Video: Eva Bartlett speaks about her time in Aleppo

If you saw the previous post about the meetings in the Bay Area including in Oakland, at which Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett is speaking, this speech gives an idea of her findings on her visits to Syria. I suggest you watch it to the end when she answers questions from a western journalist.

We have argued on this blog that there is no solution to the crisis in the Middle East including in Syria on the basis of capitalism, and it is difficult for the ordinary person to understand exactly what is going on. One thing I would say for certain is that with all the talk of fake news and kids on computers in Macedonia making a few thousand dollars creating stories on the Internet, the most productive source of fake news is the capitalist mass media.

Speaking for myself, and not being a  supporter of the Assad regime, it is no coincidence that the two regimes in the Middle East that have faced regime change by Western Imperialism are both secular regimes that have had significant sectors of the economy state owned.  In the case of Iraq, the oil industry in particular.  I traveled all through Iraq in 1971 and was treated with kindness and respect. It was one of the most secular of the Arab regimes in this area with women active in political life. What US imperialism has done to Iraq is nothing less than a crime against humanity. It's surreal that the only people indicted in the so-called International Criminal Court are Africans. Some former colonial nations that subscribed to the ICC are leaving it with one politician referring to it as the International Caucasian Court.

With Syria, it is also the relationship its government has with Iran and Russia that is a factor as US imperialism surrounds both these countries with military installations, troops, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.

On the overall picture, sometimes the only choice for workers is neither side.  Only the intervention of the working class as a global force can put an end to these endless regional wars, the rise of religious fanaticism and and end to capitalism that is the root cause of these crises. And a global federation of democratic socialist states is the only answer. That the working class of Syria and to a lesser extent Iraq, has been decimated through imperialist aggression, increases the general suffering that people will bear along this road but it doesn't change this reality.

One thing is capitalism cannot be overthrown, and replaced by a democratic socialist world unless and until the US working class settles matters with the US bourgeois.  Richard Mellor