War and Terror

“Civilised humanity” or class struggle?

By Sacha Ismail “For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving force of history, and in particular the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social upheaval; it is therefore impossible for us to ally with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement...We cannot ally with people who say that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above by philanthropic bourgeois and petty bourgeois.” Marx and Engels to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknicht and...

A few "mistakes"?

George Bush has now been moved to concede some "mistakes" in Iraq. The US has now begun to investigate a massacre that, according to all indications, was not just a "mistake", but — like torture in Abu Ghraib — a logical and predictable product of the general brutality and arrogance of the US occupation in Iraq. In November 2005, US Marines deliberately killed as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in the town of Haditha. "When these investigations come out, there’s going to be a firestorm," said retired Brigadier General David Brahms, formerly a top lawyer for the...

A "Third Camp" of "civilised humanity"?

The following statement is being circulated by the Worker-communist Party of Iran. We publish it here to further debate. The present conflict between the Western governments and the Islamic Republic of Iran can have disastrous human, political and social consequences. The terrible experience of Iraq has shown to all the catastrophes that can result from economic sanctions and a military attack. Deterioration of living conditions, economic plight, death, destruction and displacement of people, and increased repression by the Islamic regime, would be some of the immediate consequences of...

A left dressed in feathers from Cold War hawks

Tom Unterrainer reviews Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-Wing case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy, by Oliver Kamm “Intervention in Iraq was not strictly a ‘humanitarian war’: it was an anti-totalitarian war. It was a war in the cause of liberty.” Oliver Kamm’s work, characterised by this statement, is an energetic and closely argued polemical “left-wing” justification for Bush and Blair’s war on Iraq. His starting point is the historical precedence of opposition to fascism and the emergence and support for “collective security”. The “left” Kamm supports is the British Labour Party and its...

Armed Forces Bill

John McDonnell MP has put two amendments to Clause 8 of the new Armed Forces Bill. Campaigners are seeking other MPs' support for his amendments before the Bill comes to the Commons on Monday 22 May. Clause 8 of the Bill would introduce a new and tougher definition of desertion: soldiers who go absent without leave (AWOL) and intend to refuse to take part in a 'military occupation of a foreign country or territory' (8 (3) (c)) may be imprisoned 'for life' (8 (4)(a)). John McDonnell's amendments are: To delete 8 (3) (c) To replace 'for life' with 'must not exceed two years'. So far there has...

Prodi says: don’t march

This peace demonstration was held on Saturday 18 March, just three weeks before the election. The majority of L’Unione — despite its policy to withdraw troops from Iraq — refused to support it. They also succeeded in convincing Italy’s biggest trade union federation, the CGIL, not to give its official backing. Prodi and his supporters said they feared the demonstration would end in violence: an anti-fascist mobilisation in Milan a week earlier had ended in street-fighting between anarchists and the police. In the event there was no such trouble, nor was there ever likely to have been. The...

CND: The CP steward, the priest, and the political banner

From Tribune 27 June 1958 Peter fryer: “stopped from marching” Some most unfortunate incidents marred last Sunday’s demonstration organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Members of the Labour Party, including many who had come down specially from the provinces, were marching behind the Newsletter’s banner, which bore the slogan “Industrial action — black the H-bomb and the rocket bases” and were shouting the slogan “No work on H-bombs, no work on rocket bases.” A similar contingent had marched all the way to Aldermaston behind the same banner and shouting the same slogans. Some of...

Brian Haw faces eviction

From Voices UK. Tomorrow, Monday 3 April, the Home Office and Metropolitan Police are appealing against the High Court decision in July last year that Brian Haw - who has been holding a one-person 24/7 peace vigil in Parliament Square since June 2001 - is exempt from the ban on unauthorised protest near Parliament brought in last year under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. The judges decided that the wording of the law, that protestors must seek authorisation before the start of a demonstration, meant that Brian, who has been continuing his protest in Parliament Square since June...

Help Iraqi workers’ voice get heard!

by Martin Thomas About 20,000 marched in London on 18 March against US/ UK troops in Iraq, and against war on Iran. Workers’ Liberty activists and others distributed leaflets for the Iraq Union Solidarity campaign, and did a bucket collection for the Iraqi unions which raised £289, about the same as on the bigger demonstration of March 2005 and much more than on the last “Stop The War” demonstration, September 2005. The “Stop The War” organisers, however, did not share the desire of many demonstrators to hear and support the voice of Iraq’s organised workers. Dashty Jamal, a British...

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