En Passant

According to a report in the respected medical journal Lancet in June 2006 the estimate was that 654,965 deaths, direct and indirect, were related to the US led invasion. Extrapolations from that figures suggest it is now likely to be much greater than one million.

Where is the compensation for the dead of Iraq, Mr Abbott, the dead whose deaths you and the government you were a member of helped cause?

I have a suggestion Mr Abbott. If you want to stop terrorism stop engaging in it. That way there wouldn’t be millions of dead at your hands and the hands of your mates and no attacks on Australians for the terrorism you unleash.

The horror in Kenya is a direct product of Western intervention writes Ken Olende in Socialist Worker UK.

Western intervention in Syria, or anywhere else in the Middle East, would deny freedom and justice to its people and fuel greater displacement and war. It will exacerbate war and lead to greater casualties on all sides.

Those raising false “anti-imperialist” flags to justify their support for a capitalist regime involved in horrifying repression of its people are ignoring reality. Israel, the key imperialist asset in the region, very clearly sees the Syrian rebellion as a far worse alternative to the Assad regime. Assad’s Western defenders either don’t mention Israel at all when they list the countries they think are waging “war on Syria” (and hope no-one notices the omission); or, even worse, they add Israel to their list despite the evidence (and hope no-one notices).

David Whitehouse explains the backdrop to the ratcheting up of conflict in the Korean peninsula–and the role the U.S. government is playing.

Revolution won’t come about by us wishing and waiting writes Nick Everett in Socialist Alternative in Australia. We need to fight for change. Socialism – a society that organises production to meet human need, not corporate greed – is not only possible, but urgently necessary.

The Western powers have chosen war as the way to put Mali together again, and they’ve begun deploying all the king’s horses. Malians of the North and the South could all be in for a long, terrible ordeal. The imperialists don’t exactly care who wins – as long as they back the winner.

The right wing, and I include the Labor Party leadership in this with its threats to deport people, are using the demonstrations, especially stupid and reactionary placards about beheading those who insult the Prophet, to justify a wave of hate and ultimately recriminations that could shift Australia to the extreme right and will make the lives of all Muslims much worse.

The current demonisation of the Muslim demonstration in Sydney is part of this wider Islamophobia, racism and vilification of all things Islamic to entrench imperialism.

While the achievement of walking on the moon shows the great capacity and potential of humanity, its driving force – imperialist competition – shows we have far to go before we are all astronauts of our own earth.