Interview to the authors of the book Syria Under Fire
Presentation

Pamela Parson, a journalist of the “Rudolph Klement” Socialist Publishing House, and Walter Montoya, its director, interviewed Abu Muad and Carlos Münzer, authors of the book Syria under fire, and their collaborators Abu Muhajer and Leandro Hofstadter. On 22 August, at the National Library of Buenos Aires, this book will be presented to the public by its authors.
The book "Syria under fire" is a work that gives a response to the major historical events shaking the world from 2011 until today. They were great revolutionary processes, which rocked the region, from Tunisia to the martyred Gaza.
As the authors of this book say, imperialism has concentrated all its forces in Syria to stop this chain of revolutions arming to the teeth dog Bashar, who has drowned in a bloodbath, in a true genocide, the Syrian exploited.

We present this interview that was developed along several days; ultimately it achieves an upgrading work on the Syrian issue and the enormous imperialist offensive on the Maghreb and Middle East that is deployed there today. Here the forecasts and the vision of the authors are ratified.
This work of the Rudolph Klement Publishing House will be very useful for the reader, so that  he/she will be able to fully address what cannot be hidden: a genuine genocide and massacre launched on the Syrian masses. Millions of refugees are fleeing the massacre to other countries in the region, in Europe and around the world. They also tell their truth, which is none other than the imposition of a counter-revolutionary counter-offensive of imperialism in Syria and throughout the Maghreb and Middle East.

While we were working on different days of this story to the presentation of our book, international events that accelerate the abrupt changes in the global situation occurred.
Chinese crash is here, announced by the fall of the stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Cuba has already fallen into the hands of US imperialists, and they are extending their maquilas factories to the Caribbean and Latin America. 
Therefore to finally settle their mastery of the world in the midst of the crisis, U.S. must define quickly in the Middle East the situation in their favor, even at the expense of the European imperialist powers as France and Germany that have there their back yard. 
Ended the Conference in Vienna, the agreement is consummated with Iran, which means that the US muddles through and needs to consolidate new counter-revolutionaries devices of control of the Maghreb and the Middle East.

The current international conditions that allow understanding in depth the evolution of developments in the Maghreb and the Middle East are developed throughout this work.

Walter Montoya, director of the Rudolph Klement Socialist Publishing House

......................................................................................................

"In the Maghreb and the Middle East there is an enormous counter-revolution in course, though there the spark of the revolution is still on. The huge fighting of the workers and peasants of Yemen against the US-Saudi led invasion show this. This isn’t the last word".
"The exploited of the world must look in the mirror of the Maghreb and the Middle East.  If the worker revolution does not give a solution, imperialism will deepen barbarism and war"
Carlos Münzer

"When the masses and the revolutionary process advanced in 2011, the entire world left painted things as if years of 'democratic spring' were coming ahead... Imperialism and the bourgeoisie understood very well the situation, that what existed was the beginning of a chain of worker and peasant revolutions.
“Today, when it is raging a fierce imperialist counter-offensive... these currents name the counterrevolution as “an inter-religious war”. They hid the revolution and now are concealing the counterrevolution.
“This is the left of Obama. They are responsible that the revolutions of the Maghreb and the Middle East were maligned, fenced, groped...” "History will be cruel with the lefts of Obama that encircled these revolutionary processes, in the same way they were cruel enough to create the conditions for the current defeats"
Abu Muad

Interview conducted by Pamela Parson and Walter Montoya to the authors of the book Syria Under Fire -Carlos Munzer and Abu Muad-, and their collaborators Leandro Hofstadter and Abu Muhajer

First day of the debate – August 10th

Pamela Parson: Will “SiriaBajo Fuego”(the book “Syria Under Fire”) be presented publicly?

Leandro Hofstadter: Yes. This book is already being distributed in several Spanish-speaking countries. We have presented it in worker meetings around the world. It is also being translated into English and we hope by year's end to make a translation into Arabic.

We will present the book together with the authors of this work on these great events of the Maghreb and Middle East that shook the planet in the 21st century. As we demonstrate in this study, those events were part of a masses’ surge that distressed the capitalist society in bankruptcy after the crisis on Wall Street.
We will go to the National Library in Buenos Aires on August 22. We will present a book written by real fighters of the Syrian masses. They are not as the “commanders-without-battles” of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), as that who the LIT walked, or like those, passing through the border North of Syria, who come with medals of Kobane "Brigadiers". That is pure image.
The authors are the direct protagonists of this struggle, who wrote this work along with socialist intellectuals, so this means not only that there will be no such a thing as a forgotten genocide, but that the struggle to put up a revolutionary leadership, needed by the masses in the region, is more valid than ever.

Pamela Parson: So on August 22 de you will present the book in the National Library. Does it mean an open invitation?

Leandro Hofstadter: Yes, it’ll be open to all those who want to really achieve a deep understanding of processes that have been completely distorted, about which some people have lied maybe more treacherously than Stalinism has about the revolutionary processes of the last century. 
We have prepared a DVD of the Publishing House, where much of the book and presentation is being advanced visually. It is a video that shows everything that the left of Obama, which already has long surrendered to the imperialist assassins, want to hide: what were the great revolutions of the Maghreb and the Middle East.
We want to refresh the memory and get the advanced workers and revolutionary youth from around the world to be able to see by their own eyes actions of masses in the streets of Syria fighting for bread against dog Bashar, as thus we also anticipate the huge massacre imperialism and their counter-revolutionary forces in the region have unleashed.

Walter Montoya: Taking advantage of the fact that those comrades have been on the fronts of struggle of the masses in the region, it is very important to specify how it looks now. What then is the situation in the Maghreb and the Middle East? At times some people are trying to hide everything. Much of the left that was before supporting the generals-without-battle of FSA from Syria, have now become supporters to the Kurdish Communist Party and the (bourgeois) Democratic Kurdish Party... But no one speaks of the Yemeni revolution, and today newspapers announce the establishment of a beach-head and the landing of troops of the United Arab Emirates in the South of Yemen...

Abu Muad: when the revolution started the reformist left raised a cloud of dust so that the actual contours of that revolution could not be distinguished. They said that it was about "Velvet" or "democratic revolutions" and not true revolutionary uprisings of millions of exploited fighting against hunger and demanding bread. Now the same is done to prevent the world workers and exploited from seeing how the counterrevolution works. Yesterday the reformists surrounded and diverted the revolutionary processes when they were on the offensive, and today they are fencing massacred masses and crushed revolutions. Hence the importance of this work on Syria Under Fire, on Revolution and Counter-revolution, which expresses the struggle, the combats and the program of a live international current that inserted itself in the fighting of the revolutionary masses. We do not intend to withdraw from the battlefield of the exploited, because we have tied our destiny to the fate of the working class.

Leandro Hofstadter: The current fence to the massacre in Syria and the entire Maghreb and Middle East actually gives chills. And this is done by the leaderships of mass organizations, including those self-claiming as "left" and "Socialist". Let’s imagine in the ' 30, in the Spanish civil war, before the uprising by Franco... or in the ' 70s and ' 80s in Chile with Pinochet or Argentina with Videla, and that alleged "Socialists" were looking the other side. This is the case of the FIT in Argentina today, which is preparing to collect hundreds of thousands of votes and plays the distracted with this huge imperialist counter-revolution in the Maghreb and the Middle East.

Abu Muhajer: Yesterday, the World Social Forum leaderships, hung at the aprons of the bloodthirsty Iranian ayatollahs, Bashar the dog, the UN and the Zionist State of Israel, took as their vital task fencing and defeating these revolutionary processes on account of imperialism. Those revolutionary foci could be the spark that lights the revolution in the Mediterranean, and Europe in particular. As we explained in our book, they had to unsynchronize the fighting of the working classes of the oppressed countries of the Maghreb and Middle East from the struggles of the European working class. Now, imperialism has its hands free to concentrate its forces and attack hard in Europe, as it is actually doing in Greece, Ukraine and to the rest of the workers in that continent.

WM: Under what international conditions does imperialism attempt to settle down its counterrevolutionary offensive?

Carlos Munzer: It is very important to specify the crisis throughout the BRICS (including Brazil and the same Russia) and China. The fall of the stock exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen announce capital withdrawals from the production process in China. There the profit rate has dropped. Resurgent fictitious bubbles are everywhere. US have pulled their entire crisis to the world.
The huge surplus in dollars accumulated in China has gone to cover the US deficit. USA has paid China imports with papers from its State, which has a 15 trillion dollars’ deficit. China is full of papers that are increasingly less worthy, because its companies have become increasingly less profitable and a bubble of over valuated securities is deflating there as well as a real estate speculative bubble. This we’ll develop in the first chapter of the book "Syria Under Fire" because it has direct consequences for the world, and in particular to the Maghreb and the Middle East.

Leandro Hofstadter: Yes, the USaimto control the Atlantic Ocean vying with a broken Europe and also to control the Pacific Rim by encircling China. They should quickly stabilize the situation in the Maghreb and the Middle East. They do so by means of strong actions and counter-revolutionary covenants, which have gone so far as to redraw national borders in the region. 
The Zionist State has not been able to fire a single shot on other Arab countries for risk ofignitingthe whole region. There's Zionism chew its hatred and sends fascist settlers to massacre Palestinians and to take Palestinian land. We have seen a Palestinian baby burnt alive; there are thousands of prisoners... Zionism is attacking the Palestinian masses with fascist gangs.

Carlos Münzer:You see, we are talking about the elements that govern and shape the conditions of the Maghreb and the Middle East. At the last Conference in Minsk (capital of Belarus), attending Russia, Germany and USA, to "stabilize" the situation in Ukraine, Putin was made to kneel before the other two. He signed a "cease fire" and called for -together with the pro-Russian bourgeoisie of the Donbass- the disarmament of the rebel masses and theirmilitias. Some weeks ago in the Conference of Vienna, Obama imposed on Putin and the Iranian ayatollahs to play a role in the orderly exit of Bashar Al-Assad for a replacement of the regime in Syria.
But behind these political agreements which will stabilize the situation to imperialism, massive business lies. That’s why imperialism needs to stabilize its counter-revolutionary victories. United States, heading these Covenants, is going to distributebusiness in Europe and the Maghreb and Middle East. In Ukraine, since the Conference in Minsk, it gave Germany the pipeline in the North of Russia, which reaches the same Germany directly, while with the Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell and Total of France, stays with the gas and oil pipelines coming from the Caucasus and Turkey.
If we look at the map, we see that that pipeline coming to Turkey will come together with the Iran pipeline directly, and from the Bosporusthe common pipeline will reach the Mediterranean, where, passing through the Suez channel, it will go to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
Putin is ready to comply; the ayatollahs obey; imperialism emerges victorious and retakes the path of the business in a region marked by enormous revolutions thousand times betrayed. That includes not only the Maghreb and the Middle East, but also Ukraine, whichthe European social-imperialistleaderships have left totally isolated, in the same way that they have sell out the Greek revolution to Tsipras, the large Greek shipowners, the Bundesbank and Merkel.
An international point of view is essential to understanding the route and the plan of the counter-revolution and the huge businesses that are made during this, while the worst of catastrophes has been the lot  leftto the masses.

WM:So, we are going to see new counterrevolutionary pacts meant to settle down the imperialist counteroffensive in the region?

Carlos Munzer: Indeed, I just named the Vienna Conference sealed just days ago on the issue of Middle East, or the Minsk one in May, on the Ukrainian question. In both, the cowardly and cynical role of Putin as a Hitman of imperialism in the region is clear. In these Covenants, imperialism comes to consolidate the victories achieved in its counteroffensive from 2013. 
I won't elaborate much more here about the Covenant of Minsk, which is already running, with the pro-Russian bourgeoisie of the Donbass disarming to the masses while the fascist army of Kiev goes on bombing at close range all the cities of the region. That is what counter-revolutionary pacts are about, wherepeople come that arrogate to be "friends of the masses" though they areprecisely who sell them out.
With regards to the Vienna Conference, the most significant aspect is the Pact with Iran and the new role of Turkey in the region. On this last it is necessary to make clear that it is the central guardian of oil coming out of Russia and Iran under the economic control of the Exxon, Shell and British Petroleum. It is the new policeman of NATO along the routes of the oil. Therefore after that Conference, the Turkish Government quickly had to leave to discipline the masses in Turkey, mainly the Kurdish ones. It shielded the regime according to the role of gendarme which it will start to play more and more openly.
Regarding Iran, the Covenant's lifting of the embargo is a kind of "Camp David" anew, like the one sealed between Egypt and the Zionist usurper in 1977 to secure the borders of the Zionist State and guarantee peace all around it, with the Golan Heights for Israel included.
This Pact that was signed with Iran now means to consolidate the presence in Damascus of the counter-revolutionary Iranian Republican Guard, which is that really holds Al-Assad militarily. This agreement means that Iran and Putin, monitored by the US, are the guarantee of an orderly exit for the assassin Al-Assad so imperialism will be able to placea US protectorate with a puppet government in Syria - very similar to that in Iraq today - with all the bourgeois fractions that control regions of this country, without Al-Assad, who is not presentable any more to stabilize the situation. In that direct negotiation Saudi Arabia, which controls the ISIS, is also an actor, which accepts an orderly transition with the Alawite bourgeois fraction of Bashar, though without him.

Abu Muad:the FSAwill undoubtedly enterthis plan. The Kurdish bourgeoisie has just said that they are working on a pact with Damascus and want to deepen it. The tragedy of the Kurdish masses is that, while its bourgeoisie kneels before Al-Assad, they are massacred in Turkey and also attacked militarily in the North of Iraq; the reason is thathowever the Kurds have been playing a role in the US invasion of that country, it is time that the oil of the Iraqi North passes also to Turkish hands. Imperialism has already paid to the Kurdish bourgeoisie for its services.

PP: And what is the share of the ISIS in the agreement around Syria?

Abu Muad: ISIS is already in that agreement in Iraq. It has members in the Iraqi Parliament and a political party that represents it in the Government of the US protectorate. In Syria, it is also a direct agent of imperialism and of Saudi Arabia, the best policeman to discipline the rebellious masses.

Carlos Munzer:Foreign Affairs, strategic magazine of the US political and military general staff, says that in Raqa'i and DeirezZor ISIS has managed to stabilize the situation and it is a guarantee for businesses, while it imposes a strict order in the masses that even Al-Assad could not impose. Undoubtedly ISIS is not any demon to imperialism, nor much less itsSaddam-Husseinite generals... Either they will behave a little more “civilized” or create a political party that will represent them. Their chiefs and generals are all businessmen. These may create a political party that represents them in a national unity Government with the Alawite bourgeois fraction of Bashar.
Imperialism needs to stabilize and settle its counter-revolutionary victory in Syria. I.e., Syria is split and needs stability, and so imperialism must get rid of the genocidal Al Assad and whitewash a regime of protectorate with its lackeys there.

PP:Are we witnessing a “new Geneva conference”, as those you describe in the book?

Abu Muad: Yes, indeed. The first was in 2013. Then the revolution was expanding even to the gates of Damascus, also intruded the borders with Lebanon, and began to destabilize the Turkish masses. All this, despite the counter-revolutionary Covenant made by Bashar with the Kurdish bourgeoisie, leaving out of scene this oppressed people that initially was part of the uprising of the masses against the same Al-Assad and his regime of hunger and sellout of Syria.
Before this situation, it was called the Conference of "Geneva 1" in mid-2013. Month to month, Obama delayed the date of its completion. That’s because this Conference was to be held on the very same battlefield. There were, under the command of imperialism, Bashar Al-Assad; the SyrianNational Coalition, which was a refugee in Qatar; Jabhat al Nusra; the Iranian ayatollahs together with Hezbollah and Putin. They had to crush the Syrian revolution and cut that string of revolutions that had started in Tunisia.
It is a Conference that was held with the United States giving green light to the army of Egypt so that in June 2013 it did give a bloody coup. At that time the attack on Yemeni masses unfolded with bombings including US drones; and we saw the start of the offensive of the counter-revolutionary forces in Libya with reactionary demonstrations and the attack to any phenomenon of independent militia. 
In Syria, as we affirm in our book, all counter-revolutionary forces concentrated with Hezbollah and Al-Assad‘s troops. They could crush the uprisings in Lebanon thanks to the fundamental role of the 'radical'Sunni bourgeoisie, which was responsible for dividing the ranks of the exploited. So Hezbollah had their hands free to reinforce al Assad and defeat the stiff resistance of the exploited in the Syrian city of alQssair.

Leandro Hofstadter: A key turning point in this counter-offensive was also the concentration of military forces of Hezbollah and the Iranian Republican Guard in Damascus to crush insurgents in the capital and the Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp...
Thus, then, the "Geneva 2" Conference, we will not tire of insisting, came to secure the Lebanonization and partition of Syria, which meant the strangulation of the revolution.
The dog Bashar survived in Damascus, Syrian North was controlled by the FSA and Jabhat the Nusra, and some cities in the Northeast Syrian where under the control of the Kurdish bourgeoisie as had been agreed uponpreviously, as we already said, with Al-Assad. Army-parties were controlling the masses, both in the "liberated areas" and in those controlled by Bashar.
That is the content of the counter-revolution, because under this regime the bourgeoisie kept all of its businesses and its power, either by expropriating, controlling or crushing the revolutionary uprisings of the masses.

Carlos Münzer: And the "Geneva 3" Conference is that we see today, which is carried out in Vienna. It comes to consolidate this counter-revolutionaryvictory, and the plan of imperialism for reconstituting its institutions of domination in the region and stabilize Syria.

WM:What does it mean today?

Abu Muhajer: firstly, crushing the Yemeni revolution. After months of shelling and savage massacre, they could make a beach head and takeAden, with heavy weaponry and troops from the Emirates. Secondly, as we’ve already said, the Pact with Iran, to make a concerted getaway for Al-Assad and establish a Government comprising all the bourgeois fractions, and as we have also said,even the same ISIS would be part to that regime of protectorate.
The Turkish Government that, as we said before, has consolidated as a great guarantee forNATO in the region and is a mainstay to discipline all the agents of the Vienna Conference plays a central role in this plan.

Abu Muad: this plan of US imperialism works through proxies, because there is a contradiction: U.S. cannot intervene directly. Though, through its agents and the business chainsit controls internationally it disputes the spheres of influence to France, Germany and Italy across the entire Maghreb and Middle East, which is the natural "backyard" of Maastricht, as US is determined to be which divides the businesses. For example, USA has taken control of all oil and gas pipelines which plunder Russia, now directly, both by Ukraine and the Baltic Sea to Germany, as through the Caucasus to Turkey. It controls the financial affairs and from there it distributes. It has given Germany an important part of the investments on the renovation of the obsolete industrial facilities and equipment of ruined Iran.
What is also important is that from the deal with the pro-US dictatorship of Al-Sisi in Egypt, U.S. controls the expansion of the Suez Channel, whence ships of great depth that could not pass before may now travel from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Control of the Suez channel was always a key point of dispute among the imperialist powers, since that is the second exit of the Mediterranean. There is the Strait of Gibraltar towards America and the Suez Channel to the Indian Ocean and Asia.

Carlos Munzer: This shows that U.S. has commanded all the imperialist powers, handing out the business, making the regional bourgeoisies play each one its role. Thus we see it today with United Arab Emirates invading Yemen; or as we have already said, in the new role of Iran and the Saudi bourgeoisie; the new role of Turkey... and in this plan Zionism remains in a weakened place as immediate agent for it goes on without a power of fire, since if it intervened, it would provoke an uprising in the entire region to the first shot.
As we said, USA distributes business, but disputing Europeits "backyard". European powers like France, however, will not look the other way. The latter went out to patrol the South Mediterranean and the access to the Suez Channel together with the Greek Navy and the military forces of the Zionist State. We must not forget for one moment that large transnational Greek ship-owners control large vessels and need, such as air to breathe, the Suez Channel.
Agreements and fierce trade disputes for spheres of influence, nations divided and their leftovers distributed, new massacres such as in Yemen, unprecedented hardships for the masses, that is the conclusion of these counter-revolutionary pacts, which would be impossible to implement without the complicity of all the treacherous leaderships of the world working class.

PP:Counterrevolution does not allow a second of rest... Imperialism is implacable in crushing the masses and try reconstructing its businesses...

Carlos Munzer: Well,yes. Capitalism is a system that reproduces itself automatically, with its incessant thirst for profits. In the imperialist epoch, capitalism advances by destroying huge productive forces, letting grow a pole of the society and a group of industries on the basis of destroying most.
In relation to the Middle East, the imperialist powers claimed that they were "civilization" facing "barbarianism", i.e. facing the barbarians of the "tribes" as they are often call by the left... and life itself shows that the counter-revolution is what has led to the barbarianism, even to the recoil of the nations that were drawn out of the Second World War, backtracking to split nations, with internal customs (as in the Middle Ages, NT)...

Leandro Hofstadter: But to impose this it is necessary, as we have been saying,to develop new stable dominance devices in the region. Don't forget that the Revolution destroyed and dislocated counter-revolutionary controls in that area of the planet. It had already started to be imposed by the resistance of theheroic Iraqi and Afghan masses against US invasion and occupation, something that all the treacherous leaderships have maintained silent about.
Because the revolutions in the Maghreb and the Middle East did not begin in 2011 as a "Spring of the peoples", as the entire world reformist left says. Revolution began with a heroic uprising of the Iraqi masses, with the Afghan resistance and with European and US working-class threatening massive uprisings in USA, Spain, etc., as the masses refused to go to war, which imposed the removal of imperialist troops in the region.
Under these conditions of weakening of imperialism in its control mechanisms in the Maghreb and the Middle East they started the uprisings of the 2011 in Tunisia. It was not the bourgeoisie that took out the masses to the streets to fight for bread and democracy, as the global left says infamously. It was the European and US working class, which weakened the control of imperialism refusing to die for the sake of their own imperialist bourgeoisie in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without understanding this nothingabsolutely can be understood, either the revolutionary processes or the current counterrevolution.

Abu Muad: Yes, it is already well known that many Syrian workers went to Iraq for fighting against imperialism, or had relatives or friends who had gone. Syria has a large border with Iraq. As well as 23 nations came together to invade Iraq; there were also tens of thousands of fighters from all countries that went to Iraq to fight against imperialism.
That is why I insist on that the ISIS then could enter rebel areas in Syria because it usurped the flags of the anti-imperialist struggle against US occupation in Iraq. And this imposture was also done by the same generals of Saddam Hussein and the Sunni bourgeoisie who surrendered and collaborated with the US forces. That shows that the conditions were given to deepen an enormous struggle against imperialism in the region. And precisely the content of the Syrian revolution was that: for bread and against imperialism... and against Bashar, whomthe masses clearly identified as agent of imperialism and Zionists’ collaborator.

Abu Muhajer:It was the reformist left and the bourgeoisie who boasted about their pseudo-democratic detours, fraudulent constituent assemblies, etc. And they did it to silence the anti-imperialist sentiment of these revolutions, which focuses on a point that everybody is silent about, which is the hatred of the rebel masses in the region, from Tunisia to Syria, against the Zionist State of Israel, the largest agent of imperialism in the Maghreb and Middle East. From Yemen to Morocco, the uprisings of Bahrain, the Tahrir Square in Cairo; from Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya to the rebel Syrian Homs, the masses voiced and stood up the banner of struggle against Zionism.

Leandro Hofstadter: Imperialism tries to stabilize its counteroffensive setting itself in a process of Lebanonization, i.e., partition, of Syria, Iraq, Libya... and on counterrevolutionary direct hits as in Egypt or the invasion Saudi-Emirati in Yemen...
That is the present time, as we have seen. Now, this stands out when one considers the counter-revolutionary controls which imperialism had there before 2011. 
When I was in Tunisia, I could see more clearly how imperialism controlled the region. There was the Covenant of Camp David, the "Pharaoh" Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia, Khadafy in Libya and the Zionist State with firepower, which attacked Gaza in 2008 / 2009 in the operation "Cast Lead". All this regime of dominance was dislocated by the revolution.
Imperialism settled their counter-offensive recognizing the relationship of forces that allows it not to intervene directly, mostly due to the attitude of the working class in the imperialist powers. So the plan of the counterrevolution in front of these revolutionary processes in the region is the partition of nations that the powers themselves drew out of the Second World War, as it happened in Iraq, in Syria... and also in Libya,where they are hacking it city by city. Suchis the plan of the counter-revolution.

Carlos Münzer: In this, as we have already said, they collaborated and still collaborate the Iranian ayatollahs, who now have a mission to prepare the orderly exit of the dog Bashar after the completion of the dirty work that hehas been carrying out.
Jabhat al Nusra and the FSA could not contain completely the revolutionary masses in rebel areas in the North of Syria. At the same time, the outraged masses of Fallujah and Mosul stood up in Iraq, threatening the regime of the protectorate. Thus, supported in the Iraqi Sunni bourgeoisie, imperialism sent ISIS to Syria to impose a bourgeois "law and order" by means of its "Islamic law". And also imperialism gave the Kurdish bourgeoisie the task of transforming the bastions it controls in the North of Syria into bastions of Al-Assad, giving this bourgeoisie the possibility of charging fees for goods entering and leaving to Syria across those borders.
This book which we will introduce has it developed in full.

Abu Muhajer: Actually, Lebanonizing and splitting nations is the content of the counter-revolution. It is a setback of civilization. Each bourgeois fraction imposes order on each portion that it controls and from there it keeps the grafts and fees it charges for the businesses developed there, by imposing internal customs that make products more expensive and imposes poverty wages to workers in all areas of Iraq and Syria.  For example, in the latter country a worker that was earning a monthly wage of $200 now wins only $60, with a constant inflation, which leads to an enormous cost of living and painful shortages.

Abu Muad: And in Libya, which is now a Federation of cities, diverse bourgeois fractions staydistributing dividends of oil income and all of them together taking care of the Central Bank, where the dollars of this rent enter. They divide the amount among them with imperialism acting as an arbitrator, either through the UN or old "technocrats" of the time of Khadafy. If you're going to Tripoli you'll see all the militias coming from all cities installed there. They are quasi embassies of the fractions of the bourgeoisies of different cities. And all of them take care of nobody touching the central bank. They take care of their part. And when not, there is war.
In other countries, as we can see, there are counter-revolutionary direct hits, as in Egypt, where there are more than 40,000 political prisoners and disappeared whomno one has knowledge. We have reports at the last moment that it has been decreed the State of siege of the generals of Ben Ali in Tunisia... And when the Yemeni revolution of the workers and peasants escaped from the imperialist control, it sent the Saudi bourgeoisie to invade and slaughter it.

Leandro Hofstadter: We cannot rule out that an imperialist plan is like filling the Maghreb and the Middle East of "Emirates" to stabilize the situation, where each group of nativebourgeois will have some oil wells and a relationship with some imperialist big oil company. ISIS is already an "Emirate"... a "caliphate". Even the plan can be that it may self-reformnot to appear any more as a "terrorist". They can also do this in Libya with Benghazi and Tobruk or Brega and Misratah... I.e. the counterrevolution can redraw the maps of the nations. But in this "new map" there are millions and millions of refugees, hundreds of thousands of deadand destroyed cities...
The contradiction this partition has is that businesses are arranged within internal borders from region to region, between businessmen from different military sides, as we see in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. But this needs a political organization allowing all the factions of the bourgeoisie to negotiate their slice of the profits. This has to be a Government of national unity, pseudo-parliaments, etc. That is what we see in the US protectorate in Iraq, with a fictitious Parliament arranged by imperialism from the top with all the bourgeois fractions in... andwith the political representatives of ISIS included.

Carlos Munzer:So you understand better... in divided Syria and Iraq there is a war of everyone against everyone, but with clear boundaries, where each one has its share of the business. And whoever crosses the line will be disciplined with bombings. That’s why Leandro said recently that they need a body of political centralization of the business. Now the borders are negotiated and the debates are resolved with shots in the war borders.
This happened in Kobane with ISIS, a matter that is explained very well in the book, what is a "war border". The bourgeois fractions dispute border checkpoints, the business of oil and the trade routes, including areas of cities as in Aleppo; meanwhile millions of oppressed Kurds, Syrians and Iraqis are living as pariahs in the middle of the desert. This is barbarianism; this is what counter-revolution means...
They are unstable equilibria. They are not the best conditions for business to the capitalists. But they are the only possible for them, once they could get rid of the great revolutionary processes of 2011 that threatened their property. That is also the U.S./Iran Pact all about, that the latter guarantees and supervises an orderly exit of Al-Assad to allow a regime of the US protectorate where all the bourgeois fractions cohabite to do business orderlyand distribute the businesses under supervision and control of imperialism.
80% of the world's oil is produced in the Maghreb and the Middle East, there are reserves for 200 years there... Besides, due to the place in which it is located, that oil is the cheapest to get out. US imperialism has boasted about its shale, but largely it is overacting. They and Europe need the cheap oil coming from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc... The United States can self-feed with the shale, but it is much more expensive, as well as to Germany to buy gas from the United States and not from Russia.
The main oil routes remain in the Maghreb and Middle East.

WM:This you will elaborate about in the coming presentation of the book…

Abu Muad: Yes. Here we anticipate the evolution of the core issues since our book was written. But there is one point that appears more and more clearly. None of this would have been possible without the fence and the betrayal of the Syrian revolution. The role of the World Social Forum was and is key to separate this process in the Maghreb and Middle East from the masses of the world and leave Assad hands free to go on with his slaughter.
The role of the reformist left of Obama is throwing soil on the eyes of the world working class so this does not understand what has happened and continues happening. First, they announced that US and NATO were going to invade Syria against Al-Assad. It became clear that it was a heinous lie: Al-Assad massacred 400,000 unmolested. Later, they said that ISIS was the greatest enemy of the masses of the world and the largest Public enemy, a bunch of assassins and super-terrorist rascals. But they covered the Covenant of Iran with the United States and their businesses with the former as figurehead of the Exxon and British Petroleum in Iraq.
Suddenly the Kurdish Peshmerga and YPG appeared, as if they were Guevaristaguerrillas or worker militias.This left presented some girl "guerrillas" with enameled nails and newly performed hairdressing... A heinous lie... It was to cover up the massacre by Saudi planes of women and children in Yemen and to promote, in the final analysis, a war where the Kurdish bourgeoisie and ISIS are disputing borders and business in the split Syria, the latter massacring the masses where Al-Assad had been defeated, and the formerreceiving its award for having sold out 16 million exploited Kurds to Erdogan (Turkey president, NT).
Everyone against everyone... split nations... fierce military dictatorships... This is barbarianism, this is counter-revolution.

Leandro Hofstadter: This is what the book which we will present is about. This is the barbarianism of the counter-revolutionary successes of imperialism and its lackeys of the native bourgeoisie. They are trying to settle down this as soon as possible. The reason is that the global economic crisis is again here. Yesterday the rise in food prices was the trigger for the revolutions in the region. The fall of the price of oil today will bring new calamities for the masses.
Imperialism needs to maintain its control mechanisms and to establish its regimes and counter-revolutionary governments.
Let's look at Egypt. Tens of thousands of prisoners, condemned to death penalty, massacre in the streets... and today in Tahrir Square they cannot be heard any more the sweet sentences about "constituent assembly", "democratic revolution" or the voices of the left lackeys of Obama; what you hear now is the noise of the feast of rich ruling elites of Egypt exhilarating about the expanded Suez Channel, which will mean new revenue to them.
The Saudi and UAE bourgeoisie need order and discipline intheir field of slaves that is Yemen, where millions of workers are crowded who work worse than slaves in the construction and oil wells throughout the area. The tragedy is not only in Syria, but has hit the revolution throughout the region.

………………………………………………………………….

"The counter-revolutionary offensive of imperialism lies in an international campaign, which goes from Obama to the reformist left, posing two fallacies. The first of these is:ISIS is the maximum enemy. Thus they whitewash the largest killers in the region: Bashar Al-Assad, the Iranian bourgeoisie, the military junta of Egypt.
The other fallacy is that they have invented the fantasy of a "revolutionary force", which would be the Kurdish YPG. A gross lie."

".. .The Kurdish bourgeoisie sold outtheir own people for alms and stabilized their business, liquidating the national question and oppressing the exploited Kurds along with the oppressors." Thus they have exposed the Kurdish masses to the fiercest repression by Erdogan."
Carlos Münzer

Carlos Münzer: The counter-revolutionary offensive of imperialism is based in an international campaign, which goes from Obama to the reformist left, posing two fallacies. The first of these is:ISIS is the maximum enemy. Thus the largest killers in the region are whitewashed: Bashar Al-Assad, the Iranian bourgeoisie, the military junta of Egypt. The other fallacy is that they have invented the fantasy of a "revolutionary force", which would be the Kurdish YPG. A gross lie.

WM: Just read the newspapers and the positions of the reformist left world to see that this is so. We were following the last meeting of the World Social Forum in Tunisia, which culminated in a March against ISIS.

Carlos Münzer: Yes, they wanted to hide that the party that governs Tunisia today is the same party of Ben Ali, with its repressive judges, its State of siege and its genocidal military. Indeed, the ISIS has been named as "enemy number one" by the entire world left, certainly not for US imperialism and Saudi Arabia, which armed it, organized it and sent it to discipline the masses. Nor is it so for al Assad, since ISIS prevents the masses of the freed Syrian North from reaching Damascus...
We have developed this question of the ISIS a lot in our book. About the Kurdish question, that has become fashionable in the last few weeks, it is however good to deal with it from the beginning, since they want to paint the YPG as if it were a "National Liberation Army"... a kind of Viet Cong... It soon would appear that they will find their Kurdish "Ho Chi Minh ". This is a gross lie.  Theyarecovering the Kurdish bourgeoisie, with silk clothes, a bourgeoisie that has sold out its own people to the Turkish Government and attached their fate to the US imperialists in Iraq and to Al-Assad in Syria. Thus they have been preparing the cruelest defeats for the Kurdish masses, today we are already witnessing this in Turkey which government is attacking them at close range in the region. This happens once imperialism has used them, thanks to the Kurdishbourgeoisie, to impel its worst offensive, as we saw before in Iraq with the invasion of Bush; the Pact with Al-Assad against the Syrian masses or the recent agreement of the PKK with Erdogan on unilateral disarmament.

WM:I've been seeing that those who yesterday asked US to intervene to give weaponry and bombs to the resistance to fight against Al-Assad -as the LIT, or small satellite groups which supported the FSA as Socialist Convergence of Argentine-, today attempt to show as if it existed a quasi-Guevarista Kurdish guerrilla as "defender of the Kurdish people".

Abu Muad:It is necessary to settle down the dust. We must see the contours of the landscape that is. The bourgeoisie settles its counter-revolution with Bonapartist, military forces:in Egypt, with the military dictatorship; in Tunisia, with anarmored 'democracy' with the generals of Ben Ali;in Bahrain with the invasion of the army of Saudi Arabia, which now tries again in Yemen.
In the game of a divided Syria there are the fascist military party of Al-Assad and the Iranian Republican Guard mercenaries. They are counter-revolutionary bourgeois army-parties, which are defending the road from Homs to Damascus, where there is the Central Bank of Syria.
In rebel areas, once the FSA could not control the masses, another bourgeois army-partysettled, which is called ISIS, whose generals are former members of the counterrevolutionary guard of Saddam Hussein, to which imperialism had once grabbed their business after the invasion of Iraq, and now it has returned it to them in the Iraqi Sunni triangle and in the North of Syria so that they take them back to blood and fire, in an agreement with the Saudi bourgeoisie.
And the Kurdish YPG and Peshmerga are bourgeois army-parties, as well as the PKK, a Stalinist-bourgeois party. In the North of Iraq, they handle 15% of oil from that country for having cooperated with all the USinvasions, as real Gurkhatroops. And in the North of Syria, after agreeing with Al-Assad in Damascus, they compete for trade and smuggling business on the border with Turkey. They are bourgeois army parties, which are there to control the masses, and for shooting them dead when they rise up to fight for breadagainst and starvation.
Here and there they collide for the borders of their businesses. The tragedy is that this is paid for by the masses, as the Kurdish masses in the north of Iraq and Syria... or the Sunnis in Fallujah or Mosul which are attacked brutally by the Iranian Republican Guard and the Iraqi army under the command of US generals, or directly by the bombardments of US aviation. These take good care not to attack the ISIS proper, but the masses, so the former can then discipline them even more.

Leandro Hofstadter: These army-parties of chopped, Lebanonized Nations, to crush the masses, are where the counter-revolution sits... until the imperialism is able to intervene militarily;but before that it will need to control and inflict tough losses to the US and European working class... and that is to be seen.
These are agents that imperialism first uses and then discards. Now, if the conditions exist, it could even destroy the ISIS when it deems necessary, if this serves to crush the masses. Today is making a deal to get rid of Al-Assad, after having used him to do the "dirty work".

Abu Muhajer: Now there is a new fact that has escaped to these army parties in Iraq. Masses of Basra and the Iraqi South, which are under the control of the Shiite bourgeoisie, are rising. 
That’s why the US is preparing and encouraging, with Iranian guarantee, as we have already said, a quick exit for al Assad, once he has done with the dirty work. The masses are suffering from famine and there may be new uprisings. Al-Assad does not give stability. Imperialists have to put order in all the bourgeois fractions in the business of a split Syria. new uprisings are already announcingfor the starvation and massacres in Damascus.
This is important. Yesterday, we saw how the masses in Yemen escaped them, and now the Shia masses in South of Iraq rise up. It is that they do not bear any more having one of the largest reserves of oil beneath them and enjoying no electricity, drinking water or basic services in moments where a huge heat wave is hitting them. Here the last word has not been said.

PP:So, they are bourgeois army-parties. That is the categorization…

Abu Muad: Yes. This is a political and geo-strategic control that the counterrevolution of imperialism defined and acquired in the current international conditions, according to the balance of power between classes at regional and international levels.
To understand a little more deeply how the Kurdish bourgeoisie works,handing over its own people, let us start with the army-parties it has. In the Syrian Kurdish provinces, in the time of Bashar there wasalways a two-party system. There was the Workers Party of Kurdistan, PKK - which is the Communist Party - and the Democratic Party (PYD), which would be the classic bourgeois wing. These were the two Kurdish parties in Syria: the PYD was on the right and the PKK contained from the left the Kurdish masses and used the national sentiment of the Kurds to negotiate its existence, especially with the Government of Turkey.

PP:When revolution breaks out in 2011… Which is the role of the Kurdish masses?

Abu Muad:Let me keep commenting. As I said, when the Revolution broke out in 2011, all exploited masses arose. We have a video showing this, millions won the streets. No matter if they were Syrians or Kurds, unrest was general, and the need to fight for the bread was in the whole country.  Then the masses put in foot CoordinationCommittees, rank and file SoldiersCommittees when the army first starts to break. At that time, the YPG, an armed guard with the Kurdistan Democratic Party,is cornered by the masses that became insurrected in the heat of the revolution at that time against the dog Bashar. I.e., the Kurdish masses took to the militia of the Kurdish Democratic Party to fight Bashar.

They entered there and changed the content. The fact is that there were the weapons that they needed to face the army of Al-Assad. Thus, Bashar was facing both Syrian and Kurdish masses in the North.
Then, what did Bashar do? He negotiated with the bourgeois sectors which could first control them, and divide this offensive that threatened to reach Damascus in 2011 / 2012. It was so that dog Bashar made a pact with the Kurdish bourgeoisie. These parties told the Kurdish masses that if they did not face Al-Assad, he would not attackthem. So they disarmed the Kurdish masses; and the PKK and the YPG aborted this armed movement composed of the Kurdish workers who, despite and against their bourgeoisie, were prompt to face and had armed to fight Bashar.
Hoy vemos cómo en Kobane, Afrin y otras ciudades que controla la burguesía kurda en el norte de Siria han levantado muros, transformándolas en verdaderos ghettos, que también le sirven para controlar al pueblo kurdo y que no se vuelva a levantar. Así garantiza la burguesía kurda su pacto con Bashar.
The onslaught of the Kurdish masses is the first thing that is aborted. That is how the military parties of the Kurdish bourgeoisie, like the YPG, returned to control the masses.
Then the Free Syrian Army, with its Basharistgenerals that "move on to the other side" with bag and baggage, begins to take control of thecoordination committees of Syrian workers in the rest of the country. 
But the first thing that is aborted is precisely that participation of the Kurdish people in the YPG;because with Bashar-PYD deal, these militias are disarmed.
Today we see how in Kobane, Afrin and other cities controlled by the Kurdish bourgeoisie in the North of Syria they have raised walls, transforming them into real ghettos, which also serve to control the Kurdish people and so that it does not dare to rise up again. Thus guarantees the Kurdish bourgeoisie itscovenant with Bashar.

WM:You had a direct experience with the Kurdish parties in the fight against Bashar al Assad…

Abu Muad: Yes. We know very well the YPG and the cowardly Kurdish bourgeoisie, which has sold out its own people in exchange for a couple of coppers. Just note the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees who are in the borders with Turkey, the 10,000 Kurdish prisoners in Turkey, and the new 590 imprisoned now, or those murdered now by the Turkish aviation... and remember that the PKK had not only agreed with Al-Assad, but also with the Turkish bourgeoisie...
We have collided in Syria with the apparatus of the Kurdish bourgeoisie defending Al-Assad. It was about La' aziziyah - which is a Christian residential area-, and just behind the residential area there is a Kurdish neighborhood that is Asharafiya. In La'aziziyah troops of Bashar had a post from which they were shooting us with heavy artillery in the neighborhoods Sukari, Salah ad-Din and Saif al - Dawla whichare three working-class neighborhoods. We made a lunge there with about a hundred men to this basis that was in La'aziziyah. We could not move forward. We were short of ammunition and had to go back. When we wanted to go through the Kurdish quarter they did not let us pass. And as Bashar knew they wouldn't let us pass he was waiting for us on the other side, behind a cemetery, making us an ambush. Because it was already agreed that the Kurds would not let us go through and then we were going to have to make that mandatory route.
Despite and against the Kurdish bourgeoisie, we got in that neighborhood, practically at gunpoint, and we could get on the other way. This was already happening in mid-2012, well into the Syrian revolution. There was a clearly established Pact between Kurdistan and Bashar, and already the YPG had been aborted, they were no more an expression of semi-dual power of the masses.

PP: Does the Kurdish Democratic Party in the North of Iraq play the same role? Does the Kurdish bourgeoisie work in this way? Because there are the Peshmergas, who are the armed wing of the Kurdish bourgeoisie in Iraq, which received a huge territory where there are thelargestoil wells in that country.

Leandro Hofstadter: It must first be borne in mind that Iraq has a capacity of exports of 3 million barrels per day, it is the second largest exporter in the world - or third, it fights it every inch with Iran—of which the Kurdish bourgeoisie has a 15% approximately, which it operates autonomously. In that area, the Kurdish bourgeoisie has its own autonomous Government, its own Parliament... It is a province with its own, inside Iraq and subordinate to his Government and Central laws, but with its own, which allows them to handle it directly. The Kurdish area has boundaries where it borders with Turkey and Iran, where it also can export oil directly, as it does for example with Turkey; they negotiate directly without having to go through the central Government.
The Kurdish bourgeoisie has evena central part in the Iraqi Government. Theirs is the speaker of the Parliament, which would be a head of State, more or less as the Vice-President in Argentina; it is the President of the single Chamber that there is for Parliament and has its own attributes as a head of State. 
So it has a central role in the Government of the US protectorate in Iraq, awarded by American imperialism. USA made Iraq a coalition Government, a Shiite Prime Minister (which is now Abadi), with an all-Shiite Cabinet, and the head of Stateis Kurdish.

Carlos Münzer: As we can see, in the hands of the Kurdish bourgeoisie, this people without a national State was used at certain times outside Turkey - where it resides as a minority - as a battering ram of imperialism. Thus it happened in Iraq when it supportedBushJr.’s invasion or in Syria after the deal with Al-Assad. At other times, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the same Bashar Al-Assad massacred the Kurdish masses, to crush their uprisings against oppression, and also have been repressed for decades in Turkey as an oppressed nation.
Therein rests the Kurdish reactionary bourgeoisie and its parties. What is the argument that it used before the Kurdish masses of Syria to support Al-Assad? That when Kurds rose in the ' 80s against the Syrian regime, and this crushed them, "no one supported them," when in reality the Kurdish bourgeoisie was always saved and kept its businesses, though it was oppressed, even after the worst crushing of the Kurdish masses. With this type of arguments the Kurdish bourgeoisie pulled the Kurdish masses behind Bush in his invasion of Iraq.
What cannot be hidden is that, even in moments of greater collaboration of the Kurdish bourgeoisie with imperialism and its agents, this oppressed people was always was crushed and persecuted in Turkey, which is home to the largest number of Kurds. This is the cynicism of the Kurdish bourgeoisie. It supported the invasion of United States and NATO to Iraq, while NATO itself with the Turkish Government was massacring them, such as they are doing today. Thus it has been left it isolated from the oppressed throughout the region.
This is the tragedy of the oppressed Kurdish people, and in particular in Turkey with the PKK, which called for unilateral disarmament and to join the Turkish regime, placing, as we already said, members in the Parliament. And once the PKK was on the surface, Erdogan commanded a brutal attack for disciplining it within Turkey. What is clear is that the Kurdish bourgeoisie has sold outits own people for crumbs and stabilized its business, liquidating the national question and oppressing the exploitedKurds along with the oppressors. It has thus exposed the Kurdish masses to the fiercest repression by Erdogan.

Abu Muad: it is clear that the path to national self-determination of the Kurdish people is inseparably linked to the struggle for the overthrow of oppressorregimes and governments, moving towards the United States Socialist of the Maghreb and the Middle East. This is what we have raised in the book. The struggle for the self-determination of the Kurdish people is irreconcilablewith the submission imposed on it by its bourgeoisie kneeled before the dog Basharin the case of Syria.
It will live inghetto-towns, as the Palestinian nation. And this is the most serious. The Palestinian people whose territory was occupied by Zionism, is ignored by the Kurdishbourgeoisie and all the Kurdish parties. There is no struggle for the self-determination of the Kurdish nation separated from the struggle for the destruction of the Zionist State of Israel and the defeat of the Turkish murderous regime in NATO.
Ultimately, as Marxism tells, any people who collaborate to oppress another one cannot free itself. That is what means our call to Kurdish workers to ignore all agreements made by their own bourgeoisie with Al-Assad, with the US protectoratein Iraq and with Erdogan.

Abu Muhajer:We have brought forth a recent statement realizing this attack by Erdogan to the Kurdish masses, which we will certainly publish.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Second day of debating–August 11th

"... The heads of the ISIS are businessmen, the bourgeoisie of the Sunni triangle. The ISIS is a bourgeois party which controls the masses with itsarmy parties. They have -as a legal cover- more than 30 members in the Iraqi Parliament, where the businesses are distributed under the command of the US..."
Abu Muad

"... Capitalism is a system that reproduces itself automatically, and when there is war it is when it most breeds (...)" "people do business above the weapons and with weapons..."
Leandro Hofstadter

"ISIS wins 2 million dollars a day from the sale of oil from the territory which it controls (...)" This oil goes through Turkey, and also by the Iraqi pipelines that pass through the entire Shiite area to the Persian Gulf (...) "Now, if it were a terrorist force (...) how does it sell that oil?..." "... In Syria they manage the dollar and the lira, which is printed on the central bank which Al-Assad controls in Damascus..."

"...business is business (...) Capital acknowledges no borders. For the bourgeois fractions and imperialism, which settles its counter-offensive against the masses, business as usual goes on, on the basis of hunger, misery and massacring of the exploited..."
Carlos Münzer

WM: A propos the ISIS. We read in the international press that there was a large military offensive by US against the ISIS. Is that true?

Abu Muad:We have had the opportunity to chat recently with colleagues who have been managing the Leon Sedov Brigade, who are directly on the terrain of the facts. They tell us from there that there was never an attack or a bomb against the Islamic State, except in Kobane (Ayn al-Arab). These bombs were always dropped against the masses and its vanguard, which have taken to the streets and do not let anyone to enter to their neighborhoods, they are dropped against the self-defense committees which may remain there and that have escaped from the control of the leadership of the Free Syrian Army and others.
An example of this happened in a prison, where the Islamic State had imprisoned many people because they were praying late, or because they found them smoking, or people that never went to pray at the mosque as ISIS would like... Let's say that they were sent to prison without a serious charge, simply for small charges of "breaching God's law" as they say. This prison was in a city of northern Syria, just northeast off Aleppo, which is called Al Bab. Imperialists bombed it, saying that it was a command of the ISIS Center, though it was actually a prison with civilians, and ended up wiping out 400 people whose crime was not going to pray on time or smoking cigarettes. There were civilians who could, in my opinion, get to break with that environment of oppression that is religion in particular. They were breaking from left, so to speak, because they were already not going to pray. They could get out of that prison with a lay disposition. Then for the imperialism they were also a problem.

Carlos Münzer: I think that to understand fully what is ISIS about we should begin considering that the revolution had a shape and content. I.e., the content of the revolution was the struggle of the dispossessed for bread... a bursting of the working-class wrapped in a popular movement of masses, against the imperialist plunder. The shape of the revolution took the form of popular actions with millions on the streets. Method: that of the semi-insurrection, which led to the partition of the armies and, in more advanced places such as in Libya and Syria, to the masses arming themselves.
In the case of Libya they went the farthest, leaving completely demolished the regime and the institutions of the State, also doing justice with Khadafy.
In Tunisia the direct irruption of the working class against the generals of Ben Ali already marked the map of revolution. At the beginning, the UGTT was strengthened... it filled with workers who entered the political struggle of the masses... but then its leadership put those huge energies at the foot of the " 14 January Front " and then the "National Salvation Front", where even the party of Ben Ali was in. The popular front and the politics of class collaboration was the content of bourgeois reaction, the detour and expropriation of the revolution. In Egypt, the revolution took the form of great actions of masses and general strikes of the working class and the poor.
It was a revolutionary torrent that dragged into all most oppressed layers of the population... millions onto the streets. That was the way the revolution acquired and its limit was set in that before that they developed or as soon as they began to build the organs of dual power, the task of all directions was to encircle the revolution.
In Egypt the masses did not reach breaking the army. The latter appeared as "neutral"... it posed as "democratic". Imperialism used the Muslim Brotherhood to do the dirty work of attacking crowds in Tahrir square. Then, the "Democrats" came, who in their turn called the generals, who staged a coup-de-état and set up a fierce military dictatorship.

PP: You werefighting with and lived within the revolutionary masses in Libya. It was a great experience…

Abu Muad: Yes, there the revolution got further. It destroyed all the institutions of the regime and left the bourgeois state completely crushed. Syria threatened to be a new Libya. But as soon as the masses began to arm themselves, the leaderships started to accuse them, saying that they had been encouraged by imperialism to topple Khadafy.
So, also the map of the revolution had a certain performance of the counter-revolutionary leaderships, which was to encircle them, saying that they were pushed by imperialism, with the aim of dislocating them from the process of the international revolution. This happened with Libya and Syria, and it was insidious. And we reached situations as in Libya where it really happened that a revolution was dirtied, tainted, vilified. Rebel militias of Libya had more casualties due to the NATO bombing (which was called "friendly fire" by the media) than due to the dog Khadafy’s fire.
The Syrian revolution was categorically a massacred revolution, like that in Egypt, where all the "democrats" were splashing in the blood of insurgent masses that had taken in Tahrir square; that is, the “democrats”stood ultimately holding the guns of the dictatorship, which set free Mubarak, and there are hundreds of people in the death row and tens of thousands of political prisoners.
The imposture of the "democratic revolutions," parliamentary "breakthroughs", were nothing more than reactionary expropriations of the revolutions that were on course... they were nothing more than a circumvent to return to the generals of Mubarak, Ben Ali, etc.

WM: So, which is then the map of counterrevolution?

Carlos Münzer: It is as we began telling you. Counter-revolutiontook the path of partition, i.e. Lebanonization, in the case of Syria, Libya or Iraq.  In Bahrain and Egypt, or as Saudi Arabia tries to do now in Yemen, the revolution collapsed under classic Bonapartist coups.
As we said, imperialism cannot act directly. Therefore, it has instructed its agents of bourgeois army-parties for coming to control the masses where the masses defeated the bourgeois States, such as in Syria or Iraq itself, where the ISIS came to the cities to discipline the local insurrections in the Sunni triangle... Or in Libya, where on one side there is Hafter’s coup, but on the other hand all the local bourgeoisiesact to break down and disperse the power of the worker militias.
In short, the map of the counter-revolution means the disintegration, fragmentation of the Nations, which is the plan of the Pentagon and imperialism: "that everyone kills everyone, and then I come and stabilize the situation and take all the businesses". This partition plan includes the establishment of the war borders, i.e., cities that are right on the border of the control zone of a bourgeois fraction; they are constantly besieged and under the permanent threat of entry of another bourgeois fraction controlling contiguous territory. So these cities are continuously bombarded and live the on-again, off-again, sometimes so only meters or blocks, in the control of a bourgeois fraction, and the vast majority of the population of this city is exiled and living as a refugee. So we saw it in certain quarters of Aleppo - war borders between Al-Assad and the FSA - or as it was Kobane - war border between the Kurdish bourgeoisie and ISIS.
This is the map of the counter-revolution. I.e., insulation, fence, slander to the revolution; the partition of Nations and the picturing the allies of the peoples as their enemies and their enemies as allies.

WM: Therefore, ISIS is part of this “map of the counterrevolution”.

Leandro Hofstadter:Absolutely, but the problem is that the entire world left says that the great battle is only against the ISIS, which would be, as they say, the "greatest terrorist in the world". For them, the counter-revolution is only the ISIS. They hide the massacres by Al-Assad, the Libyan puppet government; they conceal the Saudi invasion to Yemen, and they end up whitewashing the largest Middle East terrorists: the Zionist State of Israel -and the US troops which invaded and massacred Iraq, and that today manipulate the ISIS, among others, from the backroom.

Abu Muad: Now, whydo they set up such a large smokescreen? Because they are all concealing that Al-Assad holds up in Damascus. Because, beyond the partition, all of them agree that Damascus must not fall. And while Damascus does not fall, the partition will deepen and the tragedy to the masses will go on. Just ISIS, as the FSA yesterday, are there so the masses do not reach Damascus, do not pass from Aleppo southwards... i.e., the masses have to remain in the area of ISIS, of the "Levant". And there, ISIS is which disciplines the exploited, thoughthere are some areas where the Free Syrian Army continues to do so.
Carlos Munzer: But the Syrian revolution has not yet been defeated. They have just gone 15,000 new Iranian Republican Guards to fight against Damascus. That means they have yet to continue sending forces to supporta Al-Assad, men are mercenaries. This means that they cannot stabilize Al-Assad and he is increasingly losing more social base in Damascus. Al-Assad is only supported by the bayonets of the Iranian ayatollahs, sent by US to sustain him. As we have already said thus is the "Geneva 3" plan. I.e. as the Kurdish-Assad covenant is part of the U.S.-Iran Pact to prevent Bashar from falling down. And it is completely insidious, because the forces military holding Al-Assad are no more Syrian, and the weapons are all Russian! Therefore a replacement becomes indispensable of Al-Assad who has already done the dirty work through extermination.

PP: Well, if there are so many forces, why ISIS is not defeated?

Abu Muad: It must be taken into account that, as we said before, the ISIS is a temporary agent of imperialism. It is not the immediate task of imperialism to defeat it. All the farcical throwing up of hands in horror is a "smokescreen" for the media. 
The ISIS serves imperialism for giving, through this smokescreen, legality to the massacring the masses and the resistance. It is a well-equipped circus, and is being clear that ISIS is fulfilling its role perfectly, massacring armed masses which are beyond the control of other leaderships seeking to contain them. While ISIS is still guaranteeing this role, it is useful to imperialism and this is why it is not "defeated".

Moreover, the ISIS entered in Geneva2 because it serves well its role. And now in Geneva 3, it is very likely that the ISIS is not dismissed, but rather stayswith a 'clean face', i.e. a sort of self-reform to stop appearing as a "terrorist" and be integrated to the map of the Middle East.

Carlos Münzer: Marxism defined that war is an institution of domination the same as a Parliament, as a Government... And it expresses classes and relations of classes... and ultimately it is the continuation of politics by other means. It is to say that what defines the war is politics.

Abu Muad:And on this, we have to make clear that the heads of the ISIS are businessmen, the bourgeoisie of the Sunni triangle. The ISIS is a bourgeois party which controls the masses with its army-party. They have more than 30 members in the Iraqi Parliament, as we have said, fromwhere the businesses are distributed under US command, and this is what they want to deal with now in Syria. And precisely the ISIS, turned out to be the most effective to control the masses. With its Islamic ideology and its weapons it imposes a Bonapartist discipline in its Caliphate, and anybody not wanting to accept it undergoes slaughter;FSA and Jabhat al - Nusra could not go so far, as well as the Sunni resistance could not contain the uprisings in Fallujah and Mosul last year. The imperialist press announces and claims "the order" that exists in the areas that the ISIS controls, as in Raqqa or Deirez-Zor, where "everything is clean and there is no theft", private property and business are protected and respected. The source: "Foreign Affairs" magazine.

Carlos Münzer: Yes, and we must demystify it even more. The ISIS manages and controls large tracts of Iraqi oil, as in Mosul. It controls all the refineries in places where it is seated. In Syria it also has control over a sector of oil industry. As is already recognized by the imperialist press, ISIS earns 2 million dollars a day from the sale of oil from the territory which it controls. They also recognize that this oil passes through Turkey, and also goes by the Iraqi pipelines that pass through the entire Shiite area to the Persian Gulf.

WM: Now, if ISIS is a 'terrorist force'-as everybody says, as is stated by the bourgeois press, how do they do to trade and sell oil if the territories that the ISIS controls have no passage to the sea? Where do they send the oil through? Who does that? What currency do they handle? …Because the economy continues to operate. Nobody in the imperialist press can answer this question.

Carlos Münzer: That "terrorist force" manages an extension of territory equivalent to the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a very large part of the world oil in it... even if they are not producing to full capacity. They may be producing to a minimum, but they still make money. In Syria they handle dollars and the Syrian lira, which is printed on the central bank controlled by Al-Assad in Damascus...
And no one can answer this, not even the bourgeois analysts. They sell so much smoke spread over the terrorist "ISIS", that no one has bothered to define how the region functions economically, a region that is occupied. Don't want to say that "business is business", and there, business is as usual. Capital has no borders. For the bourgeois fractions and for imperialism, which is settling its counter-offensive against the masses, business has continued on the basis of hunger, misery and massacring the exploited.

PP:And what do they say to sort the answers to these questions, to hide them?

Carlos Munzer: They say that there is an "interethnic” or “interreligious conflict". So the charlatans of the PTS say... as if the wars were religious issues.
That is truly cynical. We have seen wars whose forms were "religious" in the end of the Middle Ages. But to call “religious wars”the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics was a shame, because in that division of the Catholic Church what was happening was that the Protestant bourgeoisie of Luther was breaking against the parasites of the nobility. The bourgeoisie wanted them to go down. It was a negotiation of an orderly exit of the Princes, not of an inter-religious conflict. The peasant wars of Germany in 1524-1525 were not religious wars conducted by Luther, but peasant wars that the bourgeoisie used to negotiate with the European nobility.
Not even the Crusades were religious wars. They were the wars for the domination of the Silk Road, the trade routes and the fertile soil which, in Europe, was nearly exhausted.
That is, no war is about religion. The war expresses class interests, or the interest of diverse class sectors. Does anybody believe that the war by Zionism against Palestine is a religious one and does not express the interests of imperialism to establish a fictitious nation that is its gendarme in the region? 
There is no such a thing as an inter-faith war, although some war may acquire religious forms. That's a brutality of people who want to hide behind a religious mantle that is the form that the counterrevolution acquires; because the "inter-faith wars" are now the way that the counter-revolution acquires for depriving the masses of their victory.

Leandro Hofstadter:Returning to the ISIS... we have to demystify this... because Marxism not only thinks that this is not an inter-religious war, but that it is the counterrevolution, i.e. they are fractions of the bourgeoisie doing, on account of imperialism, what the latter cannot do with its transnationals directly in war zones. Here there are fractions of the bourgeoisie, fromthe Kurd one up to the Iraqi-Sunni, the Saudi, Qatari, and the Iranian ones, who are the guardians of their own property and of that of the whole imperialism.

WM: Let’s de-mystify the ISIS then: in the territories it controls in Syria,aretheir business governed with the lyre, which is the currency in that country? How do they remove the oil through Turkey to the Mediterranean? Who buys the oil from the ISIS? What do imperialist enterprises do which had oil there?

Leandro Hofstadter: Next, let's say that playing the fool with the key issues that youask, and looking the other way, is equivalent to wanting to hide an elephant in a closet. Let’s clarify, then: the ISIS occupied oil wells in a speedrace in Iraq, before the hungry masses took them in the uprisings of early 2014 in Fallujah and Mosul. It was to prevent the masses from expropriating them and put them to produce for themselves, and once it achieved that, it imposed its control and domination. It extracts oil by subjecting and exploiting the masses with wages that are a pittance and in subhuman conditions, with workdays of 12 hours without any kind of safety conditions.
ISIS has occupied refineries but it also exports raw oil. That is, ISIS is selling both crude oil and its derivatives - such as petrol or diesel - and its oil goes out, either by pipelines in Iraq through Shiite and Kurdish areas where it passes by the ISIS personnel signing bills of quantity of fluid delivery, or directly into trucks that cross the war borders. ISIS sells oil at U$D 7 per barrel -the market price being U$D $60 approximately. Either the feesare paid to carriers that go to Turkey or the passage through the oil pipelines to the Persian Gulf is arrangeddirectly in Baghdad with the Shiite bourgeoisie -with which ISIS is supposedly in war. The generals of the ISIS are businessmen. We have seen that they have a legal party in Iraq. They follow the oil and trade routes that existed before the partition of those countries (Syria and Iraq, NT). The carriers are the same ones as before, with the same companies, now under the control of the ISIS, following the same routes and distributing the oil.

PP:So ISIS is which guarantees the oil trade, where before there was the “Syrian State” or the “Iraqi State”?

Leandro Hofstadter: Well,if it doesnot do the deliveryby crushing the masses, the latter would do so with the revolution, which began in Fallujah, Mosul, North of Syria, etc.
The ISIS is a great guardian of the privately owned oil companies and also in general of private trade in the areas that it controls. And across these borders, there are other bourgeois fractions that negotiate the traffic and value of the goods trafficked. With Bashar, with the Turkish bourgeoisie, with the Shia bourgeoisie, this people, like all bourgeoisies, does not have any borders, neither homeland, nor religion, only business. 
While it is true that production is not the same, it is true that they are billing u$ s 2 million a day from the sale of crude oil and its derivatives, which supply an important part but all the Syrian domestic market, and were left with part of the oil that Syria was exporting towards Turkey (which they now do). And they have now 35% of the oil from Iraq, which is one of the oil giants of the world. Therefore the amount of oil they take is not little.

Abu Muad:But we are going to unveil to the bone the entire world reformist left, that are real talking cockatoos, wanting to deflect attention from the real policy of imperialism in the region. ISIS has a legal party in the Iraqi Parliament. In this Parliament, of 328 members, there are a few who are members of the Sunni bourgeoisie, who are representatives of the Sunni triangle, i.e., the area of Iraq where ISIS is. They are its spokesmen, who do business with the Shia bourgeoisie, with the US Government, and arrange the business in the Iraqi Parliament, who discuss how the oil is sold, how the interests of the oil companies are defended which are installed in Iraq. 
ISIS has 36 members in the Government of the US protectorate in Iraq, which it shares with the Shiite bourgeoisie. And also the President of the Chamber of representatives of the Iraqi Congress - which is a unique camera - is from the Sunni bourgeoisie, i.e., hechairs the sessions, establishes the order of the day, etc.

Carlos Munzer: Therefore, whoever says that it is an "inter-religious conflict" is hiding the businessmen. With this vision there are no masses’ upheavals which ISIS went to crush, the Sunni bourgeoisie was neutral to the uprisings in Fallujah (while in fact it instructed the ISIS so itmade the disgorgement and defend their property)... 
ISIS is the guardian of the imperialist oil companies where the Sunni bourgeoisie is a junior partner in the sector where the masses made an insurrection. USA and its regime of the protectorate in Iraq awarded it letting it to have members in the Parliament and a part of the business.
If not, how a group of 10,000 terrorists is able to control 35% of Iraqi oil? It's a crazy idea. ISIS exports to Turkey, has buyers... It sells oil at U$D7, but on the world market oil is worth 60. That means they do nothold the lion’s share;because if they sell the oil to $7 someone stays with the remainingU$D53 to reach the U$D60 which is the price that oil takes when it comes out on the Mediterranean Sea. Theassignment that the oil companies leave the ISIS is 7 dollars per barrel.

Leandro Hofstadter:For Big Oil that is their "cost" of production. The oil companies say: "It costs me U$D7 to remove the barrel from there"... it’s like an "outsourced" service. No matter if those who extract it are Shia, Sunni... or any other. For the oil industry it is as an outsourced service.

Carlos Münzer:That is, it is an "interfaith war" made by people who are all different managers of the oil companies. I.e., the "7 Sisters" send Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, the Saudi bourgeoisie, etc. to get their oil... and those who say that there is an "Interfaith war" -alsowant to make believe that the oil companies have nothing to do, as if they had stopped stealing oil.

WM: You have experience in having known these businessmen of the ISIS. The generals of the FSA were also bourgeois generals, is it so?

Abu Muad: Of course! If not it seems that the classes have disappeared and all that is there are turbaned clerics.
With regard to what was mentioned before about ConvergenciaSocialista (Socialist convergence)of Argentina; I always say that they will now support these Kurdish girls coming out in the pictureswith enameled fingernails along with the Kalashnikovs or any other rifle that imperialismgave them... but who supported the mothers, grandmothers, aunts and wives of the Syrian resistance, who had to beat the back and heads of Bashar’s troops, hitthem with the rolling pinand wooden spoons (because they had no other weapons), to get rid of the mercenary soldiers instructed by Bashar to kill them, rape them, to kill and kidnap their children, to rap their daughters?

Carlos Munzer: In that the enemy is terrorism... here just the discussion and the deception of that left dies. The back of the ISIS is the Sunni bourgeoisie supported by imperialism to have it play a counterrevolutionary role. There is everything to know what's behind the business of ISIS and which they are. We’ve demystified the issue.

Abu Muad:We’ve also demystified the fact that it remains a single currency in the country (either Syria or Iraq), and the fact that in any part of the territory moneyexchangehouseswork, which are not touched by either fraction. These exchange houses receive dollars and give liras, and, I repeat, they are not touched and willnever be. They handle large amounts of currency. There is an extreme misery everywhere, people dying of hunger all around, poor little girls 12/13 years old having to prostitute for a piece of bread... thoughexchange bureausare not touched.

Carlos Münzer:Exchange Bureaus are in areas controlled by the FSA, or by Jabhat Al - Nusra, the areas where there are Kurds, the area where Basharis... on all sides there are money exchange bureaus.

PP:How are those Exchange bureaus? Is there Western Union, for example?

Leandro Hofstadter:Official banks and Western Union have closed. There are no transactions abroad. There are money exchange bureaus in the same places that the former were, or mounted on improvised stalls elsewhere; they are which connect the financial circuit on the outside and inside Syria. These exchangehouses are what keep the financial circuit.

Carlos Munzer: The Syrian lira stays throughout the Syrian territory: where there are the Kurds, the ISIS... everywhere in Syria. You see, something regulates that currency;because it is in all places at the same value against the dollar. For example 150 liras is $1 in the area where the FSA is, in the area where there is ISIS, where there is Al-Assad... 
Now, that value is defined because there is a control of the central bank in Damascus, which controls all the goods produced in Syria... by means a registration of exports and imports, disrespectful of the group that controls the area,be it ISIS, Jabhat al - Nusra, ESL, etc.
I.e., the ISIS exports, cashes in dollars. Some must be put abroad, on the financial circuit - as all the bourgeoisie does that sends abroad money deposits - and another part is used for its expenses and domestic consumption in Syria and Iraq - and that is what is going to the exchange stands. There it changes dollars for lira (in the case of Syria) and for every dollar that is changed the central bank in Damascusemits lire. They are all under the accounting of the lira, i.e. of Damascus. They are under accounting for the dollars from oil exports. This common currency expresses common accounting and business in common.

Leandro Hofstadter: Because the carrier passes by the checkpoints of Al - Assad, the ISIS, FSA, of Baghdad, of Mosul, in the South of Iraq, goes through Turkey... i.e. the bourgeoisie acknowledges no borders. As Marxism tells, capitalism is a system that automatically reproduces itself, and when there is war it is when it most breeds. Against the view of the charlatans apologists of the bourgeoisie who want us to believe that capitalism has ceased to exist there, that it doesn't work any longer in those places, it is exactly when it works better, because it is where more crushed masses are and the wages are is the lowest. If there is counter-revolution, there are then the lowest wages at this time to produce.That is why they are producing atU$D7 a barrel.
The war limits, but it is also a great engine for capitalism. We have already seen that there is a common regulation, common currency, that it plays automatically, and persons are doing business over the weapons andthrough the weapons. They come together in Turkey. There are businessmen of the ISIS... or their parliamentary representatives meet with the Shiite bourgeoisie in the Parliament of Iraq. They come together and discussabout how much is the barrel, how much is the transport fee, by where you take itout... i.e. how the national income is distributed. And this is also true for FSA, Al - Assad... and among all of them they care for the private property.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Third Day of debating–August 12th

"... The plan is leading Libya almostto cantons, bourgeois city states... but whose unity is maintained by the CentralBank..."
Carlos Münzer

WM:We have already discussed the partition of Syria and Iraq... and Libya had previously been mentioned. How would the partition in Libya be?

Carlos Münzer: What Libyan comradessay is that the partition key there is that, notwithstanding from the fraction that controls each city, neither oil nor the Central Bank is touched. 
The bourgeois fractions can fight among then about what bourgeois fraction would predominate over the other, whether the bourgeoisie in Misratah, orHafter, or those who are now controlling Benghazi. This issue has not yet been settled. Then the plan is almost lead Libya to cantons, bourgeois city mini-states... but whose unity is maintained by the Central Bank. No bourgeois fraction can touch the Central Bank, which is where the dollars enter from oil exports and hence is distributed and alsothe currency, the dinar is taken off.

Abu Muad: The only force that attacked this plan was the labor movement with its struggles; it was even on the verge - although bourgeois sectors tried and mounted upon that fight- of exporting oil directly from the wells. With its oil workers general strike, the working class confronted this plan to dismember Libya. It is a plan seeking to get every last drop of oil and gas, and let each local bourgeoisie do its business disarming the masses and crushing them. The working class tended to unite Libya and to define who the enemy was: the imperialist powers and their looting. 
But the bourgeoisie took out the labor movement from the scene, especially the oil workers. The former dismembered their struggle. There the militias were dismembered and the Libyan reaction came out big, though it still could not be imposed. The decline is already complete.

………………………………………………………………….

"... What you can see in Yemen is a revolution, and they no longer know what to do to crush her..." "... "They are the Northern and the Southern, both "Shia"and"Sunni" exploited workers and poor peasants who rose up and defeated their oppressors, their Government and their statein the streets..."
Abu Muad

PP: What is your impression about Yemen? How is the situation there?

Leandro Hofstadter: There had been a "meeting" in Geneva between bourgeois Sunni fraction and the Houthis in Yemen, always under the command of the United Nations. The Houthis said they were going to the meeting to negotiate the cessation of the bombing - which is a massacre causing 6000 dead up to now– and to get the end of the blockade they have at the borders, so they can be opened and basic supplies –specially to repair the infrastructure- can be let through, because these bombardments have destroyed it quantitatively. 
The Saudi bourgeoisie, on the other hand, did not stop its attacks until the peopledid not leave for them Aden and the South of Yemen. They wanted the Houthisto guarantee them this, and once they did, it was then time to begin negotiating. But the Houthis failed to convince the masses to return to their homes. The exploited in the South--which are mostly Sunni - do not accept that once again the Government came which they had driven out with their fighting in the streets, their wounded and martyrs.
The Houthis had said they were going to be only 10 representatives of theirs to Geneva; however there went around 40, because they had to go from every place wherethey were trying to control the masses. And they could never meet with the Sunni bourgeoisie, because they could never close a deal against the masses. 
For its part, the Houthi bourgeoisie said: "No; I cannot sit there in Geneva until the Saudi-led coalition does not stop the attacks, because if I am there while the masses die in Yemen, they would say:“What are you doingsitting at a table in a luxury hotel discussing with those who are killing us?”
On the other hand, the Sunni bourgeoisie tells the Houthis “How do you want to come and sit down to negotiate if you cannot control the masses? Let the Government go back to Aden, send the masses –disarmed- to their homes, and we could talk. We cannot negotiate if the masses are at large. Now, if you cannot get the South free from the masses’ agitation, then you do not control anyone".
For this reason the Conferencefailed, because no one of them can control the masses. The only thing that both fractions did together was staging a circus pretending to beat each other in the meeting. In fact they cannot appear sitting at a table having a coffee and chatting when they are destroying the whole country; there are thousands and thousands of dead.
After that "Conference" the bombardment, the massacre, the siegecontinued... especially the siege and isolation. Under these conditions, the "Sunni Coalition" forces managed to demolish Aden and establishedthere a beachhead. So based on massacres by bombing the cities taken by the masses, which were fully fenced, the United Arab Emirateswere able to disembarktroops with tanks and heavy weaponry, and began to expand their grip to other few cities of the South. But the masses still keep firmly in the other areas of the country, especially in the capital, Sanaa.

WM:Cantelmi, a journalist who is responsible for the international editorials of Clarin(one of the major Buenos Aires newspapers), states that there are two regional powers: one is Saudi Arabia and the other is Iran, and that the entire region revolves around these two regional powers. He says that now the Middle East boils down to that: two powers vying for supremacy of the control in the region. What do you say about this?

Carlos Münzer: Cantelmi’s vision of "regional powers" is really disproportionate. Saudi Arabia is a US protectorate. If U.S. walks out on it, the Saudis would return to the tents in the desert. Iran has its oil industry completely outdated ... equal or worse than Venezuela. The industrial equipment are rusting and obsolete machines. There a large investment is needed. That is why USA closed the deal in spite of the alleged "nuclear bombs" …there are very juicy businesses in the lifting of the embargo on Iran. US is going to enslave Iran with triple and quadruple chains.

Abu Muad:Actually both Iran and Saudi Arabia want to mount themselves above the processes of the masses to take advantage and show who between them the best watchdog is. What is in Yemen is a revolution, and they no longer know what to do to crush it. Although Cantelmi is trying to explain things in this way, on the other hand the bourgeois media commanded by imperialism makes everything so the fence is getting higher and all-comprising, and for this sake they use Goebbels-Hitler's "lie, lie, lie, that something will remain''  strategy. It is what they are doing, accusing the masses of being pro Salah, who is the former Yemeni President pulled by the masses in 2011, in insurrections for bread. I remember the masses came to the demonstrations out brandishing a piece of stiff old bread but because they had no fresh soft bread to eat. That was the only thing they had in their homes to eat, and with that hard bread they went out to the streets to confront the Government. The press also accuses those Yemeni masses of being Shia troops. They invent everyday a new slander to confound the world exploited about the Yemeni masses. Actually the latter are the Northern and Southern masses together, both "Shia" and "Sunni" toilers, exploited workers and poor peasants who have risen up and defeated their oppressors, their Government and their statein the streets.

………………………………………………………………….

The forgeries of the currents who call themselves “leftists” on the situation in the Maghreb and Middle East

PP: What do currents in the world who call themselves leftistssay on the situation of the Maghreb and the Middle East?

Abu Muhajer: The silence of the World Social Forum is chilling. In Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, they apply the policy of the Khadafis and Al-Assads. The latter used the name of socialism to crush and brutally starving masses. That is what the alleged “revolutionary-of-the-21st-century” governmentdo in Venezuela today, firing against the exploited who revolt against starvation and paying the debt in dollars to the IMF. In Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil those “Bolivarians” are attacking harshly their working classes and in Cuba they deliver workers as slaves to US imperialism. Then, the left will complain that the masses "do not raise Socialist red flags in the revolutions" e.g. in the Maghreb and the Middle East. Actually those masses just made revolutions against the "Socialists", which in reality were lackeys of Wall Street. 

Carlos Münzer:Note that an ISO (which is linked to the English SWP)Conference called "Socialism 2015" met in USA, where a Syrian group in exile participated saying they claim to be for the FSA and the Syrian revolution. This group is part of the grouping ofSolidarity with Syria in Barcelona, IS from Argentina, the ITU and the Mandelites who say that they have people in Syria, though in reality they are exiles living in Belgium.
All of these "left" groups pose that the situation in the Maghreb and the Middle East has become a religious conflict. It is the same thesis that the PTS of Argentina holds. They say that "the struggle for democracy is over". In fact they were the "democratic revolution" theorists, who were telling the masses in Egyptto support the "democratic process" to ensure a constituent Assembly, as the April 6 movementdid. Ultimately what they said was that the solution for the revolution was in the polls and not in the victory of the power bodies of the masses. But it turned out to be that the "constituents" and "democracy" of the "Arab spring" ended up being a detour back to Mubarak in Egypt or to Ben Ali'sregime in Tunisia.

Abu Muad:When the masses and the revolutionary process were advancingin 2011, the entire world left voiced that they were cominglong years of "democratic spring"... Imperialism and the bourgeoisie understood very well the situation, that what existed was the beginning of a chain of worker and peasant revolutions. Today, when a fierce imperialistcounter-offensive is raging... these currents call the counterrevolution"an inter-religious war". They hid the revolution and now are concealing the counterrevolution. This is the left of Obama.
That is the reason why the revolutions of the Maghreb and the Middle East were maligned, fenced, groped... "History will be cruel with the left of Obama that encircled these revolutionary processes, as the left of Obama was cruel to createthe conditions of the current defeats".

Leandro Hofstadter:The position of the PTS you can see in an interview made toAlbamonte (head of the Argentinian PTS, NT). The PTS had risen that the revolution regressed when it became militarized. In other words, as we have already said, what they say is that the revolutions that take arms fail. This is an atrocious pacifism. Actually revolutions are militarized when the bourgeoisie tries to militarily crush the revolution, and the masses will organize, defend themselves and be armed. The crisis occurs when the bourgeoisie manipulates the masses; disarming them, controlling them with army parties...
Today, in fact they pose that in Yemen there is an occupation by the Shiites from the southern part of the country, and that obliges Saudi Arabia to intervene to defend the Government in the South. They say that there is a changing geopolitical situation, in which US wants to establish a "nuclear peace" with Iran. This is a brutality. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, among others, are involved in a coalition supported by the US and NATO where North, Center and South of Yemenare bombarded indiscriminately... There is no town or working-class neighborhood without bombing, and they dare to affirm that this is to prevent an invasion of Shiite North against Sunni South!Alas, the masses of Shiites and Sunnis are fighting together in throughout Yemen for bread, against hunger and the hated Government of Aden!

Carlos Münzer:What the PTS says already nobody can believe it. They say "US’ nuclear peace with Iran” when is it shown that Iran cannot produce any atomic bomb because they don't have the technology to do so. They are impressionistic analysts of distant events, where they care for good hiding processes of the revolution and the counterrevolution.  Their vision has nothing in common with what is happening there.
For the PTS, USA first "encouraged the struggles for democracy"; those were the uprisings in Libya, Syria... imperialism for them indeed, "was one of the engines" of the mass "democratic uprisings" in the "Arab spring".  They have gone so far as to say that USA is opposed to a Saudi Arabia invasion to Yemen. Well, this people not even know the map of the region! A revolutionary Yemen is a living danger for the passage of commercial navigation of the transnationalsthrough the Red Sea and the Suez Channel... To tell the truth, South Yemen must be crushed and controlled because there one of the largest reserve armies of labor force in the Middle East has rebelled; a labor force that caters to entire countries so depopulated as United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, requiring that slavery for the construction industry, oil wells, etc. Undoubtedly the reformist left has endeavored to throw soil on the eyes of the world proletariat so that the latter does not see clearly who its class siblings in Middle East are.

WM: Yes, we had already talked about the reformist conception of this people assigning a progressive role to imperialism when they said that in Libya there was a "dominance of clans” and that the Middle East is plagued by"barbarian tribes"and"religious conflicts"."

Carlos Münzer:Yes, but the "approaches" of these people do not end there. They continue saying "the central place where the working class intervened was in Egypt", but for them “the working class did not intervene (as such) but (diluted in) the people in general"and therefore that was the cause for the revolution not havingtriumphed in there. So that for the PTS the problem was not that the revolution was betrayed, i.e., it was not the crisis of leadership. For them, the problem was that "the working class is weak and by not intervening in the revolution as a working class but as the people in general, this was defeated from the beginning".
With this reasoning of the PTS, if we were in Russia in February 1917, where there was an uprising of millions of peasants who were in the war as soldiers, we would have to say that the revolution would be defeated from the beginning because the working class entered revolution dissolved into the millions of peasants. And precisely the opposite was what happened. The PTS is revising the theory, History and historical lessons. What makes a revolution tough is exactly that, as Trotsky and Leninsay, all the impoverished peopleintervene, not just the working class, because if the only ones fighting were the workers, which are not the majority of the population, that would weaken the struggle and the revolution. This is a trade unionist and social democratic vision. The key is why a working-class cannot lead the millions of exploited poor farmers who are admitted to the revolutionary struggle. And that is not a "rare metamorphosis" of the working class. It is the activity of the leadership of that working class which submits it to the bourgeoisie, and this prevents the proletariat from being the leader of all oppressed sectors of the society.

Leandro Hofstadter:And in addition they falsify the facts. Because it was the Association of textile workers - who stood up when those workers entered the revolution - which called to vote delegates, one every thousand in all organizations to centralize in Tahrir square, which was the Centre of power of the insurrectedmasses and where the prospects forwardwere discussed of how to continue and make revolutionsucceed all across Egypt. The working class did intervene, and its program was clear. But the leaderships that mounted on it began to build legal labor parties, legal unions... and all that supporting laws and legalities and a so-called "democratic revolution" that ended up giving power to general Al-Sisi. And, no sooner had he assumed, he debuted with a massacre of hundreds of thousands of insurrected in Tahrir Square and the streets of the entire Egypt, with a scathing attack on the working class, particularly textiles, and today there are tens of thousands in prisons and hundreds in the death row. What determined the fall of Mubarak was a strike, very strong in the 3 main worker centers -Cairo, Alexandria and Suez-, which accompanied the taking of Tahrir square.
These people want to hide that they supported the exit of the rigged and fraudulent constituents of the "democratic" factions of the bourgeoisie. These constituents were nothing more than a diversion to facilitate the bloody counter-revolutionary hits that we see today. They were praising "democracy"; and now they pose of “pro-worker”...

Carlos Munzer:What happens is that old theories have arisen to justify the unjustifiable. Because how can PTS explain its position? If it is as they say, there is a clan society and not a class one, and if there are interreligious conflicts... then they have to explain what mode of production there exists in the region. We believe that, already in the 21st century, to say that there are neither bourgeois nor proletariat is serious. Already in the capitalism of the 19th century no region of the world existed that was not dominated by the capitalist system, much less in the imperialist epoch when financial capital has conquered all its spheres of influence in the colonial and semi-colonial world. Then, saying today that there is no capitalism is a brutality.
Much less it canbe said in relation to Libya, which must import a million workers from Tunisia and Egypt to get its oil production, as it is the fifth oil producer in OPEC. These are absurdities from charlatans. "Clans" in the final analysis are the bourgeois parties that control by city or by industry. The Government of Khadafy had organized what was a Council of "clans", i.e., it distributed the oil income among all regional and "local" bourgeois fractions of Libya. Talking about the "Libya of the clans" and setting these outside of the productive forces and the relations of classes in that country is a vulgar charlatanry;it is a complete break from Marxism.

Leandro Hofstadter: These people have an Enlightenment view of history... The class struggle has been suspended... because if they are "clans", there are neither workers nor bourgeois. They hid them. This they had said since the beginning of the uprising against Khadafy. We are not inventing anything. It is in their materials.
They mourn the death of Khadafy. They denigrate the labor movement with their invention of a “Bedouinmedieval Libya". But, what is worse, if it is as they say and they want to be consistent, they should be supporting any invasion of the imperialists to Libya, because "it would be taking a superior mode of production to the old clans of Bedouin tribes in the desert"...
Again, Khadafy and his "clans" were nothing more than bourgeois gangs with huge investments in Fiat, the British Petroleum, the weapons industry... they were a true employment agency of slaves from sub-Saharan Africa in imperialist Europe. What "clan" do they speak about? No kidding, please! Khadafy’s was a powerful bourgeois fraction that acted as a junior partner to imperialism.

Carlos Münzer: But it is already blatant what the socialimperialistparties do, even denying the existence of a bourgeois class. The oil companies and imperialist banks control most of the productive forces, i.e. oil, gas or the slavery of the entire Maghreb and Middle East... how is it that there are only "clans" or "inter-religious conflict"? British Petroleum and the ENI… what are they? Clans? What are those people speaking about? Actually,imperialist corporations and banks are key sectors of the bourgeoisies of semi-colonial countries, and of the Maghreb and the Middle East in particular... are they also a "clan"?
All this "new left" policy consists in hiding to the world masses the revolutionary struggle that their class brothers and sisters of the Maghreb and the Middle East fought and the counter-revolutionary response given byimperialism and its lackey bourgeoisies.

WM:These absurdities must have some more serious fictional support...

Abu Muad:Yes, but all of this is "enlightened despotism". One star party of this new left, the English SWP, says -referring to the Maghreb and the Middle East- that: "they are countries torn apart by occupations, civil wars, extreme poverty; and there the working class does not have an independent expression, because the clerics, the sheikhs, the mosques come and give them electricity, services, food, and so co-opt them to their religious movements." Then the region is made up of religious movements and the key is the analysis of all these religious movements. But isn't that what the imperialismmakes, co-opting the labor aristocracies and bureaucracies in the world with their parties? Is it not what Obama makes with the US working class, Chavezistas in Venezuela, the ANC and all the bourgeois parties who manipulate the masses? Precisely, as we have developed it extensively in our book, electricity, food rations granted by the sheikhs, mosques, etc., is part of the social wage that arises from a thousandth part of the oil income, which allows the worker’s family to eat, while he is going to work in the oil wells and the construction works on the entire Maghreb and Middle East.

Leandro Hofstadter:What they say with this vision is that the working class only exists when they have an independent labor party. For the "London-centric" parties as the English SWP, the working class must have its party and its Union, or it does not exist. I.e., there is not a structure of classes in society. For them the working class only exists if it has a class institution in the political superstructure. Then the US working class does not exist because they vote Democrat or Republican, which are rather more reactionary than the sheikhs. Therefore they say that the Middle East is defined bythe Islamist parties, which co-opt the working class, which does not exist as such. Then the key - according to them - is to see within these movements, what we can discover there, their inner contradictions, etc. 
Now, on the ISIS they remark that it has an ultra-repressive and strict leadership, which does not allow any contradiction inside. The ISIS is pure and only reaction and then you cannot call for a frontwith any worker inside it, nor do they have any rank and file at all, according to the explanation of the English SWP.

Abu Muad: Therefore, if tomorrow U.S. attacks the regions of Iraq or Syria controlled by ISIS to retake territory and stay with the business, they would be on US side and applaud its attack on entire regions of Syria and Iraq. With this social imperialistlogic, these people had naturally a neutral position (as they had), in the attack of the Thatcher toArgentina in Malvinas or before the US invasion and attack on the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. It must be recognized that the massacres of the ISIS are boys’ games, compared to Saddam Hussein’s slaughtering of 60 thousand Shiites and thousands of exploited Kurds with mustard gas. The Iranian ayatollahs killed 100 thousand workers and soldiers in the Iranian revolution. We are talking about people who know how tokill, if it's about number of dead and blood spilt, ISIS is a maid compared to the Shiite bourgeoisie or the traditional parties of the Sunni bourgeoisie in the region; not to mention the Saudi bourgeoisie.
When the pirates of the French Fifth Republic invaded Mali the French NPA, the partner of the English SWP, criticized it harshly because "that military action strengthens terrorism" and advised the governmentto bring democracy and investment instead. They are the "democratic" advisers of imperialism in its spheres of influence. That is being a social-imperialist.

Carlos Münzer:Well, for these people the only problem of U.S. intervention against the ISIS is that such a move would end up strengthening it, since according to them the masses in the region are highly anti-imperialist and as such, if imperialism "attacks ISIS ", the masses would align after ISIS. So that they recommend USA to not go with military forces there; the tell USA that it would be much better to go with food and to try to co-opt the masses as the religious currentsdo. Which shows that they are left "advisors" of imperialism; besides they handle also one of those ONG with which imperialism enters and co-opts the masses. But what these people do not say is that ISIS is also commanded by imperialism.
The French NPA, the English SWP, and all their allies the European social-imperialistparties, know how to defend very well the left pockets to the imperialist powers of Europe. Thus, in the last WSF in 2013-2014 and 2015 in Tunisia, they declared war not to imperialism and its lackeys in the region but to the "terrorists" of the ISIS. For this reason, together with the Bolivarians they supported the Iranian ayatollahs, the greatest lackeys of the US government and corporations, supporting genocidal Al-Assad, as yesterday they supported that lackey of Big Oil that was Khadafy.

PP:What is the position of the LIT?

Carlos Munzer:A meeting took place recently in Brazil of Conlutas directed by PSTU-LIT. That meeting was attended bySolidaires of France of the French NPA, the Spanish CGT of IU (United Lefts), among others. There they gave lip service to "the Syrian revolution", while defining, in one of the resolutions, that "the enemies of the Syrian revolution are on the one hand the murderous regime of Bashar Al-Assad, supported by the Governments of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. And on the other hand the counter-revolutionary Daeshgroup (self-styled Islamic State) sponsored by capitalist sectors of the Persian Gulf and Turkey." I keep reading what they say in this resolution: "American and European imperialism conspires together with the Governments of Arab countries, in particular with those of the Persian Gulf, to liquidate the revolution and prevent its spread to the region". They end up considering that the Syrian revolution will reach their final victory when“the Syrian working people have the right to employment, wages, education, health and housing, and the right to decide democratically on their fate"
They have never defined who the allies of the Syrian revolutionare, or how and with what policy the working class can beat those "powerful enemies" of the Syrian revolution. Also they have not defined the FSA as an internal enemy, as a true fifth column. Those omissions show that for them the FSA is not an enemy of the revolution, but its ally. Therefore they spent a time showing one of FSA generals,Maen Abu as the great revolutionary Syrian leader, while they asked US imperialism surface-to-air missiles.

Abu Muad:In short, for them, the ally of the Syrian revolution is not the world working class, but US imperialism, whom they ask forweaponry and for strengthening the FSA. That is why they don’t issue any resolution calling for any action from the part of the groups and organizations from 24 countries that make up the so-called “International Union Network of Solidarity and Struggles", having even representatives from Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia.
Of course the only missiles that imperialism sent the Syrian masses were which massacred them, either from its aviation or any of its agents as Al-Assad.

WM: Leí también que esa resolución hablaba sobre Palestina

Carlos Münzer:Yes, there they pose a requirement to the Histadrut that it breaks with the racist Government of Israel. It is incredible!They make this demand to the Histadrut, that fascist "Central Union" of the Zionists which has been designed to oppress and expel Palestinians from their lands, which was founded before the State of Israel,and defined itself as a "State in the making", which scabbed the general strike and the revolutionary upsurge of the Palestinian working class of '30s, and that attacked with its armed branches the Hagenah and the Irgun, the Palestinians insurrectionists that were fighting against the British occupation. They dare ask the Histadrut, one of the main pillars and constituent bases of the Zionist -fascist State of Israel and its armed forces, to break with "the racist Government"!

Leandro Hofstadter: Not only that, but they consider that to confront Israel, you should have a policy of "boycott". They are with the campaign called "BDS" (boycott, divestment and sanctions) which is based on making demands to the consulates and foreign ministries of countries that have commercial, military and political relations with Israel so that they do not consume their products, and ask companies to not make investments there, etc. Of course about the struggle for the destruction of the Zionist -fascist State of Israel not word is mentioned. They not even mention the issue that there are 7000 Palestinian prisoners. They are only limited to demand the freedom of a unique Palestinian political prisoner of Brazilian origin.

PP: Do they say anything about Yemen?

Carlos Münzer:Yes, they have released a statement onJuly 5 2015 entitled "Long Live the Revolution of the Yemeni people". There, the LIT believes that the revolution is being directed by the Houthis, as these are a bourgeois fraction oppressed by the regime, first by Saleh and later by Hadi.
They say: "the Houthi militias, despite their bourgeois class character and their theocratic agenda, are spearheading a very progressive process that made collapse the President Hadi, successor of the former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. "Now, in addition, they lead the armed resistance against foreign attacks, which are but a counter-revolutionary response to the victory of the Yemeni people". They end up raising that "it is necessary and feasible, at this point, a policy of military unitywith the Houthisaround something very concrete: the defense of the sovereignty of Yemen." “But this military unity cannot be given but in the context of complete political independence, since by its class character, the Houthis will end up betraying the cause, sooner or later. The national and anti-dictatorial fighting of the Yemeni people, within the framework of its own course, exceeds the Houthi leadership. This is and will always be inconsequential. The position of the revolutionistsface a conflict of this nature must forge, in the heat of the concrete showdown, a political leadership able to mobilize the working class and all the popular sectors to take the whole leadership of the process. And this revolutionary leadership, in turn, must propose as a guide, a Socialist program that inevitably starts from the most recognized democratic problems, beginning with the defeat of foreign aggressors."
The pseudotheory of the “democratic revolution”is again raised, this time applied to Yemen. They say that it is a "progressive" and "anti-dictatorial" fight... though it's revolution! For them there are neither organizations of the masses nor any masses, or the struggle by the workers and peasant alliance... There are only the Houthimilitias and the need for "a revolutionary party", without even a program for the masses to rise their organs of dual power, so they extend, develop, centralize and take power. As they previously did with the FSA, they now intend to give a so-called progressive role to the Houthi bourgeoisie, which wasn't that starred in any uprising or fighting, but it has mounted above them only to arrangeits businesses against the masses.

………………………………………………………………….

"Socialism or barbarianism is the immediate prospect"

"The reformist left world wants that we get used to barbarianism;because what's in the Maghreb and Middle East is barbarianism, not an "inter-religious war" or a "interethnic struggle", or a "dispute between regional powers". This justification is for us to get used to barbaraniism and stop fighting for the revolution."
Carlos Munzer

PP:What prospects do you see in the region and around the world?

Carlos Münzer:The plan mentioned before of partitioning the countries of the region serves imperialism if all leaderships and army-partieswe mentioned earlier can crush and destroy the masses’ activity, but they would have afterwards to give way to imperialism to enter and take everything. The problem, as we said before, is imperialism has no sufficient relationship of forces to enter and stay with everything because the US masses would not allow it.
I.e., at this time US would have to be putting order in the region and it cannot do this. There isn't a single imperialist power after the defeat in Iraq able to intervene directly in the region and bring order and discipline, as France wanted to do when the Syrian process began.
Geneva III plan has positioned US in Turkish territory, under the facade of the NATO and the 'defense' of one of its member, namely Turkey. Meanwhile, France does not accept to lose part of her business in her back yard in the Maghreb and the Middle East. For this reason, she has shielded herself.The explanation is that France is the imperialist country that has given more hard knocks to its working class. It used, let run oreven organized the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and placed the armed forces on the streets as a result of this, and led a March against "terrorism" in the streets of Paris embracing Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of the Zionist with (French President) Hollande.
Only the imperialist powers that progress in giving hard blows to their working class will be better positioned to attack the colonial and semi-colonial world. Therefore, the delay imposed by the treacherous leaderships to the working class of the colonial and imperialist countries is criminal.

WM:ConvergenciaSocialista poses that there are two factions within US imperialism. One that encourages democracy and the other favors counter-revolutionary "Bush-like" actions, and that in this gap the masses can make a breakthrough. What is your opinion?

Leandro Hofstadter:We do not see this situation at all. There is no strategic discussion between different fractions of the US imperialism for the moment. They are all partisans of the Geneva Conference. No bourgeois fraction of imperialism poses in the U.S. to make a direct intervention in the Middle East today. In any case, there is a sectorwithin the Republicans, thinking ISIS must be limited a little more, and wanting to give more weight to the Zionism -not to leave it so marginalized in the counter-revolutionary actions in the region.
Rather, the Democrat fraction has a slight difference with the Republicans. They think that if Zionism begins "meddling", it is prone to stir the cauldron; and so the plan of relying on ISIS, Tehran and Al-Assad will collapse. I.e., what Democrats are saying is that if Zionism makes a faux movement, this plan falls. And what the Republicans are saying is that they should give more political space to Zionism to play its role of gendarme in the region. But these are political nuances about the tacticallocation of one of their agents, as if you have to carry on more or less bombings. What happens is that as any reformist Kautskyte these people believe that there is a "super imperialism" that unifies all the powers. Here, whether there is any contradiction is that USA -with all these counter-revolutionaries pacts-, is grabbing business from Germany and France in the Maghreb and the Middle East.

Carlos Münzer:There is also a strategic agreement between the fractions of the US imperialist bourgeoisie about "the Atlantic Pact" and that the pivot of their policies runs through the Pacific, where U.S. has concentrated its biggest military forces. It doesn’t allow anybody daring to challenge its dominance in the region. As Obama said, "America is essentially a Pacific power". "There it won the war," he said,recalling the nuclear bombings. Such demonstration of forcesis for nowa policy of deterrence. The important thing is that there is no gap or partition of US imperialism. Democrats, Republicans... all of them recognize the US masses would not let them intervene directly. That is what makes it each time more having to use ISIS, Al-Assad, the so-called "regional powers" of Iran and Saudi Arabia, or Turkey, as mediations.

WM: Volviendo a las perspectivas, ¿cuáles ven en la región?

Carlos Münzer: Let's clarify that a phase has opened of counter-revolution where imperialism tries to settle itssuccesses. The mountains of corpses, millions of refugees in the desert, millions trying to enter Europe and colliding with fences of barbed wire in Lampedusa, the Balkans or in Ceuta and Melilla, is a mirror reflecting the collapse of civilization in the region that this imperialist counter-offensive has led to. Not to succeed the proletarian revolution, I insist, is equal to barbarism. The 10 million Syrians displaced and living in the refugee camps has become "normal". Millions of exiles hitting boundaries have become a "normal" view. Bombing civilians and massacre the masses has become "normal".
The world reformist left wants us to get used to barbarianism;because what's in the Maghreb and Middle East is barbarianism, not an "inter-religious war" or an "interethnic struggle", or a "dispute between regional powers". This justification is for us to get used to barbarianism and stop fighting for the revolution. They want us to get used to barbarianism and see "barbarian peoples" there, because, ultimately, if there is barbarianism, it would be better "to let them be all killed". That is what the PTS tells in its lectures, as also all of the pro-imperialistEurocentric left says. That is the role of the treacherous leaderships, for which the dilemma "socialism or barbarism" is no longer a historical alternative.
And precisely socialism or barbarianism is the immediate perspective. Barbarianism is already here in the Maghreb and the Middle East, and civilization is the US working class that is preventing imperialism from intervening. Civilization is, ultimately, the global working class.

Abu Muad: But the final word is not yet pronounced. Foci of resistance can be set fire again to the prairie tomorrow. And a true fact is that the Yemeni revolution is not over. There people resist now hard. The collapse of the price of oil today, as yesterday the jump of the prices of foodstuffs on the world market, will push the masses in the region to bear new and greater hardships. The uprising and revolts in the Shia South of Iraq against the Shiite criminal bourgeoisie by desperate masses can impact even on the martyred Iranian masses who were the first to revolt in 2009 in massive strikes of construction, textile, transitworkers, and teachers who were brutally massacred by the murderous theocracy of Tehran. 
I think that the counter-revolution has not actedenough to defeat the revolution completely. Though what we have seen is that at every step of this imperialist counter-offensive, the Palestinian masses have suffered worsepain and are increasingly more fenced with a brutal attack on Gaza, as we saw last year, and the invasion of fascist settlers to Palestinian lands as we are seeing at the moment.

Abu Muhajer: We could say that in the Maghreb and the Middle East there is a huge counter-revolution in course, where the spark of the revolution is still on, and ahardened resistance develops. The last word has not been said. The huge fighting of the workers and peasants of Yemen against the US-Saudi led invasion are a proof of this. Yes, the last word has not been said yet.
The exploited of the world must look at themselves in the mirror in the Middle East. It is not a problem of "distant barbaric peoples". It is a fight of a central battalion of the world working class. If the worker revolution does not give a solution, imperialism will deepen barbarianism and war.  USA is aggressive to throw its crisis to the world and to the imperialist powers competing with it for the spheres of influence, as what happens in the Maghreb and Middle East. That determines the clubbing policy which began to be exerted by the French Fifth Republic against its own masses to go to higher military offensives as it already did in Mali.
United States has disciplined itsLatin Americanbackyard. The capitalist restoration in Cuba is going to take the Castro brothers to fill the island of “maquiladoras” (sweatshops)in the name of "socialism", as imperialism is already doing in Central America and the Caribbean. It is now clear why Chavez and the Chavezista governments supported Khadafy, murderous Al-Assad or the Iranian Republican Guardso fervently. The reason is that they have started to go their way, to riddlethe hungry people with bullets in and pay every penny to the IMF.

Carlos Münzer: Meanwhile, the reformist left promises democracy, freedom -and that parliament will solve all the problems. We prepare ourselves and prepare workers for heavy fighting that are already here between revolution and counter-revolution, because the historical alternative of socialism or barbarism is immediate.
We saw this new left act with Syriza in Greece inselling out the Greek working classto each step, bound hands and feet to imperialist Maastricht. We saw Spanish PODEMOS holding the monarchy of the Bourbons, FIT of Argentina, or the socialimperialist parties nicknamed "Socialist" acting opportunistically asnurses of capitalism -in particular, in England, France or the US.  The delay of the working class vanguard worldwide to regroup their forces under a program for the revolution is costing cruel defeats to the masses. Syria under fire is one of them. But we insist, the last wordhas not been said.
US imperialism has used all of its agents to throw the crisis to the working class and the oppressed peoples of the world. Here and there with counter-revolutionary pacts it disciplines its agents, which do the dirty work. Thus, imperialism recreates new institutions of domination. But its politics, and its counter-offensive today, and its lackeys which apply that counteroffensive, have an Achilles’ heel. They do not carry progress and civilization, but barbarianism and the worst atrocities against the masses and the latter know that.

This has meant that the American working class has begun to stand up, the movement of immigrants, the colored working class, the most exploited layers of the American working class fighting to win USD15 an hour. This indicates that there is the largest and most powerful ally of the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East and the world working class. The last word has not been said. And it really is amazing the enormous energies of struggle of the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East against such conspiracy, counter-revolutionary blows, and so many betrayals. But the last word is not yet said, essentially, because the US and European working class are far from having been defeated. These are preventing imperialism from settlingdown its counter-revolution. As ever, the working class of the imperialist powers has the key to victory.

A heroic resistance develops in the Maghreb and the Middle East. We had the honor to join the masses in the region in their offensive, and we are still combating now on resistance next to them. This book we are presenting now is part of that resistance and the necessary learning that the revolutionary movement has to grab, to draw these lessons and prepare the future victories for the world proletariat.