"Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. The US wants to restore this enormous prize to its control"
A "rogue state" is threatening the world. It possesses weapons of mass destruction, and has used them. It has attacked, bombed and invaded more countries than any other state.
FIFTEEN million people are starving in southern Africa. More than 30,000 children die every day around the world from preventable diseases. Five times as many people die from AIDS every day as died in the World Trade Centre. So world leaders are getting ready to spend hundreds of billions of pounds on a war to crush Iraq. These are the two faces of imperialism - war and hunger.
FIVE SOCIALISTS and trade unionists spoke to Socialist Worker about how the movement to stop the war is connected to the fight they face against bosses at work and the government.
THREE MEMBERS of the Fire Brigades Union explain why they oppose the war and why people should back their crucial pay campaign as they begin voting next week for the first national firefighters' strike for 25 years.
The anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s was a turning point, but today's movement is even bigger. We now face the fourth war in ten years. And when the war against Iraq is over, the madmen in the White House are planning to set their sights on new targets - Iran, North Korea, perhaps even China.
THE RIGHT of Asians to defend themselves against racists is currently on trial in Preston, Lancashire. The six Asian defendants are the first to go on trial over the riots in Burnley in June of last year. They live in a town where three British National Party (BNP) members became councillors after the elections earlier this year.
The nazi British National Party (BNP) and National Front have been forced to cancel two planned events in the north west of England because of anti-Nazi opposition. The BNP had announced it was organising a march next Saturday in Burnley. It wanted to use the issue of threatened closures to elderly people's homes to try to con people in Burnley that it is a "respectable" party that cares about the NHS.
Bush and Blair claim war on Iraq is about stopping Saddam Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction. But who is the real threat in the world? And who has, and has used, weapons of mass destruction? "The people who do most of the shouting about weapons of mass destruction have those weapons themselves," says Nigel Chamberlain from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
AS revolutionaries we do not simply want to win a few small changes in society. We want to run the world in a completely different way. We think it is necessary to smash the presently existing state. But there's an immediate problem: the other side will do everything in its power to stop us. And they have a lot of power.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference in Blackpool last week was the most significant for years. The debates, speeches and votes made headline news on TV and in papers which normally shun serious coverage of trade union affairs.
An important meeting of the national committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) took place last weekend. The meeting agreed that we are facing a decisive and unprecedented political situation both internationally and in Britain.
