Anglo-American imperialism and the rest of their pack at the United Nations are wailing at Democratic Korea’s latest nuclear test. None of this would have happened in the first place had the Americans honoured their agreement with the DPR Korea to build light-water reactors as they promised in 1994. None of this would have happened had the imperialists worked sincerely to resolve the nuclear issue and ease tension on the Korean peninsula during the Six-Party talks in Beijing. Instead the imperialists chose to continue to diplomatically and economically isolate north Korea in the hope of bringing down the socialist system of the DPRK.
With sickening hypocrisy the United States, with the blood of millions of Iraqis and Afghans on its hands, poses as the arbiter of “human rights” and “democracy” throughout the world.
Millions of Palestinian Arabs live under brutal Israeli occupation or languish in refugee camps but the imperialists do nothing. When Israel attacked Lebanon in July 2006 the imperialists did nothing to stop the fighting until it became clear that Israel was losing. When the people of Gaza defied the might of the Zionist war-machine in January the imperialists did nothing to stop it at the United Nations.
Democratic Korea has had no choice but to develop its nuclear energy programme and its own independent nuclear deterrent. The DPRK threatens no one. But it is surrounded by enemies. An American nuclear armada is stationed off the coast of Korea while tens of thousands of US troops prop up a puppet regime in the south. More troops are based in Japan, a willing vassal of US imperialism. The imperialists and their puppets do little to mask their true intentions which are to perpetuate the criminal partition of the Korean peninsula and restore the rule of the hated capitalists and landlords in the free north.
The DPRK nuclear test has demonstrated the resolve of the people of north Korea to defend their socialist system come what may. We whole-heartedly support them.
Boycott the European elections
The farcical European elections take place next week but in Britain hardly anyone knows who their MEPs are or what they do. In fact they do next to nothing apart from draw their colossal wages and expenses for taking part in a charade that is paid for by the workers of Europe.
In this election Labour and the two major opposition parties are united, in differing degrees, in support of European integration – the building of a European capitalist super-state revolving around British and Franco-German imperialism. The anti-EU opposition ranges from fringe left parties to the neo-nazi BNP, all scrabbling after the juicy perks that a seat in the EU parliament provides. The most successful is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a rabid independent Tory front that is defending its nine British seats and has high hopes of gaining more from the backlash over the Commons expenses scandal. UKIP claims to fight to get Britain out of the EU. But what have UKIP’s nine MEPs achieved over the years? Absolutely nothing apart from drawing their Euros.
In Britain there is indifference and often outright hostility to the undemocratic institutions of the European Union. This was shown by the conscious decision of the vast majority of the electorate to boycott the 2004 European Parliament elections. Little more than a third of the electorate bothered to vote despite the blandishments of the media, the appeal of proportional representation to minority parties and the cajoling of the bourgeois parties. In many working class areas the turnout was even lower.
The European Parliament, like the Commission, has become a byword for undemocratic practices, corruption, nepotism and waste and fraud on a massive scale. The elections themselves are nothing more than a bogus public relations exercise for a body that possesses no meaningful executive powers at all. They don’t deserve the credibility of a vote at all. Boycott the EU elections in June!
