Iraq Follow

ASIANS WHO have traditionally voted Labour, already angry about the war on Iraq, privatisation and the demonisation of Islam, are even angrier after being snubbed again. The Labour Party has narrowly selected the Blairite MEP Robert Evans instead of Shahid Malik as their candidate for Brent East. The election may be as early as September.

NEW FIGURES show there's a £10 billion hole in New Labour's spending plans. It's no secret where much of the money has gone. Around £3 billion has already been spent on the war against Iraq and the occupation. Every month at least another £150 million goes on the bill.

ANTI-WAR activists are preparing a campaign over the summer to end the occupation of Iraq and to bring the government to account for its lies and war crimes. That was the message of a spirited meeting last week which brought together representatives of London Stop the War groups to discuss how to build effective action in the next two months.

THE KILLING of Saddam Hussein's sons should have meant the beginning of the end of opposition to the occupation of Iraq, according to Tony Blair and George Bush. But within hours of the killings last week US troops opened fire on Iraqi civilians, killing five people near a checkpoint in a poor suburb of Baghdad. Local residents told journalists that they shed no tears for Saddam's sons, but the deaths of the civilians made them prepared to resist the occupying forces.

THE BLAIR government is now in a deep crisis. The war has left a bloody and costly occupation behind in Iraq. The trail of lies and deception is now reaching back into the heart of the government. The movement built by the Stop the War Coalition struck the whole governing system with such force that its aftershocks are still reverberating through the corridors of power.

NOBODY SHOULD expect the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq to go away after the killing of Saddam's sons last week. The actions against the occupying troops have accelerated and US troops are suffering increasing casualties.

THE HEADLINES in the papers slammed Tony Blair as he set off this week to the US, Japan and South Korea. They reflect a now near universal feeling that his days are numbered. Just this weekend you could read "We don't trust you: Tony Blair has lost the trust of the British people over war on Iraq" (Daily Mirror). "Lost on the Third Way to nowhere. He's run out of drive and so have his policies" (Sunday Times).

PROTESTERS from Camden Stop the War Coalition staged a picket outside Alastair Campbell's Camden house last week. It was in response to the publication of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report, which cleared Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell of any involvement in "sexing up" the evidence to justify war in Iraq.

LEAVE ASIDE all the technicalities, exactly who said what and who knew what. The message that should have come out in this week's report from a Commons committee was that the war was for oil and US power and it was launched by lies. It is a lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could be ready in 45 minutes. It is a lie that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. It is a lie that Iraq had rebuilt factories capable of producing biological weapons.

"GEORGE BUSH is coming to South Africa with his hands dripping with the fresh blood of Iraqi people. When they roll out the red carpet for him, it will be to hide the bloodstains." That's how Trevor Ngwane, the leading South African anti-privatisation activist, summed up what Bush's tour of Africa means.

BEHIND THE noise of the row between the government and the BBC over the war on Iraq one thing is absolutely clear. Tony Blair lied to justify the war, and is still lying today. "There is not a single fact in either dossier that is actually disputed," claimed Blair last week. He was trying to defend the two dossiers his government produced in the run-up to war.