US and Britain Continue to Lead Provocations that Threaten World Peace

Taiwan protest against Pelosi's visit - Photo: Telesur

In early August, the top leader of the US House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, stole like a thief into Taiwan which is Chinese territory. She did so without securing the permission of Chinese authorities and against clearly stated Chinese objections. This hooligan behaviour was paraded as being necessary to uphold a "rules-based international order", despite the fact that it destroys all norms of international relations between countries and of international diplomacy.

The British government, in the person of Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, instead of summoning the US ambassador and supporting China in their objections, summoned the Chinese ambassador. She accused China of "increasingly aggressive behaviour" which "threaten peace and stability in the region". She condemned "in the strongest terms China's escalation in the region around Taiwan, as seen through our recent G7 statement" [1]. A statement in which the G7 countries [2] support US actions riding roughshod over just Chinese objections and confirm their "shared commitment to maintaining the rules-based international order, peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and beyond".

It is an indisputable fact that Taiwan is recognised as part of China, a fact that these G7 countries have to admit in their statement. However these actions only confirm that the "rules-based international order" are nothing but a set of rules made up to justify their actions, which they use to threaten peace and stability in the world. These actions of the G7 in the Asia Pacific are part of the brinkmanship led by the US, to attempt to see how far these big powers can go against established international norms and agreements to provoke the countries that do not accept this concocted "rules-based international order".

Reports also show that the British Foreign Affairs Committee, in a race of the British Parliament to provoke China, was planning to visit Taiwan earlier this year in a visit that was postponed but now scheduled for "probably November, or early December" [3]. However, Liz Truss speaking as a prospective candidate for leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister attempted to distance the Prime Minister from such a provocation when in an interview [4] she said, "We have a long standing position that the foreign secretary, the Ministry of Defence and the Prime Minister don't visit Taiwan."

These provocations against China in recent times have included the US and Britain sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait, which is the strategic waters between China and Taiwan, and holding war games in the vicinity. Now US fighter jets, along with those of Taiwan, are flying above Taiwan, and further increasing tensions as China launches air and sea exercises over its Chinese territory.

What is more, the AUKUS "tri-lateral" nuclear submarine pact signed between the US, Britain and Australia in September 2021 is a new hostile military alliance in the Asia Pacific aimed against China and the DPRK. The AUKUS pact means that Australia can buy nuclear powered submarines from the US and Britain. This unilaterally cancelled an earlier contract for Australia to buy non-nuclear powered submarines from France. This pact is also widely recognised to involve Taiwan in a secret deal on submarines hostile to China.

The US and Britain are already involved in secret deals with Taiwan to build submarines for "defence" against China. According to a Reuters investigation [5], "Taipei's chief foreign weapons supplier, the United States, has provided key technology, including combat-system components and sonars. But assistance is coming from far beyond America.....Defence companies from the United Kingdom, which like America operates a fleet of nuclear-powered ballistic missile and attack submarines, have provided crucial support....In a conflict, say experts, Taiwan's submarines would allow it to help the U.S. and allies bottle up the PLA Navy within the first island chain, the string of islands running from Japan to Borneo that enclose China's coast." In other words, whilst the US and British continue to deny it, Taiwan is secretly a partner in the AUKUS nuclear military pact against China.

The entire spectre of forceful reunification and scenario of China attacking Taiwan is a US narrative and falsification to cause trouble and justify its continued military build up in the Asia Pacific and Britain is in the forefront of this alongside the US. The reality is that Taiwan is Chinese territory. China, not Taiwan, is seated at the United Nations and a member of its Security Council.

On the evening of August 2, following Nancy Pelosi's visit to China's Taiwan region, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng had urgently summoned the US Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, and lodged stern representations and strong protests over Pelosi's visit to the Taiwan region. Xie noted, "The move is extremely egregious in nature and the consequences are extremely serious. China will not sit idly by." Xie said that "the US government must be held accountable. For a while, the US has said one thing and done another thing, constantly distorted and hollowed out the one-China principle." Amongst other things Xie stressed that "the trend of the times cannot be reversed, the will of the people is not to be defied, and those who play with fire will perish by it".

The fact is that the US has already been burned, as the peoples at home and abroad have witnessed one failure after the other of US wars of occupation for regime change in every part of the world, from Korea and Vietnam to Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Wars which caused millions of deaths and left human and environmental devastation in their wake. Repeatedly resorting to more violence and wars of destruction will not provide humanity or the US a way out of the crisis caused by its striving for world hegemony. Certainly, having witnessed the US defeat in Afghanistan, few consider that the US could succeed against China.

The working class and people must stand against the "rules-based international order" being imposed by the US, Britain, and other powers in the name of the G7 or NATO for their own interests, which is leading to the escalation of provocations and conflicts in the world. The necessity is to renew international relations based on international law, declaring that international issues and world security is not settled by force of arms, or by provoking and escalating conflicts. The working class and people must take the initiative to bring about an anti-war government as a necessity for the people to live in a peaceful world!

Notes
1. Preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait: G7 Foreign Ministers' statement
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/preserving-peace-and-stability-across-the-taiwan-strait-g7-foreign-ministers-statement
2. G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union
3. British MPs plan visit to Taiwan as tension with China simmers The Guardian - August 1 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/01/british-mps-plan-visit-to-taiwan-as-tension-with-china-simmers
4. Tory leadership: Liz Truss says she will not visit Taiwan if elected prime minister - News Independent TV - August 3 2022
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/truss-taiwan-tory-leadership-debate-b2138518.html
5. Taiwan's friends aid stealthy submarine project as China threat rises - Reuters - November 29 2021
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/taiwan-china-submarines/

Striking rail workers at London Bridge Station - Photo: Unjum Mirza

The strike struggles that have been developing in scope and momentum are a sign that working people have had enough of being treated as things and not as human beings with their rights and interests. This edition of Workers' Weekly carries reports on some of the struggles.

The intensification of the anti-social offensive and privatisation, with the cost-of-living crisis causing devastation for working people, with inflation soaring and energy prices spiralling upwards, has prompted the call that Enough is Enough! Resistance is growing, with rail workers setting the pace in the face of job losses and harsh real-terms pay cuts. Joining in the resistance through strike action have been call centre workers, lawyers, journalists, cleaners, transport workers and others. These workers have taken a stand against facing the fastest fall in real wages on record, while the oligarchs and monopolies who try to enforce the will of private vested interests have overseen the theft of the new value that workers produce on a national and international scale.

The working class and people are stating plainly that Enough is Enough! Working people are setting their sights on the goal of being in control of their own lives. The need of the times is for renewal, and the condition for this is the emancipation of the working class. This is an immediate requirement, a requirement to establish the power to counter being hamstrung by the dictates of the rich, and the treatment of the working class and people as things and not human beings, seeing them as costs on a balance sheet, a necessary evil to be minimised.

TUC march against the cost of living rise in June - Photo: Vuk Valcic-Zuma Press Wire - Rex Shutterstock

When the call is being given that the working class is back, working people should also look at it from the point of view of emphasising that their role is to take social responsibility for the future of society. As the slogan of the Durham miners affirms, the future is in your hands, our hands, the requirement that the general interests of society are its responsibility, as well as the well-being of every working person and the interests of the working class as a whole, a class in itself and for itself. In other words, only the working class is the class which can provide solutions to the problems of society, because their interests are consonant with a society which is fit for human beings, whereas those who dehumanise the workers in pursuit of their private vested interests do not see beyond destroying society if they cannot control it. Narrow private interests are further taking over the functions of the state, privatising what should be public functions, such as responsibility for transport, health, education.

In the immediate sense, the political call is that society should be arranged to stop paying the rich, and that instead the wealth created by working people should be invested in the social well-being of all. To advance along this path, to turn things around so that the arrangements in society favour them, is the task of the working class at this juncture as things come to a head. The requirement for political power has become an immediate demand for the working class in order to put a stop to the anti-social offensive which is causing havoc for working people and society as a whole.

The time is now for working people to strengthen their organisation, stand firm and speak out in their own name, with their own outlook and programme as events unfold.

Mick Lynch speaking at the Enough is Enough! launch rally

The campaign has been launched by trade unions, community organisations and MPs.

The Enough is Enough website sets out five demands:

• A real pay rise
• Slash energy bills
• End food poverty
• Decent homes for all
• Tax the rich

Launch Rally - Clapham Junction - Photo: Chris Ratcliffe Bloomberg

It calls for the national minimum wage to rise to £15 an hour (from £9.18 for those aged 21 to 22), public sector pay rises above inflation, a return to the pre-April energy price cap and the nationalisation of energy companies.

It also demands rent controls, the building of more than 100,000 council houses a year and reversing the National Insurance contributions rise.

The campaign hopes to end food poverty by reinstating the £20-a-week universal credit uplift and universal free school meals, along with introducing a new independent regulatory body, which will hold the government to account.

The campaign's website says that it was founded by "trade unions and community organisations determined to push back against the misery forced on millions by rising bills, low wages, food poverty, shoddy housing - and a society run only for a wealthy elite".

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has supported the campaign, along with well-known public figures such as the journalist and author Caitlin Moran and the children's writer Michael Rosen.

More than 1,500 people attended the Enough is Enough launch rally at Clapham Junction, south London, on August 17. Mick Lynch, RMT general secretary, addressing the rally, said: "The working class is back... we refuse to be humbled, we refuse to wait for politicians and we refuse to be poor any more."

Zarah Sultana, the Labour MP for Coventry South, also appeared at the rally. She said that the campaign's demands were "wildly popular", adding: "Someone tell the leadership of the Labour Party."

Covering the evening, Tribune, said that the mood among speakers was "one of both optimism and anger: not just at how workers have been abandoned in this current crisis, but how they've been abandoned over decades".

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to the campaign via its website.

Moving forward, the campaign said it will be holding rallies across Britain in the coming weeks, and will be "organising community groups, supporting picket lines and taking action against companies profiteering from this crisis".

Enough is Enough will be holding these rallies:

Manchester (AUG 30)
Manchester Cathedral, M3 1SX
Tuesday, August 30, 7pm
Andy Burnham, GM Mayor
Mick Lynch, RMT
Dave Ward, CWU
Zarah Sultana MP
Eddie Dempsey, RMT

Liverpool (SEP 2)
St. George's Hall, L1 1JJ
Friday, September 2, 7pm
Ian Byrne MP
Dave Ward, CWU
Zarah Sultana MP
Eddie Dempsey, RMT

Limited tickets on the door

For further details on Enough is Enough! Events and Demands see:

https://wesayenough.co.uk/

Striking dock workers at Felixstowe - Photo: Press Association

Dock workers at Felixstowe, Britain's largest container port, have gone on strike for the first time since 1989. Strikers include crane drivers, machine operators and stevedores who load and unload ships. A powerful action has seen workers mounting pickets on the morning of Sunday, August 21, from 6.00am, immediately after refusing a settlement from the operating company, Hutchison Ports. Workers rejected a 7% pay offer from the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company, saying it was below the rate of inflation. The strike action of some 1,900 workers at the port is expected to continue for eight days, lasting until August 29. The picket line will be manned every day until 22:00pm. Already there is reported huge support from the public.

Felixstowe is Britain's busiest port, and one of the largest in Europe, with 2,550 people working at the port, which handles about 48% of the container freight coming into Britain. The port handles some 4 million containers annually, from around 2,000 ships.

The strike is significant. The action is reminiscent of the traditional alliance between dockers and transport workers. It is no accident that the strike is taking place at a time of widescale industrial action of many unions, particularly railway workers who are engaging in struggle at the same time.

"Strike action will cause huge disruption and will generate massive shockwaves throughout the UK's supply chain, but this dispute is entirely of the company's own making," Bobby Morton, the Unite union's national officer for docks, said in a Unite statement announcing the strike earlier this month. "We're being told to accept a real terms pay cut whilst bosses and shareholders are taking record profits for themselves," Sharon Graham, the union's general secretary, posted on Twitter.

Port spokesman Paul Davey said the average pay for workers at Felixstowe was £43,000, and employees had been offered a 7% rise plus a single payment of £500. He said the offer represented an increase of between 8.1% and 9.6%, depending upon the category of worker at the port. He also attacked the workers for acting as "pawns" for an agenda set by Unite, implying that workers do not know their own minds.

One of the picket lines at Felixstowe - Photo: Richard Allday

Freight transport body Logistics UK attempted to dismiss the action saying it was "not expecting massive disruption" from the walkout. The trade association implied that it would try and break the action by saying, "Felixstowe is not a 'just-in-time' delivery port - everything coming in is scheduled well in advance. If it [the strike] goes on for longer than eight days then those using the port will be looking at alternative routes, but at the moment there is plenty of stock in the supply chain. Others have already been planning alternative routes - we're not expecting panic. As an industry, we are incredibly flexible and have been working for a while to put these goods into alternative ports if they have to be."

The reality is exposed by Adam Searle, managing director of haulage firm CP Transport, who said that if his firm did not move any containers this week it could stand to lose £60,000-£70,000. He said: "Throughout Suffolk the bill could run into the millions and throughout the country a lot more. "It's not going to affect food supply chains because all the fresh produce is already in stock, but it will effect the supply chain in terms of furniture, fences and random bits and bobs."

Sharon Graham explained: "Felixstowe docks is enormously profitable," and together with its parent company, CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd, "could give Felixstowe workers a decent pay raise". She added, "It's clear both companies have prioritised delivering multi-million pound profits and dividends rather than paying their workers a decent wage."

Robert Morton, Unite national officer, said people are angry now a company who made £240m over the last two years are unwilling to share it with them. He said that workers were going to be paid £370 per week with strike pay. "Our members are understanding of what they will lose, but they're looking at what they can gain as well."

After the workers at Felixstowe had announced their eight days of strike action, more than 500 dock workers at Britain's fourth largest port, Liverpool's Peel Port, voted on August 15 to strike after rejecting a 7 percent pay offer. The workers are demanding pay increases in line with the soaring inflation, and accuse the owners of failing to raise pay since 2018 and of reneging on an agreed bonus scheme.

These strikes are important actions in the interests of the entire working class at this time. It is significant as another of the largest union organisations is coming to the head of the general fray in a crucial sector linked to transport and distribution of products. The unions and community organisations have launched the "Enough is Enough" campaign, so it is incumbent on those who are engaged in this struggle for the rights of all to develop the struggles and solidarity with each other. It is important because workers are now clearly giving the call that Enough is Enough! in the face of the intensifying anti-social offensive. Workers demand a new direction for the economy, independent of the Westminster cartel parties, and against private monopoly and oligopoly control and decision-making.

Striking postal workers at Gloucester South - Photo: CWU News

Postal workers are taking strike action in the spirit of Enough is Enough. The announced strike dates are Friday August 26, Wednesday August 31, Thursday September 8, and Friday September 9.

The postal workers had returned a massive vote for strike action. They urged Royal Mail to reconsider their stance in regard to the workers' claim, and rejected management's attempts to force an erosion of workplace rights. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) have entered into a formal dispute with the company over pay and conditions on behalf of the workers.

Workers voted by 98.7% on a 72.2% turnout, complementing a 97.6% "yes" vote on a 77% turnout for strike action over pay in July. Despite having only five working days to mobilise, the "yes" vote has grown from the previous turnout.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward said: "Today's result is another rejection of those at the top of Royal Mail, who should consider their positions." He continued, "Postal workers in this country are being pushed to the edge, but there can be no doubt that they will fight the planned erosion of their workplace rights with determination. Right now, this country is growing sick of a business elite who are completely out of touch with ordinary people and their lives. Things are getting harder and harder for normal working people so that incompetent bosses can have an easy life. But this union will fight this disgraceful state of affairs every step of the way. The CWU's message to Royal Mail's management is simple: do right by your workers."

CWU deputy general secretary Terry Pullinger said: "Our members, who worked miracles during the pandemic, are being treated with complete contempt. The ongoing attempts of Royal Mail Group to whittle away people's hard-won working conditions will be met with fierce opposition. For far too long now, Royal Mail Group have been trying to pick a fight, treating our members like they are the dirt they walk on. But Royal Mail Group have completely failed to recognise the strength of feeling that exists against them. In these times, working people need more security on the job, not less, and we won't be backing down until we secure an acceptable solution for our members."

It is clear to all the workers involved in struggle that the old economic model in which private vested interests concentrate power, wealth and privilege in fewer and fewer hands, and the government hides behind a fraudulent "arm's length" approach to the "market-place", has failed society and in particular is failing working people. The situation at Royal Mail is a case in point. Its history dates back to 1516 when it was established as a government department, and for most of its history it operated as a public service, especially since the mid 19th century when the ruling class was demanding public enterprises funded by the state for its benefit. Its history this century, however, has seen the struggle against its privatisation which the ruling elites had pushed as part of the neo-liberal offensive. The shares of Royal Mail were floated on the Stock Exchange in 2013 by the Coalition government, originally with a 30% government stake. But the government sold its shares two years later, ending 499 years of state ownership. The struggle has not gone away. The issue remains over whether Royal Mail should be run as a public service, or go further down the road of making maximum profit for its owners. This situation has only intensified during the Covid pandemic. Now, as the CWU is pointing out, Royal Mail is treating its workers with contempt. But the workers have their dignity and humanity, and are refusing to be treated as disposable items on a balance sheet. New thinking, a new aim and new direction are needed in conformity with the modern socialised productive forces. It is up to the working class and people to take this up.

RMT Press Office issued a statement on August 13, which said that instead of sitting down with RMT and the rail industry to find a negotiated settlement to this dispute, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has politically interfered to prevent a deal.

The statement said:

Responding to a national newspaper interview with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch: "Grant Shapps is a dreadful minister who is continuing his dereliction of duty by issuing idol threats, against railway workers, all for the sake of trying to save his fledging political career.

"Instead of sitting down with RMT and the rail industry to find a negotiated settlement to this dispute, Mr Shapps has politically interfered to prevent a deal.

"Now he is threatening our members with P&O style fire and rehire and the reintroduction of Driver Only Operated services, which will lead to a fall in safety standards and job losses.

"If Mr Shapps proceeds on this course, RMT will use the industrial mandate it has from its 40,000 members in this dispute to take more strike action in the coming weeks and months."

On the threat to bring in minimum service levels on trains during strikes, Mick added: "If these proposals become law, there will be the biggest resistance mounted by the entire trade union movement, rivalling the general strike of 1926, the Suffragettes and Chartism."

Photo: The Mirror

In the conditions of the driest period in England since 1976, hosepipe bans are being put into force throughout the country. Two issues pose themselves. First, who decides? The response to the crisis is police powers arbitrarily imposed by private water companies, assuming the role of public authority. And second, those very companies, bound by their narrow private interests rather than aimed at meeting a critical social need, are what have failed to ensure that continuous water provision is properly planned for in a country that has, as a general rule, water in ample supply, despite the current weather conditions.

The first ban came into effect on August 7 in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Privately-owned Southern Water, which holds authority over the region, enacted its police powers in a public communiqué, five days before a drought was even officially declared on August 12. Several other water companies having authority over other regions have since followed suit.

"Hello, we've introduced a Temporary Use Ban to protect local rivers," began Southern Water in its letter to its "customers". The communiqué cites Section 76 of the Water Industry Act of 1991, in which the company was handed this position of authority by parliament, stating the restrictions they were about to apply, and warning that people could be fined up to £1,000 for non-compliance. The monopoly also stated that the measures will remain in force for an estimated 21 days, within their anticipation and subject to their whim. They finished their letter with a slight reference to their well-known failures such as their much-vaunted addressing of leaks.

These private water companies have long stood accused of failing to provide adequate security to the environment and the economy. They have not invested in water storage, reservoirs and tanks, to secure supply and protect rivers and lakes and the wildlife it contains. They have not saved water during rainy days of excess to be used when the sun shines and in periods of drought. Water companies have recently been criticised for inadequate response to water waste treatment and the dumping of sewerage. Profiteering and the taking of dividends have instead been the prime concern of the private investors.

The crisis exposes the nature of privatisation, which was as much about restructuring the arrangements of state as about selling off lucrative public services. Handing over key aspects of public authority has been central to this programme. But the resulting crisis is becoming acute, which is why the imposition on the Isle of Wight, for example, has led to contradictions. Certain councillors are making plans to revisit their resilience organisation, which responds to emergencies such as drought and flood. Such people, working within the local public authority such as it still exists, are coming up against these powers that have been usurped by individualistic, private interests.

Society needs to provide for the material and cultural requirements of households, of workers, pensioners and the public, such as the need for gardens and the necessities of people's houses and indeed life itself. Instead, private commercial interests, the interests of the rich, come first. Where have the land and grounds of the aristocracy, the wealthy estates of the oligarchs, the luxurious offices of CEOs, the apartments of the super-rich, the towers of the City of London and Canary Wharf, been affected or targeted? It is workers and small businesses who are told to cut back and provide the solutions and mitigate the consequences of the heatwave and climate change.

It is becoming clear that natural disasters and climate change, heatwaves and floods exacerbate the general economic crisis, as well as the government's own crisis of legitimacy and credibility. Governance and authority is being passed to those private interests that are responsible for the misdemeanours in the first place. The profiteering billionaires have no solutions. Private interest is put forward to trump public interest. Authority needs to be constituted in the name of the people to ensure that their material and cultural interests are not compromised or scapegoated in favour of elite private property interests.

It was reported that on August 12, 2022, a man stabbed novelist Salman Rushdie multiple times as he was about to give a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, United States. A 24-year-old suspect, Hadi Matar, was arrested at the scene, and was charged the following day with assault and attempted murder [1]. We make no comment on that incident, as the full facts have yet to be established. But we republish below a Cultural Review article from Workers' Weekly, October 6, 2012, which was titled Salman Rushdie - An Intellectual in the Service of Imperialist War which may be of interest to our readers.

Big powers intent on invading and waging war on a sovereign country or countries, in order to gain hegemony over a region of the world, must first create public opinion for so doing, including denigrating and demonising a whole people. Such was the role played by the writer Salman Rushdie with his book The Satanic Verses published in 1988, which insulted Islam and gravely disturbed and provoked its followers. What followed is justified and grotesquely glamorised in Rushdie's latest book, Joseph Anton, an autobiographical work focussing on his decade under police protection, the title being his assumed name during that period. This new book is currently being massively promoted.

In the late 80s, with the Soviet Empire collapsing, the main threat to Anglo-American imperialism's drive to dominate the world, apart from the remaining overtly socialist countries, was the anti-imperialist stance of various Middle East and Asian countries, albeit under the banner of Islam, but anti-imperialist in essence nonetheless. Contributing to the preparation of public opinion for military aggression against these countries a decade or more later was the work of certain intellectuals, notably Salman Rushdie.

The dreadful catastrophes subsequently to befall Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, in particular, were to be the dire outcome.

Rushdie's insult to Islam and its believers could not have been but deliberate. He well knew what would be the result. The furore caused by his book could have been predicted. In fact, when riots broke out across South Asia, in which many died, Rushdie was quoted as expressing satisfaction that sales of his book might now increase.

Concerning his subsequent circumstances, it could well be asked if any other writer claiming to be "progressive" had ever been given round-the-clock protection by the Special Branch, at a level only previously accorded to a monarch or prime minister? Certainly, those in the progressive movement could readily list hundreds who have been harassed, persecuted, and even possibly eliminated by that very undercover state agency! Clearly the state was protecting a person who was doing it valuable service! In fact, rather than being the victim of cruel persecution, Rushdie, on his own admission, could be said to have lived the life of Riley during this period. In a recent interview, he gleefully recalls how the presence of "his boys" - in his own nauseating words "handsome, fit, armed and very sexy" - added a certain much-welcomed "cachet" to his appearance at numerous literary dinner parties. And his main eventual abode in London was in what was known locally as Millionaires Row.

At the time, publication of Rushdie's book, with its quite obscene passages, was defended on the grounds of Freedom of Speech, including by many in the communist and progressive movement. But surely, it cannot be so justified? The right of freedom of expression cannot cover the insulting of a whole people and their religion, in such a provocative way as to cause death and mayhem. Such an argument has time and time again been exposed as false, as in the debates in the 60s and 70s over No Platform for Racists and Fascists in the universities, when every student union in the land rightly supported the call.

Rushdie's latest book again serves imperialist warmongering. Its unrepentant defence and justification of his earlier insult and provocation to Islam and its followers, coming as it does when the drums of war beat once again over Syria and Iran - with the devastation of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya plain for all to see - make clear why his book is receiving such massive publicity.

His latest book is to be condemned as strongly as his earlier work, as is its promotion!

Note

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Salman_Rushdie