The events of April and May this year could have a huge impact on the global movement for peace and nuclear disarmament. The signing of the Start Treaty, the publication of the US Nuclear Posture Review and the Nuclear Security Summit have all helped to build an atmosphere of optimism around the all-important Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference which is due to open in New York on May 3. However, events nearer home could have a bigger impact than all of these. The British general election offers us an opportunity to kill off the Trident project once and for all. Opposition to Trident replacement has been growing from across the political spectrum, especially in Scotland, where all Britain's nuclear weapons are based. Trident is widely seen as a useless and dangerous weapon of a bygone era, independent in name only. What has really tipped the balance, however, has been Britain's economic crisis. Even among supporters of nuclear weapons in the three main British political parties, Trident is now simply seen as unaffordable. The Liberal Democrats have come out against a like-for-like replacement of Trident, and similar misgivings have been expressed from the senior members of new Labour and the Conservative party and serving officers in the armed forces.
The peace movement has already scored a partial victory with the postponement of the design process for new nuclear weapons. Both Labour and the Tories have talked about deep cuts in defence procurement, but they have both refused to include Trident in their strategic defence review process planned for after the election. Scottish CND is working to put Trident at the heart of the election campaign - with some success. Last month its sister organisation Scotland's for Peace held a 2,000-strong march and rally in Edinburgh entitled Cut Trident Not Jobs, with a broad platform of speakers including First Minister Alex Salmond. Public service union Unison has revealed cuts of £300 million across Scottish local government with planned job losses of over 3,000. This is only the start. In the last few weeks, teachers and public service workers have held huge anti-cuts demonstrations in the streets of Glasgow. Does Trident bring jobs to Scotland? Yes, but the latest figures from the MoD suggest that the number of jobs at Faslane naval base dependent on Trident is less than 300. This confirms work done last year by the STUC and Scottish CND which showed that replacing Trident will destroy many more jobs than it will create. The money for the new system will not come out of the defence budget, but out of existing public expenditure - already under severe pressure because of recession and debt. In the next decade we could be spending £3 billion a year buying useless weapons we don't need and cannot use, rather than investing that money in basic health care and education for our people. Every candidate and sitting MP should ponder that fact with care.
Showing posts with label anti-war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-war. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Friday, 16 April 2010
Time to return our troops
The horrific loss of life in the war in Afghanistan should make it a major election issue. In this human catastrophe, tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have died since the war started in 2001. The war has also killed over 280 British soldiers, mostly young people, and over 1,400 other foreign troops.Last year it was estimated that the Afghan war had already cost people in Britain £12 billion - that's enough to build 23 new hospitals or employ 60,000 new teachers or 77,000 new nurses. And its future cost is projected to be at least £5 billion each year. This war is not being fought for the interests of ordinary Afghan people or for working-class people in Britain. It has not reduced, but increased, the threat of terrorist activity. The war is being waged for the power and prestige of imperialist powers in the west, especially the US. And, like other policies supported by the establishment parties, for the future profit of multinational corporations. Most parliamentary politicians' election slogan seems to be 'don't mention the war'. But 65% of people in a BBC opinion poll in Britain oppose the war - most people think it's unwinnable. Establishment politicians are trying to hide this bloodstained elephant in the living room. US President Obama has stepped up the war, thrusting 30,000 more US soldiers into the battle. He hopes for backing from other governments, but the war is making Afghanistan even less stable.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai 'won' last year's elections largely through fraud. Since then, his despised capitalist puppet regime has failed to take decisive action in a country where people still struggle to survive without access to clean water, electricity and other essential amenities. Karzai backs US action in areas held by the reactionary and repressive Taliban but Afghan people see the involvement of US and allied troops as akin to foreign occupation. So, caught between pressure from foreign governments to do their bidding, from regional leaders and warlords, and from the desperate mass of workers and poor people, Karzai even threatened to join the Taliban if the west keeps pressuring him to carry out reforms such as tackling corruption! The western powers are looking for alternatives to Karzai. But they cannot find non-corrupt alternatives who will be at their beck and call and help them salvage some stability from the war-torn country.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai 'won' last year's elections largely through fraud. Since then, his despised capitalist puppet regime has failed to take decisive action in a country where people still struggle to survive without access to clean water, electricity and other essential amenities. Karzai backs US action in areas held by the reactionary and repressive Taliban but Afghan people see the involvement of US and allied troops as akin to foreign occupation. So, caught between pressure from foreign governments to do their bidding, from regional leaders and warlords, and from the desperate mass of workers and poor people, Karzai even threatened to join the Taliban if the west keeps pressuring him to carry out reforms such as tackling corruption! The western powers are looking for alternatives to Karzai. But they cannot find non-corrupt alternatives who will be at their beck and call and help them salvage some stability from the war-torn country.
Monday, 5 April 2010
A decade of militaristic Labour aggression
For British politics, the defining moment of the last decade was not an election result or a policy announcement. It was February 15 2003, when over a million people marched through London to oppose the invasion of Iraq. It was the biggest demonstration in British history, but both Labour government and Tory opposition went ahead and launched a war without public support. This striking turn of events illustrates two key aspects of the last decade - a government pursuing a thoroughly militaristic agenda and a public resistant to going along with it. Tony Blair's attachment to militarism was a key characteristic of his premiership. The terrorists who murdered thousands in the World Trade Centre in 2001 hoped to provoke a war that would be seen as an assault on Islam. George Bush played right into their hands. Blair fell into line with sizeable but far from overwhelming public support for invading Afghanistan. While al-Qaida was known to be a loose network, the media spoke as if it were a global conspiracy. Bush and Blair announced the "war on terror." It didn't work. Attempts to secure public support for invading Iraq failed from the start, with few taken in by fictitious weapons of mass destruction. Blair's comments on Saddam's brutality were undermined by his friendship with Saudi despots. For the first time in living memory, British troops were sent into a war that was opposed by a majority of the population.
But militarism is about more than troop deployments. The government plans to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system. The arms firm BAE Systems has enjoyed so much influence that former foreign secretary Robin Cook said that BAE's boss had "the key to the garden door at No 10." This twisted relationship reached its zenith in 2006, when Blair intervened to end a criminal investigation into allegedly corrupt BAE arms deals with Saudi Arabia. The incident was a staggering demonstration of the way that both militarism and capitalism distort democracy. Blair defended millionaire gunrunners, Saudi despots and Washington neocons while treating public opinion with contempt. With a few honourable exceptions, his militarism was enthusiastically supported by his ministers and the Tory opposition. By backing BAE, Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron showed their belief in furthering the financial interests of the wealthy at the expense of the majority. Taxpayer-funded subsidies for arms dealers reached around £850 million per year in the middle of the decade. Nor is war immune from the privatisation craze - military occupation has been outsourced, with contracts handed to mercenary companies whose soldiers in Iraq outnumbered British troops.
The privatisation of war has contributed to dramatic changes in the nature of armed conflict. Listening to certain commentators, you could get the impression that no such changes have taken place. Cheerleaders for militarism still talk as if war were a matter of defending nations from aggression with established armies. In reality, over 90 per cent of casualties in modern warfare are civilian. The vast majority of the decade's wars have been within, not between, countries. Their combatants have been resourced by multinational arms companies without national loyalties and have frequently included mercenaries. The changes to the nature of warfare are rarely acknowledged because they make the traditional arguments for militarism redundant. The horrific day in 2005 when terrorists blew up commuters in London has been used by politicians to justify all manner of policies. But no amount of battalions, tanks, Eurofighters or Trident missiles would have prevented such an attack. Bombs and bullets do not lead to compassion and understanding. Furthermore, it is clear that the biggest threat we face to our security is the danger of catastrophic climate chaos. The floodwaters will not stop at national borders or be repelled by a hail of bullets. While the government ploughs money into military "solutions," its supporters claim it would be "unrealistic" to do otherwise.
Given that the world now spends nearly $2,000 on military force for every dollar spent on conflict prevention, it is amazing that non-violent approaches are successful at all. Yet recent years have seen non-violent methods of conflict resolution used successfully in countries as diverse as Estonia, Guatemala and Mozambique; the relative lack of violence in Northern Ireland is surely one of the greatest successes of the decade. Non-violence has far less money and publicity than violence, but the British people have shown themselves able to see through the flimsy network of lies and reassurances used to justify militarism. Not only were most of the public opposed to the Iraq war but polls consistently show majorities against Trident and the occupation of Afghanistan. Last November it became clear that the government's gung-ho approach to war had massively mistaken the public mood when an independent poll revealed that 87 per cent of British adults believe the dead on all sides should be commemorated on Remembrance Day. The millions who marched in 2003 did not prevent the Iraq invasion, but they may have made Blair or Bush think twice about laying into Syria or North Korea. Many more people are now aware of the arms industry's influence within government. In 2008, campaigners achieved the closure of the Defence Export Services Organisation - the arms companies' lobbying unit within the MoD. Arms dealers were infuriated by its replacement with a slightly weaker, but still abhorrent, unit within UK Trade and Investment.
No longer can arms companies have it all their own way. NGOs have highlighted the true cost of Trident, resulting in a Cabinet split that means there is a real chance of Trident renewal not going ahead. With British soldiers still dying and killing in Afghanistan and other armed conflicts around the world rarely even making the British press, there is far, far more to do. Climate change and economic crises have gripped the world's attention. It is vital that we make the links between militarism, climate change and capitalism. This means not only co-ordinated campaigning but clearer messages. We must continue to expose the way that both war and climate change have delivered profit and power to the few, at the expense of the planet and its people. Militarism sustains its support by constantly telling us, despite the evidence, that people cannot achieve things alone, that we need powerful individuals employing men with guns to keep things under control. Gandhi suggested that one of the biggest threats to Indian freedom was the people's reluctance to trust themselves. There is always a tendency to fall back on trusting violence, governments, money, traditions or even activist heroes. The first step to challenging militarism is having the confidence simply to trust ourselves.
But militarism is about more than troop deployments. The government plans to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system. The arms firm BAE Systems has enjoyed so much influence that former foreign secretary Robin Cook said that BAE's boss had "the key to the garden door at No 10." This twisted relationship reached its zenith in 2006, when Blair intervened to end a criminal investigation into allegedly corrupt BAE arms deals with Saudi Arabia. The incident was a staggering demonstration of the way that both militarism and capitalism distort democracy. Blair defended millionaire gunrunners, Saudi despots and Washington neocons while treating public opinion with contempt. With a few honourable exceptions, his militarism was enthusiastically supported by his ministers and the Tory opposition. By backing BAE, Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron showed their belief in furthering the financial interests of the wealthy at the expense of the majority. Taxpayer-funded subsidies for arms dealers reached around £850 million per year in the middle of the decade. Nor is war immune from the privatisation craze - military occupation has been outsourced, with contracts handed to mercenary companies whose soldiers in Iraq outnumbered British troops.
The privatisation of war has contributed to dramatic changes in the nature of armed conflict. Listening to certain commentators, you could get the impression that no such changes have taken place. Cheerleaders for militarism still talk as if war were a matter of defending nations from aggression with established armies. In reality, over 90 per cent of casualties in modern warfare are civilian. The vast majority of the decade's wars have been within, not between, countries. Their combatants have been resourced by multinational arms companies without national loyalties and have frequently included mercenaries. The changes to the nature of warfare are rarely acknowledged because they make the traditional arguments for militarism redundant. The horrific day in 2005 when terrorists blew up commuters in London has been used by politicians to justify all manner of policies. But no amount of battalions, tanks, Eurofighters or Trident missiles would have prevented such an attack. Bombs and bullets do not lead to compassion and understanding. Furthermore, it is clear that the biggest threat we face to our security is the danger of catastrophic climate chaos. The floodwaters will not stop at national borders or be repelled by a hail of bullets. While the government ploughs money into military "solutions," its supporters claim it would be "unrealistic" to do otherwise.
Given that the world now spends nearly $2,000 on military force for every dollar spent on conflict prevention, it is amazing that non-violent approaches are successful at all. Yet recent years have seen non-violent methods of conflict resolution used successfully in countries as diverse as Estonia, Guatemala and Mozambique; the relative lack of violence in Northern Ireland is surely one of the greatest successes of the decade. Non-violence has far less money and publicity than violence, but the British people have shown themselves able to see through the flimsy network of lies and reassurances used to justify militarism. Not only were most of the public opposed to the Iraq war but polls consistently show majorities against Trident and the occupation of Afghanistan. Last November it became clear that the government's gung-ho approach to war had massively mistaken the public mood when an independent poll revealed that 87 per cent of British adults believe the dead on all sides should be commemorated on Remembrance Day. The millions who marched in 2003 did not prevent the Iraq invasion, but they may have made Blair or Bush think twice about laying into Syria or North Korea. Many more people are now aware of the arms industry's influence within government. In 2008, campaigners achieved the closure of the Defence Export Services Organisation - the arms companies' lobbying unit within the MoD. Arms dealers were infuriated by its replacement with a slightly weaker, but still abhorrent, unit within UK Trade and Investment.
No longer can arms companies have it all their own way. NGOs have highlighted the true cost of Trident, resulting in a Cabinet split that means there is a real chance of Trident renewal not going ahead. With British soldiers still dying and killing in Afghanistan and other armed conflicts around the world rarely even making the British press, there is far, far more to do. Climate change and economic crises have gripped the world's attention. It is vital that we make the links between militarism, climate change and capitalism. This means not only co-ordinated campaigning but clearer messages. We must continue to expose the way that both war and climate change have delivered profit and power to the few, at the expense of the planet and its people. Militarism sustains its support by constantly telling us, despite the evidence, that people cannot achieve things alone, that we need powerful individuals employing men with guns to keep things under control. Gandhi suggested that one of the biggest threats to Indian freedom was the people's reluctance to trust themselves. There is always a tendency to fall back on trusting violence, governments, money, traditions or even activist heroes. The first step to challenging militarism is having the confidence simply to trust ourselves.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Military funding trumps real needs
Few noted the irony when US President Barack Obama defended the ongoing war in Afghanistan in his acceptance speech for the Nobel peace prize. The day before Obama made his speech, the British government revealed its pre-Budget report, which allocated funding to a number of green initiatives aimed at helping to tackle global warming. Among the measures announced was an extra £200 million for making homes more energy efficient, £50m for wind turbine development and a five-year exemption from company car tax for electric cars. All this sounded good - until £2.5billion was announced for the war in Afghanistan, bringing the total annual budget for the conflicts in that country and Iraq to £4.4bn; this unfortuitously revealed the government's ugly true priorities. Global warming is the biggest threat the world faces, yet instead of addressing this with serious investment, a derisory amount is thrown in that direction. In comparison, there is no limit to what can be spent on war and arms. This approach of allowing arms spending and war to trump all other needs is something that has been evidenced for more than a century. In the first decade of the 20th century, a reforming Liberal government under the prime minister Herbert Asquith and chancellor David Lloyd George sought to bring in welfare support, including the state pension. This was to be largely funded by National Insurance. But as the decade wore on the military's demands for the funds being used on welfare reform grew ever louder. The military wanted arms in the build-up to the first world war. The welfare budget was swallowed up.
Fast forward 35 years to the post-war Labour government. This administration further built on welfare reform and created the National Health Service. But it was not long before the demands of conflict came knocking again with the arrival of the Korean war. Much of the funding needed for the NHS and other social support was siphoned off to pay for this war. Military spending has remained high ever since. Sceptics argue that the cold war was largely a facade created to support the arms industry. Margaret Thatcher's premiership represented an important period of development for what has become known as the military-industrial complex. This amounts to a cabal of interests from government, finance, the intelligence world and the arms trade coming together to promote weapons sales. The arms to Iraq scandal demonstrated that there were large commissions to be had out of arms dealing. The Thatcher period was marked by a series of major arms deals - the biggest of which was the al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia. The client in this multibillion deal was BAE Systems. The terms of the deal remain shrouded in secrecy.
Arms spending generally took a bit of a dip in the 1990s following the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, the arms industry's power to capture domestic budgets is evidenced by the British government's limpet-like attachment to the Trident nuclear deterrent. The country may be in the depths of recession, but the government will hit the low-paid and other suffering groups long before considering getting rid of this long-outdated system. The latest bonanza for the military-industrial complex came with the US terror attacks on September 11 2001. Arms spending rocketed in US and Britain to meet the needs of the war. The arms industry was delighted by this upturn in business and with live theatres of war to show off its wares. It should not be forgotten that the US and Britain are among the biggest arms-sellers in the world. The military-industrial complex's influence was best summed up by US president Dwight D Eisenhower. Speaking in the 1950s, he said: "Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. "This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... "This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Surely it is time to come down from that iron cross and start devoting the mass of resources to development and countering global warming. It is time to start serving the real needs of the people rather than the vested interests of the military-industrial complex.
Fast forward 35 years to the post-war Labour government. This administration further built on welfare reform and created the National Health Service. But it was not long before the demands of conflict came knocking again with the arrival of the Korean war. Much of the funding needed for the NHS and other social support was siphoned off to pay for this war. Military spending has remained high ever since. Sceptics argue that the cold war was largely a facade created to support the arms industry. Margaret Thatcher's premiership represented an important period of development for what has become known as the military-industrial complex. This amounts to a cabal of interests from government, finance, the intelligence world and the arms trade coming together to promote weapons sales. The arms to Iraq scandal demonstrated that there were large commissions to be had out of arms dealing. The Thatcher period was marked by a series of major arms deals - the biggest of which was the al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia. The client in this multibillion deal was BAE Systems. The terms of the deal remain shrouded in secrecy.
Arms spending generally took a bit of a dip in the 1990s following the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, the arms industry's power to capture domestic budgets is evidenced by the British government's limpet-like attachment to the Trident nuclear deterrent. The country may be in the depths of recession, but the government will hit the low-paid and other suffering groups long before considering getting rid of this long-outdated system. The latest bonanza for the military-industrial complex came with the US terror attacks on September 11 2001. Arms spending rocketed in US and Britain to meet the needs of the war. The arms industry was delighted by this upturn in business and with live theatres of war to show off its wares. It should not be forgotten that the US and Britain are among the biggest arms-sellers in the world. The military-industrial complex's influence was best summed up by US president Dwight D Eisenhower. Speaking in the 1950s, he said: "Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. "This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... "This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Surely it is time to come down from that iron cross and start devoting the mass of resources to development and countering global warming. It is time to start serving the real needs of the people rather than the vested interests of the military-industrial complex.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Perfect match for BAE bandits
Britain's biggest arms firm has just put a top George Bush official who was deeply implicated in the Republicans' torture policies onto its board. BAE hired Michael Chertoff, formerly the US secretary of homeland security, at the end of last week. The appointment of one of Bush Jnr's crazy gang to the BAE board was ignored by the British press, but US reporters are shocked such about a high official joining a company that recently had to promise the US government not to bribe any more high officials. BAE also had to pay $447 million to settle charges about bribing the Saudis. The US press thinks that BAE promising not to bribe government officials while giving jobs to government officials looks a bit tacky. But when it comes to the unseemly, BAE and Chertoff seem a perfect match. Chertoff was the head of the criminal division of the US Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was promoted to head of homeland security in January 2005. It was in the former job that Chertoff first covered up torture. And then helped to spread it. Chertoff worked hard to hide the abusive interrogation of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban." Lindh was a Catholic boy from Washington DC who converted to Islam and went to join the Afghan Taliban in May 2001. He was captured by the US-friendly warlords of the Afghan Northern Alliance in 2001 and was interrogated by a CIA officer.
Lindh then joined a prison uprising as foreign fighters held by the Northern Alliance tried to break free from their Afghan fort prison. Hundreds were killed when the uprising was brutally put down. Lindh's CIA interrogator also died in the fighting. Lindh was shot in the leg, recaptured and transferred to the prison at a US base called "Camp Rhino." He was shipped to the US and hit with 10 charges, including "conspiracy to murder," supporting terrorism and supporting al-Qaida. He faced 90 years in prison. The evidence against him was stronger than many of those unfortunates stuck in Guantanamo. Then something strange happened. Lindh pleaded guilty to lesser charges of carrying a rifle for the Taliban. This ended the trial before any real evidence was heard and got Lindh a 20-year sentence. This was mild by US standards. Why? Because Chertoff arranged a plea-bargain with Lindh. Chertoff pushed the deal to stop details of Lindh's abuse being discussed in court. Lindh was questioned while strapped naked to a stretcher inside an unheated cargo container with an untreated bullet wound in his leg. Lindh says guards kept him awake at night by hammering on the container. His confession was given before the bullet was removed. Chertoff brought the strange and mysterious end to Lindh's trial with a deal that hid the strange and shocking treatment of the captive. Had Lindh's abuse been exposed in 2002, there was a chance the US would have turned away from torture more quickly. Instead, Chertoff helped to spread the practice. The Bush White House asked the Justice Department to legally OK "coercive" interrogation methods. Under Chertoff's leadership, junior justice officials wrote bizarre, grotesque memos suggesting, for example, that interrogations causing anything short of the pain of organ failure were OK as long as the president said so. Records show Chertoff was a bit queasy about some of these suggestions.
He refused to give a blank cheque to the CIA. He would not offer them immunity from prosecution if interrogations got out of hand. The New York Times also said Chertoff ruled out a few interrogation methods such as using death threats against family members and mind-altering drugs that would change a detainee's personality. But The Times says Chertoff did approve waterboarding for interrogations. So after covering up torture in Lindh's case, Chertoff helped authorise it, reluctantly. A Justice Department ethics panel later very mildly slapped Chertoff's wrist, saying he "should have looked beyond the surface complexity" of the torture memos written by his underlings and checked if they really were "sound." But never mind, Chertoff is respectable enough for a job on the BAE board. You can get a sense of Chertoff's views from his address to the right-wing US Heritage Foundation at a meeting called to discuss the TV show 24. In the "Ronald Reagan Building" in Washington DC, in front of the cast and writers of 24, Chertoff said of the torture-happy adventure show, "frankly, it reflects real life." Chertoff was clearly delighted by the way 24 portrays investigators as macho men who are just forced to abuse suspects to save lives. Chertoff claims 24 accurately showed justice officials had "choices about whether to take drastic and even violent action against a threat, and weighing that against the consequence of not taking the action and the destruction that might otherwise ensue."
BAE wants Chertoff because, as the firm said, he "is uniquely well positioned to support the company as it continues to grow in the global security market." It thinks that "his years of experience in the security domain will be of tremendous value to our businesses as we help our government and private-sector customers develop cyber-security solutions, combat terrorism and organised crime and strengthen border and transportation security." That is, it wants Chertoff to win those war on terror contracts, running spying and immigration databases, surveillance systems and so on. BAE relies heavily on British government support. So our tax money will pay to help Bush's pal Chertoff to spy on us. BAE is at the very centre of British politics - Speaker John Bercow recently admitted he had hired a BAE subsidiary called Detica to try and flush out who leaked the MPs' expenses details. The Home Office is preparing a report proposing BAE and other firms will help with "social profiling" to catch "terrorists." And now it can do this with the help of a man who helped Bush to abuse prisoners.
Lindh then joined a prison uprising as foreign fighters held by the Northern Alliance tried to break free from their Afghan fort prison. Hundreds were killed when the uprising was brutally put down. Lindh's CIA interrogator also died in the fighting. Lindh was shot in the leg, recaptured and transferred to the prison at a US base called "Camp Rhino." He was shipped to the US and hit with 10 charges, including "conspiracy to murder," supporting terrorism and supporting al-Qaida. He faced 90 years in prison. The evidence against him was stronger than many of those unfortunates stuck in Guantanamo. Then something strange happened. Lindh pleaded guilty to lesser charges of carrying a rifle for the Taliban. This ended the trial before any real evidence was heard and got Lindh a 20-year sentence. This was mild by US standards. Why? Because Chertoff arranged a plea-bargain with Lindh. Chertoff pushed the deal to stop details of Lindh's abuse being discussed in court. Lindh was questioned while strapped naked to a stretcher inside an unheated cargo container with an untreated bullet wound in his leg. Lindh says guards kept him awake at night by hammering on the container. His confession was given before the bullet was removed. Chertoff brought the strange and mysterious end to Lindh's trial with a deal that hid the strange and shocking treatment of the captive. Had Lindh's abuse been exposed in 2002, there was a chance the US would have turned away from torture more quickly. Instead, Chertoff helped to spread the practice. The Bush White House asked the Justice Department to legally OK "coercive" interrogation methods. Under Chertoff's leadership, junior justice officials wrote bizarre, grotesque memos suggesting, for example, that interrogations causing anything short of the pain of organ failure were OK as long as the president said so. Records show Chertoff was a bit queasy about some of these suggestions.
He refused to give a blank cheque to the CIA. He would not offer them immunity from prosecution if interrogations got out of hand. The New York Times also said Chertoff ruled out a few interrogation methods such as using death threats against family members and mind-altering drugs that would change a detainee's personality. But The Times says Chertoff did approve waterboarding for interrogations. So after covering up torture in Lindh's case, Chertoff helped authorise it, reluctantly. A Justice Department ethics panel later very mildly slapped Chertoff's wrist, saying he "should have looked beyond the surface complexity" of the torture memos written by his underlings and checked if they really were "sound." But never mind, Chertoff is respectable enough for a job on the BAE board. You can get a sense of Chertoff's views from his address to the right-wing US Heritage Foundation at a meeting called to discuss the TV show 24. In the "Ronald Reagan Building" in Washington DC, in front of the cast and writers of 24, Chertoff said of the torture-happy adventure show, "frankly, it reflects real life." Chertoff was clearly delighted by the way 24 portrays investigators as macho men who are just forced to abuse suspects to save lives. Chertoff claims 24 accurately showed justice officials had "choices about whether to take drastic and even violent action against a threat, and weighing that against the consequence of not taking the action and the destruction that might otherwise ensue."
BAE wants Chertoff because, as the firm said, he "is uniquely well positioned to support the company as it continues to grow in the global security market." It thinks that "his years of experience in the security domain will be of tremendous value to our businesses as we help our government and private-sector customers develop cyber-security solutions, combat terrorism and organised crime and strengthen border and transportation security." That is, it wants Chertoff to win those war on terror contracts, running spying and immigration databases, surveillance systems and so on. BAE relies heavily on British government support. So our tax money will pay to help Bush's pal Chertoff to spy on us. BAE is at the very centre of British politics - Speaker John Bercow recently admitted he had hired a BAE subsidiary called Detica to try and flush out who leaked the MPs' expenses details. The Home Office is preparing a report proposing BAE and other firms will help with "social profiling" to catch "terrorists." And now it can do this with the help of a man who helped Bush to abuse prisoners.
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
The sinister doublespeak beneath Obama's smile
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate, Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that "passed into history and became truth. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'." Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that "extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan" to "disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies." He called this "global security" and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which the US has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: "We have no interest in occupying your country." In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible. According to Obama, the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations security council. There was no UN authority. He said that "the world" supported the invasion in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks. In truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition. He said that the US invaded Afghanistan "only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden." In 2001, the Taliban tried three times to hand over bin Laden for trial, Pakistan's military regime reported, and they were ignored.
Even Obama's mystification of the September 11 attacks as justification for his war is false. More than two months before the twin towers were attacked, the former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik was told by the Bush administration that a US military assault would take place by mid-October. The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as "stable" enough to ensure US control over oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. It had to go. Obama's most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a "safe haven" for al-Qaida's attacks on the west. His own national security adviser James Jones said in October that there were "fewer than 100" al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan. According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but "a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power." The war is a fraud; only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of "world peace." Beneath the surface, however, there is serious purpose. Under the disturbing General Stanley McChrystal, who gained distinction for his assassination squads in Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan is a model for those "disorderly regions" of the world still beyond Oceania's reach. This is known as Coin (counter- insurgency), and draws together the military, aid organisations, psychologists, anthropologists, the media and public relations hirelings.
Covered in jargon about winning hearts and minds, it aims to incite civil war: Tajiks and Uzbeks against Pashtuns. The US did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society. They built walls between communities which had once intermarried, ethnically cleansing the Sunnis and driving millions out of the country. Embedded media reported this as "peace;" US academics bought by Washington and "security experts" briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news. As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the opposite was true. Something similar is planned for Afghanistan - people are to be forced into "target areas" controlled by warlords, bankrolled by the CIA and the opium trade. That these warlords are barbaric is irrelevant. "We can live with that," a Clinton-era diplomat once said of the return of oppressive sharia law in a "stable," Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured Western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the "humanitarian crisis" and so "secure" the subjugated tribal lands. That is the theory. It worked after a fashion in Yugoslavia, where ethnic-sectarian partition wiped out a once-peaceful society, but it failed in Vietnam, where the CIA's "Strategic Hamlet Program" was designed to corral and divide the southern population and so defeat the Vietcong - the US's catch-all term for the resistance, similar to "Taliban."
Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the US in both the Iraq and the Afghanistan adventures. Ethnic cleansing, wall-building, checkpoints, collective punishment and constant surveillance - these are claimed as Israeli innovations that have succeeded in stealing most of Palestine from its native people. And yet, for all their suffering, the Palestinians have not been divided irrevocably and they endure as a nation against all odds. The most telling forerunners of the Obama plan, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and his general and his PR men prefer we forget, are those that failed in Afghanistan itself. The British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century attempted to conquer that wild country by ethnic cleansing and were seen off, though after terrible bloodshed. Imperial cemeteries are their memorials. People power, sometimes baffling, often heroic, remains the seed beneath the snow, and invaders fear it. "It was curious," wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, "to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. "And the people under the sky were also very much the same - everywhere, all over the world ...people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same - people who ...were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."
Even Obama's mystification of the September 11 attacks as justification for his war is false. More than two months before the twin towers were attacked, the former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik was told by the Bush administration that a US military assault would take place by mid-October. The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as "stable" enough to ensure US control over oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. It had to go. Obama's most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a "safe haven" for al-Qaida's attacks on the west. His own national security adviser James Jones said in October that there were "fewer than 100" al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan. According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but "a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power." The war is a fraud; only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of "world peace." Beneath the surface, however, there is serious purpose. Under the disturbing General Stanley McChrystal, who gained distinction for his assassination squads in Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan is a model for those "disorderly regions" of the world still beyond Oceania's reach. This is known as Coin (counter- insurgency), and draws together the military, aid organisations, psychologists, anthropologists, the media and public relations hirelings.
Covered in jargon about winning hearts and minds, it aims to incite civil war: Tajiks and Uzbeks against Pashtuns. The US did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society. They built walls between communities which had once intermarried, ethnically cleansing the Sunnis and driving millions out of the country. Embedded media reported this as "peace;" US academics bought by Washington and "security experts" briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news. As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the opposite was true. Something similar is planned for Afghanistan - people are to be forced into "target areas" controlled by warlords, bankrolled by the CIA and the opium trade. That these warlords are barbaric is irrelevant. "We can live with that," a Clinton-era diplomat once said of the return of oppressive sharia law in a "stable," Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured Western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the "humanitarian crisis" and so "secure" the subjugated tribal lands. That is the theory. It worked after a fashion in Yugoslavia, where ethnic-sectarian partition wiped out a once-peaceful society, but it failed in Vietnam, where the CIA's "Strategic Hamlet Program" was designed to corral and divide the southern population and so defeat the Vietcong - the US's catch-all term for the resistance, similar to "Taliban."
Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the US in both the Iraq and the Afghanistan adventures. Ethnic cleansing, wall-building, checkpoints, collective punishment and constant surveillance - these are claimed as Israeli innovations that have succeeded in stealing most of Palestine from its native people. And yet, for all their suffering, the Palestinians have not been divided irrevocably and they endure as a nation against all odds. The most telling forerunners of the Obama plan, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and his general and his PR men prefer we forget, are those that failed in Afghanistan itself. The British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century attempted to conquer that wild country by ethnic cleansing and were seen off, though after terrible bloodshed. Imperial cemeteries are their memorials. People power, sometimes baffling, often heroic, remains the seed beneath the snow, and invaders fear it. "It was curious," wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, "to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. "And the people under the sky were also very much the same - everywhere, all over the world ...people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same - people who ...were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."
Friday, 5 March 2010
What's the point of the Afghan war?
For what cause are British soldiers and Afghan civilians dying in "Operation Moshtarak?" There is no doubt they are dying. The third British soldier to be killed fell last week. By the time this is published he may already have been joined by more of his comrades. Moshtarak means "together." And Afghan civilians are joining British troops in death. Nato admits that at least 19 civilians have been killed in operation Moshtarak - a dozen by mistargeted rocket attacks, the rest by crossfire. The killings will not end the Afghan conflict or solve Afghanistan's problems. This point was made clear by US General William Caldwell, the man in charge of training the Afghan National Army and police. He is in charge of the "exit strategy" because according to current plans Nato troops will continue killing and dying until Afghan forces are judged ready to take over.
Speaking to Radio 4's Today Programme, Caldwell said - and it is an unusual thing for a general to admit - that war is not the answer. "In fact there is no military solution to this challenge in Afghanistan," he said.
"The military can only enable a political solution. And so the political dimension that is ongoing is actually paramount. It is critical to the overall success."
So what is the political solution? Thanks to Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, we have a clearer idea. Chandrasekaran uncovered the pretensions and dreams of the Green Zone in Iraq in his book Imperial Life In The Emerald City. Now he is doing the same for Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran's report from Afghanistan describes the arrival of the new mayor of Marjah, Haji Zahir. The small town of Marjah was one of the main targets in Operation Moshtarak. Zahir has lived in Germany for most of the past 15 years. He was elected by being flown into town aboard a US marines Osprey aircraft - a kind of cross between a plane and a helicopter. The only voters seem to have been the contingent of marines in his security detail. Chandrasekaran says Zahir addressed 50 or so locals at a bazaar a his inauguration, but he never travelled more than 100 metres from the Nato warplane. His message was not popular. You'd think you would have to try hard to be less popular than the desperate and brutal Taliban. But after nearly a decade of intervention, Nato has made it. Chandrasekaran reports that a local tractor-driver told the mayor: "The Taliban provided us with a very peaceful environment, they did not bother us. We were very happy with them here."
The Taliban won local support because "they were not corrupt like the police." Another local revealed the secret of Taliban success. He preferred them to the US because "your government drops bombs on us." Zahir did his best to show democracy's virtues. This was difficult, as he had not been elected. But he did give all the locals in the market a $5 mobile phone card. Assuming unelected imports won't buy political stability with phone credits, the remaining war strategy seems to be grinding against the Taliban until it is weak enough to be negotiated into a settlement with more favoured warlords. Afghan civilians and Nato troops will continue to be chewed up by the gears of this war machine until we can stop it. So the anti-war movement's call to negotiate a settlement is now even more vital. Calling for more anti-war protest isn't easy. So much energy and time protesting against the Iraq war means there is understandable weariness. But there is still a real opening; a political crisis over continued involvement in Afghanistan is bubbling under across Nato.
A few months ago Germany's defence minister was forced to resign over responsibility for Afghan civilian deaths. Now the Dutch government has collapsed over its involvement in the Afghan mission. Canada has an ongoing political scandal over its troops' complicity in abuse. The combination of hopelessness and violence in the Afghan mission can cause outbreaks of popular opposition to feed the anti-war movement.
Speaking to Radio 4's Today Programme, Caldwell said - and it is an unusual thing for a general to admit - that war is not the answer. "In fact there is no military solution to this challenge in Afghanistan," he said.
"The military can only enable a political solution. And so the political dimension that is ongoing is actually paramount. It is critical to the overall success."
So what is the political solution? Thanks to Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, we have a clearer idea. Chandrasekaran uncovered the pretensions and dreams of the Green Zone in Iraq in his book Imperial Life In The Emerald City. Now he is doing the same for Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran's report from Afghanistan describes the arrival of the new mayor of Marjah, Haji Zahir. The small town of Marjah was one of the main targets in Operation Moshtarak. Zahir has lived in Germany for most of the past 15 years. He was elected by being flown into town aboard a US marines Osprey aircraft - a kind of cross between a plane and a helicopter. The only voters seem to have been the contingent of marines in his security detail. Chandrasekaran says Zahir addressed 50 or so locals at a bazaar a his inauguration, but he never travelled more than 100 metres from the Nato warplane. His message was not popular. You'd think you would have to try hard to be less popular than the desperate and brutal Taliban. But after nearly a decade of intervention, Nato has made it. Chandrasekaran reports that a local tractor-driver told the mayor: "The Taliban provided us with a very peaceful environment, they did not bother us. We were very happy with them here."
The Taliban won local support because "they were not corrupt like the police." Another local revealed the secret of Taliban success. He preferred them to the US because "your government drops bombs on us." Zahir did his best to show democracy's virtues. This was difficult, as he had not been elected. But he did give all the locals in the market a $5 mobile phone card. Assuming unelected imports won't buy political stability with phone credits, the remaining war strategy seems to be grinding against the Taliban until it is weak enough to be negotiated into a settlement with more favoured warlords. Afghan civilians and Nato troops will continue to be chewed up by the gears of this war machine until we can stop it. So the anti-war movement's call to negotiate a settlement is now even more vital. Calling for more anti-war protest isn't easy. So much energy and time protesting against the Iraq war means there is understandable weariness. But there is still a real opening; a political crisis over continued involvement in Afghanistan is bubbling under across Nato.
A few months ago Germany's defence minister was forced to resign over responsibility for Afghan civilian deaths. Now the Dutch government has collapsed over its involvement in the Afghan mission. Canada has an ongoing political scandal over its troops' complicity in abuse. The combination of hopelessness and violence in the Afghan mission can cause outbreaks of popular opposition to feed the anti-war movement.
Friday, 26 February 2010
All eyes on the oil prize
It is nearly seven years after the US-led invasion of Iraq. US imperialism had hoped for a quick war, the Iraqi oil industry under the control of US companies and a compliant, stable regime. However, the situation today is very different to what George Bush and Tony Blair envisaged. The Iraqi population has been abandoned, facing high levels of unemployment and a lack of basic resources, while the Iraqi government and oil companies struggle for control of the country's enormous oil wealth. This has increased sectarian and national tensions within Iraq and these tensions are spilling over into the forthcoming elections on 7 March. Recent bomb attacks underline the dangerous situation that ordinary Iraqis still face. Control of the oil wealth in the predominantly Kurdish area of northern Iraq is a major issue underpinning a lot of tensions. That oil wealth is potentially vast. Estimates put the reserves in Iraq at 115 billion barrels, probably more than Iran's and second only to Saudi Arabia. Yet production is still running at 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) lower than the pre-war daily average of 2.5 million.
In post-Saddam Iraq, the US government was hoping to dramatically increase output under the control of predominantly US oil companies. To try to achieve this aim Paul Bremer, Bush's chief representative in Iraq in the year following the invasion, under the guise of removing all members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from their positions, sacked oil technicians, engineers and administrators leaving behind only a skeleton crew of Iraqi oil workers to manage the existing production. Bremer was hoping that private oil companies, eager to exploit the oil wealth, would come in with their workforces to take over. Some companies did, but attacks on oil pipelines and facilities increased from 200 in the first two years of occupation to 600 in 2007. In part this was in response to Bremer ripping up agreements over access to oil by the local population. The major oil companies weighing up the risks decided the danger was too great at that stage. Also, significant action was taken by Iraqi oil workers striking against the privatisation of oil facilities in Basra.
Arguments developed between the Iraqi government and US about how the oil fields could be developed. None of these arguments centred on improving conditions for ordinary Iraqis, but who gets the biggest share of the oil wealth, the Iraqi regime or the oil companies. In an attempt to develop the oilfields, on 2 January 2009 the Iraqi government offered a new deal to oil companies wanting to invest in Iraq, offering them $2 for every barrel they extracted after their original investment costs had been met. The major oil companies initially rejected these terms out of hand, demanding complete control over production and payments of $25 per barrel! However, the Chinese National Petroleum company was keen to gain a foothold in Iraq and get its hands on some of the vast reserves. It induced BP, its partner in Iraq, to develop the Ramaila oilfield near Basra on the Iraqi government terms. As a result of this other companies, not wanting to see the Chinese government gain all the most lucrative contracts, accepted contracts on the initial terms. These companies are mainly state-owned but include Shell and Exxon.
However, some members of the Iraqi parliament are now challenging these contracts, no doubt wanting to get their own hands on this oil wealth but also feeling the pressure from ordinary Iraqis angry at seeing jobs and the oil wealth leaving Iraq. As Brigadier Marriner, the British defence attaché at the British embassy in Baghdad mused: "As a senior American politician said, 'If this was not about oil in 2003, it certainly is now." This is the background to the current elections. The government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is widely distrusted in Iraq. Iraq is judged as the fifth 'most corrupt' country in the world by Transparency International. US president Barack Obama is desperate for these elections to be held and to show some thin veneer of democracy. The Iraq war and occupation has already cost the US government over $707 billion. At a time of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s and with a US government debt of 12% of GDP, Obama urgently wants to limit the cost of this war with the aim of an ultimate withdrawal. But this cannot be at any cost. They want some form of stable regime that they can work with and one that will not stand in the way of the increasing exploitation of the oil wealth by private oil companies.
What these elections are not about is offering any dramatic improvement in the lives of ordinary Iraqis. All of the parties contesting the elections support the maintenance of capitalism and the ensuing cuts and privatisations that flow from this, while the wealthy elite enrich themselves at the workers' expense. Unfortunately for Obama a spanner has been thrown into the works with the banning of about 500 of the 6,000 candidates and 15 of the parties by Iraq's accountability and justice commission. Many of these are Sunni candidates and some have links to the banned Baath party. There is a fear that this could lead to an upsurge in sectarian violence and a boycott of the elections by sections of the Sunni-Arab population. These elections will only serve to underline the majority of Iraqis' feelings towards the political process. As a retired agriculture professor in Baghdad recently said: "Most people don't trust the politicians now. They know they're backed by some outside power, and the biggest power is the Americans, so whoever the Americans back will win."
The conditions that most Iraqis face are a clear reminder that the war and occupation were nothing to do with improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Unemployment stands at around 50% and about four million Iraqis are displaced. Alongside the fear that many Iraqis feel with the upturn in the bombing attacks, the conditions that many Iraqis face are brutal: 1,730 square kilometres of land are contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance, making 11% of all water supplies inaccessible. Access to clean water is critical yet 15% of households are not connected to the public water network and in some areas 73% of the population have no access to safe water. The number of women dying in childbirth is 300 women per 100,000 births in Iraq compared to 140 women per 100,000 births in neighbouring Iran. Yet prior to the years of western sanctions and then the invasion and occupation, Iraq had one of the more advanced health systems in the region.
Nearly a quarter of the population lives below the official poverty line of $2.20 a day and in just under 10% of districts in the country acute malnutrition in children - newly borns to five years old - runs at over 10%. Overcrowding in housing is also a massive problem with 13% of housing in urban areas occupied by ten occupants or more. There is a shortfall of two million houses. There is evidence that the suppressed workers' movement is struggling to improve the conditions for Iraqi workers, however small these steps forward may be. The beginning of 2010 saw a strike of hotel workers at the Rasheed hotel in the green zone in Baghdad over a risk bonus. This followed on from a strike of leather workers which was successful in winning a 25%-30% safety bonus for 1,500 workers in the state-run enterprise of leather industries. Previous to that there had been an 18-day strike of 4,000 textile workers. There is evidence that the suppressed workers' movement is struggling to improve the conditions for Iraqi workers, however small these steps forward may be. The beginning of 2010 saw a strike of hotel workers at the Rasheed hotel in the green zone in Baghdad over a risk bonus. This followed on from a strike of leather workers which was successful in winning a 25%-30% safety bonus for 1,500 workers in the state-run enterprise of leather industries. Previous to that there had been an 18-day strike of 4,000 textile workers.
What is clearly lacking throughout Iraq is a non-sectarian mass workers' party that will fight for workers' rights and for the defence of public services, though these struggles can be part of the process of developing such a party. This party needs to develop a programme that can begin to take the struggles of the Iraqi people forward. Its programme should include the democratic ownership by the people of Iraq of the major companies that dominate the economy and it should use the wealth of these companies, including the vast natural resources, for the benefit of the people of Iraq as a whole. A big issue in Iraq is the national aspirations of the Kurdish population. Consciousness varies in different parts of the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, with support ranging from autonomy to outright independence. We need to support the right of the Kurdish population to self determination up to and including independence if that is what the majority of the population democratically decide.
It is no surprise that control of the oil reserves plays a part in this situation as well. The Kurdish area of Iraq sits on 5% of the world's known oil reserves - the 6th largest in the world. There are growing ethnic tensions between the Arab, Turkoman and Kurdish populations. On the Arab/ Kurdish border known as the 'trigger line' there are 130 violent attacks a month. Many in Iraq, particularly in the government, do not want to see the separation of Iraqi Kurdistan - concerned at the loss of the oil wealth in the country. However there is also pressure from neighbouring states, in particular Turkey, which is completely opposed to an independent Kurdish state of Iraq for fear of the effect this would have on the Kurdish population in Turkey. In the Kurdish area in Iraq there is a growing mood amongst the population against the established Kurdish capitalist parties, the PUK and KDP, who many see as corrupt and not committed enough to national independence. Both the PUK and KDP have a history of perpetrating outrages against one another, including a catastrophic Kurdish civil war in 1993-1998. A new political force Gorran ("movement for change") made a significant breakthrough in the elections to the regional parliament in July last year, winning 25 seats on an anti-corruption platform. Gorran, however, is not a workers' organisation. It is headed by former PUK leader and media owner Nawshirwan Mistefa, who wants to 'modernise' the Kurdish region based on a free market economy. The current situation shows the urgent need for an independent Kurdish party that is able to connect the national liberation aspiration to the social liberation of workers and poor people.
In post-Saddam Iraq, the US government was hoping to dramatically increase output under the control of predominantly US oil companies. To try to achieve this aim Paul Bremer, Bush's chief representative in Iraq in the year following the invasion, under the guise of removing all members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from their positions, sacked oil technicians, engineers and administrators leaving behind only a skeleton crew of Iraqi oil workers to manage the existing production. Bremer was hoping that private oil companies, eager to exploit the oil wealth, would come in with their workforces to take over. Some companies did, but attacks on oil pipelines and facilities increased from 200 in the first two years of occupation to 600 in 2007. In part this was in response to Bremer ripping up agreements over access to oil by the local population. The major oil companies weighing up the risks decided the danger was too great at that stage. Also, significant action was taken by Iraqi oil workers striking against the privatisation of oil facilities in Basra.
Arguments developed between the Iraqi government and US about how the oil fields could be developed. None of these arguments centred on improving conditions for ordinary Iraqis, but who gets the biggest share of the oil wealth, the Iraqi regime or the oil companies. In an attempt to develop the oilfields, on 2 January 2009 the Iraqi government offered a new deal to oil companies wanting to invest in Iraq, offering them $2 for every barrel they extracted after their original investment costs had been met. The major oil companies initially rejected these terms out of hand, demanding complete control over production and payments of $25 per barrel! However, the Chinese National Petroleum company was keen to gain a foothold in Iraq and get its hands on some of the vast reserves. It induced BP, its partner in Iraq, to develop the Ramaila oilfield near Basra on the Iraqi government terms. As a result of this other companies, not wanting to see the Chinese government gain all the most lucrative contracts, accepted contracts on the initial terms. These companies are mainly state-owned but include Shell and Exxon.
However, some members of the Iraqi parliament are now challenging these contracts, no doubt wanting to get their own hands on this oil wealth but also feeling the pressure from ordinary Iraqis angry at seeing jobs and the oil wealth leaving Iraq. As Brigadier Marriner, the British defence attaché at the British embassy in Baghdad mused: "As a senior American politician said, 'If this was not about oil in 2003, it certainly is now." This is the background to the current elections. The government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is widely distrusted in Iraq. Iraq is judged as the fifth 'most corrupt' country in the world by Transparency International. US president Barack Obama is desperate for these elections to be held and to show some thin veneer of democracy. The Iraq war and occupation has already cost the US government over $707 billion. At a time of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s and with a US government debt of 12% of GDP, Obama urgently wants to limit the cost of this war with the aim of an ultimate withdrawal. But this cannot be at any cost. They want some form of stable regime that they can work with and one that will not stand in the way of the increasing exploitation of the oil wealth by private oil companies.
What these elections are not about is offering any dramatic improvement in the lives of ordinary Iraqis. All of the parties contesting the elections support the maintenance of capitalism and the ensuing cuts and privatisations that flow from this, while the wealthy elite enrich themselves at the workers' expense. Unfortunately for Obama a spanner has been thrown into the works with the banning of about 500 of the 6,000 candidates and 15 of the parties by Iraq's accountability and justice commission. Many of these are Sunni candidates and some have links to the banned Baath party. There is a fear that this could lead to an upsurge in sectarian violence and a boycott of the elections by sections of the Sunni-Arab population. These elections will only serve to underline the majority of Iraqis' feelings towards the political process. As a retired agriculture professor in Baghdad recently said: "Most people don't trust the politicians now. They know they're backed by some outside power, and the biggest power is the Americans, so whoever the Americans back will win."
The conditions that most Iraqis face are a clear reminder that the war and occupation were nothing to do with improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Unemployment stands at around 50% and about four million Iraqis are displaced. Alongside the fear that many Iraqis feel with the upturn in the bombing attacks, the conditions that many Iraqis face are brutal: 1,730 square kilometres of land are contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance, making 11% of all water supplies inaccessible. Access to clean water is critical yet 15% of households are not connected to the public water network and in some areas 73% of the population have no access to safe water. The number of women dying in childbirth is 300 women per 100,000 births in Iraq compared to 140 women per 100,000 births in neighbouring Iran. Yet prior to the years of western sanctions and then the invasion and occupation, Iraq had one of the more advanced health systems in the region.
Nearly a quarter of the population lives below the official poverty line of $2.20 a day and in just under 10% of districts in the country acute malnutrition in children - newly borns to five years old - runs at over 10%. Overcrowding in housing is also a massive problem with 13% of housing in urban areas occupied by ten occupants or more. There is a shortfall of two million houses. There is evidence that the suppressed workers' movement is struggling to improve the conditions for Iraqi workers, however small these steps forward may be. The beginning of 2010 saw a strike of hotel workers at the Rasheed hotel in the green zone in Baghdad over a risk bonus. This followed on from a strike of leather workers which was successful in winning a 25%-30% safety bonus for 1,500 workers in the state-run enterprise of leather industries. Previous to that there had been an 18-day strike of 4,000 textile workers. There is evidence that the suppressed workers' movement is struggling to improve the conditions for Iraqi workers, however small these steps forward may be. The beginning of 2010 saw a strike of hotel workers at the Rasheed hotel in the green zone in Baghdad over a risk bonus. This followed on from a strike of leather workers which was successful in winning a 25%-30% safety bonus for 1,500 workers in the state-run enterprise of leather industries. Previous to that there had been an 18-day strike of 4,000 textile workers.
What is clearly lacking throughout Iraq is a non-sectarian mass workers' party that will fight for workers' rights and for the defence of public services, though these struggles can be part of the process of developing such a party. This party needs to develop a programme that can begin to take the struggles of the Iraqi people forward. Its programme should include the democratic ownership by the people of Iraq of the major companies that dominate the economy and it should use the wealth of these companies, including the vast natural resources, for the benefit of the people of Iraq as a whole. A big issue in Iraq is the national aspirations of the Kurdish population. Consciousness varies in different parts of the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, with support ranging from autonomy to outright independence. We need to support the right of the Kurdish population to self determination up to and including independence if that is what the majority of the population democratically decide.
It is no surprise that control of the oil reserves plays a part in this situation as well. The Kurdish area of Iraq sits on 5% of the world's known oil reserves - the 6th largest in the world. There are growing ethnic tensions between the Arab, Turkoman and Kurdish populations. On the Arab/ Kurdish border known as the 'trigger line' there are 130 violent attacks a month. Many in Iraq, particularly in the government, do not want to see the separation of Iraqi Kurdistan - concerned at the loss of the oil wealth in the country. However there is also pressure from neighbouring states, in particular Turkey, which is completely opposed to an independent Kurdish state of Iraq for fear of the effect this would have on the Kurdish population in Turkey. In the Kurdish area in Iraq there is a growing mood amongst the population against the established Kurdish capitalist parties, the PUK and KDP, who many see as corrupt and not committed enough to national independence. Both the PUK and KDP have a history of perpetrating outrages against one another, including a catastrophic Kurdish civil war in 1993-1998. A new political force Gorran ("movement for change") made a significant breakthrough in the elections to the regional parliament in July last year, winning 25 seats on an anti-corruption platform. Gorran, however, is not a workers' organisation. It is headed by former PUK leader and media owner Nawshirwan Mistefa, who wants to 'modernise' the Kurdish region based on a free market economy. The current situation shows the urgent need for an independent Kurdish party that is able to connect the national liberation aspiration to the social liberation of workers and poor people.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Betrayed: PTSD casualties of war
With over 250 UK servicemen and women tragically dead on Afghan soil since 2001, generals, politicians and tabloid editors regularly weep crocodile tears for the 'fallen heroes' - but they say much less about the damage suffered by the survivors. Ex-soldier Danny Fitzsimons, 29 and from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, is on trial in Baghdad accused of the murder in August 2009 of two other security guards, Paul McGuigan and Darren Hoare, in a drunken brawl. His trial was due to start in November 2009 but was postponed because of a bomb attack on the court. He has been held in what his solicitor describes as a 'dungeon' and faces death by hanging if convicted. His family are calling for his return to face trial in the UK where he can receive appropriate care and would not face the death penalty if convicted. They are supported in this by their Labour MP Jim Dobbin and prisoners' rights organisation Reprieve. Danny's solicitor John Tipple has seen at first hand how justice in Iraq is subject to bribery and intimidation and it is hard to see how Danny could obtain a fair trial in Baghdad.
Danny joined the Royal Fusiliers at 16, and was sent on his first tour shortly after his 18th birthday. On his first tour, to the former Yugoslavia, Danny experienced some extremely disturbing events - the discovery of mass graves, and finding the dismembered body of a young boy who had previously delivered bread to the troops. He left the army and like many ex-soldiers turned to work as a private security contractor in Iraq, where he witnessed further traumatic events, including the death of a close friend burned alive inside a truck hit by an IED. Danny was diagnosed as suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in January 2004, while still in the army. Assessments by consultant psychiatrists in May 2008 and June 2009 reported that the symptoms had worsened. In May 2008 he was told that PTSD was: "having an impact on his day to day life and he used drugs and alcohol to combat that and escape from those experiences." Despite this, in August 2009, Danny was hired by ArmorGroup and sent out to Iraq without undergoing a full medical assessment. Within 36 hours of his arrival, the incident took place in which two colleagues died and an Iraqi was injured. ArmorGroup is now part of global security company G4S. G4S has so far tried to wash its hands of Danny with a one-off payment of $75,000 towards his legal fees. But a capital trial and the situation in Iraq mean that a proper defence would cost up to $1.8 million.
Danny Fitzsimons has been treated appallingly by G4S. But there are also major questions for the Ministry of Defence in this case, and the many other cases where service personnel are diagnosed with PTSD. What support or counselling did Danny receive while in the army, or for his resettlement when he left the army at such an early stage in his career? What psychiatric support is available for serving soldiers to deal with PTSD? What counselling or other support is available for soldiers leaving the army to ensure they return to civilian life and are not re-cycled into the violent world of private security? The charity Combat Stress has seen a 66% increase in referrals since 2005 and is currently supporting 316 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffering from PTSD. It was recently revealed that a quarter of the homeless are ex-squaddies. 10% of the male prison population consists of ex-service personnel - hardly surprising given that the psychological trauma of war-time experiences, plus the culture of drinking and drug-taking when off-duty, bring many ex-squaddies into conflict with the law. Danny's trial opened on 20 January but was adjourned for psychiatric reports. It was to resume on 18 February but his family are still pressing for the government to arrange a 'prisoner transfer' to a UK jail.
G4S is the second largest private employer in the world, with over 500,000 employees, 40,000 of them in the Middle East. In 2008 G4S had a turnover of £5.943 billion and saw its profits rise by 22%. Its board of directors includes Sir Paul (now Lord) Condon, who was commissioner of the Metropolitan Police between 1993 and 2000. Since 2008 John Reid, formerly home and defence secretary, has acted as a consultant to G4S. G4S runs immigration reporting, detention and removal centres and executes repatriation of asylum seekers to their homeland, in some cases to renewed persecution and death. It provides bodyguards for staff in Iraq and Afghanistan. It operates prisons and secure training centres in the UK, provides police 'support' duties, rail security and is likely to be a contractor for the Department for Work and Pensions Flexible New Deal Phase 2. But what it does not do is provide justice & support for those who need it most.
Danny joined the Royal Fusiliers at 16, and was sent on his first tour shortly after his 18th birthday. On his first tour, to the former Yugoslavia, Danny experienced some extremely disturbing events - the discovery of mass graves, and finding the dismembered body of a young boy who had previously delivered bread to the troops. He left the army and like many ex-soldiers turned to work as a private security contractor in Iraq, where he witnessed further traumatic events, including the death of a close friend burned alive inside a truck hit by an IED. Danny was diagnosed as suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in January 2004, while still in the army. Assessments by consultant psychiatrists in May 2008 and June 2009 reported that the symptoms had worsened. In May 2008 he was told that PTSD was: "having an impact on his day to day life and he used drugs and alcohol to combat that and escape from those experiences." Despite this, in August 2009, Danny was hired by ArmorGroup and sent out to Iraq without undergoing a full medical assessment. Within 36 hours of his arrival, the incident took place in which two colleagues died and an Iraqi was injured. ArmorGroup is now part of global security company G4S. G4S has so far tried to wash its hands of Danny with a one-off payment of $75,000 towards his legal fees. But a capital trial and the situation in Iraq mean that a proper defence would cost up to $1.8 million.
Danny Fitzsimons has been treated appallingly by G4S. But there are also major questions for the Ministry of Defence in this case, and the many other cases where service personnel are diagnosed with PTSD. What support or counselling did Danny receive while in the army, or for his resettlement when he left the army at such an early stage in his career? What psychiatric support is available for serving soldiers to deal with PTSD? What counselling or other support is available for soldiers leaving the army to ensure they return to civilian life and are not re-cycled into the violent world of private security? The charity Combat Stress has seen a 66% increase in referrals since 2005 and is currently supporting 316 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffering from PTSD. It was recently revealed that a quarter of the homeless are ex-squaddies. 10% of the male prison population consists of ex-service personnel - hardly surprising given that the psychological trauma of war-time experiences, plus the culture of drinking and drug-taking when off-duty, bring many ex-squaddies into conflict with the law. Danny's trial opened on 20 January but was adjourned for psychiatric reports. It was to resume on 18 February but his family are still pressing for the government to arrange a 'prisoner transfer' to a UK jail.
G4S is the second largest private employer in the world, with over 500,000 employees, 40,000 of them in the Middle East. In 2008 G4S had a turnover of £5.943 billion and saw its profits rise by 22%. Its board of directors includes Sir Paul (now Lord) Condon, who was commissioner of the Metropolitan Police between 1993 and 2000. Since 2008 John Reid, formerly home and defence secretary, has acted as a consultant to G4S. G4S runs immigration reporting, detention and removal centres and executes repatriation of asylum seekers to their homeland, in some cases to renewed persecution and death. It provides bodyguards for staff in Iraq and Afghanistan. It operates prisons and secure training centres in the UK, provides police 'support' duties, rail security and is likely to be a contractor for the Department for Work and Pensions Flexible New Deal Phase 2. But what it does not do is provide justice & support for those who need it most.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
BAE gets away with murder
Britain’s biggest arms company BAE has paid its way out of corruption charges. The corrupt arms dealer BAE has always believed itself above the law – and proved on Friday last week that it is. BAE paid a £288 million bribe to courts in the US and Britain to be let off, in its own words, “conspiring to make false statements... in connection with certain regulatory filings and undertakings”. In the British settlement, the company admits to, “payments made to a former marketing adviser in Tanzania” in connection with an air traffic control system. The US settlement refers explicitly to paying bribes. The deal means that investigations into BAE corruption in South Africa, Romania, Chile, the Czech Republic, Qatar, Bosnia, Nigeria, Zambia, Costa Rica and Egypt have now all been dropped. Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly faced trial for making “corrupt payments to unknown officials and other agents”. He has now escaped prosecution. Mensdorff was BAE’s key secret agent in central Europe. He denied the accusations against him “wholesale.” “BAE adopted and deployed corrupt practices to obtain lucrative contracts for jet fighters,” the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) told the courts.
It was a “sophisticated and meticulously planned operation involving very senior BAE executives”. BAE conspired with Mensdorff and spent more than £10 million funding a bribery campaign in Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Mensdorff paid bribes “to public officials to favour BAE’s bids to supply Gripen jets”. More than $17 million in total was transferred to Mensdorff, but all he officially did in return was produce “marketing reports”. All charges against Mensdorff were dropped in the “public interest” – because of the BAE bribe deal. The company has now admitted to one case of corruption – in Tanzania. In 2001 BAE sold Tanzania a £28 million air traffic control system. Even the World Bank said it was unnecessary and overpriced. It was a high-tech military system – but Tanzania barely had an air force. The deal was pushed through by then British prime minister Tony Blair. More than a third of the contract price went in bribes to Tanzanian officials. As part of the settlement, further investigation into the air traffic control system will stop and the facts so far established will be kept secret. BAE is the world’s third largest arms dealer. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.
In September 2003 The Sunday Times reported that BAE had hired a private security contractor to collate information about individuals working at the Campaign Against Arms Trade and their activities. In February 2007, it again obtained private confidential information from CAAT. Like many arms manufacturers, BAE has received criticism from various human rights and anti-arms trade organisations due to the human rights records of governments to which it has sold equipment. These include Indonesia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe. BAE's US subsidiary makes several subsystems for F-16s, 236 of which have been supplied to the Israel Defense Forces. In 2006, BAE was excluded from the portfolio of the government pension fund of Norway "because they develop and/or produce central components for nuclear weapons". "According to the ethical guidelines for the Government Pension Fund – Global, companies that produce weapons that through normal use may violate fundamental humanitarian principles shall be excluded from the fund." BAE is indirectly engaged in production of nuclear weapons - through its 37.5% share of MBDA it is involved with the production and support of the ASMP missile, an air launched nuclear missile which forms part of the French nuclear deterrent. BAE is also the UK's only nuclear submarine manufacturer and thus produces a key element of the UK's nuclear weapons capability.
BAE Systems has been under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, into the use of political corruption to help sell arms to Chile, Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Qatar. In response, BAE Systems' 2006 Corporate Responsibility Report states "We continue to reject these allegations...We take our obligations under the law extremely seriously and will continue to comply with all legal requirements around the world. In June 2007 Lord Woolf was selected to lead what the BBC described as an "independent review.... [an] ethics committee to look into how the defence giant conducts its arms deals." The report, Ethical business conduct in BAE Systems plc – the way forward, made 23 recommendations, measures which BAE has committed to implement. The finding stated that "in the past BAE did not pay sufficient attention to ethical standards in the way it conducted business," and was described by the BBC as "an embarrassing admission." In September 2009, the Serious Fraud Office announced that it intends to prosecute BAE Systems for offences relating to overseas corruption. The Guardian claimed that a penalty "possibly of more than £500m" might be an acceptable settlement package. On 5 February 2010, BAE Systems agreed to pay £280 million in criminal fines to the US and UK authorities.
In September 2005 The Guardian reported that banking records showed that BAE paid £1 million to Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. The Guardian has also reported that "clandestine arms deals" have been under investigation in Chile and the UK since 2003 and that British Aerospace and BAE made a number of payments to Pinochet advisers. BAE has been criticised for its role in disposing of surplus Royal Navy warships. HMS Sheffield was sold to the Chilean Navy in 2003 for £27 million, however the government's profit from the sale was £3 million, after contracts worth £24 million were placed with BAE for upgrade and refurbishment of the ship. The SFO's Czech Republic investigation related to alleged bribery as part of the deal to lease BAE/Saab Gripen fighters to that country. BAE is alleged to have paid "secret offshore commissions" of over £7 million to secure the sale of HMS London and HMS Coventry to the Romanian Navy. BAE received a £116 million contract for the refurbishment of the ships. The Tanzania inquiry relates to the sale of a radar system to that country in 2002. The sale was criticised by then Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short, opposition MPs and the World Bank. Clare Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development, claimed that BAE had "ripped off" developing nations.
Last year the company, worth an estimated £19bn, made a profit of over £18.5 million from selling weapons. BAE Systems is the predominant supplier to the UK Ministry of Defence, being the only company to receive more than £1 billion from the MOD in 2004/2005. Oxford Economic Forecasting states that in 2002 BAE's UK businesses employed 111,578 people, achieved export sales of £3 billion and paid £2.6 billion in taxes. These figures exclude the contribution of Airbus UK. Since its creation BAE had a difficult relationship with the MOD. This was attributed to deficient project management by the company, but also in part to the deficiencies in the terms of "fixed price contracts". BAE CEO Mike Turner said in 2006 "We had entered into contracts under the old competition rules that frankly we shouldn't have taken". These competition rules were introduced by Lord Levene during the 1980s to shift the burden of risk to the contractor and were in contrast to "cost plus contracts" where a contractor was paid for the value of its product plus an agreed profit. BAE Systems Australia is the largest defence contractor in Australia, having more than doubled in size with the acquisition of Tenix Defence. The Al Yamamah agreements between the UK and Saudi Arabia require "the provision of a complete defence package for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"; BAE employs 4,600 people in the kingdom. BAE Systems Land Systems South Africa, 75% owned by BAE, is the largest military vehicle manufacturer in South Africa, and is currently taking part in the US MRAP programme. Apart from its share of Saab, BAE's interests in Sweden are a result of the purchases of Alvis Vickers and UDI, which owned Hägglunds and Bofors respectively; The companies are now part of BAE Systems AB and have a combined workforce of approximately 1,750. Also, BAE Systems owns 49% of Air Astana, Kazakhstan.
Weapons manufacturer BAE paid a bribe to avoid bribery charges last week; those who protested in Britain against the use of those weapons in Gaza face jail this week. Manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction can pay their way out of the courts. Young people protesting against war crimes are subject to harsh jail terms. This is the reality of British justice – an upside down system where BAE can win contracts worth £50 billion through bribes and then, when it is found out, pay less than a 0.5% of the loot to go free. Tony Blair called off a corruption inquiry in 2006. BAE supplied key components for the Israeli assault on Gaza, which began at the end of 2008. Demonstrators faced police attacks and arrests when they marched against the slaughter and destruction. The police have hounded some protesters for many months. Two young women involved in the protests have already been sent to prison. More demonstrators faced jail this week. War criminals go free; anti-war marchers get locked up. Welcome to democracy under capitalism.
It was a “sophisticated and meticulously planned operation involving very senior BAE executives”. BAE conspired with Mensdorff and spent more than £10 million funding a bribery campaign in Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Mensdorff paid bribes “to public officials to favour BAE’s bids to supply Gripen jets”. More than $17 million in total was transferred to Mensdorff, but all he officially did in return was produce “marketing reports”. All charges against Mensdorff were dropped in the “public interest” – because of the BAE bribe deal. The company has now admitted to one case of corruption – in Tanzania. In 2001 BAE sold Tanzania a £28 million air traffic control system. Even the World Bank said it was unnecessary and overpriced. It was a high-tech military system – but Tanzania barely had an air force. The deal was pushed through by then British prime minister Tony Blair. More than a third of the contract price went in bribes to Tanzanian officials. As part of the settlement, further investigation into the air traffic control system will stop and the facts so far established will be kept secret. BAE is the world’s third largest arms dealer. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.
In September 2003 The Sunday Times reported that BAE had hired a private security contractor to collate information about individuals working at the Campaign Against Arms Trade and their activities. In February 2007, it again obtained private confidential information from CAAT. Like many arms manufacturers, BAE has received criticism from various human rights and anti-arms trade organisations due to the human rights records of governments to which it has sold equipment. These include Indonesia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe. BAE's US subsidiary makes several subsystems for F-16s, 236 of which have been supplied to the Israel Defense Forces. In 2006, BAE was excluded from the portfolio of the government pension fund of Norway "because they develop and/or produce central components for nuclear weapons". "According to the ethical guidelines for the Government Pension Fund – Global, companies that produce weapons that through normal use may violate fundamental humanitarian principles shall be excluded from the fund." BAE is indirectly engaged in production of nuclear weapons - through its 37.5% share of MBDA it is involved with the production and support of the ASMP missile, an air launched nuclear missile which forms part of the French nuclear deterrent. BAE is also the UK's only nuclear submarine manufacturer and thus produces a key element of the UK's nuclear weapons capability.
BAE Systems has been under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, into the use of political corruption to help sell arms to Chile, Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Qatar. In response, BAE Systems' 2006 Corporate Responsibility Report states "We continue to reject these allegations...We take our obligations under the law extremely seriously and will continue to comply with all legal requirements around the world. In June 2007 Lord Woolf was selected to lead what the BBC described as an "independent review.... [an] ethics committee to look into how the defence giant conducts its arms deals." The report, Ethical business conduct in BAE Systems plc – the way forward, made 23 recommendations, measures which BAE has committed to implement. The finding stated that "in the past BAE did not pay sufficient attention to ethical standards in the way it conducted business," and was described by the BBC as "an embarrassing admission." In September 2009, the Serious Fraud Office announced that it intends to prosecute BAE Systems for offences relating to overseas corruption. The Guardian claimed that a penalty "possibly of more than £500m" might be an acceptable settlement package. On 5 February 2010, BAE Systems agreed to pay £280 million in criminal fines to the US and UK authorities.
In September 2005 The Guardian reported that banking records showed that BAE paid £1 million to Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. The Guardian has also reported that "clandestine arms deals" have been under investigation in Chile and the UK since 2003 and that British Aerospace and BAE made a number of payments to Pinochet advisers. BAE has been criticised for its role in disposing of surplus Royal Navy warships. HMS Sheffield was sold to the Chilean Navy in 2003 for £27 million, however the government's profit from the sale was £3 million, after contracts worth £24 million were placed with BAE for upgrade and refurbishment of the ship. The SFO's Czech Republic investigation related to alleged bribery as part of the deal to lease BAE/Saab Gripen fighters to that country. BAE is alleged to have paid "secret offshore commissions" of over £7 million to secure the sale of HMS London and HMS Coventry to the Romanian Navy. BAE received a £116 million contract for the refurbishment of the ships. The Tanzania inquiry relates to the sale of a radar system to that country in 2002. The sale was criticised by then Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short, opposition MPs and the World Bank. Clare Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development, claimed that BAE had "ripped off" developing nations.
Last year the company, worth an estimated £19bn, made a profit of over £18.5 million from selling weapons. BAE Systems is the predominant supplier to the UK Ministry of Defence, being the only company to receive more than £1 billion from the MOD in 2004/2005. Oxford Economic Forecasting states that in 2002 BAE's UK businesses employed 111,578 people, achieved export sales of £3 billion and paid £2.6 billion in taxes. These figures exclude the contribution of Airbus UK. Since its creation BAE had a difficult relationship with the MOD. This was attributed to deficient project management by the company, but also in part to the deficiencies in the terms of "fixed price contracts". BAE CEO Mike Turner said in 2006 "We had entered into contracts under the old competition rules that frankly we shouldn't have taken". These competition rules were introduced by Lord Levene during the 1980s to shift the burden of risk to the contractor and were in contrast to "cost plus contracts" where a contractor was paid for the value of its product plus an agreed profit. BAE Systems Australia is the largest defence contractor in Australia, having more than doubled in size with the acquisition of Tenix Defence. The Al Yamamah agreements between the UK and Saudi Arabia require "the provision of a complete defence package for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"; BAE employs 4,600 people in the kingdom. BAE Systems Land Systems South Africa, 75% owned by BAE, is the largest military vehicle manufacturer in South Africa, and is currently taking part in the US MRAP programme. Apart from its share of Saab, BAE's interests in Sweden are a result of the purchases of Alvis Vickers and UDI, which owned Hägglunds and Bofors respectively; The companies are now part of BAE Systems AB and have a combined workforce of approximately 1,750. Also, BAE Systems owns 49% of Air Astana, Kazakhstan.
Weapons manufacturer BAE paid a bribe to avoid bribery charges last week; those who protested in Britain against the use of those weapons in Gaza face jail this week. Manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction can pay their way out of the courts. Young people protesting against war crimes are subject to harsh jail terms. This is the reality of British justice – an upside down system where BAE can win contracts worth £50 billion through bribes and then, when it is found out, pay less than a 0.5% of the loot to go free. Tony Blair called off a corruption inquiry in 2006. BAE supplied key components for the Israeli assault on Gaza, which began at the end of 2008. Demonstrators faced police attacks and arrests when they marched against the slaughter and destruction. The police have hounded some protesters for many months. Two young women involved in the protests have already been sent to prison. More demonstrators faced jail this week. War criminals go free; anti-war marchers get locked up. Welcome to democracy under capitalism.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Voices against war finally heard?
Eyebrows might be raised at the news that the Imperial War Museum in London is endorsing a new history of anti-war movements in Britain from the last century. They might be raised even higher at the news that the museum has the largest archive in the world of sound recordings of anti-war campaigners. These have been turned over to the author Lyn Smith, who has charted opposition to war from the First World War through to the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is a new book, Voices Against War: A Century Of Protest. It’s a fascinating and rich read. Some will be familiar with some of those interviewed towards the end, such as Tony Benn and Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition, Kate Hudson and Bruce Kent of CND, and Reg Keys and Rose Gentle of Military Families Against the War. But the book also charts how a smaller anti-war movement, opposing the 1999 Nato bombing campaign against Serbia, ensured activists were steeled in understanding the role of imperialism and rejecting notions of “humanitarian intervention”. This ensured that they could react rapidly and effectively to the declaration of the “war on terror” after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Other chapters describe the growth of pacifism between the First and Second World Wars in reaction to the horror at the useless slaughter unleashed in 1914.
The book records the confusion over how to respond to Adolf Hitler, the anti-bomb movement of the late 1950s – including arguments between supporters and opponents of direct action – and a raw and honest account of the 1980s women’s peace camp outside the US cruise missile base at Greenham Common. But for me the most interesting chapter is on those who refused to fight in the First World War. Some 1,600 conscientious objectors were dragged before tribunals, branded as cowards, jailed, beaten and sentenced to hard labour. After the war ended they were barred from voting for five years. Sixty nine died in detention. Many refused to fight because of their religious beliefs, but several of those featured in Voices Against War refused because of their left wing views. One objector describes walking 11 miles to join a 10,000 strong anti-war protest addressed by Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party, just as further down Whitehall the cabinet was drafting its declaration of war.
Two leading lights in the Independent Labour Party, Fenner Brockway and Clifford Allen, founded the No Conscription Fellowship in November 1914. In 1916 both men were arrested after handing out leaflets opposing the introduction of conscription. They were jailed for two months and, shortly after their release, jailed once more for refusing to enlist. Allen served 16 months in prison before being released on grounds of ill health. Brockway was only released six months after the war had ended. The heroism of these men is striking (women were not subject to conscription in this war). Yet their accounts point to a failure. The opposition to the war from the left was largely pacifist and stressed the need for a common humanity. So there was no sense that war was and is central to capitalism or that it was working people who would make the most sacrifices. Before 1914, many opposed to the capitalist system saw socialism as inevitable – whether they supported change through parliament or revolution. They believed that the job of socialists was to prepare and advance their message through education and by standing in elections. In practice they largely accepted the division between economics and politics that is central to parliamentary “democracy”. So activists tended to focus on one particular feature of the system. Trade unionists looked to strikes and struggled for economic gains.
Supporters of women’s rights fought for the vote. Elected representatives focused on political change through parliament and the council chamber. This meant that in 1914 they did not have an overall analysis of what underlay the war drive, or how to halt it. Anti-war left wingers found they could rally and demonstrate against war up until the point where it was declared, but they had no strategy once it had begun. Most fell in behind the “national interest”. Keir Hardie was heartbroken. But he kept his pacifist position until his death in 1915. The individual protests of those who refused to fight fitted in 1914. It seemed to be the only way to make a stand when even labour and trade union leaders had rallied to the flag. Yet across Europe the mood began to turn against the war as it brought galloping price rises, wage freezes, bans on strikes and, in the case of Russia, Germany and Austria, hunger. On Clydeside in the west of Scotland as early as 1915 a mass rent strike against ruthless landlords forced the government to introduce rent controls. Shop stewards in Glasgow’s key engineering, shipyard and armament factories came together in the unofficial Clyde Workers’ Committee to coordinate resistance. The leading lights in the Clyde Workers’ Committee were anti-war as individuals; they solely belonged to left wing parties.
But they also accepted a division between economics and politics. Their prime concern as a group was work in the trade unions to win and defend pay and conditions. Their political activity was confined to the weekend, when they might make anti-war speeches. The British government – sensing a weakness – went on the offensive, portraying the leaders of the Clyde Workers’ Committee as “unpatriotic” and “pro-German”. It used war-time emergency legislation to arrest and deport key activists. The Glasgow school teacher John Maclean was a fierce critic of the committee’s refusal to come out openly as anti-war, so much so that he was excluded from its meetings. More clearly than anyone else in Britain, Maclean argued the working class had no interest in a war fought for profits and markets. He went on to support the 1917 Russian Revolution, led by the Bolsheviks, and held it up as the shining example of what needed to be done. He was also one of the few people on the British left who argued to support rebellions against British colonialism in Ireland, vigorously defending the 1916 Dublin Uprising as a blow against imperialism and war. The British ruling class retaliated by ensuring that Maclean was sacked from his job and sending him to prison three times for sedition. Yet despite his strengths, Maclean was wedded to the old model of socialist organisation that stressed education along with electoral interventions. He did not look to a new, Bolshevik-style approach that combined a sharp ideological edge with being grounded in the daily battles of working people.#
The First World War ended with soldiers and workers in first Russia and then Germany refusing to sacrifice themselves for the “sacred cause” of their country’s war effort. In 1917 the October Revolution took Russia out of the war. The following year mutinies in the German forces spilled over into revolution and saw Germany leave the war, ending the conflict. In the underground conditions of pre-war Russia, the Bolshevik Party and its main leader, Lenin, had argued that whatever areas of work individual party members might focus on, the aim was to mobilise workers with revolution as a goal. This was seen as perhaps not happening immediately, but not in the distant future either. In 1914 Lenin argued that the First World War was an imperialist conflict in which workers had no interest, and that the main enemy was at home. Revolution on the domestic front was the key to ending the slaughter. One of the key reasons the Bolsheviks won the popular support needed to make a revolution was that they were the only resolutely anti-war party. Workers, peasants and soldiers knew it would deliver on its pledge to end the conflict immediately. This did not mean the Bolsheviks refused to participate in strikes, demonstrations and protests alongside those who were not 100 percent pro-revolution or even anti-war. It meant it put itself alongside these people while continuing to educate, agitate and organise. This seems to have carried us a long way from the central narratives of Voices Against War. But at its close, as the book focuses on the recent movement against the Iraq war, you get a sense of what is possible in the fight against a world where economic competition repeatedly spills over into military competition - and you also get a sense of what will be required to cleanse the world of war for once and for all.
The book records the confusion over how to respond to Adolf Hitler, the anti-bomb movement of the late 1950s – including arguments between supporters and opponents of direct action – and a raw and honest account of the 1980s women’s peace camp outside the US cruise missile base at Greenham Common. But for me the most interesting chapter is on those who refused to fight in the First World War. Some 1,600 conscientious objectors were dragged before tribunals, branded as cowards, jailed, beaten and sentenced to hard labour. After the war ended they were barred from voting for five years. Sixty nine died in detention. Many refused to fight because of their religious beliefs, but several of those featured in Voices Against War refused because of their left wing views. One objector describes walking 11 miles to join a 10,000 strong anti-war protest addressed by Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party, just as further down Whitehall the cabinet was drafting its declaration of war.
Two leading lights in the Independent Labour Party, Fenner Brockway and Clifford Allen, founded the No Conscription Fellowship in November 1914. In 1916 both men were arrested after handing out leaflets opposing the introduction of conscription. They were jailed for two months and, shortly after their release, jailed once more for refusing to enlist. Allen served 16 months in prison before being released on grounds of ill health. Brockway was only released six months after the war had ended. The heroism of these men is striking (women were not subject to conscription in this war). Yet their accounts point to a failure. The opposition to the war from the left was largely pacifist and stressed the need for a common humanity. So there was no sense that war was and is central to capitalism or that it was working people who would make the most sacrifices. Before 1914, many opposed to the capitalist system saw socialism as inevitable – whether they supported change through parliament or revolution. They believed that the job of socialists was to prepare and advance their message through education and by standing in elections. In practice they largely accepted the division between economics and politics that is central to parliamentary “democracy”. So activists tended to focus on one particular feature of the system. Trade unionists looked to strikes and struggled for economic gains.
Supporters of women’s rights fought for the vote. Elected representatives focused on political change through parliament and the council chamber. This meant that in 1914 they did not have an overall analysis of what underlay the war drive, or how to halt it. Anti-war left wingers found they could rally and demonstrate against war up until the point where it was declared, but they had no strategy once it had begun. Most fell in behind the “national interest”. Keir Hardie was heartbroken. But he kept his pacifist position until his death in 1915. The individual protests of those who refused to fight fitted in 1914. It seemed to be the only way to make a stand when even labour and trade union leaders had rallied to the flag. Yet across Europe the mood began to turn against the war as it brought galloping price rises, wage freezes, bans on strikes and, in the case of Russia, Germany and Austria, hunger. On Clydeside in the west of Scotland as early as 1915 a mass rent strike against ruthless landlords forced the government to introduce rent controls. Shop stewards in Glasgow’s key engineering, shipyard and armament factories came together in the unofficial Clyde Workers’ Committee to coordinate resistance. The leading lights in the Clyde Workers’ Committee were anti-war as individuals; they solely belonged to left wing parties.
But they also accepted a division between economics and politics. Their prime concern as a group was work in the trade unions to win and defend pay and conditions. Their political activity was confined to the weekend, when they might make anti-war speeches. The British government – sensing a weakness – went on the offensive, portraying the leaders of the Clyde Workers’ Committee as “unpatriotic” and “pro-German”. It used war-time emergency legislation to arrest and deport key activists. The Glasgow school teacher John Maclean was a fierce critic of the committee’s refusal to come out openly as anti-war, so much so that he was excluded from its meetings. More clearly than anyone else in Britain, Maclean argued the working class had no interest in a war fought for profits and markets. He went on to support the 1917 Russian Revolution, led by the Bolsheviks, and held it up as the shining example of what needed to be done. He was also one of the few people on the British left who argued to support rebellions against British colonialism in Ireland, vigorously defending the 1916 Dublin Uprising as a blow against imperialism and war. The British ruling class retaliated by ensuring that Maclean was sacked from his job and sending him to prison three times for sedition. Yet despite his strengths, Maclean was wedded to the old model of socialist organisation that stressed education along with electoral interventions. He did not look to a new, Bolshevik-style approach that combined a sharp ideological edge with being grounded in the daily battles of working people.#
The First World War ended with soldiers and workers in first Russia and then Germany refusing to sacrifice themselves for the “sacred cause” of their country’s war effort. In 1917 the October Revolution took Russia out of the war. The following year mutinies in the German forces spilled over into revolution and saw Germany leave the war, ending the conflict. In the underground conditions of pre-war Russia, the Bolshevik Party and its main leader, Lenin, had argued that whatever areas of work individual party members might focus on, the aim was to mobilise workers with revolution as a goal. This was seen as perhaps not happening immediately, but not in the distant future either. In 1914 Lenin argued that the First World War was an imperialist conflict in which workers had no interest, and that the main enemy was at home. Revolution on the domestic front was the key to ending the slaughter. One of the key reasons the Bolsheviks won the popular support needed to make a revolution was that they were the only resolutely anti-war party. Workers, peasants and soldiers knew it would deliver on its pledge to end the conflict immediately. This did not mean the Bolsheviks refused to participate in strikes, demonstrations and protests alongside those who were not 100 percent pro-revolution or even anti-war. It meant it put itself alongside these people while continuing to educate, agitate and organise. This seems to have carried us a long way from the central narratives of Voices Against War. But at its close, as the book focuses on the recent movement against the Iraq war, you get a sense of what is possible in the fight against a world where economic competition repeatedly spills over into military competition - and you also get a sense of what will be required to cleanse the world of war for once and for all.
Friday, 11 December 2009
Afghanistan Nightmare Must End
Every time you turn on the news there seems to be one more British casualty in Afghanistan. By the time you read this article the death toll of British troops will have exceeded 100 this year. This war has gone on now for 8 years, longer than the Second World War and the Vietnam War. It has been overshadowed by the war in neighbouring Iraq, but has now become the centre of attention. Nothing quite captures the attention like the prospect of a humiliating defeat. Kim Howells, a leading government supporter, has broken ranks to call for British troops to be brought home. This reflects the growing public anger against the war. In Britain, more than 70% believe the troops should be withdrawn within a year. 35% believe the soldiers should be withdrawn immediately. In March, Obama declared the fight a ‘war of necessity’ and dispatched an extra 20,000 troops. This has been followed by a ‘rethink’ and a further ‘review’. The shambles over the Afghan elections has served to compound the problem. Rather than ‘democracy’, we have corruption, bribery and staggering levels of fraud. The farce of the second round, which failed to take place, followed by the inauguration of Karzai for another presidential term, has piled added pressure on the imperialists.
The American stooge, Karzai, had invited a group of warlords, drug dealers and other mafia undesirables into his government to help ‘win’ his election. One of these, General Dostum, the Uzbek commander, is accused by human rights groups of allowing 2,000 Taliban suspects to suffocate to death in cargo containers. Karzai was favoured by the Americans because of his links with the CIA in the struggle against the Russians. In one of the poorest countries in the world, Esquire, the style magazine, once rated him as among the world’s best-dressed men. His power was based on nepotism and patronage, backed up by Western cash. Karzai’s brothers, exploiting their links to government, have amassed fortunes while the Afghan people are left to live in misery and hunger. His younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, wields so much power in Kandahar province that he has earned the nickname “the King of the South”. He is also on the pay roll of the CIA. However, drug money, based on the biggest crop of opium in the world, serves to fuel corruption as well as the Taliban.
This situation explains the millions of abstentions in the first presidential vote. This was not simply due to the activities of the Taliban, but the widespread disillusionment with government corruption and paralysis. The Karzai government, holed up in a tight security compound, has little support outside of Kabul as the Taliban gain ever more adherents. With the growing violence in Pakistan, there is a serious prospect of ‘Talibanisation’ of the entire region. Neighbouring Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan face desolation, turmoil and calamity. The intervention of the imperialists has not brought stability to the region, let alone ‘democracy’, but has created a whirlwind. They are propping up corrupt, but ‘friendly’ regimes, beginning with Karzai in Kabul, as part of their neo-colonialist policy. However, since major NATO military operations started in Afghanistan in 2006, support for the insurgency has grown. They are engaged in a war that they can never win. The situation is becoming worse and worse by the day. General Stanley McChrystal has requested 40,000 extra US troops, scaled down from an original 80,000, representing ‘one last desperate heave’. The US ambassador to Afghanistan, however, has urged the Administration to maintain troop levels at their current level. Obama is still dithering, a consequence of the deep mess they are in. The recent speeches by Brown and Miliband are a desperate attempt to shore up waning public opinion for this deeply unpopular war.
It is a war that can never deliver social and economic progress to the Afghan people. That was never the intention. The war was originally intended to extend the might and influence of US imperialism throughout the region based on military “shock and awe”. While NATO provides the cover, the war is conducted by the Americans and to a lesser extent by the British. However, they have reached a complete impasse. That explains their splits and paralysis. The labour movement must demand the immediate withdrawal of imperialist troops from Afghanistan. The imperialist powers, who invaded Afghanistan for their own interests, can never solve the problems of the Afghan people. They must be free to decide their own future. However, the barbarism that has been unleashed through the region will never find a solution on the basis of capitalism, feudalism or fundamentalism. Only on the basis of a Socialist Federation of South Asia, including a Socialist Afghanistan, can the horrors of war, hunger, disease and poverty be swept away.
The American stooge, Karzai, had invited a group of warlords, drug dealers and other mafia undesirables into his government to help ‘win’ his election. One of these, General Dostum, the Uzbek commander, is accused by human rights groups of allowing 2,000 Taliban suspects to suffocate to death in cargo containers. Karzai was favoured by the Americans because of his links with the CIA in the struggle against the Russians. In one of the poorest countries in the world, Esquire, the style magazine, once rated him as among the world’s best-dressed men. His power was based on nepotism and patronage, backed up by Western cash. Karzai’s brothers, exploiting their links to government, have amassed fortunes while the Afghan people are left to live in misery and hunger. His younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, wields so much power in Kandahar province that he has earned the nickname “the King of the South”. He is also on the pay roll of the CIA. However, drug money, based on the biggest crop of opium in the world, serves to fuel corruption as well as the Taliban.
This situation explains the millions of abstentions in the first presidential vote. This was not simply due to the activities of the Taliban, but the widespread disillusionment with government corruption and paralysis. The Karzai government, holed up in a tight security compound, has little support outside of Kabul as the Taliban gain ever more adherents. With the growing violence in Pakistan, there is a serious prospect of ‘Talibanisation’ of the entire region. Neighbouring Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan face desolation, turmoil and calamity. The intervention of the imperialists has not brought stability to the region, let alone ‘democracy’, but has created a whirlwind. They are propping up corrupt, but ‘friendly’ regimes, beginning with Karzai in Kabul, as part of their neo-colonialist policy. However, since major NATO military operations started in Afghanistan in 2006, support for the insurgency has grown. They are engaged in a war that they can never win. The situation is becoming worse and worse by the day. General Stanley McChrystal has requested 40,000 extra US troops, scaled down from an original 80,000, representing ‘one last desperate heave’. The US ambassador to Afghanistan, however, has urged the Administration to maintain troop levels at their current level. Obama is still dithering, a consequence of the deep mess they are in. The recent speeches by Brown and Miliband are a desperate attempt to shore up waning public opinion for this deeply unpopular war.
It is a war that can never deliver social and economic progress to the Afghan people. That was never the intention. The war was originally intended to extend the might and influence of US imperialism throughout the region based on military “shock and awe”. While NATO provides the cover, the war is conducted by the Americans and to a lesser extent by the British. However, they have reached a complete impasse. That explains their splits and paralysis. The labour movement must demand the immediate withdrawal of imperialist troops from Afghanistan. The imperialist powers, who invaded Afghanistan for their own interests, can never solve the problems of the Afghan people. They must be free to decide their own future. However, the barbarism that has been unleashed through the region will never find a solution on the basis of capitalism, feudalism or fundamentalism. Only on the basis of a Socialist Federation of South Asia, including a Socialist Afghanistan, can the horrors of war, hunger, disease and poverty be swept away.
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