Crisis and revolt29 Jun 2008One year on from Gordon Brown becoming prime minister, we have passed a tipping point. At some time in recent weeks a number of events have added up to create a shift in the political situation in this country. Since late last year Gordon Brown?s government has been in a tailspin that it cannot pull out of. But what was a crisis for New Labour has become a much wider one, with growing numbers of people questioning what were once regarded as economic and political certainties. The central issues are very basic ones ? the cornerstones of life, such as food and fuel. People know that prices for these necessities are surging way ahead of the official inflation figure of 3.3 percent. There is a growing realisation that these hikes hit working class people hardest, including pensioners, those out of work and the very low paid. They all spend proportionally more of their income on fuel and food than the rich. Chancellor Alistair Darling, the governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King and newspaper editorials are all telling us to tighten our belts and accept below-inflation pay ?increases?. But despite the growing global recession there is no sign of anyone accepting below-inflation pay increases in the City of London?s boardrooms. Instead, the rich continue to flaunt the wealth they?ve accrued under New Labour and the Tories at summer social events, such as last week?s Royal Ascot race meeting. When asked about the impact of a global recession on Britain, Darling dismissed the question saying the country had weathered such things in the 1980s and 1990s. What he failed to mention was that these were times of historically low levels of working class resistance as strike figures fell. Today if you read the financial pages there is a sense of panic about the economic downturn, reminiscent of fear accompanying the 1973 crash, which followed a surge in the oil price and collapse in profits. Then the global ruling class faced an insurgent working class and a wave of national liberation struggles that peaked with the Vietnamese victory over the US in 1975. Rulers were terrified that a recession would pour petrol on the flames. Today newspapers such as the Financial Times are charting the growing number of food riots spreading across Asia, Africa and Latin America. They are nervous about an economic downturn combining with the failure of George Bush?s ?war on terror? to achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. This threatens to destabilise key Western allies, such as Pakistan and Egypt. Finally, they see ?strong? right wing governments, whose recent elections they acclaimed, crumbling in the face of working class resistance. Such has been the case with the government of Kostas Karamanlis in Greece and that of the South Korean president Lee Myung-bak. Confrontation But the world?s rulers? biggest disappointment is with Nicolas Sarkozy, who was hailed by some as the new Margaret Thatcher on his election last year as France?s president. Sarkozy has backed away from some major showdowns in the face of strikes and mass demonstrations. Thirty five years ago the international ruling class decided they had to be seen to make concessions to workers in order to be able to return to the attack at a later date. In Britain and elsewhere they turned to centre left governments, like that of Labour?s Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, to broker a deal with the trade unions. These governments promised the unions would be consulted over economic matters and that they might even be allowed a say in political decision making. In return union leaders agreed to limit pay increases, dissuade workers from striking, accept cuts in welfare spending and the rationalisation of ?uneconomic? industries. In the 1970s mass struggles followed a long post-war boom which had brought increased living standards, better housing, and free education and healthcare. The recession seemed a blip, so the proposition that short term sacrifices would be followed by a return to better days had some credibility ? especially when it was sold by the Labour left and trade union leaders. Once the Labour government in Britain and the Democratic president Jimmy Carter in the US had contained and defused working class insurgency, they were replaced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Since the end of the 1970s the boot has been firmly on the foot of the employers. Yet that has left a legacy of class bitterness which has grown in recent years as working class, and even some middle class people, find themselves priced out of their cities and towns. Few think life is going to get better, let alone return to the days of council housing available for those in need and free education for all. The government has imposed public sector pay limits at levels way below inflation rates and is urging private sector employers to follow suit. This is an enormous gamble which can easily go badly wrong. The victory of the Shell tanker drivers, the show of strength by Grangemouth refinery workers and the 24 April strike by 450,000 teachers, lecturers and civil service workers means that the idea that working class people have no power has taken a huge knock. Even if people don?t feel confident enough to walk out of the door, they like the idea of striking. Constituted On a lesser scale the decision of the police to baton anti-war protesters banned from marching against George Bush?s visit to Britain showed what their real role is ? to protect the state and private property. This brings us back to the tipping point. The first half of this decade saw massive protests against neoliberalism and then war. The millions of people who took part in these protests virtually all worked, were training to work, or were retired from work. But the idea that they constituted a working class that had the power to collectively change society seemed remote. Many people who would never previously have considered joining a union or who believed themselves middle class are facing a new reality. This is accompanied by a popular rejection of the political, social and economic template championed by our rulers. The Irish referendum on the European Union?s Lisbon treaty brought that home. Working class people formed the bulk of the successful no vote, rejecting what the Irish establishment told them to do. When New Labour?s Jacqui Smith urged us to back 42-day detention without charge she said, ?Trust me, as a minister and as a home secretary.? But she seemed blissfully unaware that the response would come back, just as in a pantomime, ?Oh no we won?t.? A similar sense of rejection must greet the continued claims by politicians and journalists that the occupation forces are winning in Afghanistan, even as British and US casualties mount. Following the mass prison breakout in Kandahar last week, defence secretary Des Browne delivered this gem: ?The Taliban are losing in Afghanistan. I know it may not appear like that at the moment, but we are enjoying a degree of success.? Fundamental Socialists, anti-capitalists and those in the anti-war movement have to face a fundamental change in the political situation. But the enormity of what?s going on can seem to dwarf us, leading to a danger of passivity. Economic crises lead people to question the capitalist system we live under. It can lead people to resist. Yet there are other forces looking to prosper from the situation. For weeks the Daily Mail and Daily Express have carried front pages on price increases that could have been printed by Socialist Worker. But they were accompanied by a campaign blaming immigrants for our woes. Further right the fascists of the BNP seize on false stories that expectant Polish mothers are blocking British mums from maternity beds. It is more likely that British babies are being delivered by Polish doctors or Nigerian midwives. It is vital we follow last Saturday?s demonstration with a sustained drive to push the Nazis back into their sewer. The lesson of the Stop the War Coalition is that the left can play a central role in initiating mass movements that pull in broad layers of society. The global ?war on terror? continues to be a cancer at the heart of the system. Yet while we continue to build opposition to the war, we must also look for other opportunities to spread resistance. The 24 April strike is a harbinger of what might lie ahead on the pay front. Bus workers, London Underground workers and others must be looking at the Shell drivers? success with relish. Others, like health workers in the Unison union who accepted a below-inflation three-year pay deal, will become aware that they are going to suffer badly unless something is done. Other issues can also lead to resistance suddenly surging up. We are seeing the return of bread riots around the world. Even in Britain the potential is there for anger over prices to reach breaking point. Housing is the great issue rarely addressed in British politics. There has been a successful campaign to defend council housing, but now we are seeing evictions and flats built by speculators lying empty. Young people are forced to stay with their parents and overcrowding blights the lives of young families. And this year will see the lowest numbers of houses built in Britain since 1945. The job facing socialists is to act as detonators for mass resistance against the plans of our rulers. We need to create a network of activists across Britain who can do that and explain to smaller numbers, in more in-depth discussion, what the alternative is to capitalism ? socialism. Those who have struck and marched represent a huge force that is capable of galvanising the majority of the British population for radical and ultimately revolutionary change. That?s the possibility. But failure to address what is possible can lead to a high price being paid by us all.
The flight of the cassowary29 Jun 2008Pigs are winging through the atmosphere as I write. The Tories are not only back from the dead, not only headed to Downing Street, not only in the lead, but absolutely annihilating the once deadly New Labour electoral machine. For its part, New Labour is heading for a life-threatening crash in the ballots come the next general election. 20% behind in the latest polls and in fifth place in the Henley bye-election, Labour not only failed to keep its deposit last night, but was beaten by the Greens and the fascist BNP. Coming after a national meltdown and a humiliating loss in the heartland seat of Crewe and Nantwich, which miserably nasty campaign saw Labour swing to the right of the Tories, this result on a reasonably high turnout cannot be seen as anything but a sign of voters’ determination to hammer Labour. The government is idiotically pretending otherwise, but the raucous laughter in Millbank is audible from where I am sitting. A lot of the blame for this is being laid on Gordon Brown’s beefy shoulders, and as Roobin pointed out, polling for Unison suggests that about half of voters are less likely to vote Labour because of the performance since Brown took over. There is no question that Brown has seemed to flummox at every opportunity, from the ‘early election’ saga to the Northern Rock fiasco. He has talked tough on the ten pence tax rate only to retreat somewhat under pressure, but even the retreat was inadequate and left people dissatisfied. He backed down rather swiftly under pressure from truckers over fuel prices, but has produced nothing to anyone’s general satisfaction. They tried to talk about class in Crewe and Nantwich, but it was in the context of a risibly racist and authoritarian campaign, and it looked hypocritical coming from a party that has constantly assured us that the ‘old divisions’ are gone. There appears to be no sense of timing either: they have been consistently too late to recognise public outrage, too quick to dismiss opposition, hesitant and reluctant in their concessions. Brown’s administration, since October last year, has seemed increasingly distant from the real world. But even when the ‘Brown bounce’ (RIP) was with us, the discordant notes were already sounding, as when the sepulchral successor promised ‘British jobs for British workers’ in front of an audience of determinedly chipper conference-goers, who cheered. And Brown’s adoption of neoconservative shibboleths was one of his more bizarre introductions to the electorate. By and large, such ideas are extremely unpopular, even among a good chunk of Tories. And even the neocons in the Conservative Party aren’t being lippy about it – the big theme on the Tory website today, just above the celebration of the Henley result, is not patriotism, or war, or asylum seekers, or Muslims, or even clubbing the unions. It is celebrating the 60th birthday of the NHS. The reasoning guiding Brown’s series of misfires, however, is impeccably New Labour (except for the ‘early election’ business, which was classical Brownite procrastination). The government has always been at pains to seem tough, but it has always been as weak as it is nasty. For example, taking a million pounds from Bernie Ecclestone then giving it back and still letting him have the policy he wanted is precisely the sort of thing that was allowed to slide in the early Blair years because voters still expected some decent policies. It would be death to Brown today. Blair did much to court the right, successfully, in his early years. His meeting with Thatcher might have even seemed bold to them, a big two fingers to trade unionists and lefties. Brown’s meeting with Thatcher and his referencing of Gertrude Himmelfarb would have done little to woo a right that is convinced he is a taxaholic, red-tape wielding, red-flag hugging bureaucrat with secret socialist leanings, and it certainly came at a time when Labour voters were no longer biting their tongues and hoping for the worst to pass. The first years of Blairism were characterised by real-terms public spending cuts and ‘restraint’ in excess of what even the Tories would have opted for, but people forgave it because it was expected that compensatory policies of enhanced trade union rights, a minimum wage, slightly more local democracy and a big boost in public spending later on would make up for it. Today’s restraint targets the poorest just when they are suffering most, just when Labour appears to have no further palliation up its sleeves, and just when the erosion of the electoral base that began under Blair has come to seem career-threatening to Labour MPs. The abolition of the ten pence tax rate comes just as child poverty is rising again, pensioner poverty is rising, inequality soars to record levels, and the cost of core goods is soaring. That was not really new: Brown had previously abolished the winter fuel allowance, which hits harder when fuel costs so much more than it did when the allowance was introduced. And the strategy of cutting taxes for those slightly better off and raising them for the poor, in the hope that the former would reward the party with votes and the latter find nowhere else to go, was straight out of the school of ‘triangulation’ that the government has been practising since well before it was elected. It just happened to coincide with all the accumulated ills of previous years bearing fruit. What the Lebanon crisis was to Blair, the ten pence tax rate is to Brown (albeit Brown is not likely to be forced to resign just yet). There is of course the matter of Brown being knifed repeatedly by the ultra-Blairites who have not lost their killer instinct, (while Brown never really had one). But then, that was happening when Brown was in Number 11, and if he suffers a Caesarian death it will be because he had neither the ability nor the nous to change course. Tied to the political and fiscal strategies that he has embraced for more than a decade, he is also part of a party machine that is more or less impervious to the ‘grassroots’. Just because New Labour’s electoral coalition is finished doesn’t mean Brown or anyone around him knows how to build an alternative coalition. Instead, heading to the polls in horrible financial state and with nothing but bad news for the electorate, they’re going to spend their time trying to square that old circle of flattering businessmen and keeping the unions on board, just at the point when this seems a more distant goal than ever. New Labour is not dead, but everything that touches it is. No radical idea or movement in its orbit will survive the coming massacre. The lesson is, if you’re on the Left and you want to weather this storm, stay the hell away from the Labour Party.
Outrageous Demands for More Money29 Jun 2008Last week (17th June) the Tories’ launched a major attack on Labour over the supposedly ?inadequate? funding of military equipment. Frederick Forsyth, the chairman of a Tory propaganda vehicle, accused Gordon Brown of personal responsibility for ?50 or 60? deaths caused by ?crap equipment?. However, the truth is that, apart from the USA, Britain spends more on military equipment than any other country in the world. The armed forces in most other countries do not report inadequacies in their equipment. So, any equipment problems our forces are experiencing are not due to a shortage of money, but due to the way that money is being spent. Vast sums of money are wasted due to incompetence, Lets take helicopters as an example. Dan Byles is another member of Forsyth’s propaganda organisation. In an article posted on the ?Conservative Home? website on 3rd September 2007 ( http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2007/09/dan-byles-the-g.html) he wrote: ?Defence spending as a percentage of GDP has fallen, even as the number of soldiers dying in the sand has been rising… in Afghanistan… Brown?s budget squeeze has left us with insufficient battlefield helicopters to do the job properly.? Actually one reason for the shortage of helicopters is “a gold-standard procurement cock-up”. That’s according to Edward Leigh, the Tory chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee. Leigh was speaking earlier this month about the findings of a National Audit Office report. Eight Chinook helicopters were ordered in 1995. They were delivered in 2001 but have since been confined to special air-conditioned hangars. This is due to a mistake in the original order and problems trying to fix it, The Tories were in power when the helicopters were ordered. The helicopters have so far cost in excess of 422m, and this looks lightly to increase even further. Byles says he was?a staff officer in the MOD during the Iraq invasion?, so perhaps he should’ve known that. Its also worth mentioning that under Labour military spending has risen in absolute terms, it just hasn’t risen as fast as GDP. The Tories have repeatedly said they want public spending to rise slower than GDP. Even worse than the incompetence is the fraud and corruption on UK military contracts. Transparency International’s index rates the arms industry as the second most corrupt industry in the world. The relationship between the arms industry and the Ministry of Defence is so close that, according to a report from the Campaign Against The Arms Industry, ?the existence of any real distinction has been questioned?. Key staff frequently move back and forth, in what is called ?revolving door corruption?. The MOD has even taken an active part in channelling secret payments to foreigners in return for arms export contracts. Politicians too seems to have an unhealthy relationship with the arms industry. Mark Thatcher was famously paid a secret 12 million ?commission? by British Aerospace after his mother helped the company secure the Al-Yamamah deal. Who knows how many other British politicians have family members who’ve benefited from such secret largess? Then there is the fact that former Defence ministers inevitably end up with lucrative sinecures in the arms industry. There is also scope for corruption through bribes to political parties. The Tories have used front organisations like the Scottish Industry Forum and the Midlands Industrial Council to hide the true source of donations. There’s no reason why Labour shouldn’t do the same thing. It is undeniable that government ministers from both parties have protected arms companies accused of fraud. In March 1988 Dale Campbell-Savours, a Labour member of the Public Accounts Committee, accused Marconi of using ?misleading Engineering Change Requests? to change the specification of the 1985 Firm Price BATES contract and overcharge for these changes. Labour minister Lord Gilbert, Tory minister Sir Tim Sainsbury, and Tory minister James Arbuthnot all lied to cover up the fact that there had been an enormous increase in the price due to changes (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/382700.html). Arbuthnot is the current Chairman of the Commons Defence Committee. BATES gained added significance in January 2004 when the former head of British Aerospace admitted that the company had regularly used changes to the specification to increase the price of contracts. When pressed for assurances this was not still happening, Kevin Tebbit, the top MOD civil servant, tried to blame it all on Cost Plus contracts. This was despite Chief of Defence Procurement Peter Levene admitting in 1988 that BATES was NOT a Cost Plus contract and that Campbell-Savours’ charges might be true. BATES was a Firm Price contract, which is the toughest form of contract the MOD can award. If it could have happened on BATES, it could happen on any MOD Equipment contract (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399295.html). It is impossible to get an impartial criminal investigation into fraud and corruption on MOD equipment contracts. This is because the MOD has its own police force and other forces refuse to get involved. It would also be difficult to obtain an impartial prosecution. Blair lent on the supposedly independent Attorney General to block the prosecution of BAE Systems over the alleged Saudi Bribery scandal. In 1988 Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours said that the Director of Public Prosecutions was refusing to prosecute any company for fraud on MOD contracts if it had overseas contracts too. Even if a company was prosecuted, the MOD would be in charge of the case and could sabotage it. Until it is possible to get impartial criminal investigations and prosecutions there should be no increase in the money spent on military equipment.
Inflation: the poor pay More29 Jun 2008The rising cost of living is leaving millions of workers in Britain in poverty. Spiralling food prices have pushed inflation to a 16-year high. Rises in the cost of food jacked up the official Consumer Price Index by 0.3 percentage points last month to 3.3 percent. The slightly more realistic Retail Price Index ? which includes some housing and other costs such as council tax ? has risen to 4.3 percent. The underlying reason for this is the spiralling cost of essentials. For instance, vegetable price rises almost doubled from 3.8 percent in April to 7.2 percent last month. A basic basket of a dozen essential items has soared by an average of 23 percent in the past year. For example, 12 eggs, which cost 2 last May, are now 2.92 ? a 46 percent leap. The price of a bag of rice has increased by 93 percent. A chicken costs 1.50 more than 12 months ago and bread is up 28 percent, butter 30 percent and milk 17 percent. Food prices across the board have risen by 6.6 percent in the last year, with the cost of staple foods soaring even faster. A typical family?s annual shopping bill has gone up by about 1,000 in the past year ? that?s an extra 2.70 every day. Figures also show gas and electricity were 11.2 percent more expensive last month than May 2007. They are set to go up by as much as 40 percent this year. This is another harsh blow for those who are already struggling with the average bill of more than 1,000 a year. The average price of a litre of unleaded petrol was 1.11 in May, up 16.8 percent in a year. Diesel was up 26 percent to 1.21. However, the truth about soaring prices is being systematically distorted. The reality is that the rate of inflation for ordinary people is rising twice as fast as the official figures show. Based on Office for National Statistics calculations, a family in the south west of England with a mortgage and two children faces an inflation rate of 6.5 percent. If they live in London it?s 7.3 percent. Pensioners are enduring even tougher times. One estimate shows they struggle with a real inflation rate of over 9 percent. Elderly people are hit hardest by inflation because they spend a larger proportion of their income than other groups on basic goods such as food and fuel. The official inflation rate is calculated on a basket of 650 goods. Some of the goods used are somewhat removed from most people?s reality ? chocolate biscuits were recently taken out of the basket and champagne added in. The Office for National Statistics also added fees for stabling horses to the basket of goods in spring this year. But the real problem is the weight given to different items. Utility bills are given similar importance to luxury goods, for instance. That means that falling prices for flatscreen televisions effectively cancel out rising gas bills in the figures. So for the affluent, prices might be falling. But the daily necessities that all of us are obliged to spend money on are subject to massive price rises.
The Era of Oil Wars29 Jun 2008Gordon Brown meeting Britain’s oil chiefs to discuss higher North Sea output to bring down prices is prompted by oil prices hitting a record high of $135 a barrel, twice as high as a year ago and a staggering 12 times higher than a decade ago. The well-sourced website petrolprices.com is now predicting that petrol will reach 1.50 a litre by September, just 4 months away. Jeff Rubin of CIBC World Markets is forecasting “oil prices almost doubling over the next five years”. That would mean $270 a barrel by 2013. It perhaps explains why the government is now strongly backing BP to get a big new slice of the oil drilling licences soon to be issued in Iraq, and ? astonishingly ? has now also made clear it intends to annex a third of a million square miles of the seabed off Antarctica to pre-empt any rights to the oil it may contain. The fight for oil has begun in earnest. But is there the oil to go round? The authoritative International Energy Agency foresees an oil supply crunch within 5 years forcing up prices to unprecedented levels and greatly increasing western dependence on Opec. And the oil industry itself in its own report Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, produced by 175 authorities including all the heads of the world’s big oil companies, for the first time predicted that oil and gas may run short by 2015. The geopolitical implications of this gathering crisis for world oil supply 2010-15 are immense. The risk of further military interventions and conflicts in the Middle East is clearly high. Total world oil reserves are estimated at 2.5-2.9 trillion barrels, of which half has now been already consumed, while half of the 51 oil-producing countries reported output declines in 2006. Non-Opec production is expected to peak and decline within the next five years, driven mainly by burgeoning demand from China and the US, together with restricted output from Iraq. Then in the following five years Opec’s diminishing spare capacity will probably become increasingly unable to accommodate short-term fluctuations, depending on how fast world demand grows and how extensively Opec invests in new capacity. The latter may well not raise production capacity high enough or quickly enough, whether for political reasons or because internal decision-making is too slow or the security environment too hostile. There are of course exits from this doom-stricken scenario, though none is at all credible. First, discovery of major new oilfields could alter the picture. However, though billions have been spent on the search for new fields, discovery peaked in the mid-1960s and the last big ones were found in the 1970s. Only Iraq has undeveloped super-giant oilfields ? at West Qurna, Majnoon, and East Baghdad ? and the capacity to increase production rapidly to 8-10 million barrels a day; but ironically the US invasion, designed to produce this effect, has ruled out this outcome for a long way ahead. Already four-fifths of the world’s oil supply comes from fields discovered before 1970, and even finding a field as large as the world’s current biggest (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) ? which is anyway almost inconceivable given the huge improvements in geological knowledge in the last 30 years ? would only meet global oil demand for another 10 years. Another option much touted is a large-scale shift to so-called unconventional oil ? the Athabascan tar sands (from Alberta, Canada), extra-heavy oil (from the Orinoco belt in Venezuela), oil shale, and mature source rocks. But the almost insurmountable problem is recoverability, whether poor quality oil (extra-heavy oil), poor quality reservoirs (oil from source rocks), or both (oil shale). Worse, production may be uneconomic because of a very low net energy gain, ie it requires almost as much energy to extract the oil as is made available for subsequent use. And the enormous hike in greenhouse gases generated could produce a turbo climate change effect that would wipe out any benefit from a global post-Kyoto agreement. But even if supply constraints are ineluctable as the explosion of Chinese growth coincides with falling non-Opec oil production and the beginnings of a slow but remorseless slippage in Opec capacity, the coming crisis could still be eased by significant demand restrictions. Clearly there is substantial room for energy-saving when half the energy generated every day is wasted and when propulsion of an average car is only about 20% efficient, heating of a standard oven only 25%, and electricity generated in some power stations only some 35%. The question, however, is whether improvement can be secured globally on the level and timescale required to push back the crisis more than a few years. Equally, taking the CO2 out of fossil fuels, especially coal, may be crucial, but a decade at least is needed even to test the carbon capture technology in pilot projects, let alone begin to mainstream it. But the most direct means of constraining world demand would be the proposed Rimini protocol, which prescribes that oil-importing countries cut their imports to match the world depletion rate (ie annual production as a percentage of remaining global reserves) now running at about 2% a year. Of course, the fundamental political problem remains that the most powerful oil-hungry countries will not agree. If not Kyoto, why Rimini? What is most disturbing of all is that the big powers, so far from seeking major adjustments of their energy policies on either the supply or demand fronts or making a major switch into renewables, are actually massively intensifying their competitive struggle short-term for the limited oil reserves left. Despite an unwinnable war in Iraq, the US is still constructing at least five large permanent military bases there in order, according to evidence given to a US Congressional Committee, to control access to Gulf oil, including in Saudi and Iran. As one neocon recently put it, “one of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave”. The US is also trying to force through a new Iraqi oil law that would give western, primarily American, oil multinationals control of Iraqi oilfields for the next 30 years. The US maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries under cover of the “war on terror” to defend American economic interests, particularly access to oil. The principal objective for the continued existence and expansion of Nato post-cold war is the encirclement of Russia and the pre-emption of China dominating access to oil and gas in the Caspian Sea and Middle East regions. It is only the beginning of the unannounced titanic global resource struggle between the US and China, the world’s largest importers of oil (China overtook Japan in 2003). Islam has been dragged into this tussle because it is in the Islamic world where most of these resources lie, but Islam is only a secondary player. In the case of Russia, the recent pronounced stepping up of western attacks on Putin and claims he is undermining democracy are ultimately aimed at securing a pro-western government there, and access to Russian oil and gas when Russia has more of these two hydrocarbons together than any other country in the world. The struggle has also spilled over into West Africa, reckoned to hold some 66 billion barrels of oil typically low in sulphur and thus ideal for refining. In 2005 the US imported more oil from the Gulf of Guinea than from Saudi and Kuwait combined, and is expected over the next 10 years to import more oil from Africa than from the Middle East. In step with this, the Pentagon is setting up a new unified military command for the continent named Africom. Conversely, Angola is now China’s main supplier of crude oil, overtaking Saudi Arabia last year. There is no doubt that Africom, which will greatly increase the US military presence in Africa, is aimed at the growing conflict with China over oil supplies. As Joe Lieberman, former US presidential candidate, put it, efforts by the US and China to use imports to meet growing demand “may escalate competition for oil to something as hot and dangerous as the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union”.
Mugabe, Britain and Hypocrisy28 Jun 2008Over forty years ago, as Africa
commenced the long and arduous process of decolonization, one
of its foremost liberationist thinkers issued a prophetic warning. Frantz
Fanon, himself a freedom fighter, wrote that the national leader in
the postcolonial era should not ‘fall back into the past and become
drunk on the remembrance of the epoch leading up to independence.’
His powerful descriptions of a once effective leader who gradually
secedes from reality and betrays the people who entrust him with their
future has resonances for the tragic situation in which Zimbabwe finds
itself today. Having reduced a once significant anti-colonialism to
a self-serving dogma, Robert Mugabe is the kind of fallen leader Fanon
cautioned Africa against. Hesitant African leaders who are being called
upon to intervene might want to reread his classic essay, ‘The
Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ from that classic liberationist
text, The Wretched of the Earth, As Zimbabwe spirals into further
political chaos, Mugabe and his party’s addiction to power will further
indulge an equally self-serving Western appetite for spectacles of Third
World despotism. If Mugabe finds it convenient to invoke the demon of
colonial oppression (which many Zimbabweans, barely thirty years out
of colonial rule, remember all too well), he also enables British politicians
to spout pieties condemning violence while their own nation is
currently implicated in two dubious and bloody wars. Were the BBC and
Channel 4 to show as many close-ups of injured and dead Iraqis as they
do of Mugabe’s maimed victims, criticism of violence against innocents
might be somewhat more evenly distributed than it currently is. The
British government turns accusatory fingers in Zimbabwe’s direction
while Mugabe shouts back anti-colonial slogans. It is a perfect symbiosis,
a mutually convenient embrace of denunciation, with each party laying
claim to the higher moral ground. The only innocents, however, are ordinary
Zimbabweans. Both Mugabe and Britain are
guilty of avoiding historical truths in favour of a skewed story which
legitimates their own position. Britain’s persistent refusal
to acknowledge its own colonial legacies is contradictory. It reneged
on its commitments to the land reform programme claiming, in Claire
Short’s words, that there were no ‘links to former colonial interests’
while nevertheless concerning itself with the fate of the white farmers
who represent these interests. Alongside an extremely selective
use of human rights discourse, such contradictions mean that Mugabe’s
denunciations have some truth to them even if their main purpose is
to detract from the ruling elite’s own depravities. While Africa is
ostensibly central to Britain’s international development agenda,
the emphasis has always been on the paternalism of aid rather than
acknowledging
and making reparations for the economic devastation wrought by colonialism.
Rarely do condemnations of land seizure, violence and intimidation extend
back to the time Matabeleland came under British rule. This too was
accompanied by the seizure of vast swathes of fertile land by a handful
of British farmers while large numbers of Ndebele and Shona people were
killed or forced into labour. Brutal modern regimes in that part of
the globe didn’t begin with Mugabe. Mugabe, meanwhile, should
also reacquaint himself with the original aims of anti-colonialism and
the people’s expectations of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe.
Having resisted the anti-poor agendas of international monetary institutions
and initiated necessary land reforms, the Zimbabwean leader has also
refused all responsibility for those many failures of his rule not reducible
solely to the colonial past. A once dynamic band of freedom fighters
have degenerated into a party who brandish their liberationist laurels
while they subjugate, starve and brutalize an entire population in the
name of anti-colonialism. The sanctions imposed by the West have, as
they usually do in such cases, strengthened Mugabe’s brutish hold
on power and further harmed the vulnerable. Real anti-colonialists like
Fanon and Gandhi both insisted that that freedom was not about replacing
the white tyrant with the brown or black one. Mugabe is the exemplary
cautionary tale here, a freedom fighter who has essentially recolonized
his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation
which the Zimbabwean leader whereas Mugabe has essentially recolonized
his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation
deployed by the Zimbabwean leader, a knight of the British Empire until
yesterday were taught to him by the colonial masters he professes to
despise. Censorship, brutal suppression of resistance and the dismissal
of any form of criticism as seditious were all part of the colonial
arsenal. Quick to claim credit for spreading parliamentary democracy,
Britain is less forthcoming about acknowledging the legacy of authoritarian
rule also left behind by its empire. . Frantz Fanon died young, but
one can imagine what he might have to say to his fellow former liberationist.
Mr Mugabe, it is time for you to return the power which the Zimbabwean
people once vested in you but which they now legitimately wish to reclaim.
Liberate them from the tyranny of the rule you have exercised for too
long and without a continuing mandate. Your actions weaken all of us
who hold the accomplishments of liberation dear and only strengthen
the hypocrisies of former colonial powers. The great tradition of African
anti-colonialism to which you constantly refer has never been
about blaming the colonizer alone; it has always taken account of the
culpability and responsibilities of African leaders and elites. As for those in Britain, it
is time for the ‘proper analysis’ some commentators have called
for, one which would include honest reflections on the imperial legacy
rather than ‘shutting up’ because of colonial guilt. It is the only
way to deprive Mugabe of his main moral weapon.This is not just about
the kind of simple-minded ‘balance’ which the BBC generally advocates
(though it has long since abandoned that value with regard to Zimbabwe),
but also an informed sense of how history shapes the present. Failing
this, Zimbabwe and the rest of us are destined to asphyxiate ourselves
in what Fanon aptly termed ‘the tragic lie’ of the aftermath of
colonialism. This is an extended version of an article published in the Guardian
which can be found
here
GM won’t yield a harvest for the world28 Jun 2008The biotechnology industry has never been shy of making outlandish claims on behalf of its products. Back in the late 1990s we were sold genetically modified soya and oilseed rape on the promise that it would feed the world. On closer examination, it became clear that these first-generation GM crops were more about intensifying chemical agriculture and sealing corporate control of the food chain than feeding starving babies in Africa. Consumers, especially in Europe, rose in revolt, and the industry was forced into retreat. But big companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF are not easily kept at bay for long. Now their PR-men have discovered a new line in emotional blackmail: that without GM crops we will be unable to produce enough food in an era of climate change. Transgenic crops will be able to grow in drought-stricken, saline areas, we are assured, helping to augment food supplies in an era of rapidly intensifying crisis. So is it time to follow in the steps of the UK environment minister Phil Woolas and reassess the potential of GM? As Woolas says: ?There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food price crisis. It is a question that we as a nation need to ask ourselves.? So is he right? I doubt it. For starters, the current food price crisis is only partly about supply. Yes, falling harvests have affected the amount of food available, and the recent severe flooding in the US midwest certainly won?t help the situation. But, as with oil, rising demand is the biggest factor driving prices towards the stratosphere. As countries such as India and China get richer and adopt more western diets, they consume more meat, sucking grain off the market to feed growing numbers of livestock. The misconceived rush to biofuels has further intensified the problem, gobbling up vast quantities of corn and soya in order to produce the fuel Americans and Europeans need to feed their addiction to the car. Underlying all this, the human population continues to grow, adding another 80 million mouths every single year. But look a little closer at the companies which are promising our salvation ? and which Woolas rushed to meet yesterday under the aegis of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council ? and their motivations seem somewhat less than altruistic. According to the Canada-based ETC Group, big biotech companies have already filed some 532 patents on ?climate-ready? genes at patent offices around the world. I doubt these companies have any intention of giving out free seeds to the world?s poorest farmers: instead, they seal up intellectual property rights in transgenic crops and force growers to pay a licence fee. Traditional practices of saving or exchanging seeds are of course forbidden. This concentration of ownership of the food chain is not going to reduce hunger; it is much more likely to intensify it. I am not arguing that these companies are somehow bad or evil. It is their job to maximise profits ? anything else, and their directors would quickly be punished by loss-making shareholders. It is entirely natural therefore that they seek to retain ownership over their inventions, in this case by seeking patents on transgenic seeds. But on the other hand, they should not claim that their products are going to feed the world either ? allowing their public relations teams to create soft-focus adverts of hungry people being fed is utterly misleading. There are also much deeper ethical questions around GM which have never been addressed ? and cannot be addressed by science, because they lie outside the scientific arena. One is the question of whether it is ethically justified to mix genetic material from completely unrelated organisms, like viruses and potato plants. GM proponents constantly argue that this is simply another stage on from traditional selective breeding techniques, but this is clearly untrue. Mixing DNA from unrelated species is an entirely different undertaking, and one which raises all sorts of new risks ? as well as deeper questions about humankind playing God. In my view, the technology moves entirely in the wrong direction, intensifying human technological manipulation of nature when we should be aiming at a more holistic ecological approach instead. If something goes wrong with a transgenic organism, this raises a whole new category of risk. Traditional pollution ? whether of toxins like DDT or radioactive waste ? will mix and eventually be dispersed or broken down in the environment. Genetic pollution on the other hand is self-replicating because it is contained in living organisms; once released, it can never be recalled, and possibly never controlled as GM superweeds, bacteria or viruses run rampant and breed. I am not raising scare stories here: there are countless cases recorded internationally now where GM crops have begun to infest supposedly organic or GM-free fields. It may be, as Woolas suggests, that we need to swallow these ethical and ecological concerns in an era where rapidly rising global temperatures and diminishing oil supplies are already putting serious constraints on food production. Would I be prepared to reconsider my opposition to GM so that a million Sudanese or Ethiopians don?t have to watch their children starve as the rains fail once again? Yes, of course. But am I prepared to accept GM just so that rich consumers ? whether in Beijing or Birmingham ? can drive around in biofuelled SUVs? No. Which of these options is more likely is not about technology or science, it?s about economics and social policy. And that requires us to keep asking difficult questions, and to not be browbeaten by emotionally manipulative advertising from profit-seeking corporations.
Prisons of war, furnaces of radicalism28 Jun 2008A long-term consequence of the Iraq war is the production of a new generation of young paramilitaries with combat experience in urban environments against the world’s best equipped army (see “Afghanistan in an amorphous war”, 19 June 2008). Even if the conflict in Iraq does ease in the coming months, the experience of combat there will serve well an al-Qaida movement that measures its aims in decades rather than years. The battalions of paramilitaries in Afghanistan that fought against Soviet conscripts in the 1980s war operated in a largely rural environment, in a conflict very different from its successor. Indeed, in one of the many “blowback [1]” effects of the “war on terror”, the methods and technologies that have been learned in Iraq have now been exported back to Afghanistan. The use of roadside-bombs, for example, has escalated alarmingly in the first half of 2008, demonstrating the skills of Taliban militias as they develop their guerrilla tactics. The jail blowback If the combat experience gained in Iraq has been one aid to the paramilitary movements, another has been the unexpected effect of the holding [2] by the United States and its allies of large numbers of people without trial, sometimes for years on end. The overall figures are difficult to assess, although there were indications in 2007 that at least 120,000 people have been detained since 9/11. The great majority of these have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the incarcerated [3] also include some thousands of people across the middle east and south Asia, and hundreds in Europe. Some details surface [4] from time to time. It is known, for example, that the United States forces in Afghanistan are building a new prison at Bagram capable of housing 600 longterm and up to 1,100 short-term prisoners (see “A world beyond control” [4], 22 May 2008). This is in addition to, and outside the control of, the Afghan prison system. The numbers are far higher in Iraq, where the US forces are currently detaining 21,000 Iraqis – a number exceeded by thousands more held in Iraqi prisons. The American-held number represents a decrease of 4,000 from mid-2007, though US contractors are in the process of building new prisons in the country, such as one in Taji near Baghdad (see Walter Pincus, “U.S. Official Cites ‘Hardening’ Of Iraqi Detainees [5]”, Washington Post, 10 June 2008). In addition, there is a constant throughput of detainees as new people are imprisoned and others are released. At present, thirty people are detained and imprisoned by US forces every day, while fifty are released. This explains the net drop in overall numbers but also means that, at current rates, about 10,000 more Iraqis experience detention in the US system each year. US sources report that their own personnel are getting more efficient at determining which detainees are the most radical and will be kept in prison for long periods of time. They estimate that there are approximately 8,000 detainees who cannot be proved to have committed crimes under the Iraqi judicial system and cannot therefore be handed over to the Iraqi for trial. These are people, though, who are deemed to pose such serious security threats that they must be incarcerate even without judicial process. What this means is that there are many thousands of “hard-core” detainees in the prisons who are interacting repeatedly with much greater numbers coming through the system. It has to be remembered that all of these people are being detained without trial [6] by what is seen as a foreign occupying force. The potential for radicalisation within prison, let alone the impact on their friends and families, is therefore considerable. In a related issue, there has been recurrent concern within the British prison system that convicted Muslim prisoners will do their best to proselytise fellow Muslim convicts in prison for non-political offences (see Jamie Doward, “Extremists train young convicts for terror plots [7]”, Observer, 15 July 2007). The chief prisons inspector, Anne Owers, drew attention to this issue in supporting the work of Muslim chaplains while highlighting a lack of training for prison officers (see Dominic Casciani, “Warning over jail radicalisation [8]”, BBC News, 14 April 2008). The enemy effect The worries reflected in the British reports are shared elsewhere. The most striking example comes from the most closely guarded and controversial detention centre – Guantnamo in Cuba (see David Rose, “Guant [8]namo: America’s war on human rights [8]”, 23 September 2004). A remarkable report by one of the best informed of US journalists, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers, gives some indication of the extent of the problem (see Tom Lasseter, “How Guantnamo became a terror training ground [9]”, Miami Herald, 17 June 2008). He starts with an example that is worth quoting in full: “Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.” “US troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from the Guantnamo Bay detention camp the following year, however – after more than twelve months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers – he’d made connections to high-level militants.” “In fact, he had become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 ?most wanted’ playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan – with Osama bin Laden at the top – Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.” The detention In a detailed survey by the McClatchy newspaper group [12], sixty-six former Guantnamo detainees were interviewed and gave a picture of abuse and mistreatment of prisoners that served to build up considerable anger, resentment and above all, a pervasive anti-American mood. What also became clear, both from former detainees and some informal contacts in the US defence department, was that convinced Islamists were adept at using the prison system and the feelings of ordinary detainees to build up a group of potential recruits to their cause. Some of the techniques were sophisticated, even if they were exploiting the kinds of structures and lines of communication that exist in most prisons. After the original Camp X-ray at Guantnamo had been replaced by Camp Delta, the detention-centre [13] was organised into a series of units that varied in the severity of treatment depending on the perceived security threats from detainees. Those considered most dangerous and difficult were assigned to the most secure units whereas others, including many prisoners with no jihadist connections, were assigned to easier units. However, even middle-ranking al-Qaida supporters were sufficiently experienced to avoid drawing attention to themselves, so that they could end up in an “easy” unit where they could concentrate on proselytising other inmates. As Lasseter puts it: “An angry cab driver from Kabul… may have been more likely to attack a guard and end up in Camp Three [high security] than an al Qaeda militant was.” Furthermore, senior al-Qaida leaders could order middle-level supporters to cause trouble so that they would end up in a high security unit, enabling them to deliver messages as part of an effective communications network. Lasseter’s report is primarily significant because it is describing circumstances in a particularly high-security detention centre that is very well resourced and has a substantial staff of guards and detention specialists. In Iraq, the US military are dealing with tens of thousands of detainees, the great majority of whom do not turn out to be dangerous insurgents or paramilitary radicals. If even Guantnamo, with all its security and organisation, can be a paramilitary recruiting-station, then much larger and more loosely organised prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan may well be far more potent. What this suggests, yet once more, is that yet another part of America’s “war on terror” – the detention of over 120,000 people – stands to be deeply counterproductive. The end results may not become clear for years or even decades but, once again, the United States is inadvertently doing al-Qaida’s job for it. Links:
[1] http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101facomment84601/peter-bergen-alec-r…
[2] http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_detentions
[3] http://www.gulfnews.com/world/U.S.A/10213354.html
[4] http://www.ghostplane.net/AboutTheBook
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR200806…
[6] http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/index.htm
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation
[8] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7347643.stm
[9] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/572714.html
[10] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[11] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[12] http://www.mcclatchy.com/102/story/354.html
[13] http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/27970res20070111.html
Hounded28 Jun 2008SCHNEWS asks who’s harassing who as hunt seeks giant exclusion zone ?If we can get this, it will be a massive victory for hunting and will set a precedent for other hunts to follow.? Simon Bonner ? Countryside Alliance chairman. ?This is nothing more than a flagrant attempt to use the anti-stalking laws – which were drafted to protect vulnerable individuals – to prevent the monitoring of hunting because the hunt believe the Hunting Act does not give people the right to monitor.? – Simon Wilde Yes, repression via the Protection from Harassment Act is back! (see SchNEWS 581). The Crawley and Horsham Foxhunt are trying to take out an injunction against local hunt monitors Simon and Jaine Wilde, along with the rest of the West Sussex Wildlife Protection Group. They?ve received the now familiar black ringbinders of ?evidence? from Timothy Lawson Cruttenden (aka TLC)1 and are now due in the High Court on the 15th July. The hunt want an outright ban on ?old sabbing tactics ? balaclavas, sprays, whips, hunting horns and tape recorders?, or so says senior master Anthony Sandeman, ?But the main thing is the continual trespass. Farmers are getting fed up with it.? Of course trespassing isn?t usually a criminal offence under English law but if the injunction goes through it will give the police a power of arrest over a huge swathe of West Sussex. The hunt also want to prevent ?loitering on footpaths? for the purposes of filming and, crucially, they even want to prevent hunt monitors from filming from public roads. Other clauses in the proposed injunction include an exclusion zone around the hunt kennels and a demand that monitors inform the police 24 hours before any planned activity. Breaching any of these clauses could mean arrest and prison. To recap for those of you who weren?t paying attention: injunctions under the Harassment Act create criminal offences out of civil law. An ?interim? injunction – which can be obtained on the flimsiest of evidence – has the full force of law behind it. In this case something as simple as standing on a footpath taking photos could become a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years in prison. But why are the C&H Foxhunt – adamant that they are only carrying out legal activities – so camera-shy? One hunt monitor who attends the hunt is in no doubt: ?We know the C&H are hunting, they cast the hounds into woods, and frequently chase foxes. What they do bears no resemblance to drag-hunting. We?ve been watching hunts for years and we know what hunting looks like.? The League against Cruel Sports discovered the C&H breaking the hunt ban in February 2007, saying, ?The reality is caught on film in horrifying detail. A fox is pursued by the Crawley and Horsham over the Sussex countryside. It seeks refuge in a small hole on the edge of a field. Twenty minutes later ? and after a frantic dig out involving three men, spades and two terriers ? the fox is dragged to the surface, held aloft and thrown to the waiting hounds. After ten minutes of being savaged by the hounds ? encouraged by watching huntsmen ? almost nothing remains of the fox.? Of course according to Lawson-Cruttenden, ?We?re not trying to stop anyone who wants legitimately to monitor the hunt, but we think that means people are entitled only to photograph the master and huntsman while they are engaged in legal hunting activities.? What this means in practice is that if anyone else at all is within the camera angle then monitors could find themselves under arrest. All others (including the C&H?s thirty-strong squad of stewards) will have the status of ?protected persons?. Our hunt monitor told SchNEWS: ?Effectively filming will be obstructed and potentially made illegal. All they?ll have to do is have a protected person with them whenever they?re up to anything dodgy and we?ll have to put our cameras away.? Toff With Their Heads This attempt to strangle the rights of hunt monitors to document the abuse of wildlife showcases the balance of power in the countryside. On the one hand you have some of the UK?s richest landowners/grandees – including the likes of Nicolas Soames MP, grandson of Winston Churchill – backed to the hilt by the wealth of the Countryside Alliance and the Master of Foxhounds Association, and on the other a group of slightly more down-to earth individuals who go out every weekend to try and gather evidence of the abuse of wildlife. Unfortunately civil court cases cost money and it?s possible the landed classes may be able bulldoze this through by sheer weight of bullion. If they lose then, hey, it?s just this year?s agricultural subsidies down the pan and one less tin of caviar at Christmas ? but if Simon and Jane lose then they lose their home. Of course ?Fatty? Soames has every reason to stay away from the lens: on the strength of film from the monitors he was fined for riding a quad bike on the public highway without a crash helmet. But with an injunction in place the monitors might have been arrested for filming in the first place, preventing any inconvenient court appearances. The real irony is that the notorious C&H hunt are no strangers to the ?stalking? game themselves. Pro-hunt websites such as Moochers.org carry photos, profiles and addresses of those they refer to as ?antis?. In recent years, monitors have captured on camera C&H huntsmaster Kim Richardson warning monitors, ?You?re all fair game now … I?ve fucking told everyone? – before assaulting one of them. Richardson is the son of the late Sir Michael Richardson, who was known as ?Mr Privatisation?, one of the highest ranking freemasons in England and a ?darling? of Lady Thatcher. During the run-up to the ban, supporters of the C&H achieved a publicity coup by ramming the monitors van off the road – while it was occupied by a film crew from ?Tonight with Trevor Mcdonald?. Hunt supporter John Hawkins was convicted of GBH after breaking a female monitor?s arm in two places on 29th January 2005. During the same incident a hunt whipper-in and steward were cautioned for assaulting the driver and stealing the group?s van keys. More recently, terrier man Jeremy Charman was fined 80 for throwing a dead rabbit at monitors in November last year. Meanwhile hunt steward Christopher Curtis received a warning for blocking footpaths ? under the Harassment Act! Simon and Jane have suffered a great deal over the years due to their commitment to the fight against bloodsports. As well as being a continuous presence at their local hunts they were leading voices supplying evidence to the various parliamentary inquiries, which eventually provided the evidence required to back an outright ban. They?ve had attacks on their home, carcasses dumped in the front garden and been the victims of repeated vicious beatings in the field. As one hunt monitor told us: ?This injunction under the Harassment Act is nothing more than an attempt by some very rich men to buy themselves an exemption to the law of the land. If granted it will be a charter for abuse of wildlife and monitors alike. A video camera is often our only way of protecting ourselves when under attack by hunt thugs. It?s also our only way of documenting the horrific treatment dished out to wildlife by this organisation which claims to be hunting legally.? For more about Hunt Sabbing see www.hsa.enviroweb.org 1. For more about TLC and the tender loving care he puts into injunction cases against animal rights, as well as anti-arms trade and climate change activists see SchNEWS 581, 531, 509, 492, 471
Pay – the Fightback27 Jun 2008(How much do you spend on your horse?) The fallout from the tremendous strikes and rallies on 24 April is continuing. Those who struck then are debating doing it again. Some of those who did not strike are discussing getting involved. And many others look on, wishing their own union leaders could be won to such action. Gordon Brown’s oft repeated determination to hold pay rises for 6 million public sector workers at half the rate of inflation must have lost Labour piles of votes on 1 May. But Brown shows no signs of backing off. This confrontation is a central economic and political issue. It poses the fundamental question of 2008: will workers agree to let their living standards be cut in order to bail out the bosses, the bankers and capitalism? Over 400,000 strikers on 24 April gave a resounding message that they won’t see their pay cut without a fight. The strikes reflected feeling over lack of staff, the penetration of private interests into the public sector and the oppressive power of management. But the main unifying issue was pay. Now the chance exists to recreate that day on a higher level. Around 800,000 local government workers in Unison rejected their 2.45 percent offer and are now voting in a strike ballot. The initial indications are that the first strikes could be in early July. Teachers are discussing a further strike ballot in the autumn. The 100,000 civil service workers who struck on 24 April could also strike again. July will see the 80,000 workers in the Department for Work and Pensions face the second year of an imposed deal which means 0 percent for 40 percent of the workforce. At its conference the whole PCS civil service union backed a motion calling for a national strike ballot of 280,000 members over pay and other issues. Further education lecturers have agreed further strikes – in London on 9 June to coincide with the TUC lobby of parliament, and two days nationally in September. And at the CWU conference postal workers are to debate calling a national strike ballot over pensions. And there’s also a fight in the private sector – over pensions at Grangemouth and with Unite promising a real challenge over pay on the London buses. But for the revolt to come to fruition it will require a political battle at every level. Unfortunately the left lost its move for another ballot for a strike this summer at the NUT executive. After the May elections one section of the trade union leaders will demand that there are no strikes in case the government is weakened and the Tories benefit. In some unions, especially those affiliated to Labour, there is heavy pressure from the top to damp down any fight. But even here the feeling from below has forced strike ballots. Those who continue to argue for surrender ignore the fact that workers should only be loyal to a government that is loyal to them, not one that cuts their wages and privatises services. If the left does not give a focus to the anger against Labour then it is precisely the right that gains. This is the lesson from the 1970s. A union movement that is hobbled and demobilised will be one that is demoralised enough to let the Tories in. Over the next few weeks there needs to be intense rank and file pressure to compel union leaders to call ballots, to win those ballots and, as far as possible, to secure coordinated action between unions. And inside the unions’ national and section executives the left needs to insist that the members’ interests come first, not the interests of Labour ministers or the career prospects of Gordon Brown. Fixing the figures Galloping inflation is the major factor driving the pressure for a fightback over pay. Britain’s rate of inflation rose to 3 percent in April, well above the pay increases offered to millions of workers in both the public and the private sectors. And the real rate of inflation for ordinary people is rising at least twice as fast as the official figures show. The more accurate Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation rose to 4.2 percent in April, up from 3.8 percent in March. But official figures released on 13 May showed food up 7.2 percent, household energy up 8.3 percent and transport fuel up 18.7 percent. More detailed analysis shows spaghetti up 59 percent and baguettes up 23 percent. A basket of typical food essentials was up 19.1 percent on a year earlier. Worse is to come. Wholesale price inflation, which is an indicator of future price rises, was up 6.2 percent in April. Gas and electricity prices are set to go up a further 15 percent this year, another harsh blow for those who are already struggling with the average bill of more than 1,000. No wonder that on 14 May Bank of England governor Mervyn King said, “There will be a squeeze on living standards over the next couple of years.” One traditional response when the figures look bad is to leave reality untouched, but to try to fix the figures. This is certainly happening. In the spring the Office for National Statistics added fees for stabling horses to the goods whose prices it measures to work out inflation. Maybe there are millions of workers out there for whom this is a crucial component of their monthly budget. But I reckon it won’t be much consolation as your food bill goes through the roof to know that some chief executive’s dappled grey is still getting its board and lodging at a bargain price. And while inflation rises, unemployment is also going up. One study in mid-May estimated that 1,200 people will lose their jobs every day over the next 18 months. Unemployment has been rising for the last three months and reached 1.6 million in March. Meanwhile around 2.5 million credit card customers have had restrictions put on their accounts as part of the fallout from the “credit crunch”. While most banks continue to make record profits, they have cut customers’ spending limits, brought in annual fees and even closed accounts. Those targeted are not those who use their cards indiscriminately. They are those who don’t bring enough profit. Many use their cards rarely and pay off the balance in full every month. A uSwitch survey found that 51 percent of the targeted customers were using their cards regularly and making at least minimum repayments. A further 20 percent were using their card regularly and paying their bill in full. Just 16 percent had exceeded their credit limit in the last year or missed more than one monthly repayment.
Society is Indeed Broken27 Jun 2008...and we all know who broke it When submerged under a veritable deluge of ideologically-driven ?reforms?, it takes something especially imbecilic to provoke a double-take. Louise Casey, the mouthy former head of the Government?s ?Respect task force?, is set to spearhead the latest New Labour gimmick on law ?n order. Among the 20 proposals that fade from the merely banal to the truly asinine here are three that provoke a modicum of analysis. Anonymous evidence Elderly and disabled crime victims ? as well as people at risk of reprisals? should be allowed to give evidence in court from behind screens. Ministers are sympathetic to the idea, which already happens routinely in cases involving sex offences and gangs. Fine, in one way, except that ?anonymous evidence? does not allow the defence to cross-examine witnessess or indeed raise questions as to any previous relationship the accused might have had with the accuser that might have lead them to offer evidence (not to mention the possibility of witnesses being coerced as a result of a police vendetta) against the accused in the first place. Internet crime maps Online maps with crimes plotted on them to be published every month so people can see how dangerous their area is and how well the police are doing. Gordon Brown has backed the move in principle, but areas could be stigmatised if the maps are street-by-street. The truth is many working class areas are already operationally stigmatised. ?Control and contain?, whereby crime in one area is ignored by the police the better to protect a ?nicer? middle class area nearby, is commonplace. Online maps would merely give what is custom and practice an air of routine formality. Youth clubs Friday-night youth clubs to be set up in 50 of the most deprived areas. Youth clubs for the the 50 most deprived areas? There are a number of delirious aspects involved in the proposition. Ever notice how New Labour ministers and the media are happy to talk blithely about ?deprived communities? without any mention to how they came to be ?deprived? in the first place? In the absence of any such analysis it takes a remarkable level of political remove to imagine that thirty years of the deliberate stripping out of the grassroots infrastructure in working class neighbourhoods can be remedied by organising ?a youth club on Friday nights?. What about the other nights? Or ?deprived area? number 51? Or indeed 151? The media who should be asking the serious questions don?t do so. The Independent?s response, for example, was almost unbelievable. ?Funding for youth services is already being boosted with poorer communities targeted. But should high-crime areas be rewarded?? it asks. It is true that poorer communties are indeed being targeted and not in the benign way The Independent likes to pretend. But more than that, as even government statistics demonstrate, it is self-evidently working class people in the high crime areas that are most likely to be the victims of crime. Why punish the community further? But as far as The Independent is concerned?Why not? Former Tory leader Ian Duncan-Smith blathers on about ?a broken society? in a similar way. But rival parties never ever challenge him on who broke it. That is because the beginnings of a solution are staring them all in the face. But why bother going to the root of the problem (the callous and systematic destruction of a youth club infrastructure and the selling-off of school playing fields, and so on) when under existing neo-liberal orthodoxy the unthinking dribblings in the Casey formula work just as well?
Zimbabwe and the Question of Imperialism26 Jun 2008Listen to the Interview
Audio stream
Download mp3 Criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela, who mourned the ?tragic failure of leadership? in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leader’s first comments on the situation. President Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international pressure to cancel a run-off election scheduled for Friday. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the run off late on Sunday and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare out of what he says is concern for his safety. On Wednesday he called for the African Union backed by the United Nations, to lead a ?transitional process? in Zimbabwe. He also emphasized that Friday’s vote would not be recognized. But Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission has ruled that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the election last Sunday was filed too late and has no legal force. Meanwhile at least 300 Harare residents have taken shelter from the political violence at the South African embassy. Today we host a discussion on Zimbabwe: We’re joined in Washington DC by Professor Gerald Horne. He is the Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.” Joining us on the phone from Syracuse, New York is Professor Horace Campbell. He is Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University. He has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe. Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.” Horace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University. He has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe. Rush Transcript AMY GOODMAN:As we move now from Iraq to Zimbabwe, Juan?
JUAN GONZALES:Well criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela who mourned the quote tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leaders first comments on the situation president Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international pressure to cancel a runoff election scheduled for Friday. PRESIDENT BUSH: Friday’s elections appear to be a sham. You can’t have free elections if a candidate is not allowed to campaign freely and his supporters aren’t allowed to campaign without fear of intimidation?yet the Mugabe government has been intimidating the people on the ground in Zimbabwe. And this is an incredibly sad development. I hope that the AU will, at their meeting this weekend, continue to highlight the illegitimacy of the elections, continue to remind the world that this election is not free, and is not fair. JUAN GONZALES: Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the runoff late on Sunday and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harari out of what he says is concern for his safety. On Wednesday he called for the African Union backed the United Nations to lead a quote transitional process in Zimbabwe. He also emphasized that Friday?s vote would not be recognized. TSVANGIRAI: That our decision to pull out of this shame election was in the best interest of the people of Zimbabwe. Any election conducted arrogantly, unilaterally on Friday will not be recognized by the MDC, by Zimbabweans and by the world over. JUAN GONZALES: But Zimbabwe’s electoral commission has ruled that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the election last Sunday was filed too late and has no legal force. Meanwhile at least 300 Harari residents have taken shelter from the political violence at the South African embassy. MAN SPEAKING: My house is destroyed to the ground level. And my whole apartment has been destroyed and looted, and my family-–I do not know where my family is right now. I don’t know where my wife, my kids. AMY GOODMAN: Today, we host a discussion on Zimbabwe. We’re joined in Washington D.C. by Professor Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun, the United States in the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965 to 1980.” Joining us on the phone from Syracuse is Professor Horace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University in New York, has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Gerald Horne in Washington. Can you talk about what is happening in Zimbabwe and the coverage of it, how we understand what is happening in Zimbabwe in the United States? GERALD HORNE: Well obviously what is happening in Zimbabwe is quite tragic and I would hope some of the sympathy that is extended to Zimbabwe could be extended as well to other African nations that do not have white minorities. For example, the statement condemning or questioning the Zimbabweans elections emerged from Swaziland, a South African nation that is one of the last absolute monarchies on this small planet. Some might well question why isn’t Swaziland’s human rights situation being interrogated and investigated? A scant year ago in Nigeria, the continent’s giant, you had shambolic elections, had hundreds killed yet that barely registered a blip on the international media. At least not in the North Atlantic. Many talk, perhaps understandably, about the fact the President Mugabe has served as President since 1980, but what about Omar Bongo of Gabon, a close ally of the U.S, an oil-rich country in West Africa, which of course, he has served as president since 1967? 13 years before Mugabe came into power. I mean, I could go on in this vain, but I think the fact that thousands were killed in Zimbabwe in the 1980’s and yet, he received a virtual knighthood from Queen Elizabeth and received an honorary degree from Massachusetts, and yet, today in 2008, he is a subject of international scorn after of course he expropriates some white farmers, really speaks of profound racism in terms of how this issue has been covered in the North Atlantic media. JUAN GONZALES: Horace Campbell, I want to ask about this issue. It does seem that the western media did not focus on Zimbabwe at all until the expropriations began of land. But does that deal with—the land of the white-minority there-–but does that deal with the underlying class conflicts that are obviously clearly percolating in reaching ahead right now in the country? HORACE CAMPBELL: Well, thank you for having me on the show. First of all, I would say this platform on Democracy Now! is a platform for the progressives, the left, and those who are involved in the peace movement. Our discussions on what is going on in Zimbabwe or any other part of Africa should be guided by how our solidarity with the peoples of Zimbabwe, with the oppressed workers of Southern Africa, and in all parts of Africa can assist our own struggle in this country against all forms of oppression. And so, comparing Zimbabwean’s oppression with other oppression in Africa does not excuse the oppression of the Zimbabweans people by any means. I think Gerald is very right about these oppressions across Africa, but organizations in this country that are in solidarity with the peace movement across the world ,that are in solidarity with the Zimbabwe people, should take the cue from the Congress of South African Trade Union that is calling for a blockade of Zimbabwe because of the oppression. And I think what distinguished Zimbabwe from those countries that Gerald speaks about is that none of those countries is representing themselves as being in the forefront of liberation. Robert Mugabe and Zanupe started out like they were Lumumba in the Congo. They ended up like Mubutu, killing from the people, arrested opposition leaders, killing people, calling homosexual pigs and dogs, and killing hundreds, tens of thousands of people. 18% of the Zimbabwean people are unemployed. While the stock exchange is the most successful in Africa. We on the left, in the peace movement, we acknowledge that George Bush nor Brown have any moral authority to criticize Zimbabwe because of the unjust war that they’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But having said that, we on the left and the progressives, we must take the moral leadership in having solidarity with those opposition leaders, those workers, those human rights workers in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa who are being oppressed by the Mugabe government. AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Gerald Horne? GERALD HORNE: Well I think there is very much to recommend with what Horace Campbell said. As a taxpayer to this government here in Washington, my first approach must be this regime of George W. Bush. And I think we have to question the hypocrisy of George Bush who has engaged in questionable elections in Florida and Ohio, questioning the legitimacy of the elections in Zimbabwe. More than that, if the situation in Zimbabwe is so terrible, and I agree it is, why is it that the Bush administration continues to send undocumented Zimbabwe workers back to Zimbabwe? There’s been talk about a so- called genocide unfolding in Zimbabwe, yet, you see the Gordon Brown administration in London not giving asylum to Zimbabwe workers who are exiled now in London. We talk about the Mugabe regime, but just the other day it was revealed that Anglo American, the major transnational corporation with close South African ties and headquarters in London, is about to make a $400 million investment in Zimbabwe. Barclay’s bank is in Zimbabwe. Rio Tinto-Zinc, the major mineral conglomerate is in Zimbabwe. It seems to me in the first place, we in the North Atlantic should be focusing on these kinds of contradictions that we can affect and as the African National Congress has said, leave Zimbabwe to the Zimbabwean people themselves. AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to a break and we’ll come back to this discussion. Our guests in Washington, Professor. Gerald Horne, Professor of African Studies at the University of Houston, he has lived in Zimbabwe, Professor Horace Campbell also joins us, professor of African- American studies at Syracuse University. We will be back with them both in a moment. [music break] AMY GOODMAN: This is democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. We’re talking about Zimbabwe. Professor Gerald Horne of the University of Houston is in Washington, Professor Horace Campbell of African American Studies and Political Science of Syracuse University is speaking to us from Syracuse. If you could respond, Professor Campbell, to what Gerald Horne said before the break. HORACE CAMPBELL: Yes, I want to reiterate a point that any kind of political work we do on Zimbabwe should assist us in educating our people here so that when the Zimbabwe political leadership represents itself to say that it is being persecuted because it expropriated the land of the former white settlers, we have to interrogate what did the expropriation of the land mean for the millions of Zimbabweans workers, small farmers. It is very clear that the Zimbabwean people needed to reclaim the land from the white settlers. But the Mugabe government, when he was receiving his knighthood from the british government, never negotiated about the land because throughout the period from 1980- 1992, Zimbabwe had the legal powers to be able to set in motion the possibilities for strengthening the working peoples, the farm workers, the women, the plantation and agricultural workers. And hen we speak about land, we must understand that whether the land is owned by white farmers are black farmers, the fundamental productivity on the land emanates from the labor of the working people—working people. So our task is how is it we defend the working people of Zimbabwe? The hundreds of thousands of workers who live on the conditions of wretchedness, who have been exploited by the black capitalist farmers, who are in the Zimbabwean government just as the whites have done. So any kind of transition in Zimbabwe must involve strengthening the rights of the workers, the women, and the use in Zimbabwe. I think that what Gerald said should throw away all of the talk about Mugabe been against imperialism because it was very clear that anglo- American, Barclay bank, and Rio-Tinto and diamond dealers have made billions of dollars while Mugabe was talking about the land. And what we’re calling for is for any transitional period in Zimbabwe to be one where there is intervention by the African Union so that the billions that have been carried out by the ruling elements in Zimbabwe, that we do not have them carried out repression of the workers with impunity and then stealing the money as they have done the past 8-10 years. JUAN GONZALES: Gerald Horne, I’d like to ask you. Obviously Mugabe has been an icon and a hero, a giant in terms of the liberation movements in Africa for decades. But your sense now, do you believe that he still represents any forces for progress in Africa or has he gradually transformed himself into a dictator? GERALD HORNE: Well, I think that president Mugabe is a force to be reckoned with in Zimbabwe. And I agree with those leaders in the region who feel that he and his party must be contented with if there is to be a settlement of this controversy in Zimbabwe. I should also say that with regard to professor Campbell, I’m here not to carry a brief on OPS, but they have argued they did not move on land reform before 1994, i.e. the date of the South African elections, so as not to unsettle the situation in neighboring South Africa, which of course has outstanding land claims of its own. We all know there are more white farmers killed in South Africa than have been killed in Zimbabwe. And likewise, there are outstanding land claims in neighboring Namibia as well. I think it’s understandable why there has been a focus on on Zanu PF, but standing in the wings of the opposition of the MDC and sadly, unfortunately, there has not been considerable focus on them such as their leaders, Roy Bennet, a top leader, a former major land owner in Zimbabwe who of course throttled an African leader on the floor of the Zimbabweans parliament—I would of thought that kind of behavior would have ended in independence in 1980. You have other leading Rhodesians in the leadership of MDC. One thing that worries many of us is that if MDC does come to power, there will be a split and quite frankly, they will pave the way for the rise of certain retrograde elements like Roy Bennet come back into power. In some ways, MDC, a trade union-led movement, is akin to solidarity in Poland which of course paved the way for the present right wing in Poland to come to power in Warsaw. So we have to be careful when we try to butt in to the internal affairs of a sovereign state. I think our energies would be best served by putting pressure on this government here in Washington and its comical sidekick in London. AMY GOODMAN: Professor Horace Campbell? HORACE CAMPBELL: The intellectual subservience of the MDC and the leadership ofthe MDC is clear to most workers in Southern Africa. But this point in the history of Zimbabwe, the MDC doesn’t have political power. The social forces that are organized in Zimbabwe against the government have thrown their weight behind the MDC at the present moment. The Women of Zimbabwe rise, these are independent organizations, Padari, the workers, agricultural and plantation workers. I do not think—we do not have the right to say to the Zimbabwean workers that your under oppression and therefore, we should decide for you because of the history of Mugabe’s relationship to the liberation movement, 28 years ago, then we should be saying to you what your choices should be. In Southern Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Union movement has called for a blockade of the Zimbabwean government and is the Zimbabwe leadership and the Congress of South African Trade Union which is the largest trade union movement in Southern Africa is a movement which is calling for the isolation of Mugabe government. What we agree with Gerald is on as the falling—the land question in Southern Africa is an urgent question in the media, in south Africa, and in Zimbabwe. But having said that, we must learn lessons from Zimbabwe. To say that when land his been reclaimed it should not be reclaimed for rich, black farmers to replace white farmers. Land when it is being reclaimed in South Africa or in Nambia should be reclaimed in a condition where there is health and safety conditions for the working people’s. So yes, we should take lessons from Zimbabwe and we should introduce new politics in Southern Africa that is coming out of the politics of reconciliation. That no concept of victory should be victory which gives power to one group over another there should be ways in which the transition towards a new political dispersion—in south Africa it is one that strengthens the producing classes, the small workers, farmers, students. And these are the forces that have been repressed, brutalized, the trade union leaders that are in jail right now in Zimbabwe should be released. Opposition leaders should be released. Women should be released. Human rights workers should be released. So that yes, we can criticize the leadership of the MDC and I have done so in my writing, in my book, “Reclaiming Zimbabwe” but the government of Zimbabwe must now arise in a situation where we provide leadership in a condition where 80% of the people are unemployed, where women have been persecuted as prostitutes when a walk on the streets. Were homosexuals have been called pigs and dogs and where men go around trying to have sexual relations with young virgins saying this would prevent HIV/AIDS. We need a new political leadership to go against this kind of backwardness that came out of the kind of patriotic leadership that we had for the past 28 years. AMY GOODMAN: We wanted to bring South African archbishop Desmond Tutu into this. He also came out forcefully against the violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe speaking in Cape Town Tuesday, who warned Mugabe should bend to international pressure or could risk facing universal sanctions and could risk facing an international criminal court. TUTU: We are seeing a country not just steadily, but rapidly going down into chaos. The international community should, I believe, had intervened long ago when some of us appeared for a peacekeeping force, to ensure that people who are not intimidated, people are not attacked. And that the conditions for a free and fair election would then have been sustained. Now, I think obviously the effort should continue where we are hoping against hope that good sense might get to prevail and that Mr.Mugabe would agree that really his time is up. It’s 20 years or more that he has been head of state. I think they’ve got to tell him he still less the chance—if he continues and everyone decides to grant his administration illegitimate, then he stands a very very good chance of being arraigned before the ICC for human rights violations. AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop Desmond Tutu Gerald Horne, your response both to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Horace Campbell. GERALD HORNE: Well obviously we have enormous respect for Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But I must return to the question that should occupy us in the North Atlantic. Which is why is it the Zimbabwe gets so much focus and attention on this side of the Atlantic when Paul Biya, the leader of Cameron a few weeks ago basically named himself President for life and it barely registers a blip? Similar situation unfolding in Uganda with Yoweri Museveni. I think part of the reason, not only the race and racism question, there’s also the question that many of the former Rhodesian have kith and kin on the side of the Atlantic. The spouse of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State. The spouse of Chester Crocker, the former assistant Secretary of State for Africa under the Reagan administration. Even some distant relatives of George Washington for whom the city of which I’m sitting is named. Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian leader of course has relatives in San Diego. There were hundreds if not thousands of white mercenaries who flocked to Rhodesia in the 1970’s and 1980’s to fight against liberation of that particular country. And it befuddles and baffles me why this kind of basic historical background is not integrated into the conversation, integrated into the discourse on Zimbabwe. I think it gives a very bad impression on the African continent which leads many Africans to consider their only focus on the North Atlantic is on Zimbabwe because there is a white minority and that perhaps explains to why there has been such a lethargy in responding to some of the human rights violations that are unfolding in Zimbabwe. And until that kind of situation is rectified, I dare say there will continue to be an uncivil situation in Zimbabwe. JUAN GONZALES: Gerald, all that being true and we clearly recognize that disparity in approach and coverage, back in 2005, there were massive forced relocations of hundreds of thousands of people by the Mugabe government that really stunned people, even here in a progressive community of the United States who have supported Mugabe and the past. Your response to those relocations and again to the issue of whether the government has increasingly become iron handed and dictatorial in dealing with its own people? GERALD HORNE: Well, those dislocations were tragic and unfortunate. I know about them because I hail from St. Louis, Missouri. And of course it used to be said, with regard to that city and many other cities, that urban renewal meant negro removal. That kind of situation is not unique to Zimbabwe. In Senegal as we speak, there been tens of thousands of Africans who have been displaced because of a civil conflict there reaches back 25 years. It has barely registered a blip on the international press screen. So yes, those situations that are referred to in Zimbabwe are quite tragic and they need to be criticized as well as other analogous situations. And when those analogous situations are not criticized, it basically provides fodder for those who would like to downplay the situation in Zimbabwe. AMY GOODMAN: Professor Horace Campbell, we just have about 30 seconds, your response and your summary? HORACE CAMPBELL: My response is that the government of Senegal, the government of Cameroon does not represent itself as a liberation government. The Zimbabwean government is very aware of the racism that exists in North America. And it is exploiting that racism and the antiracist sentiment among Africans in the west in order to legitimize its repression on the people. The government of Zimbabwe at this moment is illegitimate we must avoid war at all costs. Mugabe says only god can remove him and he will go to war. At present, he is at war with the Zimbabwe people and we must end the silence in the progressive and pan-African community against this type of manipulation and repression in the name of liberation. AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Professor Horace Campbell of Syracuse University and Professor Gerald Horne of Houston University, thank you for joining us. That does it for today’s show, if you want a copy of the show go to democracynow.org, tomorrow night I’ll be at Des Moines, Iowa at Simpsons College, tomorrow morning at ten in Fairfield Iowa at the library, and Tuesday night the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Peterson Answers Kamm26 Jun 2008Yesterday, we published a media alert (http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080625_selling_the_fireball.php), in which we discussed our exchange with Times commentator, Bronwen Maddox. In response, Times commentator Oliver Kamm wrote to us:
Gentlemen,
I have read your latest media alert urging your supporters to lobby Browen [sic] Maddox, Chief Foreign Commentator of The Times. You ask Bronwen for a reference for her comment that the authors of the NIE report on Iran’s nuclear programme believe, with hindsight, that “they should have phrased it differently”.
The reference is a statement by Admiral Michael McConnell, director of the National Intelligence Council, before the Senate Intelligence Committee on 5 February this year. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana asked McConnell: “You just mentioned that if you had to do it over again [i.e. report on Iran’s nuclear programme] without the heat of the moment, some time to reflect, you would have changed a couple of things. What would you have changed?”
McConnell replied: “I think I would change the way that we describe [the] nuclear program; I mean, put it up front, a little diagram, what are the component parts so that the reader could quickly grasp that a portion of it, I would argue, maybe even at least significant portion, was halted and there are other parts that continue.”
You’ll find the exchange on page 32 of the transcript, here: http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080205_transcript.pdf
It seems to me that you would be doing your own supporters a service if you were to try answering your own questions before launching imprecations at senior journalists who exercise unreasonable patience and courtesy in responding to you. Conversely, given that your supporters declare on your message board that the BBC World Service broadcasts “blatant propaganda for the Jewish religion”, I think Bronwen and the other commentators you target might be forgiven if they are unmoved by your complaints.
Sincerely,
Oliver Kamm
To quickly address the last point, it is amazing that anyone would attempt to denigrate a website on the grounds that it hosted a particular comment posted by a member of the public. Presumably, then, media professionals should revile the Guardian editors, associated as they are with the paper?s Comment is Free website, which hosts all manner of outrageous comments. Maddox was a ?target?, not of ?complaints? or ?imprecations?, but of polite invitations to rational discussion of the facts. Kamm is arguing that these should be rejected on the grounds that a post he didn?t like appeared on our message board. Comment is indeed free, but sometimes superfluous.
Media Lens is very much a collaborative effort. We are assisted by a large number of friends, including specialists and expert commentators in different fields. They are often incredibly generous in sending us advice, comments, references and other help. On this occasion, we circulated Kamm?s email to Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, David Peterson and others, hoping for a couple of comments in response. But Peterson went much further – he sent us a full demolition of both Maddox?s and Kamm?s arguments. There?s little point trying to gild the Peterson lily, so we are very happy to publish his reply as a Guest Media Alert.
We would, though, first like to invite readers to reflect on how confidently the mainstream journalists recited the official propaganda line that the authors of the NIE report had radically changed their testimony to highlight the Iranian ?threat?. And notice how Maddox in particular strongly asserted that ?the IAEA’s report a few weeks ago… has injected the new urgency?, which had left the NIE report badly out of date.
As we will see, in an almost identical replay of media performance in 2002-2003 over Iraq, these bold assertions are based on a heap of highly questionable government claims involving captured laptops and the like.
It is also useful to compare the quality of Peterson?s analysis with that of Kamm and Maddox. The chasm in rationality tells us much about why the corporate media is doing such an appalling job of informing the public and in working to relieve human suffering.
Peterson?s response:
Dear David:
What is changed in our reading of [the NIE report] Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities (Dec. 3, 2007) by the little excerpt that Oliver Kamm produces from U.S. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell’s testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Feb. 5, 2008)? Kamm believes that everything is changed. In point of fact, nothing is changed.
In the passage quoted by Kamm, McConnell’s phrase is “nuclear program” – not nuclear weapons program. There is no question that Iran has a nuclear program.
Bronwen Maddox had written that the NIE’s authors now believe it “gave too much attention to a perceived abandonment of an attempt to design actual weapons, and too little (the authors acknowledged) to two more serious points: the fact that there had been a weapons design programme, the first time that the US had said it had evidence of this; and the rapid progress of uranium enrichment, a much more difficult technical barrier to overcome than the design of a warhead.”
I do not know by what criterion Iran has been determined to be making “rapid progress” in uranium enrichment – (a) Iran has been at it for years; (b) both the IAEA and Iran itself report that Iran has achieved a reactor-grade level of enrichment between 4% and 5%; and© aside from Washington’s capacity to influence the way these matters are treated internationally, what other reason could there be for calling this “rapid progress”?
The source of the allegations about “actual weapons” and “weapons design” is dubious in the extreme. Here was how the Christian Science Monitor explained it three weeks ago:
?But there is a history of imperfect intelligence tips. A report in the Los Angeles Times last year quoted a senior diplomat at the IAEA saying that the CIA and other Western spy agencies had been giving sensitive information, but that ?since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong.? The story said US officials “privately acknowledge” that much of the evidence they had on Iran – including the detailed designs described in the current IAEA report, reportedly taken from a laptop stolen in Iran -?remains ambiguous, fragmented and difficult to prove.?” (Scott Peterson, ?Nuclear report: parsing Iran’s intent,? June 5; http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0605/p06s02-wome.html?page=1)
Because of the way the LA Times archives its material, this article at the moment is inaccessible to me. However, see Julian Borger?s article from February 23, 2007:
?One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.
“Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency. ?First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don’t put it on laptops which can walk away,? one official said. ?The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you’d have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer.? IAEA officials do not comment on intelligence passed to the watchdog agency by foreign governments, saying all such assistance is confidential.? (Borger, ?U.S. Intelligence on Iran Does Not Stand Up, Say Vienna Sources,? The Guardian, Feb. 23, 2007; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/23/topstories3.usa)
For another helpful report, also see Ewen MacAskill, ?Intelligence expert who rewrote book on Iran,? The Guardian, Dec. 8, 2007.
Anyway. Bronwen Maddox makes her assertions on very weak (and my hunch is officially-sourced and meritless) grounds. Oliver Kamm’s use of Michael McConnell’s February 5, 2008 exchange with U.S. Senator Evan Bayh changes nothing in our reading of the December National Intelligence Estimate on Iran – most certainly nothing in a direction that warrants belief in Iran’s nuclear weapons threat to international peace and security. What is more, to resort to this exchange strikes me as an act of desperation.
On the other hand, where Iran is concerned, the threat posed to international peace and security by the U.S.-Israel axis is as grave or graver than ever. But this is a categorically different point than one derived from U.S. and Israeli allegations about Iran’s nuclear program.
Last Point. In an appearance by Oliver Kamm on the BBC’s Late Edition program Kamm was once asked a question that (to roughly paraphrase it) went something like this: The U.K. has nuclear weapons. The Government is proposing to upgrade them and to maintain them for decades to come. How do you justify denying nuclear weapons to other states such as Iran and North Korea, but accept the fact that the U.K. and U.S. not only keep but upgrade theirs? Kamm’s reply was:
?We are a civilized state. Iran and North Korea are not. It’s not just a matter of the way we conduct our own affairs. Iran has conducted systematic nuclear deception, while being a signatory to the [nuclear] non-proliferation treaty.? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHGIxIIr18)
Given that Oliver Kamm has placed himself within the “clash-of-civilizations” camp, on the civilized side of the great divide, no less, I for one may be forgiven if I am unmoved by his defense of Bronwen Maddox and the Washington regime’s allegation that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
And I trust that the rest of Media Lens’s supporters will be equally unmoved.
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
davidepet@comcast.net
Postscript. For the sake of the Media Lens archives, I will reproduce here the relevant excerpt from Michael McConnell’s February 5, 2008 exchange U.S. Senator Evan Bayh; three contemporaneous reports that dealt with Michael McConnell’s testimony; and an op-ed by John R. Bolton, wherein this quite brutal American pre-emptively attacks McConnell on the very day McConnell was scheduled to testify before the U.S. Senate:
http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9480#9480
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A Classic Colonial Status25 Jun 2008Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn’t about oil. Tony Blair called the idea a “conspiracy theory”. It was about democracy and dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction and human rights, anything but oil. Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, insisted the conflict had “literally nothing to do with oil”. When Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, wrote last autumn, “Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he was treated as if he were some senile old gent who’d embarrassingly lost the plot.
That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world’s largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq’s vast reserves. Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq’s largest oilfields. But not only did the four energy giants – BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total – write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover. Big Oil is back with a vengeance.
It’s a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself. The last thing on anyone’s mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq. This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom. But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state.
In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this “strategic framework agreement”, intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian – including indefinite authorisation for the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security”. Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying “status of forces agreement” the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.
This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status. Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty.
But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country’s nominal independence. Just as in George Bush’s version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces – though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.
To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal. The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958.
The 50th anniversary of the 1958 revolution appropriately falls next month. But Bush and Cheney seem increasingly determined to force through both their security agreement and the stalled law for the privatisation of Iraq’s oil industry before the US election. The signs are that, despite intense Iraqi opposition, a combination of strong-arm tactics, bribery and some watering down of the most extreme US demands may yet secure the full imperial package.
When Bush contradicted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month on the occupation deal and predicted: “If I were a betting man, we’ll reach an agreement with the Iraqis,” he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about – rather as he did when he explained a couple of weeks ago that he was “confident” Gordon Brown would not after all be cutting British troop numbers in Basra according to any fixed timetable. Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is suddenly sounding similarly confident about “progress” on the oil law because “the Americans are very keen”.
Perhaps they are all coming to believe the Bush administration propaganda that the surge has succeeded and Iraq is starting to “fix itself” in time for the US election, as the Economist’s cover story put it last week. Much is still being made of the decline in US casualties and resistance attacks to 2004 levels, even though the factors behind that drop are widely acknowledged to be contingent and precarious. Given the carnage of the past few days alone – including seven US soldiers killed since the weekend and a Baghdad car bomb that butchered 65 people – as well as this week’s withering US Government Accountability Office report on the administration’s claims of “progress” in Iraq, any other view would seem perverse.
What is certain is that, if Bush’s blueprint for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, resistance and bloodshed will increase. Of course, it’s true that the US and Britain didn’t invade Iraq only for its oil. It was a projection of American power in the world’s most strategically sensitive region, with oil at its heart, which has brought catastrophe to Iraq and great danger to the Middle East and the wider world. That’s why the struggle to restore Iraq’s independence matters far beyond its borders – it is a global necessity.
Searching for the Left25 Jun 2008Faced with a Labour government which is resolutely set on ensconcing itself as a centre right nationalist party, it is time for the left to start making new connections. Compared with its counterparts in Continental Europe, the organised left in Britain has been unusually stable. Founded in the late nineteenth century, twenty or thirty years before the British Labour Party, most European socialist parties underwent at least three great convulsions in the twentieth century: they were split by the Bolshevik Revolution, driven underground by fascist dictators and reinvented after the collapse of Communism. In this sense these parties have a history written into them, which acknowledges that the world can change and that political formations are not immutable. Even now, the map of the European left is shifting, with realignments under way in both Germany and Italy. Britain, however, remains an exception to the European norm. Here the left has revolved around a single political formation, the Labour Party, which has been largely untouched by any of the convulsions, partly because of its late formation and partly out of simple contingency. The mirror image to Labour?s stable position on the left is that of the Conservatives on the right. For almost a century, Great Britain has been a two-party state in which power alternates between left and right. Indeed, if one substitutes Liberal for Labour, this system has dominated British politics since the mists of time. The first-past-the-post voting system has reduced other parties to electoral impotence, whilst the ?broad church? posture of the two main parties has neutralised, if not absorbed, the extremes on either side.
The current national political scene might, superficially, suggest that this two-party system remains in full flower. However, this is not the case. The high point of two-party dominance was in 1951 when Labour and Conservatives between them polled 98 per cent of a popular vote of over 80 per cent of the electorate. Since then there has been a slow but steady erosion of their position. In 1966, the Labour/Conservative vote totalled 90 per cent of the total, taking 97.8 per cent of the seats on a 72.9 per cent turnout, whilst comparable figures in 2005 were 67.5 per cent, 85 per cent and 61.4 per cent. Two stark conclusions follow. First, it is now possible for a party to obtain a clear parliamentary majority with the votes of little more than one-fifth of the adult population. Second, the gap between the aggregate share of the vote of the two main parties and their share of seats won has grown significantly. The stability of the two-party system has become precarious. In a parallel development, the broad-church nature of both parties has also diminished. The Labour Party shows this more obviously, with its socialist left component reduced in both numbers and influence to humiliating obscurity, but the Conservative Party has also become much narrower in its political spectrum, both to the left (where Labour has hoovered up any spare ?wets?) and to the right, where both the BNP and UKIP have taken over. Again the effect is to destabilise the two-party system. The great political achievement of the Blair/Brown regime has been to impose the policies of neo-liberal Thatcherism on the Labour Party whilst retaining electoral power.1 I want to take this as read and to focus on the current political problem faced by the new leader, Gordon Brown: how to manage the shift in political position required to cement Labour as the dominant electoral force in Britain. In particular, I want to consider three ways in which the political base of Labour has moved, and the implications of this for the left. These concern, respectively, the diminished strength of British trade unions, the decline of the socialist tradition and the hollowing out of the British state. The shifting context for Brown Historically, trade unions have played a more prominent role in the British labour movement than in Continental Europe, where their support has been welcome, but not decisive, for the parties of the left. They have performed two distinct functions: as a politicising agent within the working class, and as a prop for the Labour Party leadership, which, for most of its history, has been to the right of most of its members. These roles have often been contradictory, but until the last two decades most of the left, both inside and outside the Labour Party, has argued that the ruling right wing could be defeated if grass roots trade union members were properly mobilised. In the mid-1960s, this was a realistic prospect and was, indeed, pursued with some success; forty years on, it has vanished. The unions are, numerically, much diminished. Their previous grip on large parts of the private sector has all but disappeared and continues to decline, whilst their membership is ageing. Union density is now amongst the lowest in Europe. This is a long-term trend which began in the Thatcher years, but has continued unabated throughout the whole period since 1997. That this is a tragedy for British workers is undoubted. However, the political implications of this long-term decline have yet to be assimilated – at least on the left, for it is clear that Brown and Blair had long taken them on board. Nowadays, the unions do little more than service their dwindling band of members and their support for Labour?s leaders is largely undiminished, unchecked by countervailing pressure from below. Hence, any left project which involves attempting to shift the unions to the left has effectively disappeared. If anything, the political issue has reversed; the left now needs to find ways to assist unions to recover something of their previous vigour. The second shift in context is more subtle but, in its way, more important. In the mid-1960s, the Labour left held on to a broad moral and intellectual hegemony both inside the Party and also outside in the wider left. This ascendancy was based around ?socialism? as it was then understood. In Eley?s words: For roughly a century between the 1860s and the 1960s, the socialist tradition exercised a long-lasting hegemony over the Left?s effective presence ? If the Left was always larger than socialism?socialist parties also remained at their indispensable core.2 Eley writes of the European left. In Britain, much of the membership of the Labour Party plus that of the Communist Party was the essential socialist core of that broader left. In 2008, this central hegemony of socialism as the normal language of the left and as a sheet-anchor on the ultimate practice of Labour?s leaders has disintegrated.
Again in Eley?s words: Socialist languages of politics, socialist models of organising the economy, socialist projections of the good society, socialist ideas in general have all been catastrophically delegitimized ? Socialist ideas now have a more embattled and less legitimate place in the public discourse than one might ever have anticipated even two decades before (ibid). I am not arguing that this is a good thing; I am simply stating a fact about the place which socialism now has in political discourse even on the left. It has no pull, even a residual one, on the Labour leadership, who are now evidently free to pursue whatever policy seems most fi tting their own designs; and it has little attraction within a wider activist left. Yet, and this is something that becomes startlingly obvious as one moves around the various public debates centred on the Labour Party, the left within that party as well as various fragments of the old socialist groups seem largely oblivious to this fact. The third shift in context is the overall hollowing out of the British state and of the two-party system which has sustained it for so long. In the mid-1960s, Britain was a unitary state governed within the framework of a two-party system, historically largely dominated by the Conservatives, but with Labour the only credible and legitimate opposition and, within Labour, a socialist left which could visualise itself as being a government-in-waiting. This system has almost fallen apart. Scotland and Wales have started down paths of a legal national identity, whose future route is uncertain, but which has already given their nationalist parties a leading role. In England, a slow edging towards a more pluralist political structure has given a third party an increasingly prominent role, despite the obvious unfairness of the electoral system.
All this has taken place against a background of growing disillusion with the political system as a whole, refl ected in the de
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