Chemical blame game over Syria disguises the real issues

In the aftermath of parliament’s rebuff to prime minister Cameron’s proposed attack on Syria, Barack Obama has been forced to acknowledge the mass opposition to military action.

The legacy of recent debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the intervention in Libya continue to haunt large numbers of people, including top military brass.

It is evident that externally-backed regime change in these countries has achieved no benefits, either for their populations or for ordinary citizens in the United States or Britain.

Obama's hesitation about striking Syria is as much to do with popular distaste for war after more than a decade of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan as it is to do with the timing of G20 summit that takes place in Moscow later this week.

Of course, Cameron and Obama hope to give their tarnished democratic credentials a polish by subordinating themselves to the decisions of elected bodies – parliament and the US Congress.

But meanwhile, the pro-attack faction in parliament – including the vociferous former Lib-Dem leader, Lord Paddy Ashdown - is marshalling forces for a possible second vote. US secretary of state John Kerry is declaring that Obama has the authority to act without Congressional approval.

Much energy is being spent trying to pin down responsibility for the chemical attack in Damascus. Shocking images are published and the US claims to have proof that the regime is responsible.

But the issue of chemical weapons – the “red line that must not be crossed” as Obama put it – is actually a secondary issue to the fundamental question: do the major powers have the “right” to attack Syria?

The debate over who is using the chemical weapons – the Assad regime or those fighting against it – begs the real question: is military intervention

a solution to the misery of the Syrian people? And is it justified in any case?

And does opposition to bombing Assad’s military installations imply support for him?

Absolutely not in response to every question!

The all-important distinction is between the Assad and the Syrian people who have courageously opposed his noxious regime for decades, even while the US, Britain et al were wheeler dealing with Damascus in their power games.

What about the all-important the right to self-determination of the Syrian people themselves? It is as if they don’t exist except as victims whom we must pity.

But a large part of the disposed and poor Syrian people rose up against Assad in the Arab spring of 2011, which undermined autocratic regimes, from Tunisia to Egypt. (How many people know, for example, that in July 2011, the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page had over 218,000 followers?)

Of course, their hope that the Assad regime would fall quickly was mistaken. It is backed by Russia (which has a naval base in the country). Moscow has been supplied arms to Syria for decades.

Although Tehran would seem to have little in common with the secular Syrian regime, it too has supported Assad, sending him money to pay for Russian hardware, because his opponents are predominantly Sunni Muslims by contrast with the Shia Muslims in Iran.

Underneath the conflict in Syria is a class division in which the state oppresses its people. These divisions are now masked over by the sectarian religious divide, spurred on and armed by Saudi Arabia, the US and Britain and elements of Al Qaeda on the one side, with Iran and Russia on the other. 

The democratic and social aspirations of Syrians, whatever their religious or non-religious allegiances, like those of Egyptians are totally ignored by most media and commentators.

In the meantime, we say an unconditional “No” to any attacks on Syria. This does not mean giving succour to the Assad regime. As Irfan Ahmad has pointed out, in the Arab states, as elsewhere, the urgent need is to encourage and develop a democratic secular alternative.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Milibandism is New Labour Mark II

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s call for the prosecution of Tony Blair at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes comes as Labour plans to restore the former prime minister to a prominent position in the party.

Nobel-prize winner Tutu’s honourable decision to turn down an invitation to share a platform with the former Labour leader at a conference on leadership is well founded.

In 2010 a Dutch inquiry found that the US-UK invasion of Iraq, authorised by Blair and George W. Bush, had “no sound foundation in international law”. In Britain two top judges also ruled that without UN endorsement, the war was illegal.

But while the misery in Iraq continues unabated, those who promoted the 2003 invasion and occupation are doing very nicely thank you.

Blair currently owns at least six homes and is said to be worth £20 million. Meanwhile, Blair’s former spin doctor, Lord Peter Mandelson, is competing with the ex-PM in amassing a wide-ranging business empire worth millions.

Mandelson’s international business consultancy has assets of nearly £600,000, according to the Sunday Telegraph’s Mandrake. Mandelson advises companies via Global Counsel. He also co-runs a company called Willbury, which posted a profit of nearly £375,000. He and his partner have just purchased an £8m home.

The extent of Mandelson’s wealth is guarded with jealous secrecy. But due to a change in the House of Lords’ transparency rules, the advisor to autocrats around the world may come under pressure to declare his company interests.

One might think that the extraordinarily greedy behaviour of these men who knocked the Old Labour into what it is today might give pause to those who still cling to the party – and parliamentary politics - as the only possible alternative to the ConDem coalition.

Unfortunately this is far from the case. There is, for example, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, who sees the future in a conservative form of Milibandism.  Toynbee has taken upon herself the role of advising Ed Miliband about how to suck up to the LibDems. At a debate about the future of New Labour, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Toynbee declared that Labour should be “the party of conservatism”, of “preserving and restoring”.

Blogger and political commentator, Gerry Hassan, who believes in Scottish self-government, rightly pointed out that:

“Four periods of Labour in office and nine popular mandates since 1945 and the Labour Party hasn’t challenged the power nexuses and networks of establishment Britain or touched the institutions of ‘the Conservative nation’, which give succour and support to privilege and status. Nor has it, with the exception of the Attlee administration, substantially reduced inequality in any of its periods of office.”

But nonetheless he shares Toynbee’s hope that Miliband would distance himself from his New Labour heritage. This is, of course, to ignore the reality of what he said himself: Labour is part and parcel of the establishment itself.

Despite the forlorn dreams of those who cling to Labour as the only alternative to the ConDem coalition, there is no fundamental difference between Miliband’s economic and political strategy and that of his predecessors in New Labour.

For all Miliband and others’ hot air, New Labour was the real architect of the introduction of the market into the public sector. The only difference between the Labour and the Coalition is in the degree of austerity they endorse.

Feeding the illusion that the New Labour leopard can change its spots leaves the door wide open for Tory backwoodsmen and more sinister forces lurking in the wings. The serious danger to Cameron is not from Miliband but the Tory far right.

This prospect makes working for a more advanced form of democracy such as A World to Win’s strategy of people’s assemblies an urgent political task. It is certainly more progressive than waiting three years for a chance to vote for Miliband’s New Labour Mark II.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Populist Cameron trumps pathetic Labour

Interviewing the prime minister for the Sunday Telegraph, Matthew D’Ancona curiously concluded that David Cameron was a man with a mission – “to save capitalism from itself”.

Cameron is acutely aware that the system is in deep trouble and that vast numbers of people are increasingly angry about the widening gulf between them, the rich and the powerful.

A new poll has confirmed that economic fears are by far the greatest concerns. So Cameron is in a bidding war with Labour to fool a worried public that that action is being taken to curb the excesses of the system. With Ed Miliband’s party in practice a semi-detached part of the coalition government, Cameron’s task is made easier.

Cameron’s trumpeted curbs on executive pay, aimed at giving shareholders a direct say in determining salary packages and pay-offs, is aimed at soothing outrage over the earnings of company directors, as is his decision to maintain the top 50p rate of tax.

People are aware that the class divide is deeper than ever. The vast majority, are disgusted at the wealth of a tiny minority. Rising prices and bills combined with rapidly rising unemployment and wage freezes have cut deep into people’s standard of living.

Anger at top people’s wealth is of course totally justified. An independent survey finds that chief executives of 87 of the FTSE 100 firms helped themselves to a 33% rise in pay and perks in 2010-11, taking their average package to £5.1million. Other directors took pay rises of 49% over the year, walking away with £2.7million each.

Small wonder, then, that the Tent City occupation outside St Paul’s, which initially targeted the London Stock Exchange, has continued to strike a chord amongst large numbers of people, including City workers.

For a Conservative leader, Cameron has been harsher in his criticism than Labour of how economic growth and speculation on the markets has benefited a tiny minority. Edward Heath, the Tory prime minister before Margaret Thatcher, once famously talked of the “unacceptable face of capitalism”.

Cameron went one better in outright populist rhetoric directed at big business. He told BBC’s Andrew Marr show, that where “there was excessive growth of payment, unrelated to success, frankly ripping off the shareholder and the customer, [it] is crony capitalism and is wrong. It’s also, and this is the key point, payments for failure”.

It’s not the first time that Cameron and his strategy directors, who include Steve Hilton and Andrew Cooper, have invaded territory which Labour felt it could lay claim to. But that’s not difficult. Shadow Business secretary Chuka Umunna’s pathetic weekend call for a “responsible and better capitalism” hardly set the pulse racing.

The truth is that these political leaders hope to cash in on disquiet with the system simply to keep the show on the road, just as the spectre of uncontrolled financial markets and the greatest debt crisis in history is causing economic havoc.

The notion that the shareholders can somehow regulate the fortunes made out of the system is just as harebrained as the idea of that politicians can control or even influence the flows of capital through the world’s financial market.

Giving shareholders more power will do nothing to change the spots of the capitalist leopard. Institutional shareholders like insurance companies have already presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from the majority in society to the minority. And many of them benefit from the same high earnings as the CEOs they are supposed to regulate.

Along with business secretary Vince Cable and the Labour leaders, Cameron is simply cashing in on the oh-so-threadbare but still powerful myth that capitalism can be reformed or tamed by pretending that “fairness” can be spread around. Behind all the rhetoric lies the awareness that they are impotent as the system careers further and further out of control.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Torture exposes West's hollow claims about democracy

The indictment gets longer. Still wanted over the illegal invasion of Iraq, former prime minister Blair could be open to prosecution over New Labour’s secret collaboration with the Gaddafi regime, leading international lawyer Philippe Sands has suggested.

Ironically, in the wake of the Nato-backed regime change in Libya, it has become crystal clear that British intelligence agency MI6 collaborated in the “rendering” of alleged terror suspects by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and were complicit in their torture.

Under New Labour, M16 tipped off the CIA to help ensnare and transport two leaders of the anti-Gaddafi opposition back to Tripoli where they were promptly imprisoned and tortured. MI6 also told Libyan intelligence about opposition figures who lived in Britain, supplying it with emails and telephone numbers.

As early as 2003 Mark Allen, head of counter-terrorism at MI6, wrote to former Libyan foreign intelligence and then foreign minister, Moussa Koussa on the friendliest of first-name terms.

US human rights campaigners found letters in Koussa’s home showing how pleased Allen was about the “delivery” of Abedelhakim Belhadj then known by his nom de guerre Abu Abdallah Sadiq. Belhadj says that British intelligence officers were among the first to interrogate him when he arrived in Libya and was promptly imprisoned and tortured.

The CIA paid for Belhadj and his deputy, Abu Munthir and their families’

air trips from Malayasia and Hong Kong. But Allen played a double-game, telling Koussa that he would not share information obtained by torture with the CIA – and how he found this “amusing”.

“I have no intention of doing any such thing [sharing information]. The intelligence about Abu Abdallah was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful to you for the help you are giving us,” he wrote.

Mark Allen has since been knighted and is an advisor to BP.

UK Special Forces helped to train the Khamis Brigade run by one of Gaddafi’s sons. The elite SAS forces assisted Libyans in counter-terrorism techniques and surveillance between 2004 and 2009.

M16 also held counter-terrorism courses for them in 2006 to help them fight the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, then headed by Belhadj. The US had added this group to its list of banned terror groups in 2003. Ironically, Belhadj was one of the chief leaders in the overthrow of Gaddafi and is now head of the Tripoli Military Council which currently heads 8,000 troops. He has called for a full apology from Britain.

Although British diplomats tried to shred compromising documents before they fled Libya, they have been discovered in the residence of the British ambassador. They show how Labour PMs Blair and Brown wooed the Gaddafi family in terms of sycophantic flattery.

Using craven religious phraseology, Blair wrote in December 2006: “At this sacred time of harmony and reconciliation, recalling how our passionate God has mercy on mankind, I would like to express my personal wishes to you, to your family and to the Libyan people.”

But working with torturers in Libya was not enough for M16. While the British government made hypocritical noises about human rights in China, MI6 was cooperating with the notorious Chinese State Security Bureau: “We agreed that we would look at how we might engage the Chinese Services on the Islamic extremist target in China”, one letter says chillingly. It is well-known that the Chinese authorities have long been brutally repressing anyone campaigning for Uighur ethnic rights, denouncing them as Islamic terrorists.

Of course, when anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya were inspired by the Arab Spring to revolt, the Cameron-Clegg coalition changed the tune sung by Britain. But the same thinking lies behind this government: flatter the leaders, repress the opposition and above all - get the oil.

But as the evidence found in the ashes of the old regime prove, no amount of flattery or the torture of opponents can possibly guarantee this. Finally, what the revelations show is what we have always known – that fine words about “democracy” from the mouths of British governments are the height of hypocrisy – both at home and abroad.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Blair's 'gratitude' sums it up

The killing of Osama Bin Laden may satisfy America’s lust for revenge but ordinary people have paid a massive price in the hunting down of al-Qaeda’s US- trained leader.

Since the infamous 9/11 attacks, untold numbers of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan by American and British forces who have occupied the country for a decade.

America used the lie that Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were joint partners in crime, even though they regarded each other as enemies, to invade Iraq. Hundreds of thousands have been killed subsequently, and many driven into exile.

Where there was no al-Qaeda presence before in Iraq, there certainly is now. Even Britain’s MI5 warned former prime minister Blair that the 2003 invasion would increase the risk of terror attacks in Britain.

Blair’s sickening statement today, expressing "gratitude" to the US, and declaring that the killing of Bin Laden showed that "those who commit acts of terror against the innocent will be brought to justice, however long it takes" equally applies to himself.

The issues and causes that have served as recruiting grounds by jihadists everywhere remain absolutely unaltered and unresolved since 2001.

The Palestinians, for example, are perhaps further away from the legitimate goal of self-determination than they were. President Obama has followed his predecessor’s policy, isolating the elected Hamas government and backing Israel’s aggression in Gaza and in settlement building.

Puppet American regimes like the ones in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain continue their pro-Western policies and crack down on dissent with impunity and silence from Washington. American troops remain in Iraq.

There is also a sense that the timing of the US operation – miles inside Pakistan and without authority from the country’s government – is also to do with Obama’s attempt to paint himself as a true patriot and a man the country should re-elect next year.

The fact that the news led to rallies on world stock markets and boosted the dollar says as much about the fragility of the global economy as it does about anything else.

Similarly, state-authorised terror in the shape of the Nato war on Libya has given the beleaguered Coalition government in Britain something to brag about. Cameron’s indifference to the death of one of Colonel Gaddafi’s sons and three children in an illegal targeted assassination attempt is a warning to us all.

With the British economy teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession – boosted only by spending spree on bunting for that wedding – war is good for business.

Enemies abroad are being matched by the targeting of the enemy within. The pre-emptive arrests before the wedding were in the spirit of the authoritarian state built by the previous government. Riot police battering Bristolians protesting about yet another Tesco store aimed at driving small shops out of business is also a sign of the times

The market state, as we have warned, long ago abandoned its stewardship of the economy and the welfare of its people in favour of promoting business as the only business of the planet.

Shorn of social responsibilities, the state constantly falls back on its true nature – as an instrument of repression within its borders and military action outside. None of this makes the country a safer place to live, but then the ruling classes are not particularly interested in this as they don’t travel on the Tube or frequent other likely terrorist targets.

In historical and practical terms, the curtain is coming down on bourgeois democracy. We are obliged to replace the decayed political system with something much more democratic and representative, where financial interests are replaced by social and community need. Saturday’s meeting of the People’s Assemblies Network in London has taken on a new significance.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

The point of no return

The anti-government demonstrations sweeping Libya mark a stunning turn of events in the revolutionary upsurge sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. With diplomats defecting and the army split, Muammar Gaddafi’s regime is rocking.

A bizarre appearance by Saif Gaddafi on state television last night only adds to the sense that Libya’s leaders will soon suffer the fate of those in Egypt and Tunisia.

Gaddafi’s eldest son, while saying that “untrained” soldiers had made mistakes, claimed the “seditious” demonstrators were under the influence of foreign powers or even drugs and claimed that only a few people had died. He warned of civil war and a fight to the finish.

But with an estimated 200 plus deaths and many more wounded, events in the Libya – and the Arab world as a whole - have reached a point of no return. Those who are being gunned down in the streets of Libya’s second city Benghazi share the grievances affecting all of the Arab states from the largest (Egypt) to the smallest (Bahrain) – the lack of democratic rights, growing inequality and economic want.

The crackdown by the Libyan regime has been particularly brutal, much of it hidden as internet services are closed down and foreign reporters banned. One CNN report said that helicopter gunships have been used to fire at protesters.

The turning of the Gaddafi regime against its own people in this way is a turning point in the fortunes of the Arab people. Libya, despite its small population of 6.5 million, has played a special role on the world stage. After taking power in September 1970 in a military coup that overthrew the monarchy, Gaddafi fought hard to implement the ideals of Pan-Arabism championed by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt.

With his concept of jamahiriya – “state of the masses” or “republic of the masses”, he sought to foster a direct democracy in which the people would rule through local councils and communes. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Libya became a anti-imperialist force which supported liberation movements throughout the world, especially the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Libya became subject to US oil and export sanctions from 1982. The UN trade embargo was to last until 2004.

Not only did Libya face punishment by the major imperialist powers. Gaddafi’s campaign for Arab unity was undermined and betrayed by Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat’s and Hafez al-Hassad in Syria. He was denounced by his neighbour, Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba. He was punished further for opposing the Iraqi invasion of Iran during the genocidal Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s.

In April 1986, the US ir force bombed the Libyan capital Tripoli in revenge for a bombing at a Berlin discotheque frequented by US troops and Gaddafi’s family was targeted, with his daughter being killed. Political and economic pressure on Libya increased after the downing of the Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie in December 1988 for which Libya was framed.

Libya’s political and economic isolation produced a reactionary political turn. The 1990s saw increased inequalities and loss of political freedom for ordinary Libyans. A nepotistic dynastic elite grew up in which the rich enjoying freedoms denied to ordinary Libyans. Rights for opponents became non-existent, with political prisoners being shot down at the Abu Salim jail in 1996.

The sight of Gaddafi making deals over oil and immigration with oil-hungry authoritarians like Blair and Italian leader Berlusconi has been particularly shocking. The possible collapse of his regime is sending shock waves down those in the British establishment and corporate world, who have been supplying many of the weapons used against the demonstrators

Events in Libya sound not only the death-knell of liberation leaders turned autocrats. It also creates a crisis for those who conspired against them while they were revolutionaries but embraced them when they turned against their own people. With both eyes on Libya’s oil, the major capitalist powers do not give a damn for democratic rights, which is why their remarks are not worth listening to.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Obama waves big stick at Iran

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Tony Blair’s appearance before the exceptionally tame Iraq war inquiry was his pointed remarks about Iran being next in line for military action. And it seems it was more than the usual Blair “I’d do it again” bravado and that his connections to the White House are as strong as when he was prime minister.

For almost at the same time as Blair told the inquiry he didn’t have a single regret about invading and occupying Iraq, despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction, Washington was announcing a major shift in its military posture towards Iran. After a year of megaphone politics directed at Tehran, president Obama has given up the ghost (just like he’s done on Israel-Palestine).

So now the US is to provide new anti-missile systems to at least four Arab countries, and help Saudi Arabia triple the size of the 10,000 strong force that protects key installations. The US navy will also deploy ships capable of intercepting medium-range nuclear missiles off the Iranian coast on a permanent basis. The same ships will, of course, have offensive capability too.

All this suggests that a pre-emptive attack on Iran by US forces is being prepared. Ostensibly it would be aimed at Iran’s nuclear installations but ultimately it is another episode of regime change in the making. In the fantasy world of Washington, the Islamic republic would give way to some kind of Western-style democracy (the Gulf states about to receive US military help are, of course, exempt from this project because they have oil and are pro-Washington).

The danger of an international conflict is made more likely by the fact that China is a major ally of Iran (it needs the country’s oil). Washington has also decided to sell arms to Taiwan despite China’s protest that this threatens the integrity of its own borders with the island state that Beijing claims as part of its territory.

How the Israelis must be enjoying all this. A mere hint that they would attack Iran unless the US got its act together was enough to send Obama scurrying into the hands of the military. Israel’s own nuclear weapons are, of course, not talked about in polite circles. And Iran serves a convenient diversion from the accelerated ethnic cleansing taking place in Jerusalem and full-scale apartheid on the West Bank.

The noted Middle East commentator Robert Fisk asks why Washington and London are turning a blind eye to the destruction of the peace process, adding:

“This majority of the West Bank – known under the defunct Oslo Agreement's sinister sobriquet as ‘Area C’ – has already fallen under an Israeli rule which amounts to apartheid by paper: a set of Israeli laws which prohibit almost all Palestinian building or village improvements, which shamelessly smash down Palestinian homes for which permits are impossible to obtain, ordering the destruction of even restored Palestinian sewage systems. Israeli colonists have no such problems; which is why 300,000 Israelis now live – in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal – in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands.”

The double standards applied are consistent with US policy down the ages and Obama has fallen into line, chastened by the crisis within his own presidency. Iran is not a pleasant place to be right now, to say the least. The execution and torture of supporters of democratic change by the reactionary theocratic state play right into the hands of Washington. Nonetheless, we should oppose any military attack on the country or the imposition ofsanctions. The Iranian people themselves must be free to determine their own history.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Time for 'regime change' in Britain

Whatever Tony Blair says or doesn’t say at the Iraq inquiry will not alter the historical record. Blair and George W.Bush went to war on a pretext, pursuing regime change in Baghdad behind the smokescreen of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that existed in imagination only.

“Intelligence” dossiers were, to use that famous phrase, “sexed up” to suggest that Saddam Hussein could launch WMD in 45 minutes and even reach Cyprus with them. Old documents on the internet were cut and pasted and published as gospel. The British passed the Americans “information” about Iraq seeking uranium through Niger that was pure fiction.

The link made by Bush between Iraq and Al-Qaeda was total nonsense, and Blair knew it. Except it is not nonsense now. Where once they had no foothold, Al-Qaeda is now present in Iraq and is partly responsible for the near civil war that exists between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has devastated Iraq. Apart from an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion, as of May 2007 there were 2,255,000 Iraqis displaced inside the country. A similar number had fled to either Syria or Jordan. In June 2007, 28% of Iraqi children suffered from chronic malnutrition while the unemployment rate in some areas was 60%. Four in ten professionals have left since 2003, including 12,000 physicians. The latest figures available show that 70% of Iraqis have no access to adequate water supplies.

Some have got rich out of the war, notably the US defence industry and private sector corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton. By mid-2009, US taxpayers’ funds spent or approved for Iraq totalled a staggering $800 billion, running at $5,000 a second according to Senator Harry Reid.

Congressional hearings found that Halliburton overcharged the Pentagon to the tune of $1.4 billion. But what the hell! Former vice-president Dick Cheney helped to run the corporation before entering the White House so it was natural his old friends should benefit. Iraq is a privatised war, with more than 180,000 private contractors working in support of US troops. They have killed Iraqi civilians with impunity.

Those responsible for visiting this disaster on Iraq include not just Blair but Gordon Brown and the members of the New Labour cabinet and MPs who voted for the war despite massive public opposition. A good number of them are lawyers and quite well understood that the accepted principles of international law stood in the way of regime change. So they ditched them – or rather got the hapless Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, to change his mind when the military top brass said they wouldn’t invade without legal clearance.

A special word should be reserved for the United Nations and its then secretary-general Kofi Anan. Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, reported that his team could find no WMD in Iraq and in all probability that there were none. A word from Anan querying the legality of an invasion might have just held up military action. Unfortunately, it took him until September 2004 – 18 months after the invasion - to say just that!

Iraq, the continuing occupation of Afghanistan, extraordinary renditions, the secret wars waged by US special troops in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, all show that international law is powerless to stop the British and American governments. Their actions continue to reinforce not lessen the threat of terror attacks on ordinary civilians.

There is a strengthening case for “regime change” in Washington and London. These are democratic states in name only, playthings of major corporations and financial interests. Creating a real democracy, with economic and political power in the hands of ordinary people, is the best answer to the warmongers. Then we could have the war crimes tribunal that many people are demanding, with Blair and Brown, Bush and Cheney the top four defendants.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Iraq war prepared behind a cloak of lies

On the eve of former senior civil servant Secretary Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into Britain’s role in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, documents are surfacing which reveal New Labour’s astounding duplicity.

Secret government reports have been leaked which show unequivocally that former PM Tony Blair was fully aware of plans for an invasion and regime change a year before the events. So too, of course, must Gordon Brown have been.

The papers disclose that throughout 2002 Blair and a small number of officials were actually planning for military action even whilst the prime minister was claiming that the objective was “disarmament, not regime change” as late as November 2002.

On 16 July 2002, when Donald Anderson, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee asked: “Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq.” Blair replied: “No, there are no decisions which have been taken about military action.”

But as the Daily Telegraph reports: “Britain had, in fact, been preparing for possible military action for five months”. According to the leaked documents: “From March 2002, or May at the latest, there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation.”

By June 2002, a special Iraq planning conference for Britain and Australia was being held and in August, US Central Command (Centcom) commander General Tommy Franks discussed bringing together a “massive contingent of British troops as a northern invasion force through Turkey”, writes Andrew Gilligan.

It was Gilligan who filed the May 2003 BBC Radio 4 Today programme report that government claims of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could be unleashed in 45 minutes were “sexed up” and “dubious” based on inside information from Dr David Kelly. The scandal that erupted led to Kelly’s suicide and a government clampdown on the BBC.

Undoubtedly the latest leaks are connected with the deep-seated hostility within the military establishment to the way New Labour conducted the war in Iraq as well as the on-going debacle in Afghanistan. They reveal huge tensions over lack of planning and strategy as well as poor equipment.

Not only was the planning bungled, but logistics and supplies were mismanaged on a laughable scale. Ludicrously, a container-full of skis ended up in the desert. Troops were sent to war in civilian airlines and had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Despite Blair’s close relationship with the Bush White House, the leaked documents also reveal that British commanders were treated with contempt by their American opposite numbers. British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J K Tanner describes his US military counterparts as “a group of Martians” who could not be communicated with!

The leaks up the ante before the inquiry opens tomorrow. Unlike previous investigations, it will be held in public, contrary to the wishes of both Blair and Brown. It will be worth following the inquiry closely. Oliver Miles, former British ambassador to Libya is asking a question on behalf of many others: “Was the invasion legal and is Blair a war criminal?” But Chilcot’s inquiry has already ruled out any investigation of this issue, declaring that “the inquiry is not a court of law and nobody is on trial”.

We don’t need an inquiry to answer the question, however. Not just Blair but all those in the New Labour cabinet who endorsed the secret plans for war and voted for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, which devastated that country, stand indicted. Putting together a court to try them will have to wait until we have established a real democracy in Britain in place of the sham political system that is shot through with lies and deceit.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

The EU, Blair and a sense of disgust

Amid all the speculation about Tony Blair seeking to become the first president of Europe, any questions about democracy are put to one side. No wonder the polls show a growing contempt for politicians.

When the Czech Republic is finally browbeaten into signing the Lisbon Treaty, the carve-up of jobs will begin. There is absolutely no suggestion of elections for any of the posts that will the follow the treaty’s implementation.

Instead, candidates will be appointed to jobs like the president of the European Council or put in charge in of foreign policy after the usual horse-trading that goes on between member states. This is yet one more example of the undemocratic nature of the European Union project in particular and the general tendency towards bureaucratic forms of political rule.

Few countries were allowed a vote on the Lisbon Treaty itself and where they were, as in Ireland, voters were in fact compelled to vote twice until they came up with a “Yes”. Yet the treaty imposes sweeping changes to the way the EU is run and deepens the role of the market in the economies of member countries.

For example, public services will be subject under article 16 to new “economic and financial conditions”, meaning that services like health care and education, would be subject to the rules of competition. This will inevitably result in further privatisation.

The European Council and Commission is given 100 new powers across a wide range of policy areas and the new voting arrangements will reduce the voice of the smaller of the 27 nations. National parliaments are given minimal oversight powers but no real clout in relation to decisions taken in Brussels.

Increasingly, the EU is seen as a counterweight to the US and China when it comes to fighting for a share of world markets in a period of economic crisis. The EU, for example, is resisting proposals for a new climate change treaty so as not to be put at a disadvantage against rival trading blocs.

The spectacle of Blair being manoeuvred into position to become president only feeds the sense of disgust with the whole business and encourages an anti-European xenophobia that benefits the Tories and the far right. They are able to play the nationalist card and stoke up hostility to anything “foreign” or non-British. New Labour’s response is yet more undemocratic politics and a contrived pro-Europe attitude which is everything to do with promoting big business (and their own careers) and nothing to do with ordinary working people’s interests.

As we mark 20 years since the 1989 revolutions that swept Eastern Europe, it is the appropriate moment to consider how we renew and take that movement forward. Countries like the Czech Republic won and then quickly lost their new political freedoms to the EU while in Britain, the old political system has decayed beyond recognition.

The perspective has to be one of extending democracy in new ways across the whole of Europe to prevent the right-wing and nationalists seizing the initiative, as they threaten to do. A new democracy cannot be built, however, on the foundations of an old capitalist system but needs to be brought together with a transfer of economic, financial and political state power to the disenfranchised majority in every country. That has to be our internationalist perspective.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Blair keeps the wheels of profit turning

Former Prime Minister Blair put in a rare but brief television appearance last night. My, but how he has aged! His new death’s head mask is entirely appropriate for the role he is now playing.

Blair, you will recall, was the prime minister who co-organised the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan on a series of lies and deceptions. His sponsorship of the “war on terror” resulted in illegal abductions and torture, for which he could yet be held responsible.

In between times, he successfully destroyed the old Labour Party and created inequalities of wealth in Britain unseen for a century.

On leaving office, he was given the role of ambassador for the Quartet (United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States) whose aim is to make a deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

in May this year Blair received a $1.4 million award from the Israeli Dan David Foundation for his "exceptional leadership". So much for his “independence”. No wonder Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to continue with his country’s illegal settlement building without fear of rebuke from Blair (or Obama, for that matter).

Now Blair, who earns $9 million a year as an “adviser” to JP Morgan and Zurich Insurance, has popped up with a report on climate change. He presented it to the United Nations yesterday as officials struggled to prevent the Copenhagen climate summit scheduled for December from collapsing before it even gets under way.

Blair chaired a group that insists that in tackling global warming, economic growth and consumption have to be sustained, which is a big lie. He said: “Forging and implementing a global deal will not be easy but world leaders can be confident that reaching a deal is both achievable and consistent with their measures to promote economic recovery.”

He was speaking to the converted. For the majority of those gathered at both the UN before going on to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, the unquestionable, underpinning assumption is that any action on climate change is subordinated to the profit-yielding growth in the production of commodities.

Chinese leader Hu Jintao explicitly tied his country’s new commitment to environmental concerns to reducing the growth of climate change emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product. Rather than the dramatic reductions needed to bring the current atmospheric concentration back below the danger levels already extant, he intends the Chinese economy to continue to grow rapidly, and carbon dioxide emissions will continue to follow it, just a bit more slowly.

But the evidence is against even that modest aim.

Andrew Sentance, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee summarises the whole problem. His paper, Energy and Environmental Challenges in the New Global Economy, shows that growth in energy consumption has increased relative to the growth in GDP in recent decades. Sentance adds:

“On the environmental front, a return to global economic growth will put upward pressure on the output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses as energy consumption increases. A resumption of global growth will therefore tend to raise emissions, moving them in the opposite direction to the big emissions cuts that will ultimately be necessary to stabilise the global climate. Over the course of the next decade, however, we will need to start to reverse this trend of rising emissions without jeopardising the growth of the global economy and the development aspirations of poorer nations around the world.”

Just how this is to be achieved he doesn’t (or can’t) explain.

The limits of what can be squeezed out of people and the planet in the name of profit have been reached. It is now time to salvage the recyclable, reusable components of the bankrupt capitalist economy, and direct them in sustainable production satisfying the democratically-determined needs of the world’s population.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

How the war was spun

Alastair Campbell’s diaries will earn him piles of money but the former Downing Street spin doctor is still playing fast and loose with the truth about the preparations for the attack on Iraq. Key entries for the days leading up to the infamous autumn 2002 dossier, with its false claims about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), are omitted from his diaries. The dossier, with its introduction by Tony Blair claiming that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes, played a crucial role in the propaganda justification for the invasion that took place six months later. Campbell was, of course, at the centre of the accusation by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan that the government had "sexed up" the dossier because the early drafts from the intelligence agencies were too weak. While he has always denied any direct involvement in rewriting the dossier, Campbell’s diaries actually reveal that he told intelligence chiefs that the Iraq dossier "had to be revelatory" and that "we needed to show that it was new and informative and part of a bigger case". Then the diaries fall silent about the process that led to the inclusion of the fictional 45 minutes claim. What a surprise!

Across Whitehall, John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was co-ordinating the work of drafting the dossier. Scarlett admitted to the Hutton inquiry into the death of the scientist and WMD expert Dr David Kelly that he had allowed last-minute changes to strengthen the document. One crucial alteration was to cut the observation that Saddam Hussein was more likely to use chemical and biological weapons defensively than offensively. For his loyalty to the New Labour government he was later made head of MI6 and then knighted. While Campbell and Scarlett are alive and prosperous, Kelly was hounded to his death (or perhaps eliminated) by the authorities after briefing the BBC about the way the government had exaggerated Iraq’s military potential.

Campbell’s diaries claim that many cabinet ministers had reservations or doubts about the attack on Iraq. Only one, Robin Cook, resigned. The rest sat on their hands and sanctioned an illegal invasion. They did so even in the wake of another infamous dossier, this time published in February 2003, just weeks before the war. Large parts of the dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" – were actually lifted from published academic articles, some of them several years old. The dossier was nothing more than an old-fashioned, cut-and-paste job that had the fingers of Downing Street spin doctors all over it. It was just one of many examples of disinformation and media manipulation that characterised the Blair years. On this occasion, it proved deadly, however, because the spin helped to justify a war that has resulted in the deaths of tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqis, the dismemberment of their country and a sharp increase in recruitment by Al-Qaeda.

Paul Feldman, communications editor