War and Terror

A reply to Richard Brenner on the Yalta conferences, Ukraine and Russia

Richard Brenner (a member of Workers Power and the “Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine” campaign) has issued a statement explaining his attendance at a conference about Ukraine held in Yalta (Crimea) in early July. (1) That conference – entitled “The World Crisis and the Confrontation in Ukraine” – was subject to lengthy criticism in the pages of Solidarity . We argued that the conference was an initiative by people who fall somewhere in the grey area between extremist nationalism and outright fascism, and that any left-wingers attending it were, at best, playing the role...

War and Virgin Birth

During the Gulf war it was hard to avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating John Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. The TV pictures of Iraqi cities being flattened might have been...

Bloody War and the Threat of Virgin Birth, or, Capitalism Drives You Crazy!

During the Gulf war it was hard o avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull little Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. It was nothing of the sort but not many seemed to notice. The TV...

Bloody War and the Threat of Virgin Birth, or, Capitalism Drives You Crazy!

During the Gulf war it was hard o avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull little Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. It was nothing of the sort but not many seemed to notice. The TV...

The Russians Withdraw from Afghanistan (1988)

The withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan must be perplexing for those on the left who supported their invasion or did not oppose their presence. They argued that Afghanistan was a different case from Vietnam or other battles against imperialism. The USSR claims to be socialist; and even if we reject this claim we can point to the frankly reactionary prograrnme of the Afghan rebels and the support for them from the United States. In comparison the Afghan government and its Russian backers are , if no more, 'progressive'. The People's Democratic Party (PDP) government which took power...

Discovering what socialism should really mean

Socialism has always been a bit of an odd word for me. Growing up, reading about history I could never really understand what it meant. The Labour Party called itself a “democratic socialist party”, the totalitarian dictatorship that ruled Russia was known as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” and Saddam Hussein’s thuggish ruling party in Iraq was known as the “Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party”. So in what sense could it mean anything? At the same time it was becoming clearer and clearer to me, the older I got, that society was laid out in a certain way and that socialism was an alternative...

The First World War: Swear You'll Never Forget (verse)

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET? For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of the ways: And the haunted gap in your minds has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you are a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. BUT THE PAST IS JUST THE SAME—AND WAR'S A BLOODY GAME . . . HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET? LOOK DOWN, AND SWEAR BY THE SLAIN OF THE WAR THAT YOU'LL NEVER FORGET. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz— The nights you watched and wired and...

Swear You'll Never Forget (the First world War)

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET? For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of the ways: And the haunted gap in your minds has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you are a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. BUT THE PAST IS JUST THE SAME—AND WAR'S A BLOODY GAME . . . HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET? LOOK DOWN, AND SWEAR BY THE SLAIN OF THE WAR THAT YOU'LL NEVER FORGET. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz— The nights you watched and wired and...

Iraqi union leader Falah Alwan speaks on workers' struggles in Iraq

On the Saturday night of Ideas for Freedom 2014, Workers' Liberty and comrades from the Worker-Communist Parties of Iraq and Kurdistan organised a fundraiser to support Iraqi workers', women's, and refugee organisations in their struggles against sectarianism. In this speech, specially recorded for the event, Falah Alwan, the President of the Federation of Workers' Council and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI, one of Iraq's main labour federations) reports on the recent struggles of Iraqi workers, and explains why only the working class and organised labour can save Iraq from sectarian-religious...

Defying fundamentalism

In an article originally appearing in Against The Current , the publication of the US socialist group Solidarity, Haideh Moghissi reviews Karima Bennoune's Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. . This article originally appeared online here , and is from the March/April edition of ATC (No. 169). THE POST-9/11 “war on terror,” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, have provoked more interest in Islam. To some people Islam has come to represent the ideology of liberation from the yoke of Western imperialism; to others it is a backward...

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