London bombings -- the price of the “war on terror”

A statement from the Socialist Alliance (Australia)

July 8, 2005

The Socialist Alliance condemns outright the horrific bombings in London yesterday and expresses our solidarity with all the victims and their families and friends.

The bombings are in no way a blow against imperialist exploitation and oppression. The majority of those killed and wounded in London will have opposed the imperialist leaders’ wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and many will have supported the huge protests against world poverty in Scotland this week. Meanwhile the G8 leaders were safe behind fortified walls, protected by thousands of police and armed forces, plotting how to entrench their exploitation of the oppressed peoples of the world.

For Tony Blair, George Bush, John Howard and Co, the London bombing, like those in Bali, Madrid and 9/11 itself, is not a tragedy but an opportunity. It is already being used to whip up “anti-terrorist” hysteria and to try to silence the now far-reaching condemnation of the imperialists’ wars and occupations, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine in particular.

Yesterday’s horrific events reveal yet again that the claims by Blair, Bush and Howard that their “war on terror” has made the world a safer place are entirely false. In fact, the “coalition of the willing” has created more, not less, terrorism. Since the formal declaration of the war there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of major terrorist attacks.

Terrorists are not born with terrorist ideas; they are produced by lives of repression, violence, poverty and humiliation. The London tragedy is one more reflection of the universal violation of democratic and human rights by the imperialist system. For so long as global inequality and injustice continue, countless thousands more innocent people will die needlessly.

The Socialist Alliance will continue to campaign for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This is the most effective way to make the world a safer place.

Meanwhile, we will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Middle Eastern and Muslim communities against every xenophobic attack and continue to campaign for the repeal of all state and federal “anti-terror” laws, laws which do nothing to reduce the risk of terrorist attack but do drastically reduce democratic rights and are being systematically used against Middle Eastern and Muslim Australians in particular.

Socialist Alliance

 http://www.socialist-alliance.org