BY NICK EVERETT
SYDNEY — An anti-war teach-in on October 27 provided an opportunity to discuss a range of issues confronting the anti-war movement. The teach-in, organised by the Network Opposing War and Racism (NOWAR), was attended by 50 peace activists.
"Bush's claim to have humanitarian motives is a fraud", International Socialist Organisation member Tom Barnes told the first of two plenary sessions. Barnes went on to explain that 7.5 million people are at risk of starvation in Afghanistan according to the UN, while Western governments try to conceal the horror. "John Howard, when announcing the government's plans to send 1500 troops, did not mention the bombing once."
Khaldoun Hajaj, a Palestinian activist, began his presentation with paraphrasing the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin: "There are decades when nothing much seems to happen and then there are months when decades occur." Reflecting on developments since September 11, he noted that US State Department officials, desperate to find a new enemy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had siezed upon the "threat of terrorism" as a pretext both to launch a new war abroad and to "render the Bill or Rights worthless" at home.
Hajaj also outlined how US conservative think tanks and Pentagon officials had latched on to Samuel Huntington's thesis that a "clash of civilisations will dominate world politics" to justify their military assault on Afghanistan.
Hajaj argued that Huntington's assertion that all Muslims constituted a single entity standing against the West was ludicrous. "As a Palestinian I have a different culture to an Indonesian or a Morrocan", Hajaj said. Huntington's bold assertion that "Islam has bloodied borders" fails to take into account how British and US imperialism have used monarchies in the Middle East (such as those of Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Emirates), as well as Islamic fundamentalism against progressive movements, explained Hajaj.
Max Lane, Democratic Socialist Party member, Indonesian language translator and solidarity activist, also took up Huntington's thesis in his workshop, declaring his references to "cultural conflict" to be smokescreen for his real thesis: a conflict of "the West and the rest". Huntington's thesis contains an implicit racist message, stated Lane. The domination of world markets and world politics by Western imperialist powers was being justified with the claim to a superior civilisation.
Workshops discussed themes such as globalisation, the anti-Vietnam War movement and the role of young people, Palestine, refugees, terrorism and religion.
John Percy, a veteran of the anti-Vietnam War movement and national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party, addressed the question of how to build a mass anti-war movement in the final plenary. "We must build a movement with clear demands that, if met, can materially assist our side", he said. "A strategy of mass action — mobilising the largest possible numbers of people against the war, and giving everyone in the movement a voice — can stop this war."