To youth and students against war in Winnipeg

A call for a rally against war with Syria was issued today by the 1919 Club of the Young Communist League, based in Winnipeg. The YCL group is asking you to send the letter to every school child who is opposed to a war with Syria. Please forward the below letter to everyone you know. Thanks!

Our office is in full support of this welcome initiative, one of the first for this renewed group. We need youth to help lead the way to a world without war and injustice!

Many of us remember the great protest by high school students in 2003; it helped greatly to keep Canada officially out of Bush’s war with Iraq. We need to change Ottawa’s support for this new war.

There is a facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/462561173851849/

Darrell Rankin
Manitoba office, Communist Party of Canada

* * * * * *
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2013
From: ycl-winnipeg@mail.com
Subject: YCL Urgent Action Letter
To: Everyone

Call to Action
Don’t Attack Syria
Walk out on Friday, Sept 13
Assemble at Memorial Park, Noon

As the U.S. prepares for a military strike on Syria in the coming days, youth and students and working people around the world are rallying in opposition to U.S. imperialism and in support of the Syrian people to determine their own future.

The Obama administration is using the same lies and tactics to justify a military strike on Syria that the Bush administration used to justify an attack on Iraq in 2003 – that weapons of mass destruction have been used and this consstitutes a “red line.”

We now know that the “evidence” used by the Bush administration was fabricated – no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. The “evidence” the Obama administration has that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons is equally dubious. The U.N. has testimony that the Syrian “rebels”, armed and supported by the U.S, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others, has used chemical weapons in Syria, and Turkish authorities have arrested Syrian rebels in possession of sarin gas.

Furthermore, while the U.S. attempts to depict a military strike on Syria as a “humanitarian intervention”, the U.S. has the world’s largest stockpile of chemical weapons and has a long history of both selling and using them around the world. The U.S. used Agent Orange in Vietnam and depleted uranium in Iraq, the U.S. was silent when Israel used white phosphorus on Palestinians, and the U.S. has sold chemical weapons to many oppressive regimes around the world.

Youth and students shouldn’t believe the lies being told in the corporate media. War hurts all working people and the Syrian people have the right to determine their own future without the threat of destructive foreign intervention.

Everyone is welcome! All youth and student organizations are invited to participate and help organize for this rally in opposition to a U.S. military strike on Syria.

Winnipeg Students Say No to War!

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/462561173851849/

For more information contact The 1919 Club of the Young Communist League:
ycl-winnipeg@mail.com
www.facebook.com/the1919club

Dear Friends, Sisters and Brothers,

Another rally has been organized for this Saturday against military aggression on Syria.

We need your help to send a message: Winnipeg says Don’t attack Syria! Please find time to attend the rally (details below), and bring your family, friends, banners and placards.

The Harper government is part of a handful of countries who support a U.S.-led war with Syria. The missile attacks would be an act of war. Besides Canada and the U.S., only France and a handful of despotic Middle East regimes are in full support of criminal, bloody aggression against Syria that would only prolong the civil war taking place there.

Even the Arab League of Nations is opposed to missile attacks that are not approved by the U.N. Security Council (a decision that would violate the UN Charter).

The U.S. people are also against attacking Syria – only 10-20 per cent support Obama’s position. Next week, the U.S. Congress will decide if it is more important to support Obama and the future of the Democratic Party than to obliterate another Arab country.

A little-know fact is that Canada is Syria’s 3rd largest foreign investor – no wonder Harper wants to control the country. France is a former colonial power in Syria.

This is a time for all people and groups who oppose war as a way of resolving problems to unite and make their voices heard! We need to pressure all opposition parties in parliament for Canada to be a voice for peace and talks in Syria, not more violence.

We need the rally to be well-attended. We need many initiatives in the coming weeks. Can students walk out of schools? Can people put up signs in their windows? Can we have educational meetings on Syria? Can unions stand up for the solidarity of Canadian workers with the workers of Syria – that war is against workers of all lands? Arab and non-Arab workers have nothing to lose except their chains by uniting.

We must oppose the supplying of rebels with weapons and degrading the Syrian government – we must use every way possible to pressure the sides to hold talks leading to a nonviolent solution, including elections. Talk, not war!

The most important outcome and the only legitimate diplomatic position is for the Syrian people to decide their future, not U.S. and French military missiles.

Citizens of Canada, France and the U.S. are being stampeded into war with powerful pro-war propaganda, as if attacking Syria is a humanitarian solution. This is a lying, deceitful and criminal campaign, one that the Nuremberg Tribunal called a “crime against peace.”

For Peace and the international solidarity of workers in Canada and Syria,
Darrell Rankin
Manitoba office, Communist Party of Canada

PS Joining No War with Syria (Winnipeg) is a good way to keep up with fast-moving events.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/193748280802346/

PPS For Saturday, here is the facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/159075420953155/

Rally details
* * * * * *
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 23:47
From: peacenews peacenews@shaw.ca To: Members – Peace Alliance Winnipeg members@peacealliancewinnipeg.ca
Subject: [Communications] PEACE ALLIANCE WINNIPEG NEWS & ACTION ALERT

Peace with Syria Rally
Sept. 7, 2013, 2:00 pm
Program
2:00-2:30 Assemble at the Manitoba Legislature
2:30-2:45 Walk to the intersection of River Avenue & Osborne Street
2:45-3:45 leaflet all for corners of intersection, engage & discuss the public.
Please bring your favourite placard and as many friends as possible.
Sponsors include Peace Alliance Winnipeg, No War with Syria Winnipeg and Occupied Winnipeg.
– See more at: http://www.peacealliancewinnipeg.ca/2013/09/peace-in-syria-rally-winnipeg/#sthash.Ggt4NljO.dpuf

Posted By Lynn Parramore On August 29, 2013 (7:47 am).

Life for the medieval peasant was certainly no picnic. His life was shadowed by fear of famine, disease and bursts of warfare. His diet and personal hygiene left much to be desired. But despite his reputation as a miserable wretch, you might envy him one thing: his vacations.

Plowing and harvesting were backbreaking toil, but the peasant enjoyed anywhere from eight weeks to half the year off. The Church, mindful of how to keep a population from rebelling, enforced frequent mandatory holidays. Weddings, wakes and births might mean a week off quaffing ale to celebrate, and when wandering jugglers or sporting events came to town, the peasant expected time off for entertainment. There were labor-free Sundays, and when the plowing and harvesting seasons were over, the peasant got time to rest, too. In fact, economist Juliet Shor found that during periods of particularly high wages, such as 14th-century England, peasants might put in no more than 150 days a year.

As for the modern American worker? After a year on the job, she gets an average of eight vacation days annually.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way: John Maynard Keynes, one of the founders of modern economics, made a famous prediction that by 2030, advanced societies would be wealthy enough that leisure time, rather than work, would characterize national lifestyles. So far, that forecast is not looking good.

What happened? Some cite the victory of the modern eight-hour a day, 40-hour workweek over the punishing 70 or 80 hours a 19th century worker spent toiling as proof that we’re moving in the right direction. But Americans have long since kissed the 40-hour workweek goodbye, and Shor’s examination of work patterns reveals that the 19th century was an aberration in the history of human labor. When workers fought for the eight-hour workday, they weren’t trying to get something radical and new, but rather to restore what their ancestors had enjoyed before industrial capitalists and the electric lightbulb came on the scene. Go back 200, 300 or 400 years and you find that most people did not work very long hours at all. In addition to relaxing during long holidays, the medieval peasant took his sweet time eating meals, and the day often included time for an afternoon snooz! e. “The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed,” notes Shor. “Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure.”

Fast-forward to the 21st century, and the U.S. is the only advanced country with no national vacation policy whatsoever. Many American workers must keep on working through public holidays, and vacation days often go unused. Even when we finally carve out a holiday, many of us answer emails and “check in” whether we’re camping with the kids or trying to kick back on the beach.

Some blame the American worker for not taking what is her due. But in a period of consistently high unemployment, job insecurity and weak labor unions, employees may feel no choice but to accept the conditions set by the culture and the individual employer. In a world of “at will” employment, where the work contract can be terminated at any time, it’s not easy to raise objections.

It’s true that the New Deal brought back some of the conditions that farm workers and artisans from the Middle Ages took for granted, but since the 1980s things have gone steadily downhill. With secure long-term employment slipping away, people jump from job to job, so seniority no longer offers the benefits of additional days off. The rising trend of hourly and part-time work, stoked by the Great Recession, means that for many, the idea of a guaranteed vacation is a dim memory.

Ironically, this cult of endless toil doesn’t really help the bottom line. Study after study shows that overworking reduces productivity. On the other hand, performance increases after a vacation, and workers come back with restored energy and focus. The longer the vacation, the more relaxed and energized people feel upon returning to the office.

Economic crises give austerity-minded politicians excuses to talk of decreasing time off, increasing the retirement age and cutting into social insurance programs and safety nets that were supposed to allow us a fate better than working until we drop. In Europe, where workers average 25 to 30 days off per year, politicians like French President Francois Hollande and Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras are sending signals that the culture of longer vacations is coming to an end. But the belief that shorter vacations bring economic gains doesn’t appear to add up. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the Greeks, who face a horrible economy, work more hours than any other Europeans. In Germany, an economic powerhouse, workers rank second to last in number of hours worked. Despite more time off, German workers are! the eighth most productive in Europe, while the long-toiling Greeks rank 24 out of 25 in productivity.

Beyond burnout, vanishing vacations make our relationships with families and friends suffer. Our health is deteriorating: depression and higher risk of death are among the outcomes for our no-vacation nation. Some forward-thinking people have tried to reverse this trend, like progressive economist Robert Reich, who has argued in favor of a mandatory three weeks off for all American workers. Congressman Alan Grayson proposed the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, but alas, the bill didn’t even make it to the floor of Congress.

Speaking of Congress, its members seem to be the only people in America getting as much down time as the medieval peasant. They get 239 days off this year.

Article taken from The Great Debate – http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate
URL to article: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/

600,000 member NYSUT reaffirms single payer support, calls for enactment
of HR 676

The New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) has reaffirmed support for
single payer health care. The reaffirmation, which was submitted by
Retiree Council 12, calls specifically for support for HR 676, Congressman
John Conyers’ Expanded and Improved Medicare for All legislation.

NYSUT is made up of more than 600,000 who work in, or are retired from,
New York’s schools, colleges, and healthcare facilities. NYSUT is a union
of classroom teachers, college and university faculty and professional
staff, school bus drivers, custodians, secretaries, cafeteria workers,
teacher assistants and aides, nurses and healthcare technicians.

NYSUT is a federation of more than 1,200 local unions. It is affiliated
with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education
Association (NEA), and the AFL-CIO.

The NYSUT reaffirmation is available in full here
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org/union_endorsers  at the link in #607.

—————————————————————

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental (including oral surgery,
periodontics, endodontics), mental health, home health, physical therapy,
rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care and
correction, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, podiatric care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 48 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 607 union organizations including 146 Central
Labor Councils/Area Labor Federations and 43 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT,
OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX,
IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NJ, NY, NV,
MA, RI, NH, & ID).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org

9/03/13

– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

“Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!” V.I. Lenin

The US left suffers from two maladies that persistently thwart any effort to move beyond the malaise of internet negativity and the false activism of online petitions. Setting aside those still desperately clinging to the Democratic Party womb, well-intentioned and serious radicals, young and old, have yet to draw the lessons necessary to unify and focus the seemingly limitless committees, coalitions, and centers that constitute our dysfunctional left.

Most damaging is the mindless and groundless faith in spontaneity. Far too many of our brothers and sisters believe that political action, organization, and change will come the way it does in Hollywood horror movies. The people will emerge from their homes, recognize the danger, and rally to confront the alien threat. Danger combines with self-interest to generate a spontaneous common resistance and a common response. While it makes for entertaining fiction, it seldom if ever happens in real life.

The Occupy movement was the latest iteration of this faith. Life proved that the notion of spontaneous organization and governance would end, leaving barely a trace of its prior existence. Decades before Occupy, the so-called New Left cast its fate to spontaneity. Programs, parties, agendas, etc. were eschewed; the “Movement” would find its own way. Oracles of that flawed thinking have gone on to their life’s work as professors, professionals, and Democratic Party operatives.

In the rear-view mirror of bourgeois historians, political movements are depicted as spontaneous risings– a kind of spontaneous combustion sparked by a particularly hostile affront or violent act. The US colonial rebellion against the British was “sparked” by the Boston Tea Party or the confrontations at Lexington and Concord, never mind the years of debate, struggle, and planning by the Sons of Liberty and other evolving organizations of resistance. Similarly, popular history poses the Civil Rights Movement as a burst of activism ignited by Rosa Parks’ courage and channeled by police dogs and fire hoses. The decades of organized and planned resistance that prepared for this moment are largely ignored.

Faith in spontaneous struggle, trust in an instinctive, automatic confrontation with power, spawns inaction. If the oppressed and exploited will unerringly marshal resistance, there is no need to organize and agitate among them; they will find their way without the uninvited help of organizers and agitators. Professional revolutionaries need not apply. They must simply add their bodies to the “movement” when the magic moment arises.

A logical conclusion of the faith in spontaneity is the dangerous and destructive notion that “the worse things get, the better.” When enough pain is felt, the masses will rise; until then we meet in our diverse and numerous causes, sending checks, signing petitions and reassuring each other that something big will undoubtedly erupt.

Among Marxists, the cult of spontaneity takes the form of what V. I. Lenin called “economism.” By acknowledging only the objective conditions, the unseen operations of the laws of capitalist development, the tendency for capitalism towards crisis and the “immiseration of the proletariat,” these “Marxists” see no role for agitation and organization; they see no need for a party of revolutionaries. Instead, they count on the grinding inevitability of crude determinism.

Marxists (and trade union leaders) who fall into the trap of “economism” invariably bury the Marxist principle of class struggle in the day-to-day administration of trade unionism. In writing about the Marxist “economists” of his time, Lenin charged that they “demoralized the socialist consciousness by vulgarizing Marxism, by advocating the theory of the blunting of social contradictions, by declaring the idea of the social revolution… to be absurd, by reducing the working class movement and the class struggle to narrow trade-unionism and to a ‘realistic’ struggle for petty, gradual reforms. This was synonymous with bourgeois democracy’s denial of socialism’s right to independence and, consequently, of its right to existence; in practice it meant a striving to convert the… working class movement into an appendage of the liberals.” (What Is To Be Done?)

Faith in spontaneity diminishes politics. Neither the vulgar belief that collective pain will birth action nor the “sophisticated” and distorted Marxist claim that objective laws will inexorably bring change stands the test of history. Agency– the planned, concerted, and collective effort of organized groups– make history.

“If only we had a Lenin, Martin Luther King, Ralph Nader, etc., etc….”

A different, but closely related malady retards political action on the US left: the Knight in Shining Armor syndrome. Like spontaneity, it postpones action until something unknown and unpredictable happens; it replaces planned, concerted action with faith.

Many on the left are frozen with inaction while waiting for the next great emancipator or political super-star. This variant of celebrity worship is nurtured by the all-too-common brief appearance of prominent figures on the political stage while leaving no lasting movement or organization in their wake.

The Jesse Jackson Democratic primary campaigns of 1984 and 1988 are cases in point. Jackson offered the most progressive Democratic Party platform since the New Deal. In the first primary battle, he captured nearly 20% of the popular vote. In 1988, he ran again, establishing himself as the front runner after handily winning the important Michigan primary and finished by more than doubling his previous vote total and securing 11 states.

And then he was gone, disappearing from Democratic Party politics, leaving neither a movement nor a political impact on the Party’s destiny. By 1992, the Party had moved permanently rightward to embrace right-centrist, Bill Clinton. And twenty-five years later, the progressive wing of the Party waits hopefully and patiently for another celebrity arriving fully armored and on a powerful steed!

Similarly, the Nader Presidential campaigns brought great interest to the Green Party. But the ever-earnest Ralph Nader had little interest in party-building. Though serious, he walked away, leaving others to attempt to construct an on-going political party from the good will left from his runs. Fortunately, the Green Party’s latest candidate, Jill Stein, has a more developed understanding of political theory. What she lacks in celebrity status, she more than makes up for with organizational savvy and historical perspective. Her innovative, clever development of the “shadow” cabinet concept is particularly impressive.

But it’s not solely the fault of Jackson and Nader–two well-meaning candidates– that these celebrity campaigns were comet-like. Rather, it is the naïveté of the left that failed to see beyond the immediacy of these political events, that felt no urgency to subordinate an unrealistic chance to actually win to the necessity of leaving something permanent upon which to build.

Behind the Knight in Shining Armor syndrome stands the Great Man (or Woman) theory of history: great events are the work of great personalities. For example, the Pharaohs built the Great Pyramids (All by themselves? to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht). The masses are merely the obliging instruments of superior minds and talented leaders. Lenin refers to this thinking as in the “Ilovaisky manner,” referring to the author of many Russian textbooks who saw Russian history solely as the work of czars and generals.

The political expression of this in Lenin’s Russia came from the Norodniks who saw themselves as the saviors of the peasants. Middle class intellectuals impressed with their own superior abilities, the Norodniks “colonized” peasant society in order to surgically implant the great leaders they felt the peasantry lacked. In the words of Soviet writer V.P. Filatov, they believed “that only ‘heroes’ made history” and that they could turn “the mob into the people.”

Adding the ‘Conscious Element’

Lenin’s writings demonstrate that there is nothing new or unique in the false ideology of spontaneity. Further, we can learn from Lenin’s conclusion: “[A]ll worship of the spontaneity of the working class movement, all belittling of the role of ‘the conscious element’,… means quite independently of whether he who belittles that role desires it or not, a strengthening of the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the workers…” (What is to be Done?) In other words, only attention to the “conscious element” can advance our cause beyond the false path of spontaneity.

But what does Lenin mean by the “conscious element”?

Going forward depends upon a correct assessment of what constrains our progress. It requires a consciousness of the ideas essential to successfully challenge power. It requires an ideology. Moreover, that ideology must be radically different from the ideology of the forces resisting change. Nor can it compromise with the enemy ideology. Thus, it is a revolutionary consciousness.

But revolutionary consciousness must be converted into mass revolutionary consciousness. For that we need an organization. Because its mission is to take the ideology of revolutionary change to those both most in need of it and most able to use it, that organization counts as a vanguard. It is the idea of a vanguard that allows us to advance beyond the illusion of spontaneity.

Opponents of Leninism charge the idea of a vanguard with elitism, the idea that a select group of revolutionaries knows better than the masses. It is nothing of the sort. Rather, a vanguard is the transmission belt for ideas that will not and cannot arise spontaneously within the working class or broader movement.

In our time, the ideology of resistance is decidedly and necessarily anti-capitalist. But that is not enough. A revolutionary ideology must offer an alternative to capitalism, an alternative that is neither cosmetic nor fanciful. That alternative is socialism.

Popular illusions abound: regulation can wean corporations from rapacious accumulation and dominance; small-scale “social” enterprises and cooperatives can erode the unprecedented political and economic power of monopoly enterprises. Such ideas fall far short of ideological credibility. Only socialism—the elimination of the process of private accumulation through labor exploitation– reaches that credibility.

And who is to deliver the message of socialism; i.e., who is to serve as missionary for the revolutionary ideology?

The answer is as it was in Lenin’s time: An organization dedicated to that task above all else; an organization not encumbered by the fetish of bourgeois elections; a party of revolutionaries; a Communist Party.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

By James Thompson

March on Washington 2013

I attended the March on Washington last Wednesday, 8/28/2013, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. During the March on Washington in 1963, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech. The speech and the event in 1963 were instrumental in the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. My hope in attending the event was to lend support to efforts which could overturn the recent scurrilous decision by the Supreme Court to “excoriate” the Voting Rights Act.

I was very disappointed at the event because I heard very little from the luminary speakers to inspire working people to fight for legislation to overturn the Supreme Court decision. Although I must concede that several speakers spoke about the Voting Rights Act, their rhetoric was lackluster and did little to convince working people that this is an issue worth fighting for. The current President, also a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said little or nothing about the issue.

When Barack Obama was elected President, I wept with tears of joy in 2008. Now I weep with tears of sorrow at what he is doing and threatens to do.

I spoke with one African-American PhD college professor who did not even know about the Supreme Court decision.

So instead of honoring the glorious memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m afraid the event disrespected him and all the others who fought and died for the Voting Rights Act.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also fought for and died for many other social justice causes. He died while supporting sanitation workers’ rights in Memphis, Tennessee. He also called for an end to the Vietnam War and was a champion for world peace and nonviolence.

The speakers at last Wednesday’s event could have honored Dr. King by applying his thinking to the current situation with which we are faced in the world today.

At least one of the speakers could have called for new legislation to reinstate the Voting Rights Act and perhaps even take it a step further. Someone could have called for legislation which would make all forms of discrimination illegal in the United States with severe penalties for offenders. Although racial injustice is a serious problem in the United States today, other forms of discrimination also make working people’s lives unnecessarily miserable. Recently, there has been some recognition that women are systematically paid less than men for the same work. Educational and health care resources are not equally distributed among African-Americans and Caucasians. These are but a couple of examples of the rampant discrimination that has been institutionalized in this country.

At least one speaker could have spoken out boldly about the horrors of war as Dr. King did. Instead, the Nobel Peace Prize winning President has been hypocritically calling for a new US slaughter, this time in Syria. Somebody could have spoken to the potential catastrophe that would result from a new US imperialist military intervention.

It seems to me, and some may think this simpleminded, that currently the Syrian government is killing working people in Syria and the US backed “rebels” (some may call them “mercenaries”) are killing working people in Syria. If the US military starts killing working people in Syria, this will just mean that more Syrians will die. No one in the world doubts the murderous efficiency of the US military.

Ultimately, such an intervention would be extraordinarily expensive in terms of loss of life as well as loss of military equipment, seriously injured military personnel and loss of US credibility.

It is worth noting that the potential slaughter by the US in Syria does not have the support of the people of the US. Nor does imperialist military intervention have the support of traditional US allies to include the UK. It is even reported that the Polish government has refused to allow American bombers to cross their airspace to carry out their grim duties. Countless world peace organizations have spoken out in opposition to US military intervention in Syria.

It should be noted that this author does not in any way support the government of Syria. However, it should be recognized that Syria is a sovereign nation and should be allowed to settle its internal affairs without foreign intervention.

It is certainly a good thing that President Obama is putting the issue of military intervention in Syria before the US Congress. He is, by doing this, giving working people a chance to speak out on the issue. There are only a few precious days left before the Congress starts its debate on September 9. It would be better if the President and Congress would focus on the problems facing the people of the US and not on imperialist distractions in Syria.

Let’s honor Dr. King and show the world that he did not die in vain. Working people must fight for their rights and for a better life for everyone. We must not let the hypocritical warmongers win! We must not let the destructive racists win on the Voting Rights Act! We must not let the wealthy elite destroy our educational system and health-care system! We must not be complacent and allowed the clock to be turned back on so many issues important to working people. Celebrate Labor Day and honor Dr. King tomorrow by contacting your members of Congress and voice your opinion on the direction the US government is taking.

PHill1917@comcast.net

By Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh On August 30, 2013 @ 9:55 am

Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, whom the report was written in collaboration with, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents.

Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This exclusive report is not an Associated Press article, rather it is exclusive to MintPress News.

Ghouta, Syria – As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.

Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.

The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.

“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.

Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.

More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.

Saudi involvement

In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” Ingersoll wrote.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.

“Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.

“Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves this guy,” he added.

According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA realized Saudi Arabia was “serious” about toppling Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar to lead the effort.

“They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.

Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.

The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:

“His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a person familiar with the meetings.”

Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.

Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”

But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.

Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’ strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his capacity to use chemical weapons:

“Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who deployed them.

“It is important to remember that Assad has been accused of using poison gas against civilians before. But on that occasion, Carla del Ponte, a U.N. commissioner on Syria, concluded that the rebels, not Assad, were probably responsible.”

Some information in this article could not be independently verified. Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates .

Dale Gavlak is a Middle East correspondent for Mint Press News and has reported from Amman, Jordan, writing for the Associated Press, NPR and BBC. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Gavlak covers the Levant region, writing on topics including politics, social issues and economic trends. Dale holds a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Contact Dale at dgavlak@mintpressnews.com

Yahya Ababneh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and is currently working on a master’s degree in journalism, He has covered events in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Libya. His stories have appeared on Amman Net, Saraya News, Gerasa News and elsewhere.

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