The unnamed war victims

The Stop the War Coalition has marked a grave and ongoing tragedy at the Cenotaph. But a far greater tragedy will go almost unnoticed.

Two hundred and four British soldiers have now died in George Bush and Tony Blair's senseless invasion of Afghanistan, along with nearly 800 of their US counterparts.
No-one can honestly tell you what they died for. First the war was to catch Osama bin Laden, then it was to bring democracy to Afghanistan, now it's to stop terrorist attacks being plotted there. No doubt another empty excuse will be along soon.
Every death in the service of this pointless, stupid, apparently never-ending war is a tragedy - and that includes the people fighting it.

Some of those 204 victims may have joined up to escape desperate poverty, as so many US soldiers do. Some may have sincerely believed that they were doing humanitarian work or defending their country, or they may simply have trusted their government not to lead them wrong.

If so they were misguided. But being misguided is not a capital crime. And surely it's the people who told the lies that should pay, not the people who believed them?

These soldiers deserve to be mourned and they deserve to be remembered.
But while the Stop the War Coalition names every one of these 204 men and women, we must not forget that there is a far grimmer list of victims whose names we will never know and whose numbers will never be counted.

That is, the innocent Afghan men, women and children who have lost their lives in the near-eight-year assault on their country.

"We don't do body counts," US General Tommy Franks once infamously said of that other great criminal war of the 21st century.

Despite Franks, through the efforts of independent researchers we know that around 650,000 Iraqis had been killed by Bush and Blair's invasion by 2006 - a figure that could now be as high as 1.3 million.

It's still hard to comprehend the scale of that massacre, a bloodbath which puts Bush and Blair alongside some of the most notorious mass murderers in history.
But we have no idea of the extent of their guilt. Because we have almost no idea how many

Afghan deaths they have on their blood-drenched hands.

The lowest credible estimate is about 19,000, including civilians, resistance fighters and troops killed in the initial invasion.

But then the lowest credible estimate for Iraq is about 100,000 civilians - far removed from the true scale of the horror.

Have 10,000 Afghan civilians been killed? A hundred thousand? We simply do not know.
And we can't trust anyone to tell us. Not the UN, which decided during the Israeli assault on Gaza that just about all adult males were "fighters" and hence not fit to be included in civilian casualties.

Not the US, which can't tell the difference between a group of Taliban guerillas and a wedding party.

And not the Afghan government, which is hardly going to admit the scale of its own troops' role in killing civilians.

So it's no fault of the Stop the War Coalition that these uncounted, unnamed thousands couldn't also be mourned at today's ceremony.

At least soldier's wife Clare Glenton had the compassion to admit what the devious hypocrites in the Cabinet won't - that "there are no firm figures on the number of Afghan lives lost but in an unjustified conflict even one life lost is too many."

Which is why our troops must come home now, to end the meaningless killing on both sides of this meaningless war. And it's why we can only hope that one day Bush and Blair will face the justice they deserve - even if we can never name their victims or measure the full scale of their crimes. Original story

Stunning victory for Tube workers

London's Tube workers proved that strikes work after London Underground bosses caved in and withdrew their threat to make 1,000 redundancies.

The stunning breakthrough in the RMT union's long-running fight to defend jobs and beat back Tube bosses' attacks on workers' conditions has been revealed exclusively to the Morning Star tonight.

RMT leader Bob Crow said that, following the huge capital-wide strikes in June, "London Underground has now agreed to the union's demand that there be no compulsory redundancies."
"As a result of our members standing firm, management has agreed to abide by the key security of employment clause in our union agreement and this will apply to all LUL operational staff," he emphasised.
London Underground had threatened to tear up a hard-won union agreement that protected jobs from being cut after the Tube lines were privatised and handed over to Metronet and Tubelines.

But, after the privateers ran up £6 billion in debts proving that they couldn't run the Underground, the government renationalised the franchises.
LUL executives then tried to renege on the union deal to protect jobs and forcibly sack a thousand workers in what the RMT feared was just the beginning of the bosses' demands to make their staff pay for the debts.

But facing down virulent anti-union tirades from London Mayor Boris Johnson and the right-wing press, thousands of Tube workers walked out in a 48-hour strike this summer, in what has now proved to be a successful fightback.

"Thanks to the two days of strike action, we have safeguarded members jobs and forced management to abide by negotiated agreements," Mr Crow stressed.

"To win a commitment of 'no redundancies' from an employer at a time when bosses are threatening redundancies every day is a massive victory and shows what can be done," he declared.

"The stand that RMT members have taken has proved that, by sticking together, the union can protect jobs and conditions."
In a letter to union members, RMT organiser Steve Hedley added his praise for the stand that Tube workers had taken.

"I want to thank everyone of you who showed steadfast support for your colleagues who were at risk of being made unemployed," he wrote.
"In particular, I would like to thank all the reps and activists and those who manned the picket lines that made our 48-hour dispute a huge success," he added.
Mr Crow said that the fight will now move on to securing a pay deal, highlighting that LUL bosses had already been forced to tear up their offer for a five-year agreement that would have raised wages by barely 0.5 per cent.

"This was unacceptable," he insisted.

"But, as well as securing the agreement on jobs, we have forced LUL management to back down from victimising workers taking sick leave and we will now be meeting with ACAS and the other Tube unions to discuss the outstanding issues around pay," Mr Crow added. Read the original story here

What revolution to bring about?

Revolution means the condition of overall changes in human society. It begins from the change in mindset and perception with0ut which all policies and investments become worthless. Many violent revolutions in the world have not changed the world. Instead, such violent revolutions in which ordinary masses had a great hope, have frustrated them badly because those who led revolution did not change their moral characer and mindset. However, it is necesary to make people understand that rotten and corrupt systems need to be replaced. Read the whole story

US health plan, death plan?

While the US Administration has been evincing the First World War-styled chauvinism in every nook and corner of the world, American political critic and analyst Alexander Cockburn consider the US health plan as a death plan. According to him, American ruling elites are status quoists, believing in the death of the poor while serving only business elites. Read the whole story here.