C8 Forum

[cf]

Why I won’t be at the Peace March

Tomorrow, February 15, demonstrations and marches against a war on Iraq are planned in 600 cities and places. The aim, according to indymedia, is to mobilise 10m people.
Here are a few thoughts about the peace movement and ist role, the war and its possible merits. It is automatically touching on a whole range of other issues that are connected, sometimes more, sometimes less obvious. And due to the scope of the subject matter a lot of points should be made more concrete. In order to post this today I leave it in this raw version, and will be happy to discuss any resulting questions.

Almost everybody seems to agree: The left and the neo-nazis, the whole of Germany and the Islamic world: A group of evil, callous, cynical powermongers, obsessed with ruling the world have nothing else on their mind than bombing innocent civilians and sacrificing their own youth in their quest for oil and wold domination. For this they use their propaganda machinery, fake and forge and lie. Against this all the decent people(s) of the world should stand up and mobilise against the ‚tyrants’. We’ll all get another opportunity to show our strength as a civil society on february 15 – and march alongside Hamas sympathisers shouting ‚Jews to the gas!’.
Like this we can serve the imperialist ambitions of EU-Germany trying to position itself directly against the US in its slow but steady process of becoming one of the big players again. Germany who has the most investments in Iraq, whose chemical companies supplied Iraq with raw materials. For poison gas that Iraq intends to use against Israel.
It’s true that the US/UK alliance have come up with insufficient proof for some of the claims they’ve made. Nevertheless it should be clear to any half-intelligent person that they are probably right in most of their claims, and that they are certainly right in the assessment of the Ba’th party regime as a fascist dictatorship where human life and basic liberties are worthless or non-existent.
Insofar the assurances of France and Germany that they agree with the Americans on principle (of disarming Iraq) are hypocritical, because they aim at giving every chance to Saddam to carry on with his dictatorship, while the Americans and British are seeking a regime change and want to install a bourgeois democracy and ‚western values’ in Iraq.

People argueing against the war keep saying that the links to terrorism are trumped up by the sick imagination of Blair or Bush, when it’s common knowledge that Iraq is entertaining offices in the West Bank to make payouts of 25'000 US$ each to the families of suicide bombers and like this actively and efficiently support the murderous campaigns of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. These are organisations that essentially fight for a Jew-free religious dictatorship in Palestine. At least the Martyrs Brigade is directly tied to the socalled Palestinian Authority which in turn is mainly financed by EU-Germany.
German ties to the middle east go back a long time. The Osman Empire fought alongside it in WW1; WW2 saw a Palestinian SS-division fight against Britain – and against Zionism. If you think this is all the past and the tables have turned, then maybe the current discussions in Germany about allied war crimes against the poor Germans in 1944-45 could convince you that the situation is dodgier than most people in the west are aware of. German propaganda then always portrayed Churchill as a criminal warmonger – and now there’s talk about ‚state-terrorism’ by the allies in the mainstream media: when the truth is clear, blatant, in your face: that the bombing terror was necessary to break the resistance of Nazi Germany behind which the vast majority of the people stood to the last minute.
I have no intentions of saying that Saddam is the Hitler of today. This is a cheap argument that the West used already to destroy Yugoslavia in a scandalous and criminal war. But the Ba’th party regime is actually modelled after national socialism (with the addition of including families/clans in the powerstructure), and Saddam is known to be a fervent admirer of both Hitler and Stalin (and Italian hand made shoes).
Contrary to Germany in WW2 we have no reason to believe that ordinary people in Iraq love the regime. The Iraqi opposition seems clearly pro-war. 10'000 communists were butchered by the Ba’th gang after they came to power. There are executions of dissidents on a daily basis – 3000 people that are known by name fell victim of illegal executions without due process between May 1997 and late 2000 alone. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced or have disappeared.
Of course there would be innocent victims in case of a war, but there are innocent victims without a war. Every day people are tortured and murdered. Hundreds of thousands have died. And so on and so on. The horror of this regime and the casualties are well documented. They are not figments of the imagination!

Of course pacifists will logically prefer fascism to war.
But neither the Islamists, nor the neo-nazis, nor the Germans, nor the ‚left’ who are against this war are usually pacifists (with the exception of a segment of the left, and some christians). So we have to assume that they follow another agenda. An agenda that in this context means that they don’t give a fuck about the victims of a fascist dictatorship and only care about positioning themslves against America.
Each of these segments stand against a different America, for some it’s the multicultural, egalitarian aspect that is a nightmare, for others it’s the capitalism manifesting itself in that society, for Germany it’s imperialist competition, and possibly latent revanchism.
One problem is that these are starting to get all mixed up now.

If it’s true that more people than in living memory are against the government for example in Britain, then that’s cool, but it’s for the wrong reasons.
In Datacide we have consistently attacked the moves towards more dictatorial powers for the western governments as they manifest themselves in the various ‚anti-terrorist’ pieces of legislation. Italy and West-Germany passed a wide range of legislation in the 70’s (Germany passed state of emergency laws in the 60’s). We know that fascism is a card the establishment is prepared to play to save capitalism in the face of crisis, not just in Germany. And we know that fascism, if the capitalist crisis is getting worse (which is obviously is), will reappear with a different face. Sure, the US and Britain are catching up in this respect.
But state of emergency legislation is not yet fascism, nor even tyranny.
People who are sitting there, protected by the basic bills of rights that are and remain in place in the west, calling the Bush/Blair governments ‚tyrannical’ don’t know what their talking about. The capitalist order of exploitation and alienation that these regimes represent should be overthrown by the revolutionary movement, I am the first to agree. But not overthrown in favour of a basic, fake, negative anti-capitalism.
Fascism appears as the saviour of capitalism under an anti-capitalist pretense. It locates the trouble in the sphere of circulation, as opposed to the sphere of production. Simplified: It will claim that finance capital is the culprit, and that if only we could get rid of the evil globalisers, cosmopolitans and jews, everyone could live in a ‚natural’ state of each people’s subsistence-capitalism = national socialism.
Most segments of the radical left have a tendency to salute any and every move(ment) against the current order in the absence of real class struggles. Once upon a time they called anti-semitism the ‚socialism of the stupid guy’. This was in itself stupid to start with, but since nazi-germany there is no two ways about it. Nevertheless some still use anti-semitism, now called anti-zionism, as a mobilising tool, organise boycotts of Israel – a state that needed to be founded on the basis of the experience of the shoa, because it turned out that jews needed an armed national construct to be able to defend themselves against exterminist forces – and spread the ideology of a crude anti-imperialism and of national liberation.
No wonder they are now mobilising for Saddam Hussein’s regime, and for Germany, traditionally the friend of the oppressed nations.
If this week’s Bin Laden tape is genuine, it completes the circle of this united front I was talking about at the beginning of this text. While distancing himself from the ‚socialist’ (should say: national-socialist) regimes, he calls on muslims to fight shoulder to shoulder against America and the Jews, implicitly – in the context of the ‚peace’ marches - that means shoulder to shoulder with Germany, with Trotzkyists, with Anarchists, with Stalinists, with Christians, with North Korea, Cuba, France, Russia, China, even though all the above only share some points with each other.
The situation is cetainly confused, the frontlines seem to be drawn along new lines.

How should we position ourselves in this if we agree that our aim is worldwide revolution against capitalism and for a future human community called communism?

Only a tiny minority of the undogmatic ultra-left and anti-german communists are opposing BOTH capitalism and national-socialist anti-imperialism.
They again are split, as the ultra-left are vouching for a continuation of the ‚no war but the class war’ campaign, while the anti-germans (based in Germany) are calling for unconditional support for Israel and implicitly for a war against the Ba’th regime.

I see temporary shortcomings in both poins of view: the ultra-left, while heroically (and I don’t mean this ironically) upholding the revolutionary project on a world wide scale is generally suffering from the lack of an analysis of anti-semitism as the pathology of the way capitalism deals with its crises, the anti-germans, powered by a Frankfurt School inspired critical theory, seem too fixated on Germany and its resurgence as a world power (and the resulting next world war – a rather vital point as well that should be taken more seriously in the international movement) . I hope in the near future the two fractions will be able to go a step beyond their differences and help to establish a platform for communist critique of both capitalism and its negative abolition, and for a resurgence of the world revolutionary movement for communism.

The socalled peace movement however is not only an expansion of the socalled anti-globalisation movement making realpolitik for ‚old Europe’ and its anti-imperialist friends, but also making war in Iraq more probable.
If the world, including Germany, France, Russia and China had actually made the threat of force associated with UN resolution 1441 credible, then maybe Iraq had felt compelled to explain the whereabouts of 1'000 tons of chemical weapons and chemicals that remain unaccounted for according to todays Blix report.
The united front of the mentioned countries, the church, the arab world and the peace movement simply deny the urgency to answer such questions. Their sanctimonious talk of ‚averting war’costs lives on a daily basis in a calculated powergame.

Following Marx, let us state that the victory of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, the development of the productive forces and public debate it brings about, is the prerequisite for communism. The geopolitical aim of the US/UK coalition to break up the geographical block of a coalition of barbarity of Islamism and arab national socialism in the middle east could be a step in the right direction.
I’m not saying we should side positively with and support Bush and Blair, but negatively, because as absurd the situation has become, and as much as I don’t like to say this, for the wrong reasons entirely, it’s them who seem dedicated to dismantling and toppling fascist, stalinist and religious dictatorships around the world, and thus, sadly, for the moment, do more for communism than anyone else, without indending to, finally digging their own graves.

[istari lasterfahrer]

peace demonstrations suck ever - like any demonstration.

thats right, demonstrating for not destroying the regime in iraq is not very
clever. so it makes me think. but if the us/uk going to attack iraq whats next ? setting up a governoeur ? they cant stop the battlemarch after victoring bagdad, they got to victory all the arab countrys around iraq too, killing every person not willing to have them in their countrys. what kind of freedom will that be ? is there any something like freedom or a little piece of hope on this ? freedom still is having money and the better arms.

problem are religous fanatics are taking over worldwide because of a lack of other possibilities, communism went all wrong if we see the history of the 20th century. communism was used by powermongers like stalin in every contry it was set up. ok, may someone say that this wasnt communism anyway but who going to listen. the word itself becoming dead from history, being semantic perverted by experiences. same goes to the word anarchism, which only stands for bollock shit like destruction and raping, from movies, comics and newspaper telling us.


who cares anyway ? missed-out is on mtv tonight - lets drops some bombs in the mean time.


oh yes ! i don`t belive germany is not on the war side because of some bussiness types they have done now and in the last time with iraq, they could easyly do much more money by capturing iraq with us/uk and the others and i don`t belive its some OLD secret plan from germany and the palestinensian to wipe out the jews ( thats sounds just a bit to paranoid, but is an interresting mind play ). i think the lefty german goverment is just diffuse against this war because of old 68 spirit, dont ask me why. it doesnt fit really to what they do in germanys inner-politix right now.

2: demonstration suck because running around with a bunch of people with some diffuse aims you dont know is sometimes strange. but should i care ? still going to some...

[synthe.labo]

well, i read with a lot of interest these textes.
i say that i don't think that demonstartions suck as a concept, it's all about when, how, and the attitude of the thing.
to make a practical example, i can say i supported the so called no-global movement in '99, 2000 and 2001, i remember i saw in a good light the Seattle riot, Pragha2000, and i was personally at Genoa in 2001.
the last sorta hippie snaturated thing at Firenze in 2002 was a bit far from the roots of what i believed in: a movement that is positive and try to propose solutions and things against capitalist and imperialist globalization, and together has to demonstrate a big distance from power, and, if this is needed, some action to manifestate angriness.

first i tell you my position: i am not a gandhian pacifist, i believe that in some cases the use of the force and war can be necessary, but i believe that 90% of the times is just for economical purposes, so i can say i'm pacifist in the way i don't support 'national' wars (toghether with my hard antinationalism, antipatriotism), but i can support *civil wars* or riots of violence not as a *solution* but as a natural behaviour.

i found some interesting points in your text, Christoph, and i would ask you/discuss:

>>""Following Marx, let us state that the victory of capitalism and
bourgeois democracy, the development of the productive forces and
public debate it brings about, is the prerequisite for communism. ""<<

probably it's my broken english etc, but i find this point a bit controverse....
is the meaning that for the becoming of 'communism' is needed the victory of capitalism before, so in the end it will be a *revolution*?

>>""I’m not saying we should side positively with and support
Bush and Blair, but negatively, because as absurd the situation
has become, and as much as I don’t like to say this,
for the wrong reasons entirely, it’s them who seem dedicated
to dismantling and toppling fascist, stalinist and
religious dictatorships around the world, and thus, sadly,
for the moment, do more for communism than anyone else,
without indending to, finally digging their own graves.""<<

this is more interesting...
i try to extreme simplify your though AS i understud it (so i can be completely wrong at the beginning): USA/UK and the others, fighting the fascist dictatorship of Saddam and rebuilding that fucked up arab zone, for absurd, will contribute to do something for 'communism'...
i know my version is a bit too simple.
if this war will bring a sorta democracy into Iraq, this will be really far from left-wing or communism, i mean, capitalistic nations are going to destroy this fascist dictature, so, till in my simplified way, there will be a little democracy that will look to USA and Europe as they are: capitalistic states!
the need for OIL in that zone will cover only some war costs, BUT the whole thing, i suppose, is done to build a new arab zone, pseudo democratic, that will be able to make good and riskless commerce with USA. also in this way, i see communism really far.

my personal opinion is against this war, and this time i am really more practical respect the idealist i'm supposed to be: i don't think it will end in a quick time, terrorism will have new evident motivations to exist, the distance between muslims and catholic and in general between arabs and occidentals will be bigger and bigger.

i'm scared by some thoughts i read from some mailing lists from USA, where i listened to many americans and the point of these texes i read can be resumed into:
this war will be about 3 things: for preventing terrorism - for oil - for revenge.
11/9 is still heavy thought, i feel in the worlds of this people that feelings that are behind the death penalty....a little bit of revenge involved, but now it's a nerve war, i feel that US lost a bit the lucidity.
in any case, well, i can't support something NATIONAL done also for economy and for revenge.
but these last points are less importatnt respect the others i spoke about before.

[Adverse_Solutions]

Some comments on this piece:

I don't substantially disagree with your reasoning for not attending the peace march. I think it's a good thing that you're being realistic about the power Saddam Hussein posesses, thereby taking a critical stance towards all fascists.

Could you go into the reasons that you see driving Germany and France to oppose the US intervention in the middle east? Shifting their standing in the EU? Constricting the oil supply of the US in order to drive barrel prices up in order to tip the scales of bourgeois competition?

I like how you point out that the structure of the Ba'ath party is essentially fascistic; this is a point that few anti-war protestors would acknowledge. I wholeheartedly agree that the basic interests of ongoing capitalism (i.e liberals) oppose themselves to a qualitative critique. War is horror but everyday life under capitalism is somehow not...that's why we see famous actors, business owners, priests, rabbis, petit-bourgeois marching against the war but not the everyday misery that this state of human existence implies.

Generally, what do you think are the foundations of the 'current crisis'?

<<"But not overthrown in favour of a basic, fake, negative anti-capitalism."

"How should we position ourselves in this if we agree that our aim is worldwide revolution against capitalism and for a future human community called communism?">>

I differ here. I definitely agree that negative anti-capitalist movements which posit no logical alternative are doomed to vacillation in moments of revolutionary opportunity. However I disagree that communism offers us much. I once heard communism described as "the widest expansion of the means of production possible that is not at conflict with human needs," if that defines communism, then I can agree with that. But human needs in a civilized context are essentially conflictual...Especially pertaining to Iraq, whose primary export is oil, what solution does communism offer? Obviously the idea is to break down borders surrounding Iraq and integrate it into a federation of socialist entities (i.e soviets) but I still think you're left with the bald-faced reality that oil powers 99% of human civilization; therefore that region already has a powerful, if unstated, advantage over other economic areas. Capitalism assigns values to these inputs, Communism proposes to destroy the law of value through socialized production on an edifice of material plenty, so perhaps the development of the productive forces...? In a desert region whose main productive activity is oil it doesn't seem likely that you'll be able to unify 'town and country' outside of extensive recovery of desertified areas (which takes at least fifty years at best). Any revolutionary gains will find themselves knelled at the reality of the unequal valuations of material inputs.
Following from that, I think it's important to note the material conditions that enable fascism, one of which is an economy based off the production of a single relatively scarce (on the worldwide level) commodity, that eventually comes to be controlled by a power clique. We see this in Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran. To the extent that capitalism can integrate these economies into its over-arching division of labor, it dulls the power of the controlling clique either through that clique's destruction or through economic or military coercion. Communism would face the same need for coercion.

"Only a tiny minority of the undogmatic ultra-left and anti-german communists are opposing BOTH capitalism and national-socialist anti-imperialism."

True.

"I see temporary shortcomings in both poins of view: the ultra-left, while heroically (and I don’t mean this ironically) upholding the revolutionary project on a world wide scale"

How do you figure? To my eyes the ultra-left is marginal at best.

"anti-semitism as the pathology of the way capitalism deals with its crises,"

Definitely agree here, same with anti-globalization and "anti-corporatism."

<<The geopolitical aim of the US/UK coalition to break up the geographical block of a coalition of barbarity of Islamism and arab national socialism in the middle east could be a step in the right direction.>>

You've got to explain this more. I think you're SERIOUSLY underestimating the US ruling class.

"I’m not saying we should side positively with and support Bush and Blair, but negatively, because as absurd the situation has become, and as much as I don’t like to say this, for the wrong reasons entirely, it’s them who seem dedicated to dismantling and toppling fascist, stalinist and religious dictatorships around the world, and thus, sadly, for the moment, do more for communism than anyone else, without indending to, finally digging their own graves."

I'm going to wait for more clarification on this, but for the moment all i can think is "The bourgeois as liberators, where have I heard this before oh yeah history class."

SPHINX

[cf]

To start with I’d like to say I don’t think demonstrations suck; I’ve had great fun at various demos in the past. Maybe peace demos suck, but that wasn’t my point; I wanted to criticise the current ‚peace movement’ for siding with EU-Germany in the conflict between the imperialist powers and for explicitly supporting a fascist dictatorship and implicitly anti-semitic terrorism.
I think capitalism is in a deep crisis, and this is what brings about the splits between the new blocs.
And it’s under attack – sept.11 was neither perpetrated nor invented by Bush or Mossad, as some paranoid people try to make out, but by a gang of wahabite anti-capitalists.
I think it’s possible that there is a paradigm shift in the American administration: For decades they supported tyrannical regimes in the middle east, a policy that has failed dramatically. The initial reason was clear, to quote James Atkins, the former US ambassador to Iraq: „The Ba’th Party had come to control in 1963. We were very happy. They got rid of a lot of communists. A lot of them were executed or shot. This was a great development.“
Now that ‚communism’ doesn’t come into the equation anymore as far as the administration is concerned, the ‚hawks’ in the defense ministry would like to stop supporting far right religious fascists - the last time they did that was in Kosovo – and instead try to solve the problems on a deeper level, and install western style ‚democracies’, and proper free trade capitalism.
A similar development has already progressed further in Latin America, where there are hardly any military dictatorships left that for example Kissinger still was supporting actively only three decades ago. This has given space for opposition to develop, including opposition critical of the US.

This leads me back to the point that some have commented on above, that real communism can only follow capitalism. I’m just following marxist orthodoxy here. Up to the russian revolution it was universally agreed on in the revolutionary movement that it would have to be in the most developed nations that the revolution would be successful, because there the proletariat would be the most advanced in terms of devolopment as a class, understanding of the situation and degree of organisation.
Even after the revolution was successful in Russia, then a backward feudal country, Lenin was convinced it would fail in the longer run if it wasn’t also successful at least in Germany. He was right. The German revolution was drowned in blood, Stalin came to power in Russia and following his ‚theory’ of ‚socialism in one country’ (national socialism!) established a ‚state capitalist’ regime. A regime that in fact prepared and developed Russia (as it does in China now) for capitalism! Stalinism equals anti-communist counter-revolution.
I know it’s unfortunate that even todays stalinists – like Kim Jong Il, or the Party in China – still talk of themselves as communists. This confuses many people, and has done almost irreparable damage to real communism.
So getting back to the orthodox view: yes, the bourgeoisie was once a revolutionary class (not everything in history lesson is wrong), overthrowing feudalism and promising equality, freedom and justice. We can measure them against their promises and we will find them lacking: The proletariat is the growing number of people that realise that the pursuit of happiness is the refuge of the few, that the alienating rule of the commodity is stifling humanity, that instead of being able to realise themselves they are made into working things, when in reality the productive forces and technology are so developed that no one would have to work and everybody could live in luxury. This is communism!

Fascism offers a different vision: The vision of everybody of the same blood sticking together, toiling and breeding for the leader, being ONE through the leader,defining themselves against the Other (often the Jews), and defining their freedom as being free of the Other. This is Saddams vision of himself as the leader of the Arabs.

Now, Bush and Blair explicitly use the promises of the bourgeoisie as their vision of the world. France and Germany only talk about stability and ‚peace’, when this is simply not dealing with the situation. The chancellor getting carried away drinking wine with some journalists and making up stupid concepts, Fischer getting all emotional (and unprofessional), but in a calculated way.

Still this doesn’t mean two things:
I’m not in the first instance ‚pro war’ but ‚pro regime-change’; maybe if the world had stood united and put pressure on Iraq, also assured that an insurrection or coup d’etat would this time have their support, maybe Saddam would have had to give up. With the catholic church, the french, the german and other governments, the arab nations and the anti-globalisation movement at his side he gambles, hides his weapons, and waits on. Under these circumstances, sadly, if you are for revolution in Iraq it becomes more and more indistinguishable to being ‚pro war’.
I don’t think communism becomes inevitable once the Americans march into Baghdad, of course we are very far away. But if they manage to do so with minimal casualies, I’m sorry, but they will have done the Iraqi people a favour even if an amount of ‚destabilisation’ occurs.
And yes I do think the smashing up of the Taliban was a good thing, even though Karzai is a CIA puppet and social progress is in it’s infancy. But there are possibilities again!

This doesn’t mean I underestimate the US ruling class, but let’s put it like that:
My point is that they should be overthrown as well, but for the reason that their promises of freedom, equality and justice DO NOT hold up, and NOT for the reason that wahabite terrorists stand for: because they hate freedom, equality and justice.

Maybe you think that’s hair splitting – I think it’s fundamental.

The problem is that we are not even at a point where we could start putting this into action, because there is no positive revolutionary movement worth its name, only small circles of the ultra-left and critical theorists (doing exactly this: upholding the revolutionary project under adverse conditions).

So the point of my text was to criticise a situation when there was a big movement using a gigantic mobilisation to do exactly the wrong things, siding with some of the most sinister forces on the planet.

For humanity to evolve, and let me also draw a clear line between what I believe in and primitivism, we have to find the ‚exit’ door out of this mess and not try to get out the way we got in. This means I’m totally pro-technology (in fact, someone being anti-technology using the internet and sound systems doesn’t make any sense to me, mr.sphinx), as far as I’m egalitarian, I’m for the equal distribution of luxury, not of misery, I’m not just for water for everybody, but for warm water and fridges and solar-powered superhitech public transport worldwide. Etc.
This is within human reach within one generation.
Total destruction is as well.

[istari lasterfahrer]

seen. well i was a bit sarcastic saying any demonstration sucks, they bigger they are then more they suck - like partys (?). well small demos are frustrating as well. i mean being in a crowd with so many different individuals makes me disbelive in some kind of unity. like you say on this peace demos we have anarchists, anti-imps, christians, hippies, unions, socialists, trozkists, maoists and even faschists. thats to defussive. then some punks there just to fight police when it makes no sence. same you have on anti-globalisation demos.where its a good ground for nationalists too.

i have no short answere to the enlarging struggle between islam and occident i see growing. i hate the traps of the islam, as well as on any other religon, but if these people want there religon they can keep it but dont treat other with their mindsickness. the problem is that on both sides faschist like tendencies are growing. that fears me more.

hey and turkey just waits to attack the kurdistan side of iraq. as they do now and then. and turkey is also not realy a democratic country.

i think the us lacks in general in some intelligent forign affairs treatment. they only look who can fit their uses. last year friend, this year foe. instead of sending out marines, cia or war-contractors they could use the immense knowledge for better causes. but again allways they like to deal with criminals and such, instead of intellectual, bravehearded persons in third world countrys.

why they allways make a world of hate ?

[eiterherd]

ok.. after finding some time reading all these opinions (which is indeed hard work, because there are certain allegations made without quotes of sources - so it counts for me as an opinion, which I am not able to verify with sources right now - it would be possible, but just with hard research work), I would like to ask all participants here to please also post sources!

(especially CF, please!)

I will try to work out some views now.. I will mostly quote CF, because he made the most arguments.. I would prefer to do that in a real discussion instead of a virtual one, but ok.. geographical problems.. beaming is not possible yet.. so here we go..

I start with a very simple point of view:

First of all we have to consider what the topic is: WAR and PEACE (more or less) .. WAR: in this case its mostly about civilian lives being affected.. UN estimated that 500000+ Iraqi civilians will be wounded or die when war starts.. the impact on the whole region will be massive. [1]

ok.. so its about KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE.. violence, murder, death, pain, horror .. we always have to picture that in front of our eyes if we discuss that..

I am sure that no one here is supporting the mass-killing of people..

ok.. simply said.. very clear.. we are against that.. ok.. so we oppose war.. its a barbaric ritual.. strong will defeat weak.. like in the middle ages..

the question now is: is there a justification for WAR ? .. like there maybe was some very quesionable justification for bombing Dresden in WW2?

is there a justification now?

I dont think so.. I dont see any justification.. so I am against this WAR, which would definetly lead into WW3.

I also did not attend the demonstrations, but I think it was a powerful sign of the people for a good case - a peaceful solution - not only in Iraq - in general! I do support that: a vision(!) of peace.

To me this vision of peace and peaceful living-together of people is crucial - also for the idea of communism. its a vision for the future.. I am not naive.. I know that this is not realistic.. people will kill each other also in the future.. for hundreds of years.. but still.. the vision is strong and important.. maybe most people will be smarter in 300 years.. I am pretty optimistic..

For me a peace-movement is important.. because of its power of the mobilization of masses.. for a good and important vision..

back to Iraq:
CF please explain:

[Adverse_Solutions]

<<To start with I’d like to say I don’t think demonstrations suck; I’ve had great fun at various demos in the past. Maybe peace demos suck, but that wasn’t my point; I wanted to criticise the current ‚peace movement’ for siding with EU-Germany in the conflict between the imperialist powers and for explicitly supporting a fascist dictatorship and implicitly anti-semitic terrorism.>>

Daniel, I think this is where you've missed CF's point. He's not saying that if one takes the stance of pacifist or anti-imperialist one supports the war in Iraq (though both those positions demand scrutiny), he's saying that once you place yourself within a mediating vehicle like a "peace march" that necessarily conglomerates disparate and oppositive ideologies, that THAT compromise shoves our dissent into a vehicle for one of the opposition blocs. In this case, it is France/Germany's bourgeoisie, whose capitalist competition with the United States and Britain provides cover for a moralistic appeal to put a stop to war.

"I think capitalism is in a deep crisis, and this is what brings about the splits between the new blocs."

I'm still interested in what you think the foundations of the current crisis are.

<<This leads me back to the point that some have commented on above, that real communism can only follow capitalism. I’m just following marxist orthodoxy here. Up to the russian revolution it was universally agreed on in the revolutionary movement that it would have to be in the most developed nations that the revolution would be successful, because there the proletariat would be the most advanced in terms of devolopment as a class, understanding of the situation and degree of organisation.>>

This is Marxist orthodoxy alright and in this case, I actually agree with it. Yes, revolution will stand the best chance if begun in industrial countries or spread to them. However, have we seen a lot of success as regards revolution in these countries? The closest we've gotten to communism in the past 30 years was Paris '68 and who intervened to shut that down? The communists.

<<Even after the revolution was successful in Russia, then a backward feudal country, Lenin was convinced it would fail in the longer run if it wasn’t also successful at least in Germany. He was right. The German revolution was drowned in blood,>>

Once again due to the vacillation of communists.

[stevvi]

I've only had time to skim the surface of this topic so apologies if I don't understand something obvious.

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[cf]

Stalin said that too, in fact I believe that Saddam Hussein also thinks that you're either for him or against him, so a fair number of people, yesterday his friends had a bullet in the head the next.
Sorry but I DIDN'T say that - with who or against who? Me?
The comparison of the peace march with DbD is totally nonsensical. There may or may not have been a fascist there at one party or another, or even hundreds of them, although this is a claim that is new to me, it still has nothing to do with the demo situation, because it was no platform for them.
DbD had a political agenda, we held talks and discussion. No fascist or racist ever voiced their opinion there, or even in the broader context of DbD.
Actually they wouldn't have been tolerated!

The peace marches do explicitly ask the US and UK governments to refrain from toppling Saddam. So they explicitly support a fascist dictatorship.
It's simple and logical.
It's just one point that there are fascists mobilising and marching along - you only have to go to the npd.de (national democratic party of germany, most important neo-nazi party) to read their call to participate in the peace demo under the title 'people rise' (Volk Steh auf) - a direct reference to the rhetoric of WW2.
You can also go to bnp.org.uk to read how the british national party joins the peace march, including picture of their banner! (you can also 'get a fun logo and ringtone for your mobile from the BNP')
It's not that there are just a few by mistake or because they're pacifists at heart. These were serious mobilisations of their followers.

so please don't slander DbD with baseless analogies.
not sure what would have happened had Saddam shown up off his face on speed and ketamine. would we have left him raving in the basement? probably, why not
more later....

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NPD and others btw have always been anti-american.. of course.. they see a chance to swim alongside the masses,,,

but to condemn the majority because of the common goals with a minority of crazyheads is not correct, dont you think so?

.. brings me to another point.. you might also think it is not correct to critizise Israel, because the Nazis do so too?
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maybe I should differentiate: some in the peace movement are for, some against toppling Saddam, all are against war to achieve this. objectively though they are strengthening his survival, as is the German etc position.
I mean a position that says Saddam should go into exile on his own volition is simply not serious. It may pretend to be against his rule, but it's a joke, because he's not going to step down just like that.
This is why I said the peace movement does the opposite than avert war: It helps weaken the credible threat of military strike that could have forced Saddam to give up. After what the french said in the security council, after Tariq Aziz' visit to the pope and after the massive demonstrations he feel a bit more secure. He was quoted as saying he was "relieved" after last weekend.
On the other hand of course it would be desirable if Iraqis could liberate themselves, but no opposition group is in a position to organise such a struggle, insurrection in the slums of Baghdad are unlikely to occur - at least without foreign firepower. It must be extremely hard to organise in Iraq, especially in the urban areas, as the party machine controls every housing block. now they also control the distribution of water and fuel.

People are incredibly afraid to be seen at the same side as the US.
The Iraqi Communist Party for example calls for the "departure" of Saddam and is against a war. (iraqcp.org) - the party of course was crippled, its cadres tortured and killed, and - once the strongest opposition force - now only seems to exist in exile and small groups in the less controlled north of Iraq. I have already quoted the US ex-ambassador...

I didn't say you can't criticise the Americans because neo-nazis are against them. I find it quite necessary to criticise them.
... but since you raise the topic I happen to agree that it's not correct to criticise Israel. besides that I don't think nazis "criticise" Israel, they want to destroy it full stop, and so do a bunch of other forces also opposed to the war on Iraq.

more (in german)on these topics
http://redaktion-bahamas.org/