Re: AUT: Information on Iraq was antiwar movement

[cerclesocial@xxxxxxxxxx]

A few points abour Iraq :and worker-communist party

>>How seriously can you take a Worker Communist Party guy who
claims 30k to 50k deaths as a result of the guerilla? That's an obvious fib.

Never read something like this in all WCPI press. They consider nationalist,
ethnicist and religious groups as reactionnary as imperialism, and oppose
suicide bombings and things like this. They are also themselves under
threats of Patrooitic Union of Kurdistan (that tortured some militants, as
revealed a few yeras ago by Amnesty international) and some Islamists
groups, who killed two of members at the tribune of a meeting a few years
ago. As french paper Le Monde exposed in an articles about political parties
in Iraq, their local is widely open to people, but under stong guard of
people with heavy guns.

>>As for their representation of workers and the unemployed (the UUI being a
WCPI front organization), the facts there are also entirely disputable. The
gentleman on Saturday suggested that 'thousands' were joining the UUI every
single day. When I pressed him about this, he suggested that such was the
influx of new members they couldn't give records...

It's the common fate of all organisations that go beyond the small local
group... but I agree the exact number of militants of UUI is rather
unprecise. They give various estimations, and after some rather dubbous one,
suggested it was 130 000 people - this is rather small for an union. This
doe not means that every people are everyday militants, as UUI seems to do a
lot of neighborough work, including protecting and distributing humanitarian
help medics - against their saling by sharks.

One problem is the way western medias present things. In France, sometimes
Le Monde or L'Humanité (communist daily paper) speaks about social movement
in Iraq, and recognize the reole of UUI, but this is rather rare. A comical
example of misinformation was a photography of a demonstration, put in every
media and told us to be religious shia demo. But why shia would have red
flags ? and why would them claim  100 $ for all unemployed, an UUI demand ?
Also, when US soldiers killed unemployed demonstrators in the south, medias
forgotten to say the demo was called by UUI. Remember the 1991 worker
insurection in north and east Iraq. No media spoke about it clearly,
considering there was just a natioanlist and religious movement. Now, some
'experts' recognize its  social meaning.

>>>> On a practical level, their policy is to shut out foreign workers to
give jobs for Iraqis; they
are nationalists through and through. Perhaps an argument can be construed
that this is sensible when you have 70% unemployment (another figure that
would seem  inflated), but I am not so sure.

I wonder to know where you find that ? I had, on contrary, be suprised of
the strong antinationalism they developpe. Note that UUI is Union of
Unemployed in Iraq, not of Iraqi Unemployed...


- Need to be verified, but some people in Occupation watch are linked to
baathism. The interest of Occupation watch is theat they expose ''facts''
in a western style. I tranlsted to Eva's articles in french, that are
interesting.

More soon.... I must go work...
Nico




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