Posted by John, July 20th, 2012 - under Saturday's socialist speak out.



The bomb that destroyed some of the Syrian dictator’s inner circle might well be the symbol of beginning of the end for the regime. It may be another signal that we can dare to hope for the ultimate success of the popular uprising.

Certainly it reveals the strength of the opposition driven by the Syrian masses. The battles raging in Damascus and across the rest of the country shows that the revolutionaries are a real, dynamic and armed force capable of confronting the dictatorship.

The West hasn’t intervened partly because of imperialist deadlock in the United Nations. As a result the question of whether the US could do it on its own comes up. It can’t.

Importantly, the Syrian revolutionaries, those doing the fighting for freedom, and many of the Syrian masses appear not to want Western intervention.

Victory to the Syrian revolution. Victory to the Syrian revolutionaries.

In the Sudan protests against big price increases have intensified.

In Bahrain the US supported Government suppresses its people with the help of Saudi troops.

In Spain miners striking against austerity marched into Madrid and hundreds fo thousands turn out to support them.

In Brazil a university workers’ strike for the last 2 months has closed 56 of the 59 Federal universities.

In Quebec the student strike of over 150,000 is gearing up for next semester. Guillaume Legault, one of the leaders of the strike, will speak at the Australian National University at 1 pm on Monday 30 July in room G 50 of the Hayden Allen Building.

In Egypt, workers in Mahala, the cradle of the revolution in a real sense, are on strike and the strikes are spreading.

In London customs workers and bus drivers will strike against austerity during the Olympics.

In Australia Coles/Toll Holdings workers have been on strike for 11 days to win parity in pay and conditions with Coles’ distribution workers in other centres.

In the US, a deeply alienated society with access to guns for almost all, 14 people have been shot and killed and 50 injured at a premiere of the latest Batman film the Dark Knight Rises. Obama sets the example with his drone strikes and the killing of innocents in foreign lands.

Meanwhile the almost irrelevancy that is the Gillard Labor Government is trying to combat further rumours about a leadership change or challenge. I have a simple comment about this, which some of you may have read before. It’s not the seller of the shit sandwich who is the problem. It’s the shit sandwich that is the problem.

I am at an interesting conference in Sydney called Historical Materialism 2012. I’ll give some more feedback after day 2 tomorrow but it has been good. The opening panel discussion on Friday morning was interesting.

It was basically about the way forward for the Left from 4 different speakers. For me, unsurprisingly, what was missing was a discussion about the need for a revolutionary worker’s party and the ways to build that. One speaker dealt with the issue in reverse talking about her move from the revolutionary left to the Greens.

Nevertheless it was thought provoking to hear the different contributions on the global profit rate, the degeneration of the ALP and the major parties’ visceral hatred of politics and the nature of protest movements and Australian exceptionalism (or lack thereof.)

The fact we were not discussing building a mass revolutioanry party of the working class is itself instructive. Of course it wasn’t the point of the conference and it may be unfair of me to raise it. I am looking forward tomorrow to Rick Kuhn’s discussion of Henryk Grossman, Marxist theorist and revolutionary activist.

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