Getting Stuck On28 Jul 2008I’ve been campaigning and taking direct action against the growth of the aviation industry for the last two years. Last month I found out I won an award for my work. To collect it I was to go to 10 Downing Street and meet the PM, the same man who has been wilfully ignoring all of Plane Stupid’s campaigning work, and the objections to the third runway of 70,000 London residents. It didn’t take long to decide what I would do. With a team from Plane Stupid backing me up, I put on my second hand suit wearing a device in my pocket which was linked up to an anonymous Skype account on a computer in front of the team, so that they could hear what was said. At 6.15, the Prime Minister made his way out into the audience to shake our hands. I knew what I was about to do as I squeezed the superglue packet into my left hand… ‘By the way Prime Minister, I’ve just super glued myself to your arm,’ I said. ‘Don’t’ panic. This is a peaceful protest in line with Plane’s Stupid uncompromising commitment to non-violent direct action.’ I continued: ‘We just wanted five minutes of your time because, Prime Minster, you cannot shake off climate change just like you can shake off my arm. ‘Prime Minster, you must realize that we can beat climate change- but not by expanding the worlds’ biggest international airport at Heathrow, and supporting aviation, the fastest growing contributor to global carbon emissions. That’s why we, Plane Stupid, are taking our campaign from the roof of parliament to inside ten Downing Street. (to the whole audience including the PM): ‘We are the last generation with the opportunity to adequately tackle climate change before it is too late. ‘We need the Prime Minster to make the tough decisions he keeps on talking about and if he needs someone to hold his hand, then we are willing to do just that. But we are not going to wait around for politicians to catch up. Remember, he only has two possible legacies before he leaves office. As the first Prime Minster to take climate change seriously. Or the last one not to. ‘It’s time you stopped hiding from communities on the frontline affected by climate change. Whilst we stand here smiling nicely for the cameras in the Arctic, Inuit communities are planning survival strategies for their families as the deep seas gradually engulf them. Whilst we stand here drinking champagne and eating canaps, communities in Tuvalu are desperately building sandbanks to stop their island, their families, their lives and ultimately, their dignity, from going underwater. And, Prime Minister, as you know so well, whilst we stand in each other’s arms, the community of Sipson in West London awaits complete demolition because the of the planned third runway at Heathrow airport.. ‘ Brown’s Heathrow consultation is a fix pure and simple. It is the single most anti-democratic, anti?national, anti-human, outright evil thing this government has done since the Iraq war and that’s saying something. If super-gluing myself to the Prime Minister is the only way to cut through the power of corporations like BAA and ensures he hears what people from West London really think, then so be it. I talk of Heathrow, not because everyone is, but because it is a sign of things to come. In Heathrow, the battle lines are drawn. We could continue careering down the path of relentless economic growth and ignore the world’s top scientists who are calling on us to curb aviation, or stop, take a breather, and support workers in the aviation industry and communities living around airports into a sustainable lifestyle, before it is too late. The choice, Prime Minster, is yours. Allow us, the future generation, to shake your faith. Put your hand in ours, let us lead you through this labyrinth and realize that we have this remarkable opportunity. I could be your son. Explain yourself to the next generation. The people of next generation will either thank us for taking the necessary, logical action, or lament us for not being radical enough. It is not good enough to do our bit- we must do what is necessary. Do this, because it’s important that you understand. If you find a basis to disagree, by all means take the other side. But please don’t ignore it, don’t look away. Prime Minister. It’s time to stand up to the bullies from BAA and stand up for the British public. Every morning since leaving 10 Downing Street, I have woken up and asked myself whether I should write press releases or obstruct the machinery which is causing environmental destruction. The world is drowning in a sea of words, and I don’t want to add to the deluge. Almost everyday I notice signs that more and more people are longing for our species to cease its self-destructive war with the earth and each other. And that’s the real strength of Plane Stupid; creating new spaces in which to confront climate change. Powerful people know that ordinary people are not innately selfish or slaves to consumerism. Creating spaces to strategise resistance to forces promoting this inter-generational catastrophe is not just a campaign, or even a movement -it’s a whole culture not negotiated by governments, but enforced by people. By the public. A public who can link hands across national borders and acknowledge that we are all learners, and always continuing to learn to tackle climate change. Brown’s brazen belief that we can run the world disjointed from natural phenomena with his imprudent riot squad of aviation industry techno-crats has exposed the fragile relationships this government upholds with the polluting industries. The sheer ignorance of deliberately ignoring the consultation results regarding Heathrow expansion has placed on full public view the trickery and collusion inside the government walls. Now that the Government’s sinister relationship with the aviation industry has been put into mass circulation, it could be disabled quicker than the pundits predicted. Bring on the spanners. If we succeed no one will remember; if we fail no one will forget Plane Stupid, and communities taking action on aviation expansion around the world, will not go without a fight.
Commons Apology Over 1971 Bomb Disinformation28 Jul 2008The Government this week apologised for smearing the victims of one of the first major bombings of the Troubles. McGurk’s Bar on North Queen Street in Belfast was blown up on 4 December 1971, killing 15 people including two women and three children. Allegations quick surfaced that the dead included IRA members who had accidentally detonated their own bomb. Among those smeared was 73-year-old Philip Garry, the great-uncle of Linlithgow and East Falkirk MP Michael Connarty, who raised the case in a Commons adjournment debate on Monday. Connarty highlighted documents uncovered in the National Archives which revealed the Army’s role in spreading the smears: The Pat Finucane Centre submitted those reports, having found them, to the historical inquiries team. It is clear from the reports that there was a travesty involving the Army, which said in the report that the bomb was clearly inside the pub, because five men standing around it were blown to smithereens. The Army said that the bombing was clearly an IRA own goal?it said that the bomb was, in effect, in the pub in transit. That was then. The historical inquiries team report says that it was recommended that the Secretary of State answer a question in the House confirming that story. That was never done, but, sadly, a former Member of the House, now Lord Kilclooney, said on television and in Stormont that the bomb was an IRA bomb. He said that there was no question that the bombing was a Protestant paramilitary operation. The Army’s account was reflected in press reports at the time. The truth only began to emerge in 1977, when one of the bombers, UVF member Robert Campbell, was arrested on a separate matter. For six years, the approach taken in all the police reports?this is clear from the historical inquiry team’s report of the police reports?was to keep trying to turn the evidence to suggest that the Army report was correct. The reports said things such as that the forensics showed there was no doubt that the bomb had been inside the pub. The forensic evidence did not come out until February, but Dr. Hall, who produced it, said that there was no doubt that the bomb had been placed outside the door or adjacent to it?not in the pub at all. However, the police reports still spread the same story, and every single inquiry in the report shows that the police tried to pin the bombing on the people in the bar to show that they had killed themselves and their fellow citizens from the community. That is unforgivable. The debate was closed by Northern Ireland Minister Paul Goggins,who delivered an apology on behalf of the Government. Although we cannot speak for the Ministers who made statements at the time, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are deeply sorry not just for the appalling suffering and loss of life that occurred at McGurk’s bar, but for the extraordinary additional pain caused to both the immediate families and the wider community by the erroneous suggestions made in the immediate aftermath of the explosion about who was responsible. Such perceptions and preconceived ideas should never have been allowed to cloud the actual evidence. Goggins told the House that the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Historical Inquiries Team had found no evidence that the security forces had colluded in the bombings. However, some relatives question why the army was so quick to lay a false trail of suspicion. Philip Garry’s grandson, Robert McLenaghan, has called for an investigation into allegations that the bombing was a false flag operation. The claims surfaced last year, when a number of newspaper articles quoted a loyalist using the pseudonym ‘John Black.’ He claimed to have been working with the a secretive British Army unit called the MRF. Some of Blacks claims, such as the suggestion that MRF members were present in Derry on Bloody Sunday, are regarded as outlandish within the North’s human rights community. However, the MRF is known to have conducted plain-clothes patrols in Belfast in the early 1970s, and to have recruited paramilitaries from both sides. On a visit to England last month, McLenaghan called on former British service personnel who may have knowledge of Black’s allegations to come forward. “We would like a public forum, which is international and independent of both the British and Irish Governments for him and others like him to be allowed to speak, he said.
Islamophobia in the British media28 Jul 2008A recent Channel 4 Television ?Dispatches? documentary, ?Muslims under Siege,? showed how the demonisation of Muslims and the propagation of Islamophobia have become widespread in British media and politics. Presented by journalist Peter Oborne, the programme was based on research for a pamphlet, also entitled, ?Muslims under Siege?[1] written by Oborne and James Jones, a television journalist. The ?Dispatches? programme commissioned a survey of newspaper reportage by the Cardiff School of Journalism. It involved nearly 1,000 articles written since the year 2000, noting the content and context of articles pertaining to Muslims and Islam. The findings showed that 69 percent of the articles presented Muslims as a source of problems not just in terms of terrorism but also on cultural issues, and that 26 percent of the articles portrayed Islam as dangerous, backward or irrational. Professor Justin Lewis said the survey of the articles showed a ?series of ideas repeated over time… that links Muslims with terrorism… with extremism… with incompatibility with British values. Those ideas are repeated over and over again and inevitably they are going to play a part in shaping public consciousness.? A significant finding was that the emphasis of the articles switched this year from terrorism (27 percent) to religious and cultural issues (32 percent). Professor Lewis explained that the focus on Muslims having different cultural values is ?in some ways more damaging, it portrays all British Muslims with this notion of being extreme and incompatible with British values.? Many of the articles in tabloid newspapers were either outright lies or gross distortions. A Sun newspaper report of October 7, 2006 stated that a ?Muslim hate mob? had attacked a house in an exclusive suburb of Windsor that was being refurbished to be used by British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Whilst the house had been vandalised, no evidence could be produced to show it had been carried out by Muslims. Oborne spoke to the senior policeman who had investigated the case. He explained the attack had taken place overnight and there was no evidence to show who had done it. The pamphlet states the real reason for the attack was ?simpler and rather closer to home.? An article written in the local paper the previous day revealed that the local army barracks received three anonymous calls objecting to the presence of the soldiers. The calls were from local residents objecting that the plans for the house would lower property prices. A petition had been also been signed by 40 residents objecting to the use of the house by the army. Three months later the Sun had to issue a formal statement retracting the story, but has issued no apology. A Daily Express article of October 24, 2005 claimed that pressure from Muslims had led to two major banks withdrawing the use of ?piggy? banks in their advertising material. In fact one of the banks, the Halifax, had not used piggy banks for several years and the other bank, the NatWest, issued a press statement explaining, ?There is absolutely no fact in the story. We simply had a UK-wide savings marketing campaign, which included pictures of piggy banks, running until the end of September. Piggy banks have been and will continue to be used as a promotional item by NatWest.? The pamphlet makes clear the denigration of Muslims is not confined to the tabloid press, but is also present in the broadsheets, including the ?liberal? ones. It notes that Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, then writing in the Independent ten years ago, said ?I am an Islamophobe and proud of it.? In another example from the Independent, Bruce Anderson wrote: ?There are widespread fears that Muslim immigrants, reinforced by political pressure and, ultimately, by terrorism, will succeed where Islamic armies failed and change irrevocably the character of European civilisation.? Also quoted is the notorious outburst of author Martin Amis in the Times: ?There is a definite urge?don?t you have it? The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.? The pamphlet notes: ?Islamophobia is a tremendous force for unification in British public culture. It does not merely bring liberal progressives like Polly Toynbee together with curmudgeonly Tory commentators like Bruce Anderson. It also enlists militant atheists with Christian believers.? In the introduction to the pamphlet, the authors say that the impulse to write it came from the comments of ex-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw against Muslim women wearing the veil. This was then taken up by other Labour politicians. Labour MP Phil Woolas, then Minister for Race Relations, wrote to the press in support of Straw?s statements, claiming that wearing the veil invited hostility. Interviewed in the TV documentary by Oborne, Woolas claimed he was merely reflecting the views of his constituents. The pamphlet comments, ?It soon became clear that this was more than a random rumination from a member of the government… Labour appeared… to try to identify with a general mood of resentment and anxiety about the presence of Muslim communities in this country and to intervene in the politics of religious identity.? As the programme pointed out, less than one percent of Muslim women wear the veil. The campaign of Islamophobia, especially since the London bombings of July 7, 2005, has led to increased threats towards Muslims. An ICM poll of Muslims found that since July 2005, 61 percent report an increase in hostility and 36 percent said they or a family member had been subject to abuse. Oborne spoke to several Muslims who had been subject to abuse and attacks. Sarfraz Sarwar has lived in Basildon, Essex for 40 years. He related how, over the last few years, his house has been subject to fire bombings and had bricks thrown at it. Sarwar has set up surveillance cameras around his house and feels he is living in a state of siege. The programme and pamphlet brought out how the far-right British National Party (BNP) uses Islamophobia to try to increase its influence, noting that Nick Griffin, BNP leader, ?has been inspired by the press.? In Griffin?s words, ?We bang on about Islam. Why? Because to the ordinary public out there it?s the thing they can understand. It?s the thing the newspaper editors sell newspapers with.? In their foreword to the pamphlet, Jones and Oborne point out that Muslims in Britain are: * Mainly young.
* Tend to live in the most deprived cities.
* Are disadvantaged and discriminated against in housing, education and employment by comparison with other faith groups. The orchestrated campaign of Islamophobia can only serve to increase their isolation and lead to a growing frustration. While noting that Islamophobia was promoted by the Labour cabinet following Straw?s lead in 2006, a limitation of the pamphlet is that it fails to link it to other aspects of government policy: namely the whipping up of fear of terrorist attacks and using the ?war against terror? to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as numerous attacks on democratic rights. Notes:
[1] ?Muslims under Siege? by Peter Oborne and James Jones, Democratic Audit, 2008 See Also:
Britain: Demand the release of Hicham Yezza
[2 June 2008]
The ?White Season?: The British Broadcasting Corporation?s Pim Fortuyn moment
[19 March 2008]
Labour faces wipe-out after defeat in Glasgow East28 Jul 2008Labour?s defeat by the Scottish National Party in the Glasgow East by-election is a devastating blow to the party and leaves Prime Minister Gordon Brown one of the walking dead. Labour saw its vote collapse in what was previously its third safest seat in Britain, losing a majority of over 13,500 in the 2005 General Election. The SNP, which came in a distant second three years ago, gained 11,277 votes on Thursday, a narrow majority of 365 with a massive swing of 22.5 percent from Labour. It is Labour?s third by-election defeat in nine weeks, not counting the recent Haltemprice and Howden vote in which the government would not even put up a candidate. Up until the last hours of voting, most pundits speculated that Labour?s huge majority would be eroded or even halved. Labour, while acknowledging the possibility of a big swing against it, pointed out that it had campaigned extensively in the seat, with local activists and party workers from across Scotland visiting over 20,000 homes. In the end voters expressed a level of hostility towards the government that far exceeded these expectations. Turnout was relatively high for a by-election in an inner city area, particularly during the period when businesses in Glasgow have their holidays. At 42.2 percent, it was only slightly lower than the figure for the seat at the last General Election. If the swing away from Labour in Glasgow East was replicated in the next general election, the party would retain just one of its current 41 seats in Scotland. Among those who would lose office would be Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling. Expressing the growing hostility of millions of workers across the UK to the party and the government, many traditional Labour voters either switched to the SNP or stayed at home. Journalists and candidates have reported the mood in the constituency?among the poorest in the UK with high levels of unemployment and ill-health?as one of disillusionment with and hostility toward Labour, which has dominated the city?s politics for generations. Many voters cited rocketing food and fuel prices as key factors in their opposition to Labour, as the government holds down or cuts public sector wages and welfare benefits. In May 2007 the SNP won a plurality of seats in elections to the Scottish Parliament, overtaking Labour to become the main party in Scotland. The SNP campaigned heavily in the area, with party leader and First Minister of the devolved Scottish government Alex Salmond visiting the constituency 12 times. Commenting on the campaign, Salmond said that the election was a ?test of strength between two governments.? During the campaign the SNP deliberately tried to play down its key policy of independence for Scotland, focusing on local health problems and rising domestic prices. Despite the SNP?s claims that the vote represents a ringing endorsement of their policies at Holyrood, most commentators have put the vote for the SNP down to the collapse of Labour?s support. The Conservative Party could only poll 1,639 votes in Glasgow East, only slightly higher than three years ago. It only came in third because the Liberal Democrat vote also collapsed to just 915 votes?suggesting that many of its supporters, along with traditional Labour voters, stayed at home or switched directly to the SNP to give the government a beating. Conservative leader David Cameron responded to the result by calling for a general election. In response, Brown said lamely, ?My task is getting on with the job. It?s exactly what people want me to do.? Looking like a condemned man, he commented on the loss of an area that Labour has held since the 1920s, ?We?ve got to listen and hear people?s concerns and that?s exactly what we are doing.? The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and Solidarity also stood in the constituency. The parties split from each other in 2006 after founding member Tommy Sheridan left the party over a successful libel case against Rupert Murdoch?s News of the World, which the SSP refused to support. Both parties, which have identical programmes, campaigned largely on local issues. Francis Curran, the SSP candidate, received 555 votes, with 512 votes cast for Solidarity. At just over four percent, the combined result for the two parties is slightly higher than the 3.5 percent of the vote garnered by the SSP alone in the constituency in 2005. It is lower, however, than the result for the SSP in the 2001 election, when it received 6.8 percent of the vote in the now defunct constituencies of Glasgow Baillieston and Glasgow Shettleston. At the count in the early hours of Friday morning, Labour?s candidate Margaret Curran requested a partial recount, claiming that some of her votes may have been wrongly awarded to her rival from the SSP, Francis Curran. Following this recount, Labour actually lost 11 votes. Brown may have rejected calls for his resignation, but pressure is mounting on the prime minister from within the party. Reflecting concerns among Labour MPs fearful of losing their seats at the next election, Graham Stringer, MP for Manchester Blackley, commented: ?We need a new start and that can only come from a debate around the leadership. I hope those discussions take place.? An unnamed Labour MP told the BBC that the party ?could not simply ignore? such a bad defeat, and predicted that Brown would face senior figures ?shooting from the hip? at the party conference in the autumn. There is little wonder. The pro-Labour Guardian newspaper was moved to ask: ?Does Labour face defeat at the next general election?or obliteration? The result from Glasgow East early this morning was more than simply terrible for Gordon Brown: it raises the spectre of a parliamentary wipe-out from which his party would struggle to recover.? It added, ?Perhaps the closest parallel is the 1990 Eastbourne by-election, which saw a 21% swing to the Liberal Democrats and triggered Margaret Thatcher?s ejection from office a month later. Some will speculate that the same could happen to Brown this autumn.? Labour is a party on its last legs. Labour membership has rapidly declined since 1997, falling to fewer than 200,000 mostly inactive and elderly members. In 2007 Labour reported that it had 17,000 members in Scotland, a fall of almost 50 percent since 1997. In 14 Scottish constituencies the party has fewer than 200 members, of whom only a small fraction participate in local meetings and campaigns. Electorally, Labour has lost the support of those sections of the middle class who jumped ship from the Tories in the mid-1990s to give it the victories in the 1997 and 2001 general elections. In May, Labour lost a by-election in the safe seat of Crewe and Nantwich, in which its majority of over 7,000 was turned into a 7,680 lead for the Conservatives. More fundamentally, having alienated millions of working class voters with its right-wing policies, militarism and slavish subservience to big business, even the safest of Labour strongholds can no longer be counted on to return a Labour MP. See Also:
Glasgow East by-election: Stark social problems, poverty
[24 July 2008]
Britain: Scottish National Party steps up independence rhetoric
[18 June 2008]
Back to Trnopolje27 Jul 2008Ed Vulliamy is not going to tell you anything different. Of course it was a “concentration camp”, only slightly less “satanic” than Omarska and other such institutions. Of course the emaciated Fikret Alic, “behind the barbed wire”, “embodied the violence unleashed on Bosnia’s Muslim civilians at the orders of Radovan Karadzic”. And, as we recall, it was necessary to establish the facts of the matter, and what one might say about them, by prosecuting a tiny sectarian publication and driving it out of business. (Never mind what became of said sectarians – the principle established is that it was proper for the state to determine what amounts to truth in the public domain, and what may be censured.) The trouble is that, as Phillip Knightley wrote at the time, the imagery that Ed Vulliamy is citing as evidence in itself for what the newspapers dubbed “Belsen 92”, is a deception. Knightley pointed out to The Guardian in 1997 that the key symbols in the image, the ones that Vulliamy evokes here – the barbed wire and the emaciated condition – were inaccurate because a) the other prisoners were clearly not starved, and food could be brought to the prisoners by villagers (Alic’s own account of his condition appears to be that he was both poorly nourished and suffering from an untreated illness), and b) while Alic and others clearly were in fact imprisoned (others were not), what was imprisoning Alic was not barbed wire but armed guards. It was, in short, an image settled on to convey what could not be said openly – that these were Nazi-style concentration camps. Former ITN producer Bruce Whitehead wrote, in a trenchant review of ITN’s conduct, that “the report that aired gave the clear impression that these men were being forcibly starved behind barbed wire”. This was part of a context in which Roy Gutman won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Serbian “death camps” with metal cages in which thousands of prisoners were being killed and their bodies cremated for animal feed (evidence for which is scarce). The French organisation Medicins Du Monde, set up by Bernard Kouchner as a split from Medicins Sans Frontieres in 1980, launched a mass campaign advertising death camps, comparing Milosevic with Hitler, inviting audiences to believe that the Nazi holocaust was taking place all over again. To linger with the obvious for a moment, there was in fact a system of camps intended as prisons for those deemed suspect by forces deputised by the Republika Srpska. They also functioned as deportation camps for those being driven out by those forces, as places where Bosnian men could be drafted to fight on the side of Republika Srpska, and as the basis for ‘prisoner transfers’ between the hostile forces. Many were closed down in 1992, with thousands of prisoners transferred to UN control. Trnopolje was a transit camp for detainees, although as Phillip Knightley elsewhere wrote (see below), it was also a place where refugees could go. These camps were promulgated in the context of a brutal, ethnicised civil war, which included the deliberate terrorising of civilian victims, and indiscriminate murders by all sides in the conflict. In those camps, murders, beatings and gang rapes took place. It is worth noting that, as Vulliamy points out, he and his journalistic confederates were able to report about these camps because Karadzic had enough bravado to challenge them to find atrocities during a bus-tour of the camps arranged by himself. Bosnian and Croatian forces were not so stupid as to invite journalists to inspect their detention camps, and I bet that most readers couldn’t even name one. You know of Omarska, Trnopolje and at a stretch Manja?a. The camp at Bugojno run by the Bosnian army is hard to find details about, and while there are extensive wikipedia articles and press discussions of those run by the Republika Srpska, there is nothing on wikipedia about this camp. Try finding out about the Ora?ac Camp, also run by the Bosnian army. One or two individuals have been brought before the ICTY in connection with acts committed in those camps, but I don’t think a single journalist ever thought to try to visit them, much less tell the world that they were death camps. A Lexis Nexis search discloses less than a dozen news stories specifically about the Ora?ac Camp, all from Croatian news sources. These pertain to investigations into the ritual beheadings, beatings and torture of Serb and Croatian detainees, among other things. Only a few sources outside Croatia can be found mentioning the Bugojno camp, belatedly, even though the area in which the detention camp was sited was frequently reported on during and after hostilities. No one cared, it seems. Journalists had effectively become co-belligerents with the Bosnian army and the their mujahideen auxiliaries, and anything that didn’t fit the script contrived by PR companies such as Ruder Finn, which was employed by both Croatian and Bosnian governments, or that of Washington and its allies, was out of the picture. At any rate, here is a passage from Knightley’s evidence intended for the ITN/LM trial: The most likely explanation is that Trnopolje was both a refugee camp and a detention camp—there were at least two different groups of people there—and that this is what has confused the issue. Refugees had come there of their own free will and could leave at any time. But there were also Bosnian Muslims like Fikret Alic who had been transferred there from other camps, who were awaiting identification and processing, and who were not free to leave. But even this group was not confined by barbed wire. The out-takes show them in the main camp, outside the agricultural compound, and the main camp was not surrounded with barbed wire, as the War Crimes Tribunal agrees, but by a low chain-mail fence to keep schoolchildren off the road. As well, the barbed wire fence was no deterrent to anyone determined to escape because it was poorly constructed with wide gaps. What confined the Bosnians at Trnopolje, the War Crimes Tribunal says, was the presence of armed Serbian guards. So ITN was right in that the men in the film were detained in Trnopolje, but the image used to illustrate that was misleading because it implied that they were detained by the barbed wire. The barbed wire turns out to be only symbolic. Were all the inmates starving? No. Fikret Alic was an exception. Even in Marshall’s report other men, apparently well-fed, can be seen, and the out-takes reveal at least one man with a paunch hanging over his belt. Phil Davison, a highly-respected correspondent who covered the war from both sides for The Independent says, “Things had gone slightly quiet. Suddenly there were these death camps/concentration camps stories. They were an exaggeration. I’m not excusing the Serbs but don’t forget that there was a blockade on Serbia at the time and there not a lot of food around for anyone, Serbs included.” It is a peculiar irony that just when reporters are most integrated into state propaganda (which is usually the case during a war), that is when they become the most arrogantly assured of their absolute, uncompromising integrity and intrepidity. The very fact of their presence at the scene of the crime, their ability to bear witness, even where their attention has been very carefully directed and framed in advance by assumptions elaborated by intelligence and PR agencies, is enough to make them think they are changing the course of history, humanitarian agents enacting la justice de Dieu. (Sometimes the reputation might be warranted. Apparently, the photographer and reporter Janet Schneider, who liked to stare down the “corridor of death” and coolly stated that she had endured rape “more than once” in the course of securing a story, was directly involved in assisting Fikret Alic after his escape from Trnopolje). The sheer irrational fury unleashed when their role is challenged is indicative of the intense narcissism that has been channelled into the enterprise. So, here we are, back to Trnopolje, the barbed wire, the body eaten by hunger and disease, and the spectre of Belsen. And though the montage is a crude specimen of revisionism in itself, it is of course those who do not assent to such vulgar redactions that are labelled revisionists.
EU Parliament Joins Stampede Away From Democracy27 Jul 2008The European Parliament changed its rules this month. Anyone still reading? Surely the European Parliament doesn’t have any real power anyway? Surely it’s just a talking shop where pompous windbags repeatedly stand up to demonstrate their “European” credentials while the rest of us get on with our lives? Well, not quite. Certainly the “pompous windbags” part is true, though it’s hardly fair to the minority of Euro-MPs who have tried to stand in the way as the European Union has trampled over our rights as citizens, workers, consumers, as human beings. The part about it not having any real power is nonsense, however. Increasingly, the European Parliament has what is known in EU circles as “co-decision power”, which means just what the phrase says. In a growing number of legislative areas, including virtually all environmental issues and most social and labour matters, the assembly is an equal partner with the Council of Ministers, the body which directly represents the twenty-seven member states. Its powers have grown with each successive treaty since Maastricht, in 1992. The “europhiles” would have us believe that this means that the EU’s famous “democratic deficit” is being closed, but this simply isn’t the case. The new powers granted to the European Parliament have not been at the expense of unelected centralised institutions but, on the contrary, they have been transferred from elected national parliaments and elected national governments. When I first worked as an assistant to a Labour Euro-MP 23 years ago, corporate lobbyists were thin on the ground. Now, you can’t move for the representatives of major corporations who use (sometimes quite literally) foot in the door techniques to get the attention of MEPs whose votes now exercise a huge influence on Europe-wide legislation. So the fact that the European Parliament has just voted to do away with its own democratic procedures should concern us. This is especially the case when you consider the response to the Irish people’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Just a few days later, the leaders of the 27 held a meeting on the implementation of this same treaty. Their response to the Irish vote? It didn’t even appear on the agenda! The European Parliament’s rule change means that the two big political groups, the Tweedledum of the centre-right European People’s Party and the Tweedledee of Labour’s so-called Party of European Socialists, will now exercise complete control over business conducted in the assembly. Firstly, twenty-five members from seven countries instead of twenty from six will be required to form a political group. Two existing groups, the euro-sceptic Independence/Democracy Group (ID) and the rightwing Union for a Europe of the Nations (UEN) would fail one or the other test. The argument that the new rules will make it harder for fascists to form a group is a disgrace to anyone on the left that uses it. Fascists must be confronted politically in elected assembles as well as out on the streets, not by procedural trickery. A further rule will exclude MEPs from forming groups unless they hold similar political opinions. The ID group would also fall foul of this, containing as it does MEPs from the right, as well as some who hold quite progressive opinions. They are bound together by a belief in the primacy of national sovereignty, but it is unclear under the new rules whether this will be enough. Even the United Left Group could have problems with this rule. The full name of the group, which contains all MEPs to the left of social democratic and labour parties, is the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL). Its long-winded title reflects genuine tensions within the group to do with historic splits which go back to the range of attitudes to the Soviet Union found on the European anti-capitalist left. But it isn’t all history, and quite serious differences remain. The group is held together, however, by its commitment to burying those differences in order to combat neo-liberalism, but when it comes, for example, to reform of the EU’s agricultural policies, parties from north and south will often vote different ways. Hence the “confederal”. The individual national parties retain their autonomy. The Greens form a group with progressive regionalists, the Greens/EFA. The latter element, which includes Plaed Cymru and the Scottish Nationalists, organises as a group-within-a-group, as does the Nordic Green Left within the GUE/NGL. Once again, it is unclear whether this will continue to be acceptable. This aspect of the new rules will also make life harder for MEPs who are expelled from their groups for not toeing the line. As things stand, other groups will often invite them to join. Admittedly, this is largely out of self-interest. In the European Parliament, bigger means better. More money, more speaking time, more kudos. Yet there is another motive, which is a desire to see men and women who were, after all, elected by the people of their countries, allowed to continue to do their jobs. This is apparently of no concern to the two big groups. In another change, a totally undemocratic “filter system”, purportedly designed to eliminate “silly, irrelevant or offensive questions” was also installed. Who will decide which questions fall into these categories? The holder of the European Parliament presidency, a job carved out between the two big groups, of course. As the European Parliament acquires more and more power, it becomes ever more important to the antidemocratic forces now ruling Europe to keep it under control. The rule changes may not seem to be of that much importance when set against the blatant contempt for democracy shown in the EU establishment’s reaction to successive referendum defeats, but they are another small but significant indication that, unless we wake up to what is going on, democracy may turn out to have been a whim of the twentieth century. Steve McGiffen is editor of Spectrezine. From 1986 to 1999 he worked as an assistant to a Member of the European Parliament, and then spent five years as a member of the secretariat of the United European Left political group.
Trading away the Planet for Profits26 Jul 2008Climate Culprits During the climate talks in Bali last December, NASA scientist James Hansen presented new data showing that serious climate change impacts are already happening more rapidly and at lower global ttemperature rises than previously projected, indicating that the atmosphere is more ?sensitive? to greenhouse gases than previously assumed. (1) Based on this more rapid pace of change, eight million squares kilometres of ice sheet at the North Pole ? an area as large as Australia ? is likely to be entirely lost during the summer within five years. This may trigger the melting of the Greenland ice-sheet whose total disintegration would raise sea levels by seven metres. Hansen stated that we need to move towards a post-fossil fuel clean energy system and cool the planet. Unfortunately, these dire warnings are not being met by action by the G8 nations, which represent just 13 per cent of the world?s population but are responsible for 45 per cent of the world?s greenhouse gas emissions. These industrialised countries have caused this crisis while benefiting economically and accruing a climate debt to the South.(2) Yet they are continuing to push unfair free trade and reliance on carbon trade initiatives which could accelerate climate change and further exacerbate developing countries? vulnerability to its impacts. Those least responsible for creating the current crisis such as Indigenous Peoples, peasant farmers and fisher peoples will be hit hardest by climate change and also these dangerous, corporate-driven initiatives which are being perversely branded as climate solutions. To illustrate: Indigenous Peoples and forest-dwelling communities are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, owing to their dependence upon, and close relationship with the environment and its resources. Of the 350 million Indigenous People in the world, half live in tropical rainforests, which are known to harbour 80 per cent of our planet’s biological diversity. (3) Most of these rainforests are the traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples. Both the United Nations Declarations on Right to Development (4) and the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (5) assert Indigenous Peoples? sovereignty over their natural resources. However, Indigenous Peoples continue to be marginalised in international decision-making processes including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (6) UNFCCC negotiations are now taking place on ways to reduce emissions of deforestation in developing countries (REDD) that will have direct impacts on the lives of millions of Indigenous Peoples. Member Parties nations that have ratified the UNFCCC have agreed that they will conserve and enhance forests, and also provide financial assistance to developing countries to achieve these obligations.(7) However, the UN definition of forests includes plantations and this poses major concerns as the expansion of monoculture plantations is a major driver of deforestation ? undermining Indigenous Peoples? land rights and damaging the environment through pesticides usage, water stress and biodiversity loss. In addition ? according to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) ? at the most, plantations store only one-fifth of carbon compared to untouched primary forests. There is conserted lobbying by both some governments and conservation-based NGOs for REDD mechanisms through the UNFCCC to implement carbon trading for forests, instead of a fund-based approach to community-based forest management, let alone other reliable non-money-based approaches such as strengthening land rights, leaving fossil fuels in the ground and bans on deforestation. The central idea of carbon trading for forests is that developing countries reduce their deforestation rates and this will allow them to sell the carbon stored in their forests to the North. This allows Northern countries and corporations to buy their way out of emission reductions and continue business-as-usual polluting. It is also based on a false premise that the inactive underground carbon cycles (coal, oil and gas in stable underground reservoirs) and the active land-based carbon cycles are the same. This false assumption enables the protection of one carbon cycle to offset the exploitation of the other. So at best this should theoretically lead to zero global emission reductions if it were not for the fact that the different carbon cycles vary hugely, making it impossible to actually verify whether or not emissions have actually been reduced. If our last remaining forests are to be included in carbon markets, the question naturally arises of who owns those trees and what happens to those forest-dwelling communities that have depended on them for generations? There are huge risks for a dramatic expansion of exclusionary models of forest conservation that violate Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities? customary and human rights on a global scale. The World Bank is at the helm in the trading of forest carbon credits and its portfolio is rapidly expanding with its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) which was launched amidst protests at climate talks in Bali last December. At the G8 in Japan, the Bank?s multi-billion dollar climate investment funds ? which include carbon finance for forests ? are being formally launched and these funds are already casting a dark shadow over United Nations climate negotiations.(8) The World Bank?s conflict of interests is all too apparent since the majority of its carbon finance portfolio has been channeled toward polluting industries and it has even been supporting industrial logging. (9) The Bank must be excluded from the UN talks or the integrity of a post-2012 Kyoto agreement will be severely undermined. In a similar vein to carbon trading for forests, trade liberalisation is also being promoted as a solution to the climate crisis when in reality it also threatens communities that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change by accelerating the commodification of their natural resources. Hundreds of millions of people rely on the world?s last remaining forests and are dependent on them for their livelihoods, medicine and food. The European Commission has stated that: ?Trade liberalisation can accentuate negative sustainability trends unless appropriate forest governance systems are in place and enforced?. Such systems are clearly not operating in many countries and further liberalisation should therefore not take place. The report also points out that in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries such as the Congo Basin countries and Papua New Guinea, possible negative impacts on biodiversity can be irreversible. A United Nations Environment Program study reinforces by highlighting how trade liberalisation in Tanzania led to a rapid increase in deforestation as exports for forest-based products rose dramatically.(10) Another of the EU?s impact assessment states that Central African countries should consider the environmental costs of trade liberalisation such as increased deforestation resulting from timber exports and environmental degradation linked to oil exploration.(11) The liberalisation of energy markets ? a key demand by the European Commission ? is also going to have obvious climate change impacts and undermine community-based campaigns to leave fossil fuels in the ground. The European Union is so often portrayed internationally as a force for good ? a enlightened voice of reason in a world dominated by an intransigent and deeply unpopular Washington administration. Yet often below the media radar and away from the gaze of the general public, the EU has been bullying 77 ACP countries to sign unfair trade deals misnamed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Leaders of ACP Ministers issued a joint statement deploring ?the enormous pressure that has been brought to bear on the ACP States by the European Commission to initial the interim trade arrangements, contrary to the spirit of the ACP-EU partnership?. The Pacific?s lead negotiator, Jo Keil has slammed the EC?s aggressive bully-boy approach to the negotiations stating: ?None of that will ever happen again to the Pacific to suffer that indignity that was forced upon us by Commissioner Mandelson?.(12) The Pacific region is holding out, the Caribbean region has agreed to an EPA and many African countries have relented to the EU?s bullying. A Nambian diplomat reportedly lamented: ??The pressure was too much. ?. Bully tactics are used with the threat ?you either sign or you don?t have the market.? (13) Millions of peasant farmers and fisherfolk are facing the combined threat of climate change and unfair trade impacts. In Senegal, trade liberalisation exposed its waters to heavily subsidised fleets. Ecologists claim that some 11,000 tonnes of fish caught in Senegalese waters are discarded annually by EU trawlers. UN studies show that in Mauritania fishing stocks have been devastated largely as a result of trade liberalisation with certain species such, as sawfish, disappearing altogether.(14) Studies by the United Nations Environmental Programme highlight that further trade liberalisation threatens small-scale rice farmers and the environment in countries such as Senegal and Nigeria.(15) Friends of the Earth Ghana has warned that EPAs are likely to undermine agricultural sectors. Rice and poultry farmers have already suffered from trade liberalisation and unfair competition from subsidised imports. An increase in cheap EU imports of frozen chicken and cheap rice would force rice farmers out of work and could lead to the collapse of the poultry industry. Both carbon trading and trade liberalisation have appalling track records. The corporate takeover of the climate agenda ? cloaked in philanthropic, planet-saving rhetoric and backed up with billions of dollars of financial support ? poses new grave dangers that will be resisted from the corridors of international negotiations to communities struggling for survival on the ground. A radical shift away from neo-liberalism must take place. We need to radically reduce our unsustainable consumption, secure peoples? food sovereignty, leave fossil fuels in the ground, promote community-based forest conservation and invest in clean energy generated from the sun, wind and sea to help us cool the planet and attain sustainable societies. The North must repay its ecological debt to the South ? it?s time for climate justice. Joseph Zacune is Friends of the Earth International Climate and Energy Coordinator, joseph.zacune@foe.co.uk NOTES
1. James Hansen and seven fellow scientists? report is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126 November 2007; See also David Spratt, Philip Sutton, ?Climate Code Red? http://www.climatecodered.net February 2008
2. See Friends of the Earth International?s report ?Climate Debt ? Making historical responsibility part of the solution? http://www.foei.org/en/publications/pdfs/climatedebt.pdf December 2005
3. United Nations Environment Program, ?Environment and cultural diversity? http://www.unep.org/GC/GC23/documents/GC23-INF23.pdf November 2004
4. United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development: adopted by General Assembly resolution 41/128 of 4 December 1986 http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/74.htm
5. Adopted by General Assembly Resolution 61/295 on 13 September 2007 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html
6. Estebancio Castro Diaz, Global Forest Coalition ?Climate Change, Forest Conservation and Indigenous Peoples? Rights, April 2008..
7. “All Parties, taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances, shall: ...Promote sustainable management, and promote and cooperate in the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, including …, forests …? (UNFCCC Article 4.1 d).
“The developed country Parties and other developed Parties included in Annex II shall provide new and additional financial resources to meet the agreed full costs incurred by developing country Parties in complying with their obligations under Article 12, paragraph 1. They shall also provide such financial resources, including for the transfer of technology, needed by the developing country Parties to meet the agreed full incremental costs of implementing measures that are covered by paragraph 1 of this Article and that are agreed between a developing country Party and the international entity or entities referred to in Article 11, in accordance with that Article. The implementation of these commitments shall take into account the need for adequacy and predictability in the flow of funds and the importance of appropriate burden sharing among the developed country Parties.? (UNFCCC Article 4.3)
8. Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) ?The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility: Facilitating the weakening of indigenous peoples? rights to lands and resources.? February 2008; ?Seeing RED ? ?Avoided deforestation? and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities? June 2007. Available at: www.forestpeoples.org/documents/forest_issues/bases/forest_issues.shtml SEEN ?World Bank Climate Profiteer? http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/#292 April 2008 See information on the World Bank climate investment funds http://action.foe.org/t/3877/content.jsp?content_KEY=4176
9. SEEN ?World Bank Climate Profiteer? http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/#292 April 2008 http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/s-Stop%20the%20carve%20up%20of%20t…
10. The Institute for Development Policies and Management University of Manchester, Savcor Indufor Oy ?Sustainability Impact Assessment of Proposed WTO Negotiations: Final Final Report for the Forest Sector Study?, 2005 www.sia-trade.org/wto/Phase3B/Reports/ForestFR19June05.pdf United Nations Environment Program, ?Economic Reforms, Trade Liberalization and the Environment: A Synthesis of UNEP Country Projects?, November 2001 www.unep.ch/etu/doha/pdfs/papers/synthesisround2.pdf
11. PricewaterhouseCoopers, ?Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements: Financial Services in Central Africa,? 11 September 2006 www.siagcc. org/acp/download/sia_fs_cemac_finalreport_11sept2006.pdf
12. http://www.acp-eu-trade.org/news/news_detail.php?5846
13. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40486
14. United Nations Environment Programme, ?Economic Reforms, Trade Liberalization and the Environment: a Synthesis of UNEP Country Projects?, 2001 www.unep.ch/etu/doha/ United Nations Environment Programme, ?UNEP briefs on economics, trade and sustainable development?, May 2002 www.unep.ch/etu/publications/UNEP_Fisheries.pdf
15. http://www.unep.ch/etb/publications/intAssessment/RapSynRice.pdf
Climate Camp Is Back26 Jul 2008It provoked an absolute storm. CNN?s ticker screamed that Britain was ?under siege? from environmental activists. Sky News dubbed it ?the world?s most organised protest? and the New Statesman ?the most important protest of our time? A band of pioneering environmental activists landed outside Heathrow airport last summer and injected energy and urgency into the climate change debate. The Climate Camp showed there are people sufficiently fed up with waiting for the Government to act that they are willing to put themselves where they can no longer be ignored ? and they weren?t. BAA went to the High Court to stop the camp ? they stopped me, unfortunately ? and The Evening Standard ran a smear campaign. The attempted crackdown shows Climate Camp was the green movement at its most effective. If grassroots movements are the engines of social change, this is it: something special to counter the fear and sense of powerlessness that has gripped the debate on climate change. The first Climate Camp was outside Britain?s single biggest emitter, Drax coal plant, in 2006. Among its successes came the formation of Plane Stupid. The second, at Heathrow, emboldened and empowered the local resident?s third runway campaign, whose profile has since rocketed. It also inspired a number of similar camps around the world. Next month, Climate Camp will be back ? but will it be bigger? From 3 to 11 August we?ll be pitching tents near Kingsnorth in Kent, where plans are afoot for Britain?s first new coal plant in three decades. The climate change imperative says we need a green army to derail E.ON?s plans before they gather steam, yet Climate Camp has involved less than 2,000 people. I work for Greenpeace, an organisation with some 175,000 members in the UK. At least 174,000 of them didn?t show up. As an Ecologist reader, by definition you?re one of tens of thousands environmentally aware people who didn?t either. In London, 70,000 people voted for the Green Party mayoral candidate and live within an hour of Heathrow, yet at least 69,000 of them didn?t come. Why not? With toilets, showers, wind-powered computers and a cinema, it?s hardly trench warfare, and is timed to allow families to make it along in the summer. I?ve been trying to think why so few got involved. Perhaps you think our elected representatives will sort things out for us. Are you prepared to wait much longer? Maybe you think we?re all scary, smelly eccentrics. This is a stereotype perpetuated by the media, which will ignore the group of normal-looking folk and slap a picture of the dreadlocked girl with fairy wings on the front page. Perhaps you?re scared a wall of riot police will bash you and you?ll end up in prison. Those yellow jackets are only there to intimidate you, so don?t let them. Finally, maybe you just don?t think direct action works ? in which case you?ve perversely been proved wrong by a bunch of disgruntled hauliers who recently blocked roads and overturned government policy so they could pollute even more. Britain supposedly has the most sophisticated debate on climate change in the developed world. Let?s make Climate Camp 2008 show it. See http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/ for information.
Two Steps to Zero25 Jul 2008It may be apocryphal but it still says a lot. An inner-cabinet group of Clement Attlee's post-1945 Labour government was discussing whether, in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Britain should develop its own nuclear weapons. Why not instead rely merely on close cooperation with the United States? The ebullient foreign secretary and former trade unionist, Ernest Bevin, was emphatic: "I don't care what sort of bomb it is, as long as it has a bloody Union Jack on top of it" (see Brian Cathcart, "Britain and the atomic bomb", 5 August 2005). Ever since then, Britain's nuclear forces have had at least as much to do with national status as with the perceived requirements of security. This is as much true for the decision to replace the Trident-missile system as it was for its predecessors (see "Britain's nuclear-weapons fix", 29 June 2006). Yet even as the initial design work is done on a new generation of ballistic-missile submarines, the international climate is changing. In part this is due to the proliferation of nuclear weapons across south Asia, together with the claims that Iran has nuclear-arms ambitions (see Jan De Pauw, "Iran, the United States and Europe: the nuclear complex", 5 December 2007). But one result of the fears over proliferation is that some surprising voices have begun to stress the need not just to control proliferation but even to move towards a post-nuclear world. In the United States, senior politicians from across the political divide (such as Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn) have advanced these arguments, as have figures (such as Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, David Owen, and George Robertson) from centre-right and centre-left in the United Kingdom (see Rebecca Johnson, "Britain's new nuclear abolitionists", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 15 July 2008). A last-ditch strategy The British government, too, has spoken of the crucial need to make progress in countering proliferation, with the national-security strategy making this one of the priorities: "Our approach to proliferation reflects our commitment to act early to reduce future threats, our commitment to multilateralism and the rules-based international system, and our willingness to work with partners beyond government" (see Cabinet Office, National Security Strategy, 19 March 2008). In this climate, the 2010 five-year review of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) – which was signed in 1968, and came into force in 1970 – looms large; though many arms-control
analysts are cautious as to whether there is scope for real progress (see Richard Falk & David Krieger, "After the nuclear non-proliferation treaty", 27 April 2006). For Britain to have any role in getting what the government wants – "achieving a positive outcome to the 2010 NPT Review Conference", according to the national security strategy – one of the major problems is that non-nuclear states simply cannot take Britain seriously. It may point to a planned 20% reduction in warhead numbers for the Trident replacement system, but that will still leave an arsenal of around 160 weapons, most of them very much larger than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Trident white paper also made clear that Britain would retain its current option of a willingness to use nuclear weapons first, implying that Britain's nuclear-targeting options go very much beyond the idea of a last-ditch deterrence against a threat to the United Kingdom. The British people as a whole do not share the nuclear complex of their leaders, though if anything there is more broad-based opposition to nuclear weapons in Scotland (where the nuclear-submarine fleet is based). But there does remain a feeling that nukes both are part of the country's status and do provide some kind of insurance policy against attack. Whatever the validity of this argument, it is a political fact of life at present, but it still means that there is scope for innovative moves that could help kick-start real progress at the 2010 review of the NPT. One option would have six elements: Cancel plans to build four large ballistic-missile submarines to replace the current Vanguard-class boats Cancel plans for a new generation of nuclear warheads Scale down warhead numbers from 200 to just thirty (an 85% reduction); and have modified warheads available to deploy, if ever thought necessary, with cruise missiles on attack submarines (which already deploy such missiles with conventional warheads) Phase out the entire Trident system as soon as this much-reduced force is available – certainly within a maximum of five years, and probably fewer Adopt an openly stated policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons Aspire to the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons in Britain when international progress allows These are actually quite modest proposals. South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan all went non-nuclear in the 1990s; this followed the example of Brazil and Argentina, which gave up their competitive nuclear-weapons aspirations a decade earlier. A farewell to arms? The last of the United States nuclear weapons based on British soil have now – after fifty-four years, spanning the decades from the cold war to the "war on terror" – been withdrawn from the Lakenheath air-base in Suffolk, southeast England. In the 1980s especially their presence engendered huge political dispute, but their removal caused scarcely a whisper of debate controversy or even acknowledgment (see Hans Kristensen, "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Withdrawn From the United Kingdom", Federation of American Scientists [Strategic Security Blog], 26 June 2008). Even so, if Britain really is addicted to nuclear weapons as part of its perception of international status, then retaining a minimal force should answer that, a least for the time being, while enabling the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to play a serious high-profile role in the NPT review for the first time ever (see Patricia Lewis, "The NPT review conference: no bargains in the UN basement", 1 June 2005). There would no doubt be opposition to any such move in some political circles (although all-party support is certainly not out of the question, given the views of the Conservative statesmen Rifkind and Hurd) and there would certainly be major opposition from the armaments lobby because of the loss of some particularly large contracts. Across the armed forces, though, the opposition would be minimal. Both the army and Royal Air Force are facing major funding problems and even in the Royal Navy there are many mid-career and senior officers who regard Trident replacement as an unnecessarily expensive sacred cow (or another kind of animal; see "Gordon Brown's white elephants", 26 July 2007). Whether the current government has the political courage to drive such a change through is open to question, but one thing is certain – it has no chance of paying an effective role in controlling proliferation without such action. On the other hand, if it does so, then it would be the one state among the so-called "big five" nuclear powers (along with Russia, China, France and the United States) – also therefore among the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – that could claim it was really serious about preventing a slide to a more dangerously proliferating world.
Smash School Privatisation25 Jul 2008Next Step In The Anti-Academy Campaign Following last week?s actions against the privatisation of UK education in Wembley, North West London, a new call out by campaigners to re-squat the land and put another obstacle in the way of Blair?s profitable education program, centring the campaign against school privatisation right under the nose of the new Wembley Stadium. For two years the Wembley Park Sports Ground site has been a constant pain in the butt for the local council, for the private investor, charity Ark, whose founder is multimillionaire French/Swiss financier Arpad ?Arki? Busson, and for the UK Brown fronted government. Now campaigners and activists not associated with the previous campaign are calling on people to converge on the sports ground, re-squat the site and put a halt to this, the latest corporate grab of UK education, sending a clear message to the investors and the government ? hands off our schools and our children. Residents and teachers have continually squatted the land, halting development, since 2006. In recent weeks local teachers, business owners and residents instigated direct action to draw attention to Ark gaining control of the public sports ground, in order to build their next privatised Academy school, one of six they plan to open by September 2008. The previous campaigners have now been hit with huge costs and fines, are banned from the site for two years and face prison time for even remotely being involved in any further campaign against the Wembley Ark Academy. The sports ground has been used by local schools and residents at 1 per session for decades, the local schools in the area do not have their own playing fields. The land is also home to protected trees and various wildlife, including colonies of bats. When private investor Ark takes over they claim the use of the sports ground will be ?affordable? and also claim their will be more amenities there for the local community. But, as parents have been finding out while visiting the site, expecting to see a nice big shiny new school ? the school is not built yet. In the meantime, from September 2008 60 pupils, 200 pupils by September 2009, will be temporarily housed while the school is built around them, leaving them in the middle of a construction site, breathing construction dust and put at risk from overhanging cranes and other construction machinery. And all the while, at the expense of people?s safety, private investor Ark will start raking in the profits, straight from the UK taxpayer. Local residents have been continually lied to on all issues surrounding this development. The main argument by Brent Council and Ark for the need of the school was 200 children would have no school place, thus no education, if the Academy was not built. But Brent Council neglected to inform residents, and Ark themselves, that there were two other sites in the borough where the school was more needed and appropriate land was available. Brent Council also neglected to tell residents there were other investor options in the school. Residents were only informed of the Ark investor. Now it has come to light that Brent Council have been stealing children from other local schools, canvassing parents to change schools to the new Academy, thus reducing pupil numbers at the two remaining state schools in the area. As pupil numbers fall at the state schools, so does the funding, leaving those two schools under threat of closure, leaving only the privately-run school open for business. Brent Council also promised to relocate all the small local businesses affected by the Wembley Academy development program. To date they are still waiting, despite their imminent eviction of current premises on 31 July 2008. The age old question now sits on the mouths of those directly affected in the area, and more so by all across the country questioning UK school Academisation ? if they are lying, deceiving and cheating at this stage, can these people be trusted to run UK schools? Tony Blair set up the Academy school system in 2000, where private investors were asked to come up with 2 million investment to buy their very own state school. The further running and redevelopment costs of the school would be footed by the UK taxpayer, usually a fee of around 30 million per school. The government argument for this was with state education failing on many levels the only answer to save UK education was begin a process of ?Academisation?, in other words, privatisation. Now the 2 million is not being paid by the investors. Academy schools no longer have to follow the school curriculum. They are failing worse than the remaining state schools. Expulsion rates are sky-rocketing and the private interests are increasingly gaining control of what is being taught in their schools, leaving children?s education in the hands of some of the largest most powerful companies in the world, as well as some religious groups, which, looking at closely, can only be considered fundamentalist. The Wembley Park Anti-Academy Camp will be open from this Sunday, 27 July 2008. The plan is to maintain a presence on the site and halt all preparations for the school, sending a clear message to local authorities, the national government, and the private investors, you are not welcome in our schools. Join the campaign. Save our schools from the hands of the corporate elite. Smash School Privatisation. No to education for profit. Details:
Wembley Park Sports Ground, Bridge road, Wembley, NW9
Nearest tube: Wembley Park (metropolitan and jubilee line)
Turn left out station, walk up to main junction of Bridge Road and Forty Lane, turn left, walk up to left-hand gate where car wash sign is and you?re there. Buses:
From Mill Hill or Kensal Rise – 302 (get off at Blackbird Hill)
From Golders Green – 83 (get off at Wembley Asda or Wembley Park tube)
From Brent Cross – 182 (get off at Wembley Asda or Wembley Park tube)
The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic25 Jul 2008The Selective Prosecution of War Crimes To great fanfare in the Western media, the Serbian government recently arrested Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalist cause during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early to mid-1990s, on war crimes charges. Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, who is still at large, have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in the Hague, in connection with the siege of Sarajevo, during which up to 11,000 people were killed, and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. That Karadzic is responsible for war crimes should not be in question. Under his political leadership, Serbian nationalists engaged in terrible atrocities—including the shelling of cities and towns, massacres of civilians, rapes and herding people into concentration camps—to drive people out and create an “ethnically pure” swath of Bosnia and the Krajina region of Croatia that they hoped to annex to Serbia. But this fact alone does not close the case. As with all war crimes tribunals in history, there is selectiveness about what is considered a war crime and who ends up on the dock. After the Second World War, some Nazis were put on trial in Nuremburg (though because of U.S. Cold War interests in establishing a strong German state and utilizing former Nazis as spies and scientists, the trials were wound up quickly). But as a court of the victors, no Americans were tried for the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or for the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden. Throughout the Balkans conflict, Serbs were systematically demonized in the Western press, while atrocities and ethnic cleansing committed by Croats and Muslims were either omitted or played down. * On first look, the ICTY offers an image of impartiality. In addition to indicting Slobodan Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, it has also indicted Milan Babi, president of the Republika Srpska Krajina; Ramush Haradinaj, former prime minister of Kosovo (recently acquitted); Rasim Deli, who served as commander of the main staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina from June 1993 until September 200; and Ante Gotovina, former general of the Croatian Army (currently on trial). However, of the 161 individuals indicted by the ICTY, from common soldiers to generals, police commanders and political leaders, three-quarters are Serbs or Montenegrins. This is not surprising considering the court was established by the UN Security Council, under pressure from the U.S.—making it, again, a “court of the victors.” While it is true that the conflict in the region developed out of the ambitions of Slobodan Milosevic for a greater Serbia, uniting the Serbs of Serbia with those living in Bosnia and Croatia, Croatia’s nationalists under Franjo Tudjman were no less ruthless in their efforts to create a “greater Croatia,” based on the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Krajina and Serbs and Muslims from parts of Bosnia. Croatian paramilitaries massacred hundreds of Muslim civilians in the town of Ahmici, to give just one example. After shelling the town to force townspeople to flee, Croatian forces sprayed them with machine gun fire across an open field through which the people were forced to run, a scenario similar to the atrocities committed by Serbian forces in many Bosnian villages during the war. Indeed, as Bosnia came under attack from Serbian and Croatian paramilitaries, Muslim nationalists, with (eventually) military aid and air support from the U.S. and Europe, engaged in similar acts of ethnic cleansing as their Serbian and Croatian counterparts. Journalist Misha Glenny, in his excellent book The Fall of Yugoslavia, offers an example: Wherever they could, the Muslims used the considerable sympathy which they enjoyed in the outside world as a cover to undertake military operations. In December and early January [1993], they launched an intensive offensive from Srebrenica with the aim of regaining control of Bratunac, to the east on the river Drina. The Serbs were caught unawares by the attack, and the Muslims moved swiftly through Serbian villages, slaughtering a large number of civilians on the way. Because the atrocities were being perpetrated by the Muslims, they received relatively little attention in the world media. They also provoked a fearsome counter-attack by the Serbs, who had soon driven the Muslims back to Srebrenica. Politicians and journalists were quick to condemn the Serbs for this operation, but they entirely neglected to point out that it had been provoked by the original Muslim offensive. But what really throws the impartiality of the court into question is that no individuals—military or political leaders—from NATO countries that intervened in the war have been indicted. Yet there can be no doubt that the United States and NATO forces committed war crimes in the former Yugoslavia—first, in the Bosnian war, and later, in the air war against Serbia in 1999 during the conflict over Kosovo. From the start, there was the complicity of the Western powers in creating the conditions that made war and ethnic cleansing inevitable. As Phil Gasper wrote: In the end, Germany’s recognition of Croatia’s independence—without any guarantees of the Serb minority’s national rights in Croatia—made the outbreak of war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia inevitable. The same holds true for Bosnia. Germany and the U.S. recognized Bosnian independence even though the majority of Bosnian Serbs and Croats—about 51 percent of the republic—had rejected it. By doing so, they put their seal of approval on Bosnia’s descent into war. * Then there is the direct complicity of the United States in the greatest single act of ethnic cleansing that took place during the war—Operation Storm in August 1995. By 1993, the U.S. was finally able to strong-arm its reluctant European war partners into adopting a new policy (the old one being an arms embargo on Bosnia)—NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs, combined with arming the Bosnian Muslim army. The policy was called “lift and strike.” Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, brokered a new alliance—after the two sides had been fighting for months in central Bosnia—between Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims. To “level the playing field” further, a group of retired U.S. generals helped Croatia to devise a military plan, with U.S. and German military aid, to overrun the Serb-held Krajina region. A private U.S. mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc., provided training to the Croatian Army. The August 4, 1995, Croatian offensive, dubbed “Operation Storm,” drove upwards of 200,000 Krajina Serbs from their homes. Human rights observers reported the burning of homes, looting and massacres of elderly Serbs too old to flee the region. Croatia was completely “cleansed” of its historic Serbian population, and in the following weeks, U.S. air support for Muslim and Croatian forces allowed them to seize 20 percent of Bosnia back from the Serbs. According to Mark Danner, writing in the New York Review of Books: During two weeks beginning at the end of August, NATO pilots flew 3m400 sorties, destroying Serb antiaircraft batteries, radar sites, ammunition depots, command bunkers, bridges. Meanwhile, the Croats and Bosnians pressed their combined attacks in northwest Bosnia, conquering town after town. Indeed, NATO planes had in effect become the Croatian and Bosnian air force, ensuring that they would succeed, in just over two weeks, in changing the balance of power in Bosnia. Bill Clinton praised Operation Storm, saying that he was “hopeful Croatia’s offensive will turn out to be something that will give us an avenue to a quick diplomatic solution.” The three-pronged offensive—the Croat invasion of Krajina, a Muslim attack in central Bosnia and punishing air strikes—pushed all sides to the negotiating table in 1995 to sign the Dayton Accords. Today, Ante Gotovina, the Croatian general who led Operation Storm, along with two other generals, is currently facing trial on war crimes charges associated with that operation. But Bill Clinton and the U.S. generals who helped plan it and gave the green light for it remain at large. Finally, the 11-week NATO air assault on Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999 is a war crime that the tribunal won’t touch. The U.S. claimed that it went to war to help Kosovar Albanian refugees under attack by Serbian forces. However, the NATO bombing produced another several hundred thousand Kosovar refugees and later helped facilitate the cleansing of the Serb minority from Kosovo. U.S. and NATO planes conducted several thousand sorties, destroying Serbia’s power grid, factories (372 industrial sites), railways, bridges, schools and hospitals. Between 1,200 and 1,500 Serb civilians and as many as 5,000 Serbian military personnel were killed. At one point, NATO planes destroyed a bridge filled with fleeing refugees, killing 87 people. After blowing up Belgrade’s TV station with a cruise missile, killing 16 people, NATO officials justified it by claiming that the station had been a source of “propaganda.” Directing and encouraging ethnic cleansing, playing one nationality off of another, bombing civilian infrastructure and murdering civilians—these acts engaged in by the U.S. and its NATO allies took place under the pleasant halo of “humanitarian intervention.” The perpetrators of these great “humanitarian” deeds will likely never see the inside of a jail cell or face criminal prosecution for their crimes against humanity without a massive alteration in the balance of forces in the world between the powerful and the dispossessed. Paul D’Amato is the author of The Meaning of Marxism
Britain to spend 3bn on new nuclear warheads25 Jul 2008The UK is to replace its stockpile of nuclear warheads at an estimated cost of more than 3bn, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Ministers have repeatedly denied there are any plans to replace the warheads as part of the upgrade of the Trident nuclear system, insisting no decision will be taken until the next parliament, probably sometime after 2010. However, previously unpublished papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal one of the MoD’s senior officials told a private gathering of arms manufacturers that the decision had already been taken. “This afternoon we are going to outline our plan to maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent,” David Gould, then the chief operating officer at the Defence Equipment and Support Organisation, told a future deterrent industry day event. “The intention is to replace the entire Vanguard class submarine system. Including the warhead and missile.” According to the government’s 2006 white paper, it would cost at least 3bn to replace the warheads, and opponents say the move would commit the UK to a nuclear weapons system for the next four decades. Last night, peace campaigners said the new warheads would change the weapons’ capabilities and may allow more targeted strikes, potentially making their use more likely. “This document destroys any credibility in the government’s claim that it has not yet made a decision on new nuclear warheads,” said Kate Hudson, chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. “It is a disgrace that the MoD is secretly telling the defence industry one thing, whilst ministers are saying quite the opposite to parliament.” The plans came to light after the MoD was forced to release Gould’s “speaking notes” following a request under freedom of information legislation. In the initial release, defence officials blanked out the final sentence, referring to the warheads, because “the notes were incomplete information and therefore potentially misleading”. That decision was overturned on appeal and the pivotal sentence was reinstated. Yesterday, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, Nick Harvey, called on ministers to come clean about the government’s plans for the country’s nuclear deterrent. “Des Browne [the defence secretary] needs to urgently explain how the extract from this speech could so clearly contradict stated government policy on a new warhead … This government promised an open and transparent debate about replacing Trident, but this feels more like the cloak and dagger days of the cold war.” A spokesman for the MoD said the document was a “speaking note” rather than a transcript of Gould’s speech, which was delivered in June last year, adding that it did not reflect government policy. “[The] decisions on whether and how to refurbish or replace our existing nuclear warhead are likely to be necessary in the next parliament … No decisions have yet been taken.” Opponents say replacing the warheads would commit the UK to a nuclear weapons system up to 2055, as opposed to the lifespan of the current system, which is expected to become obsolete around 2025. They also claim that pressing ahead with a new generation of warheads before the non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2010 would be seen as inflammatory and could breach international agreements. Harvey said: “Moving forward on a replacement warhead just two years before key talks on nuclear non-proliferation would be a decision with huge consequences and it demands open debate. The thought that it may have been taken already behind closed doors is deeply concerning.” Last year the government was forced to rely on Conservative party support to get its plans to renew Trident through parliament. Under those proposals, the nuclear submarines would be replaced and missiles upgraded, but no decision was taken on the warheads, which opponents say are the “key element” of any nuclear system. “Building newer, potentially more advanced warheads will breach our commitment to disarm under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and will send out a destabilising and hypocritical message to other states both with and currently without such weapons,” said Hudson. “A decision to go ahead with new warheads will have a much greater impact than the plan for new submarines, which merely provide the launch platform for these terrible weapons.”
The Lunar Conspiracy25 Jul 2008A Proposal to Hamish Mykura, Head of Documentaries, Channel 4. Dear Hamish, until I read your response to my article yesterday(1) I had decided not to make any more programmes for Channel 4: I did not want to work for people whose editorial standards were so lax that they were prepared to broadcast 90 minutes of total bollocks. But now that you have exonerated yourself of all charges of inaccuracy, I have changed my mind. I have a proposal that?s just up your street. The Lunar Conspiracy
1 × 90 minutes
Presenter: George Monbiot
Producer/Director: Martin Durkin They told you it was made of rock.
They faked a voyage to prove it.
They ?lost? the samples they took
And buried the real data
They covered up the truth they don?t want YOU to hear.
The whole thing stinks. Why? Because it is made of blue cheese. Lunar rockism is no longer just a theory about the moon; it has become a belief system so rigid that it can no longer be challenged. Scientists say the time for debate is over, that any criticism of rockism, however rigorous, is illegitimate, even dangerous. But this film will show that the evidence does not support the theory that the moon is made of rock. The rock theory is dressed up as science. But it?s not science. It?s propaganda. You are being told lies, and I can redraw the graphs to prove it. I can bring together a group of the world?s leading astronomers who, through creative editing, will confirm that the moon is made of blue cheese, probably stilton or possibly gorgonzola. I have also lined up Piers Corbyn, Philip Stott, Nigel Calder and others who, though they know nothing about this subject, are prepared to talk about it. They will say that lunar rockism is the result of scientific fraud cooked up by terrestrial cheese monopolists. Big Cheese has such a tight grip on science funding that astronomers who question the theory are terrified of stepping out of line, in case they have their stipends cut off. Worst of all, the rockists are deliberately keeping people hungry. All we need to do to solve the global food crisis is to set up a number of lunar cheese mines, but Big Cheese and the astronomers it funds have been lobbying against it, and spreading lies and disinformation to create the impression that the mines would produce only rock. I know that Channel 4 will love this idea, as it is edgy, noisy and provocative, and it will get right up the noses of the scientists trying to kill debate on a matter of vital public interest. I am sure that, like Martin and me, you have devoted a good deal of time to scrutinising Ofcom?s guidelines, and have worked out that it cannot and will not rule against films like this, because it has no provision for assessing the accuracy of factual programmes. This, as you have pointed out, means that everything we say is correct, even though we have just made it up. I look forward to hearing from you and hope that this can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. With my best wishes, George References: 1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/channel4.ofcom
Despite Ruling, “Swindle” Is Still Dangerous25 Jul 2008Don’t believe anything you see in a TV documentary made in the UK. Documentary makers here have no obligation to be accurate, though factual programmes should present a wide range of views. That is the implication of a series of rulings by Ofcom, the regulatory body for responsible for upholding broadcast standards in the UK, on complaints made about a British TV documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle. Channel 4, the television company that commissioned and broadcast the documentary, first shown on 8 March last year, subsequently sold the show to 21 countries and released it on DVD. Numerous clips have been viewed on video-sharing site YouTube. According to the Ofcom ruling, while all programmes dealing with important issues should be impartial, only news programmes have to be presented with “due accuracy”. It doesn’t matter if other programmes are misleading as long as they don’t cause “harm or offence”, and the regulator’s interpretation of harm is so narrow that it effectively gives broadcasters a green light to mislead the public. The “documentary” in question attacked the idea that global warming is caused by human activity. To achieve this, writer and director Martin Durkin didn’t look at the many genuine questions and uncertainties relating to climate change. Instead, he assembled a one-sided package of misrepresentations and fabrications based mainly on inaccurate newspaper reports, opinion pieces and old propaganda disseminated by the oil lobby and its stooges. Blatant errors For instance, parts of some of the graphs were actually made up, as the programme makers effectively admitted when they corrected the most blatant errors for later broadcasts. For me and my colleagues, this shameful piece of television was the final straw that persuaded us to do a special setting out the science behind the many climate myths and misconceptions. We were not the only ones outraged. Durkin’s documentary also prompted many complaints to Ofcom. Dave Rado, a concerned layman, worked with scientists to produce one detailed complaint claiming 137 breaches of the UK’s broadcasting regulations. Those involved stress that they are not trying to stifle free speech, but rather to prevent the media from practicing “systematic deception”. Now, more than a year after the broadcast, Ofcom has finally gotten around to ruling on these complaints (pdf). It has upheld some of the claimed breaches. Upheld complaints The programme misrepresented the views of David King, then the chief scientific advisor to the UK government, and gave him no opportunity to respond, Ofcom has decided. The programme criticised King for comments he did not make. Ofcom also partly upheld similar complaints by oceanographer Carl Wunsch and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Channel 4 will have to broadcast summaries of Ofcom’s ruling in each of the three cases. So much for fairness. What about the general issue of factual accuracy? According to Ofcom’s broadcasting code: “Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the public”. The code goes on to say that “due impartiality must be preserved on … major matters relating to current public policy” and “in dealing with matters, an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight”. Ofcom has ruled that the final part of the programme was in breach of the code relating to impartiality and presenting a wide range of views. The decision is fairly meaningless, however, as it has not imposed any sanction. Channel 4 will not have to broadcast anything relating to this ruling. Factual failings What seems extraordinary, though, is that Ofcom has decided Durkin’s programme was not in breach of the code when it comes to factual accuracy. So apparently: ? It’s OK to fabricate graphics. ? It’s OK to state that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans when in fact humans emit far more. ? It’s OK to present scientists as experts in fields they in fact know little about. ? It’s OK to present disputed claims as if they were well-established and accepted scientific facts. ? It’s OK to claim: “There is no evidence at all from Earth’s long climate history that carbon dioxide has ever determined global temperatures”, when there is overwhelming evidence going back many decades that CO2 does play a role. ? It’s OK to deliberately confuse long-term changes in sea ice cover with the seasonal coming and going of ice. ? It’s OK to state that Margaret Thatcher made a speech to scientists at the Royal Society saying: “There’s money on the table for you to prove this stuff” (meaning global warming) when she did not say any such thing. The extraordinary idea being that climate change was an issue cooked up by climate scientists in order to get funding. ? It’s OK to state that, “The common belief that carbon dioxide is driving climate change is at odds with much of the available scientific data: data from weather balloons and satellites, from ice core surveys, and from the historical temperature records” when this is clearly untrue. ? It’s OK to claim that an individual called Piers Corbyn produces more accurate weather forecasts than the UK’s Met Office when there is no evidence of this at all. The list could go on and on, but you get the picture. I can’t think of any supposedly factual programme on British TV that was less accurate than Durkin’s polemic. For Ofcom to rule that it was not factually misleading is extraordinary and sets a disastrous precedent for programmes relating to controversial scientific issues. ‘Harm and offence’ The reasoning behind this decision, according to the judgement, is that for non-news programmes the rule on factual accuracy applies only to “content which materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm and offence”. It goes on to say that only “actual harm” rather than “potential harm” matters. In other words, discouraging action to avoid future catastrophes does not count as harm. On this basis, Ofcom decided that all the falsehoods in the programme relating to the causes of climate change could simply be ignored. The programme will not cause harm by affecting people’s behaviour, the judgement claims, because most viewers know the views expressed are not the scientific consensus. Well, yes, most viewers might know what the consensus is, but an awful lot of them do not accept it. What’s more, most viewers would not have been aware how many of the statements in the programme were false. Poor record By Ofcom’s logic, a programme that presented the long-discredited myths about AIDS not being caused by HIV as being true would not count as causing harm either. Indeed, astonishingly, the ruling makes exactly this comparison. As for the factual inaccuracies not causing offence, well, I get hopping mad when I see a pack of lies presented as the truth. Does that kind of offence not count? Clearly not. The other thing I find extraordinary about this case is that Channel 4 is a publicly owned company. Despite its public remit, it has a record of broadcasting similar nonsense. What’s more, with its advertising revenues falling, it is currently campaigning to get its hands on part of the BBC’s licence fees. What a horrifying prospect. In my opinion, if Channel 4 carries on producing programmes like The Great Global Warming Swindle, the sooner it goes bust the better off Britain and the world will be
EU’s lifted sanctions could be turning point for Cuba25 Jul 2008On June 19, at a summit in Brussels, the European Union announced that it would lift its diplomatic sanctions against Cuba. The gesture was predominantly symbolic, as the restraints, which had been put in place in 2003, had been temporarily suspended since 2005. The decision came about largely due to Spain’s 2005 initiative to normalize its relations with Cuba, despite opposition from several other EU members. While the EU’s sanctions only froze development aid and visits to Cuba by high-level European officials, the move to lift them signals a commitment to increased dialogue and openness between the EU and Havana. It will surely have positive effects not just for Cuba but for the EU’s currently frosty relationship with Latin America over immigration issues. Perhaps most importantly, it serves as a contrast to the hard-line policy of the United States, which has maintained an unbending trade embargo against Cuba since 1964. The End of a Long Battle The EU’s sanctions were enacted in response to a March 2003 crackdown on Cuban dissidents after Havana had executed three men for hijacking a U.S.-bound ferry, in which a government official was murdered. The crackdown resulted in the imprisonment of seventy-five other Cubans for up to twenty-eight years. At the time, the EU condemned the crackdown, calling it “deplorable,” and refused to negotiate with Cuba until it improved its human rights record. According to the EU Report, an angry Fidel Castro accused the European body of “bowing to Nazi-Fascist US policy,” and he was further outraged when EU member nations began inviting Cuban dissidents to their Havana embassy functions. The strained relations between the EU and Cuba began to thaw in January 2005, when Spain’s new Socialist government under Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero began a movement within the EU to improve EU-Cuba relations. Many believe Spain is in the best position to attempt to normalize relations with Cuba due to a shared culture and language as well as its own authoritarian past. Following the release of fourteen of the seventy-five dissidents, Spain successfully urged the EU to suspend its sanctions, and restore “formal contact” with Havana, according to Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Prez Roque. Despite heavy criticism from other EU members, in April 2007, Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel ngel Moratinos, visited Cuba in the first trip by a Spanish foreign minister since 1998. This was the first visit by an EU member since the sanctions were imposed, and reflected Spain’s desire to have a real dialogue with the island. Several EU members, including Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and Portugal, backed Spain’s decision to renew ties with Cuba. However, others, most notably the Czech Republic, remained adamantly opposed to the visit, calling Spain’s decision “unilateral” and remarked that the meeting was “unlikely to produce anything new.” The Opposition It is not surprising that Cuba’s toughest EU critics come mainly from Eastern European countries, some of which have painful memories of Soviet-era repression. The Czech Republic’s harsh handling by the former Soviet Union during the Prague Spring of 1968 has made it the leader of the anti-Cuban bloc within the European Union due to Cuba’s staunch support of Moscow at that time. With support also from the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, and Sweden, Cuba’s opposition refused to budge on its stance in favor of the sanctions until Havana demonstrated real strides toward democracy, including an improved human rights policy and less repression of dissident groups. Cuban dissidents also vehemently opposed the lifting of the sanctions, believing that this action would “punish” the Cuban people and allow Havana to continue violating human rights. According to the leaders of the dissident group Agenda for Transition, any action taken by the EU to normalize relations with Cuba would be understood by Cuban authorities as affording legitimacy to the government’s recent actions and would “[punish] those who fight for democracy.” The Turning Point: Ral and Reforms The EU decision to lift the sanctions was ultimately achieved as a result of Cuba’s subsequent reforms. On February 24, 2008, Fidel Castro stepped down as president of Cuba on health grounds, after nearly five decades of rule. His vice president and younger brother, Ral, was officially elected to take his place, after having been acting president since July 2006. In his acceptance speech, Ral promised social and economic reforms meant to ease the burden on the everyday lives of Cubans. Many believed that any concessions made to Cuba under Ral should be limited, but on March 4, Ral signed two UN human rights pacts, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in what EUBusiness called an “unprecedented gesture.” The EU received this as a “positive development,” which could signal the beginning of more democratic reforms in Cuba. On March 9, EU aid Commissioner Louis Michel remarked that “the time is right for the European Union to begin a dialogue with Cuba towards normalizing ties and removing sanctions?” The willingness and flexibility Ral has shown in carrying out reforms demonstrates Cuba’s potential to become a more open society, both socially and economically. These efforts have provided the impetus for the EU’s decision to reverse its policy of sanctions. In stark contrast to his doctrinaire brother Fidel, Ral has demonstrated a more pragmatic approach to governance, proving himself to be flexible and open to constructive engagement. In April, Ral carried out reforms that would decentralize Cuba’s agricultural sector by allowing farmers to increase their earnings, and provide more flexibility to purchase seeds and machinery. The Cuban newspaper Granma announced that these reforms could be a “springboard for more changes.” In May, greater access to information was achieved when the government lifted the ban on personal computers and mobile phones, in addition to the use of rental cars and tourist hotels. In June, the government announced plans to abandon salary equality, a measure meant to increase worker productivity. In addition to these reforms, Ral has demonstrated a commitment to human rights by commuting thirty death sentences, as well as releasing a number of political prisoners. A Fresh Start The decision to restore relations with Cuba, handed down by the EU on June 20, comes with a caveat: it will be reviewed at the end of one year, at which time Cuba must meet several criteria in the fields of human rights and democratization. This decision went some way in placating the nations that opposed the EU’s measure, but the reassessment does not provide for a renewal of sanctions. The EU is facing criticism from Cuban dissidents for not laying down conditions on Cuba before lifting the sanctions. Though it is criticized, this move is viewed by the EU majority as a positive step forward for EU-Cuba relations. It also envisages a dialogue between the two entities that is neither conditioned nor restricted. For Cuba, this EU attitude could lead to more reforms in the fields of democracy and human rights. As the agricultural overhauls in April were deemed a starting point for further change in that sector, so too could these sanctions be seen as a launching pad for more democratic reforms. The fact that the EU attached no conditions to its revoking of sanctions demonstrates that Europe is ready to deal with Cuba in a more dignified manner and means to encourage it to carry out further democratic advancement. The EU’s decision is also a positive step for Cuba’s economy. While the sanctions on Cuba were not economic in nature, trade between the two blocs fell in 2003 and 2004 while they remained in place, according to the European Commission’s 2006 report on EU-Cuba bilateral trade. About 36% of Cuba’s imports and 31.3% of its exports in 2006 were from the EU, making it the island’s number one trading partner. European investment in Cuba could increase further now that the sanctions have been fully removed. This, coupled with more openness and additional reforms on Cuban society, are likely to lead to an improvement in the quality of life of the average Cuban. Removing the sanctions also serves as a contrast between the EU and the U.S.‘s policy when it comes to Cuba. According to Diego Lpez Garrido, Spain’s Secretary of State to the EU, the decision markedly contradicts the U.S.‘s policy of isolation of the island, Europe’s action shows that the EU is “capable of?choosing its own foreign policy path.” The U.S. was unable to convince the EU to refuse to lift anti-Havana sanctions, exhibiting its independence from Washington’s influence. On June 26, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey publicly worried that the EU’s decision would give “additional legitimacy” to the Cuban regime. However, the latter’s approach to Cuba has always been on the side of being less severe than that of the U.S., whose crippling economic sanctions have been responsible for endemic food and fuel shortages and bitterness among Cubans. If normalized relations between the EU and Cuba lead to more openness and democracy in Cuba, then perhaps the U.S. might want to reconsider its damaging and chronically ineffective policy toward the island. Amy Coonradt is a Research Associate of the Washington, DC-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
Obama, The Prince Of Bait-And-Switch25 Jul 2008On 12 July, the London Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the “high drama” and “meticulously practised routine” of evacuating another overheated journalist. For her US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, “saving a life took precedence over [their] security”. Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that “47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday”. Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no “enemy” nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another “precision” bomb. Inside were nine people – his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while The Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at the wedding party. Wedding parties are a “coalition” speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated – at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military. The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. “The most frequently used bombs,” the Air Force Times reports, “are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided . . .” Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America’s and Britain’s puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA’s payroll. The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush’s former spokesman Scott McClellan has called “complicit enablers” – journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a “good war”, the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber. In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghanistan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power – because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, “bait-and-switch” Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince. Those who write of Obama that “when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush” demonstrate the same wilful naivety that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton – and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, “ideology has surrendered entirely to ‘values’ . . . there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilised limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain . . .” Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.
Stick a fork in him25 Jul 2008Brown is finished. Let me say that again: Brown is finished. One more time: Brown is finished. I had an inkling this was coming when I saw Margaret Curran’s election message for Labour on the BBC – discoursing grimly on the unacceptable inequalities that made Glasgow East so poor, she insisted that the correct response was to ensure everyone had access to sports and ate healthily. Seriously, however, I doubt Curran had much to do with it. And she has every reason to feel disappointed. Labour was ahead in the polls, and there was a jumbo majority that the SNP had a tiny margin of time to erode. But the rate at which New Labour heartlands have been evaporating, turning over to any opposition that runs a half-decent campaign, has been nothing short of astonishing. And look, this turnout may have been down on the general election, but it’s actually quite decent for a bye-election. It looks like, alongside glum Labour voters sitting on their hands, there were quite a few motivated voters determined to smack the government. And let’s look at what the Brown administration did to, er, assist its candidate in Glasgow East. They gave in to the City and the rich on tax evasion, declared a freeze on public spending, advertised for bids on the privatised delivery of welfare, and announced a ‘revolutionary’ shake-up of benefits for the unemployed and incapacitated that will treat both like criminals. Everybody knows by now that Glasgow East is an overwhelmingly working class constituency, with life expectancy in some areas lower than in Gaza. Unemployment is well above the national average: 10% for men over 25, 25% for women. It contains Shettleston, the most deprived area in Britain according to the UN. This is a place where even the Tory candidate was a trade union branch secretary. This is Labour turf, has been for generations, and it has stuck with Labour during the worst of the Blair years, through gritted teeth. A little bit of imagination should tell you something about the combination of fury and heartbreak that produced a 23% swing to an SNP candidate with no profile, no charisma and not much in the way of policy. Not only does the government have no solution for those squeezed by soaring food and fuel prices but to scrap the winter fuel allowance and abolish the 10p tax rate, they decide to go after those on benefits while allowing criminal companies to engage in tax evasion. Commentators marvel at the government’s apparent determination to make itself unelectable. It was once the Tories doing that, with a succession of bland right-wing leaders talking ‘tough’ on crime or asylum. Let me tell you something – I’m reluctant to link to the Tories, but they are actually running a petition against Brown’s NHS cuts. They frame it in terms of inefficiency, of course, but in every other respect it looks like the kind of campaign one would see on a trade union website. The Tory strategy is unmistakeably to pitch for the slightly-left-of-New-Labour vote, and it may have some success. Now the government, aside from constantly attacking its own electoral base, frequently indulges in the right-wing populism that made the Tories look hateful and unelectable to many centre-right voters. (Not least of which, on Labour’s part, is the surreptitious Islamophobic poison about the liberal blogger Osama Saeed, the SNP’s candidate in Glasgow Central at the next election – a naked attempt to smear all SNP candidates by association with an “Islamic fundamentalist”). The story of the next election will probably be a continuation of the same: New Labour heartlands tumbling one after the others, as working class voters vent their fury about – well, take your pick from Post Office closures, privatisation, benefit cuts, public sector pay, tax breaks for the rich, the abolition of the ten pence tax rate, the abolition of the winter fuel allowance, soaring inequality, tuition fees, etc etc. So, the columnists wonder whether New Labour’s head has disappeared up Brown’s crack – surely, cabinet ministers with sense can see what’s being done? Surely, the backbenchers can understand that their careers are at risk? Why isn’t there a revolt? Well, there may be a revolt, but I suspect it would be a Blairite one aimed at removing an elephantine social misfit from a post that they would rather trust to Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn. There will not be a change of course. And the reason is simple: they are committed to this, they like doing what they’re doing, they think it’s sound economics and good politics. The Labour Party has spent twenty years talking itself into this happy little rut, and it no longer has the means to think that it might be good to get out. All of which raises the question: what is to be done? My favourite kind of question as it happens. The left has to have a strategy for coping with the collapse of Labourism that doesn’t threaten to drag it down with the irreparable hulk. That can neither take the form of sectarian disengagement with Labour supporters, nor can it take the form of some ‘progressive alliance’ uniting the various fragments of the radical left, since a) it would not necessarily be more than the sum of its parts, b) it is not going to happen anyway, and c) even if it did, it would in practise be tied to the Labour Party. Both of the above solutions are tempting short-cuts, to be sure, especially when there appears to be a paucity of alternatives. But an alternative to Labourism cannot be built from above by a loose association of ‘ecosocialists’ and Eurocommunists who flee under the Labour umbrella when there is the slightest of sign of precipitation. It has to come from below, and to that extent it has to come from the ongoing revival of trade union militancy, particularly from the fightback against Brown’s government by the very working class who can no longer stand to vote for that shower. As these strike waves become more frequent and longer, as they are sure to do, the question that has dogged previous trade union conferences – why are we funding these bastards? – will return with force. The hardcore of Labour left hangers-on will have to look increasingly outward, toward alignments beyond the party that it is kicking them. Of course, no alternative that could conceivably be built would be a ‘pure’ working class movement, or from the old left. It would embrace all the diverse campaigns that the Left has thrown itself into, including defending council housing, defending asylum seekers, fighting the BNP, resisting the war, and so on. I suppose it’s about time I mentioned the People Before Profit charter, which has got the support of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn MP, John Pilger and others. The purpose of the charter is to formulate a set of demands and signposts for the way forward. It expresses some basic requirements that the left can agree on – no wage increases below the rate of inflation, tax businesses and the rich to fund welfare and public services (particularly impose a windfall tax on energy companies), repeal anti-union laws etc. It also commits to support for various essential campaigns such as Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism, Keep Our NHS Public, and so on. You can read it in full here [pdf], although I believe a separate website is being developed for this. And you can sign it by e-mailing your name and details to: peoplebeforeprofitcharter@googlemail.com.
Don’t be fooled by the climate change bill.24 Jul 2008For the past two years I have been fretting over a mystery. Though Labour seems to have done everything possible to ensure that it stays out of office, there remains a possibility that it might form another government at some point between now and 2050. This means that its climate change bill, which will become law in the autumn, could come back to haunt it. Despite its evident flaws, this is radical and unprecedented legislation. It imposes a legal obligation on future governments to cut carbon dioxide pollution by 60% or more by 2050, with binding interim targets every five years. The government has some good climate policies. It also has some bleeding disastrous ones, which appear to commit the United Kingdom to high carbon pollution for the entire period covered by the bill. A future Labour government would find itself snared by its own current policies. Surely it wouldn?t be foolish enough to set such a trap for itself? One policy alone seems to doom future governments to prosecution: the planned doubling of the capacity of the UK?s airports by 2030. Using the Department for Transport?s projections, I estimate that by 2050 aeroplanes will account for 91% of all the greenhouse gases the country should be producing. Under the less optimistic figures published by Defra, the environment department, the proportion rises to 258% 1. Until now this hasn?t been a problem: the government has refused to include aircraft pollution in the 2050 target. But following an amendment in the Lords, the draft bill imposes a duty on the government either to include it or to explain to parliament why it hasn?t done so, within five years 2. The government claims that it might not be possible to add these gases to the UK?s carbon budget because, ?in the absence of an internationally agreed methodology?, no one knows how to calculate what proportion of this pollution belongs to us 3. It?s a knotty problem, isn?t it? If you were the government and you knew that 67% of the passengers using UK airports were residents of this country 4, could you work out what proportion of aircraft emissions should be counted in the UK?s carbon budget? No? Me neither. Wouldn?t know where to begin. This ridiculous excuse can?t be sustained for much longer. At some point aircraft gases will have to be included in the carbon target. Throw in the government?s road-building programme and its intention to approve new coal-burning power plants and you can see that it has a problem. The only factor now holding down carbon emissions is the price of energy. They fell by 2% last year, and the government admits that this ?was largely explicable in terms of price relativities.? 5 In other words, it has again become cheaper to burn natural gas in power stations than to burn coal, while the cost of oil has encouraged people to drive less. The 2% reduction means that the UK?s carbon budget is now a grand total of 0.8% smaller than it was in 19976. The government can post a 16% cut in greenhouse gases since 1990 only because of the accidental reductions made during the dash for gas under the Tories and the sharp reduction in methane and nitrous oxide from rubbish dumps and industry. Neither of these cuts can be repeated. But this doesn?t even begin to describe the government?s problem. Its new climate change report contains a tantalising figure. It is expressed in such a back-handed way that you have to perform half a dozen small calculations to discover what it means. The report boasts that even when emissions in countries exporting goods to the UK are taken into account, ?the total annual reduction of UK greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 was around 240 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent [MtCO2eq] below business as usual?.7 The government says that ?business as usual? would have led to an increase of 40% in emissions since 1990. This gives us a figure of 1079MtCO2eq8. Subtract 240 from 1079 and you get 839, or 187 MtCO2 eq above current emissions9. This means that instead of declining by 16% since 1990, as the government insists, the greenhouse gases for which the UK is responsible have risen by 9%. When I finished this sum I sat still for quite a long time. The UK?s entire climate change programme is based on a statistical artefact. The only reason our pollution appears to have declined is that we have outsourced our emissions. A fair account of our carbon emissions would include those we import minus those we export: a balance that can only worsen in a post-industrial economy. So how can the government reconcile its energy policies with future
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