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UK - Iraq: Brown's sleight of hand

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by mart

Forward from mart

New Worker News - Oct 5, 2007
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/New-Worker-News

Iraq: Brown's sleight of hand

by our Arab Affairs Correspondent.

TONY BLAIR used to go to Baghdad to puff up the Bush crusade and pose
as a world statesman in front of the troops and the Iraqi puppets of
the day in the Green Zone. 

Gordon Brown's visit this week was much more modest. His announcement
that the British expeditionary force would be cut by 1.000 by
Christmas, timed to steal the headlines from the Tories in the middle
of their annual conference in Blackpool, was largely cosmetic. Orders
to pull-out 500 troops were given in July and 270 have already returned
and they're included in the 1,000 Brown announced. 

Whether they will spend Christmas at home or simply be redeployed to
Afghanistan is another matter. What is clear is that role of the
remaining 4,500 troops now stationed at Basra Airport is now simply to
protect themselves and prepare for some sort of dignified exit in the
future. And that won't happen until after the American presidential
elections because the Bush administration is desperate to maintain the
myth that the US army in Iraq is some sort of international
"peace-keeping" force sanctioned by the United Nations rather than what
it is - a brutal imperialist army of occupation. 

Lindsey German, convener of the Stop The War Coalition, said the
withdrawal of troops was a welcome development, but was not "a serious
attempt to deal with the disastrous Iraq war". And the disaster goes on
for the Iraqi people suffering under the heel of brutal military
occupation and for the US army, it's puppets and lackeys who face the
fury of a relentless resistance movement.

This Wednesday the Polish ambassador was wounded and one of his
bodyguards killed in a car-bomb attack in the heart of the capital,
Baghdad. All three cars in the Polish convoy were destroyed in the
explosion. Poland, one of America's most loyal servants in eastern
Europe, sent 2,500 troops to the "coalition of the willing". Over 900
troops are still in Iraq.

Last Sunday a puppet regime engineering director was shot dead by
partisans when his car was ambushed as he was leaving his office in
Baghdad midday Sunday. The chief of the puppet regional development
committee in Ninwa province died in a hail of bullets when his
motorcade was ambushed in Mosul the same day. 

shot dead

The puppet police chief of Al Huwaiyah, some 200 km north of Baghdad,
was killed when his home was bombed on Saturday and the puppet police
commissioner for Mosul was shot dead in the street by a lone partisan
who escaped unharmed earlier last week.

In the south, in what used to be the British zone of occupation, a
prominent collaborator was shot dead last week. But Rahim al Zamili, a
leader of the Shia Muslim Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, was probably a
victim of the turf-war between rival sectarian Shia parties and
militias all trying totake control on the ground from the departing
British troops.

The strength of the Iraqi resistance lies in the fact that it is
completely self-sustaining, using and improvising the hidden resources
of the old Iraqi armed forces that they say will last for 50 years. The
weakness has been the regional, political and sectarian divisions that
have prevented the formation, until now, of a united national
liberation front to drive out the imperialists. 

In July militias including the Islamic Army, Mujahideen Army,
Supporters of the Sunni and the Sunni fundamentalist Missionary Action
and Fighting group formed the Reform and Jihad Movement. Last month the
1920 Revolution Brigades and the Muhammad al Fatih Brigades which
includes senior officers of the former Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein's
elite Republican Guards established the Change and Reform Front. 

Fadil al Rubaie, a member of the progressive Iraqi National Alliance,
told the Arab Al Jazeera TV network that he believed this was a turning
point after previous refusals by the Islamist groups to merge with
nationalists."Resistance groups are gearing up to meet that stage,
where leading parties will be needed to lead and to prevent a potential
militia war among many small groups," he said. 

This was also stressed in a statement from the underground Arab
Socialist Renaissance Party (Baath) on Monday in a new call on all the
partisans to "put aside their political and religious differences to
free Iraq". As the Americans are planning the partition of Iraq" there
is no more room today for discussion or debate, the decisive hour has
come and every one should choose his real trench".
==========================
New Communist Party of Britain
www.newworker.org

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The Media, the Brits, Pakistan and Myanmar - WW Edit'l

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Workers World - Oct 11, 2007
http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/myanmar-1011

EDITORIAL

Pakistan and Myanmar

In its crisis, the military regime in Myanmar appears to have no
popular support. Nevertheless, there are warning signs in the corporate
medias handling of the reporting about Myanmar"a country the former
colonial power, Britain, still calls Burma"that should put any
progressive and anti-imperialist person on guard.

It is enlightening to compare the media treatment of the generals
running Myanmar with that of the generals running Pakistan, a U.S.
client state. Both these regimes have taken bloody action against
opposition religious figures, but without the same response in the
Western corporate media.

Pakistans shaky president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, like the military
grouping in Myanmar, faces both lay and religious opponents. Like them,
he ordered troops to fire on religious figures in rebellion. On July
10, he launched a bloody military attack on a mosque in the center of
the city of Islamabad. There is no doubt that Musharraf is a dictator
ready to use naked force if he thinks it will keep him in power.

The reaction of the corporate media to Musharraf was, if not
sympathetic, at least understanding. Here is a recent Reuter report in
a chronology: After a week-long siege, Musharraf orders troops to
storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement. At
least 105 people are killed. This was typical, to characterize the
victims as similar to the Taliban"in other words, as Islamic
fundamentalist extremists, and thus unworthy of sympathy. No photos or
film appeared in the media of the tanks and soldiers shooting people
down.

Newsday takes a different bent on Myanmar: But the military junta in
Myanmar, also known as Burma, seems to know only one way to resolve
this crisis: brutal, bloody force.

This approach was typical of the corporate media throughout North
America, Western Europe and Australia. Scenes of Buddhist monks being
fired on dominated the coverage. The media hurl the heaviest invective
at the Myanmar generals and anyone who might support them. They treat
the civilian opposition, especially those forces with close connections
and support from the imperialist countries, as popular heroes, as they
do Buddhist monks.

Our message is: Watch out. Such coverage is aimed at justifying
imperialist intervention. In Pakistan, which borders Iran and
Afghanistan, that could mean military intervention if the mass struggle
there threatens to remove the generals now under U.S. control.

U.S. or British imperialism, or for that matter any of the NATO allies
or Australia or Japan, never intervene with money and/or arms in order
to aid a struggle for freedom or independence. If these imperialist
forces are involved, you can be sure there are resources at stake or
geostrategic interests in play.

As for Myanmar, however the struggle of the people of that Southeast
Asian country plays out, U.S. and NATO imperialists have no right to
intervene.

Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net

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