Remember 1998? It was the year of Titanic, it was the year Google was founded and it was the year George Michael was found doing naughty things in a toilet. It was also the year in which The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, published an article that seemed to show a link between the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccination and autism. The world went mental. Suddenly the papers were filled with headlines about how your healthy toddler was almost certainly going to develop this disorder the second the needle went in. In 2002 alone, 1257 articles were published about the scare. Thousands of worried parents stopped their children from getting the jag, deeming it to be too great a risk. What happened? By 2008, the country was in the grip of a mumps epidemic and measles was declared endemic in the UK for the first time in 14 years. What must have been a very difficult decision for parents to make could have been made a lot easier by this week’s news. The report was rubbish.

The Flawless Logic Behind the MMR Scare

The Lancet has made a full retraction of the article, the report’s lead researcher, Dr Andrew Wakefield, is facing a General Medical Council tribunal and the newspapers’ ten year run of scare stories has been made to look a bit silly. While the medical community has known for quite some time that there is absolutely no evidence of a link between MMR and autism, the newspaper scare stories kept the fear alive. Why? Because fear sells papers. Never mind the potential damage to people’s lives, the babies killed by measles, the old lady who dies because she’s scared to take her blood pressure tablets – readers are scared of what vital information they could be missing by not buying the paper. Pick up any copy of the Daily Mail or Take a Break and turn to the health section. Every day something different is giving you cancer, a different medication is apparently unnecessary or a new treatment is going to kill you. Its irresponsible reporting and it can damage lives. These articles aren’t written by doctors, they’re written by journalists and cobbled together from hearsay, taken out of context and bent to suit their message. No-one wants to hear about the 19,999,999 people whose lives were saved, let’s hear about the one person whose hair fell out! (and whose life was also saved, but that bit isn’t important) This is what capitalism is about: make money at any cost. Its easy to get taken in by newspapers and magazines pretending to care about your health but they just want you to stay scared enough to keep buying their rag. The whole MMR scare could have been over years ago if it wasn’t for the fact that it sold papers. Check out kill-or-cure.heroku.com for a full list of what the Daily Mail says will either cause or cure cancer and you’ll soon see that either they aren’t to be believed or we’re all going to die pretty soon. And don’t forget that if you ever do worry about biscuits causing cancer, the best person to ask is your doctor or pharmacist. If only That’s Life magazine asked them, some more kids might be alive today.

Update: The PDF of the new issue is now available on the Leftfield page, spam it to all your friends!

The wait is over. The new Leftfield ‘zine from SSY is here and ready to go. For now, we’ve got a sneak preview, but check back in a couple of days and we should have a PDF up for download under the Leftfield page of the site.
The new issue is jam packed full of exciting features and articles, including an interview with the director of Palestinian hip hop documentary Slingshot Hip Hop, the launch of our new Sex Drugs & On The Dole campaign, a report from the frontline of the battle against Donald Trump’s golf course plans in Aberdeenshire, film reviews, islamogeddon, the shadowy figure behind the English Defence League, Nick Griffin being creepy, mephedrone, electoral turmoil, positive solutions for a socialist future… AND SO MUCH MORE!!! Get it from SSY members now for a very small sum. Like fifty pence will do.

It seems that Fearne ‘talent vacuum’ Cotton got herself into a little bit of bother yesterday morning, with a slightly careless reference to cotton pickin’ in an interview with Morgan Freeman, who as The Sun helpfully reminded us, is a ‘black actor’.
Now, in a Leftfield exclusive, we can reveal Freeman’s quick-fire response which listeners to the show may’ve missed, since, attempting to cover up any awkwardness her remark may’ve created, Fearne quickly bursting into a fit of giggles, before cracking a joke about lynch mobs.

The Tories new advertising campaign.
What the fuck were they thinking? It hardly takes a genius to figure out that an election poster consisting of a) masses of white space b) a heavily airbrushed portrait of the country’s biggest tosser & c) the words ‘I’ll cut’ is just ASKING to be modified. And modified it shall be, and I’m not talking about yr crazy internet phenonemon. Oh no, this is the real thing… so now, after the roaring success that was Leftfield’s Top Fifteen Placards of 2009, we’re very excited to present the… TOP FIVE DAVID CAMERON DEFACED BILLBOARDS IN REAL LIFE!!!111

Award for ingenuity.
 
Let’s hope so.

Whitechapel Anarchist Group, guilty as charged. video here!

Simple, but effective.

So what’re you waiting for… get out there and join in with this most exciting of new national sports!!!

Since June of last year, environmental activists have been occupying the site of a proposed new open-cast coal mine in Mainshill, Lanarkshire.
Despite vehement opposition to the mine from the local community, and the devastating environmental impact of open-cast mining  locally, not to mention the impact on climate change globally, South Lanarkshire Council, Scottish Coal and wealthy landowner Lord Home have pressed on with their plans to tear up Mainshill wood and proceed with the mine. Now… a conglomeration of big business, local government bureaucrats and a Conservative peer putting their own interests before that of the local community and environment… who’d have thought it?!

This video shows the hypocrisy and corruption of some of the politicians involved in the decision making process, and exposes the cosy relationship many of them enjoy with Scottish Coal, who operate on numerous sites across Lanarkshire.

Over the past seven months, those occupying the site have been resisting any attempt to begin work at the site. This has involved the sabotage and destruction of machinery, lock-ons and blockades, as well as maintaining a sizeable human presence in the wood. However, this morning (Monday 25 January), bailliffs acting under the instruction of Lord Home moved into to begin the eviction of the Solidarity Camp, assisted by police. This morning saw the arrest of several activists, with many more still dug into tunnels and in treehouses, and the eviction is expected to last several days, if not longer.
The camp have had full community support throughout, who know the devastating effects that open-cast mining can have first hand, with the landscape around the village of Douglas scarred by them.
As the utter failure of the Copenhagen talks to reach any worthwhile deal on carbon emissions demonstrated, capitalism cannot, and will not, sacrifice profit for the sake of environmental or human concerns. It’s now up to us to halt the potential environmental catastrophe that climate change will bring, fighting alongside local communties who’re facing the brunt of the system that pits profit above all else.
There’s regular updates from Mainshill Solidarity Camp on Indymedia Scotland & on their twitter at https://twitter.com/MainshillCamp.

If you were in  a city centre or on the train over the weekend you might have noticed a much larger police presence than usual.

This follows the Home Office announcing the latest bout of the “don’t-be-worried-but-we-should-all-be-scared-shitless-game” with the raising of the government’s terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe”, meaning the government apparently believes an attack is “highly likely.”

Home Secretary Alan Johnson demonstrates the Government's raised state of alert

Telling people they shouldn’t be worried, whilst also telling them there’s a pretty fair chance they might get blown up, unfortunately for the government, loses quite a lot of its impact after 9 odd years of similar “scares”, and people just seemed to be ignoring the high police presence.

But if you weren’t worried about the imminent threat of exploding underwear, the security services have a new terrifying development in the world of ingenious terrorism – the “clean-skins”.

According to an article in the Sunday Telegraph, the wannabe-Jack Bauers are worried that al-Qaeda have been training women who may not be Arabs. These are what they call “clean-skin” agents.

The Telegraph's image of a "female terrorist". The balaclava kinda defeats the purpose though

“There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins – that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al-Qaeda terrorists, who may not be Arabs, and may not be men,” said Richard Clarke, a former White House Chief Couter-Terrorism Adviser.

The term “clean-skin” has its origins in the War On Drugs that came before the War On Terrorism, in relation to people bringing drugs into the US from Latin America or elsewhere who did not fit their pre-conceived profile of what a smuggler looks like. Dictionary entries for the term offer “lilywhite” as an alternative, showing that, although officially about criminal records, immigration processes always were driven by a fair dose of racial profiling.

Now the term has transferred to the ongoing process of classifying people undertaken as part of the “War On Terror”. So, according to British government analysts, the London bombers, who were British citizens, would be classified as “clean-skins”.

Now apparently, security sources have said that it was “inevitable” that al-Qaeda would eventually turn to using women with a “western appearance” to carry out suicide attacks. The fact that such a blatantly racist term as “clean-skin” is reinforced here as meaning “white” without blushing really shows how much racism underlies most of what we get told about what the secret agencies we all fund get up to.

Anjem Choudary in happier times

Fundamentalist nutjob Anjem Choudary’s bottled it. After a week of hysteria in the British press over a planned Islamist march through Wootton Bassett, he has cancelled the demo – as many already predicted he would do. Choudary previously claimed to be organising a march for Shariah Law in London before bottling it, unfortunately not before the Daily Express ran with the story “Now Muslims Demand Full Sharia Law”.
In both cases the reasons for shitting it are obvious; Islam4UK has a membership base of only dozens and would be outnumbered in the hundreds if not thousands by far-right counter demonstrators.

Full credit must be given where it’s due however. While the Left and secular Muslims can hold sizeable demonstrations against war, terrorism and in defence of secularism they are lucky to get any coverage. Islam4UK on the other hand can picket a homecoming march with a couple dozen demonstrators holding placards and make national headlines.

People who demand that more secular Muslims speak out against Choudary, or that their voices are not being heard because they have sympathy for Islam4UK should remember how the media works. Choudary is given more publicity than any other religious Muslim leader (and possibly anyone of Muslim background in the UK) not because his ideas are popular but because they sell newspapers. A bearded lunatic raving about the flag of Allah flying over Downing Street, flogging drunks, attacking British Soldiers and generally acting like something Chris Morris would cook up is someone much more interesting to read about than some nondescript spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain – particularly when he’s on 25k of YOUR taxes Great Britain!

It’s this massive outpouring of hatred for Islam4UK that’s probably resulted in their banning. After being banned in their previous incarnation Al Muhjahiroun, they rebranded themselves as Islam4UK. Expect them to do the same in a couple of months – Jihad4Anglia? Scouser Muhjahadeen? Nice Cup of tea and a sit down Martyrs Brigade? The potential name changes for British Islamists are almost endless.

As much black humour Choudary and Islam4UK can provide with calls for a fundamentalist Islamic programme across the UK they are much more dangerous than their small numbers suggest. The coverage they obtain provides crucial justification for a variety of “think tanks” and a growing cottage industry of anti-Muslim bigots. Every time Islam4UK carry out a demo it can be used as evidence for massive, concealed sympathy for Islamist ideas among British Muslims. This is almost certainly Islam4UK’s strategy; punch above your weight with some mental slogans then when these are used to justify an anti-Muslim backlash pose as the defenders of Muslims.

One such organisation which has used Islam4UK to bolster it’s own anti-Muslim bigotry is the Centre for Social Cohesion. Their spokesperson agreed to debate with Anjem Choudary but then pulled out when he demanded the audience be divided into male and female. Who would have thought a religious fundamentalist would be so unreasonable. The Centre for Social Cohesion snatched headlines recently by conducting a poll claiming that one third of Muslim students supported killing in the name of religion.

The reality was that the poll showed completely different results. Only 4% of Muslim students thought it was acceptable to kill to “preserve and promote religion”. 28% thought it was acceptable to kill “only if that religion was under attack”. The second question was specifically designed to be vague enough to get the results the poll wanted.

In other questions asked, only 6% of Muslims believed that those who became apostates (converted from Islam) should be punished under Sharia Law. The poll reveals that there are only about 4-6% of British Muslims who support Islamist ideas. There were some disturbing results however – there were significant minorities who had “little or no respect for homosexuals” for instance. Also large sections of Muslims polled said they would welcome the introduction of an Islamic Caliphate, and Sharia Law in the UK. Unsurprisingly though the poll did not ask if they thought it should be forced upon non-Muslims through violence.

The only Sharia Law that is present in the UK has no legal standing whatsoever, where Muslims go to an Imam to receive a religious judgement on aspects of their lives. The Imam has no legal power and his authority is based on Muslims deciding to accept his judgements. This is not unique in the UK – Jewish Religious courts arbitrate on affairs in the Jewish community, but can only act when Jews recognise it’s authority.

Religious law shouldn’t be whitewashed – there is often pressure in marriages, families and communities to accept arbitration from religious figures even if they carry no official power. Deciding to reject it can come at a high cost in terms of personal relations with your friends and family etc. But the people who will suffer that will be Muslims and not non-Muslims in the UK, and Muslims won’t be able to challenge religious authority if there is a cloud of suspicion cast over all of them. Instead a siege mentality will develop, with these religious figures finding their authority in the community increasing.

Polling consistently shows tiny support for hardcore Islamist ideas in the UK – only 4-6% of the Muslim population support killing in the name of Islam even if its not attacked or punishment of apostates. And this is 4-6% of a religious minority. Across the UK Muslims make up 3% of the population. In Scotland it is only 0.8%. The base of support for turning the UK into an Islamic Republic would not be able to organise in telephone boxes – matchboxes would be more appropriate.

When people like Choudary are promoted throughout the media it’s not just to laugh at his ideas, or because of his sexist, and bigoted ideas. He is used by many anti-Muslim newspapers and commentators as a stick to bash all Muslims in the UK with, and to raise a nightmare scenario of Britain becoming an Islamic State. Once you have that nightmare vision you can go on to justify any kind of attack on Muslims that wouldn’t be suggested for any other minority in the UK. That makes Anjem Choudary very dangerous, but not in the way he or his opponents in the tabloid media would think.

Popular culture has taken a peculiar twist in the past couple of years, one that is psychologically revealing about the times we live in. The apocalypse rules at the cinema, with recent top films including ‘The Book of Eli,’ ‘2012′ and ‘The Road.’ And there’s been a huge resurgence of vampires and zombies, most famously through the ‘Twilight’ films and books. It’s interesting to try and work out what it is about late-capitalist society, afflicted by economic and ecological collapse, that makes people want to settle down with, or even be, an undead creature.

‘Daybreakers’ is the perfect antidote to the abusive-stalker-mixed-with-moping relationship of Edward and Bella. It shows us a world just slightly in the future, where almost everyone in the world has chosen to become a vampire. Humans are kept in comas to be drained in horrific blood farms, and the few remaining on the loose are hunted by the military.

The society is still recognisably similar to our own, but has some high tech adaptations to the fact it’s inhabited by vampires. Sub-street walkways and cars with blacked out windows that can be driven by camera allow them to move about by day, for instance. But the real reason why this film grips you is because it’s speculative fiction at its best: a film about ideas, underlying it is an intriguing take on the problems that cut through the heart of our own society.

The main character, Ed, played by Ethan Hawke, is a top hematologist (that’s blood scientist) working on a project to develop and artificial substitute to human blood for vampire consumption. The reason for this is that with so few humans left in the world is approaching peak blood. His employer is the slimy and sinister Bromley (Sam Neil), a corporate magnate who is the personification of a corporate bloodsucker. He has gotten rich from human farming, and unlike humanitarian Ed, has no intentions of giving it up when a substitute is developed, declaring: “There will always be those who will be willing to pay more for the real thing.”

This is what made the film interesting for me-at its heart it is really an examination about our own society’s dependence on fossil fuels, and all the harm and problems that arise from it. Oil really is the lifeblood of our society, and in the real world huge military forces and oppression are indeed necessary to procure it for the use of the more well off.

The vampire world is capitalist to its core, and riven as ours by class divisions. As the blood supply slowly runs out the rich pull their private stocks of people out of their blood farm. When deprived for long enough of blood, the vampires degenerate into almost mindless hideous monsters that go around breaking into homes and attacking vampires who are still whole. They are known as “subsiders”, and they form a known, but hidden population within vampire society, living underground while everyone else attempts to ignore them, like the homeless in a human city. The consequences of poverty and inequality are less easy to avoid in a world of vampires though, and the ruling class are forced to confront the problem. Instead of seeing it as a problem of resource depletion and poverty however, they behave just like the real-world bosses. They hoard the blood supplies for themselves and militarise the streets, summarily executing the subsiders.

The main plot of the film follows Ed as he meets a human underground, dedicated to rebuilding humanity and finding a way to return the world’s population to being humans. This neatly ties up the allegory, as a minority seek a transformation that removes the dependence on a finite resource that is bringing about the slow death of society.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the film is perfect. All this intelligence is interspersed with some hammy acting and some classic action movie chase-and-fight scenes. It’s half action blockbuster and half intelligent allegory about class society undermining the basis of its own survival. That said, a lot of the fight scenes are greatly choreographed and exciting, and visually the world-building that has gone into creating ‘Daybreakers’ is gripping. These elements not only make the film enjoyable on a non-intellectual level, they’ll hopefully get mainstream blockbuster audiences thinking about some of the issues raised.

The point for me is that ‘Daybreakers’ is at its heart a film about ideas. It’s about really thinking about the oblivion that we’re all blindly walking into unless we can bring radical social change to our own world. Critics often negatively compare science fiction to literary books, claiming they don’t have the same subtlety or nuance of language. This is far from always true, but in any case it’s not really relevant. Science/speculative/whatever you want to-call-it fiction is a different kind of communication, one that deals with ideas, philosophical problems and extrapolating the consequences of real trends in the modern world. So, to me, it doesn’t really matter that ‘Daybreakers’ is half silly blockbuster. Because in amongst that is a real core of relevant ideas about the current state of our society.

Hard on the heels of a previous post poking fun at the idiocies of the organised, evangelical Christian Far Right in Ireland, Leftfield brings you news of another bout of idiocy from a fundamentalist nutjob.

Calling out the offensive madness of Pat Robertson is a bit like shooting fish in a giant barrel with a satellite laser guided super gun, i.e. it’s not very hard. Researching this article I came across the wikipedia page ‘Pat Robertson controversies,’ which has 20 separate entries, such as ‘Chinese abortions,’ ‘Remarks against Muslims and Hindus,’ ‘Remarks against Asians,’ and ‘Financial Ties to Charles Taylor and Mobutu Sese Seko.’* He also famously called Scotland “a dark land overrun with homosexuals,” and advocated the assassination of Hugo Chavez on live TV.

If you don’t know of this guy count yourself very, very lucky you live in a country where such people don’t have national political influence. People in the US are much less fortunate. Robertson is a famous televangelist, known for spouting his virulent right wing views on his own TV station, the Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1988 he campaigned to become the Republican nominee for US President, and retains a huge following and influence on the US right. He’s really a poster boy for the extreme right evangelical political movement that is basically responsible for two terms of George W. Bush.

But what has he done lately to earn the prestigious inclusion in Leftfield’s roster of knobheads? Well, he excelled himself with this latest outburst, in reference to the Richter 7.0 earthquake in Haiti which has killed around 200, 000 people:

Pat Robertson on Haitian quake

… something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the French, true story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic something good may come. But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable.

Most people who can be bothered to try and work out what is going on in his fevered mind interpret his comments as relating to the role of Dutty Boukman, a slave in colonial Haiti when the country was still controlled by the French. As a priest of the voudun religion, followed by slaves and derived from their traditional beliefs before they were abducted from Africa, he conducted a ceremony in 1791 that helped spark the Haitian revolution.

The movement he helped start is one of the forgotten moments in the long struggle of humans everywhere to free themselves from exploitation, not as well known as the French or Russian revolutions. It was the first successful slave revolt in the history of the Atlantic slave trade, and it allowed Haitians to found the first state not controlled by a white elite in the whole western hemisphere, and the first post-colonial Black-led state in the world. The revolutionaries, in an unabated streak of ass-kicking, not only beat the French, but then went on to drive out the Spanish and British invaders who saw their chance to grab another colony. Then, with racism clearly clouding his ability to recognise hardcore fighters when he saw them, Napoleon Bonaparte sent MORE French troops in an attempt to reconquer the island. I bet you can guess what happened to them.

The existence of Haiti as a revolutionary base later became a key aid to the struggle of Simon Bolivar to end Spanish colonial domination of Latin America, when Haitians provided the rebels with shelter and aid.

The history of the revolution is famously documented in the classic book ‘The Black Jacobins,’ by Caribbean Marxist C. L. R. James. It’s a great read and is one every socialist should try and make the time for at some point.

On one level, you can almost (almost) understand how poor old mad, ignorant Robertson ended up with such wacky views, given the total lack of context that’s been displayed in most coverage of the devastating quake. Most accounts have told us how the infrastructure and government were woefully inadequate, and how unprepared they were for a disaster of this kind. But that’s the end of the story, nobody seems to be interested in how this situation arose.

The fact of the matter is that there is almost never a completely natural disaster, especially in countries like Haiti, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Since the revolution Haiti has been under virtually constant assault from imperialism. In 1825 France sent another invasion force, and forced the former slaves to pay reparations for the cost of their freedom, a crippling debt for Haitians. This was the beginning of an almost permanent period of political uncertainty, in a country that has had 32 coups in its 200 year history, virtually all of them backed by foreign imperial powers.

This process came to a head in 1914 when British, German and American troops entered the island to prevent rebellion. The US then went on to occupy the island until 1934, completely re-writing the constitution and imposing a financial system that left Haiti in even more debt, and siphoned off the country’s wealth to US banks.

Another little mentioned event is how the US helped establish a firm boundary between Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Following this, in 1937, the US trained and supported Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo massacred around 30, 000 Haitians in five days on his side of the border.

Following the US occupation the US supported with significant aid the dictatorship of the batshit-insane ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier as a bulwark against a spread of the Cuban revolution. Duvalier was notable for a reign of terror against anyone he didn’t like, including socialists and communists, carried out by his private army, the Tonton Macoutes. Haiti became his private kingdom, and he continued loot the country’s wealth, as well as getting Haiti into massive debt. Haiti today is still paying off debts amassed by Duvalier, which no one had any say on apart from ‘Papa.’ He created a huge personality cult around himself, and claimed that President Kennedy had been assassinated because he had cursed him. He also liked to compare himself to Christ. In other words, he had about as much of a grip on reality as Pat Robertson. When he died in 1971 he was succeeded by his son, known, imaginatively enough, as ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier.

In 1986 Haitians finally managed to get the Duvalier family kicked out and exiled to France. Following this Haiti held its first democratic elections in a long long time, and elected former priest Jean Bertrand Aristide to the Presidency. As a priest he had advocated liberation theology, and as leader of the party Lavalas (which means ‘the flood’ in Haitian creole) he argued for redistribution of wealth and the duty of the state to try and alleviate the massive poverty affecting Haitians. In 1994 he also suffered a coup against his Presidency, but it was defeated and he returned.

Re-elected in 2000, Aristide was finally deposed in a US backed coup, the frontline troops of which were drug-smuggling mercenaries. US troops then kidnapped Aristide and dumped him in the Central African Republic. Since then Haiti has hosted a UN “peacekeeping” force, whose troops have been predictably enough been accused of numerous killings and abuses of the Haitian people. One of the most notable crimes to have occurred during the UN occupation has been the kidnapping of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine. Lovinsky was a member of Lavalas, and a noted human rights activist who fought for the poorest, particularly single mothers and homeless children. He went missing after a meeting with UN forces in 2007. An international solidarity campaign has fought for his return.

In the first elections since the coup, Haitians overwhelmingly elected Rene Preval, a close ally of Aristide. Despite government committed to (as Aristide put it) “moving from absolute misery to dignified poverty,” Haiti has been the victim of decades of neo-liberal capitalist policies. International institutions like the IMF and World Bank forced the government to relinquish its powers to help their own people from the 70s onwards, and harsh trade agreements made sure the prospect of Haiti developing its economy and resources for its own people was just not happening.

Perhaps most importantly, these policies deliberately forced tens of thousands of poor small farmers off their land and into swelling slums in cities like the capital Port Au Prince. This city has grown immensely, and the vast majority live in poorly built makeshift homes that are in no way equipped to cope with disaster conditions, with no electricity, running water or infrastructure of any kind. Around 75% of the population lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% — four and a half million people — live on less than $1 per day. These are the people who have died in the thousands, as much victims of poverty imposed by imperialism as the earthquake.

As Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, puts it: “Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.”

The UN occupation is fantastically expensive, and yet its mission is defined as solely military, in other words keeping the rebellious Haitians in line. The powers that take part, chief among them the US, have consistently voted against any of this money being diverted to help ordinary Haitians.

An important comparison to make if you want to understand what’s happened to Haiti is with neighbouring Cuba, fortunate to have had a socialist revolution in 1959 and so not controlled by the US and its allies. In 2008 storms killed thousands in Haiti, whereas in Cuba they killed only four. A socialist government that is truly in control of the country and its resources is able to take practical steps to protect ordinary people from natural disasters. Meanwhile, refugees leaving Cuba are welcomed with open arms in the US as evidence of how awful socialism is, whilst Haitians fleeing poverty are treated as vermin, kept in detention camps and deported wholesale back to Haiti.

Many places and organisations are raising money for disaster relief in Haiti, and this is of course vitally needed. But socialists reading this could perhaps reflect on how we could best help the Haitians in the long term. What Haiti really needs is imperialism to get off their back so that they can have the kind of pro-poor government that they have consistently voted for. One of the main ways this could happen is if the US and international bodies would forgive some of the huge debt burden, much of which was amassed by a government no Haitian ever voted for. But in fact, quite the opposite is happening right now, as the IMF is actually ADDING to Haiti’s external debt by offering loans for disaster relief!

Perhaps some of this (plus a basic education about geology, and the devil’s non-role in it) could help enlighten Pat Robertson. But then again, it’s unlikely, as he is clearly a knobhead. Inside that knobhead is a brain composed of nothing but 100% pure, weapons grade mentalism.

Bonus: Pat Robertson gets caught saying a caller to the Larry King show is a “homo” when he thinks he’s off air:

Pat Robertson calls viewer a \”homo\”

*Charles Taylor is the former President of Liberia, currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague, who presided over a reign of terror in his country featuring all kinds of horrors inflicted by conscripted child soldiers. Mobutu Sese Seko was the brutal dictator of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which he renamed Zaire cos he felt like it. When he was kicked out the aftermath caused a war which has killed more people than World War 1. Pat Robertson was in business with them both because he owns diamond mines that use virtual slave labour. What a prick.

First Gerry Adams reveals his father was a child abuser and calls for his brother to come out of hiding and hand himself in to the police. Now it’s been revealed a 19 year old toyboy has been firing into Iris Robinson, the Christian fundamentalist wife of Democratic Unionist Party First Minister Peter Robinson. And this is after the Robinsons were revealed to claim 30k in food costs as MP’s earning them the moniker “Swish Family Robinson”. The north is looking more and more like an episode of Hollyoaks every week, albeit with a couple of dodgy looking guys in the background with balaclavas setting off the odd bomb or two.
Its another fantastic step forward for the peace process. It’s now normalised the political set up in Northern Ireland to the extent that proper political scandals now consist of shagging and dodgy money on expenses instead of being former commanders of paramilitary organisations and trying to decapitate the British Government by blowing up hotels.

While folk on the Left enjoy the Swish Family Robinson’s comeuppance, we should take a look at the political situation in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. A lot of people have had a distinct lack of sympathy for Iris’ predicament due to her own moralising in the past. She’s denounced gays not just as an “abomination” but also that said they were worse than child abusers, commenting that “There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children”. Her husband defended her, saying she was just echoing Christian scripture. None of this is that much of a surprise though, it was Ian Paisley who led the “Save Ulster from Sodomy” campaign against the legalisation of homosexuality.
The worst folk in the modern Tory party today can’t get away with anything close to the Robinson’s comments on gays and lesbians. Far from it, now they’re speaking at Stonewall demos and apologising for Clause 28. Even Nick Griffin can only shift uncomfortably in his seat and tell folk the gays make him a bit queasy. So why is it, after the supposed success of the peace process the DUP can not just get away with it, but be popular with it?

Northern Ireland is now the most right-wing part of the UK in terms of the politicians it elects. It’s the only part of the UK where full on Christian fundamentalism, the likes of which you get in the USA, can make hay. The gay bashing is just the tip of the iceberg. The Democratic Unionist Party, who Iris represents also have also called for teaching materials on creationism to be available in schools. Another of their MP’s, not to be outdone by Pete or Iris in the nutter stakes opposed letting Catholics become the Monarch as they owe their first allegiance to the Vatican. Which is of course in the same vein as Ian Paisley denouncing the pope as the antichrist in the European Parliament. If nothing else the DUP should be thanked for reminding Catholics in Scotland how they were treated when they were immigrants.

Alongside this favourable environment for the right is an extremely unfavourable one for the Left. While the SDLP and Sinn Fein have left of centre programmes (and in Sinn Fein’s case, anti-war and anti-imperialism) they make zero headway among the Protestant half of the working class in Ireland. This is in stark contrast to the movement in the Republic, which has seen success for former Socialist TD Joe Higgins in winning a Euro seat and decent votes for other Left groups like People Before Profit and the Unemployed Workers Group. Northern Ireland is also one of the few (if not the only) statelet in Western Europe not to have a mainstream political party which has it’s roots in the trade union movement.

You can see what the lack of a trade union based party means for US politics, and the same goes for Northern Ireland. Even if every party in Western Europe which used to give genuine political representation to Trade Unions has betrayed them, they at least contributed to the development of some basic progressive, Socialist and Left ideas in their countries, which the radical Left has in some cases been able to capitalise on. The lack of a political party representing trade unions in Northern Ireland is largely due to the fact that national and religious divisions are unfortunately much more important than class divisions when people take an interest in politics. Ultimately a political party in the North has to decide whether it is for a United Ireland or for the UK, and whichever decision is made will leave it isolated from one half of working people in the province.

Irish Socialist and Republican James Connolly had it spot on when he said that dividing Ireland “would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements whilst it endured. To it labour should give the bitterest opposition, against it labour in Ulster should fight even to the death, if necessary, as our fathers fought before us.”
Creating Northern Ireland meant that one half of workers, Catholic and Republican would be pitted against the other Protestant and Loyalist half. Any attempts to foster class unity are made very difficult by an institutionalised sectarianism in Northern Ireland, which the peace process has not changed. Contrast this with the position in the Republic where the voting lines are not broken down between Catholic and Protestant, but where religion is largely irrelevant and left wing politics have an opening.

If Socialists are going to have an impact in Northern Ireland and roll back the power the DUP has it’s not just necessary to argue for a United Ireland so the political environment becomes more similar to that of the Republic. There needs to be some way of working with Protestant workers who the Left has not been able to attract because of its position on a United Ireland.
Connolly called Socialists who didn’t want to talk about the national question in Ireland were “Gas and water Socialists”, who only wanted to fight on issues surrounding the economy and poverty. But there should be some organisation uniting working people from both backgrounds in Northern Ireland even if it is just on those “gas and water” issues . Large sections of Protestants in the North will never agree with a United Ireland but many could support a campaign alongside Catholics for a decent minimum wage, defence of public services and workers rights. If even a small minority of Protestants came round to backing a United Ireland on a platform of workers rights, it would fundamentally change the political situation in the North.

As it is just now the Christian Right parties like the DUP are able to take them for granted largely on the basis that they are fighting for their communities interests against the Catholic community. One example of this was during last years Euro Elections were the DUP faced a challenge from Traditional Unionist Voice, a splinter of the DUP who split because the party went into Government with Sinn Fein. The DUP tried to maximise it’s vote by raising the danger of Sinn Fein topping the polls for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history (which they did). As the TUV pointed out, how could the DUP raise this as a nightmare when they were in Government with them?
The DUP didn’t try to defend their coalition with that argument, they fought to get more votes by raising the fear that the other community’s representatives would benefit. Now there are fears Sinn Fein could nominate a First Minister for Stormont if the DUP vote collapses due to the scandal. Expect the DUP to raise that nightmare a lot more than actually trying to defend the actions of their representatives.

The North is one of the poorest parts of the UK, with the spectacular levels of poverty, unemployment, crime and low pay. The DUP’s Christian fundamentalism do nothing to change or improve the lives of working class Protestants. All they do is keep them locked into a battle with the other half of the people, desperate to hold on to privileges they once held over Catholics – instead of demanding an increase in the quality of living for everyone in the North. As difficult as it is, the Left can improve the lives of working people if it is able to challenge the DUP on these issues without dropping a commitment to a United Ireland.