Tactical victory for Iraqi oil workers'

PRESS RELEASE from Naftana

Dear all,
Below is the full translation of a message received today, Monday 11 June 2007, from Hassan Juma'a, president of the Federation of Oil Union (IFOU) declaring a tactical victory in the ongoing struggle of Iraqi oil workers. On behalf of Naftana, we would like to extend our thanks to all, from across the world, who have campaigned and written to express solidarity with the oil workers and the IFOU. Naftana will continue to relay news ofthe oil workers in their struggle to improve living and working conditions,assert trade union rights and protect Iraq's oil from the proposed oil law,championed by the occupation governments.

Naftana

Full text of message:

Warm greetings, We would like to inform you of the latest developments in the oil workers strike in the south. Finally the workers have won in in demanding their legitimate rights. That is why an enlarged meeting was held with his excellency the minister of State for the Parliament Affairs lasting five hours resulting in thecessation of all the failings resulting from the conduct of the Iraqi Ministry of Oil and the irresponsible stance of the oil minister.

Most ofthe issues within the remit of the prime minister were dealt with. The meeting was very successful, because the minister represented the prime minister. The activation of the committee formed by the prime minister to deal with the outstanding problems was affirmed.

And after deliberations within our union, the two sides agreed to halt the strike and to use dialogue in dealings to resolve the outstanding issues. On the other hand, all problems were presented to His Eminence Sayyid Sistani, and the Iraqi ministry of oil was reprimanded for its improper conduct.

Therefore, we would like to say to all that the workers will is indestructible. The workers can achieve what they want by the means available to them and their strength. And the oil workers are very strong, because they have a legitimate right. The workers have scored a thirdvictory in demanding their rights.

Long live the Iraqi working class.
Regards,
Hassan Juma'a Awwad

Further update on Iraqi oil workers' strike...

Press release from Naftana:
The president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), Hassan Juma’a has informed Naftana* at about 3.30 PM London time (Friday 8th June 2007) that the arrest warrants against the leaders of the Federation have not been withdrawn, and he made an urgent appeal to world trade unionists and the anti-war movement to step up the solidarity campaign with Iraq’s oil workers and trade unionists.

Hassan Juma’a said “the arrest warrants, issued by the prime minister’s office, are still in force, despite the Federation’s decision to postpone the strike till Monday 11th June to allow for further negotiations.”

US jet planes were buzzing the skies of Basra as he spoke to Naftana on the phone. He added that Iraqi army tanks and other forces were still besieging workers in Sheiba, in Basra governorate, but that the workers will resume the strike on Monday if their demands were not met.

(The pic is of Hassan Juma'a Awad with Ewa Jasiewicz)

Update on the Iraqi oil workers' strike....

Update from Hands Off Iraqi Oil website about the strike:

"Naftana members spoke to IFOU leader Hassan Jumaa Awad today who alerted the support group to an arrest warrant issued by Prime Minister Maliki's office. The warrant names four leaders of the Federation including Hassan Jumaa Awad and demands their arrest for 'sabotaging the Iraqi economy'. The Federation is asking for unions and organisations world wide to support them in their unfulfilled demands and to protect them from repressive measures.

Please send faxes and emails of support for the union to Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and Oil Minister Dr Hussein al Sharastani. There is a model letter on the website".

Hassan Jumaa Awad: "One person from the Ministry of Oil accompanied by an Iraqi military figure came to negotiate the demands. Instead it was all about threats. It was all about trying to shut us up, to marginalize our actions," Awad said. "The actions we are taking now are continuing with the strike until our demands are taken in concentration."

There seems to be a total media blackout about this strike in Britain. We need to show our solidarity with these strikers as there's a strong possibility that brute force will be used to smash the strike by killing trade unionists.

Solidarity with striking Iraqi oil workers'

Oil workers in Basra went on strike yesterday. The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) was set to enter its second day of strike action today. The TUC has sent a message of support to the striking oil workers. There is the EDM 1180 that needs supporting so please contact your MP and also raise the matter of the striking oil workers' in your union.

They need your solidarity at a time when the Iraqi oil is to be ripped off, if the US/UK governments get their way, by the Western oil companies.

Two Viceroys and a loyalist

The establishment, the best word to describe the individuals concerned, apologies for haters of clichés, has got together a commission to decide what should be done with Iraq. Apparently leaving this up to the Iraqi people is boring. The grandees who help to rule Britain and the southern area of Iraq are maybe feeling miffed that their opposite numbers in the US are enjoying cooking up “Iraq study groups” and “benchmarks” with which to dictate to the government of Iraq what they should be doing i.e. hurry up with the oil law to let the US/UK oil companies get their hands on the oil reserves that currently belong to the people of Iraq.

The commission is chaired by a Tory former viceroy of the statelet of Northern Ireland Tom King, Lib-Dem Lord Ashdown, former viceroy of Bosnia and Baroness Jay. Apart from voting against the Government on some votes on House of Lords reform the Baroness has loyally voted New Labour time and time again. This includes voting through the super draconian powers the government decided that it wanted for “fighting terrorism” and for bullying people through the mental health system.

Baroness Jay said that “The Iraq Commission aims to produce a long term strategy for Britain’s role in Iraq”. You can bet a month’s salary that this long term role will not include getting out and staying out. There are eight “Commissioners” who will help the barons and baroness. These are various luminaries of the foreign policy elite spiced up for the Guardian reading classes with Maeve Sherlock, Asim Siddiqui and Brian Brivati.

Sherlock is the former Chief Exec of the Refugee Council but is perhaps more notable as a New Labour apparatchik and former NUS president. Though she won’t feel too alone as another former NUS president will also be on the commission, Stephen Twigg…

Asim Siddiqui is a British Moslem who is allowed in as he is a City slicker. Brian Brivati is an academic from the Unversity of Kingston. Brivati seems to live in a particularly high ivory tower. He thinks that history will come to regard Tony Bliar as a truly great statesman (I am not joking) and that you can have such a thing as a humanitarian war.

No one from the Iraqi community in Britain.

No one from the anti-war movement.

No one with an ability to think for themselves.

NB: Paddy Ashdown in today's Observer about the Iraq Commission

Gagging the truth: what the state don't want you to know about a cozy 'ickle chat between Bush and Blair....

While the bourgeoisie were tearfully waving sayonara to Tony Blair, two men were sentenced to prison yesterday. Their crime is breaching the Official Secrets Act by disclosing minutes of a meeting between Bush and Blair over Iraq.

Dave Keogh, who worked in Whitehall’s communication centre, passed a four-page account of a meeting in the White House in April 2004 between Bush and Blair. He passed it to Leo O’Connor who gave it to his boss, Anthony Clarke MP.

The trial was heard in secret and the press were barred. The contents of the document were considered so sensitive that press could not report. Arguments used to shroud this trial in secrecy was that if the contents were made public then there would be a “substantial risk to national security”…

Now let’s look at that argument, the discussion took place in 2004. What were they discussing which would put “British lives at risk”? Would they be talking about exact troop deployments, radio frequencies or even military armour weaknesses? The level of discussion, I imagine, would be more likely be about policy in Iraq as opposed to operations. In April 2004 US troops were committing untold atrocities and devastating the city of Fallujah. And anyway, that was then and this is now. So, why keep it a big secret?

Keogh described the contents as “abhorrent” and “illegal”. These contents should be made public as this just smacks of further censorship, double standards and what really happened in Fallujah will remain a dirty big secret with the establishment peddling their own spin and lies.

If the contents amount to war crimes then the wrong two men were sentenced yesterday.

A judge has imposed a gagging order on the media BUT that doesn't include overseas press including the USA. So get surfing....

Kanan Makiya: The Iraqi George Formby?

The Iraqi Solzhenitsyn (a.k.a. Kanan Makiya) is peeved. "I want to look into myself, look at myself, delve into the assumptions I had going into the war," Kanan Makiya told the New York Times. But things are not quite as they seem. Makiya has no intention of looking into himself and delving "into the assumptions" he "had going into the war". Makiya must be worried that those comfy Sunday morning sofas, as seen on MSNBC and CNN (although the cavemen at Fox TV have a seat reserved for their favourite House Arab), are not quite as welcoming as they once were.

Ensconced in the Gulag of leafy Cambridge Massachusetts, the Mesopotamian Solzhenitsyn goes on: "Now it seems necessary to reflect on the society that has gotten itself into this mess. A question that looms more and more for me is: Just what did 30 years of dictatorship do to 25 million people?" Translation: Iraqis are to blame. The U.S. behemoth and its brainstormers-cum-armchair-stormtroopers freed the backward lot, but the Iraqis (pronounced Eye-rack-ees) were too tortured, too brutalised to do anything but sink into tribalism and sectarianism.

"It's not like I didn’t think about this," Makiya says, having not thought about this. "But nonetheless I allowed myself as an activist to put it aside in the hope that it could be worked through, or managed, or exorcised in a way that's not as violent as is the case now. That did not work out." This is Makiya as Solzhenitsyn plus vision: he saw it coming. Solzhenitsyn, however, would not have kept lips sealed and tongue inactive in some "hope" that things would work out for the best. No Solzhenitsyn this, but an Iraqi George Formby relating "Turned out nice again".

"There were failures at the level of leadership, and they’re overwhelmingly Iraqi failures. Sectarianism began there," Makiya says of the Iraqi Governing Council, nicely omitting the uncomfortable fact that the Iraqi Governing Council was appointed by the U.S. at a time when Iraqis were advocating full democratic elections - elections the U.S. had hoped to delay indefinitely until Ahmad Chalabi or some Chalabi-like creature could be found to play the puppet.

"Everything they could do wrong, they did wrong," Makiya said, finding just enough blame to stretch to the neoconservative imperialists. "The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation," Makiya points out, with straight face and no hint of tongue deeply embedded in cheek. You see, the U.S. never intended to occupy Iraq. It just worked out that way. Unintended consequences and all that. A bit like the British Empire really, don’t you know, old boy!

The NYT informs us of Makiya’s latest sojourns into further and deeper madness: "Last summer, Makiya, who studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed a sweeping urban renewal project to Iraqi officials on a trip to Baghdad. The idea was to create, in the heart of the city, a pedestrians-only green space." The genius of it! If one was to build a "pedestrians-only green space", car bombs would become, overnight, automatically redundant. Perhaps Makiya Associates, previously builders of Baath Party HQ and the Ceremonial Parade Grounds in Tikrit, would like the contract?

"You're talking about a massive rethinking of the city," Makiya said, waving his hand across a satellite map of Baghdad hanging on one wall. "Someone has to keep dreaming," the mad Iraqi George Formby ranted.

The NYT reports the fantastic adventures of the Iraqi Solzhenitsyn, sans banjo: "Makiya had travelled to Baghdad intending to make his pitch to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But he met with lower-level officials instead." Makiya himself says: "There was terrible stuff going on in Baghdad, and one did not feel right making a full presentation" of a "pedestrians-only green space" in the heart of a city beset with sectarian cleansing, with blood soaking the streets, and civil war threatening to engulf the region. The Iraqi Solzhenitsyn had to travel to Baghdad to realise this.

"People shouldn’t feel the need to apologize. What is there to apologize for?" said the Iraqi Solzhenitsyn-cum-Formby. The NYT reporter packed his spiral-pad and left. The Iraqi George Formby stared into his glass of red wine, no banjo in sight. No one associated with mental health in Massachusetts arrived with a straitjacket.

If Brzezinski Is Worried...

Zbigniew Brzezinski is probably America’s most important imperial thinker. Not as deranged as the neocons and not as shortsighted as Henry Kissinger (but that ain’t saying much, especially given Brzezinski’s crucial role in masterminding the jihad against the Soviet Union), Brzezinski is the man to run an empire. In some sense, one should be thankful he was not at the helm post-9/11: the empire would have expanded and strengthened. As it is, the empire has been weakened, but the destruction wrought in the process is nightmarish.

Essentially, the U.S. foreign policy elite are a combination Brzezinskists and Kissingerians, with the recently arrived (and despised) neocons, a lunatic strain of imperial thought who pretend not to adore Kissinger, now very much in the background, having virtually wrecked the U.S. empire. Another two terms of neocon foreign policy and the empire will be lost. Hence the outrage within foreign policy circles in the United States.

What Brzezinski says is important - not because of who he was but of what he represents. And if he’s worried, well, we all better be worried:

“If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a ‘defensive’ U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”

Great Iraqi oil rip-off - continued

I attended the Socialist Resistance conference on the Middle East today. Instead of giving a detailed take on the day I want to concentrate on the talk given by Ewa Jasiewicz, who I have heard speak before at Labour Against the War (LAtW) and Iraq Occupation Focus events. Anyway, if you want to get a full flavour of the day I am sure Cecil B. Mac Uaid will be putting up the edited highlights of day on his blog.

Ewa represented the organisations Platform and Hands Off Iraqi Oil. She spoke about the impending Hydrocarbon Law that was put together by Iraqi technocrats overseen by the Bush administration and the IMF. It is expected to become law in May. If not, the Bush and the oil companies administration will be very very unhappy!

This law is utterly pernicious as it favours production sharing agreements that can last up to 25-40 years or indefinitely. There are "stabilisation clauses" that mean that the government won't be able to change tax rates or pass any new laws that affects the oil company profits. It is in reality, control of the oil from the Iraqis to the oil companies. This will in effect overide Iraqi sovereignity. This new law will be de facto privatisation. Iraq has the 3rd largest oil reserves and 12th for oil production. It is a lucrative business with western Oil companies grabbing up to 75% of the profits.

The Federation of Oil Unions in Iraq are bravely fighting this law. In a joint statement with other Iraqi trade unionists:

"The handing of control over oil to foreign companies, whose aims is to make big profits at the expense of the Iraqi people, and to rob the national wealth, according to long-term, unfair contracts, that undermine the sovereignity of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people"..

There is strike action planned by the oil workers once this law is passed (May/June) and there will be inevitable bloodshed and to be blunt, a killing spree orchestrated by the goon squads employed by the oil companies. Ewa stressed the importance to show solidarity with the oil workers. The union has grown from 23,000 to 26,000 within the past couple of months.

Other initiatives to protest against this vile law is demonstrating outside BP AGM, flood emails to Blair and Beckett and there is an EDM tabled by MP Katy Clark that has received support of 24 MPs (including 1 Tory!). The need to raise awareness is imperative as Iraqi oil will go the same way as Colombia and Nigeria where violent repression including murder is used to crush opposition including trade unionists.

To the pro-war left, isn't it time you protested against the plundering of Iraqi oil as it goes against your principle of bringing "freedom" to the Iraqi people?

Sober Up You Drink-Soaked Popinjays

For all you “Lefties For War” who still believe with shampoo-like enthusiasm that “it’s worth it” here’s a sobering statistic from an ABC News poll (BBC News 24, Monday 19 March): “51 percent” of Iraqis believe it is “‘acceptable’ to attack U.S. and coalition forces”. Moreover, “94% of Sunni [Arab] Muslims” voiced this opinion. Given that almost every Kurd is against attacking “U.S. and coalition forces”, this translates to a majority of Shiite Muslims also believing that it is “‘acceptable’ to attack U.S. and coalition forces”.

Is this news? Not really. Anyone who has followed the occupation will know that most Arab Iraqis support attacks on “U.S. and coalition forces”. Most Arab Iraqis see their sectarian militias as protectors and the “U.S. and coalition forces” as oppressors, with Baghdadis referring to the Americans as Mongols. That this is all down to Al Qaeda and Baathist “fascists” is a soothing myth. But the Pro-War Left are not known for their "power of facing unpleasant facts", as Orwell said of himself.

On the same day, the Guardian reported Kadhim al-Jubouri (the man made famous by his attempt to smash down a statue of Saddam in Firdous Square) as saying: “I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.” Now, this really is something coming from a man who was tortured by Saddam’s goons. I also remember Mr al-Jabouri being interviewed not long after the statue was brought down. If memory serves, he said: “Do you think the Americans crossed an ocean to save us? Do you think they will leave? They will never leave.”

The Perfect Murder Of Baha Musa

It is said that there is no such thing as the perfect murder. Unless you’re a complete fool, you’ll know that is as true as almost any commonplace wisdom. My favourite is Santayana’s famous but over-repeated saying: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. A moment’s thought should prove how hollow this is. With the trite aphorism about the perfect murder in mind, it should be noted that the discarded murder in plain sight can be gotten away with too - provided you’re in the British Army.

In September 2003 Baha Musa, a 26 year-old father of two, was beaten to death by British occupation forces at the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment’s “detention centre” (translation: torture centre) in Basra. The media has recounted the whole terrible affair - from the perspective of the regiment who murdered an innocent man, though demonstrably guilty of being an Iraqi. According to the Telegraph (usually an outlet which bangs on about the victims of crime), the regiment is “haunted” by Musa’s death, though this regiment knowingly conducted torture. A case in point is the “choir”, a well-known regiment past-time: repeated assaults on the victim in order to him scream. (The British Army, I think, is not the best place to get acquainted with the famed British sense of humour.)

After yet more British servicemen were found innocent yesterday, the Guardian reported the depraved mutterings of former Colonel David Black, a member of the QLR’s Regimental Council. The mad Colonel said that “British servicemen needed to be able to operate confidently on our behalf without looking over their shoulders inhibited by the fear of such actions by over-zealous, and remote, officialdom,” who think it’s not quite cricket to torture and murder people.

Meanwhile the MoD put out the following statement: “In very difficult and dangerous circumstances in Iraq our forces do a superb job. However, we need to maintain both operational effectiveness,” by ensuring that cases against sick torturers and murderers do not make it to court.

Colonel Mendonca, the most senior of the cleared defendants, was recently the recipient of gushing praise from the nation’s media outlets. Here was an innocent man who was put through the ordeal of a fair trial after an Iraqi man was tortured and murdered on his watch. The charge was that Mendonca failed to ensure that his men did not torture and murder. One would assume that had Colonel Mendonca not failed in his duty then Baha Musa would still be alive. And though his regiment did torture and murder Baha Musa, Colonel Mendonca was cleared of the charge. But logic and jurisprudence, like the British sense of humour, is not best found in the British Army. The Telegraph reported that “While the officer was no apologist for abuse he said it was necessary to put in context the immense difficulties soldiers faced ‘under quite extraordinary stress’.” The torturers and murderers were “under quite extraordinary stress”, but not quite as stressed as Baha Musa, I would venture.

Should we be surprised that the military won’t find its own guilty? Cast your minds back to the gruesome case of Jabbar Kareem Ali, a 16 year-old boy who was hand-cuffed and thrown into a river. The boy died. The soldiers who threw the boy to his death were found innocent. It was, as they say, a cast-iron case. The only drowning the murderers/soldiers faced, however, was the praise from the media. The British Army is resorting to the policies of their forebears who ran Iraq not so long ago. For those who haven’t figure it out yet, those who remember the past are more than willing than those who don’t to repeat it.

What is happening in Iraq

One of the indispensible reads for socialists is the American paper "Socialist Worker". In the 9th March edition there is a brilliant interview with Iraq expert Michael Schwartz.
Read it here

He convincingly decsribes how the US is operating a policy of ethnic cleansing as a form of state terror to force the Sunnis into capitulation.

What’s new about this is that the operations the United States is mounting now are much more ferocious than what they have done in Baghdad before. They’re modeled after the offensives in Falluja and Tal Afar.
They’re going into these communities, and they literally go door to door, and do damage to every building. You don’t walk in the front door, because that might allow the insurgents to shoot you when you’re knocking on the door. So you blow open the front door or the side of the building, and you go in and terrorize whoever is in there.
You do give the community a chance to evacuate, but the way you do it is to first surround the communities, and as the evacuees come out, you don’t let any of the men out, because all of the men are considered suspects to be insurgents. Which is not such an unlikely suspicion, because the entire community is on the side of the insurgency.
So the idea is to drive everybody else out of the community, leave only the men there, and then kill or capture all of them. And any time you receive fire, you use overwhelming firepower--either from the ground, using artillery or tanks, or from the air, using gunships and fighter-bombers that come in and drop 500- and 2,000-pound bombs on the most recalcitrant areas. You leave the community in a state of destruction.
In this case, they by and large evacuate the community by doing this--and in the context of current Baghdad politics, that means ethnic cleansing.
The Iraqi military comes in with the United States, and the Iraqi military controls and contains the death squads. So they drive all the Sunnis out of these rebellious communities, and they take displaced Shia--and there are plenty of displaced Shia from all the ethnic violence--and re-colonize that area.
All of the Sunni leadership is saying that the Haifa Street offensive is an exercise in ethnic cleansing--in which the U.S. military has come in and cleaned out the area, and now, Sunnis are being replaced by Shia.
In this context, you can see why the guerrillas are fighting so ferociously. They don’t really have the chance to melt into the community, and then melt back in after the U.S. leaves. This new clear-hold-and-build strategy implies that the guerrillas have to fight. Otherwise, they and their families and their neighbors and their friends lose their communities.
So the fighting has been ferocious--even a month later, it’s still going on in Haifa Street. This looks like it will drag on, in the way that the offensive in Ramadi dragged on. This is the nature of the new offensive.
If we step back from this for a moment, it can’t be the policy of the U.S. to remove all the Sunnis from the city of Baghdad. That’s not really a viable policy.
So what we have to assume is that they’re trying to use these initial battles of this surge as a form of state terror--to be so incredibly brutal and thorough in their violence that the other Sunnis will give up and stop fighting. The U.S. is saying, “Give up or look at where you’re going to be: dispossessed, your community destroyed, and then taken over by Shia, and you homeless--or dead, if you fight.”

the rest of the article is equally informative about the US strategy for dealing with the shia, the prospects of war with iran, the new iraqi oil law, and the misconception that Presidential hopeful Obama is really against US occupation of iraq.