Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
On Sunday last week, Damascus fell to Salafi terrorists and other imperialist-aligned forces. Regardless of the flaws of the ousted government, this is a horrible situation for the Syrian proletariat as well as for the people of Palestine, Lebanon and others. We can only hope for the perseverance of the Syrian workers and the remaining anti-colonial resistance.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory reading group on hiatus, will move to Lemmygrad next year
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna’s Archive, libgen
Anyone know how I can find my own DMs on here?
Edit: Found them— bell icon, messages, all.
Tomorrow I will join a general strike in Brussels against the government. Excited to see what will happen. Might be a good networking opportunity.
I have a socialist classmate who believes that money doesn’t give you power, but ideology does. When I talked about capital he said that capital doesn’t equal power either, and that capitalists power can’t be just because of capital. He also said another time that HTS didn’t win because of capitalist reasons but because of their islamic ideology. I disagree with him, and you?
He’s kinda a debate bro type of socialist btw, who doesn’t go to demonstrations or is part of a party.
Not sure what his point is really. Like money, or capital, or possession of something in general, gives you power. Especially in a system that is designed around money, or capital, or possessions.
Also not sure what he means with the HTS thing. Like, they won because they are a US proxy and managed to get aid through one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Not sure what them being Muslims has to do with that. Allah didn’t guide them to victory.
Does he ever elaborate on his claims? Or is he just trying to sound interesting?
Could have meant that the struggle was ideological rather than (just) over capital simpliciter. There’s a point to be made there. Marx and Engels argued that people do things other than for economic reasons. I’m unsure if that’s quite what’s happening here, though.
Because you can be a capitalist at heart but if you don’t own any capital what power do you have?
I think he’s an idealist and thinks ideas matter the most
You can be the biggest bootlicker at work, the bosses can even like you, but you can still get fired. The “ideas” at play here don’t matter, since the capital owners will do what they need to expand their capital - and their ability to do so is because of their ownership/control of capital.
Some criminals allegedly targeted a shop in the city of The Hague with explosives and they managed to explode an entire block of appartments instead. Multiple people died.
An 8 year old boy survived but lost his parents and sister in the explosion. The boy is of Chinese origin and the Dutch Chinese community stepped in to help raise money for him.
People find a way to be racist about this. Maybe some people are beyond redemption.
What the absolute fuck is going on in Europe? This sounds like a farfetched heist movie!
hey please say what are your thoughts on this article on syria?
spoiler
i thought it was pretty good despite being written by a trot in the new left
Omg a capybara runs this side! 🤔
— 🇮🇷 🇮🇷 🇸🇾 Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC ‘Khatam al-Anbiyaa’ Headquarters: ‘Bashar al-Assad did not request Iranian help – in fact he actively prevented us from coming and helping’
General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, deputy commander of Khatam al-Anbiyaa HQ:
– Bashar al-Assad said to one of our (Iranian) officials in a meeting: ‘My soldiers have truly become either smugglers or thieves, they only defend those who offer them bribes and privileges. They could not defend me, and when I wanted to protect at least Damascus, I realized that they were not able to protect Damascus either.’
– Bashar al-Assad did not allow us (the IRGC) to go help the Syrian Arab Army, although he asked us for assistance in the past, but this time he not only did not ask, but he was worried about us arriving, and said that ‘if you come, Israel will probably attack us’.
– Turkey is a part of NATO, and we should not see or accept the presence of this country and its influence anywhere outside of America and Europe. Turkey is a part of them, and with this attitude, it serves America. America is active behind the scenes.
– It seems that the factions present in Syria will clash with each other based on their own different interests. Maybe separating Syria is Turkey’s desire, because they have been coveting a part of Syria for a long time.
@Middle_East_Spectator
Sad…
Tonight I received a fortune that says, ‘YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR IS A JOY TO ALL.’
My fortune cookie from a week ago was “Laugh at yourself, it feels good sometimes.”
So there’s a lot of videos on telegram of HTS executing people they don’t like…
It is horrible. Those videos are flooding plenty of Telegram channels.
From doctors, minorities to scientists being assassinated, it is as if I am seeing news of a new Pol Pot.
And I had a person respond to me here saying they hope HTS kills all the Kurds in Syria…
May I see em?
Don’t do it comrade. Seeing those videos will deteriorate your mental health and may provoke you gloom. That’s what is happening to me.
The more I read about Soviet politics under Khrushchev and beyond, the more I see how cringeworthy and cancerous it was.
any thoughts?
I mean it’s hard to disagree. There are very few working class (read: poor) people who not only manage to have enough free time to write but to have the network to get published too.
I recently read a book on poverty written by a man who has gone through poverty himself. He only managed to get such a book published because he managed to get a university degree and a government job. He could be just a talented writer while working in a factory but he would have a much harder time getting published without the network he build over time.
So you mean to tell me that a dude that has planned a hit for days in advance managed to get caught in a McDonalds because an employee ‘recognized’ him while still carrying all the stuff of the murder?
Yeah, kinda strange.
Dammit, it’s been hours!
Why are Russia, China, the Taliban worthy of “critical support”, but Rojava isn’t? US trade with China amounts to a total of some $50-60 Billion a year. Russia sells uranium to the US.
What is Rojava’s sin? Surviving with the help of the US. The US gave military equipment to the Soviet Union, too, when they were fighting Nazis. They were even allies for a while.
Rojava is AES in the Middle East. They are the only socialist entity in all of Middle East.
Tin-foil hat mode: This Rojava hate is not organic. I mean you had Trotskyists joining ISIS to fight against the US, maybe this hate comes from them? I dunno. I just know the hate is unreasonable and certainly not in proportion to the “crime”.
Rojava is on the side of the US empire.
What do you mean by that?
in the global class war, they served the purpose of desestabilizing Syria, which like it or not was struggling against US imperialism.
But they didn’t destabilise Syria. They fought ISIS who threatened their existance. They created an autonomous region to govern themselves because there was no SAA or Syrian government presence. SAA was not able to defend people in that region from ISIS.
DAANES (they were formerly AANES) had always stated that their goal is to preserve the integrity and sovereignty of Syria. They wanted to be an autonomous region under the Syrian constitution. They didn’t want to separate or declare independence.
Syrian government and SDF were in negotiations (slow and rocky) but they did have a dialogue and limited cooperation.
As graineater said, they collaborated with the US to steal Syria’s oil. This group is completely backed by the US and wouldn’t exist without their support, like it can’t get more blatantly obvious.
Their internal policies are irrelevant, they are US stooges and their funds come from imperialism.
So what should happen to Rojava and the Kurds and minorities in it? If DAANES disappears, the HTS and SNA will genocide/ethnically cleanse the Kurds.
What would be the communist and anti-imperialist thing to do in their situation?
What would be the communist and anti-imperialist thing to do in their situation?
Not doing the US dirty work?
Far from being based on a single ‘relation of coercion’, the world capitalist system is a tangle of multiple and contradictory ‘relations of coercion’. What determines the ultimate location of an individual (and group) in the camp of the ‘oppressor’ or of the ‘oppressed’ is the hierarchical ordering of these social relations in accordance with their political and social relevance in a determinate concrete situation, on the one hand, and the political choice of the single individual (or group), on the other. - Domenico Losurdo on Class Struggle.
Trade is not the same thing as helping the US steal oil. The people in Rojava were and are in an unenviable position and it may deserve critical support in the future compared to the other imperialist collaborators in the region, but it’s certainly not AES
Trade is not the same thing as helping the US steal oil
Except the US didn’t “steal” any oil. The oil extracted in Rojava was sold to the Syrian government and Iraq. Look at the map of pipelines in Syria. The US didn’t carry it away in a big bucket.
Why does Rojava control those oil fields? Because they took them from ISIS, they weren’t under the control of the Syrian govt. at the time.
So yeah, SDF stole the oil… from ISIS. The pil profits went to Rojava, the US didn’t see a dollar from it.
and destabilize the Syrian government.
How did they do that? By existing? By fighting ISIS in the northeast? By cooperating with the SAA in fighting the Turkish incursion into Syria?
It wasn’t SDF that deposed Assad, it was HTS (and SNA). SDF is actually fighting the Turkey-backed SNA right now, as the SNA wants to take over Manbij.
The US absolutely did steal enormous amounts of oil, which contributed to the destabilization of the Syrian government and the suffering of the Syrian people, especially considering the crippling sanctions
Then you should clarify they hadn’t stolen it for themselves. Syrian govt. feels robbed (justifiably) but claiming the “US stole” it implies that the oil ended up in the US or was used by the US.
The reality is that the oil was “stolen” by SDF (who are supported by the US). But as I said, Syrian govt. didn’t control those oil fields when SDF took them, they were controlled by ISIS.
It’s like if someone steals my bike, then a third person steals the bike from them and then I accuse the third person of stealing the bike from me. Sure, it’s kind of technically true, but it isn’t the same as if that third person stole it directly from me.
As recent events have shown, the SAA had no hope of retaking or holding those oil fields. If SDF had disappeared, and SAA controlled the oil fields, now those oil fields would be in ISIS/HTS/SNA/Tukey’s hands.
If you look at the map of Syria, you can see that Syrian govt.'s areas of control were nowhere near those oil fields.
What was “SDF giving back the oil” supposed to look like? The SDF uses resources and people to defend the oil fields, they ship the oil for free to Damascus and in return they get… nothing. If the Syrian govt. had been more willing to negotiate DAANES autonomy they would have had a better chance of “getting their oil back”.
Then you should clarify they hadn’t stolen it for themselves. Syrian govt. feels robbed (justifiably) but claiming the “US stole” it implies that the oil ended up in the US or was used by the US.
No. Many stolen items are sold rather than being used by the thief.
But as I said, Syrian govt. didn’t control those oil fields when SDF took them, they were controlled by ISIS.
ISIS was stealing oil, then the SDF took over the theft. The SDF was still stealing from Syria. It doesn’t matter whether there was another thief in the middle.
It doesn’t matter whether there was another thief in the middle.
It kind of does, because Syria was never able to take back those oil fields. Not when ISIS had them and not in the last 10 years. One could say that Syria had lost them for good once they lost them to ISIS.
IF, on the other hand Syrian government managed to retake all of its territory and the only holdout was Rojava, I’d be more willing to agree with your viewpoint. But as it stands, Rojava wasn’t even the nearest immediate threat to the Syrian govt.
I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but the fact that SAA and SDF cooperated against a common enemy (Turkey, FSA, SNA, ISIS) and “Damascus” and Rojava were in talks to find a way to live in the same country, Syria, together, tells me that the differences between Rojava and the Syrian govt. weren’t so great as to not be overcome.
Also, if you look at the volounteers fighting for Rojava there’s a lot of ML/communist parties and organisations. Meanwhile the Trotskyists supported ISIS because “ISIS fought against the imperialist puppets Rojava”.
It kind of does, because Syria was never able to take back those oil fields. Not when ISIS had them and not in the last 10 years. One could say that Syria had lost them for good once they lost them to ISIS.
By this logic, one could argue that Israel has a right to every territory they take and the resources in them so long as they’re able to use the brute force to do it.
One could say that Syria had lost them for good once they lost them to ISIS.
One could, but it would be incorrect. Most occupations are eventually defeated.
IF, on the other hand Syrian government managed to retake all of its territory and the only holdout was Rojava, I’d be more willing to agree with your viewpoint. But as it stands, Rojava wasn’t even the nearest immediate threat to the Syrian govt.
I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but the fact that SAA and SDF cooperated against a common enemy (Turkey, FSA, SNA, ISIS) and “Damascus” and Rojava were in talks to find a way to live in the same country, Syria, together, tells me that the differences between Rojava and the Syrian govt. weren’t so great as to not be overcome.
I don’t think anyone here would claim that Rojava was the nearest immediate threat to the Syrian government, or that they could never reach a compromise with the Syrian government. This does not change the fact that Rojava did collaborate with US imperialism for many years, and it’s by no means socialist.
I am sick again. I feel like getting a job in which I see hundreds of people each week has not been great for my immune system. Bird watching while getting wind blasted yesterday probably didn’t help either.
Anyway, I will join the general strike this friday against the new plans of our new regime. It’s my first ever general strike so curious to see what it is like. I have joined smaller strikes at picket lines of specific companies to talk to the workers for our party but that’s on a much smaller scale.
