The Socialist 22 September 2009

No cuts in public services

Prepare political challenge to cuts agenda

Higher education - cuts cuts cuts!

Universities in crisis - Join Socialist Students

Defend education - stop the £2 billion cuts in spending

Brown declares war on workers

TUC congress: Anger on the fringes, inaction at the top

Afghanistan: An unwinnable war

Postal workers strike as national ballot continues

Warrington mail centre

Vestas workers determined to continue fight for jobs

Youth unemployment hits record level

Future Jobs Fund - massaging the figures

Campaign for a Salford workers' MP

Energy rip-off

Threat to Coventry homeless

Socialist Party MEP denounces "campaign of fear" on Lisbon Treaty

Workers' fightback grows in Italy

Engineering construction: Stewards' forum recommends bosses' offer Workers should reject!

Portsmouth shipbuilders vote for strike

Bosses ask JCB workers for sacrifice

Battle over pensions means strike threat at Corus

Liverpool bin workers score victory

Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy

The Dirty Thirty - Heroes of the Miners' Strike

The Anti-Flag album 'The People or the Gun'

Previous issues, etc

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Afghanistan: An unwinnable war

THE US and NATO's top military chief in Afghanistan has told his political bosses that western forces will fail there unless there is a change in policy. A secret 66-page document from General McChrystal, leaked to the Washington Post, says that unless the insurgent tide is turned back within 12 months then the Taliban may become unbeatable.

But McChrystal's warning isn't simply about winning militarily, but is a call to shift the western forces' emphasis from fighting the Taliban to winning the 'hearts and minds' of angry and alienated Afghan people. "The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily but we can defeat ourselves", he laments. But can a turnaround in strategy be achieved?

It isn't rocket science to understand that blasting the country back to the stone age, tolerating mass unemployment and widespread poverty, and allowing an unaccountable, rich, corrupt and brutal warlord regime to rule, has proved to be a recruiting sergeant for the Taliban.

Eight years on from the Bush and Blair initiated invasion of Afghanistan, the vast majority in the country are worse off in terms of security, the economy and democratic rights.

The Socialist Party opposed the invasion and we continue to call for an end to the occupation.

Demonstrate against the continuing occupation/bring the troops back - Saturday 24 October, central London.

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No cuts in public services