Month: March 2003

GEORGE BUSH’S "road map" to a political settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, supposedly leading to a Palestinian state by 2005, is a cynical exercise in placating Arab opinion while US forces invade and occupy Iraq. […]

Stop the war in Iraq. Britain.

There is hardly a building in Sarajevo city that has not been damaged in some way by the conflict in the 1990s. Walls are pock marked with bullet holes. More often than not, blocks of […]

AS WE go to press, the battle for Baghdad seems about to begin. It is still too early to get an exact picture, but if the first phase of the war is anything to go […]

Stop the war in Iraq. cwi comment and analysis.

Three thousand mainly school students, after leaving school to strike against the war, marched through Melbourne on Wednesday 26 March against the war on Iraq. The numbers were slightly down on the last school student […]

Over one hundred secondary school students and workers took part in a demonstration against the war on Saturday 22 March, organised by the Kotli branch of the Jammu and Kashmir National Awami Party (JKNAP). 

Monday 24 March 2003

On 23 March, about 20,000 protesters from all over Sicily marched on the Sigonella US Navy Air Base. The base has operated since 1959 after US – NATO agreements. It is situated in Eastern Sicily, […]

Members of the CWI and the youth organisation ‘Young Guard’ organised a protest against US aggression in Iraq on 21 March.

Over 5,000 people demonstrated through the streets on Belfast on Saturday, 22 March, to express their opposition to the continued bombing of Iraq. Although this demonstration was smaller than that on 15 February, the mood […]

The main avenue in Lisbon – Avenida da Liberdade – was flooded by 90,000 people saying ‘No to War!’ last weekend. The three left parties in parliament – the Socialist (social-democratic) Party, Communist Party and […]

Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM – CWI in South Africa) and Socialist Student Movement, both affiliates of the Anti-War Coalition, joined the demonstration on Day X at the US Consulate in Johannesburg.

The ‘Blick’ newspaper – Swiss equivalent of the Daily Mirror – estimated that on Day X 100,000 Swiss people took to the streets, the majority of whom were school students and students. The biggest student […]

The University of Massachusetts (UMass) was on spring break for Day X, but we decided to go ahead with the walkout on Monday 24 March.  Four activists met over the weekend to organise the walkout, […]

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Sydney, Sunday 23 March, in yet another huge anti-war rally.

"Workers at the steel factory, Caterpillar, in Gosselies (near Charleroi) put down tools in protest against the war with Iraq", reports Belgian news agencies.

On Day X we left with an anti-war demo from the French-speaking ULB University. There were some 1,000 students and school students joined us. We discussed with the police to be able to go the […]

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) called a demonstration in Brussels on 21 March. The demo, backed by the three main Belgian trade unions, was meant to be a protest against the GATS agreements in […]

Despite driving rain over 15,000 youth took to the streets on Friday 21 March, in Sao Paulo, to protest against the start of the war against Iraq. Thousands more have taken to the streets in […]

The Day X demonstration was big for Prague, but the second day of the war saw as many, if not more, out on the streets demonstrating. All the main political parties were there and all […]

On the evening of Day X, school students in Newcastle upon Tyne organised a sit down protest in the road. The police announced that, if the school students did not move in two minutes, they […]

Today, March 24, in Hamburg, Germany, 50,000 school students, apprentices and other students supported a local strike call made by Youth against War (Jugend gegen Krieg, JgW).

A total of 400,000 to 500,000 people have demonstrated during the last 3 days in Athens alone. Over 100,000 in Salonica and many tens of thousands in other Greek towns.

"The invasion of Iraq is a naked grab to secure the Iraqi oilfields for US capitalism and to secure imperialist control over the Middle East", said Joe Higgins, TD (member of the Dail, the Irish […]

With these words workers and young people from all over Italy took to the streets in what is the biggest anti-war movement in history. Almost immediately, after news of the first bombings, action was taken […]

On 23 March, the CWI in Japan, Kokusai Rentai, participated in an anti-war demonstration in Osaka. It was the biggest in the city so far. Around eight thousand participated.

120,000 people took to the streets of In Amsterdam on Saturday 23 march.

The first cruise missiles began to rain down on Baghdad at around 3pm Thursday (NZ time), leaving local anti-war activists with very little time to mobilise people for the emergency anti-war rallies that were scheduled […]

Stop the war in Iraq. Pictures.

The main avenue in Lisbon – Avenida da Liberdade – was flooded by 90, 000 people saying ’No to War!’ last weekend. The three left parties in parliament – the Socialist (social-democratic) Party, Communist Party […]

New Labours’ conference in Dundee was besieged by three days of mass protests. Fire-fighters, pensioners, and council workers all showed their anger at Blair’s policies. Above all, it was a chance for a new generation […]

In Madrid up to 1 million took to the streets against war on 22 March, according to the organisers (20,000 according to the government!).

Stop the war in Iraq. Pictures.

Stop the war in Iraq. cwi pictures.

At least 3,000 – 4,000 students and at least 41 schools walkout out of classes on Day X to protest against the war. 1,500 mostly high school students rallied at the University of Minnesota (U […]

The anti-war protests in Vienna and Salzburg on 20 March, partly led by the ISR and SLP, Austrian section of the CWI, demanded strike action by the unions as part of the international movement. Between […]

After the signing up of Italy by Bush onto the list of nations supporting the war, the Italian parliament yesterday officially conceded to the USA the use of bases and air space. Nevertheless demonstrations against […]

As the bombs started falling on Baghdad on March 20, over 50,000 people gathered spontaneously in Melbourne, Australia, for the first of many rallies to come.

Tens of thousands joined in Day X protests in Belgium. The Linkse Socialistische Partij/Mouvement pour une alternative Socialiste (LSP-MAS), the Belgian section of the CWI, played a key role in all the biggest demonstrations. It […]

The first full day of the war saw protest actions throughout Toronto. A vigil has been set up at the peace fountain in front of Toronto City Hall and will be maintained throughout the conflict.

Up to 2,500 people protested in Prague on Day X, which is a big step forward for the Czech anti-war movement.

Youth against War (JgK), a German-wide campaign of school students, students and apprentices, which was initiated by members of Socialist Alternative (SAV, the German CWI section) and International Resistance (the German section of International Socialist […]

Across Northern Ireland thousands of students walked out of schools on Day X, responding to the call from Youth Against War. The mood was determined.

A protest organised by various anti war groups including the Irish Anti War movement was held outside the Dail (Irish parliament) where a debate over the continued use of Shannon airport for US war aircraft […]

No village or town in the country was without some kind of anti-war protest on Day X as people came out to oppose the war against Iraq. There were 85 major demonstrations in 36 provinces. […]

Millions have protested against the start of the US led imperialist war against Iraq. As the reports from CWI sections posted on this site show, many of the demonstrations have been led and dominated by […]

The first day of the US led imperialist assault on Iraq has hugely increased the disgust and opposition from workers and youth against this war, against US imperialism and against the right wing Portuguese government […]

The discovery that the bombing of Iraq had started was met by outrage, walkouts, road blocks and demonstrations involving up to 50,000 university and school students in Barcelona yesterday (Thursday), according to press reports.

As soon as the first bombs dropped on Baghdad, members of the United Socialist Party (USP) in Sri Lanka (section of the CWI) got to work making more than a hundred large hand-written posters with […]

The immediate response from thousands of school students when the US war started was to leave school, strike and march. The central square in Stockholm was once more packed with ten thousand school students, as […]

The student walkout in Seattle on Thursday 20 March was a tremendous success. Students from over 30 Seattle colleges, high schools and middle schools (8 colleges and 22 high schools and middle schools) took part […]

Approximately 20,000 people lined the streets of Sydney just 3 hours after war was officially declared on Thursday (March 20), demanding Australian troops be withdrawn immediately and Liberal Prime Minister Howard end his slavish support […]

War has started. The US led imperialist assault against the people of Iraq means huge destruction and the loss of many lives. A high tech capitalist superpower is indiscriminately attacking a people already subjected to […]

SO THE ’liberation’ of the Iraqis is beginning – with massive carpet bombing. The US military have planned to use ten times the amount of bombs dropped in the whole of the last Gulf War […]

ON 15 March there was a new wave of anti-war action in New Zealand, mainly in South Island. In Christchurch, about 3,000 took part in a march against the war.

March 20 saw around 1,000 school students participate in a strike and midday demonstration in Umeå in northern Sweden.

The CWI in Brazil, Socialismo Revolucionario (SR), held a very successful public meeting earlier this week on the war on Iraq at the University USP, in San Carlos, in the State of Sao Paulo. Over […]

Socialist Party member, Steve Bush, describes a spontaneous school strike against war that took place yesterday in the town of Tiverton in Devon, England.

More than 10,000 workers, students and activists marched through Toronto, in Canada, on the 15 March anti-war protest organised by over 40 labour and community groups under the slogan ‘Build homes don’t bomb them’.

A teachers’ union in a school in Hackney, East London, has announced its backing of a half day strike by students on Day X. Furthermore the local union will ask all its members to also […]

The right wing cabal surrounding George Bush in the White House are determined to go to war with or without United Nations backing. Tony Blair is also determined to be in on the act. Take […]

The mass movements against war and the power struggles between and within the different ruling classes over the last few months have produced one unprecedented event after another.

On 15 March millions of people marched against imminent war in over 2,000 cities worldwide. Below we carry reports from CWI members of important protests in Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Japan and Greece.

The final countdown has started towards Bush and Blair’s war on Iraq. Within days a murderous onslaught will be launched against the Iraqi people. Weapons like the devastating "Daisy cutter bombs", depleted uranium muntion and […]

A major retrospective of the work of the 20th Century painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is currently running at the Tate Modern in London. Given the exhibition’s major concern with war and violent conflict, the timing […]

THE LOOMING US-led war on Iraq is causing uncertainties for capitalist investors. However, one section of big business hopes that a post-Saddam Iraq will become a lucrative venture.

FINANCE MINISTERS from the seven largest economies in the world met recently to debate how to revive the sick world economy. However, there was little agreement on how to revive the patient.

SOUTH AFRICA 24 April 2002. A giant faced a dying man in court. The giant told the man that he could not have the lifesaving drugs he needed because it had profits to protect. The […]

The newly elected PT (Workers’ Party) led government of Lula in Brazil has aroused massive expectations and demands for change amongst the workers, peasants and others exploited by capitalism. Millions of workers, youth and peasants […]

Last Thursday, 6 March, saw the opening of the trial of three leading members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) charged in relation to a June 15, 2000 anti-poverty demonstration in front of the […]

Yesterday some 50,000 demonstrated in Liège against the closure of Cockerill, a steel company owned by the multinational Arcelor. It was the biggest demonstration in Liège since the general strike of 1960-61. Besides thousands of […]

Stop work to stop the war.

DESPITE THE biggest demonstration in the history of Britain and unprecedented anti-war protests, Blair is determined to go to war with Iraq over the next few days. Like Bush, he believes that vital capitalist interests […]

Stop work to stop the war.

The opposition to the US war plans has increased in Chile in the past weeks. This has undoubtedly been in part because of Chile’s presence on the UN Security Council. The International Women’s Day march […]

The youth section of the social democratic nation trade union federation (ABVV) has called a national school student and higher education student strike on Friday 21 March. The appeal has received the support of the […]

While local union branches start to get involved in the anti-war campaign in Sweden, the national leadership of LO (trade union federation) is falling way behind. Three big branches of Seko (Communications Workers’ Union) have […]

A month since Sharon’s Likud party scored an election victory, and after long negotiations, the 75-year-old Prime Minister has managed to form a rightwing government based on a coalition of 68 out of 120 Members […]

Those who search for an alternative list during parliamentary elections on18 May, in Belgium, might consider the Resist list. As its name implies, the list stands for resistance against war, discrimination and exploitation. Still the […]

Russian president Putin almost gloated on the TV after the attack on the twin towers in New York. He claimed that the US would now understand what the Russian state’s ‘war against terror’ in Chechnya […]

The closer war approaches the more intense Bush and Blair’s propaganda becomes. Bush, in his press conference last week, spoke as if the USA was under imminent threat of attack from Iraq that necessitated immediate […]

A call for work stoppages throughout Europe to protest against the war at midday on Friday 14 March was made by the European Trade Union Congress at a meeting of its Executive last week (6 […]

On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we […]

"ON FEBRUARY 12th, incredulous but enthralled, Bolivians watched live broadcasts of the army and the police turning their guns on each other. What ensued was perhaps the worst period of civil disorder the country has […]

THE FIRST phase of the US-led war against Iraq has started. American and British warplanes have stepped up their bombing of Iraqi defences in the ’no-fly zones’, targeting surface-to-surface missile batteries.

THOUSANDS OF people on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC, the Line that divides Pakistani Occupied and Indian Occupied Kashmir) in Kashmir, different cities in Pakistan and Europe, recently celebrated the 19th anniversary […]

THE HUGE parliamentary revolt last week against Blair’s war plans was all the more remarkable given that the Tory party officially lined up behind Blair and the payroll vote of Labour ministers and parliamentary secretaries […]

Over 10 000 school students took part in the walk outs, rallies or in other forms of protest in the schools on March 5th.

No to war in Iraq. Protests in Northern Ireland

NIGERIA IS a neo-colonial country under the shackles of imperialism and its multinational agents. Women in Nigeria are marginalised and oppressed, as are women in capitalist society generally. Women are doubly oppressed, first as workers […]

This week, 150 students walked out of classes at York University in Toronto to join a world-wide student day of protest against the war in Iraq. Students marched through various buildings of the university and […]

The Bush administration suffered a serious blow to its war plans against Iraq after the Turkish parliament rejected, on Saturday 8 March, a draft law allowing the deployment of some 62,000 US troops to Turkish […]

The 2003 Scottish Socialist Party conference met recently against the backdrop of a likely war in Iraq and two months before the Scottish parliament elections.

Max Toynbee from Finham Park school reports:

Youth Against the War, the campaign set up by Socialist Youth, the Irish section of ISR, organised a successful walkout of school students in North Dublin yesterday. At 12.30 school students walked out of their […]

The re-formation of the coalition government between the People’s Party (ÖVP) and the far right Freedom Party (FPÖ) will leave many people in Austria angry, demotivated or frustrated. The fact that any other government coalition […]

The use of Shannon airport in the west of Ireland by the US military has become a very controversial issue. As part of international and commercial agreements, Shannon has been used by military powers for […]

Sergels square in the centre of Stockholm was filled with school students who demanded an immediate stop to preparations for war against Iraq.

The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) Zone D, i.e. the coordinating organ of all Nigerian students in all tertiary institutions in the South-West states is using this medium to officially solidarise with millions of […]

ALL THE political commentators are busy speculating in Scotland on just how the massive anti-war mood, reflected in the 80,000-strong demonstration in Glasgow on 15 February, will translate into votes at the Scottish parliament election […]

Reactionary epochs like ours not only disintegrate and weaken the working class and isolate its vanguard but also lower the general ideological level of the movement and throw political thinking back to stages long since […]

In order to correctly answer the question raised in the title of this article, it is first of all necessary to establish the difference between the basic conquest of the October Revolution-nationalized property-and the policy […]

Greetings to the Soviet workers, collective farmers, soldiers of the Red Army and sailors of the Red Navy! Greetings from distant Mexico where I found refuge after the Stalinist clique had exiled me to Turkey […]

The death of Joseph Stalin, took place half a century ago this month. However the anniversary has been largely covered in a superficial manner in the international media. Although the press has spent much time […]

AFTER THE magnificent events of 15 February, many hoped that worldwide demonstrations of tens of millions would halt the warmongers Bush and Blair in their tracks.

The US has mobilised a massive war machine, poised for an invasion of Iraq. Undoubtedly, the US has the military power to smash Saddam’s regime. But US imperialism will face major complications, especially in the […]

Alexandra Kollantai is probably the best-known woman among Russian revolutionaries, the first woman elected as a full member of the Bolshevik central committee and the first female commissar (minister) elected after the October 1917 revolution.

International Women’s Day, 8 March, is commemorated this year on the eve of war. Such a horrific prospect brings into sharp relief all that is rotten in today’s world. But it must not prevent us […]