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 war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 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
Inside the mind of a terrorist
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow himself up on Northwest Airlines 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day has generated a stupendous amount of column inches and airtime in the US and British media. While the saturation-level coverage has focused on questions of "who," "what," "when," "where" and "how," it has categorically failed to ask the most important question of all - why? Those hoping that the new messiah of the United States would enlighten the ignorant masses were sorely disappointed when the Democratic president could only offer to "communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that ... the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress." Barack Obama then turned the floor over to his top counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, who made the blindingly obvious and technically true statement that "al-Qaida is an organisation that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents." As with much of Obama's foreign policy, his inability or unwillingness to articulate why the US is the target of so much terrorism has more in common with his universally reviled predecessor than many of his supporters would like to admit. Of course Bush was always far more crass and simplistic than the smooth Harvard graduate. "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world," the then commander-in-chief told the US on September 11 2001. Just in case anyone is turning their noses up at "those stupid Americans," we shouldn't forget that immediately after the July 7 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the BBC reported then home secretary Charles Clarke as saying that "those responsible for such attacks simply wanted to destroy democracy."
In contrast Michael Scheuer, the man who headed the CIA unit monitoring Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, argues Islamic terrorist attacks on the US have nothing "to do with our freedom, liberty and democracy, but everything to do with US policies and actions in the Muslim world." So who should we believe? To begin to answer this question, it seems pertinent to look at the reasons those actually carrying out the terrorism give for their actions. Although it has since disappeared down the memory hole, in 2004 bin Laden himself directly addressed Bush's claim that al-Qaida is motivated by a hatred of US freedom and democracy. "Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden," the al-Qaida figurehead quipped before stating: "We fought you because we are free and do not accept injustice. We want to restore freedom to our nation." What about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind September 11 2001 and the man with the dubious honour of holding the world record for the number of times to undergo waterboarding - 183 times according to the US Justice Department. "By his own account KSM's [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favouring Israel," noted the official 9/11 Commission report. Back to Britain. Last September, the International Herald Tribune reported that the jury at the trial of the 2006 plot to blow up 10 transatlantic airliners were shown martyrdom videos prepared by several of the plotters. "A common theme was that they planned to wreak revenge on Britain and the United States for their interference in Muslim countries, especially the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," reported the newspaper.
No doubt some readers will be uncomfortable with taking mass-murdering terrorists at their word. But what about testimony from the US government itself? In 2004 the Pentagon-appointed US Defence Science Board explained: "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies." The board elaborated: "The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states." As someone paralysed in a 2004 attack by Saudi extremists, one presumes BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner has thought a little bit about this topic. In 2005 he told the Commons foreign affairs committee that "al-Qaida could not give a stuff about what Americans do in America. What they object to is Western military adventures in their heartland, whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever." Robert A Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, has written a whole book addressing this question. He concludes that "suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than the product of Islamic fundamentalism." Returning to the case of Abdulmutallab, a recent Associated Press story noted he was "not overtly extremist," however he "was open about his sympathies toward the Palestinians and his anger over Israel's actions in Gaza." In addition Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula released a video after the attempted attack stating that it was in revenge for two joint US-Yemeni air raids on December 17, supposedly targeting al-Qaida operatives. Yes that's right, the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize personally ordered US air strikes in Yemen, killing 23 children and 17 women, according to local officials.
The enigmatic US novelist Thomas Pynchon once wrote: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." So far the "wrong questions" asked by politicians and the mainstream media have led to the implementation of "the most significant changes to airport security since 2006," according to the Guardian. "Increased pat-down searches, more sniffer dogs in terminals and a step-up in hand luggage inspections" along with "the introduction of body scanners" has been the British government's knee-jerk response to Abdulmutallab's attempted attack. The problem is that these are technical answers to something that desperately requires a political solution. In fact, by ignoring the inconvenient question of "why," the chances are that we are actually making future terrorist attacks on the US and Britain more likely. This is not to suggest that British foreign policy should be decided by the actions of a small group of murderous Islamic extremists. Rather it should radically change because it is immoral, hypocritical and has directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of them in the Islamic world. Put simply, reversing US and British backing for Israel, withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan and ending our Machiavellian support for undemocratic Arab regimes is the right and moral thing to do. A welcome by-product of implementing these sane and humane policies would be a decrease in the hatred directed against the US and British in the Islamic world - and therefore a significantly reduced terrorist threat.
In contrast Michael Scheuer, the man who headed the CIA unit monitoring Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, argues Islamic terrorist attacks on the US have nothing "to do with our freedom, liberty and democracy, but everything to do with US policies and actions in the Muslim world." So who should we believe? To begin to answer this question, it seems pertinent to look at the reasons those actually carrying out the terrorism give for their actions. Although it has since disappeared down the memory hole, in 2004 bin Laden himself directly addressed Bush's claim that al-Qaida is motivated by a hatred of US freedom and democracy. "Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden," the al-Qaida figurehead quipped before stating: "We fought you because we are free and do not accept injustice. We want to restore freedom to our nation." What about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind September 11 2001 and the man with the dubious honour of holding the world record for the number of times to undergo waterboarding - 183 times according to the US Justice Department. "By his own account KSM's [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favouring Israel," noted the official 9/11 Commission report. Back to Britain. Last September, the International Herald Tribune reported that the jury at the trial of the 2006 plot to blow up 10 transatlantic airliners were shown martyrdom videos prepared by several of the plotters. "A common theme was that they planned to wreak revenge on Britain and the United States for their interference in Muslim countries, especially the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," reported the newspaper.
No doubt some readers will be uncomfortable with taking mass-murdering terrorists at their word. But what about testimony from the US government itself? In 2004 the Pentagon-appointed US Defence Science Board explained: "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies." The board elaborated: "The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states." As someone paralysed in a 2004 attack by Saudi extremists, one presumes BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner has thought a little bit about this topic. In 2005 he told the Commons foreign affairs committee that "al-Qaida could not give a stuff about what Americans do in America. What they object to is Western military adventures in their heartland, whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever." Robert A Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, has written a whole book addressing this question. He concludes that "suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than the product of Islamic fundamentalism." Returning to the case of Abdulmutallab, a recent Associated Press story noted he was "not overtly extremist," however he "was open about his sympathies toward the Palestinians and his anger over Israel's actions in Gaza." In addition Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula released a video after the attempted attack stating that it was in revenge for two joint US-Yemeni air raids on December 17, supposedly targeting al-Qaida operatives. Yes that's right, the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize personally ordered US air strikes in Yemen, killing 23 children and 17 women, according to local officials.
The enigmatic US novelist Thomas Pynchon once wrote: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." So far the "wrong questions" asked by politicians and the mainstream media have led to the implementation of "the most significant changes to airport security since 2006," according to the Guardian. "Increased pat-down searches, more sniffer dogs in terminals and a step-up in hand luggage inspections" along with "the introduction of body scanners" has been the British government's knee-jerk response to Abdulmutallab's attempted attack. The problem is that these are technical answers to something that desperately requires a political solution. In fact, by ignoring the inconvenient question of "why," the chances are that we are actually making future terrorist attacks on the US and Britain more likely. This is not to suggest that British foreign policy should be decided by the actions of a small group of murderous Islamic extremists. Rather it should radically change because it is immoral, hypocritical and has directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of them in the Islamic world. Put simply, reversing US and British backing for Israel, withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan and ending our Machiavellian support for undemocratic Arab regimes is the right and moral thing to do. A welcome by-product of implementing these sane and humane policies would be a decrease in the hatred directed against the US and British in the Islamic world - and therefore a significantly reduced terrorist threat.
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."
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Labour's dead man walking returns
It is, one supposes, the first time that a multimillionaire has ever graced Trimdon Labour Club with his presence as a visiting speaker. And it is a mark of the desperation and political bankruptcy of new Labour that it has pulled ex-prime minister and war criminal Tony Blair out of storage and is using him in its election campaign. There must have been many peace and political activists in the country who experienced an uncomfortable sense of deja vu when the oily face of Blair appeared once more on the television screens yesterday, hurrying into the Trimdon club under police escort. It's one of the few good things to say about politics in the Brown era that, somehow, the world seemed rather cleaner without the arch-opportunist and apologist for capitalism anywhere in evidence. But returned he is, and with the ascendance of Peter Mandelson in Cabinet and the creeping back into the public eye of Alastair Campbell, the set's complete.
Complete, that is, if you ignore the vanished coterie of disgraced new Labourites who have bitten, or are about to bite, the dust in various scandals involving influence-peddling and MPs' expenses. That's quite a substantial number, incidentally. But what does the political resurrection of Mr Blair tell us about the Labour Party in this election? In short, it tells us that the party hasn't learned a damn thing from the events of the last few years. It hasn't learned that the Blairite love-affair with the City led inexorably to the abuses that precipitated the banking crisis. The sense of invulnerability that came from having a capitalism-friendly Labour administration and a complaisant Tory opposition gave the banks and their tame speculators a licence to fiddle, free rein to invent ever-more ludicrous financial "products" to enable them to extract yet more paper "profit" from dodgy transactions and a society so based on greed and the acquisition of personal wealth that their behaviour could be passed off as acceptable. Capitalism, never exactly savoury, became casino capitalism, in which gambling was passed off as trading and skimming was considered legitimate. So difficult has new Labour found it to establish any real difference from the Tories that they are now reduced to arguments not about what, but about when. Not about attacking or defending the welfare state, but about how soon and how often to attack it. This unsurprisingly makes election campaigns difficult.
The electorate may be misguided at times, but it certainly isn't blind and anyone to the left of centre is finding it increasingly difficult to support a party which has demonstrably lost its way along with its progressive principles. Thus, the recourse to Tony Blair. It's back to the politics of spin over substance, back to a sales technique rather than a political manifesto and a return to the fight to command the centre rather than drive politics in a progressive direction. Not that there was ever much chance of a Brown administration being vastly progressive, but it has shown an increasing tendency to revisit the recent past, to try to recapture the "glory days" of the new Labour project that everyone except Labour's leaders realises is stone dead, even though as yet unburied. Mr Darling had a chance to become the defender of public services. He was driven into fighting to avoid an instant bloodbath of cuts. But he has wasted that opportunity and with it, rejected Labour's best chance of a principled victory in a general election. A vote for Labour is, in most cases, still necessary to defend against the wild excesses of a Tory Britain, but the retreat into spin represented by Mr Blair's resurrection hugely diminishes Labour's chances of electoral success. The Blairite dream of a Labour middle class is dead, but they still won't let it rest.
Complete, that is, if you ignore the vanished coterie of disgraced new Labourites who have bitten, or are about to bite, the dust in various scandals involving influence-peddling and MPs' expenses. That's quite a substantial number, incidentally. But what does the political resurrection of Mr Blair tell us about the Labour Party in this election? In short, it tells us that the party hasn't learned a damn thing from the events of the last few years. It hasn't learned that the Blairite love-affair with the City led inexorably to the abuses that precipitated the banking crisis. The sense of invulnerability that came from having a capitalism-friendly Labour administration and a complaisant Tory opposition gave the banks and their tame speculators a licence to fiddle, free rein to invent ever-more ludicrous financial "products" to enable them to extract yet more paper "profit" from dodgy transactions and a society so based on greed and the acquisition of personal wealth that their behaviour could be passed off as acceptable. Capitalism, never exactly savoury, became casino capitalism, in which gambling was passed off as trading and skimming was considered legitimate. So difficult has new Labour found it to establish any real difference from the Tories that they are now reduced to arguments not about what, but about when. Not about attacking or defending the welfare state, but about how soon and how often to attack it. This unsurprisingly makes election campaigns difficult.
The electorate may be misguided at times, but it certainly isn't blind and anyone to the left of centre is finding it increasingly difficult to support a party which has demonstrably lost its way along with its progressive principles. Thus, the recourse to Tony Blair. It's back to the politics of spin over substance, back to a sales technique rather than a political manifesto and a return to the fight to command the centre rather than drive politics in a progressive direction. Not that there was ever much chance of a Brown administration being vastly progressive, but it has shown an increasing tendency to revisit the recent past, to try to recapture the "glory days" of the new Labour project that everyone except Labour's leaders realises is stone dead, even though as yet unburied. Mr Darling had a chance to become the defender of public services. He was driven into fighting to avoid an instant bloodbath of cuts. But he has wasted that opportunity and with it, rejected Labour's best chance of a principled victory in a general election. A vote for Labour is, in most cases, still necessary to defend against the wild excesses of a Tory Britain, but the retreat into spin represented by Mr Blair's resurrection hugely diminishes Labour's chances of electoral success. The Blairite dream of a Labour middle class is dead, but they still won't let it rest.
Friday, 26 March 2010
Torture won't halt terrorism
There's a single word in a recent Foreign Commonwealth Office report that underlines a central myth used to justify torture. Responding to recent revelations that the British security services had colluded with shocking abuses, the Annual Report on Human Rights 2009 says: "We must work with intelligence and security agencies overseas. Some of them share our standards and laws while others do not. "But we cannot afford the luxury of only dealing with those that do. The intelligence we get from others saves British lives." I'm struck by the word "luxury." It implies that human rights are like shopping at Waitrose - all very nice in good times but in tough times, Tescos will do. I thought the point about "rights" was that they are inviolable - while evidence has been seeping out about torture for some years, the case of Binyam Mohamed has clarified exactly how the US government treated its detainees. Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan where he was tortured by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and then taken by US agents to Morocco where he was tortured for 18 months by the Moroccan authorities and simultaneously interrogated by the CIA. Then it was on to US detention centres in Bagram and Kabul where he was tortured by various means - sleep deprivation, continuous and literally maddeningly loud music, hooding - and finally to Guantanamo.
His account shows that the US practised torture directly and sub-contracted some of it out to other governments. Mohamed's account, accepted as true by British and US judges, has confirmed accounts from other detainees. The Bush government never denied that it practised "torture-lite" but was much more uncomfortable with the actual details being made public. The British security services knew that Mohamed was being tortured. Their agents questioned him in Karachi after having been formally told about his treatment by the CIA. When Mohamed was being tortured and interrogated in Morocco some of the questions referred to information from the British security services and his answers were passed back to Britain. British security services didn't themselves cut Mohamed's genitals with a scalpel but they knew of the torture and threatened him if he didn't "co-operate." They were happy to be involved in the interrogation process. British citizens Salahuddin Amin and Zeeshan Siddiqui each describe being tortured by Pakistan's ISI and then questioned by MI5. Human Rights Watch quotes ISI agents as saying that in both cases MI5 knew that the men were being "processed in the traditional way" and were "grateful.".
The FCO justification is therefore a surprisingly honest statement of actual practice. British security services are prepared to turn a blind eye to torture. The problem for the government is that the law is unequivocal - torture is absolutely prohibited both under long-standing common law and the European Convention on Human Rights. The government is caught in a cleft stick, which is no doubt why it is refusing to publish its guidelines on torture. For most of us, the moral case against torture is sufficient. The deliberate infliction of pain on an individual is absolutely and indisputably wrong. When private individuals torture another human being, it's illegal and horrifying. But for proponents of torture, the legal and moral arguments are mere luxuries and they constantly fall back on the "ticking time bomb" argument in which human rights "liberals" are condemned for not condoning the ill-treatment of one person when it will - or might - save the lives of thousands. They see themselves as the pragmatic ones and the life-savers. The ticking time bomb scenario is staple fare all the time in film and TV programmes such as 24 and Spooks and you're likely to come across at least one during any night's viewing. We are all very familiar with the scenario and it's that familiarity through fiction that allows the torture proponents to get away with telling us that the scenario is real.
But in the real world, no-one can point to an actual ticking time bomb scenario because presumptions underlying it are false. The security services don't usually know that a terrorist attack is about to happen or who might know about it. They didn't know about September 11, despite the US having Zacarias Moussaoui in detention for immigration offences at the time. Moussaoui was subsequently convicted of being part of that conspiracy. But since the CIA didn't know September 11 2001 was about to happen it had no reason to interrogate someone detained for other reasons. International terrorism like most serious criminal activities depends on hardly any of the players knowing the full story, especially not the actual perpetrators. Who knows what most of the September 11 2001 hijackers knew in advance? Or what the London bombers knew before the morning of July 7? What we do know is that torture produces unreliable evidence. This seems obvious - people being tortured tell their torturers what they want to hear. So the detainee eagerly assents when asked if there's a bomb in London and the spooks go haring off on a wild-goose chase. In fact the bomb was always in Paris.
Evidence obtained under torture is so inherently unreliable that its substantive value is always nothing. How could anyone identify scraps of truth - if there are any - among the fiction invented to please the torturer? Torture proponents will argue that each of those presumptions simply requires better security work. But the point is that each presumption is so unrealistic that the overall scenario is utterly far-fetched. Which is why it has never happened. Were the scenario to be realistic, then surely it would have happened at least once. But I have never heard a torture proponent able to point to one instance. I appreciate that security services can't talk about terrorist attacks that they have prevented, but surely some example would have leaked out given the current debate? There is simply no example of torture preventing a ticking time bomb. And while nobody can point to one instance of lives being saved as a result of torture, what is clear is that the US and British government's war on terror has made us less safe.
Guantanamo, torture, uncritical support for Israel and the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are all reasons why some people come to believe that terrorist attacks can be justified. Renouncing torture is a pragmatic position as well as a legal and moral one; it makes us safer. Withdrawing from Afghanistan, providing reparations for Iraq and supporting the rights of the Palestinians would also help. Practising torture - and colluding with it - doesn't just fail to detect terrorism. It also helps to make terrorism more likely. It's of some comfort that MPs and peers obviously feel just as worried about the issue, since they consistently revisit the issue in committee, even though they appear to lack the courage to do anything more direct within the various Houses of Parliament. And it's quite proper that they should feel worried, since the provisions of the anti-terror legislation consitute the biggest erosion of civil liberties in living memory, with the possible exception of the Tory - and now new Labour as well - anti-union laws. It's an unfortunate fact of political life in bourgeois democratic Britain that, when it comes to restricting human and civil rights, the temporary and short term seem to metamorphose effortlessly into the long term and the long term into the permanent.
Parliament's joint committee on human rights clearly recognises this and has called for a review of all such laws passed since September 11 2001. The committee rightly questions whether ministers can legitimately still argue that a "public emergency threatening the life of the nation" remains. And it further says that the government's "narrow" definition of complicity in torture is "worrying." Too right it is. And so is detention without charge, continual abortive attempts to extent the period of such detention, trials without publicly displayed evidence, trials without juries, derogation from aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights and all the rest of the panoply of repression which has become the norm of government over the last decade. The committee says that it is pleased to see that ministers claim that a commitment to human rights "underpinned" counter-terrorism work, but it said "all too often" it was "squeezed out by the imperatives of national security and public safety." Perhaps someone ought to warn these MPs that "all too often" is hardly a sufficient evaluation. Maybe it ought to be a building worker, because at least he or she would be able to remind them that, if just one part of underpinning is "squeezed out," the wall is likely to collapse and, if one wall falls down, the whole house is likely to collapse with it. The civil and human rights that used to be taken for granted in Britain are under extreme threat. Those rights, fought for by working people over hundreds of years, are not negotiable.
It was always obvious that the phoney "war on terror" would raise these dangers. Indeed, there are conspiracy theorists around who say that it is so convenient for a repressive government to have such an excuse that it may have been among the reasons for promoting the phoney war in the first place. While not going that far, simply because we're not in the habit of making assertions unsupported by concrete evidence, it needs to be remembered that many of the vicious repressions of nazi Germany were justified on the basis of allegations that an invisible enemy was eating away at society. Socialists have always been aware of this danger, which is one reason that the defence of civil rights is so high on any progressive agenda. And it is time that we reminded the MPs and peers in the two Houses of Parliament that it is not sufficient to merely sit on the sidelines and comment wryly on the erosion of liberty in the country. Nor is it enough to warn the government that it might have gone a teeny weeny bit too far. If the case is made, and the human rights committee has made it adequately, then it's the task of MPs to get off their behinds and do something concrete about it. Otherwise the committee system ceases to be of any democratic value and merely acts as an escape valve to let MPs air legitimate grievances and feel that they have done their duty, without actually changing anything.
His account shows that the US practised torture directly and sub-contracted some of it out to other governments. Mohamed's account, accepted as true by British and US judges, has confirmed accounts from other detainees. The Bush government never denied that it practised "torture-lite" but was much more uncomfortable with the actual details being made public. The British security services knew that Mohamed was being tortured. Their agents questioned him in Karachi after having been formally told about his treatment by the CIA. When Mohamed was being tortured and interrogated in Morocco some of the questions referred to information from the British security services and his answers were passed back to Britain. British security services didn't themselves cut Mohamed's genitals with a scalpel but they knew of the torture and threatened him if he didn't "co-operate." They were happy to be involved in the interrogation process. British citizens Salahuddin Amin and Zeeshan Siddiqui each describe being tortured by Pakistan's ISI and then questioned by MI5. Human Rights Watch quotes ISI agents as saying that in both cases MI5 knew that the men were being "processed in the traditional way" and were "grateful.".
The FCO justification is therefore a surprisingly honest statement of actual practice. British security services are prepared to turn a blind eye to torture. The problem for the government is that the law is unequivocal - torture is absolutely prohibited both under long-standing common law and the European Convention on Human Rights. The government is caught in a cleft stick, which is no doubt why it is refusing to publish its guidelines on torture. For most of us, the moral case against torture is sufficient. The deliberate infliction of pain on an individual is absolutely and indisputably wrong. When private individuals torture another human being, it's illegal and horrifying. But for proponents of torture, the legal and moral arguments are mere luxuries and they constantly fall back on the "ticking time bomb" argument in which human rights "liberals" are condemned for not condoning the ill-treatment of one person when it will - or might - save the lives of thousands. They see themselves as the pragmatic ones and the life-savers. The ticking time bomb scenario is staple fare all the time in film and TV programmes such as 24 and Spooks and you're likely to come across at least one during any night's viewing. We are all very familiar with the scenario and it's that familiarity through fiction that allows the torture proponents to get away with telling us that the scenario is real.
But in the real world, no-one can point to an actual ticking time bomb scenario because presumptions underlying it are false. The security services don't usually know that a terrorist attack is about to happen or who might know about it. They didn't know about September 11, despite the US having Zacarias Moussaoui in detention for immigration offences at the time. Moussaoui was subsequently convicted of being part of that conspiracy. But since the CIA didn't know September 11 2001 was about to happen it had no reason to interrogate someone detained for other reasons. International terrorism like most serious criminal activities depends on hardly any of the players knowing the full story, especially not the actual perpetrators. Who knows what most of the September 11 2001 hijackers knew in advance? Or what the London bombers knew before the morning of July 7? What we do know is that torture produces unreliable evidence. This seems obvious - people being tortured tell their torturers what they want to hear. So the detainee eagerly assents when asked if there's a bomb in London and the spooks go haring off on a wild-goose chase. In fact the bomb was always in Paris.
Evidence obtained under torture is so inherently unreliable that its substantive value is always nothing. How could anyone identify scraps of truth - if there are any - among the fiction invented to please the torturer? Torture proponents will argue that each of those presumptions simply requires better security work. But the point is that each presumption is so unrealistic that the overall scenario is utterly far-fetched. Which is why it has never happened. Were the scenario to be realistic, then surely it would have happened at least once. But I have never heard a torture proponent able to point to one instance. I appreciate that security services can't talk about terrorist attacks that they have prevented, but surely some example would have leaked out given the current debate? There is simply no example of torture preventing a ticking time bomb. And while nobody can point to one instance of lives being saved as a result of torture, what is clear is that the US and British government's war on terror has made us less safe.
Guantanamo, torture, uncritical support for Israel and the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are all reasons why some people come to believe that terrorist attacks can be justified. Renouncing torture is a pragmatic position as well as a legal and moral one; it makes us safer. Withdrawing from Afghanistan, providing reparations for Iraq and supporting the rights of the Palestinians would also help. Practising torture - and colluding with it - doesn't just fail to detect terrorism. It also helps to make terrorism more likely. It's of some comfort that MPs and peers obviously feel just as worried about the issue, since they consistently revisit the issue in committee, even though they appear to lack the courage to do anything more direct within the various Houses of Parliament. And it's quite proper that they should feel worried, since the provisions of the anti-terror legislation consitute the biggest erosion of civil liberties in living memory, with the possible exception of the Tory - and now new Labour as well - anti-union laws. It's an unfortunate fact of political life in bourgeois democratic Britain that, when it comes to restricting human and civil rights, the temporary and short term seem to metamorphose effortlessly into the long term and the long term into the permanent.
Parliament's joint committee on human rights clearly recognises this and has called for a review of all such laws passed since September 11 2001. The committee rightly questions whether ministers can legitimately still argue that a "public emergency threatening the life of the nation" remains. And it further says that the government's "narrow" definition of complicity in torture is "worrying." Too right it is. And so is detention without charge, continual abortive attempts to extent the period of such detention, trials without publicly displayed evidence, trials without juries, derogation from aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights and all the rest of the panoply of repression which has become the norm of government over the last decade. The committee says that it is pleased to see that ministers claim that a commitment to human rights "underpinned" counter-terrorism work, but it said "all too often" it was "squeezed out by the imperatives of national security and public safety." Perhaps someone ought to warn these MPs that "all too often" is hardly a sufficient evaluation. Maybe it ought to be a building worker, because at least he or she would be able to remind them that, if just one part of underpinning is "squeezed out," the wall is likely to collapse and, if one wall falls down, the whole house is likely to collapse with it. The civil and human rights that used to be taken for granted in Britain are under extreme threat. Those rights, fought for by working people over hundreds of years, are not negotiable.
It was always obvious that the phoney "war on terror" would raise these dangers. Indeed, there are conspiracy theorists around who say that it is so convenient for a repressive government to have such an excuse that it may have been among the reasons for promoting the phoney war in the first place. While not going that far, simply because we're not in the habit of making assertions unsupported by concrete evidence, it needs to be remembered that many of the vicious repressions of nazi Germany were justified on the basis of allegations that an invisible enemy was eating away at society. Socialists have always been aware of this danger, which is one reason that the defence of civil rights is so high on any progressive agenda. And it is time that we reminded the MPs and peers in the two Houses of Parliament that it is not sufficient to merely sit on the sidelines and comment wryly on the erosion of liberty in the country. Nor is it enough to warn the government that it might have gone a teeny weeny bit too far. If the case is made, and the human rights committee has made it adequately, then it's the task of MPs to get off their behinds and do something concrete about it. Otherwise the committee system ceases to be of any democratic value and merely acts as an escape valve to let MPs air legitimate grievances and feel that they have done their duty, without actually changing anything.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
The Tory nightmare inches closer
I want to look down the time-tunnel again at life under Cameron. But before thinking about the highlights of the Dave and George show coming to a Parliament near you soon, I want to consider what happens on May 6 2010. Last week I was trying to sketch out where the first Tory attacks might come. This provoked some debate about how to vote, and whether it even matters. I think what happens outside Parliament is more important than what happens in it - that the fate of the Miners' Strike in 1984 was more important than the fate of Neil Kinnock. But what happens inside the house still counts - a lot. For all their desperation to suck in Tories and businessmen - step forward Shaun Woodward, Paul Drayson, Quentin Davies and "Lord" David Simon - Labour still has a relation with the unions and a reliance on workers' votes. It might be hard to see it under the hail of privatisation, deregulation and war, but Labour's still more likely to throw a few more bones to our side, and the Tories quicker to show their claws. A decade's worth of Brown and Blair might have worn Labour's social democratic commitment down to a largely symbolic status. Alistair Darling is seriously considering reports from privatising Tory banker Gerry Grimstone, while Brown throws out a few cheap shots about Eton. But in the absence of anything else, symbols matter.
A vote is a big signal to their side and ours. Their side will take a vote for Cameron as a vote for compliance and a cue for more vicious cuts. Our side will be cheered by a vote for some kind of resistance. Most of that resistance might take place in the day-to-day struggle outside Parliament, but the election sets the scene. Votes for serious challengers to the left of Labour would send the strongest message. The past decade has seen some of the best electoral results for left candidates against new Labour. Unfortunately, instead of revising and preparing, we have spent the past five years tearing up our homework and throwing it in the bin. Votes for the last men and women standing from the left keep that project alive, but only just. I don't have a big list of Coventry's charms but living there gives voters the chance to put their X by the name of Dave Nellist of the Socialist Party. I thought Respect was wrong to reduce "socialism" to the initial letter "S" in their name, but there is still more left-wing principle in Salma Yaqoob than the entire Cabinet. Left-wing independents like Dai Davies in Blaenau Gwent and Val Wise in Preston deserve votes, as do whatever Solidarity and the Scottish Socialist Party can pull together north of the border. However, if the election is about demonstrating where the left stands, I don't think a string of lost deposits helps anyone.
So a vote against Cameron mostly means a vote for Labour. In most cases, not voting Labour will be taken as compliance with the Conservatives. The idea that abstention or wasted votes will be taken as a rejection of both government and opposition is a bit like hoping that when the monsters come, if we close our eyes they will all disappear. Cameron winning is a bad thing. Cameron winning by a landslide is worse. You get one more braying member of Cameron's Parliamentary Barmy Army for every 10,000 or so votes, one more foot soldier ready to get gung-ho for a forward assault on the welfare state. Now your Labour votes might mostly - with a few honourable exceptions - deliver an MP who fails to do much about that, but as US socialist Eugene Debs said: "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want and get it." Assuming that millions of people ignore my sage advice, what does a Tory government look like? Last week I looked at their likely economic policy. But how would they relate to the war on terror? They certainly like to make warlike noises. Shadow defence secretary Gerald Howarth announced at the last Conservative conference he would like to be called "Minister for War."
Forty years ago Howarth was in the university air cadets, so he likes to act like he is a wartime RAF pilot. Yet despite the Biggles behaviour, Howarth was actually a banker before he was an MP. His boss Liam Fox also likes the military act, although the former GP finds it harder to pull off the right macho posture convincingly. Fox is very much linked to the "Vulcan" wing of US Republicans and shares their enthusiasm for seeing enemies everywhere and threatening to bomb them. In one meeting at the Tory conference, Fox talk about "Resurgent threats: Terror, Russia and Iran?" Fox is desperate to take up arms against this sea of troubles, especially ones sold by the arms firms who sponsor most of his meetings. But all this warlike stance can't change the basic fact that their international policy will be like Labour's: "Whatever Obama says." Both Fox and Bob Ainsworth will only send troops abroad as dance partners to US forces. This is not wholly reassuring, given Obama's attempts to widen the Afghan conflict into Pakistan, but narrows the difference between the parties.
However, looking at some of the people involved suggests that the Tories will be more aggressively reactionary on the home front in the "war on terror." Cameron relies heavily on Michael Gove for his speeches about the dangers of "Islamic extremism." Gove in turn relies on Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a truly right-wing figure. In a 2006 speech on the "war on terror," Murray declared: "Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop." He claimed that political correctness and relativism were the "Aids of the West" leading to the "opportunist infection of Islam" which is "deadly." "Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board," he insisted. A Cameron victory brings this insidious creature closer to the political centre.
A vote is a big signal to their side and ours. Their side will take a vote for Cameron as a vote for compliance and a cue for more vicious cuts. Our side will be cheered by a vote for some kind of resistance. Most of that resistance might take place in the day-to-day struggle outside Parliament, but the election sets the scene. Votes for serious challengers to the left of Labour would send the strongest message. The past decade has seen some of the best electoral results for left candidates against new Labour. Unfortunately, instead of revising and preparing, we have spent the past five years tearing up our homework and throwing it in the bin. Votes for the last men and women standing from the left keep that project alive, but only just. I don't have a big list of Coventry's charms but living there gives voters the chance to put their X by the name of Dave Nellist of the Socialist Party. I thought Respect was wrong to reduce "socialism" to the initial letter "S" in their name, but there is still more left-wing principle in Salma Yaqoob than the entire Cabinet. Left-wing independents like Dai Davies in Blaenau Gwent and Val Wise in Preston deserve votes, as do whatever Solidarity and the Scottish Socialist Party can pull together north of the border. However, if the election is about demonstrating where the left stands, I don't think a string of lost deposits helps anyone.
So a vote against Cameron mostly means a vote for Labour. In most cases, not voting Labour will be taken as compliance with the Conservatives. The idea that abstention or wasted votes will be taken as a rejection of both government and opposition is a bit like hoping that when the monsters come, if we close our eyes they will all disappear. Cameron winning is a bad thing. Cameron winning by a landslide is worse. You get one more braying member of Cameron's Parliamentary Barmy Army for every 10,000 or so votes, one more foot soldier ready to get gung-ho for a forward assault on the welfare state. Now your Labour votes might mostly - with a few honourable exceptions - deliver an MP who fails to do much about that, but as US socialist Eugene Debs said: "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want and get it." Assuming that millions of people ignore my sage advice, what does a Tory government look like? Last week I looked at their likely economic policy. But how would they relate to the war on terror? They certainly like to make warlike noises. Shadow defence secretary Gerald Howarth announced at the last Conservative conference he would like to be called "Minister for War."
Forty years ago Howarth was in the university air cadets, so he likes to act like he is a wartime RAF pilot. Yet despite the Biggles behaviour, Howarth was actually a banker before he was an MP. His boss Liam Fox also likes the military act, although the former GP finds it harder to pull off the right macho posture convincingly. Fox is very much linked to the "Vulcan" wing of US Republicans and shares their enthusiasm for seeing enemies everywhere and threatening to bomb them. In one meeting at the Tory conference, Fox talk about "Resurgent threats: Terror, Russia and Iran?" Fox is desperate to take up arms against this sea of troubles, especially ones sold by the arms firms who sponsor most of his meetings. But all this warlike stance can't change the basic fact that their international policy will be like Labour's: "Whatever Obama says." Both Fox and Bob Ainsworth will only send troops abroad as dance partners to US forces. This is not wholly reassuring, given Obama's attempts to widen the Afghan conflict into Pakistan, but narrows the difference between the parties.
However, looking at some of the people involved suggests that the Tories will be more aggressively reactionary on the home front in the "war on terror." Cameron relies heavily on Michael Gove for his speeches about the dangers of "Islamic extremism." Gove in turn relies on Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a truly right-wing figure. In a 2006 speech on the "war on terror," Murray declared: "Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop." He claimed that political correctness and relativism were the "Aids of the West" leading to the "opportunist infection of Islam" which is "deadly." "Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board," he insisted. A Cameron victory brings this insidious creature closer to the political centre.
Monday, 22 March 2010
Bent over a barrel with WMD
General elections are supposed to be about choice, but this will be decidedly absent as far as the issues of Trident and nuclear disarmament are concerned. Opinion polls continue to show a majority opposed to Trident modernisation, but both Labour and the Conservatives insist that the replacement submarine programme will go ahead despite the £20 billion cost. The Liberal Democrats also maintain a characteristic ambivalence that allows them to criticise the expenditure on Trident while still supporting modernisation, albeit through a cheaper alternative. So much for choice. The new Labour government's position is both hypocritical and dishonest. While attempting to convince public opinion that it takes the issue of nuclear disarmament seriously in the run-up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in May, it has in fact accelerated the timetable for Trident in such a way as to make cancellation increasingly difficult after the election.
The deception can be traced back to the white paper on the future of Britain's nuclear weapons published in 2006. This was supposedly an objective exercise to analyse the range of options for future nuclear weapons, but it was always intended to have one outcome - to gain parliamentary support for a follow-on nuclear submarine programme. By reducing the operational life of the existing fleet from 30 years to 25 years and extending the development and production schedule for the new fleet from 14 to 17 years, the Ministry of Defence ensured that design work had to start in 2007, when it could have easily waited until 2012 or later. So when the government claims to have delayed decisions on the "initial gate" - when firm contractual commitments are made by the MoD for items such as the steel for the submarine hulls - in order to demonstrate a commitment to the NPT, it should be remembered that no expenditure needed to have been made at all as yet, and that initial concept and design costs for the submarine and reactor have already reached over £300 million.
Yet the scandal may be even greater. For the past 10 years the Barrow shipyard that will build Trident has been working on the Astute-class nuclear submarine programme, itself a multibillion-pound project. Originally, the plans included up to eight submarines but only four have been or are being built. Although there is a commitment to build another three, no firm production contracts have been agreed because of the overall MoD budgetary crisis, estimated now at a £21bn shortfall on equipment. This year over 300 workers have been laid off at the BAE Systems yard in Barrow because of the production slowdown. The MoD may have already taken the decision not to go ahead with the next four Astute submarines and to use the long-lead items, including the steel work for submarine hulls, as the basis for the Trident programme. In this way it can satisfy various objectives - save several billion pounds on Astute, avoid any major cancellation costs and contain expenditure on Trident as the pressure to find a cheaper alternative increases after the election. If so, the government is knowingly involved in a serious deception of both the British public and the international community.
Large sections of the Trident submarines are, in effect, already being produced and multibillion-pound contracts are in the pipeline. When the need for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation has never been greater, this is a truly appalling example to set the rest of the world. The real solution would be to cancel Trident altogether as Britain's contribution to international nuclear disarmament and to use the £20bn savings as part of a national arms conversion policy. Barrow could then be the hub for a major renewable energy programme in offshore wind and wave power using the abundant sources in the Irish Sea and the northern Atlantic. International studies clearly show that far more jobs could be generated in these new industries than could ever be maintained by nuclear weapons production. But as things stand, whichever party forms the next government, it will continue with Trident because it represents the last desperate attempt by our political and military elites to maintain the illusion of world-power status when, in reality, Britain is nothing more than a subservient ally to the United States in its imperial strategy to control energy resources. If the general election serves any purpose it should be to expose the moral and political bankruptcy of Britain and the other major nuclear weapon powers who are using the NPT as a smokescreen for the modernisation of their nuclear forces.
A new international framework for peace and disarmament is needed based on a comprehensive nuclear disarmament treaty that sets a timetable for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. And not at some indeterminate time in the future, but by 2020 at the latest.
The deception can be traced back to the white paper on the future of Britain's nuclear weapons published in 2006. This was supposedly an objective exercise to analyse the range of options for future nuclear weapons, but it was always intended to have one outcome - to gain parliamentary support for a follow-on nuclear submarine programme. By reducing the operational life of the existing fleet from 30 years to 25 years and extending the development and production schedule for the new fleet from 14 to 17 years, the Ministry of Defence ensured that design work had to start in 2007, when it could have easily waited until 2012 or later. So when the government claims to have delayed decisions on the "initial gate" - when firm contractual commitments are made by the MoD for items such as the steel for the submarine hulls - in order to demonstrate a commitment to the NPT, it should be remembered that no expenditure needed to have been made at all as yet, and that initial concept and design costs for the submarine and reactor have already reached over £300 million.
Yet the scandal may be even greater. For the past 10 years the Barrow shipyard that will build Trident has been working on the Astute-class nuclear submarine programme, itself a multibillion-pound project. Originally, the plans included up to eight submarines but only four have been or are being built. Although there is a commitment to build another three, no firm production contracts have been agreed because of the overall MoD budgetary crisis, estimated now at a £21bn shortfall on equipment. This year over 300 workers have been laid off at the BAE Systems yard in Barrow because of the production slowdown. The MoD may have already taken the decision not to go ahead with the next four Astute submarines and to use the long-lead items, including the steel work for submarine hulls, as the basis for the Trident programme. In this way it can satisfy various objectives - save several billion pounds on Astute, avoid any major cancellation costs and contain expenditure on Trident as the pressure to find a cheaper alternative increases after the election. If so, the government is knowingly involved in a serious deception of both the British public and the international community.
Large sections of the Trident submarines are, in effect, already being produced and multibillion-pound contracts are in the pipeline. When the need for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation has never been greater, this is a truly appalling example to set the rest of the world. The real solution would be to cancel Trident altogether as Britain's contribution to international nuclear disarmament and to use the £20bn savings as part of a national arms conversion policy. Barrow could then be the hub for a major renewable energy programme in offshore wind and wave power using the abundant sources in the Irish Sea and the northern Atlantic. International studies clearly show that far more jobs could be generated in these new industries than could ever be maintained by nuclear weapons production. But as things stand, whichever party forms the next government, it will continue with Trident because it represents the last desperate attempt by our political and military elites to maintain the illusion of world-power status when, in reality, Britain is nothing more than a subservient ally to the United States in its imperial strategy to control energy resources. If the general election serves any purpose it should be to expose the moral and political bankruptcy of Britain and the other major nuclear weapon powers who are using the NPT as a smokescreen for the modernisation of their nuclear forces.
A new international framework for peace and disarmament is needed based on a comprehensive nuclear disarmament treaty that sets a timetable for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. And not at some indeterminate time in the future, but by 2020 at the latest.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Convinced of Britain's guilt?
Gordon Brown chose the Daily Torygraph to signal his intention to prevent magistrates from issuing arrest warrants against visiting war criminals. Brown, as a sponsor of Israel's ethnic cleansing arm the Jewish National Fund, was obviously embarrassed by the arrest warrant issued last November for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. He explained his planned restriction of "politically motivated arrest warrants" to the Crown Prosecution Service by insisting that Britain's standing in the world could be "compromised" by "tolerating such gestures." What a curiously truncated vision he must have about what constitutes the world.
Israel is, of course, up in arms about having its war crimes described as such and its war criminals at risk of facing trial, as others from Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia have. Former US secretary of state Colin Powell - the man who presented fraudulent evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the UN to justify invasion of Iraq - is also said to be worried about the possibility of being arrested in Britain.
Far from the rest of the world seeing Britain's standing in the world compromised by identification of the likes of Livni and Powell as having a war crimes case to answer, a substantial section of the global population is already convinced of their guilt. For good measure, the same assessment goes for Brown, Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw, who were up to their necks in the duplicitous process to construct a false prospectus to justify a US war that was never about weapons of mass destruction. The intention was always regime change, which is illegal under international law, and it was designed to bolster US global hegemony and control of Iraqi oil and gas resources. Brown brazenly asserts that "politically motivated" organisations and individuals are simply seeking headlines because there is no realistic chance of a successful prosecution, but the wave of popular anger that greeted the Iraq invasion and the murderous Israeli assault on Gaza casts doubt on his certainty. And how would Brown, a politician, determine when a course of action is "politically motivated?"
Is Richard Goldstone "politically motivated?" He carried out the UN inquiry into Israel's war on Gaza and was forced by the facts to conclude that there was evidence of war crimes. He spotlighted Palestinian use of rockets against Israeli civilian targets, but the bulk of his report was directed against Israeli forces, who killed 1,400 people and wounded over 5,000. The Goldstone report catalogued Israel's "numerous instances of deliberate attacks on civilians" and the deployment of white phosphorus and high explosive artillery shells against civilian targets in Gaza, labelling these acts "violations of humanitarian law." Since then, an Israeli death squad has forged passports from a number of countries, including Britain, to enable it to kill Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the United Arab Emirates. Israeli politicians played their usual game of refusing to confirm or deny Mossad involvement, while giving a nod and a wink to indicate that Tel Aviv would continue to flout international law. Only the aforementioned Livni openly applauded the killing and she has the gall to resent being called a terrorist. Brown's avowed intent to change British legislation at Israel's behest augurs badly for the government's supposed "full investigation" into the forgery and misuse of British passports in Dubai.
Israel is, of course, up in arms about having its war crimes described as such and its war criminals at risk of facing trial, as others from Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia have. Former US secretary of state Colin Powell - the man who presented fraudulent evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the UN to justify invasion of Iraq - is also said to be worried about the possibility of being arrested in Britain.
Far from the rest of the world seeing Britain's standing in the world compromised by identification of the likes of Livni and Powell as having a war crimes case to answer, a substantial section of the global population is already convinced of their guilt. For good measure, the same assessment goes for Brown, Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw, who were up to their necks in the duplicitous process to construct a false prospectus to justify a US war that was never about weapons of mass destruction. The intention was always regime change, which is illegal under international law, and it was designed to bolster US global hegemony and control of Iraqi oil and gas resources. Brown brazenly asserts that "politically motivated" organisations and individuals are simply seeking headlines because there is no realistic chance of a successful prosecution, but the wave of popular anger that greeted the Iraq invasion and the murderous Israeli assault on Gaza casts doubt on his certainty. And how would Brown, a politician, determine when a course of action is "politically motivated?"
Is Richard Goldstone "politically motivated?" He carried out the UN inquiry into Israel's war on Gaza and was forced by the facts to conclude that there was evidence of war crimes. He spotlighted Palestinian use of rockets against Israeli civilian targets, but the bulk of his report was directed against Israeli forces, who killed 1,400 people and wounded over 5,000. The Goldstone report catalogued Israel's "numerous instances of deliberate attacks on civilians" and the deployment of white phosphorus and high explosive artillery shells against civilian targets in Gaza, labelling these acts "violations of humanitarian law." Since then, an Israeli death squad has forged passports from a number of countries, including Britain, to enable it to kill Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the United Arab Emirates. Israeli politicians played their usual game of refusing to confirm or deny Mossad involvement, while giving a nod and a wink to indicate that Tel Aviv would continue to flout international law. Only the aforementioned Livni openly applauded the killing and she has the gall to resent being called a terrorist. Brown's avowed intent to change British legislation at Israel's behest augurs badly for the government's supposed "full investigation" into the forgery and misuse of British passports in Dubai.
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, 27 January 2010
Blair & Brown have blood on their hands
The real legacy of the war in Iraq has been exposed this week. This, together with the appearance of Tony Blair in front of the Chilcot inquiry, has reignited anger over the Iraq war. Many people are rightly sceptical about the outcome of Blair’s hearing—it will not be the grilling the majority wants. But the lies and horror of the war continue to seep out. An official Iraqi study found more than 40 sites across the country were contaminated with high levels of radiation and toxins. These are the result of the use of depleted uranium shells by US and British forces in Iraq. Iraq’s energy resources continue to be sold off. The Iraqi government has signed a deal with oil giants Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell PLC to develop a major oil field in the south of the country. This gives ownership of the oil fields to the companies for 20 years. There are an estimated 8.6 billion barrels of oil in West Qurna.The oil giants will pay the Iraqi government $1.90 for each barrel of oil they extract. But when this is refined and sold on the world market it will fetch $78 a barrel at present prices.
George Bush and Blair’s war has left a trail of destruction. There are 4.5 million Iraqi refugees inside and outside the country. Electricity supplies have dropped dramatically in Baghdad.In 2008, 61 percent of Iraqis said that they believed that the US military presence made the security situation worse. Many want the occupiers out of their country as soon as possible.The price for the Iraq war has been paid by the one million killed - the estimate of the most credible surveys. Blair is responsible for this - and Gordon Brown signed the cheques. On Monday at least 36 people died in coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad and in shoot-outs between security forces. The police threat to impose a ring of steel around the Chilcot inquiry on Friday when Blair appears is another attempt to protect the guilty. Undaunted the Stop the War Coalition organised a whole day of events outside the inquiry. They include a protest in the morning, then speeches, performances and music throughout the day. A naming of some of the many war dead was also to be held. Those reading the names included members of Military Families Against the War, who have lost loved ones in Blair’s wars. The Iraqi people deserve a voice in this inquiry, to tell their side of the story. As they have been deprived of this right, it is the role of the anti-war movement to make Blair’s appearance a nightmare.
Tony Blair should be tried for his crimes against Iraq—and the legacy the war has left there. million Iraqis have died, leaving millions orphaned and widowed. The war and occupation have made as many as four million people into refugees. The whole infrastructure of Iraq has been devastated by the occupation. Our heritage has been looted and destroyed, the environment has been poisoned and vital water sources have been lost. Iraq used to be the breadbasket of the region—now once fertile lands are in danger of being transformed into a desert. Children are growing up suffering from disease and deformities. Sectarianism has been elevated to all state institutions and the country is dangerously fragmented. Corruption is rife; government officials have been caught taking bribes of millions of dollars from foreign companies. Iraq’s precious oil resources have been auctioned off to the highest bidder. Meanwhile the profits of private security companies have soared. Ordinary Iraqis who have suffered the most from the illegal war and occupation are left to cope with living under the threat of violence. Unemployment now stands at 50 percent in a country where infrastructure has been shattered. Yet despite everything the Iraqi people will continue with their determined struggle to reject the occupation and build a democratic, free Iraq.'
Protesters were to make their opposition to the war in Afghanistan clear at a meeting of world leaders in London this week. Top government officials planned to come together to restabilise the Nato occupation of Afghanistan. It is going so badly that key figures are proposing negotiations with sections of the Taliban. Gordon Brown is hosting the event which will include European leaders, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, explained the Taliban U-turn, saying, “If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority. I think the time has come to do it.” Eide wants the US to drop certain leading Taliban members from its list of terrorists in order to open up negotiations. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, has also joined the call for talks saying there has been “enough fighting”. He believes Obama’s 30,000 strong troop surge will aid this process, weakening the Taliban and making them “look desperate”. He believes that this could lead to them looking to make peace. It is highly unlikely that this will be the result of the surge. The resistance to the occupation is growing in confidence. Last week the Taliban launched attacks in the centre of Kabul. Plans by the British military to launch a new offensive in the Helmand province will see the deaths of countless Afghans and British soldiers.
But US pressure on other countries to send more troops is having some effect. It was leaked this week that the German government plans to send a further 500 soldiers. This is despite their pledge to reduce troop numbers because of public opposition to the war. The conference is designed to apply more of this pressure, seeing more troops sent to kill and be killed. The war has wrecked the lives of Afghan people and will continue to do so while the occupation continues. The conference will also discuss Yemen—set to become a new front in the “war on terror”. The anti-war movement cannot allow this to happen. We must step up the pressure to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Only this can end the ongoing devastation. The Chilcot inquiry was set up to whitewash the Labour government’s lies over the 2003 Iraq war. But it isn’t all going to plan. The inquiry team is the embodiment of what the establishment refer to as a “safe pair of hands”. The chair is a former adviser for the intelligence services. Another member wrote a speech for Tony Blair justifying “humanitarian” war. Nobody in the inquiry cares to ask the Iraqis what they think, and no politicians will be prosecuted at the end of it. Nonetheless, the contradictions and contortions of the government over the invasion of Iraq are seeping out.
Two approaches have emerged from various politicians, spin doctors and lawyers. The first is to brazen it out with the “we did nothing wrong” line. The other is to blame somebody else. In the brazen camp sit Blair’s spin doctors, Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell. Campbell is a teller of stories; contradictory and mutually incompatible. He told one version of events in his rather long diaries, another to the Hutton inquiry, and now a third at the Chilcot inquiry. This leads to absurdities. Campbell stands by the dodgy dossier, including the nonsense about Iraq being able to attack Britain at 45 minutes notice. Even chief spook John Scarlett, who “wrote” the dossier, admits it’s flawed. But not Campbell. He says no one sexed up the dossier in its countless rewrites. Campbell claims never to have been in the room when the rewrites he knew nothing about weren’t happening. Powell said that he joked with Campbell about how the Evening Standard newspaper would react to the dossier. The Standard reacted as it was meant to, putting the 45 minutes claim on its front page. Cabinet ministers have led the “not me, guv” school.
Former defence minister Geoff "Buff" Hoon has frequently been portrayed as a bit of an idiot. He used his appearance at the inquiry to reinforce that perception, presenting himself as being vaguely aware of what was going on, but not expecting anyone to actually tell him anything. This had the advantage of distancing him from all the key decisions about the war. His advisers no doubt told him, “Better a fool than a knave.” In contrast, Jack Straw said he was at the centre of everything - “If I had refused support, the UK’s participation in the military action would not in practice have been possible.” Straw had a plan, lots of plans. Though after hearing him it’s not clear if anyone other than Straw understood them. Especially when he says things like, “You’d think you’d got a kind of a deal, and then it would go back into this sort of extraordinary sort of beehive of the American system and you would have to wait until some of them, the bees, sniffed an odour from the great hive.” Straw stressed how hard it was for him to support the war. He hinted that anything difficult should be directed at someone else. He even suggested that the inquiry should ask a question to Robin Cook, who has been dead for five years.
But former cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull suggested that Straw had kept his doubts deeply hidden. He said, “This didn’t look like a man who was privately thinking, ‘This whole thing is flawed. I just don’t think this adds up’.” Underlying all this is the chaos of the last days of the Labour government. Blair is fighting a rearguard action to defend his reputation. Brown’s people will say that it was all very difficult, but everything bad that happened was because of Blair. The government’s lawyers will reveal that they thought the war was illegal, but could not stop it. Most witnesses will say that they wrestled with their consciences and their consciences lost. The inquiry gives us an insight into the world of lies and hypocrisy at the heart of the government. Decisions are made on sofas, not in parliament or the cabinet. Those in the loop make up lies to get the result they want and the outcome is the death of hundreds of thousands. The Chilcot inquiry will not hold the guilty to account for that. So whilst they all point the finger at one another, they have also pulled a trigger killing millions of innocent Iraqi civilians. And ultimately they've also shot the hopes of an election win in May. But as they bicker amongst the bodies we know this for sure. Each Labour member who either supported the unjust war or said nothing about it have blood on their hands. And no matter how much they attempt to scrub it off, that blood will remain an eternal legacy blemishing Labour eternally.
George Bush and Blair’s war has left a trail of destruction. There are 4.5 million Iraqi refugees inside and outside the country. Electricity supplies have dropped dramatically in Baghdad.In 2008, 61 percent of Iraqis said that they believed that the US military presence made the security situation worse. Many want the occupiers out of their country as soon as possible.The price for the Iraq war has been paid by the one million killed - the estimate of the most credible surveys. Blair is responsible for this - and Gordon Brown signed the cheques. On Monday at least 36 people died in coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad and in shoot-outs between security forces. The police threat to impose a ring of steel around the Chilcot inquiry on Friday when Blair appears is another attempt to protect the guilty. Undaunted the Stop the War Coalition organised a whole day of events outside the inquiry. They include a protest in the morning, then speeches, performances and music throughout the day. A naming of some of the many war dead was also to be held. Those reading the names included members of Military Families Against the War, who have lost loved ones in Blair’s wars. The Iraqi people deserve a voice in this inquiry, to tell their side of the story. As they have been deprived of this right, it is the role of the anti-war movement to make Blair’s appearance a nightmare.
Tony Blair should be tried for his crimes against Iraq—and the legacy the war has left there. million Iraqis have died, leaving millions orphaned and widowed. The war and occupation have made as many as four million people into refugees. The whole infrastructure of Iraq has been devastated by the occupation. Our heritage has been looted and destroyed, the environment has been poisoned and vital water sources have been lost. Iraq used to be the breadbasket of the region—now once fertile lands are in danger of being transformed into a desert. Children are growing up suffering from disease and deformities. Sectarianism has been elevated to all state institutions and the country is dangerously fragmented. Corruption is rife; government officials have been caught taking bribes of millions of dollars from foreign companies. Iraq’s precious oil resources have been auctioned off to the highest bidder. Meanwhile the profits of private security companies have soared. Ordinary Iraqis who have suffered the most from the illegal war and occupation are left to cope with living under the threat of violence. Unemployment now stands at 50 percent in a country where infrastructure has been shattered. Yet despite everything the Iraqi people will continue with their determined struggle to reject the occupation and build a democratic, free Iraq.'
Protesters were to make their opposition to the war in Afghanistan clear at a meeting of world leaders in London this week. Top government officials planned to come together to restabilise the Nato occupation of Afghanistan. It is going so badly that key figures are proposing negotiations with sections of the Taliban. Gordon Brown is hosting the event which will include European leaders, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, explained the Taliban U-turn, saying, “If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority. I think the time has come to do it.” Eide wants the US to drop certain leading Taliban members from its list of terrorists in order to open up negotiations. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, has also joined the call for talks saying there has been “enough fighting”. He believes Obama’s 30,000 strong troop surge will aid this process, weakening the Taliban and making them “look desperate”. He believes that this could lead to them looking to make peace. It is highly unlikely that this will be the result of the surge. The resistance to the occupation is growing in confidence. Last week the Taliban launched attacks in the centre of Kabul. Plans by the British military to launch a new offensive in the Helmand province will see the deaths of countless Afghans and British soldiers.
But US pressure on other countries to send more troops is having some effect. It was leaked this week that the German government plans to send a further 500 soldiers. This is despite their pledge to reduce troop numbers because of public opposition to the war. The conference is designed to apply more of this pressure, seeing more troops sent to kill and be killed. The war has wrecked the lives of Afghan people and will continue to do so while the occupation continues. The conference will also discuss Yemen—set to become a new front in the “war on terror”. The anti-war movement cannot allow this to happen. We must step up the pressure to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Only this can end the ongoing devastation. The Chilcot inquiry was set up to whitewash the Labour government’s lies over the 2003 Iraq war. But it isn’t all going to plan. The inquiry team is the embodiment of what the establishment refer to as a “safe pair of hands”. The chair is a former adviser for the intelligence services. Another member wrote a speech for Tony Blair justifying “humanitarian” war. Nobody in the inquiry cares to ask the Iraqis what they think, and no politicians will be prosecuted at the end of it. Nonetheless, the contradictions and contortions of the government over the invasion of Iraq are seeping out.
Two approaches have emerged from various politicians, spin doctors and lawyers. The first is to brazen it out with the “we did nothing wrong” line. The other is to blame somebody else. In the brazen camp sit Blair’s spin doctors, Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell. Campbell is a teller of stories; contradictory and mutually incompatible. He told one version of events in his rather long diaries, another to the Hutton inquiry, and now a third at the Chilcot inquiry. This leads to absurdities. Campbell stands by the dodgy dossier, including the nonsense about Iraq being able to attack Britain at 45 minutes notice. Even chief spook John Scarlett, who “wrote” the dossier, admits it’s flawed. But not Campbell. He says no one sexed up the dossier in its countless rewrites. Campbell claims never to have been in the room when the rewrites he knew nothing about weren’t happening. Powell said that he joked with Campbell about how the Evening Standard newspaper would react to the dossier. The Standard reacted as it was meant to, putting the 45 minutes claim on its front page. Cabinet ministers have led the “not me, guv” school.
Former defence minister Geoff "Buff" Hoon has frequently been portrayed as a bit of an idiot. He used his appearance at the inquiry to reinforce that perception, presenting himself as being vaguely aware of what was going on, but not expecting anyone to actually tell him anything. This had the advantage of distancing him from all the key decisions about the war. His advisers no doubt told him, “Better a fool than a knave.” In contrast, Jack Straw said he was at the centre of everything - “If I had refused support, the UK’s participation in the military action would not in practice have been possible.” Straw had a plan, lots of plans. Though after hearing him it’s not clear if anyone other than Straw understood them. Especially when he says things like, “You’d think you’d got a kind of a deal, and then it would go back into this sort of extraordinary sort of beehive of the American system and you would have to wait until some of them, the bees, sniffed an odour from the great hive.” Straw stressed how hard it was for him to support the war. He hinted that anything difficult should be directed at someone else. He even suggested that the inquiry should ask a question to Robin Cook, who has been dead for five years.
But former cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull suggested that Straw had kept his doubts deeply hidden. He said, “This didn’t look like a man who was privately thinking, ‘This whole thing is flawed. I just don’t think this adds up’.” Underlying all this is the chaos of the last days of the Labour government. Blair is fighting a rearguard action to defend his reputation. Brown’s people will say that it was all very difficult, but everything bad that happened was because of Blair. The government’s lawyers will reveal that they thought the war was illegal, but could not stop it. Most witnesses will say that they wrestled with their consciences and their consciences lost. The inquiry gives us an insight into the world of lies and hypocrisy at the heart of the government. Decisions are made on sofas, not in parliament or the cabinet. Those in the loop make up lies to get the result they want and the outcome is the death of hundreds of thousands. The Chilcot inquiry will not hold the guilty to account for that. So whilst they all point the finger at one another, they have also pulled a trigger killing millions of innocent Iraqi civilians. And ultimately they've also shot the hopes of an election win in May. But as they bicker amongst the bodies we know this for sure. Each Labour member who either supported the unjust war or said nothing about it have blood on their hands. And no matter how much they attempt to scrub it off, that blood will remain an eternal legacy blemishing Labour eternally.
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