'We will not be ignored any more'

Today the Middle East is poised on the edge of the abyss. The extrajudicial killings of Palestinian leaders Sheikh Yassin and Dr Rantissi, and the massacre of 700 men, women and children in the city of Fallujah, may well have opened "the gates of hell" in the region and far beyond.

We should never forget that more than one fifth of the world's population are Arabs and Muslims living across the world. Only a fool could be unaware of the massive pain, humiliation, despair and anger felt by these hundreds of millions of peoples. They yearn for a new world order based on fairness, justice and respect for their lands, religion, culture and people.

The anti-war movement warned in September 2001 of the dangers of the capture of the Bush presidency by the Christian fundamentalist and Zionist reactionaries led by Cheney and Wolfowitz. We warned that this imperialist, strongly pro-Israeli cabal would launch a series of "preventive wars", starting with the attack on Afghanistan and then the bombing, invasion and occupation of the sovereign state of Iraq, by exploiting the world's sympathy after the September 11, 2001 act of criminality.

It is now widely thought that Blair signed up for both in 2001, but outrageously kept this momentous decision from both his Cabinet colleagues and the British public. The cowardly slaughter of now over 55,000 Iraqi people had to have a cover story. Blair told us that they had 'weapons of mass destruction' (WMD) and threatened the world. It was an unforgivable lie for which he should be removed from high office forthwith. In fact, the only ME state that definitely does have WMD - atomic, biological and chemical, the ABC of Mass Death - is Israel.

Indeed, none of Blair's reasons for this "war" stand up to examination: it has not stabilised the Middle East but done the opposite; it has led to more not less terrorist activity; the occupation of Palestine continues, and the 'Road Map' and Resolution 242 have been unilaterally recently been set aside by Bush and Sharon.

Understandably, after a year of bloody chaos in Iraq, there is now total disillusionment with the brutal, insensitive occupation. More and more Iraqis are resisting imposed foreign rule and the country is close to a broadly-based uprising, all against a background of the steady withdrawal of troops, the latest being Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, from "the coalition of the willing".

While there was not a scrap of evidence linking Iraq with bin Laden, Rumsfeld and Bush deliberately sought to conflate terrorism and Iraq. Worse still, Americans are encouraged to believe that they live in a nightmare world in which some mythical state, The Islamic Terrorist Republic, is the some sort of new, post cold war, enemy. Tragically, the wholly ridiculous and immensely dangerous "war of terrorism" strategy could become self-fulfilling.

Iraqis have watched imperial Consul Bremer put in place an interim constitution, laws and regulations which bind the hands of any future Iraqi government, ruling out even the possibility of making changes to business contracts. These laws permanently open the economy to foreign - mostly US corporate - ownership leaving real power in the hands of US embassy and an army of occupation which is currently building a network of 14 "enduring" bases across the country.

Bush and Blair tell us that Iraq will be transformed into a "democracy" on June 30. In fact, it will be a meaningless hand-over to another hand-picked bunch of pro-US politicians and businessmen under the control of newly-appointed US Consul, John Negroponte, a Reaganite who already has blood on his hands when he gave the red light to the slaughter of thousands of Honduran people by death squads linked to the American-backed Contras. Bush and Blair are now turning, belatedly, to the UN to help legitimise their occupation, but even this is likely to fail.

The image of the UN has fallen to rock bottom in the Arab world after decades of inaction over the Palestinian plight, ten years of punitive sanctions on the Iraqi people and an complete inability to restrain American and Israeli aggression across the region. UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, backed the US early decision not to hold elections in Iraq, provoking Salim Lone, a former communications director at the UN, to say that "the UN ended up intensifying the crisis, appearing to be pro-US, anti-Iraqi and anti-democratic".

USING diplomatic language, David Richmond, the new UK representative in Baghdad, describes the current situation as "extremely difficult." In fact, Bush and Blair are in a bind. If they "stay the course", it will mean a quagmire of more slaughters, such as in Fallujah, leading to a bloody uprising. If they "cut and run", it will be seen as the biggest defeat since Vietnam.

No imperial power can allow the barbarians a victory, neither Rome nor Washington. Hence, we witness daily the deployment of US and US-financed Israeli state terrorism across the Middle East, which inevitably produces appalling localised Jihadist terrorism in response. The stark reality is that US imperialism is at the root of our global problems.

The actions, protests and ultimately the votes of the peoples of the US, UK and Israel must throw out these dangerous and misguided leaders. It is imperative that Bush be rejected by American voters and replaced by Senator Kerry in November. Sharon should be voted out by Israeli voters at the earliest opportunity and then brought before a war crimes tribunal.

Blair personally decided to support the US neo-conservative strategy to dominate the Middle East and seize control of the vital and enormous oil reserves under Arab land. He arrogantly struts the world stage, with fixed smile, voicing a nave belief that global capitalism can be manipulated into some sort of utopian Blairite order. There are solutions to this global crisis but we have to find both the will and the new leaders to have some chance of success. Time, however, is getting very short.

In the European Parliamentary Election on June 10, there is an opportunity, perhaps the only opportunity, for British voters to register their opposition to Blair's disastrous foreign policies. The Spanish electors were ignored by the war party, who were then thrown out after the bombing. We were ignored in the British corridors of power before the war. We were ignored even after two million of us joined the largest political demonstration ever seen in the UK. We will not be ignored any more.

Respect - The Unity Coalition is a new political movement which stands for peace and an end to the occupations in Iraq and Palestine. It also stands for a range of progressive policies on society and the economy. A high turnout of support for the Respect party in the North-East could be a turning point in British politics.