Iran Hawks Take Wing
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 25 Sep 2008
Summary: You’ve got to worry when bipartisan hawks flock together. And you’ve got to worry even more when those hawks are targeting Iran, and writing op-eds in the Wall Street Journal with titles like: “Everyone Needs To Worry About Iran.” And when they form organizations with names like: “United Against Nuclear Iran.” source: The Nationread more

The Iran Factor
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 25 Sep 2008
Summary: This week at the United Nations, with President Ahmadinejad once again in New York to deliver an address to the General Assembly, the U.S. was hoping to gather the P5+1 ministers to discuss imposing further sanctions on Iran for its refusal to abide by previous Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend uranium enrichment. Russia, apparently just a little miffed at the American reaction to its invasion of Georgia last month, blocked the meeting, handing a major victory to Iran and making Ahmadinejad’s visit to the UN a little less uncomfortable than it might have been with the major powers discussing new sanctions against his country. source: Huffington Postread more

Memo to McCain: U.S. Troops Can’t Call “Time Out”
AlterNet: War on Iraq - 25 Sep 2008
While McCain “suspends” his campaign to face the financial crisis, troops don’t have the luxury of a “time out” from the wars he supports.

Question time for the left
UKWatch.net - 25 Sep 2008
The convention?s final session, ?Question Time for the Left?, brought together a panel from across the left to see, once and for all, if they could work together. Not to spoil it for you or anything, but the answer was ?yes?. The panel was certainly wide-ranging: the panel took in Colin Fox (SSP), Clive Searle (Respect), Lindsey German (SWP), Robert Griffiths (CPB/Morning Star), John McDonnell, (LRC/Labour left) Mark Serwotka (PCS union), Derek Wall (Green Left) and Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper). I?d be blogging all day and all night if I wrote about every question that was asked and answered: the session was rapid-fire, with speakers? points kept short and audience participation made central to the session. The ?us and them? wall was broken down once and for all. Their verdict on the convention was unanimous, though: it was ?historic? (Wainwright), ?a tremendous success? (McDonnell), and even ?maybe, just maybe, the start of 21st century socialism in Europe? (Wall). The discussion darted from why left organisations are so ?pale and male?, to the anti-war movement, to free public transport to tackle climate change ? but it somehow stayed on track, making real links between the problems we face without resorting to the old ?the problem is capitalism? schtick. Suddenly the underlying question wasn?t ?what are the problems?? or ?can we work together?? ? it was ?how will we win?? Lindsey German pointed out that not only can the left make a difference, but it does every day: on strike picket lines, in the anti-war movement, in fighting the BNP. ?I don?t think the left should beat itself up,? she said. Our groups might not be perfect, but our convention was full of life ? Labour?s conference had none. On fuel bills, most of all, the mood to go out and build a mass campaign right there and then was palpable ? some members of the audience told of how they?d seen their bills almost double. ?We need to be going straight onto action,? said John MacDonnell, while Mark Serwotka called it ?the best issue I can think of? to organise around. Colin Fox called for militant action to stop people dying from the cold: ?There are millions who will be disconnected this winter. We have to say: if they try to disconnect one single worker?? ? the rest of the sentence got lost in the wild applause. German offered a nice slogan ? ?can?t pay, won?t pay? ? while Clive Searle said it was an opportunity to really make the left relevant to people?s lives, and Robert Griffiths told an encouraging story of how well petitions on fuel bills had gone. Hilary Wainwright added: ?The importance of a mass campaign around a winnable issue is that it opens things up for us.? Other campaigns with broad support included the climate camp (which may be forced to launch direct action at Heathrow as soon as December if the third runway gets the go-ahead in parliament), civil disobedience against ID cards (the next poll tax, for sure), renationalisation of public services, and the Europe-wide mobilisations against Nato and the spread of war. When the convention?s idea of local left forums was raised again, McDonnell had news of some people who have already gone home and started setting one up: ?I think it could be a tremendous breakthrough.? Searle tackled the ?talking shop? issue head-on: ?If they were just talking shops they?d be good, if they?re talking shops linked to action it?ll be excellent.? There is going to be a ?recall conference? on 29 November to hear reports back from the local forums, so we?ll soon know whether we?re getting anywhere. Summing up, Serwotka said: ?If movements like this are to mean anything they?ve got to be linked to action. We need some victories.? So, after five days of discussions, the job of the left suddenly appears much clearer than before. All we have to do now is get started.

The New World War – The Silence Is A Lie
UKWatch.net - 25 Sep 2008
Britain’s political conference season of 2008 will be remembered as The Great Silence. Politicians have come and gone and their mouths have moved in front of large images of themselves, and they often wave at someone. There has been lots of news about each other. Adam Boulton, the political editor of Sky News, and billed as “the husband of Blair aide Anji Hunter”, has published a book of gossip derived from his “unrivalled access to No 10”. His revelation is that Tony Blair’s mouthpiece told lies. The war criminal himself has been absent, but the former mouthpiece has been signing his own book of gossip, and waving. The club is celebrating itself, including all those, Labour and Tory, who gave the war criminal a standing ovation on his last day in parliament and who have yet to vote on, let alone condemn, Britain’s part in the wanton human, social and physical destruction of an entire nation. Instead, there are happy debates such as, “Can hope win?” and, my favourite, “Can foreign policy be a Labour strength?” As Harold Pinter said of unmentionable crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, has written that the Prime Minister “resembles a tragic hero in a Hardy novel: an essentially good man brought down by one error of judgement”. What is this one error of judgement? The bank- rolling of two murderous colonial adventures? No. The unprecedented growth of the British arms industry and the sale of weapons to the poorest countries? No. The replacement of manufacturing and public service by an arcane cult serving the ultra-rich? No. The Prime Minister’s “folly” is “postponing the election last year”. This is the March Hare Factor. Reality can be detected, however, by applying the Orwell Rule and inverting public pronouncements and headlines, such as “Aggressor Russia facing pariah status, US warns”, thereby identifying the correct pariah; or by crossing the invisible boundaries that fix the boundaries of political and media discussion. “When truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.” Understanding this silence is critical in a society in which news has become noise. Silence covers the truth that Britain’s political parties have converged and now follow the single-ideology model of the United States. This is different from the political consensus of half a century ago that produced what was known as social democracy. Today’s political union has no principled social democratic premises. Debate has become just another weasel word and principle, like the language of Chaucer, is bygone. That the poor and the state fund the rich is a given, along with the theft of public services, known as privatisation. This was spelt out by Margaret Thatcher but, more importantly, by new Labour’s engineers. In The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle declared Britain’s new “economic strengths” to be its transnational corporations, the “aerospace” industry (weapons) and “the pre-eminence of the City of London”. The rest was to be asset-stripped, including the peculiar British pursuit of selfless public service. Overlaying this was a new social authoritarianism guided by a hypocrisy based on “values”. Mandelson and Liddle demanded “a tough discipline” and a “hardworking majority” and the “proper bringing-up [sic] of children”. And in formally launching his Murdochracy, Blair used “moral” and “morality” 18 times in a speech he gave in Australia as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, who had recently found God. A “think tank” called Demos exemplified this new order. A founder of Demos, Geoff Mulgan, himself rewarded with a job in one of Blair’s “policy units”, wrote a book called Connexity. “In much of the world today,” he offered, “the most pressing problems on the public agenda are not poverty or material shortage . . . but rather the disorders of freedom: the troubles that result from having too many freedoms that are abused rather than constructively used.” As if celebrating life in another solar system, he wrote: “For the first time ever, most of the world’s most powerful nations do not want to conquer territory.” That reads, now as it ought to have read then, as dark parody in a world where more than 24,000 children die every day from the effects of poverty and at least a million people lie dead in just one territory conquered by the most powerful nations. However, it serves to remind us of the political “culture” that has so successfully fused traditional liberalism with the lunar branch of western political life and allowed our “too many freedoms” to be taken away as ruthlessly and anonymously as wedding parties in Afghanistan have been obliterated by our bombs. The product of these organised delusions is rarely acknowledged. The current economic crisis, with its threat to jobs and savings and public services, is the direct consequence of a rampant militarism comparable, in large part, with that of the first half of the last century, when Europe’s most advanced and cultured nation committed genocide. Since the 1990s, America’s military budget has doubled. Like the national debt, it is currently the largest ever. The true figure is not known, because up to 40 per cent is classified “black” – it is hidden. Britain, with a weapons industry second only to the US, has also been militarised. The Iraq invasion has cost $5trn, at least. The 4,500 British troops in Basra almost never leave their base. They are there because the Americans demand it. On 19 September, Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, was in London demanding $20bn from allies like Britain so that the US invasion force in Afghanistan could be increased to 44,000. He said the British force would be increased. It was an order. In the meantime, an American invasion of Pakistan is under way, secretly authorised by President Bush. The “change” candidate for president, Barack Obama, had already called for an invasion and more aircraft and bombs. The ironies are searing. A Pakistani religious school attacked by American drone missiles, killing 23 people, was set up in the 1980s with CIA backing. It was part of Operation Cyclone, in which the US armed and funded mujahedin groups that became al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The aim was to bring down the Soviet Union. This was achieved; it also brought down the Twin Towers. War of the world On 20 September the inevitable response to the latest invasion came with the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. For me, it is reminiscent of President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia in 1970, which was planned as a diversion from the coming defeat in Vietnam. The result was the rise to power of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Today, with Taliban guerrillas closing on Kabul and Nato refusing to conduct serious negotiations, defeat in Afghanistan is also coming. It is a war of the world. In Latin America, the Bush administration is fomenting incipient military coups in Venezuela, Bolivia, and possibly Paraguay, democracies whose governments have opposed Washington’s historic rapacious intervention in its “backyard”. Washington’s “Plan Colombia” is the model for a mostly unreported assault on Mexico. This is the Merida Initiative, which will allow the United States to fund “the war on drugs and organised crime” in Mexico – a cover, as in Colombia, for militarising its closest neighbour and ensuring its “business stability”. Britain is tied to all these adventures – a British “School of the Americas” is to be built in Wales, where British soldiers will train killers from all corners of the American empire in the name of “global security”. None of this is as potentially dangerous, or more distorted in permitted public discussion, than the war on Russia. Two years ago, Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian Studies at New York University, wrote a landmark essay in the Nation which has now been reprinted in Britain.* He warns of “the gravest threats [posed] by the undeclared Cold War Washington has waged, under both parties, against post-communist Russia during the past 15 years”. He describes a catastrophic “relentless winner-take-all of Russia’s post-1991 weakness”, with two-thirds of the population forced into poverty and life expectancy barely at 59. With most of us in the West unaware, Russia is being encircled by US and Nato bases and missiles in violation of a pledge by the United States not to expand Nato “one inch to the east”. The result, writes Cohen, “is a US-built reverse iron curtain [and] a US denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its own territory, even in ethnically akin former republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. [There is even] a presumption that Russia does not have fully sovereignty within its own borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow’s internal affairs since 1992 . . . the United States is attempting to acquire the nuclear responsibility it could not achieve during the Soviet era.” This danger has grown rapidly as the American media again presents US-Russian relations as “a duel to the death – perhaps literally”. The liberal Washington Post, says Cohen, “reads like a bygone Pravda on the Potomac”. The same is true in Britain, with the regurgitation of propaganda that Russia was wholly responsible for the war in the Caucasus and must therefore be a “pariah”. Sarah Palin, who may end up US president, says she is ready to attack Russia. The steady beat of this drum has seen Moscow return to its old nuclear alerts. Remember the 1980s, writes Cohen, “when the world faced exceedingly grave Cold War perils, and Mikhail Gorbachev unexpectedly emerged to offer a heretical way out. Is there an American leader today ready to retrieve that missed opportunity?” It is an urgent question that must be asked all over the world by those of us still unafraid to break the lethal silence. www.johnpilger.com

Lobbyists on the attack
UKWatch.net - 25 Sep 2008
?That?s an oxymoron,? quipped new, New Labour lobbyist Derek Draper, responding to a flyer on ?lobbying transparency?, promoting a fringe meeting at this year’s Labour conference. Ten years out of the game and he’s as candid as ever. Beneath the stories that dominated the headlines at conference ? Brown?s future and the country?s fortunes ? another issue was brewing. That of lobbyists and their licence to operate under the radar of public scrutiny. The lobbyists in Manchester found themselves the focus of debate thanks to two back-to-back fringe meetings, one organised by the industry’s trade body, the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC), the other by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency (ALT). ALT is a coalition of civil society groups, including Friends of the Earth, National Union of Journalists, Unlock Democracy and SpinWatch, who are concerned about the influence professional lobbyists have on public policy and the lack of transparency in the industry. Some lobbyists were possibly lured to ALT?s debate, Will Lobbyists Come Clean?, keen to be the first to read a new report by SpinWatch, which was launched at the event. The report, Spinning the Wheels: a guide to the PR and lobbying industry in the UK takes readers on a walking tour of the major players in the industry around Westminster, examining the links between their lobbyists and UK politics and revealing some of the industry?s common techniques and tactics. The fringe debate touched on much of the same ground covered by the Parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, which is due to report this autumn. Speakers John Grogan MP, David Miller of SpinWatch, Jon McLeod, UK Chairman of Public Affairs at lobbying firm Weber Shandwick, and Stephen Kingston, editor of the local grassroots magazine the Salford Star presented and debated many of the current concerns people have with professional lobbying. These include: the absence of transparency in the industry; the disparity in resources and access to political decision-makers between corporate lobbyists and the public; the revolving door between the lobbying industry and MPs, Peers and government officials; the apparent unethical behaviour of some lobbying firms and the weakness of self-regulation to prevent it; and the value of ?community consultations? conducted by PR and lobbying firms on behalf of commercial interests such as developers. Not long into the debate, heckling from the back began. Someone wishing to speak claimed that the level of debate was ?low? and the speakers were being ?nave? (which given the collective experience of the panel came as something of a surprise). When it came to questions at the end, lobbyist Robbie MacDuff rose to say his piece. MacDuff is a lobbyist formerly with Ian Greer Associates, now with Precise Public Affairs. He was recently appointed head of the APPC, the trade body established in the wake of scandals in the nineties involving Ian Greer Associates, to set standards and improve transparency in lobbying through self-regulation. In a lengthy speech, and reading from cards, MacDuff set out to defend the lobbying industry. What we need is transparency in charities, he said; lobbyists work pro-bono for good causes; regulation of lobbyists would create an exclusive ?elite? and deter others from lobbying etc. As he continued another member of the audience thought to ask him if he was in fact the fifth member of the panel, so intent was he on holding the floor. Chair Nigel Pivaro, formerly bad boy Terry Duckworth in Coronation Street, stepped in on a number of occasions to try and stem the flow, only managing to stop MacDuff with a look that was pure Terry. Despite the barracking from the back row, the panel and audience ? made up of progressive business, NGO workers, local councillors, media and lobbyists ? debated the issues for a further hour, raising questions, dispelling myths and unpicking arguments. And while some stayed on for a drink, others went back to the day job, lobbying into the night. According to sources, the APPC?s own event on lobbying the following morning passed without incident. With this fringe meeting held inside the secure zone, only those with conference passes were able to attend.

It truly is a game of two halves
UKWatch.net - 25 Sep 2008
JUST in case you hadn?t noticed, the FA Premier League football season has kicked off again, bringing nine months of unbridled joy and tension to millions of homes and significant stress to associated bank balances. The Barclays Premier League is now the most lucrative football league in the world. The combined revenues of Premiership clubs stood at approximately 1.9 billion last season and the 20 clubs spent an astonishing 600 million on playing staff alone. Owing to season ticket price hikes of 7.8 per cent on average ? more than double the rate of inflation ? and lucrative new broadcasting rights awarded to television monoliths Sky and Setanta Sports, revenues are set to rise dramatically this season Despite this affluence, poverty pay remains endemic throughout the league for the people manning the turnstiles, serving the tea, sweeping the terraces and even those servicing the luxury hotels of certain household name clubs. Every single club ? despite the fortunes being paid at the top end ? is condemning many of their workers off the pitch and away from the spotlight to a life of working poverty. Speaking recently at the headquarters of Premier League sponsors Barclays, recent convert Boris Johnson continued the work of former London Mayor Ken Livingstone by announcing a new London living wage of 7.45 an hour. He said: ?In London, largely because of housing costs, you need an hourly rate of nearly 18 per cent above the minimum wage to take you above the poverty level.? All five football clubs in the capital ? by extension ? are employing hard-working staff on working poor terms. Further evidence from the anti-poverty authority the Joseph Rowntree Foundation supports this assessment, stating that a single person in Britain needs to earn at least 13,400 a year before tax for a minimum standard of living, while a couple with two children need to spend at least 370 a week. According to bodies such as the TUC, in these difficult times of exorbitant energy, food and housing costs, a British citizen must earn at least 6.80 an hour in order to reach an adequate standard of living. It has also come to light recently that the Fair Pay Network ? which includes the TUC, Unite, Unison and the GMB as coalition members ? and the Institute for Public Policy Research have conducted research and sent Premier League clubs voluntary surveys to ascertain what knowledge they have of their own internal pay structures and external agency organised supplier chains. They have discovered widespread low pay at minimum wage level, examples of part-time working based solely on commission or the possibility of a match ticket and even one British-based supplier chain for three Premiership clubs paying an aggregated rate of 2 per hour for the production of official club merchandise This is scandalous. The moral case for any business and certainly hero-worshipped sporting clubs with vast turnovers paying their staff a fair wage should be obvious, but the business case for such an ethical course of action is just as robust. In addition to Barclays, corporate titans such as Price Waterhouse Coopers, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland are now all implementing fair or living wage policies. They do so not just because this is ethically sound, but also because it makes hard-headed business sense. Two notable examples of a growing number of private, public and third sector bodies which have set in place fair pay policies are Barclays and KPMG ? one of the largest professional services firms in the world employing more than 123,000 people. Since 2006, KPMG has ensured that every cleaner working in its British offices ? although employed by third parties ? receives the appropriate living wage employment conditions plus allowance for inflation. Similar conditions are given to all on-site supplier staff including catering, mailroom and security employees. Guy Stallard of KPMG told the Fair Pay Network: ?We have found that paying the living wage is a smart business move, as increasing wages has reduced staff turnover and absenteeism, while productivity and professionalism has subsequently increased.? Barclays has echoed his sentiments. With the growth of low-paying jobs such as hospitality and retail positions increasing in the Premiership, the prognosis for low-paying work spreading throughout the elite clubs is very real. Gone are the days when supporters sipped molten Bovril and chewed cold meat puddings; no soccer day out is now complete without a visit to the club superstore and club-branded fast food. For some, even a stay in a glass-fronted swanky stadium hotel is now de rigueur. Our national sport can and should set a national standard for fairness and lead by example. As my colleague, sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe, put it: ?Everyone working for these clubs makes a valuable contribution and it?s only right that they should be fairly rewarded.? The same can be said for all hard-working people across the low-paying sectors throughout Britain, far too many of whom receive low pay as a norm. Initiatives such as the Fair Pay Network serve to reignite grassroots social justice campaigns, not least among trade unionists and local Labour Party members. Jon Cruddas is Labour MP for Dagenham and a patron of the Fair Pay Network. To find out more about the campaign, please visit: www.fairpaynetwork.org/football

Financial markets can not govern us!
UKWatch.net - 25 Sep 2008
Gordon Brown?s conversion to financial regulation this weekend is certainly better late than never. He has joined a wide range of statesmen who, despite their role in maintaining ?hands off? global finance, have come to see the error of their ways. In May the great and the good of European social democracy, led by Jacques Delors and Jacques Santer, both former Presidents of the European Commission, declared in a letter that ?Financial markets can not govern us!?. In fact much of the world has been governed by financial markets for decades, and the severe poverty which still exists in so many developing (and indeed developed) counties can in no small measure be laid at the door of all-powerful financial globalisation. Indeed the freeing up of the financial sector ? to be as reckless as it chooses ? has been the real essence of the globalisation project over nearly 30 years. Real progress towards solving the world?s problems, poverty or climate change most prominently, would mean that the vast bailouts and injections of money that have been announced in recent days were not merely another form of ?socialism for the rich?, but used to fundamentally reform global financial architecture. A little discussed conference taking place in Doha in late November is a perfect opportunity for Brown to show his new-found credentials. The UN?s second Financing for Development conference will discuss the principles that should underlie aid, debt relief and funding for climate change. While campaigners currently fear the conference may represent a step backwards from the first conference held in Monterrey in 2002, it does have the potential to show the ?have-nots? of the world that global leaders are serious. The starting point is the fact that financial globalisation allows massive transfers of money from developing to developed countries, with unprecedented ease. What in times past would have required guns boats and armies can now be achieved with a few clicks of a mouse. To give a few examples, $160 billion is lost to the developing world every year through tax evasion, based on the fact that most trade takes place within global corporations and those corporations now have the ability to move that money around the world with few restrictions or questions asked. $250 billion is lost because $11.5 trillion of global assets are currently held in tax havens, like the UK, one of the centres of financial globalisation. The global money markets turn over a mind-blowing $3.2 trillion every day ? much of which is so-called ?hot money?, speculative capital which moves very rapidly in and out of countries and currencies, causing immense damage. Indeed currency speculation played a large role in the South East Asian crash in 1997. Another $1.6 billion a day is transferred from poor to rich countries in debt ?repayments?, based largely on loans recklessly thrust on newly independent countries in the 1960s and 70s by financial institutions who promptly raised interest rates to extortionate levels. Needless to say these gigantic sums dwarf aid budgets. Solutions to run-away finance are out there. A Currency Transaction Tax could be introduced to reduce volatility on the money markets or a restriction placed on the selling of developing country debt on secondary markets which would prevent ?vulture funds? profiting from the misery of developing countries. It would be possible to prevent ?capital flight? removing the ability of countries to effectively tax corporate and individual activities within their jurisdiction through better policing and control of financial flows, allowing the international community to effectively shut down tax havens. A fair, transparent and participative mechanism could be introduced to work-out debt disputes and reduce the dependence of developing countries on financial markets and unelected, unaccountable organisations like the Paris Club. These would be just the first reforms that would be necessary to put finance back in its box, return sovereignty to nations, and ensure a more equitable future for everyone. The financial crisis does not mean that these solutions will be adopted, but there is an opening. Unfortunately many in the world of finance will push for business as usual as soon they have offloaded their problems onto the suddenly-so-necessary state. But there is now an opportunity. Last Thursday the Financial Services Authority temporarily banned some short-selling. Despite a few howls from the unruly children unable to take their medicine, the financial system has not collapsed, as would have been predicted in earlier times. So it has been proved that it is possible to intervene to stop unhelpful types of speculation. Much more unorthodoxy will also be proved in coming months. What happens next is up to us. Public intervention is busy changing private debt into public debt. The price the public demands for this service should be clear ? to re-take control of a financial sector which has caused so much misery for so long.