People are preparing to protest June G8 summit
7 May 2007. A World to Win News Service. How much longer will humanity and our planet as a whole be threatened by the workings of capitalism whose disdain for anything but profit has played a big role in global warming? After Afghanistan and Iraq, is Iran going to be the next target of imperialist war? How many more peasants all over the world have to commit suicide as their only way out of debt? How many more lives will be destroyed in the countries dominated by the imperialists and in the imperialist countries themselves due to the brutal functioning of finance capital? How many more tribal, ethnic and religious wars are going to be unleashed and intensified by imperialist intervention and/or contention? These questions and many more are directly or indirectly related to a summit that annually is held by the leaders of the most powerful imperialist countries, the G8.
This year the G8 meeting will be held in Heiligendamm, in northern Germany 6-8 June. At this summit of the world’s most powerful criminals, they will discuss how to control the world, how to oppress and exploit the people, how to plunder the oppressed countries and deny the most basic needs of life to the global majority and how to punish those who defy them – all in the service of continuing their blood-thirsty system in which despite intense contradictions among themselves, the imperialists divide the world among themselves based on their military, political and economical strength.
One of the most acute issues at this year’s summit, whether publicly admitted or not, will be the possibility of a war against Iran. The US is trying hard to win the rest over or neutralise them in case of an attack against Iran. Through the UN Security Council the imperialist powers have already agreed on initial sanctions and announced their intention to go further. But certainly despite some contradictions among the imperialists due to their own interests, the threat of a war against Iran strongly exists. And a fierce struggle to expose and abort the imperialists’ plans is necessary to prevent another war in the Middle East where the US imperialists are trying to take full control of the region.
However these criminal acts of the imperialists have not gone unanswered. The people have responded with their struggles. The people have been chasing the G8 summits and other similar meetings, at whatever location they have taken place, in order to fight and expose the imperialists and their plans.
The political stage has seen the entrance of a new generation of youth who deeply hate this system and want to stand firm to fight it. However, there is a tendency among some forces that organise such struggles to support the reactionary regimes and forces that have been the target of imperialist aggression, instead of supporting the people and their struggle against those reactionaries. Among others, this means Islamic fundamentalist forces such as the Taleban, the Islamic Republic of Iran and, in Iraq, both the Islamic fundamentalist forces in the U.S.-backed regime and those fighting the regime and the U.S. for anti-people aims. Defending the people of those countries in the face of U.S. aggression does not mean defending these oppressor forces and their ideology.
For example, the Islamic regime in Iran is responsible for suppressing the achievements of the 1979 revolution and massacring and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of communists and other revolutionaries who had taken part in the revolution to topple the U.S. and UK-installed government of the Shah. The Islamic regime is responsible for 28 long years of vicious oppression and discrimination against women and the brutal suppression of the student movement. For the people of Iran, the struggle against imperialism and the struggle against the reactionary regime that rules over them are inseparable.
While it is necessary that US imperialism remains the target of the anti-war movement, supporting the people and revolutionary movements in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries is an integral part of any real internationalist position.
To oppose the launching of another war in the Middle East by US imperialism while also aiming to gather support for the just struggle of the people of Iran, a call signed by the “Iranian committee to organise against G8” has been issued (see accompanying article).