How the press swallows MoD propaganda17 Sep 2008Last month the press reported how friendly fire in a bungled assault killed a British soldier in Helmand last year. They all neglected to remind their readers, however, how they first reported the operation ? as a noble tale of heroism and comradeship. In January 2007 the British papers went wild over a “Rescue bid by heroes strapped to helicopters“. Describing how British soldiers had tied themselves to the wings of a helicopter to retrive a soldier’s body, an army spokesperson told the Mail: “It was a leap into the unknown. It was an extraordinary tale of heroism and bravery of our airmen, soldiers and Marines who were all prepared to put themselves back into the line of fire to rescue a fallen comrade.” Under the headline “Heroes of Helmand: the first amazing pictures“, the Observer talked of “a mission that carried echoes of Saving Private Ryan”, “a trip into the unknown, a mercy mission that has already etched itself into contemporary military folklore”. The Guardian effused that the mission evoked “the manner of the heroes of the second world war film Flight of the Phoenix”. The Times had this wonderful line: “Reports said that soldiers from 45 Commando Royal Marines did not want their 30-year-old section commander falling into the hands of insurgents, who they feared would mutilate his body.” Top marks there for demonising the enemy. The Telegraph reported the operation’s success, followed by an army spokesperson’s words that it showed “the level of camaraderie and bravery of those soldiers involved.” Now that the full MoD report on the mission is out, however, we learn that it was a tale of “poor training, confusion and friendly fire“. In the midst of the chaos, a British gunner had opened fire and shot another soldier dead. “A devastating board of inquiry report released by the Ministry of Defence exposed a catalogue of errors,” said the Guardian. Of course most papers buried this news, and the Sun managed to tell it as a story of “MoD betrayal“. So ? when will the British media learn not to take MoD press releases at face value?
Dying on the inside17 Sep 2008At the time of going to press (and almost a month after she died) the exact cause of Pauline Campbell?s death remains unclear. At her funeral in Whitchurch a former work colleague said simply: ?She died of a broken heart?. Beyond the church and at the cemetery, fellow peace and prison campaigners Joan Meredith and Helen John stood silently holding a single banner. It read ?Home Office Responsible for Pauline?s Death?. Helen John explained ?Pauline?s life could have been turned around if there had been the slightest sign of movement?. All the work that everyone has done has not been recognised and honoured by the Home Office. Her voice has fallen on deaf ears. Pauline was a loving mother and a middle-class woman living in a small village in rural Cheshire. What happened to her only child Sarah Elizabeth Campbell was every parent?s nightmare ? Sarah survived rape, but then suffered the ravages of drug addiction and self-harm and finally died, aged 19, ?in the care of the state? in Styal prison in Cheshire in 2003. With Sarah?s death Pauline?s life changed completely. She described what happened in the report she wrote for the organisation Inquest on 2 April called Death at the Hands of the State: ?I will never forget the cruel way she was treated, and the shock of her death. Until five years ago, I must admit I knew very little about prisons ? just that they were not very nice places, and people sometimes died there… ...When Sarah arrived at Styal, she was strip-searched twice, and taken to the segregation/punishment block. The following day, she swallowed a quantity of prescription antidepressant tablets, but then told staff what she had done. Unbelievably, prison staff, including a nurse, walked out of the cell, locked the door and left her alone. There were ?avoidable delays? before the prison called an ambulance. When paramedics arrived, they were stopped at the gates for eight minutes before being allowed through. Sarah was unconscious when they reached her… In 2005 the jury did not return a suicide verdict, because it was clear Sarah had not intended to die. The jury did say though that a ?failure in the duty of care? contributed to her death. In 2006 the Home Office accepted full liability for her death, and admitted her human rights were violated under the European Convention on Human Rights. Shamefully there was no apology for the death of my only child?. Pauline?s work with Inquest started just a few weeks after Sarah died. It began as her way of holding the government to account for the death of her daughter. Inquest is the only organisation in England and Wales which provides a specialist, comprehensive advice service on contentious deaths and their investigation to bereaved people, lawyers, other advice and support agencies, the media, parliamentarians and the wider public. Pauline contributed to the research report Dying on the Inside (2008) which provides a comprehensive examination of their casework on women?s deaths in prison from 1990-2007. The way in which Sarah died was not unusual. The report charts a massive increase in self-inflicted deaths and the meltdown of the women?s prison system. Pauline also worked closely with other bereaved families and the organisation United Friends and Family. The report of their ninth annual march held in 2007 shows her solidarity. ?Upon arriving at Downing Street the silent procession became a noisy explosion of anger led by Janet Alder whose brother Christopher suffocated on the floor of Hull Police Station, while officers made fun of him. The police attempted to enforce the SOCPA ban on megaphones. So Pauline Campbell took hold of the mic to remind them that she had been arrested 14 times and that previous attempts to prosecute her had failed miserably. The megaphone remained in use for the rest of the event.? (Indymedia) Direct action Frances Brooke of the Howard League has called her ?a suffragette for penal reform?. It?s a little known fact that the direct action Pauline became best known for had its roots in the peace movement. Joan Meredith remembers: ?She came to see me in the August (2003), and she was telling me about all that she had done. She had already been on Newsnight, written letters, written to newspapers and she was beginning to feel she was getting nowhere. She was feeling as if she was banging her head against a brick wall. So I told her about Trident Ploughshares – and she was interested. It was only after the first vigil in the January of 2004, Sarah had been dead a year, that she made up her mind what she wanted to do. I told her what we did, and how we had come to take direct action…we felt that we?d reached a point where we had to do something?. Every time a woman died in prison, Pauline would be there, with supporters, symbolically stopping the prison vans on the grounds that a woman had died in the ?care? of the prison, and therefore it was not safe to bring further prisoners to that jail. Who will do this job now? At Pauline Campbell?s funeral service, held in Whitchurch last month, many tributes were made, including this from Nikki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes: ?She opposed any measure which would result in any women being imprisoned. As a member of the Safety First Coalition which we coordinate, she spoke forcefully against the compulsory rehabilitation of sex workers, which was part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. Her lobbying helped us defeat those clauses in that bill. We loved her. If her commitment to justice was an ?obsession? it was the kind of obsession we need more of ? an antidote to the cowardly, uncaring and defeated approach of so many professionals. She set a standard to live by.? There are other important questions to answer about how the work Pauline did will be documented. Where is her computer? Do the police still have it along with historically important information about this woman?s life? The justice movement stays with us, and the hope that the powerful alliances Pauline helped to build ? reaching across human rights and peace movements ? will re-emerge in a new form, stronger than ever. Frances Laing is a freelance writer and journalist.
The price of free speech17 Sep 2008So we saw him off. Last week, in a victory for both medicine and free speech, Matthias Rath dropped his libel suit against the Guardian. But it seems amazing that the courts of this country allowed him to pursue this case. Rath, a German doctor, appears to have encouraged South Africans suffering from HIV to stop using anti-retroviral drugs and take his vitamin pills instead. Several of them died. It?s an important story, which shows that journalists are of some use after all. But the Guardian stood to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds for having the impudence to publish it. This newspaper is big enough to look after itself, and on Monday it was also able to settle its legal dispute with Tesco. But the net that Rath used is now being cast to catch ever smaller fry. In the past few days, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club has dropped its cases against some of its fans(1,2). I am now allowed to write about the worst example of legal bullying I have ever seen. The club has had serious problems, on and off the pitch, and many of its fans use an internet forum – owlstalk.co.uk – to discuss them. They make the kind of comments you would expect to find on any talk board, and which would normally be forgotten within 15 minutes. Two and half years ago the club launched its first suit. Only now have the people who posted these comments emerged blinking from the labyrinthine nightmare of English law. As Geoffrey Robertson and Andrew Nicol explain in their excellent book Media Law, England?s defamation laws date back to a statute created in 1275. The criminal offence of scandalum magnatum was devised to protect ?the great men of the realm? from stories which could stir the people against them. Three centuries later, the Star Chamber allowed noblemen to launch civil actions for libel, to provide them with an alternative to duelling(3). They made prolific use of this privilege until Fox?s Libel Act of 1792 determined that the claimant (the person bringing the case) had to prove that the words used against him were false, malicious and damaging. This means that libel law 216 years ago was more liberal and more in tune with the principle of free speech than it is today. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Robertson and Nicol show, ?the common law was re-fashioned to serve the British class system from the perspective of ? the Victorian club.? To protect wealthy people from criticism, the courts reversed Fox?s burden of proof. They created a presumption that any derogatory remark made about a gentleman must be false. This remains the case today. Defamation differs from all other civil or criminal laws in Britain: the burden of proof is on the defendant. The law remains the privilege of gentlemen, by which I mean people who are able to afford costs that often exceed a million pounds on each side. Cases tend to be resolved by sheer financial might, as the plaintiffs bankrupt the defendants, or force them to give in before their money runs out. This ensures that the law retains its 13th Century function. It guarantees that most attempts to hold the wealthy to account founder before they are launched, as people bite their tongues for fear of losing their homes. Since 1879, corporations have also been able to sue for libel(4). The inequality of arms this causes is compounded by the fact that there is no legal aid for defamation cases. Lawyers are now allowed to fight these suits on a no-win, no-fee basis, but this freedom is double-edged: if a defendant loses, he could end up paying double the claimant?s legal costs. This is the context in which Sheffield Wednesday went to court to demand the names and email addresses of 14 people who had posted comments on owlstalk. Here are some of the comments over which the club sued. ?What an embarrassing, pathetic, laughing stock of a football club we?ve become?. ?Another day, another blunder. I doubt even Leeds were in such a mess this time last summer, and look what happened to them?. ?I am waiting with baited breath to hear who the Chuckle Brothers have signed after their trip to watch players abroad. With the amount of money they have to spend and the wages they can offer the best we can hope for is that little known Transvestitavian International I.Sukblodov, who last scored in a brothel.?(5) Such comments were deemed by the Sheffield Wednesday?s lawyers to be ?false and seriously defamatory messages?(6) which had caused grievous injury to the delicate flowers who ran the club. (They should try posting an article on the Guardian?s Comment is Free site). The lawyers threatened ?proceedings to include claims for injunctions, damages, interest and legal costs (which could be substantial).?(7) The judge threw most of the application out, but instructed the forum?s host to reveal the email addresses of four of the posters, whose remarks seem to me to be almost as trivial as those he dismissed(8). This took place a year ago, and the long shadow of the law hung over the posters until the club?s lawyers dropped the case last week. Another case dates back to February 2006, when the club sent a warning letter to a fan called Nigel Short. When he received the letter he offered to apologise and to change his comments, but the club rejected this. He was able to fight it only because he found a lawyer – Mark Lewis of George Davies Solicitors in Manchester – who was incensed by this case and was prepared to represent him. ?I?ve had two and a half years of worrying I was going to lose my house?, Short tells me. ?It?s been hell. If Mark hadn?t done this no win, no fee, I would have been bankrupt by now.?(9) In November 2007, Short was diagnosed with throat cancer. The case continued. But on Wednesday 3rd September he announced that his treatment had been successful(10). On Friday 5th, the club dropped the case and agreed to pay his costs. It issued a press release which suggested it had done so because of ?Mr Short?s medical condition.?(11) I asked the club whether it had abandoned the case because it knew that Nigel would now live to fight the action. It has refused to answer my questions.(12) The point of this story is not that the directors of Sheffield Wednesday have behaved like a bunch of petulant bullies. It?s that the law equips them to do so. Most people see this as an issue only for journalists. But the internet ensures that the law of defamation now threatens anyone who stands up for what he believes to be right. This autumn the English branch of PEN, which defends the freedom to write, will launch a campaign against our libel law. But where are the rest of you? Where are the petitions, the public protests, the lobbies of parliament? Why is this 13th-Century law still permitted to stifle legitimate dissent? Wake up Britain: your freedoms are disappearing into the pockets of barristers and billionaires. www.monbiot.com References: 1. K&L Gates, 9th September 2008. SWFC and others v Neil Hargreaves. Notice of discontinuance. 2. Irwin Mitchell, 5th September 2008. SWFC and Kaven Walker v Nigel Short. Notice of discontinuance. 3. Geoffrey Robertson QC and Andrew Nicol QC, 2008. Media Law, 5th Edition. Penguin, London. 4. Geoffrey Robertson, pers comm. 5. K&L Gates, 10th August 2007. Schedule attached to letter sent to George Davies Solicitors. 6. SWFC and Others, 14th September 2007. Claim Form v Neil Hargreaves. No.HQ07X03169. 7. K&L Gates, 10th August 2007. Letter to George Davies Solicitors. 8. Richard Parkes QC, Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the Queen?s Bench Division, 2nd October 2007. Approved Judgment, Case No: HQ07X03169. 9. Nigel Short, pers comm. 10. http://nigelshort.blog.co.uk/2008/06/24/2008/07/27/they-say-a-picture-pa… 11. SWFC Ltd, 5th September 2008. Statement. This appears to have been removed from SWFC?s site, but I have retained a copy. Please write to me if you want to see it. 12. Colin Wood, SWFC, 15th September 2008. By email.
Transatalantic bomb plot trial collapses17 Sep 2008The conclusion of the trial of those accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airlines in 2006 has created a major crisis for the Labour government and the security services. It has revealed the gaping disconnect between public opinion and official propaganda on the ?war on terror.? So great is the damage that within days of the verdict the Crown Prosecution Service announced its intention to demand a retrial. On August 10, 2006, British security services dramatically announced they had foiled an imminent attack on a number of transatlantic planes flying out of London. Described as the most significant terror plot since 9/11, the early hours saw a series of raids in southern England and the detention of some 24 young men, predominantly British citizens of Pakistani origin, including a Muslim charity worker and an employee at Heathrow airport. London?s Heathrow airport?the world?s largest in terms of international passenger traffic?was shut down, thousands of flights were cancelled and an indefinite ban was imposed on hand luggage. Police and government officials reported that the men had intended to use liquid chemicals, disguised as drinks, to cause a series of explosions on up to 17 aircraft in midflight. Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson of the Metropolitan Police said the intention was to ?cause untold death and destruction and, quite frankly, to commit mass murder.? Then Home Secretary John Reid said that the scale of the plot was potentially larger than 9/11 and that the loss of life ?would have been on an unprecedented scale.? In the United States, President George W. Bush told a press conference that the plot was a ?historical reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.? Michael Chertoff, as homeland security secretary, said the plan was ?suggestive of an Al Qaeda plot,? was ?well advanced? and ?really quite close to the execution phase.? Some two years later?after a five-month trial costing 10 million?on September 8, a jury was unable to agree that such a plot ever existed, and failed to convict the eight men on trial on the prosecution?s central charge of plotting to explode transatlantic aircraft. The court had heard that ?martyrdom videos? recorded by six of the defendants had been found in which they threatened death and destruction, and that evidence gathered by undercover officers and through surveillance techniques proved that the men had established a bomb factory in an east London flat. The prosecution said that evidence also established that the bomb plot had been hatched in Pakistan and that when defendant Abdulla Ahmed Ali was arrested, he had a ?blueprint? for the plot in a pocket diary. A computer memory stick containing details of flights and airport security arrangements had also been uncovered. The eight denied such a plan. Ali said that the videos were intended to form part of a documentary highlighting Western attacks on Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Ali, Assad Ali Sarwar and Tanvir Hussian pled guilty to conspiracy to cause explosions, but said these were only ever intended as a publicity stunt to draw attention to the video and were never intended to cause harm. The jury rejected this claim and convicted the three of conspiracy to murder. But it was deadlocked on the central charge of conspiring to explode airliners. The four other men?Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Arafat Waheed Khan and Ibrahim Savant?had admitted conspiring to cause a public nuisance. But the jury was unable to reach verdicts on them in relation to charges of conspiracy to murder. Even more damaging from the standpoint of the prosecution?s case, Mohammed Gulzar?who was described as the plot?s ringleader but who always denied any involvement?was acquitted of all charges. He cannot be retried, but the Home Office has said that Gulzar, who is from Birmingham, will be subject to control orders curtailing his movements. Furious response to the verdict The verdict has brought a furious response from the government, security services and the media. The trial judge, Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith, has been singled out for criticism. He had led a slipshod trial, it was alleged, in which he had pandered to the juror?s every whim?allowing them a holiday, and even time off for a family emergency. Given the need to maintain juror continuity in such a lengthy case, the judge (in this instance, a former director of public prosecutions) was in fact required to set a holiday period at the start of the hearing and to make certain arrangements for other exigencies. After the jury had deliberated for 11 days without reaching agreement on the central charge, the judge had directed that he would accept a majority verdict of 11-1 or 10-2, which it subsequently failed to achieve. The jury itself has also been denounced as lax and incompetent. Typical of this approach was Max Hastings in the Daily Mail, who complained that the jurors? conclusions could only lead people to assume ?either that those responsible for protecting us do not know what they are doing; or that some jury members are stunningly indifferent to the activities of allegedly would-be mass-murderers.? Amidst suggestions that the verdict proved it was necessary that lengthy, ?complex? trials should not be heard by jurors, Frances Gibb in the Times cautioned that ?jurors must ensure that they do not fuel the opinion that, in long trials at least, their time is up.? In reality, the jury demonstrated a high degree of concern for points of law. They rejected the three main defendants? claim that they were only seeking minor explosions for propaganda purposes, but were not satisfied ?beyond reasonable doubt??the burden of proof at trial?that they had specifically intended to explode bombs on transatlantic flights. The jury?s diligence was such that Justice Calvert-Smith praised their conduct at the end of the trial. Excusing them from any further juror service for their lifetimes, he described them as a ?unique bunch of 12 people? and said they could ?Depart this court with the full-hearted thanks of the community for your service to it, which is far beyond the duty for most jurors, and my personal thanks.? A political conspiracy The Crown Prosecution Service?s announcement that it intends to seek a retrial of the seven demonstrates only contempt for due process. Having failed to secure the conviction it required, the CPS intends to keep going until it succeeds. On the face of it, this determination seems perverse. Why the concern with proving the specific charge of intention to explode transatlantic aircraft? After all, the three have been found guilty of conspiracy to murder, which carries a life sentence. Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the jury could not reasonably convict on the central charge. Within days of the initial raids and arrests, it was already apparent that there were gaping holes in the assertions by US and British authorities that they had stopped an imminent terror attack. Reports stated that no bombs had actually been assembled; that none of those detained had purchased airline tickets and some did not even have passports. In short, nothing presented during the trial proved that aircraft had been targeted. But an enormous political investment has been made in this case. As the World Socialist Web Site explained in ‘The politics of the latest terror scare’ the alleged plot was seized on not because of supposed security considerations but ?for transparently political purposes of a deeply reactionary character. It has, rather, to do with the machinations of the clique of political gangsters?Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, among others?who run the US government.? The context of the terror plot, the WSWS stated, was the ever-bloodier quagmire faced by the US-led occupation in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the politically explosive failure of the US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon. With Bush?s approval ratings plummeting, Republicans feared a wipeout in the upcoming November elections. ?The answer of the Cheney-Rove conspirators is to engineer a new wave of panic and hysteria in an attempt to once again stampede voters behind Bush?s ?war on terrorism.? They did the same in 2004, when in the run-up to the election the government suddenly announced a plot to attack major financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey?a plot that came to nothing.? This is now so clearly a matter of record that Simon Jenkins in the Guardian notes, ?It has been an open secret in police circles that Operation Overt, the most complex in counter-terror history, was sabotaged by the American vice president, Dick Cheney, desperate for a headline boost to the Republicans? 2006 mid-term elections.? He cites the recent book ?The Way of the World? by Ron Suskind, the Wall Street Journal?s former senior national affairs writer. This sets out how, after Prime Minister Tony Blair had informed Bush in July 2006 of the British intelligence services? two-year-long investigation, Operation Overt, into alleged Muslim extremists, ?Cheney then privately dispatched the CIA?s operations director, Jose Rodriguez, to Islamabad to secure the arrest of one of the British suspects, Rashid Rauf, believed to be a possible link with al-Qaida,? Jenkins writes. The capture of Rauf (who subsequently and inexplicably escaped detention) created panic in London, as ?the police had desperately to round up as many suspects as they could find overnight,? and ?all for the mid-term elections.? So rushed were the arrests that Blair had left for his Caribbean holiday just 48 hours before, and neither the head of the Metropolitan Police Special Operations department nor Britain?s transport secretary was aware that the raids were imminent until the last moment. That did not prevent the British government using the scare for its political objectives?in pressing for the extension of the period in which detainees could be held without charge for 90 days. As the WSWS stated, ?There undeniably is a conspiracy. It is a plot to use terrorist threats, real or imagined, to terrorise the American people, intimidate them, disorient them, and accustom them to accept the militarisation of every aspect of their lives and the destruction of their democratic rights. The centre of this conspiracy is the American government itself.? It is this political conspiracy that the British authorities are seeking to perpetuate in demanding a retrial.
Crime pays ? but for whom?17 Sep 2008About 100 years ago, the great sociologist Emile Durkheim turned common sense on its head by claiming not only that crime is normal but that it is necessary for healthy societies to flourish. He argued that crime draws us ? the law abiding ? together, in horror, outrage and, thereby, in solidarity. This remarkable idea that crime has benefits for the innocent continues to intrigue academics (and bedevil undergraduates) today. Can it be possible that we need crime? Aside from whatever moral renewal it might trigger, there are other ways that societies are increasingly dependent on crime. In this article I focus on crime?s more prosaic beneficiaries. Which groups and individuals gain the most financially and politically from crime? The first part of the answer feels as wrong-headed as Durkheim?s revolutionary thesis: crime pays, but not for criminals. One reason for this is that the people most likely in Scotland (as elsewhere) to perpetrate crime are also most likely to be its victims. The economic benefit of knocking someone on the head and making off with their watch is offset by getting knocked on the head and stolen from. And though it is true that police make arrests in only a small proportion of crimes that take place in a given year, street crime is still not a very sustainable career choice. Adapting an adage, nearly all criminals get caught some of the time and some criminals get caught all of the time. It?s a high risk, low payout way of life. One American study found that the average take among those caught shoplifting amounted to the equivalent of 30 (Jack Hayes, Discount Store News, 1990). (Note that I am discussing specifically ?street? crime. For crimes of the powerful, or so-called white collar crime, line drawing gets difficult between harmful things the powerful do that are against the law and the harmful things they do that are legal. My focus here on the beneficiaries of street crime is directed by the fact that this tends to be what politicians and the media are referring to when they talk about a crime ?problem?.) So who are the beneficiaries of crime if not those doing it? The reasonably alert reader will already have in mind a few of these crime ?winners?, but it is one hope of this article to surprise even the cynical observer by pointing out some of the less obvious beneficiaries. Herewith, I present a list of the beneficiaries you probably already know about alongside a discussion of some of crime?s dark horses. The beneficiaries of crime that you already knew about 1. The crime companies. For the first time in the history of capitalism, the crime trade occupies its own sector of the legitimate economy. In business-speak this trade is referred to as ?security services?. These are the firms who would not exist but for crime, and possibly more significantly, the fear of crime. There are now more private than public police in the world, and by comparison to what you or I grew up with in the 1950s, ?60s or ?70s a seeming infinity of ways to protect our homes and monitor our children?s movements. Once Addiewell prison opens in January 2009 Scotland will soon have its second privately financed, constructed and managed prison. When Addiewell reaches its capacity of 700 prisoners, Scotland will have a higher percentage of its prison population in for-profit prisons than any other country in the world. 2. The secondary crime market ? insurance companies. Insurance is the business of risk, but where we are encouraged to reduce it, avoid it and fear it, these companies buy it, trade it and make money off of it. We invest in insurance because of a risk of crime, and we pay for premium rises when we make a claim on this service. The question is, do these costs reflect real changes in risk? Richard V. Ericson?s study of the global insurance industry in the aftermath of 9/11 showed that insurance companies ?thrive on conditions of extreme uncertainty? and can foster these conditions to their financial advantage. In other words, the more worried we are, the more we are willing to spend on the legal protection racket. 3. The media. Crime pays because crime sells. Well, some crimes sell better than others. Research on media representations of crime shows a consistent pattern: there is disproportionate coverage of violent and sex crimes in newspaper and television reporting. This is true for Scotland in particular as well as the UK in general. Let?s not blame it all on the press: we may need crime in ways that Durkheim could not have anticipated. Crime-based TV shows, films and books take up substantial amounts of our leisure time and spending (so good for you, reading this dry piece when you could be catching up on CSI). 4. Politicians. Being tough on crime has become the basis of contemporary political capital. A single horrific crime provides a leader the opportunity to convey desirable qualities and appear decisive and go-getting in a way that is not possible when trying to deal with structural problems in the economy or global threats beyond the control of any single nation. Building prisons, passing tougher sentencing laws and promising to put more police on the beat have arguably won governments votes and elections. Realising improvements in the health service, ensuring stable pensions, and providing adequate childcare for working parents are just as, if not more, complex problems than crime but provide fewer opportunities to demonstrate one?s political charisma, as Brown, compared with Blair, is learning to his cost. 5. The police and other criminal justice agencies. Former President Bill Clinton promised to add 100,000 more police in 1995, Jack Straw sought to recruit 4,000 new frontline officers in 2000, and the SNP promised 1,000 additional police on the street in 2007. When politicians use crime to build up political capital, then the police become beneficiaries of crime. They gain more funding, more staff and more priority in the never ending competition among public services for scarce resources. This benefit accrues to the police as an organisation, where the normative model of organisation is the efficiently run business. Businesses seek growth and market share, and the law and order politics of the last quarter-century has ensured that the police, and criminal justice services generally, have gained significant market share in the public sector market. But sometimes this ?success? has been to the consternation of the winners themselves. John Carnochan, director of Strathclyde Police?s Violence Reduction Unit has argued that we need additional health visitors more than we need extra police. Similarly, the Prison Officers Association has expressed opposition to plans for three new 2,500 bed prisons in England and Wales. Individuals who work in criminal justice agencies have learned that reducing crime does not necessarily follow from expanding crime control services. The beneficiaries of crime that you didn?t know about 1. FT 500 Companies. The Royal Bank of Scotland may have reported dismal results in the current economic climate, but is expected to do well out of its financing and half ownership of the Addiewell prison. Other companies on the FT 500 list with stakes in Scottish criminal justice include BT, Serco and Siemens. Siemens? They hold a lucrative contract to supply telephone services for prisoners, so lucrative that a complaint has been made to Ofcom by the Scottish Consumer Council (joining a ?super complaint? by counterparts in Wales and England) about excessive rates charged to prisoners using pay phones, alleged to be seven times more costly than rates charged for use of public phones. Academics have begun to talk about the ?crime control industry? and the ?prison-industrial complex?, and these conversations need to be located in the context of globalised, networked society. The business of crime is no longer limited to crime businesses, it has become one of myriad types of investment that allow multinational corporations to diversify their holdings and expand the territories of profit. 2. Surplus labour. Mark on a map the location of prisons constructed in the UK since the mid-1980s and a clear pattern emerges: they are almost all built on the grounds of old MoD installations, hospitals, and especially, defunct mining villages. Addiewell, Kilmarnock, and the planned Bishopbriggs prison follow this trend. West Lothian once sought to re-invent itself as part of Silicon Glen but has now got an Inland Revenue call centre in the Bathgate facility vacated by Motorola, and a prison to replace the jobs long lost by the oil shale industry. Public sector employment in Scotland has grown about twice as fast as private sector employment since the mid-1990s, and while it is difficult to extract the specific contribution of criminal justice workers to this result, it underlines a trend. The public sector, for better or worse, is providing the jobs ? as prison guards, probation officers or police ? that manufacturing and other industries no longer can. 3. Universities. Crime, or more precisely the study of it, provides two major forms of income to academia ? postgraduate fees and research funding. And this not only makes me grateful, since it is the reason that I have a job, but it makes universities increasingly interested in developing criminology programmes, degrees and centres. There are millions of pounds at stake just for Scottish Universities in the study of crime. This merits some self-reflection: are we profiting from misery? Are we supporting a criminal justice-industrial complex? I would not like to think so, and personally feel our contribution is worthwhile when our research exposes the hidden implications of this industry or allows for better understanding and therefore responses to the problems of crime and victimisation. However, research provides the evidence in political debates and by acting as the information producers in this field we cannot hold ourselves innocent nor above these legitimacy wars. When it comes to making money off of crime, the usual suspects are easy to spot, but the net spreads wider to include groups and institutions we think of as working for the common good. There are others that could be added to this discussion ? the voluntary sector organisations dependent on government contracts to provide services to those involved in the criminal justice system. Even the reform groups that seek to limit the growth and damage of criminal justice are beneficiaries to the extent that their funding relies on crime remaining in the public imagination. Speaking as one implicated in the crime business, I would argue that we have got a responsibility for our involvement to work for the good. But sometimes it is not entirely clear what doing good means. Dr Sarah Armstrong is a Senior Research Fellow with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Criminal Justice Research, and has recently received a research grant to study prison policy making.
The Shape of Things to Come16 Sep 2008Press`Release from Statewatch The EU is currently developing a new five year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009-2014. The proposals set out by the shadowy ?Future Group? include a range of extremely controversial measures including techniques and technologies of surveillance and enhanced cooperation with the United States. A major new report The Shape of Things to come (60 pages) examines the proposals of the Future Group and their relation to existing and planned EU policies. It shows how European governments and EU policy-makers are pursuing unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone ? on the grounds that we can all be safe and secure from perceived ?threats?. But how, asks Tony Bunyan, Statewatch Director, ?are we to be safe from the state itself, from its uses and abuses of the data they hold on us?? Privacy swept away by EU?s ?digital tsunami? The report shows how the EU Future Group is seeking to harness the power of what it calls the ?digital tsunami? ? a rather insensitive concept ? for the benefit of law enforcement and security agencies. In the words of the EU Council presidency: Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts. The Shape of Things to come shows how the EU has substituted the concept that data relating to EU citizens should in principle be kept private from state agencies, in favour of the principle that the state should have access to every detail about our private lives. In this scenario, data protection and judicial scrutiny of police surveillance are perceived by the EU as ?obstacles? to efficient law enforcement cooperation. The Statewatch report calls for a meaningful and wide-ranging debate? before it is ?too late? for privacy and civil liberties. EU must make up its mind on formal ?Euro-Atlantic area of cooperation? In a case study of negotiations between the EU and the USA on justice and home affairs issues, The Shape of Things to come shows how the two powers are considering the establishment of a formal security cooperation framework from 2014. The Statewatch report also shows how on substantive issues relating to EU-US security cooperation since 11 September 2001, the USA has ?got its way? to the detriment of the privacy and protection of data pertaining to EU citizens. ?EU standards have been by-passed or undermined and the USA has steadfastly refused to offer Europeans the equivalent level of privacy protection to US citizens?, says Tony Bunyan. On the proposal that the EU should tie itself in with the USA across the whole justice and home affairs field, Tony Bunyan argues that ?it is hard to think of a greater danger to our privacy and civil liberties?. ?Convergence principle? = ?EU state building? The EU Future Group also calls for the application of the “convergence principle” to policing and law enforcement in the EU. According to the Group, the principle “would apply to all areas where closer relations between Member States are possible: agents, institutions, practices, equipment and legal frameworks”. While national law enforcement agencies will still continue to work according to their national legal frameworks, those frameworks will increasingly be determined at the EU level, through ?harmonisation? or the development of EU institutions and law enforcement agencies. The Shape of Things to come shows the extent of the consolidation and extension of police powers at the EU level, from mandatory communications data retention to the continued expansion of agencies like the European Police Office (Europol), the EU prosecutions agency (Eurojust), the fledgling EU border police (Frontex) and the planned Standing Committee on Internal Security (COSI). Before yet more powers over policing and surveillance are de facto granted to the EU, suggests Tony Bunyan, ?Europe needs to have a meaningful debate about the direction in which the EU is heading and just what this means for civil liberties and privacy?. The full Analysis: The Shape of Things to Come is at:
http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/the-shape-of-things-to-come.pdf Statewatch: Observatory on ?The Shape of Things to Come? ? the EU Future group:
http://www.statewatch.org/future-group.htm Tony Bunyan is a writer and journalist and has been Director of Statewatch since 1991. He is the author of The Political Police in Britain (1977), Secrecy and openness in the EU (1999) and has edited numerous Statewatch publications including The War on freedom and democracy ? Essays in civil liberties in Europe (2006). He has taken eight successful complaints against the Council of the European Union to the European Ombudsman on access to documents on behalf of Statewatch as well as two successful complaints against the European Commission. In 2001 and 2004 he was selected by the European Voice newspaper as one of the 50 most influential people in Europe. For more information contact Tony Bunyan:
Statewatch office: 00 44 0208 802 1882
e-mail: office@statewatch.org
Postal address: Statewatch, PO Box 1516, London N16 0EW, UK
“Not Very Interesting” – Haiti, New Orleans and Media Hypocrisy16 Sep 2008On September 1, the press began warning that “the storm of the century” was about to hit New Orleans as Hurricane Gustav “bore down nearly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city”. (‘It’s the storm of the century,’ Daily Mirror, September 1, 2008) A comparable storm of media coverage was to follow, with continuous live broadcasts from the city. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin heightened the sense of drama: “For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you – that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life.” (Paul Thompson, ‘Storm of the century,’ Daily Mail, September 1, 2008) But Nagin’s worst fears were not realised. In fact weather forecasters had warned at the time that it was “too early to know whether New Orleans will take another direct hit”. (Daily Mirror, op.cit) By September 3, the reality was apparent. Hurricane Gustav had swept through Louisiana, causing eight deaths and widespread damage, but “had not produced any significant flooding,” the Independent reported. US officials “faced charges of over-reacting” as they were “forced to defend the decision to evacuate more than two million people”. (Guy Adams, ‘Officials deny threat of Gustav was exaggerated,’ The Independent, September 3, 2008) Saturation media coverage had been devoted to a disaster that had simply not happened. The following day, a senior BBC journalist leaked an email from his editor to media analyst David Miller at Strathclyde University. The whistleblower’s editor had listed several stories which he described as “not that interesting”, followed by the comment: “Dull stories – every one of them, don’t you think?” These were the stories: “The leading anti-drugs judge in Afghanistan has been assassinated. “There’s been an angry reaction in France following the magazine publication of photos of Taleban fighters displaying trophies they’d stripped from French soldiers killed in an ambush. “The authorities in Haiti say the number of those killed in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna has risen to more than sixty. “A United Nations report says the world’s wealthiest countries are failing to deliver on their promises to boost development aid.” The anonymous BBC journalist expressed his feelings: “I’m sure once that Hurricane gets to Florida we’ll have live coverage of the telephone polls falling over, but sixty dead people in Haiti. Not that interesting.” Hell In Haiti Indeed, initial early estimates that more than 500 people had died in Haiti’s floods received barely half a dozen mentions in British newspapers. It is now thought that as many as 1,000 people have died so far, with one million made homeless out of a population of 8.7 million (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/10/haiti_struggles_with_humanitarian_disaster_in). Rescue groups were last week reported to be unable to reach many villages across the southern region or to Gonaives, Haiti’s third-largest city, which was cut off with 300,000 homeless residents. The city’s population has been stranded for days without food or drinking water. Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that provides free medical care in central Haiti, wrote: “After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnesse in Gonaives.” (http://www.pih.org/inforesources/ news/PEF_hurricane_letter.html) Hedi Annabi, a United Nations envoy, touring Gonaives commented: “What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/ 08/world/americas/08ike.html) The New York Times reported how crowds of children had chased UN food trucks shouting “Hungry, hungry” while families climbed on to rooftops and floating cars to escape floodwaters. The figure of 1,000 dead in Haiti compares with eight dead reported for Louisiana. And yet a media database search (September 15) showed that the words ‘New Orleans’ and ‘hurricane’ appeared in 265 UK newspaper articles over the last three weeks. Over the same period, the words ‘Haiti’ and ‘hurricane’ appeared in 113 articles. There were 67 mentions of Haiti’s ‘floods’. But the devil is in the detail. Many references to Haiti were limited to one or two sentences. On September 9, the Daily Mail reported merely: “Hurricane Hanna killed hundreds of people and caused widespread destruction when it struck the island of Haiti last week.” (Helen Bruce, ‘Here comes a hurricane to soak us again,’ Daily Mail, September 9, 2008) On the same day, the Mirror wrote: “Hanna, which caused widespread destruction and killed more than 500 people when it hit Haiti, is now on its way across the Atlantic towards Ireland.” (Maeve Quigley, ‘Hit by Hanna,’ Mirror, September 9, 2003) The most substantial report was a 530-word section in an article in the Guardian on September 7. The Times devoted 150 words to the story on September 8. The Independent has this month devoted a total of 153 words to Haiti’s crisis. By contrast, a single Independent article on the threat to New Orleans on September 1 took up 1,269 words. The irony is striking. Earlier this month, an Independent leader noted the “stark contrast” between the massive attention given to the plight of New Orleans while “the catastrophic floods in the Indian state of Bihar have barely registered on the international radar”. The editors added: “What makes the discrepancy even starker is that the Bihar disaster has so far been considerably more destructive, killing hundreds and leaving more than a million people in this desperately poor region homeless.” (Leader, ‘A flood of sympathy, sometimes,’ The Independent, September 2, 2008) There were practical reasons for the difference, we were told – it was harder for journalists to travel to Bihar than to New Orleans. But there was more: “[I]t would be dishonest to ignore some of the darker reasons for the discrepancy in the media coverage of these two disasters. One is a failure of empathy in the West. People can envisage themselves stranded in New Orleans, but not a village in Bihar. And then there is the sad reality that, even in our globalised age, lives lost in the developing world are regarded as less newsworthy than lives lost in the rich world. Even when subject to the undiscriminating violence of nature, it would appear that all men and women are nothing like equal.” At time of writing, the Independent has not mentioned Haiti since September 5. But the paper has at least helped explain its own prejudice. Inconvenient News Recent performance fits as part of a consistent bias in media reporting. In the latest NACLA Report on the Americas, Dan Beeton of the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research interviewed several US journalists who have reported from Haiti. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one described a common view among editors: “Everyone knows the place [Haiti] is a mess, so what are you going to tell me that’s new? What goes on there does not affect people in the US.” (Beeton, ‘Bad News From Haiti: U.S. Press Misses the Story,’ September/October 2008, NACLA. See the full article here: http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2846) This indifference has led to an appalling level of non-reporting, not just of the latest floods, but also of the killing of unarmed civilians by United Nations forces (Minustah), the Haitian National Police, and death squads. On July 6, 2005, the UN’s Minustah force launched an assault into Haiti’s Cit Soleil. According to declassified messages sent that day from the US Embassy in the Haitian capital to the State Department, UN troops fired 22,000 shots in seven hours in a neighbourhood where most people live in flimsy metal structures. As many as 30 people were killed, including a number of children. Although a freelance journalist was on hand to document the shootings and take video statements from victims’ relatives, only a few US newspapers mentioned the incident. These mostly portrayed the incident as a successful UN attempt to eliminate gang members – reports of civilian deaths were ignored. The US press has given similar treatment to atrocities committed by the Haitian National Police. By contrast, at the time of President Aristide’s second term in power (2001-2004), there were numerous articles, editorials, and opinion pieces in US and British papers denouncing violence. The Times, for example, did not grieve Aristide’s overthrow by armed thugs in 2004, but instead denounced his “despotic and erratic rule”. (Leader, ‘Au revoir Aristide,’ The Times, March 1, 2004) The Independent‘s Andrew Gumbel wrote a piece titled, “The little priest [Aristide] who became a bloody dictator like the one he once despised.” (Gumbel, The Independent, February 21, 2004) And yet, Beeton reports: “Reasonable estimates put the number of political killings – by the police or groups supporting his government – during Aristide’s two terms in office at between 10 and 30. This contrasts with the more than 3,000 political killings that took place under the 2004-06 interim government (and the estimated 50,000 under the Duvalier dictatorships).” So why has so little attention been paid to Haiti after Aristide, when there has been far more political turmoil and violence? One reporter told Beeton: “If the United States has spent millions of dollars funding the training of police officers, who then terrorize people or become drug traffickers, the U.S. would not be eager to have this information broadcast to American taxpayers.” Another reporter described how his editor had turned down an investigative piece on Rudolph Boulos, one of the wealthiest men in Haiti and a board member of the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington-based lobby group. The editor explained: “Boulos is a very well-known figure in Washington.” The deeper reasons were indicated by The Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which observed after the initial, US-backed coup to overthrow Aristide in September 1991: “Under Aristide, for the first time in the republic’s tortured history, Haiti seemed to be on the verge of tearing free from the fabric of despotism and tyranny which had smothered all previous attempts at democratic expression and self-determination.” Aristide’s victory “represented more than a decade of civic engagement and education on his part,” in “a textbook example of participatory, ‘bottom-up’ and democratic political development”. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Year 501, Verso, 1993, p.209) Howard French wrote in the New York Times in 1992: “Despite much blood on the army’s hands, United States diplomats consider it a vital counterweight to Father Aristide, whose class-struggle rhetoric… threatened or antagonized traditional power centres at home and abroad.” (French, ‘Aristide seeks more than moral support,’ New York Times, September 27, 1992) We asked Beeton what he thought of media coverage of the latest flooding. He explained that the crisis is made far worse by the fact that so many of Haiti’s trees have been cut down by desperate people for sale or use: “Media coverage of floods and other natural disasters in Haiti consistently overlooks the human-made contribution to those disasters. In Haiti’s case, this is the endemic poverty, the lack of infrastructure, lack of adequate health care, and lack of social spending that has resulted in so many people living in shacks and make-shift housing, and most of the population in poverty. But Haiti’s poverty is a legacy of impoverishment, a result of centuries of economic looting of the country by France, the U.S., and of odious debt owed to creditors like the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. Haiti has never been allowed to pursue an economic development strategy of its own choosing, and recent decades of IMF-mandated policies have left the country more impoverished than ever. “This is why the country is denuded of trees, after desperate Haitians cut them down to make charcoal to use or sell. Without vegetation, the country is more prone to flooding. “Until Haiti is able to develop, free of foreign interference and the dictates of foreign creditors, it’s impoverishment is likely to continue and even to worsen. “The international community can help mitigate future disasters by canceling Haiti’s debt – much of it accrued under the Duvalier dictatorships – and giving Haiti the policy space it needs to promote real, sustainable, development.” (Email to Media Lens, September 9, 2008) This honest analysis of the root causes of Haitian misery, like the misery itself, is unlikely to trouble the pages of our newspapers any time soon. ______ Suggested action The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Ask the Independent why it has had so little to say about the crisis in Haiti. Write to the Independent‘s foreign news editor, Katherine Butler
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Financial chaos coming on London tube16 Sep 2008The nearly 2 billion gap between Tube Lines’ 7.2 billion costs estimate and the maximum 5.5 billion the PPP arbiter says it should get raises fears for planned Tube upgrades. The Tube Lines estimate is a massive 3.1 billion higher – 2.5 billion taking inflation into account – than that of London Underground, which called for the arbiter’s early guidance. “Metronet’s collapse was so spectacular that it made Tube Lines look good in comparison, but RMT has maintained from the start that the PPP itself is the complex, wasteful problem,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today. “After Metronet’s collapse left the public with a 2 billion extra bill, the alarm bells should be ringing and it is important to understand that 95 % of Tube Lines? colossal liabilities are also underwritten by the public purse.? Subsidy for the Tube has increased 20-fold as a result of the PPP, and Tube Lines has been taking more than 1 million a week in profits for its shareholders. Now they are asking for 2 billion more than the arbiter thinks their costs should be. They?re picking our pockets! “The PPP, like all PFI projects, is a complex scam designed to convert public money into private profit, and these contracts should be brought in-house now,” Bob Crow continued. Meanwhile chaos looms in preparation for the London Olympics We are now less than four years away from the 2012 Olympics, and if we are to get the Tube network the capital needs in place by then, the time to sort out this mess is now. There is no agreement with London Underground staff to run the network round the clock during the 2012 Olympics, the Tube?s biggest union said today. Following the mayor?s public announcement that the network would operate 24 hours a day during the 2012 games, RMT reveals that it has yet to be approached by the mayor, Transport for London or London Underground Ltd management for discussions on the many complex issues involved. ?It is all very well the mayor announcing that the Tube will run-around the clock during the Olympics, but if it is going to happen it will need detailed planning and the agreement and goodwill of the professional staff who will deliver it,? RMT general secretary Bob Crow said. ?RMT supports the 2012 Olympics and for two years we have been seeking an early settlement that takes account of the substantial additional burdens and responsibilities that London?s transport workers will have placed upon them. ?We are not opposed to 24-hour running during the games in principle, but simply announcing it will not make it happen, and so far there has not been a word from the new mayor seeking even preliminary talks.? Mayor Boris is clearly out of his depth in all this. Here?s more evidence. Passengers to pay Inflation-busting fare increases are a short-sighted fix that will create more problems than they solve, London Underground?s biggest union says today. As the mayor of London announced increases at one per cent ahead of inflation, RMT called for an end to the colossal waste of public money still being poured into private pockets under the part-privatisation of the Tube?s infrastructure ?If the mayor needs extra cash for the London transport network he should be looking at ways to end the shocking waste still caused by the PPP, not squeezing passengers even more with inflation-busting fares hikes,? RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today. ?The economy and the environment need a massive increase in affordable transport capacity, and that applies to London as much as the rest of Britain,? Bob Crow said. This article first appeared in Socialist Appeal.
Lib Dems -Shifting to the right16 Sep 2008Of course Nick Clegg and Vince Cable insist that today’s vote by the Liberal Democrat conference in favour of tax and spending cuts doesn’t represent a move to the right. They have to say that both to keep on side their own activists – who put up an impressive rearguard fight against the U-turn on the floor of the conference – and to maintain their two-way-bet appeal to traditional Labour and Tory voters north and south. But a highly symbolic shift to the right is exactly what took place in Bournemouth this afternoon ? and it also marked a historic reassertion of old-fashioned economic liberalism against the party’s more interventionist and social-democratic trends which looks likely to have a wider impact on British politics. It’s not their proposals to cut taxes on the low-paid with cash clawed back from tax loopholes for the rich and capital gains and higher-rate pension contribution exemptions that are the main issue. That’s a redistributive package which leaves the overall levels of tax and spend unchanged, even if dropping the 50% rate was a step backwards. And there’s no question that taxes need to be cut for lower-paid workers, whose living standards have been hit hardest by fuel, food and housing cost rises. The crucial change is the new commitment to reduce the overall level of public spending and taxation, which actually goes further than David Cameron and George Osborne have so far on behalf of the Tories ? and that on the cusp of recession, when what is needed is a boost to public spending, not a cut. Out of 20bn-worth of proposed Lib Dem cutbacks to the “bloated public sector”, around 4bn is being earmarked by the leadership for extra tax cuts. Naturally, that’s hedged around with qualifications and is anyway entirely hypothetical, since the party’s chances of even making it into a coalition government are minimal. But in terms of the political terms of trade, the decision seems bound to have an impact on the other main parties and give cover to Cameron’s honeyed crusade for a smaller state ? along with those within Labour who want to head in the same direction. If it were really just about making the tax burden fairer, as Clegg’s rival for the leadership Chris Huhne argues, there would have been no argument. Instead, there were plenty of rhetorical echoes of classic Thatcherism in the conference debate today – about problems not being solved by “throwing money at them” and “giving back” people their own cash. A key part of the motivation for the Lib Dems’ 180-degree turn from its previous higher tax commitments is clearly a desperation to shore up its position against the newly resurgent Tories, who are the main challengers to most sitting Lib Dem MPs. But for Clegg and his closest supporters, it’s also ideological. The Lib Dem leader, whose politics were formed in Margaret Thatcher’s heyday, is an economic liberal whose conclusion from a decade of New Labour’s corporate-driven economic management is that social democratic state intervention is dead. The libertarian rightwingers from the Liberal Vision pressure group are delighted with Clegg’s approach, but want him to go further still. Its chairman, Mark Littlewood, told a fringe meeting today that “low tax and small government” must be the Liberal Democrats’ “key message”. How all this is supposed to bolster an economy buckling under the impact of an international financial meltdown and the failed politics of deregulation, or promote the greater equality all Lib Dems claim to be in favour of, is anybody’s guess. The likeihood is that it won’t save the bacon of Lib Dem MPs either.
Twilight of the NPT?15 Sep 2008The nuclear non-proliferation treaty belongs to that venerable tradition in the Atlantic world of unequal agreements: those which?in their very texts, rather than just in their effects?give extraordinary benefits and liberties to one set of states while constraining the freedom of action and rights of others. Yet it has been remarkably successful since 1970 in attracting the adherence of the overwhelming majority of countries. Most surprisingly, the one that has benefited most from its terms?the United States?has been most vigorously attempting to undermine the npt regime over the last eight years, generating a major crisis in the efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons through international cooperation. As Norman Dombey?s essay in this issue so vividly demonstrates, the NPT was constructed through US?Soviet negotiations in the 1960s to prevent non-weapon states from acquiring an arsenal, while leaving existing weapon states a free hand to develop and deploy?indeed, use?nuclear weapons as they saw fit. [1] Beyond a purely rhetorical commitment to negotiate disarmament, no restraints were put on them at all. By 1992, once the five permanent members of the UN Security Council?all nuclear powers?had joined, formidable instruments became available to enforce these unequal provisions. Any other country seeking to acquire nuclear weapons could now be referred for judgement before the UNSC, on the charge of posing a threat to peace under Chapter Seven of the Charter. This also allows the Permanent Five to legally bind all un member states to action?up to and including military attack?against the state in question. This threat would be particularly potent against states that had ratified the NPT, and thus submitted their nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A weapons programme would be a direct violation of their obligations under the Treaty; thus referral to the UNSC would become a predictable institutional outcome of the NPT regime. Policing the South The Treaty was signed and ratified only after the Permanent Five had acquired their nuclear weapons?in the case of Britain and France, to preserve their great-power status; in the case of the Soviet Union and then China, to acquire a nuclear-deterrent capacity against the United States. The NPT was designed to lock the rest of the world into accepting the Permanent Five?s special rights. Why, in such circumstances, was the npt regime able to persist, enlarge its membership and fulfil so many of its inequitable goals, not only during the Cold War, but even after? One answer would be that most of the states who had the industrial and technological capacity to build both a nuclear bomb, and the vehicle to transmit it, were already offered protection from nuclear or conventional attack by one of the two superpowers during the Cold War. States that persisted in their efforts to achieve nuclear-weapon status were those that faced security challenges but could not expect guaranteed protection from a superpower: Israel, in its struggle with the Arab states in the 1950s and 1960s, before the US decisively committed itself to Israeli military security; apartheid South Africa, repeatedly at war in Africa (and indeed, suffering defeats at the hands of Cuban forces in Angola in the 1970s); India, after its defeat by China in the border war of 1962; followed by Pakistan, in response to the threat from India. This explanation for the rarity of moves to circumvent or flout the NPT would also cover the cases of North Korea and Iraq. The former was neither a Russian nor a Chinese satellite, and could not rely on them for ultimate security even during the Cold War, when it faced aggression from both South Korea and the us. Iraq under the Ba?ath also faced grave military threats, not only from the Western powers but also from Israel and Iran, and could not count on superpower protection. But it had the financial resources for a nuclear-weapons programme. Conversely, the majority of states have not perceived themselves to be facing such dire military threats as to warrant the acquisition of nuclear arms. Even those with strong traditions of retaining complete autonomy over their security, such as Sweden or Brazil, have refrained from adopting such a course. Yet absence of military threat may not fully explain the apparent achievements of the npt regime. Another element of the explanation may be that its success has been much more partial than it seems. The Treaty contains a grey zone between a state being an industrial nuclear power, in the civilian field, and being a nuclear-weapon state. It treats these two statuses as polar opposites: industrial proliferation is actually encouraged, while the cross-over to armaments is outlawed. In practice, no such gulf exists between the two: civilian nuclear power is the necessary threshold for acquiring nuclear-weapon capabilities. This has no doubt ensured that countries such as Germany and Japan?though deeply critical of aspects of the asymmetrical NPT regime?have been prepared to go along with it, for they cannot be described simply as non-weapon states. They would be better termed ?threshold? states, which remain within the terms of the Treaty but could, like a number of other formally non-weapon states, transform very swiftly indeed into full-fledged nuclear powers. This grey zone is combined with the Treaty?s blinkered focus exclusively upon the industrial side of nuclear arms: it has nothing to say about delivery vehicles?that is, missile capabilities. Thus, threshold states can proceed under the terms of the Treaty to develop even intercontinental ballistic missiles without sanction. Nor does the so-called Missile Technology Control Regime serve to block them doing so. The MTCR is an informal club, established in 1987, to prevent diffusion of technology for missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads?specifically, those able to carry a payload of 500kg at least 300 kilometres. The club?s founders consisted precisely of those developed states which possessed such technologies, namely Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. The first four names are indicative: formally non-nuclear powers, but in reality threshold states with advanced missile technologies. The list of members has now grown to 34, of which 19 are in the European Union. Another 10 are US allies; Russia joined the club in 1995. Not a single country from the global South holds membership. In short, beneath the headline picture of the npt anchoring the monopoly of nuclear-weapon states, we find a second layer of reality: a regime, including the MTCR, which has enabled a substantial number of rich countries, allied to the US, to become threshold states with advanced missile technologies. Alongside these there is a third reality: a sustained effort by the North, plus Russia, to block the possibility of states in the global South acquiring deterrence capability. This pattern is replicated by other organizations that form part of the overall counter-proliferation regime, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group. This was created in 1975 on US initiative, in the face of India?s nuclear-weapons programme. We are still left with two substantial puzzles: first, why have states in the global South that have bad relations with the United States still tended to adhere to the npt regime? Secondly, why has the us itself, in the post-Cold War period, shown such hostility to the rules of a regime that gives it such inordinate privileges? The most striking examples of states remaining in the npt, apparently against their own interests, are North Korea and Iran. American hostility towards them has been long-standing and deep: there is no doubt that the United States has been programmatically committed to overthrowing both regimes, even if its tactics towards each have varied across time. Yet both have continued to declare their respect for the npt and iaea. One reason lies in the enthusiasm for civilian nuclear power embedded in the foundations of the IAEA and the NPT. It is worth pointing out that when the iaea was created in the 1950s and the npt established at the end of the 1960s, few could envisage any state from the global South acquiring the indigenous know-how to construct their own civilian nuclear-power industry. North Korea and Iran have committed themselves to achieving just that and have been able to legitimate their efforts through the iaea?npt framework. Today many others have the technological and financial resources, if they wish, to follow suit. Far from precluding the emergence of threshold states in the South, the regime?s rules actually facilitate it. Furthermore, the NPT does allow states to acquire a nuclear-deterrent capability: under Article X, if a state faces ?extraordinary events? that ?have jeopardized? its ?supreme interests?, it may withdraw from the restraints of the Treaty with three months? notice. This was exactly the course taken by North Korea in the face of blunt threats of pre-emptive attack?preventive war?made by the US. Pyongyang gave notice, withdrew and carried out a successful nuclear-weapon test. After the Bush Administration?s subsequent retreat, North Korea began to return to the npt regime. Persian smokescreen The confrontation between Iran and the US and EU over the former?s nuclear programme is paradigmatic of the current contradictions of the npt regime. Although there are some indications that Iran conducted research relevant to nuclear-weapon production between 1989 and 1993 (in a period when neighbouring Iraq did have a secret crash nuclear programme), there has been no significant evidence since then of clandestine weapon development. [2] Since the 1990s Iran has instead sought to establish civilian nuclear energy and substantial missile capacity. By pursuing both these paths, Iran could hope to become a threshold state in the same sense as Germany and Japan, and it could do so quite legally under the NPT, to which it has continued to adhere under the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, the US?supported by the EU?has been attempting to prevent Iran from exercising its legal rights to enrich uranium for civilian uses. This campaign under Bush has been in many ways continuous with Clinton?s policy in the mid-1990s. His Administration had dubbed Iran?with which the US had no diplomatic relations?a rogue terrorist state secretly seeking ?weapons of mass destruction?, and imposed sweeping sanctions centred on an embargo of Iranian oil. [3] Until 2002, Western Europe rejected both the embargo and Washington?s accusations against Tehran. Trade was growing between Iran and the eu, with Germany its main trading partner. By 2000 the EU was preparing the way for a trade agreement with Iran; European oil companies, including British ones, were discussing new investments. The Russian government was pursuing a similar course and had committed itself to a contract to build a nuclear-power station at Bushehr, on the Gulf coast. Iranian foreign policy was geared towards using these links as a vector to integrate the country into the international institutional and trading order. Against this background, and in the context of American preparations to attack Iraq, Bush?s January 2002 State of the Union address denounced the Islamic Republic as part of the ?Axis of Evil? and claimed the right to engage in a pre-emptive war to overthrow it. This did not initially alter the eu?s course: it proceeded to sign a new commercial agreement with Iran. Following discussions with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Ahani?less than a week after the Bush speech?Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqu, speaking for the presidency of the eu, told a news conference in Madrid that the 15-country bloc would seek ?maximum cooperation? with Iran on trade, the fight against terrorism and human rights. [4]US pressure, however, soon swung the West European states towards joining its campaign to deny Iran?s right to organize the full nuclear-fuel cycle, and support Washington?s demand that Iran stop enriching uranium on its own territory. The British and French sought to justify this by parroting the charges routinely made against Iran by the Clinton and Bush Administrations, which they had themselves previously ignored. The German government, more squeamish about Bush-style big-lie propaganda, said Tehran should give up its rights as a necessary step towards easing tensions between Iran and the US. The problem facing the US?British?French approach was that the iaea inspectorate, under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, was not prepared to participate in spreading unsubstantiated allegations. In December 2002 the Bush Administration therefore tried to whip up a melodramatic media campaign in the hope of railroading the iaea Board into taking action against Iran. The trick was to present the news that Iran had been constructing nuclear facilities in Natanz and Arak as a shocking revelation of secret and presumably illegal activity. The us published satellite images of the two sites under construction as proof. This supposedly shocking revelation was nothing of the kind. The Natanz complex was for fuel fabrication; the Arak facility was a heavy-water reactor. NPT safeguards require Iran to inform the iaea of such facilities only six months before they go into operation. The pilot plant at Natanz was not operational until early 2006 while the one in Arak is not due to start until 2014. [5] The fact that Iran did not inform the Agency of their construction until February 2003 did not constitute any breach of the NPT, and thus the inspectorate refused to treat the us expos as evidence of this. [6] During 2003 and 2004 the Bush Administration worked to get rid of ElBaradei and gain control of the iaea inspectorate. They tapped all his phone calls and engaged in what the Washington Post later called an ?orchestrated campaign? to spread anonymous accusations that he was a secret supporter of Iran, had capitulated to pressure and was deliberately concealing damning details about Iran?s programme from the Board. ?The plan is to keep the spotlight on ElBaradei and raise the heat?, a us official said. [7] These kinds of tactics had succeeded earlier in 2002 with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a UN body based in The Hague. Its head, Jos Bustani, had infuriated Washington by attempting to involve the OPCW in the search for suspected chemical weapons in Iraq; the White House successfully undermined and removed him. This had caused little stir internationally because of the OPCW?s fairly low profile, but also because its members wanted to avoid being drawn into the diplomatic row leading up to the Iraq war. The aim now was to unseat ElBaradei when he came up for re-election in December 2004. The US State Department sought alternative candidates such as Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Brazilian disarmament expert Sergio Duarte and two South Korean officials. [8] Downer was not prepared to stand against ElBaradei, while the latter three represented countries under iaea investigation for suspect nuclear work. The drive to remove ElBaradei ultimately failed because a sufficient number of states on the iaea Board continued to back him. As a result, the us was left with only a few technicalities dating back to the 1990s on which to accuse Iran: it had twice neglected to report enrichment facilities, and there were six instances of ?failure to provide design information or updated design information? for certain installations. [9]iaea officials did not consider these omissions to be actual breaches of the NPT, and by autumn 2005 they had in any case been cleared up. ElBaradei certified that ?all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for and, therefore, such material is not diverted to prohibited activities.? To put these technical violations in perspective, between 2002 and 2005 the Agency found discrepancies in the utilization of nuclear material in as many as 15 countries including Taiwan, Egypt and South Korea. In 2002 and 2003, for example, the latter refused to let inspectors visit facilities connected to its laser-enrichment programme. Subsequently, Seoul confessed to having secretly enriched uranium to a 77 per cent concentration of U-235?sufficient for weapons-grade fissile material. Neither the US nor EU suggested referring the matter to the unsc. [10] In contrast, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has produced weapons-grade uranium. Despite intrusive inspections, no facility or plan to do so has been discovered, nor have any weapon designs surfaced. ElBaradei?s September 2005 report concluded that Iranian concealment had been effectively rectified and was no longer a significant problem. [11] With the deepening crisis in Iraq, the Bush Administration eventually split over its own confrontation with Iran: its intelligence apparatus?backed by a powerful segment of the military?sabotaged the drive against Iran within the unsc and iaea by declaring that there did not, in fact, seem to be a secret nuclear-weapon programme. For face-saving reasons, the report suggested that Iran may have had one before 2003 but had abandoned it. Primacy and proliferation The fate of the NPT since the end of the Cold War has been linked to that of the American drive for global primacy in the military?political field. If that drive had been successful, the Treaty would have become irrelevant and the iaea inspectorate would have been reduced to a technical and political support system for Washington. The technological core of the US effort has focused on rendering obsolete other states? attempts to furnish themselves with a nuclear deterrent against American attack. This could be achieved through the development of anti-missile systems within the Star Wars tradition: powerful radar and precision guidance systems could enable the US to destroy missiles on launch. At the same time, the US has been attempting to develop immensely powerful bunker-buster bombs capable of destroying underground nuclear and other military facilities. The political core, meanwhile, has been the doctrine of so-called pre-emptive war, entitling the us to attack regimes that it opposes, and to do so without the support of any multilateral institution such as the IAEA or the UN. A corollary of this is that the us is also free unilaterally to decide which states it allows to acquire nuclear weapons, without bothering with the rules of the NPT regime. This, indeed, has been the premise of the long-standing us policy towards Israel and its current approach to India. Yet the us campaign seems doomed to failure. In the first place, the technological and military?political capacities it requires do not seem within reach. This is partly the result of drawbacks inherent in anti-missile defence systems: even if the technology works it could be overwhelmed, at least in the case of large countries such as Russia and China, by the opponent?s capacity to enlarge its stock of missiles and launch sites. More importantly, hostile states also frequently possess other, non-nuclear forms of deterrence which can lead to a loss of American nerve. This is the lesson of the confrontation with both North Korea and Iran. In each case, Washington blinked. The advanced capitalist world?s acceptance of American claims to primacy over it does not seem to extend to allowing the devastation of parts of that zone itself, such as South Korea; nor to tolerating a catastrophic interruption of its main oil supplies. Even where the us succeeds in confining destruction to an excluded state such as Iraq, it lacks the capacity to produce new regimes to its own liking. For all of these reasons, the us campaign for global primacy and its doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive attack have not constituted a persuasive counter-proliferation regime. The other side of its strategy?promoting nuclear proliferation on the part of friendly states?has also thrown up problems, as in the Israeli, Indian and Pakistani cases. When India and Pakistan demonstrated in the 1990s that they had become nuclear-weapon states, the Clinton Administration imposed sanctions on both, at least formally respecting the spirit of the NPT. Bush, however, lifted those sanctions and then went on to negotiate and sign an agreement legitimating India?s nuclear-weapon status and inaugurating cooperation in the nuclear-energy sphere. [12] This policy not only undermines the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime and contradicts the central purpose of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it also demonstrates America?s political weakness: the accord will leave India largely independent in the nuclear field, unlike the British, for example, whose deterrent capacity remains deeply dependent on the us. The Bush?Singh deal would allow India to import fissile material from the us for its civilian nuclear industry while, in return, voluntarily accepting the npt safeguards regime (including the Additional Protocol), but only for its civilian industry. India would have a free hand to develop and expand its military programme, just as the us has. Indeed the deal would free Indian resources from the civilian industry for military use. [13] India has, of course, promised within the terms of the proposed deal that it will subsequently negotiate a test ban, but this can scarcely be taken seriously since the us itself has not been prepared to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. In these circumstances India will have gained a great prize?the Bush Administration?s endorsement of it as a legitimate nuclear-weapon state?while paying nothing in return, in this domain at least. It will have succeeded in damaging both of the main pillars of the NPT regime: to prevent proliferation and to preserve the five-state nuclear-weapons cartel, possessing the untrammelled right to maintain and enhance their arsenals. Nuclear bonanza The Bush Administration?s record on nuclear-weapons proliferation, then, is unremittingly negative from the standpoint of its own interests and those of its allies. The priority for rich capitalist non-weapon countries is to maintain their threshold status, while blocking states in the South from gaining it by tightening controls on their development of civilian nuclear industries and missile capabilities. The most obvious way to do this would be for Northern states to try to persuade those in the South to give up the NPT right to carry out their own uranium enrichment; but few would be ready to accept such a restriction on existing prerogatives, particularly when the five-state cartel has ignored all the phraseology in and around the Treaty on taking their own arms-control, test-ban and disarmament measures. On the contrary, the us over the last eight years has been brushing aside all restraints on its own massive rearmament in nuclear, missile and other strategic weapons. Simultaneously, the us?s efforts to turn itself into an aggressive alternative to any rule-based non-proliferation regime have proved woefully ineffective. Its bombastic rhetoric about unilateral preventive war was combined with a volte-face on North Korea and Iran. Meanwhile North Korea has been able to cross the civilian?military boundary and thereby gain the prospect of a better deal than it received from the Clinton Administration, without moving outside the international legal framework. Iran shows every sign of being able to acquire threshold status within NPT provisions. America?s readiness to trample upon the rules of the non-proliferation regime and the norms of the UN Charter resulted in a dramatic loss of diplomatic influence: Washington was not even able to unseat the Director General of the iaea and subordinate that apparatus to the us National Security Council. Its diplomacy towards India has been a spectacular example of wishful thinking and incompetence, producing a deal which does not even give Washington the kind of leverage it has over the British. In short the Bush legacy is one of lamentable failure. The rational solution to the crisis of the non-proliferation regime would be for threshold states in the North, such as Germany and Japan, to link up with non-nuclear states in the South to demand that the weapon states adopt serious disarmament measures?above all the us but also Israel?as the basis for reviving the NPT in the post-Bush period. This, however, seems remote, not least because there is no sign of a will to submit to such pressure within the United States itself, and in such circumstances Washington?s allies tend to shut up. Moreover, the nuclear industries of the Atlantic world and, of course, Russia are looking forward to a bonanza of new business for nuclear-energy investment, especially in the South. In their competitive battles to gain contracts they are unlikely to impose new restrictions on uranium enrichment and reprocessing amongst their prospective customers. In the main zones where military?political incentives for weapons proliferation are greatest?the ?Greater Middle East? and East Asia?there are no indications that the United States is interested in replacing its confrontationist policies, of backing Israel in one theatre and containing China in the other, with a more cooperative approach to regional security. Thus, in this area as in so many others, the days when the United States and its Atlantic allies could credibly present themselves as a leading force on global issues seem to lie in the past. Notes: [1] Norman Dombey, ?The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Aims, Limitations and Achievements?, nlr 52, July?August 2008. [2] The Tehran Research Reactor (trr) had carried out experiments on bismuth irradiation to extract polonium, which, when combined with beryllium, may be used for nuclear-weapon construction. Iran was not, in fact, required to inform the iaea about such research. The iaea has declared there is no evidence that Iran ever imported beryllium. Experiment details were in the trr logbook, safeguarded by the iaea for 30 years. [3] See, for example, ?Findings? in the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996. [4] Suzanne Daley, ?French Minister Calls us Policy ?Simplistic??, New York Times, 7 February 2002. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly dismissed the Bush speech as designed for domestic consumption, saying it was ?best understood by the fact that there are mid-term congressional elections in November.? Of course, he quickly changed his tune. [5] Siddharth Varadarajan, ?The Persian Puzzle I: Iran and the invention of a nuclear crisis?, The Hindu, 21 September 2005. [6] Under the IAEA?s ?Additional Protocol? drafted in the late 1990s, Iran would have had to inform it of plans six months before the start of construction (rather than before becoming operational). By 2002 Iran, like many others, had not yet ratified the Protocol. [7] Varadarajan, ?The Persian Puzzle II: What the IAEA really found in Iran?, The Hindu, 22 September 2005; Dafna Linzer, ?iaea Leader?s Phone Tapped?, Washington Post, 12 December 2004. [8] Linzer, ?iaea Leader?s Phone Tapped?. [9] Varadarajan, ?Persian Puzzle II?. A further issue concerned import of uranium from China in 1991. [10] Varadarajan, ?Persian Puzzle I?. [11] Varadarajan, ?Persian Puzzle II?. Some of the centrifuges assembled in Natanz showed traces of enriched uranium, but inspectors concluded that these were of Pakistani origin. [12] The Indo-us Civilian Nuclear Agreement was revealed on 18 July 2005 by Prime Minister Singh and President Bush as part of a ?global partnership? to promote ?stability, democracy, prosperity and peace?. [13] See Arms Control Association, ?Experts Call on Congress to Take Harder Look at US?India Nuclear Deal?, 23 November 2005.
Charity on the cheap15 Sep 2008The voluntary sector has been defined as comprising ?independent, self-governing bodies that do not distribute profits but are run for the benefit of others and the community? (Poole, 2007). Voluntary sector organisations are run by a mixture of paid staff and volunteers and draw on a range of resources to keep them economically viable; these include individual and corporate donations, state grants, contract finance, tax relief due to their charitable status and lottery funding (Poole, 2007). The recent strike by workers at the homeless charity Shelter has highlighted issues concerning exploitation in the voluntary sector. According to Shelter management, the charity needs to be more competitive in the public services delivery market. Furthermore, it is not the first time that Shelter management have attacked wages and conditions in order to win contracts to provide public services. The attitude of Shelter management has surprised many; in some statements they have sounded more like corporate-style bullies than managers of a charity. Ken Loach, whose 1960s film Cathy Come Home played a part in establishing Shelter as a campaigning organisation, likened the charity to a QUANGO working for the state, rather than a critical independent organisation. The public services delivery market involves organisations like Shelter competing to provide services to local authorities, primary care trusts and government agencies. The markets that have been created in the public sector are uneven: at the top end of the market, commercial firms have profited from the marketisation of public services, particularly in relation to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). However at the other end of the market, relatively few opportunities exist to make a substantial profit which obviously means that private firms do not tender for contracts. Consequently, a vacuum has been created in the delivery of public services that has been occupied by the voluntary sector. It is in this context that the voluntary sector has been called upon by government as a means of providing low cost public services. What is taking place is a neo-liberal restructuring of the voluntary sector that is related to the political project of ?rolling back the state?. Neo-Liberalism is not necessarily anti-welfare. In Britain during the previous two decades, both Conservative and Labour governments have attempted to restructure the British welfare state in order to make it compatible to neo-liberal ideology. New Labour has referred to this process as ?public sector reform? or ?modernisation?. Forming the core of these ideas is a commitment to establish a neo-liberal welfare state. Social welfare in one form or another has always existed. What is called the voluntary sector today is historically routed in self-help movements, charity and philanthropy. In Britain, workers co-operatives, mutuals, friendly societies, social welfare clubs, credit unions and the co-operative movement are all examples of assistance and relief provided to those excluded from, or by the market. The voluntary sector was sidelined as the major provider of welfare after the Second World War and by the 1950s, the welfare state was firmly established in British society. This era in British politics has been referred to as the ?social democratic consensus?, or ?post-war settlement?. The ?post-war settlement? lasted for the best part of 30 years. There is not the space here to discuss why it collapsed, although it is important to note that the destabilisation of capitalist economies in the mid-1970s, precipitated by a collapse in oil prices, did much to undermine the Keynesian economic programme. In addition, the election of the Conservative Party in 1979 brought about a new era in British politics: the age of neo-liberalism, sometimes referred to in Britain as ?Thatcherism? had begun. The Tories restructured the provision of social welfare in Britain. Neo-liberals argued that the state had an unfair monopoly over the provision of welfare services and called for a more pluralistic approach to service delivery; a political transformation was taking place whereby the state relinquished much of its direct welfare provision to the private and non-profit sectors, which it would in turn work to enable, finance and regulate (Poole, 2007). As a consequence of neo-liberal reforms, the welfare state was opened up to internal markets, a process referred to as marketisation. The reforms meant that the state was becoming a purchaser rather than a provider of services. The election of a Labour government in 1997 did little to reverse the declining role of the social state. New Labour fully embraced a mixed economy of welfare encouraging various stakeholders and partners to become involved in service delivery. New Labour has pushed reforms to much deeper levels than Thatcher or Major. Under a Labour government, frontline services have been contracted out to the cheapest provider. Moreover, as a consequence of PFI, the private sector now owns assets that were once the property of the public sector, e.g. schools, hospitals and community centres. What New Labour has not privatised they have been keen to transfer over to the voluntary sector. In 1991 there were around 98,000 registered charities in the UK with an expenditure of around 11.2 billion; by 2001 the number of registered charities had risen to 153,000, with a collective expenditure of over 20 billion (Poole, 2007). In Scotland, the social economy in which the voluntary sector operates has an income which exceeds 2 billion, around 4 per cent of Scotland?s GDP. Furthermore, the sector employs 100,000 staff and 700,000 volunteers. The rise of the voluntary sector runs parallel to the decline in services that were once provided by the state. The former Prime Minister Tony Blair described the voluntary sector as providing high quality, but lower cost products and services. Moreover, he added that he wanted the sector to strive for a public service ethos with strong business acumen. The voluntary sector is the preferred option of neo-liberal policymakers because of its role in delivering public services cheaper than the state, which is largely due to the voluntary sector having lower labour costs. The sector has come under intense pressure from government to become more business-like in its agenda. The new business culture has been encouraged by a policy context that is driven by central government which involves competitive tendering and contracting. A market discipline is being established in the provision of public services with providers competing with one another for welfare contracts. Becoming more efficient in governance is a stated aim for the voluntary sector. In practice, this has required embracing the ethos of New Public Management (NPM). NPM involves consolidating neo-liberal values within the everyday culture of voluntary organisations. The main features of NPM include an emphasis on auditing, measurement, calculation and quantification (Mooney and Law, 2007). Auditing has given rise to a culture of distortion and spin in the delivery of public services creating a plethora of middle managers obsessed with the PR management of public services. The outcome of continuous audits is a focus on organisational not social goals; organisations produce paper trails of achievement and successes that bear little relationship to real events taking place on the ground (Hughes, et al, 2002). Mooney and Law note, that whilst auditing has stimulated ?organisational games?, designed to meet the auditors own indicators for grading, it is less clear that they contribute directly to improving public services. The PR management of public services has resulted in seemingly endless consultations with various stakeholders and partners. The management of public services and voluntary sector organisations like commercial businesses has resulted in a decrease in morale amongst the workforce. Everyday working life in the voluntary and public sector has become more routine, standardised and subject to continuous regulation and monitoring. Furthermore, increased employee surveillance by management has been achieved as a consequence of performance indicators, staff reviews, Quality Assurance documentation and rigorous inspection regimes (Mooney and Law, 2007). The result of all these reforms has been a ?proletarianisation? of professional workers who once had a degree of autonomy in their work (Cumbers and Whittam, 2007). Many workers, who regard themselves as professionals, are now subject to labour market conditions that require flexibility, which has helped create a culture whereby short-term contracts have become normalised. Furthermore, NPM has encouraged a routinisation of the work process that is contributing to a ?spectre of uselessness?, now gripping professional workers as it did manual workers before them (Mooney and Law, 2007). Workers who were once inspired to choose a caring vocation have now found themselves caught in the multifarious webs of government bureaucracy, audits, marketing and target setting. This article has highlighted the neo-liberal discourses that inform the contemporary policy context which surrounds the voluntary sector. A broader change is taking place in politics: it is the end of an era in many ways, creating new challenges and opportunities for the left. In the United Sates, the presidency of George W. Bush ? responsible for so much bloodshed ? will come to an end next year. In Britain, Tony Blair has gone and Gordon Brown is increasingly looking like a lame-duck Prime Minister. Moreover, the era of New Labour is coming to an end: in Scotland, the SNP have broken Labour?s hegemony over the Scottish working class. In a British wide context, there is the real prospect of a Conservative government taking power. In relation to the voluntary sector, the Tories want to extend the influence of charities in providing public services. David Cameron has a vision of charities becoming more competitive and being paid the market rate for delivering public services. In a recent interview with the Guardian he stated: ??the state can?t run British society properly…the state takes responsibility away from people, families and communities, and a lack of social responsibility is the fundamental cause of the social breakdown we see all around us?. Cameron then calls for more non-state collective provision, adding that ?family breakdown, anti-social behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse are best dealt with by the voluntary sector?. It is clear then, that a Tory government would not mark a qualitative shift from the policies pursued by New Labour. It is important to note however, that the neo-liberal restructuring of the voluntary and public sector, whether it be implemented by Labour or the Tories, has not been uncontested. The neo-liberal agenda involving intensive managerialism and auditing runs right throughout the public sector: teachers, social workers, community workers, university academics, childcare workers, NHS staff and many more have all suffered from neo-liberal reforms. Consequently, there is widespread frustration and anger which has occasionally resulted in industrial action. Furthermore, the recent dispute by Shelter workers creates an opportunity to link the struggles of the voluntary sector to resistance taking place in the public sector. However, it is not just enough to provide a critique of neo-liberal welfare; socialists and progressives also need to engage in a discussion about what an alternative welfare state might look like? In this discussion it would be a mistake to romanticise the past: it should not be forgotten that the ?post war consensus? involved a welfare state that was ?top-down?, overly bureaucratic and patriarchal. New forms of welfare need to be participatory, enabling and inclusive. Moreover, there needs to be a return to the ethos of public service and a shift away from the language and practices of the market. As for the voluntary sector, there should be in the short term, a minimum of four-years? funding for all organisations providing social services. In the longer term, services that were once provided by the state need to be returned to local authority control. This would require a complete rethinking of the role of local government. The voluntary sector still has a part to play, not as entrepreneurial business endeavours providing public services on the cheap but as independent campaigning organisations providing political voices to some of the most marginalised groups in our society. Gary Fraser is a Community Education worker and is planning a research degree on managerialism and its impact on public and voluntary sector. workers
Transatlantic bomb plot- jury fails to convict14 Sep 2008The conclusion of the trial of those accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airlines in 2006 has created a major crisis for the Labour government and the security services. It has revealed the gaping disconnect between public opinion and official propaganda on the ?war on terror.? So great is the damage that within days of the verdict the Crown Prosecution Service announced its intention to demand a retrial. On August 10, 2006, British security services dramatically announced they had foiled an imminent attack on a number of transatlantic planes flying out of London. Described as the most significant terror plot since 9/11, the early hours saw a series of raids in southern England and the detention of some 24 young men, predominantly British citizens of Pakistani origin, including a Muslim charity worker and an employee at Heathrow airport. London?s Heathrow airport?the world?s largest in terms of international passenger traffic?was shut down, thousands of flights were cancelled and an indefinite ban was imposed on hand luggage. Police and government officials reported that the men had intended to use liquid chemicals, disguised as drinks, to cause a series of explosions on up to 17 aircraft in midflight. Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson of the Metropolitan Police said the intention was to ?cause untold death and destruction and, quite frankly, to commit mass murder.? Then Home Secretary John Reid said that the scale of the plot was potentially larger than 9/11 and that the loss of life ?would have been on an unprecedented scale.? In the United States, President George W. Bush told a press conference that the plot was a ?historical reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.? Michael Chertoff, as homeland security secretary, said the plan was ?suggestive of an Al Qaeda plot,? was ?well advanced? and ?really quite close to the execution phase.? Some two years later?after a five-month trial costing 10 million?on September 8, a jury was unable to agree that such a plot ever existed, and failed to convict the eight men on trial on the prosecution?s central charge of plotting to explode transatlantic aircraft. The court had heard that ?martyrdom videos? recorded by six of the defendants had been found in which they threatened death and destruction, and that evidence gathered by undercover officers and through surveillance techniques proved that the men had established a bomb factory in an east London flat. The prosecution said that evidence also established that the bomb plot had been hatched in Pakistan and that when defendant Abdulla Ahmed Ali was arrested, he had a ?blueprint? for the plot in a pocket diary. A computer memory stick containing details of flights and airport security arrangements had also been uncovered. The eight denied such a plan. Ali said that the videos were intended to form part of a documentary highlighting Western attacks on Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Ali, Assad Ali Sarwar and Tanvir Hussian pled guilty to conspiracy to cause explosions, but said these were only ever intended as a publicity stunt to draw attention to the video and were never intended to cause harm. The jury rejected this claim and convicted the three of conspiracy to murder. But it was deadlocked on the central charge of conspiring to explode airliners. The four other men?Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Arafat Waheed Khan and Ibrahim Savant?had admitted conspiring to cause a public nuisance. But the jury was unable to reach verdicts on them in relation to charges of conspiracy to murder. Even more damaging from the standpoint of the prosecution?s case, Mohammed Gulzar?who was described as the plot?s ringleader but who always denied any involvement?was acquitted of all charges. He cannot be retried, but the Home Office has said that Gulzar, who is from Birmingham, will be subject to control orders curtailing his movements. Furious response to the verdict The verdict has brought a furious response from the government, security services and the media. The trial judge, Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith, has been singled out for criticism. He had led a slipshod trial, it was alleged, in which he had pandered to the juror?s every whim?allowing them a holiday, and even time off for a family emergency. Given the need to maintain juror continuity in such a lengthy case, the judge (in this instance, a former director of public prosecutions) was in fact required to set a holiday period at the start of the hearing and to make certain arrangements for other exigencies. After the jury had deliberated for 11 days without reaching agreement on the central charge, the judge had directed that he would accept a majority verdict of 11-1 or 10-2, which it subsequently failed to achieve. The jury itself has also been denounced as lax and incompetent. Typical of this approach was Max Hastings in the Daily Mail, who complained that the jurors? conclusions could only lead people to assume ?either that those responsible for protecting us do not know what they are doing; or that some jury members are stunningly indifferent to the activities of allegedly would-be mass-murderers.? Amidst suggestions that the verdict proved it was necessary that lengthy, ?complex? trials should not be heard by jurors, Frances Gibb in the Times cautioned that ?jurors must ensure that they do not fuel the opinion that, in long trials at least, their time is up.? In reality, the jury demonstrated a high degree of concern for points of law. They rejected the three main defendants? claim that they were only seeking minor explosions for propaganda purposes, but were not satisfied ?beyond reasonable doubt??the burden of proof at trial?that they had specifically intended to explode bombs on transatlantic flights. The jury?s diligence was such that Justice Calvert-Smith praised their conduct at the end of the trial. Excusing them from any further juror service for their lifetimes, he described them as a ?unique bunch of 12 people? and said they could ?Depart this court with the full-hearted thanks of the community for your service to it, which is far beyond the duty for most jurors, and my personal thanks.? A political conspiracy The Crown Prosecution Service?s announcement that it intends to seek a retrial of the seven demonstrates only contempt for due process. Having failed to secure the conviction it required, the CPS intends to keep going until it succeeds. On the face of it, this determination seems perverse. Why the concern with proving the specific charge of intention to explode transatlantic aircraft? After all, the three have been found guilty of conspiracy to murder, which carries a life sentence. Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the jury could not reasonably convict on the central charge. Within days of the initial raids and arrests, it was already apparent that there were gaping holes in the assertions by US and British authorities that they had stopped an imminent terror attack. Reports stated that no bombs had actually been assembled; that none of those detained had purchased airline tickets and some did not even have passports. In short, nothing presented during the trial proved that aircraft had been targeted. But an enormous political investment has been made in this case. As the World Socialist Web Site explained in ?The politics of the latest terror scare,? the alleged plot was seized on not because of supposed security considerations but ?for transparently political purposes of a deeply reactionary character. It has, rather, to do with the machinations of the clique of political gangsters?Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, among others?who run the US government.? The context of the terror plot, the WSWS stated, was the ever-bloodier quagmire faced by the US-led occupation in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the politically explosive failure of the US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon. With Bush?s approval ratings plummeting, Republicans feared a wipeout in the upcoming November elections. ?The answer of the Cheney-Rove conspirators is to engineer a new wave of panic and hysteria in an attempt to once again stampede voters behind Bush?s ?war on terrorism.? They did the same in 2004, when in the run-up to the election the government suddenly announced a plot to attack major financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey?a plot that came to nothing.? This is now so clearly a matter of record that Simon Jenkins in the Guardian notes, ?It has been an open secret in police circles that Operation Overt, the most complex in counter-terror history, was sabotaged by the American vice president, Dick Cheney, desperate for a headline boost to the Republicans? 2006 mid-term elections.? He cites the recent book ?The Way of the World? by Ron Suskind, the Wall Street Journal?s former senior national affairs writer. This sets out how, after Prime Minister Tony Blair had informed Bush in July 2006 of the British intelligence services? two-year-long investigation, Operation Overt, into alleged Muslim extremists, ?Cheney then privately dispatched the CIA?s operations director, Jose Rodriguez, to Islamabad to secure the arrest of one of the British suspects, Rashid Rauf, believed to be a possible link with al-Qaida,? Jenkins writes. The capture of Rauf (who subsequently and inexplicably escaped detention) created panic in London, as ?the police had desperately to round up as many suspects as they could find overnight,? and ?all for the mid-term elections.? So rushed were the arrests that Blair had left for his Caribbean holiday just 48 hours before, and neither the head of the Metropolitan Police Special Operations department nor Britain?s transport secretary was aware that the raids were imminent until the last moment. That did not prevent the British government using the scare for its political objectives?in pressing for the extension of the period in which detainees could be held without charge for 90 days. As the WSWS stated, ?There undeniably is a conspiracy. It is a plot to use terrorist threats, real or imagined, to terrorise the American people, intimidate them, disorient them, and accustom them to accept the militarisation of every aspect of their lives and the destruction of their democratic rights. The centre of this conspiracy is the American government itself.? It is this political conspiracy that the British authorities are seeking to perpetuate in demanding a retrial.
Left talk but no fight against Labour government13 Sep 2008At the beginning of the week, the reports of what to expect at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) at Brighton were apocalyptic. Amidst what is almost universally acknowledged as the worst economic situation for decades?and possibly since the 1930s?there was talk in the media of a new ?Winter of Discontent?, or the conflict between the trade unions and the Labour government of James Callaghan that ended with the Conservatives coming to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Ballots are planned for protest strikes in November against the government?s below-inflation 2.45 percent wage ceiling by the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) civil service union, the National Union of Teachers, the local government union UNISON and the UCU college lecturers union, which involve up to one million workers. In addition, the Prison Officers Association (POA) called for a general strike against the government?s failure to rescind the anti-union laws. It also moved an amendment to add the word ?strike? to demands for action against the government-imposed wage cap. Prior to the congress, the TUC issued a series of reports highlighting the bitterness felt by many of its affiliate?s members, and called for the government to change course. A survey found that 13 percent of respondents?equivalent to three million workers?are not confident they will be in their job in a year?s time. Another found growing disenchantment in the workplace, with 42 percent of workers questioned believing their pay has not kept pace with inflation and 46 percent saying the amount of work asked of them has increased. Another report, ?Do the super rich matter?? pointed to the growth of a fabulously wealthy elite under the Labour Party governments. While one needed at least 50 million to be among the UK?s 200 wealthiest people in 1990, one would now need 400 million to be included. The report urged the government to raise taxes on those earning more than 100,000 a year. The TUC also criticised the ?big six? energy firms for making 1.6 billion last year, while raising prices by 42 percent, and called for a windfall tax on power companies to fund a rebate for poor households. As the congress events unfolded, the unions? threats were exposed as largely empty bluster, meant to mollify and deceive their own discontented membership. Delegates backed the idea of some sort of ?coordinated action, a national demonstration and joint days of action? against the government?s pay policy, but voted down the strike call demanded by the POA. Its call for a general strike over the anti-union laws was also rejected, supported only by the RMT transport union. Writing in the pro-Labour New Statesman, Jeremy Dear, the nominally ?left? national secretary of the National Union of Journalists, commented cynically, ?So we?re ready to threaten the government with a series of leaflets and angry newspaper articles?but no TUC-led industrial action.? The TUC, far from seeking a confrontation with the government, is doing everything possible to avoid one. Labour is heading towards electoral disaster, with the Independent newspaper?s ?poll of polls? showing its support ?flatlining? while the Conservatives are set for ?an overall majority of 174 seats?. Without the support of the trade unions, Labour would be finished. They provide fully 9 out of every 10 received by the party. Yet far from mobilising against Labour, the TUC?s most strenuous efforts were made to oppose any leadership challenge to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. TUC President Dave Prentis said of Brown, ?I believe he will continue to be [prime minister] until the next election. Of course we want him to. He is the leader of the Labour Party and he is Prime Minister of this country.? The most likely leadership challenge to Brown is from the Blairite Foreign Secretary David Miliband. This prompted one of the few genuinely angry reactions from a leading union bureaucrat. Interviewed by the Observer on the eve of the TUC congress, Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of UNITE, ?accused Miliband, in a stream of swearwords, of being ?smug? and ?arrogant?,? the paper reports. ?In terms that caused fury on the right of the party, he also said Miliband would take the country back to the ?failings of Blairism? and could be a worse choice as Prime Minister than the Tory leader David Cameron.? Simpson may as well have saved his breath, as Miliband and the rest of Labour?s cabinet took part in a series of high-profile media events to make clear their support for Brown. The foreign secretary said Brown would ?prove people wrong? by winning the next general election. At a private dinner with the TUC leaders Wednesday, Brown was able to give what was reported as ?relaxed, 20-minute speech? during which he ?cracked jokes? and was ?was warmly received?. More than a dozen cabinet members joined him, including Miliband. Brown did not deign to address the TUC conference, left instead to Chancellor Alistair Darling. Before this appearance, the TUC had officially backed calls for a rather paltry 1 billion windfall tax on the energy companies. To put this tax in perspective, Blair and Brown levied a much larger 4.5 billion surcharge on the privatized utilities in 1997. Again conflict was predicted as Brown had already rejected the windfall tax in favour of a scheme to provide some aid for loft insulation. Gerry Doherty, general secretary of transport union TSSA, said, ?Darling will get a tough time from the public sector unions. There is bound to be some sort of demonstration.? At the event, only a small number of UCU college lecturers held up banners saying that food, housing and education were ?not an additional extra?. Darling took the occasion to call for pay restraint and to reject calls for a windfall tax on the energy companies. Michael White of the Guardian summed up the response of delegates as, ?They didn?t dance in the aisles, but they didn?t riot either?. To complete this somewhat pathetic picture, Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman?s speech was supposed to be a sop to workers? anger at growing social inequality, and provide something the trade unions could cite approvingly. Though she stated that the inequality of opportunity between ?the rich and poor? and ?the north and the south? must be overcome, she dropped references to ?socioeconomic class? in her published speech. The TUC bureaucrats gathered at Brighton are fully aware that they are sitting on a powderkeg of social and political discontent. The rhetoric of the lefts and the call for protest strikes are an attempt to provide a safety valve through which to release these tensions, but nothing more. That is why, even now, the only discussion of a break with the Labour Party at the congress was confined to a fringe meeting hosted by the Morning Star, the daily paper of the ever-declining Stalinist Communist Party of Britain. PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka vaguely called for a new party and Bob Crow of the RMT argued that there would be a need for a new party at some point, while UNITE General Secretary Derek Simpson reportedly argued for changing the Labour Party from within. The entire union bureaucracy is opposed to any struggle that might threaten the fundamental interests of the major corporations or the Labour government. They are not the representatives of the working class, but social policemen who owe their privileged status to their intimate relations with big business and the state apparatus at municipal and national levels. Control of union assets is one source of their privileges, but it does not translate into a desire to defend their members. As a definite social layer, their existence is bound up with maintaining a position as valued ?social partners? of industry and government. It was possible for the unions to secure certain gains and social reforms from the employers as long as economic life was largely organised on the basis of national production. But with the development of globalised production, the defence of jobs and living standards now demands a coordinated international struggle of the working class led on the basis of irreconcilable opposition to the profit system. The union bureaucracy has developed in the opposite direction. It has abandoned the struggle for reforms and integrated itself ever more closely into the apparatus of corporate management and the state. As a result of their repeated betrayals, the unions have lost over half their membership from their post-war peak in the 1970s. The number of employed union members fell to just 28 percent in 2007. But even this is a distorted figure, since union density in the public sector is 59 percent, compared with just 16.1 percent in the private sector. The full extent of the political decay of the trade unions found its most finished expression in a call meant to coincide with the congress issued by Rory Murphy, the former head of the Amicus union, now part of UNITE. Writing for Personnel Today, Murphy recommended the TUC change its ?outdated? name to something like the ?Organisation for Workers? Rights or The Centre for Improvement? and then seek a merger with the main employers? organisation, the Confederation of British Industry. He urged, ?If the TUC is unsure of its role, and can?t change, might the unthinkable need contemplating? If we are truly to make progress as a society, should the TUC consider amalgamating with the CBI to fight for fairness and justice for all workers and employers? Are the aims of both organisations so widely apart that such an idea is a non-starter? After all, what is the real difference in seeking ?to improve the economic or social conditions of workers? and helping ?create and sustain conditions for business to compete and prosper for all?.? There is no way that the unions, organising millions of workers as they still do, will not experience an eruption of opposition to the government within their ranks. The TUC congress confirms, however, that workers within the unions, as well as those who are un-organised, are faced with mounting a combined offensive against the union bureaucracy that is just as fundamental as that they must wage against the government and the employers. This requires the construction of independent rank-and-file workplace organisations to take the struggle out of the hands of the union leaders, as part of a broad political movement for the construction of a genuinely socialist and internationalist leadership.
Al Qaida- The SWISH Report13 Sep 2008An eighth report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the al-Qaida Strategic Planning Cell (SPC) on the progress of the campaign Thank you for inviting us to deliver another report on the progress of your movement. You will recall that our work for your planning cell commenced with an initial assessment in July 2004, a follow-up in January 2005 and further reports in February 2006 and September 2006 and (in light of political developments in the United States) December 2006. The next analysis was presented in November 2007; but the pace of events in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan – in the context of the evolving United States presidential-election campaign – led to the request for the next report only three months later, in February 2008. This last document clearly signalled to you that this might be the final occasion when our services might be required. We are then particularly pleased that – even though our February 2008 assessment was somewhat blunt in terms of your movement’s overall prospect – you have invited us to deliver one more report. We understand that on this occasion you require a brief updating of our analysis on your main theatres of operation, together with an analysis of the impact of the possible outcomes of the US residential election in November 2008. Pakistan and Afghanistan In our last briefing we made three judgments about Pakistan. First. that the country’s then general-president Pervez Musharraf had been much weakened by the result of the country’s just-held parliamentary election, and that we were not convinced he would survive. Second, that it was doubtful that a stable parliamentary coalition would emerge. Third, that there would be we increased United States military activity within western Pakistan. In all three respects our analysis was accurate: Pervez Musharraf has gone, the domestic governing coalition is in disarray, and the US military is now conducting special-forces operations across the border with Afghanistan. The assumption of the presidency by Asif Ali Zardari is also an indication that the feudal pattern of Pakistani politics is thriving; though civil-society elements and the legal profession may cause problems for the government. It is likely that President Zardari will be supportive of increased US military action, but this may cause deep unease in sections of the Pakistani military, as well as increasing the more general anti-American mood. While our predictions seven months ago for Pakistan were reassuringly accurate, we must confess we were less effective in our analysis concerning Afghanistan. There, we were doubtful that the revitalised Taliban would extend their activities to major assaults on coalition forces – in the face of overwhelming firepower we instead expected to see an intense concentration on roadside bombs and martyr attacks. While these have indeed been increased, we also note the effective move towards the targeting of supply-routes, and a willingness, on occasions, to conduct substantial military operations. These have included a successful assault on the main prison in Kandahar and lethal attacks on US and French units. One outcome of these developments is that the US military now puts a much greater emphasis on the war in Afghanistan and is looking to increase its own military deployments while seeking to persuade its Nato partners to be more supportive. Iraq In our February 2008 report, we anticipated that the George W Bush administration, along with neo-conservative commentators, would develop an overall narrative centred on a “probability of victory” in Iraq which would downgrade the significance of the war in that country during the latter months of the presidential campaign. This has indeed been what has happened, with the framers of the narrative placing a great emphasis on Iraq’s increased security. It is interesting in this context, however, that the United States military leadership is deeply reluctant to withdraw combat-troops to a level much below that of the pre-surge (that is, pre-February 2007) deployments. In spite of the pressing need for troops in Afghanistan, it now looks as though just one of the fifteen remaining US combat-brigades will be withdrawn in the September 2008 – March 2009 period. We strongly suspect that many of the more astute military analysts in US Central Command (Centcom) and the Pentagon believe that security in Iraq is far more problematic than their political masters would like their citizens to believe. This is partly due to the hard line now being taken by the Nouri al-Maliki government, especially towards the integration of Sunni militias into the security forces, but also relates to strains in Shi’a / Kurdish relations and the growing influence of Iran. The al-Maliki government claims to want a total United States military withdrawal by 2010 or 2011, but oil geopolitics makes this nonsensical – the US is in Iraq for the long term. While your associates in Iraq have had major reversals, we suspect these are short-term. We stand by our assessment of seven months ago: “Although circumstances will not always be as favourable as 2006-07, rest assured that your paramilitary combat-training zone in Iraq will remain viable and of great use to you for the foreseeable future.” In this context, we note recent reports that some of your paramilitary associates from Iraq are now active in Somalia. The American election campaign In our last report to you it had become clear that John McCain was likely to be the Republican candidate and that Barack Obama might defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Our overall view was that: “What is best for you is that the United States remains resolute in its support for Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; fully addicted to oil and therefore determined to remain dominant in the Persian Gulf; and prepared to continue to pursue its war against you with the utmost vigour. In other words, eight more years for George W Bush would have been ideal. Sadly for your movement, that cannot be.” As a whole, we considered McCain to be a far better prospect from your perspective; though we had some concerns that such rightwing incumbents can, on occasions, opt successfully for radical change. Today, with the Obama/McCain contest fully underway, we indeed believe that a McCain presidency is – by a considerable margin – the more favourable to your movement; not least because the Republican ticket is now supplemented by a vice-presidential nominee who is a Christian fundamentalist as well as a climate-change sceptic from an oil-rich state. It remains the case that if elected, Barack Obama could be very limited in his security options. His speech to the leading American pro-Israel organisation Aipac in June 2008 was markedly hardline; he supports military reinforcements for Afghanistan; and he has implied that he would be willing to order more direct US military action in Pakistan. Even so, part of the reason for taking such positions relates simply to the realities of electoral politics. What he says now and what he would do in office may be very different, especially if the Democrats have convincing majorities in both houses of Congress. In any case, whatever his actual policies, we most certainly would expect under an Obama presidency a marked change in style towards a more listening, cooperative and multilaterally-engaged America. That must be of deep concern to you. A more “acceptable” America in global terms is the last thing you want. In one sense, however, we can reassure you about the outcome; for our associates in our Washington office believe that John McCain will win by a relatively small margin, although Congress is likely to remain Democrat-controlled. Their assessment is based on a prediction that while polls may well give Obama a small margin even up to election-day, a small but significant portion of those voting will be sufficiently influenced by residual prejudice to opt for McCain in the privacy of the polling booth. Their point is that even if only one in fifty voters behaves in this manner, that should help ensure a victory for McCain. We acknowledge that this is very tentative, and that American politics are currently volatile and unpredictable; and that, after all, our assessment in November 2007 was made in the context of a likely Rudy Giuliani / Hillary Clinton contest! Your concern must still be with the prospect of an Obama victory, and a key question is whether you should engineer a major attack against US interests shortly before the election. We would advise against this. Whether or not you have the resources to mount a major attack (and we understand why you will not take us into your confidence), the result could be unpredictable. In the immediate wake of a 9/11-scale attack within the continental United States, Obama’s advisers would know that this would benefit their opponent strongly. They might well then take the risk of going on the offensive against McCain, pointing to the folly of George W Bush’s policies and the manner in which they have made the United States unsafe. It would be a risky strategy but these would be desperate times for the Obama campaign and it might just come off. The risk to you is too great and for this reason alone we do not advocate such an attack. Instead, we stand by our recommendation in February 2008 that you seek, in the weeks before the election, to make it known that you favour Barack Obama and believe he would be a president with whom you could do business. This would be combined with strong statements to the effect that you believe a John McCain presidency would be a disaster for the United States and that he would be a leader unto darkness and death. Such a strategy, we believe, would go a long way to ensure he was elected, this being the outcome you should most earnestly desire. Wana South Waziristan 10 September 2008
Making Money From Education13 Sep 2008The American education company Kaplan has announced plans to open a profit seeking university in the UK. Although only a small beginning, this opens the way to a profit-driven higher education system. The first move was the government’s, who recently relaxed laws on who can award degrees. They are in effect trying to open up the concept of a degree to market speculation and commodification. Kaplan is already prominent in the US, and they are not altogether alien to these shores either, having joint ventures with Nottingham Trent and Sheffield universities. It also owns the Dublin Business School. Kaplan generates revenues of over $1 billion per year, so it clearly knows how to squeeze a buck or two out of our public education system. Those leading a campaign against the possibility of a profit driven university are likely to be the Coalition of Modern Universities, which represents about 30 ‘new’ universities in England. They have already criticised the government’s relaxing of laws on the awarding of degrees, because the changes could rob universities of vital funds and would unsurprisingly create an even more class-divided, elitist university system. A senior figure within the CMU said: “There has been absolutely no consultation on principle, mechanics or implications for sustainability.” The group prides itself on being the biggest player in attracting students from poorer backgrounds to higher education. However, whatever the motivations and creation processes of the new laws, the introduction of profit-driven universities will open up the British higher education system to becoming more like American system, the most elitist and expensive in the world. SAT scores That the potential university will aim itself at the more wealthy customers is confirmed by its running of the SAT system for entry into such institutions. “The conventional wisdom is that the [SAT] test is just another leg up for rich kids who can shell out $1,000 for a test prep course. To some, the likes of Kaplan and Princeton Review have turned good SAT scores into a commodity, another saleable ticket into America’s Ivy League aristocracy,” says Kerry Howley, an American teacher. Once such a university comes into being over here, as is no doubt the government’s intentions, it would be in direct competition with public, established universities. The law of the market would then be applied with ever greater force on our higher education system, and will inevitably erode what remains of its public character. In the light of this, the government’s plans to remove the cap on fees, allowing universities to charge as much as they like, are clearly a part of a larger plan. But it is not wise, even from a long-term capitalist perspective, to open up university education to speculation when this has recently proved to be so volatile as to threaten the entire world economy. Do we want the same logic that has lead to the food crisis and driven millions more into starvation, to also be applied to the way we learn? No way!
PR push for Iraq war preceeded intelligence13 Sep 2008Washington D.C., August 22, 2008 – The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados. The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the “White Paper” ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002. A similar comparison between a declassified draft and the final version of the British government’s “White Paper” on Iraq weapons of mass destruction adds to evidence that the two nations colluded in the effort to build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Dr. Prados concludes that the new evidence tends to support charges raised by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its long-delayed June 2008 “Phase II” report on politicization of intelligence.
Madness of the market13 Sep 2008Once again, capitalism has shown its cuddly, people-friendly face with the collapse of holiday giant XL Leisure Group. Around 85,000 people stranded abroad, several hundred thousand advance bookings dishonoured, staff finding out that they didn’t have a job in mid-flight, over 1,700 jobs potentially vanishing and the Unite union not even being informed by the company that it was in trouble with its refinancing arrangements after a major bank pulled out on August 14. And yet, in the full knowledge that it was, indeed, in trouble and desperately trying to arrange a bail-out, the companies in the group continued to take people’s cash and make bookings that there was precious little chance that they could honour. Not that this implies any dishonesty or deliberately dodgy dealing by the companies. Far from it – at least in the terms of the market economy. The logic of capitalism meant that they had to continue trying to trade their way out of trouble and that same market-oriented logic said that they could not allow any hint of trouble to become public knowledge because people would obviously then cease to book with the companies, thereby sealing their fate. Indeed, as late as August 31, a company spokesman was saying that “the XL Leisure Group is experiencing strong trading, with bookings for 2009 already outperforming last year.” But, as for the long-suffering passengers, they inevitably get the sticky end of the deal and, the less well off that they are, the stickier it becomes. Granted, customers well off enough to book full package deals through travel agencies are covered by the CAA air travel organisers’ licensing scheme and will be offered repatriation flights or their money back if they have an advance booking. And, if they booked by credit card, their card insurance should cover them. But people not having credit cards to book with, or booking a flight only, because they could not afford the full package, will face an extra fee to get home. And it’s not only the passengers. The staff have an even worse situation to deal with. No jobs and an industry that is contracting by the day, with airlines such as Alitalia and Zoom either collapsing or in terminal decline and a resulting glut of unemployed staff on the jobs market. So, who is to blame for this situation? In 2004, the Times reported that a major British bank “is poised to become the largest oil trader in the City of London as banks rush to profit from the soaring oil price and booming oil speculation market.” In 2008, that same bank pulled the rug out from under XL because of financing associated with fuel. In other words, a major oil speculator shuts XL because the company can’t pay the price for fuel that the speculators have driven up. And the bank’s partner in financing XL – a major Icelandic bank – acquired the still-profitable French and German XL subsidiaries on Friday morning after the rug-pulling exercise, in what can only be described as a perfect example of asset-stripping, although it would probably claim that it was saving what could be rescued from the stricken company. But the fact remains that, if the company was stricken, it was the banks that did the striking. Talk about having your cake and eating it. It is difficult to imagine a better example of the amoral chaos of market capitalism or, for that matter, a better reason for social ownership of banks and big businesses generally.
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