Welsh War of Independence

[Larry O'Hara]

It seems...

many posters here aren't actually aware of the extended attempts, over 7 centuries, by the English ruling class (from Edward I 1283 onwards) to exterminate Welsh consciousness, culture, language & identity, compounded by Tudor centralisation. Certainly there is a rich vein of socialist radicalism such as the Rebecca riots, Miner's next Step & so on, even up to & including some Red outposts. To be fully commended. The fact is though, also, that the history of Owain Glyndwr & the his mythical status in the sense of not being captured is important too. While Meibion Glyndwr Mark II had the hallmarks of state infiltration/manipulation, Mark I MG I personally fully supported--'come home to a real fire' is still a slogan that stays in the memory.

It ill behoves 'Brit Leftists' (in ideology, not necessarily background) to make patronising comments about whether Welsh medieval struggles retrospectively fit modern-day notions of delegate-based 'workers councils' & suchlike. As somebody rightly says, it is not a question of cherry-picking--Welsh independence is not, & should not be, something Brit Leftists quibble about, but of course they will. I personally do have a query, which applies also to the SNP--'Independence Within Europe' (the EU) is an oxymoron, like 'Life within death'. I far prefer older policies of genuine independence from the British state and the EU. Which policy begs the interesting socio-economic/ecological questions of how to build a sustainable non-exploitative economy and society, that is distinctly 21st Century Welsh but also draws on the best insights from libertarian socialism, anarchism & Green politics.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

What is ironic and offensive is that Chilango attacks us for not supporting the Welsh National Liberation struggle - which doesn't really exist, but can't bring himself to support a genuine resistance to imperialism in Iraq.

Apparently, the relationship between Wales and England is colonial, but the relationship between Iraq and the US/UK is . . . he doesn't know.

Frankly, Chilango, the question today, is are you with US/UK imperialism or are you with the right of Iraqis to resist occupation and economic colonialism - your patronising comments on another thread are classic "white man's burden" stuff.

What's happening in Iraq is classic imperialism, it happened in the Congo, India, and Malaya in the last 200 years.

I recall Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi Novelist tortured under the Saddam regime bluntly stated at a War on Want conference - "If it wasn't for the courageous Iraqi resistance, Iraq would now just be one big corporation".

2 rich countries essentially invade and occupy another country to control it's natural resource - oil and to further their geo-political aims.

Who controls oil revenue in Iraq - President Talabani? The "Iraqi Parliament"? Perhaps even Iraqis appointed by the Occupation?

Of course not.

For the next 5 years, oil revenue and how it is spent will be controlled by a commission handpicked by US Viceroy, Paul Bremer made up of 10 foreigners and 1 Iraqi.

The US has privatised 200 public utilities in Iraq and sold them on the cheap to US multinationals. It has change Iraq Law, so that 100% of the money made from these public utilities can be taken out of the country. The front page of the Independent yesterday highlighted how the puppet government is fast tracking the process of handing over Iraq's economy to US multinationals.

Unlike Wales: 160,000 troops are stationed in Iraq, immune from prosecution by any Iraqi court.

Unlike Wales: The US is constructing 15 permanent military bases to hold down the native population and from which to dominate the whole Middle East.

Unlike Wales: 85% of the Iraqi population want foreign (including Welsh) troops out and demand genuine self-determination.

I'm surprised Chilango that when you were a member of the SWP you didn't read the statement in the newspaper: "We support all genuine national liberation struggles".

Most people can see that their is no comparison between the situation of Chechens, Palestinians, Kurds, Tibetans, Kashmiris, Iraqis or even Haitians or Catholics in the North of Ireland and the situation of the Welsh - it's obvious!

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Why would one need to be taught to be Welsh?

Can one not choose one's own identity without having it thrust upon one?

If so I choose first not to be British and secondly I choose not to be Welsh.

The concept of national identity and Lewislewis's wish to impose upon us "Welshness" is reactionary.

The purpose of national identities is to obscure over the fundamental divide in society between rich and poor. And let the workers know that they can feel content because they are part of the elite group.

Being told that you are Welsh and you can be proud of it, is kind of a psychological compensation for being exploited and living in a crap society - but if we are going to improve things then we need to dispense with this kind of crutch. I'm not sure why some people are so emotionally and psychologically insecure that they need to wear a badge to make them feel good or life meaningful.

 

[Brockway]

Can one not choose one's own identity without having it thrust upon one?

Definitely. Most of the youth round where I live have decided to be a Los Angeles street gang.

I didn't know about the Fenner/Cardiff link - I'll have to do a bit of reading up on that. Nice one.

 

[Brockway]

"Unlike Wales: 160,000 troops are stationed in Iraq, immune from prosecution by any Iraqi court.

Unlike Wales: The US is constructing 15 permanent military bases to hold down the native population and from which to dominate the whole Middle East.

Unlike Wales: 85% of the Iraqi population want foreign (including Welsh) troops out and demand genuine self-determination."

Udo, we've had plenty of English troops here in the past.

You can still see the English military bases dotted around Wales
- they're called castles.

It's a sad irony that the defeated people often end up (through economic necessity) having to fight for the colonizer. We've been cannon fodder for the English for centuries.

Maybe you think because we haven't got English troops on our street today we should just move on and accept our fate? At what point should the Iraqis move on? Ten years from now, a hundred years, or a thousand? Or perhaps when they are speaking English in an American accent.

 

[Belushi]

Udo, we've had plenty of English troops here in the past.

Aye in 1911 and 1926 to start with.

My Grandad used to tell me about them sending the troops in at Glynneath when he was a lad when the miners there locked out the bosses and set up their own soviet.

 

[RubberBuccaneer]

Funnily enough William Burroughs had an authentic orgone accumulator in his back garden. I know someone who saw it.

Who's that mate???

it must be quite hard being culturally oppressed with a nice big house, a well paid job and a middle class background -

I come from a very comfortable background, but it doesn't alter the fact that I can't speak Welsh or that my mamgu was beaten for speaking it.

Cultural oppression and financial oppression can be seperate, although I wouldn't describe myself as being oppressed because of it, maybe mildy peeved.

Hate to disagree with you Brockway, but I don't think that the relationship between Wales and England today can be characterised as colonial.

Oh, How many people from Butetown get to work in the bay and all it's developments?

Remember Peter Law and English Labour knows best for it's dominions?

Indeed, the overwhelming amount of people I have met here who lecture me on how oppressed Wales is, are not particularly poor but happen to live in big houses and be quite comfortably well off - yet they say, "Yes, I'm so oppressed, I may earn alot more than you, Udo, and own a big house, but I'm Welsh and I'm soooooo oppressed and my culture is surpressed!"

You want to get out more, I've been here 40 years and never hear that type of thing.

 

[Belushi]

"South Wales is consistently one of the poorest parts of the UK" Hmmm... try Easterhouse in Scotland, some parts of the East End of London where the swetshops are or even the North east of England where the cotton mills etc have closed and racism is on the rise. Actually S Wales at the moment is very similar to London's Docklands - we have pockets of extreme poverty side by side with pockets of extreme/grotesque affluence.

According to this BBC Report Wales has the highest level of children living in poverty in the UK.

Wales has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK (33%)
Wales has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe
The youth unemployment rate is 28.6%
Wales has more pensioners than the rest of the UK, and half have annual incomes of less than £10,000.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Oh, How many people from Butetown get to work in the bay and all it's developments?

Remember Peter Law and English Labour knows best for it's dominions?

.

You could say the same about the Canary Wharf development which is cheek by jowl with Tower Hamlets, the poorest borough in England. This is an issue of class not nation.

The selection of Maggie Jones had nothing to do with England imposing candidates on Wales or nationalism - it was to do with New Labour wanting to replace a fairly left wing MP with a New Labour clone - incidentally, both Llew Smith and Peter Law are hostile to nationalism, as indeed have most Welsh MPs from that area including most famously Aneurin Bevan - a figure (who for all his reformist shortcomings) is far more significant than Gwynfor Evans - a political pygmy unknown outside of Wales.

The same process of "women-only shortlists" being imposed on left wing constituency parties happened in England too.

 

[niclas]

There's one big difference between Wales and Iraq that Udo hasn't pointed out - we live in Wales and can do something about conditions here.

Unless Udo is planning to send International Brigades to help the Iraqi resistance, then there's a limit to what can be done in terms of solidarity beyond marching in ever decreasing circles around London (a practical suggestion - when you have a 2m strong march, don't try to repeat it 6 months later, it'll look crap. Use your imagination and try something different FFS)

Trying to juxtapose the situation in Wales with Iraq, as Udo does, is insulting to both the Iraqis and Welsh. Both are nations that have suffered colonial oppression, both are divided by class. In both cases, the majority on this list (I hope) would want to see workers in both nations taking control over their own lives, workplaces and communities.

That task has to be the work of the Iraqi working class and the Welsh working class themselves. I would suggest that the job of any decent socialist/anarchist/republican is to work within their communities and workplaces to ensure that happens.

As to Owain Glyndwr's relevance, the example of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is instructive. Chavez is using the imagery of Bolivar the liberator not because he was a socialist but because he symbolised one kind of liberation. I don't see any problem in using Glyndwr in the same way.

 

[Brockway]

Who's that mate???

Jon Langford out of the Mekons.

Shit result the other night. Loovens out - relegation battle beckons. Can't believe the Jacks' crowds! Hope they go up though, just for the derby games.

 

[RubberBuccaneer]

The other point about Iraq ( personally speaking ) , and we're getting way off topic now, is that it was our fuck up to go in there, so to piss off now the going is tough and leave it to a civil war seems even worse to me.

See I never knew he was from Newport growing up , thought they were Leeds.

 

[Brockway]

Gentleman Taff met him when he was in The Three Johns apparently.

 

[neprimerimye]

As to Owain Glyndwr's relevance, the example of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is instructive. Chavez is using the imagery of Bolivar the liberator not because he was a socialist but because he symbolised one kind of liberation. I don't see any problem in using Glyndwr in the same way.

The tropuble qwith the above is that using the imagery of historical figures such as Bolivar or Glyn Dwr means falsifing the historical record and/or forcing present day struggles into historical templates which do not fit reality.

Thus Welsh nationalists using Glyn Dwr's struggle must portray that struggle as a straight forward fight for a national state and an independent nation. But the historical record reveals a Glyn Dwr who fought for the English feudal monarchy and until slighted was content to function as a local representative of that regime. The struggle itself reveals that once engaged in a fight that was literarly life or death that he was more and more forced into reliance on the 'popular masses'. In plain terms like many anothe struggle his was forced to radicalise by events. What must also be understood is that Glyn Dwr's struggle for an independent Welsh state failed and cannot be repeated in iether form or content. In which case the imagery if expropriated by Welsh nationalists is meaningless.

Similarly Bolivars struggle cannot be repeated and the imagery and symbolism is of no practical use to the masses. But it is of use to Chavez who can use that symbolism to portray himself as a caudillo - in Marxian terms a Bonapartist type figure - raised above society and hence the struggle of the classes. This limits and inhibits the development of the struggle which is best progressed by reliance on the workers and oppressed themselves. In fact were it not for the intervention of the masses the coup attempt of some months back would have been succesfull.

 

[neprimerimye]

The concept of national identity and Lewislewis's wish to impose upon us "Welshness" is reactionary.

The purpose of national identities is to obscure over the fundamental divide in society between rich and poor. And let the workers know that they can feel content because they are part of the elite group.

Being told that you are Welsh and you can be proud of it, is kind of a psychological compensation for being exploited and living in a crap society - but if we are going to improve things then we need to dispense with this kind of crutch. I'm not sure why some people are so emotionally and psychologically insecure that they need to wear a badge to make them feel good or life meaningful.

A curiously one sided and therefore non-dialectical formulation Udo. From a Marxist point of view nations are reactionary as nation states are a fetter on the relations of production. Historially they belong to the era of class society which we fight against.

This does not mean that at all times and in all places nations, still less national identities, are automatically to be viewed as reactionary and therefore oppsed (that would be what Nwnmcompoop wrongly calls Luxemburgism). It does mean that we recognise that only those nations which are oppressed and whose struggles do not obstruct the social revolution are supportable.

Ths a growth in national consciousness in say Iraq, of which there is no evidence btw, would be a progressive development given the continuing imperialist occupation of that country. Even in Wales the development of national consciousness in the past few decades is arguably a reaction to the real oppression of Welsh speakers in the past (to a far lesser degree even today) and is also a result of the decay of the labourite project. It is not wholly or unambigously reactionary.

National identity is in this respect rather similar to religious feelings in that it is not based on objective material circumstances - in the case of those nations which are not subject to oppression mark you - as is the case with class consciousness and can serve as both an opiate concealing the alienation produced by class society and - in oppressed nations - as an ideology of resistance. In all cases however it is for Marxists a false consciousness.

 

[lewislewis]

You're belief in Iraqi nationalism (if it happened) as a weapon against UK imperialism totally contradcits your belief in Welsh nationalism as a weapon against UK imperialism.

 

[lewislewis]

So assuming (rightly) the difference between Nations and Nation-States...which of these do you think is destined to disappear?

The Nation itself will never disappear. It is an adaptable and evolutionary organic body which draws together people of a shared cultural heritage, common interest or historical experience.

Nation-States for all their shortcomings are essential to ensure the interests of each nation are contained within an independent polity. I agree that people should organise across national boundaries where necessary, in terms of international law, free movement of people (to match the free movement of money which has been forced on us by globalisation) and free movement of information.

 

[chilango]

What is ironic and offensive is that Chilango attacks us for not supporting the Welsh National Liberation struggle -

Not quite. I am attacking you for your pick n mix attitude towards national liberation.

I´m not sure how this is either ironic or offensive

which doesn't really exist, but can't bring himself to support a genuine resistance to imperialism in Iraq.

I can´t bring myself to support islamist, indiscriminate, reactionary butchers.

Besides is my lack of support such a loss for them anyway? I mean as pointed out by someone else its not like the suppoters of the resistancesuch as yourself are off to join the fighting is it?

Apparently, the relationship between Wales and England is colonial, but the relationship between Iraq and the US/UK is . . . he doesn't know.

The relationship between England and Wales is colonial? I never said that, although i would argue that there are still elements of that existing. People get sack for speaking their indigenous language (Welsh) at work by a foreign (English) boss who can´t speak it. Still happens. Just one example.

The realtionshpip between US/UK and Iraq is pretty similar to the realtionship between (say) the US and Colombia I don´t notice you cheerleading the FARC or denouncing the ELN for holding peacetalks. Why not?

Frankly, Chilango, the question today, is are you with US/UK imperialism or are you with the right of Iraqis to resist occupation and economic colonialism

Its that simple? Whatever happened to neither Washington nor Moscow? eh?

yeah, the Iraqis have the right to resist, and we have the right condemn reactionary procapitalist antiworker movements who happen to be involved.

- your patronising comments on another thread are classic "white man's burden" stuff.

Can you link or quote? - so I can explain/apologise/reject as appropriate.

I don´t intend to patronise - just to try and provoke slightly more rigorous argument rather than simplistic sloganeering.

What's happening in Iraq is classic imperialism, it happened in the Congo, India, and Malaya in the last 200 years.

Is it? So? Like I said I´m not defending the US.

I recall Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi Novelist tortured under the Saddam regime bluntly stated at a War on Want conference - "If it wasn't for the courageous Iraqi resistance, Iraq would now just be one big corporation".

...and if the insurgents come to power will an Islamic regime be any different? Would it follow such beacons of anti imperialism as Saudi, Sudan or Iran?

2 rich countries essentially invade and occupy another country to control it's natural resource - oil and to further their geo-political aims.

Yeah. Is anyone disagreeing with this? Are any of us actually saying the US are right? Course not.

Who controls oil revenue in Iraq - President Talabani? The "Iraqi Parliament"? Perhaps even Iraqis appointed by the Occupation?

Of course not.

For the next 5 years, oil revenue and how it is spent will be controlled by a commission handpicked by US Viceroy, Paul Bremer made up of 10 foreigners and 1 Iraqi.

I repeat is putting this decision in the hands of a right wing islamist movement going to be something much better? something selfproclaimed revolutionary socialists such as yourself should advocate?

The US has privatised 200 public utilities in Iraq and sold them on the cheap to US multinationals. It has change Iraq Law, so that 100% of the money made from these public utilities can be taken out of the country. The front page of the Independent yesterday highlighted how the puppet government is fast tracking the process of handing over Iraq's economy to US multinationals.

so? they´re bad! we know.....

Unlike Wales: ......

banalities removed....

Yeah Wales and Iraq are different. (see below)

I'm surprised Chilango that when you were a member of the SWP you didn't read the statement in the newspaper: "We support all genuine national liberation struggles".

How do you define "genuine?

Most people can see that their is no comparison between the situation of Chechens, Palestinians, Kurds, Tibetans, Kashmiris, Iraqis or even Haitians or Catholics in the North of Ireland and the situation of the Welsh - it's obvious!

Nor is there that much in common with situations in N Ireland, Tibet , Chechnya and Haiti but you seem happy to lump them in together. What are the comon denominators?

Would you include the Basque Country? Corsica? Galiza? Puerto Rico?

 

[Dic Penderyn]

Aye in 1911 and 1926 to start with.

My Grandad used to tell me about them sending the troops in at Glynneath when he was a lad when the miners there locked out the bosses and set up their own soviet.

My great-grandfather was one of them, he got beaten up so badly in the 1926 strike he spent a year unable to walk and never worked again. My grandad used to tell me about the disputes, they sounded like full on warfare.

 

[lewislewis]

I really don't understand Udo...he doesn't think peaceful methods are genuine, but he'd applaud us if we were blowing people up with car bombs?

 

[neprimerimye]

So assuming (rightly) the difference between Nations and Nation-States...which of these do you think is destined to disappear?

The Nation itself will never disappear. It is an adaptable and evolutionary organic body which draws together people of a shared cultural heritage, common interest or historical experience.

Nation-States for all their shortcomings are essential to ensure the interests of each nation are contained within an independent polity. I agree that people should organise across national boundaries where necessary, in terms of international law, free movement of people (to match the free movement of money which has been forced on us by globalisation) and free movement of information.

I'm presuming this question is directed at me. If so then it is my contention that if the working class can come to power and set humanity on the road to communism then both nations and nation ststes will in the course of time cease to exist. The only alternatives to this are nuclear devastation or a descent into barbarism that will make the Third Reich look like a kiddies party.

Basically Marxism argues that nations, in the sense that we know them today, only came into being with the capitalist epoch. They are then relatively recent organisms and not in any sense essential to human culture or society in any way.

Similarly Marxism argues that the state only came into being with class society and was therefore unknown for the majority of the time Man has been around. Marxism further contends that the state will always function as the tool of the ruling class and must be abolished in order for a classless society to come into being.

It follows that Marxism is therefore opposed to nation states as such. In fact nation states are actually a rarity with most such states so described actually containing significant minorities of one kind or another. Thus the british state contains Wales and Scotland and France contains northern Euskadi and Brittany. There are also regions in many nation states which do not easily fit into the templates offered us by nationalists. then we have dispersed national minorities such as the Sinti and Roma througout much of Europe. And to add to this list there are often castes, such as the barakumin in japan, who are frequently considered not to belong to the nation and have am infererior status. All this and I've not ven mentioned multinational states or migrants!

Finally you write that "which draws together people of a shared cultural heritage, common interest or historical experience" but this definition is actually prety meaningless in respect of Wales. the shared historical experience which all, excepting the most recent of immigrants, have is with britain as a whole as the historical experience of specific groups and regions in Wales is as disparate as those of Britain as a whole, the Welsh nation has no common interest as long as Welsh workers do not have a common interest with the bourgeoisie including those members of that class of Welsh nationality and out cultural heritage is very much divided by language and is not therefore common to us all.

 

[nwnm]

"People get sack for speaking their indigenous language (Welsh) at work by a foreign (English) boss who can´t speak it. Still happens. Just one example." Oh Chilango, I can smell the smoke and see the mirrors... So Welsh bosses don't do this? And they never use the Loophole in the current Language Act to suppress the use of Welsh by not producing Bilingual documentation etc. One of the oldest tricks in the Welsh Nationalist book is to go on about
'English' bosses - as though the people in Wales automatically change their nationality if they're a member of the boss class. As a genius once wrote "Every day when I wake up I thank the Lord I'm Welsh ... and then I remember Michael Howard, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, and bloody Neil Kinnock".

 

[Brockway]

I'm presuming this question is directed at me. If so then it is my contention that if the working class can come to power and set humanity on the road to communism then both nations and nation ststes will in the course of time cease to exist. The only alternatives to this are nuclear devastation or a descent into barbarism that will make the Third Reich look like a kiddies party.

The only alternatives Nep? Come on, bit melodramatic isn't it? Here's another alternative: things will muddle along pretty much as they are.

Incidentally, I can't see much evidence of the workers round by me looking to take power and effect a world revolution in which states no longer exist. You'd have to drag them away from Sky TV; their PSPs; pimping their rides; ganja; and fags first.

Assuming your stateless world comes to pass Nep, here are some questions for you:

1. Will their be a football league? Would it be a world league? Would it be hierarchical with promotion and relegation?
2. Will women be allowed to wear make-up?
3. Would there be a police force?
4. Will there be pornography?
5. What language will everyone be speaking in Africa?

 

[chilango]

"People get sack for speaking their indigenous language (Welsh) at work by a foreign (English) boss who can´t speak it. Still happens. Just one example." Oh Chilango, I can smell the smoke and see the mirrors... So Welsh bosses don't do this? And they never use the Loophole in the current Language Act to suppress the use of Welsh by not producing Bilingual documentation etc. One of the oldest tricks in the Welsh Nationalist book is to go on about
'English' bosses - as though the people in Wales automatically change their nationality if they're a member of the boss class. As a genius once wrote "Every day when I wake up I thank the Lord I'm Welsh ... and then I remember Michael Howard, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, and bloody Neil Kinnock".

3 wise monkeys?

The cases I reffered to both involved Englsi bosses - they were not Welsh. They had been parachuted in by the companies in question. You can pretend it didn`t happen if it makes you feel more comfortable.

Of course you get Welsh bosses.

You get Iraqi bosses too - does that ruin your support for the insurgents? apparently not.

 

[neprimerimye]

The only alternatives Nep? Come on, bit melodramatic isn't it? Here's another alternative: things will muddle along pretty much as they are.

Incidentally, I can't see much evidence of the workers round by me looking to take power and effect a world revolution in which states no longer exist. You'd have to drag them away from Sky TV; their PSPs; pimping their rides; ganja; and fags first.

Assuming your stateless world comes to pass Nep, here are some questions for you:

1. Will their be a football league? Would it be a world league? Would it be hierarchical with promotion and relegation?
2. Will women be allowed to wear make-up?
3. Would there be a police force?
4. Will there be pornography?
5. What language will everyone be speaking in Africa?

Sure things can muddle along as they do at present thats absolutely true. But at some point in the future the contradictions built into bourgeois society will lead to a descent into a darkness from which man will not emerge. The recent crop of wars and man made 'natural' disasters are but a foretaste of the disasters waiting round the corner. Course you might be lucky and die before the full consequences of this decadent society emerge in their full ferocity but emerge they will.

That the working classes are at present more concerned with fin de siecle nano-celeb culture than with revolution is true. But thats why you should be a communist my friend. Like the MC5 said you have five seconds to decide....

As for your questions.

1/ I don't know what this 'football league' is so I can hardly know if it will exist at some undefined point in the future.

2/ Yes and so will you if you wish.

3/ If private property no longer exists and want is a thing of the past then the state too will not exist.

4/ Surely that depends on what you mean by pornography? However as gender/sex oppression would be a thing of the past I would argue that exploitative imagery would no longer find an audience.

5/ No idea.

 

[lewislewis]

Sounds like a cool idea, except I can only see this website because of my nice capitalist lap-top.
Will there be lap-tops?
Will there be coke and other soft drinks?
How will people pay for goods?
Will there be churches/mosques?
Well everybody have to work?

 

[nwnm]

"Of course you get Welsh bosses." And they abuse the system in the same way - correct?

"You get Iraqi bosses too - does that ruin your support for the insurgents? apparently not." Iraqi bosses are identifiable by their slavish support for the US, are they not? (Lets face it, in the current climate they wouldn't be bosses for long if they didn't...) So that doesn't ruin anyones support for the Iraqi resistance my myopic little friend.
Bet you would have been fun to be around during the Vietnam war. Student radicalism would have been at its height and you would have been handing out leaflets (if anything) explaining why you weren't marching..... or maybe shouting 'hot chocalate - drinking chocolate!'

 

[chilango]

"Of course you get Welsh bosses." And they abuse the system in the same way - correct?

"You get Iraqi bosses too - does that ruin your support for the insurgents? apparently not." Iraqi bosses are identifiable by their slavish support for the US, are they not? (Lets face it, in the current climate they wouldn't be bosses for long if they didn't...) So that doesn't ruin anyones support for the Iraqi resistance my myopic little friend.
Bet you would have been fun to be around during the Vietnam war. Student radicalism would have been at its height and you would have been handing out leaflets (if anything) explaining why you weren't marching..... or maybe shouting 'hot chocalate - drinking chocolate!'

My point is if the resistance wins. There will be Iraqi bosses every bit as bad - if not worse if experienec of Islamist regimes tells us anything - as the US ones.

...and don´t think for a second the US won´t cut a deal with them if it suits. They used to list Sudan as a terrorist state, but they fear missing out on the oil there so thatsbeen forgotten. As would your heroic antimperialism.

 

[nwnm]

But the point is that if the Iraqi resistance won (ie US/British forces withdrew) it would unleash all sorts of forces not just Islamic ones - and not just in Iraq. For a start it would bolster the confidence of whole sections of the population of the middle east. Imagine the impact it could have on a workers movement in saudi Arabia and Egypt which still exist (more clandestinely in Saudi obviously) despite suppression by the state. Imagine the destabilisation it could cause throughout the middle east and the impact on the Palestine issue, and the problems it would cause Bush's other allies.

"don't think for a second the US won´t cut a deal with them if it suits" If they pulled out of Iraq they may be in no position to cut a deal with anyone for quite some time. The political impact would be devastating - Bush's future is looking shaky enough as it is. Withdrawal from Iraq could lead to Vietnam syndrome Mk2. There's an old story that after the Vietnam war, a US president was considering sending troops to Angola, only to be sharply rebuked by one of his aides, who pointed out the scale of the anti war movement and the involvement of the military in this "besides" he said "Most of our GI's are black.... exactly who's side d'you think they'll be on?" Withdrawal from Iraq would almost certainly finish off Blair if the back bench revolts don't get him first. Look at the bigger picture mate.....

 

[neprimerimye]

Sounds like a cool idea, except I can only see this website because of my nice capitalist lap-top.
Will there be lap-tops?
Will there be coke and other soft drinks?
How will people pay for goods?
Will there be churches/mosques?
Well everybody have to work?

No cos lap tops will become outdated, even under capitalism.
I don't know or care.
Everything will be free.
No.
No work will be abolished.