Current mood:

Angry and a little afraid

SWP completely lose the plot, invite terrorist spokeman to speak at Stop The War meetings
This is really quite sinister, and leads me to question exactly who is paying the SWP's bills.

http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=490&Itemid=1

My emphasis:

Tour: Eyewitness from Iraq and Lebanon
UK tour starts in London, 28 February, 6.30pm Friends Meeting House

Hassan Juma'a, President of the Iraqi Oil Workers Union will be speaking with Ibrahim Mousawi, editor of a journal linked to Lebanon's Hezbollah for their only meeting in London. This is a chance to hear what is really going on in the Middle East today. Meetings will take place in the following cities:

London , 28 February
Bristol , 29 February
Birmingham , 1 March
Manchester , 1 March
Cambridge , 2 March
Norwich , 2 March
Cardiff , 3 March
Liverpool , 4 March

Hassan Juma'a, President of the Iraqi Oil Workers Federation and Ibrahim Moussawi, Editor of the journal Al-Intiqad in Lebanon, linked to Hezbollah, will be joined by activists and authors on a tour of the UK.

(........................................................)

Ibrahim Moussawi is the editor of the Hezbollah newspaper, Al Intiqad. He is based in Lebanon.


This has already caused controversy on my local indymedia board.

First post:
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/687947?condense_comments=false#comments

Reply:
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/687955?condense_comments=false#comments

Counter-reply- note the heavy use of ad-hominem attacks. BTW, the poster FAILS miserably.
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/687969?condense_comments=false#comments

Quo vadis, STW? You say you want to stop the war but you give an unopposed platform for a Hezbollah propagandist. If they wanted to show people what it was like in the ME, why not bring ordinary people from all the countries affected by the wars there?

It seems to me that there are two possibilities:

1) They're taking Hezbollah's money. This is probably against the law, as Hezbollox are a well known gang of international terrorists and war criminals, not unlike the Western military-industrial complex that SWP claim to oppose.

2) They're taking the British governments' money. The government would dearly love to shut down protest but they need a reason. A tour like this seems incredibly provocative, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if physical violence broke out - already anti-fascists are talking about "giving Moussawi the welcome he deserves". The government could then ban all protests that don't have explicit police permission in advance, as is already the case in central London.

Of course, perhaps I am just being paranoid. It's an occupational hazard when dealing with far-left politics and the SWP and it's front groups do have a long, long history of being really, really stupid - but how come they are always stupid in such a way as to cause the protest movements they take over to fail? And how come they have so much money to print their papers, bus people around the country and form multiple front groups? Socialist / Communist newspapers such as the Morning Star and the Weekly Worker are constantly begging for money, donations, handouts etc - but the SWP seems able to run at a loss indefinitely.

Who is paying for this?