Stop the War Coalition, Libya and imperialism

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2011-12 has been a year of relentless intrigue for imperialism and its agents in the working class movement. The following video is an excerpt from a meeting held in Birmingham in November 2011 addressing the situation in Libya. It was organised by a local group of activists called AIWAA (Against Imperialist Wars in Africa and Asia). Like most stop the war groups around the country, Birmingham is dominated by Trotskyists and social democrats who spend most of their time championing the cause of imperialism, putting on meetings broadly in support of the case for war and telling everybody to get behind the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell! This short video is taken from the question and answer session at the conclusion of the meeting where Harpal Brar puts forward the case for a truly anti-imperialist agenda in the anti-war movement to the utter dismay and frustration of some local Trotskyists, principally Stuart Richardson of ‘Socialist’ Resistance (a barmy and thoroughly reactionary group of misfits infamous for their disgusting position during imperialism’s assault on Libya in 2011).

The world economic crisis has brought a period of renewed and intensified world-wide class struggle. Following the genuine popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrein, Imperialism countered with massive destabilization campaigns against the principle anti-imperialist forces across the middle east, and renewed hostility with socialist states and forces.

In addition to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, Saudi, Yemen, Bahrein and the gulf statelets, All out civil strife was fomented in Libya, followed by bombing and the Lynching of Gaddafi. Moves were also made against Ivory Coast, to dominate the Cocoa trade, and ensure french control of ‘their’ west African neo-colonial economies.

Iran and most of all Syria now find themselves in the firing line – and the response of the British anti-war movement has been lamentable – if understandable and sadly predictable.

Read this analysis submitted to the AGM of StW by the CPGB-ML: http://blog.cpgb-ml.org/stop-the-war-leaders-and-libya-you-can%E2%80%99t-expel-the-truth/

More hand-wringing and breast-beating from Stop the War Coalition leaders

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CPGB-ML Blog, December 7, 2011

On Monday 5 December, Stop the War Coalition held a rally at Conway Hall headlined Don’t Attack Iran. Everyone in the hall (apart from the usual smattering of MI5 agents) was in agreement: none of us wanted to see Iran attacked.

From the platform, a very frail looking Tony Benn spoke first, confiding to us that when he was minister for energy (years ago when even I was young), some unidentified bloke in his ministerial office had helped Israel to “British” nuclear secrets. If that wasn’t bad enough, Benn also found out and all the “waste” plutonium from “our” civil nuclear industry had been secretly shipped off to America to make nuclear bombs.

Benn said he hadn’t found out about either of these outrages until after he left office. Which says it all about the effectiveness of Stop the War Coalition’s brand of ‘anti-imperialism’.

Not one of the speakers, including George Galloway, who (despite a terrible chest infection) headlined at his tub-thumping and fiery best, had any suggestions about what to do apart from march about with our banners and protest.

We were told to go back to our workplaces and trade unions and “expose” the media lies about Iran; but the speakers’ only stated aim was to bring more people out on the streets of London to wave banners and protest at some undeclared date in the future.

Most depressing of all was the quick mention of Syria in passing. No question of any ‘Don’t Attack Syria’ campaign. We were just told to watch our email inboxes as Stop the War Coalition planned to call us all out – you guessed it … to wave banners and protest at Downing Street at 5.00pm on the day Syria was attacked (or maybe the day after, the speaker wasn’t too sure).

Syria did better than Pakistan, as while all the speakers agreed that Pakistan was under threat, there was not even a suggestion of going to Downing Street with banners to protest over any attack on that benighted country.

So what is to be done? Well, when Stop the War Coalition does call us out, we will (as always) troop along with our banners and protest, but that by itself will do nothing. Two million of us waved banners and protested to stop the war in Iraq, and the imperialists laughed.

We have to do much more and something else. We have to go to the Stop the War national conference and demand something more than mere banner waving and protesting and wondering why these naughty imperialists won’t listen to reason.

The imperialists are listening to reason, they are listening to their own warmongering superprofits-seeking, anti-people reason. And they will never listen to our reason; they will only ‘listen’ to our actions.

This is where CPGB-ML conflicts with the present leadership of Stop the War Coalition. We understand that the one and only way to stop these continual bloody wars is the Jolly George way. The working class has to stop cooperating with imperialism.

We have to fight, not merely wring our hands, beat our breasts and plead with the imperialists to sit on the naughty step. This is big; it’s the future of the world.

See original blog for extra links!

Revolution in Britain?

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Cde Harpal Brar, Chairman of the CPGB-ML delivered this keynote speech at the party’s recent celebration of the Great Socialist October Revolution of 1917.

He explains the historical significance of the October Revolution, the achievements of Soviet Socialism, and its ongoing relevance to workers in Britain.

He gives a detailed explanation of modern imperialism, its wars and its global capitalist economic overproduction crisis. The analysis given by Marx and Lenin not only explains these, the major problems that humanity – and in particular the working and toiling masses – are facing, but shows us the way forward to their solution. Capitalism cannot be reformed, regulated, moderated or otherwise made to serve the interests of working people. It must be overthrown!

We must discard all those parties who pretend otherwise, particularly the social democratic Labour Party, and its revisionist and trotskite hangers-on who act as agents of imperialism (misguided or malicious) in the working class movement. In this as in so many regards, October shows us the way!

Our job, Harpal emphasizes, is to make this Marxist-Leninist analysis truly popular, well known and understood, and to inject the spontaneous protest and resistance movements with clear scientific analysis that can sustain them and help them to direct their blows.

The October revolution has shown that working people, when united and organized around a correct understanding and a disciplined party, guided by such an analysis, are really able to achieve unity of action, to become an army of millions and tens of millions, which no capitalist power can resist.

The CPGB-ML is building such an army. Join us!

http://www.cpgb-ml.org

PAIGC on Libya – All Africa will suffer from NATO's colonial and genocidal war!

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Legendary Marxist-Leninist Liberation fighter, pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist Amilcar Cabral had the following to say on the nature of our fight against imperialism:

“I should just like to make one last point about solidarity between the international working class movement and our national liberation struggle. There are two alternatives: either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in all the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple: it is to fight.”

Cabral died just 9 months before the party he founded – the PAIGC – liberated his homeland, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, from 500 years of Portugese Colonialism, bringing the downfall of the Potugese fascist junta in its wake.

He and his comrades from the PAIGC also played a vital part in the liberation of other (Particularly, but not exclusively, Portugese speaking) African nations. He was a founding member of MPLA (Angola) and the Portugese Communist Party, inter alia.

Comrade Teodora Ignacia Gomez, Womens’ activist, liberation fighter and comrade in arms of Cabral, features in this video interview, which is an exert from a longer interview she granted to comrades of the CPGB-ML on her recent visit to London.

She outlines the supportive relationship that Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had fostered with Guinea Bissau, as so many other African Nations. Libya had tried to bring about sustainable infrastructural and agricultural development in Guinea Bissau, she tells us, both through the African Bank and independently granted aid.

As a result of NATOs genocidal war on Libya, and the illegal ousting of her legitimate government – and now Gaddafi’s cowardly and brutal assassination, which foul deed took place 24 hrs after this interview – the people of Guinea Bissau and all Africa will suffer, she says.

RT reports Saif al-Islam alive and well

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Red Youth is happy to reproduce the following story which was reported by Russia Today 23.10.11:

“The son and heir apparent of the late Colonel Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam, is still in Libya. He is free and will go on with resistance, he reportedly claimed in an address to supporters aired by Syria’s Arrai TV Channel, loyal to the Libyan ex-leader.

“We continue our resistance. I am in Libya, I am alive, free and intend to go to the very end and exact revenge,”Russia’s “RIA Novosti” news agency quotes Saif al-Islam as saying on the Syrian Channel on Saturday night.

Earlier contradictory reports suggested Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been either killed or captured in the western Libyan town of Zliten and was in the hands of the country’s National Transitional Council.

Egypt’s Nile TV Channel reported on Thursday, October 20, that he had managed to flee Sirte and find shelter in the desert.

According to RIA Novosti, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has already got the support of the tribes loyal to his father, who promised to fight against the current government and take revenge for the killing of the colonel and his son Mutassim. Some experts now suggest the Libyan conflict could now be prolonged and grow from a political into an interethnic struggle.

Thirty-nine-year-old Saif al-Islam is the second son of Muammar Gaddafi and carried out public relations and diplomatic roles for his father. Western-educated and the most-recognized Libyan official, he was often viewed as Colonel’s successor and a possible reformer.”

 

CPGB-ML bring Libya Solidarity to Anti-War Demo in London

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Footage from Harpal at mass meeting in Tripoli (June), pledging to do our utmost to support the just anti-imperialist resistance and legitimate government of the Libyan people against NATO’s colonial war is cut with RT footage of CPGB-ML with green and party flags in London’s anti-war demonstration yesterday.

Stop the War’s leadership, meanwhile, continues to turn a blind eye to NATO’s imperialist war and perversely chimes in with the criminal propaganda of justifying regime change in Libya. They have taken the ‘bold’ step, not of attacking NATO, but of attacking members of the coalition – in particular the CPGB-ML – who support the Libyan government and it’s heroic resistance!

1: StW Leadership’s principle of ‘unity’ – extends to all opportunists and scoundrels, but not constant anti-imperialists:
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=45

2: StW leadership’s criminal position on Libyan conflict: http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=44

StW on Libya: http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=44

Libya: imperialist propaganda war

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It is impossible to verify and substantiate the vast array of contradictory messages currently coming from Tripoli. The imperialist’s propaganda machine each day declares that some new stronghold in Tripoli is taken, or that the regime is finished for good. What is for sure is that the ‘revolutionaries’ are nothing but a bunch of hired killers, and that without NATO they would surely be routed by the Libyan masses who continue to put up strong resistance to the attempted imperialist occupation of their country. The above interview with Lizzie Phelan for Russia Today gives a side of the story you’ll not find on the BBC.