US/NATO casualties climb in Afghanistan15 Jul 2008The US/NATO occupation force in Afghanistan on Sunday suffered the largest number of casualties in a 24-hour period in more than three years. Nine American troops lost their lives and as many as 15 were wounded in a day-long battle with insurgents who attacked a US base in the eastern province of Kunar. Another soldier, also believed to be an American, was killed in a roadside bombing in the volatile Sangin district of Helmand province. Sunday?s attack was one of the most effective insurgent operations in the six-and-a-half year war. The US military and Afghan government forces had only established a base in Wanat, a village near the Pakistani border, three days earlier. A sizeable force of guerillas converged on the base in the middle of the night. According to an Associated Press report, they evacuated the civilian community and took up firing positions in buildings surrounding the facility. At approximately 4.30 a.m., the insurgents launched an assault. Fighting lasted throughout the day, with the anti-occupation fighters repeatedly engaging the base with mortars, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades. According to some reports, militants managed to get inside the US compound. Multiple US air strikes had to be called in to drive off the attackers. A spokesman for NATO?s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told journalists: ?We defended the base. There are still some operations on-going. The insurgents were repulsed and there is no fighting now, but they might pop up again.? NATO sources claim that dozens of insurgents were killed. Wanat is near the district of Deh Bala, in the adjacent province of Nangahar, where US fighters bombed a wedding party on July 7. As many as 27 men, women and children were slaughtered. The assault on the American base may well have been a revenge attack. The attack, however, is part of a trend over recent weeks of set piece battles against the occupation forces. In late June, a large force of guerillas seized a number of villages in the Arghandab Valley to the northwest of Kandahar. Scores were killed during the US/Afghan government operation to take back control of the district. Anti-occupation fighters also attempted several offensive operations in Sangin last week, crossing the Helmand River to attack NATO and Afghan Army personnel. US retaliatory air strikes on Sunday reportedly resulted in the deaths of at least 40 guerillas, as well as the destruction of several improvised bridges and dozens of small boats. Also on Sunday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosion at a crowded bazaar in the town of Deh Rawood in Uruzgan province, killing five Afghan police and as many as 19 civilians, including a number of young children. The suicide attack came in the wake of a massive blast that struck the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing 41 people and injuring over 140. Most US and NATO casualties continue to be the result of remotely-detonated roadside bombs. A total of 20 occupation personnel have already lost their lives in July, including a 42-year-old American junior officer who appears to have committed suicide on July 4. Among the recent casualties was a Hungarian explosives expert who was killed by a bomb on Saturday in the northern province of Baghlan. The 32-year-old had only arrived in Afghanistan several weeks ago?to replace a Hungarian explosives expert who was killed trying to defuse a bomb on June 10. A roadside bomb in Paktika province took the lives of two US National Guardsmen from Guam last Thursday. More than 15 percent of all American troops serving in Afghanistan are part-time civilian soldiers. Nine UK troops were wounded near Sangin on Wednesday when a British helicopter gunship, which had been called in to rescue them from an ambush, mistakenly fired on their position. Three of the men suffered serious injuries. One had to be flown back to Britain for specialised medical treatment. He is said to be in a stable condition. An Australian special forces soldier was killed and three others wounded by a roadside bomb in Uruzgan province on Tuesday. This was the fifth Australian fatality in the past nine months. The same day, an American soldier was killed in a bombing near Bagram airport. The insurgency is based among the fiercely independent Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Afghanistan and Pakistan border. Some guerilla groups are loyal to the fundamentalist Taliban movement that was overthrown by the US invasion in 2001. Others follow Pashtun Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Huqqani?both of whom received huge amounts of money and arms from the CIA to conduct a guerilla war against the Soviet force occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s. Fighting has been taking place inside Pakistan over the past several weeks. The Pakistani government, responding to pressure from Washington to curb the movement of guerillas into Afghanistan, has ordered its security forces to crack down on various militant groups operating in the tribal provinces along the Afghan border. The focus of the operations has been the area surrounding Peshawar?the largest city on the road through to the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan. Insurgents retaliated over the weekend, ambushing a convoy of Pakistani Frontier Corps?the paramilitary force responsible for security in the tribal regions?on Saturday near the border city of Hangu, to the south west of Peshawar. According to Pakistani media sources, eight troops were killed and eight others who were captured were executed by firing squad. Local Taliban groups claimed they had captured and were still holding a further 29 soldiers and police. The attack coincided with an unannounced visit to Pakistan by US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen. He met with President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and the head of the armed forces, General Ashfaq Kiyani. The purpose of Mullen?s trip was to deliver a blunt message to the Pakistani establishment to step up operations in the border regions against Pashtun militants. The Bush administration and NATO countries have repeatedly accused Islamabad of not doing enough to stop insurgent activity and thereby facilitating the rise in attacks on their troops in Afghanistan. Mullen repeated the claim on Saturday, telling a press conference that the ?border is more porous than it was a year ago. It?s very important that action be taken to respond to that.? The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has gone further and accused the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), and sections of its military of assisting the Taliban insurgency. An Afghan government spokesman blamed the ISI for last week?s bombing of the Indian embassy. Other Afghan figures have implied it was involved in the assassination attempt on Karzai in June. Yesterday, Karzai repeated the accusations, declaring: ?The murder, killing, destruction, dishonouring and insecurity in Afghanistan is carried out by the intelligence administration of Pakistan, its military intelligence institutions…. We have told the government of Pakistan and the world and from now on it will be pronounced by every member of the Afghan nation.? The implicit threat facing Musharraf and Gilani is that the US military will step up its own operations inside Pakistan?s tribal regions unless the situation is brought under control. Just days before Mullen?s visit, nine Pakistani troops and several civilians were wounded when a border outpost was bombed in South Waziristan on Thursday. Local tribesmen told the Associated Press that the bombing was a US air strike. The Pakistani government, anxious not to further inflame the mass resentment and hostility over its collaboration with the US, stated that casualties were inflicted by mortars fired from Afghanistan and that the attacker had ?yet to be determined?. The escalating war in Afghanistan is fuelling calls for the deployment of additional US troops to the war zone. Significantly, Barack Obama, the Democratic Party presidential candidate, who has supported US military action against insurgent bases inside Pakistan, was among them. He called in an op-ed in yesterday?s New York Times for the dispatch of an additional two combat brigades, or more than 10,000 troops. ?We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence gathering and more non-military assistance to accomplish the mission there,? he wrote.
Can Britain Feed Itself?14 Jul 2008In 1975, the Scottish ecologist Kenneth Mellanby wrote a short book called Can Britain Feed Itself? His answer was yes, if we eat less meat. The way in which he worked it out was simple, almost a back of the envelope job, but it provides a useful template for making similar calculations. In this article I have adapted and embellished Mellanby?s ?basic diet? to show how much land modern UK agriculture might require to produce the food we need under six different agricultural regimes ? chemical, organic and permacultural, each with or without livestock. There were two main reasons why I decided to repeat Mellanby?s analysis. Firstly, like him, I recognize that in the future the UK may have to become a lot more self reliant than it is now. Secondly, I am interested to see how organic agriculture in particular performs, because the most convincing argument advanced against organic farming by its opponents is that it takes up too much land. This is of most concern in poor, highly populated countries such as Bangladesh, but Britain cannot afford to be complacent: it is more densely populated than China, Pakistan, Vietnam or any African country except Rwanda. There are limitations in this kind of statistical exercise; and I do not claim to have carried it out with either the expertise or the thoroughness that it merits. This is, at best, a back of an A4 envelope job. However since I can find no evidence that anyone with the necessary qualifications and stipend to do justice to the subject has been inclined to take it on, I hope that readers will find my offering better than nothing. The results should not be seen as anything other than a rough guide, and a useful framework for thinking about such matters. Mellanby?s Basic Diet Mellanby took as his starting point the UK?s total figure for grain production. In 1975, Britain grew 15 million tonnes of cereals on less than 3.6 million hectares at a yield of about 4 tonnes per hectare. This was the equivalent of 283 kilos per person a year, which is about 2,700 calories a day ? comfortable enough for every man, woman, child and elderly person in the country. The total population was 53 million. Working from this figure of 15 million tonnes of grain, Mellanby built up a somewhat more varied diet, subtracting grain from the total as he introduced other foodstuffs. Table A shows us his ?basic rations? of cereal, potatoes, sugar, milk and meat. Every person gets the equivalent of a pint of milk and a pound of potatoes a day, which is what they were actually consuming in 1975: but Mellanby gives them less meat. The 2,400 hectares assigned for dairy are mainly leys ? temporary pastures which are rotated with cropland to provide fertility. Another 2,400 hectares of permanent grazing are for raising beef. As for sheep, Mellanby retains the 28 million of them that there were in 1975, without bothering to work out how much land they take up or how much meat or calories they provide ? in fact they do not contribute much more than one per cent of the total diet. The three items most obviously missing from Mellanby?s basic diet are beer, fat and vegetables. Beer, since it is made of barley and has a calorific value of 100 to 150 calories a pint, is included within the grain figure. Fat is a more serious omission, involving substantial amounts of land and Mellanby could usefully have included it in his calculations. He may have been deterred by the fact that edible rape oil had barely been invented in 1975, so his self-sufficient Britain would have been dependent for its fat supply on lard. As for vegetables and fruit, Mellanby is content simply to point out that these can be provided in allotments and gardens. These omission don?t undermine his main point, since there are millions of hectares left over, which could be put over to pigs, more cows for butter, vegetables, poultry or whatever anybody felt like. There is, in fact, no shortage of land whatsoever. Mellanby?s calculations are for so-called ?conventional? agriculture using nitrogen fertilizers and other chemicals, which makes his task much easier; but he does mention the potential of organic agriculture and concludes that, although less productive than conventional agriculture, it could still probably feed the country using an extra 33 per cent of the land. The Mellanby Diet Today Since 1975 a number of factors have changed: the population has risen from 53 million people to 60.6 million, but crop yields have risen much faster. In 2004 Britain grew nearly 22 million tonnes of grains on 3.1 million hectares at a yield averaging over 7 tonnes per acre. Figure 1 shows how, as a result, land use has changed in the last 30 years. The total agricultural area has declined only slightly, but there has been a large shift away from temporary grass ley, reflecting the decline of the dairy herd, as well as a smaller drop in arable land and the arrival of set-aside. The amount of land under permanent pasture and forestry has increased correspondingly. Table B is Mellanby?s 1975 table updated to 2005, to take account of the rise in population and increases in crop yield. The same diet for 14 per cent more people can now be provided on 86 per cent of the 1975 arable land area. However beef production nowadays is less efficient than in the 1975 model. There is a reason for this, which I shall explain later on. I have made one addition to Mellanby?s table: some extra hectares to account for vegetables and fruit, which require more land than corn does to produce a given number of calories. About 160,000 hectares are devoted to horticulture in the UK at the moment, but we import about 60 per cent of all our fruit and veg, so we consume over 400,000 hectares worth. This is a substantial amount of land; but I can understand why Mellanby left it out, because calculating the area involved and the number of calories for such a variety of different crops is tricky. Mellanby Goes Vegan Mellanby could feed his population quite comfortably by reducing the amount of meat, so what would happen if it went vegan? In order to make a comparison with stockless agriculture providing a non-animal diet, in Table C I have substituted the meat and milk in Mellanby?s ration with an equivalent ration of protein (peas) and fat (rape oil). The meat-eaters get their fat from milk (about 24 grams per day) and meat, but both diets are stingy on fat for anyone wanting to lead a physically active or an indulgent lifestyle. Table C shows that chemical stockless agriculture is by far the most economical in terms of land use and can grow the entire ration on less arable land than that required by chemical livestock agriculture to provide its non-meat component. This is the ideal farming system for any society wishing to reduce the number of its farmers to a minimum, or to grow wide areas of biofuels, or to support large urban populations ? all main objectives of modern social policy. With industrial processing of pea, bean and grain protein into artificial meat and milk, a semblance of an animal-based diet could be provided for about 200 million people. Vegan Organic: Reliance on Green Manure In Tables D and E I have again updated Mellanby?s diet to 2005, but this time for organic husbandry. Both these organic diets, vegan and livestock, take more land than their chemical counterparts. This is partly because average grain yields obtained by organic agriculture today in Britain are less than 60 per cent of those obtained by chemical farmers; in fact organic wheat yields today are similar to those of chemical agriculture in 1975. But lower yields are only half the problem. To obtain yields above a bare minimum of around 750 kg of grain per hectare, land has to be fed with extra nitrogen. Organic systems by definition do not use synthetic fertilizer, so nitrogen is either imported from other land where it is not required, usually in the form of animal manure; or obtained by inserting into the rotation a crop of leguminous plants such as beans, clover or lucerne, which extract nitrogen from the atmosphere. A dedicated crop of legumes, which is not fed to humans or animals, but ploughed in to provide fertility, is called a green manure. Green manures which occupy the ground for a whole season lower the yield from each hectare still further. In Table D I have assumed that one hectare out of every three arable hectares is used for green manure ? except for the pea crop which fixes its own nitrogen from the atmosphere. This adds an extra 2.2 million hectares to the vegan organic land-take, with the result that it requires more 14 per cent more arable land than is in use today (including set-aside). This is not a problem, since it can be taken from the pasture, for which the vegan diet has no use. I have used the 33 per cent green manure ratio because that is the figure given in my main source, the Organic Farm Management Handbook. However there are a number of experiments in the UK and elsewhere in which green manure constitutes only 20 or 25 per cent of a stockless rotation. Several of these have maintained respectable yields for 10 or 15 years, though some require additions of phosphorus. More astonishingly, the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania(1) has grown cash crops continuously for 20 years on the same land, fertilized only by winter cover crops and soya beans. I am unclear why this has not been matched in the UK, but clearly it requires good land and there are also sites in the USA which have failed to repeat Rodale?s performance. If these experiments could be replicated on a widespread scale, then the requirement for arable land for green manure would be considerably reduced in stockless systems. Organic Livestock: the High Yield Paradox In organic mixed farming systems, nitrogen is provided by manure, and by leys ? temporary pasture including clover or other nitrogen fixing plants which after say four or five years is ploughed up for two years or three cropping, and then put back to ley. Essentially these are green manures in which part of the nutrients pass through grazing animals before finding their way back to the cropland ? though a proportion are creamed off to provide milk, meat, leather etc. In Table E, 3 hectares of ley is assumed to fertilize 2 hectares of cash crops. At this rate the 1.9 million hectares of ley for dairy pasture, plus a small amount of manure from the beef, does not provide enough fertility for all the crops grown and so the organic livestock model also has to rely on 1.7 million hectares of green manure. If there were pigs or chickens, they would provide more manure ? but not enough to grow the corn necessary to feed them. The organic livestock model is worrying because it is very expensive on land. It would require the ploughing up of 1.76 million hectares of our existing pasture land to provide cropland and leys. This in turn means that there is not quite enough permanent pasture left for the beef ? there is a shortage of 149,000 hectares, which has to be taken out of the rough grazing. Only 2.623 million hectares are left for other uses such as wildlife parks or biomass production. There are two main reasons for the heavy land requirement of organic farming. The first is that average yields of organic wheat and potatoes are only 60 per cent of those achieved with the use of chemicals. With most other crops the difference between organic and chemical is less pronounced, but wheat and potatoes are the staples. According to Elm Farm researcher Martin Wolfe, the main problem is that modern wheat varieties have been highly bred specifically for non-organic production: they are ?short-strawed with an open canopy, so that they compete less well with weeds, and there is a similar contrast in disease resistance . . . There is an urgent need, therefore, to breed organic wheat.?(2) The other problem is the cows, particularly the beef cows which take up an enormous amount of land for very little return. There appears to be too much beef, which is strange because it is the same amount per person as in Mellanby?s 1975 scenario, and it didn?t cause any problem then. Admittedly there are now 7 million more mouths to feed, and also Mellanby puts fertilizer on his leys. But even so the beef sector seems to have expanded disproportionately. In 1975 the beef herd occupied the same amount of land as the dairy herd ; but now the area devoted to beef (including grain for cattle feed) is almost twice as large. Here, paradoxically, it is high yields that are causing the problem. The figures in Table E are derived from Elm Farm?s Organic Farm Management Handbook 2007, and they reflect a more modern management approach in an era of cheap subsidised corn. Whereas Mellanby?s cows yielded just 3,600 litres of milk a year, organic cows today average 5,800 litres, only 1200 litres less than non-organic cows. The trouble is that to achieve this they need fairly large amounts of grain ? over a tonne a year each ? whereas Mellanby?s cows are grass-fed. The need for grain is not the only problem caused by the high milk yield of these cows. The size of Mellanby?s beef herd was dictated by the number of calves that his low yielding cows produced. But now, because there are fewer cows producing the same amount of milk there are fewer calves; this means that in order to produce the same amount of beef as in Mellanby?s diet, we have to run a dedicated beef suckler herd ? nearly two million cows which produce nothing except one beef calf a year, whereas Mellanby?s calves were all the by-product of cows supplying milk. This cancels out much of the advantage of high-yielding cows and is the main reason why land occupied by beef has swelled from 2,400 hectares in 1975 to 4,100 in Table E. I therefore decided to see what would happen if I reduced the beef herd to a size commensurate with the dairy herd and moved back to Mellanby?s system of running a larger number of low yielding dairy cows which can subsist entirely on grass. This is akin to what has been happening in New Zealand since they abolished farm subsidies, because it is more competitive ? which is why New Zealand butter is advertised as coming from free range cows. And it is what I have done in Table F. If you examine just the cattle figures in it, you will see that the milk yield has been reduced from 5800 to 3700 litres a cow, and the total amount of beef produced has bee reduced from 1.24 million tonnes to 735,000 tonnes; but the number of dairy cows is increased so that the total amount of milk produced, 12.5 million tonnes, remains the same as in Table E. In terms of land-take the lower yielding cows produce food almost as efficiently as the high yielding cows. The ratio of hectares of land to calories of beef and milk from the corn-fed cows in Table E is 6983 :480 or 14.5:1 whereas from the grass-fed cows in Table F it is 6330:416 ? or 15.2:1. In other words, a 63 per cent increase in milk yield results in a mere five per cent increase in land productivity. But there is another big difference between the two. The grass-fed cattle in Table F provide over 2.8 million hectares of ley that can be used in rotation to help fertilize over a million hectares of crops ? whereas in Table E the 1.9 million hectares of ley that the corn fed cattle bring with them isn?t enough to fertilize the million hectares of grain they eat. The low yielding cows are nitrogen providers whereas the high yielding cows are nitrogen takers. There is one other matter of interest. Since 2004 the net organic yield for wheat has risen from 3.8 tonnes a hectare to 4.3 tonnes; but the milk yield for organic cows has actually dropped, from 6000 litres to 5,800 litres, and so has the amount of corn they are fed. Both these trends are in a benign direction A Permaculture Approach My main purpose in Tables F and G is to go another step further and see whether the UK could become more self reliant, not only in food, fodder and fertility, but also in fibre and fuel? Our environmental footprint currently stretches across untold ghost acres around the world; if suddenly we had to shoehorn it into the 22 million hectares of non-urban land we have in this country, how would we cope? Could this be done organically, whilst keeping a reasonable amount of meat in our diet for those who wanted it, and ensuring that a reasonable proportion of the country is reserved for wildlife? Tables F and G reflect a more permacultural approach, by which I mean permaculture on the macro-scale, involving increased integration of lifestyle with natural and renewable cycles, rather than mulching, intercropping and herb spirals. Some of the measures taken require a change in our land management systems, and also in human settlement patterns. This is a society in a state of energy descent, with increasing dependence upon renewable resources and (consequently) a localized economy, more integrated with natural processes. Here is a list of the main features which I have introduced. There is particular attention to livestock because they are the most extravagant in terms of land use. Get the livestock balance right and other things fall into place. Meat and Dairy The amount of beef in the diet has been reduced both by no longer running a suckler herd, and by reducing the average age at which beef cows are slaughtered. There are 83 grams of red meat a person a day. For a family of four, this is the equivalent of a 5lb Sunday joint, which could probably be spun out till Tuesday or Wednesday. Together with a smidgeon of chicken and fish it comes to 38 kilos of meat per year, which is about half the amount people eat now. The volume of milk consumed is the same as now, and everyone also has a couple of eggs a week. Farm animals provide 670 calories of the daily ration of 2767, whereas in Mellanby?s basic diet they only provided 517. Pigs To compensate for the reduced amount of beef in the diet, I have introduced pigs. Although partially fed on grain, these are efficient because their diet consists of two thirds crop residues and food waste. This ought to be possible since in the early 1990s even commercial pig feed consisted of 50 per cent food waste(3), and on top of that there is all the domestic food waste which currently goes into landfill. The figure of 2,767 calories per person (including children and old people) allows for around 700 calories of food waste(4), which in theory is enough to provide our pigs with all their food. (The draconian laws forbidding the feeding of even sterilized catering and domestic waste to pigs, introduced in a panic after the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic, need to be repealed). I have kept this margin tight because selling feed to small-scale pig units on mixed farms is an economical way of ensuring that the nutrients in food processing waste cascade back to the land. The pigs also bring fat into the diet, and produce it on less land than rape oil.(5) Chickens I have also introduced chickens, which in this model are fed on grain. They take up more land for less calories than pigs, but this is only because the pigs are getting all the food waste. It is possible to feed much of the waste to hens, and they convert it into protein more efficiently than pigs. But the advantage of pigs in a northern country is that they produce fat, when little else does. If resources became scarce, I would expect commercial chickens to be among the first to rise in price, (a boiling fowl was a luxury to be had only on special occasions in the 1950s) but there would still be plenty of opportunity for backyard hens fed on household scraps. Fish I have allowed the carnivores a small amount of fish, equivalent to about half of current consumption levels. If European countries reverted to local control of fishing grounds, then management of UK stocks would improve and catches eventually rise. There are some wonderful permacultural systems in Vietnam and China where fish farming is part of the cycle, but I don?t know enough about their potential in the UK to include them here. Sheep I have reduced the number of sheep from 27 million in Mellanby?s scenario to 18 million, because they don?t produce much food and there is a widespread perception that they have too much of a monopoly of our uplands at the moment. But we might think twice about this because, in the absence of plastic fleeces shipped in from China, we may need more wool than 18 million sheep can produce. Sheep would be bred for heavier fleeces. Wild Meat I could find no figures for the volume of meat available from wild herbivores, but it is probably minimal. The figure given is roughly the same as the estimated quantity of wild rabbit meat eaten in 1953. Fruit and Veg In the localized economy envisaged here, a large proportion of fruit and vegetables could be grown more intensively on allotments, in gardens and on urban land. Much top fruit would be grown not on arable land, which needs weeding, but in orchards which could be grazed, or in the vegan case mown. I have reduced the area of arable put down to horticulture in Table F to 100,000 hectares. Wheat High yields come through breeding for seed production at the expense of stem production. The lower wheat yields associated with organic production can be partially offset by producing thatching straw ? another form of biomass that will be in demand if we enter a path of energy descent. Textiles I have been unable to establish what current UK consumption rates of textiles are, and since so much of it is frivolous there is not much point. Textile fibres do not take up an enormous amount of land. Except for fashion models, most of us eat more than we wear. In Table F I have allocated 7.25 kilos per person per year (a domestic washing-machine load), provided by hemp and flax, wool and leather. Nutrient cycles Additional nitrogen for crops comes from three main sources. Enough nitrogen to fertilize 1 million hectares of crops can be obtained from recycling human sewage, preferably on crops for animal rather than human consumption. This requires a society which does not pollute its human waste with heavy metals, through contamination with liquid run-off and effluent. Just over a million hectares can be supplied with nutrients through ley farming. And a further 750,000 hectares could be fertilized with a proportion of the available animal manure. How much can be recuperated depends upon how livestock are managed. In the case of sheep, this might involve bringing them in at night, to shit in the farmyard, as is normal practice in many places on the continent. Any shortfall would have to be met by green manure, at a rate of one hectare for every two cultivated. In the absence of supplies of imported rock phosphate, phosphorus rather than nitrogen might become the main constraint upon crop yields, in which case we would have to ensure rigorous recycling of animal manures, human sewage, slaughterhouse wastes etc ? a further reason for dispersing population around the countryside. A vegan system in particular might have problems maintaining phosphorus levels. Biomass I have not allowed for much intensive biomass energy production, mainly because it takes up arable land that could be better used for food. In non-arable areas, I prefer natural woodland to short rotation coppice, because of its amenity and wildlife value; the prospect of vast acreages of the countryside curtained in eight foot high willow coppice monoculture is not very appealing. However, there is a good case for arable biomass production on farms to provide fuel for tractors. I have allocated 10 per cent of the arable land either for biomass to run machinery, or else to grow feed for draught animals. The Livestock Permaculture land economy outlined in Table F produces all its food, a substantial proportion of its textiles, and the energy for cultivating its fields on 13.4 million hectares, a little over half the entire country. The more orthodox organic system in Table E requires nearly 16 million hectares, it doesn?t produce any fuel, it is low on fat, and it produces less meat: only 187 calories in the daily ration, compared with 272 in the permaculture model. The improvement comes through using animals for what they are best at, recycling nutrients and waste ? and avoiding feeding them grains. Woodland or Wildland We are left in Table F with about 9 million hectares, of which 3.7 million hectares are currently classed as woodland or else ?other land on agricultural holdings including woodland?, and the rest are rough grazing ? including 1.5 million hectares of grouse moor. There are therefore nearly five million hectares of mostly poor quality land spare, for which the most obvious uses are either to ?rewild? it, or else to put it over to woodland. In the livestock permaculture scenario I have opted to leave slightly over half of this area for wildlife and to convert the other half to woodland. This gives us about six million hectares of woodland, around a quarter of the entire country. This is still a lower proportion than in France (27 per cent), the EU (40 per cent) or the world (29 per cent). Six million hectares of biodiverse woodland, coppice and plantation could produce 36 million cubic metres of timber and pulp ? three quarters of what we currently consume (most of which is imported). A saner society, without all the junk mail, newspaper supplements no one reads, tacky throwaway furniture and so on could make do with a lot less. On the other hand six million hectares of woodland, could also produce enough firewood to heat six million well insulated family homes (at three tonnes per hectare and per home). This is not incompatible with timber production. All pulp and timber, when it comes to the end of its economic life, is firewood. This leaves three million hectares for wildlife, an eighth of the country, not as much as some people would wish to see. This land, since it is specifically not woodland, would have to be grazed by edible, semi-wild herbivores such as deer, primitive types of ox, or Konik ponies. The wild area could be increased by reducing the sheep flock still further, at the expense of a small amount of meat and some rather valuable wool; by producing more ?pink veal? (from young grass-fed cattle) and less mature beef; or by reducing the number of dairy cows and the amount of milk consumed. In each case, to compensate, a smaller area of land would have to be converted to crop production and green manure. Vegan Permaculture Table G outlines, as far as I am able, a vegan permacultural vision, based on the same data. I have introduced more flax and hemp to make up for the lack of wool and leather; and since the meat-eaters have been allowed pork and eggs, I have increased the variety in the vegan diet by allocating an additional 100,000 hectares for fruit and vegetables, most of which is grown on non-agricultural or orchard land, and fertilized with municipal compost. Perhaps I should allow them more. Nuts are an obvious choice, but reliable information about yields is difficult to find. The vegan system uses human sewage for fertilizer like the livestock system, though there would be more of a problem avoiding applying it to human edible crops. The obvious, and some would say overwhelming advantage of the vegan system is that it uses less land. However, it is the grazing land that the vegans economize on. They require almost as much arable land as the meat-eaters, mainly because of the lack of manure, and the expense of providing fat or oil. In fact the area of land under annual cultivation in the vegan system in any one year (7.2 million hectares) is considerably greater than in the livestock system where more than a third of the arable land consists of grass leys, and only 4.6 million hectares hold annual crops. The vegans could perhaps reduce the area of green manure by more efficient use of cover crops, or by importing hay or leaf mould for mulch. There are also the residues from rapeseed oil, biofuel, and products such oat milk and pea milk which could be used as fertilizer ? though vegans might be tempted to trade these with pig keepers. The disadvantage of the vegan model, from the peasant perspective, is that it results in a lop-sided land economy, with almost all the activity concentrated in the arable area; and overall it appears to provide less employment on the land than the livestock system. The less arable areas of Britain would become agriculturally redundant. All that empty space in the grassland area gives the relatively small growing area a rather compacted urban feel, and I worry that the spare land might get filled up with monoculture energy crops. But that depends upon what the vegans decide to do with it, and that is not really for me to say. I have so far failed to find any vegan land-use vision that maps out in detail what might be done with the large areas of UK land that would be liberated or abandoned, depending on your viewpoint, if we all turned vegan.(6) So, vegan permaculturists, we know you are out there, here is your chance. Fill in the blank area on Table G ? all 9 million hectares of it ? with whatever land uses you think are most appropriate, and we?ll publish your ?Vegan Vision for Rural Britain? in a future issue of The Land [where this article first appeared]. That is not to say that the people?s choice has to be either one thing or the other. Vegan and livestock land use systems can coexist well enough side by side, as long as boundaries are drawn and fences maintained. Instead of being strictly vegan or enthusiastically carnivore, it is entirely possible to have a level of compromise between the two approaches outlined in Tables F and G, and indeed that is more likely. Conclusion The main conclusion to be drawn from this exercise is that organic livestock-based agriculture, practised by orthodox methods and without supplementary measures, has the most difficulty sustaining the full UK population on the land available, while other management systems can do so with a more or less comfortable margin. However organic livestock agriculture becomes more efficient and sustainable when it is carried out in conjunction with other traditional and permacultural management practices which are integral to a natural fertility cycle. These include: feeding livestock upon food wastes and residues; returning human sewage to productive land; dispersal of animals on mixed farms and smallholdings, rather than concentration in large farms; local slaughter and food distribution; managing animals to ensure optimum recuperation of manure; and selecting and managing livestock, especially dairy cows, to be nitrogen providers rather than nitrogen stealers. These measures demand more human labour, and more even dispersal of both livestock and humans around the country than chemical or vegan options. Effective pursuit of livestock-based organic agriculture of this kind requires a localized economy, and some degree of agrarian resettlement. Other management systems based on synthetic fertilizers or vegan principles lend themselves more easily to the levels of urbanization currently favoured by the dominant (and mostly urban) policy makers. This article first appeared in the Winter 2007/2008 issue of The Land. References: 1. D. Pimentel et al, Organic and Conventional Farming Systems: Environmental and Economic Issues, Cornell University, 2005; http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/2101/1/pimentel_repor… 2.Martin Wolfe, Recognizing and Realizing the Potential of Organic Agriculture, presentation at Global Ag 2020 conference, John Innes Centre, April 19, 2001, www.biotech-info.net/organic_potential.html 3. Peter Brooks, Rediscovering the Environmentally-Friendly Pig, Seale Hayne, 1993, unpublished. 4. US citizens have 3,600 calories of available food, but only eat 2000 calories per capita. USDA figures, cited in V. Smil, Enriching the Earth, MIT, 2004, p 166. 5. Pigs produce fat on less land than rape in our scenario because they are fed substantial amounts of waste. If you gave them no waste and grew all the pig food organically and fed it at a feed/meat conversion ratio of 5:1 you would get about 800 kilos of fat and meat per hectare, which is the same as our estimated yield of organic rape oil. Soya bean oil yields are much lower ? an average non-organic harvest is about 2.4 tonnes per ha of beans yielding about 450 kg oil. (FAO, Livestock?s Long Shadow, 2006, pp. 43-44). 6. The ideas expressed in Mark Fishers? website www.self-willed-land.org.uk are highly compatible with a vegan land economy.
Censored by Money14 Jul 2008After every test case, the media assume the worst is over: that Britain?s libel laws, designed to protect the powerful from public scrutiny, have been fanged, and freedom of speech will no longer be treated like a crime. And then it gets worse. On the website of Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, you can read a letter his publishers have received from the law firm Schillings(1). It contains something I have never seen before: a threatened injunction against a book they haven?t read and that won?t be published until September. Acting on behalf of the ?private security contractor? Tim Spicer, Schillings gave the publishers three days (the deadline was last Friday) to guarantee that the book does not defame its client, or face ?an injunction to restrain publication?. No publisher can afford to ignore a letter like this. Though libel is a civil rather than a criminal matter in this country, the consequences can be much graver than most criminal convictions. I would rather go to prison for a few weeks for committing a crime than spend five years fighting a libel case, then lose my house and my savings. It is better to be caught mugging than to be caught speaking freely. If someone launches a sustained and malicious campaign of false charges against another person, and that person is given no opportunity to demonstrate that he is being wronged, he should be allowed to seek redress. But the libel laws of England and Wales are tilted so heavily against the defendant and involve such monumental costs that they amount, in effect, to censorship by private interests: a sedition law for the exclusive use of millionaires. While in the United States the plaintiff must prove that the claims against him are false, in English law the defendants? claims are presumed false until proven otherwise: he has to demonstrate his innocence. If his defence fails, he must pay both costs and damages. The plaintiff?s lawyers make little attempt to limit their costs: the partners at one well-known firm charge 750 an hour(2). The bill can rise to millions. Perhaps you don?t live in England or Wales, so you think this has nothing to do with you. You?re wrong. English libel law now applies to everyone on earth. Make any accusation, anywhere in the world, and if the subject can demonstrate that a single person in England or Wales has read it, you could be sued here for every penny, cent, rouble, rupee or renmimbi you possess. The internet and the global nature of publishing ensure that these mediaevel laws have become the most powerful extra-territorial legislation ever drafted. Yesterday two men with whom I seldom agree, the US senators Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman, launched a new bill, called the Free Speech Protection Act, to defend US citizens against English libel law. Our laws, they argue, threaten the ?free-flowing marketplace of ideas? which ?enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.?(3) English libel law is an international menace, a national disgrace, a pre-democratic anachronism. It defends crooks, terrorists and tyrants from investigation. It threatens the free speech of people all over the world and causes untold damage to the reputation of this country. And neither the British government nor the British parliament gives a damn. Every few years the newspapers fill with optimistic headlines about the death of these repressive laws. In 1999, they were deemed to have been neutralised by the case of Reynolds v Times Newspapers, when the law lords established that a journalist could use the defence of public interest if he had acted responsibly, even if he could not prove his allegations. But the criteria for responsible journalism were so narrowly defined that this defence has seldom succeeded. In 2006 the laws were deemed to have died again when the Wall Street Journal successfully used the Reynolds defence in the House of Lords, overturning a case brought by the Saudi businessman Mohammed Jameel(4). Last year they died once more when the court of appeal found that the investigative journalist Graeme McLagan had acted responsibly when he claimed that a former police officer had taken a bribe from a criminal(5,6). But today Britain?s libel lawyers are more active than ever before. They have developed a lucrative new line in shutting down websites. This is the second time, for example, that Craig Murray has come to the attention of Schillings. Last year it closed his site and several others by threatening the companies which host them – internet service providers (ISPs) ?? with libel suits on behalf of Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-Russian billionaire with a major share in Arsenal football club(7,8,9). ISPs are especially vulnerable to the libel laws. Most of them have no stake in the contents of the sites they host and have no means of deciding whether the material they contain or the complaints it generates are true, but they carry as much liability as the people who write defamatory blogs. They can be sued even over the throw-away remarks of anonymous posters on comment threads ? this is one of the reasons why the Comment is Free threads have to be edited by the Guardian. Some lawyers don?t bother to write to the authors of contentious web pages, but deal only with the ISPs, knowing that they are likely to surrender at the first whiff of gunpowder(10). Some of the successful cases appear to me to be remarkably petty. Last year the directors of the Sheffield Wednesday football club sued the fan site Owlstalk to force it to reveal the identity of 11 anonymous contributers to its forums, who had made derogatory comments about them(11). The controversial childcare guru Gina Ford obliged the site Mumsnet to apologise and pay her legal costs, after bloggers had alleged, among other accusations, that she had been ?strapping babies to rockets and firing them into South Lebanon?(12). Who but Ms Ford could have taken this seriously? The blogger Richard Brunton tells a shocking story of the threats he received from a leisure company (which he is now too frightened even to name) after contributors to his site had made adverse comments about some of its products(13). Such threats could bring an end to critical online reviews. The internet butterfly is repeatedly broken upon the wheel of England?s mediaevel laws. In 2002, the Law Commission, a statutory body, recommended that the libel laws be reformed to protect ISPs(14). Since then the government has done nothing. British ministers love these censors? laws. Even the newspapers scarcely seem prepared to fight. Rather than campaign for new legislation, they simply wait for the higher courts to act, then claim victory when no such thing has been achieved. It is not as if most of the media is falling over itself to expose the misdeeds of the rich and powerful anyway: the law gives editors the excuse they need to leave billionaires alone. As for our parliamentarians, I would like to have ended this column by naming some of these self-interested chickens, who thunder about free speech while allowing the rich to stamp on their critics. But I wouldn?t dare: they might sue me. References: 1. http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/Schillings.pdf 2. Robert Verkaik, 7th July 2008. Defame academy: the libel specialists. The Independent. 3. Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman, 14th July 2008. Foreign Courts Take Aim at Our Free Speech. Wall Street Journal. 4. eg James M Dorsey, 16th October 2006. ?Victory is sweet?. The Guardian. 5. Clare Dyer, 12th October 2007. Landmark libel ruling grants more freedom to journalists. The Guardian. 6. Graeme McLagan, 15th October 2007. Brought to book. The Guardian. 7. Michael Weiss, 10th October 2007. Civil Disobedience on the Web. http://www.slate.com/id/2175579/ 8. Doreen Carvajal, 7th October 2007. Bloggers beware when you criticize the rich and powerful. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/07/business/net08.php 9. http://b-heads.blogspot.com/ 10. There is an interesting discussion of the problem and possible solutions at http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2007/09/ 11. Bobbie Johnson, 29th October 2007. Red card for commenters. The Guardian. 12. Lucy Ward, 10th May 2007. Gina Ford wins apology over web postings. The Guardian. 13. http://weblog.brunton.org.uk/archives/2007/09/solicitors_atta.html#more 14. Clare Dyer, 18th December 2002. Internet libel laws ?stifling freedom of expression?. The Guardian.
Outsourcing Abuse14 Jul 2008Executive Summary Background Last autumn, 2007, stories hit the headlines about alleged assaults and beatings of asylum seekers by security guards employed by private companies contracted to run immigration detention centres or to escort detainees being moved between centres or when being removed from the UK. In October 2007, an article in the Independent made reference to campaigners having a ?dossier? of 200 alleged assault cases. The Home Office said the assault allegations were ?unsupported assertions? and that if there was evidence of mistreatment they would expect it to be provided to them for investigation. In many cases, those alleging assaults had already lodged complaints, providing information to the Home Office and asking them to investigate, but where followed up by the Home Office, the complaints had largely been dismissed. The Complaints Audit Committee, set up to monitor the Home Office?s procedures for investigating complaints about the conduct of staff, informed us that there were about 190 complaints about alleged assaults in the previous 12 months. In October 2007, we did not have permission from all those alleging the assaults to provide the Home Office with further information. We have since sought their permission where possible and now present findings from our dossier that has reached nearly 300 cases of alleged assault. Many additional allegations of assault have been reported to us that we simply have not had the resources to consider and therefore have not been included in the dossier. Because of this, coupled with the fact that other victims are fearful of coming forward, we feel our dossier is just the tip of the iceberg. We have found an alarming and unacceptable number of injuries have been sustained by those subject to forced removals. This dossier provides evidence of widespread and seemingly systemic abuse of one of the most vulnerable communities of people in our society, who have fled their own countries seeking safety and refuge. The alleged assaults took place between January 2004 and June 2008. In addition to our findings, 48 detailed case studies are included in Part 2. Key findings In all cases in our dossier, what may have started off as ?reasonable? force1 turned into what we consider to be excessive force. One asylum seeker ended up with his leg in a plaster cast and a woman was pushed through airports in a wheelchair after having allegedly been assaulted. The most common form of injury recorded resulted from inappropriate use of handcuffing, including swelling and cuts to the wrist, sometimes leading to longlasting nerve damage. Other injuries included bruising and swelling to the face and fractures to the wrists, ribs or ankles. Often psychological consequences resulted, such as the onset or exacerbation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, suicidal feelings and depression. 66 % of alleged assaults were against men and 34 % against women. 48% of the assaults occurred at the airport before the detainee was placed on the plane and 12 % took place in the transport van on the way to the airport. 24% of alleged assaults took place on the aeroplane before take-off and 3% after take-off. 7% took place in the van back to the detention centre after the removal had already failed and 6 % took place within detention centres. Allegations of assault were made by people from over 41 counties. Almost three quarters of these were from Africa. The most common nationalities of those being removed were Ugandan, Nigerian, Cameroonian, Congolese (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Jamaican. There were 27 alleged incidents involving families, comprising a total of 42 children, 5 of whom are alleged to have been assaulted themselves. Many of those assaulted made allegations of racism against the escort; there are repeated accounts of abusive language used such as ?black bitch? and ?black monkey, go back to your own country.? Alleged assaults took place on scheduled airline flights, charter flights and military planes. Private jets have also been arranged to remove people from the UK. It is not known exactly how many airlines are contracted to carry out this task, or how much they are paid, but the costs run into millions of pounds each year. Few asylum seekers are able to make a complaint or seek redress. The relevant procedures and legal process are complex and not perceived to be independent. There is evidence that asylum seekers lodging complaints are subject to harassment and further abuse. Many victims are already traumatised and see no option but to try to simply forget what has happened. The authorities appear reluctant to investigate reported assaults which often happen behind closed doors, with no witnesses. Cell mates who witness assaults may be quickly moved to another centre or deported. CCTV evidence miraculously disappears or is conveniently obsured at the crucial moment. In most cases allegations of assault were not upheld following investigation, although in some cases, there were concerns about the inadequacy of the investigation. There is evidence that the police do not take allegations seriously. In some cases where the detainee reported the matter to the police, counter allegations of assault were made against the detainee. In a number of cases, detainees who have complained have been charged and prosecuted, although none we are aware of have been convicted. A number of people alleging assault have been able to bring a civil action cases, some of which have settled out of court. We are not aware, however, of any security guards or their employers being prosecuted for any assault related offence under the criminal law. Our evidence suggests that immigration detainees do not have equal access to the law. Summary Asylum applications are a 14-year low, yet the proportional use of detention has increased 7-fold. The government is driven by seemingly arbitrary targets on deportation and has just announced a near doubling of detention centre capacity. ?Mass deportations? may follow if the government puts into effect its announcement made in August 2007 to deal with 450,000 unresolved asylum cases within 5 years or less. The increased use of detention and target-driven deportations may lead to further injuries and assault allegations. There have been numerous inquiries into alleged abuse of immigration detainees over the years but we see no improvement. While the practice of using private companies for running detention centres and escorting of forced removals may contribute to a certain level of ?see no evil, hear no evil?, our understanding is that the Home Office is aware of an unacceptable level of alleged abuse through its own complaints procedure. We consider the evidence in this report reveals what may amount to state sanctioned violence, for which ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Office. Link to complete report Harriet Wistrich, Birnberg Peirce & Partners.
Dr. Frank Arnold, Medical Justice.
Emma Ginn, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns.
Contact: info@medicaljustice.org.uk
Tel: 07786 517379
Louise Casey is tired of human rights14 Jul 2008In the government-commissioned “Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime” report Casey argues, among other things, that people doing community service should have the added shame of wearing high visibility jackets stating that they are being punished. She also argues that websites, leaflets, posters and public meetings should be used to name and shame those guilty of crimes such as vandalism and tell people what their punishment will be. She also suggests giving community support officers the power to detain and fine people – a bit like budget versions of Judge Dredd. “We’re all a little tired of hearing about the human rights and civil liberties of people who break the law,” said Casey. While there is little evidence to suggest that public humiliation would stop crime, that doesn’t seem to be the reason for the new measures. “More offenders than ever are brought to justice and punished more severely – partly reflected in a doubling of those now locked up in prison and 93 percent of offenders being made to pay their fines,” Casey acknowledges. But the public still “don’t believe wrong-doers face adequate consequences for the crimes they commit. They don’t believe that crime has fallen when they are told so.” So crime is going down and sentencing is going up – but since people don’t understand that, it’s time to make life even more intolerable for graffiti artists and litter bugs. Plastering a town centre with someone’s mug shot would seem to serve as an attempt to show that the government is being tough on crime. No more of this politically correct nonsense about being “tough on the causes of crime” – this is the modern equivalent of being tarred and feathered. Casey is a long-term friend of New Labour. She can boast being one of the brains behind the anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), and Tony Blair’s “homelessness tsar”. In 1999 she accused charities of “perpetuating homelessness” by giving out sleeping bags and soup (how are we expected to rid the streets of the homeless if people don’t just let them freeze to death?). Home secretary Jacqui Smith is said to be enthusiastic about the report, always salivating at the opportunity to make Britain a pioneer in ineffective draconian punishment. But these tactics have not always gone down too well. In Shenzhen, China, 100 people convicted of offences related to prostitution were paraded through the streets in yellow tunics in 2006. This caused such a wave of public revulsion that the government didn’t dare use the punishment again. So the question is: can crime fighting duo Smith and Casey succeed in offender humiliation where the Chinese government has failed?
Afghanistan: state of siege14 Jul 2008On 7 July 2008 a suicide-bomber detonated a large car-bomb at the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing fifty-four people and injuring more than 140. The embassy stands in one of the most secure parts of Afghanistan’s capital, yet this did not protect it from what security forces described as the worst bombing [1] in the city since the termination of the Taliban regime in November 2001. Taliban sources denied that the movement was responsible, while Afghan sources implied [2] (albeit without supporting evidence) a Pakistani intelligence connection. The high death-toll is in part attributable to the fact that many people were queuing at the embassy at the time; this may be a factor too in the Taliban reaction, for it has been a regular practice of the group to deny responsibility for attacks where large numbers of civilians are killed. Whoever was responsible, the Indian embassy attack came at a time of escalating violence in Afghanistan marked by a number of high-profile paramilitary actions. These include an assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai at a military parade on 27 April 2008), and the dramatic raid on Sarpoza prison in Kandahar which freed dozens of Taliban prisoners and which was followed by the seizure of several villages close to the city (see “Afghanistan in an amorphous war [2]”, 19 June 2008). A day after the embassy attack, a bomb was found [3] on a bus carrying Indian workers in the province of Nimroz (where many Indian projects, including the strategic Zarang-Delaram highway project, are centred). The seriousness of the situation in Afghanistan has led to the United States navy’s redeployment [4] of a carrier battle-group led by the aircraft-carrier USS Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea; this will enable [5] US strike aircraft to provide further airpower in Afghanistan. The problem with this response is the danger it carries of continuing the pattern of inflicting civilian deaths in misdirected air-strikes, which in turn provokes affected communities to turn against the coalition forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC [6]) estimates that in the period of 2-7 July 2008 alone, paramilitary violence and coalition military action together killed at least 250 civilians, and that deaths caused by US air power being a particular source of tension on the ground (see ICRC, “Civilians in the line of fire [7]”, 9 July 2008). The question of deaths as a result of missile-strikes [8] is a source of great controversy. In two recent incidents, for example, there is dispute over the identity of the dead Afghans. Local Afghan officials claimed that the fifteen people who died in a US missile attack in Kunar province on 4 July [9] were civilians, while American spokespersons insisted that only militants were killed; Afghan officials were equally adamant that the at least twenty-seven victims of a missile attack on 6 July [10] included nineteen women and children, reportedly members of a group of around eighty or so people in a wedding party who were taking a rest while walking to the groom’s house. Whatever the true circumstances of these and other cases [11], the killing of civilians by coalition forces is deeply unsettling and has added to the anti-western mood in many parts of the country already hard-pressed [12] by problems such as growing food insecurity. The pattern of civilian deaths also comes at a time when coalition sources are beginning to admit to the seriousness of the strategic predicament they face in Afghanistan. A chain of influence Each year since the Taliban regime was ended, foreign troop numbers in the country have risen; the single greatest increase has been since early 2007, with 20,000 additional troops arriving to take the overall total to around 66,000 (see the editorial, “Afghan Escalation [13]”, Washington Post, 6 July 2008). Despite this, the intensity of Taliban activity has also increased. Much of it is seasonal, with less fighting during the severe winter months, but even here there has been a change. In recent years, suicide-attacks in cities such as Kabul and Kandahar have increased overall, but they have also continued through the winter months. For the US forces, the biggest surprise has been the growth in Taliban activity in the eastern part of the country. This region, close to the Pakistan border, has been garrisoned by US forces operating independently of Nato, and there have been frequent claims of progress over the past two years. The US forces and spokespersons have made pointed references to the contrast between their “success” and the difficulties experienced by British troops in Helmand province and the Canadians [14] in Kandahar. Now, though, the US claims are sounding less assured. The newly-appointed US military commander for eastern Afghanistan, Major-General Jeffrey J Schloesser, has highlighted [15] the increased sophistication of the methods used by the insurgents as a factor in the rising violence. This has led to a near-doubling of the number [16] of US troops killed in the country in the first six months of 2008 compared with the similar period in 2007. What has become particularly noticeable has been the more widespread use of roadside bombs, with tactics developed in Iraq being deployed in Afghanistan (see Peter Spiegel & Julian E Barnes, “Afghan Attacks Rise, U.S. Says [17]”, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2008). The escalation of violence in Afghanistan has two other elements. The first is a loss of support for the war in a number of Nato member-states that have committed troops. A Pew Global Attitudes Project [17]survey conducted in a number of Nato countries in April 2008 (even before the violence intensified in the following two months) found majority support for the withdrawal of Nato forces – ranging from 54% to 72% in countries including France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Turkey (see Jim Lobe, “Afghanistan Moves Back Into the Limelight [18]”, Inter Press Service, 3 July 2008). The second element is the steady rise in power of Taliban and al-Qaida paramilitaries in western Pakistan. The Pakistan-based Taliban militias now have considerable influence [21] in many of the border districts of Pakistan, including parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies [22], and North Waziristan and South Waziristan. This influence in turn has two effects. The first is that Taliban groups fighting in Afghanistan have safe havens across the border [23]; but if US forces mount raids into western Pakistan this simply stirs up more anti-American feelings across the country. The second effect, and just as significant from a US perspective, is that the Taliban control has allowed al-Qaida to regenerate. An informed assessment is that there are as many as two thousand paramilitaries established in training camps in western Pakistan, up from several hundred three years ago (see Mark Mazzetti & David Rohde, “Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan [24]”, New York Times, 30 June 2008). The issue has been complicated by differences of opinion within the United States over the need for US forces, whether CIA, special forces or regular military, to operate within Pakistan. This remains unresolved but has become even more complicated by the uncertainties of politics within Pakistan itself (see Gary Thomas, “Instability, Uncertainty, Fuel Pakistan, Afghan Attacks [25]”, Voice of America, 8 July 2008). A “winning fight” Pervez Musharraf remains president, though his diminishing [26] influence means that his markedly pro-American outlook carries less weight. The coalition government remains in some disarray [27] over the president and other issues, but its overall mood – reflecting an even stronger popular feeling – is unwillingness [28] to allow greater US military involvement in the border districts. The bottom line, which is keenly recognised within the higher echelons of the Pakistani civil service, is that the population as a whole will simply not accept more US involvement. It has become a political non-starter. The consequences for the US military are thoroughly negative. The senior Nato commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, states: “The porous border has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border, as well as a greater freedom to resupply, to allow leadership to sustain stronger sanctuaries and to provide fighters across that border” (see Eric Schmitt, “Pakistan is said to be attracting insurgents [29]”, International Herald Tribune, 10 July 2008). American military and intelligence sources are reporting a marked increase in the involvement of foreign fighters with Taliban militias in western Pakistan. These include young men from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and the Gulf states; since March 2008 the numbers have increased (according to an unnamed Pentagon official) “from a trickle to a steady stream”. This is part of a trend in which Pakistan and Afghanistan are now the focus of attention for paramilitaries intent on fighting western forces. The International Herald Tribune report on this phenomenon is worth quoting at length: “The American officials say the influx (of foreign fighters), which could be in the dozens but also could be higher, shows a further strengthening of the position of the forces of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, increasingly seen as an important base of support for the Taliban, whose forces in Afghanistan have become more aggressive in their campaign against American-led troops. ...American intelligence officials say that some jihadist Web sites have been encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is considered a ?winning fight’, compared with the insurgency in Iraq, which has suffered sharp setbacks recently. Four senior military officials said that Al Qaeda was strengthening its increasingly close operational ties in the tribal areas with the Taliban and other various militant groups – financing, training recruits and facilitating attacks into Afghanistan, though not necessarily conducting attacks themselves.” A decisive year The accumulating result of these trends is a deteriorating security situation across much of southern and eastern Afghanistan, made worse by the Taliban/al-Qaida revival [30] across the border. A forceful United States government might have insisted on taking the war to Pakistan, even against the overwhelming opinion against this within that country. But the George W Bush administration is nearing the end of its term and is, in any case, far more preoccupied with Iran (see “Iraq task, Iran risk [30]”, 3 July 2008). In April 2008 a number of analysts were suggesting that 2008 would be a decisive year for the seven-year war: either the Taliban would succumb to the overwhelming weaponry available to Nato and US forces, or the movement would increase its power. At the midpoint of the year, the latter view looks more accurate – so much so that Afghanistan might even exceed Iraq as an issue at the heart of the American presidential campaign. Links: [1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/ap_on_re_as/afghan_explosion
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5328140
[3] http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=454096&sid=NAT
[4] http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/08/carrier.moves/
[5] http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56054
[6] http://www.icrc.org/eng/afghanistan
[7] http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/afghanistan-news-090708%21…
[8] http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-07-09_D91QAEAO0&show_articl…
[9] http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jkKFU8CvHoLV5ont_58iLTVBWLVQD91O9R500
[10] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008036533_afghan07.ht…
[11] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7498041.stm
[12] http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79162
[13] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/05/AR200807…
[14] http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=8d56ddc9-9f6d-4f99…
[15] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-usafghan25-2008jun2…
[16] http://icasualties.org/oef/
[17] http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/25/world/fg-usafghan25
[18] http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=1567
[19] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[20] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[21] http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080709/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanattacksin…
[22] http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?issue_id=3893
[23] http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/afghan_pak_border_map.htm
[24] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/washington/30tribal.html
[25] http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-08-voa51.cfm
[26] http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=172441
[27] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c93103c0-4dce-11dd-820e-000077b07658.html
[28] http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkOyy6iVkNxhRAX9Mio7wSQxbnYQD91QM9R00
[29] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/10/asia/10terror.php
[30] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/world/asia/10terror.html?em&ex=1215748…
Trident tested11 Jul 2008On the beautiful and rugged western coast of Scotland is an exceptionally deep natural harbour called Faslane. It is home to a British naval base and four Trident submarines equipped with up to 200 warheads. Just one of these has the capacity to deliver eight times the destructive power of the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This corner of Scotland has also been the setting for a year-long rolling protest, which involved thousands of people giving up several days to oppose, physically, a programme to upgrade Britain?s weapons of mass destruction. The Big Blockade started on 1 October 2006. By the end of the year the base had been successfully blockaded for 189 days which led to 1,150 arrests. ?We piled out of the van and ran towards the North Gate,? recalls Lavinia Crossley. ?We lay down in the circular formation we had practised, interlocked our arms and super-glued our hands together. It worked a treat! The banner we had made summed up our action nicely: ?Sticking Together For Peace?. We remained stuck there for three hours, as the Strathclyde police gently prized our flesh apart.? The youngest to get arrested was 13-year-old Catherine Holmes who locked on to her teddy bear with her Edinburgh group. The oldest was Betty Tebbs who, at 89, thumb-locked herself to others from Manchester and lay down in the rain, with the midges biting, blocking the south entrance to the base. A group from York came dressed as Vikings, pointing out: ?The Vikings slaughtered tens of thousands of people but they did so over half a millennium. Trident could do the same in a minute.? Pete Abel dressed as a squirrel with a placard saying ?Nuts to Trident?. He gleefully remembers the reaction of the police ?when they realized that they would have to arrest a seven foot furry squirrel, thumbcuffed to two other protesters at the North Gate. And that he was not going to ?go quietly!?? The Bishop of Reading, for his part, was on hand to bless the peacemakers. People?s disarmament Faslane365 was a recent manifestation of Britain?s ?People?s Disarmament? movement, initiated in 1961 by Bertrand Russell, who argued: ?If all those who disapprove of Government policy were to join massive demonstrations of civil disobedience they could render Government folly impossible.? A group of us had launched ?Trident Ploughshares? in 1998 to disarm Britain?s nuclear weapons system in a nonviolent, open, peaceful and fully accountable manner. We did not see the destruction of fences and equipment as violent, or criminal damage, or a breach of the peace, but as practical and lawful. Of course, the Government did not see it that way and there have been over 2,200 arrests leading to 500 trials. Myself, Ellen Moxley and Ulla Roder disarmed a multi-million pound research barge that maintained the ?invisibility? of Trident; we emptied the contents of the laboratory into Loch Goil. After five months in prison and a trial where we argued that we were entitled to do this under international law, a brave Sheriff and jury acquitted us, causing a legal furore. By 2005 I had become increasingly concerned that the peace movement was not exerting enough influence. The trickle of disarmament actions, the one-off mass blockades were easily dealt with. We were horrified that a new nuclear arms race was starting and the British Government was committed to replacing Trident. They were so busy wasting our money and the world?s resources that they were failing to address the real mass destruction that threatens our security: the oil-and-industry-driven heating of the planet; destruction of our habitat and environment; and the institutionalized poverty that destroys hope and lives. We needed to escalate our disarmament efforts, to provide the political pressure for change in a year when the Scots would hold an election that might bring an anti-Trident party into power for the first time. So the idea behind Faslane365 was to encourage and support more people to engage in civil resistance by organizing blockades on a daily basis over a whole year. Scotland: officially anti-nuke The variety of people blockading, the day-to-day disruption to the base, and the diversity of messages against Trident built up the people pressure in the run-up to the Scottish elections. On 3 May 2007 the Scottish National Party (SNP) ? a party long-committed to making Scotland nuclear free ? won a historic one-seat majority. Opinion poll data showed that for Labour voters who switched to the SNP, opposition to Trident was a major factor. Six weeks later, a resolution opposing Trident replacement was resoundingly carried by 71 to 16. We are now giving the Scottish Parliament time to remove Trident. Although under the terms of devolution they are not supposed to interfere in ?foreign policy? issues and must defer to the British Government, they can reject Trident based on international law as well as moral grounds. We know that if Trident is removed from Scotland there are no alternative secure locations in England or Wales to base the submarines and store the nuclear warheads. The British Government would either have to find a non-submarine alternative or give up nuclear weapons altogether. We must remain vigilant and may need to return to sustained people?s disarmament. If we do, then we will need thousands of people to commit to nonviolent disruption on a massive level. It is up to us. Angie Zelter is a campaigner specializing in nonviolent direct action. She has been arrested over 100 times and served 16 prison sentences. In 1996 she and three other women disarmed a BAE Hawk Jet bound for East Timor, causing $3 million worth of damage. A jury found them ?not guilty?. Her book Faslane 365 ? a year of anti-nuclear blockades (Luath) will be launched in June 2008.
Islamophobia: The Bigotry You Can Vent Without Shame10 Jul 2008Yesterday evening, Channel 4 showed a wonderful documentary, “Dispatches: It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim“, an example of that rare and precious thing called public service broadcasting. It is my view that every last person responsible, from the tea-boy up, should be given a knighthood. At least. Journalist Peter Oborne investigated
“the rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims….He discover[ed] that for many in the Muslim community, Britain is becoming a very frightening place. Dispatches [met] a range of British Muslims who now live in daily fear, some because their homes are constantly vandalised, others because they or family have suffered devastatingly violent attacks.” The Language of Hate Some important and authoritative research was commissioned by the film-makers, which will serve as valuable resources for those fighting Islamophobia in the future. There’s a report by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, which found that “the bulk of [press] coverage of British Muslims – around two thirds – focuses on Muslims as a threat (in relation to terrorism), a problem (in terms of differences in values) or both (Muslim extremism in general).” “Decontextualisation, misinformation and a preferred discourse of threat, fear and danger, while not uniformly present, were strong forces in the reporting of British Muslims in the UK national press.” The Cardiff School of Journalism report is a very solid bit of social science research and well worth reading in full. Like the documentary as a whole, it provides a thorough analysis of how a dangerous bigotry is constructed and maintained in public discourse. The British press is shown to constantly present Muslims as an alien presence; a threatening “other”. Rarely if ever in the coverage is it accepted that if a person lives, works, votes, pays their taxes and abides by the law in this country then they are no less British if they are a Muslim than if they are CofE or anything else. Instead, Islamic traditions are presented as a threat to a nebulous concept called “our way of life”, from which British people of Islamic faith are excluded by definition. It is clear that, for the press, “Britishness” means a narrow concept of white Anglo-Saxonism; and that should be a cause for concern to a great many of us besides Muslims. The other point about the press coverage is that so much of it is simply false, to the point where it appears that many journalists are in the business of systematically lying about the subject. It becomes plain that the assumption you should work from when you see a scare-story about Muslims in the gutter press, or even the broadsheets, (“Muslims Ban Christmas”, “Mosques Beat Churches”, “Gay Muslim Paedophile Asylum Seekers May Cause Cancer/Fall in House Prices”) is that the story is probably false. Furthermore, “Oborne conclude[d] that in today’s climate the media say things about Islam and Muslims they would never say about other groups [and this includes supposedly liberal commentators like Polly Toynbee]. When he replace[d] the word’ ‘Muslim’ in some recent headlines with ‘Jews’, ‘Blacks’ and ‘Gays’ and show[ed] them to members of the public, they [found] those headlines deeply offensive”. A particularly interesting moment came when Oborne interviewed Rabbi Pete Tobias, a expert in the anti-semitism of early twentieth century Britain. Tobias showed Oborne an Evening Standard article from 1911, a time when many Jews were arriving in the UK from Europe. The language was familiar: dangerous and backward people from the east threaten our values and way of life by swamping our communities and refusing to integrate or submit to our superior culture. Chilling to consider that, even after the twentieth century, the essential components of racist discourse are still not being recognised for what they are (see the election of the lovable clown Boris Johnson, for a separate example). Crucially, the documentary gave many British Muslims the chance to speak for themselves, which makes a change from having other people talking about them. And their responses to the prejudice that had been thrown their way were the best and most telling of all. Asked about the Sun’s political editor’s comment that it is correct to spotlight Muslims because of Islamist terrorism, one Muslim cleric asked, if all rapists are men, then why don’t we spotlight the entire male gender for the issue of rape? A Muslim medical student said that when Muslims like her get abused or attacked by white British people then no one asks broad questions about the defects of white British culture, but when a Muslim commits a terrorist act then every member of the Islamic faith is held guilty of hate-filled extremism until proven innocent. This gets right to the crux of it. In reality, we do not have a problem with Islam; we have a problem with terrorists. Actually, we have a problem with terrorism and with bigotry towards Muslims, which often manifests itself in Muslims being violently terrorised. Terrorising Muslims The documentary makers commissioned a poll, one of the most important results of which illustrated the fact that Islamophobia does a lot worse than hurt people’s feelings. Fully thirty seven percent of Muslims – over one in three – says they have been subjected to hostility or abuse since 7 July 2005 because of their religion. Oborne interviewed people who had had their houses and cars vandalised, been abused in the street, beaten and stabbed, and targeted by fire-bombings. The information pamphlet accompanying the programme (also well worth a read), describes an incident where “[o]n Wednesday 7 May 2008 in Bolton a group of young people allegedly chased a group of Muslim men shouting racial and religious abuse. A chainsaw was allegedly held to the throat of one man. A 17-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man have been charged with affray and possession of an offensive weapon, and are awaiting trial”. Elsewhere “[a] Methodist chapel being converted into an Asian community centre in Quenchwell, near Carnon suffered an Islamophobic attack in early June. In the wake of a local row about the plans to create an Asian centre at this location urine was found inside a builder?s helmet. The words ?Fuck off you Asian bastards? were written on a table. On the morning of Monday 2 June a pig?s head was found nailed to the door in a clear attempt to offend Muslims. The words ?God says fuck off? and a cross were daubed on the door”. “On 17 April three men were jailed for three years for a campaign of racial harassment lasting nine months against a Muslim colleague, Amjid Mehmood, who was tied to railings and force-fed bacon, which he cannot eat because of his religious beliefs. His attackers filmed the whole incident on a mobile phone. In total, nine separate incidents of racial harassment occurred over the period. A rucksack with protruding wires was put on his locker and his trousers were set on fire. During the Birmingham riots he was driven to an Afro-Caribbean area and told locals were ?coming to get him.?” Its never been a secret that the language of racism is spoken with fists and knives as much as it is written in newsprint or insinuated in the statements of politicians. But many powerful people seem happy to ignore this, while the costs are paid by ordinary and entirely innocent Britons of Islamic faith. Violence is of course the logical consequence of a public discourse in which Muslims are constantly demonised and lied about. Thus, the self-styled victims of fictional Muslim aggression become the enablers of actual aggression against Muslims. The press and politicians (like the odious Jack Straw whining about how veiled women discomfort him, or any given right-wing hack complaining about “political correctness gone mad”) portray themselves as the pitiful victims of extremist Islamism. But when Muslims then suffer actual physical aggression as a result of this demonisation, politicians and the press have nothing to say. Attitudes: differences and similarities The poll also shows, as other polls have done, that Muslims are not significantly less tolerant than non-Muslims, which sweeps away at a stroke the fantasy of an ultra-conservative Islamist invasion. So we can expect the press to ignore that completely, since it doesn’t fit with the approved story. Speaking generally, the poll results highlight the sorts of differences in perceptions of Islamophobia that you’d probably expect between Muslims and the rest of the population, which are certainly dismaying, and a serious level of prejudice obviously exists. But I hope I’m not being panglossian in saying that this prejudice is also not as widespread as it could be, given the nature of press coverage and elite political discourse. Note for example that 78 per cent of Muslims and 70 per cent of non-Muslims agree that “there is more … religious prejudice against Muslims in Britain today since the London bombings in July 2005“. Most non-Muslims felt that Muslims were bearing the brunt of unjustified criticism (51 per cent) while 31 per cent felt that the level of criticism was justified. When you subtract the decent people who have just been misled by politicians and the press (and would probably change their minds when presented with the facts) from that third of the population, then you’re left with a small minority of bigots. Which is not to say that a small minority of bigots can’t be very dangerous, but it does help to put a rather frightening picture of British Islamophobia in some sort of context. In a way, it shows what polls often show, that the public are largely decent and reasonable people, and that the political class (media and politicians) is broadly to the right of the general population. Islamophobia is propagated by the political class and a potentially small minority of the public; making it dangerous, but not invincible. The political utility of hate Finally, I’d like to make a point that wasn’t made in the documentary but which I think is essential for putting all of this in context. We should bear in mind the central, enabling role that Islamophobia plays in the War on Terror, and the potential usefulness to the political class of this species of bigotry. The documentary aired 3 years to the day after the London tube and bus bombings. As I wrote at the time, the security services had repeatedly warned the government that Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq strongly increased the chances that attacks like this would occur. The government joined the US invasion of Iraq – a country that posed no threat to us – in spite of these warnings. It is a truism that one is responsible for the predictable consequences of ones actions, so on the afternoon of 7/7/2005 the British government had a serious problem, as indeed did the media that had played a key enabling role in taking the country to into an unpopular war. It was then extremely convenient for these elites to change the subject from Western foreign policy, the known inspiration for these brutal terrorist crimes, and instead place the focus on the Muslim community. And when you observe the people who run our country first starting a war of aggression that has by now claimed probably over a million lives, and then passing the blame for one of the predicted consequences of that war onto one of the most vulnerable communities in the UK (many of whom had actually voted New Labour, incidentally), then you get the measure of the sheer moral bankruptcy of British ruling elite. It should also not be forgotten that the demonisation of Islam plays a broader enabling role for Western foreign policy. As I noted in this article, which I wrote in response to the controversy over the Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad: “It is no coincidence that those who most enthusiastically peddle the fiction of a “clash of civilisations” also portray the opposing “other” as a force that seriously threatens to destroy “our way of life”, and therefore advocate an aggressive US-led military strategy across the Islamic world. Manichean rhetoric eulogizing the liberal idealism of “our values” and the necessity of defending them against those who “hate our freedoms” has been the very essence of Western pro-war advocacy in recent years. Observing essentially imperial foreign policies being depicted as altruistic endeavours aimed at bringing enlightenment to backward, inferior (if exotic) cultures, or at least at defending us against them, hardly places us in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, subjugation almost invariably goes hand in hand with the deliberate dehumanisation of those who are being subjugated by those responsible for or whose acquiescence is essential to the act of subjugation”. As competition escalates for strategic control over the planet’s dwindling oil reserves, the need for our esteemed leaders to present aggressive imperial policies in Western Asia within the conceptual framework of a “clash of civilisations” will only increase. Violence against innocent people on the streets of Britain will be but one lamentable but neccessary byproduct of this propaganda campaign, along with the massive violence meted out to the people of the region and the predictable terrorist backlash against our own country. Such are the calculations made by the statesmen who run the world on our behalf. Conclusion But while the documentary did not place British Islamophobia into this broader context, it should still be applauded for giving such serious treatment to an important subject, and for speaking out with a strong moral voice against this dangerous tide of hatred. Hopefully before too long, Islamophobia will go the way of anti-semitism and anti-black racism, becoming seen as something you at least don’t say out loud, as a prelude to it and those other forms of bigotry disappearing forever. If that is to happen, then people like Peter Oborne and the Dispatches team will have played their part. If only more of their peers could say the same.
Contempt for unions10 Jul 2008IT is no secret that Business Secretary John Hutton was a Tory when he was at university. The only question is whether he has ever changed his politics. Everyone knows that government ministers don’t commission a report unless they can be reasonably sure what conclusions it is likely to draw. Putting DeAnne Julius, a former Bank of England monetary policy committee member, an ex-director of vulture capitalist conglomerate Serco and current director of BP and Roche, in charge of the commission makes it a pretty safe bet that the principle of publicly owned and operated services is not likely to be high up on the list of recommendations. Not that this was a surprise. The fact that Mr Hutton announced this commission at last December’s CBI public services forum spoke volumes for the intent behind it. It was intended to signal further opportunities for big business to dine out at the public expense and the subsequent invitations to, among others, Cap Gemini Consulting, Logica, Spire Healthcare, Babcock, KPMG and Serco conjured up images of troughs and slavering pigs. The Julius commission’s priority is corporate profit, so it is axiomatic that she urges the government to open up even more public services to privatisation. It is not enough that 6 per cent of the economy that was previously in the public sector is now part of the profits mainline for these dividend junkies. As long as there is the capacity for privateers to milk the public purse, this parasitic sector will expand to take it up. Mr Hutton borrows the overused and threadbare line of Tony Blair that “what matters to the public is not who provides but how well a service is provided,” as though government actions are dictated by pragmatism rather than dogma. But, in fact, there is no practical assessment taking place. The government opts for private as a matter of course. And Ms Julius does the same, referring to “clear benefits” to taxpayers in hiving off public services to the privateers. If cutting costs and enabling private profits are the sole criteria, privatisation obviously makes sense, but it omits the key questions of value for money and quality of services. So confident are the trade unions of the superiority of public over private that, at TUC congress and Labour Party conferences, they have successfully proposed in-depth examination of private finance initiatives and their comparison with government-financed schemes. New Labour has refused to proceed with these evaluations because, as with Ms Julius’s commission, it knows the answer already. Most bizarrely, in light of the tidal wave of fury expressed by trade unions, Mr Hutton claims that “the ideological battle over using private and third-sector providers is over.” By this he means among the circles in which he moves and to which he listens and that doesn’t include trade unionists. No-one should imagine that Mr Hutton is a maverick out of step with Gordon Brown. They are in step with each other and they couldn’t give a toss about the unions. The point at issue is what the unions are prepared to do about a party that holds them and their members in contempt.
How Britain wages war10 Jul 2008Five photographs together break a silence. The first is of a former Gurkha regimental sergeant major, Tul Bahadur Pun, aged 87. He sits in a wheelchair outside 10 Downing Street. He holds a board full of medals, including the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, which he won serving in the British army. He has been refused entry to Britain and treatment for a serious heart ailment by the National Health Service: outrages rescinded only after a public campaign. On 25 June, he came to Down ing Street to hand his Victoria Cross back to the Prime Minister, but Gordon Brown refused to see him. The second photograph is of a 12-year-old boy, one of three children. They are Kuchis, nomads of Afghanistan. They have been hit by Nato bombs, American or British, and nurses are trying to peel away their roasted skin with tweezers. On the night of 10 June, Nato planes struck again, killing at least 30 civilians in a single village: children, women, schoolteachers, students. On 4 July, another 22 civilians died like this. All, including the roasted children, are described as “militants” or “suspected Taliban”. The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, says the invasion of Afghan istan is “the noble cause of the 21st century”. The third photograph is of a computer-generated aircraft carrier not yet built, one of two of the biggest ships ever ordered for the Royal Navy. The 4bn contract is shared by BAE Systems, whose sale of 72 fighter jets to the corrupt tyranny in Saudi Arabia has made Britain the biggest arms merchant on earth, selling mostly to oppressive regimes in poor countries. At a time of economic crisis, Browne describes the carriers as “an affordable expenditure”. The fourth photograph is of a young British soldier, Gavin Williams, who was “beasted” to death by three non-commissioned officers. This “informal summary punishment”, which sent his body temperature to more than 41 degrees, was intended to “humiliate, push to the limit and hurt”. The torture was described in court as a fact of army life. The final photograph is of an Iraqi man, Baha Mousa, who was tortured to death by British soldiers. Taken during his post-mortem, it shows some of the 93 horrific injuries he suffered at the hands of men of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment who beat and abused him for 36 hours, including double-hooding him with hessian sacks in stifling heat. He was a hotel receptionist. Although his murder took place almost five years ago, it was only in May this year that the Ministry of Defence responded to the courts and agreed to an independent inquiry. A judge has described this as a “wall of silence”. A court martial convicted just one soldier of Mousa’s “inhumane treatment”, and he has since been quietly released. Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, representing the families of Iraqis who have died in British custody, says the evidence is clear – abuse and torture by the British army is systemic. Shiner and his colleagues have witness statements and corroborations of prima facie crimes of an especially atrocious kind usually associated with the Americans. “The more cases I am dealing with, the worse it gets,” he says. These include an “incident” near the town of Majar al-Kabir in 2004, when British soldiers executed as many as 20 Iraqi prisoners after mutilating them. The latest is that of a 14-year-old boy who was forced to simulate anal and oral sex over a prolonged period. “At the heart of the US and UK project,” says Shiner, “is a desire to avoid accountability for what they want to do. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary renditions are part of the same struggle to avoid accountability through jurisdiction.” British soldiers, he says, use the same torture techniques as the Americans and deny that the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on Torture apply to them. And British torture is “commonplace”: so much so, that “the routine nature of this ill-treatment helps to explain why, despite the abuse of the soldiers and cries of the detainees being clearly audible, nobody, particularly in authority, took any notice”. Unbelievably, says Shiner, the Ministry of Defence under Tony Blair decided that the 1972 Heath government’s ban on certain torture techniques applied only in the UK and Northern Ireland. Consequently, “many Iraqis were killed and tortured in UK detention facilities”. Shiner is working on 46 horrific cases. A wall of silence has always surrounded the British military, its arcane rituals, rites and practices and, above all, its contempt for the law and natural justice in its various imperial pursuits. For 80 years, the Ministry of Defence and compliant ministers refused to countenance posthumous pardons for terrified boys shot at dawn during the slaughter of the First World War. British soldiers used as guinea pigs during the testing of nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean were abandoned, as were many others who suffered the toxic effects of the 1991 Gulf War. The treatment of Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun is typical. Having been sent back to Nepal, many of these “soldiers of the Queen” have no pension, are deeply impoverished and are refused residence or medical help in the country for which they fought and for which 43,000 of them have died or been injured. The Gurkhas have won no fewer than 26 Victoria Crosses, yet Browne’s “affordable expenditure” excludes them. An even more imposing wall of silence ensures that the British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain’s modern colonial wars. In his landmark work Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, the historian Mark Curtis uses three main categories: direct responsibility, indirect responsibility and active inaction. “The overall figure [since 1945] is between 8.6 and 13.5 million,” Curtis writes. “Of these, Britain bears direct responsibility for between four million and six million deaths. This figure is, if anything, likely to be an underestimate. Not all British interventions have been included, because of lack of data.” Since his study was published, the Iraq death toll has reached, by reliable measure, a million men, women and children. The spiralling rise of militarism within Britain is rarely acknowledged, even by those alerting the public to legislation attacking basic civil liberties, such as the recently drafted Data Com muni cations Bill, which will give the government powers to keep records of all electronic communication. Like the plans for identity cards, this is in keeping what the Americans call “the national security state”, which seeks the control of domestic dissent while pursuing military aggression abroad. The 4bn aircraft carriers are to have a “global role”. For global read colonial. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office follow Washington’s line almost to the letter, as in Browne’s preposterous description of Afghanistan as a noble cause. In reality, the US-inspired Nato invasion has had two effects: the killing and dispossession of large numbers of Afghans, and the return of the opium trade, which the Taliban had banned. According to Hamid Karzai, the west’s puppet leader, Britain’s role in Helmand Province has led directly to the return of the Taliban. The militarising of how the British state perceives and treats other societies is vividly demonstrated in Africa, where ten out of 14 of the most impoverished and conflict-ridden countries are seduced into buying British arms and military equipment with “soft loans”. Like the British royal family, the British Prime Minister simply follows the money. Having ritually condemned a despot in Zimbabwe for “human rights abuses” – in truth, for no longer serving as the west’s business agent – and having obeyed the latest US dictum on Iran and Iraq, Brown set off recently for Saudi Arabia, exporter of Wahhabi fundamentalism and wheeler of fabulous arms deals. To complement this, the Brown government is spending 11bn of taxpayers’ money on a huge, pri vatised military academy in Wales, which will train foreign soldiers and mercenaries recruited to the bogus “war on terror”. With arms companies such as Raytheon profiting, this will become Britain’s “School of the Americas”, a centre for counter-insurgency (terrorist) training and the design of future colonial adventures. It has had almost no publicity. Of course, the image of militarist Britain clashes with a benign national regard formed, wrote Tolstoy, “from infancy, by every possible means – class books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments [leading to] people stupefied in the one direction”. Much has changed since he wrote that. Or has it? The shabby, destructive colonial war in Afghanistan is now reported almost entirely through the British army, with squaddies always doing their Kipling best, and with the Afghan resistance routinely dismissed as “outsiders” and “invaders”. Pictures of nomadic boys with Nato-roasted skin almost never appear in the press or on television, nor the after-effects of British thermobaric weapons, or “vacuum bombs”, designed to suck the air out of human lungs. Instead, whole pages mourn a British military intelligence agent in Afghanis tan, because she happens to have been a 26-year-old woman, the first to die in active service since the 2001 invasion. Baha Mousa, tortured to death by British soldiers, was also 26 years old. But he was different. His father, Daoud, says that the way the Ministry of Defence has behaved over his son’s death convinces him that the British government regards the lives of others as “cheap”. And he is right.
The true cost of privatised public services10 Jul 2008Today’s report by the free market economist DeAnne Julius celebrates the multibillion pound profits private companies are now making from our privatised public services. Proving what PCS has been saying for some time ? that New Labour has privatised more than the last two Tory governments combined ? the report joyfully proclaims that what is sinisterly referred to as the “public services industry” is now worth an eye-watering 79bn, a 130% growth since 1995. These figures are the stuff of dreams to economists and business leaders; and, it would now appear, Labour cabinet ministers. But it is worth reflecting on what it means. What it shows is the ideological drive to sell off the vital public services on which this country relies has now gathered such pace that we are in a position to parade contracts around the world as a shop window to attract yet more buyers. Instead of commissioning an economist to investigate how much can be sold off, the government should ask itself, what is the essence of public service? Instead of privatising workers who have won awards for the services they provide, it should reverse its obsession with prioritising profits over people’s needs. The report offers no reliable evidence for the assertion that public services are improved by privatisation and outsourcing. It is fitting that it is published in the same week as the Commons public administration select committee confirmed PCS’s long-held view that there is no compelling evidence to support the government’s claim that the third sector is “transforming” public services. If she had wanted evidence, Dr Julius could have looked no further than the report, Water as a Public Service [.pdf], by David Hall and Emanuele Lobina of Greenwich University’s public services international research unit, which leaves no room for doubt about the need for public provision of this most vital resource. She could also read Allyson Pollock’s devastating analysis of private involvement in healthcare, NHS plc, which exposes the damage done by PFI. Dr Julius might have thought twice about citing welfare reform as an area of success of marketisation, if she had read the Department for Work and Pensions‘ [.pdf] own research, which shows that non-contracted out job centre teams outperform private-sector teams. As Steve Davies, of Cardiff University, points out in Contracting Out Employment Services to the Third and Private Sectors: A Critique, the evidence of the success of outsourcing is just not there. As I said on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, the fact this review was commissioned, and has been endorsed, by business secretary John Hutton sums up all that is wrong with this Labour government; a government which is now more obsessed with putting profits in the pockets of millionaires, than caring about the lives of the millions of people who rely on public services. We now face the horrifying prospect of a Labour secretary of state jetting off round the world to persuade developing countries that they should follow suit and privatise their services. My union, through the Public Services Not Private Profit campaign, will continue to lead the fight against this trend at every possible turn. I believe we enjoy the support of the majority in our opposition to this programme of so-called “reform”, which is ideological in intent and devastating in impact.
This persecution of Gypsies is now the shame of Europe10 Jul 2008At the heart of Europe, police have begun fingerprinting children on the basis of their race – with barely a murmur of protest from European governments. Last week, Silvio Berlusconi’s new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country’s estimated 150,000 Gypsies – Roma and Sinti people – whether Italian-born or migrants. Interior minister and leading light of the xenophobic Northern League, Roberto Maroni, insisted that taking fingerprints of all Roma, including children, was needed to “prevent begging” and, if necessary, remove the children from their parents. The ethnic fingerprinting drive is part of a broader crackdown on Italy’s three-and-a-half million migrants, most of them legal, carried out in an atmosphere of increasingly hysterical rhetoric about crime and security. But the reviled Roma, some of whose families have been in Italy since the middle ages, are taking the brunt of it. The aim is to close 700 Roma squatter camps and force their inhabitants out of the cities or the country. In the same week as Maroni was defending his racial registration plans in parliament, Italy’s highest appeal court ruled that it was acceptable to discriminate against Roma on the grounds that “all Gypsies were thieves”, rather than because of their “Gypsy nature”. Official roundups and forced closures of Roma camps have been punctuated with vigilante attacks. In May, rumours of an abduction of a baby girl by a Gypsy woman in Naples triggered an orgy of racist violence against Roma camps by thugs wielding iron bars, who torched caravans and drove Gypsies from their slum homes in dozens of assaults, orchestrated by the local mafia, the Camorra. The response of Berlusconi’s government to the firebombing and ethnic cleansing? “That is what happens when Gypsies steal babies,” shrugged Maroni; while fellow minister and Northern League leader Umberto Bossi declared: “The people do what the political class isn’t able to do.” This, it should be recalled, is taking place in a state that under Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship played a willing part in the Holocaust, during which more than a million Gypsies are estimated to have died as “sub-humans” alongside the Nazi genocide perpetrated against the Jews. The first expulsions of Gypsies by Mussolini took place as early as 1926. Now the dictator’s political heirs, the “post-fascist” National Alliance, are coalition partners in Berlusconi’s government. In case anyone missed that, when the Alliance’s Gianni Alemanno was elected mayor of Rome in April, his supporters gave the fascist salute chanting “Duce” (equivalent to the German “Fhrer”) and Berlusconi enthused: “We are the new Falange” (the Spanish fascist party of General Franco). So you might have expected that Berlusconi would be taken to task for his vile treatment of the surviving Roma of Europe at the G8 summit in Japan this week by those fearless crusaders for human rights, George Bush and Gordon Brown. Far from it. Instead, Bush’s spokesman issued a grovelling apology to the Italian prime minister on Tuesday for a US briefing describing his “good friend” Berlusconi as “one of the most controversial leaders of Italy … hated by many”. It has been left to others to speak out against this eruption of naked, officially sanctioned racism. Catholic human rights organisations have damned the fingerprinting of Gypsies as “evoking painful memories”. The chief rabbi of Rome insisted it “must be stopped now”. Roma groups have demonstrated, wearing the black triangles Gypsies were forced to wear in the Nazi concentration camps, and anti-racist campaigners in Rome this week began to bombard the interior ministry with their own fingerprints in protest against the treatment of the Gypsies. But, given that the European establishment has long turned a blind eye to anti-Roma discrimination and violence in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, along with the celebration of SS units that took part in the Holocaust in the Baltic states, perhaps it’s no surprise that they ignore the outrages now taking place in Italy. The rest of us cannot. There are particular reasons why Italy has been especially vulnerable in recent years to xenophobic and racist campaigns – even while crime is actually lower than it was in the 1990s (and below the level of Britain). The scale of recent immigration from the Balkans and Africa, an insecure and stagnant job market and the collapse of what was previously a powerful progressive and anti-fascist culture have all combined to create a particularly fearful and individualistic atmosphere, the leftwing Italian veteran Luciana Castellina argues. But the same phenomena can be seen to varying degrees all over Europe, where racist and Islamophobic parties are on the march: take the far right Swiss People’s party, which on Tuesday succeeded in collecting enough signatures to force a referendum on banning minarets throughout the country. In Britain, as Peter Oborne’s Channel 4 film on Islamophobia this week underlined, a mendacious media and political campaign has fed anti-Muslim hostility and violence since the 2005 London bombings – just as hostility to asylum seekers was whipped up in the 1990s. The social and democratic degeneration now reached by Italy can happen anywhere in the current climate. Italy has a further lesson for Britain and the rest of Europe. Berlusconi’s election victory in April was built on the collapse of confidence in the centre-left government of Romano Prodi, which stuck to a narrow neoliberal programme and miserably failed to deliver to its own voters. Meanwhile, centre-left politicians such as Walter Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome, pandered to, rather than challenged, the xenophobic agenda of the rightwing parties – tearing down Gypsy camps himself and absurdly claiming last year that 75% of all crime was committed by Romanians (often confused with Roma in Italy). What was needed instead, as in the case of other countries experiencing large-scale immigration, was public action to provide decent housing and jobs, clamp down on exploitation of migrant workers and support economic development in Europe’s neighbours. That opportunity has now been lost, as Italy is gripped by an ominous and retrograde spasm. The persecution of Gypsies is Italy’s shame – and a warning to us all.
News International Threatens Media Lens with Legal and Police Action10 Jul 2008On June 28 and July 3, Media Lens received repeated threats of both legal and police action from Alastair Brett, legal manager of News International?s Times Newspapers. Noam Chomsky described the threat, pithily, as ?pretty sick.? (Email, June 28, 2008) David Miller, professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and founder member of Spinwatch, commented: ?The response from the Times is an absolutely outrageous attempt to bully and censor you. It is not – unfortunately – surprising though, as the Murdoch empire is determined to attempt to snuff out those voices which try to bear witness to the truths of our age. Those that unmask naked power will be targeted by the Murdoch empire and its hench people. Maddox is the latest in a long line and is evidently a well networked member of the political elite – being a governor of the shadowy Ditchley Foundation. It is simply laughable that sending emails to complain about her distorted coverage constitutes harassment. Frankly, the drumbeat for war with Iran, to which she adds her voice, is much more like harassment, but of a whole nation. Its consequences are already more deadly serious for the people of Iran than any amount of emails from Medialens readers.? (Email, July 8, 2008) Brett claimed Times journalist Bronwen Maddox had been subject to ?vexatious and threatening? emails from Media Lens readers, which constituted ?harassment?. If this did not stop, Brett told us, he would notify the police who might wish to investigate the matter with a view to bringing a criminal prosecution. As former New Statesman editor, Peter Wilby, noted in his Guardian article on the Times threat, this was no joke – prosecution for criminal harassment ?can lead to six months’ imprisonment or, if a court order is breached, up to five years?. Maddox claimed to have received “dozens of emails, many abusive or threatening”. (Ibid) Beginning with our very first media alert, published seven years ago yesterday, we have always advised our readers to treat journalists with respect: ?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.? As usual, many emails were copied or forwarded to us. We saw precisely one that could conceivably be described as ?vexatious and threatening?. The email read: “You have know [sic] idea who you are dealing with here. But I do like to help. I suggest that you read this [an inaccessible Facebook website entry] very, very carefully and fully. You have until 4pm Monday to respond to my original email or I will deem you to be fired.” This was also the only email offered up as evidence to Wilby for his Guardian piece. Unprompted by us, the offending emailer had earlier written to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, informing one executive: ?If you take more than 1 working day to reply to this email without a reason that I consider acceptable you can consider yourself fired.? He also wrote to around 40 senior UK editors and journalists in June describing Media Lens as ?a pack of absolute tossers?. Ironically, we have been subject to far worse abuse than Maddox and Brett, and at the hands of mainstream journalists. Before becoming editor of the Independent, the former Observer editor, Roger Alton, asked one of our readers: ?Have you just been told to write in by those c*nts at medialens?? (Email forwarded, June 1, 2006 – original uncensored. Changed here to avoid triggering spam filters) An online Observer article by Peter Beaumont described Media Lens as ?a curious willy-waving exercise… Think a train spotters’ club run by Uncle Joe Stalin.? (Beaumont, ?Microscope on Medialens,? June 18, 2006) We have always found these insults more chucklesome than vexatious. Chomsky was once asked for his reaction to the abuse he receives: “Man: ?Noam… You’ve been called a neo-Nazi, your books have been burned, you’ve been called anti-Israeli – don’t you get a bit upset by the way that your views are always distorted by the media and by intellectuals?? ?Noam: ?No why should I? I get called anything, I’m accused of everything you can think of: being a Communist propagandist, a Nazi propagandist, a pawn of freedom of speech, an anti-Semite, liar, whatever you want. Actually, I think that’s all a good sign. I mean, if you are a dissident, typically you are ignored. If you can’t be ignored, and you can’t be answered, you’re vilified – that’s obvious: no institution is going to help people undermine it. So I would only regard the kind of things you’re talking about as signs of progress.?” (Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power, The New Press, 2002, pp.204-5) Questions Of Copyright Brett also claimed that we would be acting unlawfully by publishing an email from Maddox without permission. We sought advice and one legal expert told us: ?The Times has no case over the confidentiality of email correspondence. Email correspondence, in itself, is not considered confidential – unless the precise contents of an email are confidential.? Another suggested that the law is less clear and that the Times might carry out its threat. Another reminded us: “Added weight to your cause is that the statements expressed and reproduced on your site represent important ?political commentary? (as opposed to artistic or commercial commentary). Political commentary is the most heavily protected type of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (via the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK).” Another lawyer cited a barrister friend who nutshelled his view of the credibility of the Times?s case: “Tell them to f*ck off.? Douwe Korff, Professor of International Law at London Metropolitan University and an expert on the European Convention on Human Rights, commented: “I find the stance of the Times appalling in moral terms and flimsy at best in law. Their legal position, if endorsed by the courts, would severely limit freedom of the press over issues of major public concern. Is that what they want? I have little doubt their arguments would be kicked out by the UK courts if they pursued them here; they would certainly not be upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This is simply an attempt by a heavy-weight corporation to brow-beat a small freelance news operation that dares to be critical of its editorial line. It is quite scandalous. The Times should be ashamed of itself.” (Email to Media Lens, July 8, 2008) Having minimal resources for fighting a court case, either in terms of time or money, we decided to delete Maddox?s email from our media alert, ?Selling The Fireball?, as demanded. You can see the amended version here We also published a message on our website emphasising the need for respectful communication with journalists. Coincidentally, we had previously discussed the issue at length in ?Compassionate Media Activism,? an interview with former Buddhist monk, Matthew Bain, published this week on the new Elephant Skin website. The happy result of this episode is that a number of high-powered legal minds have offered us their services free of charge should the need arise in future. Peter Wilby wrote about the Times? threat in the Guardian: ?We journalists are accustomed to dishing it out, but have the thinnest of skins. At the merest hint of criticism, we are apt to turn to our lawyers. One reason for this professional sensitivity, I suppose, is that journalists are insecure egotists who like to occupy the high moral ground. Criticism assaults their sense of self-worth and, since their colleagues and potential employers are assiduous consumers of print, it may damage their future prospects.? Wilby quoted from the banned email, perhaps thereby indicating his own feelings on the matter. But his piece was ?balanced?. He criticised us for not providing a link to Maddox?s original article, for not urging readers to always read journalists? work before writing, and for not making clear to Maddox who we were when we wrote to her. He contrasted these ?failings? with the Times?s ?professional sensitivities?, which he suggested were over-developed. There was something missing from Wilby?s article, however: the human catastrophe that provides the moral backdrop to the entire debate. George Monbiot alluded to it in 2004 when he wrote: “the falsehoods reproduced by the media before the invasion of Iraq were massive and consequential: it is hard to see how Britain could have gone to war if the press had done its job.? Like the rest of the British media, the Times played a vital role in selling the public a pack of outrageous government lies that presented a totally non-existent and obviously risible ?threat? as somehow serious, plausible, and even (god help us!) urgent. Many of the most sophisticated philosophies of human culture contend that rational understanding is the result, not just of wisdom, but also of compassion. This is certainly true of the current discussion. Brett?s complaints that our actions caused distress to one of his journalists, and Wilby?s ?balanced? response, can seem almost reasonable, until we focus our minds and hearts (if we are able) on a single overwhelming fact. In significant part as a result of the actions of the British media, more than one million human beings are now lying dead in Iraq. In fact, the entire country has been subject to unrelenting destruction and slaughter by two decades of Western policy rooted in selfish greed. All of this has been buried in official propaganda, media silence and compromised ?balance? – it barely exists for the public. And of course there is more and worse. Almost unbelievably, the media?s Iran focus 2008 is near-identical to the media?s Iraq focus 2002-2003. It is entirely possible that hundreds of thousands of people will soon be lying dead in Iran as a result of sanctions and war, just across the border from Iraq. The point is that we are unable to perceive the obscenity of the media silence surrounding this mass slaughter if we are unable to perceive the truth of those one million Iraqi deaths. And we cannot experience the truth of those deaths unless we have some compassion for our victims. To understand what we have done to the Iraqi people, to feel something of their torment, casts the media silence in a very different light. It transforms, utterly, the actions of people like us trying to break that silence, as it does the actions of those who seek to stop us on the grounds that emailing journalists is ?not proper behaviour? and makes ?a mess of their inboxes?. (Brett) In truth, the steps we have suggested are pitiful in their timidity. We have always seen media activism as a small, energising contribution intended to inspire much wider, much more profound, political organisation and activism. What we have done to Iraq is not a video game; it is not a Hollywood invention. We really have destroyed an entire nation and brought misery to millions. About that, this whole country should not be writing a few emails; it should be in uproar.
Civil Society?s Choice at the G8 Summit9 Jul 2008The Road of Genoa or the Road of Gleneagles? The Group of Eight came into being in 1975 as the G7 at a time that the world was embroiled in deep economic crisis, much like today. Its main aim was to coordinate the macroeconomic policies of the rich countries at a time of stagflation as well as to forge a common strategy vis-a-vis the developing world, which had loosened its political and economic dependency on the First World during the heady days of decolonization, national liberation struggles, and the emergence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as an economic power. The G7 were not successful in coordinating their policies, with the US under Ronald Reagan aggressively pursuing a cheap dollar policy that brought on recession in Germany and Japan. They did, however, come together in a united front against the developing countries, putting their weight behind the neoliberal structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and IMF on more than 90 developing and transition (post-socialist) economies. The structural adjustment programs rolled back the economic gains achieved by the South in the 1950?s and 1960?s. In the 1990?s, the G7 became the main promoters of corporate-driven globalization, for which the road had been paved by the radical deregulation, radical liberalization, and radical privatization that took place in developing countries under structural adjustment. The G7 also provided strong support for the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the main agency for the process global trade and investment liberalization demanded by their corporations. The late 1990?s, however, brought about, not the increasing prosperity for all promised by neoliberal, pro-market policies but rising absolute poverty, increasing inequality, and the consolidation of economic stagnation in the South. The collapse of the third ministerial of the WTO in Seattle in December 1999 marked the achievement of a critical mass by the forces of opposition created by the contradictions of globalization. With the realities of globalization exposed, the summits of the G7?now G8 with the incorporation of Russia?became a lightning rod for the rising global opposition. At the G8 Summit in Genoa in June 2001, three hundred thousand people came together under the uncompromising program of ?No to the G8.? The battle lines were clearly drawn, with the Italian police or carabineri contributing immensely to polarization by erupting in a riot that took the life of one activist and injured scores of others. Elements within the G8 realized that the image of being a hegemonic directorate of globalization was not good for the future of the body. Led by the New Labor government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Britain, the G8 underwent a facelift. A new discourse was forged, the key substantive elements of which were debt forgiveness for the poorest countries, the raising of aid levels to 0.7 per cent of the GDP of the G8 countries, a massive aid package for Africa, making trade serve development, and tackling climate change. The new watchwords when it came to process were ?partnership,? ?consultation,? ?global social integration,? and the ?millennium development goals.? The battle was for the soul of global civil society. The high point of this new look was the Gleneagles Summit in 2005, which was choreographed by an alliance between the Labor Government, entertainment superstars Bob Geldof and Bono, and influential British NGO?s. Several hundred thousand people who journeyed to Scotland found themselves manipulated into becoming a chorus for the glittering Aid for Africa concerts that were staged simultaneously in different parts of the globe. By the time 2007 came along, the glitter was gone. The idea of global civil society partnering with the G8 had soured as none of the G8 governments reached the 0.7 of GDP target, aid to Africa fell short of the $20 billion promised at Gleneagles, the ?Doha Development Round? had become a big joke, and serious action on climate was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the G8 communique at the Heiligendamm or Rostock Summit emphasized techno-fixes for climate change, lectured developing countries about not restricting investment by transnational corporations, and issued a thinly veiled warning about China getting preferential access to raw materials in Africa. Under the leadership of civil society in Germany, militant denunciation and confrontation of the G8 was the preferred civil society response, with thousands of demonstrators trying to penetrate the site of the leaders? meeting to shut it down. With the dominant cry being ?G8?Get out of the way,? the Heiligendamm protests retrieved the militant tradition of Genoa that had been suppressed at Gleneagles. So we come to the G8 Summit here in Hokkaido, Japan. We have not only in Bush, Sarkozy, Brown, and Fukuda a group of discredited leaders with very low ratings at the polls in their own countries. We have as well a G8 that is, more than ever, lacking in legitimacy as the typhoon unleashed by the project of globalization that it has promoted is wracking the globe in the form of the simultaneous crises of skyrocketing oil prices, rising food prices, global financial collapse, and worsening climate change. Against this backdrop, Japanese and Asian social movements are faced with the choice of taking either the Road of Genoa or the Road of Gleneagles?that is, to deepen the G8?s crisis of legitimacy or, as in Gleneagles, to salvage the G8 once again. The greatest gift that the Japanese movement can give to global civil society is by leading the struggle to make the Hokkaido Summit the final summit of the G8. Walden Bello is president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition and senior analyst of Focus on the Global South.
Victory for the Raytheon 99 Jul 2008On 11 June 2008, 6 people, who had occupied the offices of Raytheon in Derry and destroyed computers, were acquitted of criminal damage by a Belfast jury. Raytheon is a huge US arms manufacturer, with sales of $20 billion in 2006 and over 70,000 employees worldwide. It makes Patriot, Tomahawk, Cruise and Sidewinder missiles, and much more besides. The action which gave rise to the criminal charges took place on 9 August 2006 during Israel?s war on Lebanon, in which well over 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli bombing and shelling. On 30 July 2006, an Israeli aircraft targeted a residential building in Qana in southern Lebanon with a Raytheon-supplied ?bunker buster? bomb. As a result, 28 civilians, from two extended families, the Hashems and the Shaloubs, were killed. The dead included 14 children. This event led to 9 members of the Derry Anti War Coalition occupying Raytheon?s offices in Derry ten days later. They remained there until forcibly removed by police in riot gear about 8 hours later. Substantial damage was done to Raytheon property: ?Documents found on the premises were thrown from the windows to supporters outside. After our supporters were moved away by the police, computers, already damaged, were hurled out. Our main target was the mainframe: we knew that putting this out of action would disrupt Raytheon?s ordering system and thus hamper production, including production of missiles. The mainframe was decommissioned with a fire-extinguisher.? This account is taken from The Raytheon 9: Resisting war crimes is not a crime, an excellent pamphlet about the affair by Eamonn McCann, who took part in the occupation. The action eventually led to 6 of the participants appearing before a judge and jury in Belfast in May 2008, charged with criminal damage and affray. On 4 June 2008, after the prosecution had put its case, the judge expressed the opinion that there was no case to answer on either charge. However, the prosecution appealed to a higher court and won with respect to the criminal damage charge, which then had to be put the jury. A few days later, the jury found all the accused not guilty on the criminal damage charge. The charge of affray was dismissed by the judge without it being put to the jury. The trial went largely unreported in the local Northern Ireland media, and in the Dublin and London media. The same is true of the verdict, even though it has sensational implications. The defence argued that the accused had undertaken their action in order to prevent war crimes being perpetrated in Lebanon by Israel using Raytheon-supplied weapons. In the words of Eamonn McCann in a statement afterwards, by finding the accused not guilty: ?The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that: the Israel Defence Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes.? [1] In other words, in the opinion of the jury, having heard the evidence, it was reasonable of the defendants to believe that Raytheon was engaged in criminal activity by supplying Israel with armaments and that they were justified in perpetrating criminal damage on Raytheon property in order to hamper this criminal activity. In his statement, Eamonn McCann called ?on the office of the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service, in light of this verdict, to institute an investigation into the activities of Raytheon at its various plants across the UK, with a view to determining whether Raytheon is, as we say it is, a criminal enterprise.? Gagging order The Raytheon trial would normally have taken place in Derry, where the offences alleged were committed. However, on 14 September 2007, the prosecution requested a change of venue, on the grounds that protests outside the court might intimidate jurors, and coverage in the local media might prejudice them. At this time, the presiding judge, the Derry recorder, Corinne Philpott, banned publicity about the case, but in such general terms that journalists present didn?t know what they were allowed to report and what was banned. There was no reporting of the application for a change of venue. On 10 December 2007, Judge Philpott imposed a blanket ban on reporting in Northern Ireland of any matter relating to the trial, including anything at all relating to Raytheon. The objective seems to have been to prevent publicity in Northern Ireland about Raytheon?s arms business, which might make a jury incline to the view that damaging its computers was a good idea. There was no attempt by mainstream media organisations in Northern Ireland or elsewhere to have this extraordinary gagging order lifted or modified, despite the fact that their work was being hampered by the ban. For example, the Village magazine reported on 29 February 2008: ?Suzanne Breen (formerly of Village, now writing for the Sunday Tribune) has been referred to the Attorney General for possible contempt in an article published on 18 November in the Sunday Tribune. She had mentioned possible witnesses from the USA and Lebanon, and that, if convicted, defendants could face lengthy jail sentences. ?Also RTE has ordered Belfast independent production company Below the Radar to delete sections on Raytheon from a film about Ireland and the arms trade transmitted on 14 January. The effect of the ban is that all discussion of Raytheon?s presence in Derry has been shut down.? [2] However, a legal challenge to the order was launched by Shane O?Curry of the Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign. As a result, the Belfast recorder, Judge Burgess, modified the order in late February 2008 to limit the ban to the usual one on pre-trial reporting of material directly relevant to the trial. It could then be reported for the first time that the Derry recorder had acceded to the prosecution?s request to move the trial from Derry to Belfast. Notes [1] www.ukwatch.net/article/raytheon9_acquitted
[2] www.village.ie/Ireland/Northern_Ireland/Media_gag_over_Derry_arms_factory_occupation/
Spin Doctor Behind Davis’ Campaign Promotes ID Cards9 Jul 2008A spin doctor behind David Davis and his much-vaunted “freedom” campaign against creeping state surveillance is an influential figure in the worldwide promotion of identity cards. Kevin Bell is vice-president of Fleishman-Hillard, a global public relations firm representing security companies that have introduced ID cards in the United States and Spain. Opposition to the Government’s move to introduce a British ID card is a major plank of the David Davis for Freedom campaign website, which Fleishman-Hillard also set up. Mr Bell has been close friends with Mr Davis for more than 20 years. But they appear to be on opposite sides of the national debate that the politician is hoping to spark about Britain’s surveillance society. Mr Bell has spoken at a Home Office-supported conference promoting the controversial ID card, a scheme that Mr Davis cites as one of the main reasons for his shock resignation as shadow Home Secretary earlier this month. The title of Mr Bell’s speech was “Achieving public acceptance”. The embarrassing disclosure comes as Mr Davis launches his all-or-nothing attempt to return to Parliament on a civil liberties agenda. During Mr Davis’s dramatic resignation speech, which has forced a by-election next month in his East Yorkshire constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, he has railed against “the database state”. He attacked the British ID card plan as “the most intrusive system in the world” at the low-key launch of his election campaign last Friday. Mr Davis’s hopes of fighting a by-election to highlight Labour’s “authoritarian” policies have been undermined by the fact that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and even the BNP declined to field candidates to stand against him. Instead, his best-known opponent is David Icke, a former sports presenter who has claimed he is the son of God. Other candidates include the Church of the Militant Elvis Party, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (whose candidate is called Mad Cow-Girl), the New Party, the Christian Party, the Freedom 4 Choice Party, the Socialist Equality Party, the National Front, a market trader, a variety of independent candidates, an anti-rape campaigner and a performer who twice represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest during the 1960s. Mr Davis’s stand against “the ceaseless encroachment of the state into daily lives” already sits awkwardly for some voters with his support for the death penalty. Britain’s proposed ID card scheme, to be rolled out by 2010, could eventually cost taxpayers 6bn. One of the security firms interested in a government contract is Texas-based Entrust. It already provides software for the national identity card used by 40 million Spanish citizens. Mr Davis criticised David Blunkett, who introduced the ID Card Bill, when the former home secretary announced he was taking up a paid consultancy with Entrust. However, Entrust is represented by Fleish-man-Hillard, whose digital media team designed Mr Davis’s campaign website. Tom Ridge, the former US minister for homeland security in the Bush administration and a prominent supporter of ID cards, sits on the PR firm’s international board. Among its other American clients is Blackboard Inc, a security company responsible for the introduction of ID cards on US campuses. Mr Davis said “Mr Bell is an old friend. He did initially help set up my website for the present campaign, for which payment will be made and declared in due course.” Mr Bell did not respond.
UK workers campaign against ID cards9 Jul 2008Representatives of the UK?s aviation workers say they are being used as political pawns to further the UK government?s controversial ID cards programme. The British Air Transport Association (BATA) says aviation workers are being used as guinea pigs for the scheme. ID cards for airside workers, those who work beyond airport security checks, will become compulsory in 2009. Roger Wiltshire, secretary general of BATA, says, ?We do feel we?re being used politically. The government intends a creeping introduction, to [lend the cards credibility]. We will be the first industry to have compulsory ID passes, even before the voluntary scheme is in place.? About 100,000 UK airport workers with airside access are likely to be the first to be issued with Britain?s new biometric identity cards. A spokesman for UK airport operator BAA says, ?We can confirm that we are in preliminary discussions on ID cards.? UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is expected to announce proposals for the initial rollout of the scheme this week. However, the opposition Conservative Party claims that the UK government is introducing ID cards by stealth by making them compulsory in some areas, including that of airport security. The controversial scheme is estimated to cost 5.4 billion (US$$10.8 billion). The UK?s Home Office says, ?We are looking at starting [to issue ID cards] to certain parts of the population and rolling out the programme incrementally, and it?s right that our first priority should be to consider where ID cards can be of greatest benefit to the security of the UK.?
Signing on in Brussels8 Jul 2008Members of the European Parliament were brought into discredit in a programme broadcast recently on German TV. The short documentary film dealing with the behaviour of Euro-MPs when it comes to their expenses is now circulating via the Internet. Euro-MP Erik Meijer of the United European Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL), the political group made up of all of the genuinely left parties in the European Parliament, was asked to comment. Meijer represents the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP), a true socialist party which in 2006 trebled its representation at national, regional and local level, hammering the centre-left Labour and Green Left parties. The SP’s success came on the back of theparty’s leadership of the triumphant ‘No’ campaign against the European Constitution. The video in question shows MEPs signing the Strasbourg attendance register early in the morning and then later – but not much later – leaving the building, suitcase in hand, on their way homeward or, in any case, elsewhere. In this way, they are able to access the daily expenses intended for those who stay in Strasbourg and continue to work. (a British Tory MEP long ago dubbed this the ‘SOSO’ system – ‘Sign On and Sod Off’.) When they were asked by the broadcaster why they left, they dodged the question. One even put a hand to the camera’s lens. It must be impossible for a broadcaster to imagine better TV than that, a journalist’s revelations blacked out! Permission to film inside the European Parliament building was withdrawn there and then and the camera crew forcibly escorted from the premises. But what was not mentioned was that the whole thing happened several years ago. Old news SP Euro-MP Erik Meijer’s first reaction was to dismiss the whole things as old news. “These were pictures which had been recorded in 2003 or 2004. However, the abuse which they made public is still going on. The SP has for many years demanded that an end be put to the laughable payments made to Euro-MPs. Those elected as SP candidates distance themselves from this, by for example returning any unspent surplus of our travel expenses. “From 1999 to 2004 I returned more than ?50,000 to the Parliament. The SP’s Euro-MPs receive a monthly salary of roughly ?2,300, a sum on which you can live well enough. The rest of our actual salary we hand over to the party, which helps, for example, to finance the SP’s activism, and such operations as the broadcast of our recent short film on home helps.” The ins and outs Members of the European Parliament receive various forms of income: 1..A fixed monthly salary from their own national Foreign Ministry, equivalent to that of a Member of their own national parliament, which therefore means that the biggest differences between MEPs result from differences in the salaries paid to their national MPs. These are very wide indeed, the lowest paid receiving ?500 p.m. and the highest ?11,000. Hungarians are amongst the lowest paid, Italians the highest.
2..In addition, all MEPs receive three kinds of repayment of expenses:
1. General costs ( a fixed sum, equal for all MEPs)
2. Travel expenses (depending on the number of kilometres travelled. Finns, for example, must generally travel a lot further than Dutch members.)
3. A daily allowance (which depends on the number of days a member signs the attendance book). The daily allowance Officially this money is designed to cover living expenses, such as the renting of a second home in Brussels, hotel rooms in Strasbourg and hotel costs for meetings in other places. In practice, the ‘reimbursement’ amounts to more than the actual costs. Most MEPs pocket the difference, but this does not happen in the SP. It is this daily allowance which is discussed in the RTL documentary. Every working day that a MEP is present in Brussels or Strasbourg, or when the Member participates in a Parliamentary Committee meeting or foreign delegation in another country, he or she can also sign this attendance register. For each day that you are signed in you receive ?287. The attendance register for daily allowances is available to be signed each day in a certain room in the European Parliament building in Brussels or Strasbourg. As a result of earlier ‘camera incidents’, no-one is allowed to look at this book. It has, however, been agree that a daily allowance will only be paid for a Friday if the Member in question has also signed in for the Thursday before it, and that if the Parliament is closed for a public holiday, and during the week between Christmas and New Year, as well as in the first three weeks of August, the attendance list cannot be signed. The current situation In addition to this list, there is also a list of presence covering the plenary sessions, when in principle all Members should be in attendance. This list of those present is included in the minutes so that everyone can see which MEPs turn up and which don’t. Until 2002 the Parliament’s Strasbourg plenaries stretched into Friday. During the 1997-1998 parliamentary session it was discovered that many MEPs were in the habit of arriving at around 9 o’clock on the Friday morning, signing the register and then immediately leaving the building, most likely to shoot off home. This led at the time to a scandal, all the more because the Parliament’s Praesidium had decided to move the register from the entrance hall into the meeting room itself, where neither journalists nor other visitors could see who had signed the list. In 2002, on a proposal from the SP and others, it was decided that the poorly-attended Friday session, at which for the most part only 10% of the Members were present, would be done away with. Since then the only attendance list which can be signed on Friday is the general list described above, as on any other working day. Abuse In 2003 Hans Peter Martin, who in 1999 had been Number 1 on the list of the Austrian social democrats, declared that signing in for the daily allowance in Strasbourg on Fridays was an abuse. In support of his re-election campaign as an independent, he had placed a camera crew in the room where the register was and, as a consequence, plunged into scandal all of those who arrived with their luggage at around 9 o’clock, signed, and then immediately set off home. The pictures which are now being distributed via the Internet come from this period. Martin was thrown out of the social democratic group, the so-called Party of European Socialists. Hated Since his actions in 2003, Hans Peter Martin has been hated by almost all Euro-MPs, because he had accused everyone of being a cheat. One of the few still speaking to him is Erik Meijer, even though Meijer does not completely agree with him about what constitutes cheating and what does not. Where precisely do they disagree? Martin’s view is that now there is no plenary session on Friday, attendance allowances should no longer be paid for this day. But as Meijer points out, “I sign the list on Friday, but only if I intend to stay in Strasbourg to work, and I never do this any earlier than around noon. Until recently you could check this for yourself. I was one of the last, and you could see that from the number which appeared before my signature. But this too has now changed. About a year ago it was decided that the list of names would be arranged in alphabetical order. In any case, these lists were never made available to the public. Even Members could see only the last ten signatures. The rest were removed.” Whit Monday “An exceptional case was Whit Monday , I think it was in 2001,” Meijer recalls. “Following protests from Dutch Members the plenary session was delayed, because this is an important holiday in the Netherlands. Despite this, it turned out that the daily allowance list could be signed. I tried at the time to check which Dutch Members had signed, without signing it myself, but I was not allowed to peruse the register and was sent away. As long as the system is maintained under which there is an attendance list for every working say, I will sign the list when, and only when, I am present and working.” New in 2009 After the next elections, from July 2009, every MEP from whatever country will receive an equal salary, higher than that for national MPs in the case of the Netherlands, but lower than that of the Members from the big member states. From then on, a MEP will be liable, just as is the case now for officials of the EU, to pay a special EU income tax which is much lower than that of the Netherlands. The SP has persistently – and in this it has stood alone amongst Dutch political parties – argued that Dutch MEPs should pay the difference between the EU tax and our own national tax to the Dutch state. “At the end of June, 2008, during a meeting with Guusje Ter Horst, Minister of Internal Affairs, I heard that she is prepared to put forward a legislative proposal under which Dutch Euro-MPs should pay Dutch taxes, and that they should continue doing so after 2009,” says Meijer. “In addition to the SP, the PvdA (Labour Party) has promised to support this proposal. Other political groups are arguing in favour of the EU tax.” Paying Up “My salary goes into the SP’s funds. I then receive ?2,300 per month,” says Meijer. “As for my expenses, anything left over from my housing and hotel costs is also paid to the SP. I pay a monthly surplus of ? 1,500 euro to the SP. When it comes to travel expenses, the reimbursement rate is a bit higher than the actual cost of my train tickets. Until 1999, when I was first elected, all Dutch MEPs could pocket the difference. In 1999 and again in 2004 it was agreed that all of us would pay it back to the EP. Starting in July 2009, only the actual costs will be reimbursed. The SP’s MEPs here in Brussels are well-known as people who pay a great deal back, but there are others who pay little or nothing back, for example because they like to travel in luxury.” Erik Meijer was talking to a Socialist Party journalist.
Stop the demonisation of Britain?s young people8 Jul 2008The Tories and the tabloid press have waded into the debate on knife crime with demands for mandatory and longer prison sentences for those found carrying knives. The Sun, the Mirror and the News of the World all now have their own online petitions calling for more government crackdowns over knife crime. The News of the World is even running a roadshow to garner support for longer sentencing, more police and the building of more prisons. Labour has responded by announcing a review into sentencing. It has also publicised the appointment of a new lord chief justice, Sir Igor Judge. He is writing to every magistrate in England and Wales to warn them that they should apply tougher sentences to deal with knife crime. But simply pouring more police onto the streets or locking people up for longer will not address the problem ? it will make the situation worse. Britain?s jails are already overflowing and more young people are locked up here than anywhere in western Europe. There is already a huge police crackdown underway. The London Metropolitan Police force launched its latest operation in May. Known as Operation Blunt 2, the high profile operation has led to an astonishing 27,000 people being searched since May. This uncovered only 500 knives ? from less than 2 percent of those searched. But as children?s commissioner Al Aynsley-Green has pointed out, policies like this simply antagonise and further alienate young people. Stop and search is also disproportionately used against black and Asian people and increases the racist harassment that young black people face. Threat Underlying New Labour?s approach is the assumption that there is something fundamentally wrong with young people, that they are a threat to society. Policing minister Tony McNulty made this clear last week when he said that knife crime among young people ?is apparently a generational, almost cultural thing that?s getting into the collective DNA?. There is no serious attempt to understand why young people may carry knives ? to consider the fear, poverty, alienation, anger and frustration that may lead to violence or crime. Worrying statistics show that while overall deaths from stabbings have remained fairly consistent at around 200-250 a year for the past decade, the victims of knife crime are getting younger. Knife injuries also seem to be rising. The number of children admitted to hospitals in England and Wales with wounds from a knife or other sharp instrument has risen 62 percent in just three years. Racism is one of the issues connected to knife crime. Yet politicians ignore this. In London, for example, 19 teenagers have been stabbed or beaten to death this year ? 16 of those are black or Asian. Young black men are disproportionately excluded from schools, discriminated against in jobs and training, more likely to be stopped or arrested by the police or to end up in prison. There is a worrying development in the reporting of those killed by knives. There is a growing division between those (usually white people) who are depicted as innocent victims and those (predominantly black people) who are portrayed as being gang members and violent thugs and therefore partly to blame for their own death. We should reject this division. The rising number of young people carrying knives is a damning indictment of a society that demonises and alienates the majority of young people instead of listening to them and offering them a decent future. Labour may grab headlines with its increasingly punitive policies, but it is badly failing young people.
Kept Afloat on a Tide of Money8 Jul 2008All over the world, protesters are engaged in a heroic battle with reality. They block roads, picket fuel depots, throw missiles and turn over cars in an effort to hold it at bay. The oil is running out and governments, they insist, must do something about it. When they?ve sorted it out, what about the fact that the days are getting shorter? What do we pay our taxes for? The latest people to join these surreal protests are the world?s fishermen. They are on strike in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Japan and demonstrating in scores of maritime countries. Last month in Brussels they threw rocks and flares at the police, who have been conspiring with the world?s sedimentary basins to keep the price of oil high. The fishermen warn that if something isn?t done to help them, thousands could be forced to scrap their boats and hang up their nets. It?s an appalling prospect, which we should greet with heartfelt indifference. Just as the oil price now seems to be all that stands between us and runaway climate change, it is also the only factor which offers a glimmer of hope to the world?s marine ecosystems. No East Asian government was prepared to conserve the stocks of tuna; now one-third of the tuna boats in Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea will stay in dock for the next few months because they can?t afford to sail1. The unsustainable quotas set on the US Pacific seaboard won?t be met this year, because the price of oil is rising faster than the price of fish2. The indefinite strike called by Spanish fishermen is the best news European fisheries have had for years. Beam trawlermen ? who trash the seafloor and scoop up a massive bycatch of unwanted species – warn that their industry could collapse within a year3. Hurray to that too. It would, of course, be better for everyone if these unsustainable practices could be shut down gently without the need for a crisis or the loss of jobs, but this seems to be more than human nature can bear. The European Union has a programme for taking fishing boats out of service ? the tonnage of the European fleet has fallen by 5% since 19994 – but the decline in boats is too slow to overtake the decline in stocks. Every year the EU, like every other fishery authority, tries to accommodate its surplus boats by setting quotas higher than those proposed by its scientific advisers, and every year the population of several species is pressed a little closer to extinction. The fishermen make two demands, which are taken up by politicians in coastal regions all over the world: they must be allowed to destroy their own livelihoods, and the rest of us should pay for it. Over seven years, European taxpayers will be giving this industry E3.8bn5. Some of this money is used to take boats out of service and to find other jobs for fishermen, but the rest is used to equip boats with new engines and new gear, to keep them on the water, to modernise ports and landing sites and to promote and market the catch. Except for the funds used to re-train fishermen or help them into early retirement, there is no justification for this spending. At least farmers can argue ? often falsely ? that they are the ?stewards of the countryside?. But what possible argument is there for keeping more fishermen afloat than the fish population can bear? The EU says its spending will reduce fishing pressure and help fishermen adopt greener methods. In reality, it is delaying the decline of the industry and allowing it to defy ecological limits for as long as possible. If the member states want to protect the ecosystem, it?s a good deal cheaper to legislate than to pay. Our fishing policies, like those of almost all maritime nations, are a perfect parable of commercial stupidity and short-termism, helping an industry to destroy its long-term prospects for the sake of immediate profit. But the fishermen only demand more. The headline on this week?s Fishing News is ?Thanks for Nothing!?, bemoaning the British government?s refusal to follow France, Spain and Italy in handing out fuel subsidies6. But why the heck should it? The Scottish fishing secretary, Richard Lochhead, demands that the government in Westminster ?open the purse strings?. He also insists that new money is ?not tied to decommissioning?: in other words no more boats should be taken off the water7. Is this really a service to the industry, or only to its most short-sighted members? I have a leaked copy of the draft proposal that European states will discuss on Thursday8. It?s a disaster. Some of the boats which, under existing agreements, will be scrapped and turned into artificial reefs, permanently reducing the sized of the fleet, can now be replaced with smaller vessels. The EU will pay costs and salaries for crews stranded by the fuel crisis, so that they stay in business and can start fishing again when the price falls. Member states will be able to shell out more money (E100,000 per boat instead of E30,000) without breaking state aid rules. They can hand out new grants for replacing old equipment with more fuel-efficient gear. The proposal seems to be aimed at ensuring that the industry collapses through lack of fish rather than lack of fuel. The fishermen won?t go down without taking the ecosystem with them. What makes the draft document so dumb is that in some regions, especially in British waters, the industry is just beginning to turn. While French, Spanish and Italian fishermen clamour for a resumption of bluefin tuna fishing9, knowing that if they are allowed to fish now, this will be the last season ever, around the UK it has begun to dawn on some fishermen that there might be an association between the survival of the fish and the survival of the fishing. Prompted by Young?s seafood and some of the supermarkets, who in turn have been harried by environmental groups, some of the biggest British fisheries have applied for eco-labels from the Marine Stewardship Council, which sets standards for how fish are caught10. Fishermen around the UK also seem to be taking the law more seriously, and at last to be showing some interest in obscure issues such as spawning grounds and juvenile fish (which, believe it or not, turn out to have a connection to future fish stocks). By ensuring that far too many boats, and far too many desperate fishermen, stay on the water, and that the remaining quotas are stretched too thinly, the EU will slow down or even reverse the greening of the industry. Why is this issue so hard to resolve? Why does every representative of a fishing region believe he must defend his constituents? right to ensure that their children have nothing to inherit? Why do the leaders of the fishermen?s associations feel the need always to denounce the scientists who say that fish stocks decline if they are hit too hard? If this is a microcosm of how human beings engage with the environment, the prospect for humanity is not a happy one. 1. Tom Seaman, July 2008. Global supply of sushi tuna to plummet on soaring fuel prices. Intrafish, Vol 6, Issue 7. 2. Steve Quinn, 29th June 2008. Time to jump ship? Almost, say commercial fishermen. The Associated Press. 3. James Meikle, 23rd May 2008. Fish prices may rise by up to 50%. The Guardian. 4. European Union, 2008. Evolution of the fleet?s number of vessels, tonnage and engine power. http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/fleetstatistics/index.cfm?lng=en 5. European Commission, 2006. The European Fisheries Fund 2007-2013. http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/publications/FEP_EN.pdf 6. Fishing News, 4th July 2008. 7. No author given, 4th July 2008. ?Open the Purse Strings? ? Lochhead. Fishing News. 8. The Council of the European Union, 2008. Proposal for a Council Regulation instituting a temporary specific action aiming to promote the restructuring of the European fisheries fleets affected by the economic crisis. 9. Agence France Press, 17th June 2008. EU rejects calls to drop planned tuna fishing ban. 10. Severin Carrell, 26th March 2008. British seas turning green, says watchdog. The Guardian.
Is Trevor Kavanagh an Islamophobe?7 Jul 2008You don’t necessarily have to know anything about Islam to be an Islamophobe. Quite the reverse, in fact. The more ignorant about Islam and everything else, the better it is for the hopeful candidate for Islamophobia. So, just because Trevor Kavanagh thinks that “Sunni Iran” is “oil hungry”, don’t think that he can’t possibly be an Islamophobe. The reason this has come up is that Peter Oborne, the right-wing journalist and documentary maker, has recently struck gold with an attack on Islamophobia – a quite unsporting thing for a right-wing commentator of any description to do, so far as his co-ideologues are concerned. Trevor Kavanagh of The Sun, responsible for some of the worst delirium that appears on that paper’s front pages, was interviewed for the programme, took umbrage at the fact that he evidently came across as a guttersnipe, and has composed a bilious response. Kavanagh’s reply, unlike the original documentary and pamphlet that produced it, will be read by millions. His argument, such as it is, boils down to the assertion that there are indeed ‘extremists’ and bad people, doing very bad things, and the implication that these are somehow a manifestation of something essential to Islam. Rather than rely on such antiquated practises as logical argument, which is to The Sun as daylight is to the vampire, Kavanagh relies on the simple procedure of citing approved Muslim voices. For example: In the wake of 9/11, the Muslim head of Al Arabiya TV, Abdul Rahman al Rashed, said: “Not all Muslims are terrorists but, with deep regret, we must admit that almost all terrorists are Muslims.” Is he an Islamophobe? Try watching Syrian-born Dr Wafa Sultan on YouTube as she challenges a furious cleric to name a single Jew or Buddhist suicide bomber. “Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by killing people, burning churches and bombing embassies,” she storms. Is she Islamophobic? Or simply spelling out the facts? Dr Sultan also condemned the way Muslim hardliners “treat women like beasts”. Al Rashed’s stupid comment (stupid, both because it was untrue and because it is liable to feed an atmosphere of violent anti-Muslim feeling) is quite widely repeated in one version or another. Hitchens likes it a lot, for example, as he would. But it was not made “in the wake of 9/11”, (and nor was Al Rashed the head of Al Arabiya television at that time, since Al Arabiya television didn’t come into existence until 2004). The comment was published in a Saudi-run newspaper based in London and Jeddah following the Beslan massacre. It was made at a time when Russian troops had been terrorising Chechnyans for some years – strange to relate, those Russian troops were not, on the whole, of the Muslim persuasion. Wafa Sultan, for those of you who don’t know her, is hardly even worth your attention. She is adored by the Luce media and the NYT, because she says the right things: only Muslims do wicked things, Islam is responsible, Muslims are medieval, the West is enlightened and modern. Were it not for the patronage, she could summarise her views on the back of a postage stamp and mail it to her brain, presently lodged halfway up her colon, and save us all the trouble. I assume no one needs me to rebut the view that only Muslims defend their beliefs by killing people (but if you do, just supply your address and I’ll come and sort you out). Anyway, having run out of native informers, Kavanagh finally resorts to his own expertise: Muslim men are entitled to beat their wives and take more than one wife. Women are automatically suspect, banned in some communities from showing their faces or limbs because they are sexually tempting ? to men. Visit an Arab country, or watch TV shows about them, and you will see plenty of men and boys. Women appear rarely and, when they do, are covered head to toe. The rest are under virtual house arrest, living behind closed doors in ignorance and isolation. We cannot interfere in the way other countries order their societies. But such barbaric treatment of women has been imported and thrives here. The Sun, would you believe it, is now a feminist concern. We can assume that those many forms of misogyny that were not ‘imported’ will now feature as a daily concern in that paper, next to Mandy, aged 23. I doubt Trevor Kavanagh has actually visited an “Arab country” for longer than fifteen minutes, during which time his feet would have been firmly planted in a Mercedes, although I am sure he has seen “TV shows” about them. But which Arab countries is he watching? Oh, it doesn’t matter: I’m sure he is as learned about Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Mauritania, Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait as he is about Sunni Iran. And I’m sure that when it comes to Muslim populations beyond the Arab world, he could discourse eloquently on the fate of the Indonesian women who stitch his Gucci soles in what is colloquially known as a sweatshop (the 18 hour shift in the high security compounds is like house arrest, only with added slavery). Is Trevor Kavanagh an Islamophobe? Well, he passes the first qualification at least: he doesn’t know shit about Islam.
Misreporting Muslims7 Jul 2008Imagine if you picked up a newspaper to discover the following headline, “Gay sickos’ Maddie kidnap shock”. What would your response be? Or perhaps if you read, “Christmas is banned: it offends Jews”. Or even, “Black people tell us how to run our schools”. You would probably be offended and outraged in equal measure ? and rightly so. In modern Britain, it is no longer acceptable for the media to engage in such egregiously inaccurate or recklessly bigoted coverage of minority groups. There is, however, one glaring exception to this rule ? Muslims. As writer and broadcaster Peter Oborne points out in tonight’s Dispatches on Channel 4, these rather shocking headlines have already appeared in our national press, but only in relation to Britain’s Muslim minority. In the wake of 7/7, the press has been given free rein to effectively demonise the Islamic faith and its two million adherents in this country. Dispatches commissioned Cardiff University’s school of journalism to carry out a unique study of the content and, above all, context of almost a thousand articles written about Islam and Muslims since 2000. The Cardiff researchers discovered that over two-thirds of stories identified Muslims either as a source of problems or as a threat ? not just in the context of terrorism but on cultural issues too. In fact, this year for the first time, the volume of stories focusing on cultural differences overtook those related to terrorism. Over the entire period, more than one in four stories contained the rather pernicious idea that Islam is dangerous, backward or irrational. As a practicing Muslim and as a television journalist, I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media. With my journalist’s hat on, I recognise and support the very legitimate desire of the media to cover, and comment on, the growing terrorist threat to this country from “homegrown” extremists. (Dispatches has a long and proud record in this area.) With my Muslim hat on, however, I grow tired of having to also endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations and often inaccurate and baseless stories. Did a local council, for example, “ban Christmas” to avoid offending Muslims? No. Did Natwest remove its piggy banks to avoid offending Muslims? Not at all. Did a “Muslim hate mob” vandalise a house full of British squaddies? Nope. To pretend that this relentlessly negative coverage of a marginalised minority has no effect on community relations or on integration is naive, if not disingenuous. Portraying Muslims as different and dangerous can have serious repercussions, and tonight’s Dispatches draws attention to a growing number of Muslims who now live in daily fear; some because their homes are repeatedly vandalized, others because they have suffered devastatingly violent attacks. In an exclusive ICM poll (pdf) for the programme, a third of Britain’s Muslims say they or their family members have suffered abuse or hostility since 7/7, and over two-thirds of the wider British public think that prejudice against Muslims has increased. Yet, at the same time, a majority of the public also continues to believe that the religion of Islam is to blame for the bombings. Three years on, it is time to stop conflating the actions of a tiny minority of extremists with the entire Muslim community or the whole religion of Islam. It is time for newspaper editors, reporters, columnists and commentators to stop the negative stereotyping and fear-mongering that reinforces the public perception of Muslims and Islam as strange, foreign and threatening, and further alienates and stigmatises an already vulnerable community of British citizens. As Peter Oborne points out, “There is an urgent need for a change in our public culture.” ————- Dispatches: It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim was broadcast last night at 8pm on Channel 4, and can be viewed online on 4oD. Peter Oborne and James Jones have written a pamphlet to accompany the documentary, entitled ‘Muslims Under Siege: Alienating Vulnerable Communities’ (.pdf).
It’s no surprise that the BNP’s rise and New Labour’s demise are linked7 Jul 2008On Wednesday evening around 7pm, the Reverend Roger Gayler, vicar of St Marks parish, went to answer a knock on the door. It was the night before the Chadwell Heath byelection for Barking and Dagenham council in Greater London, and Gayler had recently written an open letter to his flock. “I rarely enter the party political arena and do so very reluctantly, but as a matter of Christian principle I feel this time I must,” he wrote. “The [British National party] would divide our community, spread fear through lies, and reduce services to those in our community who most need them (they proposed huge cuts in services for the elderly and young people in their budget). They preach the politics of hate.” The man at the door was Robert Bailey, BNP leader on the council. He was clearly agitated. “He asked me whether I’d written it,” recalls Gayler. “I said ‘yes’.” “This goes against the democratic process,” said Bailey. “It’s all part of the democratic process,” replied Gayler. “You’re just a fascist,” said Bailey, and then scrumpled the letter and threw it at the vicar. “There was no shouting or screaming but it was obviously a visit from a very rattled person,” says Gayler. The next evening, in Dagenham’s council chamber, a multiracial team of council workers tallied the votes. The BNP had 12 seats on the council and was hoping this would be their 13th. In the end, a seat vacated by Labour was won by the Tories by a comfortable margin. Nothing strange there. The BNP candidate came third with 25% of the vote in a ward the party had never contested before. Sadly, there seemed to be nothing strange there either. Terry Justice, the Tory victor, said he looked forward to working with all his fellow councillors. When I asked Margaret Mullane, the Labour candidate, what she made of the size of the BNP vote, she said: “You’ll have to ask the BNP about that really.” Leaving Dagenham civic centre, with the clock nudging closer to midnight, I felt I was heading back to the 30s. Bailey is not the only one who should be feeling rattled. True, under the circumstances, the fact that they didn’t win could be regarded as a victory. But those circumstances are dire. The BNP’s advances have been spotty – still limited to particular towns and regions. But over the last decade those spots have become larger and more widespread. Back in 1993, its gain of a single council seat in London’s Tower Hamlets produced a brief, but intense, moment of national introspection. Today it has more than 50 councillors in around 20 councils plus a member of the London assembly. By increments it has become an accepted, if contested, fact of British municipal life. For all the talk of Islamo-fascism – that desperately belligerent phrase that some hurl about in the hope that it may one day land on a coherent meaning – plain old-fashioned fascism is the force truly making gains. Elsewhere in Europe, where the far right runs councils and holds cabinet seats, things are far worse. In Italy, the state recently started fingerprinting Gypsies, along with a promise to take Gypsy children not attending school into custody. In Switzerland, the far right is in government. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right, nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10% of the vote. In Norway, it is more than twice that; in Switzerland, the figure it is almost three times as much. If our Enlightenment values really are under threat, then the primary challenge seems to be domestic – and far more familiar and entrenched than some would have us believe. This is not a handful of young, nihilist men with backpacks – it is marginalised communities with ballot papers. None of this denies or excuses the rise in jihadism. Indeed, it is only possible to make an effective stand against either by recognising the potency of both. The “tolerant, liberal” society that immigrants – particularly Muslims – are being told to join has long been eroding. While multiculturalism has been under assault, nostalgic visions of a mythological monoculture have been given a new lease of life. Just as there is more to racism in Britain than the BNP, the BNP’s rise tells us more about Britain than just racism. It is a canary in the mine – an early warning system signalling the complacency of our political culture in which our political class has been complicit. Trapped in a hopeless spiral of negativity, people will vote against anything – immigration, the Tories, Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson, Scottish nationalism, Gordon Brown or Europe, to name a few. But it seems a long time since large numbers of people voted for anything. So the fact that the BNP has performed best in Labour strongholds should come as no surprise. Its rise and New Labour’s demise are linked. The government is failing even on its own modest terms. Child poverty and pensioner poverty are up. Economic inequality is now greater than under the Tories. Inflation is rising, house prices falling, and last week workers were again asked to tighten their belts. Never mind no return to boom and bust – many feel like they are about to crash and burn. People are desperate. There is nothing inevitable about this shift from despondency to demagoguery. Black and Asian people are overrepresented among the poor and vulnerable, and they aren’t voting for the BNP. Nor are the overwhelming majority of white working-class people. Nonetheless, the trend has always been likely and logical. A party that has its historical roots and electoral base in the working class and then fails to advance the interests of that class will engender cynicism. New Labour’s electoral project is based in no small measure on the calculation that the poor have nowhere else to go. A small but determined minority have retreated into their laagers in search of solutions and solace. However, New Labour’s decision to follow them there made no sense, either morally or strategically. Following the strong showing of the BNP in Burnley, Anthony Giddens, the architect of the third way, spoke of being “tough on immigration and tough on the causes of hostility to immigrants”. Tony Blair prioritised “crime and social behaviour” and “immigration and asylum”. But these populist responses hold no sustainable answers to the particular and urgent material needs of the white working class. Incarcerating asylum seekers or bashing the niqab built no houses, created no jobs and educated no children. That does not, in itself, necessarily make them wrong – but as a response to the concerns of Labour’s base they were worse than useless. New Labour’s legislative shortcomings made a BNP revival possible; the government’s rhetorical excesses made it electorally palatable. Given its huge majority, Labour could have made the case against racism and xenophobia. But rather than stand on principle, it has preferred to pander. Having ducked the major challenges, it has left it to the likes of Rev Roger Gayler to literally face the consequences of the failure head on.
England and the ‘National-Popular’ (Part 2)7 Jul 2008Click here for Part 1 of this article Where is England? Well, I think I live in it. So, for me, it?s the earth beneath my feet and the landscape I walk through with my dog. Green and pleasant, temperate and mild, most of the time anyway. It?s the slightly scruffy streets of the fine city I live in; the cafes and theatres, the galleries and libraries and museums, the gyms and jogging routes that give me culinary, aesthetic, intellectual and athletic sustenance. It?s the semi-darkness of the urban evening, the encounters with the familiar unknown and the safely dangerous, which as a man I feel securely entitled to. Then, venturing further afield for work and research, it?s the overheated, creaking railway line that takes me to London and Essex, where I make my living as an expert of sorts in the social care of people with HIV/AIDS. As I speed past the fields and woods, back yards and warehouses of East Anglia, I often wonder what kinds of lives are led there and whether they are anything like mine. Then, at the end of a working day, I speed back to Norwich and Norfolk and a decent night?s sleep in this ?city of silence?. This was the poet D?Annunzio?s term for ancient, pre-industrial cities, cited respectfully in the Selections from Prison Notebooks: ?all had glorious pasts but are now of secondary importance, some little more than villages with magnificent monumental centres as a relic of their bygone splendour?. So this, in rough summary, is my England. Of course this is my personal corner of the country, but the interesting question is how to link this into a wider narrative. England has more often defined itself by what it is not: black, Jewish, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Asian, African, Spanish, French, German, European of any sort really. This ?negative identity? is characteristic of national-popular cultures shaped by militaristic adventure and imperial dominion. So maybe I should also say what the England I live in is not. First off, it is no longer ?British?, at any rate since Scottish and Welsh devolution, which had the (surely unintended but wholly predictable) effect of making some of the English feel as if these other people of the British land mass really didn?t want to live with us any more. (Northern Ireland is a more complex question which I don?t have the space to go into here.) One of my own recent weekend breaks was to Edinburgh, the beautiful, sensibly vibrant, deeply cultured and obviously prosperous capital city of Scotland, where it really does feel like the separate country it plainly aspires to be. Secondly, the England I live in is not (for all its best intentions) multi-cultural, in the sense of a diverse but essentially unitary community. Let?s be clear: the ethnic groups of England (where they have to) live and work politely alongside each other, but there is precious little real, voluntary inter-connection. And what there is often takes the form of slightly broader ?exclusive alliances?, based on new ?negative identities?, such as underclass white and black youth united in ?chav/gangsta? culture against both Asian youth and the wider ?respectable? society. Paul Gilroy wrote in the 1980s that ?there ain?t no black in the union jack?. Well, there?s plenty of black in the St George Cross in 2008, but very little brown (and certainly no tartan or taff). I am conscious that in this last paragraph I have finally introduced some real live people into my account of the English, even if only to argue that many of them don?t seem to want to have much to do with anyone else. And this, it seems to me, is another currently defining ?negative identity? of the English, coming ever closer to home: that, as I and others have argued in the pamphlet Feelbad Britain, ?we are a society of people who don?t appear to like themselves and each other very much?. The white people I commute with once or twice a week to Essex and London, on crowded, uncomfortable, often malfunctioning and surprisingly slow trains, barely exchange a glance let alone a word. For much of the year they are yellow and grey with fatigue and ill health. Unless they?ve just been on their holidays, when they briefly turn a lightly toasted colour. The comfortably unhappy. Two other of our current social categories deserve a mention, because of what they represent in English society: the ?grumpy old?, and then back to ?chav?. We are well used to being told that our aging population is a problem, primarily because of the burden it will place on the welfare state and on the working-age people whose taxes pay for it. This is real enough – leaving aside the question of whether increased longevity is actually a problem – but like so much of our current political discourse, it casts the issue within a narrowly economistic framework. Far more immediate and apparent is what Gramsci would have called the ?moral crisis? of longer lives: a general loss of purpose, often amounting to a sense of utter futility, amongst this growing sector of the population. Faced with redundancy from jobs and industries that no longer exist, early retirement on questionable ill health grounds, or even statutory retirement decades before they can expect to die – and deprived of (or excused from) any sustained involvement in childcare by the dispersal of family networks – older people now have loads of time and (mostly) money, with little idea what to do with it all. There are two general options for this growing segment of the population. The first is the positive ?active elderly? route, keeping physically fit and mentally engaged and flexible, and living happily and well – a historically unprecedented experience that requires a degree of personal resourcefulness, family and social support, and simple good luck in avoiding chronic illness and disability. The second, in many ways easier but obviously far more problematic for the individual and for society, is the negative ?grumpy old? option, ossifying into your grievances and prejudices, bathing in outrage and disgust. In an English context, this pretty much sums up the hard-core Daily Mail readership and the people who still bother to vote in local elections; and it casts a wider, ever darker pall over our public life. As for chav – the Burberry cap and sportswear-clad, shaved or scraped-scalp, gold-bedecked look and lifestyle that has overrun much of what?s left of the English working class – well, it?s a genuine social phenomenon deserving far more serious scrutiny than the kind of for/against discourse of tabloid press and TV, or than I have space for here. Basically, chav is what happens when a working class is left culturally defenceless, exposed to a low-grade diet of American cultural imperialism, especially the gangsta-rap and porno-R&B that passes for pop culture in the age of MTV, the shopping mall, fast food and freely available strong lager and C-class drugs. Is chav a new way of being English? Or just a weird hybrid of commercial/?globalisation?-era cultural styles, that will fade away as quickly as it arose, and make way for some new garb and patois for the lumpen proletariat, the white trash made not so poor in the lower reaches of the neo-liberal informal economy? We shall see? Finally, one other thing England is not: London. Our supposedly capital city is now a quite separate entity, a member of the international network of mega-cities, which has turned its back wilfully and consciously on the country of England. As Doreen Massey has recently established in her book World City, London has its own wholly distinctive patterns of interaction and division, engagement and exploitation, quite different from the rest of England, while having distinct (and often damaging) repercussions for it. I regularly commute between the two, and spend time in both, and they are now in reality wholly separate places. To be specific, the concerns and perspectives of the metropolitan liberal left (in that lovely term, ?the chattering classes?) are shared by very, very few people outside London. I know it comes as an occasional, very nasty surprise to be reminded of this by such phenomena as the Countryside Alliance, periodic fuel protests, or the recurring rumble of irritation about ?political correctness?, but the middle and upper class liberal intelligentsia who
staff the political and media and cultural industries of London have really very little idea of what?s going on in the separate country of England. They might occasionally venture out into it, for the purposes of rest and recreation (more weekend breaks), but this is little more than internal tourism. Especially when it?s to weekend and summer holiday villages consisting almost wholly of second homes, dead in the week and the winter. London?s Unilateral Declaration of Independence is a key element in the failure of the traditional English national-popular settlement. It has been gathering pace for decades, if not centuries, and its effect is now evident in the attitudes of non-Londoners towards our notional national capital. Popular reactions in the rest of England to exclusively London phenomena – from the Millennium Dome to the 7/7 bombings and the 2012 Olympics – are at best ambivalent and at worst downright contemptuous. So, this England is not London, it is not Scotland or Wales or Europe, and large parts of it subsist on an emotional diet of aggravation and disquiet which could, if we?re not very careful, turn seriously nasty. Even parts of the Southeast, London?s own hinterland, are getting seriously pissed off. If I were a displaced white East Ender, living in the modern post-industrial slums of the ?Thames Gateway? towns of Dagenham, Thurrock or Basildon, with an extended family in inter-generational multiple deprivation, I would be seriously tempted to vote BNP, just for the sheer two-fingered hell of it. And if you find that shocking, I would respectfully suggest that you are lacking in political imagination, and offer to accompany you there on my next fortnightly visit. So what might a national-popular England be like? I am well aware that mine is not the first attempt to flesh out a ?progressive patriotism?. E.P. Thompson harked back somewhat sentimentally to ?the freeborn Englishman?, and the Communist Party in its immediate post-war heyday had a stab at a patriotic national ?story?, taking in the various waves of peasant and proletarian rebellion and martyrdom. It seems to have consisted mostly of pageants and paeans, a kind of misty-eyed romanticism, and it didn?t survive the onset of Cold War. Most famously, the old Cold Warrior George Orwell attempted it in some of his rightly celebrated essays, especially ?England your England?, written in late 1940, as ?highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me?. Orwell was a vastly overrated writer, a much better essayist than novelist. As for his politics, I?ve always thought Isaac Deutscher pinned him down as ?a simple-minded anarchist?, which explains why Orwell lends himself so readily to reactionary purposes, like so many self-styled ?libertarians?. But in his wartime essays, Orwell came close to identifying the quality of defiant reserve in the English that thumbed its nose at ?itler and the Jerries and pretty much everyone else too, and might just yet make the kernel of a national-popular ?positive identity?. Orwell called it ?national loyalty? as a positive force?. But his observation that ?in moments of supreme crisis, the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone though never formulated? is deeply if unconsciously Gramscian in its grasp of the political and ideological function of national-popular ?common sense?. Towards the end of my own last bout of ?democratic left? activism, in the mid-1980s, people associated with Marxism Today attempted to ?reclaim the union jack? for the left. This reached its ultimate absurdity, I recall, in a version of that tawdry, blood-stained rag in Rastafarian colours. More recently another old acquaintance, Mark Perryman, has been heavily involved in what he calls ?football activism?, with the aim of turning the England football team into a Gramscian ?national-popular? cause. A bit of a lost one, I would say, given the abject performances of that bunch of overpaid, over-hyped, overgrown infants. Billy Bragg and Tessa Jowell have argued that the football-related mass sproutings of the St George?s Cross can be seen as, variously, an expression of national pride or ?just a bit of fun?. Well? It may be because I am so bloody English, and defiantly anti-postmodern, but I?m getting increasingly impatient with the symbolism of it all: the various flags, principles and abstract values and causes we are supposed to espouse as our ?national identity?. It?s all just too easily switched on and off, manipulated and repackaged, usually for the commercial interests of various media and leisure corporations (to be unfashionably anti-postmarxist about it) and sometimes for blatantly manipulative political purposes. As such, it sums up neatly our bourgeoisie?s failure (back to Nairn-Anderson) to construct a national-popular consensus that goes beyond commerce, recreation and showbiz: fan-dom and spectating, which is pretty much all it requires of our masses. And it has no relationship with the real place of England, the land of fields and woods, towns and cities that we all of us actually if reluctantly spend our lives in. As Orwell put it in 1940, and I would love to think it still holds, ?In England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the ?Rule Britannia stuff?, is done by small minorities. The patriotism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious?. So let?s shove all that to one side, and dig a bit deeper into our past and present for a democratic (possibly left) English national-popular. To begin with, we can just about discern some sparks of resistance, and embryonic Gramscian popular hegemony, within what Gareth Stedman Jones called the English proletarian ?culture of consolation?. It?s there in elements of the music hall and folk tradition: the mocking and the cheeky, rather than the maudlin and sentimental. It?s there among the 1950s ?angry young men? (and women), especially the ?social-realist? wing of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or A Taste of Honey. It?s there in 1960s mod culture, that extraordinary appropriation by white working class youth of black American and Caribbean music and ?cool?, of European elegance and fashion, and avant-garde pop-art stylings. It?s there in the consciously popular-democratic ?folk-rock? of early Fairport Convention, whose recently re-issued, magnificent Liege and Lief was hailed at the time as an English masterpiece. It?s there in the DIY, democratic wing of punk, especially in the Northwest, which was much more explicitly cultural-political than the showy, bin-liner and safety pin London variety. It?s there now in the TV show Shameless, which at its best assembles story-lines and characters from the writer Paul Abbot?s own childhood on a council estate into a prototype for new, reconstituted proletarian living. Joyful as well as shameless; resiliently female as well as fecklessly male; sexy and polysexual; and yes, naturally if wishfully multicultural. There is something in all of this that is enduringly ?down to earth?; what Orwell called our ?horror of abstract thought?. This seems to me the central feature of the English national-popular identity, and happily resonates with my earlier call ?back to the land? of this real, mucky place. It locates us firmly where we need to be, in our material existence rather than a fog of tacky symbols. And let?s be honest: it exposes the complete dead-end we on the left have allowed ourselves to be shunted into, of ?political correctness?. How on earth (that word again) did we allow otherwise progressive demands, about equality and freedom and fairness, to be turned into a new moral code for language and behaviour that the majority of the population finds utterly bewildering and alienating? What we have done with ?political correctness? is set about imposing upon the national discourse a new form of the traditional middle-class sensibility of politeness and nice-ness and ?good manners?, which itself arose as a trusty guide for social climbers through the otherwise hazardous,
tumultuous social landscape of the nineteenth century. This was where Gramsci?s ?separate entity?, the English bourgeoisie, found its moral purpose, keeping the silly, licentious aristocracy in check, and policing the rude manners of the unruly masses. But instead of not eating off your knife or saying ?bloody?, only doing the washing on Monday and never discussing personal feelings, we now censure the white, generally powerless lower orders for using terms of ethnic or sexual designation that are in everyday, colloquial use among minority ethnic (nigger and paki) and sexual communities (queer and dyke) themselves! Whatever possessed us? Probably the same malign spirit that made us think we could construct a progressive – even socialist! – politics around every other aspect of ?individual identity? than nation and class, the central categories within Gramsci?s thinking. But then, as Stedman Jones reminds us, there are plenty of historical antecedents for this kind of thing within the social relations of our country. Sometimes they have played a key role in the adaptation of bourgeois hegemony, as in the ?affinity of outlook between the ?top and bottom drawer? against the ?killjoys in between?? during middle-class attempts to impose a restrictive moral order on pleasure-taking in the late nineteenth century (after a loosening of moral restraints that had generated new commercial possibilities within the consumption of leisure). This was a time when Conservatism put down its deep roots amongst the English working class, because you could drink alcohol freely in the ?Conny club?, sing along with gusto at the Conservative-protected music hall, and cheer on the boxers and football teams sponsored by your Conservative employer. Conservatism was fun, well out of reach of the finger-wagging zealots of non-conformism, Liberalism and Labourism. For the nineteenth-century temperance movements, Humanitarian League or anti-Gambling League of Stedman Jones?s account, ?all acting on the same principle, trying to interfere with the enjoyments and pleasures of the people?, read twenty-first century ?political correctness gone mad? or moral panic over drugs and binge-drinking. Much of the theorising about culture and identity of the last twenty years has followed a trajectory from ?communities of identity? (people drawn together by a common ethnicity or sexuality), through ?communities of interest? (people with shared hobbies or pastimes) to ?communities of affect? (people united by taste or sensation in music, art, sport or other spectacle). What we have ended up with is a society of ?virtual enclaves? or self-selecting ghettoes, mutually exclusive sets of PLUs (People Like Us) living alongside but not with each other, the reductio ad absurdum of a process of social retreat first identified in the late-1980s by Michael Rustin and others. I propose, in pursuit of the English national-popular – the Scottish and Welsh are welcome to join in too, by the way, but it seems to me that they?re a fair way down their own road already – that we seek to rediscover ?communities of place?. That is, real geographical material places you can put your finger and foot on, like Norwich and Norfolk or anywhere else that takes your English fancy. A quaint notion, I know, but the fact is that while we?ve been busily setting up communities of identity/interest/affect, most real people have continued living in such real geographical material places. We need to re-establish political contact with them, as is already happening, in small, localized, sometimes contradictory ways, in the ?greening? of municipal politics. My own local Green Party group of Norwich city councillors is now in double figures, with a realistic chance of an MP and an MEP in the next few years. They have still to extend their electoral reach much beyond the disaffected urban intelligentsia, and to develop a fully modern, urban progressive politics, but at its best greenery connects to people?s real, troubled experience of their land and lives: a crucial ingredient in any emergent democratic left England. Maybe, once we?ve embraced our core-Englishness, we can begin happily and comfortably being other things too – men, women, black, white, brown, gay, straight, young, old, whatever constitutes our own unique personalities – and articulating our nationality with all our other identities. Maybe as a nation we could start to like each other again, and just maybe start to creep out from under the shadow of failed, partial bourgeois hegemony and its contemporary ideological twists of Thatcherism and its neo-liberal, New Labour adaptation. As the socialist visionary Edward Carpenter wrote in his eponymous ?national-popular? hymn of the 1900s, ?England Arise!? Or, as one of the foremost English visionaries of our own time, Ian Dury, put it, ?There ain?t half been some clever bastards??
Boris Johnson?s return to ?traditional Tory values?7 Jul 2008It is only two months since the newly elected Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson promised he would, with a new broom, sweep clean the sleaze and corruption he declared characterised the outgoing administration under the Labour Party?s Ken Livingstone. Johnson also proclaimed that his mayoralty would be a return to ?traditional Tory values.? As it has turned out, it is this pledge that is being realised as his own administration has begun to fall apart amidst accusations of racism and the type of ?sleaze and corruption? he promised to root out. Last week, longstanding allegations of financial and sexual misconduct against deputy mayor Ray Lewis ended in his resignation, and forced Johnson to set up an inquiry. The media hailed Lewis?s appointment as deputy mayor for young people as a shrewd move aimed at countering adverse reports of comments made by Johnson in an article on Tony Blair in which he referred to ?picaninnies? with ?watermelon smiles.? Lewis?s Eastside Young Leaders Academy in Edmonton, London, and its ?tough love? ethos of army-style drilling, religion, uniforms and discipline, was proclaimed as the real answer to gang-related violence. In the past several days, however, it was revealed that the former Church of England Minister had had restrictions placed on his ministry because of a series of allegations of sexual and financial misconduct against parishioners. In 1993 he was accused of ?sexually inappropriate behaviour? by two members of the congregation at St. Matthew?s, West Ham and he was banned from preaching for six years. Two years later he was accused of failing to repay a total of 41,000 borrowed from three parishioners, though the investigation was subsequently dropped. Lewis also faces accusations of assaulting pupils at his academy, all of which he denies. The Lewis resignation follows that of Johnson?s chief policy advisor, James McGrath. When asked by a journalist if Johnson?s election would provoke a flight of black Londoners back to the Caribbean, McGrath replied, ?Well, let them go if they don?t like it here.? Johnson mounted a feeble defence of both men, but then dropped them fairly quickly. McGrath was chosen as an advisor by fellow Australian, Lynton Crosby, the architect behind Johnson? electoral campaign who earlier spearheaded electoral campaigns for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Central to the campaign was a barrage of allegations of misconduct against Livingstone and his leading aides. Almost daily, the conservative Evening Standard newspaper ran stories charging the Livingstone administration with corruption. This claimed its first scalp shortly before the election, when Lee Jasper?the focus of many of the unproven allegations of corruption?resigned his post as Senior Policy Advisor on Equalities following the leaking of sexually explicit emails he had sent to a female friend in an organisation that received funding from the Assembly. However hostile a section of the Tory press was to Livingstone, he retained the backing of the City of London as its favoured candidate and also had the support of newspapers running the political spectrum from the Financial Times to the Guardian. It is a measure of the widespread resentment and hostility felt towards Labour?and towards Livingstone himself?that this failed to win him re-election and that Johnson?s posturing as ?Mr. Clean? was partially successful. Livingstone?s defeat coincided with the disastrous performance of Labour in the May 3 local elections, as the party continues to lose what remains of its working class base and is deserted by the better-off traditional Tory and ?swing voters? it won in 1997. Johnson benefited on both counts. Turnout among Labour supporters was down while Johnson successfully mobilised his own party?s ?natural constituency.? In addition, Labour?s reputation as a party of big business, sleaze, incompetence, authoritarianism and militarism could no longer be countered by Livingstone invoking his radical past. Labour promoted Livingstone?s support in the City of London, but the Greens, Respect Renewal and the Socialist Workers Party?s Left List, together with the Guardian, promoted him as the ?progressive candidate? and sought to mobilise support in the inner-city areas, particularly amongst black and Asian workers. But such claims could no longer be reconciled after two terms in which Livingstone made his peace with Labour after first being elected as an independent. He famously denounced striking London Underground workers as ?selfish? and defended Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair after an Old Bailey jury convicted the Met of corporate failure over the killing of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. Livingstone insisted there were no grounds for the resignation of this ?incredibly talented officer,? stating that the court?s verdict might make stopping suicide bombers more difficult. Anyone foolish enough to believe that Johnson?s would be the ?clean hands? administration he had promised has soon been disabused. Johnson?s record since taking office has provided a glimpse of what can be expected. Once in power, he quickly set about appointing his own cronies?an army of consultants and advisors?stating bluntly that ?it is not intended that the fees for these (other) individuals will be made public.? Reports suggest that many will receive a salary of more than 100,000. The chief executive of the London Development Agency (LDA)?which declares itself the ?Mayor?s agency responsible for driving London?s sustainable economic growth??was sacked and Harvey McGrath, former chairman of the hedge fund specialists the Man Group, nominated in his place. A ?forensic audit team? has been set up to investigate allegations of corruption in the LDA and Greater London Authority, headed by the former editor of the Sunday Telegraph Patience Wheatcroft, who had stirred up controversy after censoring a critical article about Conservative leader David Cameron. Multimillionaire former asset stripper and private equity chief Tim Parker was made first deputy and chief executive, as well as being appointed the new chairman of Transport for London. Full delegated powers over major planning decisions were given to Ian Clement, an unelected advisor from Bexley Council, who became notorious for cutting the ?meals on wheels? scheme for pensioners. Johnson has appointed Simon Milton as director of planning, but had to backtrack after it was revealed that he is also chairman of the Local Authorities? chief lobbying group. Although losing his title, he will still remain in Johnson?s office in the role of consultant. Munira Mirza, a former radical, has arrived at the heart of a Tory administration as the new cultural advisor to the mayor, thanks to her opposition to ?multiculturalism? and professions that the extent of ?Islamophobia? is exaggerated. She writes for the Policy Exchange think tank, whose founder Nick Boles will likely work on marketing for the mayor along with Dan Ritterband, a former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive. Policy Exchange, which is described as the most influential think tank ?on the right,? is headed by Charles Moore, former editor of the Thatcherite Spectator magazine?a position held previously by Johnson. The organisation was embroiled in controversy only recently over allegations that documents it circulated to prove the influence of Islamic extremists in Britain?s mosques were fakes. Once in office, Johnson swiftly implemented the right-wing policies outlined in his manifesto. Central to this agenda is to ?beef up the police presence on our streets by increasing police numbers and cutting red tape at the Metropolitan Police Service.? Within hours of his election, dozens of extra police were deployed to carry out random ?stop and search? procedures across the city in ?Operation Blunt 2,? exploiting the media frenzy over youth-related gun and knife crime in the last few months. This has not been addressed on the basis of tackling the wider issues of poverty, job opportunities and social inequality, but by increased police powers and a zero tolerance policing policy. In a city with the dubious honour of having the most surveillance cameras in the world, Johnson has also promised more closed circuit TVs. These initiatives closely parallel those undertaken by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, whose critics have argued that the fall in street crime had more to do with enrolling an extra 7,000 officers than with any strategic master-stroke, and that much crime simply moved to neighbouring districts. Bloomberg made a special visit to London?s City Hall to congratulate Johnson on his electoral victory, but the content of their meeting has remained strictly confidential. Another indication of the real agenda of the new mayor is in his attitude to low-income earners. Johnson has cancelled the cheap oil deal Livingstone made with the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez last year and declared that he will annul applications for cheap fares, which have benefited more than 80,000 Londoners on Income Support benefits. Livingstone used the deal as part of a handful of populist gestures to buttress his neo-liberal economic policies, making sure they did not conflict with the fundamental interests of the City of London, or compromise his record in promoting London as a magnet for global capital. It is Livingstone and Labour that have paved the way for a deepening of the assaults they began on the working class in London, only now with Boris Johnson at the helm.
UKWatch.net