Huge demonstrations are planned in Germany on the occasion of the annual G8 meeting that is to start on June 6. The summit of this gangsters' "united front" will once again be protected by a giant police operation. It will be held in an entrenched camp especially designed for the event near Rostock. A 13 kilometer-long barbed-wire fence was installed for $18 million in order to prevent the demonstrators entering the meeting site... The German Interior Ministry first announced an exclusion zone some six kilometers around the site, but a court finally ruled that protestors could not be kept more than 200 meters from the fence. Some 16,000 cops will be there anyway to enforce the rulers' law and order. The Maoist organizations in Europe are planning to take part in the different actions that will take place during the whole week. Five of them issued this statement that they will circulate widely among the demonstrators.

- Arsenal-Express

The drumbeats for the next war in the Middle East are getting louder by the day! The US war machine is fuelling up for a brutal attack against Iran. The US diplomatic corps is busy conducting secret negotiations with the regional reactionary regimes and even the Islamic fundamentalist reactionary forces to actively prepare the political ground for a new phase of war in the Middle East.

Taking the hideous anti-people September 11 attack as an opportunity, the US ruling class, rallied around its Christian fascist hard core, openly declared its goal of establishing a new world order. Under the guise of a "war on terror" they have started an unlimited war with the goal of establishing an unchallenged global empire.

The US rampage that is currently targeting the Middle East has a much wider scope, covering territory from Turkey to Indonesia, which serves its global strategic restructuring for building an unchallenged new empire. In short the aim is "full-scale dominance" in the Middle East.

No one should contemplate that this storm will blow over and the pendulum will swing back to "normalcy". We have a long night ahead. Therefore, let us prepare ourselves and most of all get clear on the path of our struggle against this totally murderous war.

On this bloody empire-building road, the US feels compelled to remove its previous puppets, collaborators and the unstable political structures that are not suitable for the new economic and political requirements of its empire. This is what brings the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran face to face into a showdown. This should not cause confusion about the nature of this regime. Its current contradictions with the US can in no way be an excuse to cover up its reactionary character and crimes. It cannot be allowed to wash the blood from its hands with the blood the US has been and will be spilling.

Nobody should forget the history of the Iranian revolution. When in 1979 the people of Iran rose in revolution, the US and other Western imperialist powers thought it was smart to support the mullahs against the peoples of Iran. Thus began their mutual collaboration. They drowned the revolution in blood and killed a million people in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs ruling in Iran have always been more than willing to supply oil and political grease to the cogs and wheels of imperialist exploitation in the region. Their verbal skirmishes with the US and their Islamic fundamentalist ideology have been two thin veils to cover and mystify the real nature of the social relations of exploitation and oppression in Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic regime that has turned women into slaves and made children the property of parents by restoring the 1,400 year-old Sharia laws. In 1988 this bloody regime hanged several thousand political prisoners in a matter of two weeks in order to "solve" the problem of political prisoners. Today big industrial projects of European oil and gas companies in Iran and other multi-national corporations are protected by the so-called Revolutionary Guards of the Iranian Hezbollah with orders to shoot the semi-slave workers if they rebel. Today, the people of Iran from all strata are bouncing back from that great defeat in order to make revolution once again. Their revolutionary struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran must be supported and strengthened.

The crisis and showdown brewing between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran must be used against both of them: the master and its long-time collaborator. Their strife must be turned into a gaping hole through which the independent historical initiative of the people can and must burst forth onto the historical stage, rupturing and reversing the reactionary hellish dynamic in the region. The logic of seeking protection under the wings of a reactionary side whenever two of them get into conflict for their anti-people interests is a deadly political trap for the oppressed masses of people and must be ended. The difficulties of the reactionaries can and must be utilized for their effective removal from the backs of the peoples, not for an excuse or opportunity to let one of them secure victory and renew the chains on the masses.

Tremendous suffering and destruction have been imposed on the people in the Middle East. And much more is in the making. There is no end to the escalating crimes of the apartheid state of Israel against the Palestinian people. The US and European occupation forces are running Afghanistan with the baton of their hi-tech armies and Islamic Sharia law! After four years of destructive war and the occupation of Iraq that has murdered more than half a million Iraqis and chased four million people into exile, there is no end in sight to this carnage and chaos. They set the agenda and we, the people, end up providing the victims. This must stop! They build empires; we dig graves for our loved ones. This must stop!

Neither can we ignore or forgive the complete complicity of the European imperialists, the Russian new capitalist Tsars and the Japanese imperialists, in the criminal war that the US is leading in the Middle East. These powers are increasingly troubled by the US drive for world dominance because they are envious of the US dominance in running modern-day wage slave plantations around the world. They move behind the US and try to get the best possible share of the globalised capitalist exploitation of the peoples of the world, but at the same time they pursue their own imperial dreams in the Middle East.

Today, the Islamic fundamentalist forces are occupying the political terrain as opponents of the US global drive. But in fact their aim is to achieve an accommodation within the world system ruled by the US and impose oppressive, age-old social relations on the peoples of the Middle East - a glaring example of which is slavery for women. The US is using the reactionary nature of its opponents to promote its own equally reactionary social relations and ideology as something progressive - as if its global drive were bringing freedom and development for the peoples of the Middle East. These two poles of reactionary and imperialist forces are indeed reinforcing each other at the expense of the people's revolutionary aspirations and struggles for emancipation. This political and ideological polarization currently developing is dangerous because forces representing no good for the people are setting the terms of ideological and political confrontation, in order to trap people in one or the other pole. The US imperialists use this dynamic to make their crusade for empire seem like a justifiable violence against religious "fanatics and barbarians who hate democracy and freedom", even while they are moving US society itself towards Bible-based theocratic fascism. On the other side, ideologically and politically reactionary Islamic forces seek to present their historically reactionary dreams and interests as "righteous jihad" against "occupying infidels". We cannot allow this dynamic of mutually reinforcing reactionary mystification of the real class and social relations of oppression and exploitation in the world to continue.

A powerful movement of the people of the world is urgently needed to oppose and reverse the monopolization and polarization of the political atmosphere by the reactionary states and forces. It has been far too long that the political stage in the region of Middle East has been left to the initiative of the reactionaries.

Now there is a growing resentment, agonizing and rejection among broad sections of the population about the bloody crusade of the US and its reactionary opponents.

A truthful and clear vision representing the genuine interests and revolutionary aspirations of the peoples must lead and transform this growing sentiment into a politically and ideologically effective force on the political terrain. Such a political movement strongly voicing the fundamental and genuine interests and aspirations of the masses will give heart and provide a way forward out of the encirclement by imperialists and reactionary forces and agendas.

There is no denying that dark clouds are gathering on the horizon and these are dangerous times ahead.

The most advanced revolutionary forces must urgently move to unite with all progressive forces in order to launch independent historical action of the masses. This requires a farsighted revolutionary vision of radically transforming society while seeking sincerely to unite with all those who oppose the crimes of the imperialists and reactionaries. Such a movement will make the situation more favourable and create better conditions for a revolutionary struggle that aims at remaking the world for the people by the people - by collectively fighting for a radically different human society on this planet!

We must open our eyes and sense the gravity of the situation. Look how yesterday's intolerable outrages are being presented as today's reality to be accepted: Now they are talking about using nuclear bombs on the Iranian people. How could this be tolerated? Will it stop even there, if we allow this to happen? It has become ordinary to speak about the possibility of the end of human civilization as a result of ecological catastrophe. But people are not allowed to think of ending this capitalist-imperialist order through popular revolutions!

It is about time to put an end to these "Hausverbots" and "Denkverbots" (outlawed thoughts and actions). Yes, the world needs to be remade, but not by Bushes, Blairs, Merkels, Sarkozys, Putins, or by the local two-bit reactionaries running around in the Middle East. It must be remade collectively by the people of the world for the people of the world.

Stop imperialist occupation and war of aggression in the Middle East!
Promote revolutionary thinking, unity and struggles!
Against imperialism and reaction!
Peoples of the Middle East: join forces in internationalist unity and fight against the imperialists and all the reactionary states in the region!

Communist Party of Iran (MLM)
Maoist Communist Party (Turkey-Northern Kurdistan)
Revolutionary Communists (Germany)
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan
Supporters of TKP/ML (Maoist Party Centre)

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First published in Arsenal-Express, No. 8, June 3, 2007.
Arsenal-Express is an electronic newsletter that presents the viewpoints from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) of Canada.
For a free subscription, look at www.pcr-rcp.ca.