Melbourne, a violent racist slammed the head of a 26 year-old Muslim woman travelling on a train against the carriage wall. Although some of the population have truly been scared into bearing, largely imaginary, fears of a terrorist attack, Muslim and other non-white communities are living with the very real fear of racist attack.

Prime Minister Abbott has made a point of refusing to condemn any of this racist violence – even directly feeding into it by joining the racist chorus against the Muslim burqa. After all, why would he even pretend to stand against extreme racism – the racist climate that he has cunningly helped to create and the war fever that he has infected part of the population with is helping to divert frustrations away from his government’s unpopular, anti-working class budget. The terror threat hype has also helped the government – with the backing of the ALP Opposition – to massively increase funding for ASIO and to today push through draconian new “anti-terror” laws. The laws will make it easier for ASIO to hack into your computers and postal mail. Dangerously, it will give ASIO and police officers immunity from prosecution for crimes that they commit during intelligence operations and will see journalists and whistle blowers – like Edward Snowden – jailed for up to 10 years for revealing details of intelligence operations. Although these laws are framed as being aimed against the likes of ISIS, their ultimate target is the workers movement, the Left and Aboriginal and other anti-racist movements. After all, that is who ASIO most spies on now! In particular, as the ruling class gears up for union-busting attacks against construction workers’ unions, the new laws will be used to further spy on and intimidate militant unionists in the manner that special building industry laws have already been used to persecute activists of the CFMEU construction workers union. That is why it is urgent for the union movement, the Left and anti-racist groups to unite in determined action to demand the abolition of all the anti-terror laws.

Similarly, the workers movement must stand against the racist terrorism hype which serves to divert the working class masses from the truth that it is the capitalist exploiters at home and the governments who serve them who are the ones who are attacking our unions, planning to make us pay for doctors’ visits, threatening to make those of us under 30 starve for six months a year if we lose our jobs and forever eroding our right to secure, permanent jobs. Activists have called a rally for 3pm on this Sunday, October 5 at Lakemba Train Station to oppose the vilification of Muslims. Trotskyist Platform urges all organisations and individuals in the Left and the working class to join this action. Only by resisting the racism that the ruling elite seeks to infect our ranks with can the workers movement achieve the unity we need to defeat the attacks we are facing from the capitalist rulers.

We   need   mass   actions   to   defend Muslims and other embattled non-white communities against racist attacks – such actions as the one on July 26 in Sydney’s Marrickville when over 80 leftists, trade unionists and other anti-racists united to drive out a planned anti-Muslim picket by the white supremacist Party For Freedom. Key to a successful anti-racist action is having the power of the organised workers movement behind it which can repel police attempts to crush such a mobilisation. A trade-union centred action like this took place on May 2 in Brisbane when more than a 100 construction workers from the BLF, CFMEU and ETU unions formed the core of a 200 strong group that routed a planned march by the neo-Nazi Australia First Party.

BUILD WORKING CLASS OPPOSITION TO THE IMPERIALIST WAR CAMPAIGN

The “war on terror” is, in fact, a tragically self-fulfilling prophesy. It is the repression, racist vilification, marginalisation from society and jobs and the knowledge that the imperialist invaders are devastating their lands that drives a very small percentage of Muslim youth in Australia into the arms of reactionary forces like ISIS. Of course, it is the most reactionary elements who choose to join such outfits – far-sighted individuals choose to react to oppression by becoming leftists instead. Yet contrary to mainstream propaganda that depicts “Australian values” as the very opposite of ISIS, the sad truth is that it is the worst values prevalent in Australian society – shaped as it is by the capitalist system and by its origins in the genocidal dispossession of this country’s first peoples – that help to push a small number of disaffected Muslim youth into the arms of reactionary fanatics. These “values” include piggish, male chauvinist bigotry against women and hatred of people from ethnic and religious minorities.

Although the U.S. and Australian rulers do now seem to, for the moment, want to crack down on ISIS, ISIS are hardly the first fanatics that the Western imperialists have nurtured in order to achieve their goals only to later turn on them when it suited their purposes. Thus Al-Qaeda – of which ISIS is an offshoot – was created and built up by the CIA in the late 1980s to organise foreign fighters to join Washington’s anti-communist war against the leftist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan government and their Soviet Red Army backers. After all, that was why Al Qaeda were so well trained, armed and funded! Even after the war against Al-Qaeda became a convenient excuse for imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, Washington continued to work closely with Al Qaeda in other theatres. Thus, among the key “Rebel” factions that NATO backed and brought to power in Libya in 2011 was Al Qaeda itself. In fact, after NATO’s “Rebels” took power in Libya, the capital, Tripoli, was commanded by Abdulhakim Belhadj, the “former” head of the Al Qaeda in Libya group. Belhadj and his supporters later collaborated with and helped train the pro-Western “Free Syrian Army” “Rebels” on the Turkish-Syria border. Meanwhile, Washington and its allies not only backed the Al Qaeda offshoot ISIS but also trained and backed the official Al Qaeda-allied group in Syria, the Al Nusra Front – who are actually, currently, the strongest non- ISIS, Syrian “Rebel” group. However, it was not just Washington that was up to its neck in collaboration with Al Qaeda in Syria. The previous Australian Labour government, in support of the Syrian ”Rebels” – of which Al Qaeda is a key component – spearheaded Western diplomatic moves against the Syrian government. In May 2012, the Australian regime became one of the first countries in the world to expel Syria’s top diplomats from their country.

All this shows to what extent the imperial powers will go to in order to subjugate the world. However, this drive to world domination is not merely a policy choice for the capitalists. It is an absolute necessity for them as their crumbling system cannot survive unless they find new sources of labour to exploit, fresh natural resources to plunder and new markets to corner. As their economies have lurched from one crisis to the next, the U.S.-led imperialists have become increasingly rabid in their predatory ventures. They have been targeting not only “Third World” countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria but also other developed capitalist powers. In February, Washington orchestrated a right-wing coup, spearheaded by fascist gangs, to depose the previously elected Ukrainian president in order to create a regime there hostile to Washington’s emerging capitalist rival, Russia. Meanwhile, part of Washington’s purpose in seizing control of the oil-rich Middle East is to have the ability to use that against its German imperialist and Japanese imperialist future rivals. The new U.S.-led direct intervention in the Middle East is, thus, yet another signal that the crumbling capitalist system will in the future lead us into the horror of a new world war if it is not first overthrown.

However, the question is what political force is going to be able to challenge the imperialist rulers and their increasing militarism. The ALP have once again proved that their social democratic program means that they will always on big questions betray the interests of their working class base. In contrast to the ALP, the Greens at least oppose troops being sent to the Middle East and had the decency to vote against the anti-terror laws. However, the Greens contributed to the current reality in Syria that has opened the way to the U.S.-led intervention. They were the strongest backers of the pro-imperialist drive for regime change in Syria. They were the first parliamentary party to demand the expulsion of Syrian diplomatic personnel and called for even more aggressive sanctions on Syria. Following the Greens in supporting the pro-imperialist Syrian “Rebels” were the various reformist-left groups that often (to varying degrees) pander to the Greens – like Solidarity, Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative.

Furthermore, although the Greens oppose Australia’s participation in the U.S.-led military campaign, they have stressed that now that the Australian military is there in the Middle East they are in full support of them in their actions. However, the Australian military is not some institution serving all Australian people. In capitalist Australia, the military – like the police and ASIO – is an institution created and maintained for serving the exclusive interests of the capitalist exploiting class. Regardless of whether some of its personnel are recruited from working class strata, the military will be acting against the interests of Australia’s and, indeed, the world’s working class people. Every success for the U.S. and Australian militaries in their latest Middle East campaign will be a blow against the interests of the working class and downtrodden.

What we need to do is to build a movement that will not only oppose Australia’s participation in this military adventure but will oppose the imperialist military campaign itself and oppose the institution of the capitalist-serving military. Such a movement must be based on the organised working class united with all of the oppressed. It is possible to win the working class to oppose the military intervention because these imperialist interventions are diametrically opposed to workers’ interests.

Against the intense propaganda that has a majority of Australians currently backing the war campaign, we can point out to class- conscious workers that the same politicians and media who lie to you when they say that curbing unions and privatising public enterprises is good for you are also lying when they say that this military campaign and the anti-terror laws are in your interests.

We need a movement that can expose Abbott’s claim that all Australians have a common interest in “Team Australia” against external threats. The notion is disgusting that low income workers share the same interests as greedy capitalist billionaire Andrew Forrest who wants to throw unemployed workers off the dole! There is no “Team Australia” because one part of the supposed “team” derives its wealth from exploiting the rest of the “team.” Abbott wants to sell us the “Team Australia” myth so that we will be looking out for external threats while the capitalist members of our “team” are peacefully emptying all of our pockets.

Let us build a movement centred on the working class and oppressed Aboriginal and “ethnic” communities that can oppose this imperialist military campaign in the Middle East. Let us build towards union industrial action against the military campaign. What is urgently posed right now is to build energetic   demonstrations   demanding “U.S./Australian imperialism: Hands Off Syria and Iraq!” Such actions must seek to win the participation of the most politically aware trade unionists, Aboriginal activists and working-class “ethnic” youth and must be based on slogans that openly appeal to the class interests that the working class have in opposing the militarism of the Australian ruling class. And out of the struggle to build such a pro-working class, anti-imperialist movement, the fight to build a revolutionary workers party will begin.