Imperialism Follow

Tony Blair’ß decision to invite Iraq’s stooge prime minister, Iyad Allawi, to the Labour Party conference is a calculated insult.

‘I think anger is a good word to describe how we feel. He’d gone there thinking it was not a war zone.

Even a hardened cynic like me has been amazed by the blatant propaganda operation orchestrated by the US and British governments over Iraq.

First came the letters to local papers from grieving relatives. Then, in ones and twos, young deserters began to slip across the border to Canada.

Will the Iraqis humble the mighty US empire? Alex Callinicos investigates.

"He has plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes" Tont Blair, 24 September 2002

The history of British and French rule in the Middle East makes uncomfortable reading for Iraq's new conquerors.

THE UN weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes the war on Iraq was "planned well in advance" of his inspectors' last visit to Iraq. He says, "You ask yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they did to try to show that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons programmes, like the fake contract with Niger."

The real looters are now arriving in Iraq. They do not want to grab a TV or a computer – nothing so trivial. They are after great chunks of the economy. Oil is top of the list. The US defence department is setting up an advisory board to run Iraq's oil industry.

The war in Iraq has exposed splits between the imperial powers.

San Francisco, Rome, Buenos Aires, Vienna, London, Sydney, Dhaka, Brussels, Madrid, Athens, Seoul, Tokyo, Mexico City, Edinburgh... and hundreds more

On the day that war broke out towns, cities and even villages across Britain were brought to a standstill by militant anti-war protests