Since last weekend's attempted attacks in the UK,

bombings of civilians by US-led forces in both Iraq

and Afghanistan have continued on a daily basis

leaving scores of innocent victims dead each day

Yet we're 'shocked' when young Muslims retaliate

Wars are no longer fought between the armies

of nations against those of other nations

Wars today are waged by the hired guns

of corporate and imperial oppression

against people themselves conveniently

called “terrorists” or “insurgents”

It all sounds like a cheap movie plot

I cannot pretend that the aims and goals

of every guerrilla band are legitimate

I can say that the imperial aims of Bush and his

corporate co-sponsors are most certainly not

Why Do We Hate Them?

Tony Blair, the great new Labour promise, had been running the country for a decade; he managed to drag this country into every possible conflict, and to escalate minor conflict to crisis levels.

He has managed to lie repeatedly to his people, his parliament and his cabinet, he has launched an illegal war that cost over 700,000 innocent civilian lives.

He obviously failed to see the impact those wars may have on his multi-ethnic society at home.

Blair has just left the PM office, thank God for that, however, this country is now on the brink of moral collapse. Its civil rights system is under severe threat. Politicians of all parties are calling for tougher detention laws.

The possibility of mass deportation of new immigrants doesn’t look like a remote nightmare. Yet, most worrying is the role of the ‘free’ media in this country.

The leading papers and TV are succumbing quite willingly to the official Government line of thinking. It’s something that reminds me too much of the recruited media in my doomed homeland, the place I left thirteen years ago.

I find myself wondering, how dare the media ask ‘why do they hate us?’ Don’t they know the answer? Don’t we know the answer?

Weren’t we the ones who demolished Iraq? Wasn’t it our PM, Tony Blair, who gave a green light to the Israelis to flatten Lebanon?

Wasn’t it Tony Blair’s government who dismissed the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine? Wasn’t it Blair who allowed the Israelis to starve Gaza?

For those who still fail to realise, to kill is rather simple, to turn towns into piles of rubble isn’t that complicated either.

Yet, to raise a child may take a few years, to build a city takes hundreds of years and to establish harmony between human beings takes thousand of years. We should stop lying to others and to ourselves.

We know perfectly well why they hate us, they have some good reasons, as things stand momentarily, we are the ones who are killing them en mass. It is us who demolish their towns and kill their kids.

Thus, rather than raising the pathetic question, ‘why do they hate us?’ we’d better evade our self-righteous mode, and ask ourselves, ‘why do we hate them so much?’ or even, ‘why do we hate so much?’ in general.

To Stop the Bombs, Get the Troops Out

The British media have been quick to praise the changed tone adopted by the new prime minister Gordon Brown and home secretary Jacqui Smith.

Neither rushed to announce new terror laws and both made a point of blaming Al Qaida and not Muslims in general for the bomb attempts. Brown let it be known he would not use the phrase "war on terror".

But Brown repeated Tony Blair's claim that bombs in Britain are not a product of the carnage in the Middle East. He argued attacks occur "irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, irrespective of what is happening in different parts of the world".

He stated that "the terrorist threat is long term and it's sustained. It is about those people who are essentially violent extremists who have a grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent."

Stop the War Coalition convenor Lindsey German points out, "Even a government inquiry last year found that the growth of terrorism in Britain was due to the war in Iraq."

She adds, "There is one simple fact – before the war in Iraq, Britain was not under threat from such bombings. Now it is.

"What Britain needs is not more terror laws but a change in foreign policy."

Following the attack at Glasgow airport the Stop the War Coalition in Scotland issued a statement deploring the attempted bombing.

It pointed out, "We reiterate our view that the roots of violence at home lie in the illegal war in the Middle East and we call again for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq."

New Labour has rushed to argue that the 9/11 attacks pre-date the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

That misses the fact that ten years earlier, US-led forces devastated Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War and followed that with a decade of sanctions which left half a million children dead.

The Scottish Stop the War Coalition will be supporting and speaking at this weekend's march for peace in Glasgow.

One of the messages must be to oppose any attempt to utilise these attacks to intensify the growing climate of Islamophobia.

Since last Friday's and Saturday's attempted attacks, bombings of civilians by US-led forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan have continued on a daily basis leaving scores of innocent victims dead each day.

For all those wanting an end to the threat of bombs in our towns and cities those attacks must stop. Socialist Worker