100,000 killed in Iraq
The leading UK medical research journal Lancet has estimated that up to 100,000 civilians have been killed since the invasion of Iraq. The details are at http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9446/early_online_publication.
The Alliance for Green Socialism has highlighted the death figures from the respected Iraqi Body Count. Their figures have been used by desperate New Labour politicians to try to rubbish the Lancet paper. In the latest US killing spree in Falluja the US General in charge was able to say that 54 of his soldiers have been killed and around 1,200 insurgents. He was unable to give any civilian casualties. The US puppet government initially said there were no civilian causalities and later changed this to 20.
Iraq Body Count's own response can be seen at http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/
Been here before
In 1920, Falluja was a symbol of Iraqi opposition to British rule. Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, whose online column comments daily on Iraq, has quoted TE Laurence. In August 1920, Laurence wrote in the Sunday Times: "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows." The British eventually imposed order and a king on Iraq. This time it is supposed to be different. Full article at: http://www.juancole.com/
The reality of Falluja
Over forty members of the Leeds Coalition Against the War Annual General meeting heard an Iraqi doctor who had been in the first siege of Falluja. His description of the horrors of the killings of civilians by Marines was appalling. His ambulance was dropping off one-litre water bottles to families in the houses. He threw bottles through the sliding door because the US marines would shoot him if he stopped to get out. The Marines would snipe the bottles to empty them and shoot dead any who came out of the houses to try and get to the water. He saw many dead civilians who had been shot through the forehead. He had many more grim tales to tell including shot and burned children. His assessment was that the current attack on Falluja is much worse. The fighting is still continuing in Falluja some three weeks after the US bombed and rocketed their way into the town.
Democracy and Falluja
The Iraqi Islamic Party pulled out of the Iraqi interim government over the assault on Falluja. Its leader Nassir Ayet was subsequently arrested in a dawn raid by the US military. Nassir Ayet is the Deputy Speaker of the interim Iraqi parliament and should have been protected by parliamentary immunity.
Working for a clampdown
David Blunkett has a wide vision of the mafia. In his bill on organised crime he has introduced two amendments. One will place a time limit on demonstrations in Parliament square, as well as banning megaphones. This is being introduced to get rid of Brian Haw. Brian has been outside the Houses of Parliament raising questions over the invasion of Iraq. His megaphone activity has apparently disturbed MPs while they were snoozing in their offices. The other amendment, mentioned in Umbrella 78, was to introduce a specific criminal offence of trespass at the Royal Palaces punishable by up to six months imprisonment. Blunkett has failed to defend those members of the public from being attacked by royal princes in the early hours of the morning.
Apparently this sort of antisocial behaviour is condoned by custom and practice going back hundreds of years. The US hold prisoners in defiance of the Geneva convention. One of the places mentioned as having prisoners is Diego Garcia, a British territory. The original inhabitants are not allowed to return by the British Government but Blunkett's law and order doesn't extend to taking on the Americans. This will become a big issue in next years General Election for him given recent events involving US citizens in Yorkshire and Humberside.
Impeach Blair
There is now a draft parliamentary motion to impeach British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It accuses him of "gross misconduct" over the US-led invasion of Iraq. The motion is from a cross-party group of MPs and it will be offered for debate during the new parliamentary session. Michael Martin, the speaker in the House of Commons, must rule on whether the motion can be proposed for debate on the floor of the house. Blair won't lose an impeachment vote, but he doesn't like the idea. Downing Street is treating this seriously and has ordered officials to compile a case against the motion on the grounds it is obsolete. Adam Pryce, Plaid Cymru MP, said he hoped 30 to 50 members of parliament would support the motion, according to the Independent. So far 23 have signed up. However not a single New Labour MP has had the courage to take on liar Blair. The text calls for a committee to investigate and report to the house on Blair's conduct regarding the war. The committee would draw up the "articles of impeachment" and a panel of law lords would judge whether Blair deliberately misled the nation into waging an unlawful war, it said. A guilty verdict would see Blair arrested by parliament's Sergeant at Arms.
The House of Commons is asked to consider the following:
- The conclusions of the US Iraq Survey Group which reported that in March 2003, when the invasion was launched, Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and had been essentially free of them since the mid-1990s.
- The opinion of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that the war was unlawful.
- "Whether there exist sufficient grounds to impeach... Blair on charges of gross misconduct in his advocacy of the case for war against Iraq and in his conduct of policy in connection with that war."
There is now an online petition available for signing at www.impeachblair.org
If this attempt to use an ancient parliamentary procedure is taken alongside the Countryside Alliance attempts to challenge the Parliament Act in court, some serious questions are being raised over the nature of that most shadowy of creatures the British Constitution.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Internet radio Station Democracy Now has interviewed John Perkins, a former member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how he helped the US cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies. The full interview reinforces the arguments of our friends in the Drop the Dept Campaign but also sharpens up the focus on the USA's key role in creating the dept in the first place. Read the transcipt at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251
News from the Swampies
Suing people
Liz Davies and Mike Marqusee have revealed why they had left the Socialist Alliance. Over two years ago Liz Davies was the National Chair of the SA. She was one of the signatories for the cheques and discovered that her signature had been forged on a number of cheques. She demanded a condemning of the practice and a through investigation. However the SA Committee, dominated by the Socialist Workers Party but supported by the International Socialist Group, the Alliance for Workers Liberty and the Communist Party of Great Britain, refused to take the matter beyond a mild tut-tutting. Liz and Mike, despite a number of nasty political innuendos including one from Martin Thomas of the AWL, kept their silence. They desperately wanted the Socialist Alliance to succeed and refused to wash its dirty linen in public.
Today the Socialist Alliance has been destroyed by the SWP and they are doing the same with Respect. Liz and Mike were responding to pushing by an SWP member on the Socialist Unity Web site. And what was the response of the SWP? John Rees has threatened to sue the Socialist Unity site. He is apparently hopping mad and said he was going back on Paul Foot's statements about never using the bourgeois courts against socialist opponents.
There is more in the last two editions of the Weekly Worker http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker
They of course cover up their own role in this squalid affair and put in couple of snide attacks on Mike and Liz.
The SWP and Respect
This is a letter from Kath Owen, who gained over 500 votes for Respect at the last local elections, and a response from Garth Frankland, a Leeds member of the Alliance for Green Socialism.
Dear Comrades and Friends
It is with sadness that I find myself writing this. I have come to the decision that I can no longer remain within the Respect Coalition in its current form. I have had some doubts about the politics and leadership of Respect for some time, but this weekendâ€-s first National Conference has confirmed for me that I can no longer continue. I held out great hopes for the Conference, it being the first opportunity members had had to democratically decide the politics and direction of the Coalition. At the time of the founding declaration in January 2004 there were, for me, question marks over internal democracy and policy positions. However, with the European elections looming there did seem a necessity to get on with the massive task of building an electoral campaign. Without an operational Socialist Alliance, the prospect of mounting a national, socialist, anti-war challenge in the June elections would only be possible through Respect. The all-up elections for Leeds City Council and other councils also presented an opportunity to stand socialist candidates who would oppose privatisation and speak out about other issues including racism and war. I felt it was the right decision to stand as a Respect candidate in the Leeds and Euro elections. I have always tried to make decisions following my socialist principles in a pragmatic way: I donâ€-t regret standing in those elections. But Respect has not developed in a way I feel comfortable with and the Conference was the nail in the coffin. Firstly, there was very little room in the agenda to have real debate about policy issues. True, there were workshop sessions, but the resolutions that were passed were only considered for a few minutes. Debate brings clarity to politics and we must not shy away from having the difficult arguments, as this brings out the best ideas. Many controversial/complicated motions were remitted, often this seemed to be under pressure from Executive members. Since the National Executive will not be publishing and circulating minutes of its meetings, delegates were expected to trust that the myriad of issues passed to the Executive would all be considered in full and acted upon, as conference would wish. Frankly, I doubt that this will happen. Secondly, there was a series of really controversial motions, which for me flagged up key issues that the Coalition has to have a position on. These included: abortion rights, representatives taking a workerâ€-s wage, political plurality within the Coalition, republicanism and secularism, and our relationship with other organisations on the Left. I regard all these issues as worth consideration for an electoral organisation and approach them from a socialist feminist perspective. I was therefore disappointed that conference chose not to:
- Defend a woman's right to choose and commit itself to campaigning for free abortion on demand, full reproductive rights and access to childcare for all
- Commit its elected representatives to taking the wage of the ordinary people whom they represent (as the Scottish Socialist Party does)
- Recognise different political tendencies within the Coalition and set out their rights and responsibilities
- Take a republican and secular stance (which opposes all religious discrimination) as part of a democratic state
- Accept the fact there are other socialist and left organisations and individuals with different programs, who Respect could benefit from working with rather than denounce
It is not the fact that these motions, which I supported, did not pass. I am not so childish as to expect that everyone in an organisation of which I am a member will agree with me on every issue. How boring that would be. However, it was the way these motions were opposed by leading members and how the movers were denounced that I found to be undemocratic and disturbing. Executive members put arguments that forming policies from the controversial motions would "put people off Respect". It was stated that there was "a dishonesty in the way the motions had been put forward" and they were "divisive" proposals. The movers were described as "people who had done nothing to build the anti-war movement and if they don't like it they can go off and form their own organisation." I felt this was not the way to conduct a democratic conference where open debate would result in delegates forming their opinion and voting accordingly.
I also believe that the big-tent idea is limited. Of course Respect can operate as a broad coalition, most other political parties are broad churches. But how big should the tent be? The canvass cannot be stretched indefinitely. Of course, the controversial motions did not pass. Time and time again, conference voted against resolutions that would determine Respect as a democratically orientated, socialist organisation committed to equal rights and liberation. This brings me to my third problem.
The Socialist Workers Party dominates the leadership of Respect. It seemed that the conference followed the direction that key SWP members wished it to go. I canâ€-t reconcile that fact that a supposedly socialist organisation can operate in such a manner, directing anti-socialist votes. Whilst I have a lot of time for individuals in the SWP, what the party leadership has done to Respect I cannot tolerate. This added to the contempt with which the Socialist Alliance membership has been treated and the way the London European Social Forum was organised has used up the last bits of trust I had for the organisation.
I still remain hopeful that a broad, democratic, socialist alliance can work together in campaigning and elections in England and Wales. The Respect Coalition would have been one way to achieve this. But until I am convinced that it is operating in a principled manner I cannot support it. I will not be renewing my membership for the foreseeable future.
Dear Kath
This is sad. As you know I felt that the SWP had destroyed the Socialist Alliance and Respect would end up another SWP front a la ANL and Global Resistance. But for the labour movement it would have been better for Respect to become semi-democratic (even better to be completely democratic) and for the SWP to adapt a more hands off approach. Being right doesn't necessarily help the movement forward. Trotsky heavily criticised Stalin's policies on China. His comrades came to him after the Shanghai massacre and said "Look you have been proved right, now we can deal with Stalin". The old man shook his head and said "No it would be better I was wrong. The deaths of the workers in Shanghai will strength those conservative elements on which Stalin's polices are based". This is written with out looking at the individual texts but you get the drift. The destruction of the SA, followed by the carve up of Respect, makes it more difficult for us to construct a credible alternative to Blairism. Dave Church (from the Walsall Independent Labour Group and the SADP) sits on the AGS National Committee. Two months ago he said that we have to get some agreement to work together quickly but it is going to take some years to bind us into single organisation. Unspoken but understood was of course the model of the Scottish Socialist Party. I remember some three years ago at the beginning of the SA in Leeds saying (to an SWP full timer) how important it was for the SWP to recruit and sell papers in the sea that the SA wanted to be. Instead of being like Mao building a sea in which they can fish they are draining the pond for short term gain. The AGS has continued to develop. We have set two new branches and gained a new affiliate in the last two months and we will have another two branches by the New Year. The news about Respect is not good and will make things harder for everyone.
Garth
The SWP and the Democracy Platform of the Socialist Alliance (SADP)
The SADP have put 28 questions to the SWP dominated run leadership of the Socialist Alliance. They have received no clear answers. The questions range from who took the decision to wind down the office to what has happened to assets of the organisation. The SADP gives the full document at: http://www.democracyplatform.org.uk/SA_Malad.pdf
The SWP and the Stop the War Coalition
Mike Davies, who was the Alliance for Green Socialism's substitute delegate, reported the following antics at the latest Stop the War Coalition meeting in Leeds.
I had the dubious privilege of attending, on behalf of the AGS, the STW National Council meeting in Leeds on Saturday 13 November. It was reminiscent of the dire Respect conference a fortnight earlier. About forty people attended. Anyone opposing the platform (i.e. SWP) position or even voicing mild criticism of it was reviled as childish, a liar, disruptive or a tiny revolutionary group on the left. Most of this abuse came directly from the chair. The two motions the platform did not like were quite shamelessly denied a proper hearing. The one that worried them most was deliberately buried in a general debate about the political situation. When the chair came to move to a vote, he first of all summed up against it himself, from the chair, for five minutes, then allowed the SWP's Lindsey German to sum up against it from the platform for a further eleven minutes. He did not allow the mover of the motion to sum up at all! The chair also refused to accept a perfectly proper, written amendment from me.
The most dramatic outcome was that the SWP voted down a motion committing the Stop the War campaign to an immediate end of the occupation of Iraq. Yes, you did read that correctly. We now have a "Stop the War" campaign that refuses to support an immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops. I suppose that matches nicely with Respect's earlier refusal, at its conference, to criticise multinational capital on the grounds that it might upset some people. There must be some principle, somewhere that the SWP are not willing to betray. I just haven't found one yet.
Then the SWP try to falsify the meeting as Mike Davies further reports.
After the Stop the War national council meeting last Saturday I sent you a brief note, reproduced below. I have now received the official report of the meeting distributed by StW officers, reproduced above. These notes are as remarkable as the meeting. Firstly, significant parts of the report are false:
- "The Council agreed the outline of a plan of campaigning ..." It did not. No such plan was even put to it.
- ".. the National Council (was) marked by a very high degree of unity." It was not. there was significant opposition - ranging from open disgust to discreet disquiet - to the SWP railroading. The truth is simply that they turned out enough SWP members to hold the line.
- "The National Council passed, with just two votes against, the following resolution concerning Mick Rix's resignation from our Steering Committee: ..." It did not. The report carries only half the favourable part of the resolution. The National Council passed a resolution twice that length. The part omitted included direct instructions to the Steering Committee to behave in a proper manner in future.
- The most marked falsity in the report is also one of omission. According to the report, the resolution calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq was not merely defeated, it never even existed. It has been excised from the record. Orwell's Ministry of Truth could not have done it better!
The Stop the War Coalition's report of the meeting is at http://www.stopwar.org.uk/bulletin.asp?id=171104
Mike's account has been backed by accounts on the Urban 75 website.This in turn has led to series of anti SWP jokes such as this: According to (ahem) The Sun, the suicide bomber who killed a member of the Black Watch in Iraq this week was a white, European, Islamist. Is everyone on the SWP CC accounted for? According to eyewitnesses the suicide bomber had a bizarre orange goatee and a exaggerated Glaswegian accent. Where's Bambery?
The SWP and the European Social Forum
I haven't the space to go into their destructive manipulations at the European Social Forum. Their antics have been exposed in articles from the Weekly Worker to the New Statesman
Why do the SWP behave as they do?
I will return to this in a future Umbrella as I have spent too long on them already..
Jack Straw: an oily past and present
Jack Straw has admitted that the British Government knew five weeks before the arrests about the failed old-Etonian/SAS/Thatcher coup in Equatorial Guinea. However he kept mum. Although Equatorial Guinea is a nasty little dictatorship the UK government maintains full diplomatic relations and the pretence that it is a sort of democracy. This is because of the enormous quantities of oil there. There has been a long term Anglo-American strategy to obtain control over African oil. Some this conspiracy against the African people has been outline in Mark Curtis book Unpeople: Britain's secret Human Rights Abuses (isbn 0099469723 published this month by Vintage)
Jack Straw recalled his past in a recent letter to the Independent.
"Dear Comrade Editor:
In his report on President Arafat's funeral ceremony in Cairo (13 November), Robert Fisk uttered such a malicious libel against me that I am certain that even the late George Carman QC would have taken my case without fee. Mr Fisk called me an "old Trot". There is a very long list of old Trots who really were Trots who will be as outraged as me by this calumny. (These types can usually now be found in the City, appearing on quiz shows or ranting in certain national newspapers.) Whatever other frailties I may have (many), I have been consistent in my opposition to Trotskyism and the false consciousness it engenders. (I was taught to spot a Trot at 50 yards in 1965 by Mr Bert Ramelson, Yorkshire industrial organiser of the Communist Party.) Yours fraternally, JACK STRAW Foreign Secretary, House of Commons PS. Further reading. Isaac Deutscher: Trotsky (3 vols). Left Wing Communism, an Infantile disorder, V I Lenin 1919 (a prescient warning about Trotskyist adventurism)."
I passed this story by my ancient buddy Garth Frankland who was Secretary of the West Yorkshire Area of National Union of Students during Straw's rise to power. He remembers the formidable Bert Ramelson well. He chaired at least one meeting at which he spoke and clashed with him several times in Leeds and Bradford. Bert was the leading member of the Communist Party in the area and the organisation was particularly strong in Leeds University. Straw came at the tail end of the Communist Party influence among Leeds students. Trotskyists such as Mike Gonzales and Bernie Diamond were beginning to challenge the old guard around Alan Hunt The breakthrough came when the old CIA financed right wing of the National Union of Students, of which Robert Fisk was one of the leaders, was broken by the election of Roger "bun" Lyons a London student with the backing of the Colleges of Advanced Technology. This was seen at the time as break to the left of the old Communist Party and probably explains Fisk's perception. Straw crept through on the back of these political developments. Something must got into his blood from those distant days when he responded to letters exposing his dodgy grasp of socialism with more quotes from Lenin torn out of context. Given that his job as Foreign Secretary just agreeing with the Americans he probably has a lot of time on his hands. Even at the time, by those who knew him, Straw was seen as a political opportunist. Garth remembers well an NUS Area Committee meeting where Straw came in late and the Chair leaned across to him and whispered "Why has this opportunist shit bag come to the meeting?". There has never been any need to alter this basement over the last 40 years.
Moving around Gaza
Martin Asser of the BBC describes in detail the difficulties ordinary citizens have in just moving around Gaza.
"After a certain point, every feature of landscape has been erased - bulldozed out of existence by the Israeli army. The only building visible for hundreds of metres is the fortified watchtower guarding the western side of the settlement. Behind in the hazy distance is the lush setting of Netzarim itself. If there is a closure, this is where Israeli forces dig up the road and seal off Gaza City from the rest of the Strip. There is usually one loophole for Palestinians wanting to get through. They take shared taxis as far as they can go and then walk for 2km (1.2 miles) along the edge of the sea, which is out of sight of the road and the watchtower. Sometimes even that loophole is closed - an armoured vehicle parks at the cliff top and opens fire to deter any pedestrians."
Read the full article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4021095.stm
Prince Charles is in touch
In a scathing memo, written to a third party in response to a request from a former Clarence House secretary for more training at work, Charles complained that young people nowadays think they can be pop stars, high court judges or even heads of state without putting in the work or having the "natural ability". The secretary was described in the memo by Charles as "so PC it frightens me rigid". Charles Clarke, New Labour Education Minister initially defended state education against the implied attack by saying Prince Charles was out of touch. However he rapidly changed his position. After all it is New Labour policy to introduce hundreds of private Academy schools and introduce specialisation with an emphasis vocational training in the rest. In other words Prince Charles was accurately reflecting the New Labour agenda. Although Blair refuses to face up to this the royal family is increasingly seen as an expensive irrelevancy by the electorate. This latest outburst brings the closer the day when they are replaced by a democratically elected president along the lines of Ireland.
New Labour Watch
- Work deaths have continued to rise under New Labour. There is no sign of the corporate killing law promised. Last year the Health and Safety Executive reported a 4% rise in deaths. The full figures are at www.hse.gov.uk/statistics.
- Pensions have risen less under New labour than under the Tories. If pensions had risen the same rate as under the Tories pensioners would be £300 a year better off.
- We have previously reported the closure of Indymedia by what appeared to be the US FBI operating on UK soil without a warrant. This closed down 20 Indymedia sites throughout the world. Five days after they disappeared, the harddrives were returned, again with no hint as to where they had been.
This doesn't mean the matter is closed. As Mark Thomas said in the New Statesman: This "was the equivalent of the FBI storming the Guardian's offices and demanding that the paper hand over all its computers, including those that hold details of its writers and photographers."
Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the British NUJ , put it similarly: "To take away a server is like taking away a broadcaster's transmitter. It is simply incredible that American security agents can just walk into a London office and remove equipment."
MPs in the NUJ's () Parliamentary group tabled questions to British Home Secretary David Blunkett. In reply to a parliamentary question asked by Richard Allan, MP for Sheffield (UK), and Jeremy Corbyn, the British home office stated that "no UK law enforcement agencies were involved".
So where were the forces of UK law and order when it came to protecting Indymedia?
Further information at: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/indymedia/
-- Half-Celestial Khan
