Iraq Follow

A HARD anti-war position was very nearly voted for at the Labour Party's conference in Blackpool on Monday of this week. If just a few big unions had changed their votes then Bush's most trusted ally, Tony Blair, would have had his war policy totally rejected by his own party. Some 40 percent of the conference voted to totally reject any military action against Iraq.

THE HYPOCRISY of Bush and Blair's propaganda against Saddam Hussein is striking in very many ways. But few can feel more nauseated by this hypocrisy than the Kurdish people of Iraq and Turkey. They, more directly than anyone else, know that Saddam is a ruthless and bloody dictator.

TONY BLAIR'S policy of supporting Bush over war with Iraq is causing the biggest turmoil inside the Labour Party for 20 years. In 1982 important sections of the right wing went from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party. This time it is the left who are outraged by the party's direction. The debate on the war at this week's conference gave one sign of the bitter mood. It involved leaders of some of the most important trade unions, still the bedrock of Labour, pitting themselves against the leadership. The revolt in parliament last week, when 56 Labour MPs voted against the government, was another important indication.

HUNDREDS OF thousands of people took over central London last Saturday to march against war on Iraq and for freedom for Palestine. The size of the demonstration stunned many people. Marchers waited around four hours to leave Embankment, while speakers at the end rally were already addressing demonstrators as they poured into Hyde Park. Thousands more joined splinter demonstrations that spilled out into other parts of central London, including a march up Oxford Street.

ANTI-WAR activists are mobilising for the next focus in the movement to stop war on Iraq. The Stop the War Coalition has called for a day of action - "Stop Your City, Stop the War" - on Thursday 31 October.

TONY BLAIR'S dossier to justify war against Iraq is a rehash of well worn lies, baseless speculation and exaggerated claims. It has taken his government a year to come up with this document. Nothing in it adds one ounce to the weight of the warmongers' case.

OPPOSITION TO launching a military attack on Iraq is growing in Britain, according to the latest opinion polls. The feeling against war has led to a significant drop in Labour's support on the eve of the party's conference.

THE RE-ELECTION of Gerhard Schröder as German leader on Sunday was bad news for George Bush and the warmongers. Schröder staged a remarkable recovery to narrowly clinch the election for one central reason - his stated opposition to a US war on Iraq, even if it gets the blessing of the United Nations.

AN IRAQI child is lying in a Baghdad hospital bed being treated for leukemia. Ali Hussein is eight years old and can't get the treatment he needs because of US-imposed sanctions on Iraq. Bush and Blair's war will bring more horror to this devastated country.

"Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. The US wants to restore this enormous prize to its control"

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.

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.