Take no lessons about Syria from Marie Lynam
Marie Lynam, who writes on the LRC blog, and is a member of the infamous Fourth International Posadist, has recently written a post requesting the world leaves its “Hands off Syria”. But we ought not be taking lessons from her.
We don’t need to look too hard to find the most gruesome stories come out of Assad’s Syria, by his own hand.
The killing, one by one, of 49 children in what’s now known as the Houla massacre, with the horrific pictures to accompany, are enough to make anybody’s blood boil.
Indeed recently elected French socialist President, François Hollande, said in response to the tragedy: “A military intervention is not to be ruled out”.
A report by Human Rights Watch revealing Assad’s secret underground prisons detail some of the most disturbing accounts of torture we have in the modern age.
One detainee told of being forced to undress while receiving staples in his fingers, ears and chest as electric stun-guns were applied to his genitals.
Another had pins shoved into his feet so he could no longer walk and one other detainee was left hanging by his wrists just enough so his toes could position himself upright.
Other accounts found that one detainee who had diabetes went into shock and died.
It is understood by many nations today that Assad is not going to give in anytime soon. But frustratingly all ways beside military intervention don’t seem to have worked.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told French newspaper Le Monde on Saturday “Evidently, we haven’t succeeded,” adding: “And perhaps there is no guarantee that we will succeed.”
This doesn’t mean to say intervention is off the table, but operationally it will not be as simple as interventions in the past, namely Libya, where rebel troops against the government have agreed to a single set of mission statements and have set up a safe haven to base themselves (like Benghazi and Zabadani could stay).
In her piece, Lynam – with no irony – says:
Sensing its end coming near, capitalism prepares for war not against Syria, or Iran, but against the USSR, China and the world masses whom it sees as the originators of Workers and Revolutionary States. The attacks on Syria and Iran are just steps towards this.
One sincerely wants the inclusion of the USSR to be a Freudian slip, but cannot help thinking this is probably what she meant.
She goes on to say that: “It is not civil war that capitalism fears in Syria, but a [sic] greater anti-imperialist union”. So much time does she spend anthropomorphising capitalism that she neglects to mention the expression of those who have come into contact with the accounts of Assad’s mad muscle men, placing enemies on burning metal plates to extract information from them by force.
I don’t care what she thinks capitalism fears, I don’t want to see civil war in Syria and therefore, like President Hollande, I want to see the end of Assad.
Though we can tell what side of the tracks she sits on when saying: “When Socialist Francois Hollande calls for “Assad to step down”, it is to reassure NATO.”
I can’t see that this is anything other than a statement in support of Assad himself.
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However we can’t expect too much from anyone who uses the name of J. Posadas as anything other than a source of belittlement.
The organisation to which she is affiliated has been described thus:
Posadist Fourth International affiliates worked to organise trade unions, often operating clandestinely under dictatorships.
J. Posadas himself can have attributed to his name the following:
“Il faut faire appel aux êtres des autres planètes, lorsqu’ils viennent, à intervenir et collaborer avec les habitants de la terre pour supprimer la misère.”
We should call out to other Beings on Other Planets, when they come, to intervene and co-operate with the Earth’s inhabitants to end our wretchedness.
According to his wikipedia entry:
In his later years Posadas led his movement into the development of various esoteric ideas that bordered on theNew Age with writings about communicating with dolphins and humans giving birth under water.
He also wrote the following:
“Nuclear war [equals] revolutionary war. It will damage humanity but it will not – it cannot – destroy the level of consciousness reached by it… Humanity will pass quickly through a nuclear war into a new human society – Socialism.”
This is beyond barmy. Nuclear war will bring about socialism, destroying mankind but saving its higher consciousness. What rot.
Perhaps it’s why Posadists still refer to Iran as ”The REVOLUTIONARY STATE of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and why Lynam herself has penned a blog post for the LRC called The problem is not Gaddafi or Iran. It is imperialism!
Are there not more pressing battles to fight than that against the Posadist Fourth International?
Yes there are – the case for intervention in Syria being one, it’s all in here.
Posadas was nuts, and Assad is a butcher. However, all the evidence is that the Houla massacre was carried out AGAINST Assad supporters. One of those killed was a recently elected pro regime MP. Der Spiegel has described the facts, and a former British Intellligence officer, Alistair Cook, has said the methods used are those typical of Al Zaqawi’s group from Iraq, not of Levantine groups.
As for pictures, we shouldn’t forget that western news groups have given evidence of widespread falsification by rebel groups, many of which come from outside Syria. There was, of course, the example of the BBC putting up on its website a picture purporting to be of dead children from Houla that turned out to be a well known picture of dead children in Iraq from 10 years ago!
The experience of Imperialist intervention wherever it has occurred confirms Trotsky’s view that Imperialism does not intervene for moral purposes, but to further its own interests, and those are not the interests of workers. The experience of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere shows that however bad the status quo might be, its repalcement can often be worse. We should not be involved in a chocie between lesser-evils, but involved in promoting the building of a workers alternative and response to its class enemies whatever mask they choose to wear.
Hahah WHAT? Can you really say for sure that the replacement in Libya is worse than Gaddafi? The replacement is (unless something explosive happens) is Jibril, a moderate secular-leaning pragmatist, as opposed to Gaddafi who told dissenting Libyans that he’d take them to paradise in chains.
I hear from the American newswaves almost daily, re Syria, Libya et al, that the US has no stake there, so why should they get involved. My goodness it is this isolationism that is common to paleoconservatives and socialists alike – and in the latter it hurts the most as that is where I am.
We have responsibility over and above our borders because we are one world, and I fear you’ll never be able to see the difference between a government that you disagree with, or who operates within a capitalist system, who acts in accordance with this principle of one worldness, and one that acts only out of self-interest.
Though I might like to offer my small consequentialist argument here, namely: NATO might be acting in self-interest, but by some mad coincidence their self-interest is mine too, and that is that I think intervention in Syria would be a good thing (albeit, a very operationally difficult thing).
What a nutter this Marie Lynam person is.
Anyway I would advise caution against military intervention. The case for intervening in Syria seems to be strong as the regime is barbaric but let’s not forget the flow of arms and Jihadis pouring into the country, with the FSA supported and funded by certain NATO countries and Gulf Monarchies. And the real reason the West might want to intervene is more likely for geopolitical reasons rather than human rights concerns. Syria is a complex mix of various ethnicities and religions and simply taking out Assad isn’t good enough. There needs to be international support for what comes next such helping Syria transition into an independent democratic state with the proper institutions in place and respecting the rule of law.
Also I know Syria is in the media a lot but there are other far longer conflicts that could do with resolving.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_military_conflicts
No, this is mainly some irrelevant wittering about Marie Lynam and Juan Posadas. I’m sure there is a convincing case to be made for intervention in Syria but it’s not here.
I’d say it is a 1/3 reasons why we should be enthused to act over the torture and murderous regime at the hands of an autocrat, a 1/3 is a look at common so-called anti-imperialist stances and why they don’t hold up, and then a final 1/3 on why the Posadists are nutters. Where else can you find writing like this? Nowhere. I have to use my reformed far-leftist knowledge somehow – it’s killing me.
It’s Alistair Crooke, not Cook. If you want to be be taken seriously, at least get peoples’ names right Boffy. Crooke is now a shill for Iran – as that famously reactionary publication Mother Jones noticed two years ago: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/spy-who-loved-hamas-and-hezbollah-and-iran
There is no such thing as American isolationism, it is the most powerful empire on earth you twit. The questions in the US are formed around how the empire will function, not IF it will function.
And you are one of the empires most ardent apologists, and a total apologist for imperialism. BTW the coincidence that you always follow the pro imperialist line isn’t something mad but fits perfectly with your outlook.
If you are on the left then I don’t want to be thanks very much.
“If you are on the left then I don’t want to be thanks very much.”
Seriously Edgar I’ve been saying that about people like you for years, if you want to walk first please be my guest.
As for calling me a twit, which I quite like in a weird way, then what else would you call the notion of not taking interest in a place where your country had no perceived benefits from saving? If that’s not isolationism then I’ll eat my hat.
This is a great piece. Marie Lynam may be a bit of a straw woman in the way she expresses herself, but shes representative of a worryingly large number on the left who seem willing to take almost any stance as long as its in opposition to whatever NATO or America want.
Perfectly exemplified here by Boffy, who ludicrously claims that ‘all the evidence’ about the Houla massacre points to it being against Assad supporters. That evidence being the unsupported assertion of a disaffected former intelligence officer, on the totally unbiased ‘Russia Today’, claiming that no levantine muslim could possibly have used shotguns and daggers to kill civilians, as its against their religion. Unlike bombarding civilians with artillery of course, which is presumably fine according to Allawi islam.
Yes.
“but shes representative of a worryingly large number on the left who seem willing to take almost any stance as long as its in opposition to whatever NATO or America want.”
No FFS! This should be a given to anyone who is on the left. You can argue (I would not) that NATO intervention creates the conditions for what we on the left want but we should never ever be under the illusion that what we want is what NATO wants. We are in permanent opposition to what they want.
The reality is that there exists on the left a section that will support America in almost every adventure. Why is this? Because they are the empire and thus they are the best representatives of modernity, which translates into the most progressive and enlightened. You lot would have defended the Roman empire, right up to its collapse.
I hope your hat tastes good. It isn’t isolationism for the empire to debate what is and isn’t in its interests. You are a twit because you actually believe the so called non isolationists are in Syria for reasons other than self interest. The so called non isolationists leave alone plenty of places on the globe because they are not high up on the priority list. Therefore there is no isolationist/non isolationist wing of the empire (save a few nutters at the extreme), they will all act out of the perceived self interest.
No no no. I don’t believe the so called non isolationists, necessarily. I note that there is a correlation between what I think is best and what is perhaps perceived as empire’s self-interest.
It’s not just a dodgy former spy or Russia Today that have cast doubts on the initial accounts of the Houla massacre.
According to the BBC (8 June), “Maj Gen Robert Mood, the head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria, said ‘the circumstances that led to these tragic killings are still unclear’.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18233934
Given the vehemence and certainty about Houla in late May/early June in the speeches by anti-Assad governments i.e. Mood’s bosses, that’s quite an admission.
Also from the BBC, a later report (27 June) has it that the UN are now saying that Syria “may have been responsible” for Houla. Again, nothing like the certainty of the first dispatches. The UN investigation is on-going.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18606889
Even if it was 100% Assad forces to blame for the deaths, reports make it clear there is a sectarian basis to at least some of the battles and massacres and Houla proper, a Sunni area, is bordered by villages dominated by other sects, enough to make socialists wary about rushing to support lesser evils.
The idea that who runs Libya has been determined in the recent elections is as ludicrous as the idea that the elections in Syria elected a legitimate Government! The only way Jibril will be able to rule will be if he invites in the Imperialists to provide the support in the streets necessary, where real control rests with the Islamist militias. Is it better for Libyan workers, which is what socialists should be interested in?
Given that the Neo-Liberals like Jibril have proposed to privatise everything left in sight, its pretty bad news for all the workers who were employed by the Libyan State, which in a State capitalist economy is pretty much all of them! it is pretty bad for tyhose thousands of workers, especially black workers who have been rounded up, and put in atrocious conditions in concentration camps by those militias, let alone all those simply killed. Its pretty bad when humanitarian groups like medicins Frontieres pull out of Misrata because they were being asked to patch people up who’d been tortured, only for them to be sent back for additional torture! That’s on top of 30,000 dead, the economy and infrastruicture destroyed, the beginnings of tribal and sectarian civil war – not to mention the carry over effects into Mali.
No its not just Alistair Crooke in relation to Houla, as the der Spiegel article makes clear, and as was made clear by the Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (not Der Spiegel as I previously said) as quoted on WSW who also refer to other evidence. But, as i said that doesn’t in any way alter the fact that Assad is a butcher. But, there is enough evidence that much of the opposition offer the Syrian workers no progressive solution either. Cetainly ther eis no reason to believe that Imperialism does.
Quick response: (paraphrasing) it’s not a democracy until millionaires spend state money on advertising or winning crooks elections. I’m happy to see Libya join us in democracy, and away from Gaddafi’s dream of taking everyone to paradise in chains. For 42 years. We don’t know we’re born, Boffy.
Its not a democracy if bunches of clerical-fascist militia control the streets and torture people, and where the society is collapsing into sectarian Civil War! Do you think Nazi Germany was a democracy just because Hitler won an election! I would also be happy to see Libya become even a bourgeois democracy – I notice that you didn’t specifiy the class nature of the democracy – but better still what I seek is a Workers Democracy, because as Lenin put it, Bourgeois Democracy is merely the best political shell for Capitalism. Moreover, its one they are happy to throw off when it does not meet their immediate requirements.
“Dave” above says,
“of a worryingly large number on the left who seem willing to take almost any stance as long as its in opposition to whatever NATO or America want.
Perfectly exemplified here by Boffy,”
But, I most certainly have NOT been prepared to take almost any stance in order to be in opposition to Imperialism!!!! Quite the opposite, I was one of the first people to write in opposition to what the AWL now call “Idiot Anti-Imperialism”. I frequently write in opposition to the SWP and others who do adopt that position!
But, the irony is that now it is the AWL and their co-thinkers who do exactly the same from the opposite direction. In the same way that the SWP declare “We are all Hezbollah Now! in order to oppose Israel and the US, so today we see the AWL declaring in effect “We are all the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group Now” in order to provide their backing to the opponents of Gaddafi, and the allies of “Democratic Imperialism”, in a similar way to how they bigged up the Shia Clerical allies of US Imperialism in Iraq, like Sistani. And rather like the way George Bernard Shaw saw no signs of Stalin’s atrocities in Russia, so today they see no signs of torture in Libya, or the descent into Civil War and chaos and so on.
In fact, as I wrote about Egypt last year, if the US used its influence with the Egyptian Generals to persuade them to step aside and allow a peaceful transition to bourgeois democracy then that would be good. Of course, it would not be good for workers if the consequence was a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis. That is why I argued that rather than relying on any such pressure from the US on the Generals, and rather than joining some Popular Front with the Liberal Bourgeoisie, it was necessary for the Egyptian workers to maintain their strict independence of those forces, to build their own organisaions, including in the army, in order to break it apart, and begin the process of building a Workers democracy the better to fight the bourgeois democrats. In Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South Korea and elsewhere the US and other Imperialists similarly applied pressure to persuade military juntas to step aside in order to allow bourgeois democracy to be established. But, they didn’t do so out of some moral conviction but precisely because these were newly industrialised economies where Lenin’s dictum applies – bourgeois demcoracy is the best possible shell for Capitalism. It is merely the most effective means under those conditions for extracting relative surplus value from industrial workers.
But, bourgeois democracy cannot be established just anywhere. It needs the required material conditions existing in society. Those Latin American and Asian newly industrialed economies had those conditions, Egypt and Tunisia, are at least close to having them, if they don’t actually already exist. But, Libya, Syria and the Gulf Monarchies do not. In fact, its because they don’t, and because of the other cleavages in these societies that Bonapartist regimes arose in the first place!
Under those conditions all an Imperialist intervention will bring about is the replacement of one brutal regime with another. You may be happy to impose that on the workers of those countries to assuage your moral conscience that you have done something, and close your eyes to the atrocities of those you now support in order to cling to your beleif that things are better. No decent Marxist can be prepared to do so.