so who are these people?

Amir Taheri gives the rundown on the groups behind this week's planned protests in London.

The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard left groups: Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castrists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labour party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists known as “Watermelons” (Green outside, red inside).

The chairman of the coalition is one Andrew Murray, a former employee of the Soviet Novosty Agency and leader in the British Communist party. Cochair is Muhammad Asalm Ijaz of the London Council of Mosques. Members include John Rees of the Socialist Workers' party and Ghayassudin Siddiqui of the Muslim Parliament. Tanja Salem of the Al-awdah (The Return) group, an outfit close to Yasser Arafat, is also a member along with Shahedah Vawda of “Just Peace,” another militant Arab group, and Wolf Wayne of the “Green Socialist Network.”

As Taheri points out, the most troubling aspect of this coalition of the deranged is the heretofore unimagined union of Islamists and communist diehards.

UPDATE. Also on NRO today, Andrew Apostolou reminds us how the UK is—in spite of such sound and fury—still our closest ally:

Yet the oddity of Britain is that while the press and public opinion have been volatile in their attitude towards the Iraq war, British political leaders, in government and opposition, are remarkably united in supporting the U.S. administration. …

It is not just that Blair's Labor party, with an unassailable parliamentary majority, backed him over Iraq. The opposition Conservative party also agrees with his Iraq policy.

He also points out that, with the scheduled expansion of the EU next year, “Britain, and its American alignment, will represent the majority view among EU states, with the ungrateful anti-Americanism of Chirac doomed to be the minority creed.” Let us hope so—while remembering that in certain of these countries (Spain, Italy, Poland) a change in government might be sufficient to tilt the balance in Europe the other way.