Regular readers of this site may have noticed occasional negative references to the police -- in particular strathy polis and it’s benevolent Brother Guide leader Nelson Telfer. Due to recent changes in policing and what constitutes “a joke on the internet” we will be making changes to our editorial policy.
Jokes on the internet? THAT'LL BE 20 YEARS IN A LABOUR CAMP
This is obviously an unforgivable crime, and in light of new regulations, we thank our Dear Leader Nelson Telfer for his consistently wise, benevolent and top class policing. You are the sun of a million stars Nelson, and we will die to protect you.
After last weeks multiple days of consecutive rioting, there’s a chance now for some calm, measured discussion on the upheaval that saw the capital and several English cities burn, high streets looted and alleged gangster Mark Duggan shot dead -- with three others killed defending their property. The key word being “chance”, the same way there’s a chance you’ll win the lottery or Michael Bay will decide to stop making movies -- what’s predictably actually happened is talking heads, politicians and newspaper editors have demanded martial law/the death penalty/the return of Maggie Thatcher/Saddam Hussein to crush the thousands of young people who live in the shadows among us waiting to strike again like a Tottenham based Vietcong.
One Newspaper has demanded the return of national service, safe in the knowledge that teaching thousands of young rioters basic firearms skills would have no possible down sides. Other newspaper polls have asked if Blackberry messager should be banned -- following in the footsteps of other strongmen leaders who thought cracking down on people communicating would solve all their problems. If the responses on how to stop the riots again have been a bit daft it’s nothing compared to what some folk have blamed the riots on. David Cameron predictably said the riots were down to “sheer criminality” -- but why didn’t all these criminals strike earlier if their only motive was theft? Looters obviously took advantage of clashes with the police to go out and get a new telly, but what was it they took advantage of? More on that later. Historian David Starkey has blamed the riots on rap music and black culture in general, saying white folk have become black, like Michael Jackson in reverse with less moonwalking and more firebombing. The BBC have obviously went straight for the insider voices into why urban black youth in London might riot, by asking the 66 year old Royal Family historian from Kendal his views. Continuing this new line of reporting, BBC Four have asked Tinchy Strider to front a 4 part series on the Tudors.
But the BBC didn’t just ask old bigots like Starkey why the riots started -- they did ask a black man as well, fulfilling their broadcasting guidelines. Except when they interviewed Darcus Howe about why the riots started, and he gave a response that didn’t blame BBM/Jeremy Kyle/Welfare State/Ali G In Da House, but said people might be angry cos a man was shot dead and the police lied about the circumstances the interviewer didn’t like it too much and accused him of being a rioter. It’s all part of a concerted effort by the press and politicians to make people stop thinking, and instead accept that people rioted because they’re animals -- literally “feral youth” as the BBC described them.
So how did the riots start? On the 5th of August Mark Duggan was followed in a taxi cab by armed members of the Metropolitan Police. After what was claimed to be a shoot out, Duggan was shot dead by the Met. After his death his family and friends started a protest demanding answers about his killing. When a 16 year old girl approached police lines, in accordance with the Met’s community engagement agenda, she was beaten with batons. The combination of Duggan’s killing and police thuggery at the demo sparked an uprising from young people in different parts of London against the police. Outnumbered and caught by surprise, the police were forced to retreat and leave parts of the city in the hands of rioters. Like any spontaneous riot, unlike a planned insurrection once you force the police out people take advantage of having no authority at all. That can range from drinking in the street, to stealing new pairs of trainers, to mugging folk. And if you’ve grown up on the broo with no hope of employment -- 54 people chase every job going in Hackney -- getting all the consumer kicks you’re supposed to have is much easier to do when there’s no polis around.
More information then came out about Duggan’s death -- that the bullet in a police radio was in fact “police issue”, and that the IPCC “may have misled” the public about how he was killed, stating there was no evidence he fired a weapon the police claimed they found at the scene. By the time this information came out the riots were in full swing and it probably would not have made much more of a difference -- but it did confirm the unaired suspicions of thousands of black and asian youth in London, that the police had lied about the circumstances of Duggan’s death. The bullet in the police radio is especially fishy -- while Met police have an itchy trigger finger, they’re just about clever enough to avoid shooting each other. Could the Met have killed Duggan illegally, and then put a bullet into a radio to make it look like he had responded? It’s a very cynical thought, almost like believing they’d be in cahoots with a major newspaper to cover up massive phone hacking scandals.
After three days of consecutive rioting -- which had spread from London to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford -- the combined weight of thousands of extra polis/nothing good left to loot brought the riots to an end. After a rather unpleasant shock, the legal system has responded with draconian sentences against rioters -- one guy was sent to jail for 6 months, for stealing bottled water. Another woman was sentenced to 5 months for accepting goods that were stolen, not actually stealing them herself (better avoid that guy round the Barras with the new Planet of the Apes DVD eh?). Under any other circumstances these people would be let off with a caution for shoplifting, or at worst a fine. Now they stand to face jail time and a criminal record for petty crimes which did far less damage to society than what the legal system is doing to them and their families. Alongside these sentences for theft others have even got jail time for just for swearing at the police -- and one guy’s even been sent down for four years just for a facebook event.
The reason there’s been such a massive crackdown is that the establishment is desperate to ensure a riot on the scale of last week never happens again. But they’re at a permanent disadvantage in that they don’t know why the riots started, and they don’t want to know why -- that’s why the media has asked everyone from aging home counties historians to Tory cabinet ministers about why they think people are rioting -- people they have about as much knowledge of or link to as they do with martians. Nowhere has the media tried the most simple and obvious way of determining why people rioted -- actually asking the young folk in these cities. Where the BBC have done it, it’s been at best a soundbite -- but it’s a soundbite that’s worth more than the endless hours of droning from talking heads. Two young girls from London spelled things out pretty clearly -- folk rioted because they wanted to show the police and the rich they could do what they want. No one in the media or the political establishment is prepared to engage with that argument because they live in a bubble where they can’t fathom why people would be angry at the rich or the police -- so they create lots of alternative explanations like blaming rap or BBM for rioting.
actual reason folk rioted above
There’s plenty of poor areas in the UK that didn’t riot though -- Alex Salmond has been at pains to remind the BBC these riots aren’t UK wide, there was no looting anywhere in Scotland despite the Scottish Polis’ efforts to invent some. And some of the poorest constituencies in the whole UK are in Scotland. So are riots just down to poverty? The answer is no, riots don’t just happen when communities are poor -- they happen when they’re poor and are under attack, or have suffered an injustice. In Britain and the USA this injustice is generally police brutality motivated by racism -- like the Rodney King case, the murder of a grandmother that sparked the 1981 riots and now the police killing of Mark Duggan. This -- and not black or “gangster” culture -- is why riots have taken off.
These riots are also happening at the biggest pillars of authority in British society are collapsing -- the banks have stolen from everyone and are now getting paid off, with the wages of nurses, teachers, carers and the benefit claims of the disabled. Instead of being prosecuted bankers still receive bonuses larger than most young people will earn in their entire lifetime. The MP’s who are calling for strict prosecution of the rioters are thieves that make last weeks looters look like angels in comparison -- Tory Minister Michael Gove, who lost his temper when Harriet Harman argued cuts were behind the riots, has stolen £7k from the public purse to do up his house. When he was caught out, he simply repaid the money. Will folk who say they want to riot on facebook get let off if they delete the page? No, they’ll get four years. The forces trying to crush the riots -- the Met -- have also been exposed as massively corrupt, with backhanders taken from News International in exchange for covering up phone hacking. This is as well as being able to kill with impunity -- there’s been over 300 police deaths in custody, but not one single conviction.
That’s the problem with saying all that’s necessary to stop the riots is law and order -- there’s virtually no law or order when it comes to regulating the abuses and crimes of those at the top of society. The corrupt political establishment don’t care about the communities that rioted, either because they think they’ll always vote for them no matter what (Labour) or because they’ll never vote for them (Tories). During the boom years of British capitalism, these poor areas of London were left to rot because the rich demanded cheap labour. Now that the same rich have destroyed the economy these areas which have nothing are being asked to pay up with money they don’t have -- weeks before the riots, massive cuts to Haringey’s youth budget was announced. People who say the riots are mindless have got it massively wrong -- people are now at least talking about why these areas have been abandoned. A few weeks ago they’d never make the headlines. Riots are the one desperate way to grab attention from people who have access to no other means of political power. If you want to avoid riots in the future you can’t keep demanding “order” but have no order in the economy, society, or politics which allows 50% of young people in many parts of London to be unemployed -- otherwise people will find their own ways of striking back whether you think it’s healthy or not.
It’s all gone spectacularly Pete Tong. The Murdoch’s have pulled the plug on the News of the World, the biggest selling English language paper. The Notw staff want to “lynch Rebekah Brooks”, 200 NotW journalists face the sack and Sun subeditors have gone on strike to support them. Oh, and Andy Coulson is getting arrested tomorrow. Fortunately David Cameron has got his finger on the pulse of the whole thing – he’s at a police bravery awards ceremony tonight, hosted by the Sun.
Tomorrow’s super-soar away Guardian. WOULD THE LAST NEWS OF THE WORLD HACK TURN THE LIGHTS OUT?
Everyone knows tabloid newspapers are not angels – to a large extent it’s why people buy them, an acceptance that their underhand tactics expose the affairs, drug habits and scandals of the rich and famous. Despite this grudging acceptance of tasteless methods to satisfy a desire for gossip, there’s always been a trend of opinion in British society that has been hostile to the tabloids – in particular those of Rupert Murdoch, The Sun and the News of the World. Whether it’s the ongoing boycott of the Sun in Liverpool for their disgusting coverage of the Hillsborough Disaster, the defiance of printworkers at Wapping or the refusal of those printers to produce copies of the newspaper comparing Arthur Scargill to Hitler during the Miners Strike, there has always been a radical but substantial minority of people in the UK who despise the Sun and NotW for their journalism and politics.
What’s happened in the past two days has gone above and beyond that politicized section of British society. Now even Daily Mail readers are on the same side as The Guardian; appalled by the tactics and (lack of) ethics on the part of NotW. A scandal which has been quietly bubbling away – that of phone hacking – has exploded in News International’s offices with the force of Krakatoa. A Guardian investigation has revealed that NotW hacked into the mobile phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, and that in order to listen to all the messages, some were deleted – giving the Dowler family false hope that their daughter was still alive. It’s appalling stuff beyond even the notorious “The Truth” headline of the Sun. And it’s getting even worse – the police have approached the families of the 7/7 victims, Madeline McCann, and the Soham murder victims to tell them that they may also have been the victims of phone hacking.
Gone is the previous depiction of phone hacking commonly circulated in the press – that of an overzealous NotW hack (no pun intended) listening to phone messages in an attempt to discover if premiership footballers or royal family members are shagging their secretaries. The people who have been hacked are those who have never sought fame or fortune, but are the victims of horrific tragedies that NotW – particularly child murder – supposedly rails against. The NotW even interviewed the Dowler family on their daughters murder, while they had simultaneously been hacking their murdered daughters phone. Most devastating of all for NotW is the new allegation that they even hacked the phones of dead soldiers families. This is the same newspaper that regularly condemns any anti-war sentiment as being in league with the Taliban or Saddam Hussein.
Kelvin listens in, sick bastard that he is
Already these revelations have sparked an emergency debate in Westminster with David Cameron backing calls for a public inquiry into the hacking scandal. This is alongside an ongoing Metropolitan police investigation into hacking which has been widely condemned as toothless. Chris Bryant MP – one of those most vociferously camapaigning against phone hacking – detailed how senior figures in the Met were wined and dined by Notw while the enquiry was ongoing in his speech in the House of Commons.
The most shocking example of all is that of Andy Hayman the officer responsible for conducting the inquiry into phone hacking; he later went on to work as a columnist for News International! With that level of “scrutiny” it’s no surprise the original inquiry into phone hacking was dropped earlier this year. It was only a matter of weeks before a new investigation of hacking was opened however, based on the emergence of new evidence. It remains to be seen if this inquiry will be any more thorough than the previous cosy arrangement with the Met.
David Cameron has already pointed to this new investigation, as a way to dilute calls for a public inquiry. While in public he supports one, he has qualified his support saying it must not “prejudice the Metropolitan police’s investigation”. For the Tories this hacking scandal is very close to the knuckle indeed – David Cameron is a close friend of the CEO of News International, Rebekah Brooks. Cameron enjoyed a christmas family lunch with her, a connection that is highly embarrassing to the prime minister given Brooks is alleged to have personally known the private investigator who hacked Milly’s phone. There is also Andy Coulson, former editor of News of the World who resigned after phone hacking was exposed in Notw (even though he knew nothing about it), to immediately move on to work as a considerably less competent Malcolm Tucker (aka Director of Communications) for Number 10, before he resigned again over phone hacking (even though he knew nothing about it). There are many politicians and journalists who do not resign when they have committed the most appalling acts – whereas if we are to believe Andy Coulson he resigns for things he barely even knows about, let alone has responsibility for.
Such is the tide of popular revulsion against NotW that for the first time in decades a serious impediment to Rupert Murdoch’s slow but steady take over of the UK media may have arisen. 50,000 people have in the past 24 hours alone already signed a petition to oppose the takeover of BskyB by Murdoch. Advertisers Ford, Aldi, Cadbury, Halifax, Vauxhall, and Debenhams have all withdrawn their ads from this Sunday’s Notw, and the share price of News International’s stock has also fallen. The tipping point may come this Sunday, where there will be all eyes on the News of the World’s circulation figures to see if the most damaging blow of all may yet come – the desertion of tens of thousands of the newspapers predominantly working class readers in disgust at it’s tactics.
Bin Laden may be dead, but authorities are still trying to track down Bert.
He was the Salafist Jihadist Terrorist Princess Queen of Hearts. We’ve spent almost 10 years growing up in his Bond-villain like shadow, but after nearly a decade of hiding from US intelligence they finally got round to finding the best hide and seek champion in the Islamic world -- Osama Bin Laden is dead. Watching President Obama’s address to the nation (coming a couple of days after he released a document showing he himself wasn’t a mad Islamic terrorist) he outlined the unique care and rules of war America abides in dealing with terrorists -- they found him, shot him in the head and then dumped his body in the sea, presumably whilst pished and chanting “USA, USA, USA”. Bin Laden’s death also follows the killing of Saif Al Arab Gaddaffi, one of Colonel Gaddafi’s younger sons who never made it into Italian Serie A football. It just shows you what the American’s can do when the PS3 network is down, and that America’s idea of what present you give to a newlywed Royal couple is somewhat tasteless.
But now Bin Laden is dead, Is Al Qaeda finished? is the War on Terror over? Will the occupation of Afghanistan end? The reality is that Bin Laden’s death will not significantly change the fortunes of the three. Al Qaeda as an organisation in Afghanistan was already effectively destroyed in the late Autumn of 2001 with the Western bombing and invasion of the country. It’s training facilities (which consisted of sinister looking jungle gyms) and headquarters were overrun, and organising the most wanted terrorist group in the world was a bit more tricky in a country occupied by thousands of NATO soldiers with assistance from Afghan warlords to boot.
Al Qaeda as an organisation was also an illusion -- the idea of a world wide terrorist organisation, with branches in hundreds of countries taking orders from Bin Laden was and still is a myth, as this excellent BBC series outlines. President Obama is continuing to promote that myth by declaring that Bin Laden was the “leader” of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda as it actually exists is completely different. Al Qaeda is not an organisation but more a means of conducting terrorism and an ideology that justifies that terrorism on the basis of an apocalyptic clash between Islam and unbelievers.
Al Qaeda came out of a small hardcore of Islamist militants in the late 80’s, who were Arabs who had travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. After their victory against the Soviets, they intended to form a network of Islamist militants to take the fight to their own Arab regimes (who they believed were too secular) and to the corrupt and morally bankrupt Western Christian countries who backed them. They organised Al Qaeda like a franchise, allowing Islamists from anywhere in the world to blow up people in the name of a cosmic struggle between the West and Islam and to do so in the name of Al Qaeda. There’s very rarely any direct link between Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda cells, let alone direct orders.
Some attacks attributed to Al Qaeda have shown considerable deviation from the “leadership” of the Al Qaeda idea as outlined by Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri. The 2004 Madrid bombing for example, was conducted only a few days before the Spanish Elections, and resulted in the removal of the pro-Iraq War Popular Party government and it’s replacement with PSOE who opposed the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden and Zawahiri would never be motivated to bomb a country on the basis of changing it’s unbeliever Government -- they see their struggle as a cosmic clash of Islam and Crusaders, in which changing one non-Muslim Government to another non-Muslim Government as having little point to their struggle. Zawahiri has also criticised the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Musab Al Zarqawi for carrying out a massive sectarian bombing campaign explicitly targeting Shia civilians. While Zawahiri agrees that Shiites are deviating from Islam he outlines in his statement how bombing civilians instead of occupying armies is bad for PR. These examples show Bin Laden simply never was the leader of a cohesive terrorist organisation. There is no equivalent of an Al Qaeda “Army Council” which directs it’s war like the Provisional IRA had.
The US wanted to indict Bin Laden for the bombing of their embassies in Africa and used Al Fadl’s testimony to create a picture of Al Qaeda as an organisation with a leadership, branches and hierarchy -- so that Bin Laden could be prosecuted for the crimes other Islamists committed because he was supposedly in the same organisation as them. Having this vision of Al Qaeda meant that the US Government could prosecute Bin Laden using the same laws that they use to arrest the heads of the Mafia and other organised crime families. In these cases it is crucial to have an organisation that someone is a member of in order to successfully obtain a prosecution -- the problem is that this simply does not exist in Al Qaeda’s case.
Even Al Qaeda’s most famous atrocity, the 9/11 attacks was not Bin Laden’s idea, but that of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (who was arrested in 2003). Khalid obtained financial support from Osama for the 9/11 attacks, but it was he who organised it. This is how the 9/11 attacks were really organised -- a network of Islamists worked together and were funded by Bin Laden’s considerable personal wealth. Bin Laden’s role in Islamist terrorism has not been primarily that of an organiser but a financier. Different terrorist cells and organisations can approach Bin Laden and request funds for operations against the West. This loose, network is what makes Al Qaeda amorphous and potentially dangerous. The death of Bin Laden will not do much to practically impede this network’s activities against the West -- Bin Laden was already isolated and could not provide much practical assistance to Al Qaeda affiliates.
Bin Laden was useful as a symbol however, a charismatic figurehead for the Al Qaeda brand’s form of extreme Islamism. Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri may become the new “face” of Al Qaeda but he does not have the same charm and charisma of Osama. The real danger from Al Qaeda’s brand of terrorism is still the same (and as overhyped) as it was before Bin Laden’s death. It’s based on angry, Muslim, predominantly middle class men operating loosely as cells without a central leadership. Bin Laden’s death may even spur some of these groups on to carry out attacks -- possibly in a half-arsed manner, like the Glasgow Airport Attacks.
Bin Laden’s death is already being celebrated across the USA, but the reality is that the so-called “War on Terror” will go on regardless -- because both the terror networks known as Al Qaeda will still exist, and because the War on Terror itself was never about fighting terrorism. It was a convenient label to cover up what wars have always been about, control of the world and it’s resources.
Bin Laden’s death may have the positive effect of putting more pressure on the USA/UK to end it’s occupation of Afghanistan, as the original reason for the NATO invasion -- hunting down Bin Laden -- has been resolved. In reality however the occupation of Afghanistan is motivated not by fighting Al Qaeda but on the control of a strategically important country in the middle of some of the largest natural gas fields in the world. The War on Terror didn’t just start using terrorism as a justification to control the world’s energy resources in Iraq -- it was a motivation from the very start in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden died a prisoner of his own security, unable to effectively organise or finance terrorism personally, due to the worldwide manhunt for him. Despite this he goes to his death with his and Al Qaeda’s ideas immensely stronger. The 9/11 attacks did not only succeed in massacring thousands of casualties and damaging the pride of the USA, it has also embroiled the West in two bloody and expensive wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bin Laden may not have seen the invasion of Iraq coming (although he and Al Qaeda have benefited from it enormously) but it was inevitable the USA would invade Afghanistan after 9/11.
Two days before the September 11th attacks Al Qaeda members assassinated the anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most credible anti-Taliban figure in Afghanistan and a natural puppet leader for the US. In killing Massoud Al Qaeda knew that if Afghanistan was invaded once again, they could make the subsequent occupation much harder for NATO by removing a unifying figure. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are repeating the strategy they used in the 80’s against the Soviets -- dragging a superpowers army into their backyard, and bleeding them. The ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan is Bin Laden’s victory in death.
Now that Osama Bin Laden has been killed it’s time for Socialists and the anti-war movement to call for a complete end to the so-called War on Terror. The very flimsy justification for this war is now gone, and the continuing war against Muslim and Arab countries -- from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya -- is the exact strategy Bin Laden has fought for all his life, a bloody clash between Muslims and Christians, a clash that will only result in increasing support for Al Qaeda type networks across the globe.
It’s also a clash which, contrary to the predictions of Al Qaeda supporters and anti-Muslim bigots is not inevitable. Al Qaeda may be stronger in some respects given the West has acted as a recruiting sergeant for fundamentalist Islam, due to it’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is also much, much weaker in another and far more important battlefield; Al Qaeda has been left behind by the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East. Across the entire Arab world a tidal wave of people power is challenging the established pro-western, corrupt dictators -- and Al Qaeda and fundamentalist Islam is nowhere to be seen.
The wave of protest is almost entirely secular in it’s makeup and demands. Al Qaeda has spent 20 years bombing civilians across the middle east and the Islamic world to try and change their societies, all without any success whatsoever, with no real threat to the regimes they oppose. In contrast a secular, working class, non sectarian movement in Egypt brought the most powerful Arab regime to it’s knees within a month. Al Qaeda know how to react to Western bombing campaigns, Arab autocracies, and Israeli atrocities -- but they have no idea how to respond to the mass movement of millions of Arabs fighting against dictatorship using their power primarily as a class of workers, and not as Muslims pitted against other religious groups.
It’s those ideas currently sweeping the Arab world that will defeat the ideas of Al Qaeda, not the abuses of Guantanamo Bay, Al Ghraib and the senseless bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya today.
Edited to include some political points at the bottom
The big day is closing up on us, with all the inevitability of a death sentence/England World Cup attempt and all the dread and misery that surrounds the two. David Cameron’s already been using the Royal Wedding as a stick to beat “politically correct” health and safety mad councils, declaring that people should be free to have street parties to celebrate the special day.
Needless to say the same principle does not apply to those want to demonstrate in the City Centre of Glasgow (unless you’re the orange order) or defend much more basic rights to protest at all – as we saw with the wave of political policing a few weeks ago, and now the shocking decision to prosecute Alfie Meadows for “violent disorder”.
Cameron’s argument is also pretty spurious given the total lack of enthusiasm for the Royal Wedding, particularly in Scotland where the only street parties in Glasgow were cancelled due to “lack of interest”. Pro-royalists will point towards a Guardian poll saying that the majority of the UK still thinks the monarchy are “relevant”. Unfortunately there is no regional breakdown of this poll – as it’s almost certain the support for the Royal Family in Scotland will be much lower than in England.
Despite this poll, even the most ardent Royalists must accept there’s a distinct lack of interest around this Royal Wedding compared to previous equivalents – Prince Charles and Lady Diana being the most obvious example. More and more people have had the scales removed from their eyes in how they examine society across the UK – millions of people no longer believe in the political or economic system, and are fundamentally pissed off with Britain full stop. This means there’s a constituency of people – even if it is a minority – who are able to see how unfair and bonkers it is to spend millions on the monarchy whilst politicians demand massive cuts to public services.
But the facts are the monarchy plays a useful role to the class of politicians, bankers, millionaires, media tycoons, industrials and spivs who run the UK. The monarchy are useful in three ways – socially, diplomatically, and politically – to the wealthiest in British society.
To take the first item, the monarchy are useful socially because they instill the idea amongst the population that not only is it ok to be filthy rich, but it’s ok to be filthy rich for no other reason than you were born into it. Given the massive amount of inherited wealth in the UK, that’s an idea a lot of powerful people in the UK would quite like to see made normal and not challenged. In fact, not only is it not challenged but the idea that folk can be millionaires out of our expense is put forward as something good and worth celebrating – somehow we “all benefit” from the monarchy, because of tourists, national unity etc. It’s at this point I would like to remind readers that Mickey Mouse is not made head of state in the USA because of folk going to Orlando, Florida for their holidays.
The monarchy are also useful as diplomats – they can engage in the grubbiest work with dodgy bastards and despots free from criticism. Take Prince Andrew – he’s been a close associate of Colonel Gaddafi, a corrupt Kazakh billionaire, a paedophile businessman and a Libyan arms dealer. Just being linked to one of those is generally enough to force a politician into an insincere, stage-managed, Thick of It damage-limitation style resignation. But not for the Royals – you can’t make them resign, nor can you attack them, lest you damage an “institution”. This makes them very handy for doing the dirty dealings of the British state all around the world. It’s also why the attendees at the Royal Wedding include the people who have been firing upon unarmed demonstrators for democracy all across the Arab world. If just one of these gange of murderers turned up at Labour or Tory party conference there would be an outcry – but because it’s the apolitical Royal Family, we can’t criticise that or be called “unpatriotic”.
The final reason the monarchy are important is the big one – politics. It may seem strange, given that we are repeatedly told that the Queen’s powers are only token – sure she has the ability to dissolve Parliament, but she’d never actually do it etc. The reality is the Crown Power’s of the Monarch have not only been used, they have been used multiple times within living memory.
The Crown Powers have also been used to deny justice for the people of the Chagos Islands – an Order in Council under Royal Prerogative was used to stop islanders who were evicted from their homes to make room for a US military base returning, despite Court rulings that would have allowed them to return.
The powers of the Monarch have gone even further, they have been used to dissolve a democratically elected Government against that Goverment’s will in Australia. Here the Labor Government had won a majority in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate, allowing their political opponents to block the passage of legislation. The Labor Prime Minister went to the Governor General to seek new elections for the Senate – but was instead dismissed by the Queen’s representative in Australia, an unelected Governor General. It’s use of these undemocratic powers which means that just under half of Australians backed Republicanism in 1999.
The campaign group Republic in the UK lists various other abuses of Crown Powers here – including but not limited to the banning of trade unions at GCHQ, the power to go to war and dissolution of Parliament for partisan reasons.
The bottom line is that while the Queen herself may not decide to go rogue and implement a dictatorship, her powers are used by supposedly democratic politicians throughout the rebranded British Empire to bypass parliament and civil rights. Crown Powers are a useful box of tools for these politicians, it’s for those reasons – and not tourism – that the powers of the monarchy still exist.
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to be the only political party in the mainland UK to organise against the Royal Wedding and for Republicanism. We want an Independent Socialist Republic – different from the SNP’s view of Scotland, which would still have the Queen as head of state, and Crown Powers still able to be used on a supposedly independent Scotland just as they were used on Australia and Canada. We will be supporting two Republican events over the next couple of days,
The first is an SSP Republican Social at 7.30 in Maryhill Central Halls this Thursday. We will be having political speakers, music and song agitating and arguing for a Democratic, Socialist, and Republican Scotland that controls it’s own destiny and where the rights of all it’s citizens are determined by a Constitution – and not a feudal relic.
Secondly – on the big day itself – we are supporting a demonstration on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, to turn it into a Republican Mile. It’ll be on this Friday from 11.30 onwards and we hope it will provide a useful social for those of Her Majesty’s Subjects who were unfortunate enough not to receive an invitation.
The frontpages of the Sunday papers could have been taken from a Chris Morris sketch -- IT’S WAR, TOP GUNS 1 -- MAD DOG 0, and HUGE STRIKE ON GADDAFI (where they also reveal the shock news that a black person has been on Midsomer Murders). After years of feeling a bit dodgy and awkward over the idea of bombing Arab countries, the politicians and the press are getting back into the swing of things, with air strikes against Libya beginning on the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq no less.
The first shots were fired by the French air-force taking out Libyan armour on the road to Benghazi. This is a bit confusing given what the West was demanding in Libya was a “No Fly Zone” -- unless Gaddafi has an army of Transformers, tanks usually cannot fly. In reality we do not have a “No Fly Zone” -- we have a concerted bombing campaign against Libya, with plenty of flying being done by NATO aircraft.
These airstrikes are justified on the basis that they are all that remains between Gaddafi and the destruction of the Libyan uprising. After weeks of euphoria throughout the Arab world, with almost all of Libya bar Tripoli falling to the uprising it looked like Gaddafi would be the next despot to be overthrown. In the past week however, it appears that Gaddafi has consolidated his forces - paramilitaries, mercenaries and special forces led by his son Khamis -- and is launching a devastating offensive against the rebels. The failure to take Tripoli allowed Gaddafi to regroup and now he has retaken the oil towns along the coast, and his army stands at the gates of Benghazi -- the centre of the uprising.
After the UN Security Council supported a No Fly Zone over Libya, Gaddafi called a ceasefire in his offensive. For a while it appeared as if the threat of force alone had saved the uprising. But Gaddafi’s ceasefire was not genuine, he continued to attack Benghazi and the predictable response from the Western powers began.
Some have justified the airstrikes as the only way to save the uprising -- and it’s clear from footage in Benghazi that there is support from the rebels for the airstrikes. However while Gaddafi was making considerable gains, the rebels still showed the ability to fight off Gaddafi’s forces in the city of Misurata (the last rebel stronghold in the west of Libya) and at Adjabiya (the last town before Libya’s second city, Benghazi). The rebellion is not a spent force yet, and taking Benghazi would have been a much harder task than the coastal oil towns -- it’s where the rebellion would (and perhaps may still) make a bloody last stand, an urban battle in which Gaddafi’s tanks would have been of less use.
The reality is that stopping Gaddafi’s forces from overrunning the rebels could never be done just by stopping his airforce -- his forces on the ground are the ones taking the towns and cities, and ultimately it’s the armour and infantry that Gaddafi has consolidated that the rebellion needs to defeat. The “No Fly Zone” has always been a pretext for a much wider bombing of Gaddafi’s army and Libyan towns and cities. The civilian casualties we have seen so far have already provoked the Arab League to call for an end to the bombing, with it’s General Secretary saying “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone. What we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.”
The bombing of Libya has been pushed through the UN because the Western powers are desperate to coopt and control the Arab revolutions in their own interests. The USA/UK would have been quite happy to see Gaddafi crush the rebellion discreetly and decisively in it’s early days, and maintain stability in the region but Gaddafi’s brutality made him an unreliable ally. That’s what led to formerly close European allies of Gaddafi to burn their bridges with him, and even go as far as to recognise the rebels as Libya’s legitimate Government. Now that it looks like Gaddafi may remain in control of most of Libya -- including the oil fields -- the West is now intervening to remove him through their own military force.
While Gaddafi may be an eccentric figure, attacked as an lunatic in the press, Libya is not an irrelevant basket case. It is the richest country in Africa, with the highest standard of living on the continent, and it’s oil wealth makes it an important regional player. Libyan oil money has been used to fund a variety of African rebellions, and an alleged assassination attempt against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Gaddafi was also a major supporter of the IRA in the 80s, providing the group with an entire trawler of arms -- The Eksund -- which could have given the Provisionals victory over the British in Northern Ireland if it had not been intercepted by the French Navy. It’s the fear that Gaddafi will align himself with anti-western guerillas throughout Africa -- like the brutal RUF in Sierra Leone -- that is partially motivating the US/UK to remove him with air strikes. Having a “rogue state” awash with oil money on the Mediterranean cost is not something any of the Western powers are keen on if it can be avoided.
As well as playing an important role in Africa, Libya is also a major supplier of oil to Europe. It provides Spain and Italy with 22% of it’s crude oil -- explaining why Gaddafi and Berlusconi got so pally with each other. The civil war in Libya endangers the economies of these European states as the price of oil skyrockets. Also Gaddafi’s brutality has led to Western powers to break links with him -- if he stays in power and consolidates his hold over the oil fields in Libya, the West will be denied access to Libya’s natural resources due to sanctions they themselves have imposed. This would be disastrous for many Western oil companies -- BP alone have a £900 million dollar deal with Libya. It’s these massive profits which make it clear why there is a bombing campaign in Libya, but not an intervention in the pro-Western state of Bahrain which has been occupied by Saudi troops.
The bombing in Libya marks the return of the discredited “humanitarian intervention” -- the idea that NATO aircraft can police the world and bring democracy at the point of a Tomahawk. Many readers of this site may be too young to remember Tony Blair’s war against Serbia in 1999 -- often touted as a success compared to the failure of Iraq and the ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan. The 73 day NATO bombing of the Serbs was justified as bringing to an end the racist ethnic cleansing of the Kosovars by the Milosevic regime. The reality was that
‘They ran out of military targets in the first couple of weeks,’ said James Bissell, the Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia. ‘It was common knowledge that NATO then went to Stage Three: civilian targets. Otherwise, they would not have been bombing bridges on Sunday afternoons and market places.’ Admiral Elmar Schmahling, head of German Military Intelligence, said, ‘The plan was to first put pressure on the civilian population and second to destroy the Yugoslav economy so deeply it would not recover.’
NATO spent most of it’s bombing campaign attacking Serb society -- while the actual ground forces of Milosevic ran rampant in Kosova. NATO managed to destroy only 14 tanks in the bombing campaign -- but did successfully attack state-run Serbian TV and the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. If and when the West runs out of military targets to bomb in Libya, you can expect them to target soft civilian infrastructure to push Libyan society to breaking point, just as it did in Serbia.
During the bombing of Serbia there was one significant, brave section of opposition to the air strikes alongside the SSP -- that of the Scottish National Party. Alex Salmond was condemned as the “Toast of Belgrade” by Robin Cook, who later transformed into an “anti-war” leader during the run up to the invasion of Iraq. This time round though it appears that the SSP is alone in opposing the bombing -- SNP MP’s have went as far as to use the attacks on Libya as a justification to maintain British RAF bases in Scotland.
Every real Socialist supports the overthrow of Gaddafi and the establishment of a democracy in Libya -- but we shouldn’t be tempted into believing that the same Western powers who sold Gaddafi arms in the past, and back every other Arab despot have the interests of the democracy movement at heart. The West will use it’s military force not only to remove Gaddafi but to back whichever faction of the Libyan opposition will be the most friendly to their interests. Imperialism has never been progressive, and the only people we should trust to bring democracy and freedom to Libya are the Libyan people themselves.
Japan has been hit by the worst earthquake in it’s history. It’s the 6th most powerful quake in the entire world since records began in 1900. Just looking at the scenes coming from the disaster – particularly the before and after shots – and it’s clear that despite being a first-world country the deathtoll will be immense, in the thousands if not tens of thousands. It’s already been declared the worst disaster Japan has faced since WW2.
As SSY has already posted natural disasters are often exacerbated by the man-made actions (or inaction) that occurs around them. Whether it’s the botched response in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the comparative defences against Hurricanes by Socialist Cuba and Capitalist Haiti the way your society is organised has a direct effect on how it copes with massive natural catastrophes.
Had the tsunami hit some of the poorer countries in the Pacific like Indonesia or the Phillipines – who do not enjoy the same defences to natural disasters Japan does – the death toll would have been even higher. As a developed country Japan probably could not have done much more to stop it’s citizens being swept away by the tsunami, but it’s modernity has also made another very unnatural disaster possible – one that would not simply stop at the beaches of Japan, but has the potential to affect the entire region.
The earthquake and tsunami has destabilised Japan’s nuclear power stations at Fukushima, and thousands of people have already been evacuated, with residents being told to stay indoors, close their windows and not to drink tap water. Within the past few hours Japanese officials have declared that the fuel rods in all 3 reactors appear to be melting. France’s Nuclear safety agency has also increased the severity of the accident at Fukushima from level 4 to “at least level 5, or even at level 6″. This is significant and extremely worrying. The International Nuclear Event Scale runs from 1 to 7, with 7 being the most serious. There has only ever been one level 7 nuclear disaster – Chernobyl, and the events at Fukushima are (currently) only one scale behind that.
What has happened at Fukushima underlines the inherent dangers of Nuclear energy. Nuclear power operates by using the immense heat given off by nuclear fission to boil water and produce steam which in turn is used to power generators. The problem (and the danger) lies with the fuel itself, which is so hot it needs to be constantly submerged in cool water (this is why many nuclear facilities are near the sea). What’s happened at Fukushima is that the earthquake and tsunami has disrupted the cooling systems, meaning the fuel rods are no longer kept cool. The danger is now that the fuel will become so hot it will meltdown, break out of containment and release nuclear material into the atmosphere.
If this happens it does not matter how far people are evacuated, the material will go as Michio Kazuo puts it, wherever the wind blows. This means not only Japan but the Pacific and potentially the West coast of the USA could be affected. When Chernobyl underwent a meltdown nuclear material was found in Scotland, with restricted zones being set up to stop sheep carrying the radioactive material. If Fukushima does undergo a catastrophic, Chernobyl style meltdown it does not just pose a threat to people near the reactor in the here and now, it also threatens thousands more for the rest of their lives. After Chernobyl melted down, there were thousands of excess cancer deaths that claimed peoples lives years after the event despite the attempts of some to downplay the death toll.
The events at Fukushima may be this generations wake up call to the dangers of Nuclear power, just as Chernobyl was to the past. There’s already been a demo of 40,000 in Germany against the nuclear power plant at Neckarwestheim, whose operational length is undergoing extension despite popular opposition. The UK already announced a new generation of Nuclear Power plants over 3 years ago. The defenders of Nuclear power claim these new plants are much safer than their previous counterparts. Unfortunately, report the Guardian,
The analysis is limited, however. Computed risks for new reactors are lower than for current designs “when only internal events are considered,” according to a 2009 report that the Nuclear Energy Institute wrote for the NRC. (That includes fires or pipe breaks, for example.) But when risks of damage caused by external events — earthquakes, for example — are factored in, the new reactors are no safer than older reactors. In addition, because utilities have no operating experience with the new reactors, the probable risk assessments are purely theoretical and not as reliable as years of actual operating data from existing plants.
The German Government's response to anti-Nuclear protests
The article also quotes Russ Bell, head of new Nuclear Plant licensing in the USA, who is reticent about saying the new generation of Nuclear Power plants are safer because “We think all our plants are safe”. The reality is that everything that has the potential to fail and cause loss of life and limb – whether it’s a boat, aircraft, car or Nuclear Power Plant – is described by the builder as “safe”. The people who describe the new generation of Nuclear Power Plants as foolproof would have said the same thing about plants like 3 mile island in the past.
Accidents happen in the world all the time. Sometimes they are avoidable, and the cause of malicious neglect by the unscrupulous, like the Bhopal disaster or Chernobyl itself. Others are simply tragic accidents that could not have been foreseen or stopped. We cannot stop all technology due to the risk of injury and death – people will always need to use trains, despite the railtrack disasters. But we don’t need to use Nuclear Power in human society, the potential disasters that can occur in Nuclear energy are much more severe than the worst disasters that can undergo in other aspects of man made technology. Put simply when a plane or car crashes, it does not render the surrounding environment uninhabitable and increase the cancer risks of thousands of people for hundreds of miles.
Nuclear Power is a technology that is being promoted and constructed in defiance of public safety (to the point of building reactors near fault lines) in the interests of modern, non-stop growth Capitalism. What energy a society has available to it regulates what kind of technology, industry and civilisation it can build. Access to crops (the product of solar energy from the sun) allowed primitive civilisation to develop in the middle east, and allowed people to become scientists, doctors and teachers and survive off of maize, rice, corn etc instead of constantly having to hunt animals for food. The development of Capitalism 100 years ago was dependent on the use of coal fossil fuels to undergo the Industrial Revolution and transform the UK from a feudal peasant society to a modern Capitalist one – a society able to build ships, trains, use steel and construct cities.
Capitalism today is similar – it needs to constantly be producing consumer goods for people to buy. Capitalist companies which do not keep growing and producing greater profits for their shareholders will be overtaken and destroyed by those that do. This demand for non-stop growth has already led to a world wide economic crisis, ignited by the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the USA, with families being sold homes they could not afford. As well as an obvious economic crisis however, it also threatens to start a much larger environmental crisis – global warming.
The non-stop growth of Capitalism requires the use of the same fossil fuels it did 100 years ago, despite what we now know about the effects of increased CO2 on the environment. Some companies and Government’s have accepted the massive scientific consensus regarding man made (in reality, Capitalist carbon driven) climate change, and are trying to find alternate sources of energy that will allow them to continue non-stop growth. Others are looking for alternate energy for more cynical reasons – avoiding a dependence on middle eastern oil for example. The alternative that many of these companies and Governments are now promoting is Nuclear Power.
The reason they are backing Nuclear is because while it may not give off CO2, Nuclear Power is similar to fossil fuel in many other respects. The advantages of fossil fuels (you can hold on to coal/oil, then use it at levels and times of your choosing in power stations) are present in Nuclear fuel – you can decide when and how you use Uranium for example. Of course there is the Nuclear waste, which continues to be radioactive for thousands of years. Unfortunately capitalism does not think in the long term – if it did there would never be any revolutions or economic crisis – let alone think on a timescale which is many, many, many times longer the establishment not only of Capitalism but any kind of human civilisation itself.
There are alternative sources to both Nuclear and Fossil fuel – renewable energy, like tidal, wind, and solar. The reason these are not encouraged on the same level as Nuclear power is simple, they do not have the same advantages for capitalism as the fossil/nuclear fuel has above. You cannot decide when, where, and to what extent the wind blows, waves move or the sun shines in the same way you can decide what level of fossil/nuclear fuel to use. This kind of renewable energy is not compatible with a society and economic system that is dependent on constant, never ending economic growth.
That’s why as well as changing our energy systems from those that damage the environment we have to change our society to one that isn’t dependent on constant growth, and the neverending production of consumer goods which results not only in the economic crisis Marx predicted a hundred years ago, but now new environmental catastrophes that he could not have foreseen in his worst nightmares. The disaster at Fukushima is connected to the economic crisis throughout the world, and the continuing climate change – the constant non-stop growth demands of Capitalism, in defiance of the needs and safety of the majority of the world’s population.
Another scalp for the pro-democracy and workers movement that’s sweeping the middle east – Tunisian Prime Minister Ghannouchi has resigned after thousands took to the street demanding he quit. It’s the second bastard deposed from office by Tunisa’s people, Ghannouchi took over after corrupt President Ben Ali was kicked out a couple of months ago. Ghannouchi was an ally of Ben Ali, and the protesters have not accepted his rule as any more legitimate than that of his corrupt predecessor.
Elections in Tunisia are scheduled for July, and the ruling establishment in Tunisia must have already been bricking it. Now that they have lost their caretaker Prime Minister, it puts them in an even weaker position. This removal of Ghannochi – alongside a massive rally in Tahrir Square held to call for the removal of emergency laws – shows the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have not stopped or grown complacent just because the old corrupt figureheads have been removed. People are demanding the whole rotten system is torn down as well.
Still, lets provide a quick recap of just who has been chucked out over the past 2 months,
Is it Libya? Egypt? Tunisia? No, it’s the USA. It may have been overlooked amongst rioting and protests of a much bigger scale in the middle east, but there’s been a battle raging in Wisconsin between the State Government and its own people. Police were ordered to force demonstrators out of the State Capitol building yesterday, but instead of driving them out defected to the side of the protesters.
The occupied Wisconsin State Capitol
One of the police said “We have been ordered by the legislature to kick
you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will
not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!”. For a State to lose control of it’s police force is unprecedented in recent history, and a sign that the Wisconsin demonstrators are now winning groups to their struggle who, to put it mildy, are not generally associated with trade unions and radical struggle.
The origin of these protests lies in an attempt by the Tea Party supported right-wing Republican Governor Scott Walker to destroy the power of the unions in Wisconsin. Walker wants to remove the rights of unions to collectively bargain with the Government over all other issues apart from pay – ie, holidays. pensions, benefits etc.
Walker claims that this is necessary to deal with the state deficit, but the reality is that – just like the Tories in the UK – the Tea Party and it’s allies want to use the national debt as an excuse to do all the things they’ve wanted to do to Trade Unions but didn’t have an excuse to do. It’s the Shock Doctrine for Wisconsin – terrify people into accepting horrendous “reforms” whilst they’re scared of a financial crisis. Whilst attacking collective bargaining for Unions and attacking their members pensions and healthcare, Walker’s budget proposes tax cuts for the richest in the State.
Walker’s plan is summarised quite well here, as a three pronged attack on the unions.
“In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin’s unions can’t deliver value to their members, they’re deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections
And because the Unions provide large donations to the Democratic Party, as well as neutering class struggle in the State it also removes finances from a political opponent – OR it forces the Democrats to seek funding from non-union sources, like millionaire businessmen. This means either the Democratic Party loses funds, or has to shift more and more to the right to win the money of big business – shifting right on to a territory the Republican Party already hold. It’s a Machiavellian plan to fundamentally change the political terrain in Wisconsin in favour of the ideas of the Right and business.
Given the vast number of citizens who opposed the bill, unsurprisingly there wasn’t enough time to hear them all. Instead of leaving though, the protesters stayed overnight in the Capitol Building and have remained there for two weeks – with thousands more coming to join in their occupation and to protest outside the building.
This militant defiance of union busting by the Labour movement in the USA has even, dragged the Democratic Party in the State leftward. In both the Assembly and the Senate of Wisconsin the Democrats are a minority – having lost out to the Republican Party’s gains in the midterms. They cannot vote to defeat Walker’s proposals.
But instead the Democratic Party’s Senators have gone into a kind of political exile to Illinois. It sounds mad but is actually an inspired counter-move. The Republicans have 19 Senators in the state compared to the 14 Democratic Senators. But in order for any law to pass, there must be a quorate of at least 20 senators – so the Republicans have been unable to pass this law because the Democrats have fled the state! The Democratic Party are effectively acting in defiance of normal parliamentary practice to stop the Republican Party from crushing the Trade Union movement.
Walker has of course found allies from the Tea Party, who have organised counter-demonstrations against the Unions. But they have been massively outnumbered by the pro-Union rallies, which are the biggest demonstrations Wisconsin has seen since the Vietnam War. In a national poll over 60% of Americans opposed Walker’s plan being enacted in their own states, and even contributors from Fox News have realised that Walker’s argument is “malarkey” and that it’s all about union busting.
These protests show that while the USA isn’t normally seen as a hotbed of class struggle, when it happens they don’t mess about. The struggle in Wisconsin is reminiscent of other mass mobilisations of workers in US Labour Movement history – like the Bonus Army, who set up an illegal camp in Washington DC in protest at the President’s refusal to pay them their bonus after fighting in WW1. The US Army was eventually brought in to clear the camps, which it did at the point of bayonets and the use of chemical gas.
Of course this time round, if Walker wants to use the State’s security forces to clear the State Capitol he won’t have the support of the Police. What remains to be seen is if other parts of the State will obey his orders – he’s already declared his willingness to use the National Guard to bust Unions, a tactic that Mubarak would have been happy to use. State Troopers have even been dispatched to try and drag the Democratic Senators back to the occupied Capitol Building, to try and facilitate a “democratic” process through state sponsored kidnapping.
The struggle in Wisconsin shows that the Left in the USA are starting to fight back after being left in the shadow of the Tea Party and Obama’s failures and betrayals. Along the way, they are winning mass support and a few unusal (but not unwelcome) allies to their cause.
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