Why the Stop the War Coalition in Britain is Orwellian.

'The terrible plight of the Yazidis, trapped by Isis and fearing a terrible fate if captured, is heart-rending but will not be helped by further military intervention in Iraq. The occupation of Iraq broke the infrastructure of Iraqi society. Sectarian tensions were encouraged and exacerbated by the occupying forces, and some of those now supporting Isis formed the opposition to this occupation'.

So opines Lindsey German, head and chief propagandist of Britain's Stop the War Coalition. Of course, if the war being waged by ISIS in Iraq at present is considered a continuation of the war the US and Britain started in 2003 by invading Iraq then there is not really much more to say on it. Only there is.

Some of those now aligning with ISIS were indeed part of the 'opposition' to the US and UK occupation. Former Baathists and Sunni jihadists whose 'opposition' was not called so but termed 'the resistance' by luminaries of the Stop the War Coalition such as Tariq Ali and John Pilger.

The hypocrisy of this is not surprising but it is no less fundamentally repellent to the deepest core possible. Back in 2003, the 'Stop the War Coalition' continually ( and artificially ) yoked the fate of Palestine to Iraq when the line was the witless placard slogan 'Don't Attack Iraq: Freedom for Palestine'. 

Now after eleven years when a pyschotic jihadist movement called ISIS is murdering Christians and the Yazidis in northern Iraq, Lindsey German merely claims that is the fault of 'the west' for having invaded Iraq in the first place ( as if this was radical subversive knowledge we did not know ).

But German bemoans the fact too that 'the west' and Turkey and Saudi Arabia 'armed the rebels'. The 'rebels', in any case, are not one homogenous group and the failure of the Western powers to try to strongly advise Saudi Arabia and Qatar enough not to fund Sunni fundamentalist fanatics is an abject failure.

The Free Syria Army is connected with the Muslim Brotherhood backed by Qatar and which also supports and gives funds to that noble 'resistance' movement known as Hamas which is extolled by leading members of the absurdly entitled 'Stop the War Coalition'.

But, of course, German knows that, which is why, in accordance with doublethink, she omits to mention Qatar at all as a factor in the regional power politics of the Middle East. It's obvious that the US and Britain's 'intervention' in the Middle East has largely had negative consequences in Syria and Iraq.

However, to say there is plenty that could be 'done' to 'stop' Israel committing war crimes in Gaza while insinuating absolutely nothing could be 'done' to stop ISIS killing thousands of Christians and Yazidis does not add up. Any truly humane 'anti-war' activist would, at least try to outline what could be done.

Adding to that the sneering and embittered comment that if the 'Stop the War' movement is to be accused of double standards for not having anything to say about that then those concerned are 'Tory bloggers, shock jocks and neocons', it could be made plain that the leadership of the StWC is actually little better.

The STWC leadership consists of a miserable array of failed Trotskyist revolutionaries and sour malcontents whose insistence in hijacking the cause of being 'anti-war' is a total fraud and a con. If Galloway could not be described as a ranting shock jock , then it would be difficult to see who else could be.

There is a need for a principled opposition to Britain's foreign policy that is seldom there in Parliament any more. Unfortunately, the StWC cannot provide it because it sits there as a sort of established anti-establishment consisting of the same dreary faces and self important hack propaganists.

Maybe it's time for an alternative alternative ? One based on true principles and, above all, a real knowledge of the Middle East and not the same empahasis on pure political expediency and hypocrisy that defined Tony Blair's approach and that has, in part, been carried on by the British government since.

The Iraq War : Predicting Bloody Chaos.

'The catastrophic results of the Iraq invasion are often portrayed as having been impossible to predict, and only inevitable with the benefit of hindsight. If only to prevent future calamities from happening, this is a myth that needs to be dispelled. The very fact that the demonstration on that chilly February day in 2003 was the biggest Britain had ever seen, is testament to the fact that disaster seemed inevitable to so many people.'( Owen Jones, We anti-war protesters were right: the Iraq invasion has led to bloody chaos, Owen Jones, Guardian June 10 2014)

The problem, however, is that the demonstration in February 2003 did not prove many foresaw how the invasion would become the disaster it did. Obviously, there were informed experts on the Middle East who foresaw that an invasion could fragment the nation along sectarian lines and so were against it.

Yet few leading anti-war activists trying to ramp up opposition to Tony Blair mentioned this at the time. Tariq Ali made no mention of a resurgence of sectarian warfare. Nor did John Rees, George Galloway, Lindsey German or Andrew Murray foresee that or write about it.

The reason was because they were not interested. The war was by definition wrong because all wars launched by the imperialist US and Britain would be wrong because all state violence for them is wrong unless it is being used by revolutionaries to terrorise enemies into submission.

So the reason people marched against the war may have been ideological , taking a stance against an 'imperialist' war. For others, the invasion was just an attack on a Muslim nation. Others believed it was wrong because they thought the official justifications hid other more obvious motives.

There were many who saw George Bush's administration were intent on invading Iraq without having first proved Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and, rightly, that this provided the pretext for removing the dictator and securing US and British control over Iraqi oil.

But for leading members of the Stop the War Coalition, such as Ali, the war was a 'threat to peace', a blitheringly obvious statement as a war by definition means the end of peace, unless the argument is that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was less a threat to peace than the US. As he put it,

'The pretext not only failed to convince but served rather to fuel a broad-based opposition as millions now saw the greatest threat to peace coming, not from the depleted armouries of decaying dictatorships, but from the rotten heart of the American empire and its satrapies, Israel and Britain'.

Even so, the invasion of Iraq removed Saddam fairly quickly and it only became clear a year later that Iraq would, in fact, fragment into a religiously sectarian forms of warfare aimed not only at the occupation forces but at others vying for control over Iraq and its oil wealth.

Ali was, in fact, extolling some largely mythical Iraqi national 'resistance' force, 'the Iraqi Army did not disintegrate at the first shot; there was little sign of widespread popular gratitude for the invasion but rather more of guerrilla resistance and....increasing anger in the Arab world'.

Evidently, the reality in Iraq has been far worse than anti-war activists had imagined in 2003.Yet few, if any of them-as opposed to Middle East experts who warned Blair about the probability of sectarian warfare and were ignored-knew or cared about Iraq's sectarian divisions back then.

On the contrary, many anti-war activists seemed more concerned the US and Britain might have been successful in invading Iraq and fervently wanted it to be defeated by 'the guerilla resistance' and for collaborators to 'meet the fate of Nuri Said' i.e. to be murdered and the corpse dug up, burnt and mutilated.

The demonstrations of 2003 acheived nothing nor has the 'anti-war movement' and one reason for that is that the STWC was dominated by sinister ideologues in the Socialist Workers Party and creepy apologists for dictatorships such as Galloway who discredit what should have been a good cause.

Responses to the Second Egyptian Uprising on the Radical Left

An odd fact about the response in Britain to events in Egypt is that radical anti-imperialists do not know how to react to this military takeover or else have come down in support of it despite the fact the Muslim Brotherhood was elected with 51% of the vote.

Neither John Pilger nor Tariq Ali, always cocksure in their opinions, have 'taken a stance' because they probably cannot yet portray the US as responsible and because the revolt against the Muslim Brotherhood is popular in Egypt. In fact, they rarely have an opinion on these sort of events unless the US is somehow involved.

Shamus Cooke in Counterpunch has no such doubts. In   How Egypt Killed Political Islam July 8 2013 he extols the military takeover as part of an ongoing process in glowingly optimistic terms.

"The rebirth of the Egyptian revolution ushered in the death of the first Muslim Brotherhood government. But some near-sighted analysts limit the events of Egypt to a military coup. Yes, the military is desperately trying to stay relevant — given the enormous initiative of the Egyptian masses — but the generals realize their own limitations in this context better than anybody. This wasn’t a mere re-shuffling at the top of society, but a flood from the bottom".

It seems Western radicals are set to get themselves into all sorts of contortions trying to frame events in Egypt. Ali and Pilger cannot yet pin the blame exclusively on the US nor can they merely portray the protesters as tools of imperial control without annoying their radical fan base.

Cooke is a radical anti-imperialist and revolutionary socialist who is against the old system under Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood. As such he is quite content to justify the overthrow of Morsi's regime in accordance with the dictates of permanent revolution.

"Political legitimacy — especially in times of revolution — must be earned, not assumed. Revolutionary legitimacy comes from taking bold actions to satisfy the political demands of the people: jobs, housing, public services, etc. A “democracy” that represents only Egypt’s upper crust as the Muslim Brotherhood government did, cannot emerge from a revolution and maintain itself; it was destroyed by a higher form of revolutionary democracy".

Given that revolutionary socialists are backing the 'second revolution' against political Islam it will be very interesting to see how Pilger and Ali are going to try and spin these events. They are always itching to pontificate on most uprisings. They remain curiously silent on this one.

Mt Cooke has no doubts about this revolution, however, and goes on to opine gleefully,

"What did the Brotherhood do with the corrupt state they inherited? They tried to adapt; they flirted with the Egyptian military, coddled up to the security services, and seduced the dictatorship’s primary backer, the United States. They shielded all the Mubarak criminals from facing justice.

The Brotherhood’s foreign policy was also the same as Mubarak’s, favoring Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, and favoring the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels against the Syrian government, while increasingly adopting an anti-Iran agenda. A primary financial backer of the Muslim Brotherhood government was the oil-rich monarchy of Qatar (a U.S. puppet government), who helped steer the foreign policy of the Egyptian government".

There will be lots of frantic polemicising, framing and reframing of the 'correct line' to take on the 'second revolution' depending on changing circumstances. But it seems that a number of radical anti-imperialists see Morsi's removal as a signpost on the way to true revolution. Or, as Cooke puts it,

"The Egyptian people have now had the experience of political Islam and have discarded it, in the same way a tank deals with a speed bump".

More Hype than Hope-Tariq Ali on President Obama.

Tariq Ali has opined on President Obama ( Obama hope was all hype ),

The hope of 2008 soon morphed into hype. Admirers in the liberal media who had linked Obama vicariously to the civil rights movement sounded increasingly ridiculous; claiming the mantle of Martin Luther King for their man was an extravagance that had to be rapidly discarded.


In one of his last big speeches, a year before he was assassinated, King had argued "that if our nation can spend $35bn a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and $20bn to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth".


What had any of this to do with a seasoned machine politician from Chicago?As a candidate, Obama projected himself as a new Reagan, above narrow party politics. He wanted to please all, but has ended up annoying many.

Contrary to what Ali thinks, and as with his hero Trotsky it is always self serving, Obama is in many ways the embodiment of 1960s identity politics made convenient for the world of corporate capitalism and admass society. Identity politics, economic self interest and public relations can flow seamlessly.

In any case, at what exact stage did "hope" morph into "hype" and who created that ? Partly Obama's political choreographers but also all those people who voted for him for progressive reasons, not least deluded US blacks, a chorus of approval mirrored across the Atlantic here in Britain.

Obviously, Obama is a PR creation , a visual embodiment of "The American Dream" that was meant to rebrand the image of the US against those in more soppily liberal countries that he was some kind of amalgam of Martin Luther King and JFK against the image of "stupid white men" like Bush II.

Obama thus did not project himself as the "new Reagan" at all. Ali assumes that because he has to link the explicit ideology of neoliberal capitalism with the 1980s and not as one outcome of 1960s identity politics with 1980s economics. The political myth of Obama is pure 1960s. And it was kitsch.

Anyway, to get to the nitty gritty, Obama was always going to disappoint on foreign policy because it was not really so different from Bush II's from the outset, a point that Ali at least, unlike numerous others at the time of Obama's election, seems to have been able to grasp.

Obama may have opposed the Iraq War but he did so only because it was a strategic mistake and because Afghanistan should take preference and was always the "war of choice" that represented "The Good War", an opinion shared by his foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Not only did Obama vote in Congress for the Patriot Act and suspending the liberties enshrined in habeas corpus, that Bush initiated as part of the 'war on terror', but he also outlined a foreign policy vision that had many neoconservatives quite content that their legacy would not be reversed.

In April 2007 Obama delivered a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in which he declared that,

"America must....lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good....We have heard much over the last six years about how America's larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom. I agree".

Yet how imposing democracy and human rights through war and conventional military force on a nation such as Afghanistan has never been clearly outlined by 'liberal imperialists' or 'humanitarian interventionists'. Then again, the war there became evermore clearly about the ensuring the construction of the TAPI pipeline.

Obama made it clear he wanted to increase defence spending and to add 65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines so that the US military could"stay on the offence, from Djibouti to Kandahar" as "the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face."

That was a statement that yet again conflated global terrorism of the Al Qaida variety with rogue states in which the pre-emptive use of force was legitimate, without concerning itself with the UN. As with Iraq, a 'mistake', Obama maintained,

"no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary.....to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked".

When the USA's "vital interests" were "imminently threatened" then it could invade other nations as it deemed fit. And those who know anything about the USA's "vital interests" now that this has been defined at least since the 1980 Carter Doctrine as protecting the USA's oil supply.

With regards Afghanistan, the war now remains centrally concerned with getting the TAPI pipeline built as this will, it is thought, block off the rival IPI pipeline, contribute towards isolating and encircling Iran and integrate the regional economies under US protection and power.

On a lighter note, it is amusing to note all those offering spasms of pseudo-orgasmic ecstasy back in 2008, some of which I could not resist collecting at the time for future reference, if only to show the utter bollocks spouted by columnists whose job it is to genuglect before power instead of offering critical commentary.

First, Niall Stanage offered this tripe It's America's time Monday 1 December 2008,

There was a moment, early on, when I realised he had something special.Back in February, I went to hear Barack Obama speak in Baltimore, Maryland.


I had seen Obama in person plenty of times before, and the rally was, on its face, unexceptional. It took place the day before the Maryland primary, a contest that elicited little media excitement because Obama was expected to win with ease (which he duly did).


That campaign restored a faith in politics that most of us thought we had lost. On an unseasonably mild Chicago night last month, when a disembodied voice announced the next first family of the United States, and Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama strode into the lights, it restored a faith in the United States too.


America was, once again, a place where astounding things could happen.

People get paid to write this.Another piece of idiocy was offered by Michael Paulin who wanted to make the following very clear,

It is unfortunate that this needs to be said but, for the avoidance of doubt: Barack Hussein Obama is black. Yet he is also mixed-race. Perhaps more important, he is a black, mixed-race intellectual.

If that was not idiotic enough, Jonathan Freedman wrote this in a column 'America has not lost its talent for renewal, even redemption'. It was drivel then and it looks no less fundamentally deluded and stupid now,

For the last eight years, it's been hard to keep the flame alive. ...But on Tuesday night I stood in Grant Park and watched a crowd of 200,000 erupt as they saw Barack Obama become America's next president..... From now on, admiration for the US will no longer need to be whispered nor weighed down with a thousand qualifiers....

It was obvious that the emoting was forced, an attempt to try and feel some "change in the air" in opposition to that boring thing called reality. But that was not the best of the worst.

A supreme Obamagasm came from the almost satirical piece written by Johnathan Raban. who chimed in with this,

On Tuesday, dodging the hubbub of election parties, I watched the results come in with two close friends and my teenage daughter. We might have been patients showing up at a hospital for a surgical procedure, nervously joking over the early returns from Vermont (predictably, Barack Obama) and Kentucky (predictably, John McCain).

When, at 8:01pm, Pacific time, CNN called the race for Obama, we collapsed in one another's arms. Even my dry tear ducts did their job, and, for a few moments, the room swam out of focus. The champagne, whose presence in the fridge I had thought to be ominously bad karma, was opened. No toast. Just "Thank God, thank God, thank God", spoken by four devout atheists.

This sounds like the sort of totalitarian political kitsch that could have been offered in favour of Stalin, Mao, Castro and numerous others. Even so, it was unintentionally very amusing.

Yet the scale of the stream of arrant drivel issuing out from the liberal-left commentariat surely came from the banal and witless Polly Toynbee,

There has never been a day like it for Britain's postwar generations. As that inauguration speech echoes out, the globe itself seems to inhale a mighty, collective intake of breath, frighteningly audacious in its hope.A BBC World Service poll shows a tidal wave of optimism about what Obama will do, spread out across a rainbow of nations.

Here is the world's wish list: first save global finance from ruin; next get out of Iraq; then fix the climate and bring peace to the Middle East. Yes he can, is the world's expectation.How does the man's arrival feel here? A day like no other, in a time of multiple crisis like none other.

In Gaza, the horror of so many dead Palestinian children is a monstrous challenge to greet Obama. If ever the world needed saving, it's now.So here comes the man who says he can.

It's an American mystery that this great pool of genius has usually thrown such minnows into the White House. But the monumental present danger has summoned forth a man who promises the intellect, character and power of persuasion to match the hour.

And such windbags often get indignant at why so many people get cynical at politicians and journalists.