Iraq Follow

"WORLD AGAINST the War". That was the front-page headline of the Independent on Sunday after protests against Bush's planned war on Iraq swept the world last weekend. As well as in the US (see page 5), there were protests in many other countries.

THE BIGGEST day of anti-war protests the world has ever seen took place last Saturday. But instead of listening to the majority around the world who oppose war on Iraq, Tony Blair sent a quarter of the British army to the Gulf. Support for the war in Britain has fallen to a new low and outright opposition has risen to new heights, according to a poll in the Guardian that has tracked opinion since August.

AS A result of recent changes in government policy, asylum seekers are being evicted from their homes, having all benefits removed and being denied the right to work. Most are Iraqi Kurds. We challenged my local MP and immigration minister Beverley Hughes to say what the government expects Kurdish refugees to do in such circumstances.

Chris Harman argues for mass protests and mass action

"It was a political protest over the threat to attack Iraq. It was a sign that as individuals and workers we were not prepared to be part of a murderous war, a conscientious objection to helping kill Iraqi civilians."

AN IMPORTANT conference held in Cairo, Egypt, last December attracted 400 delegates and launched the International Campaign Against US Aggression on Iraq. The conference issued a declaration against war and globalisation. The key points of the declaration include:

IT IS no coincidence that at a time when British troops are getting ready to invade and occupy Iraq, Channel 4 should televise an expensive celebratory history of the British Empire. The series is presented by one of the country's leading Thatcherite historians, the appalling Oxford professor Niall Ferguson.

BRITISH ambassadors were called back to London for a crisis meeting this week. The move was in response to growing panic in the government over global opposition to war on Iraq. Many of the ambassadors are worried that the drive to war is "radicalising" people around the world.

DONALD RUMSFELD, the US defence secretary, is urging George Bush on to attack Iraq. He demands war because "Iraq has nuclear and chemical weapons capacity". But one of the US's top daily newspapers, the Washington Post, last week underlined Rumsfeld's gross hypocrisy.

THOUSANDS OF activists across the world are making 15 February an international day of demonstrations against war on Iraq. They are doing so as US military analysts tell of a "near unstoppable momentum towards war" by late February.

TWO IMPORTANT social forums took place at the end of last month. Activists met at the Palestine Social Forum in Ramallah, which is under Israeli occupation. It called for support for the international day of action against the war on Iraq on 15 February.

BILLIONS OF people around the world want peace. Opinion polls show the majority of people in every country apart from the US are against war on Iraq. Yet George Bush is out for blood. Bush has already rubbished the dossier on weapons that Iraq produced. He's ready to order the thousands of US troops in the Gulf state of Qatar to kill and maim ordinary people in Iraq.