Demo opposes Bush's Imperial Dystopia
Saturdays demonstration in London is being hailed as a great success - one of the biggest turnouts any of us can remember. Certainly the march was huge, anywhere between 250, 000 and 400, 000. The start was delayed by around 2 hours, due to the sheer numbers of people gathering on the embankment. In fact the Scottish contingent began to think we wouldn't have time to march, before we had to return home, and we took a short cut to join the march nearer the front. At Hyde Park I missed most of the speakers, and as we left around 5pm to get our train home, the crowd was still streaming in.
Around 400 came down on the Edinburgh transport alone, more from Glasgow. The turnout was fairly diverse, in our contingent there were all ages present, and demonstrators ranged from railway workers to members of the clergy. One couple had travelled down from Ullapool in the Highlands. On the way back they reported that Ullapool had its own demo and 300 turned out, one fifth of the town population!
Politically I think the demonstration has actually succeeded in putting Blair under pressure whilst the Labour Party conference is on. It will also give impetus to the anti-war movement who will have a new confidence. Public opinion is still with the anti-war lobby, but this will come under pressure if fighting begins involving British troops.
The US ruling class are engaging on an imperialist project that threatens the entire planet. A state of permanent war, of armed globalisation.
In the new paper Socialist Resistance, Phil Hearse (taking up some of the arguments of Claude Serfati) argues this point.
"Brzezinski' version of course does not simply counterpose political and diplomatic mechanisms to military ones. Military dominance has a crucial role to play. It is however a question of balance. Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle have thrown the Grand Chessboard version into the dustbin and proclaimed a new militarist activism amounting to a doctrine of permanent war, with no natural limits - including on the use of nuclear weapons."
The US will also increasingly rely on reactionary islamic regimes, such as that in Saudi Arabia, to suppress the (also reactionary) political islamic movements that will be enormously strengthened in the middle east if there is any attack on Iraq.
A dangerous strategy and one that could leave the entire region destabilised.
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