AFL-CIO resolution on Iraq

The motion combines support for Iraq’s labour movement (The bedrock of any democracy is a strong, free, democratic labor movement. That is true in the United States and Iraq), support for Iraqi democrats (In recent months, the insurgency increasingly has focused its terror on the Iraqi people, engaging in a deliberate campaign to frustrate their aspirations to take control of their own destiny. These aspirations were clearly demonstrated earlier this year when Iraqis defied widespread intimidation and escalating violence by turning out in the millions to elect a new Iraqi interim government tasked with writing a constitution. The AFL-CIO applauds the courage of the Iraqi people and unequivocally condemns the use of terror in Iraq and indeed anywhere in the world) and a call for the rapid withdrawal of US forces.

Submitted by the Executive Council, as amended from the floor and adopted by the delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago, July 26, 2005
The AFL-CIO supports the brave men and women deployed in Iraq, which include our members in all branches of the armed services.

Our soldiers—the men and women risking their lives in Iraq—come from America's working families. They are our sons and daughters, our sisters and brothers, our husbands and wives. They deserve to be properly equipped with protective body gear and up-armored vehicles. And they deserve leadership that fully values their courage and sacrifice. Most importantly, they deserve a commitment from our country's leaders to bring them home rapidly. An unending military presence will waste lives and resources, undermine our nation's security and weaken our military.

We have lost more than 1,700 brave Americans in Iraq to date, and Iraqi civilian casualties are in the thousands. In recent months, the insurgency increasingly has focused its terror on the Iraqi people, engaging in a deliberate campaign to frustrate their aspirations to take control of their own destiny. These aspirations were clearly demonstrated earlier this year when Iraqis defied widespread intimidation and escalating violence by turning out in the millions to elect a new Iraqi interim government tasked with writing a constitution. The AFL-CIO applauds the courage of the Iraqi people and unequivocally condemns the use of terror in Iraq and indeed anywhere in the world.

No foreign policy can be sustained without the informed consent of the American people. The American people were misinformed before the war began and have not been informed about the reality on the ground and the very difficult challenges that lie ahead.

It is long past time for the Bush administration to level with the American people and for Congress to fulfill its constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities. The AFL-CIO supports the call from members of Congress for the establishment of benchmarks in the key areas of security, governance, reconstruction and internationalization.

Since the beginning of the war almost two-and-a-half years ago, the AFL-CIO has emphasized the support and participation of a broad coalition of nations and the United Nations is vital to building a democratic Iraq. Greater security on the ground remains an unmet precondition for such efforts to succeed. The AFL-CIO calls on the international community to help the Iraqi people build its capacity to maintain law and order through a concerted international effort to train Iraqi security and police forces.

Future efforts to rebuild the country are hampered by the weight of the massive foreign debt accumulated under the Saddam Hussein regime. The AFL-CIO calls for cancellation of Saddam's foreign debt without any conditions imposed upon the people of Iraq, who suffered under the regime that was supported by these loans. Further, the AFL-CIO calls for the cancellation of reparations imposed as a result of wars waged by Saddam Hussein's regime and the return of all Iraqi property and antiquities taken during the war and occupation.

The bedrock of any democracy is a strong, free, democratic labor movement.

That is true in the United States and Iraq.

Our returning troops should be afforded all resources and services available to meet their needs. Our members should return to their jobs, with seniority and benefits.

The AFL-CIO calls on Congress and President Bush to expand benefits for veterans and assist those affected by military base closings, including a G.I. Bill for returning Iraq veterans and a Veterans Administration housing program that meets current needs.

The AFL-CIO supports the efforts of Iraqi workers to form independent labor unions. In the absence of an adequate labor law, the AFL-CIO calls on the Iraqi government, as well as domestic and international companies operating in Iraq, to respect internationally recognized International Labor Organization standards that call for protecting the right of workers to organize free from all government and employer interference and the right to organize and bargain collectively in both the public and private sectors. These rights must be extended to include full equality for working women.

The AFL-CIO condemns the fact that Saddam's decree No. 150 issued in 1987 that abolished union rights for workers in the extensive Iraqi public sector has not been repealed. Under current laws, payroll deductions for union dues are not even permitted. The AFL-CIO calls on the Iraqi government to place as a top priority the adoption of a new labor law that conforms to international labor standards to replace the old anti-worker laws and decrees.

Despite legal obstacles, Iraq's workers and their institutions are already leaders in the struggle for democracy. Trade unionists are being targeted for their activism, and some have paid for their valor with their lives. The AFL-CIO condemns these brutal acts of intimidation.

The AFL-CIO has a proud history of solidarity with worker movements around the world in their opposition to tyranny. In concert with the international trade union movement, the AFL-CIO will continue to provide our full solidarity to Iraq's workers as they lead the struggle for an end to the violence and a more just and democratic nation.

Iraqi women and the new constitution

James Hider in the Times reports on the Iraqi women who fear that democracy will crush freedom and that oppression and inequality may be enshrined in the new constitution.

The Prospects for Democratic Consolidation in Iraq:What do Other Cases Tell Us?

Initial Call for Papers

A multidisciplinary conference in applied social science and history 6-7 January 2006 at Kingston University, London, UK

Kingston University's Helen Bamber Centre, the Labour Friends of Iraq and the UK Iraqi Community Association

This conference in London aims to marry theory, history, and practice in the service of contributing to the consolidation of democracy in Iraq.

It is intended to produce practical conclusions and recommendations that might help build the capacity for consolidation in Iraq, including by enabling the Iraqi diaspora community to contribute to the democratization process. The conference proposes to do this not by extending purely academic debates about the causes of democratisation and democratic consolidation but instead as an exercise in applied social science theory and history. It is based on the assumption that valuable contributions to this post-war goal can be made by scholars, researchers, and practitioners regardless of their original views on the
invasion of Iraq.

Of particular interest are the findings of social scientists and historians who have done research on cases of democracies emerging from the destruction and dislocation associated with repression or war or both. Emphasis is placed on the ability to wring practical and applicable insights from central debates in the literature on democratic consolidation which variously emphasize the causal importance of cultural characteristics, strategic choice, economic performance,
institutional design, and other factors.

The conference will include both overview plenary sessions and a series of panel sessions exploring issues such as:

Security
Federalism
Equality
Human Rights
Institutional Design
Religion
Voting/Participation
Freedom of Expression

This is a preliminary list of topics; we welcome suggestions for additional panels and volunteers for panel organisers. In all cases, scholarly debates need to be contextualised and presented in such a way that practitioners and on-the-ground participants in events in Iraq can make use of them. Our aim is to help Iraqi democrats debate the relative merits of the arguments presented and move from theory to practice, from abstraction to a more predictable future for their children.

If you are interested in making a contribution then please send a 500 word abstract which either (1) summarizes your work on democratic consolidation and describes what lessons it might hold for the Iraqi case, or (2) suggests a theme for a panel and indicates people you would wish to invite.

Professor Brian Brivati, Kingston University, UK
Professor Gerard Alexander, University of Virginia, USA

Responses should be sent by 30 September to nd.j@ukonline.co.uk

Many faces of Islam in Britain

Martin Walker at UPI examines Tony Blair’s response to the recent London bombings.

Ripples of Democracy in the Middle East

Rokhsana Fiaz, in the Asian Times, examines democratization in the Middle East.

Recent months have had the world transfixed with the revolutionary changes afoot in the Middle East. According to the foreign policy pundits, we are bearing witness to a remarkable development in the spread of democratic ideals across the Arab World.

What do these changes signify? Well for a start, we are told that this vindication of the Bush administration’s push against tyranny and extremism, unpalatable though this might be for those opposed to America’s onslaught on terrorism.

We are told that Arabs everywhere have been profoundly affected by the spectacle of Iraqis defying terrorists to cast their votes and elect a new government, symbolising the Arab equivalent of the fall of the Berlin wall. And of Palestinians managing to hold a free election whilst still under Israeli occupation along with the Lebanese thronging the streets of Beirut with their flags in an unprecedented show of people’s power. At the same time Honsi Mubarak, Egypt’s president for the past 24 years, has astonished his countrymen with a call for constitutional changes allowing for rivals to pitch for his position for the first time in a generation.

Whilst these changes certainly signify a new spirit, we should err on the side of caution. The Arab world is large and diverse, and there is always a risk of connecting dots in a way that produces a distorted picture.

Take the example of Lebanon. Broad base popular movements as we have recently witnessed here are unlikely to emerge soon in other countries. Lebanon’s experience is in many ways unique. Famously fractious, the Lebanese are well educated and politically sophisticated. Their central government is weak, meaning that it lacks the instruments of control enjoyed by other states. Here, grassroots appetite for bottom up democracy and the impulse for independence combine into a potent force. But there remains a lot to do. The next critical phase for Lebanon is to deal with internal issues. The Lebanese people must re-legitimise their political system and Lebanon's first parliamentary elections currently being held free of Syrian control in almost 30 years will be a key test. This process will necessitate a restructuring of the constitution and an examination of the parliamentary structure, the role of political parties, and the voting age. All these topics are being actively debated. Even Hezbollah recognises that they will have to change with the times to keep the party legitimate and as it has developed, Hezbollah has become more of a pragmatic political party than a religious institution. Lebanon will also have to assess the new generation of Lebanese youth, which makes up roughly half of the Lebanese population and whose demands, aspirations and expectations are largely unknown.

By contrast, in the remaining Arab states the kings and ‘national liberation’ parties that took power after the colonial period have clung ruthlessly to office ever since. Yet in the past year or so, even governments of that sort have been making concessions to democracy. In some cases this has been done for domestic reasons, in others a response to pressure from the Americans.

Morocco’s politics have matured lately into lively multi-party systems, albeit under the supervision of an almost absolute monarch. In Kuwait, we are currently witnessing the last all-male polls in this emirate, which embraced parliamentary democracy more than four decades ago. Only last month did its Parliament grant full political rights to all citizens and enfranchised Kuwaiti women will make their election debut in 2007. Even Saudi Arabia has enjoyed the thrill of electioneering as polling for town councils recently took place across the kingdom.

Needless to say, much of this top-down reform has been hesitant and shallow. In none of these cases has the real balance of power been threatened with change.

Essential attributes of an open society, such as full scrutiny of state spending, an unfettered press, truly independent courts and accountable police and security forces remain unachieved. The changes often look less like Bush’s forward strategy of freedom than a rearguard strategy of regime survival.

Throughout history, the countries of the Middle East have made invaluable contributions to the arts and sciences. Today, however, too many people are hindered by the lack of political and economic freedom, and modern education they need to prosper in the 21st century. Currently, some 14 million Arab adults lack the jobs they need to put food on their tables and roofs over their heads. Some 50 million more Arab young people will enter the already crowded job market over the next eight years. But economies are not creating enough jobs.

Growth is weak. The GDP of 260 million Arabs is already less than that of 40 million Spaniards and falling even further behind. Add in the production of Iran’s 67 million people, and the total is still only two-thirds of Italy’s.

Internally, many economies are stifled by regulation and cronyism. They lack transparency and are closed to entrepreneurship, investment, and trade. Ten million school-age children are at home, at work, or on the streets instead of in class. Some 65 million of their parents cannot read or write, let alone help them with their lessons. Barely one person out of a hundred has access to a computer. Of those, only half can reach the wider world via the Internet. Even when children do go to school, they often fail to learn the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century. “Education” too often means rote learning rather than the creative, critical thinking essential for success in our globalising world. Education has begun to lose its significant role as a means of achieving social advancement in Arab countries, turning instead into a means of perpetuating social stratification and poverty.

And for women in the Middle East, marginalisation remains the key challenge. More than half of the Arab world’s women are illiterate. They suffer more from unemployment and lack of economic opportunity. Women also make up a smaller proportion of members of parliament in Arab countries than in any other region in the world. Until the countries of the Middle East unleash the abilities and potential of their women, they will not build a future of hope.

What is clear is that the international community’s approach to the region needs to broaden to achieve real democratic success. In particular, it must give sustained and energetic support to economic, political, and educational reform across the region. It must work with peoples and governments to close the gulf between expectation and reality and address the all too apparent ‘hope’ gap. Only then will the ripple of democracy emerging in the Middle East turn into a liberating wave.

Rokhsana Fiaz on how to defeat terror

Rokhsana Fiaz has an excellent column in Tribune in which she examines the terror threat and argues that It is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere.

The Prime Minster’s speech at last weekend’s National Policy Forum was correct in tone and content: we are indeed confronted with an evil ideology. Young men twisted by an ideology that juxtaposes hope and fear carried out heinous acts in London, and in the process perpetrated a sacrilegious crime against all people and Islam.

That juxtaposition of hope and fear is an integral weapon of the terrorist, who seeks not only to destroy life and property but also to disrupt our lives in ways that bring more destruction. That fear has already led to questions about why the British security agencies did not anticipate the attacks, why the wealthy nations have not done enough about the root causes of terrorism and why Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden continue to function after almost four years of the ‘war on terrorism’. Many will wonder why the United States and its allies remain mired in Iraq while Al Qaeda's leader still roams free.

There are no easy answers to these questions, just as there is no easy defence against acts of terrorism. What we do know is that this is a critical moment, and in the process of deciding our response, we must do all we can to limit the fallout from this bombing. But this is not going to be easy. Why? Because unlike after 9/11, there is no obvious, easy target to retaliate against for bombings like those in London. The Al Qaeda threat has metastasised and become franchised. It is no longer vertical, something that we can punch in the face. It is now horizontal, flat and widely distributed, operating through the Internet and tiny cells.

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, the Muslim community both here and abroad has a vital role to work alongside the West to restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists behind the London bombings and elsewhere. It is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. The greatest restraint on human behaviour is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the Muslim village and its religious and political leaders, young and old, say is wrong or not allowed.

Some Muslim leaders have rightly taken up this challenge. The Muslim Council of Britain speedily condemned the London outrage and in recent weeks, King Abdullah II of Jordon, hosted an impressive conference in Amman for moderate Muslim thinkers and clerics who want to take back their faith from those who have tried to hijack it.

But this has to go further and wider. The double-decker buses of London, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and its leaders do not take on, delegitimise, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.

The mainstream, then, must reclaim the initiative, and expel the zealots from the sacred place. It should not find it difficult to do this. It has, after all, a great civilisation behind it, which extremism cannot claim.

Religion is surely about facing reality. Too many of us today live amid delusions, no doubt because we find the reality of our times too disturbing to contemplate. Conspiracy theories, paranoia, fantasies about the past or the future; these abound in religious conferences; not just among Muslims, but among religionists everywhere. Religion, however, invites us to ‘get real’ -. Because we believe in God and an afterlife, and in the ultimate restitution for injustice, we should have souls great enough to look reality in the face without flinching.

What is needed, then, is for mainstream Islam to reassert its possession of ‘tafsi’ or interpretation. It remains in a strong position to do this. The zealots are everywhere a very small percentage of the total of believers. The masses are either too traditional or too religiously weak to want to follow them. Never will extremism triumph for long, simply because normal people do not want it, Already we find a growing sense around the Muslim world that zealotry only damages only Islam. Take last week’s publication of the Pew Research Centre’s Global Attitude Survey, highlighting that concerns over Islamic extremism is shared to a considerable degree by Muslims. Nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries. At the same time, most Muslims are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defence of Islam.

In Europe too, the Muslim Diaspora has experienced a profound change, especially among the younger generation. Most were born in Europe, became fluent in their national language and became better educated than their elders. The parents’ dream of going home faded. The emergence of this new generation of European Muslims has resulted in a new way of thinking and talking about the nature of Islamic communities here. Now a silent revolution is taking place. Old concepts that divided the world into two hostile camps-Islamic vs. non-Islamic -are outdated and need to be reviewed. European constitutions allow Muslims to practice their religion and should therefore be respected. Religious principles should not be confused with culture of origin: European Muslims should only be Muslim instead of forever remaining North African, Pakistani or Turkish Muslims. Active citizenship has to be encouraged and a European Islamic culture needs to be created. How? By respecting Islamic principles while adopting European tastes and styles.

Too many Muslims are getting things mixed up. Problems of discrimination in housing or the workplace should not be taken as "attacks on Islam" but as the effects of social policies that we must commit ourselves to changing, as citizens demanding equal rights. We must not fall into a "victim mentality" and the alibi that Islamophobia is preventing us from flourishing. It’s up to Muslims to assume their responsibilities, construct clear arguments, engage in dialogue both within their own communities and with others fellow citizens, and reject the simplistic vision of "us vs. them."

We should promote common values of equality, justice and respect in the name of a shared "ethic of citizenship". Over time, we must do away with the temptation to shut ourselves off as an isolated minority for otherwise we offer encouragement to those extremist voices that argue ’You are more Muslim when you’re against the West’. The Muslims of Europe must be more self-critical.

But their non-Muslim fellow-citizens need to make an effort too. They need to accept that Europe’s population has changed, that it no longer has a single history and that the future calls for mutual understanding and respect. They need to face up to their ignorance and reject the clichés and prejudices that surround Islam. They must start discussing the principles, values and forms that will enable us to live together. The future of Europe-with a flourishing Muslim presence and an open European identity-will be built by all those who accept this challenge.

Baghdad and bombs in London

Gerard Baker, in the Times examines the arguments about the links between the London bombings and Iraq and concludes that . Invading Iraq has undoubtedly created in the minds of many millions of Muslims the idea that their people, their faith is under attack. The right way to tackle that view is not to indulge it, sympathise with it or nurse it, but to correct it. The right way to deal with anti-American and anti-British sentiment in the Muslim world is not to pull out our troops from Iraq and beg forgiveness, but to continue to fight there on behalf of the majority of good Muslims for the kind of country they need and deserve.

Charges against Saddam

Visit here for an article on the Iraqi Special Tribunal charges against Saddam Hussein for crimes committed during his reign. (MH)

Norman Geras urges a fightback against the we told you so brigade

In a tough-minded article in today’s Guardian,Norman Geras argues that the We told you so lot have been bleating on about Iraq ever since the atrocities of 7/7 - it is time to fight back.

The War on Women

Lesley Abdela analyses the desperate situation of women in Iraq. (AJ)

Dilip Hiro: Fair and Balanced?

Dilip Hiro has the reputation of a serious and objective reporter on Iraq. It is not deserved, certainly not recently. This was made clear again today when, interviewed on BBC News 24 about the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein, scheduled for September. Hiro said that Saddam’s defence team had been provided with no information (untrue), that the charges were very old, and, anyway, ‘There was an attempt on Saddam’s life .. so he surrounded the village and punished the people’. The trial, he said, is just ‘a diversionary tactic’.

Imagine if someone dared to say ‘well, Heydrich had been murdered so Himmler and Hitler surrounded Lidice and punished the people’. The BBC audience is now in an important sense disconnected from reality, fed on a diet of this stuff.

Hiro ended his 2003 book ‘Iraq: A Report from the Inside’ with the idea that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was nothing but a continuation of the 1991 Gulf war and that both wars had been about NOTHING BUT OIL. He concluded the 2003 book with these words. “Explaining the 1991 Gulf War the worldly wise Muhammad Bagga, an old resident of Saddam City, Baghdad, told me: “The big Western powers got angry because Saddam Hussein wanted to benefit all Arabs from Iraq’s oil”’. Yeah, right, Saddam wanted to benifit all Arabs, why didn't we see it before? (AJ)

The funding of Respect

Eric Lee asks some questions.(AJ)

Mind your language

Nick Cohen in the Observer examines the BBC's use of language after the recent terrorist
atrocities.

Unite Against Terror Statement

A statement against terror can be signed here. Early signatories include Omar of Iraq the Model, Peter Tatchell, Jane Ashworth (Chair, Labour Friends of Iraq) Osama Al-Moosawi, Alex Gordon (RMT), Micheline Ishay (Director, International Human Rights Program, University of Denver, personal capacity) Debbie Williams (TGWU), Adrian Cohen, and others. (AJ)

Apologia for the inexcusable

Norman Geras has a post about apologias “spreading like [an] infestation … across the pages of the oldest British liberal newspaper. (AJ)

Doctors under threat

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting reports that insurgents are pressuring local doctors to leave Iraq. Incidents of murder and the violent kidnapping of doctors are on the increase. (KW)

They bomb children, don’t they

See this terrible report on the BBC about the latest atrocity in Iraq.

Not a Pretty Thing’: The Wisdom of Tariq Ali

Days after 7/7 Tariq Ali addressed Marxism 2005 (an annual week of discussions organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party). Telling Ken Livingstone to ‘get a grip of himself’, Ali said :I remember the French occupation of Algeria. The French used to call the Algerians filthy terrorists because they bombed cafes in Algiers. The Algerian National Liberation Front used to reply, "We do what we have to do to drive you out of our country. If you don't want us to bomb cafes where you and your friends sit, then please lend us a few fighter bombers and we can bomb your barracks. Throughout the Vietnam War the US denounced the Vietnamese when they planted bombs in the capital, Saigon. But the resistance had to do this to make the country ungovernable. It is not a pretty thing. But the character of the occupation determines the nature of the resistance — this is true in every single instance.

Ali offers an ideological apologia for suicide bombing. (AJ)

Eric Lee sends an open letter to George Galloway

Eric Lee has published an open letter to George Galloway. It reads: Last week, following the attacks in London, you wrote: No one can condone acts of violence aimed at working people going about their daily lives. They have not been a party to, nor are they responsible for, the decisions of their government. They are entirely innocent and we condemn those who have killed or injured them.

Today a suicide bomber killed two women and injured 24 others in an attack on a shopping mall in Netanya, Israel. Do you condemn the attack in Netanya today? I look forward to receiving your reply, which I will publish on the web.

The road to a new constitution in Iraq

Mariam Fam considers, on the Kurdistan Regional Government website, the tough issues facing the new Iraqi constitution drafting committee. The issues that need to be overcome, she claims, are: the structure of government, federalism, and the role of religion.

Rebutting blowback thesis

Guardian letter writer Richard Mollet cuts to the chase with this brief but powerful letter in today’s Guardian: The I told you so brigade did not take long (Blair's blowback, July 11). But if one assumes Blair did recognise there may be some increase in British susceptibility to attack as a consequence of invading Iraq, it is wrong to accuse him of being negligent in pursuing the policy. Worrying about what terrorists may do and trimming our behaviour accordingly is never the appropriate response. This is as true of choosing to continue to use the tube, as it is of developing foreign policy.

The need for hard and soft power

Brian Brivati in today’s Guardian takes issue with the usual left response to terror and argues that a new political response is needed that has more to do with engaging communities than restricting liberties.

TUC welcome for London United vigil

Commenting on Ken Livingstone’s announcement of a vigil involving the GLA, the TUC and faith communities on Thursday evening in Trafalgar Square to mark the London bombings, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

This will be the opportunity for London to come together to show sympathy for the victims, defiance to the terrorists, thanks to the emergency services and to unite as a city proud of its diversity.'

Text of Ken Livingstone’s statement:

On Thursday 14 July London will remember all of those who died last Thursday and show its defiance of those who try to change the character of our city through terror.

At noon millions of Londoners will observe two minutes silence. Every bus in the city will stop, businesses will stop and I want everyone who can to come out of their workplaces and homes onto the streets of London to remember those who died and to show their complete defiance of the terrorists.

At 1pm books of condolences will be opened in Trafalgar Square for all Londoners and visitors to the city to sign throughout the day.

At 6pm Londoners are invited to a vigil in Trafalgar Square to remember those who died, to show that London will not be moved from our city's goal of building an open, tolerant, multi-racial and multi-cultural society showing the world its future and to thank the heroes of the transport and emergency services who saved so many lives last Thursday.

The vigil is organised with the Trades Union Congress and representatives of London' s different faiths and communities. There will be readings and poems by prominent Londoners, different communities and some of those from the transport and emergency services.

Clive Furness on the contradictions of George Galloway

According to George Galloway MP, Islamist bombers killing people on their way to work in London are “despicable”. However, Islamist bombers killing people on their way to work in Baghdad are “resistance fighters”. Is there more to be said?

This letter appeared in the Sunday Times on 10 July.

Timothy Garton Ash on Iraq and 7/7

It was right to drive Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. By contrast, it becomes increasingly clear that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, almost certainly creating more terrorists that it eliminated. But now we have to make the best of a bad job there. The last thing we should do in response to this attack is to scuttle out of Iraq. On the contrary, now is the time for all democracies to rally round the cause of building a peaceful and halfway free Iraq, while insisting on further changes in occupation policy from a sobered United States, no longer infused with the neoconservative hubris of three years ago.

A peace settlement between Israel and Palestine would remove another great recruiting sergeant for Islamist terrorists. And, yes, working toward the modernization, liberalization and eventual democratization of the wider Middle East is the only certain, long-term way to drain the swamp in which terrorist mosquitoes breed. Here, it is Europe rather than the United States that needs to wake up, urgently, to the imperative of doing more. See here. (hat tip, MA)

We are all Londoners…

IRAQI COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
PALINGSWICK HOUSE, 241 KING STREET, HAMMERSMITH, LONDON W6 9LP
Tel: 020 8741 5491 Fax: 020 8748 9010 E-mail: iraqicommunity@btclick.com
www.iraqicommunity.org

PRESS RELEASE 09.07.2005

“The good old red London bus, a worldwide symbol of our capital, ripped to pieces. Random and senseless though such violence may appear, we also all know, it expresses a deadly poisonous sick ideology.” Said Jabbar Hasan, Director of the Iraqi Community Association in London.

“Our Community are shocked and angered by the despicable actions of these terrorists, but we must all channel these emotions into a constructive resolve and not to allow our anger to turn against our fellow citizens.”

Said Mr Hasan of ICA. All these attacks do is strengthen our resolve to see these cowards brought to justice. It is not an assault on our values but rather an assault on all civilisations. Attacks on our transportation system are an open proclamation that the perpetrators don't care if they kill Muslims, Christians, Hindus or Jews. The sadistic sick fanatic culture of freedom haters cannot and will not divide our multicultural society. Terrorist Fanatics and extremists would like to create a great gulf between the Muslim world and the globalizing west. We must do all we can to limit the civilizational fallout from this bombing.

“For a few moments on 7/7, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of evil murderers.” Said Mr Hasan of ICA.

The terrorist attacks in London, should be a stark reminder of Sept. 11, 2001. The global war on terrorism is being waged against enemies who will kill civilians and disrupt the daily routine of freedom-loving people worldwide. Should there be any lingering doubt, the horrific bombings in London remind us that fanatics will not hesitate to strike civilian targets in order to send their message and attempt to reverse the rising tide of democracy in the Middle East.

We send our deepest condolences to the victims' families and friends, and our
thoughts with those who have injured; we wish them an early recovery.

LFIQ letter in Guardian

"The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine," says Tariq Ali in a classic confusion of cause and consequence. September 11 preceded the removal of the Taliban and the invasion of Iraq. The perpetrators of 7/7 seek a 7th-century Islamic Caliphate, not the resumption of the roadmap. A precipitate withdrawal from Iraq isn't sought by most Iraqis and would create a security void in which a democratic constitution and the rights of unions and women could be consumed by sectarian strife. It could also force the Kurds into a unilateral declaration of independence and threaten a regional conflagration.

The terrorist outrages in London should strengthen our resolve to back, not abandon, Iraqi democrats, and increase our determination to see through the UN-backed political process in Iraq, not hand Iraqis over to Tariq Ali's "resistance". (9 July)

Alan Johnson
Jane Ashworth
Labour Friends of Iraq

Joint letter from the iraqi Community Association and LFIQ to the Times

Letter sent to the Times

Your leader (Revulsion and Resolve, 8 July) rightly warns that the Muslim community in Britain should not be victimised. Just as Irish people were rightly not held responsible for IRA atrocities nor should Muslim Londoners. We would add that the success of Iraqi democratisation will powerfully undermine a miniscule minority which supports a sectarian war of civilisations, here and on a daily basis in Iraq. We appeal, therefore, to the British public to assist Iraqi democrats as they struggle for a democratic, federal, united and secular Iraq. It is a common cause of humanity.

Yours sincerely

Jabbar Hasan, Director, Iraqi Community Association (www.iraqicommunity.org)
Gary Kent, Director, Labour Friends of Iraq (www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk)
Hammersmith
London

Mary Kaldor on Iraq and 7/7

“I still want to help build a peaceful and democratic Iraq, to support an inclusive government in Baghdad, and end the occupation irrespective of what happened in London”. See whole article atOpen Democracy. (AJ)

Medical Textbooks for Iraq

A dispatch for medical professionals and other wishing to help Iraqi people is at Michael Yon’s blog.

Iraqi Communist pleads for informed understanding of Iraqi realities

Read this fascinating interview with Salam Ali, the London-based international representative of the Iraqi Communist Party in which he says that distorted views of the Iraqi reality doesn’t help in understanding the situation and doesn’t help to develop solidarity with the democratic and anti-occupation forces.

Nick Cohen targets the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith

Nick Cohen is on very good form in the Observer, examining the reaction of parts of the left to the London bombs and concluding that “There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long.”

Philosophy for Cretino-Leninists, Or How To Construct Bad Pseudo-Logic the SWP Way by Philip Dore

In a previous article, LFIQ’s Alan Johnson introduced the concept of the Single Transferable Article on Iraq, one of the many wonky assumptions and spurious pieces of logic that infest the current debate over Iraq, particularly among our old friends the Socialist Workers Party and their allies.

Given the intellectual vapidity of much of the pseudo-left, one could, with a little imagination and plenty of back copies of the Socialist Worker, use their verbal outpourings as a basis to create a basic philosophy course on how to construct false arguments. A sort of Logic 101 on how not to do it. A Trinny and Susannah for the mind, if you will.

So, other than the Single Transferable Article on Iraq, what other concepts would be on the syllabus for our hypothetical philosophy course?

Anyone who spends any time arguing with the SWP, be it at political meetings, the comments boxes on Harry's Place or wherever, should have at some point come across the debating tool/handy cop-out that I like to refer to as the Rebuttal by Spurious Comparison.

This is the point where, upon being challenged over the SWP's dopey comments praising the Iraqi insurgency/Hezbollah/the IRA/Fidel Castro/whatever, a Swuppie responds by beginning to foam at the mouth and screeching, "But what about Fallujah/the Israeli separation wall/Bloody Sunday/the US economic embargo/that teacher who used to put me down in geography class?" The implication being that so long as somebody else is behaving badly elsewhere, you can't condemn the actions of one individual or organisation, mmkay?

There's a good example of Rebuttal by Spurious Comparison in the June 18th edition of the Socialist Worker, which contains a book review of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's new biography of Mao Zedong.

The review is pretty scathing about the book. Fair enough. I haven't read it myself, but I did notice that the respected biographer Frank Mclynn has "openly pro-imperialist" and a "campaign in support of Blair's Iraq strategy.", criticising the authors (among other things) for their lack of objectivity. Though in fairness to Jung Chang, it's hard to be objective about a ruler when you were a direct personal victim of his policies.

Towards the end of the review comes the Rebuttal by Spurious Comparison, when the reviewer declares:

The weakest point about this book is its claim that Mao was uniquely evil and “responsible for 70 million peacetime deaths”—“more than either Hitler or Stalin”.

All rulers in this barbaric capitalist world are prepared to see people die if it is necessary to achieve their goals of accumulating wealth or armaments.

They endorse sanctions in Iraq, which killed half a million children in ten years. They happily blast apart cities such as Belgrade or Fallujah. And they preside over a system that sees 50,000 die in the Third World each day from poverty-related causes — which means more deaths in just four years than died under Mao’s brutal regime.

Now hang on a minute. For all the unholy mess in Iraq, Bush and Blair have still yet to kill more Iraqis than Saddam did, let alone more than the number of Chinese people Mao killed.

And yes, more people may die in the Third World from poverty in four years than were killed by Mao under his rule, but that's worldwide not in one country. And it's as a result of a wide number of factors. Yes, these include crippling debt and unjust trade agreements imposed by the developed world, but it also includes war, natural disasters such as famine or tsunamis, and the corrupt, self-serving governments that many Third World nations are saddled with. Unlike the 70 million Chinese killed by Mao, they're not the result of policies that emanate from one man.

There's an ugly suggestion implied in this sort of argument, which is that elected leaders of liberal democracies can be equated to the likes of Mao, Hitler and Stalin. For all the (many) faults of Bush, Blair, Chirac etc, that is an odious suggestion.

Another concept to add to our little philosophy syllabus is one that we could dub Consistency Equals Correct. This is when political ideologues start behaving like religious fanatics, declaring the tenets of their faith to be true and pure, and the slightest deviation from the One True Faith to be blasphemy. The StWC’s stance on the war is a good example of the Consistency Equals Correct principle, and the foolishness that it causes as a result of principles being carried to their ridiculous extremes. The War Was Wrong, Therefore All Troops Must Leave Immediately (even if this results in carnage, civil war and the eventual victory of the fascists). On the opposite side of the argument, one can also see the same principle at work among certain US Republican supporters – The War Was Right, Therefore Bush Is A Benevolent Deity Immune From Criticism. Any nuances in this view (“I was against the war, but I think the occupation should end with an orderly transition to a democratic state, not a headlong dash to the airport”; “I was in favour of the war, but I disagree with the US’s cack-handed running of the occupation”) therefore become heresy and treason.

Ideas expressed with nuances are often more likely to reflect reality than those that stick to fundamental, unwavering principles. However, those who have tried to express a nuanced view on Iraq have come under attack from the True Believers. After the war began, the Liberal Democrats were excoriated by the anti-war movement for opposing war only “until the first shot is fired”. This missed the point that the Liberal Democrats had made their opposition felt in the only place where it really mattered – in the Commons votes on the issue. Anything after the war had begun would have been mere vacant posturing; unless of course Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell were expect to leap on a plane to the deserts of Southern Iraq, where they would lead a parade of middle-class liberals to run in front of the oncoming armoured divisions shouting “Stop where you are! Turn around and head back to Kuwait!” Admittedly an amusing mental image, but not very realistic.

Labour Friends of Iraq have also taken a nuanced view of the Iraq conflict. Some of us (including myself) opposed the war; others supported it. However, we believe that whatever one’s original position on the war, there is a dire and pressing need to support our comrades in the Iraqi trade union movement. We believe that working towards democracy and a working civil society is more useful than childish “anti-imperialist” notions. We believe that brave, dedicated trade unionists have a right not to be subjected to potentially harmful slurs and smears by cretino-Leninist organisations like the SWP and Workers Power. This apparently makes us "campaign in support of Blair's Iraq strategy."

Those among us who recently watch Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith may remember the following exchange that takes place in the film:

Anakin Skywalker: “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.”

The exchange is of course a not-very-subtle jibe at George W. Bush, but it could easily be about George Galloway. The absolutism of his anti-war stance has led him to openly urge Iraqis to kill other Iraqis who he regards as collaborating with the occupation. Since Galloway seems to have a shockingly broad view of who he regards a collaborator – last year he called an Iraqi trade unionist a "quisling"in print – this comes with deeply sinister undertones. How ironic that the two Georges – Bush and Galloway – have both come to embody childish Manichean views of good and evil, black and white, goodies and baddies.

In the absence of our hypothetical philosophy course becoming reality, any readers who want to explore this subject further might wish to make use of the
woolly-thinker's guide to rhetoric at the excellent Butterflies and Wheels website. You might find it useful to arm yourself with the kind of pseudo-logic so beloved of pseudo-leftists, so as to be ready with some verbal brickbats to retort with. Alternatively, you could use it to put together a speech to deliver at Marxism 2005.

Press Statement on London bombs from Iraqi Embassy in Canada

July 8, 2005

The Embassy of Iraq in Canada wishes to express its unequivocal condemnation of yesterday’s terrorist attacks in London. We send our condolences to the families of the bereaved and our support and best wishes to the injured. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of London as they confront his atrocity. Londoners have been extremely generous over the years in their reception of refugees from tyranny in Iraq and we are grateful for their kindness.

The president of Iraq and the prime minister of Iraq have both made their utter opposition to all forms of terrorism very clear. There is no excuse for terrorism and all attempts to “explain” yesterday’s attacks with reference to the liberation of Iraq are null and void. London was attacked for the same reason that Baghdad is attacked, because its people believe in democracy and freedom. The terrorists attack is not for what we do but for who we are. They will not succeed.

IFTU statement of solidarity with victims of the London bombings and the workers of London

The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) London office strongly
condemns the terrorist attacks in London that took place yesterday (7
July, 2005) against innocent defenceless working people going about
their daily routine.

We mourn the loss of life and pray for a speedy recovery of the injured.

These are unprovoked attacks, which lack any justification whatsoever.

We Iraqis know very well the sorrow Londoners are going through at the
moment and feel their pain as Iraq today battles against extremism for
democracy and human rights in a federal and united Iraq.

The perpetrators of these vile acts of barbarism must be brought to
justice and receive the deserved punishment.

We salute the brave, calm and tireless humanitarian response of
workers in the transport, emergency services and media who have
demonstrated the instinctive and universal duty of love and care to
their fellow Londoners, that is an example to trade unionists
everywhere.

Finally our sympathy with families and friends who lost loved ones.

Thomas Friedman on the 7/7 bombings

Thomas Friedman in today’s New York Times says that it is “essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst.”

All out against terror

Searchlight statement on the London bombs

Alan Johnson pens an open letter to a comrade on the attacks today

Dear Friend,

What a terrible day.

We have not spoken for some time. After our work together in the local Stop the War group do you recall how we fell out? In January 2004 you called me a ‘pro-imperialist’ and, I remember, a ‘neocon’, because I wrote an article in support of a war on terror. I had written, “For many left intellectuals and writers the dirty bomb that Al Qaeda was getting closer to creating in its Afghan camps will never be finished and explode in the middle of London or Madrid. From the massacre of ‘westerners’ at Luxor, to the massacre of Jews in Turkey, parts of the left are in denial’.

Do you recall how two months later the terrorists attacked Madrid? I wrote, “It is to be hoped that the bombs, devastating but not ‘dirty’… will make some think again”.

I am writing to you today as Al Qaeda bombs have killed an unknown number in London – it seems the number of fatalities may rise to as many as 60, and who knows how many lives will now be lived forever in pain and anguish.

We stopped speaking altogether when the Stop the War movement circulated a letter written by its leading officers (later retracted) which stated “The StWC reaffirms its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and recognises once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary”. Those words - any means they find necessary - look more chilling than ever today.

At the time I was appalled by them but you were not. You thought there was a ’resistance’ in Iraq and it was doing the work of anti-imperialism. I said it was fascistic and you should be supporting the Iraqi democrats instead. We have not spoken since. Can we now speak again?

Let me try to start us off. I hope you will reply. Forgive the length but there is much to say.

The Threat

I still think we are ‘menaced by theocratic fascism’. Timothy Garton Ash said that before Iraq made it impossible to talk so plainly. We face a ‘totalitarian impulse which varies ideologically from group to group’, as the Dissent writer, Paul Berman, wrote. This threat is organised through networks that are neither states nor state actors, that are not party to international conventions and treaties, and that render meaningless traditional (or Westphalian’) war-goals such as the defeat of an army or the defence of territory. We are also menaced by states – such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran - that sponsor, promote and protect those networks. The networks dream of taking over the states, of course. Failing states, unable to fend off the networks or safeguard WMD secrets are part of the equation. In Afghanistan the network took over the state, like a Mafia. So the network was removed and the state rebuilt. And that meant rebuilding the nation. My criticism is that it should have been done better. Is yours still – after the fall of the Taliban, after the clearing out of the AQ camps, after the elections, after the girls playing football in Karbul, after the sight of women MPs- that it happened at all?

Tony Blair has warned of an ‘existential threat’: the coming together of WMD and Terror Networks: ‘it is a matter of time unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together’ and wage ‘war without limit’ (March 5 2004). I still think that is real. Do you still think he is ‘whipping up a story for George Bush’ as you put it?

Denial

But to large parts of the left, yourself included, the terrorists of Al Qaeda were no more real than were the rats of Oran to the dreamy city-dwellers in Camus’s allegorical novel The Plague. You used to quote Michael Moore at me, a man whose appeal to you is beyond me. Moore said ‘There is no threat! Repeat after me, there is no threat!’. Well, there was, and there is. I recall you would also repeat other words Moore (words I thought demented). ‘The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win’. Do you still believe all that?

John Pilger and Tariq Ali, both major figures and leaders of the ‘anti-war’ party, then came out openly with positive declarations of support for the fascistic fundamentalist terrorists and Baathist totalitarians of 'the Resistance' who were massacring their way across Iraq. ‘You can’t be choosy’ said Pilger. ‘Anti-Imperialism’ said Ali. No criticism of Pilger or Ali was forthcoming from you. Then your friends began to like the moloch of the Iraqi ‘resistance’ to the French resistance fighters who fought the Nazis. You kept quiet. ‘The main enemy is Bush’ you said.

So when the staged pulling down of the statute of Bush in Trafalgar Square took place (as if to say 'Aha! Now we will show you whose statute should REALLY have been pulled down!') you couldn’t see a problem. And it was not that the anti-war movement thought there was a moral equivalence between Bush and Bin Laden. It was worse. Many of your new friends really do think Bush is worse. That he, not Osama Bin Laden is, as that nudnik poster has it, ‘The Worlds Number 1 Terrorist’. A legitimate and necessary opposition to US foreign policy was mis-used to minimise or deny or even to indulge the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaeda and it was a bloody disgrace.

Today the Socialist Workers Party were at it again. By 1.30pm they had got the line straight: “The British government cannot avoid its responsibility for these terrible attacks, which are a consequence of its support for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan”. In fact the fascists of Al Qaeda were responsible and the SWP are appeasers.

Aldgate East tube is in George Galloway’s constituency, I think. But don’t you think part of his statement was also marked by the spirit of appeasement and was quite remarkable given who these people are and what they aim for (the return of the 7th century Caliphate not a resumption of the Road Map):

“We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings.

We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East. Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence”.

Today Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone spoke for London not your friends in Respect.

Norman Geras spoke for me. His posts through the day said all I have to say. Here is a part. “They are the enemies of democracy and the enemies of all humankind. They must be fought till they have been defeated.

1. They attack Red Cross personnel.
2. They murder people working for the UN.
3. They kidnap and kill care workers.
4. They bomb holiday-makers, in nightclubs.
5. They blow up people travelling on trains - civilians.
6. They target people on buses - civilians.
7. They take civilian hostages.
8. They decapitate them.
9. They murder trade unionists.
10. They kidnap diplomats.
11. They kill people for being... barbers.
12. They fly aircraft full of civilians into skyscrapers where people are at work.
13. They take schoolchildren hostage and murder them.
14. They bomb synagogues.
15. They kill people shopping in a market.
16. They kill people queuing at a medical clinic.
17. They murder children in Baghdad.
18. They murder people on their way to work in London.

Norman has links for each kind of enormity. You should check them all out. But you were never really convinced that Al Qaeda really existed were you? I heard from a mutual friend that you had been telling everybody how great the much hyped and promoted BBC documentary, ‘The Power of Nightmares’ was. Well, I don’t think they’ll be re-showing that one for a while. I recall I complained that banners for the 9/11 conspiracy websites were prominently displayed at the Trafalgar Square ‘anti-war’ protest. These sites push the idea that the US government, and maybe Mossad, planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks.

I think this kind of thing can only be explained with the resources of depth psychology. Freud would call it denial and repression. Talk of the ‘Power of Nightmares’ was itself a form of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment which facilitated the denial of a particularly painful aspect of the self, a manic defence against the inner significance of an experience, a form of repression of what could not be acknowledged (i.e. the fact that you are, whatever you say to yourself, supporting fascists as a way to give Bush a bloody nose).

Denial is now a mass phenomenon not only on the contemporary liberal-left but also on the right (witness Simon Jenkins, the man who wrote a column in the Times mocking Tony Bair for scaremongering about a non-existent terrorist threat…on the day of the Madrid bombing. And who, after an indecently short interval, has simply carried on writing the same column ever since. Will he stop now? No chance).

Apologetics

We traded insults through a mutual friend when, as the terrorism of al-Qaeda and the Saddam loyalists grows more desperate and barbaric, the apologetics just got worse and worse. The Australian Green Left refused to condemn the bombing of the UN headquarters and Al Qaeda’s massacre of UN staff seeking to rebuild Iraq. The bombing you will recall was ‘anti-imperialist’, the UN being a tool of ‘imperialism’. I think you found that hard to swallow but changed the subject back to Blair-Bush. In fact you’ve been doing a lot of that haven’t you? Whenever the ‘resistance’ committed an atrocity you have been pretending to yourself that it is really a Bush-Blair atrocity (just as the SWP pretend to themselves today). They aren’t you know.

And why do you always put scare quotes around the word terrorism. After today will you drop those scare quotes? Isn’t now the time to accept what Paul Berman says, that with “the end of the taboo against staging gigantic massacres in the United States, the rise of an extremely sophisticated international terrorist underground, the steady development of nuclear and other terrible weapons by the Ba’ath and other wings of the totalitarian movement – all these developments signal…the approach of gigantic calamities. That is why we have to roll back the totalitarian movement in each of its wings’ (Berman 2003).

We must take full measure of the terrorist threat and develop the response accordingly.

Respect

I hear you have been flirting with Respect. You should be careful of the company you are keeping. Do you know what links John Rees and George Galloway, the leaders of Respect with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and ‘Sheikh Hassan Zarkani, representative of the Al Sadr movement, Iraq’. They all formed the platform of the Third ‘Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Zionist Cairo Conference’.

The ‘Cairo Conference’ was launched in 2002. At it, the Iraqi delegation to the Cairo Conference was headed by Nabil Negm (an under-secretary in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry who rose to become chief political adviser to Saddam Hussein) and Saad Qassem Hammoudy (a leading member of the Baath Party, Secretary-General of the Iraqi Conference of Arab Popular Forces, and Iraqi Ambassador to the Arab League. Key speakers alongside these Saddamists were John Rees of Respect and George Galloway. Among the other participants were Moustafa Bakri, editor of the Egyptian magazine Al Osboa, a publication renowned for its denunciations of homosexuality and human rights activists. In 1999 the International Human Rights Federation published a report accusing Bakri of ties to the Egyptian security services’.

The Iraqi Communist Party described the first Cairo Conference as “a conference of solidarity with Saddam Hussein’s regime.”

In 2003 the Cairo Conference coincided with the capture of Saddam Hussein. As news filtered through that the tyrant had been caught it was George Galloway who expressed the outrage of the conference. ‘But Galloway had taken the microphone. “The Prisoner is Saddam,” he said, “he’s been paraded on the TV screens and he’s been virtually humiliated. His enemies are having a good laugh but it won’t be the last laugh,” at which point applause filled the hall’ (Al-Ahram Weekly Online report of the second ‘Anti-Zionist and Anti-Imperialist Conference’, held at Cairo, Egypt).

At the final press conference of the Second Cairo conference John Rees sat happily between George Galloway, the man who hailed Saddam Hussein and spent Christmas with Tariq Aziz, Ramsey Clarke, defender of Radovan Karadzic and a member of the International Committee To Defend Slobodan Milosovic and Azzam Tamimi, who, according to Louise Ellman MP, speaking in the House of Commons, is an advisor to Hamas who hopes the Jews drown with the boats they are driven out of Israel in (Tamimi denies these charges).

A new political force is emerging, part ‘anti-imperialist’, part fascistic, each chasing a purity without spot. The Rees-Galloway project is to yoke the left to ‘reactionary anti-imperialism’. The democratic left needs to raise our dropped jaw and take its measure. We could do with your support in that.

Who are the bombers?

You said to me last time we argued that you thought the rise of Jihadi Fundamentalism was only blowback against imperialism and was therefore progressive. I spluttered some profanity and left. Sorry. Let me try and explain more fully, much more fully, why I do not agree with your tacit support for these forces.

When he was a socialist, Max Shachtman argued that if capitalist society continued to decay and if the working class failed to lead an alliance of forces to a progressive democratic collectivism then a totalitarian doppelganger, Stalinism, could emerge as a reactionary alternative to impose a reactionary ”bureaucratic collectivism.” While history never repeats itself, we can use the logical structure of Shachtman’s analysis – “if…if…then” – to fathom the rise of Jihadic Islamic Fundamentalism.

If the national, secular, often state-capitalist, modernizing projects of the bourgeoisie and state elites fail to develop the society and culture, and become stalled in corruption, tyranny, and cultural stagnation (in 2001 only 300 books were published in Egypt), leaving the rulers unable to secure the support of large sections of the middle class…

If global capitalist competition, penetration, and dislocation presses upon that middle class, sending it into panic and rage, disintegrating welfare systems established by the state-capitalist regimes in the post-war period, ravaging old social relationships but not creating new ones, threatening the old exploiting classes – the bazaar merchants, the religious establishment, sometimes landlords…

If the political leaderships and organizations of the Left are widely discredited for having tailed the nationalist projects of the bourgeoisie (the Egyptian CP dissolved into Nasser’s front in the 1960s, for instance), and if the working class is weak and not organized independently…

Then not only the middle classes (small manufacturers, shopkeepers, artisans, peasants, market merchants, frustrated university graduates) but also those classes created by primitive capital accumulation and pauperization, a cast-off sub-proletariat, a mass of marginalized semi-proletarian poor and distressed petit-bourgeois (who were, in truth, never really won over to secularism during the post-war years) are “opened up” for recruitment by the traditional intellectuals of political Islam, the ulemas. These forces can be swept up into a mass movement aimed inchoately at “the West” or “Imperialism” or “the Infidels,” chasing the entirely reactionary “solution” (actually incapable of implementation) of using modern military technology and, they hope, state power, to turn back the clock to the pure Islamic state of the 7th century based on Sharia law.

Each of these pre-conditions for the rise of political Islam can be found, with national peculiarities of course, in the countries that have suffered its spectacular rise.

The Islamic Fundamentalists appeal to a deep sense of humiliation. Bernard Lewis, in his book What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, is right to focus attention upon that anguished question which torments the Islamic world: how did the very fulcrum of civilization become dependent, defeated, backward, corrupt, and poverty-stricken? The Fundamentalists say “they did it!” pointing to a cast of villains such as “infidels,” “westernizers,” corrupt oil sheiks, Jews, and uppity women.
Fundamentalist Islamic intellectuals such as Sayyid Qutb, Mawlana Mawdudi, and Ruhollah Khomeni laid the foundations for the rise of Political Islam. When modern secular nationalism stalled amid defeat and failure in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Stalinist-led workers’ movements lost the allegiance of major social layers, then the Islamists became the repository of the hopes and dreams of millions. In turn, the Islamists worked tirelessly to redefine those dreams as nihilist fantasies. The result has been a wave of Islamist political militancy and violence from Iran to Algeria, Sudan to Afghanistan, Kashmir to Chechnya, and, in the form of al-Qaeda, a global Jihadic terrorist network.
How does this mayhem connect up to Shachtman’s idea that “capitalism is decaying”? It depends how “decay” is defined. If Shachtman meant the “decline of the productive forces” then he was just plain wrong. The global explosion in the productive forces of the post-1945 world, and the surge in life expectancy and living standards associated with it, speaks for itself. World GDP increased six-fold from 1950-1998, with an average growth rate of nearly 4 per cent a year, according to the OECD. Real GDP per capita rose by 2.1 per cent a year between 1950 and 1998. That compares with less than 1 per cent a year between 1820 and 1950.

In fact Shachtman defined decay rather differently: “To say that capitalism is decaying is to say that it is increasingly incapable of coping with the basic problems of society, of maintaining economic and political order.” That is an accurate indictment of the “runaway world” of the 21st century: a voracious, amoral capitalism eats up the resources of the planet, churns up communities, mocks social institutions from the family to representative democracy, and turns everything it touches – and it touches everything – into a commodity to be bought and sold. This pathology generates a counter-pathology: an irredentist throwback to a simpler time of order, tradition, tribe, and blood.
We have tamed the irrational forces of nature but we remain at the mercy of irrational social and political forces we have created, from the religion of the market to the market place of religions. Humanity is kept in a state of suicidal macro-irrationality “increasingly incapable of coping with the basic problems.”
The Jihadis offer no answer to any of this. They are a desperate, anti-modern reaction to the impasse. And half the region are aged 25 or under.

If the democrats are to push them aside, and reconnect with Muslim workers and diverse progressive elements in society who experience the Fundamentalists as their mortal foe, then we must first define them correctly as a deadly enemy not a potential ally.

The bombers are fascistic

When Islamic Fundamentalism first emerged the Left defined it as analogous to fascism. The Arab Trotskyist Salah Jaber wrote in 1981 that “Islamic Fundamentalism is one of the most dangerous enemies of the revolutionary proletariat.” He pointed out that “the fundamentalist movement shares many of the characteristics of fascism outlines by Trotsky: its social base, the nature of its political ideology, its fierce anti-communism and its totalitarianism”. But there were also differences between classical fascism and fundamentalism. In some respects “the fundamentalist movement is, in fact, more backward than was fascism”. It drives the historical clock backward to a reactionary utopia with more faith and zeal than the classical fascists. But the Fundamentalists, as part of this “more reactionary” drive backwards, can also challenge big private capital. This contrasts to the role of classical fascism as the brutish guarantor of big capital in the face of a mass workers movement. All this means socialists will find themselves on the same demonstration, protesting the same social ill, from time to time. However “any compromises proposed by the fundamentalists as a result of this type of situation pose enormous dangers for all sections of the left, both moral and physical”. Tactical flexibility must be balanced against the overriding political conclusion that it was “absolutely and under all circumstances necessary to combat its ‘reactionary and medieval influence.’” Even the so-called “anti-imperialism” of the Fundamentalists, Jaber pointed out, does not amount to what socialists mean by that term. It represents only an inchoate reactionary hostility to “the hated ‘west’…all the political and social gains of the bourgeois revolution”.

Compare Jaber’s approach to a Lindsey German chasing ‘the Muslim vote’, a George Galloway denouncing the free Iraqi trade unionists as ‘Quislings’ in the Arab press, as John Rees, cosying up to the Muslim Brotherhood, or a Professor Alex Callinicos, sniffily waving away the “hullaballo” about the torture and murder of Hadi Saleh, a leader of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, by the ‘resistance’. That left is finished whatever its noisy show.

It is finished because once Fundamentalism gained a mass base and - all-important, this, for an essentially anti-American left - came into conflict with the USA, then some (forgetting that the possession of a mass base was also typical of classical fascism, forgetting that totalitarian Russia was also in conflict with the USA) allowed their rhetoric about the USA being “the heart of the beast” to merge with the political Islamists’ talk of “the Great Satan.” Reactionary Islamic Fundamentalism was now redefined as “Radical Islam” and the anti-Semitic zealots of Hamas, for instance, were redefined as bone fide “anti-imperialist” forces.

This redefinition was part of a wider collapse of radical politics. Too often leftists halt at a merely negative and inchoate oppositionism to whatever the U.S. is doing. A complex world has been reduced to a face-off between two camps, “Imperialism” versus “the Resistance.” (the crudity is dressed up in post-structuralese, and you can wave your copies of Negri at me all you want, but crudity it is). These leftists define the political Islamists as part of “the Resistance,” and, of course, in that act redefine themselves as the critical supporters of the political Islamists. The price paid in the West has been the loss of independent political judgement and much idiocy about, for instance, the “anti-imperialism” of groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Elsewhere the price has been much higher. In 1977 in Pakistan, the Left sided with Jamat al-Islami against Bhutto, imagining a tactical alliance against a common enemy. They were used and then jailed. During the Iranian Revolution negative oppositionism and inchoate “anti-imperialism” pushed the Left into the arms of Khomeini, the so-called “objective anti-imperialist.” They were led to his gallows.

An Alternative

Our job is to push on past a stalled modernity and a demented reaction. How? By a consistent fight for global democratisation and global development, or, if we can put it this way, making tyranny history and making poverty history. That’s how the decent left we need will come to know itself and challenge the pro-tyrant left we have. But that’s a discussion we can have. There are a hundred discussions we need to have. Are we talking again?

Best wishes,
Alan Johnson

Hitchens on 7/7

Christopher Hitchens at Slate examines the meaning of the London attacks.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has issued the following statement on the attacks today

These attacks have brought out the best in London’s workforce. Emergency service and transport workers have earned the gratitude and admiration of everyone affected by these outrages.

We offer our sympathy and condolences to everyone who has suffered in today’s atrocities. They were an indiscriminate attack on the population of one of the world’s most diverse cities.

We have received messages of support from trade unions around the world including those who have suffered from similar terrorist attacks.

When the immediate emergency is over, we will look for an opportunity to bring London’s workforce together in all its diversity to show our unity in opposition to terrorism.

LFIQ Statement on the 7/7 atrocities in London

We unreservedly condemn the attacks today on ordinary Londoners and mourn the loss of life and hundreds of injuries. There is no justification whatsoever for these attacks and we hope that the perpetrators are swiftly brought to justice and that popular vigilance and security action will prevent any further attacks. We do not yet know who carried out these murderous assaults but they have all the hallmarks of terrorist actions in New York, Washington, Bali and Madrid. We hope that no one will take the law into their own hands, as some did against the Irish community when the Provisional IRA bombed England in the early 70s, and attack Muslims. Those who carried out these attacks wish to foment sectarian strife and we should not play into their hands.

Gary Kent, Director, Labour Friends of Iraq

Nick Cohen on Terror and Liberalism

Read this excellent review by Nick Cohen of Paul Berman’s book, Terror and Liberalism on Normblog

Optimism about Southern Iraq

Check out Normblog on the reasons for optimism in Southern Iraq (AJ)

Labour MPs Ann Clwyd and Sharon Hodgson raise role of UK forces in supporting Iraqi democratisation

The following took place in the Commons on 4th July

9. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab): What contribution UK armed forces have made to the reconstruction effort in Iraq.

15. Mrs. Sharon Hodgson (Gateshead, East and Washington, West) (Lab): What assessment he has made of the contribution of UK armed forces to the development of democratic and sustainable political structures in Iraq.

The Secretary of State for Defence (John Reid): I am sure the whole House will wish to express our condolences to the family of Signaller Paul Didsbury of 21 Signals Regiment, who tragically died on duty in Iraq on 29 June.

British forces are in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi Government as part of the multinational effort to help the Iraqi people achieve stability, democracy and prosperity. Our role is to support the Iraqi Government through providing security. This protects the development of democratic government and institutions and physical reconstruction.

Ann Clwyd: As a frequent visitor to Iraq, I pay tribute to the humanitarian effort of the British military, including the Royal Regiment of Wales, in which some of my constituents serve, in rebuilding schools and hospitals and constructing water supplies. The Iraqi people give the same message every time I go there, which is to ask us to stay the course.

John Reid: I give double thanks to my hon. Friend for that. First, I congratulate her on, and thank her for, her personal commitment and contribution to Iraq over many years. Secondly, by remarking on the role that our servicemen and women have played in the reconstruction of Iraq—as they have, in many details—alongside building up the Iraqi security forces and alongside counter-terrorism, she pays the type of compliment that is constantly paid to our troops in Iraq itself, where they receive great gratitude. It is a pity, and in some ways a tragedy, as they remarked to me when I visited them, that they do not receive the same gratitude and praise in some of our media at home.

Mrs. Hodgson: Will my right hon. Friend provide more information on how UK forces are improving the capacity of the Iraqi security forces to defend human rights, which is vital to Iraqis democratising their country after decades of fascism, and allowing grass-roots organisations, such as women's groups and trade unions, to play their full role?

John Reid: My hon. Friend is right. Our forces are contributing to that in two ways. First, they are contributing towards the training of Iraqi security forces. They also make it plain that, like any other democratic sovereign nation, the Iraqis must take responsibility for the conduct of their security forces. That is why when anything goes wrong, or allegations are made about the misuse of such power, we raise that idea constantly. Secondly, by helping to provide 170,000 trained Iraqi security forces, which for the first time is a greater number than the multinational forces in Iraq, they provide the security framework within which the democratic institutions of Iraq can function. That is happening slowly, but steadily. There have been improvements in both security and politics in Iraq. It is not because the Iraqis themselves are not succeeding that furious and frantic terrorist attacks and the murder of innocent civilians have taken place. They have occurred precisely because the Iraqis, with our support, are succeeding in taking democratic control of their own country.

Jefferson and Iraq

On the eve of American Independence Day, Michael Ignatieff, in the Observer, examines Jeffersonian democracy, its origins, record and Iraq. Worth reading in full.

‘Democracies Need Unions, Unions Need Democracies’

Abdullah Muhsin says that Democracies need unions, and unions need democracies.

Trade union organizations are fundamental to the development of secure, prosperous and democratic societies. They are the bedrock of civil society. I strongly believe that a truly free and democratic society will not exist any where in the world without a democratic labour movement that can freely advocate and bargain for the interest of the working people. ‘The Union Makes Us Strong’ goes the old slogan. This is true but the ‘Us’ really refers not just to the union members but to the entire society. Democratic societies, not just workers, need free trade unions.

1. Democracies Need Unions

For parliamentary democracy to prosper independent, democratic and free civil society organizations must be encouraged to develop. I strongly believe trade unions are the driving force of democracy. For they are not the voice of an ideology or an ‘absolute truth’ but are the motivators for the promotion and improvement of the social, economic and political condition of working people. By that I mean improving social provision (housing, education and health), achieving fair wages and better working conditions and reducing unemployment.

Trade unions bring common folks together in organisations regardless of their race, nationality, religion or colour. The purpose of these organisations is the collective organised and peaceful pursuit of improvement in the social conditions and life chances of the members. As such trade unions are one of the key factors in ensuring social and political stability alongside the role of the state, the major economic actors, and the role of the international community.

In conflict-ridden societies trade unions are a vital means to bridge divides, unite the people, and ease the tensions. Unions are not organised on the basis of national, religious and ethnic and ideological identities but help construct a new identity: worker, citizen, Iraqi. It is in the DNA of trade unions to instil collective and non-sectarian identities and to pursuit collective advances not sectarian advantage.

In any society it is civil society organizations that are the link connecting the state with the people, not as a transmission belt carrying orders downwards but as one of those awkward positive forces, an independent centre of identity, opinion and resource, campaigning on behalf of their members, representing their interests, projecting their voice. It is the plurality and free competition of such centres of identity, opinion and resource that makes a democracy real. Without this interaction between state and a vibrant plural civil society we suffer the domination of the state. In such cases usually the state in question is a dictatorship and violence, leader-worship and demagogy is the groundtone of the culture.

In Iraq the unions can be one of the most important independent centres of identity, opinion and resource in the formation, development and consolidation of our democratic future. This is for two reasons: unions promote social partnership and prosperity; unions promote social unity and citizenship.

Social Partnership and Prosperity

Unions are the engine that propels the economy alongside capital. A prosperous economy is fundamental factor in the building and consolidation of democracy anywhere in the world. A healthy economy encourages social and political stability and help maintain strong sense of community.

Social Unity and Citizenship

Unions are the glue that binds together disparate identities and traditions on the basis of social justice, democracy and human rights. Recall how bitter divisions between Catholics and Protestants in many European societies – divisions that frequently led to riots- were overcome in the 19th and 20th centuries. The trade unions played a major role by bringing the sectarian combatants into the same rooms, members of the same organisations, to share the same dreams: a better life for their children, dignity at work, a fair share of prosperity. Unions were a great antidote against the sectarian poisons of extremism and I believe they can be in Iraq. Every time a dictator triumphed, whether Hitler or Saddam, the first thing they had to do was to abolish the free trade unions and create transmission belts controlled by the state.

I believe that the free trade unions in Iraq can play a similar historic role in the 21st century to the European unions of the 19 and 20 centuries. Other identities will remain, of course: Shia and Sunni and Turkoman and Assyrian Christian and Kurds. But like the streams meeting in the mighty rivers- Tigress and the Euphrates- they can join together to create something quite new: worker, citizen, Iraqi. And as Shia and Sunni and Turkoman and Assyrian Christian and Kurds unite in some spheres of their lives, then the meaning of their distinct historic identities can be transformed.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said this about democracy: “If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost’. This is true but so is the reverse: democracy is found in liberty and equality. The Professor of Political Thought at Cambridge, John Dunn, has just written a book called ‘Set the People Free’. Part of his argument is that when the ‘egalitarians’ lose out to the ‘egoists’ – in other words when collective social provision and the public service ethic is entirely squeezed out by the dictates of the market - then democracy itself withers on the vine.

If we put the insights of Aristotle and Dunn together do we not arrive at the conclusion that trade unions are a society’s egalitarian insurance policy against the self-defeating triumph of egoism? Unions are the organisational form of what some French thinkers call equaliberty: the idea that equality and liberty advance best when they advance together.

Unions help to keep equality and liberty from separating too much. Unions ensure social cooperation and prevent vast unaccountable centres of economic power from translating too easily into uncontested political power. When that happens the basic social compact between the people and the government is in danger.

2. Unions Need Democracies

The Enabling State

However, in order for civil society organizations to perform these functions and so contribute to building a parliamentary democracy, the state has a responsibility to create the right political climate in which independent civil society organisations, including trade unions, can function and organise. But this state support must preserve the independence of trade unions. By state here I mean the executive, parliament, public bureaucracy and security forces.

Unions in liberal democracies pride themselves for being democratic and independent of the influence of the state and the domination of political party control. They pride themselves for being a watchdog: growling, fiercely independent protectors of their members’ interests, against the power of government and capital as well as being engaged in social partnership.

Without independence from the state, unions’ lose their legitimacy as the voice of organized and unorganized working people.

The Democratic State

The commitment of the state to parliamentary democracy is another key factor. Without the will of the state and its agencies to accept the values and virtues of democracy in practice, it is difficult to see how civil society organizations and trade unions can function to fulfil their role.

Independent civil society organizations are the umbilical cord that connects a democratic state with individual citizens. For this to work, working people must be free to organize themselves in legal and recognized unions.

The state in liberal democracies has the responsibility to create a political space, a legal framework, and resources (for example facility time for union representatives) for workers to form their organisations. I believe it is a fundamental human right that working people can pool their resources in a special legal entity (the union) in a similar way to the pooling of capital resources in the form of what is called today the corporation.

3. Iraq and the European Model

If we look around the world we see that the relationship between trade unions and the state varies widely, and with it the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the unions. Unions in America, Canada and Europe, much of Latin America, and in some African and Asian countries are founded upon democratic principles. Union leaders are selected by democratic and open election procedures. In many of the former socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, and in many third World countries, unions are controlled and run by the state or dominated by political parties.

The European Model

The Iraqi unions will develop in accordance with our own national traditions. But we do tend to look to the European model as an inspirational model. This is because in many European countries we see two qualities in the typical state-union relationship that we feel are good for workers and good for democracies.

First, and in contrast to authoritarian societies, European unions are usually free.

• Unions are not transmission belts acting at the behest of the state but wholly independent bodies controlled by their members. Though they often have historic links to the social democratic parties of the left they are free to lend their political support to whichever party they believe will best represent their interests or to give their support to none. The unions’ special relationships with friendly parties do give them one way to influence government. Unions mobilise during general elections and seek to influence their outcome. They urge all parties to promote social justice, fair standard of welfare and the adoption of social market model of running the economy. And the unions that advocate such policies are usually free, democratic and independent and are not tied to a government or political parties.

• Unions have a protected legal status and so are free to organise workers within a clear legal framework including recourse to the law when employers ignore that framework.

Second, and in contrast to those societies dominated by a raw free market model, in Europe unions are often respected social partners.

This status is the result of a mix of pressure from below and sanction from above, a combination that is only possible in a social democracy.

• Pressure from below. In part, to state the obvious, unions wield influence because they are powerful independent political actors. They have freely recruited large memberships and reaped the benefits of collective organisation. Union influence on government policy, and in the workplace, is greater when large memberships and high union density combine with progressive industrial law. Yes, union density has been declining across the private sector since the late 1970s while holding up better in the public sector. But there is evidence that this decline is being arrested as unions adjust to new industries and labour markets.

• Sanction from above. In Europe the unions exist under an umbrella unfurled by the state. It may be a tattered umbrella in some countries now, but it exists.

Democracies need unions

We believe that the European model enables unions to play a positive role in the consolidation of liberal democracies. It gives concrete form to the talk of ‘pluralism’ and ‘civil society’. Unions play a central role in persuading the polity to end the social exclusion of working people by forcing onto the policy agenda issues such as health, pension and jobs, housing and education. I would like to quote a remarkable man called Karl Marx, we might say trade unions impose something of the ‘political economy of the working class’ on an economic system that sometimes only cares for the ‘bottom line’.

And I believe that when democracies look after unions, unions look after democracies. Gaining tangible benefits from democratic politics, trade unions have also been the great defenders of democratic politics, mobilising popular social classes at moment of social crisis against extremist threats. The most effective opponents of totalitarians of whatever stripe has always been the progressive democrats.

Iraqi working people are set free after three and half decades of Saddam’ years of darkness. Saddam’s model of state-union relations is found (in more benign forms) across the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East: the union as an extension of the state.

In Saddam’s Iraq those who refused to accept the authority of the undemocratic state had to organize in illegal and underground forms.

Let me give you one story. On 11 March 1987, Saddam’s regime introduced a new Labour Code, which redefined public sector workers as “employees” and removed their right to form or join trade unions. He abolished the eight-hour day and handed over workers pension fund to the treasury without compensation. The Labour Law No. 151 of 1970 was also abolished.

Saddam actually announced these measures during a televised meeting with the yellow union leaders of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU). With the GFTU leadership and members of the "Central Workers Office" of the Ba’ath party smiling for the cameras Saddam said "From now on, the title 'worker' is abolished and all workers shall become official employees by the State. As everybody is now a government employee, there is no more need for trade unions. Workers in the private sector will have a special labour law decreed for them". The GFTU applauded all these measures! And, when Saddam launched his wars against Iran from 1980 to 1988 and his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 the GFTU, the yellow union, acted as Saddam’s recruiting sergeants

So today Iraq’s free trade unions, as with Iraq’s 30th January 2005 historic free elections, are blazing a trail for the entire region. This has its dangers. We have enemies within and enemies without.

Within Iraq the Saddam’s Ba’athist-Extremists Islamist fundamentalists so-called resistance hates the free trade unions. They have tortured and killed many of our members and leaders.

Outside Iraq there are many who are very fearful of Iraq’s free elections and free trade unions because of the dangerous example they offer peoples across the region. After all, think of it from the dictators’ point of view. What if workers in the region like the look of our free trade unions? What if they compare our IFTU to their Ba’athist- state run transmission belt model and decide they want a change?

Let me say a few words about the development of the IFTU in the last two years.

IFTU

The clandestine trade union movement, the Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM), organized an open meeting on 16 May 2003 attended by 350 Iraqi trade unionists (liberals, communists, and nationalists, both Arab and Kurds). It was at this meeting that the IFTU was formed. Some of these founding organisers had been in exile. Some had been imprisoned. Some had been working underground.

The IFTU has achieved some great things against the odds. 12 national unions in key sectors of the Iraq’s economy have been established. The IFTU now includes the following unions: The Oil and Gas Union, the Railway Union, The Transport and Communication Union, the Mechanics, Printing and Metal Union. The Textile and Leather products Union, the Construction and Wood Workers' Union, the Electricians' Union, the Service Industry Union and the Agriculture and Food Staff Workers' Union.

These unions organise in Baghdad and across Iraq’s 15 provinces such as Basra, Kirkuk, Mosul, Kurbala, al Najif, Babel and Mesan.

The IFTU has over 200,000 members.

The IFTU has good relations with international Labour movement like the ICFTU, with many European federations such as the CCOO, CGT and CGIL and the TUC and COSATO and AFL-CIO and with many other trade union centres around the world, such as the Korean labour movement.

The IFTU and the international trade union movement

The IFTU seeks affiliation to the ICFTU.

Internationalism is more important today than ever before in a globalised world in which the distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ policy is collapsing.

The first international trade union centre was called the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), was formed in 1901. This I-F-T-U was established to bring trade unionists from different part of the globe to campaign with one voice for jobs and economic justice and for the promotion of universal human rights such as the right to organise and vote. (Here is an irony, the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, the newly formed free and democratic trade unions in the wake of Saddam’s dictatorial order, carries the same acronym: IFTU. We are proud of this).

The ICFTU is a democratic organization and is mainly controlled by its members and not governments or political parties. Today the ICFTU is the largest international union federation and the IFTU aspires to affiliation to the ICFTU.

There is also a World Confederation of Labour (WCL) a relatively small organization based on Christians social principles and values. The WCL is merging with the ICFTU to crate a new global trade unions center.

The European Trade Unions Congress (ETUC) was established on 1973, founded on the basis of independence, transparency and democracy. It is now one of the key trade union centres alongside the ICFTU.

Forgive me for the blizzard of initials. The point is this: the IFTU wishes to take its place alongside the democratic free trade unions inside the ICFTU.

Where now for the Iraqi Unions?

To finish, let me say that I think the union-state relationship must develop at two levels: national and international.

The National Level

Post-Saddam Iraq accepts trade unions as part of a democratic society. We urge and we expect that the new constitution will embrace a liberal-democratic model of state-union relations. We are arguing for the right of workers to join trade unions, and for unions to organise under legal protection, independent of the state. We want the new Iraq to embrace ILO standards, including an ILO-approved Labour Code. If the new constitution fails to embed the rights of Iraqi workers a tremendous opportunity to undercut the appeal of the terrorists will have been missed. For with those rights we will build a mighty union able to offer a real alternative to the nihilists.

International

Finally, let us not forget the elephant in the room, so to speak. When we talk about ‘democracy’ in Iraq, when we talk of ‘state-union relations’ in Iraq we must remember that my country is occupied by foreign troops. Iraqi democracy can only walk tall, and the unions can only take their place as social partners of a sovereign Iraqi government, when the UN-backed political process is successful and the phased withdrawal of foreign troops is complete. Security Council resolution 1546 sets out a process and a timetable for the total withdrawal of foreign troops. Upon the success of this process - no less than upon our efforts as trade unionists - hangs the future of free trade unionism in Iraq.

That’s why the international labour movement must embrace the UN political process under 1546 SC Resolution. Iraq is the hinge of our time and I’m afraid we Iraqi democrats do sometimes feel that this is understood rather better by the enemies of democracy than by its friends.
We Iraqi democrats wish that the international community would put aside old disputes and rush to Iraq with the urgency and determination and zeal of the poor deluded Islamist fundamentalists who cross the border seeking martyrdom and bringing only death and misery.

Drafting a constitution, holding fresh elections, training new security forces: all these tasks are immense and require the wholehearted support of the international community. We can’t bear these burdens alone.

If democracy fails in Iraq the world will be picking up the pieces for the rest of our lifetimes. If democracy succeeds in Iraq then we may be on the verge of a world historic process of democratisation throughout the region. That is what is at stake in Iraq. It is the hinge of our time.

The Two Souls of the Left: Pro-Tyrant and Democratic

“The establishment of no-fly zones in the Northern and Southern parts of Iraq ... were aimed at degrading and weakening Iraq’s human and material resources and capacities in order to facilitate its subsequent invasion and occupation. In this enterprise the US and British leaderships had the endorsement of a complicit UN Security Council".

(Preliminary Declaration of the Jury of Conscience World Tribunal on Iraq, 27 June 2005)

“Kurdistan lies across the top of Iraq in a blanket of beautiful mountains and forms northern Iraq. The Kurdish people have suffered imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of Saddam’s Baath’ist party and military power. In the provinces of Duhok and Arbil over 5000 villages were destroyed, thousands of people made homeless, countless numbers missing and killed, bombed, machined gunned, gassed, and poisoned by chemicals. Since 1991 due to the intervention of the United Nations and the courage of the Kurdish people, the country has had the opportunity to build, improve and modernise. The difference those years have made is remarkable, and can only pay tribute to the people of Iraqi Kurdistan and give hope to the people of Iraq for the future”.

(Brian Joyce, a member of the National Executive Commitee of the Fire Brigades Union provides an account of a recent trade union visit to Iraqi Kurdistan by his union to oversee delivery of 1250 sets of fire kit sent by the FBU). (AJ)

Give John Tierney the Purple Finger

Why is so much comment about Iraq so stupid? Listen to John Tierney in the New York Times

“The critics have not been kind to the prose and the plot, but they miss Saddam's strength. He's a marketer. He is said to have finished the novel just as the war was beginning, when American leaders were fantasizing about their troops' being welcomed as liberators. But Saddam knew enough to give his novel a surefire title for the post-invasion era: "Get Out, You Damned One." It's a naked appeal to xenophobia, an impulse that's far more ancient and widespread than the yearning for democracy that President Bush talked about this week”.

In the January elections more than two hundred political entities registered, tens of thousands stood as candidates, volunteers flooded to help the Independent Commission for Elections in Iraq, manning 600 registry offices and 9,000 voting stations nationwide in the face of threats, car bombs and assassinations. 8.5 of some 13-14 million eligible voters went to the polls. Tierney airbrushes al those joyful dancing Iraqis, purple fingers held aloft, from history it seems. That he does so in the cause of a puff for the enduring power of xenophobia is shameful. Again President Bush is depicted holding the flag for democracy while the liberals giggle in the corner. How depressing. (AJ)