Will Britain still go to war in Syria?

Well they will have to do it without the approval of parliament after a motion from David Cameron and the government as surprisingly voted down tonight thankfully in my view. David Cameron: "It is clear to me that the British parliament... does not want to see British military action" Tonight British MPs have voted to reject possible military action against the Assad regime in Syria to deter the use of chemical weapons. A government motion was defeated by 285 to 272, a majority of 13 votes. Prime Minster David Cameron said it was clear Parliament does not want action and "the government will act accordingly". It effectively rules out British involvement in any US-led strikes against the Assad regime. And it comes as a potential blow to the authority of David Cameron, who had already watered down a government motion proposing military action, in response to the opposition Labour Party's demands for more evidence of Assad's guilt. Labour had seen its own amendment - calling for "compelling" evidence - rejected by MPs by 114 votes. But - in an unexpected turn of events - MPs also rejected the government's motion in support of military action in Syria if it was supported by evidence from United Nations weapons inspectors, who are investigating claims President Bashar al-Assad's regime had used chemical weapons against civilians. So where does David Cameron and his pro imperialist supporters go now? I don’t think they’d get away with pushing forward with military action now without a vote before parliament. It shows that Cameron and his authority are weakening all the time and he can be defeated too. This should spur the working class on to know that the government can be defeated if organised and willing. Will there still be intervention in Syria? Well possibly but it may have to be without America’s good friend Britain. This will be interesting to se what America in particular does next.

What did those behind the ‘Ring of Steel’ decide ?

www.socialistworld.net, 28/06/2013 website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI Representatives of the 1% pledge more austerity, war and environmental degradation Kevin Henry, Socialist Party (CWI Ireland) Sixty million spent on security so that people could have a peaceful protest, Obama parades around as a man of peace as bored school students listen on and the local politicians get to bask in the reflected glow of the G8’s ’great’ leaders. But when the media are discussing all that, what were those behind the huge security fence around the Lough Erne Resort actually discussing? "Fire up the world economy?" In the Belfast Telegraph we are told by Cameron that “the whole point of this meeting in Lough Erne is to fire up our economies and drive growth and prosperity around the world, to do things that make a real difference to people’s lives.” The summit began with an announcement of EU/US free trade agreement. This is despite the fact the mandate to negotiate the deal was approved by trade ministers meeting in Luxemburg the week before and discussions had been ongoing. Of course never let the facts getting the way of a good story! Cameron claims that such an agreement would create two million jobs and mean adding as much as £100bn to the EU economy. These figures are effectively plucked out of the air and change in every statement made by the key proponents of this free trade agreement. The real agenda of these negotiations is the ’liberalisation’ of our public services and a race to the bottom in terms of workers’ rights and environmental standards. This agreement will include an ‘Investor State Dispute Settlement’ mechanism that would allow foreign investors both in the EU and the US to bypass the normal legal system and directly challenge governments at international tribunals whenever they find that laws in the area of public health, environmental, labour or social protection interfere with their profits. For example, many of those protesting against the G8 visit in Fermanagh were specifically concerned by the issue of ’Fracking’ or hydraulic fracturing. This mechanism is used in other free trade agreements and currently by a US energy firm to challenge a moratorium on fracking in Quebec. This agreement is will be used as part of a ‘race to the bottom’ in terms workers’ wages and conditions and to undermine trade union rights in the name of competitiveness and free trade. Including making it easier for EU companies to access the labour market in the so-called ’Right to Work’ states i.e. states that deny basic trade union right such as to collective bargaining. (For more on this Free Trade Agreement see: EU-US Free Trade Agreement: Race to the Bottom of the Atlantic) Rewriting the rules on tax? We are also told that the summit would deal with transparency around tax issues. The leaders of the G8 clearly feel the pressure on tax evasion. Global tax evasion means multinationals get away with hiding $3 trillion a year in profits, according to research from Tax Justice Network, while as much as $32 trillion could be stashed away by individuals in tax havens. Every time these leaders close hospital or propose new austerity measures they are faced working people asking what about Vodaphone or Starbucks taxes. The capitalist leaders claim that action on tax evasion has to be dealt with at international gathering and a big song and dance was made that it would be dealt with at the G8 summit. British Prime Minister David Cameron said the summit declaration had "the potential to rewrite the rules on tax and transparency for the benefit of countries right across the world, including the poorest countries in the world." Unsurprisingly, however the ’Lough Erne declaration’ on tax commits governments and multinational to very little. It outlines a few basic principles, such as the sharing of tax information among authorities and that more steps are taken to force companies to report where they pay taxes. But, in the words of a War on Want spokesperson, “as always the devil will be in the detail, and there’s no detail here." The deal falls far short of the comprehensive public register of owners that NGO groups had being calling for. The deal does not commit countries to making information public, only to share it with other tax authorities. Of course talk is cheap! Not a penny more in taxes will be paid by Amazon, or any of the other companies that operate intricate webs of offshore companies to avoid tax. Syria: “Blood is on the hands of both parties." Away from the formal sitting of the G8, the focus of the meeting was on Syria, a conflict which has left an estimated 93,000 people dead and which is a source of massive tension between the G8 leaders. With the US, Britain and France wishing to more openly arm the rebels (in reality, they already do through Turkey and Gulf regimes) and with Russia central to arming the Assad regime, this tension is reflected in the comments of the Canadian Prime Minister Harper that the summit is “the G7 plus one.” On the eve of the summit, Russian President Putin and Cameron held a press conference. When Putin was asked whether he had “the blood of Syrian children on his hands” - a reference to Cameron’s recent comments at the UN - Putin replied that “the blood is on the hands of both parties." Obama is now public in his intention to arm rebels and Putin claims that all that his government is doing is supplying "to the legitimate government of Syria.” Even within Harper’s G7 there is divisions. While Chancellor Merkel is complicit in dropping the EU’s arms embargo, she ruled out taking part in arming the rebels and stressed the need for a ’political process.’ The resolution the G8 managed to cobble together on Syria stressed the need for a "political solution to the crisis based on a vision for a united, inclusive and democratic Syria". For all the Western powers claiming to be defending the Syrian people, the resolution makes no reference to the alleged use of chemical weapons or the future of Assad, due to resistance from Putin. It only states that a transitional government must be formed "by mutual consent" between the different sides of Syrian society. Importantly, however, it makes clear that Syria’s military and security forces will be allowed to remain intact following a transition of power - seen as a tacit encouragement to Assad’s senior officers to launch a coup. In reality, while both sides will continue arming their respective sides, the Western powers do not feel confident enough in the opposition, either politically or militarily, to openly fully back and arm them, at this point. Some of the powers fear further destabilising the region and they also realise there is little public support for imperialist intervention in Syria. A Pew Research poll indicated that 70% of Americans oppose arming the opposition. For socialists, the Syrian civil war, which is also a proxy conflict between big powers’ interests, is a testament to the failure of capitalism in the region. None of the parties – all of which have blood on their hands - offers anything for the Syrian masses. Arming factions or holding ’peace conferences’ or encouraging a military coup will just replace one butcher regime with another. It will take revolutionary struggle, as we saw in Tunisia and Egypt, armed with a socialist alternative that can end the rule of the reactionary forces trying to carve up Syria. The rule of the 1% Despite a massively publicised campaign by charities around aid and world hunger, where was that on the G8 agenda? In fact, the amount of money the world’s richest countries give to ’developing countries’ fell by $2.9 billion between 2011 and 2012. And on climate change, the issue is all but ignored accept a tag on page at the end of the summit communique. The pro-big business politics pursued in the ‘Ring of Steel’ at Lough Erne, is a vindication of what the Socialist Party and others who organised against the G8 said in the course of our campaign; the G8 represent the interest of the 1% and the policies of austerity, war and criminal environmental policies. We need to build a socialist alternative, so that the decisions that affect the future of our society are not taken by CEOs in boardrooms or unrepresentative politicians behind Steel fencing. But instead the resources of society are publically owned and democratically controlled and managed by working people.

American school shooting more questions for society

With the tragic gunning down of 27 odd people many children in America last Friday the media has gone into over drive looking to blame the gunman for being unhinged unstable or worse. Yet the facts many commentators are missing and the elephant in the room is the figure of 300 million Americans own a fire arm in the United States this is a huge market for profit making and any laws or tighter controls on gun laws will be met with resistance by gun manufactures. Charlie Wolf an out spoken right wing journalist from America but now working over here and regularly appears on BBC 5 live on the paper review session in the evenings was quick to get his voice out saying this massacre was nothing to do with Americas gun culture and the right to bear arms. I beg to differ I’d point towards the untold social situation the system which drives people to mental illness and desperation the system of capitalism which mess’s with your mind day in day out the constant drive to conform to be a wage labourer and sell your labour power just to exist. It puts lots of untold pressures on individuals. I don’t know much about the gun man he may well have had under lying issues Just like with the poor nurse who took her life last week at the hospital who was looking after the Duchess of Cambridge who apparently took her life after taking a prank call from two Australian DJ’s we don’t know if she had underlying issues either whether that be down to stress of work family life or social issues including poor pay and Christmas coming up all could have lead to a breaking point. Capitalism is a system which looks to drive down workers wages force you to crave work just to live and yet it greets you with poor pay and awful working conditions more often than not. Gun laws are something I have always thought are dangerous allowing mass’s to own guns always means they could end up in the wrong hands. Gun shootings although rare when do happen are tragic and we must as Marxists understand the under currents of what drives situations such as these to appear. It is not as simple as capitalist commentators would have you believe it is just down to one sick minded individual or someone who has just lost it. They may well have but we have to ask ourselves why this is and what society is failing them on. SO let’s not jump to conclusions blame individuals but look at their social circumstances and look to rehabilitate people who do have genuine troubles not just lock them up and forget about them. For me prison does not work. Locking people up then hoping they’ll behave and not reoffend are hopeful at best stupid at worst. I believe in fully funding rehabilitation projects are introducing people who have committed crimes to the community. But we also have to think why crime exists and who it benefits. Crime can pay as much as we don’t like to think so drug money can be lucrative for those who own the means of production yet those n the sharp end get punished for falling into a trap of poverty and desperation. It’s time to end this ill system of capitalism and plan a future to meet people needs so crime and gun crime is no longer an issue.

13 trillion in tax evaded each year by super rich, time for socialist change ?

Below i re publish a excellent article bpunblished on the CWI website www.socialistworld.net £13 trillion hidden from tax by super-richwww.socialistworld.net, 04/08/2012 website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI Take the wealth off the 1%! Naomi Byron, Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales), first published in the Socialist A sum of money the size of the US and Japanese Gross Domestic Product (GDP) together is being held in offshore tax havens. This enormous hoard could immediately pay off most of the deficits and debt that are being used to justify austerity, and create millions of jobs. Instead it sits in places like the Cayman Islands, making the tax dodgers that put it there even richer. The report by James Henry for the Tax Justice Network, shows that between £13 trillion and £20 trillion has been looted from national economies so that the super-rich can avoid paying tax. It’s no exaggeration to say that we are ruled by the very people that are dodging tax. In Britain ’Lord’ Ashcroft, who was treasurer of the Tory party for years and has donated more than £10 million to its coffers, has most of his wealth offshore so he won’t pay UK tax. The fortune David Cameron inherited comes partly from his father’s use of tax havens. One rule for us... Trust me, I’m a banker - Youth Fight for Jobs Austerity Games, July 2012, photo Paul Mattsson Far from too much money being spent on public services, it is the banksters, speculators, profiteers and tax dodgers who are the cause of the massive debt burden being used to enforce austerity on the 99%. But when Barclays and Bob Diamond are caught fiddling millions, or HSBC seems to be using their massive finances to help gun-running, money laundering and terrorism, they hardly receive a rap over the knuckles. Henry points out that with the sums looted from sub-Saharan Africa, many of the countries there could have paid off their debts entirely. However in this respect the report misses the point - most "highly indebted poor countries" have already paid off their "debts" many times over. But because of the economic power of imperialism and the legalised robbery of the finance industry, the interest alone has now ballooned to sums that would make a loan shark proud. Not a penny more should go to pay for these fake debts. We have always been told that capitalism may be unfair, but it is the best system available because it creates jobs and wealth. This report exposes the big lie that private profits will be ploughed into creating more wealth. The money sitting in tax havens dwarfs even figures like the £750 billion currently sitting un-invested in the banks of big business in the UK. Capitalism is not only creating misery for billions, it is a bankrupt system, incapable of maintaining current living standards let alone taking society forwards. As long as the banking and finance industries remain under the control of the looters, we have no chance of even enforcing the existing puny laws on the super-rich. Public ownership The banks must be taken into public ownership, and run under democratic workers’ control, in the interests of the 99%. Free personal banking, with cheap loans for small businesses and cheap mortgages. The banking system, like health and education, should be run in the benefits of society as a whole, not a minority of super-rich speculators.

Why Marxists warn and fight against imperialism

I’m currently reading Lenin’s excellent work on Imperialism the highest form of capitalism. What a fantastic piece I must say to someone still getting to grips with Marxism and learning about the world and how it really works this piece has been a really top read.

Imperialism is as Lenin quite rightly points out is the heights form of capitalism it is born out of monopoly capitalism which arises as a contradiction to the so called free market. It’s the domination of capital on an international scale breaking out of its national confines to invade and plunder foreign markets in pursuit of greater profits and to see off the competition as much like capitalism does on the national scale.

Imperialism. Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i.e., the violation of national independence (for annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to self-determination).
This piece which Lenin wrote highlights the role imperialism plays on the world stage and the view which Marxists take towards it. The current state of imperialism is a very interesting thing from what I can understand American and British imperialism would appear to be in decline with the rise of German and Chinese imperialism on the rise in its influence and market share. Germany has done well off the back of the Euro one of the few countries powering ahead still in the world although this cannot last it is for now holding great sway over much of Europe and beyond in some cases. China due to its huge growth in the last period has enabled it to enter new markets in Africa and other parts of Asia Taiwan Malaysia etc. It is the so called strength of eastern imperialism including China which capitalists worldwide hope will pull their system out of this deep crisis it is unlikely to do so as China itself is now slowing and cooling off its growth nod a repeat of the 2008 pumping of the economy by a estimated 12 % of GDP in China is simply not possible any longer. This is a desperate stage for capitalism where it goes from here they have no idea the thinkers part of this system. Hense I think imperialism in the US and the UK for example has taken a beaten of late. The fact that Egypt and Tunisia which were both backed by Imperialism for many years have seen their regimes crumble at the force of the working class is proof that imperialism is not indestructible and immune to crisis’s and defeat. The imperialist backed invasion of Iraq by Western troops in 2003 to remove Sadam Hussein now looks a shattered idea as the idea that only imperialist forces can bring down a dictator has been blown wide out of the water.

The mass’s when they unite and bring dictators to their knees such as in Egypt although not a fully developed situation there now with the SCAF still holding the power there shows that workers and the mass’s are finding their voices and their power which has laid dormant for years is now finally being realised again.

The fight against imperialism has to be international much like the struggle for socialism. A national struggle will always be supported by other workers around the world as we all face the same oppression but a global effort to replace capitalism is what is needed more. Ending capitalism will bring an end to imperialism and exploitation. Growing ideas and building the ideas of Marxism around the globe is key to understanding imperialism. Reading Lenin and Trotsky on the matter is very helpful too I’m still learning and always will be learning. Understanding the way capitalism works and doesn’t work is key to bein a Marxist but applying it to the class strugglea and a programme for winning workers to the ideas to change society is far more important though. This is what the socialist party does day to day and will continue to do to realise a better more equal society for the 99%.

Why i'm gainst the death penalty in any circumstances

We wake up to the sad news that Troy Davies who the whole world had been watching to see if he had been given a stay of execution or not waked up to the sad news he was killed over night.
Troy Davis, 42, who had been on death row since 1991, was executed by lethal injection at the Georgia state prison in Jackson on Wednesday, despite serious doubts surrounding his conviction.

On the same day, Iran publicly hanged a 17-year old boy convicted of killing a popular athlete despite international prohibitions against executing juveniles, while China executed a Pakistani national convicted of drug smuggling even though drug offences do not meet the threshold for “most serious” crimes in international law.

“This is a bleak day for human rights worldwide. By executing these individuals, these countries are moving away from the global trend to abolish the death penalty,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Americas.

“Countries that retain the death penalty very often defend their position by claiming that their use of the death penalty is consistent with international human rights law. Their actions yesterday blatantly contradict these claims,” she said.

Amnesty International activists have campaigned extensively against the death penalty. In recent days, nearly one million signatures on Troy Davis’ behalf have been delivered to authorities in Georgia to urge them to commute his death sentence: vigils and events have been held in approximately 300 locations around the world.

Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen Macphail in Savannah, Georgia. The case against him primarily rested on witness testimony.

Since his 1991 trial, seven of key nine witnesses recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police coercion.

Iranian teenager Alireza Molla-Soltani was hanged Wednesday morning in front of a large crowd in the city of Karaj.

He was sentenced to death last month for stabbing Ruhollah Dadashi, a popular athlete during a driving dispute on 17 July. The 17-year old said he panicked and stabbed Ruhollah Dadashi in self-defence after the athlete attacked him in the dark, according to local media reports.

Zahid Husain Shah, who was arrested in 2008 for drug smuggling, was executed in China by lethal injection on Wednesday.

On the same day, Lawrence Brewer was also executed in Huntsville, Texas. He was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of James Byrd, Jr. in June 1998.


I wanted to voice my disgust at this kind of action still going on in the world today. wWhatever the crime i never feel that killing someone is justice. So many doubts lay over this treatment i do not believe a country that still uses the death penalty is a fit and civilised society and i include America in this group of countries sadly.

The fact that the wittness's had doubts and wre not sure should have been enoug hto stop this execution but no they went ahead anyway. I do not believe that killing someone is ever right whether the offender did or not an eye for a eye makes us just as bad as them in my view and i'm totally against this form of punishment.

If they are guilty i'd rather see the person jailed for the rest of their life rather than cutting short their life which they may yet be proven to be innocent. I just dont think its right in the 21st century to still be carrying out such acts of brutality .

Why social mobility is a myth

Social mobility is a myth, those who are born in the bottom 20% have a 97% chance of remaining right there in the bottom 20%..

We hear all the time from various parties and governments that the harder you work you can get yourself up the ladder out of the situation you are in. This is not the case at all as the statistic aabove suggests you can work dam hard all your life and still remain working class. It is a common myth that you can work hard and reach the fruits of your labour.

It is a difficult thing to explain to people but it is a fact that we live in a class based society where the working class are oppressed by the ruling class, the capitalists. The working class must sell their labour to get by.

Several recent studies have punctured the conception, assiduously fostered by the media and political defenders of the profit system, that capitalism makes possible the rapid acquisition of wealth for anyone motivated to work for it.

The truth is very different. A study by economist Tom Hertz of American University, “Understanding Mobility in America”, finds that a child born into a poor family, defined as the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, has an infinitesimal one-in-a-hundred chance of making it into the top five percent income level.

Hertz’s report, issued by the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress (CAP), studied both “intergenerational mobility” and “short-term mobility.” Intergenerational mobility, comparing an individual’s economic status with that of his or her parents, is taken as a measure of equality of opportunity, since economic success independent of the status of one’s family would seem to indicate that merit and work are the principal sources of material rewards.

As far as intergenerational mobility is concerned, it is not only the children of the poor in the US who have little chance of becoming wealthy. Children born in the middle quintile (the 40-60th percentile of incomes in the country, $42,000 to $54,300) also have only a 1.8 percent chance of reaching the top five percent, a likelihood not much higher than in poor families. These findings were based on a study of over 4,000 children whose parents’ income was determined in 1968 and whose own income was then reviewed as adults in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999.

Breaking the data down by race showed that, within the framework of increasing pressure on the working class as a whole, black families continue to face higher burdens. While 47 percent of poor families remain poor in subsequent generations, this figure is 32 percent for whites and 63 percent for blacks. Only 3 percent of African-Americans jump from the bottom quarter of the income distribution to the top 25 percent, while for whites this number, still small, is 14 percent.

The second feature of the study focuses on short-term mobility, which is a measure of annual income volatility. Large changes in annual income correlate with economic instability and insecurity.

On the subject of income volatility, the report’s findings also contradict the claim of equal opportunity and rewards for hard work. Those in the middle income levels—the majority of whom consist of both industrial and service sector workers who are commonly lumped together and labeled “middle class” based on their income level—experienced increased “insecurity of income” between 1997 and 2004, compared to 1990. Downward short-term mobility—an annual income decline of $20,000 or more—rose from 13.0 percent of the population in 1990 to 14.8 percent in 1997-98 and 16.6 percent in 2003-04.

This downward mobility was concentrated among those earning between $34,500 and $89,300 a year, while those in the top 10 percent of income earners ($122,880 or more) saw less negative shocks during this same period. Moreover, the middle income household was no more upwardly mobile in 2003-04 than it was in 1990-91, although the early nineties was a period of recession and the more recent years were ones of officially strong economic growth.
Untill the banking crash in 2008.


Hertz’s findings parallel those contained in a number of similar recent studies. A report prepared by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon for the National Bureau of Economic Research in December 2005 shows that those in the top 10 percent income bracket received 49 percent of the growth in wages and salaries in the period between 1997 and 2001, while the bottom 50 percent received less than 13 percent.




SO there is clearly mass inequality in society and around the world. In every capitalist society and system there is always teh myth be it the "american dream" or hard work gets you far. Of course working hard can get you so far but to the top very rarely. We as socialists must be at the front pointing these class inequalities out and preparing alternatives to all of these situations.

Of course our alternative is radical and would result in a class less society where there is no upper or lower class a equal fair society where you would be paid a fair wage for a fair days work.

So when you hear a polititian peddling the line that social mobility has increased or decreased its a myth. It simply does not exist and on the odd few ocasions people do move class's and i stress very rarely there are often exceptional circumstances to explain this. So lets not buy the political class's myths and rubbish and start fighting the class war to end the class system for good and bring equality and prosperity to all not just the few.

Markets take a tumble as fear spreads about state of world economies, a socialist alternative is needed

Today saw one of the biggest falls on the global stock markets in 3 years with big dips in America and in Britain.

Wall Street had its worst day for almost three years as shares tumbled on fears about the eurozone debt crisis and the US economic recovery.

The Dow Jones index closed down more than 500 points, or 4.3%, and came after the leading European bourses fell more than 3%.

It was the biggest one-day fall for the Dow since 22 October 2008.

Earlier, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned that the sovereign debt crisis was spreading.

Also in New York, the S&P 500 index fell 4.8% and the tech-rich Nasdaq was more than 5% lower.

Meanwhile, Frankfurt's Dax and London's FTSE 100 indexes had their worst day this year, closing almost 3.5% lower as investors fretted that Italy and Spain might become engulfed in the debt crisis.

"People are throwing in the towel because they can't find relief on any front," said Milton Ezrati, market strategist at Lord Abbett.

Investors sought the relative safety of gold, sending the price of the metal to a new record high of $1,677 an ounce.

More weak jobs data from the US also raised concerns about the strength of the economic recovery there.

Wall Street's financial power houses were hit hard, with JP Morgan and Bank of America falling 5% and 7.4% respectively.

In Europe, Lloyds Banking Group fell 9.9% and Royal Bank of Scotland was down 7%. France's Societe Generale lost 6.9% and Germany's Commerzbank dropped 6.8% in Frankfurt.

Miners also suffered, with Vedanta Resources slumping 9.5% and Xstrata and Eurasian Natural Resources falling more than 8% in London.

The oil price also slumped on fears that a weaker global recovery would hit demand. Benchmark West Texas crude for September delivery fell $5.30, or 5.8%, to $86.63 a barrel. Brent crude fell 5.3% to $107.25.


This just highlights the fragileness of the global recovery if you can even call it one. There are fears over Italy and Spain who are borrowing at high interest rates which they are not thought to be able to sustain for too long.

There is increasing doubt over these economies and this doesnt even begin to mention Greece which surely will take anotehr tumble sadly. But all this means that global economists are urging for more cuts and less borrowing. I.e austerity which we are all starting to become very familiar with unfortunatly. If your nearing the edge pull back and cut is the message being sent to countries in trouble.

But this is no warmth to the working class who as a result of all this will feel their living standards cut even further and jobs lost, wages cut and gains we have made over decades taken away.

Unless we resist . There i a growing movement of reisstance but i feel this now has to be stepped up to a major scale. Bringing whole cities and towns to a stand still for prolonged time. The demand to write off the debt must be started to be made i feel too. If this message is spread early enough it can become ingrained in workers contiousness and spread.

The absence of a workers party in much of europe and the world is still very evident. The struggle for this must continue with building of things like TUSC - trade union and socialist coalition in order to give workers a voice on thepolitical stage and a alternative to the cuts and austerity.

Idealy this need for a party would not be nessesarily to win elections and replace labour as a careerist capitalist pro busienss party but to reject capitalism and offer a new way forward for workers to realise. NOt by just voting will things change it all has to be linked to the continuous need for socialism and democratic workers control of the planned economy.

Libya, the "no fly zone" and the left

here i thought i'd share with you a excellent article by teh general secretary of the socialist party, Peter Taaffe, which is to appear in our may edition of socialism today from the socialist party issue number 148 which you can order a copy from the party at www.socialistparty.org.uk
this article is also available to read on the CWI website at www.socialistworld.net too

this is fascinating and shows up a lot of hypocrisy not just with Ed miliband and labour but also some other left groups when it comes to Libya and the events out there at the moment.

Imperialist powers have implemented a no-fly zone over Libya to protect their own strategic and economic interests and to restore their damaged prestige. Incredibly, some on the Marxist left support this military intervention. PETER TAAFFE writes.
WAR IS THE most barbaric of all human activity, invested as it is in the modern era with fiendish weapons of mass destruction. It also lays bare the reality of class relations, nationally and internationally, which are normally obfuscated, hidden by layers of hypocrisy and the moral turpitude of the ruling classes.

It is the ultimate test, alongside revolution, of ideas and programme, not only for the bourgeois but also for the labour movement and the different political trends within it.

The current Libyan war - for that is what it is - illustrates this clearly. Capitalism and imperialism, masquerading under the moth-eaten label of 'humanitarian military intervention' - utterly discredited by the slaughter of Iraq - are using the conflict in an attempt to regain the initiative.

Taken aback by the sweep of the revolution in Tunisia and Egypt - with loyal props such as Mubarak and Ben Ali toppled - they desperately sought a lever to halt the process and hopefully reverse it.

This is what lies behind the bloody massacre in Bahrain, carried out by Saudi Arabian troops, with a large component of mercenaries from Pakistan and elsewhere.

Not a peep has issued from the British government on the revelations in The Observer of widespread murder gangs - led by Sunni Muslims linked to the monarchy - and the deliberate attempt to foster sectarianism in what had been previously a largely unified non-ethnic movement.

The slogans of the original Bahraini demonstrations were: 'We are not Shia, we are not Sunni, we are Bahraini'. Equally, the 'Labour leaders' - led by New Labour chief, Ed Miliband, who promised something 'different' to the previous regime of Tony Blair - have now shuffled into line to back David Cameron's Libyan policies and the imposition of the no-fly zone.

Incredibly, this policy has been supported by some on the left, including a few who adhere to Marxism and Trotskyism. Amongst these must be included Gilbert Achar, who has written books on the Middle East, and whose support for the no-fly zone was originally carried uncritically on the website journal of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), International Viewpoint.

His views were subsequently repudiated by the USFI.

No such uncertainty, however, exists for the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL). This organisation's shrill tone, particularly in criticising others on the left, rises in inverse proportion to its small forces and its even more limited influence within the labour movement.

The AWL has even dragged in Leon Trotsky to justify imperialist intervention through the no-fly zone. One headline read: "Libya: no illusions in west but 'anti-intervention' opposition is abandoning the rebels".

Another priceless headline was: 'Why we should not denounce intervention in Libya'. (Workers Liberty website, 23 March)

These latter examples fly in the face of a cardinal principle of Marxism and Trotskyism. That is to strive to instil into the working class and its organisations complete class independence from all shades of bourgeois opinion and the actions that flow from this.

This applies on all questions, particularly during a war, even a civil war, which the Libyan conflict clearly has elements of. There is nothing remotely progressive in the attempt of the imperialist powers of Britain, France or the US to implement the no-fly zone.

The Benghazi rebels are so much small change in their calculations. Only yesterday, these 'powers' embraced Muammar Gaddafi, supplied him with weapons, bought his oil and, through Blair, visited his 'big tent' in the desert and welcomed him into the 'international community'.

This term is a complete misnomer, as is the idea of the United Nations, used on this occasion as the screen behind which the intervention in Libya was prepared, for naked capitalist and imperialist class interests.

Undoubtedly, there are illusions amongst many idealistic young people and workers who look towards such bodies to resolve the problems of war, conflict, poverty, etc.

Some were also motivated to support the no-fly zone because of the fear that the population in Benghazi would be massacred by Gaddafi's forces. But the UN merely brings the capitalist nations together, dominated overwhelmingly by the US, to collaborate when their interests coincide, but which, equally, are very 'disunited' when the opposite is the case.

The jockeying for position and the squabbles between the different imperialist powers over the Libyan intervention illustrate this.

US overstretch and uncertainty
THE REVOLUTIONS IN the Middle East and North Africa initially revealed the uncertainty - almost the paralysis - of the major imperialist power, the US, to intervene.

The administration of Barack Obama has been forced to attempt to separate itself from George Bush's doctrine of a unipolar world dominated by US imperialism, with its overwhelming economic and military power.

It still retains this military advantage compared to its rivals but this is now undermined by the economic weakening of the US.

There is also the problem of Afghanistan and the fear that this is leading to military overstretch. This forced Robert Gates, US defence secretary, to declare early on his opposition - and, it must be assumed, of the US general staff - to the use of US land troops anywhere else in the world.

He also said that it was a 'certainty' that no US ground troops would be authorised by Obama in Libya.

He underlined this when he "laid into the rebels' capabilities, describing the opposition as a faction-ridden and disparate 'misnomer' whose forces lacked 'command and control and organisation'." (Observer, 3 April)

Obama, on the hoof, has sought to formulate a new military diplomatic doctrine in line with the changed position of the US. He has tried to draw a distinction between the 'vital' and 'non-vital' interests of US imperialism.

In 'vital' cases, the US will act unilaterally if the situation requires it but the US, he arrogantly proclaimed, is no longer 'the world's policeman' but, in future, would act as the world's 'police chief'.

This means, it seems, that the US would lend its support, be formally at the head of, a 'multilateral core coalition', so long as this did not mean the automatic actual deployment of troops.

Despite this, the pressure allegedly to prevent a 'bloodbath' has now compelled Obama to sign a public letter with Nicolas Sarkozy and Cameron declaring that it would be 'an unconscionable betrayal' if Gaddafi remains in place and the rebels are left to his mercy.

Libya, they declare, threatens to become 'a failed state'. This appears to set the scene for another somersault, particularly by Obama, to prepare the use of some ground forces if necessary.

When it has been unable to intervene directly, because of domestic opposition for instance, imperialism has not hesitated to use mercenaries to overthrow a regime it did not favour or to stymie a revolution.

Such was the policy of Ronald Reagan's administration in using hired thugs, the Contras, against the Nicaraguan revolution. Imperialism has been forced into the latest stand by the fact that Gaddafi appears to be winning or, at least, has sufficient military strength and a residue of support to avoid outright military defeat, short of a land invasion.

The rebels hold only the east, and not even all of this. The west, in which two thirds of the population live, is still largely controlled by Gaddafi and his forces.

This is not entirely due to popular compliance with the Gaddafi regime. His forces have most of the guns, particularly heavy weapons, tanks, etc.

He has always kept the regular army in check for fear that a coup could emanate from this quarter. Patrick Cockburn wrote in the Independent on Sunday: "Absence of a professional army in Libya means that the rebels have to rely on long-retired soldiers to train new recruits".

(17 April) Gaddafi is also able to draw on tribal support, as well as the political capital accumulated for his regime from the higher living standards in Libya, before the conflict, than in most countries in the region.

The Spanish revolution
MANY SUPPORTERS OF the no-fly zone took this position in the expectation that imperialism would be unable to proceed beyond this.

What will they do if, as cannot be excluded, land forces in one form or another are deployed with the open or concealed compliance of the imperialist powers of the US, France and Britain?

In the House of Commons debate on 21 March, Miliband was unrestrained in his support for Cameron's military action. This is further confirmation of the political degeneration of the Labour Party, from a workers' party at bottom into a bourgeois formation.

Writers from the capitalist class now almost casually recognise this reality: "The Labour Party was once the political arm of the organised working class.

All three main parties are now the political arm of the organised corporate class. This is not a peculiarly British phenomenon.

Almost every advanced democracy, and particularly the US, struggles to control the corporate sector". "(Peter Wilby, The Guardian, 12 April)

Just compare the stance of the current 'Labour' leader to that of Harold Wilson at the time of the Vietnam war. Much to the chagrin of then US president, Lyndon Johnson, Wilson - although he was not averse to supporting military action abroad if he thought he could get away with it - refused to involve British troops.

For him to have done otherwise would have split the Labour Party from top to bottom, probably leading to his removal as leader. In other words, he was compelled by the pressure of the ranks of the Labour Party and the trade unions to desist from supporting military action by US imperialism.

Now Miliband backs Cameron, with hardly a squeak from New Labour MPs or the 'rank and file'. He has invoked Spain during the civil war, in justifying support for the government.

He declared: "In 1936, a Spanish politician came to Britain to plead for support in the face of General Franco's violent fascism.

"He said: 'We are fighting with sticks and knives against tanks and aircraft and guns, and it revolts the conscience of the world that that should be true'." (Hansard, 21 March)

The parallel with Spain is entirely false. Then, a genuine revolution of the working class and poor peasants unfolded, with the creation, at least in the initial period after July 1936, of genuine workers' power, mass committees, and the occupation of land and factories.

Spain was experiencing a social revolution. In the main, this revolution was defeated not by Franco's fascist forces but by the false policies of the republican bourgeoisie which derailed the revolution, aided and abetted by the Communist Party, under orders from Stalin and the Russian bureaucracy.

They correctly feared that the triumph of the Spanish revolution would be the signal for their own overthrow. In this situation, the world working class rallied in support of the demand for arms to Spain.

Then imperialism, particularly the Anglo-French powers, did everything to prevent the Spanish workers from being armed. Yet the right-wing Tory MP, Bill Cash, agreed with Miliband that there was indeed "a parallel with what happened in 1936", and therefore supported the "arming of those who are resisting Gaddafi" in Benghazi.

Does this not indicate the political character of the present leadership in Benghazi and the east, which includes former Gaddafi loyalists like the former head of the special forces, Abdul Fattah Younis? If the original tendency shown in Benghazi of mass committees, involving the participation of the working class, had been maintained there would be no question of support emanating from right-wing Tories! Miliband gave further justification for his support of the no-fly zone: "There is international consent, a just cause and a feasible mission... are we really saying that we should be a country that stands by and does nothing?"

No serious left force can advocate a policy of abstention where working people are subjected to murderous attack by a ruthless dictator like Gaddafi. Clearly, we had to give political support -the position of the Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) from the outset - to the people of Benghazi when they drove Gaddafi's forces from the city in a revolutionary uprising.

This is a sufficient answer to those who seek to justify support for military intervention from the outside on the basis that Benghazi's people are defenceless.

They used the same arguments about the impotence of the Iraqi people in the grip of a ruthless dictator to justify the bombardment and invasion of Iraq, with all the murderous results that we see now.

But this argument was shattered by the uprising of the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples who, through their own multi-millioned power, smashed dictatorships.

The people of Benghazi have already defeated Gaddafi's forces once. This was when revolutionary or semi-revolutionary methods were deployed.

These now seem to have taken a backseat as petty-bourgeois and bourgeois forces have elbowed aside the genuine revolutionary forces. On the basis of mass workers' committees, a revolutionary army - unlike the ragtag force supporting the so-called 'transitional government' - could have been mobilised to seize all the towns in the east and make a revolutionary appeal to the people of the west, particularly in the capital, Tripoli.

There are many successful examples of this in history, not least in the Spanish revolution, which Miliband invokes but does not understand. For instance, after the workers in Barcelona smashed Franco's fascist uprising in July 1936, José Buenaventura Durruti formed a revolutionary army which marched through Catalonia and Aragon to the gates of Madrid.

This placed four fifths of Spain in the hands of the working class and poor peasantry. This was indeed a 'just' war on the part of the masses who were defending democracy while striving for a new, humane, socialist society.

Moreover, it was one with real international support from the European and world working class. Miliband's criteria for what is 'just' and what is not is situated within capitalism and what is best for that system, not the interests of working-class people who are in an oppositional and antagonistic relationship to that system, increasingly so today.

Western powers' double standards
OUR CRITERIA OF what is just and progressive, including wars, is that which enhances and strengthens the working masses, increases their power, their consciousness, etc.

What hinders this is retrogressive. Capitalist, imperialist intervention, including the no-fly zone, even if successful, will not strengthen the working class, increase the sense of its own power, to see itself and its organisations as the real and only lever for achieving its ends.

Instead, it directs the gaze of the workers in the east towards an outside 'liberating' force, thereby lowering the consciousness of working people in their own potential power.

As even Tory MPs commented in the Commons debate, Miliband seemed to identify himself completely with the 'Blair doctrine' - so-called humanitarian military intervention from the outside - from which he had appeared to distance himself when first elected leader.

This meant justifying both Blair and Cameron's arguments when confronted with the choice of where and when to intervene in the world. Miliband fell back on the specious statement: "The argument that because we cannot do everything we cannot do anything is a bad argument".

'We', that is capitalism and imperialism, cannot intervene against dictatorship in Burma, cannot even raise 'our' voices against the murderous assaults of the Israeli ruling class on the Palestinians in Gaza.

'We' are mute against the vicious regimes in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Nevertheless, it is 'just' to oppose Gaddafi - while only yesterday 'we' embraced him - and to use force from the sky, at least, against him and his regime.

The 'liberal' Observer newspaper takes the prize for summing up this arbitrary hypocritical approach of capitalism: "Why does this Gulf regime [Bahrain] get the benefit of the doubt when other authoritarian Arab rulers do not? Clearly, there is no question of intervention in Bahrain or in any other state where protest is being crushed.

The entanglement in Libya leaves no appetite for giving active support, whether diplomatic or military, to other rebellions. If only one villain in the region had to be singled out for attack, Colonel Gaddafi was surely the most deserving candidate". (17 April)

"Entirely missing from this argumentation is the real reason for intervention in Libya, and that is the material interests of capitalism and imperialism, above all of oil, with some of the biggest reserves in Africa.

Some have even denied that this is a factor - they argued the same before Iraq. "The oil conspiracy theory... is one of the most absurd", said Blair (6 February 2003).

Now The Independent (19 April) has published a hitherto hidden Foreign Office memorandum, sent on 13 November 2002, following a meeting with the oil giant BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect.

"BP are desperate to get in there".

Shameful support for military intervention
WHILE THE POSITION of the likes of Miliband is not unexpected, given the rightward evolution of the ex-workers' parties and their leaders, the same cannot be said of those claiming to stand in a Marxist-Trotskyist tradition.

Sean Matgamna of the AWL even drags in Leon Trotsky to justify support for military intervention in Libya: "An individual, a group, a party, or a class that 'objectively' picks its nose while it watches men drunk with blood massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive".

In this passage, from his writings on the Balkan wars prior to the first world war, Trotsky denounces the spokesmen of Russian liberal capitalism for remaining silent while Serbian and Bulgarian atrocities were committed against other nationalities.

He was not in anyway justifying support for the leaders of one nation against another. This is clear from the rest of the quote, which Matgamna does not cite: "On the other hand, a party or the class that rises up against every abominable action wherever it has occurred, as vigorously and unhesitatingly as a living organism reacts to protect its eyes when they are threatened with external injury - such a party or class is sound of heart.

"Protest against the outrages in the Balkans cleanses the social atmosphere in our own country, heightens the level of moral awareness among our own people... Therefore an uncompromising protest against atrocities serves not only the purpose of moral self-defence on the personal and party level but also the purpose of politically safeguarding the people against adventurism concealed under the flag of 'liberation'."

If anything, the last point from this quote finds conclusively against the AWL. It is supporting imperialist intervention under the false flag of 'liberation'.

Yet we find the astounding allegation: "The would-be left is yet again tying itself in knots over a false political dilemma: the belief that in order not to give general support to the British-France 'liberal intervention' in Libya, they must stridently oppose them on this and on every specific thing they do.

Or at least on every military action. In fact it is a dilemma of their own making".

"Trying to square the circle, Matgamna then adds: "Of course, socialists should not give positive political support to the governments and the ruling capitalists of Britain, France, the USA, or the UN, in Libya or anywhere else".

A child of ten can recognise that support for military action of whatever kind is 'positive political support'. The AWL claims that it can neatly separate support for action of this character from the wider perspectives of the powers that take such action.

It is, in effect, the political attorney and apologist for France and Britain: "The UN, with Britain and France as its instruments, has set very limited objectives in Libya.

"There is no reason at all to think that the 'Great Powers' want to occupy Libya or are doing other than a limited international police operation on what they see as Europe's 'southern border'." Gratuitously the AWL says: "The bitter lessons of their bungling in Iraq are still very fresh to them".

It goes on: "In the name of what alternative should we have told them to stop using air power to prevent Gaddafi massacring an incalculable number of his own people? That is the decisive question in all such situations".

If you do not go along with this nonsense you are incorrigible pacifists, according to the AWL. To show how far these latter-day 'Trotskyists' are removed from Trotsky's real views on war, look at his position during the Spanish civil war on the issue of the military budget of the Republican government.

Max Shachtman, at that time one of his followers, opposed Trotsky who had argued in 1937: "If we would have a member in the Cortes [Spanish parliament] he would vote against the military budget of Negrin".

Trotsky wrote that Shachtman's opposition to this position "astounded me. Shachtman was willing to express confidence in the perfidious Negrin government".

He later explained: "To vote for the military budget of the Negrin government signifies to vote him political confidence... To do it would be a crime.

"How do we explain our vote to the anarchist workers? Very simply: We have not the slightest confidence in the capacity of this government to conduct the war and assure victory.

We accuse this government of protecting the rich and starving the poor. This government must be smashed.

So long as we are not strong enough to replace it, we are fighting under its command. But on every occasion we express openly our non-confidence in it: it is the only one possibility to mobilise the masses politically against this government and to prepare its overthrow.

Any other politics would be a betrayal of the revolution". (Trotsky, From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene, 24 January 1940) How much more scathingly would Trotsky assail the AWL's shameful support for imperialist intervention in Libya today.

An independent class position
INCREDIBLY, THE AWL's apology for imperialist intervention allegedly defends 'independent working-class politics'. But there is not an atom of an independent class position in its approach.

We opposed military intervention, but so did the masses in Benghazi in the first period. The slogans on the walls read, in English: 'No to foreign intervention, the Libyans can do it themselves'.

In other words, the masses had a much sounder class instinct, a suspicion of any military intervention from the outside, particularly by the powers that formerly dominated the region: Britain and France.

They correctly feared that a no-fly zone, despite protestations to the contrary, would lead to an invasion, as it did in Iraq. Does this mean that we remain on the level of general slogans, that we are impassive in the face of a possible attack by Gaddafi on Benghazi? No.

But in such a situation we emphasise the need for independent class politics, for the masses to rely on their own strength and to give not a scintilla of support for the idea that imperialism has the best interests of the masses at heart.

Truly, we cannot react - as did Alex Callinicos, a leader of the British SWP - to the arguments of the possible massacre in Benghazi with the statement: "The sad fact is that massacres are a chronic feature of capitalism.

The revolutionary left is, alas, too weak to stop them". Physically, the forces of Marxism may be too weak to prevent massacres - in Rwanda, for instance.

Nonetheless, we are obligated to advocate that the broad labour movement should adopt the most effective position politically to defend and enhance the power and influence of the working class in a given situation.

In Northern Ireland in 1969, for instance, Militant supporters (predecessors of the Socialist Party), opposed sending in British troops to defend the Catholic nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry from a murderous assault by the predominantly loyalist B-Specials.

The SWP, despite later denials, supported sending in the British troops. When the troop did go in, they defended these areas from loyalist attacks and were welcomed as 'defenders'.

But, as we predicted, at a certain stage this would turn into its opposite and the troops would come to be seen as a repressive force against the Catholic nationalist minority.

This is how events actually worked out.

However, faced with a possible massacre of the Catholic population we did not adopt a 'neutral' or passive position. In Militant (now The Socialist), in September 1969, we argued "for a united workers' defence force, the withdrawal of British troops, disband the B-Specials, end of all discrimination, jobs, homes, schools, etc, for all workers".

We stood, in other words, for class unity and for working people to rely on their own forces and not on the capitalist state forces. Only a similar approach based on the foundation of complete class independence, adapted to the concrete conditions in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East, can lead to success for the workers' struggle in a very complicated situation.

We cannot follow Achar either when he declares: "Can anyone claiming to belong to the left just ignore a popular movement's plea for protection, even by means of imperialist bandit-cops, when the type of protection requested is not one through which control over their country could be exerted? Certainly not, by my understanding of the left.

No real progressive could just ignore the uprising's request for protection".

It is wrong to identify the 'uprising', which was originally a genuine mass movement - as we pointed out - with its present leadership, stuffed with bourgeois and pro-bourgeois elements, including remnants from the Gaddafi regime.

Moreover, it is entirely wrong to equate Lenin's acceptance of food and even arms from one imperialist power to be used to repulse another, without any military or political strings attached, to support for imperialism's no-fly zone - as some have done.

It is not a question for Marxism only of what is done, but who does it, why and how.

Defending revolution
ULTIMATELY, IMPERIALISM'S intervention is to safeguard its power, prestige and income from the threat of the unfolding revolution in the region. A spokesman for the Obama administration made it clear that it is not Libya that is the main concern but what happens in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, where most of the oil reserves upon which world capitalism depends are concentrated.

But they see a successful intervention in Libya as a firewall against the threat of revolution in these states and the whole region. They are also concerned about the regional influence of Iran, which grew enormously as a result of the Iraq war.

The situation in Libya is extremely fluid. The outcome of the present conflict is uncertain.

At the moment, it looks like deadlock with neither Gaddafi nor the rebels able to strike a decisive blow for victory in what is now a drawn-out civil war.

This could lead to the effective partitioning of the country, already the de facto case. In this situation, all the latent tribal divisions - held in check partly by the terror of the Gaddafi regime - could come flooding to the surface, creating a new Somalia in the centre of the Middle East, with all its instability, not least in the struggle over Libya's oil reserves.

On the other hand, imperialism is desperate to avoid the impression that Gaddafi could come out as a partial victor in this struggle, enhancing the perceived impotence of the imperialist powers to decide the outcome of events.

But the responsibility of the labour movements in Britain and worldwide is clear.

Absolute opposition to all outside imperialist intervention! Let the Libyan people decide their own fate! Maximum support, from the world working class and labour movement, including the supply of food and weapons, to the genuine forces of national and social liberation in Libya and the Middle East!

Imperialism will not be able to stop the forward march of revolution in North Africa and the Middle East. Yes, there is disappointment, as the CWI predicted, amongst the masses that the fruits of their victories against Mubarak and Ben Ali appear to have been stolen for the moment by the regimes that replaced them.

The hated security apparatus and state machine which existed before, despite the mighty labours of the revolution, remain largely intact. But they are being opposed by the mass movements.

The revolutions endure and millions have learnt enormously in the course of this movement. Hopefully, their conclusions will lead to a strengthening of the working class and the development of independent class politics.

This would be symbolised by the development of the workers' own organisations, new powerful trade unions and workers' parties with the goal of socialist transformation, accompanied by democracy in Libya and the region as a whole.

No to imperialist military intervention in Libya

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The UN Security Council's majority decision to enact a militarily-imposed 'no-fly-zone' against Libya, while greeted with joy on the streets of Benghazi and Tobruk, is in no way intended to defend the Libyan revolution.

Revolutionaries in Libya may think that this decision will help them, but they are mistaken. Naked economic and political calculations lay behind the imperialist powers' decision.

It is not a lifeline that could 'save' the revolution, in the real sense of the word, against Gaddafi. Major imperialist powers decided that they wanted now to exploit the revolution and try to replace Gaddafi with a more reliable regime.

However the Libyan foreign minster's announcement of an immediate ceasefire has complicated imperialism's position.

Faced with a rapid eastwards advance of Gaddafi's forces, many in eastern Libya seized hold of the idea of a no-fly-zone to help stem this tide, but this is not the way to defend and extend the revolution.

Unfortunately, the revolution's initial drive towards the west, where two-thirds of Libyans live, was not based on a movement, built upon popular, democratic committees that could offer a clear programme to win support from the masses and the rank and file soldiers, while waging a revolutionary war.

This gave Gaddafi an opportunity to regroup.

The growing support for a no-fly-zone was a reversal of the sentiment expressed in the English language posters put up in Benghazi, in February, declaring: "No To Foreign Intervention - Libyans Can Do It By Themselves".

This followed the wonderful examples of Tunisia and Egypt, where sustained mass action completely undermined totalitarian regimes. The Libyan masses were confident that their momentum would secure victory.

But Gaddafi was able to retain a grip in Tripoli. This, at least, relative stabilisation of the regime and its counter-offensive led to a change in attitude towards foreign intervention that allowed the largely pro-Western leadership of the rebel 'Interim Transitional National Council' to overcome youth opposition to asking the West for aid.

However, despite the Gaddafi regime's blood-curdling words, it is not at all certain that its relatively small forces could have launched an all-out assault on Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, with around a million living in its environs.

A mass defence of the city would have blunted the attack of Gaddafi's relatively small forces. Now, if the ceasefire holds and Gaddafi remains in power in Tripoli, a de-facto breakup of the country could occur, returning to something like the separate entities that existed before Italy first created Libya after 1912 and which Britain recreated in the late 1940s.

Whatever the immediate effect the 'no fly zone', any trust placed in either the UN or the imperialist powers threatens to undermine all the genuine hopes and aspirations of the revolution that began last month.

This is because the powers that have imposed threatened military action are no friends of the Libyan masses. Until recently, they were quite happy to deal with, and pander to, the murderous Gaddafi ruling clique, to maintain a 'partnership', especially concerning Libya's oil and gas industries.

Indeed, the day after the UN took its decision, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal lamented that "the close partnership between the Libyan leader Col.

"Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence service and the CIA has been severed" (18 March, 2011). The Journal reported "according to a senior US official" the previous 'partnership' was "especially productive".

Now, having lost former dictatorial allies Mubarak, in Egypt, and Ben Ali, in Tunisia, imperialism is trying to take advantage of the popular uprising in Libya to both refurbish its "democratic" image and to help install a more "reliable" regime, or at least a part of Libya.

As before, North Africa and the Middle East, with its oil and strategic location, are of tremendous importance to the imperialist powers.

This reveals the absolute hypocrisy of the main imperialist powers, which have shamelessly supported repressive dictatorial regimes throughout the Middle East for decades.

At the very same time that they were deciding the No Fly Zone, the same powers did absolutely nothing to prevent Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies' increasingly brutal suppression of the majority of the Bahraini population and their attempt to ferment sectarianism.

Within 12 hours of the UN decision, the armed forces another regional ally, Yemeni, ally shot dead at least 39 protesters in the capital city, Sanaa. The UN was only able to take its decision on Libya because the Arab League supported a no fly zone, but of course these mainly reactionary rulers say nothing about repression in Bahrain, Yemen or other Arab countries.

Cameron and Sarkozy's "concern" for Libya is at least partly motivated by domestic unpopularity and the hope that a foreign success will strengthen their standing.

Cameron clearly hopes for a boost similar to that which Thatcher enjoyed after her victory in the 1983 Falklands war. But Thatcher achieved a quick military victory - the no fly zone operation will not will produce a similar military win.

Sarkozy, after the disaster of his Tunisia policy that led to the resignation of the French Foreign Minister, needs a "success" to lift his low poll ratings as next year's Presidential election looms closer.

Gaddafi zig-zags
Despite the imperialist powers' recent rapprochement with Gaddafi, the tyrant always remained an unreliable ally. Throughout his nearly 42 years in power, Gaddafi zig-zagged in policy, sometimes violently.

In 1971, he helped the Sudanese dictator, Nimeiry, crush a left coup that took place in reaction to the earlier suppression of the left, including the banning of the one-million member Sudanese communist party.

Six years later, Gaddafi proclaimed a "people's revolution" and changed the country's official name from the Libyan Arab Republic to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah.

Despite the name change and the formation of so-called "revolutionary committees", this was not genuine democratic socialism or a move towards it. The Libyan working people and youth were not running their country.

Gaddafi remained in control. This was underlined by the increasingly prominent role that many of his children played in the regime.

Nevertheless, since 1969, on the basis of a large oil income and a small population, there was a big improvement in most Libyans' lives, especially in education and health, which at least partly explains why Gaddafi still has some basis of support amongst the population.

Even while there is growing opposition to the Gaddafi clique, especially amongst Libya's overwhelmingly young and educated population, there is also fear about who might replace him and opposition to anything that smells of foreign rule.

The revolutionaries' widespread use of the old ruling monarchy's flag was bound to alienate those who do not want to return to the past and was used by Gaddafi to justify his rule.

Flying the old flag also risked alienating Libyans in the west of the country because the former king came from the east and had no historic roots in the area around Tripoli.

But these factors are not a complete explanation as to why Gaddafi was able, at least temporally, to stabilise his position. While there was a popular uprising in eastern Libya, Gaddafi was able to maintain his position in the west, where two-thirds of the population live, despite large protests in Tripoli and uprisings in Misrata, Zuwarah and a few other areas.

Role of the working class
Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, the working class in Libya has not, so far, begun to play an independent role in the revolution. Furthermore, many workers in Libya are migrants who have fled the country in recent weeks.

The absence of a national focal point which, for example, the Tunisian UGTT trade union federation provided (despite its pro-Ben Ali national leadership), complicated the situation in Libya.

The huge revolutionary enthusiasm of the population has not, so far, been given an organised expression. The largely self-appointed 'National Council' that emerged in Benghazi is a combination of elements from the old regime and more pro-imperialist elements.

For example, the Council's foreign spokesman, Mahmoud Jibril, the former head of Gaddafi's National Economic Development Board, was described by the US Ambassador, in November 2009, as a "serious interlocutor who 'gets' the US perspective".

It is easy for Gaddafi to present these people as a threat to Libyan living standards and agents of foreign powers. At the same time, this propaganda will have only a limited effect, as population's living standards worsening and unemployment increased (standing at 10%) since from the end of the 1980s oil boom and the start of privatisation back in 2003.

Gaddafi's use of the threat of imperialist intervention did gather some support and if the country becomes divided may gain more. How long this can sustain Gaddafi is another question.

In addition to anti-imperialist rhetoric, Gaddafi made concessions to maintain support. Each family has been given the equivalent of $450.

Some public sector workers have been given 150% wage increases and taxes and customs duties on food have been abolished. But these steps do not answer the demands for freedom or end the growing frustration of Libya's youthful population, with an average age of 24, over the regime's corruption and suffocating grip.

Around the world, millions of people follow, and are inspired by, the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. These events inspired protests against the effects of the continuing capitalist crisis in many countries.

Some of those welcoming the revolutionary events in the region may support the UN's 'no fly zone' but socialists argue that it is primarily made in the interests of the imperialist powers - the same powers that no nothing substantially to restrain the repressive actions of Gulf states against mass protests in their countries.

But what then can be done internationally to genuinely help the Libyan revolution? First of all, trade unions should block the export of Libyan oil and gas.

Secondly, bank workers should organise the freezing of all the Gaddafi regime's financial assets.

The 'no fly zone' will not automatically lead to the overthrow of Gaddafi, in fact, like Saddam Hussein, the Libyan leader could entrench his position for a time in those parts of the country he controls.

As the experience of Egypt and Tunisia shows, the key to overthrow dictatorships is the movement of the working masses and youth.

A revolutionary programme
Thus the fate of the revolution will be decided inside Libya itself. Its victory requires a programme that can cut across tribal and regional divisions and unite the mass of the population against the Gaddafi clique and for a struggle for a better future.

A programme for the Libyan revolution that would genuinely benefit the mass of the population would be based on winning and defending real democratic rights; an end to corruption and privilege; the safeguarding and further development of the social gains made since the discovery of oil; opposition to any form of re-colonisation and for a democratically-controlled, publicly-owned, economic plan to use the country's resources for the future benefit of the mass of people.

The creation of an independent movement of Libyan workers, poor and youth that could implement such a real revolutionary transformation of the country, is the only way to thwart the imperialists' plans, end dictatorship and to transform the lives of the people.


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Committee for

How the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami may affect us all

So over the weekend the tragic news of a huge earthquake that hit just off the north east coast of the japanese mainland hit on friday i think it was now. Awful devastation in the north of the country with big towns such as Sendai affected hugely with many homes and buildings flattened and often washed out to sea.

Japan who lie slap bang on the fault line of a major fault line which is part of teh pacific ring of fire as they call it was always under threat from this huge quake and this appears to have been the big one. Coming in at a collosall 8.9 and many argueing it could be a 9 on the reicter scale is huge on anyones estimation.

Firstly i wantt o send all of our condolances from this blog and many who read this. I intend to pledge a donation to the Red Cross in solidarity with the Japanese people. I must say the Japanese people have handled this amazingly with faced with such tradegy they havent moaned or groaned or pleaded to the world about their troubles they have quietly gone about rescueing any survivors they can rescue from the quake and any who have been affected by the Tsnami which brought a huge huge wave clattering against the Japanese coastline washing in 10 miles inland at some parts and destroying anything that lay in its path.

Absolutely awful scenes we saw over the weekend on our news. Many countries around the world including New Zealand and Chile who have also been recently hit with big earthquakes have pledged to support Japan in its rescue efforts and rebuilding efforts.

Not just teh loss of life and destruction of buildings and land though a big problem that now has occured now as a direct result of fridays earthquake is the major nuclear power plants and reactors that keep the Japanese electricity supply going. It is rumoured due to the shut down and the damage caused to these reactors which are still not stable by any means the Japanese electricity supply is now down by 25% roughly. This is major i would say as Japan as what is the 3rd or 4th biggest global economies in the whole wide world relies heavily on nuclear power and electricity for its production which in itself is huge.

It is said in times of disaster around the world the world looks to the ever reliable Yen to invest in and it has always been seen as a safe currency to invest your money in.

Now it is Japan in troublea nd the Yen taking a tumble in the stock market loosing 6% of its worth apparently today what affect will this have on the rest of the world i ask you.

Well i dont think we know the full extent of the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake of 2011 yet. But small things are emerging it is being estimated that the insurance cost for this will rocket into the billions of dollars and Japan who's economy is already in dire straights with a financial deficit estimated to be 4 times bigger than the UK's i fail to see how this wont have a major impact on the world and the global economy.

I dont think many have stopped to think of the knock on effects the problems in Japan will have. Alot of the business and production and trade in the world today is carried out with Japan with them having to heal their damaged economy and possibly take a loan out with a country like America for example i can only see the japanese economy taking a tumble in the world market.

As a socialist i find this fascinating and also very worryign how a major capitalist country goes about healing itself. No doubt to help pay for the damage and the aftermath of a broken economy already not coping with the recession it has been in for the last 8 or 9 years now will be sent to the working class's to help pay for this as usual. This is a tactic often used when a capitalist society gets into trouble financially. But i can only see this benifitin America to be honest as i said before i see America one of the Japanese closest allies now according to Barac O'barma will be sure to come to their aid with a recovery economic package to help their economy get back on its feet. The world needs a strong Japan with its huge infrustructure and production power on the world stage.

We are facing one of the most uncertain economic times for a very long time and i really do see this Japanese situation and unfortunate as it is how it will affect the global economy. I really feel the damage and long lasting damage done to that country will send the rest of the world into recession as teh capitalist system fails to grasp how it can get out of its own mess.

I really do think the events in Japan over the last week or so will affect us all be it with the worry of nuclear power making its way back onto the agenda of world governments. I may well do a blogpost on nuclear energy and its pro's and con's in the next week or so but it has brought it back on to the agenda for modern day governments to assess whetehr it really is the best way to go.

With a ever expanding China aiming to build over 300 nuclear power plants over the next 10 years and with China on a few big major fault lines of its own it is quite worrying that we may end up with another chernobyl nuclear disaster which ruined a large amount of the Ukrainian countryside when a nuclear meltdown caused the plant to leak for miles around the site writing off land for years and still many birds and animals will not return to this land deeming it un usable. I myself am anti nucler i am scared by it to be quite honest the power it pocess's and can weirld is frightening. I am glad i wasnt alive during the times of the cold war that would have scared the crap out of me. I feel in a socialist society there would be no need for nuclear power and the rich capitalists using these sorts of dangerous energies to gain more profit out of. I would hope in a socialist society the money that was shared out between everyone would be used to create long lasting greener energies that were renewable and usable.

So i do think the question will return to many western governments whether nuclear really is the best way forward possibly leading to higher energy prices as Japan depends more on oil over the next few yearsas a result of its broken nuclear system. This i feel will havea result as this will drive up the price of oil even further so do watch this space with this situation. This could affect us all.

The rising power of Chinese globalisation

So i've just finnished watching this weeks programme of The Chinese are coming from last night which i blogged about last week about how the Chinese were exploiting Africa and African workers in its pursuit of global dominance.

This weeks show was very interesting as they went to South America and Brazil in particular showing the absolute devestation of large areas of the Amazon rainforest where Chinese and Brazilian companies have got together to extract large amounts of whardood out of the forest area. THe programme and the guy who was presenting the show i dont remember his name sorry, Justin i think it was traveled with a Greenpeace activists in a helicopter over the land where such huge deforestation has taken place and still is taking place across Brazil.

The programme also visited a small indigenous tribe in the rainforest, one of the few remaining in the rainforest there in Brazil. Although this tribes land has been protected by the Brazilian government the area of the forest where they do a lot of their hunting is under huge threat from deforestation and charcoal kilns being set up all over the place near where they hunt.

The programme highlited some excellent humanitarian issues and exploitations which stood out for me. The huge iron ore mines some of the biggest in the world are in Brazil and as China demands huge amounts of steel now to build its fast growing econmy and its new cities popping up every dahy pretty much it has turned to Brazil and its better quality iron ore. But the devestation and exploitation occuring for this to happen is just unreal. It frankly scares me what China is doing to places like the Amazon jungle which is effectively the lungs of the planet.

As later in the show a guy rightly said the British in their quest for imperialism with their own British Empire back in the day was just as blunt and devastating in their quest for domination in country after country.

The Chinese product which we all know so well in Britain today is flooding the worlds markets now and even in say Brazil there are chinese shops selling chinese products to Brazilians. This has a hugely negative impact on the local Brazilian economy and its people. The Brazilians may benifit in the short term from dirt cheap products possibly not of same quality as their own home made products but as with most consumers the cheaper the better it seems.

The rise of China is being felt hugely now in America, The United States as others call it. The impact of a rising China is having a big impact and this was shown when Justin visited a school in California where young pupils aged 10 to 13 were learning basic Mandorin/Chinese for want of a better word.

This practise was met with anger by parents and local campaingers who felt the influence of China is becoming too much and they wanted to fight back. This struck a worrying chord with me as the people they interviewed. Redneck Americans i could only make out were slagging off commonism and Chinas attempt to corrupt young American school children into their ways. This struck me of a little like waht the Tea party would be saying and i expect to hear much more of this in the future. The fact is and a one of the leading foreign affairs speakers in America was interviewed eleuded to it is not that Americans are scared of Chinas commonism it is the fact Americans are more scared of China's capitalism . Very telling really as the fact that America and teh majority of the western world are in economic down turn the rise of China becomes even more apparant when companies based in the UK and the USA for years including many industrial companies are taking their factories to China where the production costsa nd labour costs are so much more cheaper.

So as a result of our global financial crisis which i have blogged about endlessly on this blog countries like the US and the UK will be facing huge challenges to even to compete against the powerhouse that is China.
Another thing which struck me with the American children in the school i mentioned earlier was the fact that this highlights capitalism even more the fact that Americans will go to this length to as the guy even put it who was running the class's to enable the next generation to compete says it all. It is all profit over people now. I really do think America could drive itself into the ground trying to compete with a massive and ever powerful China. I think China is one step ahead of the game in so many ways. It will be hard to see this ever swinging back now. The tide is turning i'm afraid and like it or not China is here to stay and will be the next super power on the world stage.

This is why alot of countries, including our own are sucking up majorly to the Chinese for work and business opputunities. We sent David Cameron our prime minister on a envoy trip with alot of British business leaders in a attempt to bring good things between Britain and China in terms of business relations.

I really dont think China see us as a big player anymore. Its america they have their sights on. This was no more apparent with the Chinese military becoming armed and flexing its military might by investing hugely in misiles and military technology whether they intend to use these one day i really do hope not for everyones sake. But their long range misiles can already reach Taiwan, Japan and even a lot of the South Pacific Ocean. Worrying indeed if this ever gets to anything.

My last point was about this idea of a potential trade war between America and China which i may do a blogpost on itself one day as i think it will deserve one. But just to make the point that America has already started the economic fightback against dirt cheap Chinese workers and products by slapping import tax's on Chinese products. China has retaliated by doing the same to American chicken feed for example so i will say watch this space as i can see a real all out trade war kicking off there in a few years time.

So all in all i've really enjoyed this series of documentaries and i've tried to fill you in on the show if you havent seen it. If you havent yet i do recommend catching it on the BBC I player called The Chinese are coming. really worth a watch about possibly how the world will look in the next century onwards as the balance of power economically shifts eastward.