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as we know it and I feel fine

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Ex-commercial TV Pr-man

old Etonian and occasional pigfucker,

David Cameron would like to bomb Syria.

Unfortunately Russia's got there first

and America's been doing it for ages.

He wants to bomb Syria to stop the flow

of refugees fleeing all the bombs.

He's also hoping it will stop

the increased influence of

Islamic extremism.

Bombing Syria will of course destroy

the one remaining multicultural society

in the region, leaving it open to

the increased influence of

Islamic extremism.

To bomb Syria, therefore,

is clearly mental.

Goooooooooooooood morning slaves

and welcome to another sedition of

It's the End of the World as we Know it

and I Feel Fine....

the show that gets under dictators’ skin.

Need another car.

Fraid this last one ended up in the drink.

Look at you.

You're a -

I'm not puppet.

You're a bloody puppet!

Every person on earth, whether they

agree or disagree with President Putin,

they should respect him.

♫ I've got no strings to hold me down

to make me fret, or make me frown. ♫

You're a puppet!

I'm not puppet.

I am your host the Stimulator,

and this December will mark six years

since 26 year old fruit vendor

Mohammed Bouazizi lit himself on fire

in the streets of Sidi Bouzid,

to protest harassment from the pigs,

and the crushing weight of

systemic poverty,

igniting the righteous fucking wave

of revolt that came to be known as

the Arab Spring.

This historic uprising swept like wildfire

across the Middle East and North Africa,

toppling dictators in Tunisia, Egypt,

Libya and Yemen,

catching the United Snakes and

its regional allies in the Gulf states

off guard,

and scaring the living shit out of them.

Riots will start here.

Iraq will be squeezed.

Syria, Jordan will fall.

Who will stand with the United States?

Who will stand with Israel?

Tragically, the heady optimism

seen on the streets of Tahrir Square

has long since been replaced by

the jackboot of counter-revolution

and the grim fucking realities

of terrorism and civil war.

In Bahrain, a popular uprising was

brutally put down by a Saudi-led invasion.

In Egypt, one pro-Western dictator

has been replaced by another,

who has ruthlessly clamped down on

protests, jailing thousands of dissidents.

Libya and Yemen have both descended

into civil wars, each drawing in

foreign military intervention.

And then there's Syria.

Up until now, me and my subMedia slaves

have avoided putting out an

in-depth sedition on Syria

because the situation on the ground

is incredibly fucking complicated,

and well… frankly... depressing as fuck.

Buuuuuuuuut despite being the defining war

of our epoch, a horrific fucking slaughter

that has killed upwards of

half a million people,

and displaced 12 million more,

reduced entire cities to rubble,

and spawned a massive flood of refugees

that in turn has hastened

the nationalist-fuelled disintegration of

the European Union,

and despite the fact that it has become

a central battleground for

the competing geopolitical ambitions

of so-called great powers

and regional state actors alike...

the fact is that the Syrian Revolution

and subsequent civil war

is still woefully misunderstood.

On the right side of the spectrum,

corporate and state-run media

have depicted Syria solely as

an external threat;

a breeding ground for ISIS terrorists

who are trying to smuggle their way

into Western population centres

by pretending to be war-torn refugees.

Is the United States opening its doors

to potential terrorists?

I could never have imagined

an Islamic radical sleeper cell

becoming president.

If they can cross... anybody can cross.

And I'm here today to ask you:

do you feel safe?

We ain't scared of you.

We're not gonna let you guys use your fear

to take our rights away.

They claim to be in America now!

And as soon as you come into our country

we're gonna trick your ass out!

In other news, Muslims are bad.

What more do you need to know

about these people?!

Many Western leftists, on the other hand,

have adopted a disgustingly

amoral pragmatism that rationalizes

their lack of solidarity by pointing to

the lack of a sufficiently moderate

armed rebel faction to support.

Who are the fighters there?

Well it's not just ISIS, but it's al-Nusra

as well... the Al Qaeda affiliate.

There are said to be moderates there,

but you know... and there probably are,

but they're not a -

they're a minority force.

While others have gone so far as

to throw their support behind

the psychopathic regime of that ugly

teen-stached motherfucker himself,

Bashar al-Asaad.

Death to imperialism,

victory to Bashar Assad.

Victory to the Syrian Arab Army,

the National Defense Force,

The Popular Front for the Liberation

of Palestine, and everyone who is fighting

within Syria for the Syrian people.

This confused and politically bankrupt

fucking narrative is particularly popular

with tankies who have a collective hard-on

for Vladimir Putin, and seemingly base

their entire fucking worldview on

a fossilized Cold War narrative that

supports any state that they deem to be

an official enemy of the United Snakes.

Tankie leftists believe that Assad

has been targeted for regime change by

the United Snakes and its allies,

and that Syria is being protected

by its staunchly anti-imperialist homies,

Russia and Iran.

Buuuuuuuuut putting aside the fact that

Russia and Iran are both gangsta

imperialist states in their own right

who oppress the fuck out of

their own citizens, there's an

even more obvious flaw in this logic...

the fact that the United Snakes isn't

actually trying to overthrow Assad at all.

The real threat to Assad's fascist

fucking regime has come from Syrians

themselves, who after growing sick and

mothafuckin tired of having their peaceful

protests bombed and machine-gunned,

launched a popular fucking armed uprising.

And it's racist as fuck to ignore

this fact, and to see all Syrian people

as either Islamic terrorists or

helpless victims only worthy of support

once they become refugees.

As the Presidential elections in

the United Snakes draw ever closer,

members of the Obama administration

are in a rush to add a victory over ISIS

to their presidential legacy,

before the next war-criminal-in-chief gets

sworn in in January.

To help accomplish this,

they've stepped up cooperation with Russia

and the two sides have recently agreed

to a so-called Cessation of Hostilities,

in order to join forces to fight ISIS

and Al Qaeda.

Buuuuuuuuuuut few peeps following things

on the ground actually think this latest

diplomatic push is gonna work.

There’s only one person who can end

the civil war in Syria.

You would rule in the possibility

of using nuclear weapons against ISIS?

Well.... I'm not going rule anything out.

Oh fuck no... not that fucker.

I’m talking about Syria’s greasy,

sunken-eyed, goose-necked dictator

himself… Bashar Al-Assad.

So with that in mind,

I’ve got a simple plea.

Bashar… you’ve done some pretty fucking

heinous shit over the past five years.

But there’s still time for you to do

the right thing.

In fact, it’s pretty simple…

just fucking kill yourself.

You do realize you’re not getting out

of this shit alive, right?

Once Russia and Iran get tired of

propping up your corrupt,

hollowed out regime, and decide to reach

some sorta deal to cover their own asses,

they’re throw you to the fuckin sharks.

So how do you wanna go out?

You wanna die like Ceausescu,

swarmed by a pissed off mob and lynched?

Who knows… with all you’ve done,

you’d probably get the full Mussolini.

Or maybe, just maybe, you’d prefer to

take the dignified way out,

like a fucking samurai,

or... or viking warrior or some shit…

or as dignified as a man as hideous and

awkward as you could possibly hope for.

Fuck it… you could shoot yourself out of

a fucking cannon into the Mediterranean

....that might be fun.

And seriously… who’s gonna miss you?

Aside from these tankies,

and your ugly fucking cousin Rahmi.

And on the plus side… just think about

how much suffering and bloodshed

you could avoid…

let alone all the rope peeps would save

by not having to hang you by your

freakishly long neck!

Anyway Bashar… just an idea.

Ball's in your court,

you miserable piece of shit.

♫ Head high, you made a revolution

Be proud of yourselves,

you destroyed a dirty band.

I know I have lost many things

But I feel I have gained many things.

Freedom, dignity, it is not easy.

It's not easy to do something

without victims and war machines.

Destroy the tree and the stone

Not one wall left standing

The regime humiliates me,

fuck him, he will not have me

Opposition failed on one side,

the other false media

Hezbollah, Daesh and others

countries of a world cursed

They let the people die & prepared coffins

I speak for the people,

gone are the days of silence

Gone are the days where you not dare express

If the revolution is here, it's your time

This is not a civil war

its the revolt of your people

The Refugees of RAP,

the voice of the people came back.

This is not a civil war

It is the revolt of a people, began peacefully

This is a revolution. ♫

On August 25th, Turkey’s thin-skinned

proto-fascist tyrant, Tayyip Erdogan,

officially joined the geopolitical

clusterfuck in Syria, when he sent

Turkey’s armed forces to lead

a cross-border incursion, ostensibly to

fight Daesh or the so-called Islamic State

but transparently as an effort to

halt the breaks on advances by

the Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the

Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, or YPG,

which has been making territorial gains

in the region that Syria’s Kurds have

re-christened as Rojava.

For many outside observers of the

Syrian civil war, the Rojava Revolution

has been a lonely beacon of hope

in an otherwise bleak fucking tragedy,

and anarchists and other revolutionaries

around the world have accordingly flocked

to show solidarity with their cause.

This has ranged from the establishment

of Rojava solidarity chapters in cities

and countries across the world,

all the way to peeps traveling to join

international battalions of volunteer

fighters on the front lines, in an act of

international solidarity that hearkens

back to the Spanish Civil War.

Over the past several years,

the liberated cantons of Rojava

have witnessed some of the most

inspiring revolutionary transformations

in modern history, most notable being

its grassroots Tev-Dem system

of participatory democracy, and the

accompanying self-organization and

mass empowerment of women.

Freedom for Kurdistan starts with

freedom for women.

When women are free,

then Kurdistan will be free.

These hard-fought gains have been

all the more impressive given the fact

that they've taken place while waging

an existential war against the

genocidal fucking jihadis of Daesh.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut while this will no doubt

piss a lot of peeps off…

Oh boy, here we go!

the uncomfortable truth is that many

supporters of Rojava have adopted a

dogmatic, uncritical approach to

the Kurdish struggle in northern Syria,

particularly its military aspect,

and in the process have ignored or

downplayed actions that not only

contradict fundamental principles of

the Rojava revolution, but also

pose serious fucking threats to

its future viability and the spread of

values within the region.

Kurds have long and tragic history of

betrayal and oppression at the hands of

the different states and ethnic groups

that surround them on all sides.

Under the Assad regime they were

officially banned from speaking their

own language, and were targeted by

so-called Arabization policies aimed at

controlling natural resources and

manipulating ethnic demographics

in the region.

One of the main tenants of Rojava’s

Tev-Dem system has been an embrace of

secular pluralism and cultural

and political autonomy for different

ethnic groups and religious minorities.

At the same time,

the Democratic Unity Party, or PYD, the

ruling Kurdish political party in Rojava,

has pursued a policy of geographically

linking the three Kurdish cantons of

Afrin, Kobane and Jazira, which are

physically separated from one another by

large swaths of land primarily

populated by Arabs.

The YPG militia, from the start of

the revolution, has been working for

its own interests.

It created an autonomous area....

it never recognized the Syrian revolution,

but it used it to create its own state.

The efforts to link the cantons militarily

has provoked a great deal of inter-ethnic

strife in Northern Syria, with YPG forces

benefiting from both US and Russian

airstrikes - in the latter case leading to

ethnic cleansing of rebel-held positions

in the province of Aleppo.

YPG supporters have tended to justify

these actions by claiming that the Arab

forces they have been targeting are all

head-chopping jihadis,

or members of Daesh or Al-Nusra.

Hopefully this doesn’t become a

self-fulfilling prophecy, and the YPG

and local militias of the Free Syrian Army

are able to come to an understanding

and mutual fucking coexistence.

This is especially important now that

Turkey’s military has joined the fray,

and Erdogan, drunk on the authoritarian

fucking powers he seized in the wake of

July’s failed coup,

has begun further cracking down on Kurds

in south-eastern Turkey.

While it’s important that anarchists

fully support aspirations of Kurdish

autonomy and self-determination,

whether in Syria, Turkey, Iraq or Iran…

it’s also important to support the

autonomy of Syrians in other parts of

the country, who are struggling against

a fucked up combination of

authoritarian Islamists, the Assad regime,

and its Iranian and Russian backers.

They are more powerful with weapons,

but we are more powerful in our hearts.

Many of you have your freedom

because of a revolution.

The time for our freedom is now.

So… in an effort to shed some

well-needed light on this other aspect

of the Syrian Revolution, I recently

caught up with Robin Yassin-Kassab,

a Syrian-British journalist, and co-author

of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution

and War.

Hey Robin, how the fuck are you?

I'm very well indeed.

Back in January, you and your co-author

Leila al-Shami published Burning Country:

Syrians in Revolution and War, which is

widely regarded as one of the best

English-language accounts of

the Syrian Revolution.

What inspired you to write this book?

I think we wrote the book because

we felt that the story of the Syrian

Revolution, and then the various

counter-revolutions which came back at it

wasn't being told properly.

Everybody knows about the jihadists and

the head-choppers, and everybody knows

about Putin, and Turkey and Qatar,

and Saudi Arabia.

But nobody seems to know about, y'know,

grassroots Syrian workers and farmers,

and students who were going out there

and protesting, and then who began to

pick up weapons when they were

so oppressed.

So we did it because we wanted to give a

voice to those remarkable Syrian

revolutionaries, which we thought they

were lacking in the English language,

and in the west.

You have been pretty fucking outspoken

in your criticism of the international

response to the conflict in Syria,

and particularly scathing with regards to

the posture adopted by western leftists.

What in particular pisses you off

about how peeps have approached

the situation.... and what do you think

that this says about the current state

of the left more generally?

Well I think it's been really depressing,

really tragic that a lot of Syrians

expected at the start that they would be

getting help, or solidarity from the

leftists, the so-called anti-imperialists

in the west, and very often it was

the left, at least the mainstream or

dominant left, which misrepresented them

and spread lies about them even before

the right did.

So for example, nowadays we have the

right-wing telling us that all these

Syrian refugees, they're all Al Qaeda,

they're all dangerous jihadists

and we shouldn't let any of them in....

this notion that every Syrian, or every

Syrian revolutionary is Al Qaeda was

actually spread by lots of people

on the left.

I think what the left has done, not just

in the case of Syria, but in general,

tragically, the left has given up on

ordinary people.

It seems to have lost hope that people at

the grassroots can actually change things,

and therefore it's just got itself

obsessed with states.

It seems to think that being

left-wing is about supporting certain

states against other states, as if there

are, y'know, goodie states against

the badie states.

But that's not classical leftism.

It's not Marxism... I mean Marxism talked

about doing a class analysis in which you

give your support to the working classes

in their struggle against

the ruling classes. And I think that's

what leftists should be doing

if they want to be in any way relevant

to real struggles in the world.

They should be supporting people within

every state who are trying to fight

against their oppressors.

And the left has failed to do that,

and instead, through this very inaccurate

state-based analysis, they're just making

silly assumptions. They seem to think,

for example, that this is a regime-change

plot directed by the United States against

the glorious resistance regime in Syria.

And, y'know, the facts don't bear

that out at all.

You've stated on several occasions

your belief that the Syrian Revolution

has been the most significant revolution

since 1930s Spain.

Could you elaborate on this?

In the revolution, and then particularly

as it became a war, when the regime was

forced to withdraw from certain parts of

the country... as the regime withdrew,

it withdrew the services that if offered,

of course. The state collapsed.

And what you had then, was that in many

different parts of the country,

people started setting up their own

self-organized administrations.

So they set up local councils for example.

At the moment there are about 400

local councils operating in the liberated

areas of Syria. And these are the people

who are keeping life together in the

liberated areas, under the bombs,

in the most difficult circumstances.

They're keeping the electricity going,

they're keeping the water supply going,

they're trying to build makeshift

hospitals and underground schools

where people can be educated

despite the bombs.

This is remarkable!

This self-organization, this local

democracy, and nobody notices it.

Nobody talks about it. It's much easier

for us to talk about the Saudis and

the Russians and the states than it is

to talk about the remarkable things

that people are doing.

Not just councils... women's centers,

free radio stations,

free television stations,

newspapers, an explosion of popular art,

all of this kind of thing is happening

in Syria, in the middle of an awful war,

amidst starvation sieges... it's really

remarkable and it's inspiring what's

happening in Syria, as well as tragic,

and it's our loss that we don't

pay more attention to it.

Outside of Rojava, many western anarchists

are unfamiliar with the influential role

that anarchists have played in the

Syrian Revolution - a prime example being

Omar Aziz.

Can you tell us a little bit more about

who he was, and his material and

theoretical contributions to

the revolutionary process?

Yeah well, Omar Aziz was a remarkable man,

and a very influential man.

He was an anarchist, I mean, he

self-identified as an anarchist.

Of course, many of the people who set up

the self-organized committees and councils

that we were talking about, do not

necessarily use the word anarchist to

describe themselves.

They don't necessarily come from that

theoretical tradition.

They haven't necessarily read Bakunin

and so on, but what they're doing

is anarchist. Omar Aziz actually

identified as an anarchist, and he'd

obviously read a lot of anarchism,

and studied it. He was living outside

of Syria, he came back to join

the revolution, and then in the 8th month

he wrote a paper in which he said

it's not enough to go out and protest.

We have to withdraw from the state,

and stop giving our consent, and we have

to set up our own alternative bodies

and organizations, and he recommended

setting up local councils - the local

councils I was just talking about.

He helped to set up three of the first

local councils in the Damascus suburbs,

and then he was arrested.

And he died in prison. Some people say

he was tortured to death, we don't know.

He already had weak health when he went

into prison... he died there a day before

his 64th birthday.

But after he died, this model that he had

helped to build, spread like wildfire...

particularly in 2012-2013 as the regime

was withdrawing from key areas of

the country, people were setting up

local councils everywhere.

It's also important to remember, I mean,

in a way that anarchists in the west can

identify with Omar Aziz to an extent

- if they've heard of him - because he

identified as an anarchist. But then,

y'know, when we're looking at cultures

which we as westerners don't immediately

recognize - Islamic cultures,

African cultures, y'know, cultures all

over the world - people there may be using

their own vocabulary, their own cultural

vocabulary, but they're sometimes arriving

at the same conclusions of

self-organization and cooperation that

anarchists in the west would hope that

they arrive to, so that's interesting and

I think we need to look out for that

in the future.

What effects have the revolution

and subsequent civil war had in terms of

women's participation in Syrian society?

As a result of the revolution, women have

been empowered a great deal, and then as

a result of the counter-revolutionary war,

in many ways things have gone backwards.

In terms of the revolution, I mean,

Razan Zaitouneh, a woman, was the founder

of the Local Coordination Committees,

a grassroots revolutionary unit which was

set up at the start and spread all over

the country. There was another group of

coordination committees set up by

Sohar Itasi, another woman,

so those two very important key bodies

were set up by women.

Also, what you've had during

the revolution in liberated areas is a lot

of women's centers have been set up

by women themselves in order to encourage

women's participation in the revolution,

in society, in the economy, in order to

teach skills where necessary, and also as

places where they can go and talk and

express solidarity to each other, and try

to find common solutions to their problems

I think that the fact of revolutionary

work, as well, has to an extent liberated

women. Everything has been questioned

in Syria in the last years, including the

relations between men and women, between

husbands and wives, between fathers and

daughters, parents and children.

On the other hand, y'know... of course

the fact of war, in many ways has made

things terrible for women. I mean, women

have been subject to a mass rape campaign

which the regime organized.

ISIS also, of course, has raped women and

made Yazidi women into sex slaves, all of

this kind of barbarism has gone on.

The fact of war has victimized women

in particular... but the revolutionary

impulses are there, and I think they will

continue, and I think that women who've

had a taste of activism and freedom,

if only for a moment, during

the revolution are not going to give

that up, and they're going to pass

that on to their daughters.

Anything else you wanna add?

I think that we should really be paying

much more attention because, as I said,

it's remarkable what Syrians are doing,

socially, politically and culturally.

As well as all of the terrible things,

the torture, the jihadism, the bombing,

the rest of it, there's all of this

cultural explosion, the free newspapers,

the community cooperation that's happening

which we could learn from.

This kind of thing doesn't happen

very often in history, and certainly

people who claim to be revolutionaries,

anarchists and leftists they really should

be the first people who are without

prejudice, without silly binaries, without

worshiping different lines set out

by states - they should be attending

to what's happening on the ground at the

grassroots, and showing some solidarity.

Thanks Robin… and that about

does it for this sedition of it's the end

of the world as we know it and I feel fine

To listen to the entire interview

with Robin, for a playlist of the music

we used, or to subscribe to our podcast

or email list just visit my fuckin website

I wanted send a massive shoutout to the

folks of newday.host for saving our ass

when our webhost banned us,

essentially leaving sub.media offline.

Check them out at newday.host.

Also big ups to Louis, Antoine and Micah

for giving us tips on how to deal with

a hacking crisis this summer.

And of course, mega big ups to the slaves

who help us keep the lights on. So big ups

to: Harjap Jessica, Jay, Jim, Alexandra,

Blade, Karlis, Steve, Gavin, Eradour, Jan,

Jane, Jamie, Per, Laura, Flyn, Bear,

Michael, Gabriel, Brett, Saganites, Juliano,

Christopher, Stephen, Sebastien, Coby,

Sakura, Aaron, Hanging Around Hammocks,

William, Adam, Bogrestov, Salissen, Jordan

Robert, Dan, Michelle, Andrew, Tyler,

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Max, Skyler, Luigi, Paul, Maciej, Nigel,

Heinrigh, Gregory, Liam, Adrian, Derrick,

Marten, Margaret and Meghsha... Antojitos!

I also want to welcome the newest members

of the taconspiracy: Anonymous, Alberto,

Sam, Liam, Corbo, Tunic and Talisman.

Bolijos!

That's all for now, stay tuned to

sub.media for more news from

the global muthafuckin resistance.

Hasta la pasta compañeras!