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Lead

IRAQ: US SURGE MEETS DEADLY RESPONSE

by our Arab Affairs Correspondent

Guns are yet again blazing across Iraq as the American imperialist push meet fierce resistance in Baghdad and the west of occupied Arab country. Nine US troops were killed on Tuesday, the deadliest day for the Americans since they launched their “surge” offensive three weeks ago.

The partisans have withdrawn from most of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, in the face of a US armoured attack but guerrillas have freed over 140 partisans in a spectacular attack on a jail in Mosul and other units are continuing to strike home hard in the heart of the Iraqi capital.

Partisans stormed a prison on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday freeing over 140 prisoners, most of whom were resistance fighters. After they easily overwhelmed the puppet regime guards, the partisans freed the prisoners and drove away in cars and pick-up trucks. Another guerrilla, Ahmad al Omar, a resistance commander under sentence of death, made his get-away from a Mosul jail last weekend.

kidnapped

In Baghdad American and puppet forces, with the tacit support of sectarian Shia militias, are attempting to drive the resistance out of the areas they control by sealing off streets, mounting house-to-house searches and setting up fortified posts in nationalist neighbourhoods. But this hasn’t stopped the resistance attacks. Last Saturday a senior puppet regime officer was kidnapped in broad daylight and the international airport was repeatedly shelled.

General Samir Sultan al Tikriti, the puppet deputy commander in charge of the “Baghdad Security Plan” was seized as he was leaving his home Saturday afternoon Earlier that day guerrillas shot dead a puppet colonel while his convoy was driving through the western part of the city. Meanwhile other units made repeated attacks on Saddam International Airport inflicting heavy damage to the runways. The partisans returned on Sunday to shell the US military base at the airport for over 30 minutes before dispersing.

Last weekend the Arab League called on the United Nations Security Council to set a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq. Arab League Secretary-General Amer Moussa called for a time-table for the withdrawal of the US-led forces, the disbanding of all militias and the fair distribution of wealth within Iraq.

enough is enough

“I suggest that these foundations be included in a binding UN Security Council resolution that all Iraqi and other parties with present roles in Iraq should respect and follow,” Amer Moussa told Arab foreign ministers at the Arab League meeting in Cairo. The Arab League, a forum of all the Arab states, is routinely ignored by imperialism but its statements reinforce the feeling on the Arab street that enough is enough.

And the imperialists are certainly concerned at the mounting anger of the Arab masses at the crimes of American imperialism and its Zionist lackey in the Middle East. That’s why they’ve moved to silence a pro-resistance satellite TV station that has won a huge audience inside Iraq and throughout the Arab world for its films and reports of resistance actions.

Mishan al Jabburi, the head of Al Zawra (The Revolution) TV, has accused the Americans of jamming his station’s broadcasts and putting pressure on its Egyptian satellite provider to stop transmissions. The puppet regime has banned the station and American foreign minister Condoleezza Rice is believed to have urged the authorities to shut it down during her recent visit to Egypt.

Al Jabburi, a Mosul businessman and leader of the National Reconciliation and Liberation Party, was once a member of the puppet Iraqi parliament. He opposed the continued American occupation and left the country in February after he was accused of “encouraging terrorism” and attacks on the US army of occupation.

He is now negotiating with the Arab Satellite Communications Organisation – Arabsat, to resume broadcasting.

Al Jabburi said that the Americans were targeting his station because Al Zawra broadcasts information on the Resistance to the US occupation and publicises the achievements of the Resistance. Arabsat would be sympathetic to him as it is owned by a consortium of Arab states who support his initiative – including Libya and Saudi Arabia, who between them own half the shares of the company.

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Editorial

Gestapo Britain?

NOT YET but it might well be the ways things are going these days. If house arrest, detention without trial, round-the-clock CCTV surveillance and asbos weren’t enough, we can now expect bailiffs breaking into homes and seizing belongings with the full blessing of the law. The new proposals, which had their second reading in the House of Commons this week will give bailiffs the right to forcibly enter domestic premised to enforce debts include outstanding credit card bills. This is advancing fascism in top gear.

In its dying days the Blair Government seems determined to do as much damage as it can to the working class and the Labour Party it claims to represent. Workers on the dole are told to make “an even greater effort” to get a job and single parents may be kicked off benefits once their child turns 12 if the Blair leadership has its way.

Workers’ children in England and Wales get a third-rate education under a Government that prefers school sponsorship from religious bigots and local businessmen and a university regime that has priced out the working class. And now workers are expected to work even longer to get a state pension that is worth less and less as time goes by.

The National Health Service that was established by the Attlee Government in 1948 was a momentous achievement for the labour movement. For the first time patients could obtain free treatment and free prescriptions from a health service that surpassed even that of the Soviet Union. Now patients have to fork out more and more of their own money while the NHS suffers the death of a thousand cuts through privatisation that began under the Tories and has continued unabated under Blair.

Britain has become a paradise for the spivs, millionaires and exploiters who have benefited from tax breaks and anti-union legislation. It’s a nightmare for those eking out a miserable existence on benefits in squalid council estates that are dying from neglect because the councils are not allowed to revive them.

Billions have been spent on the criminal and illegal war in Iraq. Billions more are going to be squandered on a new Trident nuclear weapons system that nobody wants and the country doesn’t need. While the rich flaunt their wealth in the best parts of town workers struggle to maintain their standard of living by working longer hours.

It’s not surprising that the Labour Party is disintegrating. Few doubt that Labour is going to get a hiding in the Scottish parliamentary and local elections in May. Some workers will give their protest votes to marginal left social-democratic parties that can never form a government. Others will be lured by the lies and illusions of the neo-nazis. Most will simply not bother to vote at all.

The major beneficiaries will, of course, be the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. Both are parties of the bourgeoisie and both are essentially hostile to the organised working class. That clearly doesn’t bother Blair who is doing his best to make Labour unelectable for the next decade. But it certainly bothers us.

The organised working class is the only force that can halt the drive toward authoritarianism. But it can only do it if it re-asserts its control over the Labour Party that depends on the unions for most of its funding. A fight-back has began around John McDonnell and the Labour Representation Committee. Some unions are on the offensive for more pay and to stop the cuts. But much more needs to be done.

The fight to build a genuine, strong communist movement based on Marxism-Leninism is crucial in the struggle to defend workers’ rights. Socialism is the only answer to the capitalist crisis. The alternative, as Marx said, was barbarism and we’re getting our first taste of it now.

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