Democracy protesters in Bahrain have been killed, tortured and jailed on criminal charges for peacefully speaking out – crimes in which the Bahrain Defence Force, armed by Britain, is implicated.

If you fear the possibility of the war with Iran, says George Galloway, then the time is now to stand against the propaganda, meddling and drive for intervention over Syria and across the Middle East.

The Guardian newspaper asked Stop the War to comment on five different ways the outside world could respond to the crisis in Syria. Chris Nineham, national officer of Stop the War, gives our reply.

If you wish to halt the insane rush from one war to the next that western governments are embarked on, you cannot condemn acts of state terrorism in one country and then find excuses for it in another.

Whether we like it or not, it is incumbent upon those of us who are instinctively opposed to western military interventions in the Middle East to answer the question: what would you do to stop Assad?

If Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough evidence of what happens when the West wages war in the name of "humanitarian intervention", the chaos in Libya is yet another warning.

Western intervention in Syria – and Russia and China's opposition to it – can only be understood as part of a proxy war against Iran, which disastrously threatens to become a direct one.

There is nothing noble about invading and bombing a country into regime change if what one ushers in is mass instability along with tyranny and abuse by a different regime.

It's as if Tahrir Square was built for that day, awaiting to receive the deluge of waves upon waves of human crowds all converging on the square to help it live up to its name - liberation square.

David Cameron's visit to Saudi Arabia to sell British armaments was a slap in the face for protesters who are demanding human rights and more of a say in their country's affairs and facing brutal repression from the regime.

Military interventions typically make humanitarian situations worse than before, not better, a point dramatically illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of deaths that resulted from interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unmarked Nato warplanes are delivering arms, French and British special forces trainers are on the ground assisting the Syrian rebels, the CIA is providing communications equipment and intelligence.

There will always be those who will claim savagery is preferable to humanity under the guise of care for their victims, but there is no humanitarian case for military intervention by the West in Syria.

Since the day Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, there has been a relentless counter-drive by the western powers and their Gulf allies to buy off, crush or hijack the Arab revolutions.

The message is: everything you rose up against is here, is worse. Don't put your hopes in the revolution or parliament. We are the regime and we're back.

The youth of Syria are being cut down by Assad's troops. But, says Mehdi Hasan, a western-led military intervention would be a disaster: if the uprising is to succeed, Syrians will have to make it happen on their own.