Iraq Follow

British charity War On Want has been tracking the growth of private military contractors over the last few years. In a report released earlier this year, Corporate Mercenaries – The Threat of Private Military and Security Companies, the charity condems what it describes as the "privatisation of war". The major corporate mercenary firms are:

The US House of Representatives has voted to call a spade a spade and decided that the massacre of around one million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 must be described as genocide.

They kill with impunity. Gun down civilians, devastate families and spread terror. Yet they are beyond the law.

"According to some of America’s leading journalists, the attack on Iraq would never have happened had the media challenged the lies of Bush and Blair instead of amplifying and echoing them.

Over 1,000 Iraqis demonstrated in Baghdad last Saturday against the US occupation and its plans to carve up the city by building walls between Sunni and Shia areas. They chanted "No to the wall, no to America."

More evidence of Iraq occupation’s failure

This year has seen the often apolitical art scene in Britain burst into life with critiques of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan – most notably Mark Wallinger's Turner prize nominated State Britain installation.

Tony Benn and Labour national executive member Walter Wolfgang are set to defy the law and lead a banned anti-war march down Whitehall to parliament next Monday—the day Gordon Brown has promised to deliver a statement on Britain's presence in occupied Iraq.

Gordon Brown was in Basra in Iraq on Tuesday of this week to announce that 1,000 British troops would leave the city by the end of the year. But 4,000 will remain in Iraq – despite being driven out of Basra city last month.

War Art by Gerald Laing is an exhibition inspired by the war in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. It is to be shown for the first time at the StolenSpace gallery in Brick Lane, east London, between 28 September and 13 October.

Iraq is the issue that Gordon Brown would like to avoid. But campaigners are determined that their anti-war message will be heard when they protest outside parliament as MPs return from their summer break on Monday 8 October.