Lee Salter

Why not riot?

2011-08-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

So here we are sitting among the cinders of a wave of riots across the UK, pondering. What have we learned?

Perhaps the most significant lesson we have learned is how reluctant so many people are to learn anything at all. The wilful ignorance of “middle England” can indeed be shocking, but never so much as when it cognitive capacities are turned to computing the actions of another culture.

The stupidity of the “there is no excuse” brigade is startling. The inability or unwillingness to undertake what sociologists call a hermeneutic exercise is not only worrying but dangerous too. “I think it is disgusting”, “I have been XYZ but I would never do THAT” refers not to the situation but to the self-obsession that is carried along with self-assured liberal individualism. “It is not what I choose” is the extent of possible understanding among so many, as if “choice” is something that all experience in the same way.

But switching electricity suppliers to gain a slightly cheaper or slightly greener deal is not the same at the monotony of choosing whether to catch the bus or to buy some weed. Choosing to work as a waitress to save up enough money to go “slumming it” across east Asia for 6 months in a gap year is not the same as choosing whether to find permanent work in Burger King or to deal crack to help Mum pay the rent. Choosing whether to go to the cinema or to have friends over to dinner is not the same as choosing which street corner to hang out on because you're not allowed back into the flat. The humiliation felt when ubiquitous adverts merely signal your poverty is different to the guilt-relief of spending an extra 20p on a packet of coffee because it is kind to third world producers.

It is a different experience when the luxury apartments built on the formerly council-owned playing field (sold to raise funds to renovate your dilapidated council block) serve to mock your poverty rather than to stand as an aspirational living environment. It is even more galling when the young, educated professionals who move in to what was your community demand shops you can't afford to shop in, move their kids to schools you can't attend and look upon you with contempt. “Fucking chav” becomes the acceptable version of “fucking nigger” as you, your culture, your community, friends and family are ridiculed daily in smug television comedies.

It is probably worth noting here that Little Britain's Vicky Pollard – from Bristol's deprived Fishponds area – is played by the son of a successful London business man who went to private school and then on to Bristol university. And at the same time it is probably worth noting that the cheap 9 carrot gold bracelet and shell suit are indeed prized possessions, they do mean something to the wearer and give them a sense of self-esteem, even though viewers can't understand how. But it is okay to take the piss, to ridicule, to belittle the poor. Not the blacks any more, but the poor for sure.

The mediated image dominates because in every city across the country middle-class parents take on huge debts to create middle-class ghettos so they can ensure their children don't mix with the chavs, the Pakis and the niggers. Any sacrifice is acceptable to ensure that Jilly and Johnny get to the best, whitest schools and avoid at any cost contact with the unclean and foul-mouthed. House prices rise in those areas and fall near the shit schools. Modern day segregation becomes sanitised as the “post code lottery” or “parental choice”. But chavs, Pakis and niggers tend not to have THAT choice. It is not a matter of simple will power for THAT family to move from their two bed, 12^th floor council flat in Peckham to a five bed villa in Highgate so the kids can go to a better school.

Meanwhile, they remain the kids whose flats the indignant speed past in their cars on the commute from work to the safety of a nice, sterilised community; who cause nice people to cross the road rather than walk past; who the security guard follows around the shop; who the police slam up against the wall to stop and search; whose three GCSEs from a shit school merely accentuate the significance of their surnames and postcodes.

The irony of indignant screaming “I have to work like a dog to pay my mortgage” is surely not lost on these kids. Work? Mortgage?

To add to the milieux, we are all told that to consume is the ultimate in self-control. Self-definition, social acceptability, self-worth is drawn out from consumption habits. Government after government has relaxed rules on advertising, so at every turn we are told to be slimmer, more tanned, to have better, newer clothes, that we need need need a touch-phone, an iPad, Ray Bans, a car that gives us status and so on. Yet at the same time the means to achieve these symbols of worth are denied to these kids, at least in terms of the “have it now” culture we inhabit. This exposes hopeless culture of youths from the estates, which is not exclusively caused by their endogenous experience, but also a media world that presents a fundamental contradiction in degraded "culture" between the commercial world of material desire and an economic world that forbids them the legitimate means to achieve that.

To the minds of so many, “why should other kids have all this just because they were born into a richer family. It wasn't my choice to be born here, now, so why should I suffer the consequences?”

We are told that greed is good, that accumulation of goods is the ultimate aspiration. Indeed, when capitalism is questioned we are told that “greed is natural”. We are told that we are only individuals, that society doesn't exist. We are told to “define yourself”. We are told that the selfish pursuit of our individual interest is the height of human civilisation. We are told that wars and violence overseas are not only necessary but good. We are told that killers should be celebrated in parades. We are told that capital accumulation is good and that to look after others who lack our means is to demotivate them. Yet when these principles motivate poor kids, we are indignant! Why would kids care about who and what they smash up when they are hopeless, ignored, excluded, ridiculed.

Such suggestions are not mere speculation, highfalutin theorisations about possibly life contexts. If any of the indignant could have the backbone to speak to such kids, to go to the estates, to know the culture, they would know that the attitude speaks of “they don't give a fuck about us, we don't give a fuck about them”. And why should they? What investment do they have in national prosperity, law and order, market stability when their life conditions tend to be in inverse relation to those phenomena. To be sure, throughout the 1980s, when the rich became richer, the lot of the poor worsened. Can we really expect kids from the estates to care?

When a government of millionaires that serves banks before all else cuts social services, closes community centres, takes away the £40 per week that poor people are given to continue their studies, closes libraries and youth centres, cuts the Sure Start scheme to help the poorest kids, to ditch public sector workers (who make up so many of the working people in the estates), claiming that there's no money for anything other than the banks and war, what do we expect? When police chiefs resign for corruption, and officers shoot youths dead on the street and then lie to explain what happened, is it likely that they will be respected? When there is no respect from anyone toward those people, is it likely that they will show “respect”? Do we really expect kids from the estates to sit back, shut up and take “their share of the pain”?

Indeed even those who accept the reality of the riots but condemn the targets of the rioters (especially small businesses and innocent bystanders) are projecting an alien rationality onto the rioters – “political” targets mean little in a depoliticised, cynical postmodern youth culture that is socially and culturally excluded and effectively disenfranchised. Yet it is also folly to accept that the very real outrages are definitive of the whole uprising, though it is instructive that this is how news organisations chose to frame it, while refusing to give use such metanyms to explain the British presence in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Is it really so difficult to understand that there are reasons the riots involved kids from Brixton, Toxteth and St Pauls? Is it so difficult to spot the difference between Brixton and Pimlico, Toxteth and The Wirral, Clifton and St Pauls. Is it really the case that the differences consist merely in the moral orientation of kids who live there rather than housing, wealth, material well-being, health, job opportunities, schools, cultural capital, political influence, amenities and leisure facilities?

To consider recent events on the basis of one's own experience, to refuse to even try to understand from the perspective of those participating in the uprising, to ignore history, to dismiss sociology, to deny politics may be reassuring for those more interested in self-assured ignorance, but will not more one inch toward resolution. The ignorance of the indigants flies in the face of historical fact, and so we are destined to repeat history – the other times as farce, this time as tragedy.

The conditions that led to the riots of the early 1980s are still with us. Or rather, the government has re-created them. It is not necessary to indulge left-wing analyses of protest to have an inkling as to why this occurred. In the 1980s, after the media and public indignation over the actions of the niggers and chavs, the Tory backed Scarman Enquiry told us what we have no excuse to ignore. Scarman pointed to unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, heavy-handed policing as the main contributory factors in the 1980s riots. Nearly 20 years after Scarman, the Macpherson report pointed out that Scarman's recommendations had been largely ignored. It is reasonable so expect that the findings of any inquiry into the recent riots will be similarly ignored.

Cuts: All in it Together?

2010-10-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

Whenever we are told that "we" are all in it together at the same time you are told "there is no alternative", do take note that this is at best an anti-democratic and at worst a fascistic sentiment. Indeed those who use such polemical tricks tend to have a considerable investment in persuading the multiplicity of peoples that they share their interests and concerns.

Of course, in reality they don't. It is a simple and straight-forward, time honoured tactic to align the perception of the working majority with the narrow interests of the political and economic elite.

These interests of course become the "national interests", the "nation" being embodied in the interests of the political and economic elite. As a consequence, any objection to these "shared" interests become a cancerous threat, "treachery", a "pestilence". Incidentally, these terms are those used by the Nazi regime in 1930s Germany to describe opponents.

Burke's 1939 paper, "The rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘battle’"discusses how those who merely pointed to the economic cause of national disturbances were treated. Those who pointed to a diversity of conflicting interests were blamed for the disturbances themselves!

'People so dislike the idea of internal division that, where there is a real internal division, their dislike can easily be turned against the man or group who would so much as name it, let alone proposing to act upon it. Their natural and justified resentment against internal division itself, is turned against the diagnostician who states it as a fact. This diagnostician, it is felt, is the cause of the disunity he named'

So what fate for the "no cuts" brigade? Well, naturally given the times in which we are living, they face a very modern form of the fate of opponents to Nazi explanations of unity. As Chomsky tells us, propaganda is to capitalism what a bludgeon is to totalitarianism, though the bludgeon will no doubt become a key method of controlling "dissent" in the near future. At the same time, though, the propaganda machine is in full swing, with every newspaper and television station in the land allowing us to discuss to our hearts are content where but never whether to cut, to consider which of the most under-privileged should take their "share" of the pain most.

In the mean time, the voices that oppose cuts struggle to be heard amongst the fascistic chorus of "there is no alternative" (remember that one in the 1980s? Oh how history persists). The narrowcast is of course faithfully situated as as quaint, naive discourse that is the corporate media's democratic duty to report on, but which surely cannot be taken seriously.

So explanations need to be offered for this state of affairs. In the first instance it is noteworthy to take account of the fact that those pushing through the cuts do not share "our" pain. As the above graphic shows, they are rather wealthy. They are not like us.

Now, I ought to provide some evidence for this assertion. Well, let's take from right-wing sources, to avoid the old "well they would say that, they're just jealous" line.

This Is Money.co.uk refers to the cabinet as "the £60m Cabinet". 23 of 29 ministers have assets worth more than £1m. That is, we are governed by millionaires, who depend for their survival on investment and banking rather than hard work, decent wages and public services. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are worth £8.6 million between them. Even our fair and just Lib Dem leader is worth £1.9m.

Not only are they not in it together with us, but as the excellent Dispatches shows, they are actively trying to get away from us by stashing their millions in off-shore accounts.

Most of the Cabinet was schooled at private schools and then Oxford or Cambridge.

So what about us? Who are we?

Well, according to the National Audit Office, the national average income in 2009 was around £24,500. That's far, far less than the quarterly interest the Man of the People, Dave Cameron, would earn if his assets were liquid assets in a bank account.

In July 2010 that stalwart of the far left, the Daily Mail informed us that workers' annual pay had dropped £2,600 in SIX MONTHS!

That other great voice of socialist agitation, the Daily Telegraph, informed us in the same month that the average household bill was by then higher than the average salary. So not only are we poorer, but things also cost more relatively. The Telegraph report suggested that the average annual salary by then was £23,244.

So we find ourselves surely wondering just how we are "all in it together" and why we "all need to take our fair share of the pain". Well, actually, I agree with the last statement. My fair share of the pain, and the fair share of the tens of millions of hard working persons and the unemployed, is 0. None. Nothing. I didn't cause the crisis. I didn't benefit from creating speculative bubbles. I didn't vote for policies that de-regulated banking. I did NOTHING to cause this.

By no reasonable measure is it true that the "share" of the pain shouldered by poor, the unemployed, the elderly or children is "fair". Especially whilst the banking sector is allows to carry on with business as usual.

Indeed, there is no real consensus, besides that imposed by the corporate media, that cuts are necessary. There is very little evidence that public spending is in any way excessive or that it in any way caused an economic crisis, as my colleague shows very clearly.

Indeed, if you cast your mind back, at the beginning of the crisis, bankers were to blame. Yet the propaganda machinery of capital has proven extremely adept at transforming public consciousness from anger towards those most deserving of it, to a perverse kind of self-hatred.

Those same news sources that inform us that we are getting poorer and suffering disproportionate do so only with the proviso that this is unfortunate but necessary. Its a kind of charitable pity. A resignation to the given.

Therefore we now face one of those social-pathological situations in which working people have been persuaded to blame their schools, their healthcare, their pensions and their own employment for the malaise that has infected capitalism.

And the state? Well Mussolini described our situation so clearly. “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

Science: Religion for the 21st century?

2010-09-21T06:04:00.000-07:00

Using Religious tactics to promote Science will only cause more hatred, argues Holly Tarn.

Richard Dawkins, an Oxford professor, has recently embarked on an anti-Religious campaign, saying that it is time for Scientists to “stop sitting on the fence” and start “fighting back against Religion”. But in doing so, surely Dawkins is promoting exactly the kind of separatism that he denounces in Religion?

The campaign so far is this: Dawkins initially wrote a book called ‘The God Delusion’, it caused a mild level of controversy amongst the Religious world, but nevertheless it was a book, so you had a choice of whether to buy it or not, it seemed like a fairly non-confrontational way of making his point.

Dawkins then went on to make a Channel 4 series named ‘Religion: the Root of all Evil?’ The documentary – which is two episodes in – pushes a few more boundaries than the book. He directly and rather harshly challenges Religious leaders, often ending in conflictive, cringe-worthy situations.

However, his most recent – and certainly most provocative - move in the campaign so far was making a speech at the anti-Pope protests in London. In his speech, Dawkins didn’t just criticize the policies advocated by the Pope which initially caused the Pope protests – like anti gay rights – but rather began on an out-and-out tirade against Catholicism, in which we heard Dawkins call the Pope, amongst other things ‘an enemy of humanity’.

The main thing that bemuses me in the whole of this campaign is Dawkins seeming lack of understanding of the context in which he is speaking. He is a clever man, surely he understands that we live in a world where Religion is still valued, and to condemn it in the way he does will cause further anger, hatred and separation?

Although I disagree with his methods of ‘attack’, I actually agree with most of the points that Dawkins makes. But then again I am from the same Western-centric background that he is, and thus share by-and-large the same value system that he does.

What he doesn’t seem to understand is that many other people in this world have not had the same background as us. Endless numbers of different cultures cohabit this earth and each believe that they have the superior set of values that can guide you through life. Whether that be Islam, Buddhist or Secular, it clear that the world is not yet ready to live as one, and until the world is ready to do that, the only way we can live in relative peace is to promote toleration, understanding and acceptance.

Dawkins believes that religions should not preach about being the one Truth, but how can he be so hypocritical when he is claiming exactly that of Science?

After all, our belief of Science in the Western world is still a relatively new phenomenon. You can’t eradicate thousands of years of belief systems that millions of people have devoted their lives to overnight. If what we have learned from Science, and what we will continue to learn from Science stays neutral, then there is a far better chance of it influencing peoples thought systems than if it is used to insult others beliefs.

In actual fact, Science has already made its impact on many major religions. Christianity, Judaism, and even Catholicism all find merit in scientific thought. Pope Benedict himself said that he endorsed science but believed that we needed religion to accompany it as a moral guideline.

Perhaps the Pope has something here. Much of religion - in particular the parts about creation - have been proved false by Scientific discovery. But many of the moral guidelines that different Religions have taught are invaluable to society. Just as it is negative for a Religion to be fundamental in their rejection of scientific discovery, so is it negative for Science to be fundamental in its rejection of religion.

“Doubt is not an agreeable position, but certainty is an absurd one.” Voltaire.

The forgotten state.

2010-09-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

Western Sahara is now the only country in Africa on the UN’s list of non-self governing territories. Despite repeated calls for the country to have a referendum on independence, the UN has delayed due to the interests of neighbouring powers. With UN peace plans failing to move forward, and Western Sahara falling off the face of the international media it is important to ask…

Why has Africa got one last colony?

Throughout the late nineteenth century, European powers divided up Africa and its resources in what is now known as the ‘Scramble For Africa’. The effects were devastating. Natural resources were depleted, cultural boundaries ignored and the economy was left in ruin. However, post World War two, States in Africa began to be granted independence.

Today, all African states are considered sovereign and face the long struggle to reinstate their position in the international hierarchy. All accept one.

Western Sahara is situated on the North East coastline of Africa, bordering Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. Despite being mostly compromised of desert land and lacking sufficient rainfall for most agricultural activities, the country does have fish rich waters, large amounts of phosphate, and also potentially possesses a large amount of oil.

Unlike most African states, which, upon withdrawal of their colonial powers were offered a referendum on independence, Western Sahara was immediately laid claim to by its neighbouring country’s of Morocco and Mauritania.

This did not come without resistance from the Saharawi people, who had developed a strong nationalism in the 1960’s, which gave birth to the Polisario Front, who are the sole representative of the Saharan people. This Front had successfully rid itself of Spanish power through guerrilla warfare, and now faced the task of doing the same to its neighbouring powers.

But why, considering that under UN law “freely expressed self-determination is an unalienable right”, did the international powers not step-in and demand a referendum on independence, akin to those that all other African states had been granted?

The answer is because other, more dominant powers had an interest in this land.

Firstly, Spain, rather than handing independence to the Saharawi’s cut a deal with Morocco and Mauritania by signing the ‘Madrid Agreement’ in which Spain split the territory between the neighbouring countries. In doing this Spain both avoided a messy colonial war with their neighbour, and gained access to the fish and phosphate in return for their favour.

But Spain was not the only country with eyes for the natural resources of Western Sahara. The neighbouring countries of Morocco and Mauritania would also inevitably gain from their ownership of this land. However, the claims over this territory go a little deeper than seeking to extract the country’s resources.

Prior to Spain’s claim over the land in 1884, the Spanish Sahara formed an integral part of both countries territories. Morocco and Mauritania therefore demanded a solution that respected its claim of sovereignty.

Mauritania quickly proved unable to maintain control over the territory. The country was facing internal unrest, and on top of this the Polisario were making the weak country their prime target. Also, a large amount of the Mauritanian population was Saharawi, and thus sympathetic with the Polisario. By 1979 Mauritania had completely withdrawn from the region, only for Morocco to extend its control to the rest of the territory. The war between Morocco and the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which is the state created by the Polisario, continued.

Saharawi’s continued to flock to the refugee camps set up in Tindouf Province, Algeria, where more than 100,000 people now live.

Many Western commentators on the conflict have been criticised for ignoring the historical and cultural ties that Morocco has with Western Sahara, and for blindly labelling the land as ‘stolen’. Indeed it is true that Morocco has done more for the country than simply extracting resources. It has worked towards building an infrastructure, and boosted the economy, things which are much needed for a country that has been lacking a significant place in international relations since the withdrawal of their colonial power. Additionally it is often ignored by pro-SADR independence commentators that the Polisario are not model rulers. There have been many claims of human rights abuses by the Front, and it is clear that if the country were to be granted independence the government would need the support of the UN in ensuring that a stable and effective government was in place.

It is, however, still evident that we now live in a world in which sovereignty is the prime mode of rule. In fact, when Morocco first laid claim on the land it asked for an opinion form the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of its demands. Simultaneously, the UN sent a visiting mission to examine the wishes of the population. On October the 15^th the visiting mission published its findings saying that an ‘overwhelming’ amount of people wanted independence over any form of integration. On October 16^th the ICJ delivered its verdict. The court found with a clear majority that these countries historical ties to Spanish Sahara did not grant them right to the territory. Furthermore, the court declared that the concept of un-owned land did not apply to the territory, and that the Saharawi people had a right to self-determination.

So why, when on October 31^st, Morocco went ahead and attacked Polisario positions, did no one interfere?

Firstly, many Western states were on the side of Morocco. As well as Spain, the Moroccan government had strong backing from both France and the Regan administration in the United States. Both countries saw Morocco as a key ally in the Middle East, and didn’t want to disturb their relationship by giving support for a referendum on independence, even if it is backed by international law.

The UN has been attempting to find a solution to the question of sovereignty and self-determination since 2000. But it is the UN’s lack of willingness to adhere to international law, and call for a referendum on independence that is causing problems. The Polisario has expressed willingness to talk about power sharing post-referendum, in which independence is an option. This would adhere to international law. However, Morocco has rejected the independence option and will only enter negotiations allowing Western Sahara autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. The Security Council have refused to send a strong signal to Morocco that a referendum on independence is inevitable, and have instead chosen to back to the option of a ‘mutually acceptable political situation’.

But how can this be possible when Western Sahara and Morocco have reached a stalemate in their demands? The position of Western Sahara is clearly stronger than that of Morocco. Western Sahara has a territory, resources, a population with a strong nationalism, leadership in SADR and the Polisario and is backed by Algeria, the African Union, international solidarity networks, and most importantly, international law. Morocco, on the other hand, has historical claim to the land, which has been ruled out as reason for ownership by the ICJ, and backing from a few Western countries interested in power politics and ignoring international law.

The UN, rather than tiptoeing around the illegitimate demands of Morocco, should use their muscle to grant Western Sahara a referendum on independence, and spend their time and energy on improving the lives of the thousands of displaced refugees living in the Tindouf province, and ensuring that the Polisario are a legitimate front that is ready for the task of successfully running a new state.

Wikileaks, Rape and Idiots.

2010-08-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

Conspiracy theories float around about moon landings, assassinated presidents, George W Bush and his cronies planning 9/11 leading intelligent people to contemplate politics from a position of absurd abstraction. Moreover they tend to deflect

attention from real conspiracies.

One such conspiracy is happening right now and, although as with so many conspiracies it seems to be backfiring, it threatens one of the greatest innovations the world of journalism has seen.

Just 4 years ago a group of activists and dissidents from around the world got together and created an internet tool to enable them to expose the disgraceful and shocking things our governments and other powerful institutions get up to.

In a short time Wikileaks was hailed by many journalists for providing access to documents that would normally takes months if not years of careful planning to obtain. Acclaim was particularly forthcoming when Wikileaks had done its job so well that the Chinese government began its attempts to ban it.

However, as a reasonably intelligent person may imagine, such acclaim is of course limited by the “objective” worldview of our esteemed journalists and politicians. The tone changes somewhat when it is “us” who are the targets of Wikileaks.

As far back as 2007 Wikileaks contemptuously and outrageously released leaked footage of two US Apache helicopters mowing down groups of Iraqi people (including two Reuters journalists - click on the link, take a look) and then attack a van (containing children) which was trying to evacuate the injured. How dare they?!

Subsequent to this, the US Army Counterintelligence Center wrote a secret report on Wikileaks, describing it as ‘a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army’ and refers to ‘Efforts by some domestic and foreign personnel and organizations to discredit the Wikileaks.org Web site include allegations that it wittingly allows the posting of uncorroborated information, serves as an instrument of propaganda, and is a front organization of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’.

Thereafter the paranoia of Wikileaks participants began to grow to the point that the unofficial “spokesperson”, Julian Assange, and others complained about being followed and subjected to aggressive surveillance.

A crunch moment came this year when Wikileaks released 91,000 US army reports on Afghanistan. Oh dear.

The response from the US media was predictable. Naturally they were blind to the irony that they support the right of foreign journalists to release information that may damage the security of those states. But who cares about the impact of publishing details of “nuclear programmes” on the security of Iran? What does it matter that keeping quiet about the big fucking WMD being launched by the US at Iraqi conscripts may endanger their lives? It is the job of the journalist to get at information and expose the Truth. Except of course when the truth just might endanger the lives of US troops and/or the strategic interests of the USA.

But of course, not many US journalists would claim to be that objective. Rather, their objectivity is mitigated by a sense of “patriotism”, or servile adherence to the interests of the rich, mediated by a bureaucratic state, whichever description sits best with the reader.

Thus it was left to Reporters Without Borders (yes, WITHOUT FUCKING BORDERS, i.e. with no adherence to the interests of any state, you know, the ones who selflessly rush around the world defending the rights of journalists to break the laws of any state that the US doesn’t like… erm, I mean “oppressive regimes”) to defend the rights of Wikileaks to freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart information.

Yes. It was their duty.

So, what was the strategy of RBW? Well, first off, they wrote to the United Nations to confirm the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights provisions for free expression. Once these were confirmed, they wrote to editors around the world reminding them that it is not the role of the journalist to take sides and defend this or that state. The letters they sent out… oh fuck it!

The snivelling little toe rags wrote an open letter to Wikileaks accusing them of “irresponsibility” in putting the lives of US soldiers (and of course Afghanis) at risk and, publicly condemning Wikileaks worldwide.

After years of accusations that RWB is tool of the US State, they effectively gave up the ghost, announcing to the world where their loyalties lay. They were forced into a rather embarrassing climb-down, but the episode began to lift the curtain on the campaign against Wikileaks.

Assange had previously warned that intelligence services may try to smear his name and discredit Wikileaks. However, when rumours began to circulate that Assange was being sought by the Swedish police for rape, fuckwit idiot Oxbridge graduates working for the major news organisations could not stretch their fat lazy yessir “brains” enough to even consider that the story just might be a fake.

Did it not occur to these dimwitted morons that the man who is the public face of an organisation that almost every government on the planet wants destroyed just might be the target of a campaign to discredit him? Was there not a hesitation, for instance by that stalwart of professionalism, the BBC, to hold off for confirmation?

No, why let the truth get in the way of a good story, so the saying goes.

As expected, the rape allegations Assange have now been “dropped”, and harbingers of journalistic doom, the bloggers, are now questioning who set the story rolling. In the meantime, corporate news organisations are making sheep seem un-sheep-like.

Fortunately if intelligence services were behind this non-story, they done fucked up. For now they have led millions of people around the world to ask, “who on earth is Assange?” and wtf is Wikileaks? Better take a look. (yes, that’s a NLP technique, it means TAKE A LOOK! Now.

In the meantime, just don’t believe anything you read about Assange and his colleagues.

Israeli Flotilla Raid Investigation: the Panel.

2010-06-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

Israel has announced that it is to launch an investigation into the its flotilla "raid".

Few voices from the West were concerned when Israel shunned the idea of a UN-based

investigation. Although UN investigations are finefor Serbia, Sudan, Liberia, when it comes to Israel, that great upholder of International Law, the USA, went into overdrive in denying that it might support a UN investigation.

So we are left with Israel's own "independent" inquiry. Israeli PM, Netanyahu, has already

indicated the conclusions the investigation is expected to reach, and the panel seems to have been selected to ensure this will happen.

However, in their desperate attempts to deliver "objective facts" Western journalists are doing a good job of faithfully reproducing Israel's line on the panel members. But who are these people?

The Foreign Observers

David Trimble, a right-wing Northern Irish "Loyalist", whose position on Israel can be discerned from his Conservative Friends of Israel pamphlet.

Ken Watkin, a Canadian military prosecutor, whose role in advising the Canadians on abuse claims in Afghanistan was questioned when he refused to testify to the Canadian House on legal advice.

The "Independent" Israelis

Shabtai Rosen is described by the BBC as "a professor of international law". However, this has been a rather recent appointment. Rosen was in fact one of the founders of Israel! Thereafter he served as a legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Office and then served as an ambassador.

Amos Regev, a retired military officer, who "

fought in the War of Independence in 1948, was the head of the Israeli Defense Force's Weapons Development, led mobile artillery for the Sinai and 1967 Six Day Wars, was Chairman of the Board of Rafael, and was President of Technion University." Though Regev is an unashamed Zionist, he does (or at least did) believe in unilateral disengagement from the West Bank, whilst retaining other stolen land.

Yaakov Tirkel, the head of the panel, and a former Supreme Court Judge seems to be unrivalled in his inappropriateness in heading the panel. According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz (which refers to the inquiry as a "farce"), he "opposed bringing in foreign observers and made clear that he is not a devotee of drawing conclusions about individuals and dismissing those responsible for failures".

Further details about the investigation, including its parameters and objectives can be found here.

Tamil Genocide, Ostriches and the "Sri Lanka Option"

2010-05-19T01:22:00.001-07:00

That European and North American states are hypocritical in their designation of "good" and "evil" is hardly a revelation. Yet, there are some examples that strike upon the mind so strongly as to make one reflect how truly shameful Western states can be.

To go back a decade, between 1998 and 1999 the Serbian army fought a full-scale war against the Kosovan (sometimes referred to as "ethnic Albanian") independence movement's military wing, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). With the break up of Yugoslavia, ostensibly on ethnic grounds, the KLAseized its opportunity to fight for independence, transforming in to a fully-fledged guerrilla army. The war saw Serbia fight against the KLA's bid for independence only for NATO to intervene on behalf of the latter.

The outcome of NATO's intervention was victory for the independence movement, the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic and a war crimes tribunal charging the leadership of Serbia with war crimes.

There was near universal condemnation of Serbia by Western powers and no sparing of the resources required to ensure "justice" prevailed. At the very least it had shown that "humanitarian" intervention - in both military and legal terms - was possible with political will.

Several thousand kilometres away and 10 years after that precedent had been set, the Sri Lankan Civil War was coming to an end.

Sri Lanka has long witnessed brutal state repression against the Tamil minority, and against anyone who appears to sympathise. Since the end of the civil war between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE or Tamil Tigers) in 2009, a variety of international organisations have been pushing for investigations into allegations of human rights abuses and war crimes, most recently with the International Crisis Group's report War Crimes in Sri Lanka.

Over the last few days, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both reiterated their demands for UN investigations into the abuses, citing a range of evidence including witness testimony (including by Sri Lankan military personnel), photographs and video footage.

Just yesterday (18th May), the UK's Channel 4 News reported their investigation into claims made by a senior Sri Lankan commander that their soldiers were ordered to "kill everybody".

The final battles between the Sri Lankan Army and the Tigers in the north of the country, saw hundreds of thousands of Tamils - fighters and civilians - hemmed in between the sea and the advancing Sri Lankan army backed with weapons from anyone willing to supply them.

The final moments brought the scale of what had become genocide into stark relief. Whilst it is notoriously difficult to report freely in Sri Lanka, reasonable estimates claim that around 20,000 civilians were killed in those last weeks, with hundreds of thousands ending up in concentration camps. Of those detained in the camps, some 1,400 were dying each week after the war was over. These figures tower over the number of Kosovans killed by the Serbian military.

One might suspect, then, that the UN (as opposed to Nato) would have sent soldiers, jet fighters and warships and would have sought a resolution to prevent such war crimes and genocide occurring. However, the Kosovo model (nor the Iraq method) was not, and appears still not to be, an option.

One key reason for the lack of international action was China. Never one for "humanitarian intervention", the Chinese state was too busy profiting from the situation to have any concern for human rights violations. Oil and infrastructural projects were the rewards for the Chinese ostrich. Without China on side in the Security Council, even if other states had the will, there was little chance of passing a resolution without the Chinese.

Another problem was the Sri Lankan government's strategic use of President Bush's "war on terror" discourse to justify its actions. How could the most "liberal" of Western states object to Sri Lankan state actions when the US and the UK had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of a "war on terror". Sri Lanka claimed it was just doing the same - weeding out "terrorists" by any means necessary.

In a clever use of Bush's discourse, the Sri Lankan state had sought to adopt his terms, referring to the civil war as a "Terrorists' War Against Sri Lanka". This was no longer an ethnic-political conflict over power and self determination, but it was part of the global "war on terror".

Indeed whilst the Sri Lankan government had gone some way to drawing attention to similarities between the LTTE and Islamic terrorists, they were surpassed by some of the wackier "journalists" around. For instance, Dominic Whiteman, writing in his own Westminster Review, asserted, 'Now evidence is emerging which portrays the LTTE as individuals who are so unhinged that they have agreed to ditch their "freedom fighter" pretext forever and are now at one with the craven Islamist perpetrators of 911 and 7/7', tying the LTTE to that one-size-fits-all excuse for anything, Al Qaeda.

The LTTE was hardly a savoury organisation. Its reputation for ruthlessness was deserved no less than any other guerrilla group or standing army for that matter. Its recruitment of child soldiers, pioneering use of suicide bombings and targeting of economic and religious targets alongside military ones may all be investigated as war crimes. Yet its rationale for independence was certainly no less than the KLA's.

Whilst it is never comfortable to compare suffering, the intensity of the Sri Lankan state's response to this "national liberation movement" was far more severe and wide-ranging than that suffered by Kosovans. For example, NATO intervention in Kosovo was immediately precipitated by the "Račak incident", in which 45 Kosovans were killed by Serbian soldiers. If this massacre (or the one in Halabja, Iraq, that was so frequently cited as a justification for the invasion of Iraq) was sufficient to warrant coordinated international action, then what of the tens of thousands of Tamils killed in the Sri Lankan Civil War?

Whatever the reasons for non-intervention to prevent this genocide in the past, the evidence is there now, today, to initiate investigations against the current Sri Lankan government. Yet investigative interest seems to lie only with NGOs at the moment. Whilst there is little chance of hypocritical Western states doing anything to call for investigation, it is important to maintain pressure to ensure what Channel 4 journalist, Jonathan Miller, calls "The Sri Lanka Option" does not become the new legal framework for warfare.

A Battle Against Democracy.

2010-05-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

As politicians of different shades politely congratulate each other following the election, political leaders are trying to balance their political aspirations with expressions of respect for the democratic expression of public will.

The outcome of the election may not have been ideal for the political elite, but voters have again refused (rather than “failed”, a shamefully condescending term) to give any particular party Absolute Power. This time, though, the allocation of parliamentary seats reflects that refusal. How refreshingly democratic!

So how is this democratic coup being welcomed by the British press? In the main, it is not. The tone of our most esteemed commentators indicates some kind of constitutional crisis. We are faced with a dangerous – even terrifying – situation, verging on a threat to national security. The “eyes of the nation” are focused on three political leaders who are struggling to overcome that awkward thing called democracy!

The driving force behind this urge to triumph over democracy is not just the unquenchable thirst for power on the part of the political elites. So too, we are told, the mystical, intangible, soulless guardians of power, “the markets” are “worried”.

Markets' "concern" over a democratic outcome can be read off stock market drops of 2.6 percent – ending the worst week a year, and exchange rate drops, with the pound sliding against the Euro and the Dollar.

The market doesn't like slow, deliberative, consensual decision-making; it can do without democracy thank you.

What we need, we are told, is “strong” government – as Italy and Germany understood so clearly in the 1920s and 1930s. Otherwise the markets that brought about the economic crisis will be devoid of the requisite confidence that government will allow them to do it again!

We need a strong government to ensure that the poorest sections of society, the health system and universities pay for the bankers’ crisis.

Yet even with this knowledge, we have failed to vote to establish a strong, forceful and unrepresentative government, and the markets – those harbingers of “freedom” – are punishing us for our democratic decision-making.

The markets have no appreciation for the fact that we have avoided what the Conservative Peer, Lord Acton, long ago referred to as an “elected dictatorship”.

What a thought! A government and a parliament that is not the expected result of a rotten electoral system funded by dirty money; policies that are not the expression of single-minded self-referential party controlled by the iron grip of the party whips; political decision-making that is not pandering to a tiny minority of swing voters whose fickle nature strikes fear into the heart of party apparatchiks.

What is so scary about a government that has to reach consensus from a cross-section of society and a range of political opinion? What level of threat is there from three political leaders trying to determine what areas of agreement there might be to form the basis of a government? How fearful should 60% of voters be that for the first time in decades their votes actually count?

What a crisis! What a “failure” of democracy!

One in the face for Berlusconi

2009-12-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

The media frenzy around the assault on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reflect the apparent reassurance that il Pagliaccio is not entirely above justice.

The Italian media have reacted in line with expectations - surprise, incredulity, and condemnation. This is not the reaction only of Berlusconi's own media empire, but it occurred across the board. Unsurprisingly references to the "years of lead", the years of domestic civil war between the left and right, abound.

Indeed, La Repubblica, Italy's equivalent of The Guardian, called for Italians to join in solidarity with the Prime Minister.

The unified response of the Italian press does warrant some consideration - Why has no one asked whether he deserved it? Why would someone whack a 73 year old man with a statue? Could it really be that he is insane? Or perhaps there are other reasons?

Berlusconi has become a celebrated clown in recent years. His actions - disgraceful as they may be - are usually received in the national and international media as playful and "fun", but perhaps one might consider who Berlusconi is and what this says about how he regarded by many people.

As David Lane explains in Berlusconi's Shadow, there is little doubt left that Berlusconi's rise in business depended on nepotistic relations and criminal activities - especially fraud and false accounting. Indeed, as Lane explains, the only real reason that Berlusconi is not officially a criminal is that when the judicial system gets close, he abuses his political power to change the law.

Berlusconi uses the law not for a capitalist class of conspirators, but for himself. If charged with a crime committed 10 years ago, he changes the statute of limitations to 9 years. When the rest of the world was tightening accounting laws in the wake of Enron, Berlusconi "legalised" false accounting (of which he has been charged).

Perhaps most importantly for this case, though, is the way in which Berlusconi expects to throw insults around with no comeback. If in doubt, try some of these in your local high street, and see the response they elicit.

2002 - Summit of EU Foreign Ministers, makes cuckold sign behind the head of the Spanish Foreign Minister

2003 - EU Parliament, suggests German MEP Martin Schulz would be suitable to play a concentration camp guard in a film

2003 - says in interview that Mussolini didn't order people exterminated, but merely sent them on holiday.

2005 - offends Finish President with lewd comments

2008 - insults all of the Italian "left" (and women) by saying "The left has no taste, even when it comes to women"

2008 - insults the world's most powerful person (President Obama), by saying he has a "nice tan"

2009 - insults power powerful person in Europe (Angela Merkle the German Chancellor), by keeping her waiting whilst chatting on the phone.

2009 - insults Italian politician, Rosy Bindi, on television saying “I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent.” (she's not the best looking person on the planet)

There are of course, many other examples, but the point is made. One can only go on cowardly insulting people and hiding behind a Seat of Office (and a large number of security guards) before someone hits back.

Indeed, the question now should be one of security or motivation, but, surely, just why it has taken so long for someone to do this?

Gangsters criticise plans for compensation

2009-12-07T02:17:00.000-08:00

Gangsters criticise plans for compensation (the alternative reality of the BBC)

Excessive bonuses have been cited as one of the causes of the downturn

British gangsters have reacted angrily to news the Treasury is drawing up plans to make them pay compensation for the actions of individual criminals.

A scheme could be unveiled in Alistair Darling's pre-Budget report this week.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said making individual gangsters rather than gangs would not weaken the gangs and could raise several hundred million pounds.

Angela Knight from the British Gangsters' Association (BGA) called such compensation "populist, political and penal".

She said demanding compensation from thieves would send the wrong message to the rest of the world about the UK's position as a centre for crime.

"We have already seen quite a few criminals shift out of the UK," the BGA's chief executive told the BBC.

"It might be popular to demand compensation from a few [criminals], but we need to know how we would look internationally."

She added that one million jobs in the UK were supported by the gangster industry.

'Serious damage'

Options in Mr Darling's pre-Budget report on Wednesday may include a super-tax on big bonus gangsters or a larger employers' National Insurance charge on gangs.

Writing in his blog our correspondent said: "The advantage of gangsters paying compensation for their crimes are first that they are likely to be pretty popular with more-or-less everyone apart from the gangsters, if opinion polls are to be believed.

"But also, taxing gangsters rather than gangs would not weaken the gangs themselves, at a time when they need to accumulate capital."

State-owned Royal Robbers of Scotland reportedly wants to pay a total of £1.5bn in bonuses to investment gangsters, and the capos have threatened to quit if the government blocks the move.

Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Darling played down speculation about compensation.

He said the government had a "veto" over bonuses at RRS but said the gang had "not come to us with any proposals at all at the moment because they don't yet know what the end of year position will be".

But he stressed: "These bonuses have to be reasonable and they have to be responsible and I think everyone has to accept that."

He added: "We are not going to be held to ransom by people who believe you can pay extraordinarily high bonuses without regard to what's going on."

But he also acknowledged that there had to be "sufficient incentives" to ensure RRS got back onto a "proper footing" and off the government's books.

'Gifted vast profits'

Our correspondent said if a compensation was imposed it would raise "considerably more than £1bn a year" and would not just apply to UK gangs such as the Krays, the Noonans and Royal Robbers of Scotland, but also to the British arms of overseas firms, such as the Mafia, Triads and other cartels.

City commentator David Buik says the compensation plans sound "insane"

"The fact is that we have gifted vast profits to the gangs as a result of our actions," our correspondent quotes one minister as saying.

"If they were using those profits simply to strengthen themselves that would be okay. But what we can't accept, and what society can't accept, is that they are using those profits to pay enormous bonuses to top gangsters".

Our correspondent also said taxing the gangs for compensation may not be cost-free for the UK.

"It would not be great for the economic prospects of the UK if wealth-creating gangsters and their institutions emigrated to rival criminal centres - for fear that the UK is becoming irredeemably hostile to them," he said.

In the longer term, the prime minister and chancellor want permanent levy on gang transactions, a so-called Tobin tax.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne, for the Conservatives, said he "wouldn't rule out" a compensation scheme on gangsters, but would prefer reforms to ensure gangs pay tax on future profits.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable told the BBC "a special tax on the gangs' profits" should last as long as the "gangs continue to depend on taxpayer guarantees".

The Little Dictator, or the Criminal Emperor?

2009-11-14T02:02:00.000-08:00

Anyone reasonable person with an interest in Italian politics cannot fail to be exasperated to the point of depression with its ups and downs. The rise of Silvio Berlusconi seems to illustrate all that is rotten in Italian politics, and all that is grim in modern Italian culture.

But the latest proposals of the Berlusconi government, for a "processo brevi", or "brief process" for trials, captures the essence of the Italian government - a social movement with one objective: to promote and protect the interests of Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi, one of the richest men in Italy, built his political career on money. His first "movement", Forza Italia, could not properly be called a party, for it was launched by him with one objective - to assemble people in pursuit of his political career. Italian politics was purchased. There is no internal democracy, in Berlusconi's movement, candidates are selected by either Berlusconi or his lieutenants, and members are expected to support their leader without question. This is to say it resembles Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, or Mussolini's Fascist Party more than a democratic party.

The difference, however, between Hussein and Mussolini and Berlusconi is that regardless of how pernicious their parties were, at least for the former two there was some orientation (however misplaced) to the greater good. Berlusconi's party on the other hand has just two immediate intentions - to protect his business investments, and to ensure that he avoids justice.

Over the years Berlusconi has stood trial for false accounting (a number of times), bribery (a number or times), perversion of justice, tax fraud, and embezzlement. Many of these cases were clearly moving towards a guilty verdict until his lawyers would drag the case on to surpass the "statute of limitations", that is, beyond the time in which a trial should be concluded.

On other occasions, Berlusconi and his cronies would change the law retrospectively. For example, the 2005 trial for false accounting, the All Iberian case, collapsed when Berlusconi instructed his cronies in Parliament to pass a law custom-made for his trial. The law made false accounting a crime only if it specifically damages the person reporting the crime. And this was just a couple of years after the rest of the world was tightening up regulations on fraud and false accounting in the wake of the Enron scandal.

David Lane's book Berlusconi's Shadow has outlined the details of Berlusconi's criminal empire that his latest "law" is attempting to protect. Whilst Berlusconi's legislation is "tough" on petty crimes, the "processi dei brevi" will in fact encourage "white collar", or corporate, crime, and will certainly allow Berlusconi to act with formal impunity.

It is this impunity that allows Berlusconi to stand head and shoulders about all other governments in Europe (and most in the rest of the world), west and east, new and old, right and left. None other, not even the President of Europe's "last dictatorship", Belarus, has managed to customise a legal system to suit his criminal pursuits.

The Italian journalist Roberto Saviano has recently launched an online petition against this new law. Although Berlucsoni's monkies in Parliament will no doubt fail to be swayed by international condemnation of their slavish deference to their "masser", the historical record must register the disgust of decent people that Berlusconi's abuse of power was not left unopposed. You can sign the petition here.

Return to war in Ireland?

2009-11-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

The war in Ireland, or "The "Troubles" as it is called in the repressed British Press, may seem to have ended but many Loyalists and many Republicans see it as more of a ceasefire. Indeed the fragility of peace is clear to even the casual observer.

In bearing witness to this fragile peace, the British media has tended to play a great deal of attention to the activities of Republican groups, such as the killing of two British soliders earlier this year. In contrast it would seem that the Loyalist paramilitary groups are inactive. Of course they are not.

For Republicans, thought, the greatest problem in Northern Ireland is the reluctance of the British state and its Loyalist allies to stand down, or, rather, to devolve power to Northern Ireland, as required by the Good Friday agreement.

With the war at its height, Irish Republicans did fight Loyalist groups in Northern Ireland, but that was never what the war was about. For the IRA and associated groups, the was, and still is, the British state. It is the British state, and its support from loyalist groups that poses the greatest threat to peace.

For instance, earlier this month British security forces assailed members of the Irish Republican Socialist Party after a meeting in Belfash. Kevin McQuillan, spokesperson for the Republican Network for Unity explained what happened,

“Yesterday afternoon senior representatives of the IRSP, including Party spokesperson Willie Gallagher, had left a meeting in their Party offices on the Falls Road and were going to another meeting in Belfast City centre when their vehicle was forced to a stop after being surrounded by four unmarked cars containing a number of masked and armed men.

Shocked members of the public then bore witness to screamed threats to shoot the IRSP members as they were forcefully dragged from their vehicle and thrown both to the ground and across the bonnet of the car. It was only after some considerable time that these masked assailants were to be identified as members of the PSNI’s Tactical Support Group and the others dressed in civilian clothing to have been undercover Britishintelligence forces, known to be operating in Nationalist areas"

With scenes like this, it is unsurprising that policing in Northern Ireland has become a major issue for Republican groups. The Irish Republican Socialist Party, whose members were the subjects of the raid is one of the groups that has rejected the Good Friday Agreement. However, it is said that the IRSP was instrumental in convincing the Irish National Liberation Army to disband this year.

Another incident just a couple of days ago intensified the concerns about "political policing" in Northern Ireland. Prominant Republican activist, Sean Hughes, was the target of police raids in south Armagh earlier this week. His friend and ally, Sinn Féin MP for Newry and Armagh Conor Murphy, explained that the raids,

“have caused deep anger in south Armagh. There is no justification for the deliberate targeting of Seán and his family today"

Mr Murphy, a Minister in the Northern Ireland government, claims that Mr Hughes, “has championed the peace process and the campaign to end political policing", adding “Seán has been charged with nothing. Neither have any members of his family. It is unacceptable.”

The public nature of both raids were not the only cause of consternation among Republicans. It was also the way the raid reflected the lack of progress in devolving the control of police powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Talks are still taking place over the future of police powers, but in recent developments, and with utterly awful timing given police actions in recent weeks, the Loyalist Democratic Unionist Party has appeared to backtrack on commitments to secure control of polcing for the people of Northern Ireland.

In response, and no doubt driven by the anger expressed over recent incidents, Martin McGuiness, leader of Sinn Fein and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, has prediced "deep trouble" if the situation is not resolved by Christmas.

Whilst it is unlikely that the DUP's u-turn will bring about a complete breakdown of the Good Friday Agreement, it may prove to be a significant step towards its unravelling.

Terrorist America?

2009-11-07T03:13:00.000-08:00

On October 27, Republican representative from Florida, Connie Mack, and Democratic representative Ron Klein, introduced a resolution to the US Congress calling for Venezuela to be designated a "state sponsor of terrorism".

The grounds of this designation are that the Venezuelan government has taken ambiguous stances on Iran and Hezbollah, and - as an implicit ground - is opposing the US's assertion of military authority in Colombia (i.e. is supporting the FARC).

Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, has long been a thorn in the side of US political and economic interests in Latin America. Perhaps without the distraction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration would have dedicated more attention to the rise of democratic anti-imperialism in Latin America, but much to the chagrin of the Bush Administration such movements have been allowed to flourish over the last ten years.

Naturally, autonomous democratic governments cannot be tolerated in "America's Backyard", and the US government and various "independent" think tanks have been attempting to discredit and overthrow them for decades.

This most recent attempt to align Venezuela with the "axis of evil" (remember that!) is clearly absurd, though fits comfortably with the propagandistic narrative adopted by Western media.

Under Chavez, the "threatening" policies pursued by Venezuela include Mission Robinson, the biggest literacy programme the world has ever seen, and Mission Barrio Adentro, which saw the introduction of universal healthcare, in part provided by Cuban doctors, and was praised by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. Other Bolivarian Missions introduced by the administration addressed housing, nutrition, rural development and indigenous rights.

Under Chavez, Venezuela has invaded and occupied precisely no other countries, has initiated no kidnap and torture, or "extraordinary rendition", programmes, and has constructed exactly no "black hole" prisons. Rather, although Venezuela has armed itself, it is the only country in the world to have incorporated the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into its domestic legislation, including recognising free healthcare as a human right.

Clearly Venezuela poses a significant threat!

But is the US in a position to accuse other countries of being "rogue states" or sponsors of terrorism? Perhaps there might be some hypocrisy here?

Since 1945 the US has invaded, bombed or attacked Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Laos, Serbia, Libya, Cuba, Somalia and Cambodia to name just a few. It remains the only state to have used the nuclear bomb, twice, against civilian targets.

It has aided and supported coups and dictators in Chile, Saudi Arabia and most of the Middle-East, Pakistan, Egypt, Venezuela, Iraq, Guatemala, Brazil, Indonesia, Haiti again just to name a few.

The US has also supported terrorism in Chile, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan, among many other states.

(For primary government documents outlining and detailing US interventions - i.e. proof of it, see the National Security Archive at George Washington University)

But of course, being a free, democratic state with an independent media, US newspapers couldn't fail to notice the hypocrisy!

Well, actually, historically the US newspapers have found it difficult to apply the same moral indignation for their own government that they apply overseas. For example, in the early 1980s the CIA published a "terrorist manual" for Nicaraguan terrorists, which included a section titled ‘Implicit and Explicit Terror’.

Although the scandal was exposed by the Baltimore Sun, the general response of the press was muted with only 5 US newspaper articles on the subject published in the three weeks following the breaking of the story.

The Washington Post reported (without humour) that the guide ‘was prepared not as guidance for killers but as a restraint on killers’ (‘For the Upwardly Mobile Guerrilla’, 2^nd November 1984), though four days later published, without comment, a letter from the foreign minister of Nicaragua to the US Secretary of State accusing the US of supporting terrorism (November 6^th 1984).

It also published a report on a Representative’s denunciation of the document for creating a ‘disaster’ for U.S. foreign policy and for its impact on the ‘image’ of the United States.

The Washington Post qualified its criticism by juxtaposing the CIA’s advocacy of ‘political assassination, blackmail and mob violence’ with the ‘international terrorism’ ‘practiced by groups supported by such countries as Libya, Iran and Syria’, because the ‘tactics described in the document also appear at odds with the administration's condemnation of terrorism’ (18^th October 1984).

The New York Times also showed concern over the ‘primer’, but again emphasized the problems of advocating ‘killing’ and ‘kidnapping’ whilst attempting to oppose and condemn the ‘terrorism’ of others (17^th October 1984).

Similarly another manual on terrorism, The Freedom Fighter’s Manual, was repeatedly dismissed by the New York Times as a ‘comic book’ (‘C.I.A. Linked to Comic Book for Nicaraguans’ New York Times 19^th October, 1984). The Washington Post’s dismissal led them to headline their only article on the matter with, ‘If you like comics, you are going to love a new wrinkle in the Reagan administration's holy war against the Soviet outpost of evil in Nicaragua’ (‘… And C.I.A. Comics’ The Washington Post 12^th August, 1984).

By all indicators the US has been and still is a "state sponsor of terrorism", though of course their is "good" terrorism. Venezuela, on the other hand, has terrorised the poor, the illiterate and the ill by offering them housing and subsidized food, education and free healthcare. Damn them to hell!

BNP World

2009-10-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

BNP leader Nick Griffin's denials have led BBC coverage of the BNP leader's appearance on its Question Time debate programme. In the first instance any denial of racism, fascism, or holocaust denial is simply absurd. The BBC's subheadings, 'BNP not racist', and 'I am not a Nazi', are as absurd as 'Jack the Ripper: Not a ripper', 'Stalin: Not a mass murderer'. But the denials laid a veil over policy issues.

Where is the debate about the BNP's policies? Whether the BNP's policies are motivated by racism or homophobia, or whether Nick Griffion is a nasty man or not is really a non-starter in political debate - it is the realm of mere opinion. The real issue is: What are the implications of their policies?

Could or should the BNP "secure" Britain for its "indigenous" folk?

A few years ago an excellent documentary, 100% English, exposed the hypocrisy and inconsistency of racist and ethnic policies. A range of English naitonalists were asked their opinion on who should be classed as English. Accounts differed slightly but the general thrust was that a person needed to be able to trace their ancenstors back 5, 6, 7 generations.

For anyone with even an ounce of intelligence it was unsurprising to find that genetic tests on the participants showed that only one would qualify as "English" on their own terms. The testing showed that most partcipants had complex genetic make-ups, including markers from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia - ethnic or racial purity cannot , therefore, be a basis for determining nationality. Consequently, there is no basis for the BNP's claim that certain people "belong" in certain territories, so how could the BNP secure Britain for the "British".

It takes no more than a little historical investigation to realise that the idea of ethnic nations is absurd - human beings have moved and mixed for thousands of years, such that we are all "mongrels"!

However, there is a more compelling reason to reject the BNP's policies. Their ultimate aspiration is for an international community of "ethnically"-based independent nations. So far, so uncomplicated. However, the idea of all nations based on "indegenous" peoples would massively increase immigration to the UK. Consider, for example, the 3-400,000,000 "non-indigenous" North Americans? Where would they go?

Suppose that, on a conservative estimate, just 20% of Americans and Canadians can trace their roots back to Britain. That would entail 60-80,000,000 immigrants to the UK, doubling the population. Add to that South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders, not to mention the 500,000 British people who have settled in southern Spain and more who have settled elsewhere, and the UK would be in serious trouble.

Nothing in the UK could stand the strain of a doubling or trebling of the population - roads, trains, schools, sewers, hospitals, policing, housing, farming, everything would fail under the weight of such a population increase. Just a simple quesiton about their general orientation towards ethinic nationalism would have sufficed to derail Griffin's publicity coup, yet is has still not been asked.

A second, slightly more complicated issue may have deepened Griffin's malaise: The fascist and Nazi predecessors to the BNP - in Britain and elsewhere in Europe - were driven by ideas of racial and ethnic superiority and concepts of nationalism which were themselves premised on European economic, political and military hegemony.

To encourage the spread of ethnic naitonalism and racial superiority in an age in which China and India - whose citizens provide many of the targets of the BNP boot-boys - are likely to become the most powerful states in the world is simply a bad political decision.

Mr Griffin and his supporters would be well advised the think carefully about what they wish for, because they might just get it.

The CHECK is in the Post

2009-10-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

"I've been walking since 8am but this is the last part of my round" said the exhausted postman having jogged across my front garden to deliver my post at six o'clock on a Saturday afternoon.

As usual the British news media have displayed an almost Stalinist level of propaganda against mail workers. Rarely is there any reporting of the Communications Workers' Union's (CWU) motivations for taking industrial action. The story is always the same: Management are doing their best to "improve conditions" under "difficult circumstances" but those damn unions are too busy trying to maintain easy working conditions and high wages so that they can carry on being lazy. They are holding The Nation to ransom.

This is the dominant theme in UK news, among business people, and inside government. The unelected, (allegedly) corrupt business minister, Peter Mandelson, speaking for a government headed by an unelected Prime Minister, tells us that it is the union, not management, that needs to "pull back".

One might assume, then, that it is the union, not management, that is pushing for conflict. However, the CWU has already offered a "peace plan" to avoid industrial action. In a clear indication of where the fault lies, Royal Mail management has rejected this offer to avoid industrial action, and when it does take place we can rest assured few if any journalists will remember this.

So why on earth would management be pushing for a conflict. Why would they risk business contracts, customer satisfaction and the future of Royal Mail?

Perhaps it is because this is the same Royal Mail that, if the present government had its way, would be sold off to government cronies for pennies? Gordon Brown's government - as Blair's before him - is obsessed with "market-forces", despite their glaring failure in the wake of the biggest depression since the 1930s, whether they work or not. However, the "discipline" of the market is the only thing that can force people to work long hours for poverty wages.

Yet public hostility to the privatisation of the UK mail service was such that the government was forced to shelve plans for a sell-off. The Independent newspaper described the defeat over mail privatisation as part of a "wounding double blow".

Prime Minister Brown and his market-obsessed minister for business were clearly furious that they could not destroy the cheap, efficient and fair postal service.

Brown and friends were faced with two prospects. First, they still felt the need to support Royal Mail management in ramping up workloads whilst restraining wages and creating intolerable job insecurity. Second, perhaps in bullying and cajoling postal workers to accept deteriorating conditions, they might prompt a response from unions that could bankrupt Royal Mail, therefore negating the need for a sensibly discussed democratic decision on its future.

It is becoming clear that Royal Mail management is colluding with ministers on trying to sideline the union and thwart its attempts to maintain a decent quality of service and half-decent working conditions. A secret Royal Mail strategy document obtained by the CWU shows that management are prepared to push for confrontation and "non-agreement". 'The document, Dispute: Strategic Overview', shows that management are pushing towards derecognising the union.

The big question is, What is at stake here? It has been apparent for many years that consecutive governments have been trying to cut back on mail services, most visibly with the closure of post offices, especially those in rural areas that don't have alternatives. Citizens have been campaigning against such threats for years.

Post Office closures were in part a consequence of EU Directive 97-67-EU, which sought to open postal services to "competition", but the government's market-obsession would have pushed for this anyway.

Yet rather than speak the truth about the situation, government and Royal Mail management dress their plans up in the tired old talk of "modernisation". "Modernisation" is in this case a synonym for cuts, cuts, cuts.

Indeed, if people are concerned about post office closures, delays to post, cuts from two delivery slots to one, and the welfare of the human-donkeys lugging around ever increasing weights, one might suspect massive public support for the CWU.

As Dave Ward, the Deputy General Secretary of the CWU puts it, "Royal Mail has never really been engaged in modernisation. They've been running down the business, running down services and cutting costs and it's that business plan that postal workers have overwhelmingly rejected"

"We've seen cuts and increased workloads and now we need an agreed roll-out of real modernisation. Aligning the interests of customers, employees and the company as a whole is a pre-requisite for the successful modernisation of Royal Mail"

On the other hand, the boss of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, has presided over ever increasing losses (£279,000,000 in 2007), yet has seen his "remuneration" increase threefold to £3,000,000! At the same time, postal delivery workers work very heard to earn under the average national wage - £19,000 a year. Mr Crozier earns that every two days, without lugging around half his body weight in post every day!

Though the concerted government-management-media propaganda campaign won't have you believe it, it is Crozier and his cronies in government, not the unions, who are "threatening" strike action. For most ordinary people the action will have be no more burden than giving ever more purchase to that old excuse: "The cheque is in the post"!

A Very British Mafia.

2009-10-17T00:53:00.001-07:00

In yet another shameful case of the rich and powerful trying to conceal their daily threats to the lives of human beings, "commodity trading firm", Trafigura, has "allowed" the Guardian newspaper to report on its dumping of potentially toxic waste on former colonial subjects in Ivory Coast.

The "concession" comes just three months after another toxic waste scandal in which two British companies tried to dump 1400 tons of waste in Brazil. In July this year Brazilian authorities prevented the waste - marked up as recyclable plastic and children's' toys - entering their country. The dumping of blood, syringes, nappies and other such waste not only contravened international treaties on waste disposal but also involved fraud and deception on a grand scale.

On the Trafigura case the Guardian reported "The study said early reports of large scale medical problems among the inhabitants of Abidjan, were consistent with a release of a cloud of potentially lethal hydrogen sulphide gas over the city. The effects could have included severe burns to the skin and lungs, eye damage, permanent ulceration, coma and death."

Two questions naturally arise from this.

Firstly, will governments, police authorities and news media respond to this case of mass torture with the same moral indignation and outrage usually reserved for "hoodies"? Will we see blanket coverage about corporate executives willingly torturing innocent Africans, as we see every day when youths carry out acts of violence in our inner cities?

Probably not, then. But imagine such charitable treatment of street-crime. A gang of hooded youths rampage around a well-to-do part of London with bottles containing hydrogen sulphide spraying it indiscriminately into the faces of innocent bystanders. When questioned, they shrug: "yeah, didn't really know what I was doing!", as the usual corporate cop-out goes (contrasted of course to the remarkable feats of memory performed by executives claiming bonuses for a year of successful trading. Funny how selective memory can be!)

There is a second story. This one draws on the narrative developed by the heroic Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, author of the spine-chilling expose, Gomorrah. Between this and countless stories about "La Cosa Nostra" we are used to tails of corrupt Italian politicians and Mafia-controlled firms immiserating innocent Italians and they collude to dump industrial and nuclear waste around the south of Italy. The story is simply regarded from the moral heights of cliffs of Dover - Italy is corrupt to the core, crime is everywhere and Italian business is permeated with Mafia.

Yet this is not the narrative of the British criminality. It is all rather different here. There appear to be no links between politicians and corrupt corporations. The corporations themselves may "accidentally" commit questionable activities, or perhaps be unaware of "complex regulations", but they certainly are not criminal organisations. Such is the world of British capital. Ignorance is never a defence for human beings, but it has become THE defence for Ango-American corporate criminal organisations. Otherwise, the attitude of British corporations is: if it ain't illegal, it is permissible.

Indeed, such an immoral attitude is at the heart of corporate capitalism. As the Godfather of corporate capitalism, Milton Friedman, explained in his famous article in the New York Times, anyone who speaks of corporate responsibilities such as ‘promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for ... avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers … are – or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously – preaching pure and unadulterated socialism’. For Friedman, the only responsibility a corporation is to make money within existing legal frameworks. It is not the responsibility of the corporation to ensure those frameworks are right or just.

So, as far as the Godfather of corporate capitalism is concerned, only socialists would object to dumping hydrogen sulphide gas on innocent people who benefit in no way from industrial production. And anyone who would be crazy enough to object to corporate executives colluding with corrupt local officials to inflict on innocent people severe burns to the skin and lungs, eye damage, permanent ulceration, coma and death, should not be taken seriously.

Despite the rhetoric about openness, government, media and corporations in the UK collude to drape a veil of ignorance over the British population. The key to this tactic is that whereas the Camorra and La Costa Nostra are happy to murder, torture and mutilate their country-folk with chemical and biological warfare, the Great British Corporate Thugs tend to reserve such treatment for foreigners in far off lands, for people the British Empire never really recognised as human. So rather than dumping toxic waste in the countryside around London, as the Camorra do in the countryside around Naples, it is poured on the lands of the poor, the powerless and disenfranchaised. Their only experience of corporate capital is its waste.

Should any readers have any information that may be of use in prosecuting such activity, they can contact local police or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Should any readers have any waste they would like to dump on unsuspecting third world populations, Trafigura can be contacted on enquiries@trafigura.com

Honduras and the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church

2009-07-21T02:01:00.000-07:00

It is reasonably well known that the Catholic Church has supported despots, dictators and tyrants around the world, and especially in Latin America.

Not content with helping wipe out the native population of Latin America, the Universal Church has throughout the 20th Century ensured that the Universal Order of Latin American wealth and poverty remains in place. Indeed, there is a wonderful scene in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the documentary that captured the coup against Hugo Chavez, that enables us to see a coup from the inside. As the oligarchy gathers to celebrate the overthrow of democracy, the camera operator captures a Catholic Priest among the coup leaders chatting on his mobile phone (see photo above). Given historical precedence, it should come as no surprise that Latin American Church leaders support anti-democratic forces that are opposed to social justice.

And so now in Honduras. On one side a democratically elected government implementing social reforms to improve the lot of the least fortunate, the Organisation of American States, the elected leaders of most other Latin American countries, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the European Union, and even a newly invigorated United States of America. Unusually both the US President and Secretary of State explicitly condemned the coup. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "The action taken against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all”

On the other side, the usual suspects: a wealthy oligarchy, the private media they control, and the Catholic Church, though, as Informeaning has previously reported, the CIA is conspicuously absent.

Tegucigalpa's Archbishop, Oscar Andrés Rodríguez, recently went on Honduran television to support the illegitimate, anti-democratic coup leaders. He told Zelaya in front of the assembled audience, "On the day of your inauguration you cited three commandments of the rules of God -- not to lie, not to steal, not to kill''.

In an surreal denial of reality and with no apparent sense of irony, he went on to say "This is a community that will define our own destiny without any unilateral pressures. We renounce any blockades, which will only hurt the poor.''

Clearly the Church does not think that the ballot box is the best way of "defining our own destiny". On a more positive note, however, the Archbishop's comments have paved the way for the overthrow of another government headed by a lying, murdrous thief - that of the country surrounding the Holy See.

Certainly the irony of "hurting the poor" by supporting the overthrow of a government commited to social programmes oriented to social justice is lost on an organisation whose institutionalisation of sexual repression led to hundreds of thousands of cases of sexual and physical abuse from Ireland to Boston.

Sri Lanka: The Amazing Disapprearing Tamils

2009-07-11T06:13:00.000-07:00

Osama Bin Laden is a smart man. He knows very well the stupidity of the West. He knows that death tolls mean little to Westerners unless they are accompanied by Hollywood-style pyrotechnics. That's why his attacks on the US military-financial complex in 2001 looked the way they did, spectacular. And of course, it worked. It was a no-brainer to get international media organisations playing his game.

George W Bush did the same thing, far less successfully, with his "Shock and Awe" campaign against Iraq. Bush was less successful, in case you were wondering, because Bin Laden didn't have to worry about contradictory ideological issues like human rights and democracy, whereas Bush and Blair's propaganda campaign foregrounded human rights, democracy and ... Weapons of Mass Destruction! The problem for Bush, then, was that Shock and Awe made the US look little different to Bin Laden's people.

The Sri Lankan Government has been far smarter than Bush ever was. I know, that's not hard! Its main guide for conducting the last phase of the war with the Tamil Tigers earlier this year seems to have been Sun Tzu's Art of War The Sri Lankan government was wise enough to stick to the basics of warfare as described by Tzu: deception, deception, deception.

In these days of 24/7 international media, if one is intent on deceit, it is not advisable to welcome journalists and give them free reign. Indeed it is best not to allow them into the conflict zone at all, especially somewhere like Sri Lanka, where it seems the majority opinion of journalists is that the Sri Lankan government has behaved reprehensibly.

And so what little the West saw of the Sri Lanka/Tamil conflict was fed through official government and army agencies. Western news organisations did, however, cover the conflict. Given the visibility of the Tamil diaspora it might have been hard to ignore their plight, but Tamil protesters were not the cause of news coverage.

Rather, the drama of a bloody conflict in which tens if not hundreds of thousands of people would be slaughtered was the main cause of journalistic salivation. The Sri Lankan government's imposition of a deadline for ending the conflict added an additional level of drama, a kind of Carlito's way for war.

However, with no access to the conflict zone, journalists had to rely mainly on government sources. Consequently the news service that gave most coverage in the UK, the BBC, could only manage a standardised "balance" of reporting: "The Sri Lankan government claims... The Tamil Tigers claim... Neither can be verified". Ultimately the picture was one of a balanced conflict between two sides, each hell bent on dominating the other.

The reality, as Informeaning pointed out, was quite different. Now the official war is over, aid agencies are beginning to get at what really happened. As the Tamils were hemmed into a small area in the North of the island, most news outlets around the world reported how the Tamil Tiger rebel group were "using" civilians for cover - a bit like Winston Churchill used Londoners for "cover" during the Blitz one presumes! Then they gave credence to Sri Lankan government claims that many if not most of the casualties were the result of Tamil Tigers executing Tamils who wanted to flee their iron grip.

To the even moderately critical observer it was always already apparent that such an explanation was flawed. Firstly, no guerilla group on earth has ever managed to survive against a much larger, better organised and better resources state army (or invading army) without the support of the civilian population. Secondly, most of the "knowledge" about the massacre of Tamil civilians came from Tamils being stewarded by Sri Lankan soldiers.

Given that even prominent Sinhala editors and journalists can be assassinated for speaking out against the Sri Lankan government, when thousands of unarmed Tamil civilians - on the losing side - are being ushered by a notoriously brutal Sri Lankan army, might one not treat their comments may be taken with a modicum of suspicion? Might not an astute journalist be nagged by images of American hostages bemoaning the evils of their homeland's empire with guns at their heads?

Indeed, Amnesty International has reported recently that doctors who spoke the truth about the situation have since been detained and "persuaded" to recant.

Well, now the journalists have gone home and now there are far more important world issues to address - today alone we can read about such important and infrequent things as lightening occuring in America, a smokey plane, a man falling over, the sun shining (okay, for Scotland perhaps that is newsworthy!), and mad people in Saudia Arabia - the plight of the Tamils has dropped from the radar. Almost like the closure we get in trashy Hollywood flicks, it is supposed that this particular film ended with the victory of the Sri Lankan Army. All that's left is the credits.

However, the crisis continues. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils are being stored in what the Sri Lankan government call "welfare camps", which might be more commonly recognised as concentration camps. Surprisingly the Times of London is one of the few news outlets still interested in the plight of the Tamils, reporting that some 1,400 Tamils are dying each week in the camps. Mix that with allegations that the Sri Lankan government is moving Sinhala to the north of the island, as well as the reports from Informeaning on the acts of abuse commited there, and it seems that these facts point to what is called in polite circles, "ethnic cleansing".

So, why no sanctions? Why is the United Nations seemingly unconcerned? Why no "peace keeping" force? Why no war crimes tribunals or "humanitarian interventions"? Why no international shock or resultant agenda for "regime change"?

The reality of international relations must be understood in order to make sense of the wilful ignorance of the international "community". The US is under pressure in Pakistan and may need to rethink its deployments in South Asia. The Sri Lankan capital, Colombo is well situated for actions in South Asia. However, it seems that the US is not the main bad-guy here.

Indeed the US withdrew aid and ended military supplies to Sri Lanka during the conflict. But the void was filled by China and Pakistan who saw the opportunity for billions of dollars worth of trade for their war industries. The Japan Times reports that China and Pakistan stepped in where the US stepped out, boosting their (military) "aid" packages to $1bn and $100m respectively.

There are additional incentives for China's involvement. Sri Lanka is ripe for development in its own right (China loaned Sri Lanka nearly $1bn to build a coal-fired power station just last month), but it is also strategically important for China's foreign policy in the region. This will be helped by the new Chinese-built ports on the south of the Island, crucial for trade routes between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Naturally, there is one last piece to this particular puzzle: good old black gold. China has an enormous interest in gaining control over oil exploration and extraction in Asia, having lost the advantage in the Middle East to European and American interests. Having exploited Myanmar's international isolation over human rights abuses, China has been rewarded with lucrative oil exploration contract there. The reward for its assistance in the massacre of the Tamils in Sri Lanka is, naturally, oil and gas exploration rights.

But fuck 'em, Jordan had a miscarriage and Tamils have brown skin.

Honduras: The legacy of US foreign policy?

2009-07-05T02:07:00.000-07:00

On 28th June 2008 the democratically elected leader of Honduras, Manuel Zeyala, was ousted in a military coup. Zeyala was a moderate-left businessman, who had aligned his government with the pro-independence Bolivarian movement. The international reaction seems to betray a shift in policy towards Latin America.

US policy in Latin America and the Pacific and Caribbean islands over the past 150 years has been imperialistic to a greater or lesser degree. US imperialism saw direct control exerted over the likes of Puerto Rico (1898), Hawaii (1898), Midway (1867), and Pearl Harbor (1887) - unlike many of the gains of European powers, these colonies remain in US hands, having been absorbed into the US state.

Other states and territories have simply been denied autonomous development. Often this short-sighted policy has pushed independence and anti-imperialist leaders into the hands of greater "enemies" of the US, with Cuba as the most obvious example - as in Vietnam the independence leaders in Cuba were nationalist anti-imperialists before US opposition pushed them towards the communist bloc.

So the story continues. Democratically elected leaders who showed significant deviation from US policies were brutally overthrown in US-backed coups. Indeed, the "terrorist training camp", the School of the Americas was set up in Georgia in 1946 to train Latin American military staff to suppress independence movements.

The "success" of the training can be seen in the fact that its Alumni include narco-dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, Galteri, who slaughtered tens of thousands in Argentina, many of the senior figures in Pinochet's Chile, and various terrorist leaders and death squads around Latin America throughout the 20th Century.

At times, the US actively and explicitly promoted terrorism in Latin America, as found in the CIA training manual produced to show the Contra terrorists how to conduct "explicit" and "implicit terrorist operations against the democratically elected government in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

The activities of the US in Latin America - its overthrow of elected governments, its funding of terrorist groups and its support of the use of torture and assassination - are not speculative or conspiratorial conjecture. They are well documented in the US state's own documents and in the diaries of defector and former CIA operative Philip Agee.

Such intervention continues to the present day, with democratically elected government of Venezuela as the most recent victim of imperialistic US foreign policies.

Like him or loathe him, Hugo Chavez's credentials as an elected leader are beyond doubt. He was elected for the first time in 1998 with 56% of the vote and with 60% of the vote in 2000. In 2004 Chavez won a recall vote with 59%, and he was most recently reelected in a general election of 2006, in which he won with 63% of the vote.

To set Chavez’s democratic support in perspective, in 2000 George Bush was elected President in a controversial decision with 47.9% of the vote (against 48.4% sic for his opponent on a 51.31% turnout) and then with 50.7% of the vote in 2004 on a 56.69% turnout. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher was elected on 43.9% of the vote in 1979, 42.4% in 1983 and 42.2% in 1987. Blair was elected with 43.2% in 1997, 40.1% in 2001 and 35.3% in 2005. The current British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has not won a general election but was appointed by Blair. Most of his Cabinet are also unelected. There is, then, in absolute and relative terms no reasonable doubt about Chavez’s democratic legitimacy.

Nevertheless, the US and to a lesser extent, the UK had a policy of "regime change", seeking to overthrow the elected leader of Venezuela. US-Venezuelan lawyer, Eva Golinger has shown conclusively how the US supported and funded the anti-democratic oligarchy in Venezuela before and after the 2002 coup. By 2006 the US Government had given "the opposition" $34,000,000.

In 2002 a group of oligarchs - mainly businessmen and military generals - launched a coup, on the back of a long campaign of political agitation and economic sabotage. The coup didn't last long, as ordinary Venezuelans rose up against the military junta alongside ordinary soldiers. The rapidity of the incident exposed the US and UK.

Incredibly, even the supposedly rabidly communist, pinko, homosexual, Muslim British newspapers, the Guardian and the Independent bought their government's position. The Guardian and the Times reported that 'in Washington … the fall of Mr Chavez was hailed as a triumph of democracy’, and, inexplicably, The Guardian proposed that Chavez’s ‘popularity plummeted as he antagonised almost every sector of society and failed to improve the lot of the poor’ (see above election results!). The Times was literally a mouthpiece for the government when it carried Denis MacShane’s (then minister for Latin America) vitriolic commentary on Chavez, a ‘ranting, populist demagogue’, in which he went so far as to write, ‘Venezuela now needs to find its way to a democratic and inclusive governance’.

Of course, government statements changed rather dramatically when democracy was restored.

So what of Honduras?

Well, the Bush administration's obsession with oil led it to take its eye of its historical 'back yard'. The problem is not so much a hostile Chavez in the region, but the self-confident, commanding form of anti-imperialism and self-reliance he represents. In fact, Chavez is little more than the sort of European social democrat we find in Sweden, Holland or Norway. The main problem is that the sort of independence he is aligned with in the Bolivarian movement threatens US hegemony in the region.

Zeyala is a "member" of the Bolivarian (independence and anti-imperialism) movement, which also includes Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador. However, with the Obama administration in power in the US, it is clear that US foreign policy has changed.

President Obama has been explicit in his condemnation of the coup - in stark contrast to the Bush administration's support of dictatorship in Venezuela. Similarly the British government has been clear in its condemnation, saying it "condemns the expulsion of President Zelaya and calls for the restoration of democratic, constitutional government in Honduras. We support the Organisation of American States' call supporting the rule of law and are deeply concerned about the deployment of military personnel onto the streets of Tegucigalpa".

Although there are a few blogs out there that refer to the involvement of the CIA, the idea that it has been officially sanctioned is very doubtful.

What is more likely is that a culture has developed amongst the oligarchy in Honduras and elsewhere in Latin America, wherein it believes it has the right, the authority and, perhaps most importantly, the support of its overlord to act as it will, should democracy prove unsuitable to its interests.

Honduras was, after all, one of the key strategic playing fields for the US oligarchy's absurd "defence" against "Soviet interests" in the region. Honduras was America's bitch in its war against democracy in Nicaraguas, and was where many of the "Contra" missions were launched from. It was not just Honduras' role as a launch-pad that helps us make sense of today. Indeed, it was a playground for maladjusted American statespersons, mercenaries and solider-boys, who supported the Honduran military's slaughter of its own citizens in the 1980s.

Indeed, many of the misdeeds in Honduras were reported in that stalwart of televisiual entertainment, The Baltimore Sun. Omar muthafuka!

The Baltimore Sun reported that

"The Honduran press was full of reports about military abuses, including hundreds of newspaper stories in 1982 alone"

It went on to implicate the US, claiming that the roles of U.S. officials

"were detailed by The Sun in a four-part June series that documented kidnapping, torture and murder by a CIA-trained Honduran military unit known as Battalion 316.

Documents declassified at The Sun's request revealed that U.S. officials knew what was happening in Honduras and engaged in a willful deception to avoid confronting Congress with the truth."

For more than a century the US has encouraged Latin American oligarchs to overthrow democratic governments, to murder, torture, mutilate and terrorise their own people should they call for deviate from their interests or those of the US, whether in relation to fruit plantations, natural gas, copper deposits or the old favourite, oil.

It is thus not surprising that an elected leader who opposes both the domestic oligarchs and US hegemony should be deposed.

The important questions remain - how far with the world powers go to restore democracy (could they see it as important as Iraq?), and when will the counter-productive nature of such policies be realised and thereby the policies cease?

Human Rights, Government Wrongs. The application of human rights law in the UK

2009-06-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

In the 1990s the UK's Labour Government had made human rights one of its key platforms. However, 12 years since the Labour party was elected to form a government, its record on human rights prosecutions is shameful, as political and economic interests dominate.

In 1998 the UK's Labour Government introduced the Human Rights Act. Grand sounding as it is, the Act was not as revolutionary as some thought. Its main intention was to enable EU Human Rights law to be used in the UK courts without having to go to the European courts.

However, the spirit of that particular law went further. These were the heady days of the first Labour government in 18 years, and it seemed the UK had entered a brave new world. Alongside other radical proposals for greater political and human rights was the "ethical foreign policy", which would have limited arms sales to repressive regimes.

Soon after the idea of an ethical foreign policy was popularised, ministers realised the cost implications of such policy - the UK war industry is huge, and the Labour government was soon to conform to the Conservative principle that money is more important than the lives of strangers. The ethical foreign policy was all but abandoned.

The limited scope Human Rights Act (HRA) was subject to no such strategic withdrawal. However, just over 10 years after Parliament voted to pass it, it remains largely the tool of wealthy celebrities trying to prevent photographs being published.

Nevertheless, the Human Rights Act is not the only tool for human rights law. Ten years before the HRA, Thatcher's Conservative Government introduced the 1988 Criminal Justice Act. Although Labour had traditionally marketed itself as the party of human rights, the 1988 Act is enormously important. The Act states that, "A public official or person acting in an official capacity, whatever his nationality, commits the offence of torture if in the United Kingdom or elsewhere he intentionally inflicts severe pain or suffering on another in the performance or purported performance of his official duties."

This Act established what is known in the legal profession as "Universal Jurisdiction". The doctrine of universal jurisdiction authorizes Britain to take legal action against individuals who are accused of certain serious violations of international law, notably torture and war crimes, regardless of where they were commited.

However, over the past 10 years, there have been three significant persons facing allegations in the UK, who the government simply let go.

The former Chilean Dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, was responsible for the slaughter of some 3000 political opponents, and the torture of many more, during the 1970s and 1980s. His victims included nuns, trade unionists, priests, human rights workers, socialists and anyone else who questioned his authority.

In 1998 Pinochet went to England seeking medical treatment but was arrested after a Spanish prosecutor had requested his extradition for the torture and murder of Spanish citizens living in Chile under his regime.

After a lengthy legal battle in which Law Lords ruled that the law provided for his extradition and thereby for universal jurisdiction, the Home Secretary at the time, Jack Straw, intervened allowing Pinochet to escape justice on medical grounds.

Professor David Sugarman, Director for the Centre for Law and Society at Lancaster University, who has written about the case, explained that having been petitioned by the Chilean government, Straw exercised "discretion" in his application of the law, but did not wait for the court decision and agreed to set Pinochet free before the court had ruled.

Human Rights First called Straw’s decision a “travesty of justice”.

Straw initially refused to allow petitioners, including Human Rights Watch, to inspect the medical reports that led to Pinochet’s release. Human Rights Watch expressed dismay at being “denied the right to question the fairness of the procedure used to assess Augusto Pinochet's fitness to stand trial”.

Sugarman explains that the only reason the medical reports became public is because, having been requested by Spain and Belgium, the two countries asking for extradition, they were disclosed but leaked onto a Spanish web site.

Once the reports were made available it became clear, according to Sugarman, that they were not conclusive, but did offer Straw a way out. For Sugarman this was not a heroic Spanish government fighting an intransigent UK government. Rather, he explains that there was a lack of political will on the part of all the governments involved, not least because Spain would have opened a can of worms as regards its own history of human rights violations under Franco.

The ruling elites in the UK, Chile and Spain were united in their desire to avoid pursuing the case.

Only a few years later the Israeli general, Doron Almog, was accused of demolishing 59 Palestinian homes to the ground in Gaza, in breach of the Geneva Convention.

An English court had issued a warrant for Almog’s arrest in September 2005 but as his plane arrived at Heathrow airport, representatives of the Israeli embassy had been able to advise Almog not to leave the plane. Metropolitan police officers had arrived to make the arrest, only to stand down and allow Almog’s plane to return to Israel.

Shortly after the event, Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary this time, went on to apologise to the Israeli foreign minister and eventually withdrew the warrant.

Amnesty said it “deplored the failure of the United Kingdom authorities to arrest Almog”. It went on to say, “refusal to arrest a person suspected of war crimes is a clear violation both of the UK's unconditional obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention and under national law”.

For its part, the Metropolitan police refused to answer journalists’ questions about why officers refused to make the arrest. At least some of those involved reported that the police backed down because of the threat of an armed conflict with Israeli security staff.

Moreover, despite demands by Daniel Machover, the lawyer who requested the warrant, there have been no enquiries into the conduct of either the police or Jack Straw.

Professor Chandra Lekha Srira, Director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict at the University of East London, draws out the parallels between the Almog case and that of Pinochet. "Given the foreign relations fallout with both Spain and Chile over the Pinochet case, it was not especially surprising" that Almog got away. "The real issue is the absence of political will to carry a case forward where a person is in custody, and also clearly a strong desire to avoid having to even take decisions by enabling individuals to leave quickly. Almog barely having arrived".

Most recently there was the case of the former Tamil Tiger turned Sri Lankan government militiaman, Colonel Karuna (click here for Informeaning's account of his case). Karuna had been arrested in London for immigration offences and was eventually imprisoned.

Although Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had presented dossiers on human rights abuses attributed to him, yet again the UK government refused to prosecute the case.

Brad Adams, from Human Rights Watch, was clear about the possibility of trying Karuna. "The UK has strong Human Rights Laws and hence there should have been no problem in prosecuting him". “Karuna’s escape from justice in the UK is a failure for international law, the British government blew it”.

Again, there was no political will to try Karuna.

As with Almog, no official questions have been asked about the failure to try him, about Karuna's suspicious arrival in the UK nor about his return to Sri Lanka, where he was rewarded for his crimes by being given a ministerial post.

There has been, however, one case of human rights abuses committed in another jurisdiction being prosecuted in the UK. Afghan "warlord", Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, was no greater human rights abuser than any of the others who might have been tried. He fought against the Russians in the 1980s and in the 1990s set up check points at which he abducted, robbed tortured and murdered travellers in Afghanistan. Fleeing the Taliban in the late 1990s he settled in London.

Despite the UK government knowing about the allegations against Zardad, he lived in London undisturbed for 5 years.

In 2003 Zardad was arrested in London and put on trial. He was found guilty of torture in 2005 and sentenced to 20 years in jail. The trial cost around £3 million.

Why, then, was Zardad prosecuted? The most obvious point is that he fell out of favour as the UK joined NATO powers in invading Afghanistan. Brad Adams suggests that the support the UK gave to the Afghan government necessitated the trial, and noted that the influence of counter-terrorism rather than human rights motives explained a good deal.

Crucially there was an ideological drive. For the Blair government, the public rationale for invading Afghanistan (whatever the real reasons) had to be something that nobody could object to. And so the human rights angle was played again and again, with the help of a willing media. Zardad could thereby become the proof for Blair's claim that UK involvement in the Afghan war was driven by a desire to improve human rights. His was an ideological trial to demonstrate how much Afghanistan had improved, despite the fact that he was an enemy of the Taliban.

Zardad's misfortune was that there were compelling political and ideological reasons to try him for human rights abuses. Elsewhere, in the 10 years since the Human Rights Act, rights come a poor fourth place behind political, economic and ideological interests. With the Conservative Party still hanging on to the idea of repealing human rights legislation, this situation is likely to change any time soon.

European Elections: The Top Ten Most Right Wing Countries in Europe

2009-06-08T06:05:00.001-07:00

So the European electorate has"steered" the EU to the right, and we are left trying to negotiate absurdities that would have had Alice pondering the madness of the hatter's tea party.

Yes, we live in a Europe where the Italian government is headed by an alleged criminal who just happens to own much of the media landscape. So it is no surprise that Italians see few contradictions in living under a government coalition that was built on three main "parties" - one is Berlusconi's plaything, to which he is able to appoint and remove at will. Another, Northern League, has its sole objective as autonomy and ideally independence from the rest of Italy. The third party, National Alliance, has its sole objective as a unified, centralised Italian state.

Such daft alliances carried over to the European Union, with the establishment of the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS) grouping, in which the Northern League tried to co-exist with the Greater Romania party. However, it just so happened that Romanians are among the most despised immigrant groups in the eyes of Legistas and other assorted Italian fascists. Naturally the Italian fascist Alessandra Mussolini (yes, his granddaughter) couldn't manage diplomacy in front of the Romanians and managed to convince them to leave the group, thus precipitating its demise.

Today the ITS grouping has been replaced by the Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN). Despite the usual drivel that it is "against all forms of racism and discrimination" the UEN is as close to a fascist grouping as there is in the European Parliament. It is accompanied by the ironically titled, Independence/Democracy (ID), which is made up by a multitude of right wing rejectionists.

Between them the UEN and ID have reaped the rewards not of a "steer" from the electorate as such, but of concerted pan-European propaganda campaigns against the inevitable movement of persons that occurs as national borders decline in importance, as enshrined in the principles of European Union - the free movement of people, products and services.

At the head of the campaigns have been the imbecilic media moguls, editors and journalists on some of the most popular newspapers and television stations.

And so the Polish go to the UK, the British go to Spain, the Romanians go to Italy, the Italians to everywhere, the Bulgarians to Greece and so on. And it is without self-consciousness that the returning emigres complain about how things have changed and how nobody speaks English/French/Italian/German/Dutch/Port... any more.

On a good day, European right-wing nationalism has the mind bending in incomprehension. The lack of self-consciousness on the part of many on the right has been exposed on many occasions, including on the wonderful Channel 4 documentary, 100% English. Whereas at least on that documentary the subjects were born in the territory from which they claim their racial purity, on other occasions the right-wing migrant's dilemma is cruelly exposed.

Such was the case when I was asked by a northern Italian school teacher to discuss a student exchange. Before meeting her I was advised by a friend that she was the head of the local chapter of the anti-immigrant far-right party Lega Nord (Northern League). She is also a Danish immigrant. So I took great delight (in my apparent ignorance) in expressing my concern for her as an immigrant in an area where the Northern League is strong. She didn't get it.

Alas the slightest hint of a question or concern about who the European "immigrants" are leads Europe's prestigious news outlets to take up the sword against would be invaders. These crusaders are not interested in answering questions, because even the most elementary knowledge of the news business leads one to understand that controversy and fear (preferably terror) sell news. So why try to help people understand the movement of peoples around Europe when fear mongering earns more?

Indeed, the campaigns has infected almost all political actors. Just like Bush's incredulous "War on Terror" the "War on Movement" forbids opposition. How can one oppose it when the news tells us that it is the movement of people that is behind "our" loss of identity, cultural corruption, unemployment, crime, sexual deviancy, divorce, disease and so on? Your are either with Us or with the corrupters, criminals deviants and the rest of them.

So in the UK, the Daily Mail has reached the pinnacle of its 100 years of racism by persuading almost all political actors that immigration is The "Problem". It is not a natural phenomenon that has been going on for thousands of years, but a recent disease that the government must do something about. Other newsmongers can't be left behind, so seek to outdo each other on tales of immigration terror.

In turn, British Labour Prime Ministers have ensured that their declarations on immigration policy have pandered to the most ignorant of the Daily Mail readers, so fearful are they of upsetting people who wouldn't vote for them even if it meant death.

The result of course is that the Prime Minister gained the initiative on immigration, showing he can be even "tougher" (rarrr) than Hitler.... oh no, my mistake. The result of course is that the Prime Minister gave the upper hand to fascist parties like the British Nationalist Party, who could out-Hitler Hitler, let alone Gordon Brown.

So where has the fear and suspicion got us today? In which countries has the War on Movement been most successful? Informeaning has analysed the data and here provides the top ten most right-wing states in Europe according to the % of seats the right wing parties picked up in the 2009 European Elections:

Perhaps surprisingly it is one of the nations that provides the most migrants heading the list.

1. Poland, 86%
2. Hungary, 68.2%
3. Ireland, 66.7%
4. Italy, 59.7%
5. Slovakia, 53.8%
6= Latvia, 50%
6= Lithuania, 50%
6= Luxembourg, 50%
9. Spain, 46%
10. Portugal, 45.5%

The list is somewhat skewed because UK's Conservative party, which dominated the elections, isn't quite sure how right wing it is and has yet to join a group. Furthermore, in some countries, the "centre-right" is less right-wing than in others. So, what does the list look like if we include only the far right UEN and ID paries without the centre-right?

The most far-right nations of Europe are

1. Latvia, 37.5%
2. Ireland, 33.3%
3. Poland, 30%
4. UK, 18.1%
5. Lithuania, 16.7%
6. Denmark, 15.4%
7. Italy, 12.5%
8. Greece, 8.3%
9. Netherlands, 8%
10. Slovakia, 7.7%

Vote British Nationalist Party?

2009-06-03T00:29:00.001-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More bristol

Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers: It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings

2009-05-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

"The writ of the state now runs across every inch of our territory .... We have completely defeated terrorism." So, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa declared this week. The decades-long war between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state is over.

Rajapaksa's triumphalism is a far cry from George W Bush's "mission accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in may 2003, at least 6 years before the mission was anywhere near "accomplished. However, although the routing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been intense and seems complete, there is reason for caution.

The Sri Lankan state was faced with three choices in tackling the Tamil Tigers' de facto state in the north and east of the island.

One choice was acceptance of Tamil autonomy in the north, which would never have been accepted by the dominant Sinhala parties.

Another was a protracted conventional war, moving slowly north, avoiding civilian casualties and attempting to win "hearts and minds".

The final choice was total war, annihilation of the Tamil Tiger infrastructure at any cost. Much to the bemusement of middle class Westerners, it was the Buddhist party, Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) that was leading the calls for genocidal policies. Though many Hollywood celebrities have promoted the myth of a nice fluffy Buddhism led by grandfather-like gentile old men like the Dalai Lama, the reality of Buddhism is rather different. It is certainly not adverse to supporting questionable regimes and practices, as in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka.

It was of course this final choice that was pursued by the Sri Lankan state. Indeed the pursuit of this choice was clear in the day-to-day utterances and actions of the Sri Lankan government. The Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was candid about the government's intentions, declaring its aim "to destroy the LTTE at any cost. There was no ambiguity in that".

The result was that civilians would not be protected. Indeed, during and since the last months of the war reports of attacks on civilian areas abound. Amnesty International reported the "continuous shelling of areas with large concentrations of non-combatants", as well as attacks on hospitals treating Tamil civilians.

In addition to the thousands of Tamil fighters and civilians killed during the recent "surge", the Red Cross reports that there are well over 200,000 "displaced persons" living in camps, many of whom are suffering abuse and violence, including rape.

The problem for the Sri Lankan state is that it has to deal with a guerilla movement. The LTTE arose in response to the oppression Tamils experienced at the hands of the dominant ethnic group in Sri Lankan, the Sinhala. The oppression faced by the Sinhala was in no small part due to their complicity with the British Empire's rule over Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was then known. The British used their usual tactics of divide and rule, offering rewards to the minority Tamil population to administer the colony.

Sinhala nationalism grew before and during the process of decolonisation, resulting in the establishment of a dominant Buddhist nationalism in which Tamils faced significant discrimination.

The conduct of the Sri Lankan forces during and after the recent surge will do nothing whatsoever to dampen the sense of violent discrimination that fuelled the drive for Tamil independence. Indeed, some of the significant support for the LTTE comes from outside Sri Lanka, from the wealthy and powerful Tamil diaspora around the world. Indeed, for obvious reasons the Tamil exiles are often stronger supporters of the LTTE than those left behind.

Whilst the diaspora demand and fund the drive for independence, and whilst the Tamils in Sri Lanka face extreme discrimination and violence, the desire for independence will not receed. As is the case with guerilla movements, the strength of the guerillas comes not from their arms but from the support of the ordinary people.

The ultimate defeat of the LTTE will not come from military action. They will only be defeated in the long term when Tamils cease to feel the need for their protection, a point made by Eric Hobsbawm in the 1960s when it looked like the US would be victorious in its attempt to dominate Vietnam.

Parliament PLC: MPs' salaries and the problem of expenses

2009-05-19T02:03:00.000-07:00

On Question Time this week a member of the audience made sense of the MPs' expense 'scandal' by suggesting that it was a result of "us" not paying MPs enough.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the scandal would be used as a rallying point for MPs to claim even more remuneration, without the slighted sense of irony. So, The Independent and the BBC raise the question.

The argument for increasing MPs pay to "commercial rates" are:
1. to recruit the best people
2. to prevent fraud, such as over expenses
3. to prevent MPs seeking outside jobs

One might hope that the flaws in such arguments are obvious, but they ought to be recounted nevertheless:

1 a. the "best people" don't do it for the money
1 b. the corporate idea that the "best" need to be paid lots is a self-perpetuating lie. The economy doesn't really respond to individuals. It is a system that responds to processes that are beyond the control of individuals. It just looks as is the individual CEOs are in control. They are not. However, the gangs that rule us have the same interests in convincing us that if we don't pay them millions, they will.... erm... seek alternative employment as... teachers... or... erm nurses.
1 c. An MP is NOT a CEO, Chief Executive or any other business person. They ought not to serve because they are paid highly (as otherwise they will go off to work for Coca Cola). Rather, they ought to serve because they have a commitment to the ordinary people (not to corporations, rich people or their own pockets) they are supposed to represent. Frankly if people are refusing to become MPs because of the pay, then good, they are not good MPs
1 d. The argument doesn't hold for other important yet low paid roles (teachers, social workers, nurses)
1 e. They "earn" £60,000 per year already.

2. Ahem, "Your Honour, yes I did fiddle expenses, and yes I did pilfer, but it was all because I wasn't being paid enough". Verdict?.

3. Moonlighting is not allowed in most jobs.

However, moonlighting it is part of the culture in Parliament. Indeed, Tory MP Andrew Lansley spewed that his non-executive directorship is necessary because it helps him "understand what is happening". The argument undermines the intention here. If MPs want to "understand what is happening", then their first job (as MP) should pay the median national average wage of £23,000. Any second job should entail working long hours for low wages in supermarkets, cleaning streets, office administration and so on. Anyone who couldn't do that would be deemed the be out of touch and could happily cease to be a representative of ordinary people.

Perhaps, as MPs deem ordinary people to be worthy of means-testing, MPs' wages ought to be means tested, so that those who don't need to draw a wage at all don't. Such MPs might include:

- Conservative leader, David Cameron, fortune £3.2 million (expenses 2007/8, £148,829)
- Conservative leader in the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, fortune £10 million.
- Tory MP for Beaconsfield, Dominic Grieve, fortune £3.1 million (expenses 2007/8, £128,343)
- Tory MP for Amersham and Chesham, Cheryl Gillan fortune £1.3 million (expenses 2007/8, £153,886)
- Labour MP for St Helens South, Shaun Woodward, fortune £40 million (expenses 2007/8, £152,822)

Perhaps such MPs are, as so many claim, needy of financial help. Perhaps they are just regretfully working within the inadequate rules of Parliament. If they could, they would change them. Well, they had a chance. They all had a chance. Unfortunately none of them voted strongly for greater transparency in Parliament. In fact, they mostly simply failed to turn up to important votes on Freedom of Information Act amendments in 2007 that would have introduced greater transparency.

As if to deliver a more significant slap in the faces of the oiks he" represents" the richest of this particular rouges' gallery, Mr Woodward, felt so concerned about the impact on his fortune of having to pay for furniture that he voted against a rule that would have excluded furniture. But then it must be expensive to furnish properties in London, Oxford and St Helens, as well as rental properties in New York, London, France, and the West Indies.

Woodward, he former Tory MP for Witney also felt it important to vote against external audits of MP's expenses. As his colleague intimated on Question Time, the oiks probably wouldn't understand why.

G8 in L'Aquila and Obama riding the back of the bus?

2009-05-13T03:44:00.000-07:00

The allegedly corrupt Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi is bolstering his populism by proposing to site the next G8 meeting in L'Aquila, the site of the recent earthquake. The proposal has met with positive reactions from the US and UK.

Berlusconi heads a right-wing coalition of "neo" fascists, racists and Silvio-devotees in Italy, members of which are often accused of committing "gaffes", most notably against Barak Obama when Berlusconi "congratulated" the US President by complimenting him on his "sun tan".

It will, then, be interesting in the extreme to see how Obama is "welcomed" to L'Aquila.

Although much of the Western media chooses to refer to Berlusconi's government as "centre-right", or when feeling brave "right-wing", it is far from it, indicating merely how far to the right the centre has moved.

For example, "centrist" Berlusconi has referred to " illegal immigrants" as an "army of evil", has suggested that "Mussolini never killed anyone", and in April 2008 declared "We are the new Falange" after the new "centre right" mayor of Rome was welcomed with fascist salutes and cries of "Duce, Duce" (the term reserved for Mussolini in the fascisst period).

Umberto Bossi, Berlusconi's coalition partner and leader of Lega Nord (Northern League), suggested that if the left won the last election he had rifles and 300,000 martyrs waiting. He also called on the Italian navy to blow ships carrying immigrants out of the water (presumably referring only to those ships carrying immigrants with dark skin, rather than the thousands of English, Germans, Dutch and Americans who settle there)

Roberto Calderoli, the minister in charge of "simplification", well known for his insulting intervention in the Mohammed cartoon controversy, is also known for suggesting that the constitution of the French football team meant France had "sacrificed its identity for results by fielding Niggers, Muslims and Communists".

Italy's Defence Minister, Ignazio La Russa expressed no regret after he embraced Alessandra Mussolini on the night of last election results, declaring "I love you and I love your grandfather".

The examples could go on, but the point is made.

So how will Obama receive such people? Perhaps he may view these utterances as mere utterances, the sort of hot air we expect from Latin hotheads?

Much as it might be reassuring to bury one's head in such conclusions, these utterances are not merely hot air.

All around Italy non-white immigrants and travelling communities are being subject to harassment and discrimination, but the most pertinent issue for Obama may remind him of bygone times in the US.

Last week Milanese Lega Nord election candidate, Raffaella Piccinni, proposed "Milanese only" seats on public transport. Naturally, coming from a candidate for a far-right, racist party, "Milanese only" would not exclude other Italians.

Matteo Salvini, the deputy secretary of Lega Nord, explained, 'The proposal to set aside seats for Milanese travellers could be implemented in a few years’ time', adding that 'Given the general atmosphere of arrogance, rudeness and violence, if nothing is done about it, in ten years’ time there’ll be seats reserved for the Milanese and decent people, the way there once were for war veterans, invalids and pregnant women. If we don’t lay down limits for immigration, that’s what it will come to'.

The immigrants to be targeted would, however, not include those from Britain, Germany or Holland, but only those from outside the EU ... presumably those with darker skin tones.

So where would that leave Mr Obama should he decide to permanently leave the rough roads around Washington to ride at the back of the bus in Bella Italia?

MP's Expenses? Interesting but business as usual

2009-05-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

So, the crusading British press has exposed the latest political scandal in Westminster. This time MPs have been "discovered" fiddling expenses, pursued by journalists, "innocent" MPs and the Great British Public, unified in their tutting.

Countless pages of national newspapers have been given over to reporting the details of the scandal, detailing claims ranging from the purchase of a wooden spoon (yes, really!) to spending tens of thousands of pounds on renovating houses.

The indignation has almost exceeded that seen in the bankers' pensions scandal, yet there is something deeply troubling about both responses.

Should we really be that horrified at either case?

Perhaps bureaucratic capitalism is deeply corrupt in its very nature. Perhaps the "scandals" we see are merely the predictable result of a system that thrives on corruption, regardless of the individuals involved.

Another way to look at this is to consider the actions and relations that fail to become scandals because they are considered normal.

The shock expressed at these specific instances masks institutionalised corruption. Indeed if one is labouring under the delusion that we live in a democracy or that bankers normally deserve to be paid £5,000,000 a year, the one may be purblind to normal, ordinary, everyday corruption.

Outrage at the "scandals" seems a little naive.

A far deeper problem in "our" political system consists in its normal links with business. The problem with Parliament is not that its members can claim expenses for a handyman to change light bulbs, but is that it is not considered scandalous when ministers and MPs ordinarily use institutions for the financial gain of themselves and their friends (or whoever pays them).

So, for example, when the former minister Jack Cunningham becomes a paid consultant for the Corporation of London the Guardian reports it, but there is no chorus of outrage.

When the former International Development Secretary Baroness Amos becomes non-executive director of a private equity firm, to which her department awarded government contracts, the Conservatives condemn her.

Yet it is not a problem that Tony Baldry MP is Chairman (non-executive) of Red Eagle Resources PLC, Chairman (non-executive) of Westminster Oil Limited, as well as of West African Investments Ltd, Halcyon Oil Limited, Partner Capital Ltd (non-executive); Mastermailer Holdings plc, and Deputy Chairman of Woburn Energy plc. The reason that this is not considered to be a problem is that Mr Baldry claims the Chairmanships on Parliament's Register of Members' Interests.

Perhaps the principle behind the system of registering interests should be extended to all, as is becoming of democracy: "I hereby register my interest in shooting politicians". It feels good to know that forgiveness follows confession.

When Tony Blair was "paid" $5,000,000 to act as a consultant for JP Morgan, the most the BBC's correspondent could muster was: ""I am not making a judgement about the value of what our former Prime Minister will actually do for Morgan ... The proof of that will be in the pudding." Lenin will say more on this in a moment.

Is it okay that William Hague, the former leader of the Conservative Party, raked in £1,000,000 from extra parliamentary activities whilst retaining his seat in Parliament?

Of course the MPs who are also Chairmen of various businesses have done noting illegal. Nor is it illegal for former ministers to take a job, but it doesn't follow that they have done nothing wrong.

As unfashionable as the reference might be, we can learn something from V I Lenin's moral indignation at the systemic corruption of the political classes in pre-Soviet Russia.

'Since, for instance, in the very first months of the Russian democratic republic, one might say during the honeymoon of the "socialist" S.R.s and Mensheviks joined in wedlock to the bourgeoisie, in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky obstructed every measure intended for curbing the capitalists and their marauding practices, their plundering of the state by means of war contracts; and since later on Mr. Palchinsky, upon resigning from the Cabinet (and being, of course, replaced by another quite similar Palchinsky), was "rewarded" by the capitalists with a lucrative job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per annum — what would you call that? Direct or indirect bribery?'

History is a cliché

And so here we are 100 or so years later, having learned nothing. Bribery is institutionalised, normal. In fact it indirect bribery is the lifeblood of the political system - what else do we call it when businesses and individuals "donate" millions of pounds to political parties? They didn't become right by giving away money for nothing!

Corruption applies only to those who fail to declare.

And so we are here under a Labour government wherein us creatures look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but again it is impossible to say which is which.

Save the Children?

2009-05-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago Informeaning wrote about the tragedy of tax rises for the rich. We explained that it was unfair to make the rich pay for the fiscal shortcomings of a government obsessed with increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.

The economy may have collapsed because of a culture of greed and gambling that served the rich, but that doesn't mean the rich should be responsible for the fallout from the crisis of profitability.

No. Since when did anyone in their right mind think that the rich should stoop to the level of the poor and be held responsible for their actions? It is far more appropriate to reward the rich with massive corporate welfare packages, otherwise they would lack the motivation to screw things up again.

However, governments will have to pay for this welfare somehow. The trillions of pounds, dollars and Euros that have been handed over to banks and bankers did not grow on trees (cue, "but paper...").

Business Week estimates that European governments recently managed to find $4,000,000,000,000 hidden away beneath various mattresses, under the cushions of sofas and, well, just lying around. This was promptly spent on social services, education, hospi.. oh, sorry, on hand-outs to banks.

Istockanalysis tells us that the US government's corporate welfare bill could reach $11,000,000,000,000, or 80% of 2007 GDP!

Surely governments cannot divert money from military budgets to pay for this? The Council of Foreign Relations reports that total US military expenditure on the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq is likely to reach between $2,600,000,000,000 and $4,500,000,000,000. The Guardian reports that the UK's spending on these wars in just one year (2008) amounted to £4,500,000,000.

But whilst there are still countries to invade and people to kill, defence budgets cannot be cut.

No. There must be sections of society who can be defecated upon without an uproar because they simply don't matter? There must be people and organisations from whom money can be taken without anyone really caring.

Information has already reported that the gap between rich and poor has increased to such a degree that there is not much more to take from the poor.

Ah! That's it! The government still has some kind of commitment to providing for a near-human existence for the disabled, children, and the mentally ill. That's right, welfare paid to these incompetents can be cut so that, er, we can cover the cost of welfare for banks.

Sources close to the street have informed Informeaning that there are some 3,400,000 lazy, good for nothing children whose lethargy has led them willingly into poverty. They are no doubt scrounging for demotivating government handouts.

There are at least 340,000 homeless children in the UK, many of whom have chosen to live that way out of sheer selfishness, denying parents the pleasures of paedophilia, and drug-and alcohol-induced violence. These, surely, are the people who should be paying the bankers, in return for so many years of bankers having selflessly promoted and provided jobs, homes and futures that the pesky kids refuse.

Fortunately Informeaning is not the only font of such wisdom in the UK. Indeed the government itself has recognised the demotivating effects of providing a nanny state for such lazy, disloyal children, and has tried to address this shortcoming in its 2009 budget.

Kate Green of the Child Poverty Action Group celebrated the "crisis budget", explaining that, "The money targeted on the children struggling most during the recession amounts to less each week than the cost of a pint of milk"

Lisa Harker of the Institute of Public Policy Research was equally pessimistic: "This was the government's last chance to make the necessary investment to meet its own target of halving child poverty by 2010. This target is now almost certainly unachievable"

On the other hand, the government announced a £20,000,000 hardship fund for the voluntary sector. This alone could provide 3.4 million children living in poverty with £5.80 each! It is not beyond the meekest of us to calculate the inflationary effective of such handouts.

In Ireland there is more sense. The government there has heeded calls from stockbrokers (yes, that's right, their opinions are as valid as ever) to cut welfare payments to Irish scroungers (of the poor type). The Irish Business and Employers' Conferderation has echoed the stockbrokers' calls, suggesting that as the poor are likely to benefit from deflation, welfare payments should be cut by 3%. At the same time, they have rightly insisted upon a "short-term emergency support package for enterprise", without which the world would end.

Some of this sense has crossed the Irish Channel. Indeed, the UK government has identified the worst offenders against hard work and innovation - the crazies, the sick and the "dying". The British Association of Social Workers reported that cuts in the social UK work sector resulting from the budget will result in 500 too few staff in 'community mental health teams', and 'will mean little or no support in the community for a significant number of people with mental illness'. There will also be shortages of psychotherapists, fewer than 1% of people with personality disorder will get help, 'long-stay patients who could be resettled in the community will have to remain in inappropriate hospital care', 'advocacy services for carers will not be developed; residential respite care will continue to be restricted; proposals to support victims of sexual or domestic violence cannot be taken forward'.

Additionally, it reported,
- 'at least 3,000 people with chronic illness will not receive early intervention support and will have unnecessary hospital admissions;
- proposals to improve care services by expanding the range of services and responses to older and vulnerable people will not be taken forward and long waiting times for care packages will continue;
- plans to develop end of life palliative care services will not be implemented;
- new approaches to self management of chronic disease will not be put in place;
- access to specialist services out of hours to children and adults with difficult asthma will not be provided'

Showing no signs of embarrassment for their slavish submission to the nanny state, the Association of Sandle-Wearing Communist Social "Workers" fail to see that things like "end of life palliative" services contribute nothing to our national wealth or welbeing. Those people are dying anyway, and are no doubt too lazy to work.

If these social workers had the intelligence of Irish stockbrokers, they would realise that $4,500,000,000 can pay for,
- 6000 Rolex Daytona watches
- 2000 holidays in Jamaica
- 50,000 Mercedes
- 40 Lear Jets
- 1000 brats to spend 10 years each at Eton.
- 10,000 Armani suits
- 100,000 wraps of cocaine
with enough left over to pay for a lifetime subscription to Ms Classy's dominatrix dungeon for each stockbroker working at the FTSE.

Such spending would create real jobs for real people, is as far away places as Colombia, the West Indies, Thailand, China and Poland as well as in the UK. Welfare cuts would compliment this growth in prosperity by encouraging scroungers to turn their back on the recession, show some initiative and either die or get on their bikes and find work.

Meaning, there's welfare and there's welfare. Oh, and, yes, scarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Crime without Punishment: The Strange Case of Colonel Karuna.

2009-05-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

(This is an updated version of an article I first published on OhMyNews)

The trial, imprisonment and release of a former Tamil Tiger leader raises some tricky and potentially embarrassing questions for the British government. The former leader of the Tamil Tigers in the east of Sri Lanka Commander Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Colonel Karuna was arrested for travelling to the UK on a false passport in November 2007 and sentenced to 9 months in prison at the end of January 2008.

He was released from prison on May 9 and transferred to an immigration detention centre. He was deported at the beginning of July having escaped charges of war crimes and human rights abuses committed in Sri Lanka.

For the past 25 years the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for a homeland in what is now north and east Sri Lanka. During this time Karuna, proved himself to be an adept guerrilla leader. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Tigers to become Special Commander of the eastern region of the Tamil Eelam, in eastern Sri Lanka. Shortly after his promotion Karuna broke from the Tigers to form his own army, the Tamil People’s Liberation Tigers.

After switching sides he began to associate with members of the Sinhala establishment, the dominant ethnic group in Sri Lanka. Tamils allege that the association was so strong, and Karuna’s army so important in the fight against the Tamil Tigers, that the Sri Lankan army and Special Forces aided his missions against the Tigers.

Throughout this period Karuna has been accused of being behind some of the most abhorrent abuses of human rights in Sri Lanka. Amnesty UK alleges such abuses include torture, hostage taking, the use of child soldiers, and crimes against humanity.

Human Rights Watch refers to Karuna as having a “long and horrific record of abuse”, and claim he is “one of the worst human rights abusers ever to end up in custody in the UK”. However, few Tamils believed he would become the first person to be successfully convicted in the UK for war crimes or human rights violations.

Shortly after arriving in the UK Karuna was charged under Section 25 of the Identity Cards Act for the possession of a false identity document, but the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment are shrouded with secrecy and intrigue, raising questions about the role and competency of the British government.

At Isleworth Crown Court Karuna pleaded guilty to travelling on a fraudulent passport, but said he did so with the backing of the Sri Lankan Government. Karuna’s lawyer, David Philips, told the court that Karuna “entered the United Kingdom using a diplomatic passport … it contained a six month multiple visit visa, issued at the British High Commission” in Colombo. “The Sri Lankan Government gave him the passport and sent him to the United Kingdom” and it was the Sri Lankan Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, also the Prime Minister’s brother, who organised it.

He went on to say that Karuna did not go to the British High Commission to collect the documents and was merely following the instructions of the Sri Lankan Government.

Karuna’s lawyer told me that none of Karuna’s allegations were investigated, and no questions about them have been asked in Parliament. He went on to tell me that his attempts to investigate were met with closed doors and a “wall of silence”.

Despite Karuna’s claims of a change of heart, his break with the Tigers was generally regarded as opportunistic. Very few sources are prepared to talk on the record about Karuna for political or safety reasons. However, Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, a prominent Tamil newspaper editor in Sri Lanka, and a friend of Karuna’s when he was in the Tigers, explained that Karuna jumped before he was pushed. Karuna had allegedly embezzled money from the Tigers, infuriating their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Karuna was a marked man.

His relations with the Sri Lankan Government did not fare much better. By 2007 it seemed that Karuna’s usefulness to the Government was beginning to ebb away. In June of that year, the editor of the Asia Tribune, K.T. Rajasingham, met with the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakse and his Minister for Social Welfare, Douglas Devananda, in Geneva to discuss Sri Lankan affairs, including the “problem” of Karuna.

The minutes of the meeting show Rajasingham’s stance on Karuna: “unfortunately, I supported Karuna thinking that though he started his career as a terrorist, he could be rehabilitated”, made to respect human rights and be repositioned in the democratic mainstream of politics. He went on to explain that Karuna was a liability to the Sri Lankan Government, “a spent force”. Three years after leaving the Tigers, “he has no more real stories to narrate and will be of no use to anyone”. Rajasingham’s most chilling comment is that Karuna’s former deputy and political rival Pillayan “is planning to arrest Karuna” but is hesitating due to opposition from the Defense Ministry. “I suggest the government get rid of Karuna, a liability and work with Pillayan and his men who are more popular in the east than Karuna”.

Pilliayan has since become the government’s man in the east. Banda (not his real name), a Sinhala, and a Sri Lanka expert for a major international news organisation explains, on condition of anonymity, that, “due to fratricidal animosities between Karuna and Pillaiyan [Karuna] sought the help of the government to get out of the country”.

Karuna was, then, willingly removed from Sri Lanka, but given allegations of serious war crimes and human rights abuses hanging over him, it is unlikely that he could have wished British authorities to hear of his escape.

In addition to Rajasingham’s evidence, independent sources have confirmed that, as Karuna alleged in court, Sri Lankan officials helped him through the through the airport, bypassing customs, and delivering his passport to him onboard the plane.

The British government seemed to have been convinced enough by Karuna’s evidence to call the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to the Foreign Office for an explanation. The Sri Lankan Government has denied all allegations of assisting Karuna.

The question is, however, if the Sri Lankan Government wanted rid of Karuna why go through such a convoluted process? This is Sri Lanka after all, where disappearances are part of daily life. A number of explanations exist. Vithyatharan suggests that assassination or disappearance was out of the question, for it would have heralded a “victory for the Tigers”.

Banda explains that Karuna is considered something of a folk hero amongst the Sinhala community in Sri Lanka for turning the tide of the 25-year civil war against the Tigers. He is a “Sinhala hero, remember that. He’s the one who helped the government army to chase Tigers off the East”. Any obvious action against Karuna would have been deeply unpopular.

It is highly probably that Karuna would not have been able to leave the country without the help of the Sri Lankan government. Visas from Sri Lanka, especially those issued for diplomatic passports, are not given out without government assurances that that application is genuine. Further, all persons entering and exiting embassies and high commissions, especially in war zones, are logged for security reasons. Although identity fraud is common in Sri Lanka it is rare for diplomatic passports to be forged.

Karuna could not have picked up the passports himself. The journalist who broke the Karuna story in Sri Lanka for the Sunday Leader, Ranjith Jayasunderas, explains that British embassy officials he spoke to are “certain that his passport was delivered to them by regular Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry channels”.

The questions remains, however, of the competence of the British High Commission in Colombo and perhaps even the Foreign Office. One British member of the European Parliament with an interest in Sri Lanka said, off the record, that the British government issued the visa “on the basis of support” from the Sri Lankan Government, and was “stitched up by the Sri Lankan government” in a way that was “alarming to say the least”.

However, Karuna’s face is rather well known in Sri Lanka and among the diplomatic community in Sri Lanka – at least as well known as Martin McGuinness’s is in the UK. There is little chance that Britain’s High Commission staff did not recognise Karuna’s photo on the passport when issuing the visa. It would be remarkable if at least one official in the High Commission had not recognised Karuna’s photograph.

A senior British MP said, on condition of anonymity, that the “history of Tamil Tiger participants is that clearly there have been various covert and sanctioned exercises where individuals have left (Sri Lanka) over the years”. “I guess that our man in Colombo and the Foreign Office and other governments would not find themselves in unknown territory to allow free passage”.

Banda suggested that the Foreign Office may have intervened on behalf of the Sri Lankan Government to ensure Karuna’s safe passage. “My contacts within the HC in Colombo didn’t know this went through until it blew up they were not aware … so it looks like someone high up was really involved”.

Whether or not they were, there have been few if any questions asked about the conduct of the High Commission staff. As Jayasunderas points out, “this need not have been Karuna. It could very well have been Bin Laden with plastic surgery, smuggled in by the Sri Lankan government. He would have gotten through just the same”.

The Home Office refused to comment on the case. The High Commissioner at the time, Dominck Chilcott, told me that the questions raised here are “all very good” but that he cannot comment on the matter.

Perhaps the most disappointing element of the debacle, especially for human rights activists, was the inaction of the British government when they may have had the opportunity of securing a conviction of an alleged war criminal.

Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch petitioned the UK government and the Metropolitan police to charge Karuna but the case was not pursued. Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s expert on the case, claims that there was a collection of evidence from NGOs presented to the Metropolitan police, including a large number of credible cases of human rights abuse.

Human Rights Watch has gathered considerable evidence of Karuna’s role in human rights abuses, including the abduction of children to serve as child soldiers, in the form of case studies, witness statements, maps and photographs. Evidence gathered by the Norwegian Sri Lanka Monitoring Project and UNICEF confirm the allegations. UNICEF alone has documented evidence of more than 200 cases of child soldier recruitment by Karuna’s militia.

Amnesty is unhappy that despite the quantity of evidence, the police sent only a limited number of cases to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS says it dropped the case because it felt the information presented by the Met was insufficient. It says there was “insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offences in the UK”.

The reasons for the lack of evidence presented to the Crown Prosecution Service are still unknown. The Guardian made a freedom of information request, which was not fruitful. The Met have failed to respond to letters from Amnesty and the chair of Parliament’s Sri Lanka Group, Andy Love, attempted to find out more from the Home Office, but it refused to divulge details of the case.

“The claim about lack of evidence seems spurious” Chandra Sriram, the director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict told me. The real issue for Sriram given the abundance of available evidence against Karuna “is the absence of political will to carry a case forward”.

“The British government blew it” says Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director. Adams accuses the government as a whole for the failure to prosecute, from the police to the Home Office. The police and CPS seemed not to understand who they had and lacked the resources to pursue the case. For Adams, the Government’s stated commitment to human rights is “not matched by its actions”.

Amnesty’s Yolanda Foster told me, “we are very disappointed that the UK government did not pursue the case”. “There were very serious allegations made against Karuna but he has been returned to Sri Lanka where there is a culture of impunity”. Amnesty is concerned that Sri Lankans who did come forward now face retaliation.

Having now been deported, Karuna’s fate in Sri Lanka remains uncertain. Whilst some who know him, including his lawyer, are impressed by his “fierce loyalty”, others believe that suspicion and in-fighting may spell the end of Karuna one way or another.

The Tamil People’s Liberation Tigers’s political wing, the United People’s Freedom Alliance contested and won elections in the former Tiger strongholds in the east earlier this year.

Although the victory was tainted by claims of intimidation and fraud, leading to the withdrawal of the largest Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance party, the result has been accepted by the government.

Karuna was soon reinstated as the leader of his party, leaving human rights activists to bemoan a missed opportunity for the British government to show its commitment to human rights.

Karuna’s was, however, a pyrrhic victory, for in his absence his rival Pillayan was offered the post of Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council. Just in time to meet the British Foreign Office minister, Lord Malloch-Brown during his 4 day visit to Sri Lanka. Karuna remains on the sidelines.

Nevertheless, in October 2008 Karuna was installed in the Sri Lankan Parliament amidst protests from Tamils and human rights organisations. As a significant act of defiance, in March 2009 Karuna was made minister for national integration and reconciliation.

The Karuna gamble seems to have paid off. Without Karuna's eastern division the LTTE have been unable to hold off the Sri Lankan army's advance from the south, and are currently hemmed into a tiny area in the north of the island admidst a humanitarian catastrophe, and with seemingly no way out for the LTTE.

Karuna still has many enemies, both among Tamils and Sinhala. His fate hinges on his continued worth to the Sri Lankan government. The only certainties are that the human rights situation in Sri Lanka will continue to deteriorate and ordinary Sri Lankans will continue to suffer.

Swine Flu update

2009-04-29T04:31:00.000-07:00

So now "we" are officially gripped in panic over Swine Flu... well, at least the journalists are.

The BBC is churning out dozens of stories each day on this issue, many of which seem to be based on little more than speculation, rumour and that wonderful thing, suspicion.

A few days ago Informeaning wrote that there are questions to be asked about the priorities of health reporting, expressing concerns that 80 "surprise" deaths receive a massive amount of coverage, whereas 5,000,000 annual deaths from preventable and curable diseases receive almost none.

It may have been a gamble to dismiss Swine Flu so soon, but the point is not about its existence or the level of threat, but the fact that the coverage it receives merely highlights our ignorance of the regularised, habitual suffering of millions.

However, we were right to also draw attention to the scare-mongering involved in reporting this latest end-of-the-world scenario.

For instance, the on 28th April the BBC reported (with no sense of irony) "Mexico: 152 suspected deaths - 20 confirmed cases". Why only 152 "suspected deaths"? Why not 1000, 2000, 40000? Actually, why not just "20 confirmed cases" and leave the suspicion to a lesser news organisation? Indeed, didn't the BBC get told off for "suspecting" Blair had authorised the sexing up of intelligence information about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq? Has the BBC not used its now infamous triple sourcing rules for this crucial matter?

On the 29th April we were told that,

"Stricter swine flu tests have cut the number of confirmed deaths in Mexico, where the virus was first reported, from 20 to seven, authorities say".

Eh? That's no good. Its a bit like a zombie flick where the the undead become less numerous until only one or two are banging at the shopping mall window, the rest having just been confirmed as "quite old" or, erm, not undead.

So what of Reuters' claim a few days earlier, confirmed by the BBC, that "up to 81" people had died?

Naturally the BBC couldn't rain on the virus's parade of panic without reassuring us that it was equipped with an umbrella,

"But officials warned the number of deaths likely to have been caused by swine flu [in Mexico] has risen to 159 with more than 1,300 patients under observation."

So that's okay. The threat is still there. Panic while you still can!

But let's not be too down on the BEEB when there are still the likes of that glorified toilet paper The Sun to help us (mis)understand the situation.

One is tempted to offer advice.

"It is too early to calculate the fatality rate, and too premature to draw any parallel to the 1918 Spanish flu which is thought to have killed at least 40 million."

Erm, well don't do it then. Or am I missing something?

And whilst there is some ambiguity about whether or not swine flu has parallels to a disease that killed 40,000,000 (my maths is not very good at all, but I think 7 is less than 40,000,000?), there is less ambiguity over the fatalities so far.

"[the] death toll [in Mexico] in the deadly outbreak rose to 149 with another 1,600 ill"

(That's right, when something has a death toll, it is deadly ... unlike wars - on 19th March 2003 The Sun confidently declared 'The war in Iraq could have almost no civilian casualties'. Ahem.)

Well, now that an American has died, we can stop fussing over silly little details. We now have our first real, worthy victim so all those numbers simply are no longer significant.

Second Life in Afghanistan: the humanitarian view

2009-04-29T03:01:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan was the first front in Bush’s so-called “war on terror”. Invaded in 2001 for harbouring Saudi terrorist, Osama Bin Laden due to its reliance on traditional sources of law, it has been subject to Western occupation for nearly eight years, with a war simmering throughout that period.

Though there are sporadic reports on military activities, less is know about life in Afghanistan for those affected by the war.

Here a humanitarian worker who has been in the country for the past two years gives Informeaning her assessment of life in Afghanistan (IM=Informeaning, HW=Humanitarian Worker).

IM: It is clear that the Neo-Cons got it wrong back in 2003 when they declared the US had the power to fight three wars - in Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea. Resources and media attention have been diverted from Afghanistan in recent years but lately the talk from the US and the EU has been about diverting military resources back to Afghanistan. Less is said about humanitarian resources. As a humanitarian worker, do you enough resources are being made available for humanitarian needs?

HW: As a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan, one sees the gap growing between humanitarian needs and political priorities on the ground. Certainly in recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk here of a new beginning, a new focus, a new political deal between the international community and the Afghan government – primarily from the Obama administration. However, there has been little focus on the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people the new deal seems to be one primarily a military one. Humanitarian pledges/needs are not being matched by spending. In particular, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world – if not THE poorest. It continues to have severe water shortages (only 20% of the people have access to clean drinking water), food shortages due to severe drought in parts of the country, few livelihood opportunities for the refugees who have returned from Pakistan and Iran and the host communities, coupled with a rising wave of insecurity and violence leading to mass numbers of IDPs fleeing the conflict in the south of the country. The picture is bleak for Afghanistan as it heads into another long dry summer of water and food shortages, insecurity and an August presidential election with no clear outcome. The message we hear from the Afghan people, from a humanitarian perspective, is who is going to meet the basic needs of the Afghan people?

IM: Here in Europe we don't tend to think about refugees elsewhere. How many Afghan refugees are there in Iran and Pakistan? And how many of these have returned?

HW: There are an estimated 2.6 million Afghan refugees still in Pakistan (1.7m) and Iran (900,000) today. Since the fall of the Taliban November 2001, some 5.3 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan, which is around 20% of the current population of approx 30 million people. It has been the biggest repatriation exercise in the world since WWII.

IM: How is this being managed? Are NATO countries and the US resourcing repatriation?

HW: Yes the Western countries do fund the repatriation exercise, both through the UN agencies and NGO's who deal with returnees.

IM: Where are these people returning to?

HW: The majority of the Afghans return to the eastern provinces, adjacent to Pakistan. Some 65% of all returnees since 2002 have returned to the eastern part of the country. The majority return to their place of origin, the east, south and south-east (regions affected most by the conflict).

IM: We hear a lot about the different ethnic groups in Afghanistan - are there any ethnic tensions as a result of the return?

HW: There are constant ethnic tensions in Afghanistan, especially between the Kucis (nomadic people) and Hazara's - in the central highlands over land.
IM: Should these refugees be returning to Afghanistan while the war in intensifying? Don't the Western powers have a responsibility to take them until Afghanistan is safe?

HW: Conditions are ripe for a lot of Afghans to return, especially to the east and centre, north and west of the country. The most intense battles are in the south (Kandahar and Helmand provinces) where few Afghans return to. Plus due to the ever deteriorating security situation in Pakistan, and more so in the tribal areas (NWSP and SWAT) many Afghans are returning to the east of the country where conditions are more stable than in Pakistan! There are more livelihood opportunities and they have family ties. However, many returnees are ended up in spontaneous settlements in the east due to a lack of shelter, and their place of origin being unable to absorb large amounts of returnees.

IM: How is life in the cities? Are they more or less normal nowadays?

HW: Kabul, the capital, is overpopulated (current estimates at 3 million) from a one million population during the Taliban period. Poor sanitation, lack of clean water, transport. Kabul only recently got 24 hr electricity (pumped from Uzbekistan). Jalalabad in the east is better, as it is surrounded by good agricultural land and has water (rivers). Hirat in the west has had electricity, good transport for sometime due to the local warlords and investment from its neighbour, Iran - due to a lot of Shiite Muslims in the region.

IM: Is there basic infrastructure in cities? We hear the odd story about a school being rebuilt or a hospital constructed - is this propaganda, or are they real developments?

HW: This is one thing that has boomed since the fall of the Taliban - the construction industry has grown by 8-10% annually. There are lots of schools being built, certainly in the big urban areas and hospitals (Indian mostly), like Kabul, but in the rural areas school infrastructure is minimal.

IM: What about elsewhere? How easy is it to travel around the country?

HW: Perhaps 30% of the country is accessible for humanitarian actors, at best.. The south is totally inaccessible. And increasingly of late, areas outside of the Kabul are becoming more dangerous due to Taliban activity.

IM: Are there goods available in the shops and markets?

HW: No problem with goods in the shops in the urban areas. In the rural areas basic commodes are available but due to water shortages food productions is minimal and people survive on basic bread and some goats.

IM: The position of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban was big news in the West. Indeed a few weeks before the invasion British television aired a documentary highlighting their plight, which itself became a rallying cry. Have things improved for women or have they turned back?

HW: Despite recent western reports on the legislation affecting the women in the Hazara community (15-20% of population), there have been some positive stories. You will see hundreds of young girls every day on the streets of Kabul in the afternoon returning home school. There is woman governor of Bamyan (centre of country), there is woman candidate in the August presidential elections, there are women MPs in the current parliament. There are more and more walking the streets of Kabul without Burqas. One must put these in context that Afghanistan is deeply traditional, conservative and ultra-religious country where women had no rights under the Taliban and, while there are few signs of radical improvement, the fact that women can walk the streets, women are in parliament and women are taking a part in public life is positive. There are over 300,000 mullahs in the country (who very influential on women’s role in society) and only 80,000 trained police. That tells one what the priorities are in the country.

IM: Thanks for speaking to Informeaning

HW: Thank you.

A Healthy Dose of Bullshit

2009-04-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

So, again we are faced with a "global panic" over the latest threat to the future of humanity. Those of us left from the bird flu pandemic now face an outbreak of swine flu that is sweeping the world, instilling mass panic. Reuters tell us that the whole world is on alert, and the News of the World informs us that it has now hit Britain.

The true scale of the threat can be simply represented in figures: So far around the world 80 people are "thought to have died" as a result of it. Yes, that's such a small percentage of the world population that my Windows calculator cannot display it.

In contrast, UNICEF tells us that more than 900,000 children under five still die each year from measles, 370,000 under-fives die each year from whooping cough, 50,000 from tuberculosis, and every single day 4,500 children die from "unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation facilities". The World Health Organisation tells us that each year 1,000,000 people die of malaria and 2,200,000 die each year from diarrhoeal diseases.

But of course, the difference is that the swine flu comes out of the blue, has only just been detected and therefore has not ready-made, easily accessible cure.

Well, not really. Unfortunately the pharmaceutical industry has other priorities. It is, of course, profit-driven, and the profit-drive means that the majority of its products do not meet with needs but with wants. The industry turns these wants into needs through 'disease mongering', where illnesses are constructed and, hey presto, the pharmaceutical companies have a cure!

Other major profit streams include the production of ‘me too’ drugs, which are different versions of essentially the same, proven, drug. The British Medical Journal claims that 'me toos' accounted for two thirds of "new" drugs between 1975 and 1999 to the neglect of real needs.

The biggest problem, though, is that the pharmaceutical companies tend to concentrate on the production of a few profitable "lifestyle drugs", such as Viagra and Botox, sold to wealthy people in wealthy countries. Consequently unprofitable (un)people are effectively refused treatment for life-threatening diseases.

The outcome of this, according to Medicine Sans Frontiere, is that ‘[n]inety per cent of the world is at risk from infectious diseases, but only 10% of the world's research and pharmaceutical resources are spent on them'.

When life-saving drugs are developed, they tend to be oriented to those with purchasing power. The New Internationalist reports that,

‘in 2000 [GlaxoSmithKline] launched the first new anti-malarial developed by a drug company in 40 years. However, it was aimed at prevention, not treatment. Its market was the estimated seven million tourists and visitors who venture into malarial regions, not the people who live in them'.

These implications are not arrived at though paranoid minds inventing conspiracy theories. Indeed, they are well acknowledged in the business world, in "market reports" such as the Business Insights report, ‘The Lifestyle Drugs Outlook’, which tells us that ‘The impact of Viagra on Pfizer's share price and profitability means that all major pharmaceutical companies will be turning their attention to developing lifestyle drugs’.

Bah! Never mind the reality, let's just fictionalise a global panic (I have been looking out of my window throughout writing this, yet the headless chickens have still to emerge) and focus in on those 80 people. Fuck the tens of millions who die each year unnecessarily because we are more interested in removing the fat from one arse, injecting it into the lips of another so that hubby doesn't feel his Viagra to be the only investment in the relationship. Those deaths are normal, tolerable. Swine flu is not.

Tax the rich?

2009-04-23T13:52:00.001-07:00

'Big earners, big taxes: Your stories'. The BBC has done it again. In attempting to be "balanced" it has entered the realm of the absurd. Unfortunately the absurd is quite normal today.

At least since Thatcher, the idea that the rich need incentives to carry on working has become part of accepted currency in government circles. If we tax the rich too much, they will stop "innovating", "creating wealth" and perhaps stop working altogether. And then where would we be?

So, when the British government released a budget that increases taxation on people earning at least five times the average national wage 40% to 50% Children in Need, Oxfam and the Red Cross leapt into action flying planes laden with gold, champaign and caviare over the most needy areas...

More seriously, the BBC did jump into action, publishing the "human interest" tosh, 'High earners told the BBC news website how they feel about carrying the tax burden'. Here we are provided with crucial information on how they feel to be burdened by taxes collected to pay for benefits, schools and hospitals for those who cannot afford to live because their wages are being pegged down to avoid inflation and to ensure profits grow.

Is there something wrong with me because I don't feel sympathy for these high earners?

In 2007 the Joseph Rountree Foundation found that the gap between the rich and poor in the UK was at its widest for 40 years. A year later the OECD (hardly the last bastion of socialism) reported that inequality in the UK is higher than in most other industrialised nations.

The National Literacy Trust gives some useful statistics to understand quite how bad things have become at the bottom.

Unemployment: the number of children living in households with no working adults grew from under a fifth in 1979 to almost a third in 1997. More than 2.5 million children are currently growing up in 'work-less' households.

Low Wages: the number of children living in households with less than half the average income - more than 3 million children (one in three) fell into this category in 1999, almost 3 times as many as in 1979. In 2004 the Rowntree Foundation reported that by 2001/2 a quarter of UK workers were on low wages, averaging at £3.67 per hour. Yes, £3.67.

Poverty: by the end of 1999, 26% of the British population was living in poverty, measured in terms of low income and multiple deprivation of necessities. Roughly 9.5 million people could not afford adequate housing conditions. Around four million were not properly fed.

Now, journalist Nick Davies in his exceptionally brilliant expose of hidden poverty in the UK, Dark Heart (email me and I will buy you a copy) provides quite enough evidence of the human tradgedy of this situation - child prostitution, torture, drug addition, social collapse, and an utter nightmare even for the most hard working poor.

Perhaps the most important point that Davies makes is rather elementary. If businessmen need high wages and tax breaks to incentivise them to work hard, why does that not apply to others? How can it be that nurses, social workers, cleaners and teachers manage to carry on working without financial incentives? If the choice is between taking lunch to discuss the latest business deal or spending another night being assaulted by injured drunks and the wages are the same, it is not a particularly hard choice.

Meaning: put nurses, teachers, cleaners and social workers on £150,000 and businessmen on £14,000. See how the incentive system works then.

Immigration and the Italian Blame Culture.

2009-04-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

The ‘blame culture’, evidenced so clearly with the rifiutopoly in Naples, is one of the more frustrating aspects of modern politics. It is a culture deeply embedded into Italian politics. Insecure politicians always need someone to blame. This blame culture becomes increasingly sinister when ‘immigrants’, whether refugees fleeing war, asylum seekers fleeing persecution or economic migrants in search of a better life become its target.

The Italian media have acted as the bellows for this particular fire. Not that the UK media (or any media for that matter) are any better. But, as in most things politics, Italy does lag some 20-30 years behind. Anti-immigrant articles and articles linking immigrants with crime are routine and pervasive.

As in other European states, immigrants have become the unquestioned scapegoats for social ills, especially supposedly escalating crime rates. Any transgression by an immigrant is exaggerated and amplified in the media, as if it is worse to be raped by a Pole than by an Italian.

Immigrants are also blamed for problems overseas. While watching a football match in a Veronese bar recently, a young man confidently informed me that there is so much violence in England because there are too many immigrants.

My informant has, of course, never been to England. He must not have seen footage of white English football hooligans running riot (at Heysel or elsewhere). Nor has he experienced a middle class white English town on a Friday or Saturday night, where drunken white youths beat each other senseless for the slightest indiscretion.

Nor did he recognise the irony that he is the son of a Polish immigrant to Italy – Polish immigrants are one of the current scapegoats for the xenophobic right in England.

The political onslaught against immigrants makes it seem as if Italy knew no crime before immigration. It is as if the mafiosi, Craxi, De Michelis, Bernini, Forlani, Bossi, bankopoli, tangentopoli, or calciopoli were all imported from some far and distant land. Italy is innocent.

And it is as if Italians have never emigrated. However, far and distant lands have been the hosts for ‘hoards’ of Italian migrants for over a century. Daniela Del Boca and Alessandra Venturini have collected and analysed perhaps the most extensive data available on Italian emigration for the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn. They show that between 1861 and 1976 more than 26 million Italians emigrated to foreign lands (the bulk of whom were economic migrants). During that period, one quarter of the Italian population emigrated, and only two fifths of these came from the South. Outside the South, the greatest percentage of migrants came from the North East, where Verona is.

The Godfather, The Untouchables, Casino, or any of the dozens of Hollywood’s ‘Italian’ films give a good sense of the stereotypes to which Italian immigrants have been subject. Corruption, criminality, murder and brutality are some of the clichéd activities assigned to Italians, which are now being applied to immigrants to Italy

Immigrants are not responsible for deep, institutionalised corruption and criminality. Often they are victims – the prostitutes who line the roads exiting Verona may be foreign, but they are trafficked here for use by Veronese men, not for immigrants. Senegalese immigrants do not bring truckloads of fake designer bags with them across the sea, they are ‘Made in Italy’. Of the drug dealers, addicts and users I have spoken to in and around Verona, none mix with immigrants. As Pino Arlacchi and Roger Lewis found in their five year study of the Verona heroin market in the 1980s, so today, the majority are local, well-off, and from ‘good families’.

So what is the basis of this fear of immigrants? Despite supposed increases in immigration, Italy has one of the lowest petty crime rates in Western Europe. The most recent European Crime and Safety Survey, which, importantly, includes unreported crimes, shows that Italy has the lowest (and falling) rate of street robbery among the ‘old’ EU members states. Rates of sexual assault are half the European average (and falling). Italy also boasts the lowest (and almost unchanging) rate of assault in among the old EU members. At the moment, Italy also has one of the lowest rates of assault against immigrants. At the same time, Italy ranks among the countries with the highest rates of fear of street crime (and of immigration – 64% of Italians believe it to be a ‘very big problem’, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey).

If crime is not the problem, then perhaps immigrants are causing unemployment and poverty? Del Boca and Venteurini’s research, which focuses on the north, finds that that despite perceptions and fears, ‘there is no empirical evidence’ to support the suggestion that migrant workers are taking Italian jobs, or that foreign workers are making it more difficult for Italians to find jobs. Nor did they, or other studies they cite, find evidence that immigration has depressed wages. In fact they found that in the north of Italy, where labour demand outstrips supply, migrant workers had a complementary effect on Italian labour.

Perhaps we might venture that, given the disjuncture between actuality and perception, concern about immigration is driven mainly by media hype and is exploited by insecure politicians?

Membership of the modern, cosmopolitan, internationally connected world is not voluntary. Immigration will not stop, so it must be dealt with in a positive manner. Ghettoisation is simply not an option. Alienating, abusing and marginalizing immigrants, cases of which, in Verona and throughout Italy, have been catalogued by Cooperazione per lo Sviluppo dei Paesi Emergenti and theEuropean Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), will not stop immigration. These phenomena are well known among sociologists to lead to resentment, social tension and criminality. They are ineffective actions and constitute little more than bullying by scared little men.

Immigrants can make important contributions to the host country. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s report ‘From Immigration to Integration’ suggests that well-managed immigration flows ‘offer benefits for host countries’ but ‘the effective integration of immigrants into the societies of the countries where they settle is crucial, and this requires commitment and action at national and local level’.

For example, since UK governments have taken positive steps to integrate immigrants, children of immigrants, especially those of Chinese and Indian descent, are among the highest performers throughout the educational system. Given a chance, immigrants can make an impressive contribution to national wealth, productivity, and tax receipts. In a recent analysis of worldwide migration, the international business magazine The Economist argued that ‘despite the backlash, the boom in migration has been mostly good for both sending and recipient countries’

Independent assessments of the treatment of immigrants to Italy are not good. The ECRI has found Italy wanting in its provisions for immigrants, especially in education, housing and employment in the private sector. Such discrimination does not help communities.

Further restriction on residency to needy immigrants as proposed by Lega Nord will merely create and compound social problems. It is not a solution – nor is it particularly moral or Christian, as the governing coalition claims to be. Poor, uneducated, ostracised, homeless immigrants do not go away, they simply become prey for organised crime. Immigrants who are educated and integrated into a community, on the other hand, can make positive contributions to a community.

Drugs offence and bad defence; or, However stupid, there are always stupider

2009-04-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a true story but details have been changed to protect the guilty

One might expect better from a further education college lecturer, but then perhaps such expectations are delusional. He is still a lecturer but only just. John is also a drug dealer. He doesn't deal much hard stuff, a bit of cocaine and the odd pill, but mainly marijuana. And, yes, he likes the doing it. He freely chooses to do it because he likes it.

Some drug dealers like to be part of the "street scene", while others prefer the safety of private dealing to friends and friends of friends. John liked the street scene. At least he gained a significant amount of satisfaction from the attention local thugs gave him. The problem for John was that he broke a rule, mixing the street scene with private dealing from home. "Never let a vampire into your house, it renders you powerless" Max formed me at a young age.

Every now and then the kids would go to John's house to score, and every now and then they would borrow something. A little extra weed, a little pocket money. Something would go, but John knew and it didn't really bother him. And so he broke another rule - "can't let that shit go", as Snoop puts it.

Not being one for the code of the streets, John allowed the kids back, time and again until they turned up one day to take a little more than usual. John welcomed the kids who spotted a rather large packet of weed, worth a few hundred quid. They picked it up and informed John that they would be taking it without the courtesy of recognising its exchange value.

John (and by now we might be questioning his intellectual capacities), threatened to call the police unless they leave. Yes, he did. The kids said, "fine" and waited. Yes, they did. The police arrived on the understanding that a robbery was taking place and the kids dutifully informed them that John was a drug dealer and they were his customers.

The police searched the house finding lots of weed, and, as this was one of those rare occasions that John had diversified his stock, lots and lots of cocaine and chemicals. John was in trouble. He was arrested and charged with possession and intent to supply ... and then released on bail.

"Little shits, but is John THAT stupid?"

Well, it all gets stupider. John's defence was that the drugs were not his. He had befriended a violent drug dealer who forced him to store the drugs at his house on the threat of significant violence. John didn't know his friend's real name, though. Neither did he know his whereabouts. The police also drew a blank when enquiring about the friend's address. To all intents and purposes, there was no friend. There was no evidence of threats made or that the drugs were owned by anyone other than John.

Of course, such a ridiculous, idiotic defence would never wash, not with the local constabulary. Certainly if there was no evidence to the contrary then it would be reasonable to assume the drugs to be the property of John?

But then John is a white, middle class college lecturer and they don't deal do they?

He was released with no charge.

Meaning: however stupid you are, there are always people who are more stupid.

Boycotting Racism

2009-04-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

"Boycott-hit racism forum to open" reports the BBC. The latest UN conference on racism is to open in Geneva, that good ol' repository for Nazi booty. However, it will fail to meet with any form of international consensus as a number of nations are boycotting it.

Somalia, Senegal, Mexico and China have all said they are not prepared to attend in light of the racist treatment of their nationals and their states by Western po.... oh, my mistake, those boycotting it are of course all white Western nations. Without a hint of irony, British and American media are reporting the righteousness and moral standing of those states.

Australia, Netherlands, the US, Israel, Italy and Canada have all lined up to condemn the conference for its "anti-Israel" and "anti Western" bias. Ahem, poor Israel, poor Europe and poor North America indeed. It must be terrible to be reminded of the tiny incidental crimes against humanity committed by Europeans in North America, by Americans against Africans, and by Israelis against Palestinians. It must be awful for Germany, the state that perfected the art of genocide, to be muttered at by those horrible foreigners. The Italian prime minister must have been affronted to have discovered that Israelis may be subjected to criticism. After all, Italy, like Germany, is a friend of Israel. I mean, without Italy and Germany there would be no Israel, would there? And we all know how Australians treat the indigenous peoples don't we? If not, watch Crocodile Dundee, that tells us everything there is to know.

So what exactly is driving the boycott? Well, first we are told there is the fall out from the Durban conference of 2001. The US and Britain were horrified to find that delegates wanted to discuss historical events such as slavery. They were mortified that some African states might want to use the conference to talk about issues such as reparations. "Don't mention the war", Basil Fawlty remarked.

To explain the utter impossibility of discussing reparations, the BBC pulled some black people out of its hat. From the UK side, the BBC explained, "The modern world is complex: the British Foreign Office Minister attending the conference, Valerie Amos, is another descendant of slaves". Don't ya see? The UK can't pay reparations because the world is complex maaan. Anyway Valerie is a descendent of the slaves... don't you get it? You see, in the UK we have black people elected to senior posi... oh, that Valerie, the one who in every single other BBC report is referred to by her normal title, Baroness Amos. No racists here guv.

Well, perhaps it is better explained by US representatives. The BBC rolled out Colin (what no WMD?) Powell, "Would I get compensation for slavery," he asked, "or would I pay it?". Ah, the modern will is complex innit.

I mean, reparations for slavery would be absurd, like... er... I dunno, carving out a state for Jews after the holocaust. Ahem.

So what of other objections? The linking of Zionism to racism also proved "complex". The original proposal for a statement from the conference advised Israel "to revise its legislation based on racial or religious discrimination such as the law of return and all the policies of an occupying power which prevent the Palestinian refugees and displaced persons from returning to their homes and properties".

Shock, horror! To revise legislation based on racial or religious discrimination?! What? Proposed at a conference based in a place like South Africa? Who are they to talk? I mean, what about their racist legislation? ... What? It has been revised? Ah. Complex, maaan.

The revised text of the declaration was just as bad. Those damn blackies had the front to suggest, "As for the situation in the Middle East, calls for the end of violence and the swift resumption of negotiations, respect for international human rights and humanitarian law, respect for the principle of self-determination and the end of all suffering, thus allowing Israel and the Palestinians to resume the peace process, and to develop and prosper in security and freedom".

It doesn't take a major league discourse analyst to work out what was wrong with that! Just a glance can identify the sickness at the hearts of those making the statement: "end of violence", "resumption of negotiations", "respect" (twice!), "international human rights", "self-determination", "end of all suffering" (yes, ALL suffering), "resume the peace proces", "security and freedom". Goddam pinko, homosexual, fundamentalist bastards!

Okay, so it is not all one way. Certainly there are issues of profound Arab racism. And as for "legislation based on racial or religious discrimination", Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and many other places spring to mind. In fact, there are few states not based on such discrimination. Indeed, that is exactly what almost all modern nation-states are based on - racial and religious discrimination.

Similarly, there was little impulse from those nations proposing the condemnation of Israeli racism or Euro-American slavery to apportion blame on Arab and Islamic slave traders, to call on Islamic scholars to reject Islam's acceptance of slavery, or to address their own racism.

However, surely the point of such a conference is to debate such things? Surely it is within the political capability and moral capacity of diplomats from European states and the white ex-colonies to discuss, debate and perhaps even conceed responsibility. After all, aren't we always told about the need to be responsible for our actions? Aren't the American and British states the same states still the same states that directed slavery? Aren't those states still reaping the rewards, and African states still suffering the consequences?

Similar concerns have guided Western nations' responses to the latest conference. The Dutch Foreign Minister explained that it would not be involved in a conference that is "to be abused for political ends and attacks on the West". It is of course clear to us all that a political conference at the United Nations should not be used for political ends. Who would have thought that a political conference might have political ends. And using the UN to attack the West is not what it was meant for ... it was meant to be used to attack... oh, well, you know. Does the unscrupulousness of the darkies never end?

Even worse, some Western nations have expressed concern that delegations have been calling for a declaration to include references to incitement of religious hatred. OMG! Would this be the same incitement to religious hatred referred to in UK legislation outlawing ... incitement of religous hatred? How dare they!

One might expect the shrewd diplomat to see such calls as an opportunity. Yes, let's talk about incitement to religious hatred! Even better, let's talk about incitement to irreligious hatred. Let's talk about discrimination against people who have no religion, who think the belief in God is at best absurd and at worst pathetic.

Ultimately the response of the boycotting nations is pathetic. To refuse to talk about the wrongs committed by any nation, whether Israel, the UK or Saudi Arabia is just daft. The particular objections - to anti-Zionism and anti-Westernism - is pathetic in the extreme. If we consider African slavery, the genocides from Argentina to Canada, the continuing oppression of Australian natives, colonialism (especially in its genocidal forms such as in Congo) the holocaust, secregation in the US, and most of the Euro-American wars fought since World War Two, and the present-day mass hysteria over immigration, well it appears there is a lot to discuss. If we consider also the standing of those states, their actions around the world today and their claims to moral superiority, we might see the conference as an opportunity for those states to reflect, and for their citizens and subjects to pause and take a breath.

But the risk that that pause and that breath would perhaps create a space to reflect on the legitimacy claimed by those states at home and abroad is far, far too great. Then again, the boycott has served to highlight the conference, has exposed the hypocrisy of the West, and has raised questions about the effectiveness of a black American president within a systematically racist world.

Meaning? See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.

Classes just ain't classy

2009-04-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

The National Union of Teachers has voted not to administer SATs. Naturally the Daily Mail turns to the important issue of chanting, and the BBC invites us to Have (Y)our Say. Should school Sats be scrapped? they ask. The discussion proceeds with the usual "balance" of positions, Yes because... , No because... One might note that the question is about SATs rather than the views of the people who actually experience them. Quite frankly if teachers say something is bad, then it is bad.

But what is the issue with SATs? Those in the Yes camp tell us that they allow parents to check on how well their kids are doing. Of course they don't... not even a bit. They sometimes add that they tell us how well the school is doing. Of course they don't... well perhaps a little bit. What they do tell parents is 1. how good the school is at training kids to shut up and obey, 2 how good the kids are at shutting up and obeying. Their point is to set a standard level of attainment in basic training against which little Johhny or Jilly can be measured at the specified age.

The attainment levels are measured, aggregated and put into tables so parents can get anxious if Johhny fails to conform to what the state thinks the economy needs. This is not about little Johhny's well being or his real development. The schools are forced to prioritise the SATs against other real needs that the children have and the kids learn to jump through hoops.

The biggest problem, however, is precisely the idea of standardisation. Should we celebrate kids who excell at being standard? Or who prove they can conform? It is surely most distressing, however, to make kids feel lowly because they have not reached X target by age Y. Indeed, it doesn't take a degree in child development to know that kids mature physically and intellectually at vert different ages. One doesn't need to rant too much to make the point that age is merely a convenient standardised measure through which the state can administer people.

The question we must consider, then, is What is education for? Is it to encourage children to reach their potential, to develop skills that accord with their own needs? To develop emotional, intellectual and social qualities that make for a better society? Or is it merely to train and condition "human resources" for industry? Of course it depends on who the education is for. More precisely, it depends on the class of the class.

Let's not kid ourselves, their ain't no SATs at Eton! And this is the rub: SATs are designed to ensure that "standards" are standard for those who cannot be expected to become the next generation of dictators, arms dealers and mass murderers. After all, what would happen if we all went to Eton?

Meaning? I, Robot. Or teachers know best.

The mists of time

2009-04-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

It is well known that journalists are forgetful. Amnesia is part of the game. This is what allows the likes of David Aaronovitch to write in The Guardian "These claims (about the existence of WMD in Iraq) cannot be wished away in the light of a successful war. If nothing is eventually found, I - as a supporter of the war - will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere." (29th April 2003). Of course Aaronovitch knows that few will remember his commitment, so he need not keep it. Rather, he excuses himself and then changes newspaper.

So it is in keeping with tradition that we are told that the Police "watchdog" was "wrong" to say there was no CCTV footage of the G20 demonstrations in the City of London, in which Ian Tomlinson died. Phew. Now perhaps we can find out which paricular instance of police assault was responsible for his death.

But hold on ... "wrong"? What does that mean? This is the City of London, one of the most secure and most intensely monitored places in the world! Well, my memory is really rather bad but wasn't there some mention in the build up to the protests that the police might be getting prepared? I could have sworn there was to be an "'Unprecedented' police operation to protect world leaders", and even my delapidated memory recalls that "officers will be coordinated by up to 3,000 CCTV cameras monitored from a specialist operations room in Lambeth" ... or perhaps it was actually that "Police will tap London's network of 10,000 CCTV cameras to monitor protests, while an army special forces unit will be on alert to respond".

Well, as someone who is particularly bad with figures, I can appreciate the difficulty in keeping up. I mean, 3000, 10,000, none. It just becomes a jumble to me too.

But then it is not always such a jumble that confuses the police. Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the police, but there is some pedigree here. Topical as it is, those who remember the Hillsborough disaster might also remember the case of a couple of CCTV videos going missing there. In the immortal words of Officer Barbrady, "move along, there's nothing to see here".

I just hope from the bottom of my heart that our watchdog sets a new precedent in which we can all be "wrong" and get away with it. I look foward to being "wrong" about there being no laws on drug consumption, cycling without due care and attention, and being drunk and disorderly.

Meaning? Somebody be lying.