BY-ELECTION. RESPECT HOLD BIRMINGHAM SPARKBROOK

BY-ELECTION. RESPECT HOLD BIRMINGHAM SPARKBROOK (report from Socialist Unity)

Respect, 2492
Labour, 2221
Tory, 797
Lib Dem, 505
Green, 188
Ind, 54

Congratulations to Respect’s new councillor, Shokat Ali and all in Birmingham Respect.

Update: See also - George Galloway celebrates by-election victory

Link: Socialist Unity web site

For Britons, The Party Game Is Over by John Pilger

For Britons, The Party Game Is Over by John Pilger from Information Clearing House.

On the day Prime Minister Gordon Brown made his “major policy speech” on Afghanistan, repeating his surreal claim that if the British army did not fight Pashtun tribesmen over there, they would be over here, the stench of burnt flesh hung over the banks of the Kunduz River. Nato fighter planes had blown the poorest of the poor to bits. They were Afghan villagers who had rushed to siphon off fuel from two stalled tankers. Many were children with water buckets and cooking pots. “At least” 90 were killed, although Nato prefers not to count its civilian enemy. “It was a scene from hell,” said Mohammed Daud, a witness. “Hands, legs and body parts were scattered everywhere.” No parade for them along a Wiltshire high street.

I saw something similar in south-east Asia. An incendiary bomb had razed most of a thatched village, and bits of charred people were hanging on upended fishing nets. Those intact lay splayed and black, like large spiders. I have never believed you need witness such a hell to comprehend the crime. A standard-issue conscience is enough for all but the morally corrupt and powerful.

Fresh from another dysfunctional photo opportunity with troops in Afghanistan – a contrivance far from the impoverished suffering of that country – Brown “authorised” the Rambo-style rescue of Stephen Farrell, a journalist of British and Irish nationality, at the site of the Nato attack. It was a stunt that went wrong. A British soldier was killed and Farrell’s guide, Sultan Munadi, an Afghan journalist, was abandoned and killed. Munadi’s family now fully appreciates the different worth of British and Afghan lives.

During the 1914-18 slaughter, Prime Minister Lloyd George confided: “If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know.” Have we not yet advanced over a century’s corpses to a point where the likes of Brown are denied their mendacious subterfuge? The Afghan war is a fraud. It began as an American vendetta for domestic consumption in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which not a single Afghan was involved. The Taliban, who are Afghans, had no quarrel with the United States and were dealing secretly with the Clinton administration over a strategic pipeline. They offered to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and hand him over to a clerical court, but this was rejected.

The establishment of a permanent US/Nato presence in a resource-rich, strategic region is the principal reason for the war. The British are there because that is what Washington wants. Preventing the Taliban from storming our streets is reminiscent of President Lyndon B Johnson’s plaint: “We have to stop the communists over there [Vietnam] or we’ll soon be fighting them in California.”

There is one difference. By refusing to bring the troops home, Brown is likely to provoke an atrocity by young British Muslims who view the war as a western crusade; the recent Old Bailey trail made that clear. He has been told as much by British intelligence and security services. Brown’s own security adviser has said as much publicly. As with Tony Blair and the bombs of 7 July 2005, he will bear ultimate responsibility for bringing violence and grief to his own people.

More than MPs’ fake expenses, it is this corrupting and trivialising of life and death that mark a fitting end to the “modernised” Labour Party, the party of criminal war. Do the delegates preparing for the party’s annual rituals in Brighton comprehend this? It says enough that most Labour MPs never demanded a vote on Blair’s bloodshed in Iraq and gave him a standing ovation when he departed. One timid motion proposed by the “grass roots” at Brighton might be allowed. This concludes that “a majority of the public believe that the war [in Afghanistan] is unwinnable”. There is no suggestion that it is wrong, immoral and based on lies similar to those that led to the extinction of a million Iraqis, “an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide”, according to one scholarly estimate.

This is largely why the game of parliamentary politics is over for so many Britons, especially the young. In 2005, a bent system allowed Blair to win with fewer popular votes than the Tories in their electoral catastrophe of 1997. New Labour’s greatest achievement is the lowest turnouts since universal voting began. Today, voters watch Brown give billions of public money to casino banks while demanding nothing in return, having once hailed their practices as an inspiration “for the whole economy”. At the recent meeting of G20 leaders in London, Brown distinguished himself by opposing, and killing, a modest Franco-German proposal for a limit on bonuses and penalties for companies that broke it. The gap between rich and poor in Britain is now the widest since 1968.

New Labour’s causes and effect extend from the one in five young people denied employment, education and hope to the £12m that Blair coins in a year, “advising” the rich and lecturing to them at £157,000 a time.For the more extreme among Blair's and Brown's mentors and courtiers, such as the twice disgraced Peter Mandelson, this represents the most sought after achievement of all: the positioning of Labour to the right of the Tories, though it is probably correct to say the two main parties have converged, now competing feverishly with each other to threaten cuts in public services in order to pay for the bailing out of the banks and for the druglords of Kabul. There is no mention of cutting the billions to be spent on replacing Trident nuclear submarines designed for the defunct cold war.

The game is over. Corporatism and a reinvigorated militarism have finally appropriated parliamentary democracy, a historic shift. For those Afghan villagers blown to pieces in our name, one craven motion at Labour’s conference is too late. At the very least, the party’s “grass roots” might ask themselves why.

www.johnpilger.com

Link: ICH

No excuse for Afghan war - Morning Star comment

No excuse for Afghan war - Morning Star comment.

Does even Gordon Brown believe the words coming out of his own mouth any more? If so he must be the only one in Britain.

The Prime Minister's latest attempt to justify the Afghanistan fiasco smacks of an over-the-hill prizefighter still staggering around the ring flailing his fists, too brain-battered to realise he's lost.

So detached is Brown from reality that yesterday's defence of the Afghan occupation consisted entirely of arguments which have already been knocked down and which surely no-one, except perhaps Brown, believes.

Every time Brown claims we're in Afghanistan to prevent terror attacks on Britain, a little bit more of his credibility trickles away down the drain.

It wasn't our original reason for invading. That was in theory to catch Osama bin Laden - remember him? - and in practice because the US told us to.

But bin Laden is proving as elusive as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. And so, just as with Iraq, we get a constantly shifting stream of alternative excuses to continue the occupation, none of them convincing.

"Each time I have to ask myself if we are doing the right thing by being in Afghanistan," says Brown.

"And my answer has always been Yes. For when the security of our country is at stake, we cannot walk away."

Well, next time he asks himself that question, he can consider this. Is he aware why the July 7 bombers carried out the deadliest attack on London since World War II?

It was because of Britain's wars in the Middle East. Because of the "bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people," according to bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. And, said Shehzad Tanweer, July 7 was "only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq."

Preventing terrorism? Our occupation of Afghanistan is causing it. That is the simple truth that Brown either cannot understand or cannot admit.

And his claim that our presence is helping to stabilise Pakistan is equally wrong-headed.

The truth is that military action in the Pakistani border region - particularly the notorious US drone attacks which have slaughtered hundreds of civilians, including children - is stirring up an angry backlash against the West, offering future July 7 bombers another motive to take revenge on Britain.

There's not much sign that anyone in Brown's government understands this - not even Eric Joyce, despite his resignation over Brown's handling of Afghanistan.

Joyce, like Brown, believes British occupation forces are helping to prevent terrorism. He just thinks that's "not enough of an explanation" for voters back at home.

Where Joyce is spot on, though, is in highlighting the government's shameful treatment of its soldiers.

Brown's talk of the importance of Afghanistan doesn't sit well with the reality for the troops - which is that the death toll from this pointless occupation is being inflated still further by underfunding and underequipping.

And if that weren't enough, the Ministry of Defence is fighting a massively unpopular court case for the right to slash compensation payments to wounded soldiers.

This is a staggeringly stupid and callous act which is winning the government no friends anywhere - not among the troops, not among the few voters who still think the war's a good idea and not among the growing ranks of those who want Britain out of Afghanistan.

At least now we know why the MoD is fighting the case - because it will have to pay out around £150 million more if it loses.

But that's hardly a convincing argument at a time when Brown's throwing far larger sums at the City. Not when it's such a small price to pay for some of the lives ruined by this criminal war.

And not when there's no sign of an end to the stream of young men and women returning maimed, disabled or in body bags from Labour's great imperial folly.

Link: Morning Star