War and Terror

Revolutionary politics, imperialism, and anti-racism: a further reply in the "Marxism and religion" controversy

Marcus Halaby’s polemic against Workers’ Liberty’s politics on religion, Islamism, and anti-imperialism ( “The AWL’s anti-anti-imperialist Islamophobia” ) is worth reading because it illustrates some differences between the political method of Workers Power and ourselves in Workers’ Liberty. Click here for the debate of which this is part, which started with a Facebook outcry in 2013 against the introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1 of January 2006 Marcus expends more than 3,000 words before he reaches what he calls “the crux of the matter”: our disagreement on imperialism. We’ll start with it...

August 4th 1914: The First World War

Go fight, you fools! Tear up the earth with strife And1 spill each others guts upon the field; Serve unto death the men you served in in life So that their wide dominions may not yield. Stand by the flag—the lie that still al- lures ; Lay down your lives for land you do not own, And give unto a war that is not yours Your gory tithe of mangled flesh and bone. But whether it be yours to fall or kill You must not question why nor where. You see the tiny crosses on that hill? It took all those to make one million- aire. The bugle screams, the cannons cease to roar. "Enough! enough! God give us...

US hushes up force feeding

The US military will no longer publicly disclose whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike. Hunger strikes have taken place at the prison camp since it was opened in 2002, but normally it was possible for the press to discover how many in-mates were making the protest, and how many of them were being force fed. A Guantanamo Bay official said the camp authorities would “no longer further [prisoners’] protests by reporting the numbers to the public.” The US holds 164 prisoners at Guantanamo, most of them without charge. Earlier this year, over a hundred of them were refusing food...

How the US uses torture

Western democracies have prided themselves in applying humane standards to the treatment of prisoners of war. This treatment is encapsulated in the Geneva Convention, first formulated in 1864 and modified since, most recently in 1949. They have also signed up to the UN Convention against Torture. These conventions have been flouted by some democratic states (France in Algeria, Britain in Northern Ireland, USA in Vietnam, ...). The US explicitly banned torture and harsh treatment by military interrogators after the Vietnam war, introducing the Army Field Manual on Interrogation (FM 34-52) in...

Defend the whistleblowers! Stop spying on us!

Revelations of US and other state espionage on their own and foreign citizens has taken a farcical turn with the claim by Der Spiegel magazine that the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the mobile phone of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The NSA is accused of spying on several European and other government communications. The US and UK ambassadors in Berlin have been summoned for questioning. The huge scale of spying became clear in June 2013 when the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers published evidence provided by whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and...

Political Islam, Christian Fundamentalism, Marxism and the Left Today

Click here for a range of articles that were part of the controversy sparked by the republication of this article *** (Adapted from the introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1: Marxism and Religion - January 2006) In many countries, religion and disputes about, or expressed in terms of, religion have long been central to political life — in Christian Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or the USA; in Muslim Iran or Algeria; in Lebanon; in Israel-Palestine. Today, since Islamist terrorists attacked New York on 11 September 2001, religion, or concerns and interests expressed in religion, are at the centre of...

Political Islam, Christian Fundamentalism, Marxism and the Left Today

In many countries, religion and disputes about, or expressed in terms of, religion have long been central to political life — in Christian Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or the USA; in Muslim Iran or Algeria; in Lebanon; in Israel-Palestine. Today, since Islamist terrorists attacked New York on 11 September 2001, religion, or concerns and interests expressed in religion, are at the centre of international politics to a degree without parallel for hundreds of years. We have not, as in Francis Fukuyama’s thesis after the fall of the USSR, reached “the end of history”. We seem to be reprising long...

Three positions as National Union of Students debates Syria

On 16 September, the national executive council of the National Union of Students will debate Syria. There are three motions: one from Workers' Liberty member Rosie Huzzard; one from the broadly New Labour leadership of NUS; and one from the Stalinist Socialist Action group. (You can read all three here .) Rosie's motion opposes the US bombing Syria while also opposing Assad, his foreign imperialist backers and the sectarian opposition militias. It argues for solidarity with democratic and working-class organisations in Syria, as well as support for Syrian students in the UK. The leadership...

The SWP's Political Nihilism in the Balkan Wars [1999]

Review of "The Balkans, nationalism and imperialism", edited by Lindsay German,1999 If socialists operate in politics according to worked out positive principles, then they will generally be consistent. Should circumstances arise that compel them to seemingly veer from those principles, then they will explain themselves in terms of the base-line principles involved, or of some higher principle. For example, socialists believe that peoples should be self-governing - that, for instance, where the compact majority wants it, Ireland has a democratic right to be free of British interference. But...

The Fruits of SWP Mechanical negativism in the Balcan Wars

If socialists operate in politics according to worked out positive principles, then they will generally be consistent. Should circumstances arise that compel them to seemingly veer from those principles, then they will explain themselves in terms of the base-line principles involved, or of some higher principle. For example, socialists believe that peoples should be self-governing - that, for instance, where the compact majority wants it, Ireland has a democratic right to be free of British interference. But suppose that the British working class has taken power and a hostile Ireland is used...

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