When News is Noise: the Media and South Ossetia4 Sep 2008The Strain Behind The Smile A Los Angeles Times editorial observed last month that China had persuaded world leaders to attend the Olympic Games "despite their misgivings about Beijing’s horrific human rights record both domestically and abroad". The horror, the editors noted, could not be entirely suppressed: "What planners in Beijing miscalculated is that no matter how well you teach performers to smile, the strain behind the lips is still detectable." (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-olympics26-2008aug26,0,5033807.story) Needless to say, no mainstream British or American journalist referred to the host nation’s "horrific human rights record" at the time of the US Games in Atlanta in 1996, or of the Los Angeles Games in 1984. And of course no media outlet has discussed "misgivings" about the awarding of the 2012 Games to Britain. But why on earth would they? Historian Mark Curtis explains: "Since 1945, rather than occasionally deviating from the promotion of peace, democracy, human rights and economic development in the Third World, British (and US) foreign policy has been systematically opposed to them, whether the Conservatives or Labour (or Republicans or Democrats) have been in power. This has had grave consequences for those on the receiving end of Western policies abroad." (Curtis, The Ambiguities of Power, Zed Books, 1995, p.3) A Guardian leader in July described how "western leaders rightly remain uneasy about giving their imprimatur to a [Chinese] regime which jails dissidents, persecutes religious groups, backs Burma and bankrolls Darfur." (Leader, ‘Beijing Olympics: Faster, higher – but freer?,’ The Guardian, July 12, 2008) On the other hand, the Guardian leader writers might have felt uneasy about giving their imprimatur to "western leaders" who are the destroyers of Baghdad, Fallujah and Mosul, and who have promoted chaos and terror in Afghanistan, Haiti, Serbia and Somalia, among many other places. An Independent leader naturally shared the Guardian’s view: "The outside world will have a crucial role to play in the coming years. Engagement will produce much better results than isolation. But at the same time, the developed world must guard against soft-pedalling sensitive issues such as the treatment of Tibet, or Beijing’s sponsorship of vile regimes in Africa." (Leader, ‘China must not let its brief democratic light go out,’ The Independent, August 2, 2008) It is taken for granted that "the developed world" is the great hope for human rights. Again, comparable Independent editorials did not appear ahead of the Atlanta and Los Angeles Games condemning Washington’s "sponsorship of vile regimes". Everything in the media starts from the assumption that ‘We mean well,’ and from the unspoken, indeed unthought, assumption that this claim need never be questioned. This isn’t just a matter of choice – career success depends on it. Senior journalists like the BBC’s Huw Edwards have to be willing to make the Soviet-style claim that British troops are in Afghanistan "to try to help in the country’s rebuilding programme". (Edwards, BBC 1, News at Ten, July 28, 2008) Respecting Sovereignty One tragicomic consequence of this self-imposed simple-mindedness is the inability of the mainstream media to make sense of last month’s war in Georgia. Journalists kept a straight face as they communicated George Bush’s demand that "Russia’s government must respect Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty." (http://afp.google.com/article/ ALeqM5i2LdnLHTyJgB2Ng8VSQyMQ3eMVrw) Few felt inclined to mention the small matter of Bush’s own invasion of sovereign Iraq, or the US-driven separation of Kosovo from sovereign Serbia. Gordon Brown, proud ‘liberator’ of Iraq, or what remains of it, somehow avoided choking on his own hypocrisy as he insisted: "when Russia has a grievance over an issue such as South Ossetia, it should act multilaterally by consent rather than unilaterally by force."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/2008/aug/31/russia.georgia) Occasional mentions have been made of the fact that the largest pipeline between the Black Sea and the Caspian oil fields and Europe is the 1.2 million barrels a day BP Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) line that passes through Georgia and parts of Abkhazia, and which happens to be the only pipeline not under Russian control. The Christian Science Monitor recently described the politics of the pipeline: "The $4 billion BTC pipeline, managed by and 30 percent owned by British Petroleum, was routed through Georgia to avoid sending Caspian oil through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Russia. A 10-mile pipeline could have connected Caspian oil to the well-developed Iranian pipeline system." (http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0816/p14s01-cogn.html) In 2000, Bill Clinton described the pipeline as "the most important achievement at the end of the twentieth century." (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/geor-m02.shtml) Securing this "achievement" has involved intense US efforts to manipulate Georgian political and military elites. The US and France are the main suppliers of Georgia’s military, but the prime US ally, Israel, has also supplied some $200 million worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted drones, rockets, night-vision equipment, electronic systems, and training by former senior Israeli officers. To be sure, media hints that oil might help explain American and Israeli involvement have far exceeded mentions of the even more embarrassing reasons behind the British and American attack on Iraq in 2003, when the subject of oil was completely off the news agenda. Patrick Collinson wrote in the Guardian of the Georgian crisis: "It’s a superpower confrontation in a region criss-crossed with oil pipelines vital to the west." (Collinson, ‘Money: Sell oil, buy banks?: Crude prices are falling and commodities are plummeting,’ The Guardian, August 16, 2008) An article in the Observer last month was titled: "Europe’s energy source lies in the shadow of Russia’s anger: Behind the tanks in Ossetia are key oil and gas pipelines." (Alex Brett, The Observer, August 17, 2008) In the Times, Richard Beeston wrote a piece headed: "Oil supplies and Kremlin’s relations with the West at stake." (Beeston, The Times, August 9, 2008) The media have presented the West as innocently seeking to protect its energy supplies from an erratic Russian predator – we just want to keep our economies running. Perhaps the insatiably greedy Western interests that have wrecked havoc across the world in the post-1945 period are busy elsewhere. In the Guardian, Jeremy Leggett wrote: "The Kremlin has a strategy to control a vast slab of the world economy via oil and gas. Dmitry Medvedev, lest we forget, used to run Gazprom. The Georgia crisis, if not a planned piece in the strategy, certainly fits." (Leggett ‘Beware the bear trap: Britain, like most of Europe, is at risk of being the target of Russia’s energy export weaponry,’ The Guardian, August 30, 2008) Recall, by contrast, the almost complete media taboo on identifying oil as a factor in the US-UK invasion of Iraq. We can imagine a companion piece by Leggett from, say, 2002: "The White House has a strategy to control a vast slab of the world economy via oil and gas. George W. Bush, lest we forget, was the founder of Arbusto Oil, and chairman and CEO of energy company Spectrum 7. The Iraq crisis, if not a planned piece in the strategy, certainly fits." In the real world, Johann Hari wrote of Iraq in the Independent in 2003: "Blair went into this with the best of intentions. It is just silly to claim that Blair cooked up all these arguments to justify a grab for oil, or a straight-forward imperialist project." (Hari, ‘What Monica Lewinsky Was For Clinton The Hutton Inquiry Is For Tony Blair,’ The Independent, August 27, 2003) A year earlier, David Aaronovitch manufactured the required sneer: "Over in the New Statesman, John Pilger cranks out, as though Xeroxing on an old machine, piece after repetitive piece telling us that it’s all about oil and money and greed and imperialism." (Aaronovitch, ‘You couldn’t be sure what anyone would end up saying,’ The Independent, September 10, 2002) “The UK, meanwhile” Leggett added sagely in his actual article, “has no energy strategy”. Certainly not in Iraq, where, in late June, Iraqi oil minister Mohamad Sharastani announced that contracts had been drawn up between the Maliki government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq. Edward Herman takes up the wretched tale: "No competitive bidding was allowed, and the terms announced were very poor by existing international contract standards. The contracts were written with the help of ‘a group of American advisers led by a small State department team.’ This was all in conformity with the Declaration of Principles of November 26, 2007, whereby the ‘sovereign country’ of Iraq would use ‘especially American investments’ in its attempt to recover from the effects of the American aggression. The contracts have not yet been signed, and the internal protests are loud, but clearly the fig leaf of WMD and democracy has been stripped away as an ‘enduring’ occupation and a systematic looting of Iraq’s oil are arranged under a non-democratic tool of the occupation." (Herman, ‘Further Nuggets From the Nuthouse: The Law of Conservation of the Level of Violence,’ Z Magazine, September 2008) The BBC’s World Affairs Correspondent, Paul Reynolds, found no difficulty this week in recognising the realpolitik in Russian policy: "In some ways, we are going back to the century before last, with a nationalistic Russia very much looking out for its own interests, but open to co-operation with the outside world on issues where it is willing to be flexible." (Reynolds, ‘New Russian world order: the five principles,’ September 1, 2008; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7591610.stm) By contrast, Reynolds wrote in 2006: "The third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq prompts some melancholy thoughts about how it was supposed to be – and how it has turned out. "By now, according to the plan, Iraq should have emerged into a peaceful, stable representative democracy, an example to dictatorships and authoritarian regimes across the Middle East." (Reynolds, ‘Iraq three years on: A bleak tale,’ March 17, 2006; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/middle_east/4812460.stm) Russia’s plan is to look out for ‘number one’; the US-UK plan was to spread peace, love and understanding to Iraq and the region. Not a trace of recognition was allowed that the Iraq invasion was fundamentally about American profit and power, and certainly not the welfare of the Iraqi people, about whom, traditionally, US policymakers have not given a damn. Mostly the level of analysis of last month’s conflict has been pitifully thin, as in this comment from Bronwen Maddox in the Times: "Why now? The main reason is Georgia’s desire to throw in its lot with Nato, the US’s enthusiastic support for that, and Russia’s passionate opposition." (Maddox, ‘Simmering dispute could turn Russia against the West,’ The Times, August 6, 2008) It simply isn’t done for corporate journalism to expose the true goals of Western corporate titans and their militant state allies. The preferred realm of discourse is restricted to nonsense about "security", "democracy" and other "humanitarian" goals. Favouring Georgia Britain isn’t afflicted with a state-controlled media system, although one would hardly know it from press performance. Typically, a country identified as ‘nice’ by the British government is also ‘nice’ for our ‘free press’. The same is true of governments labelled ‘nasty’. The media have therefore presented the Georgia/South Ossetia conflict as the result of irrational Russian bullying. Max Hastings emphasised in the Guardian that, "The Russians yearn for respect, in the same fashion as any inner-city street kid with a knife." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/2008/aug/18/russia.georgia) In a rare example of independent thought in the Guardian, Peter Wilby noted the consistent bias: "Russia’s behaviour, newspapers implied, was in a quite different category from Georgia’s. In the Sunday Times, Russian tanks went ‘rampaging’ in South Ossetia, while Georgian tanks merely ‘moved’. If Georgian forces had bombarded civilians, it was ‘reprehensible’, the Telegraph allowed. Russia, however, was ‘offending every canon of international behaviour’." (Wilby, ‘Georgia has won the PR war,’ The Guardian, August 18, 2008; http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/18/ pressandpublishing.georgia) Wilby added: "Georgia’s actions in South Ossetia went largely unexamined, and it was hard to find, from press accounts, what refugees from the province were fleeing from." Indeed, an August 19 ITV News report explained the tragic results of the fighting for the people of Georgia. But as in so much reporting, no mention was made of the initial Georgian attack or the consequences for the people of South Ossetia. In fact Georgian forces had bombed the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, for 72 hours. An August 20 article in the Times reported how a "makeshift operating table lay under a weak lightbulb in the corridor of a dank basement that smelt strongly of excrement." Dina Zhakarova, a doctor in South Ossetia, commented: "This is where we had to try to save people’s lives. The whole place was a sea of blood while the Georgians were bombing our hospital." (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ news/world/europe/article4568945.ece) Dr Zhakarova described how staff had treated more than 250 people underground after the Georgian Army’s assault, adding: "All the staff gave blood for the patients because there were so many wounded. The Georgians knew very well that this was a hospital, so how could they say that we are their fellow citizens when they were firing rockets at us? It’s nonsense." Such commentary has been vanishingly rare. The bias is clear, but the deeper point is far more interesting – the entrenched propaganda function of the mainstream media renders it incapable of making sense of events in Georgia and South Ossetia. References to Russian self-interest are allowed, and to Western concerns about energy security. But on the real reasons why people were killing and dying, on how Western state violence consistently supports Western corporate greed, journalists have had next to nothing to say. In a world where rational understanding conflicts with the ‘ideals’ of propaganda, "news" is often little more than noise. SUGGESTED ACTION The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Write to Paul Reynolds
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Prisons- The Wrong Philosophy4 Sep 2008“Naive” is the kindest word that can be used to describe the decision by crime reduction charity Nacro to get into bed with private security contractor G4S to bid to run two prisons. Nacro has a commendable record of opposing private prisons with their priority of producing profits and dividends for shareholders. It has shared with other members of the Criminal Justice Alliance the view that prisons should not be used simply to lock away wrongdoers but should be part of process of turning people away from crime. Indeed, there has been widespread agreement on the need to prioritise non-custodial sentences with service and supervision within the community taking the place of isolation and deprivation. However, it is a giant step away from a general agreement on tackling crime that seeks to convince offenders to recognise their behaviour and to make amends for it to a willingness to be involved in a for-profits enterprise with G4S. Nacro chief executive Paul Cavadino believes that, if reform charities are involved in the planning of a prison regime, prisons would be more likely to provide high-quality resettlement and rehabilitation. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Private security contractors, whether G4S or any other company, will operate whichever regime shows the greater likelihood of generating profits for their shareholders. Mr Cavadino’s mistake lies in believing that he and Nacro can isolate one part of the criminal justice system and engender a humanitarian regime. But one look at the government’s approach, with its likely adoption of US-style Titan prisons, indicates that new Labour is pushing for profits to be the deciding factor, as it has done in the NHS and other public services. Profits are prioritised on the basis of cutting down on expenditure, which is why privateers do not pay the same salaries or contribute to the same pension scheme as in publicly operated jails. Is it likely that privatised prisons, in these same circumstances, would invest more heavily in rehabilitation, education and post-imprisonment supervision than the state sector? You don’t get to rake in half-yearly profits of 175 million if you have been doing so. The main problem with the Prison Service is that the government has not been prepared to invest in humane alternatives to the “lock ‘em up and throw the key away” approach favoured by right-wing tabloid newspapers. It has adopted in reality the desperate and deceitful philosophy of former Tory home secretary Michael Howard, the absurd view that “prison works.” If prison worked, we would not have the current high rates of recidivism, the widespread availability of class A drugs in jail, and the majority of prisoners having drugs or alcohol abuse problems. Our prisons are overcrowded because the message coming from government is that more and more people should be locked up. The government assures us that this illustrates its toughness. It does no such thing. It is tougher for offenders to be compelled to confront what they have done and to be helped to find a better way of existence than reliance on crime. Nacro will either be part of this tougher but more humane approach or it will fall for the privateers’ mantra that, if it brings in profits, it works.
Military Recruitment at Schools and Colleges4 Sep 2008Who’s the new guy in the leafy attire handing out fitness advice and wads of cash? After moving the motion objecting to army recruitment at congress, confirming our solidarity with NUT and overwhelmingly supported by you all, our local campaign began in earnest this week. The Army have set up a stall in the drama hall during enrolment offering a 5000 bursaries to students to commit themselves to 4 years in the army after leaving college. With no other employers have been granted this privileged access,and no other organisation has been offered the opportunity to counter the one-sided propaganda; we were understandably concerned. Their material as one member put.. “ its like a promotional material for a sports centre for bird spotters”. Why has the army has been permitted access during enrolment week when students are making important choices about their future. Pressure, bribes or inducements from outside institutions are inappropriate in this context. In response to UCU’s distribution, and in solidarity with our UNISON branch, we leafleted outlining our opposition to the army’s recruitment activity in the college during enrolment. As a direct consequence our college principal publicly lambasted our new branch secretary through a microphone in front of the assembled college, at a meeting called at the start of the year. The army had been distributing their literature unchallenged to all curriculum desks throughout enrolment. Our concern is for the welfare of our students, particularly the 16-18 year-olds, and a profound distaste that they are being recruited with inducements and under false pretences to an institution which is failing in its duty of care. A recent independent report by the Rowntree trust has condemned the army for using false and misleading propaganda to recruit young people. A full-page article in yesterday’s Observer newspaper (‘Record numbers of ex-soldiers in jail as combat leaves mental scars’) supplies further evidence that the MOD are failing in their duty of care to soldiers, Soldiers comprise the largest occupational group in the prison system with the number doubling in the last 4 years to 8500. The Howard League for Penal Reform attributes this to ‘‘an inability to cope with civilian life, particularly for those who joined the services on leaving school’ Veterans in Prison argue that ‘‘they’re fighting in back-to-back conflicts, coming out and going back again; they haven’t got time to recover. There are not enough of them. They don’t have the right cover or equipment and they’re absolutely knackered’ ‘staff at [one prison] have become so concerned at the lack of support traumatised soldiers receive upon release that they have taken to issuing them with information packs giving details of mental health charities’ National and local public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our local community amongst others is struggling to deal with gun crime and violence, especially where it affects young people. As a community college we should oppose violence and should not be feeding our young people to the war machine. The UK has been criticised at the UN (Child Soldiers Global Report 2008) as the only country in Europe that recruits 16 year-olds into the armed forces. The army targets youth because they are more vulnerable to army propaganda, especially in areas of high poverty and unemployment where young people have fewer choices than in leafy suburbs. The Army is enticing young people with glossy propaganda that conceals the facts that: - The Army is a racist, sexist and homophobic institution - 20% of 16-23 year-old women recruits suffer sexual harassment (2006 Equal Opportunities commission survey), with 10% of new recruits report being bullied in the first 12 months (Army’s own figures, report arising from the recent Deepcut inquiry) - Two thirds of people helped by Shelter, the homelessness charity, in 2001 were ex-armed forces - Hundreds of soldiers have been sent to fight illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with defective or inadequate equipment - Soldiers returning from the front-line are suffering record levels of mental breakdown, drug abuse and alcoholism as a result of the trauma that they have endured The army own offices and seemingly unlimited funds for media advertising campaigns. They have mobile recruitment buses that have previously pitched up outside Tottenham Town Hall. Groups that oppose their activities are free to protest their presence in such spaces. But educational unions the NUT and UCU have taken the considered view that army recruitment activities should have no place in educational institutions, and this is a position that we intend to fight for. This is opposition to government policy, and trades unions have long fought for the right to express a political position. We plan to publicly express our position by having a protest outside our college on Wednesday lunchtime, 12.30 ? 1.30pm. Demonstrate at Tottenham Centre UCU and UNISON have raised strong objections to management about the army in the college during enrolment, recruiting 16-18 year-olds under their FE Bursary Scheme. Although there are of course a range of views about the army within the UCU and UNISON, our common concern is for the welfare of our students and a profound distaste that they are being recruited with inducements and under false pretences to ease the army’s recruitment crisis. Misleading Propaganda The UK has been criticised at the UN (Child Soldiers Global Report 2008) as the only country in Europe which recruits 16 year-old into the armed forces. A recent independent report by the Joseph Rowntree Trust (www.informedchoice.org.uk) has condemned the army for using false and misleading propaganda to recruit young people. Army literature emphasises comradeship, active lifestyle, travel and training opportunities. It omits or obscures the risks of dying (estimated at one in 36 of those sent to Afghanistan), the long-term damage to physical and mental health, the legal obligations of enlistment and the demands of a military lifestyle. Army Failing in Duty of Care A full-page article in the Observer newspaper on Sunday (‘Record numbers of ex-soldiers in jail as combat leaves mental scars’) supplies further damning evidence of the damage that our students may suffer if we facilitate their signing-up. According to the article, ex-soldiers comprise the largest occupational group in the prison system, with the number doubling in the last 4 years to 8500. The Howard League for Penal Reform attributes this to ‘‘an inability to cope with civilian life, particularly for those who joined the services on leaving school’. Veterans in Prison argue that ‘‘they’re fighting in back-to-back conflicts, coming out and going back again; they haven’t got time to recover. There are not enough of them. They don’t have the right cover or equipment and they’re absolutely knackered’
‘Them and us’ economy hits the rocks4 Sep 2008“The economic times we are facing are arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years”, blurted out chancellor Alistair Darling in an unguarded moment on his summer holiday. “And I think it’s going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought”, he added. Darling’s words sent a chill through millions of working people as we leave the summer that ‘never was’ and prepare for a long winter. It is working class people who will bear the brunt of the recession that many economists believe has already begun. It’s not just the chancellor. Bad news has spilled out from the City for over a week. The pound reflected the dire state of the British economy by tumbling to a new low. The normally cautious Nationwide building society said house prices are falling at 150 a day and the CBI, the bosses’ union, reported the biggest annual decline in shopping since records began in 1983. A member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee has predicted two million people will be unemployed by Christmas. Over a thousand workers at Northern Rock are amongst the first to lose their jobs in this wave of redundancies, because the multi-billion pound rescue of the bank by the government does not include saving their jobs. But some people don’t have to worry about a cold winter. Energy multinational Centrica’s shares rose in value when it announced its latest price increase for British Gas customers. Having blighted Christmas for these customers, Christmas came early for Centrica’s big shareholders a couple of days later, when it posted a profit of 992 million in six months. Meanwhile Shell oil recorded a profit of 4 billion in just three months – that’s 2 million an hour! So while the rest of us tighten our belts and count our pennies, the super wealthy are doing very well. On the day that it was announced that pay increases are falling behind the rate of inflation, it was reported that in central London in July, houses priced at over 10 million rose in price by 1%, while the average house price in the same area went down. Many working people cannot afford to buy any house, but the super wealthy are buying more expensive homes than ever before. In his March budget speech, Darling said: “Britain is better placed than other economies to withstand the slowdown in the global economy”. This is not true. First Margaret Thatcher and the Tories, and then New Labour, encouraged the decline of manufacturing industry and moved the economy onto one based on finance and services, lubricated by a flood of debt. This appeared to work for a period, but as The Socialist warned, would come a cropper in a financial crisis. Now the mega rich who got us into this mess want working class people to get them out of it – we are expected to pay the price. But faced with this agenda, anger is growing and major struggles are inevitable. This anger and action will be accompanied by people drawing political conclusions, including the vital conclusion that a new workers’ party needs to be built. The ‘Them and Us’ recession Them: * 37% pay increase for FTSE 100 chief executives last year
* 992 million profit for Centrica in first six months of this year
* 26.9 billion pumped into Northern Rock Us: * 3.5% average annual pay increases April -June
* 35% increase in prices to Centrica’s British Gas customers
* 2000 jobs to go at Northern Rock
Contaminated Water- Yet Again!4 Sep 2008For the third time in three years there has been an outbreak of cryptosporidium in the Gwynedd and Anglesey water supplies. Last time over 200 people were left ill after contracting the parasite which causes severe diahorrea, in late 2005 and a notice to boil all water (which kills the parasites eggs) was in place for several months. Last time the company (Welsh Water / Dwr Cyrmu) agreed to compensate 37,000 customers 25 each for their inconvenience and were fined a tiny 60,000. After the incident the company spent 1million on new treatment equipment. But, the bug is back again with a notice to boil water on 30th August which will affect 45,000 people. It appears that this new treatment isn?t working either. A letter released by the Drinking Water Inspectorate pointed out that Welsh Water had been warned about possible problems with Cryptosporidium way back in 1998. The investigation into the 2005-06 incident said that treatment was in line with regulatory standards because it was believed the bug would be sufficiently dilute in the water not to cause harm! Welsh Water, like other water companies across the UK was privatised by Thatcher in 1989. The debts of these companies were written off by the government, but this still led to price increases and staff cuts. Maintenance and investment was also cutback on as part of ?cost-cutting? exercises. So we have seen water shortages, outbreaks of bugs like cryptosporidium and poor maintenance of sewerage which made last years flooding much more severe. The provision of water is a vital public service and should never have been privatised. Socialists argue for the re-nationalisation of the water companies, under democratic control and scrutiny of the local population.
Climate, Class and Coal3 Sep 2008In August, me and Arthur Scargill enter another big field to fight the corner for the miners and coal our industry and cause. Last time it was that field at Orgreave, this time it?s the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth Power Station and instead of thousands of cops there?s thousands of eco-warriors who now believe coal is killing the planet and want to stop all new coal stations. If truth were known, they want to close down all coal stations per se. This time there is only Arthur, and me, we have no squads of pickets, no marching bands and no flying banners. It is in many respects as daunting a prospect, but it shows the quality of this man, our differences aside, he came into the teeth of opposition with an unpopular and untrendy message, among people who are hardly receptive to his old school brand of Marxist-Leninist socialism but prepared to debate till the cows come home why the NUM and clean coal technology are allies in the struggle for a socialist ecology and a just world. Arthur is now 70 and I am 60, I think we present a figure of two rather battered and scarred alley cats come for a peace conference with the league of dogs. This is a sad and confusing conjuncture of forces. I have never in my life experienced a situation where the miners and what we do is the unpopular foe except among the ruling class and Tories. Outside of the Young Conservatives, I have never known young people regard mining and pit heads as their enemy. What is worse is that these are my traditional constituency on the Anarchist left, they have the aura of the hippies, they aspire to the freedoms and love of life, which our 60s/70s generation did. I come across the Newcastle and Scottish camp, and know many of the activists from the Toon scene and demonstrations. Previously we have always held each other in a silent mutual respect, now there is a mutual distance, coolness, a sort of mutual Et tu Brutus. However, I see here also the mortified conviction of my own anti-nuclear youth. The conviction that myself and the world were on the brink of extinction. The certainty that if we delay we are all doomed to a wretched and painful end. Now it is climate change, and the gathering speed with which the earth is crashing toward climatical obliteration ironically for all carbon based creatures and vegetation on the earth as we know it. A change, which will cleanse us all from the surface of the globe for eternity. The camp like some latter day Woodstock; they are a commonwealth, locked in debate and dedication, little communities with kids romping through the fields, longhaired, dreadlocked, singing and dancing. It is deeply wounding to be the enemy. This is an anti-Durham gala, everywhere are Workshops on mining, on resistance around the world to mining of all descriptions, pictures of headgear and open cast, industry and miners, and the campaigns against them. It is like a Durham miner?s gala on bad acid. Instead of everywhere a celebration of the miners, our work, our communities, are protests for its end. I am shocked that many left groups are now Groupies to the eco movement and have abandoned all attempts at class analysis. Arthur?s worst critic in the field is the local secretary of The Socialist Party, who tells him the NUM and miners? struggle was yesterday?s cause, this was where the struggle was now, that EON and the big generators to facilitate their profits are using us. I argue the opposite that every attack on coal feeds the nuclear agenda, sets the agenda for government policy. I remind them too that they are enthusiastic supporters of EON when it comes to ramming wind turbines down the throats of protesting locals resolved not to have them. Around the tent, are dotted Trade Union members of the SWP are they now ready to bury him having once been full of his praise? For a month, the Weekly Worker has carried uncritical adverts for the camp while the Morning Star warned me I was underestimating the forthcoming climate holocaust and declined my article criticising the camp. I have the honour to have wrote the official NUM bulletin The Miners and The Climate Camp, which Ken Capstick the Miner?s editor has managed to reduce from eight sides to four with a bit of clever editing. I?ve humped 2000 of them in a huge bag from Doncaster and have spent the morning spreading them round the field, where they are received with less than enthusiasm. About 150 protesters turn up to the tent, where Arthur and I are speaking from 1500 in the field. Their bottom line argument is we shouldn?t be generating so much power anyway, it should be cut by 50% and we need to get use to not having electricity. Arthur gets one of the Greens scientific officers to admit she was talking about taking out all nuclear and coal capacity, which would leave Britain virtually without power generation of any sort. They are non-plussed by the fact that we both accept practical renewables, that we see solar energy as the long-term future for the planet. That many other clean sources, as long as they are not equally environmentally damaging (like land wind turbines) should be deployed along with mass insulation projects and energy saving programmes. But that coal should be the base supply agent and buy the world a breathing space so long as we developed carbon capture systems to burn it cleanly. There is sympathy for the miners generally accepted as the most exploited people in Britain over the last century, but there has to be losers if we are to save the Planet, and we have been chosen to be it. Few people believe that CO2 capture works, and anyway will not be ready ?in time? to stop the climate going into free fall. At the same time as facing the Climate Camp and linked to it across the left and green movement, more and more people are coming over to the Government programme for nuclear power, and an end to coal mining and coal burning in Britain. I have argued far and wide that clean coal is the alternative to a civil nuclear programme. I am stunned to be told the NUM?s new policy supports both coal and nuclear although I still claim this to be untrue. It needs urgent clarification, because this is a central plank in our defence. I am asked to give a Workshop on the relevance and importance of the great 84/5 coal strike, nine people come. The relevance clearly isn?t too well established. ?The Earth? becomes an abstraction, humanity is some sort of foreign and alien invader and the storm troops, this time not of the TUC but of tidal waves, poverty and death, are the miners. Of course, Arthur?s arguments are not totally mine, he talks of ?dirty foreign coal? and unfair competition, slave labour and child labour, these are not my arguments. Import controls are not a progressive answer, in my view, but I am for a level playing field of subsidies and a ?fair trade? standard of terms, conditions and union rights, which would be, for the millions of coal miners abroad as much as for us. We agree though that clean coal technology is an achievable science now, and it is vital that it is applied wholesale across coal generation. The cops are arseholes as usual I am stopped and searched two sometimes three times a day, against my consent and often with force. Indeed, I am almost arrested, which would have been proved interesting in court. They could hardly argue they had reasonable grounds for suspecting I was going to sabotage the Power Station when I had gone down two thirds of the country with half a tonne of literature in its defence. They attack the camp on numerous occasions and lay into protesters with truncheons; day after day, they line people against the fence from the very youngest toddlers to very old people, and search and harass them. Arthur makes a very strong Statement to the media at the gate, in defence of the right to protest and welcomes the protesters invitation to him and to debate this vital issue. It was a privilege to stand with Arthur again, in the teeth of opposition again, though we could have done with thousands more supporters so short sighted ?greens? are not allowed to dominate this crucial debate. I am trying to put together a Labour Movement Conference on Climate, Class and Clean Coal in Newcastle for the end of the year, and very much hope the NUM sponsor it and supply key speakers.
Waiting for the barbarians3 Sep 2008In his verse ?Waiting for the Barbarians?, Greek poet Constantine Cavafy describes a country where all public life focuses on its enemies. Citizens wait in the forum because ?the barbarians are due?. The emperor and consuls are dressed in their finest garments to impress the barbarians when they arrive. Normal laws are suspended, and parliamentary debates cancelled during the present barbarian danger. Then the worst possible news reaches the city: ?... the barbarians have not come. / And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.? The barbarians? failure to materialise hurts more than their expected arrival ? after all, ?... what?s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.? A generation of Western politicians grew up during the Cold War, when the fear of the ?barbarians? of Russia and China was used as a key to international and domestic politics: all confrontations between the West and developing nations were recast as battles between freedom and communist tyranny. Anti-communism dominated home politics during the 1950s, and remained a significant force right up to the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Ideas to the left of the Democrats in US, or of social democracy in Europe, were often painted as illegitimate relations of the communist enemy. Some leading politicians seemed disorientated when the barbarians of the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a unified force. The Soviets had provided a ?kind of solution? to how to organise US and European government, and now they were gone. Leaderships in the White House and Westminster have seized on the new terrorist threat as a new kind of useful barbarian, again shaping much of foreign and domestic policy into the frame provided by the ?war on terror?. Relations with the developing world are determined according to who is on side in the battle against terrorism, and who harbours the diverse terrorist enemy. Authoritarian regimes like those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia can be part of the coalition for freedom simply by declaring themselves against terrorism. Populations or nations that find themselves in conflict with the Western consensus ? like many Iraqis, Palestinians and Iranians ? are lumped together with Osama bin Laden?s small, violent network as part of the terrorist threat. Home politics are also bent towards an authoritarian, surveillance-happy ?homeland security?, with the suspension of ordinary civil liberties and the enactment of emergency laws. The threat of the new barbarians provides a new and unhappy political ?solution?. The theme of this book has been that, while legislators and officials are drawn to this political solution by themselves, they are also encouraged along this road by a substantial business lobby with a commercial interest in militaristic and authoritarian responses to the threat of terrorism. The neoconservatives have a long history of building up the threat of the barbarians. In the 1970s George Bush Sr founded a group called ?Team B? to second-guess the CIA?s estimate of Russian weapons and intentions. This group, which included Paul Wolfowitz and other prominent neoconservatives, deliberately overestimated the scale of the Soviet military and the aggressive threat of the Russian leadership in an attempt to derail dtente between East and West. From Team B developed the Committee on the Present Danger, a lobbying group which sought to keep up political pressure for a strong, interventionist US army. The Committee fought against anti-military feelings generated by the Vietnam failure, countering them by emphasising the Soviet threat. In effect the Committee on the Present Danger, led by neoconservative figures like Richard Perle, strained to keep the Cold War going. Unfortunately, these ideologues saw their present recede decisively into the past, when the Soviet bloc fell apart during the last decade of the twentieth century. Unsurprisingly, given this past, neoconservatives like Cheney and Wolfowitz seized on the terrorist threat as a source of new barbarians. They set out an argument that would make the Islamist terrorists into an enemy around which all Western foreign policy ? and a substantial amount of domestic policy ? could turn. They enthusiastically embraced the idea that the terrorist menace could replace the red menace. A new ?Committee on the Present Danger? was formed by figures like James Woolsey to argue that the terrorist threat was not a ?law enforcement issue?, but rather an ?existential war?. The US leadership tried to frame all foreign policy questions in terms of the war on terror, in the same way that a previous generation of leaders had tried to squeeze all international conflicts into the frame of anti-communism. During the Cold War, the US and British leaderships were willing to back any dictator, warlord or coup that was thought to provide protection against communism. For example, millions suffered and died while the West backed the South African regime and its vile proxies in Angola and Namibia, simply because they were seen as bulwarks against the red menace. In Southeast Asia, the Cold War was very hot, taking the form of the Vietnam War. In Central and South America it meant backing death squads against anyone ? whether guerrilla or nun ? who looked the least bit red. During the war on terror, all conflicts have been squeezed into the framework of the battle with Osama bin Laden ? even when, as in the case of Iraq, such a connection had to be fabricated. As during the Cold War, reactionary, authoritarian and bloody regimes ? Libya, Egypt, Uzbekistan ? were welcomed aboard as long as they were ?against terrorism?. Perhaps it is not so surprising that Bush and Cheney tried to update old red-baiting strategies for the age of terror, and to use the war on terror to police domestic opposition to their policies. But Cold War nostalgia was not limited to the US. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown explicitly argued that the Cold War model should be used in the new war on terror ? for example, in an article for Rupert Murdoch?s daily Sun newspaper. Brown?s apprentice in his previous post as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, made the same point in a radio interview. Brown wanted the Cold War analogy to sound reassuring after some of Prime Minister Blair?s bellicose stands, by emphasising the ?cultural? nature of the conflict with communism and the use of the ?soft? power of influence, as well as of the ?hard? power of war. Brown said that the Western confrontation with the Soviets had been ?a battle fought through books and ideas, even music and the arts?, and a ?battle for hearts and minds?, as well as one of military power. The cultural war against communism included the covert funding of political organizations and magazines; the imposition of loyalty pledges; the removal of ?unsound? people from positions of influence, from Hollywood to local schools; the harassment of labour activists and campaigners ? so Brown?s evocation of ?soft power? offered little comfort. It underlined the fact that Brown saw himself as continuing with the policy of making into a wide-ranging ?war? a conflict with the lethal but thankfully relatively small threat of domestic terrorism. Brown?s comments about the Cold War were revealing in two ways. Firstly they showed that, though one of the main actors in the war on terror, Tony Blair, had walked off the stage, his understudy Gordon Brown intended to follow a similar script. Secondly, by invoking the Cold War Brown invited us to wonder whether the problems of the Cold War were going to be repeated in the war on terror. The theme of this book has been that President Eisenhower?s warnings about the ?military?industrial complex? can be restated for the war on terror: in short, there is a new ?security?industrial complex? made up of a circle of businessmen and politicians with a vested interest in responding to the terrorist threat with ever more aggressive, broad, expensive and counterproductive overreactions on the domestic and international fronts. Eisenhower?s warning came from the old Cold War years, but Brown?s attempted revival of one aspect of that conflict showed that the old warning could not, unfortunately, be treated as a mere historical curiosity. One battle over Iraq, in 2007, affords a clear sense of how closely the British and US political leaderships were intertwined with business interests in the war on terror. The battle was not fought in the streets of Baghdad, but in the courts of Washington, D.C. Rival security companies launched legal actions and political lobbying campaigns to wrestle the most significant private military deal in the Iraq theatre ? the ?Reconstruction Support Services? contract ? out of the hands of Aegis, the British paramilitary company run by Tim Spicer. This $280 million-a-year contract was at that point one of the most complete military privatisations ever. The deal put a private company in charge of mobile armed units, called Security Escort Teams, guarding the most important political figures. The contract also demanded that the company create and run ?Reconstruction Operations Centres? in Iraq, which would be in charge of all other private security companies in the country. These centres would manage military intelligence for the contractors, which they would also provide to the US army. Clauses in the contract said that the private company must have analysts with ?NATO equivalent SECRET clearance?, who will conduct ?analysis of foreign intelligence services, terrorist organizations, and their surrogates targeting Department of Defense personnel, resources and facilities?. The contract places the contractor in charge of the most delicate military intelligence. After gathering this intelligence, the company is supposed to use its analysis both to assist the US army in its battle with the insurgency and to help direct the other security firms ? keeping them out of harms way in the dangerous Iraqi ?red zone?. Aegis itself codenamed this contract ?Project Matrix?. The company told the Washington Post that its teams would go into Iraqi towns and cities and report back to the US ? to ?provide ?ground truth? to the Army Corps? ? and help guide other contractors with ?threat assessments for the people that travel the battlespace?. Aegis worked hard to keep this lucrative contract. Spicer took great pains to build relations with the US state, hiring Kristi Clemens to run Aegis?s Washington office. Clemens had the right background to lobby for her new employer in the US. Clemens had previously been a spokesperson for Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq. She later became a Republican political appointee in the US Department of Homeland Security, but left that job after being accused of distorting public statements about terrorism to help get Bush re-elected. Spicer also hired Robert MacFarlane as an Aegis director. MacFarlane had worked for Ronald Reagan, helping run the Iran?Contra operation. McFarlane was central the plot, which involved selling arms to Iran in return for hostage releases, while using the profits to pay for the ?secret? US backing of the Contras in their war against Nicaragua?s government. MacFarlane had been found guilty of misleading Congress in the affair, and had tried to kill himself with an overdose of Valium. He was later pardoned by President Bush Sr. A number of veterans of the Iran?Contra affair turned up in the administration of the younger President Bush, so MacFarlane was a useful contact. The advantage to Iraqis of these legal battles and struggles for influence is less obvious. Spicer?s new links with the US security establishment did not guarantee that the company would be able to retain its grip on this slice of business. The contract was so central to the new military privatisation that other leading companies tried to take over, keen for their staff to be in charge of the ?battlespace? and the delivery of ?ground truths? in Iraq. When the contract came up for renewal in 2007, this jewel in the crown of military privatization attracted multiple bids. Two of the companies rejected from the bidding ? the US firm Blackwater and the Anglo-South African Erinys ? immediately launched court actions, demanding to be reconsidered. One of the consequences of privatisation was that the new wings of the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq now devoted valuable time and resources to fighting each other in court. Links with the political establishment ? the British establishment as much as that of the American ? were clearly prized by the security companies. Two British firms were allowed to bid for this US security contract: Spicer?s Aegis and the Armor Group. Aegis had hired a prominent British politician ? former Conservative defence minister (and grandson of Winston Churchill), Nicholas Soames. The Armor Group?s chairman was former Conservative defence secretary, Malcolm Rifkind. Rifkind had been Soames?s boss in the last Conservative administration, but now the two MPs were rivals in the battle for Iraqi security cash. The fact that the military companies were so keen to employ former ministers meant that any current or future politician knew that they could look forward to a lucrative career in the new security industry. The ?revolving door? between politicians and the security business provided the basis for the new security?industrial complex. It created a financial incentive for politicians to press forward with the subcontracting of state security services. In turn, the security industry had a vested interest in persuading politicians that new military interventions or extended police powers were feasible, and even positive ventures. This game of musical chairs between positions of political influence and the boardrooms of the security industry is now well documented. Former Conservative leader Michael Howard sits alongside former CIA director William Webster on the advisory board of Diligence, a private intelligence company set up by former MI5 and CIA agents. The traffic of personnel between the new security industry and the leadership of Britain?s political parties affected both the Labour government and opposition. Prime Minister Gordon Brown made several ministerial appointments from outside his own party, announcing that he wanted a government ?of all the talents?. One such talent was the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West. While Sir Alan had never been talented enough actually to be elected, he did have his admirers. After resigning from the navy, Sir Alan had become a paid adviser to a company called QinetiQ, which had been formed out of Britain?s military laboratories, which had themselves been sold to US-led private investors. QinetiQ?s workshops once housed the historical counterparts of ?Q? ? the gadget man who supplies James Bond with his spy kit. The newly commercialised boffins knew which way the market was moving, and the firm set up a ?rapidly expanding security business? to deal with ?homeland security? issues. The company sells surveillance systems, ?data mining? programmes to identify ?dangerous passengers?, scanning machines designed to identify dangerous weapons, and other high-tech security products. Shortly after Brown appointed the ex-QinetiQ man, the leader of the Conservative opposition, David Cameron, made Dame Pauline Neville-Jones his own senior security advisor. She had formerly been the head of Britain?s Joint Intelligence Committee, but in her retirement from public life had been chairwoman of QinetiQ for three years. So the security advisers to both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition had worked for the same security-focused company. The government could approach the terrorist threat politically or technically: it could aim to reduce the terrorist danger by trying to bring enough disaffected people into the political consensus, to isolate the hard core, violent minority; but it could also look to expensive computerized security systems as a way of trying to identify terrorist groups. The strong presence of security industry veterans in the political process makes the latter strategy more likely. The nexus of links between the political class and the new security industry can both make company employees into ministers and ministers into company employees. Lord George Robertson ? previously Labour defence secretary and then head of NATO ? now works for Englefield Capital, a banking firm that owns GSL, which itself operates the private prisons, immigration detention centres and secure transport that form the backbone of the private security industry. The post-ministerial career of former home secretary, David Blunkett, includes a job advising Entrust, a Texas-based security firm bidding for work on Britain?s identity card. Former Labour cabinet minister Lord Barnett runs Atos Origin, a French-owned company also bidding for work on the identity card. The US and British states have taken on new powers to fight the war on terror, and then promptly delegated these powers to a new and growing corporate sector. discontent over individual parts of the war on terror has not yet been enough to substantially shift British or US policy. One of the many reasons that the transatlantic leadership continues to reach for militaristic and authoritarian solutions to current crises is that there is now a substantial commercial lobby beckoning them in this direction. The first step towards unravelling the influence of the security?industrial complex is the recognition that it exists. I hope this book goes a little way towards making that possible.
Footnote War on Terror, Inc: Corporate Profiteering from the Politics of Fear, by Solomon Hughes, is published by Verso, price 16.99
Strange Fruit2 Sep 2008I feel almost shy about writing this column. It contains no revelations, no call to arms. No one gets savaged – well, only mildly. The subject is almost inconsequential. Yet it has become an obsession which, at this time of year, forbids me to concentrate for long on anything else. Though we still subsist largely on junk, even bilious old gits like me are forced to admit that the quality and variety of most types of food sold in Britain has greatly improved. But one kind has deteriorated. You can buy mangoes, papayas, custard apples, persimmons, pomegranates, mangosteens, lychees, rambutans and god knows what else. But almost all the fruit sold here now seems to taste the same: either rock-hard and dry, or wet and bland. A mango may be ambrosia in India; it tastes like soggy toilet paper in the UK. And the variety of native fruits on sale is smaller than it has been for 200 years. Why? Most people believe it’s because the supermarkets select for appearance, not taste. This might be true for vegetables, but for fruit it’s evidently wrong. Green mangoes, Conference pears, unripe Bramley, Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples look about as appealing as a shrink-wrapped stool. Appearance has nothing to do with it. What counts to the retailer is how well the variety travels. Take the Egremont Russet, for example. It’s a small apple that looks like a conker wrapped in sandpaper. But it has one inestimable quality. It can be dropped from the top of Canary Wharf, smash a kerbstone and come to no harm. This means it can be trucked from an orchard at Land’s End to a packing plant in John O’Groats, via Sydney, Washington and Vladivostock, then back to a superstore in Penzance (this is the preferred route for most of the fruit sold in the UK) and remain fit for sale. The supermarkets must have had some trouble shifting it because of its strange appearance, so they promoted it as a connoisseur’s apple. Such is our suggestibility that almost everyone believes this, even though a dispassionate tasting would show you that it’s as sweet and juicy as a box of Kleenex. For the same reason, we are assaulted with Conference pears, most of which resemble some kind of heavy ordnance, rather than any one of a hundred exquisite varieties such as the Durondeau, Belle Julie, Urbaniste, Glou Morceau, Ambrosia, Professeur du Breuil or Althorp Crasanne. It is because these pears are so delicious that they cannot be marketed. They melt in the mouth, which means they would also melt in the truck before it left the farm gate. As the best pears, plums, peaches and cherries are those which go soft and juicy when ripe, the grocers ensure that we never eat them. To compound the problem, the supermarkets demand that fruit is picked long before it ripens: it doesn’t soften until it rots. This makes great commercial sense. It also ensures that no one in his right mind would want to eat it. But, happily for the retailers, we have forgotten what fruit should taste like. The only way to find out is either to travel abroad or – the low-carbon option – to grow your own. I find myself becoming a fruit evangelist, a fructivist, whose mission is to show people what they are missing. When I lived in Oxford, at a time when allotments were underused, I spent a week in the Bodleian library reading Hogg and Bull’s Herefordshire Pomona, a massive book of apples and pears, written in the 1870s (you can now buy it on CD from the Marcher Apple Network). Then I cleared two and a half plots and planted the best varieties I could find. I left just as the trees were ready to fruit. But land here in mid-Wales is cheap. I bought half an acre and have started planting a second orchard. When I first tried to place an order, I caused great excitement among the nurseries I phoned. Where had I seen these apples? Who recommended them? Two of them, I discovered, had been extinct for at least 50 years. So I have had to settle for second best, by which I mean breeds that still exist. I began by planting a Ribston Pippin and an Ashmead’s Kernel. These apples, both exquisite when fully ripe, can be stored from October till May. To spread the fruit as far through the year as possible, I have ordered an apple called the Irish Peach, which ripens in early August; a St Edmund’s Pippin (September) and a Wyken Pippin (December to April). After a long search I think I have pinned down the apple I once tasted and loved in a friend’s garden. I’m pretty confident that it was a Forfar, also know as the Dutch Mignonne, so I’ve bought one of those too. If I’d had more space, I would also have planted a Catshead, a Boston Russet, a Sturmer Pippin and a Reinette Grise. I have bought two pears – a Seckle and a Beurr Rance – a green plum (the Cambridge Gage), a fig, a medlar, a peach, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, loganberries and blueberries. But what excites me most are the suggestions made by a man called Ken Fern. Once a London bus driver, Fern has spent most of his life cataloguing and growing the edible species of fruit and vegetable which can survive in this country. His list now extends to 7,000, some of which are featured in his book Plants for a Future. I’ve decided to buy an Arnold Thorn (Crataegus arnoldiana), which belongs to the same genus as the hawthorn, but grows sweet juicy fruits the size of cherries, and to replace my hedge with Elaeagnus x ebbingei, which produces sweet red berries with edible seeds, in (uniquely) April and May. This means, if it works out, that I can eat fresh fruit all the year round. I can store apples and Beurr Rance pears until the Eleagnus fruits, then my strawberries should be ready more or less when it stops. One day, when I can afford it, I will buy more land and plant a few dozen of the weird species Fern has found. Most people have less space than I do, but even a tiny garden can support half a dozen apple trees, if you grow them as cordons (single stems with short spurs) 80cm apart against a wall. If you have room for only a couple of pots, you could grow blueberries, strawberries, cranberries or some of the little shrubs Fern recommends, such as Vaccinium praestans and Gaultheria shallon. Or you could become a guerrilla planter or guerrilla grafter, growing fruit on roadsides, on commons and in parks and wasteland. Apple twigs of any kind can be grafted on to crab trees. Medlars and one breed of pear (a delicious variety called Josphine des Malines) can be grafted on to hawthorn. Kiwi fruit, passion fruit and a vine called Schisandra grandiflora will climb into trees of any kind. It’s not just the produce I love. When you start growing fruit, you enter a world of recondite knowledge, accumulated over centuries of amateur experiments. You must choose the right rootstocks and pollinators and learn about bees, birds and caterpillars. But above all you must learn patience. Growing fruit forces you to think ahead, to imagine a sweeter future and then to wait. Perhaps it is this, as much as the forgotten flavours, that I have been missing.
EDA: Arms for War and Profit2 Sep 2008One of the many surprises thrown up by the Lisbon Treaty debate was that the European arms industry had managed to set up shop within the EU. Not only were we being obliged to spend more on armaments [“Art. 28(3): Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities”], but an entire EU agency dedicated to bolstering the defence sector and the arms trade was being brought into an EU Treaty. How had this happened? Where had this European Defence Agency (EDA) come from? And what was the attitude of the Irish Government to all of this? There are a number of excellent reports by the human rights group, Statewatch, and the Transnational Institute outlining how the European arms merchants got into the EU shop: it was via the EU Commission ‘kitchen’. There are over 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels, mostly representing business interests, and many of them are invited by the Commission to sit on special policy committees. One such group was the EU Advisory Group on Aerospace. Nearly half its members were aerospace industry chairmen, including those from Europe’s four largest arms companies. Their ‘Strategic Aerospace Review for the 21st Century’, published in July 2002, called for the creation of a ‘level playing field so Europe’s industry can compete fairly in world markets’. Ultimately, what was required was the establishment of a: “European armaments policy to provide structure for European defence and security equipment markets, and to allow a sustainable and competitive technological and industrial base”. The EU Commission embraced this proposal: good for business, good for EU military ambitions. By the spring of 2003, it had produced Towards an EU Defence Equipment Policy, incorporating the Aerospace Review concepts and calling for the creation of an Agency to oversee these developments. The very first draft of the EU Constitution in 2003 contained provisions for a European Armaments, Research and Military Capabilities Agency, (later renamed the European Defence Agency). It was not surprising that such an agency would be part of the new EU Constitution, which was on track to boost the EU’s military dimension. Indeed, during the preparatory work for the Constitution by the EU Convention, thirteen ‘expert’ witnesses were called before the Working Group on Defence including a General, military reps from the EU and member-states, two reps from the arms industry, and President of the European Defence Industries Group. The working group never asked to hear from civil society representatives. Measures to boost EU military capabilities pre-dated the EU Constitution. Member States in 2003 promised to develop their military capabilities to an agreed state of readiness by 2010 (the so-called Headline Goal), so the EU could ‘respond with rapid and decisive action ?.to the whole spectrum of crisis management operations’ included in earlier EU Treaties. Under the 2004 Irish Presidency, the European Council gave its final blessings to these Goals, adding that the EU must consider pre-emptive actions and have the ‘ability to conduct concurrent operations ? simultaneously at different levels of engagement’. This was all underpinned by the European Security Strategy authored by EU Foreign Affairs and Security chief, Javier Solana, in 2003. The EU Constitution would have leant a helping hand to these military improvements. When it was defeated in 2005, its military provisions were fully incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty. Lisbon spells out the EDA’s role in ensuring that the EU is fighting fit. Not only will the Agency be responsible for supporting the defence sector and defence R&D, but it will identify operational requirements for the EU’s developing military force, assist in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy, and monitor the improvement of EU military capabilities. It has a special responsibility for the new Permanent Structured Cooperation provision in Lisbon, a mechanism allowing certain member states to form mini-military alliances within the EU’s structures for the EU’s ‘more demanding’ missions. The EDA is to ensure that these states are fully equipped to carry out these demanding missions. The EDA has no misapprehensions about the importance of its role. It shouldn’t have. It already exists. So eager were the EU Powers That Be to have its services, that the EDA didn’t have to wait for the Constitution’s blessings. It was up and running from July 2004, when approved by the EU Foreign Ministers. In other words, with the Constitution defeated and Lisbon knocked down by Ireland, the EDA has still not been placed into the EU Treaties. The EU’s Foreign Affairs Supremo, Javier Solana, is head of the EDA. Its steering group consists of the EU defence ministers and the EU Commission. The self-assured Agency even produced a Long Term Vision Statement in 2006, outlining some of the tasks it sees before it: “The Headline Goal and European Security Strategy envisage a broad and significantly challenging set of potential missions. These include separation of warring factions by force, on the sort of scale that would have been required had a ground invasion of Kosovo in 1999 turned out to be necessary. They may also encompass stabilising operations in a failed state …. So the demands of today’s European Security and Defence Policy are already potentially deep and comprehensive.”...“Future joint forces will need agility at the operational and tactical levels as well as the strategic. Once deployed, EU Member States’ joint forces may need to be able to operate at will within all domains and across the depth and breadth of the operational area, possessing combinations of stealth, speed, information superiority, connectivity, protection, and lethality. They may need to operate in complex terrain and inside cities.” These EU joint forces are already under development, including a 60,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force capable of intervening far beyond the EU’s borders. The French Presidency next month hopes to speed up that process. Meanwhile, the EU is already in action with a number of rapidly deployable Battlegroups, consisting of up to 2500 troops, with capabilities for high intensity operations. NATO has described the Battlegroups as “providing the EU with ‘ready to go’ military capability to respond to crises around the world”. Ireland has been a member of the Nordic Battlegroup since 2006. This Vision Statement was also written with the knowledge that the EU’s military tasks had been expanded by the EU Constitution (and now Lisbon). In addition to the humanitarian, peace-keeping/peace-enforcement tasks of previous treaties, there are new provisions for joint disarmament operations, post-conflict stabilization and combating terrorism in countries outside the EU. There are also mutual defence and solidarity clauses, with the latter dealing with joint actions against terrorism, including the need to counter perceived ‘threats’ as well as attacks. Ireland: eager members of the EDA Ireland joined the EDA immediately, in July 2004. There was no Dail debate and no vote. The decision was taken by the Government. Defence Minister Willie O’Dea stated the EDA was an intergovernmental agency within the framework of the EU’s European Security and Defence Policy and that membership didn’t oblige or commit Ireland to do anything other than contribute to the EDA’s budget. The fact that the EDA would be in the business of promoting armaments and boosting the arms trade didn’t seem to bother the Minister or the Irish Government. It is within the Lisbon Treaty provisions concerning the EDA that Member States are obliged to improve their military capabilities. EDA Head Javier Solana has made it clear that there is an ‘absolute requirement for us to spend more, spend better and spend more together’. In 2008, Ireland will be making a financial contribution of ?327,000 to the EDA. In addition, Ireland has, since 2007, been participating in the Joint Investment Programme on Force Protection. This has a budget of ?55 million over 3 years, to which Ireland is committing ?700,000. (Research areas include: Stand off detection of Chemical, Biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosives; Defence options for airborne threats; Scope spotting and sniper detection: Research on new materials for force protection). There are basic questions which must be asked about Ireland’s involvement with the EDA. Historically, Irish Governments – in keeping with popular sentiment — have not been proponents of the arms industry. Ministers have invariably denied the existence of any indigenous Irish arms sector (despite evidence from Amnesty International and Afri to the contrary). Indeed, for over thirty years, Irish state boards promoting research and enterprise, such as Enterprise Ireland, have been bound by legislation stating they: “shall not engage in or promote any activity of a primarily military relevance without the prior approval of the Government” The Department of Defence’s Strategy Statement, 2008-2010, extols the EDA as providing “opportunities of interest to Irish-based enterprises and researchers” and states: “We will work closely with Enterprise Ireland to exploit potential research and commercial opportunities arising”. Ireland’s relations with the developing world have prompted concerns about arms spending and the global arms trade. But the EDA is focused on increasing global competitiveness for EU arms industries, particularly in relation to the United States, a direction reinforced by the EU Commission in its 2007 “A Strategy for a Stronger and More Competitive European Defence Industry”. Already, EU companies are responsible for over ?80 billion a year in arms sales. The EDA and Lisbon Since the EDA already exists, one might ask: how has defeating Lisbon affected that organization? There are at least four implications. 1. Without Lisbon, Member States are not legally obliged to progressively improve their military capabilities; 2. The EDA has still not been placed into the EU Treaties; 3. The new expanded military tasks have not been given Treaty status and the EDA should not be promoting capabilities, etc. in these areas; 4. The provision of Permanent Structured Cooperation — in which the EDA was to have played a major role — has not been approved. How Ireland ever joined the EDA without parliamentary debate or approval is incomprehensible. Maybe now, post-Lisbon, questions will begin to be asked about Ireland’s involvement in this agency and about the entire EU military project. Carol Fox is Research Officer for PANA, the Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance. See also http://www.spectrezine.org/europe/street.htm
The Art of Balance2 Sep 2008The long-established Middle East conflict polarises opinion. It is difficult to have a dispassionate viewpoint. Most people would like to see a reduction in tension leading to a peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. However, depending on their experiences individuals understand, and therefore prefer, one version of events which they believe to be more truthful and accurate. Journalists are not free from these forms of influence, and unsurprisingly, this polarisation is often reflected in the British media’s coverage of Israel and its relationship with the Palestinians. The Israeli Ambassador, Ron Prosor, pointed out that Israeli affairs are more widely covered than most other countries with a similar population. There are complex reasons why this is so. Firstly, my PhD research indicated that the British media often reflects the interests of the US; in this context, Israel could be viewed as more newsworthy than countries that do not enjoy such a close relationship with America. Secondly, the media cannot be divorced from its commercial interests – it operates in a competitive space, and media outlets publish what sells newspapers and broadcast items that attract audiences. This conflict is one such story. Another issue is location; the Middle East has more than its fair share of drama. Most news organisations have a considerable number of journalists posted to the region at any time, making it easier to follow interesting stories arising there. Associated with this is Israel’s success in attracting media organisations to base their Middle East operations in Jerusalem. This was explained by a BBC executive, who stated: “Israel is an easy place to work in journalistic terms; it is accessible.” He compared this with the complex bureaucracy found in some Arab countries. Interestingly, Israel’s pole position is being challenged by Dubai, which has recently put a great deal of effort into creating an attractive working environment for the international media as part of its own commercial development. My own opinion is that since developing its media hub, Dubai gets far wider coverage in the British media than neighbouring Emirates such as Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, and indeed, often more than other Arab states. If this trend continues, international coverage of Israeli matters could decline, but this may not suit Palestinian or Israeli interests. The Israeli ambassador cited a recent study claiming that more newspaper commentaries give a negative view of Israel than a positive one. These statistics are only relevant if compared to other national and international coverage showing that Israel is the only country depicted in this manner, but that is unlikely. Bad news often takes precedence as it is seen as more interesting. Recent topics such as corruption scandals and the siege of Gaza have been widely and sometimes negatively reported in the Israeli media; it is not surprising to find these high-profile stories in Britain. News stories may be negative or reflect different versions of ‘truth,’ but that does not in itself imply inaccuracy, nor breach of the Editors’ Code or Ofcom regulations. Many Israeli supporters claim that the British media ignores ‘terror’ attacks on Israel citizens. All military attacks cause ‘terror’ amongst local populations, but with no international definition of this word, it is meaningless terminology. From an alternative perspective, organisations that reflect Arab opinion believe there is more media emphasis on rocket attacks on Israel than on Israeli attacks on Palestinians. This has some credibility. For example, I read in the Israeli press that last year there were 92 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces, but no Israeli child was killed by Palestinians during the same period. These tragic statistics were ignored by the British media. Downplaying Palestinian deaths is not a new trend. Research in 2006 found that more words were used to describe the kidnapping of one Israeli soldier than were used when reporting 20+ Palestinians killed by Israel, most of them civilians. For example, the Daily Mail devoted 661 words for the kidnapping, and 167 to the deaths, and the Guardian used 826 for the kidnapping, and 393 for the deaths. My own research shows that when 15 Palestinian children were killed by Israelis during one month in 2002, 107 words were printed per child death. During this same period, seven Israeli children were killed by Palestinians, with an average of 1,070 words each. Israelis were described as innocent victims of hatred, whereas Palestinian children were frequently made to appear culpable for their own deaths; for example, a reporter might associate a death with stone-throwing. Reports often cited Israeli views of events but ignored Palestinian versions. Palestinian children were rarely named or personalised, whereas Israeli children often were. Similar findings were made in an extensive study of ITV and BBC output by Glasgow University. As many people use TV as their main source of news, the study demonstrated that the lack of context, the style of language and the spokespersons used often confused audiences rather than informing them. Respondents in their audience studies did not understand fundamental issues such as refugees, military occupation and settlement building, but instead saw the conflict as a tit-for-tat border dispute. The BBC is particularly vulnerable to lobbying, as the public views it as more reliable than commercial broadcasters; the corporation claims “accurate, robust and impartial journalism.” The BBC commissioned an independent report from Loughborough University in 2005 to evaluate its coverage of the conflict; the findings correlated with the Glasgow study, describing coverage as incomplete and misleading. An important finding was that BBC reports did not show that one side is in control whilst the other side lives under occupation. They also described a disparity in favour of Israel that existed in talk time and media appearances. This was also confirmed by an extensive Arab Media Watch study of BBC news output, which showed similar disparities in terminology, talk time, historical context, and the tendency to play down Palestinian suffering. For example, after Israeli attacks resulting in many civilian deaths, there was one Palestinian attack on Jewish settlers and one suicide attack, but the BBC repeatedly described these as “ending a period of relative calm.” The terminology and context issues particularly concern refugee issues. The Glasgow study found that only 8% of people knew that Palestinian refugees were displaced from their homes when Israel was formed. The media had an opportunity to debate this after the 2007 Arab Summit. Their peace initiative was re-launched, promising Israel full peace in return for withdrawing from occupied lands and finding a just settlement for refugees. This was not mentioned in tabloid newspapers, and although a dozen broadsheet editorials at the time referred to the Arab offer, none focused on the refugee issue. The British broadcasting media are required to provide balanced coverage, but the press has no such restrictions and can provide a partisan view, hence there are likely to be articles that reflect opposing versions of ‘truth.’ However, newspapers still have a duty to provide accurate information, but that does not stop them from omitting items that do not suit their editorial line. It is notable that there has been little comment on the siege of Gaza, which conforms to the legal definition of collective punishment of 1.5 million civilians. When the siege intensified at the beginning of February 2008, the only commentary in the Times was entitled “A barrage against Israel,” and the siege was blamed on the Palestinians. It went on; “?the frenzied, rhetorical onslaught of the Jewish state is at best intellectually lazy?” However, there was little sign of this onslaught; out of 10 daily newspapers, only the Telegraph, Independent, Financial Times and Guardian each published one leader, and in addition there were only nine commentaries, five of them in the Independent. Only the Independent reacted directly to Israel’s intensification of the siege, whilst the others reacted to the breach in the Gaza-Egypt border. An AMW terminology study in March 2008 compared the newsprint coverage of 120 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, and eight Israelis killed by a Palestinian in Jerusalem days later, noting the selection of words used to describe the incidents. Five journalists balanced their choice of descriptive words in each tragedy, whereas nine others used terms such as “massacre”, “bloodbath” and “slaughter” when describing the Palestinian attack, but used sanitised terms such as “offensive”, “incursion” and “strikes” to describe the Israeli attacks. When asked to explain his use of terminology, one journalist stated that he avoided the use of inflammatory words, but his copy had been changed by his editorial team without his knowledge or permission. The British media has a responsibility in its reporting of the conflict, as inciting hatred of either Israelis or Palestinians, or hiding the historical obstacles that need to be understood and overcome, can only prolong suffering. In order to guide the media, there should be more empirical research that covers issues such as historical context, story selection, terminology, types of discourses followed, spokespersons used, accessibility and prominence. Independent academic studies so far have shown that the British media tends to follow discourses that do not create understanding of the Palestinian case. There are many complex reasons why this occurs, but in itself this can foster anti-Israeli sentiment, as a largely one-sided perspective can mislead some audiences into thinking that Israel controls everything, and hence creates an environment in which radicalism can grow. That worries many people – including most Palestinians.
High Court Rules on Binyam Mohamed2 Sep 2008In the lawless world of Guantnamo ?- and the United States? even murkier network of secret prisons run by or on behalf of the CIA ?- it has taken six years and four months for British resident Binyam Mohamed to secure anything resembling justice. Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, Binyam was rendered to Morocco three months later, where he was tortured on behalf of the US for 18 months, in sessions that regularly included having his genitals cut with a razor, and was then held for nine months in Afghanistan, first at the ?Dark Prison,? a secret prison run by the CIA, where he was also tortured, and then at Bagram airbase. He has been held at Guantnamo since September 2004. When justice finally came for Binyam, it was not at Guantnamo, but in London?s High Court, where, last Thursday, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones delivered a stinging rebuke to both the British and the American governments: to the British for the complicity of the UK intelligence services in the US administration?s post-9/11 policies of ?extraordinary rendition? and torture, and to the Americans for the lawless conduct of the trials by Military Commission that were established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to deal with ?terror suspects? like Binyam (even though the judges professed in their ruling that they ?did not consider it necessary to form any view about the overall fairness of the Military Commissions procedure?). The road to the High Court opened up in May this year, when Binyam?s lawyers at the legal action charity Reprieve, who represent over 30 Guantnamo prisoners, teamed up with solicitors at Leigh Day & Co. to sue the British government, seeking the release of information relating to British knowledge of Binyam?s rendition and torture, in preparation for his impending trial at Guantnamo. In the event, this was prescient, as charges were leveled against Binyam on May 28, in connection with the spectral ?dirty bomb? plot that was dropped years ago against US citizen Jose Padilla. It was, therefore, imperative that potentially exculpatory evidence ?- which the British possessed, and which they had also handed over to the Americans ?- was made available to his lawyers so that they could begin preparing a defence, and, preferably, discover evidence of torture, which would back up Binyam?s claims that the charges against him were based solely on confessions obtained through torture, and would, therefore, make the US administration call off his forthcoming trial. It was an indication of how far removed the Military Commissions are from legal norms that, although Binyam?s lawyers contended that he had been tortured, and had discovered the records of ?extraordinary rendition? flights that matched his accounts, the US administration had not only provided no information to enable them to defend him, but had also categorically refused to account for his whereabouts before his arrival at Bagram. Whatever information they and the British possessed would, it was stated, be made available to Binyam?s military defense lawyer, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, at the discovery stage, should his trial go ahead, but as the trial of Salim Hamdan demonstrated in late July, some evidence was withheld from the defence until the last possible moment, and other evidence ?- relating, for example, to coercive interrogations of Hamdan conducted by the CIA in Afghanistan ?- was ruled off-limits by the military judge presiding over the trial, and was, essentially, regarded as though it didn?t exist at all. In Binyam?s case, his lawyers sued the British government after an earlier attempt to secure potentially exculpatory evidence from the British government was turned down, when the Treasury Solicitors, acting on behalf of the government, attempted to brush aside British complicity in Binyam?s rendition, torture and false confessions by claiming that ?the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted,? and adding that ?it is HM Government?s position that ? evidence held by the UK Government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained? by his British lawyers. Last Thursday, following a judicial review in the High Court that was triggered when Binyam?s lawyers sued the government, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones demolished the government?s defence of its actions in a 75-page judgment (also available as a five-page summary). The judges made clear that, after Binyam was captured and US agents came to regard him as ?a serious potential threat to the security of the United Kingdom,? the British intelligence services had ?every reason to seek to obtain as much intelligence from him as was possible in accordance with the rule of law and to cooperate as fully as possible with the United States authorities to that end.? They concluded, however, that the actions of the intelligence services from May 2002, when a British agent visited Binyam in US-supervised Pakistani custody, until February 2003, when the British last received information from the US regarding his interrogations, had placed the British government in a position where it ?was involved, however innocently, in the alleged wrongdoing,? which it had helped facilitate. Regarding Binyam?s time in Pakistan, where the British agent who visited him on May 17, 2002 made it clear that the British government ?would not help [him] unless he cooperated fully with the US authorities,? the judges ruled that Binyam?s detention was ?unlawful? under Pakistani law, because he ?was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer.? Furthermore, the judges noted that the British intelligence services ?provided further information to the United States and further questions to be asked of BM [Binyam]? for nine months after this visit, even though he ?was still incommunicado and they must also have appreciated that he was not in a United States facility and that the facility in which he was being detained was that of a foreign government (other than Afghanistan).? The judges noted that all of the above was particularly significant because the information obtained from Binyam was ?sought to be used as a confession in a trial where the charges ? are very serious and may carry the death penalty,? and that it is ?a long-standing principle of the common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial.? They therefore ruled that ?by seeking to interview BM in the circumstances found and supplying information and questions for his interviews, the relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United States authorities went far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.? The gravity of this was brought home during the judicial review, when the agent who had interviewed Binyam in Pakistan was cross-examined for several days in closed sessions that were clearly so perilous for the agent, in terms of potential criminal liability for war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act of 2001, that he brought his own legal adviser with him, and, it was revealed in the judgment, initially refused to answer the judges? questions, fearing self-incrimination. This, of course, is in marked contrast to the position held by the US administration, which has refused to sign up to the International Criminal Court, and which, in addition, maintains that it ?does not torture? and continues to do all in its power to deny that it has been responsible for gross human rights abuses. In the second part of their ruling, the judges took as their starting point an admission by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, which took place ?after the commencement of this application but before the hearing,? that he had ?identified documents which he considers could be considered exculpatory or might otherwise be relevant in the context of the proceedings before the Military Commission.? After stating that David Miliband had informed Binyam?s lawyers and had ?provided these documents to the United States Government,? the judges added, ?It is a matter of regret that the documents have not been made available in the proceedings under the Military Commissions Act in confidence to BM?s lawyers, who have security clearance from the United States authorities to at least secret level.? This was not the judges? only thinly-veiled criticism of the behaviour of the US authorities, but it was for three specific reasons that they proceeded to rule that the Foreign Secretary was ?under a duty? to disclose ?in confidence? to Binyam?s legal advisers the requested information, which was ?not only necessary but essential for his defence?: firstly, because the Foreign Secretary had not made the documents available to Binyam?s lawyers; secondly, because the US authorities had also refused to do so; and thirdly, because the Foreign Secretary had accepted that Binyam had ?established an arguable case? that, until his transfer to Guantnamo, ?he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States,? and was also ?subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.? Having demolished the cases put forward by both the British and American governments, the judges nevertheless held out a lifeline for the Foreign Secretary, pointing out that they would ?make no order for the provision of the information? until he ?had an opportunity to consider the interests of national security in the light of these judgments,? and set a date for a second hearing on Wednesday August 27. On the day, what was initially regarded as a straightforward hearing for the Foreign Secretary to announce his response to the judges? ruling turned into another long session as the government responded to the security concerns mentioned by the judges by filing a Public Interest Immunity (PII) Certificate seeking to suppress disclosure of the documents on the grounds of national security, and the US State Department attempted to strike a deal through correspondence with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). John Bellinger, the US State Department?s Legal Adviser, claimed that public disclosure of the documents was ?likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence information-sharing arrangements between our two governments.? His only concession to the judges? ruling was to note that the Office of the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions had agreed to provide the British intelligence documents (44 in total) to the Commissions? Convening Authority, Susan Crawford, if she requested them, ?subject only to the condition that the names of American and British government officials and the locations of intelligence facilities will be redacted from the documents prior to their being provided.? He added that, if Binyam?s trial were to go ahead, the redacted documents would be made available to his military lawyer at the ?normal discovery phase? of the process. In a separate email to the FCO, Stephen Mathias, one of John Bellinger?s deputies, offered a further concession ?by way of update,? in which he stated that the Legal Adviser had now decided to present the documents to Susan Crawford, without waiting for her to ask for them. Describing this as ?a significant development,? Stephen Mathias proceeded to claim, with a degree of force that appeared rather intimidating, ?Ordering the disclosure of US intelligence information now would have only the marginal effects of serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence sharing relationship, and thus the national security of the United Kingdom, and of aggressive and unprecedented intervention in the apparently functioning adjudicatory processes of a longtime ally of the United Kingdom, in contravention of well established principles of international comity.? As Ben Jaffey (for Binyam) argued in court, neither the State Department?s ?carefully calibrated concessions? nor the British government?s claim of Public Interest Immunity were tenable. He pointed out, as the judges did in their ruling, that the case did not involve public disclosure of the documents, but only the confidential disclosure to Binyam?s lawyers, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley and Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve?s Director, who both have US security clearance. He added that the supposed concessions demonstrated merely that the US government was determined to find any method possible to prevent disclosure, and added that nothing offered by the State Department addressed the ?central question? relating to Binyam?s rendition and torture. ?Where,? he asked, ?was Mr. Mohamed between 2002 and 2004?? Ben Jaffey was equally dismissive of the British government?s PII claims, noting, in particular, that David Miliband had effectively conceded that the British government was going to hand over the intelligence documents to Binyam?s lawyers until the State Department intervened, and calmly dismissing the government?s national security claims. His composure was in marked contrast to that of the government?s representative, Tim Eicke, who struggled to maintain a coherent argument, despite the best efforts of the many representatives of the government and the intelligence services at the back of the court, who kept slipping him notes suggesting new twists on the spurious national security case. On Friday, the judges delivered their second judgment on Binyam?s case. Noting that the correspondence from the US State Department effected a ?significant change? in the US position, they nevertheless refused to accept the British government?s position regarding its Public Interest Immunity Certificate. They were, it seemed, convinced in particular by submissions from the Special Advocates, Thomas de la Mare and Martin Goudie, who represented Binyam in the various sessions of the court that were closed to the public when confidential material was being discussed. In the opinion of the Special Advocates, the PII Certificate, and other proposals presented in a closed session on Wednesday, ?failed to address, in the light of allegations made by BM, the abhorrence and condemnation accorded to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.? Adding that this issue was something whose significance had been ?accepted on behalf of the Foreign Secretary,? the judges proceeded to note that the Foreign Secretary ?nevertheless contended that the issues arising out of BM?s allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment were implicitly dealt with in his Certificate,? and in the documentation used in the closed session. ?Having carefully considered this matter,? the judges wrote, ?we do not consider that the issue arising out of the allegations made by BM is implicitly dealt with in these documents.? Refusing to push the matter further, the judges commended the Foreign Secretary and the FCO?s Legal Adviser, Daniel Bethlehem QC, for having ?gone to very considerable lengths to provide BM with assistance,? noting that it was ?evident? that they had ?been engaged in lengthy discussions which have led to the important changes? summarized in the second judgment. ?This,? they added, ?has been time-consuming and burdensome, and has rendered very real assistance to the interests of justice in this case.? As a result, the judges concluded their second judgment by giving the Foreign Secretary another week to come up with a response to their initial ruling and the developments since. They suggested that this could be in the form of another security certificate, although I hope, of course, that, having been thrown another lifeline, the government might find it preferable ? bearing in mind the Special Advocates? description of ?the abhorrence and condemnation accorded to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment? ? either to give Binyam?s lawyers what they require, or, preferably, to convince the US administration that, in order to keep the door to the torture chambers firmly shut, the only available course of action is to drop the charges against Binyam and return him to the UK.
Blindingly obvious2 Sep 2008Home Office Minister Tony McNulty is correct to point out that suggesting that economic recession could lead to an increase in petty crime, violence, racial abuse and far-right extremism was a “statement of the blindingly obvious.” Unfortunately, the minister seems to assume that the recession is an act of God and the government powerless to influence matters. While the international downturn in trade is a reality and the knock-on effects of the credit crisis detonated by the US subprime mortgage scandal undeniable, every country will undergo its own economic experience that is dependent on specific national characteristics. And the level of the crisis that is already hitting Britain is conditioned by the pro-business policies pursued by new Labour. Recession will not cause the problems itemised in the Home Office draft letter. There is already huge resentment in working-class areas across Britain that will be exacerbated by rising unemployment, mortgage defaults and a general depression of living standards. Governments tend to appeal to the mythical Dunkirk spirit to ride the wave of hardships, but that is less likely when people can see clearly that there is no equality of sacrifice. Indeed, new Labour has made a virtue of inequality, with Chancellor Alistair Darling simply the latest leading advocate to say that he is not perturbed by the prospect of hugely differing levels of income. And this is not simply rhetoric. New Labour has presided over a widening gap in income and wealth more akin to Victorian norms than to a supposed modern democracy. The revelation by the TUC PensionWatch survey that top bosses can retire on average annual pensions of 200,000, 25 times what the average worker will get and 50 times more than the basic state pension, illustrates a grotesquely divided society. Employers and managers have, in recent years, launched a concerted drive against workers’ pension entitlements, while ensuring that their own are safeguarded. The government has acquiesced in this process, lecturing workers about their own supposed fecklessness while running down the value of the state pension. And its obsession with leaving economic priorities to be decided by the vagaries of the market has seen Britain’s manufacturing sector inexorably eroded, with over a million relatively well-paid jobs, complete with decent conditions and a pension, scrapped and replaced by a combination of McJobs and dead-end “training” schemes. It has claimed that there isn’t the finance available to improve the state pension, take the railways back into public ownership or invest to defend manufacturing jobs. But it has been able to find billions of pounds for overseas wars and 50 billion to bail out Northern Rock shareholders. The government’s wars have not only been costly but have created a new enemy – international terrorism – which is used as an excuse to cut back human rights and to increase xenophobia. This combination of crimes against working people makes new Labour unfitted to lecture anyone on the effects of recession. It is implicated up to its neck. The only way to avoid the negative consequences in the Home Office letter is to fight back against the economic and social policies that cause them in the first place.
Climate Camp and Class2 Sep 2008Picture the scene. The setting sun is glinting off the visors of the police lined up in front of me. It’s the second or third day of the weeklong Camp for Climate Action – already I’ve lost count – and for the second or third time since I last slept it looks as if the cops are about to invade. I’ve just bolted from the opposite end of the site, where I’ve helped dig a defensive trench at another gate. To my left, atop a red van, a woman who sounds scouser than scouse exhaustedly screeches words of encouragement into a megaphone and somehow dances to Radiohead. To my right, a posher than posh couple casually talk up Cornish nationalism and agree that political correctness means white people suffer more oppression than anyone else on the planet. All the campers care about the environment, but that seems to be the only thing we have in common. That and – by now – a dislike of police. The first Climate Camp was set up in 2006, by activists who had been heavily involved in organising protests against the G8 summit in Gleneagles the year before. Their immediate target was the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire, but they sought to demonstrate two things. Firstly, that direct action was an effective way of making changes within society – like shutting down power stations – and secondly, that people could live non-hierarchically, in an environmentally sustainable way. Many of the initial organisers self-identified as anarchists, and they wanted climate camps to be anarchy in action. At least that was the theory. Now in Climate Camp’s third year, the results are highly questionable. In terms of building a movement for environmental sustainability, the camp experience and how it is perceived by the wider population both need to be considered. Certainly, to be a climate camper is to participate in anarchy in its original and best sense ? running things without bosses. The camp is clustered into regional neighbourhoods, which hold meetings every morning. These assemblies discuss organisation within the neighbourhoods and camp policy as a whole, such as whether to accept the police?s latest ultimatum. Decisions are eventually reached via consensus, and ‘spokes’ are delegated to express the collective?s views to the ‘spokes council’, before reporting back. This can be seem like a long-winded process if you’re used to taking orders, but it works to ensure that everyone feels ownership over decisions, and are therefore usually happy to implement them. Anarchy can work fast too, and not just when riot police arrive on site at 5.30 in the morning. Perhaps my favourite illustration of this took place on the final Sunday evening, when a trail of wooden boards that snaked through the camp needed to stacked. Someone took the initiative to do this, then someone else joined in next to them. Within a couple of minutes, the idea of stacking had gone along the trail, and about quarter of an hour later it was all done. Quite a strenuous task had quickly been completed, without a single order being given. However, halfway through the week ‘An open letter to the neighbourhoods’ was circulated, authored by ‘?a large group of anti-authoritarian participants in the climate camp’, and expressing ‘deep concern about the direction that the debates have taken over the past days’. It went on to claim that ‘In more than one workshop we have heard calls from the podium for command-and-control and market-orientated measures to address climate change’, and ‘The responses to these proposals have been far too polite?. Calling for ?A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism’, as well as ‘all forms and systems of domination and discrimination’, it emphasises ‘A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations’. The letter hit on one of the central problems facing the camp: how to make it ?a welcoming and non-sectarian space? for people new to anarchist ideas, whilst ensuring that career environmentalists like George Monbiot and Mark Lynas (who outraged many by backing the government?s nuclear power plans, the former on BBC?s Newsnight) don?t get an easy ride. This issue is compounded by the inevitable tendency of more militant campaigners being drawn to the barricades and defending camp against police. Saturday was the climax of the week, and had been declared the day when we would “?go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!”. The camp separated into blue, green, silver and orange blocs, with the plan being that we would take different routes over land, sea and air to get to Kingsnorth, arriving en masse, and E.ON bosses would order a shutdown. The end result was that one person climbed over the second security fence onto company property, and was immediately arrested. One boat made it onto a jetty, and a police charge sheet reveals that one of the four water inlet systems was shut down, but E.ON claimed it was “business as usual”. Fifty arrests were made, about half the total for the week. So much for what actually happened. How much of the intended message survived the mainstream media?s filters and made it into public consciousness? At the start of the week, coverage focused on the police attacks. Monday, 4th August saw BBC exposure of the police?s brutal dawn raid, giving details of casualties, showing police in riot gear attacking campers, and quoting camp media team members at length. On Tuesday, they ran with local Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews? claim that the police had been “provocative and heavy-handed”. On the other hand, none of the other almost daily attacks got any press. This may be partly due to the pressure of the police?s announcement that they?d discovered a stash of knives and other weapons in woodland near the site. Campers immediately denied any connection with the stash, and none has since been found. But it seems likely that for many, this discovery provided retrospective cover for the police?s use of force, potentially dissuading waverers from paying a visit. For the mainstream media, the camp wasn?t so much an experiment in sustainable living as a collection of oddities. When they discussed on-site conditions at all, they seemed more intrigued that there were people in the 21st century who voluntarily used compost toilets and grey water systems, than by the green implications. That this was part of an ‘eco village’ seems largely to have passed them by, a fact illustrated by a Google News search. Bizarrely, the Custer County Chief in Nebraska, USA picked up on it, as did a New Statesman article (not very encouragingly titled ‘Woolly minded hippies?’). This contrasts with 109 results for “climate camp” “compost toilet”. For their part, The Guardian even produced a tourist-style survival guide, entitled ‘How to go to Climate Camp – and enjoy it’. As in previous years, the camp got the mainstream media talking about the role that carbon emissions play in manmade climate change. However, outlets overwhelmingly portrayed this as a protest against emissions at Kingsnorth in isolation, rather than the structural need of capital to expand, degrading the environment in the process. One deviation from this was when the Kent News quoted camper Anya Patterson as saying “If we are serious about fighting climate change, we have to tackle the root causes, and those are greed and a commitment to relentless economic growth.” Similarly, the non-hierarchical decision-making process was largely ignored, with the BBC merely describing it as ‘exhaustive’ and ‘somewhat baffling’. One facet of the week that all mainstream media went big on was the idea of direct action. Unfortunately, it was only covered in the most superficial way, focusing on the supposed dangers that campers would be letting themselves in for. Of course, police attack was not listed amongst these hazards, but electrocution and drowning were. The implicit message in all of this was that once people stepped outside the law, their safety was at risk, and that therefore the state and – by extension – police really are there to serve and protect everyone ? batons, riding crops, pepper spray and all. Though the Climate Camp website is declaring the week a resounding success, it can surely be judged a valiant failure in terms of its stated objectives. E.ON were inconvenienced for a few hours, but Kingsnorth was not shut down. Some campers learned about non-hierarchical organising and strategies for sustainable living, but this made little impact on the wider public. ?Direct action? became a media buzzword, but only as something irresponsible and to be feared. Carbon emissions became a hot topic, but in the context of the above, only as ‘footprints’ to feel guilty about. Indeed, some campers were hoping for this. On the Thursday morning, I had a discussion with an activist about his ambitions for what is being dubbed the ‘climate movement’. “To make a lot of people very guilty”, he replied. This emphasis on guilt as a precursor for individualistic lifestyle change is perhaps the very opposite of what many original organisers hoped for. However, I believe it is fundamental to what is sometimes called ‘green and black’ anarchism. The idea of a class-based transformation of society is rejected ? in some cases because of righteous disillusionment with traditional forms of class struggle, in many cases because the individual is from a relatively wealthy background. When such people see impending environmental catastrophe as the number one threat to their lives, their philosophy often becomes more anti-technological than anti-capitalist. Taking this perspective to its logical conclusion, capitalism and the state wouldn?t be much of a problem if they could somehow leave people alone in ecological peace, but since they can?t, both must be overcome. But with international class-based solidarity apparently ruled out, the result is that ?setting an example? (as one woman put it) becomes the main method of ideological recruitment. This sets green and black anarchism up for its own failure. Due to the built-in ideological structures of mainstream media and the state, the example set is of using those compost toilets, getting attacked by police, and putting yourself in mortal danger on your week off. Understandably, this is not an example that many are willing to follow. The boast that Climate Camp would ?shut down Kingsnorth? was always about bravado and bluster, a tendency which people from all strands of activism are vulnerable to in times of unrelenting defeat. But how could Kingsnorth really be shut down? Medway Council have approved E.ON?s plans, and the final decision rests with the government, who have already indicated they will grant permission. Demolition of the current site and the construction of the new one is scheduled for February next year. On camp, there was a lot of talk about trying to build on current ?momentum? and systematically blockading work from then onwards. Clearly, because of the long term commitment to direct action necessary, this would attract a smaller and ever dwindling number of people, unless substantial local support is forthcoming. Even if it is, there are plans for seven more coal-fired stations in the pipeline, plus all the other myriad ways capital is destroying the environment. There simply aren’t enough of us to wage such a struggle. Any campaign against environmental destruction has to be rooted in a movement against the profit motive and the capitalist system, or it is doomed to symbolic gestures and failure. Industry doesn?t create carbon emissions, working people do, because they are paid to do so and see no viable alternative. While capitalist ideas prevail amongst the working class, invasions of power stations are less direct action and more dramatic lobbying; ultimately impotent appeals to the government to see further than the short term bottom line, something it is organically incapable of doing. Ironically, this plays into the hands of people like George Monbiot. ‘Climate change is not anarchy?s football’, he patronisingly declared in a post-camp online reply to an article by radical journalist Ewa Jasiewicz, before going on to declare that ?I don’t know how to solve the problem of capitalism without resorting to totalitarianism?. And every dictatorship needs paid advisors. No George, climate change is not ‘anarchy’s football’; it?s a matter of life and death. That?s why we need working class revolution, so we can sort it out.
Anarchist Scholarship31 Aug 2008Thanks for taking some time to answer these questions today, David. For starters, could you tell us about the Anarchist Studies Network: what work does it do and what do you hope for it to achieve? The ASN was basically established, I suppose, to do two things: create and foster links between the growing number of people doing research on anarchism (whether they were students/academics or not); and, building on that, to promote further research in the area and help disseminate the results. A group of us (lecturers and postgraduate research students) in the Politics Department at Loughborough University who were working on various aspects of anarchist history, politics, and theory were keen to raise the profile of research on anarchism?because, without wanting to be paranoid, it’s still difficult to get scholarly (i.e. properly researched) work on anarchism taken seriously within the education system in Britain. Some of us belonged to the Political Studies Association, which allows its members to create “Specialist Groups” on all kinds of subjects, so we set up a Specialist Group for the Study of Anarchism, which means that we get a certain amount of funding from the PSA. The name was later changed to ASN. With the help of our more techie members, we’ve since set up a wiki web site and an e-mail discussion list. There have also been a couple of annual meetings where all the members got together to discuss plans. The PSA funding (which has no strings attached so long as it’s used to do what we want to do in any case, i.e. promote the study of anarchism) has allowed us to fund various seminars, workshops, and conferences, and to give financial support to members who needed help to be able to attend these events?not to mention the forthcoming ASN conference in Loughborough this September. In its succinct definition of anarchist studies, the ASN states “For a number of us, what we are calling ?anarchist studies’ no longer necessarily takes anarchism as its object of study but as a standpoint from which to study the world. Anarchist contributions to thought are making a reappearance in a number of fields, challenging established orthodoxies. Perhaps, against all odds, we are witnessing the emergence of a new anarchist paradigm in academia.” Can you describe some current examples of how anarchist ideas are informing new approaches to the imposing challenges leveled by capitalism in recent years? And what is the relationship of anarchist studies to the ongoing revolutionary project to achieve anarchy? Plenty has been said and written over the last few years about the resurgence of interest in anarchist ideas, and the influence of anarchist modes of organizing within social movements, trade unions, worker co-ops, and popular protests of all kinds, as well as in the broader alter-globalization “movement of movements.” There are still debates to be had there about the nature of the relationship between some contemporary anarchisms and earlier anarchist movements, and this relationship clearly varies from country to country (the situation in the States, say, is different from that in France). But the remarks you quote in your question could probably be read in two ways. One reading could be that “anarchist studies” is not just about the study of anarchism, but that it is about bringing an anarchist perspective to bear in doing research on any subject. Sharif Gemie, for example, once described himself to me as an anarchist historian rather a historian of anarchism. In international relations, someone informed by an anarchist methodology might reject the state-centric approach of most analyses in that field (see Alex Prichard’s recent PhD on Proudhon and international politics). And I’ve just seen a call for papers for a panel at the Association of American Geographers’ 2009 annual conference that proposes to explore the possible contribution of anarchist theory and practice to a radical geographic theory (Kropotkin and Elise Reclus were, of course, geographers). Barry Pateman (in his introduction to the forthcoming AK Press edition of my book) also talks about “that critical grey area between independent anarchist scholarship and the academy.” His concerns have to do with “what we are doing when we research the history of anarchism and anarchists. Some recent scholarship appears to suggest that the lives of anarchists?their hopes, fears, contradictions and, yes, moments of inspiration?are no more than objects for intellectual experimentation.” On the other hand?although I understand the healthy skepticism towards many academics whose research (and teaching, for that matter) is entirely divorced from any political commitment?I do get a bit weary of those “activists” who draw a clear distinction between themselves on the one hand and “academics” on the other, refusing to see any value or use whatsoever in scholarly research. As if the fact that some of us happen to earn our living working as teachers in universities and colleges means that we can’t also be politically active in other ways. Tell us about the ASN Conference happening September 4-6, 2008. This isn’t the first conference that ASN members have been involved in organizing or that the ASN has subsidized, but it’s the first ASN conf
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