Assange: no hero of the Left

Above: screen grab taken from the X (formerly Twitter) account of WikiLeaks of Julian Assange on board a flight to Bangkok, Thailand, following his release from prison It is good that Julian Assange has been freed. It is good on purely humanitarian grounds: he'd spent more than five years in Belmarsh high security prison and …

SWP, “anti-imperialism” and terror: a story of cowardice and opportunism

Above: the SWP's immediate reaction to the Hamas pogrom of 7 October (posted by SWP on 9 October 2023) The Socialist Workers Party’s immediate response to the 7 October massacre of Israeli civilians (“Rejoice”) and its repeated statements of support for Hamas are aimed at presenting an image of being the most militant “anti-imperialists” in …

Suella Braverman’s speech is an insult to the refugees we’ve reported on – OpenDemocracy

The home secretary thinks the refugee system is too generous. She should tell that to the refugees the UK has shut out By Adam Bychawski at OpenDemocracy (Sept 26 2023) “Are we delivering safe and legal routes in an efficient and effective manner?” This is what Suella Braverman has been asking other European countries, she …

AWL and the Iraq war

On the twentieth anniversary of the disastrous invasion of Iraq, we thought we'd republish the Alliance for Workers Liberty position at the time (in fact this resolution was passed in 2004, but it merely codified the stance that the AWL had taken from 2003 and, indeed, before that in the run-up to the invasion). This …

The truth about the ‘Stop The War Coalition’

Don't mention Russia ... it's all NATO's fault! Happily, the danger of war in Ukraine seems to be receding. The aggressor Putin may have over-played his hand on this occasion. [NB: this was posted on 15 February, when Putin appeared to be withdrawing his troops. Sadly, this proved to be merely a ploy]. But here …

Terrorism and the limitations of the ‘Blowback’ argument

"Blowback" has always been central to Stop the War's propaganda (Getty Images) The chaotic ending of the US/Nato occupation of Afghanistan, and the claims by Biden, Boris Johnson and many others, that the occupation at least prevented terrorist attacks, has re-ignited debate over the theory (central to the arguments of people like 'Stop the War') of …

Assange: a loathsome character who must be defended

David Leigh and Luke Harding’s history of WikiLeaks describes how journalists took Assange to Moro’s, a classy Spanish restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. “Well, they’re informants,” Assange …

Once Upon A Time In Iraq

By guest reviewer,  Leyla Sanai If you haven’t yet watched Once Upon A Time In Iraq on the BBC or iplayer, you are missing out. It is a superb overview of the doomed 2003 war on the wicked but secular despot Saddam Hussein, and the violent chaos that was the war and its faction-ridden, terrorist-packed …

Blowback in Iran

Iranian students demonstrate following a tribute to the victims of a Ukraine International Airlines crash, in front of Amirkabir University in Tehran, Jan. 11, 2020. Police later dispersed students chanting what were seen as "radical" slogans. One of the proudest achievements of Shiraz Socialist (at the Old Place) was to have debunked and discredited the …

Soleimani assassination and the danger of war: what socialists in the region have to say

Unlike the UK Stop the War group (uncritical apologists for the Iranian regime), the Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists, about whom we at Shiraz know next to nothing, are able to simultaneously condemn Trump's reckless belligerence and  and the repression of democratic forces by Iran and other regional imperialist powers: Oppose U.S. …