Labour Friends of Iraq

The IFTU web site carries a report of the fringe meeting at the TUC where President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), Raseen Alawadi was well received on the day when extremists slaughtered Iraqi workers desperate for work.

Over at drinksoakedtrotsforwar there is a reasonable summary of the long-awaited debate between Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway in New York.

The Prime Minister told the World Summit on Terrorism that – Terrorism will not be defeated until our determination is as complete as theirs, our defence of freedom as absolute as their fanaticism, our passion for the democratic way as great as their passion for tyranny.
Here is the full speech
First of all, on behalf of the United Kingdom, let me thank everyone for supporting this resolution. We should not under-estimate what we face.
This terrorism that today again has claimed the lives of innocent people, this time queuing for jobs in Iraq, that has now disfigured countries in every continent, at every stage of development, with ever conceivable mix of races and religions, this terrorism is a movement, it has an ideology and it has a strategy, and the strategy is not just to kill, it is by terror to cause chaos and instability and to divide and confuse us – the enemy of this terrorism.
It will not be defeated until our determination is as complete as theirs, our defence of freedom as absolute as their fanaticism, until our passion for the democratic way is as great as their passion for tyranny. It won’t be defeated until we unite not just in condemning the acts of terrorism, which we all do, but in fighting the poisonous propaganda that the root cause of this terrorism somehow lies with us around this table, and not with them. They want us to believe that somehow it is our fault, that their extremism is somehow our responsibility. They play on our divisions. They exploit our hesitations. This is our weakness, and they know it, and we must unite against this ghastly game with our conscience.
There are real injustices in our world: poverty, that it is our duty to eradicate; conflicts, not least that between Israel and Palestine, it is our duty to help resolve; nation building as in Iraq and Afghanistan that it is our responsibility to help deliver.
But none of this has caused this terrorism. Around this table two years ago we were divided over Iraq, but by June 2003 there was in place a new UN resolution, a new UN-backed political process to give democracy to Iraqis, which they want, as 8.5 million of them showed by voting for it. The obstacle is terrorism, the victims are largely Muslim. How obscene therefore for these terrorists to claim that their terror is in response to our aggression against Muslims in Iraq. They use Iraq to divide us, just as they use Afghanistan where again their terror is the obstacle to Afghan democracy, just as they use Palestine where terrorism does not create progress but destroys it.
And it is not these issues, and never forget September 11 had happened, just a short distance from here, was before Iraq or Afghanistan, and when there was an active attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. If not these, they will use Chechnya, they will use Kashmir or Bosnia, and if none of these it will be the western presence in Arab states. And when all of that fails, those states themselves will be blamed, or any state that is not Talibanised.
The root cause therefore is not a decision on foreign policy, however contentious, it is a doctrine of fanaticism, and we must unite to uproot it by co-operating on security, as people have said, by taking actionagainst those who incite, preach or teach this extremism, wherever they are, in whichever country, and also by eliminating our own ambivalence, by fighting not just the methods of this terrorism but their motivation, their twisted reasoning, their wretched excuse for terror.
At the same time of course, by contrast, we should fulfil our duty to act against injustice. We support, all of us, strongly the resolution for conflict prevention in Africa. We should show our own strength and belief in the values of democracy and tolerance, and above all we should demonstrate that the future, however hard the path to it is, does not, and never will, belong to fanatics but will be with those who believe that we should live in peace with each other, whatever our race, nation, colour or religion.
They do indeed have their strategy, but we have ours, and we should use it to defeat them.

The Prime Minister argued the following – Give people the chance and they always vote for freedom; always prefer tolerance to prejudice, will never willingly accept the suppression of human rights and governance by extremism.
Here is the full speech.
The UN must come of age. It must become the visible and credible expression of the globalisation of politics. The modern world insists we are dependent on each other. We work with each other or we suffer in isolation.
The principles of the UN have always had a moral force. Today they receive the sharper impulse of self-interest.
The terrorist attacks in Britain on 7 July have their origins in an ideology born thousands of miles from our shores.
The proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will never be halted outside of an international consensus to do so.
Failed states, as we know to our cost, fail us all. The protection of the environment, the promotion of international trade: we can do nothing without effective action together.
And when we look with revulsion, as we should, at the misery of the millions who die in Africa and elsewhere through preventable famine, disease and conflict, the urgency to act is driven not just by conscience but by an inner sense that one day, if we refuse to act, we will reap a dire reward from our refusal.
What’s more, humanity today is confident of its common values. Give people the chance and they always vote for freedom; always prefer tolerance to prejudice, will never willingly accept the suppression of human rights and governance by extremism.
So the challenge is clear; the values clear; the self-interest in upholding them together also clear.
What must now be clear is that the UN can be the instrument of achieving the global will of the people.
It must give leadership on terrorism. There is not and never can be any justification, any excuse, any cause that accepts the random slaughter of the innocent. Wherever it happens, whoever is responsible, we stand united in condemnation.
The United Nations must strengthen its policy against non-proliferation; in particular, how to allow nations to develop civil nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.
The new Human Rights Council must earn the world’s respect not its contempt.
The United Nations Peace-building Commission must become the means of renewing nations, where war and the collapse of proper systems of government have left them ravaged and their people desolate.
For the first lime at this Summit we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders, but that we, in the name of humanity, have a common duty to protect people where their own governments will not.
Stalking this summit, like a spectre, are the Millennium Development goals.
The struggle against global poverty will define our moral standing in the eyes of the future.
The G8 in Scotland shows how we redeem it. I have heard people describe the outcomes of this Summit as modest, No summit requiring unanimity from 190 nations can be more than modest.
But if we did what we have agreed on doubling aid, on opening up trade, on debt relief, on HI V/AIDS and malaria, on conflict prevention so that never again would the world stand by, helpless when genocide struck, our modesty would surprise.
There would be more democracy, less oppression. More freedom, less terrorism. More growth, less poverty. The effect would be measured in the lives of millions of people who will never hear these speeches or read our statements.
But it would be the proper vocation of political leadership; and the United Nations would live up to its name. So let us do it.

Eric Lee interviews the IFTU President.

Greg Palast questions George Galloway.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting carries a report on increased electoral registration. the manager of the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq, announced that a total of 1,129,146 voters visited elections registration centers during the updating process that started August 1 and ended Sept. 7. The IECI finished voter registration on August 31, but extended it in Anbar governorate for another week for security reasons. (Al-Taakhi is issued daily by the Kurdistan Democratic Party.)

The Guardian reports on a Sunni Arab teenager who died saving Shias during last week’s stampede disaster in Baghdad and who has been hailed as a hero whose sacrifice should unify Iraq.

Times Correspondent Richard Beeston in Baghdad says young defy terror to pursue a dream in a profile of wannabe pop star Marwa Ahmed.

The Iraqi Ambassador to the UK, Dr Salah Al-Shaikhly has a letter in the Times in which he says of the stampede in Baghdad that conflicting stories are attempting to point the finger of blame at sectarian agendas. This stokes the fire of terror and plays directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates in Iraq. He concludes that Our communities have co- existed without recourse to the civil war or sectarian strife that was predicted by the scaremongers. Our two communities never had a reason to quarrel. We lived in peace for over one thousand years. Our leaders and our people have shown remarkable maturity and restraint and we denounce all attacks aimed at our unity.