After almost a year since the SNP’s landslide victory we have a  date – Autumn 2014. The most important referendum in Scottish history, on whether or not we stay in a Union dominated by the right-wing, a state that invaded Iraq, imposes nuclear weapons on the Clyde, destroyed Scotland’s industrial base, or whether we become an independent nation with the power to fundamentally change Scotland for the better and which reflects the left of centre political terrain instead of being dominated by the Tory home counties.

The referendum date has been announced after months of whining from the Unionist parties, all of which have been in disarray since the SNP’s victory. Labour, the Libdems and the Tories all called for a referendum to be held as soon as possible after the SNP’s victory – ignoring that when the SNP was a minority administration they all refused to support the SNP’s call for an independence referendum in 2011.

They must be kicking themselves now – the poll on Scotland’s future will now take place after 2 years of a vicious Tory austerity package that will disproportionately affect Scotland’s economy, which itself has a higher than average public sector employment due to destruction of Scottish industry in the 80’s by Thatcher. If it comes down to choosing between a Government led by Alex Salmond in Holyrood and many years of continued Tory rule in Westminster even non-nationalist Scots may vote Yes as an “exit strategy” from Tory misrule.

This fear of a referendum being held at the height of Tory cuts is probably what motivated Cameron – along with typical Unionist arrogance – to try to bring the referendum under the control of Westminster. After 300 years of Scotland having no say in whether or not we stayed in the Union Westminster is now very concerned that Scots should have a fair say in it, even going as far as to say a referendum held by the Scottish Parliament would be “illegal” and “unconstitutional”. A bit ironic given that the UK has no written constitution – it has Kings, Queens, Princes, Dukes, but no constitution.

At the end of the day, no referendum carried out is “binding” under UK law – all of them are advisory. And if there’s a majority yes vote for independence, it does not matter whether it’s in 2012 or 2014 – politically, the Union is finished. After years of snidey slagging of Scots as “subsidy junkies”, “dole scum”, too wee to go it alone etc, Conservatives in England are beginning to wake up to the reality of Scottish Independence – the British state would be “Shorn of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and relegated to minnow status in Nato”.

Unfortunately for the Tories who have less MP’s in Scotland than there are Panda’s, they’re unlikely to have any impact in stopping the breakup of the UK. Cameron’s intervention into the timing of the referendum shows he has zero tactical knowledge of the Scottish political scene. The Unionist pillar of political strength in Scotland is the Labour Party, who have still not recovered from their defeat of 2007 let alone last year’s humiliating rout.

Despite the disparity in political strength between the SNP and it’s Unionist opponents, by 2014 you can expect the Honeymoon between the Scottish media and the SNP to be over, if not at least on hiatus for the duration of an Independence Referendum campaign. Expect predictions of the apocalypse if Scotland decides to go it alone.

That’s why we need to organise a grassroots Independence campaign to ensure we have our own media to promote the case for Independence – with Socialists adovcating a Republic, public ownership of oil, and taxes on the super-rich, in contradiction to the SNP’s model of Scotland as a Celtic Tiger like, er, Ireland.

Pro-Independence left-wingers don’t just need to organise to win the referendum, but also to shape the future of a post Independence Scotland – to oppose any moves to keep Scotland inside a “Union lite” with British bases kept in Scotland on lease, or where our economy is run along the same Thatcherite lines that condemns a quarter of Scottish children to poverty.

For the first time in decades we have a chance to fundamentally change Scotland and Scottish politics for the better. Lets get organised to build the Socialist Republic.

The Russian revolutionary Lenin said there were “decades where nothing happens; and there were weeks when decades happen”. If there was a time that saw decades of political conservatism, stagnancy, and immobility swept away in mere weeks, it was 2011. Last year began with the resignation of the Tunisian despot Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January, in response to protests by Tunisian youth SSY covered here. Few people could have imagined the tidal wave of the protest that would follow as Egyptian youth inspired by the overthrow of Ben Ali organised a Day of Rage for the 25th of January in Egypt (which coincided with the “police day” public holiday).

What might have been small and manageable in the past decade proved to be very different in the first major recession of the 21st century. After decades of police brutality, corruption, dictatorship and political repression the call to action struck with popular consciousness not just in Egypt but all around the world. Millions watched glued to their screens, the first major revolution of the 21st century. After decades of rule and with no previously obvious signs of collapse the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced from office in the space of two weeks and now faces the death penalty for his crimes against the Egyptian people.
Egypt’s revolution took the rulers of that region completely unaware – Israel today is absolutely terrified they will no longer have a partner to keep Gaza under siege and whose new Parliament may put it’s peace treaty with Israel to a popular referendum, and the US tried hopelessly to maintain Mubarak’s rule in Egypt even as it looked impossible to most observers.
This wave of popular protest wasn’t limited to Egypt either – it has now spread to every Arab country, both pro and anti-US but with the common goal of overthrowing dictatorship and corruption.
This meant the West took very different attitudes to different parts of the Arab Spring. In Bahrain, the USA turned a blind eye as one of it’s most important allies, Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of troops to crush a popular uprising in Bahrain and to preserve the sectarian monarchy that hosts a large US military base on the Island. However when it came to Libya, a bizarre dictatorship which shared many characteristics with other Arab regimes – with the exception that it wasn’t completely in the pockets of the West – a different attitude was taken, with military action conducted by NATO to overthrow the regime.

Not a good year for these guys

This made Libya the third Muslim country in 10 years bombed by the West, after Afghanistan and Iraq. While the campaign in Libya was, from the viewpoint of London, Paris and Washington, a quite easy affair there was one war that finally seems to have drawn to a close – at least for Washington. The 8 year nightmare of Iraq for the USA ended with a formal troop withdrawal from Iraq earlier last year, as Obama redeployed US soldiers from Iraq to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Iraq war, so critical in radicalizing millions of people across the world ended not with a bang but a whimper as the USA has been forced to leave with many of it’s desires – permanent military bases, proxy for strikes on Iran and Syria, dirt cheap oil – unfulfilled. If Iraq has been a disaster, Afghanistan hasn’t turned out much better as it’s Taliban guerillas continue to make the ISAF occupation of the country as pointless, ineffective and bloody as all the previous occupations of Afghanistan have been. The Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden even went as far as to say “The Taliban are not our enemy” – an admission that the USA will negotiate and involve the Taliban in Afghan politics at some point.

The solid decade of occupation and war in Afghanistan and Iraq has proved so costly for the USA that US President Barack Obama has carried out the biggest reform of the US military “since WW2″. Moving it’s forces away from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and the Pacific (hello China) it’s a massive climbdown from the previously almost invincible US military power in the 90’s. But what other choice does Obama have, particularly when in 2011 the US faced a historic first time downgrading of it’s credit rating. When the most powerful nation in human history hasn’t got the best possible record at debt management, it’s a damning indictment of the cost of occupation and war – and may fortunately dissuade the USA from any attack on Iran, at least for the time being.
Many of the historic events we saw in 2011 – such as the resignation of Mubarak – weren’t from our sofas or bedrooms, but with other activists in comrades in the longest running student occupation in UK history. From February to September, Hetherington House a former postgraduate club, was occupied by anti-cuts students at Glasgow University. For 6 months we were able to hold a non-commercial space on Glasgow Uni campus, open to a variety of campaigns – from the protests to stop cuts to nursing, modern languages and adult education at Glasgow University, to the campaign to save the Accord Centre in the East End of Glasgow. This occupation succeeded in acting as a focal point for the anti-cuts movement across the whole of the city, as well as attracting a variety of speakers like Ken O’Keefe and Owen Jones.

While the occupation of the Hetherington House ended, the networks and connections built up between different activists and groups hasn’t disappeared. There’s now a vibrant anti-cuts group for the whole of Glasgow that many of the former occupiers are involved in – the Coalition of Resistance. COR’s been in existence since May and has already become the largest and most active anti-cuts group in Glasgow, organising strike buses for J3O and N30, building the October 1st demonstration, the march to save the accord and providing a space for anyone from any political background who wants to fight the cuts to come to. COR will be an important part of anti-cuts activism in the next year, and a vital space for Socialists to operate in.
Another front that will be opening in the next few years is the Independence campaign in Scotland. After 4 years of SNP minority rule, alongside a Tory Government in Westminster many Labour Party members must have thought they were a shoe in for the Holyrood elections held in May of last year. What they actually faced was the biggest defeat for Labour and Unionism imaginable – central belt seats where the Labour party had majorities you’d normally find in one party states were seized by the SNP for the first time in it’s history, producing a revolutionary result in Scottish politics – a pro-independence majority in Holyrood for the first time ever.

This means after 300 years of unionist misrule, the Scottish population will finally have a choice over our constitutional future. And for Unionism, it couldn’t come at a worse time, where a Tory party that has less MP’s in Scotland than Pandas is trying to force through a brutal package of austerity. This is Scotland’s gain from the revolutionary year that was 2011 – the chance to take our nation out of the world’s oldest empire, and a possibility for the Radical Left to shape that debate and the Scotland that emerges. 2011 will be remembered as the year that saw arrogant, embedded and reactionary power crumble fall – from Cairo to Tunis to Pollok – lets organise to make sure 2012 continues in the same vein.

David Icke. Alex Jones. Ron Paul. The Zeigeist Movement. President Andrew Jackson. What do all these people have in common? No, they’re unfortunately not the next line up of Celebrity Big Brother. They are however a series of individuals and “movements” who despite having little sway over most political thought in the world today, have made a disturbing encroachment into movements against austerity, cuts and for social justice. This blog has already covered a few of these individuals before. And we’d be lying if we didn’t find the occasional presence of Alex Jones or David Icke amongst the internets a comedy joy we’ve all indulged in frequently.

But there is a time and a place for Alex Jones and David Icke, and that time is 3o’clock in the morning, pished, going on you tube -- NOT inside movements for real, radical social change in the UK or anywhere else. This isn’t a call that everyone inside these movements must be 100% Marxists or Socialists. Far from it, we need to engage with people who are not already activists. It’s about recognising that the ideas promoted by the groups and individuals outlined in the beginning of this post aren’t just misguided and wrong -- they’re actively dangerous to any real success over the economic misrule and capitalism.

David Icke knows Boyzone will destroy the lizard people

The groups and individuals are quite diverse, ranging from a US Democratic President in the 1800’s, a Republican Congressman standing for President and a former Grandstand presenter who thinks he is Jesus and that the world is run by lizards. What could possibly unite such a disparate group? The answer is that they are all people who have argued against the forces of the wealthy and powerful in society -- generally the banks and financial institutions. So how are they any different from socialists?

The difference lies in their analysis of what problems the bankers cause, what should replace them and how they go about trying to enact that change. Their analysis ranges from completely insane to explicitly racist, and their solutions from ineffective to backwards and reactionary. The base of their analysis is that the world economic crisis is a problem inflicted by specific forms of banking (such as fractional reserve banking) and financial management, and that ultimately it is bankers and not capitalism and class society that is to blame.

These individuals obviously don’t agree on everything -- Ron Paul’s not mentioned Lizard control over the Royal Family in the GOP debates, at least not yet -- but what they basically agree on runs something like this; Banks developed their wealth and power at the expense of hardworking people (typically small businesses and artisans). They now use this wealth and power to enslave governments and control culture, media, politics, and social attitudes in a range of countries, as well as initiating wars for their own benefit. Often the phrase “International Bankers” is used interchangeably with Jews, or “Zionists”, alleging that the world is in the thrall of a gigantic Jewish-Banker conspiracy.

Alex Jones rocks out against the globalists

These theories have been able to make some headway on the left because there is a grain of truth in what they say about bankers, if not Jews. Bankers have historically used their economic power to influence society, and have a long history of exploitation of both the developing world and the working class in the West. The problem is that banks are just one part of a system of exploitation called capitalism. In capitalism the work people do to produce commodities is sold on at a profit to the employer. These employers are not just bankers, but range from retailers, oil companies, mines, factories, restaurants and so on. Banks are a fundamental part of that system, as the profit is invested in banks which then use this money to make more money, to invest in other industries and to lend so people can continue to buy products without having to raise wages.

This is the real cause of the economic crisis, and properly identifies what role the bankers played. In the past, if people wanted to buy stuff -- like cars, clothes or houses -- they either had to save up for it, or get a modest loan that was based on their ability to repay it. This meant working class people had to be paid enough so they could buy the things capitalism produced -- whether it was trainers or tellies. Karl Marx identified the problem with this a hundred years ago -- the companies which want to sell the working class trainers at £50 a pop are the same companies who want to pay them 10p an hour. Recessions come and go in capitalism because inevitably companies end up producing goods at the same time they try to keep wages down, so the working class cannot buy their goods and the companies end up going bankrupt.

For the past 30 years capitalism thought it had a way out of this problem -- make it easier for working class people to borrow lots of money, so that way they can still buy the products without having to increase wages. This kept capitalism booming, even though for the past 30 years wages in the USA have been stagnating. It also meant as well as having money to pay for consumer goods, working class people now had to pay money to banks in interest. This is what the banks have done -- lending billions of the profits working people made, so that the same people would keep buying and capitalism would stay afloat. This was not just a system endorsed by the banks, it was in the interests of  capitalism as system -- every corporation, company, and business now had a market of indebted workers to sell to, and could continue to depress the wages of their workers safe in the knowledge that they could borrow money to buy their products.

Sensible and accurate version of why capitalism and the banks have collapsed

Eventually this illusion, that people could continue to afford things that were way beyond the wages they earned, came to a dramatic end with the economic crisis in 2008. This crisis began with the collapse of the housing bubble in the USA -- where banks like Freddie Mae had offered loans to people with poor credit ratings, so they could own their own houses and keep capitalism afloat. When it became clear that the Emperor had no clothes, and the housing repayments couldn’t be made, banks in the western world collapsed requiring the bailouts we’ve all heard about.  The banks loaned money they couldn’t repay -- using a system called fractional reserve banking -- where they only had a fraction of the deposits people made to the banks in their accounts, while the rest was loaned out. In order to stop people losing billions of their savings, governments stepped in to guarantee these funds.

So there’s plenty of very real criticism to be made of the banks -- the fact they recklessly lent to boost their own profits, and when the shit hit the fan instead of taxing the super-rich to plug the gap, they were bailed out with public money. What should have been done is something similar to what Greg Philo and Glasgow Uni Media Group have argued for -- a one off 10% wealth tax on the richest (who made their money predominantly through the financial bubble) to pay for the mess they caused.

Unfortunately this is not what Alex Jones, Ron Paul et al call for. They won’t argue for wealth redistribution, because by their own admission they aren’t Socialists -- they are paleo-conservative Republicans. They may be Republicans who oppose the War on Terror, the developing attack on civil liberties in the USA or ongoing funding to Israel, but they all absolutely believe in capitalism -- and that the problem with the economic crash of 2008 is not the free market, but bizarrely, “socialism”. Jones says big corporations and big government are the same, in contradiction to everything that the right-wing in the USA and Europe actually rolled back. People like Jones, Ron Paul, Icke etc draw many of their ideas from a very reactionary period of US political history during the 1800’s in which the United States of America was half-feudal and half-industrial -- or as Abraham Lincoln described it “half slave and half free”.

The United States was divided in two -- the North, in which slavery was abolished and an industrial revolution was starting, and the South where the economy was based on slavery, and was backwards and feudal. In this topsy turvy time it was the Democrat Party which was racist and pro-slavery, and it was the Republican Party that wanted to ultimately abolish the institution of slavery. At that time the Republican Party correctly saw that slavery would keep the United States trapped in a backward, medieval economy. The profits made by keeping slavery going would make an industrial revolution impossible. Slavery stopped the development of a paid working class, that is necessary to consume the products of industrialisation.  The South was at that time a massive producer of cotton on the backs of slave labour, and was in practice a colony of European powers who wanted to buy cotton for use in their Industrial Revolution.

US Civil War

There were many honest Republicans at that time who found slavery morally abhorrent, but the alterior motivation for Republican opposition to slavery was their backing from the new American capitalist class. This class wanted the abolition of slavery so they could compete against the Southern economy, and so white Southern workers could be paid to do the jobs of the slaves. In short they wanted to develop the United States into a modern capitalist country like Britain or France, knowing that the untapped resources of the North American continent would make them a superpower.

The Democrats position was based on “states rights” -- which meant defending the rights of states to uphold slavery. Their arguments were based on racist opposition to the emancipation of slaves, and the desire to keep large parts of the USA in a feudal state. As part of this outlook, many Democrats had a crude, populist opposition to capitalism. They opposed banks and the expansion of big business, believing it would enslave white Americans. Instead they promoted a vision of  the USA as a continent where all whites would be able to own their own farms and businesses as independent artisans, farmers, shop keepers and craftsmen -- with slaves to assist them.

Democrats were hostile to the industrial revolution and the development of modern capitalism because they saw (correctly) that capitalism would eliminate this parochial economic system -- replacing farmers with agrobusiness, shopowners with department stores, gold whittlers with mines etc. This process was no picnic. Capitalism was ruthless in destroying feudal opposition to it’s development, and the working conditions -- most notoriously those of Victorian Britain -- are infamous for their depravity.

BUT… capitalism was a massive improvement on what had preceded it, which was the rule of Kings and Queens, and an economy run along the whims of unelected noblemen. Capitalism produced economic growth on a scale unheard of in human history -- the development of modern industry, the mass production of consumer goods, the move from the country to the city, and most importantly, the rise of the working class. This is the most important part for socialists as now the group of people who produced clothes, dug the mines, ran the railways etc could be organised, and could eventually become the rulers of a new society -- a socialist one.

One Democrat who owned slaves at  this time, President Andrew Jackson, became infamous for his opposition to any central bank for the USA using his veto power to overrule it. Jackson today is heralded by many anti-banking Occupy activists for this stance. But Jacksons opposition to banking was not based on any socialist or even progressive desire for the working class to rule society -- it was about defending small businesses and the institution of slavery against this massively powerful and dynamic economic system, that threatened to overpower all religious, nationalist and feudal opposition to it

President Andrew Jackson

Writing at the time Karl Marx identified these kind of “anti-capitalists” as feudal socialists,

“In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history”

Put simply, while many anti-banking forces in the 1800’s had legitimate points about the unaccountability of these financial institutions, their opposition fundamentally came from a desire to maintain an unfair, feudal and backward society. At that time Marx identified Capitalism as a brutal, but progressive force -- one of the reasons why he wrote a letter of congratulations to Lincoln during the US Civil War for crushing feudalism and the slave economy of the South.

This radical transformation of society, from feudalism to capitalism terrified and alarmed many people in Europe and the USA. These societies existed during a time when the theories of race were commonly accepted and discussed as a science -- to justify both slavery and the imperial exploitation of Africa and other colonies. As well as racist prejudice one other common bigotry was anti-Semitism, the hatred of Jews. As capitalism developed, producing transnational, global insitutions many racists alarmed at this transformation identified the enemy behind it -- that of the Jew. As part of anti-semitic prejudice throughout Europe, Jews were forced into jobs in the financial sector that Christians deemed immoral -- like banking. So when the industrial revolution was financed by and empowered banks with Jewish owners anti-semites saw a conspiracy by the Jewish race to enslave the white Christian race.

So much wrong in just one picture

The most notorious subject of these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was the Rothschild Family. The Rothschilds were an extremely wealthy and powerful banking family during the 1800’s, who exercised massive influence over the developing capitalist economies of Europe and North America. This combination of power and Judaism made them the frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. As a major banking institution there’s no question the Rothschild’s would have been involved in underhand and conspiratorial plans to influence governments and secure their markets -- but the accusations labelled at the Rothschilds go way beyond criticism of bankers influence, and into conspiracy nonsense about world Jewish plots to enslave the world. For example, the Rothschilds were accused of both funding American Capitalism and Russian Bolsheviks, a ridiculous allegation that had it’s base in anti-socialist racist sentiment. Many anti-Semites were disturbed at the challenge global capitalism posed to nation states sovereignty and could not understand the power of the economic system they faced, so instead chose to blame it on conspiratorial groups.

These ideas -- anti-banking sentiment of small business Democrats, and anti-semitic opposition to the Rothschilds -- unfortunately haven’t remained in the past. They continue to be advocated by people like Zeitgeist, Alex Jones and David Icke. This piece by Norfolk Community Action Group criticizes the influence these forces have in the occupy movement,

“The populist narrative is also an integral part of the political views of conspiracy theorists, far right activists, and anti-Semites. For anti-Semites, the elites are the Jews; for David Icke, the elites are the reptilians; for nationalists, they are members of minority ethnic, racial, or religious groups; for others, they are the “globalists,” the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, the Federal Reserve, etc. All of these various conspiracy theories also tend to blend in and borrow from each other. Additionally, the focus on “Wall Street” also has specific appeal to those who see the elite as represented by finance capital, a particular obsession of the anti-Semites, Larouchites, followers of David Icke, etc. “The Rothschilds” are the favorite stand-in codeword of choice to refer to the supposed Jewish control of the banking system.”

The “Rothschild Zionists” feature in both Alex Jones and Icke’s material -- which blame a 200 year old banking institution for conspiratorial involvement in global capitalism. The reality is that the Rothschilds influence declined by the early 1900s -- blaming them for the financial crisis is like blaming the British East India company for the ongoing exploitation of Asia. The Rothschilds have been surpassed and overtaken by new financial institutions.

So why do they continue to be prevalent in conspiracy theories related to banking? Because in the USA, when people are discontent and angry at the banks instead of looking to socialism -- which has historically been weak in the USA -- they go back to the most prominent anti-banking ideas and figures, which unfortunately are anti-semitic. Likewise many bankers are identified as “Rothschild Zionists” by Icke who clearly have no familial connection to the Rothschild family at all -- like David Miliband and DSK. But it’s ok, as Icke explains:

“I should also stress that when I say ‘Rothschild’, I don’t only mean those called ‘Rothschild’, nor even all of the people who are known by that name. There are many in the Rothschild family and its offshoots who have no idea what the hierarchy is doing and there are many ‘Rothschilds’ who don’t carry the name itself.

When I say ‘Rothschild’, I am referring to the Rothschild bloodline because, as I have detailed in my books, they have long had breeding programmes that produce offspring that are brought up under other names.”

This is effectively an excuse to link all Jewish people in areas of power together, based on racist ideas of “bloodlines”, and using the code “Zionist” instead of what people really mean, which is Jew. Whatever crimes have been committed in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel against the Palestinians, the idea a country of five million Israelis control international finance is absurd and only makes sense if you believe in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Last year SSY wrote about how an internet documentary called Zeitgeist played upon many of these conspiracy theories around finance, with reference to the banks. As well as the Zeitgeist movement another video has been doing the rounds -- this one was posted by Occupy Glasgow:

The documentary is nowhere near as anti-Semitic as Icke’s rants. But it does have the same disturbing focus on the Rothschilds -- along with lizardesque imagery for bankers -- and puts slaveowner and Native American killer President Jackson in a good light. It makes its focus the inequities of the banking system -- many of its criticisms have a point, such as the fact that the US Federal Reserve isn’t actually publically owned, but controlled by unaccountable and unelected bankers who have the power to control the US currency. However all of it stems from the same Jacksonian fear of big business and banking and not capitalism itself. Taking a look at its website -- called “The American Dream” -- it identifies the “good guys” as Alex Jones, The Cato Institute, The Drudge Report and other right-wing sites. They also link to Ron Paul, a Libertarian Republican who thinks someone dying from lack of medical care is choosing ‘freedom’.

The 99% can fuck off and die if they don’t have health insurance

Elsewhere on its website it calls for less government intervention in medicare, social security and federal spending. In short, a demand that the Government’s debt should be cut so we aren’t slaves to evil bankers -- regardless of the massive job cuts entailed. They also ask you to be more like your grandfather, and not get into debt -- ignoring that consumer debt would not be as  massive if peoples wages went up at the same rate as profits in the USA.  There’s also consideration to reintroduce the gold standard -- that is link the value of your currency to the amount of gold you have. It’s very popular amongst the headbanger right, particularly with Glenn Beck fans, who like the idea as if you have gold the bankers can’t control you with their easily printed “fiat” money. But why would you want to organise a society’s currency on the value of a base metal, and have it fluctuate depending on mining rates? And why is it people who are demanding a rush to the gold standard are quite happy to sell you lots of precious gold for your useless fiat money?

The new Shitegeist

Jones, Ron Paul and the libertarian US right don’t call for the debt to be paid by taxing the rich, or for the economy to be restructured on need. This is because they’ve picked anti banking sentiment from a time when small scale traders were trying to survive against the onslaught of capitalism -- a hopeless and reactionary struggle. Trying to solve the world economic crisis by trying to resurrect an economic system from 200 years ago is doomed to failure -- it couldn’t withstand the force of capitalism then, in its progressive phase and it can’t stand against it now even if it’s clearly dying. What’s neccessary is a movement which organises not in the interests of small businesses vs banks, but workers and the poor vs all strands of capitalism. Only then will the interests of the 99% genuinely be enforced.

Amidst the worldwide media coverage of Gaddafi’s death, a historic development in another conflict went largely unnoticed -- after over 40 years of a military campaign against the Spanish state, the Basque armed group ETA announced a permanent end to it’s use of violence in the struggle for an independent and socialist Basque state. This follows on from previous announcements from the group, declaring a desire to pursue Basque independence through peaceful measures.

Naturally the Spanish PM has spoke of ETA’s declaration as a victory over terror and a  rebuke to radical Basque nationalists. In reality, the use of shootings and bombings by a group the size of ETA is unable to bring independence to the Basque country, and skews the coverage of the conflict as one between the Spanish state and a small armed organisation. This totally ignores the strength of the Basque radical pro-independence movement, and acts in the interests of the Spanish state by making the dispute about a conflict against terrorism that the Basques cannot win by military means.

The position of the Basque independence left is one the untold success stories of the Socialist movement in Europe. In almost every town and city, the left pro-independence movement -- known as the Abertzale or patriotic left -- controls youth centres, pubs and social clubs. These community facilities are considered such a threat to the Spanish state that one of them was recently demolished, despite public opposition. The Basque Left can also wield a significant section of the popular vote in the Basque country -- almost certainly larger than anywhere else for the Socialist Left in Europe.

In the recent municipal elections in the Spanish State, the Basque Left party Bildu stood and took a whopping 25% of the vote -- the largest ever vote recieved by the pro-independence left, who historically took between 10% and 20%. This makes Bildu the opposition party in the Basque country, to the pro-independence moderate party the PNV which took 30% of the vote. This combined vote shows there is a solid majority in favour of independence for the Basque country.

The vote for the pro-independence left was even more impressive giving the Spanish State had tried to ban Bildu from standing -- claiming that it was a front for ETA and Batasuna, a radical Basque party the Spanish state previously banned that took between 15 -- 20%. This ban was ridiculous considering that Bildu declared it did not support ETA attacks to bring about independence, and that ETA itself had declared it’s intention to end it’s campaign.

Despite ETA’s repeated attempts to engage with the Spanish State in a peace process, both the right-wing Popular Party and the New Labouresque Spanish Socialist Workers Party refused to enter into any meaningful negotiation to end the conflict. Unreported from the majority of the world’s media is the ongoing political repression in the Basque country -- in which political parties like Batasuna were banned, Basque newspapers were shut down, prisoners are tortured, youth organisations are prohibited and radical Basque politicians jailed for insulting the monarchy. This repression hasn’t all come from the right wing of Spanish politics either -- it was the “Socialist” Workers Party who set up death squads to assassinate and torture ETA members and Basque radical politicans, with the authorization and support of Government ministers.

Banned Basque pro-Independence Left group SEGI

The Spanish State refuses to enter a peace process because it knows what the result inevitably will be -- almost every single election since the overthrow of Franco in Spain has produced a majority nationalist administration in the Basque autonomous region. Spain has refused any discussion on Independence for the Basque country -- with the Spanish Parliament vetoing even unofficial referendums on the Basque country’s future, fearing the inevitable yes vote for Independence.

The modern Spanish state never really decisively broke with it’s fascist past -- there were no trials or truth and reconciliation commissions for those who tortured and murdered leftists, trade unionists and Basque and Catalan nationalists under Franco. Instead an agreement was struck between the conservative and centre-left parties not to pursue justice for these people, and to enshrine in the Spanish constitution the illegality of any form of independence for nations that are currently part of the Spanish State. The so-called democratic post-Franco constitution made it illegal for the Basque country to become independent without the sanction of the central Spanish Government. It was for this reason that the majority of Basque voters abstained and voted against accepting this new constitution -- and why despite the overthrow of Franco, ETA continued an armed campaign.

Basque political prisoners are dispersed - this poster demands their return.

Now it’s become clear the Basque independence movement has stronger weapons in it’s arsenal than bombs or bullets, weapons the Spanish State cannot easily quash. With the support of a third of the population, and dozens of community facilities across the Basque country the pro-Independence left is ready to wage a war of the people against the Spanish State.

SSY was proud to host a group of Basque Abertzale youth at our camp last year. One of the motivations they had in coming to Scotland was to observe the possible referendum on Independence here. Unfortunately, we never got a chance to vote for Independence in 2010 because the Unionist parties blocked it. However as you’ve probably noticed, the recent SNP landslide means there will be a definite referendum in the next 4 years. This isn’t just important for Scotland -- it’s a message to the Spanish State and the Basque people as well. If Scots are allowed to vote in a free vote on our future, without being blocked by the Spanish Government, tortured, shot by death squads, having our political parties banned, our newspapers closed down, community centres demolished -- why shouldn’t the Basque Country have that choice as well?

FREEDOM FOR THE BASQUE COUNTRY -- GORA EUSKAL HERRIA!

5000 Basques march in Bilbao against "Hispanity day" in Solidarity with massacred American indians.

He lived his life like a candle in the wind. A mad candle, ranting that people on ecstasy were trying to overthrow his regime and replace it with Al Qaeda but a candle nonetheless. With the news that Colonel Gaddafi has died in his hometown of Sirte, who now will fill the shoes of craziest head of state? Whose going to design the uncrashable cars? Call for the abolition of Switzerland? Accuse the H1N1 virus of being an imperialist plot?

Colonel Gaddafi’s death comes as a massive relief to the Libyan rebel National Transitional Council. While it was impossible Gaddafi would ever be able to rule Libya again his continued survival could have provided inspiration and encouragement to Libyan’s opposed to the new council. Only a few days ago a gun battle erupted in Tripoli between the NTC and Gaddafi loyalists. And despite Tripoli falling months ago, Sirte and Bani Walid managed to hold out until today, against both the NTC and NATO bombardment. This suggests Gaddafi has -- or at least had -- a section of the population still willing to fight for him even when his rule was clearly finished. Neutralising that potential insurgency is probably the top priority of the NTC, especially given that the rebel council itself is not homogeneous and has former Gaddafi ministers and Islamists sitting around the same table.

For NATO the bombing campaign of Libya has been a success -- especially when you consider the long weeks of apparent stalemate, and the fact that the bombing campaign was the most unpopular war fought by the United States in recent memory. The push for NATO involvement in Libya was led by the UK and France, who are showing that despite planned defence cuts, they can still wield a big stick to maintain their sphere of influence in North Africa -- and at a cost of £1 Billion, can still find the money to do it in a time of austerity. The reality is that despite the language of human rights and democracy, NATO’s involvement in Libya has been motivated by far less noble and more complex factors.

The root cause of NATO intervention in Libya lies with the rebellion itself in early 2011. Following on from the wave of revolution that toppled Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Mubarak and Egypt Gaddafi’s regime was the next to face a popular uprising. This began in the eastern city of Benghazi -- a stronghold of the opposition to the Colonel, and a Libya’s second largest city -- where Libyan’s took to the streets to protest the pre-emptive arrests of human rights campaigners. What happened next is disputed -- Gaddafi’s loyalists claim the rebels stormed the barracks and staged an armed uprising without provocation, while the protesters claim they were fired upon by soldiers first. This uprising therefore started in quite a different way from that of Tunisia or Egypt -- instead of demonstrators occupying a square and demanding the resignation of a despot, this was more an armed insurrection with attacks on barracks and police stations to secure guns in cities and towns across the country.

The Libyan uprising took this form because the regime in the country is very different from that of Tunisia or Egypt. In Tunisia and Egypt the two strongmen dictators, Ben Ali and Mubarak, were dependent on their power from many other forces in their societies -- that of the army, the business class, western imperialism etc. Ben Ali and Mubarak were the public faces of the regimes -- but they were disposable once they became a liability to those forces. Hence why the Egyptian military was unwilling to risk it’s stake in Egyptian society (as a massive business empire) by shooting demonstrators in a Tienanmen Square-style massacre of the demonstrators to keep Mubarak in power. In these countries when the protest movement became unstoppable, the forces in control of Egyptian and Tunisian society had a quiet word with the strongmen leaders and told them to resign -- so that the business interests of those countries could be preserved, and stability for western imperialism be consolidated.

Libya -- or to give it it’s proper title under Gaddafi, “The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” -- was a bit different from those countries as the official name might suggest. If you’ve not heard of the word “Jamahiriya” before it might be because it is a word Colonel Gaddafi made up that means “state of the masses”. Obviously what a country calls itself doesn’t reveal everything about how it is run -- but the fact that the official name of the country was invented by Gaddafi himself suggests he had a much bigger role to play in that regime than Mubarak or Ben Ali did. You might also have noticed the different flags the rebels and Gaddafi supporters have used -- the rebels use the Libyan independence flag, flown under the monarchy which is red, green and black with a crescent moon, while Gaddafi’s supporters use the official Libyan Jamahiriya flag, which is solid green. The flag was picked by Gaddafi to tie in with his book of mad things he wrote -- “The Green Book”.

So when you have a society that’s official organs and symbols are named around the eccentricities of it’s mad ruler, you see how difficult it could be in trying to remove him peacefully. Gaddafi intentionally kept different parts of Libyan society -- most importantly the military -- weak so that they could not be used to remove him in a coup, or force him to stand down the way the Egyptian army did with Mubarak when his time was up. Instead, Gaddafi was able to use armed forces loyal to himself and the Libyan “Jamahiriya” he created to suppress the rebellion with lethal force.

Gaddafi was also able to stay in power thanks to an additional factor that Mubarak and Ben Ali did not have -- a section of support amongst the population. Gaddafi took power in Libya in a bloodless military coup in 1969, with the same program as other Arab nationalist movements like Nasser in Egypt. Under Gaddafi’s rule the oil was nationalised and used to develop the country’s infrastructure, building roads, schools, hospitals -- even a massive irrigation project called the Great Man-Made River -- which transformed Libya from the poorest country in the world to the richest country in Africa, with a Human Development Index comparable to that of Eastern Europe and Portugal. Gaddafi’s success in these social projects shouldn’t be used to whitewash his regime as a socialist paradise -- the unemployment rate in Libya in 2009 was over 20%, and hundreds of thousands still lived in poverty. But the fact that Libya did develop infrastructure and social programs better than most of Africa under Gaddafi allowed him to secure a base for his regime, particularly in the western part of Libya where the rebellion was weaker.

Gaddafi was able to pursue these social policies because despite being no socialist, he took a path independent of western capitalism for most of his reign, able to use oil funds that would have been privatised in other western puppet states to develop the country. While Gaddafi reached an accommodation with the West since dismantling his WMD program and handing over the alleged Lockerbie bomber -- notably culimnating in getting off with Tony Blair in a tent in the desert -- he still maintained policies independent of western imperialism. Jack Ferguson, formerly an SSY columnist here before he got too old outlines a few of these policies in his excellent blog post here.

Gaddafi maintained an independent state-controlled banking system, with the power to issue it’s own money -- different from the other neo-colonies in Africa whose currencies are guaranteed by western powers like France. This meant that the Libyan economy -- unlike so many other African countries -- did not have massive levels of debt to western powers. As Libya was a country independent of western financial control, it was able to use it’s economic power to assist African development in the construction of telecommunication satellites and even more dangerously for western banks, propose an African currency guaranteed with Libya’s gold reserves. The use of a currency not in hoc to the western powers would undermine the financial enslavement of Africa by the European powers. The last person to try something similar was Saddam Hussein, who started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars before he was toppled by the United States. One of the first thing the rebels did was set up a new central bank, which raises questions about what kind of economic program they want to install in Libya now Gaddafi has been toppled.

Gaddafi also repeatedly used racist attitudes in Europe regarding immigration to his favour, warning western leaders that Europe would “turn black” unless he received the aid he demanded. Gaddafi played a cynical game with the lives of thousands of immigrants to Europe, selectively detaining them or letting them emigrate to Europe depending on what suited his interests. Gaddafi has also historically had a lot of influence in Africa -- one of the reasons why the African Union vociferously opposed NATO’s program of regime change in Libya. The nationalized oil wealth has been used in a combination of military assistance and aid packages to bolster the African regimes the Colonel supported.

Libya's influence throughout Africa.

All of these policies -- independent currency for Africa, state control of banks, refusal to play ball on immigration, regional power status in the African continent -- made working with Gaddafi a grudging necessity for western powers. Despite their rapprochement with him, Gaddafi was never a western puppet in the same way Mubarak or Ben Ali was. This doesn’t make Gaddafi a hero -- in fact his response to protests was more brutal than Mubarak or Ali, and his refusal to stand down has brought NATO bombing and civil war to his country -- but it does explain why the West intervened in Libya but will not intervene in a variety of other African conflicts or assist other pro-democracy movements in the Arab world. Gaddafi was bombed by NATO because he pursued a path independent of the west to some degree, and because he refused to step down when his time was up. His refusal to resign like Mubarak made Libya an unstable country, unacceptable to the European countries who purchase Libyan oil.

Gaddafi’s already paid the personal price for his rule -- his firing on demonstrators, repression of students, prison massacres -- with grisly photos of his corpse circulating the internet. But there’s a potentially darker side to the fall of Sirte than just the death of this despot, that may go unreported -- the fate of thousands of Black Libyan African men. In the opening days of the uprising in Benghazi there was footage circulated, alongside rumours, that Gaddafi was using foreign African mercenaries to crush the protesters. Whatever Gaddafi did during the opening days of the uprising, human rights organisations have investigated the claim of mercenaries and can find no evidence to support it. Unfortunately these rumours were circulated by tv stations like Al Jazeera and now as the rebels have taken control of most of Libya, Black Libyans are effectively being lynched by racist forces within the uprising.

The siege on the city of Misurata was widely reported, with a spotlight on Gaddafi’s forces shelling the civilian population. Whats not been reported as widely is the fate of a neighbouring town -- Tawergha, which was accused by the rebels of being pro-Gaddafi and assisting the siege. When the siege of Misrata was lifted, the rebels advanced on Tawergha and to all intents and purposes cleansed it. As one rebel commander said “Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata”. A city of 10,000 Black Africans has effectively been ethnically cleansed, with racist graffiti declaring the rebels are “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” being daubed across the city. The rebels themselves say the Tawergha will return to their city “over their dead bodies”. Many of these refugees fled to Sirte, a city that may face a similar fate as Tawergha.

The ghost town of Tawergha, ethnically cleansed by the rebels.

This is not the only human rights abuse the rebels have committed. As the western media entered Tripoli after the fall of Gaddafi, they found corpses with their hands bound behind their back and bullets in their heads in Gaddafi’s Bab Al Azziya compound. Naturally the suspicion fell on a massacre committed by Gaddafi. But many of these victims were Black Africans with foreign passports -- suggesting they were migrant workers who had been summarily executed by the rebels. These crimes against Black Libyans have been committed across the country as the Libyan civil war became a war not just between the East and West, but between African and Arab.

Racist lynching of Black Africans conducted by the rebels in Libya

Not all rebels are motivated by racism -- the Libyan Youth Movement for example has been key in supporting the uprising and is inspired by the youth movements in the wider Arab world. Unfortunately, many of those opposing Gaddafi are not so clean cut. The chairman of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil was Colonel Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister. Jalil was happy to act as one of Gaddafi’s lackeys when it suited him -- including the torture and rigged trial of Bulgarian nurses accused of giving Libyans HIV. Alongside Jibril are many other former diplomatic and military staff who happily served under Gaddafi. The highest ranking defector was Abdel Fattah Younis, a Major General in the Libyan army. Despite being described as a defector, privately Younis was captured by the rebels when he tried to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Unsurprisingly many of the rebels were not to keen on receiving military commands from someone who was so pivotal in Gaddafi’s regime -- particularly those who fought a long guerilla war against him.

Younis didn’t escape the attention of these people for long -- he was killed after being arrested under mysterious circumstances, which the NTC has not clarified. Gaddafi’s long maintained that the forces fighting him are Al Qaeda -- an accusation that’s ridiculous, as this blog has covered that Al Qaeda as an organisation is a fantasy. But there is no doubt that many leading figures in the rebellion, if not Al Qaeda, are certainly Islamist. One such figure is Abdelhakim Belhadj a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Belhaj is commander of the rebel forces in Tripoli and a former victim of CIA rendition. This is not surprising given that the east of Libya -- like Benghazi and Darnah -- have proportionately sent more Arabs to fight in Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other part of the Arab world. Alongside these former regime loyalists, ethnic cleansers and Islamist fundamentalists are CIA backed exile groups like the National Front for the Salvation of Libya.

Rebels lynch Black Africans in Libya

The uprising in Libya was not a CIA/Al Qaeda plot to remove an anti-imperialist, before anyone suggests that -- it was a genuine popular social movement, taking it’s roots in the poorest cities and towns in Libya, and led by young revolutionaries inspired by the toppling of Arab dictators (that Gaddafi had supported). Who will come out on top is by no means certain. But what is certain is that NATO involvement means that the West now has a massive sway over Libya’s revolution, that they clearly do not have in Egypt or Tunisia, and they are already trying to put their own people in charge. Gaddafi might be dead, but as Iraq shows there is absolutely no guarantee that things will get better when a despot is removed. In fact, they can always get much, much worse.

The US government has foiled a terrorist plot involving Iran, Mexican drug cartels, Cuba, Hezbollah, and Osama Bin Laden’s reanimated corpse. Ok, ok they’re actually only claiming the first two.  In news that will bring joy to 24 season writers and Tea Party members, the United States Department of Justice has allegedly exposed an Iranian terrorist plot to strike the heart of America. The Attorney General, Eric Holder outlined an alleged terror plot in which Iranian agents would oversee the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States as well as a bombing campaign against Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington DC. If that didn’t sound crazy enough, the Iranian’s were alleged to have orchestrated this plan by approaching the Mexican drug cartel Los Zeta’s for help -- the cartel was to be paid $1.5 million and supplied with Iranian opium for carrying out the attacks.

US Attorney General Eric Holder

Unfortunately for the Iranians the Zeta’s contact in this (alleged) plot was in fact a DEA informant -- presumably Jack Bauer on spring break getting MWI in Tijuana. As well as closely fitting the plot of a recent Tom Clancy novel, detailing Taliban collusion with the Juarez Cartel this cartel connection could ostensibly be used for deploying the US army into Mexico, to fight the increasingly brutal drug war going on there -- as one Republican Presidential candidate has already suggested. This would give the United States two wars to fight, one in Mexico alongside Iran presumably. Attorney General Holder announced that in the next few hours, measures against Iran would be outlined -- that could range from sanctions to bombing a fourth Muslim country in ten years.

There are two factors that may spare Iran war -- one is that so far the US Government is accusing “factions” of the Iranian Government as being responsible for the plot, something quite different from saying the actual leadership of the country is behind the assassination attempt. After all it was only a few weeks ago the US accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting insurgents in Afghanistan, despite Pakistan being a US ally. Here it’s specifically it’s the Revolutionary Guard of Iran who are being accused of funding and planning this plot. The Revolutionary Guard are a 125,000 strong armed wing of the Iranian military, whose specific remit is the defence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution -- similar in respects to Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, in their role as the best equipped, most loyal defence of an autocratic regime. Naturally this position gives them significant influence in Iranian society, which means it is possible they could have independently organised a terrorist plot in the United States without the knowledge of  Iran’s President Ahmadinejahd or the real power in the country, the Guardian Council. That’s one reason Iran might not be a gigantic car park by the time I finish typing.

The second reason is that Iran is no Iraq -- bombing, invading and occupying Iran will not be as easy as the invasion of Iraq. And as some of our more eagle eyed readers may have noticed, invading Iraq was not the greatest plan ever. Iran is a regional power in the Middle East with an army that has not been broken under the weight of sanctions and war, as Saddam Hussein’s was by 2003. Also Iran has significant influence outside it’s borders -- namely in Iraq and Lebanon, where Iranian support is provided to the Shia parties of Iraq like SCIRI (The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and more famously, Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. Any attack on Iran would result in attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Hezbollah -- which proved it’s competence as a fighting force in the 2006 war on Lebanon -- attacks on America’s ally Israel. Alongside this ability to exert force across the Arab world, Iran would also be able to halt shipping through the Straits of Hormuz -- effectively halting a majority of the world’s oil supplies, potentially tipping the entire world into another recession.

Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi ambassador anyway? Israel seems an obvious enough target, but why target the Saudis? Alongside the well publicized Arab-Israeli conflict, there’s another less well known cold war in the Middle East -- that between the regional powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It goes right back to Iran’s revolution itself, which overthrew the pro Western monarch of Iran, The Shah. The Gulf is chock a block full of similar pro Western monarchs -- in Dubai, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and the biggest one of all, Saudi Arabia. All of these rulers are shit scared at the idea of being overthrown by the poor and dispossessed sections of their society, mobilised under the flag of Islamic revolution.  One most recent example of this was in Bahrain, where the monarchy (who are Sunni Muslims, and the minority of the population) faced an uprising from the population (who are mostly Shiite Muslims). Here the US sided with Bahraini government, who allow the US to station a naval base in the country and turned a blind eye to the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s deployment of armed forces to the Kingdom to suppress the rebels.

Bahrain's uprising, crushed by Saudi troops.

The movement in Bahrain was not Islamist in nature, and a far cry from the Islamic revolution in Iran during the late 70’s -- instead taking it’s inspiration from the secular movement that brought down Mubarak in Egypt. But any mobilisation of Muslims against these Gulf monarchies -- specifically those of the Shia -- will always be linked to Iran by their ruling elites. That’s why there’s a Saudi Arabia/Iran hostility in the Arab world -- a hostility that even sometimes breaks ranks with the traditional Arab/Israeli confrontation, like when Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister described the Shiite and Iranian supported Hezbollah millitia as a “bunch of adventurers” and blamed them, and not Israel for the 2006 war.  Saudia Arabia ’s even shares Israeli and US hostility to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme -- a wikileaks cable revealed the Saudi King Abdullah was encouraging the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Saudi Arabia have -- alongside Israel -- played the role of US ally in the Middle East for decades, and have been armed to the teeth by the West. The United States simply can’t allow the world’s largest oil producer to fall to an Arab nationalist or Islamic revolution. It’s why despite spending $39 billion on arms, the Saudi Arabian army is deliberately kept weak; the weapons are “pre-positioned” to be used by US forces to quash any uprising, and the army is kept weak to stop any coup against the monarchy.

Despite all the hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia there’s still no guarantee the US Government of all people are honest in this terror accusation -- America has been chomping at the bit for years to attack Iran, and now they may have their pretext. The Iranians would have to have been spectacularly reckless to believe they could blow up the Saudi Ambassador in America’s capital -- particularly through the alleged middlemen of the Zeta’s cartel, a non-political organisation whose only objective is to sell drugs and make money -- without facing retaliation. The Zeta cartel themselves would have a lot to lose by signing up to such a scheme -- almost guaranteed US military assistance to the beleaguered Mexican Government that’s desperately trying to crush them. These accusations against the Zeta’s only serve to make them sound even more like something out of a Bond movie -- the Los Zeta’s Cartel were originally an elite special forces squad in Mexico, who decided that there was a lot more money in drugs so decided to defect to the side of the cartels they used to fight. Their special forces background means they’ve been able to run rings around the Mexican state, and many US government agencies too…

Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Quality polis, aw the way.

Which brings us to scandal that’s gone unreported this side of the Atlantic, which has embroiled the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) bureau of the US Government and the Attorney General Eric Holder -- who broke the story about the alleged terror plot. The scandal sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie -- specifically the title -- “Operation Fast and Furious”. This ATF operation didn’t involve Vin Diesel in charge of a carjacking ring though -- instead it was an authorized US Government operation to force gun stores in the US to sell firearms to people with links to drug cartels. Here ATF officers ordered gun stores to sell firearms to criminals, ostensibly so they could be tracked to the leaders of the cartel and convicted on conspiracy charges. But the entire operation was blown when a US Border Patrol guard was shot dead by one of the “Fast and Furious” weapons and an ATF agent blew the whistle. It’s been described as Obama’s “potential Watergate” due to the national scandal of a US Government agency allowing the sale of thousands of firearms to be used to kill on both sides of the Mexican border. Some of the Right Wing in the USA have an easy answer as to why this gunrunning was allowed -- to allow the Democrats to clamp down on gun sales in the States, in the wake of massive violence from the Cartels.

ATF Whistleblower exposes state sanctioned supply of arms to drug cartels

But there is another more convincing -- and sinister- explanation; the US Government is deliberately facilitating the sale of arms to one side in the Mexican drug war -- the Sinaloa Cartel -- in exchange for that organisations assistance in destroying rival cartels. Rival cartels like Los Zetas. Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the US went further and claimed the Sinaloa Cartel were actually allowed to transport cocaine across the border without US Government interference. It may sound far fetched, but it’s happened before. The entire crack epidemic which took hold of the USA in the 80’s was orchestrated by the anticommunist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, with the CIA turning a blind eye to their shipments of cocaine to the US that were used to fund their war against the Socialist Sandinista Government.

There’s also been collaboration between US agencies and Latin American Governments with drug cartels in the past. In Colombia, during the hunt for Pablo Escobar the Billionaire drug lord, an organisation called Los Pepes sprung up. Los Pepes ostensibly stood for “People persecuted by Pablo Escobar” but was in reality a front for the Cali cartel who were in competition with Pablo’s Medellin organisation. Los Pepes were vital in helping the US bring Pablo down, as they could wage a war of terror against his family and business associates that the Colombian state was unable (openly) to do. Because Los Pepes were murdering his lawyers, cousins, business partners Pablo was unable to launch a full scale war against the Colombian wealthy for fear his wife and children may be killed (who were refused amnesty by the US).  Previously when Escobar was on the run from the Colombian state he deployed his private army to indiscriminately terrorize the wealthy in Colombia -- with bombings, drive by shootings and kidnappings against the well heeled. This had the desired effect of Colombia’s elite feeling the heat of the drug war and demanding the Colombian Government give in to his demands -- which were effectively to continue running his own business from a luxurious private “prison” he designed, built and staffed.

Coming soon to an ATF bureau near you.

Killing Escobar itself had no real effect on the drug trade. With Escobar removed the Cali cartel simply took over the gap in the market. And then when they were removed, the Mexican’s took over the trade. If Apple stopped producing computers tomorrow people would still buy computers -- it’s just that they would buy them from Dell or Microsoft. The same principle works for cocaine. Remove one supplier and another takes their place. So why were the American’s desperate to destroy Escobar? Largely because he became a threat to the Colombian state and American security itself. Escobar did not keep his head down like the Cali cartel, and carry out business discreetly. Instead Escobar was elected as a Colombian Senator, funded welfare projects for the poor -- and bombed an airline to try and assassinate a Colombian Presidential candidate who threatened him with extradition. This bombing killed US citizens, and was an unacceptable level of violence for a drug lord in the eyes of the US Government.

Given the accusations against Los Zetas -- that they were approached by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to conduct terrorism - could the ATF be repeating the strategy used by previous US administrations to bring down Escobar? Perhaps Los Zetas have now become a threat to the national interests of the US in the same way Escobar was, and the US Government is willing to fund and assist a rival cartel to see their removal. There’s already been accusations that the Mexican Government has not prosecuted it’s war on drugs against the Sinaloa cartel to the same extent that it fight Los Zetas. It’s possible these accusations against Los Zetas to justify US military intervention against a well organised drug cartel manned by former special forces.

It might even be just the stimulus package the ailing Obama administration needs -- invade Mexico and Iran, and kickstart your economy with World War 3.

Being a Socialist is a tricky job. In the 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down, there’s been very little space for the ideas of the radical left to express itself and pro-free market politicians have a variety of swanky PR firms to do work for them that we can only dream of. That’s why it’s always good when a rogue bastard comes along and tactlessly gives the game away to the horror of thousands of stockbrokers.

He is not joking. He would shoot a kitten for money.

One case of this is the BBC interview with Alessio Rastanii. Alessio describes himself as an “independent trader”, which is probably why his answers ranged from “meh” to “fuck you”. When a BBC journalist asked him, with all the sincerity of a small child looking for it’s lost mum, if the Eurozone would be saved he responded that he “didn’t care”, his job was to “make money” and he “dreamed of another recession”. As if this wasn’t enough, he went on to say “Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs does”.

Fellow honest evil bastard Paul McMullen. I haven’t seen someone this rough and stressed out since I last watched Downfall.

It’s a great example of an evil bastard being so completely honest that you can’t help but admire him -- a bit like crater faced and increasingly-stressed-out with each interview phone hacking bastard Paul McMullen, who repeatedly said he hacked phones, enjoyed it, and who really gives a fuck about Hugh Grant anyway.

Unsurprisingly, the interview went viral as someone finally said what millions of people suspect traders actually believe. As it spread round the internets, rumours flew that Alessio wasn’t actually a trader but was in fact one of the “Yes Men”. The Yes Men are a hilarious bunch o lads that once pretended to be the representatives of Dow Chemicals, and wiped several billions of their stock market value when they falsely announced they would be providing compensation to the hundreds of family members of the folk their company killed in the Bhopal disaster. Had they fooled the BBC again?

This guy is a joker. He doesn’t have the same evil glint in his eye.

Nope, the Yes Men denied that Alessio was their guy and like the IRA or Cheryl Cole, they always take credit for their work. That makes Alessio a genuine evil bastard, not joking, not making things up, not being a spoof, not a Noel Edmonds “Gotcha” sketch and not a comic. He is actually genuinely one of the people the entire political mainstream in the developed world have asked you to trust in for the past 40 years, and have been bailed out to the tune of Trillions.

See you all on Saturday!

"Do what with the money?! HAHAHAHA"

Ok maybe David Cameron wasn’t as blunt as the headline above, but he wasn’t far off it. When SNP MP Angus MacNeil asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed with 68% of Scots that the North Sea oil wealth should be devolved -- i.e. put under the ownership and control of the Scottish Parliament, it’s unlikely David Cameron would have supported the right of Scotland to have exclusive access to such massive wealth. North Sea oil has already been used by the Tories to pay the British States’ million strong giro bill during the Thatcher years, and with massive government cuts approaching it’s a source of wealth the British State can ill afford to lose.
However Cameron’s response was childish and pathetic even by the worst British Unionist standards -- he said “if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer” -- inferring that what Scotland does with it’s own natural resources is “stupid” and that we are also “stupid” for thinking we should have control over it. As Cameron gave his rebuttal the Tory front bench were positively pissing themselves with laughter at the very concept the sweaty jocks from the North could control anything more complex than a deep fat fryer let alone Europe’s largest oil reserves.

It’s this naked arrogance and patronising contempt for Scots that means the Tories are so despised here their frontrunner for leader is talking about disbanding the party itself, and pretending they’re not Tories anymore. Good luck with that one.

It’s not the only piece in the news today about the North Sea’s oil reserves -- the BBC revealed that Old Labour Energy minister Tony Benn tried to buy North Sea oil off British Petroleum for the state owned British energy company. Benn was denied the opportunity, as the Labour Government at that time believed nationalisation of  oil went too far -- despite the vast majority of oil producing countries having state owned oil companies, that are to varying levels used to build the infrastructures of their respective states.

No such luck for Scotland though -- we have the dubious honor of being one of  only two countries in the world to find oil and get poorer, the other being Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Declassified civil service documents revealed that the British state deliberately covered up the scale of oil wealth in the North Sea to stop the massive swing towards Scottish nationalism in the 70’s.

Today the movement for Independence is even stronger than then -- opinion polls show a majority of Scots backing Independence, and this is before the Government’s massive cuts are enacted. These cuts would be at the very least reduced if Scotland had access to this oil wealth, instead of having it frittered away by Westminster on Trident and the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. It’s not “stupid” for Scots to ask why we have the poorest cities in Western Europe sitting right next to the greatest source of wealth in Western Europe -- the only thing that’s stupid is allowing an unaccountable clique -- whether it’s Westminster Tories or private oil multinationals laughing all the way to the bank with our money.

Talk of deficits, massive debt and brutal public spending cuts are pretty much in the British news 24/7 these days, so if you’ve noticed the recent debt crisis in the USA you’ll have noticed some of the same terms being thrown about, but if you paid close attention you might have noticed that unlike the UK there’s been a standoff between the two main political parties in how to handle the debt crisis.

This crisis started when the US Treasury requested an increase in the amount of money it was able to borrow -- but this amount, known as the debt ceiling has to achieve backing for the US Congress. Unfortunately for Democratic President Barack Obama, the Congress is currently in the control of the Republican Party. Ouch. And many of these Republican Congressmen and women are members of the Tea Party, a political movement that  was formed in opposition to public spending and incurring any more government debt. Double ouch.

This standoff between the Republicans -- who wanted no tax increases but massive public spending cuts and the Democrats,  who wanted some tax increases, but still some massive cuts as well -- went on for weeks with angry Americans venting their frustration on twitter, as pundits warned that the most powerful superpower in human history was about to follow in the footsteps of Hearts of Midlothian FC. Fortunately, after days of wrangling the politicians managed to sort it all out -- a compromise was reached, and the USA can go back to hopey changey goodness under President Obama -- right?

Unfortunately not -- the Democrats led a full scale surrender to the most extreme Republican demands in Congress. In exchange for extending the debt ceiling, there will be spending cuts of a whopping $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years, made in the very, very limited welfare net of the USA. Just to clarify, $2.5 trillion is how much money you would need to pay Bill Gates for him to shit himself in public with his mum and dad watching. These cuts come a few months after Republican hardliners -- many of them from the Tea Party -- refused to ditch Bush era tax cuts, designed to help the richest 2% of Americans. At the same time as these cuts are made, there will be no new taxes to raise revenue -- not even on the super rich in the USA, who have seen their personal wealth skyrocket in the past 30 years.

“I’ve spent all my money bombing the middle east and bailing out the worst bankers in history, at a time of capitalism in collapse. Can I get credit? AYE!”

The Republicans have pushed for these cuts supposedly to stop “out of control” Government spending, but the reality is that the US debt has been incurred largely due to the bailout of multiple US banks and corporations and maintaining the most powerful army in mankind’s history (currently at war in three countries, with dozens of bases dotted across the globe). The picture painted by Republicans of a Socialist Obama borrowing money recklessly to give to the poor is a complete fantasy . Like in the UK, the political establishment in the USA, both Democrat and Republican, supported massive bail outs of failed private enterprises with virtually no control or direction on how US taxpayers money should be spent.

This combination of no  new taxes on the super rich, but also a desire to maintain a massively expensive military industrial complex is a contradiction that the credit ratings agencies of the USA haven’t ignored -- as noted by the US Darpa’s continued research into rocket planes in the same couple of weeks that Bright House came to the White House asking for their telly back. In a historic first these credit agencies downgraded the United State’s credit rating from AAA to AA+. It may not sound so bad -- if you came home with a AA+ mark in a Maths exam you’d probably be quite chuffed -- but when the self-described leader of the free world, the victor of the Cold War and the world’s only Hyperpower has a credit rating lower than those cheese eating surrender monkeys in France, you can see why a lot of the miniature American flag brigade are worried.

This supposed threat of bankruptcy in the USA has been grist to the mill of the Tea Party movement, an organisation which is known internationally for their hilarious placards and obsession with long form birth certificates. The Tea Party came to prominence in the wake of the massive bail out of US Banks at the start of the economic crisis a few years ago, alongside the election of  President Barack Obama. Their raison detre is opposition to the US Government incurring any more debt and “big government”. Don’t try to point out to them that the Republican Party also voted for the bail out of Wall Street or that part and parcel of “big government” is the ability to bomb foreign people half the world away with missiles wi cameras attached so you can upload it to your you tube account. You’ll probably just get screamed at that you’re an IslamoMarxist as well.

As hilarious as many of these nutters are, they are dangerous not just to millions of the poorest Americans, but to the billions of people in the world who are intertwined with the USA through it’s domination of finance capital and military power. Right wingers in the USA often go a bit funny when a Democrat gets in, exaggerating things somewhat -- like believing Bill Clinton is a Marxist NWO member cos of Waco, or calling JFK a traitor and arranging for him to drive in an open top car at 5mph through Dallas. But the Tea Party are something special.

The Tea Party are a movement of white, upper middle class wealthy Americans fearful of the world economic crisis and it’s threat to their privilege. Regular slogans at Tea Party rallies and protests talk about how they want to “take back America” -- a declaration that the Tea Party don’t think the votes of African Americans and poor whites should determine who occupies the White House, but rather the organised block vote of Christian Evangelicals across the USA. As well as demanding massive public spending cuts, the Tea Party also gives a platform to racists angry at the first Black President in the USA -- Tea Party placards in Washington declared “The Zoo has an African Lion and the White House has a Lyin’ African”. This is alongside their ongoing campaign to demand Obama’s birth records, to prove he is a Kenyan and not an American citizen.

Mad as a bag of cats

The Tea Party’s biggest prejudice is their naked class hatred towards the poorest in the USA. The Tea Party live in a fantasy world where the unemployed, immigrant, low paid, Hispanic and African American population of the USA live a life of luxury off the back of their tax dollars in free healthcare and benefits. One Tea Party supporter, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer (no relation to Jack we presume said)

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.”

This was in reference to a program in his state that allowed students to receive subsided lunches. Tea Party supporters quite literally look upon the working class in the USA like they’re animals. They’re the worst kind of right-wing libertarians who don’t ever stop to consider the link between a massive pool of cheap exploited labour and their personal wealth. Nowhere do the Tea Party try to hold accountable the billionaires in the USA who wrecked the economy with their own rampant greed -- probably because despite the mom and pop apple pie image, the Tea Party are funded by billionaires, happy to have an astroturfed campaign to defend their right to be filthy rich.

Unfortunately there’s been little sustained attack from the Left against the Tea Party. With the exception of the heroic struggle against Republican union-busters in Wisconsin, most of the Left in the USA has fallen back to defending Obama, despite the fact he’s been totally unable to harness the millions involved in his election campaign to push forward a halfway progressive agenda in the states. This means that it’s by no means certain Barack Obama will be re-elected in next years Presidential elections -- and that the door is open for a Republican President influenced and supported by the Tea Party’s ideas.

One possible candidate is Texan Governor Rick Perry. Despite being a former Democrat, Perry has been described as “George Bush on steroids”, which comes as a terrifying shock for those of us who took a big sigh of relief when a bourgeois capitalist politician who could tie his own shoelaces took over in 2008.  Perry has been described as the “closest thing to an establishment candidate that the tea party is going to accept, and he is the closest thing to a tea party candidate that the GOP (Republican -- ed) establishment is going to accept”.

We're doomed. Again.

Perry’s already made moves to court the nutter vote, by saying the Chairman of the federal reserve would be guilty of treason if he printed more money before the 2012 election -- a pretty harsh statement, given treason is more usually associated with trying to undermine or overthrow the democratic process -- possibly by systematically lying about a country’s threat in the build up to a war for example. While opposing any tax increases on the rich, Perry decries that only half of Americans pay tax -- posing towards Tea Party supporters and backing their assertions that they are the dynamic, wealth producing section of American society that keep the country afloat. In reality, in Texas the poorest 20% pay 6% of their income on sales tax while the richest 20% pay only 1.3% -- “Texas is not a low-tax state if you’re low-income” one analyst correctly noted. This is in line with other right-wing “low tax” regimes, like Thatcher in the 80’s -- where the poor ended up paying more in tax, through an increase in regressive taxes and the Poll Tax.

As well as backing Tea Party tax policy, Perry has also called for the use of (unarmed) predator drones to patrol the border between Mexico and the USA. This anti-immigrant rhetoric is justified by the ongoing “War on Drugs” across the border in Mexico, as the cartels and the Mexican Government destroy both each other and Mexican society in the crossfire. Perhaps some slack should be cut for Perry -- he identified the Mexican city of Juarez as the most dangerous city in America. Oops.

Geography lessons for Perry

If Perry’s geography skills are a bit shite his scientific knowledge isn’t better. Perry supports the teaching of intelligent design ie creationism in schools, and also believes global warming is a myth. So far this is all pretty standard fare Evangelical Christian stuff; alongside support for creationism, Perry also responded to a drought in his state with the same policy plan as the ancient babylonians -- with a three day designated “Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas”. Unfortunately, in a shocking victory for athiests in the Republican state, praying for rain did not work and the drought got worse. This might scupper some future Perry Whitehouse initiatives, such as “Praying nobody trades oil in euros instead of dollars week”, “national month of deficit reduction mass” or “Praying the Chinese never want all that money  back”.

As well as being fond of the old Christianity a bit much, Perry’s also controversially hinted at support for the secession of Texas from the Union -- a risky policy gambit not tried in a Whitehouse race since pre-Civil War America. Perry said to journalists after a Tea Party rally that,  ”Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that… My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.” It’s a pretty bold statement from someone who a) wants to be President of the USA and b) is happy to accuse folk of treason for pursuing different economic policies than his.

Rick Perry supports the use of B-52 bombers to defend the unborn foetus.

It’s easy just to put the blame for extreme right-wingers in the USA like the Tea Partiers and Perry down to stupid Americans voting for mad people with crazy ideas. The problem is that in one sense the Tea Partiers are right -- they are getting support because the USA is in the middle of a crisis, just not the one they think it’s in. The USA is a superpower whose economic power is dependent on a massive military industrial complex -- one big enough to stop anyone trading oil in anything other than dollars, for example -- but free market fundamentalists in the USA are unwilling to call for even slight tax increases on the super rich to fund this military power. This contradiction is what’s forced credit agencies to downgrade the credit rating of the USA, in an attempt to force the political class in the USA to get it’s act together, and run the most powerful capitalist superpower with responsibility to the needs of finance and bankers. Because this system is international -- the US debt crisis has had negative effects on the world’s stock markets -- the far-right in the USA’s total support for complete free market capitalism could help plunge the world into a second recession. Forget George Bush dragging us into Iraq -- the American empire might yet bring the world into a much greater economic disaster if we don’t find a way to declare independence from the mad, mad world of the stock market.

As Britain recovers from the riots, it’s facing the second blow of having to cope with lots of people’s “explanations” for the mass looting. Some of it’s ridiculous – blaming Blackberry Messenger for the chaos – and some of it’s a bit more sinister, like David Starkey blaming black culture for the riots. Unfortunately Starkey isn’t the only one whose using the riots to engage in a bit of casual racism – the admin of the pro-Met police page on facebook was exposed as a racist from his tweeter feed.

Don't know if trolling or just stupid

Now a Tory councillor, Bob Frost has fallen victim to the dangers of social networking, with his racist views exposed in another case of the over 40s not understanding how the internet works. Frost – a 56 year old who is a “right wing libertarian” made reference to the looters being  “jungle bunnies” on his facebook. Oh dear. In most cases of public exposure of racist views the individuals concerned put their hands up and apologize, refuse to comment and hope it blows over, or resign in disgrace. There are exceptions to these rules however and Bob Frost’s response has to attract attention for sheer, out and out olympic class fantastical bullshit.

As Bob explains, he was “referring to the urban jungle”, and was originally going to call the rioters animals but picked bunny instead as people might be offended by him “calling fellow humans this so I chose something I thought was innocent and also cuddly.” Later on he received a phone call accusing him of racism, at which point he promptly checked his dictionary which gave him the shocking news that  ”it would appear that the term jungle bunnies is pejorative and is a racist slur relating to African-Americans”.

So you see Bob is just a man who has tried to be too politically correct, but in his efforts to placate the EUSSR Harriet Harperson feminazis has gone through the anti-racist time space continuum and ended up as a bigot due to no fault of his own.

Seriously though Bob, this must rank as the biggest pile of bullshit since Baptist Minister George Rekers claimed he took a male prostitute with him on holiday to carry his bags for him. We would be very interested in hearing Bob’s other crazy excuses in life – “Where have all the biscuits gone Bob? Had to eat them all for a Charity Special of Ant and Dec, you just missed them”, “Bob it’s your round mate? No, you bought a pint for my identical twin Bob Tsorf” or “Bob have you got that fiver I leant you last week? Well I would, but with today’s currency fluctuations I’d need to check what it’d be worth the now”.

We are sure with such a fantastic flair for combining casual racism with an ability to engage in extravagant lying and bullshitting Bob will be back in his old job soon enough, with a Tory cabinet post waiting in the wings for him.