The war for understanding20 May 2008A tendency shared by government policy and establishment media coverage in regard to major issues is that it becomes so routine as to lose an important component of any responsible behaviour: self-awareness. The point is highlighted by the way that the western states in the vanguard of the “war on terror”, the United States and the United Kingdom, are focusing more and more resources on internal security (especially counter-terrorism) even as they and the countries’ leading media organisations portray their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as in essence benign and inconsequential. The result is that so much of the reality they are dealing with remains beyond their grasp. An important illustration is the British government’s determined expansion of the country’s domestic anti-terrorism [1] forces, which has received far less publicity example than (for example) its attempt to extend the detention without charge of suspects in such cases to forty-two days. There will soon be 7,000 police and support-staff in England and Wales alone working exclusively on counter-terrorism activities, in addition to those among the staff of the security service (MI5 [2]), which has near-doubled in size. The central component of these police activities is the London based Counter Terrorism Command [3] (launched in October 2006), for which the lead force is the Metropolitan Police. This much-expanded command is being supplemented by eight new centres across the country: three Counter Terrorism Units (with a total of 2,000 staff) based in Leeds [4], Manchester and Birmingham, sharing headquarters with MI5’s new regional offices; and five new Counter Terrorism Intelligence Units based in the east Midlands, east, southeast, southwest, and Wales, with a sixth reported to be in train that would cover the Thames valley area west of London.There is, too, an increase of such forces in Scotland and Northern Ireland. These plans build on the establishment (in 2003) of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre [5] and (in 2007) of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism. They are also part of the overall national-security strategy announced [6] by Britain’s prime minister Gordon Brown in March 2008, whose other components include greater surveillance of cyberspace [6] and more resources for the state’s monitoring agency, GCHQ. It is expensive work. The government’s spending on counter-terrorism and intelligence rose from 1 billion in 2001 to 2.5 billion in 2008, and will rise [7] to 3.5 billion by 2010-11. By contrast, educational and other programmes to combat domestic political radicalisation and extremism [8], though also increasing, will cost about 24 million a year in 2008-10 – around 1% of the counter-terrorism and intelligence budget. True, more money is going into what is termed “tackling violent extremism and promoting greater understanding” abroad, mainly involving (again) educational projects in the middle east and southwest Asia (especially Pakistan), but even this amounts to barely 5% of spending on domestic counter-terrorism. The problem here, however, is not a deficit of resources but of understanding. What still appears almost entirely lacking in government circles is awareness and acknowledgment of the impact [10]of Britain’s role in the “war on terror” on opinion among young Muslims in Britain. This was typified by Tony Blair, who remained committed to the war and to the idea of victory in Iraq to the end [10] of his term as prime minister on 27 June 2007; but the connection is still not being made almost a year later. The Fallujah echo Many examples of how this deficiency of understanding deforms public policy and discussion could be made. Two, one each from Iraq and Afghanistan, offer different kinds of lesson. The Iraqi example is the enduring impact of the United States assault on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004. This was part of a cycle of tensions in the city rooted in the killing of civilians by US forces in the early stages of the war in 2003; these reached a gruesome point in April 2004, when US marines tried to take control of the city after an angry crowd had killed four American security contractors, then mutilated and burned their bodies. The intense effort failed; within a few months Fallujah was seen as the epicentre of the entire Iraq insurgency, and the Americans were determined to try again (see “Fallujah fallout [10]”, 11 November 2004). A force of over 10,000 US army and marine-corps personnel was assembled, and an intensive two-week assault cleared the city was of insurgent elements. But the apparent success was short-lived, as many of the insurgents simply relocated elsewhere (including to Mosul, scene of an almost instantaneous surprise attack). More seriously, the impact of the Fallujah operation in the United States and across the middle east differed greatly (see “Victory in Iraq [10]”, 15 December 2005). In the US, the taking of Fallujah was seen as a great victory in the wider war on terror. Many journalists and film crews were “embedded” with the troops, and they reported and broadcast graphic images of tracer-bullets arcing through the sky and across the river into the city (including spectacular examples of shells hitting mosques). The Pentagon’s public-relations teams went into overdrive; at the moment of George W Bush’s re-election to a second term as president, it was a timely demonstration that the US’s enemies could be faced down in their home territory and defeated. Iraq could be portrayed as a worthwhile and perfectly winnable war. Most western media reports showed the Fallujah attack almost exclusively from the US military perspective, but Arabic and middle-eastern satellite channels such as al-Jazeera showed another side of reality (see “No direction home [10]”, 25 November 2004). This included many bodies lying in the streets, the wreckage of most public buildings and nearly 20,000 houses (half the city’s dwellings) destroyed or badly damaged. They also reported that several thousand civilians had been killed and that 200,000 refugees had fled the fighting. Fallujah was known across Iraq (and even beyond) as the “city of mosques”, and the attack was seen straightforwardly as an assault on an Islamic centre by an occupying power engaged in an illegal and atrocious war. Americans saw Fallujah in November 2004 as a great and justified success; many in the region saw it as the Arab equivalent of 9/11 (see “Iraq in the mirror of Fallujah [10]”, 21 July 2005). What happened in Fallujah related mainly to the actions of the United States, but it had a great and enduring [11] impact among Muslims in Europe and elsewhere – young Muslims in Britain among them. In part this was because of the Labour government’s strong support for the Bush administration; in part because British troops had been redeployed from southern Iraq to districts around Baghdad in order to free up American troops for the assault. The prince’s finger The Afghan example is the activities of the third in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, Prince Harry – and how these have been reported. The young lieutenant’s presence in Afghanistan’s dangerous Helmand province was reported [12] in the media on 28 February 2008, when he had already been serving in the country for ten weeks. At that point, his reputation was transformed from callow party-lover with a touch of the boor into a courageous and disciplined soldier. Prince Harry might not have been on the frontline of the anti-Taliban campaign itself, but there is no doubt that he experienced real dangers at firsthand. As a “forward air controller” providing cover for frontline troops, one of his reported tasks was to direct air-strikes onto Taliban positions that were threatening British army patrols, a task which might have contributed to saving the lives of some of his fellow soldiers. In recognition of his role, the prince received a campaign medal (which television news showed being bestowed [13] by his aunt, Princess Anne, in a formal ceremony). The media reported [14] the event on 5 May 2008 dutifully and with a uniformly positive tone, depicting Harry as having matured into a valued member of the British army engaged [15] in a legitimate war against terrorists who threatened the security of the United Kingdom. However, many young Muslims in Britain (as well as others) see the soldierly act of directing airstrikes in Afghanistan as entailing the killing of Muslim fighters engaged in legitimate resistance to a foreign occupation of their country. Moreover, the high incidence of civilian casualties in Nato air-strikes means that civilians too might well have been killed. After all, even Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has been critical of such Nato operations. Prince Harry belongs to a British army regiment assigned to perform tasks assigned by military and political leaders. As such, he is also one small cog in the wheel of a much larger military operation that has, since October 2001, seen over 100,000 civilians killed in Iraq [15] and Afghanistan; at least that number seriously injured; over 120,000 people detained without trial; and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners. The point here is the conflict of perspectives: between a justified military operation in which a brave young prince plays a heroic role, and a symbolically charged involvement in an illegal and unjust assault on Islam. Perhaps not all the more astute people in Britain’s ministry of defence or the government as a whole would share the first view, and certainly not all [15] Muslims in Britain would share the second. But the dichotomy is there, and it is deep-seated. There is no prospect either that it will be bridged, in the sixth year of the Iraq war and the seventh year of the Afghan. Yet until it is, the likely consequences will include further insecurity, anger and distrust with possibly dangerous consequences. The governments which devote large forces and sums to domestic counter-terrorism while pursuing military operations abroad – and the media organisations which report these uncritically – might benefit from an educational programme of their own. Links:
[1] http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/security/terrorism-and-the-law/
[2] http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page15.html
[3] http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm
[4] http://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/section-item.asp?sid=13&iid=3392
[5] http://www.intelligence.gov.uk/agencies/jtac.aspx
[6] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3584179.ece
[7] http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page541.html
[8] http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5957586
[9] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[10] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[11] http://electroniciraq.net/news/newsanalysis/
Fallujah_Now_Under_a_Different_Kind_of_Siege-3249.shtml
[12] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/7269743.stm
[13] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7383789.stm
[14] http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j53T1NT7dwgU9HZTKhSDnkhv9ssw
[15] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/1580102/Prince-Harry…
in-Afghanistan.html
University students face worsening conditions, rising debt20 May 2008Recent studies reveal that students in the UK face higher fees and growing levels of debt, coupled with cutbacks in universities. The Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have made far-reaching and historic attacks on higher education. In 1998, the Labour government legislated to allow universities to charge tuition fees. In 2006, it introduced ?top-up fees? for English and Welsh students. Under this system, universities are able to charge students up to a maximum of 3,000 per year. But even this is set to rise as the government has encouraged the ?marketisation? of higher education, with universities increasingly being treated as businesses. Asked whether universities should be allowed to charge whatever tuition fees they please just before he left office, Blair replied that the university system was ?a global marketplace??i.e., that the universities would always be able to find people somewhere in the world able and willing to pay the going rate. Just months later, his successor Brown announced plans to remove 100 million of funding from 170,000 mostly part-time students studying for a second degree. The same month saw a private-sector firm granted the power to award degrees for the first time. BPP College of Professional studies, an offshoot of the education firm BPP, will offer truncated two-year post-graduate degrees in law and business-related subjects from the next academic year. The degrees will cost about 10,000 a year. The principal of BPP said, ?We don?t have the baggage of traditional research, so we?re focused on customer service? (emphasis added). In April, the universities secretary, John Denham, announced a consultation paper with proposals for 30,000 new university places to be co-funded by business. Students on these courses, which will be partly designed by employers, will study ?business-focused? degrees. Denham said in an interview with the Guardian, ?If you look at the university system as a whole, and the way in which it engages with employers, it needs to be closer, more intensive, and part of what university offers has got to be tailored for the needs of a very different group of students and the people who are going to be paying for these courses.? In 2009, the Brown government is to review the impact of implementing top-up fees, and vice chancellors at many universities, including those in the ?Russell Group? of leading universities, are proposing they be allowed to charge far higher tuition fees than those currently in place. Debt deters students from seeking university education A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published in September showed that in terms of young people entering university?as opposed to those actually finishing degree courses?the UK had fallen below the OECD average. Using the OECD?s definition, 52 percent of young people in the UK enter university, while in Australia, New Zealand and the Scandinavian nations, three quarters of young people enter university after leaving school. Despite Labour?s much-vaunted expansion of higher education, the OECD found that there was less expansion of higher education in the UK than in South Korea, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The research also found that only 32 percent of 15-year-olds in the UK expect to go to university?one of the lowest figures throughout the whole OECD. Research conducted by the Sutton Trust charity showed that ?Nearly two-thirds (59 percent) of students who had decided not to pursue study in higher education reported that avoiding debt had affected their decision ?much? or ?very much.? ? The spectre of debt is now also affecting where students intend to study. Nationally, students now pay an average of 9,000 a year in fees. Some 31 percent of those intending to go to university told the Sutton Trust survey that avoiding debt had ?much? or ?very much? affected their decisions about where to study. The report found that 75 percent of those surveyed were planning or considering a local university and were intending to live with parents/guardians to keep costs down. The survey also found that 72 percent of prospective students intending to live at home cited a desire to minimise debt as ?important? or ?very important.? Protests at universities. The erosion of education access and campus services has led students at several universities to stage protests in the past few months. On April 22, hundreds of students protested at the University of Manchester in the northwest of England. The university is the largest single campus in the UK, with some 40,000 students. Protesters gathered to oppose increased tuition fees, vastly reduced teaching hours and contact time, staff cuts, increases in rents, and the lack of library and IT resources and access to facilities. The university has spiralling debts and has spent tens of millions of pounds on new buildings, whilst the most basic requirements of students and staff are not being met. More than 400 jobs have been shed throughout the university in the last year, and there are more to go. The protest temporarily closed several roads near the university, including the main Oxford Road artery. Students later occupied the new 31 million Arthur Lewis complex, which has restricted access to undergraduates, who must book an appointment with the relevant member of staff in advance. According to research conducted by the University of Manchester Students Union, politics students spend an average of just 86 hours per year in lectures and tutorials. Twenty years ago, politics students at the university received 200 hours of teaching a year. Social Anthropology students were taught for 220 hours per year 20 years ago. This figure has fallen to as little as 120 hours. The survey also found that English Language students ?can typically expect to receive between six and eight weekly hours of teaching this semester.? One of those surveyed, a second-year history student, said she paid 3,070 a year in tuition fees and has only four hours? tuition timetabled a week. This works out to her paying 28.43 per hour for her education. At the University of Sussex, management has published restructuring plans that will mean cuts in established areas of study in favour of more lucrative areas such as business and management and international security. The creation of a ?Sussex Innovation Centre,? oriented to the requirements of businesses such as American Express, is under way. Students have held numerous protest meetings and demonstrations, including the staging of a mock outdoor exam on May 2. Some 150 students participated in the protest in opposition to 30 overseas students being banned from taking tests because they had fallen behind on tuition fee payments. The international students have also had their university library and e-mail accounts cut off until they agree to pay their fees. The protest was followed by students marching to university financial offices, where a petition with 300 signatures was delivered. Up to 50 students from the University of Sussex occupied a business centre on the University campus. On May 2, students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland protested against the closure of Fife Park, one of the university?s two accommodation halls. The university has decided to replace it with new accommodation, with rents being raised from 52 to between 110 and 130 per week. A report published last year by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that more than one fifth of UK students at English universities felt they were receiving ?poor? or ?very poor? value for money. The previous year, before top-up fees were introduced, the number dissatisfied was 15 percent. More than a quarter of students (27 percent) from outside the European Union, who pay up to 12,000 per annum to study in Britain, reported that they received poor or very poor value. Research by the NUS found that when living costs such as rent, textbooks, utility bills and travel are added, the average cost of a three-year university degree comes to more than 45,000 in London and 39,000 elsewhere. Graduates are often saddled with massive debts and usually find themselves in low-paying jobs, with no relevance to their field of study and expertise. NUS officially abandons free education policy The numerous protests against rising tuition fees, attacks on campus services and facilities, and the wholesale privatisation of university education express a growing undercurrent of anger against the Labour government and a political shift to the left among a section of students and youth. In contrast, the Labour-controlled National Union of Students has gone ever further to the right. Its previous commitment to free education, as a right, was formally abandoned at its April conference when NUS delegates voted down a motion calling for a campaign for ?Free Education.? NUS President-elect Wes Streeting, a member of Labour Students, recently wrote a letter to all NUS members in England. Acknowledging the developing student opposition to the privatisation of education, he wrote that the NUS ?still believe that higher education should be free for students. It isn?t ludicrous, it isn?t offensive and it isn?t selfish.? But, he continued, ?sadly, for students in England it isn?t realistic, or credible, and it doesn?t have any chance of being endorsed by any British government under Gordon Brown or David Cameron.? To emphasise the point, Streeting added, ?Let me be clear: we are prepared to accept the notion of a graduate contribution to the costs of higher education.? It was not possible to have a free education system and at the same time have quality, well-resourced education, he continued. Hailing the decision at the NUS conference, he wrote, ?Delegates at our conference voted to stop simply arguing for ?free education? in England, and decided instead to consult with our members and bring to the table some radical, imaginative solutions that will be better and fairer for students than regressive and damaging market forces. Only if we do this can we sit down at the same table with the vice-chancellors and the captains of industry, and have our policy taken seriously by the government.? Despite Streeting?s ridiculous claim to oppose ?market forces? while sitting down with the ?captains of industry,? the NUS has made clear it is in full agreement with the Brown government that students must pay for their education. Such a perspective must be rejected. The assault on free public education is a product of the subordination of every aspect of economic and social life, in Britain and around the world, to the dictates of the ?free market.? The International Students for Social Equality is for a free and universally accessible education system for all who wish to study. This is critical for the development of a truly democratic and egalitarian society, in which the requirements of society as a whole have priority over private profit. Students must be allowed and encouraged to concentrate on their studies and engage fully in all aspects of campus life, without either being forced to work and/or accumulating massive debts. The ISSE calls for the abolition of the Student Loans system and for students to be freed of all debt obligations and for the re-introduction of grants to be paid for by taxing business. Students must also have access to the latest Information Technology, textbooks, university libraries, library databases and online resources as part of a high-quality education. Teaching hours and timetables must be re-organised so that lecturers are able to spend the necessary time with their students. Cutbacks at universities and the shedding of staff must be ended and reversed. Such a programme cannot and will not be implemented by New Labour, its backers in the National Union of Students leadership, or any of the political representatives of the super-rich. The right to education was won by the working class and the socialist movement in decades of struggle. We call on students and all young people to take forward the building of the ISSE at your campus. This is an integral part of the fight for an alternative, international socialist perspective?one that begins from the needs and rights of the vast majority of ordinary working and young people, not the profits of a tiny minority.
Tony Blair accused of War Crimes19 May 2008Anthony Charles Lynton Blair on Trial in The Hague On the same day the BBC reported that former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was to go on trial after five years in prison over the deaths of a group of Baghdad merchants in 1992, it was rumoured the former prime minister of Britain will be indicted for crimes against humanity. The list of charges is long and not confined to the many alleged crimes in Iraq. Mr Blair’s whereabouts are uncertain; he has been sighted occasionally in occupied East Jerusalem where he is acting as “peace” envoy for the “Quartet”. Most recently, he has been facilitating industrial zones for the employment of Palestinians and for the removal of a few of the over 500 Israeli Occupation Force roadblocks. The charge list includes: Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention from the time he became prime minister in 1997 until March 2003 during whichtime draconian sanctions were being applied to the civilian population of Iraq. These sanctions prompted the resignation of Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck who served as assistant secretaries-general of the UN. The former stated that the effect of those sanctions was genocidal. It was established that there was an excess mortality of babies and children of at least 500,000 between 1992 and 2003. This had to do with foul water, poor nutrition and deteriorating medical services, all of which were satisfactory before the sanctions took hold. Conspiracy to join with another power in aggressive war, the supreme international war crime, contrary to the Nuremberg Rules and the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. This was first made public when he joined Mr George Bush, President of the United States of America, and Britain for bloodied steaks over a barbecue at Crawford Ranch in April 2002. High treason (betrayal of one’s country, sovereign or government) in manufacturing a case for war, the central one of which was the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. This in itself gave no grounds because the possession of such was no basis for a military assault on a sovereign country. Three aggressive nations, the US, UK and Israel, have held weapons of mass destruction for decades; no attempt has been made to disarm them. The grounds for UK military action against Iraq changed as the unlawful operation proceeded under the guise of liberation of the people and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The part played by the “sofa cabinet”, three of whom were unelected, in promulgating a war fought on behalf of Her Majesty is being minutely examined by law officers. One such cabinet member, Mr Charles Powell, recently stated on BBC TV that the aim of the war was the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. He would know that was an illegal aim. Ann Clywd MP was appointed Mr Blair’s human rights envoy in Iraq. She has continuously claimed a virtuous aim … [but the fact is that] at least a million Iraqis have been killed, about 40 per cent of whom will have been children. Using a conservative ratio, at least two million will have been maimed. Mr Blair is charged with a litany of war crimes that followed the invasion, one of which is the failure of the “coalition of the willing” to halt the further deterioration in the quality and quantity of medical services in Iraq which had already worsened during the 12 years of sanctions. Another obligation of an occupier is to maintain security for the populace. The very opposite happened. Disbanding the Iraqi army and other Baathist structures was central to the violent chaos which followed the invasion. Protecting the heritage of a country is another obligation of an occupier in international law. Mr Blair failed as leader to meet these and he is so charged. The general charges in this indictment are followed by an annex which details names in which there has been death or extreme injury. The charges also include collusion in a military and political coalition which has used banned weapons. The use of white phosphorus at Fallujah by the US was admitted. Armour-penetrating tank and cannon shells, as well as “bunker busting” bombs and missiles, have used depleted uranium. Uranium U238 is dispersed widely as a very fine dust; it has been detected as far away as the UK. Iraqi doctors claim that there have been dramatic rises in grotesque deformities in babies born prematurely, in leukaemia and in other malignancies. The list of charges includes the case of Ali Abbas, then 12 years of age and formerly of the village of Zafaraniya, which is 30 miles from Baghdad, and his deceased family: his mother who was six months pregnant, his father, brother and at least 10 other relatives. It has been reported that, just after midnight on 30 March 2003 and 10 days into “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, a weapon or two weapons exploded. We had all gone to bed and there was this loud noise and smoke. I felt very scared and I was in much pain. I kept shouting for my mother. I did not know at the time what had happened to her. A photograph taken in hospital in Baghdad shows that Ali was burned across his trunk and that his hands and forearms were incinerated. His head, neck, abdomen and legs were unblemished. Examination of this photograph shows this boy was subjected to the most intense radiated heat ? not contact heat. It seems likely that his head and lower half were screened from the source of this radiation by a window aperture or similar, given the rectangular pattern of the thermal injuries. The weapon that caused such rapid incineration is unknown. It certainly was not a thermobaric weapon as used currently in Iraq and Gaza. Uranium weapons give rise to a fireball as the dust ignites. This can melt steel but there are no photographs of human victims of such attacks which match the incineration of the arms of Ali Abbas, although these weapons have been used frequently ? both in the Gulf War and in the ongoing Iraq War. The clandestine use of a small tactical nuclear weapon cannot not be ruled out. The authorities will require that Ali Abbas comes to the Hague to give evidence. However, he has not been able to leave Baghdad since last summer. He has of course required someone else to attend to his every toilet need and to his dressing. An uncle provided that for him whilst he grew from boy to man at the private boys school in London and where he excelled scholastically. Another uncle took over last summer but a visa has not been forthcoming from the UK. The US named Tariq Aziz the Eight of Spades, thus coming 43rd in the United States’ set of 55 playing cards. His trial for involvement in the hanging of 40 alleged racketeers started on 29 April under a Kurdish judge and a military occupation. The central charge against Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is that he has caused the death of thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians, the maiming of many more and the displacement of over four million people. Unlike the treatment of those humans, his hearing will be fair. It is understood that he will be able to receive a Catholic priest in the cell which was formerly occupied by Slobodan Milosevic. The prison chaplain will encourage further study of “faith”, which with globalization were the topics of Mr Blair’s address in Westminster Cathedral. The commander-in-chief of the USA spoke of the “sanctity of life” when he was receiving the Pontiff in Washington recently. This principle will be applied to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair but probably not to the deputy prime minister of Iraq. David Halpin FRCS is a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon. He founded the Dove and the Dolphin charity, one of whose aims is to promote the health and welfare of Palestinian children.
ISSE addresses students during week of debates at the University of Sussex19 May 2008The International Students for Social Equality recently took part in a ?One World Week? of debates on international topics, organised by students at the University of Sussex. The ISSE has been campaigning to set up a student society on the campus and has held three meetings this year?on the Russian Revolution, the Iraq War and the May-June 1968 uprising in France. After receiving an invitation from event organiser Oniicosi Luqman, the ISSE provided speakers for a number of sessions that were attended by up to 20 students. Several students signed up to the ISSE. Student union communications officer Koos Couve said that ?it was great you guys talked about things from a broader, international viewpoint. We have never heard such ideas before here and they really had an impact.? The first session of ?One World Week? posed the question ?Kenya: Can the new government guarantee fair elections, stop tribal tensions and end corruption?? World Socialist Web Site correspondent Ann Talbot explained that the crisis that afflicted Kenya after the elections earlier this year ?was not a conjunctural episode that can be addressed by reform of the constitution, by better oversight of public institutions, or by widening the political elite to include previously excluded groups.? Kenya was undergoing a systemic breakdown of its political system, which was one expression of a far more generalised crisis in Africa, she said. Talbot agreed with first speaker, Kenyan freelance journalist Julius MbaLuto, that ?the outbreak of what has been described as inter-tribal violence in Kenya has nothing to do with any peculiar propensity of African people for such conflict.? At independence in 1963, the British handed power over to the Kikuyu elite, which then enriched itself at the expense of the majority of the population, including the Kikuyu poor. For almost half a century, this elite has failed to carry out an effective programme of land reform, one of the most basic elements in the programme of bourgeois democracy, or bring about economic improvement for the vast majority of poor. Although Kenya was held up as an African ?success story,? its high economic growth has not benefited the majority of the population, more than half of whom live on an income of less than US$2 a day and at least half on less than US$1 a day. This situation resulted from the subordination of the ruling elite?of whichever faction?to the interests of the major capitalist powers, the international financial institutions and the giant corporations that dominate the world economy. For a short time after independence, as long as the Cold War lasted, Kenya?s new rulers had a certain room for manoeuvre. But no more, Talbot explained. Subjected to IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes that demanded previously protected markets be opened up to global finance capital, the result has been rapid deregulation, privatisations and public spending cuts accompanied by increased looting of the economy. Talbot explained how Mwai Kibaki and his Rainbow Coalition had won victory in 2002 by promising reforms and an end to the corruption associated with the previous Moi regime. The Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga, a former member of Kibaki?s government, became the focus of those who were excluded from this ?feeding frenzy,? she said. Their inclusion in the new power-sharing government is part of a vast wealth grab. Almost half of MPs have become cabinet ministers or assistant ministers and are entitled to huge salaries and other benefits. Odinga, who is now prime minister, has a fleet of cars and a 45-strong personal bodyguard. Talbot said that the post-election violence was prepared in advance. It was state repression aimed at the poorest strata of the population, which had a class, rather than tribal character. Politicians on both sides were prepared to sacrifice the lives of almost 2,000 of their fellow countrymen in pursuit of wealth and power. These politicians now sit in the same cabinet and talk about returning the displaced people to their farms and homes. ?A cabinet composed of people of this stamp are not about to resolve any of the political and economic problems that confront Kenya. They are part of the problem,? she added. She concluded by calling for a new political perspective to address the problems that confront the mass of the Kenyan population. Genuine economic development can only take place in Kenya on the basis of the socialist reorganisation of the world economy to meet the needs of the majority of its people. The Obama campaign ISSE organiser Marcus Morgan spoke at the session, ?The US people want change. Can Obama bring it?? Morgan explained how the growing economic crisis and resulting social tensions have thrown the Democratic Party into crisis and seen it fracturing along racial, ethnic, gender and other demographic lines. The bitter conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, despite there being no public expression of major policy differences between them, signifies a deep divide in the US ruling elite. Although Obama had tapped into broad and deep discontent, particularly among young people, over the war, economic insecurity, and the corruption and criminality of the Bush years, he has been carefully groomed as the candidate of ?change? by a faction of the Democratic Party that sees a shift in foreign policy as the only way to defend US interests around the world. Morgan reviewed the historical evolution of the Democratic Party and the collapse of American liberalism. The ?New Deal? reforms advocated by the Democratic Party under Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression had proved to be the high point of US liberal reforms, he said. Following World War II, however, the Democratic Party no longer presented itself as the party of the ?working man,? but as the defender of the ?middle class.? Workers, it was said, would improve their lot by benefiting as consumers from the economic growth and general prosperity of the country. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the post-war boom beginning to unravel against the background of civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, urban riots and a wave of strikes. ?As the promise of rising living standards through the expansion of the consumer society faltered, the Democratic Party sought to refashion itself under the banner of identity politics,? he explained, becoming an unstable alliance of competing interest groups, which included the civil rights establishment and more privileged layers of blacks and other minorities, feminist organisations, gay rights groups, trade unions and environmentalists. Working class support for the Democrats was further eroded as the party supported demands for the restructuring of the US economy in the face of its global competition. It was Democratic President Jimmy Carter, Morgan recalled, who initiated the first major attack on the reforms of the New Deal and began an offensive against the wages and living standards of the working class. If there was one telling indication of Obama?s real political agenda, Morgan added, it was when, in an unguarded moment, he spoke of the ?bitterness? of working class voters in Pennsylvania over wage-cutting, layoffs and deepening economic insecurity, and the indifference of both Republican and Democratic administrations to their problems. Following a media campaign, Obama apologised for his ?blunder? and remained on the defensive for the remainder of the Pennsylvania campaign. This episode demonstrates how completely American liberalism and the Democratic Party are dedicated to suppressing discussion on the fundamental class tensions and interests that dominate American society and opposing the development of an independent socialist perspective in the working class. Morgan?s appraisal drew a sharp response from the Stop The War Coalition speaker on the platform who was opposed to a socialist critique of Obama and the Democrats. She insisted that Obama was the best of a bad bunch, and that it was a question of uniting the discontent that will emerge, largely of a local and ethnic character, into a ?national forum? pledged to ?mass radical action.? Israel and Palestine Jean Shaoul, who writes on Israel and Palestine for the World Socialist Web Site, spoke at a session considering the questions, ?Palestine?How can the Palestinians be liberated? What does the division between Hamas and Fatah mean? Can a majority of Israelis be won to supporting Palestinian rights? Who is precluding the two-state solution?? Shaoul made it clear that it is only possible to understand the failure of the struggle to liberate Palestine from the standpoint of Leon Trotsky?s Theory of Permanent Revolution. She explained how shortly after Israel defeated the Arab nations in the 1967 Six-Day War, Yasser Arafat and his Fatah faction came to dominate the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Although it was a popular and radical mass movement, its perspective was one of a democratic, secular, capitalist state where the Palestinian bourgeoisie would be free to exploit its own working class. Arafat and the PLO sought to work through the various Arab regimes, which were entirely dependent on a world market dominated by the imperialist powers and who were ultimately fearful of the threat to their rule posed by the working class. As such, they had demonstrated their inability to either achieve genuine independence from imperialism or secure the democratic rights and social needs of the workers and peasant masses they exploited. ?One after another, all of these regimes betrayed the Palestinians with tragic consequences,? Shaoul added. Along with oil revenues, backing from the Soviet Union had allowed the Arab regimes a certain room for manoeuvre in their dealings with the major powers. But the first Gulf War in 1991, which unfolded during the final days of the USSR and amidst the drive to restore capitalism, saw the majority of the Arab regimes line up unambiguously with Washington. This left Arafat completely isolated. In 1993, he was forced to sign the Oslo Agreement, officially renouncing his original perspective of freeing the whole of 1948 Palestine and accepting a two-state solution. The Palestinian Authority set up under the Oslo agreement, Shaoul continued, was to be the vehicle for the Palestinian bourgeoisie to exploit the working class and become fabulously wealthy. Fatah became associated with corruption, waste and inefficiency that even Arafat?s prestige could not disguise. While Arafat himself ultimately baulked at Washington?s demands to accept Israel?s dictates, his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, pledged himself to peace on whatever terms Washington and Tel Aviv demanded. Shaoul described how Hamas offered no alternative, but was a retrogressive development of the Palestinian national movement. Its explicit call for an Islamic state, she said, would involve the subjugation of non-Muslims and the mass expulsion of Israeli Jewry. In its ideology and methods, Hamas mirrors the Zionist extremists, who claim all of Palestine as a Jewish state with no room for other peoples. Hamas, too, has all but accepted a two-state solution, Shaoul continued, making an offer recently to the Israeli government to accept a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders along with its promise of a ceasefire. Such a state, even if realised, would be economically unviable other than as a heavily fortified investment platform for the transnational corporations from which to brutally exploit the working class and peasantry. The liberation of Palestine is only possible as part of a perspective of ending the artificial patchwork of capitalist states in the Middle East and through the unity of Arab and Israeli workers, youth and intellectuals in a combined struggle to establish the United Socialist States of the Middle East. Shaoul rejected the conception that the Israeli people are collectively responsible for the oppression of the Palestinians. Israel is beset by class and social conflicts and has a strong and militant working class that opposes its government?s social and economic policies. The fate of the Middle East, Shaoul said, ?will, in the final analysis, be decided in the US and Europe, either by the political representatives of big business implementing their plans for the region?s military and economic subjugation, or by the major battalions of the international working class doing what is politically necessary to prevent this.?
Nothing Left to Fight For19 May 2008You can hear the wringing of hands and tearing of cloth all the way down Farringdon Road. Dismayed by the results of the local elections, convinced that Labour will be crushed in the byelection on Thursday, afraid that this will presage disaster in the next general election, my fellow columnists are predicting the end of the civilised world. But I can?t understand why we should care. Yes, I worry about what the Tories might do when they get in. I also worry about what Labour might do if it wins another term. Why should anyone on the left seek the re-election of the most rightwing government Britain has had since the second world war? New Labour?s apologists keep reminding us of the redistributive policies it has introduced: Sure Start children?s centres, reductions in child poverty, raising the school leaving age, the national minimum wage, flexible hours for parents and carers, better conditions for part-time workers, the Decent Homes programme, free museums, more foreign aid. All these are real achievements and deserve to be celebrated. But the catalogue of failures, backsliding and outright destruction is much longer and more consequential. One fact alone should disqualify this government from office: we have a cabinet of war criminals. The Nuremberg Tribunal characterised a war of aggression as ?the supreme international crime.? It is not just that Britain?s Labour government launched and has sustained an unprovoked war, it also sabotaged all means of achieving a peaceful resolution. In April 2002 it helped the Bush administration to sack Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in order to prevent him from settling the dispute over Iraq?s alleged weapons of mass destruction(1,2). In two separate offers before the invasion began, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates(3). Cluster bombs can be legally used because the British government helped to block an international ban in 2006(4): it is still holding out against an outright ban at the current talks in Dublin(5). The government has undermined another international peace agreement ? the nuclear non-proliferation treaty ? by deciding to renew the Trident missile programme. It was the first administration to announce a policy of pre-emptive nuclear attack(6): even the great nuclear enthusiast Harold Macmillan never went this far. In 2007, the defence secretary, without parliamentary debate, revealed that the US would be allowed to use the listening station at Menwith Hill for its missile defence system(7). Labour appears to be prepared to meet any demand, however outrageous, the Bush administration makes. In 2003 the government signed a one-sided extradition treaty, permitting the US to extract our citizens without producing prima facie evidence of an offence. In the same year the defence secretary announced that he would restructure the British armed forces to make them ?inter-operable? with those of the United States, ensuring for the first time in British history that they became functionally subordinate to those of another sovereign power(8). Labour?s foreign policy is as unethical as Margaret Thatcher?s. It provides military aid to the government of Colombia, whose troops are involved in a campaign of terror against the civilian population. It granted an open licence for weapons exports to the government of Uzbekistan, and sacked the British ambassador when he tried to draw attention to the regime?s human rights abuses. It has collaborated with the US programme of extrajudicial kidnapping and imprisonment, left our citizens to languish in Guantanamo Bay, and made use of Pakistani torture chambers in seeking to extract testimony from British suspects(9). Until 2005 it tied its foreign aid programme to the privatisation of public utilities in some of the world?s poorest countries(10,11). Last year it held out against reform of the International Monetary Fund?s unfair allocation of votes(12). The proportion of the British population in prison has risen by a fifth since the Tories left office. Today Britain locks up 151 out of every 100,000 people(13). The Chinese judiciary, by contrast, which is notorious for its willingness to bang up anyone and everyone, jails 119 people per 100,000; Myanmar imprisons 120, Saudi Arabia 132(14). The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, passed in 2005, contains clauses which permit the police to ban any demonstration, however peaceful(15). It is one of a long series of bills the Labour government has passed which restrict the right to protest. The citizen has been re-regulated; business has been deregulated. Last year deaths caused by serious injuries at work rose by 11%(16): a predictable result of the sacking of 1000 staff at the Health and Safety Executive and a 24% reduction in workplace inspections(17). In 2006 the government instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop its corruption case against the arms manufacturer BAe. It has obstructed efforts by other states to investigate the company(18,19). Labour has shifted taxation from the rich to the poor, cutting corporation tax from 33% to 28% and capital gains tax from 40% to 18%, and introducing a new Entrepreneurs? Relief scheme, taxing the first million of capital gains at just 10%. It tried to raise the income tax paid by the poorest earners from 10% to 20%. Labour has lifted the inheritance tax threshold from 300,000 to 700,000, and maintained the cap on the highest rates of council tax. While vigorously prosecuting benefits cheats, it has allowed tax avoidance, mostly by the very rich, to reach an estimated 41billion(20). Inequality today is slightly worse than it was when Labour took power (the Gini coefficient which measures it has risen from 0.33 to 0.35(21)). Both as Chancellor and as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has forced the private finance initiative into almost all public services. His privatisation schemes have crept into places where the Conservative government never dared to tread. Labour has waged war against our planning system and overseen a disastrous decline in social housing: under Margaret Thatcher?s tenure an average of 46,600 social homes were built every year; under Tony Blair the average rate was 17,300(22). Labour is closing post offices, small schools and GPs? surgeries, while overseeing a doubling of the UK?s airport capacity and the construction of 4000km of new trunk roads(23). These developments ensure that even the modest targets in the climate change bill are likely to be missed. Carbon dioxide pollution fell faster under the Conservatives than it has under Labour(24). Above all, the Labour government has destroyed hope. It has put into practice Margaret Thatcher?s dictum that ?there is no alternative? to a market fundamentalism that subordinates human welfare to the demands of business. It has created a political monoculture which kills voters? enthusasism, and delayed the electoral reforms which would have given smaller parties an opportunity to be heard. All we are left with is fear: the fear that this awful government might be replaced with something slightly worse. Fear has destroyed the Labour party: people keep supporting it, whatever it does, in trepidation of letting the other side win. Save this government? I would sooner give money to the Malarial Mosquito Conservation Project. Of all the causes leftist thinkers might support, New Labour must be the least deserving. References: 1. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/04/16/a-war-against-the-peacemaker/ 2. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/04/23/diplomatic-impunity/ 3. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/11/11/dreamers-and-idiots/ 4. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/11/07/asserting-our-right-to-kill-a…
5. BBC Online, 19th May 2008. Forum seeks to ban cluster bombs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7407631.stm 6. Geoff Hoon, 24th March 2002. The Jonathan Dimbleby Show, ITV 1. 7. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/31/drumming-up-a-new-cold-war/ 8. Geoff Hoon, 26th June 2003. Britain?s Armed Forces for Tomorrow?s Defence. Speech to the Royal United Services Institute. 9. Ian Cobain, 29th April 2008. MI5 accused of colluding in torture of terrorist suspects. The Guardian. 10. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/01/06/on-the-edge-of-lunacy/ 11. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/05/18/this-is-what-we-paid-for/ 12. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/17/the-emperor-of-africa/ 13. Kings College, London, 2008. Prison Brief – Highest to Lowest Rates.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?a… 14. ibid. 15. Sections 125-127. 16. Health and Safety Executive, 2008. Fatal injury statistics.
http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals.htm 17. SchNEWS, 11th April 2008. Issue 628. http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news628.htm 18. Rob Evans, Ian Traynor, Luke Harding and Rory Carroll, 12th June 2003. Politicians? claims put BAE in firing line. The Guardian. 19. Rob Evans and Ian Traynor, 12th June 2003. US accuses British over arms deal bribery bid. The Guardian.
20. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/t… 21. Mike Brewer et al, 2008. Poverty and inequality in the UK: 2007. IFS Briefing Note No. 73. The Institute for Fiscal Studies. http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn73.pdf 22. DCLG, August 2007. Table 244. Housebuilding: permanent dwellings completed, by tenure, England, historical calendar year series. www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/140912 23. Department for Transport, July 2004. The Future of Transport White Paper. 24. www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/globatmos/download/xls/ghg_annex…
Israel, the Holocaust and the Nakba18 May 2008Very few matrixes can be as sensitive as that of the Holocaust, Israel and the Palestinian Catastrophe of 1948 (known as the Nakba). It is no wonder that very few people in the past have attempted to comment on the nexus between the Holocaust, the Nakba and a solution for the Palestine question. To all intents and purposes, researchers, journalists and essayists who were, and still are, interested in the Palestine question preferred to deal with each of the subject matters separately – as if there is no connection whatsoever between them. But the connection is there and is highly important both for students of the Israel/Palestine question and for the future of this torn country. Sixty years after the dispossession of the Palestinians, the event that shaped the present Middle Eastern political crisis, it is high time also to involve the Holocaust and its memory in our overall attempt to understand the “conflict” and contribute towards its solution. Various factors contributed to the demise of the Palestinians in 1948. The most important of them was Zionist ideology and later on Israeli policy. The Zionist movement wished ever since its appearance on Palestine’s soil in the late 19th century to take over as much of the country as possible and create on it a Jewish state. The effort to achieve it began in earnest with the onset of British rule in Palestine in 1917. Judaising Palestine meant de-Arabising it. So an important part of the vision was an effort to have as few Palestinians as possible within the future Jewish state. The vision became a plan and reality when Britain, after 30 years of rule, decided to leave Palestine in February 1947. About a year later, at the beginning of 1948, the Zionist leaders decided that the best means of making the vision of a Jewish Palestine possible was by forcefully dispossessing the Palestinians from their homeland. Within less than a year, between February and October 1948, the Israeli army systematically uprooted and destroyed more than 500 villages and 11 towns. Half of Palestine’s native population was ethnically cleansed in those months. Their material and cultural possessions were taken over by the Israelis and their presence on the land was nearly wiped out. British legacy The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, however, could not have been executed had it not been for some additional factors. The British mandatory government was responsible, since it did not interfere, when it could, in the early stages of the dispossession. The expulsions were carried out while its officials and soldiers watched. Indirectly, Britain was also made culpable by its destruction of the Palestinian leadership during the 1936-1939 revolt. The British exiled and killed many of the Palestinian leaders in those years. The absence of an able political leadership and the disappearance of capable military men left the Palestinians literally defenceless in the face of the Jewish forces in 1948. The Arab world also played a negative part. The impotence of its armies and the lack of commitment of its leaders turned the hope of a pan-Arab solidarity movement into a farce. The Palestinians surrendered their affairs in the hands of the Arab League, a move that proved to be a colossal mistake. The League did not represent their aspirations nor could it protect them. But the most important factor, quite often overlooked, was the international complacency in the face of the ethnic cleansing. This Israeli policy could not have been contemplated, let alone implemented, had it not been tolerated by the international community. The Zionist and later Israeli leaders knew they could rely on the passivity and silence of the international community. On the face of it, this should not have been an obvious assumption. After the Second World War when the Cold War period had just begun, the main powers competing for world hegemony needed the goodwill of the Arab world. Moreover, the more conscientious sections of Western society were increasingly supporting the anti-colonialist emotions and movements throughout the Arab world. True, the two leading ailing colonialist powers of the day, Britain and France, were still trying to maintain their presence and influence in the Arab world, but at least for the sake of appearances they too had to adhere to the notion that all the Arab peoples in all the Arab countries were entitled to be independent and sovereign. And when France was particularly reluctant to grant even this symbolic independence to Algeria – preferring the interests of its settler community there – public opinion in Europe, and beyond, rallied behind the Algerian liberation movement. The people of Palestine and their national movement should not have been an exceptional case study, had it not been for the Zionist movement’s interest in their country. They easily passed the test of being recognised as a modern day “nation” or “people”. But they were already exempted, towards the end of the First World War, from the international promise to allow the Arab nations or peoples to become independent. Strategic considerations, Christian Zionism among Britain’s leaders and a fair share of anti-Semitism led London to support the settlement of European Jews away from Europe in the midst of the Arab world. Although the British declared famously in 1917 that this would be done without prejudicing the rights and aspirations of the indigenous population, of course it did. It impinged upon their basic rights for nationhood, self-determination and independence – rights granted to everyone else in the Arab world. This was done against staggering statistics: 90 percent of the population were Palestinians, and out of the 10 percent Jews, quite a few were Orthodox Jews who regarded Zionism as an aberration and interference with God’s will. It did not work, though. The Palestinians rejected the imposition of a colonialist project on them, despite the full European support for it. Up to 1939 Europe, and in particular Britain, developed second thoughts about Palestine. International public opinion had to make a new decision in 1947, when Britain, in despair at its entanglement there, passed the question to others. In 1947 the statistics were still very much in the Palestinians’ favour. Objectively, they had what was needed to be regarded by the international community as a legitimate nation demanding its right for self determination and independence. They were two thirds of the population and owned more than 90 percent of the land. The Jews were mostly newcomers from the previous three years and had managed to buy only 7 percent of the land. Compared to 1917, the Palestinians had an even more distinct national identity and a clearer vision. But this was all ignored by the international community that used the United Nations (UN) to pass a decision on Palestine’s future on 29 November 1947, the famous partition resolution. Instead of granting the Palestinians independence in Palestine, the UN suggested allocating them less than half of the country and proposed they would share the economy and currency with the Jewish settlers who were allocated a larger part of it. Their capital, Jerusalem, was expropriated as an international enclave. Only one factor led the UN special commission on Palestine, and all those powers behind it, to abandon every conventional principle of statehood and independence for the sake of satisfying the Zionist movement: the Holocaust. One can read again and again the arguments put forward by everyone involved in proposing the partition resolution and later on the admittance of Israel as a full member of the UN, while Palestine was erased from the international public agenda, and see clearly that the Holocaust was the sole argument. The argument for a Jewish state as compensation for the Holocaust was a powerful argument, so powerful that nobody listened to the outright rejection of the UN solution by the overwhelming majority of the people of Palestine. What comes out clearly is a European wish to atone. The basic and natural rights of the Palestinians should be sidelined, dwarfed and forgotten altogether for the sake of the forgiveness that Europe was seeking from the newly formed Jewish state. It was much easier to rectify the Nazi evil vis—vis a Zionist movement than facing the Jews of the world in general. It was less complex and, more importantly, it did not involve facing the victims of the Holocaust themselves, but rather a state that claimed to represent them. The price for this more convenient atonement was robbing the Palestinians of every basic and natural right they had and allowing the Zionist movement to ethnically cleanse them without fear of any rebuke or condemnation. The most bewildering arithmetic done by the UN, in the name of the international community, towards achieving this formula was to include the number of Jews in Europe in the overall demographic calculation of the balance in Palestine. Hence, Palestine was now the land of the Jews of Europe, including those who had not yet arrived there and those who never intended to arrive there. As such they were a majority in Palestine. The Zionist movement had the military power to both ethnically cleanse Palestine of its original population and to face a military confrontation with troops from various Arab armies sent to try and prevent the creation of a Jewish state. However, it needed the Holocaust memory to silence any criticism of its ethnic cleansing operation and to prevent any international pressure on it to allow the return of all those expelled from the land after the 1948 war. Europe’s guilt at allowing Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jews of Europe was to be cured by the dispossession of the Palestinians. This created what the late Edward Said called a chain of victimisation. The Palestinians became the victims’ victim. This concept was never accepted by Israel and its allies; nor was it ever endorsed by the European political elite that felt very comfortable with the formula of Israel being the only and exclusive victim of the Holocaust and the only victim in Palestine. The Israelis went the other way in two directions that complemented each other. On the one hand, they felt secure from any Western pressure and continued the dispossession of the Palestinians – until today. The limits to their actions in the past, and quite probably in the future, were well defined by the late Israeli journalist Aryeh Caspi: as long as the Israelis do not do to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews, they are within the legitimate and moral boundaries of civilised behaviour. The repertoire of actions within those limits was, and still is, quite horrendous, as the latest Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip testify. The other direction was to Nazify the Palestinians so as to justify further the actions against them. Justice The European political elite seems still to suffer from the same timidity as it did in the past. This fear, rooted so clearly in Europe’s tragic Jewish history, hinders severely any chance for a comprehensive and lasting peace in Israel and Palestine. It is true that the main block for any effective pressure on Israel is the US. But any chance of balancing it or causing it to redirect its course depends very much on Europe. One of the main stumbling blocks in the way of such a change is Germany, for obvious reasons. However, Germany as a society and government has an obligation not only to the Jewish people, but also to the Palestinians. It was right and just that the first decades after the Holocaust were devoted to reconciliation with the Jewish world. Germany as a whole did face its past boldly and did not deny the horror of the Holocaust. Now the time has come for the Germans to pay attention to the victims’ victim – Germany is not that far a link in the chain of victimisation and cannot spurn responsibility. There are other strategic reasons for trying a new approach to the Palestine issue than the one that puts all the blame on the Palestinians and disregards their legitimate rights such as the right of the refugees to return and the right of the rest of the Palestinian people to live without occupation, oppression and discrimination. The continued violence in Israel and Palestine has the potential of dragging not only the Middle East into endless wars but also Europe – as is very clear from the events of the last decade. But this naive article is about morality and justice – justice, something which I found is very important to a younger German generation; a generation that knows that as a nation they faced head-on their own past evils and expect the Israelis to do the same. You can meet them as volunteers in the occupied territories and in the various European solidarity campaigns for Palestine. These young men and women should be a source of pride for Germany, as were the young Germans who volunteered in Israel as part of the reconciliation. We will all need them, because history teaches us that evil, occupation and dispossession do eventually come to an end. There is always a danger of revenge and retribution on such a day. Maybe a group of people who were brought up boldly facing the Nazi genocide, and became aware at first hand of the Israeli occupation and its horrors, would facilitate a restitutive justice for all – like the one we had in post Apartheid South Africa and not a retributive one – such as the one we witnessed in Rwanda. Judging by the speech recently given by the chancellor, Angela Merkel, in the Israeli Knesset, Germany is not likely to play any constructive role in bringing peace to Israel and Palestine. Merkel presented an embarrassingly biased and one sided pro-Israeli position. In her address the chancellor did not mention the occupation, even in passing, and only praised Israel as a paragon of justice, democracy and civilisation. This will only strengthen the more aggressive and violent aspects of Israeli policy and actions. It also left the Palestinians with no hope for a different future, and without hope despair sets in which in turn produces violence. We all need closure from the 20th century – not in order to forget and not even to forgive, but for the sake of building a normal and healthy life. This is true about victims and victimisers alike. Germany can play a very positive role in bringing that about in Palestine. Now is the time, before it is too late. Ilan Pappe’s latest book is The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. His new book The Bureaucracy of Evil will be published later this year. Pappe will also be talking at Marxism 2008
Newcastle University Pushes Clean Coal18 May 2008Simon Cunich
10 May 2008 ?[It] would be imprudent to tip the winners in the race for low emission technologies?, wrote Barney Glover, University of Newcastle deputy vice-chancellor, in an April 10 letter defending the university?s research in so-called clean coal technologies. ?In the race to find a solution to the problem of climate change, clean coal may have a future role?, he wrote. His letter was in response to a statement presented to the university by students at the Fossil Fools? Day protest on April 1. The statement criticised the university?s role as a partner of the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development, an Australia-wide research partnership which aims to ?optimise the contribution of coal to a sustainable future?. Glover is on the board of the CCSD. The students? statement argued that the university ?cannot provide independent research into climate change solutions while it is a CCSD partner alongside some of the world?s largest mining corporations (Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Xstrata Coal)?. According to the statement, between 2001 and 2007 the university spent more than $3.6 million in cash and in-kind contributions to the CCSD. Meanwhile, Newcastle University joins many of the same corporations as a partner of the Cooperative Research Centre for Mining. As well as mining companies, the CCSD also brings together the University of Queensland, the University of NSW, Macquarie University, and Curtin University of Technology. The statement argued that the CCSD ?is being driven by the coal industry?s interests rather than a genuine response to climate change?. According to the vast majority of climate scientists, drastic changes have to be made within the next 10 years to keep global warming under 2C (above pre-industrial levels). According to Friends of the Earth, warming above 2-2.4 C would lead to further unavoidable rises, taking temperatures beyond the range of the last million years. The change necessary to avoid this, the statement argued, would involve a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions of 50-80% by 2050. This would require ?a rapid shift away from the use of coal and other dirty fossil fuels for energy production?. Clean coal research is based on the idea that we can continue to extract and burn coal but bury the carbon emissions underground through an as yet unproven technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). Even if the technology is successful the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has assessed that ?the majority of CCS deployment will occur in the second half of this century?, which is too late to make the necessary reductions to keep global warming below two degrees. ?The expectation that CCS technology will be successful in the future cannot be used to justify the expansion of the coal industry today ? Rather, as long as clean coal remains unviable, the mining, burning and exporting of coal must be drastically reduced?, the statement said. If the university is serious about developing solutions to climate change it should call for coal to be phased out until clean coal is proven viable, if it ever is. A transition away from coal is possible because, in contrast to CCS, renewable energy technologies already exist. The statement called on the university to prioritise research and development of renewable energy technologies. ?[These technologies] could be further developed and implemented on a far greater scale with the support of the government and institutions like our University.? The university conducts renewable energy and clean coal research at its Priority Research Centre for Energy. However, the centre is unlikely to ?win the race? to solve climate change with its current inadequate aim to ?develop technologies that can reduce greenhouse gases internationally by 2% and nationally by 20% by 2030”. Universities must play a central role in developing responses to climate change. This requires more public funding and independence from coal corporations that are doing their best to preserve business-as-usual.
With Scottish independence on his mind, will Gordon Brown be taking Indonesian lessons next month?18 May 2008Next year or in 2010, the people of Scotland are now almost certain to be given the opportunity to vote in a referendum to choose independence or staying in the United Kingdom. In response, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised to ?do whatever is necessary to ensure the stability and maintenance of the Union?. (1) Next month, Gordon Brown will welcome to Downing Street a leader who knows a thing or two about doing ?whatever is necessary? to combat independence movements: the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Ten years ago, when Yudhoyono was a General in the Indonesian army, he and his military colleagues failed to prevent East Timor from breaking away from Indonesia. They tried to kill off East Timor?s bid for freedom by killing a third of the East Timorese people (2) ? but even that wasn?t enough. And now, a decade later, having swapped his General?s uniform for a civilian suit, President Yudhoyono is determined, once again, to do ?whatever is necessary? to stop West Papua going the same way. According to a recent speech by UK Foreign Office Minister, Meg Munn MP, ?Indonesia?s experience in East Timor, Aceh and Papua is not simply an internal affair. It can act as a model to others.? (3) With this in mind, it would only be logical for Gordon Brown to ask the Indonesian President?s advice on how to prevent Scottish independence. Using Indonesia?s ?experience? in West Papua as a ?model? for what the UK?s ?experience in Scotland? could be like, here is how Yudhoyono?s advice to Gordon Brown might sound: ?1) As President of Indonesia, my first advice to you, Prime Minister Brown, is that you must fill Scotland with British military forces. Build British military posts all over Scotland, in the centre of every city and in even the smallest Scottish village. Remember, the main reason for the British military?s existence is to maintain the unity and territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. You can also flood Scotland with British intelligence agents disguised as taxi drivers or shop keepers. Then you will catch as many Scottish separatists as possible. Your British soldiers, police and intelligence agents can then kill them, torture them, rape them, intimidate them and imprison them as a warning to other Scottish separatists. As your Minister said, Indonesia?s experience in West Papua can act as a model to others: During my four years as President, we have hugely increased the Indonesian military and intelligence presence in West Papua. After one of my military commanders was indicted by the UN for war crimes in East Timor, I promoted him and sent him to West Papua. Since then he has warned the Papuan people “? it is the duty of the TNI [the Indonesian military] to crush any struggle or activity undertaken by any group in the community which tends towards separatism”(4) Our Indonesian intelligence agents are everywhere in West Papua, disguised as taxi drivers or shop keepers. They catch as many Papuan separatists as possible. Then our Indonesian soldiers, police and intelligence agents can kill them, torture them (5), rape them, intimidate them and imprison them as a warning to other Papuan separatists. 2) I next advise you to BAN the Scottish flag, the Saltire, BAN the National Anthem, ?Scotland the Brave? and BAN all other ?separatist symbols? such as the thistle and Scottish dancing. As your Minister said, Indonesia?s experience in West Papua can act as a model to others: We have made it a criminal offence for West Papuans to raise their flag, the Morning Star, or to sing their national anthem, ?O My Land, Papua?. Both are counted as ?rebellion? under Indonesian law and are punishable by up to 20 years in prison (6). And under a new decree I have just issued (without any consultation with the Papuan people, of course), I?ve also banned displaying the flag or any other ?separatist symbols? such as the Mambruk bird on a bag or T shirt. (7) Last July, our Indonesian Police also investigated allegations that some Papuan teenagers had been seen performing a separatist dance. 3) Next you must BAN all ?regional/Scottish? political parties, especially the Scottish National Party. This means that, irrespective of what may be the democratic will of the Scottish people, the only choice Scots will have when they go to vote will be parties which totally support British territorial integrity! You may also consider assassinating their leaders. At the very least, imprison them for as long as possible. As your Minister said, Indonesia?s experience in West Papua can act as a model to others: Under Indonesian law (8), we have made it impossible for the Papuans to form a ?Free West Papua Party? by requiring that all political parties are represented in at least 50% of all the Indonesian provinces. So when West Papuans go to vote they can choose between my Party, The Democratic Party (Indonesian nationalist), or the Party of the Functional Groups [Golkar] (Indonesian nationalist), or the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Indonesian nationalist), or the United Development Party (Indonesian nationalist), or the Prosperous Justice Party (Indonesian nationalist), or the National Awakening Party (Indonesian nationalist), or the National Mandate Party (Indonesian nationalist) or finally the Crescent Star Party (Indonesian nationalist). This is the choice we offer Papuan voters under Indonesian democracy. Our friends in Burma prefer to keep Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, but in 2001 we in Indonesia decided it was better to assassinate the West Papuan independence leader, Theys Eluay (9). Our Special Forces strangled him to death because he was becoming much too popular amongst his own people and he was making West Papua known in the rest of the world. Then in 2002 we arrested another West Papuan independence leader, Benny Wenda. First we tried to bribe him into working for us but when he refused we tried to kill him too. And of course every time a Papuan raises the Morning Star flag, we put them in prison too. 4) Next you must BAN all Scottish separatists from standing in elections or from working in the Civil Service. Simply BAN everyone in Scotland from holding public office if they refuse to sign an oath to ?to maintain the integrity of the United Kingdom?. And you must also make it a legal requirement of the Scottish Parliament ?to maintain the integrity of the United Kingdom?. Then if a Member of the Scottish Parliament or a Scottish Civil Servant says anything about wanting independence for Scotland you can dismiss them from their post immediately. You?ll find it?s a very effective way to keep people silent. As your Minister said, Indonesia?s experience in West Papua can act as a model to others: Under Indonesian Law, all West Papuans who want to stand for election or become a Civil Servant must make an oath ?to maintain the unity and integrity? of Indonesia (10). And in our Special Autonomy Law for West Papua we?ve made it law that the Local Papuan Parliament is expressly required ?to maintain the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia?. In 2005, when a Papuan Civil Servant called Filep Karma, raised the Morning Star flag, we naturally dismissed him from his job ? and also put him in prison for 15 years. We find this approach works very well for us in West Papua. We can tell the world that the Governor of Papua and the members of the Local Parliament are the ?elected representatives of the Papuan people?, but we Indonesians know that these people will almost always stay silent about human rights abuses and Papuan demands for an independence referendum ? or else we will fire them. 5) And finally, hold a sham independence referendum. If you are worried that if you give them a free and democratic vote the Scottish people might make the wrong choice, i.e. independence for Scotland, simply make sure that whatever they actually want, you will get a 100% vote in favour of maintaining the United Kingdom! ?One person ? one vote? is of course out of the question. You must order the British military to hand-pick a thousand or so ?Scottish representatives?, then put a gun to their heads and order them to vote for the United Kingdom. You can call it ?the Act of Free Choice?. As your Minister said, Indonesia?s experience in West Papua can act as a model to others: Very inconveniently, we were required under international law to allow the West Papuans to exercise their right to self-determination, but my old mentor General Suharto knew that if we allowed them ?one person ? one vote? they would undoubtedly make the wrong choice; independence for West Papua. So our Indonesian military simply rounded up 1,026 Papuan elders, locked them inside our military camps, put a gun to their heads and ordered them to vote for Indonesia. (11) This part of our ?Indonesian model? was entirely successful. 100% of the ?Papuan representatives? voted in favour of Indonesia. We called it ?the Act of Free Choice?.? ———————————————————————— Of course, when Gordon Brown speaks of doing ?whatever is necessary? to maintain the United Kingdom he doesn?t have assassinating Scottish independence leaders, banning Scottish flags or holding sham referendums in mind. Despite praising it as ?a model for others?, the UK will not be following Indonesia?s West Papua model. This imagined advice from Yudhoyono to Brown would be laughable if it wasn?t also so seriously true about how Indonesia is treating the West Papua people. So this question must be put clearly and strongly to Gordon Brown: If this Indonesian model is so obviously unacceptable as a way to counter Scots who want independence from the UK, why do UK Ministers keep saying it is acceptable, sometimes even praiseworthy, as the way to counter West Papuans who want independence from Indonesia? Don?t West Papuans deserve exactly the same democratic rights & freedoms as the Scots, the English, the Irish and the Welsh? At their meeting in London next month, we hope Gordon Brown will tell President Yudhoyono that they do. NOTES: (1) The Daily Telegraph: ?Gordon Brown won’t let Union split? 10 May 2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/1944747/Gordon-Brown-won’t-let-England-and-Scotland-split.html (2) The Australian: ?UN verdict on East Timor? 19 January 2006 http://www.etan.org/et2006/january/14/19truth.htm (3) Speech by UK Foreign Office Minister, Meg Munn MP, at a Wilton Park Conference ?Indonesia: Political and Economic Prospects? 3 March 2008 http://www.wiltonpark.org.uk/documents/Meg%20Munn%20Speech%20901.pdf (4) Cenderwasih Pos, 7 July 2007: Statement by indicted war criminal and Indonesian military (TNI) commander in the West Papuan capital Jayapura: “? it is the duty of the TNI [the Indonesian military]to crush any struggle or activity undertaken by any group in the community which tends towards separatism” “What is absolutely certain is that anyone who tends towards separatism will be crushed by TNI”. ?In the interests of the NKRI (Republic of Indonesia), we are not afraid of human rights. We are quite prepared to imprison anyone, or dismiss them from their posts, whenever such [an action] is in the interests of the NKRI”. (5) See, for example, report on TORTURE by Dr Manfred Nowak, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, 7 March 2008 : ??in Papua .. [Indonesian] mobile paramilitary police units have routinely been engaging in largely indiscriminate village ?sweeping? operations in search of alleged independence activists and their supporters, or raids on university boarding houses, using excessive force?. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/7session/A.HRC.7.3.A… (6) Two prominent examples of West Papuans jailed for peacefully raising the Morning Star flag are Filep Karma & Yusak Pakage, who are currently serving 15 & 10 year prison sentences, respectively. Amnesty International has recognised Filep & Yusak as Prisoners of Conscience and is calling for their immediate and unconditional release. See: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=42 (6) Indonesian Government Regulation Number 77 of 2007 (PP 77/2007) on ?Local Symbols? was issued by President Yudhoyono in December 2007. Article 6.4 states: ?The design of a local symbol and flag must not have main similarities to the design, logo and flag of any illegal organization or separatist organization/ group/ institution/ movement in the Unitary Republic of Indonesia.? (8) Indonesian Law No. 31 of 2002 requires that political parties must have regional party boards in at least 50% of the total Indonesian provinces, and in 50 % of the total districts/municipalities in each province concerned, and in 25 % of the total sub-districts in each district/municipalities concerned. http://www.kbri-bangkok.com/about_indonesia/province_papua/province_papu… (9) The Age: ?Kopassus guilty of Eluay murder? 22 April 2003 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/21/1050777211770.html (10) Article 2 of the Official Pledge for Indonesian Civil Servants and military personnel http://jdihukum.banten.go.id/dokumen/UU%2048%20NO%209.pdf (11) ?[In the Act of Free Choice a] 1,000 handpicked representatives ? were largely coerced into declaring for inclusion in Indonesia?. (Foreign Office Minister Baroness Symons, House of Lords, 13 December 2004.)
Tesco and BAA coy over lobbying in the face of evidence18 May 2008The penultimate evidence session of the current Parliamentary inquiry into lobbying offered a strange mix of obfuscation and revelation. In the first of two separate sessions were representatives of three of the UK?s most powerful companies; Lucy Neville-Rolfe for Tesco, Tom Kelly for BAA and Chris Brinsmead for AstraZeneca. The Committee of MPs, said its chair Tony Wright, had called them in to find out what they get up to in terms of lobbying, and how they would feel about transparency regulations to open up the world of lobbying to greater public scrutiny. The next hour and twenty minutes of questions and answers had a familiarity to it, certainly from the point of view of the Committee and anyone who?d listened to previous sessions with lobbyists. Answers were guarded, questions were side stepped and the witnesses were defensive. This despite Tony Wright?s reassurance that lobbying could be seen as a good thing, and a warning at the top of the session for the three to avoid being ?coy? in their responses. ?Don?t come here to lobby us,? Wright advised. ?I want you to tell us like it is?. Many would be hard pushed to recognise the picture then painted by the witnesses. All three, it seems, were working not for profit, but for the public good, whether it was working to prevent climate change or helping the Government to encourage more science students. According to Neville-Rolfe, Tesco has a ?dialogue? with Government (it?s all about dialogue) to explain what they think should be done to help Britain. ?It?s a win, win? for Tesco and the country, she said. Similarly Brinsmead saw his drug company working ?to the same ends? as the NHS. Given this ?constructive dialogue?, one wonders why the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry, of which Brinsmead is the President, needed to draw up a lobbying ?battle? plan, which Tony Wright had got his hands on. In it, according to Wright, the ABPI talked about ?deploying ground troops? to ?weaken political and professional defences?, after which it planned to ?follow through with high precision strikes on specific regulatory enclaves in Whitehall and Brussels.? Quite a different picture of lobbying. On the issue of the revolving door and privileged access to decision-makers, Tom Kelly, who was Tony Blair?s spokesman at No10 until he moved to BAA, suggested that MPs were vastly overstating his role in Government and therefore his access and influence. In response to a question about the size of his contacts book, Kelly ? the man who replaced Alastair Campbell – replied that they extended as far as the press officers of Government departments. All of which led Tony Wright to say, at the beginning of the next session, that it had been quite difficult to work out how central lobbying is to these three companies. The second session heard from John Sauven of Greenpeace, Owen Espley of Friends of the Earth, and Tim Hancock of Amnesty. Information flowed much more freely during this next hour, with evidence of lobbying by BAA, Tesco and the nuclear industry all under the spotlight. The previous assertion by the corporate representatives – that open dialogue with Government was necessary for better public policy making – was also put into some doubt by Espley describing the lobbying activities of the Confederation of British Industry. In July 2005, he explained, Friends of the Earth requested details of meetings between the CBI and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) that had taken place shortly after the last General Election. At the time, Friends of the Earth was concerned that the CBI had been making exaggerated claims over the costs of environmental regulation, claims the Government seemed to be taking at face value. Requests by Friends of the Earth under the Freedom of Information Act of details of meetings between the CBI and the then DTI had been refused. At the beginning of May 2008, however, the Information Tribunal ruled that the government should disclose the information, stating: “In our view, there is a strong public interest in understanding how lobbyists, particularly those given privileged access, are attempting to influence government so that other supporting or counterbalancing views can be put to government to help ministers and civil servants make best policy.” Clearly making the case for lobbying transparency regulation. Had lobbying by the nuclear industry had an impact on the Government?s decision to support a new nuclear energy programme, the witnesses were asked by Gordon Prentice MP. John Sauven pointed to the extraordinary lobbying power of the nuclear industry just from the revolving door. Former MPs, MEPs and Ministers Jack Cunningham, Richard Caborn, Ian McCartney, Brian Wilson and Alan Donnelly are all now employed by the nuclear industry with obvious influence. By contrast, Sauven went on, the first public consultation on nuclear power had been rejected by the High Court for being deeply flawed. One of the cases of improper lobbying Sauven recounted was the collusion that went on between the Department for Transport (DfT) and BAA over the consultation on Heathrow expansion, where the two bodies, having made their decision, then attempted to reverse engineer the outcome. This ?almost fraudulent? process only came to light after sifting through a lot of requests under the Freedom of Information Act. It was only from this information that concerned MPs and campaigners were able to piece together just how embedded and how influential BAA was in the DfT. The obvious imbalance in lobbying resources between local community groups and companies like Tesco was also raised by Espley. Quoting a report by Friends of the Earth into how supermarkets get their way in planning decisions (PDF), he described a case in Dartford where developers lobbied to change the area?s Local Plan to include specific proposals which would allow for a new Tesco. The Plan was duly changed. It was only after a Public Inquiry that permission for the new development was withdrawn, the proposals ?having not been the subject of full statutory examination? in the words of the Planning Inspector. Espley asked the Committee to remember the local communities ?meeting on a wet Tuesday evening in their community centre?, without the small army of lawyers, planning specialists, PR consultants and seemingly unlimited funds Tesco and others employ. People who bother to get involved in civic matters need to know that the system is working for them too, he said. It?s not a case of corporate versus community ? none of the witnesses were anti-business – merely that for the public to have faith in decision-making, there needs to be more transparency. The sum of these two sessions finally brought some clarity to the inquiry. Back in January Paul Flynn MP, voiced his frustration with witnesses from the lobbying industry: ?We?re not really getting to the truth on this,? he said. This week?s complete lack of candor from the corporates ? coupled with hard evidence from experienced NGOs – exposed the Committee to some truths and the urgent need for transparency in lobbying. The latest session can be watch on Parliament TV (available for 28 days after the session). A transcript of the session will be available on the Public Administration Select Committee’s Inquiry into Lobbying webpage.
The Threat of a Good Example16 May 2008On a night where Labour were deservedly massacred across the whole country how were a bunch of lacklustre candidates able to win two out of three against the IWCA in Oxford? In the local elections on 1 May, the IWCA lost two of its four councillors on Oxford City Council. In Churchill ward, Claire Kent?s vote from 2004 ?where she won by 10 votes from a standing start- stood up, but Labour were able to add on over 200 to theirs. In Blackbird Leys, Labour were able to turn Lee Cole?s 80 vote majority from 2004 into a 230 vote deficit. These results were greeted with unrestrained glee and relish by Labour at the count. In Northfield Brook, IWCA group leader Stuart Craft held on, though his majority was reduced from 116 to 66. Elsewhere, the BNP officially took 5.3% in the London Assembly elections and now have one of the 25 Assembly members. They also added a dozen or so councillors and now have over 100 elected representatives at various local levels. In the individual London Assembly constituencies, the British Nationalists took 5.7% in Greenwich and Lewisham, 5.6% in Bexley and Bromley and 4.5% in Ealing and Hillingdon. Respect and the BNP only faced each other in one constituency, City and East, where they finished third and fourth respectively with 14.3% and 9.6% (City and East is made up of the Respect/ Galloway fiefdoms of Newham and Tower Hamlets, and the BNP stronghold of Barking and Dagenham). The Left List stood a candidate in every constituency, and the best they could manage was 3.56% in Enfield and Haringey. The Left List?s Mayoral candidate, Lindsey German, pulled in just under 52,000 votes, compared to over 120,000 that she got running under the Respect banner last time. By way of comparison, the IWCA?s Lorna Reid pulled in just under 50,000 votes in 2004 on a significantly lower turn-out (37% to 45%). On a night where Labour were deservedly massacred across the whole country and posted their worst electoral results for forty years?the Observer?s Andrew Rawnsley wrote: ?The genius of New Labour was to create an election-winning alliance of both traditional supporters and converts, of Labour heartlands and new territories. Labour was not hammered in one or the other – it was slaughtered in both??in Oxford they were able to successfully unseat two dedicated, born-and-bred independent working class representatives. How? The Labour candidates that were stood against the IWCA were in themselves hardly A-grade material: in Churchill Labour stood Mark Lygo, a man relatively new to the area with no track record of community work or local activism, and who himself said he was ?surprised by the margin of victory?. In Blackbird Leys Labour stood Val Smith, an incumbent county councillor and wife of the sitting Oxford East MP Andrew Smith. The Smiths are New Labour personified, and Andrew Smith is holding onto his Parliamentary seat by his fingertips: his majority in the last general election was cut from over 10,000 to less than 1,000. Labour?s candidate in Northfield Brook was a corporate lawyer from wealthy North Oxford. So how were this shower able to win two out of three against the IWCA? In January an Oxford Green councillor, Matt Sellwood, predicted precisely this very outcome. His reasoning?: ?part of their [the IWCA?s] problem is that they’ve made such an impact that they’ve scared Labour half to death, and so Labour are going to do everything they can to defeat them ? even more so than against the Lib Dems, and much more than against the Greens (Labour have pretty much abandoned most of our wards these days, and given up trying to get them back). So basically their seats are Labours #1, #2 and #3 targets, and that is hard to resist in a city that still has a lot of Labour funding and volunteers. Not impossible, but very difficult.? The Smiths are the biggest political fish in Oxford and they have taken personal charge of the campaign to defeat the IWCA. In September 2004, soon after the IWCA increased its number of councillors in Oxford from one to three, Andrew Smith suddenly and mysteriously resigned from his post as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions ?to devote more time to the responsibilities I enjoy in my constituency and to my family.? And in their efforts to stop the IWCA the Smiths are not averse to bringing in outside reinforcements: in this local election campaign no less than Gordon Brown himself paid a visit to Oxford, where he made three stops: Blackbird Leys, Churchill, and Stuart Craft?s workplace (?Brown backs slur-hit city estate?, Oxford Mail, 8 April 2008). Brown never visited Bury, a key swing battleground where Labour eventually lost the council to the Tories. So Labour pulled out all the stops and threw everything they had at us, up to and including the Prime Minister. Does that explain everything, particularly the large, and unforeseen, swing towards Labour away from Lee Cole? Perhaps not. This is not the first time that Labour, increasingly nationally unpopular and devoid of decent personnel, have been able to produce a large vote against the IWCA seemingly from nowhere: the same thing happened in Islington in 2006. The day after this years elections, the Guardian reported on comments made by members of the Labour controlled Public Administration Select Committee on postal ballot fraud. Labour MP Gordon Prentice said: ?Our elections are wide open to fraud. We have judges that have said in recent months and years that the UK is like a banana republic when it comes to an election.? Tory MP Charles Walker said: ?In many parts of this country, it is one man, one woman, three or four hundred votes.? Labour?s Kelvin Hopkins has argued for the introduction of individual voter registration to clamp down on fraud, while adding with admirable candour: ?I hesitate to say this, but one of the reasons our party is reluctant to do this, is because it might actually dent our support in certain areas,? (?Election fraud: Labour failed to act, say MPs?, The Guardian, 2 May 2008). The Lib Dem MP John Hemming has written: ?Labour?s strategy (called the L Vote) in recent years has been to identify where their own supporters are, and address the campaign to them. This may result in lower turnouts, although having postal votes where individuals fill in a few hundred votes each has helped increase the Labour vote. Happily the more recent changes to election law will reduce the amount of electoral fraud?. An undercover investigation by the Sunday Times into the Labour party in Leeds showed the ?L Vote? strategy in action, with canvassers ?chasing? postal votes by going door-to-door prior to election day collecting postal ballots from voters, and filling them out on their behalf if need be. When one of the group suggested that the practice was illegal, the team leader responded with: ?Yes it is. But we?ve done 25% already, so ?? (( ?Get the votes and we can win, but don’t get caught with them?, (The Sunday Times, 29 April 2008 ). A report by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust published in April found: i) ?Greater use of postal voting has made UK elections far more vulnerable to fraud and resulted in several instances of large-scale fraud?; ii) ?There is widespread, and justifiable, concern about both the comprehensiveness and the accuracy of the UK?s electoral registers ? the poor state of the registers potentially compromises the integrity of the ballot?; iii) ?There is a genuine risk of electoral integrity being threatened by previously robust systems of electoral administration having reached ?breaking point? as a result of pressures imposed in recent years?. But far less important than the ?how? of Labour?s victory is the ?why?. Why would Labour?the Prime Minister included?go to all this trouble to try and knock out three councillors on the eastern edge of Oxford? Because of the threat of a good example: if working class people?with virtually no resources?can get organised, sling out Labour and demonstrably start to take back control on the eastern edge of Oxford then they can do it elsewhere (when Gordon Brown visited Blackbird Leys he remarked that the estate had ?made a huge step forward? and that ?there is so much improvement taking place on Blackbird Leys?, forgetting to mention who was the source of this improvement or who was responsible for the previous neglect). Will Hutton wrote in the Observer on 4 May: ?There has not been a gap between the rich and poor on the current scale ever in history. It is unstable. Sooner or later, there will be popular outrage and a political response… Who isn’t spooked by the renaissance of Italian fascism? Challenging times require courageous responses. None is in prospect,? (?Feeble government lets the superclass soar over the rest of us?, The Observer). As we have seen above, the renaissance of Italian fascism is being mirrored by the far right?s greatest ever electoral success in the UK. Neo-liberalism is becoming increasingly unstable, yet only fascism is positioning itself as a viable alternative. Meanwhile, the middle class left, in the shape of the Left List, with sufficient resources to make an impact, continue only to provide further proof of Peter Wright?s claim that the British left ?are about as dangerous as a pondful of ducks.? The IWCA is not: the BNP?s current success is largely based on the same analysis of New Labour that led to the formation of the IWCA in the first place. In 1997 the BNP?s Tony Lecomber said, ?The people who have been abandoned by Labour and have never been represented by the Tories will, in their desperation, turn to us. This is unlikely to happen next May, since people will still be giving Tony Blair’s Labour Party the chance to show what they can do. After that, though, disappointment will set in.? One of the IWCA?s early breakthroughs came in the London borough of Havering, where we took 25% of the vote the first time out in the wards of Gooshays and Heaton in 2002. Since then, unfortunately, the IWCA branch there has had to cease activity due to pressures of work and time on the key activists. However, this gave the BNP the chance to move in, win Gooshays marginally in 2006 and then decisively in 2008. This, in microcosm, is the choice we face. The IWCA analysis, applied from the left rather than the right, calls into question the very legitimacy of the Labour Party, of it?s alleged reason for being as the party of the working class. More than that, pound for pound the IWCA strategy works and has been proven to work where we?ve been able to apply it and so the Labour party ??scared half to death?- has had no choice other than to try and stop it at source. We now know how hard and how dirty Labour will fight in order to safeguard their position and prevent a progressive, working class alternative to the barbarism of neo-liberalism, and the greater barbarism of fascism, from emerging. We now know that the working class will have to fight all the more effectively in terms of organisation, numbers, tactics, resources and ideas if that alternative is to be made a reality. We will.
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front16 May 2008David Peace on Thatcher’s Britain In 1984, the Thatcher regime and the British National Coal Board annulled an agreement reached after the 1974 British miners’ strike. The Board told the British public that they intended to close 20 coal mines and privatize the previously nationalized industry. At least twenty thousand jobs would be lost, and many communities in the north of England and in Wales would lose their primary source of employment. The Thatcher government had prepared against a repeat of the earlier successful 1974 industrial action by stock-piling coal. David Peace, a British crime novelist, was a teen at the time who lived in the region of Britain most affected by the strike. He became known to the British and US crime fiction reading public with his series of four books about the Yorkshire Ripper?a British serial murderer. These four books, known as the Red Riding Quartet, are as much about police corruption and criminality as they are about the serial murders. Cops on the take. Cops running prostitution rings and pornography outfits. A police chief that tells his select group of officers that since there will always be vice, then the cops should be the ones that control it. Murders of prostitutes and criminal opposition and the destruction of witnesses’ lives. False arrests and frameups. There are no redeeming characters that survive in Peace’s Quartet?only the most corrupt and evil. It is a bleak look at human life in the twilight of British capitalism and a despairing prediction of a future many of us now inhabit. Maggie Thatcher was the Prime Minister than and her ruthless disregard for human life that did not serve her intended resurrection of capitalism and empire in colors that bled toward the fascist National Front is the underpinning of Peace’s work. If there was one political event besides the ongoing trouble in northern Ireland (including the H Block prison situation, many spectacular bombings by the IRA and provocateurs posing as IRA, and the growth of the Protestant paramilitaries), it was the aforementioned miner’s strike. Of course, Peace wrote a novel about the strike. It is a novel that reads best with Elvis Costello’s first two albums, Billy Bragg’s War and Peace EP, and maybe something by The Smiths playing in the background. That book, titled GB84, is nothing short of stunning. Told in two parallel narratives, its portrayal of corruption, political machinations, and corporate and government heartlessness makes the desperate situation of the miners and their union superreal. One strain of the narrative is told by a striking union miner who details the lives of men on strike who lose their homes, their wives, their children, jobs and dignity. The other strain is the story of the union leadership, its government counterpart, and various police and corporate operatives that operate in different levels of secrecy. Some are M15 and some are private contractors with ties to the National Front. Some are double agents whose final allegiance lies with the government of the ultraright Maggie Thatcher. Like the Quartet, there are ambiguities in the story, but only in as much as there are ambiguities in real life. Interpretation, after all, is a part of the whole. GB84 is about the savagery of capitalism. Jackboots and legalized police beatings of unarmed strikers. Secret hit squads and government/corporate sponsored organizations of police pretending to be miners whose job is to convince the strikers to scab. Democratic forms and fascist realities. The war of the super rich against the workers. This is David Peace at his best. There is no beauty here. Some of the union officials demand sacrifices of their members while they secretly hole away funds for a future after the union’s demise. It is these leaders’ distance from the travails of the members and their proximity to the slime intent on profit at the workers’ expense that corrupts them. Indeed, it is as if they cannot help themselves as they fall into the abyss of selfish concern for their own future while the union crumbles under the onslaught of big time capitalists and their governmental conspirators whose ruthlessness knows no bounds. The miner’s strike was a symbol of resistance during the reactionary 1980s. It was simultaneously an example to corporate capitalists the world over of how the battle must be fought if they wanted to stay on top. No more negotiations with workers and no respect for their lives. Resistance to the will of capitalism should not be legitimized by negotiation but destroyed through violence. The defeat of the strike and the privatization of the national economy in Britain was a harbinger of the neoliberal future we now live in. It is a future that for many is as bleak and despairing as Peace’s master work. It is also a future that more of us may soon be sharing. When the shock of economic collapse heightens, there will be nothing left to protect us. Like the miners worn down by the systemic strangulation of their union in the mid-1980s, the only response will appear to be one that increases our isolation from each other and, like so many fish fighting over a fisherman’s chum, leaving us to fight among ourselves with the final victory being one that leads us to certain death at the hands of the fisherman. The only possible redemption might be in a rebirth of solidarity amongst those currently fighting over that chum.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
Labour?s ?re-launch? stymied by worsening economic forecast16 May 2008The Labour government brought forward a series of measures this week in a rearguard action to try to rescue its political fortunes in wake of the party?s collapse into third place in the May 1 local elections. With a by-election due on May 22, in which the Conservatives are currently tipped to overturn a 7,000 Labour majority, Prime Minister Gordon Brown sought to placate voters? wrath. On Tuesday, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced what many described as an emergency ?mini-budget? on taxation. The government?s abolition of the 10 pence tax band has severely financially affected more than 5 million low-earners. While the measure had been announced last year, it only took effect last month. In 2007, the move won applause from Labour?s backbenches, not least because it had enabled the government to make cuts into corporation tax. But a lot has changed since then, particularly the sharp decline in living standards due to the global economic crisis. Rising food prices sent the UK?s official annual inflation rate to 3 percent in April?the sharpest increase in the cost of living in almost six years, rising 0.5 percent in just one month. Reports indicate that the real cost of living, however, is far greater, as food costs alone are increasing at an average of 15.5 percent a year. Rising costs in other essentials such as fuel and utilities mean that many families are already spending 1,000 a year more out of pocket?without taking into account spiralling mortgage costs. In his mini-budget Darling announced that personal tax allowance would rise by 600. Those earning less than 40,000 per annum (the overwhelming majority) will gain up to 120 this year. The chancellor claimed that this would also compensate the majority of those who lost out from the scrapping of the 10 pence tax band. Labour?s attempt at a political re-launch was followed by Brown outlining planned legislation to be brought forward in the next Queen?s speech, which he claimed would create a ?more prosperous and fairer Britain.? He set out the further ?reform? of schools, hospitals and the welfare benefit system. His government will grant new powers to local authorities to intervene against ?failing schools,? link hospital funding to performance, introduce tougher controls on immigration and more punitive measures against the long-term unemployed. The government had given an indication of just what this amounted to in an earlier statement promising a radical shakeup of England?s social care system for the elderly. State support for elderly care is means-tested in England, with most having to pay for home help and assisted accommodation. Thousands have been forced to sell their homes to raise the finance as a consequence. Health Secretary Alan Johnson said that the government was initiating a six-month consultation period to consider how people could be provided for in old age. He claimed that the government had set ?no pre-determined answers,? but went on to make clear that what was intended is a move away from universal state provision to an insurance-based scheme paid for by the individual. ?If we are running out of so-called free personal care?which even the Liberal Democrats have dropped as a commitment?then you are looking at some kind of insurance that can be provided by the state or the individual,? he said. It is a measure of how far removed Labour is from the realities of millions of people?s lives that it could consider such measures to be a popular re-launch. Moreover, while the government claims that these moves are necessary because of a 6 billion shortfall in provision, it has had no such qualms over using some 100 billion of taxpayers? money to shore up the banks, or the some 800 million per month being spent on the occupation of Iraq. So right-wing are Labour?s politics that the Conservatives are casting themselves as a ?progressive? alternative, even while boasting that they are the only party prepared to ?break open the monopoly? on state education and social welfare. But as Brown was speaking in Parliament, asking the voters to ?judge and test? him on the basis of his economic stewardship, his room for political manoeuvre was rapidly diminishing. Not only are some 1 million low-earners still out of pocket despite Darling?s announcement, but hopes that tax changes will help re-stimulate the economy were almost immediately dashed by the Bank of England?s quarterly inflation report. Governor Mervyn King warned that the ?the nice decade is behind us? and the economy was ?travelling along a bumpy road.? ?Real take-home pay has not risen by much in the past four years?by well below 1 percent a year. The next couple of years are going to see at least as great a squeeze on living standards that will erode purchasing power,? he continued. The report spelt out that millions of working people would be hit financially from all sides over the next period. According to the Bank, gas, electricity and food prices will continue to rise pushing inflation towards 4 percent while the housing market, which it stated has already worsened ?markedly,? is set to fall even further. The banking crisis could continue well into 2009, the report stated, while economic growth is likely to slump toward 1 percent by the end of 2008, bringing the risk of recession. The assessment made a mockery of the trade union bureaucracy?s claims that the chancellor?s tax allowance changes were sufficient to salvage Labour. Tony Woodley, joint leader of Unite, had pronounced that Darling?s mini-budget meant the party was ?reconnecting with Labour?s social conscience? and ?with voters generally,? while GMB general secretary Paul Kenny congratulated Brown and Darling for ?listening to the public and changing tack.? No doubt the trade union leaders hoped that Darling?s measures would be enough to prevent the party imploding in an orgy of unprincipled factionalism. Labour?s latest drubbing in the polls coincided with the publication of memoirs by Tony Blair?s wife, Cherie, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Blair?s Middle East envoy, Lord Levy. All seized the opportunity to settle personal scores with Brown directly?and to make some money in the process. Prescott described Brown as ?prickly,? saying that he could ?go off like a volcano? while Levy, who was arrested twice during the cash-for-honours inquiry before being cleared of any wrongdoing, told the BBC that it was ?inconceivable? that the former chancellor had not known about the party?s financial arrangements. Darling?s announcement proved to be enough to silence a potential rebellion by sections of Labour backbenchers who are afraid they will lose their seats. Frank Field, who had led threats to vote down the government?s budget and who had said he would be ?very surprised? if Brown were still Labour leader at the next election, pronounced his satisfaction with the changes and publicly apologised to the prime minister. But outside of Labour?s immediate environs, criticism of Brown and the government in ruling circles rages unabated. Under banner headlines on the day Brown spoke, the Independent reported that the ?spectre of ?stagflation?? associated with the 1970s was back on the agenda. ?The 15 percent decline in the value of sterling?as steep as when the pound was forced out of the ERM on ?Black Wednesday? in 1992?has exacerbated inflationary pressures,? it said, ?hitting living standards, especially for pensioners and the poorest,? hardest. There was little leeway for policymakers, it continued, ?as they are pulled between the need to fight inflation and avoid a slump.? Against this background, economists complained that Darling?s compensation package would push public borrowing towards 50 billion this year, jeopardizing the government?s fiscal rules. The Financial Times said that Darling?s measure smacked of ?desperation,? as the government failed to make tax policy ?with an eye to the long-term health of the public finances and a coherent fiscal philosophy.? It had ?shattered any residual idea that Mr. Brown?s administration can run an orderly fiscal policy,? the newspaper pronounced. Such comments were intended to serve notice that big business will not tolerate any palliative measures, no matter how pitiful, even at the expense of the government?s fall. More significant for Brown?s political survival was the savaging he received in Rupert Murdoch?s Sun newspaper. Describing Darling?s tax changes as a ?gamble? with taxpayer?s money, it complained that it was ?not the first time Gordon Brown has panicked in the face of the polls.? Having backed out of calling an early general election in November it had ?rewritten a Budget just over two months old … if he can be persuaded to rip up a Budget, what?s to stop Labour?s union paymasters and the public sector demanding pay rises this summer?? the newspaper thundered. There is already widespread discontent across the public sector at the government?s imposition of a below-inflation pay award. The Sun is only too aware that this will grow significantly over the next months and does not believe Brown has the mettle to face down the opposition. In a particularly hostile piece the next day, associate editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote that the local elections had ?torpedoed this Government beneath the waterline.? ?As Gordon Brown prowled the TV studios saying sorry yesterday, we were watching a dead man drowning. I give him six months. ?Labour has burst asunder from stem to stern, its timbers rotten to the core,? he continued, as the ?Blair/Brown Government has been sussed as the incompetent, interfering and wasteful political con-trick it was from May 1, 1997.? Given that Rupert Murdoch and his tabloid have been one of the main political backers of New Labour and have played a major role in shaping its policies, such supposedly newfound wisdom is deserving only of contempt. In a comment in the Guardian designed to bolster Brown by laying New Labour?s failings at Blair?s door, Robert Harris revealed the substance of the party?s meltdown more tellingly than he had perhaps intended. Complaining that the former prime minister had cut and run, leaving New Labour high and dry, Harris then opined that the current crisis in Labour was not so much one ?of leadership as a crisis of purpose?of existence, in fact…? ?What is this thing called the Labour party for, exactly? One can see why the Tories exist, and why the Liberals have endured. But Labour?this friend of global corporations, this ally of the neocons in Washington, this raiser of income tax on the poor?where is its place supposed to be in the political firmament?? For the likes of Murdoch, et al the answer appears to be clear. The ?political con-trick? of New Labour completely exhausted, they are now looking at the Tories to repackage the same pro-business agenda. For working people, however, Labour?s right-wing putrefaction must underscore the necessity for the construction of a new workers party based on socialist policies.
Europe Deserves Much Better than the Lisbon Treaty15 May 2008European history provides a showcase of human beings at their worst. Constant conflict, the two bloodiest wars ever waged, famine, brutal industrialisation, oppression of workers and women, religious strife, colonialism, fascism, communism – all these stain our past. But Europe also represents the best humankind has accomplished, giving the world the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, a constant struggle for emancipation, democracy and the separation of powers, the welfare state – not to mention universally recognised cultural contributions from Greek drama to Finnegans Wake , from the symphony orchestra to Irish folksong. Born in the United States and a citizen of France, I am a fervent European. At this point in history, I believe only Europe can provide all its citizens with democratic government, dignified living standards, greater social equality, public services, universal healthcare and education. This small continent, with just 15 per cent of the world’s people, can lead the way towards ecological sanity and a liveable planet and prove nations can overcome even the most tenacious hatreds and live together in peace. Europe can be a counter-model to the myriad brutalities, affinity for war and stupendous inequalities on display elsewhere. For these and other reasons, I voted no to the deeply flawed, undemocratic European constitution in May 2005. Had the French government not confiscated the people’s right to another referendum, I would have voted no again to the Lisbon (“Reform”) Treaty – a clone of the rejected constitution, except for “cosmetic changes” making it “easier to swallow”, as Valry Giscard d’Estaing, principal author of the constitution, said. No flag, no Beethoven hymn, but the rest is there as Angela Merkel, Jos Manuel Barroso, Bertie Ahern and other relieved European notables all agreed. The treaty contains no substantive changes. It’s just much harder to understand, worse even than the immensely complex constitution. Now we must deal with two European treaties (Rome, 1957, and Maastricht, 1992, with their subsequent revisions) to which Lisbon adds 145 pages of amendments plus 132 more pages of 12 protocols and 51 declarations, all legally binding, all superseding every law of the 27 member states. There is no single text – you must cut, paste and collate the hundreds of pages for yourself. The very least one should require of a treaty that will dictate at least 80 per cent of all future legislation throughout Europe is that it be comprehensible. But complexity can be an effective weapon against democracy. Let us recall what commission vice-president Gunter Verheugen said after the French and Dutch No votes: “We must not give in to blackmail.” So much for universal suffrage and popular sover
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