No, not that Europe

When what is possibly the worst economic crisis since the 30’s got going in 2008, a lot of people looked back into history. They pointed out that when the Wall Street Crash happened in 1929, it took a couple of years before we really began to see political implications, like the rise of Hitler or the Spanish Civil War.

In recent weeks a wave of protests and strikes has engulfed Southern Europe, bringing people on to the streets of Greece, Spain and Portugal. It looks like for some countries at least, we won’t have to wait much longer to see consequences of financial meltdown.

The Euro as a currency is in crisis as a result of what’s happening. The fate of countries like Greece puts serious doubts on its long term viability.

Many people support the European Union, because they think it is a big club where everyone helps each other out and prevents wars. The EU’s own rhetoric has often talked about solidarity across Europe. But the response to the financial crisis in Greece has shown that the EU is no different than any other part of the capitalist world-the strong exploit the weak, and the powerful have no interest in solidarity with those who are relatively powerless.

Hyperinflation made money cheaper than jenga

The biggest power in the EU is Germany. The German elite have learned from history, and since the war they’ve wanted two things: sound money and European integration. In the 30’s hyperinflation made the German Mark worthless, causing misery for everyone and spurring the rise of the Nazis. And following the destruction of the war, the only way France and Germany could ever hope to match up to the global power of the US was by teaming up.

These two objectives came together with the establishment of the Euro, the aim of which was to give Europe a strong currency that could stand up to the dollar on world markets. But the idea was also that the Euro would help political integration, with the EU becoming more like a state of its own.

But closer integration has proved difficult, and in the meantime the EU has mushroomed outwards to take in a bunch of countries in Eastern Europe. Now 16 different states, many with very different economies, are tied together economically by using the Euro. Some of these countries, like Germany or the Netherlands, export a lot of products and as a result have surplus money. Others, like Greece or Spain, have huge debts. In the past, if a country had a surplus the currency would increase in value, making it more expensive to buy their products. If another had a deficit, then its currency would fall in value, having the opposite effect. This is the way, traditionally, that imbalances got sorted out.

But now, with so many countries locked into one currency, it’s nearly impossible for a national government to take action to try and deal with an economic crisis. Richer countries like France and Germany have been able to pump some of their own money into the financial system, but the banks and capitalists don’t trust the poorer countries like Greece, and won’t let them do the same.

EU members today

Germany has the second largest trade surplus in the world, after Saudi Arabia. It exports a lot more than it imports. Its relationship to the rest of Europe is a bit like China and the US-Germany provides goods and finances, and the rest of Europe buys those goods and takes the investment. The difference is that other European countries aren’t nearly as economically powerful as the US. Germany has invested and traded heavily with poorer countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal. These countries companies just can’t compete with German ones.

On top of this, it’s now clear that there was a lot of bullshitting going on by European governments in order to keep the Euro working, and get more countries as members. An investigation is being launched into how the former Greek government conspired with banks to hide the true extent of their debts. But more generally, many of the European governments have been breaking their own rules and covering it up.

PIIGS: shocked by hidden debt

This hasn’t been money that has been spent to the advantage of workers, but is the result of massive corruption and mismanagement, along with huge tax evasion by the wealthy. Without cooking the books like this, it would have been impossible for countries like Greece to join the Euro.

Before the crash, governments were able to cope with their debts by playing financial games and borrowing more money. But that option is closed off now for most of them after the collapse of the financial system, and several countries are left with huge debts that are causing a huge problem for the Euro. The worst problems are in the countries that have been rudely dubbed “PIIGS”-Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

In these countries the governments are now forced to desperately try and cut spending, meaning wage cuts, job losses and general misery, whilst at the same time raising taxes. In other words, they are trying to force the working class to pay the cost of the crisis that was created by financial speculators, banks and badly-managed governments.

In Greece, the government has a few months to raise £20 billion through cuts. If it doesn’t they could face the serious possibility of a Euro member going bankrupt. The German and French governments have been less than willing to come to the rescue, although they may yet be forced to. In the meantime the government is trying to force through an unprecedentedly harsh package of cuts.

Greek protesters: handy with a stick

The good news is that the Greek working class is one of the most militant in Europe, and is refusing to accept the government’s programme without a fight. From midnight tonight (Wednesday) Greek workers are walking out to start their second national strike. In previous strikes protestors have been fighting in the streets with riot police, and attempted to storm the parliament.

In other parts of Europe resistance is starting to heat up as well. In Portugal civil servants shut down courts, schools and hospitals in protest at government wage freezes. In Spain, where the government wants to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 to keep people working longer, tens of thousands have been on the streets protesting. And in Ireland 4,500 porters, caterers, security guards and other low paid workers are set to go on strike against wage cuts in Dublin hospitals.

These Greek protesters bricked up a bank entrance to demand the government takes action against them!

In the UK, with the PCS already on strike and the prospect of more savage cuts after the election whoever wins, it couldn’t be more important to learn about what’s happening across Europe. We aren’t yet looking at a real revolutionary situation, but there’s no doubt that if we let European governments implement their plans it will mean poverty and misery for the European working class on a scale not seen since the 1930’s. The only way we can stop that happening is by defeating our governments across the continent, through mass action, strikes and people on the street. There’s an urgent need to link up the struggles across borders and understand the international nature of what’s going on, and Leftfield will do its best to keep you informed in a clear and understandable way in the months to come.

Footage of last month’s general strike in Greece.

I’m sure many Leftfield readers will have been watching the latest series of Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, pretty much the best satire on telly.

I loved the second series of this vital show, taking down the lies and fantasies of the media at every turn. But I didn’t love most of the bits featuring “US comic and drunk [big woop] Doug Stanhope.”

This guy has a persona of an absolute misanthrope: he hates the world and everyone in it. His most objectionable bit was the one embedded above, talking about overpopulation.

In this little rant, Stanhope tries to make out like he’s telling the world a hidden truth, something hidden by the media because it doesn’t fit with the mainstream environmentalist agenda. This supposed truth is that there are too many people in the world, using up too many resources, and the only way we can really save the environment is to stop having kids.

But the reality is that this idea is a very powerful one, and it’s been used by the ruling class as an excuse for nearly 200 years now.

In 1798 English cleric and economist Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population. He argued that population growth would always outstrip the expansion of the food supply, and that as more workers became available wages would be driven down, leading to poverty.

2.Many.Malthuses.

In other words, the working class in Britain were to blame for their own poverty. It had nothing to do with the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the capitalists, who owned the places where they worked, and got rich on the back of their labour.

The thing is, he was wrong. Food production has grown faster in the last 200 years than at any other time in history, and has rapidly outstripped population growth. Famines aren’t caused by food shortages, but by unequal distribution of food.

But blaming the poor for poverty and hunger was a convenient solution for the people who were really responsible-the rich.

In the 1960s Malthus’ arguments were revived by environmentalists, who argued that population growth in the third world was causing an ecological crisis and must be stopped.

These people never however stopped to think about the centuries of looting that the third world has suffered at the hands of European empires. Nor did they consider that many people in poor countries have many children to ensure that some of them survive the harsh realities of an impoverished childhood.

In fact, the rate of world population growth is slowing. It peaked in the 1960s, and ever since the rate of increase has been getting slower.

The population theorists thought that if the world’s resources were a pie, reducing the number of people who wanted a slice would mean everyone gets more. But what about the 1 or 2 people that are eating three-quarters of the pie, leaving the rest of us fighting over the crumbs?

Delicious pie: Time to fight for a bigger slice

Most mainstream environmentalists don’t want to confront the realities of inequality, caused by capitalism. It’s much easier to tell everyone that they have to play their part, change their lightbulbs etc., than to say “A tiny minority of the world’s population are fucking everything up to make themselves rich.” The reason it’s easier is that rich people are very powerful, and taking them on is a hard fight. But if we’re really going to prevent the worst of climate change, and save the global environment, then we’ll have to take them on and beat them.

As a system, capitalism is based on economic growth. Every year we must produce more products, consume more, and make more money. But growth is unequal-the economy is constantly funneling more and more wealth from the hands of the majority into the those of the rich.

Right now, 10% of the world’s population own 54% of the world’s wealth. The richest 50 humans on Earth make more money than the poorest 416 million put together. In their unceasing quest to get richer, these people are trashing the Earth, by pulling out everything of value from the ground, the sea, and the soil, and by pumping back the toxic waste left over. These are the people who are really responsible for climate change, and must be defeated.

The best way to reduce population growth is to start ending the poverty afflicting most of the world’s population. For decades the world’s rich countries and financial institutions have forced poorer countries to cut their public spending, preventing them from having decent health services. If more poor countries were able to follow the example of Cuba, and set up world beating health services, then less babies would die and parents would have less children. Another key issue is women’s access to proper sex education, and reproductive rights to control their own bodies.

If we’re really going to save human civilisation from the potential catastrophes on the horizon, we can’t be human-haters. We need to change our society to be more eco-friendly, and at the same time more people-friendly. It’s more than possible to meet all the basic needs (clean water, housing, enough to eat, a fulfilling life) for all the people in the world.

The people in the way of us achieving this would much rather believe that all humans are equally responsible. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but with unequal wealth and power comes unequal responsibility. So Doug Stanhope isn’t bringing us a radical message that they don’t want you to hear. His hatred of humanity (which conceals a real misogyny-see his comments about “a tired old whore” and women’s wombs) actually suits the mainstream agenda just fine. Because it lets the people who’s fault it really is off the hook.

This map uses colour and distortion to show two different things. The extent to which a country is squeezed or inflated shows the extent to which countries are consuming their fair share, based on population, of the world’s resources. Starved-looking countries consume less than their fair share (most of Africa), whereas stuffed-looking countries consume far more than their share (most of Europe and North America). The colour of the countries shows the balance between whether a country has, within its borders, can generate enough resources and cope with its own waste within its environment (green, like environmentally rich Brazil and Canada) or not (like the Middle East and, yes, the United States). (via www.pthbb.org)

The outcome of government policy

At the coming election the three major UK parties will work hard to convince you that there’s a big difference between them, and that they deserve your vote more than others.

But Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems are all united in their desire to make the internet shite. The government’s Digital Economy Bill looks like it will be rushed through parliament before the election because it’s supported by all the major parties.

The bill is a spectacular example of political knobhead-ery. It is a dogs dinner of law, aimed at helping massive entertainment corporations continue to rake in profits at our expense, and potentially limit our access to controversial information online. It shows just how much our political process is controlled by powerful companies that are beyond democratic oversight.

The bill proposes a “three strikes” rule, so that those accused of illegal filesharing more than three times will have their internet connections cut off. That means you, looking for things you wouldn’t otherwise see or hear on megaupload or Pirate Bay. This kind of harmless activity would lead to you being deprived of everything that we use the internet at home for, an increasingly important part of most young people’s lives. A majority of the world’s population now regard access to the internet as a fundamental human right, and are supported in this by the UN.

Let’s be clear-being able to get things for free on the internet is one of the greatest advances of the modern age. Being one of the oldest members of SSY, I can tell you that kids today don’t know they’re born. I remember the days when if you wanted to hear new music you had to save up to maybe buy one CD in a month. Every once in a while you might get a new video, and you were stuck with whatever council telly decided you got to watch. The Dark Ages of Entertainment in other words. Today, that’s all different, and the ability for cultural participation is enhanced unimaginably compared to what it was like growing up in the 90s.

But of course this presents the capitalist market with a problem. Propaganda on the issue of filesharing likes to try and make us think of some poor impoverished artist somewhere struggling by as we take away their livelihood. But we all know that the people who have really suffered are the culture industry, the massive entertainment corporations who monopolise the rights to the works of others so they can parasite off their creativity. These people have now pushed the government into putting forward a law that aims to reduce filesharing by 70%.

But it doesn’t stop there. Anyone providing internet access is to be made responsible for the actions of those using it. What that effectively means is that we’ll probably see the end of wee cafes providing wi fi access, as the government forces them to keep detailed records of what every single customer does, an unbearable burden for small businesses. Community centres, libraries and universities will face the same obligations. The government recognises that many universities already have stringent copyright protection in place on their networks, and wants to expand it. If you’ve ever stayed in uni halls and gone online, you may well know what this will mean-the possibility of arbitrary disconnection for doing things that are perfectly legal, and the internet generally being really slow and rubbish.

But perhaps the worst aspect of the proposed law is that it will make copyright law work like libel laws. Under our libel laws, if you write something nasty about someone else, they can take you to court. It is then essentially on you to prove that what you said was true. In other words, you are considered to guilty until proven innocent of lying. This has led to many ridiculous libel judgments, many involving politicians trying to cover stuff up. But more importantly, it means that unless you’ve got plenty of money and good lawyers, you can’t defend yourself, and so the rich and powerful can often stop things being printed that they don’t like.

Similar principles are going to be applied to websites under the Digital Economy Bill. Companies will have the right to demand the blocking of websites which they argue have “significant amounts” of material that infringes copyright. This could well lead to many people in the UK being unable to look at youtube, for example. Websites could be pulled down by their internet service providers without even knowing. In theory, these applications could be challenged in court, but only if you’ve got the dough for lawyers. The vast majority of small-time website operators won’t be able to afford this, and will just have to go along with it.

This raises the potential that companies could then abuse the system, putting up claims against websites they don’t like. The US, which already has passed some pretty shitey laws, we’ve already seen Microsoft try and block leaks website Cryptome from publishing sensitive documents through spurious copyright claims. In other words, this law opens the door to severe corporate censorship of the internet.

This stuff is all politically bad. It is pro-corporate bullshit, which has the ultimate aim of taking money out of your pocket and putting it in the hands of rich people. But on a more basic level, it will also slow down the internet, prevent some of the best things on the internet from continuing, and generally make our lives a bit more rubbish. With all the mainstream parties lined up behind this campaign for shitness, what can we do?

The Open Rights Group (ORG) is an independent campaign group desperately trying to pull together as wide opposition to the bill as possible. They’ve got details on their site of how to get in touch with the government to express your opposition, and for anyone who’s down south or could make it to London, they’ve called a demo against disconnection on Wednesday 24th March, outside the Houses of Parliament at 17.30. Also, if you join ORG you get a free signed copy of the novel ‘Little Brother’ by Cory Doctorow.

Across Europe (and around the world) the threat to internet freedom by corporate controlled governments has led to the formation of Pirate Parties, particularly in Sweden where the party has been very successful. In the UK there’s a Pirate Party as well, although it looks unlikely to have anything like the same impact on the political system.

For those of us who are socialists, it’s time to get wise on these issues. The right of the working class to get entertainment outside of the market system is well worth defending. Yes, there are some issues about how to compensate artists for their work, but already extensive work has been done to resolve this, and the amount of artists and writers who support groups like ORG shows that the drive for a crappy internet isn’t driven by them.

What gives me hope is that for over 10 years now I’ve seen the evolution of filesharing technologies, and the overcoming by ingenious ordinary folk of all the attempts by governments and their corporate paymasters to stop us doing it. Alongside the political campaigning, the continued efforts of nerds everywhere to overcome internet censorship and damage benefit us all. In the coming weeks, Leftfield intends you to bring you comprehensive guides to how to get stuff online, before the government messes things up.

At the end of feudal society, the invention of new industrial technologies helped make fedualism obsolete, and usher in the new capitalist era. Today, the power of the internet ultimately shows that the monopolistic capitalist market is out of date, because we as a society can do things better if we work together in a non-profitable, collaborative and collective way. It’s a glimpse of how things would work under socialism, and socialists should be at the forefront of defending it.

Bonus: SSY member ‘The Enlivened Bandit’ on the politics of filesharing.

Remember when the whole world seemed to feel the same way as Randy Marsh? It’s only just over a year since the US exploded with excitement at the idea that Barack Obama’s election meant that real change was coming to America.

But what has actually happened? Obama has been the latest of a series of governments elected on a wave of hope, only to disappoint their supporters. From the SNP Scottish Government to President Lula in Brazil to New Labour, people have learned again and again that promises of “change” are hollow unless those elected are really ready to fight the powerful forces that keep things the way they are.

In the first of a series exposing the bullshit promises of political fakers, Leftfield sets out to investigate the real record of the Obama Presidency so far. The best place to start seems to be the greatest battleground that the right has tried to defeat him on: healthcare reform.

If you did Higher Modern Studies, or you’ve seen Michael Moore’s brilliant ‘Sicko’, then you’re probably well aware the US isn’t a good place to get sick. Almost all hospitals and doctor’s surgeries are privately-owned profit making companies. They charge huge sums for life saving treatment, which people pay for by taking out insurance policies. The insurance companies and the healthcare companies form an unholy alliance that pours huge sums of money into the campaigns of all Presidential and Congressional candidates, making sure that both the Democrats and the Republicans continue to uphold their business interests.

Obama: Let down

Around 15% of Americans have no access to any kind of health insurance. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you realise it’s 46 million people. Far more people are “underinsured”, that is they can’t afford full insurance for everything that might happen to them. And, as Sicko so powerfully shows, even those with insurance are regularly cheated when insurance companies move the goalposts to try and avoid paying for treatment that is included within policies.

Insurance companies are some of the most publicly hated institutions in the US, precisely because people know that they care only about profit, and cheat thousands out of their right to life. Not content with this, the insurance and health companies have years been lobbying European governments to try and undermine socialised medicine over here, and so expand their potential market. A lot of the attacks on the NHS in the UK have received political support from these same companies.

Some limited numbers of people do get government help with their healthcare in America. War veterans get support. And there are also two government programmes, Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is a federal (that is, provided by the national government) programme providing health insurance to the elderly and certain special categories of disabled people. Medicaid is a programme administered by the different states, but part funded by the federal government, that provides some means-tested help to poor people. Being poor however is no guarantee of support: an estimated 60% of Americans living in poverty do not receive Medicaid, because they don’t meet the required criteria.

One of the major problems in the US is that there are so many different programmes that provide health insurance-you can take out a policy with a company, have a programme through your employer, or a host of other options. It adds up to huge amounts of bureaucracy and costs to patients. 31% of the cost of healthcare in the US is spent on administration and bureaucracy.

An estimated 100, 000 Americans a year die because they couldn’t afford proper healthcare. Healthcare costs the individual more in the US than in any other country in the world, which shows how absurd it is to oppose a fairer system if it would mean raising taxes: they’re already paying way over the odds! Medical debt is a factor in 62% of American personal bankruptcies, as people struggle to pay the money required to keep their families alive. As a whole, the US spends more of its total income on healthcare costs than any other United Nations member apart from East Timor.

The USA is the only industrialised country on Earth that doesn’t recognise healthcare as a right, and provide universal access to free healthcare. When Obama came to power, many dared to hope that the US was about to catch up with what Britain was able to achieve in 1945, and establish universal healthcare.

Tea party protestors: Mental

Obama has made healthcare reform a major focus of his Presidency. In the process, the right wing has gone absolutely bananas, accusing him of being a socialist. Looking at the Tea Party crazies, it seems like what he wants must be at least a bit good if these people are against it. The stakes are definitely high: the right has won every battle on healthcare reform in the US since the ’40s.

There are two different versions of a healthcare reform bill that have gone through Congress, one passed by the House of Representatives and one through the Senate. The Senate bill will probably form the basis of the final laws, if they get passed.

All through the process of putting together his proposals, Obama has kept his door open to insurance, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, meeting with them time and again to make sure, behind the scenes, and away from all the “socialism” bullshit, the capitalist healthcare industry was still happy with what he was proposing.

The Obama proposals will indeed extend health insurance to the uninsured-by forcing them to buy expensive private insurance or face a legal penalty. Obama has compared it to forcing drivers to buy a driver’s licence. Although initially there was a plan to set up a publicly run health insurance company, that was killed off by the right in Congress. Even if it had been set up, it was estimated it would only have helped 2% of Americans with their healthcare costs.

Obama has also made a big deal about how his proposals will stop insurance companies discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions. What this means is that when you get sick, insurance companies employ their own doctors who try to prove that you were already sick at the time you took out the policy, so they can avoid paying for your care. However, Obama’s plan won’t ban this. Instead, you’ll just pay up to 50% more. Oh, that’s ok then.

Part of the concessions made to insurance companies and the right in order to get something passed included scrapping a lot of regulation that currently tries to force them to behave themselves. Insurance companies will also be allowed to move their base of operations to states with the least consumer protection.

Other concessions to the right include the exemption of abortion from coverage under health plans, and the fact that undocumented migrants to the US will receive no coverage.

Effectively, the law, if passed, will force Americans to fork out more money to insurance companies, increasing their stranglehold over healthcare. At the same time, an “expert panel” is going to be appointed to try and “slash costs” in Medicare, i.e. try and reduce the quality of care the programme provides.

But the greatest scandal of all is the so-called “Cadillac tax.” A minority of workers in the US who are in jobs that are still well unionised have been able to force employers to provide “expensive” health insurance, that is health insurance that provides more money for healthcare than more basic policies. Obama proposes to put a 40% tax on these policies to pay for his reforms, taking away hard won benefits from struggling workers. The unions had promised to fight this proposal tooth and nail, but in January Obama pulled union leaders into the White House for a private meeting where he bullied them into accepting this outrageous proposal. In return they got a slight raising of the threshold required for this tax to kick in. However, the overall result will be that less employers will provide good health policies, forcing more workers to buy private insurance.

I see what you guys did there!

The so-called “Cadillac” policies aren’t even that great. Often, they aren’t more expensive because they provide better care, but because the private insurance companies have calculated that workers in dangerous industries, or older people or whoever are greater insurance risks, and so charge higher premiums.

The whole healthcare system in the US is incredibly complex and difficult to understand. Obama’s proposals are also really complex, and difficult to fathom. But the main upshot of them is that little will change for the better, and several things will change for the worse. Weakening and cutting the existing better health plans, they will force more people to buy private insurance out of their own pocket. In the process, billions of dollars will be transferred from the working class to insurance companies.

They do nothing to address the elephant in the room-insurance companies are hugely profitable entities that have massive control over the political process. The idea that the American health system represents free enterprise and competition is completely wrong, because these companies are big enough and powerful enough to operate as cartels, and completely control working class Americans’ access to life saving care.

A lot of the weakness of the final proposals has to do with the weakness of unions in the US. The fact that there is no socialised medicine is a major factor in why they are so weak. For 30 years unions have been forced into defensive battles against employers. Instead of fighting for higher wages, they’ve been fighting to try and prevent companies getting out of their obligations to provide healthcare for their employees, which effectively means a wage cut as workers have to pay more for essential help. As a result, wages haven’t risen seriously for decades, and union membership has collapsed. Union bureaucrats are so tied into the Democratic party as they only game in town they are willing to concede on what were once declared to be lines that wouldn’t be crossed, like the “Cadillac tax”.

Depressed yet? Looking at how all the enthusiasm of millions of working class Americans has been squandered by Obama’s sell out to corporate healthcare could well turn many away from attempting to bring about political change.

A protestor demanding Single Payer

But there is a silver lining to the cloud. The insanity of the current debate has galvanised a whole series of grassroots campaigners to fight for what, to the rest of us, seems blatantly obvious. A single payer system, i.e. all healthcare costs being paid for by the state, as happens in Europe, with the NHS, and in virtually every country with governments that have half a brain cell.

Radical trade unionists have been at the forefront of this battle. The Labor for Single Payer Campaign has correctly recognised the fight for an American NHS as one of the greatest battles that must be won if unions and the working class are to stand a chance of making any progress. Last year they forced the AFL-CIO (which is a bit like the American version of the TUC or STUC) to support the demand for single payer healthcare. Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO has not followed up this call with actual campaigning, or by putting demands on Obama. This just shows the need for socialists and radicals in the trade union movement to fight all the harder for control of their unions, to try and force them to take a fighting stance.

Doctors all across the US have come out in support of the campaign as well. Organised by the Physicians for a National Health Programme campaign, they have brought a lot of attention to the issue in the media.

One of the most prominent campaigning doctors is Margaret Flowers MD. In his State of the Union speech in January, Obama called for anyone that had a better idea for reform than his own to come forward. In response, Dr Flowers, a pediatrician from Baltimore, tried to hand deliver a letter outlining the case for Single Payer to the White House. The security guards turned her away, saying they couldn’t accept hand delivered letters. What they left out, of course, was unless you represent the insurance industry, in which case you’ll get invited in to meet White House staff.

Independent socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who has had some contact with the SSP in the past, did introduce a bill proposing to extend Medicare to all Americans, and establish a single payer system for the US. Predictably, it was voted down. However, similar proposals look like having a good chance of passing in Sanders’ home state of Vermont. And the state of California’s State Assembly has passed Single Payer plans on several occasions, only to have them vetoed by Governator Schwarzenegger.

The proposal for a Single Payer health system is hardly radical stuff, or the final shape that we’d see healthcare being delivered if there was a socialist system. But even this first baby step in the right direction hasn’t been made in the US yet. The emergence of massive grassroots campaigns for decent, state provided healthcare is the first real sign of potential progress in decades.

Drone attacks in Pakistan

I found the above map via boingboing. It shows attacks by unmanned robotic drones committed by the US within Pakistan. The analysts who produced it write:

“Our study shows that the 114 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, including 18 in 2010, from 2004 to the present have killed approximately between 834 and 1,216 individuals, of whom around 549 to 849 were described as militants in reliable press accounts, about 2/3 of total on average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32%.”

Of course, what defines a militant in this kind of situation could be pretty elastic. But what this seems to be showing us is that at least a third of the people we are sending robots to kill are completely innocent Pakistani civilians.

It was announced this week that the BBC is planning to make sweeping cuts, including shutting down BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network.

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that whoever gets into government after the general election is going to try and slash public services of all kind. Both Labour and the Tories are obsessed with getting back the money the government has spent on bailing out banks, and they intend to get it back from you and me.

In the case of the BBC, it’s no secret that the Tories have done a major deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News International. The Murdoch family control Sky TV, The Sun and a host of the UK’s most powerful media outlets. In return for their support, the Tories have effectively let the Murdochs write their media policy. Part of this agenda is cutting the funding of the BBC, so that it can compete less effectively with their products.

But what’s shocking about the cuts announced by BBC Director General Mark Thompson is that they are trying to pre-empt these cuts by making their own. It’s an approach that will fail in any kind of public service that tries it. The only way to stop cuts is to fight them from day one, not try and make them more acceptable.

The National Union of Journalists understands this, and has pledged resistance. Their General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Mark Thompson has put BBC management on a collision course – not just with us and the hundreds of BBC staff who face losing  their jobs, but with licence fee payers up and down the country.

“BBC management’s strategy of desperate, hopeful self-sacrifice is fundamentally flawed. Far from convincing an incoming government or commercial rivals that the BBC should now be left well alone, their self-harming approach will only encourage commercial media operations to demand more cuts. Public outrage at the proposed cuts has been overwhelming. A ‘Save BBC6 Music’ Facebook group has gained almost 90,000 members in just a few days and group members have appealed to us and other BBC unions to organise a joint demonstration. We’ve seen an increase in requests for membership from BBC staff right across the UK.”

Vaizey: Posh Wank trying to look cool

The closure of 6 Music has attracted the biggest outcry, including a lot of support from music celebrities like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker and Lily Allen. One of our favourites was Adam Buxton, of the Adam and Joe Show, inviting Mark Thompson out for a fight. Some have even suggested that it may well be a deliberate headline grabber, with the BBC manufacturing a controversy so that it can demonstrate how much public support there is for BBC output. This theory was given a boost when Tory culture spokesman Ed Vaizey (who, as a the son of a life peer, in fact bears the title ‘The Honourable Edward Vaizey’), tried depserately to prove how in-touch, cool and not posh he was by changing his mind to support 6 Music. He initially came out in support of the proposals. But once he saw this might make him fall foul of the Facebook/Twitter cool vanguard he quickly changed his mind and declared himself a fan of the station.

Whether in fact it is true that the closure of 6 Music is some kind of conspiracy double-bluff by the BBC remains to be seen-it’s certainly the service with the most public (and celebrity) support, and may well get saved. But as several presenters have pointed out, Asian Network listeners are less likely to be able to mobilise famous people in support, and are also less likely to be Facebook or Twitter users able to generate a huge campaign online. The majority of listeners get the Asian Network via AM rather than digital radio.

The BBC argues that the Asian community in the UK is made up of many different groups, from different places, with different languages and religions. This is absolutely right, Asians in the UK are not a homogeneous group. Where they get it wrong is then going on to say that the idea of a national network that can serve this whole community was never going to work. As one presenter argues, the network brings the communities together, as well as allowing discussion of controversial issues without the racism and ignorance in much of the rest of the mainstream media. Although there are other Asian-based radio stations throughout the country, there is no comparable UK-wide media outlet for the Asian community (and indeed the many white listeners, like me, that enjoy its programmes too!)

The other part of the cuts package is slashing the BBC website, especially the brands aimed at teenagers BBC Switch and Blast! The reasoning behind this is that the teenage audience is already being served by Channel 4. But the whole point of the BBC is that everyone pays for it, and everyone gets something out of it. Once we start accepting that teenagers are better served elsewhere, well let’s not forget that there’s Sky News or ITN to cover the news too. Where does it end? With the BBC providing only niche programming which others don’t do because it isn’t profitable. Teenagers have as much right to expect some service in return for the licence fee which either they or their parents pay as anyone else does.

If it is the case that the BBC needs to save money, then Leftfield has come up with a few ways this could be done with no impact on the quality of programmes. Currently, the BBC pisses gigantic sums of money into the bank accounts of a few people who really don’t need it. This is money paid in by the public via the licence fee. Let’s start with the top:

-BBC Director General Mark Thompson is on a salary of £834, 000. This is several-hundreds-of-grands more than Gordon Brown gets paid, and enough to pay for more than 7 months of 6 Music’s total costs.

Moyles' world record attempt for most amount of chins on air

-Then there’s Chris ‘Great Face for Radio’ Moyles, the boring and sexist Radio 1 presenter, who is on £630, 000 a year. In return we get a man who mocks gay people and says Polish people make “good prostitutes.”

-Or Jeremy Clarkson, who earns an unbelievable £2 million a year, and on top of that gets another £200, 000 through merchandise, and then receives another £117, ooo in “payment as services” i.e. freebies.

-Or Anne Robinson, who is getting £3 million a year from the BBC, after having said “what are Welsh people for?”. She also made old Blue Peter presenter John Noakes cry by asking about Blue Peter dog Shep “Did he die or just run away?” (hope you felt big and clever after that one!) Just how much is a wink worth?

The BBC would of course argue that these salaries are justified, because there is no other way it can compete to get “top talent” to stick with themand not go to other networks. Clearly there’s a very wide definition of talent being used. We suggest that the BBC immediately slash the salaries of all the above to make sure they’re not earning more than £70 an hour. If they say they can’t survive onthat, or they don’t want to, then fuck them. The UK is full of talented people who only want a decent living

Jeremy having fun: you're paying

wage and could produce amazing and innovative programming that benefits everyone. Some of them work for 6 Music and Asian Network!

Save the BBC petition.

Love 6 Music website.

Save 6 Music Facebook.

Save Asian Network Facebook.

Tell the BBC your views.

Looking shifty: Steven Purcell gets the sweats

After the resignation of the leader of Glasgow City Council Steven Purcell on Tuesday, it’s hard to find someone with a bad word to say about him.

Even SNP First Minister Alex Salmond, who once told Purcell to grow up, has been being nice about him.

So where do you go if you want to see someone be critical of this knobhead? Most of the media are, today at least, keeping cautious about the rumours about his resignation, since it was announced by his expensive high-powered solicitors. We wonder why that could be?

The official reason for Purcell standing down is that he is “exhausted and stressed”. But last week he seemed to be on good enough form to go to a fancy dinner at the Hilton with Gordon ‘Citric Idiot‘ Brown and Rangers manager Walter Smith to raise money for the Labour Party. But over the course of the weekend, things changed, and word started to come out on Monday he was standing down.

It’s easy to see why he would be stressed, following a major scandal at Strathclyde Passenger Transport, the public body responsible for running the subway and other public transport in Glasgow. Labour councillors have been in the top posts at this body for a long time, but recently it began to emerge that despite SPT bosses’ huge salaries, they’ve been making ridiculous expense claims, which added up to £520, 000. Free junkets enjoyed by top managers included trips to football games, expensive restaurants, £117,573 in foreign trips around the world, and even a Neil Diamond concert (where they undoubtedly had a few bottles of Red Red Wine).

Back of an SPT train

When this all started to come out several top managers were forced to resign. How this is linked to Purcell’s resignation remains to be revealed. Relations between the council and SPT have been severely strained by the affair. Tensions haven’t been helped by the slow pace of building up transport links needed for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Almost everyone who has commented on Purcell’s resignation has been quick to praise his role in bringing the Commonweath Games to Glasgow. But was the successful bid such great news for Glasgow as all the mainstream parties would like us to believe?

The current budget for the cost of the games is £288 million, but of course nobody believes such huge projects will ever stay inside their budget. Meanwhile, the race is on to for property developers and lazy rich people everywhere to get their hands on land in the East End and other extremely poor parts of Glasgow. Many know that if they own land they will get huge payouts from public funds for them. And after the Commonwealth Games, the long term effect is likely to be a wave of gentrification. That means that new housing and investment will mean that poor people can’t afford to live in areas they grew up any more.

It shouldn’t surprise us that this took place under Purcell’s leadership. Before he was leader of the council he was responsible for Development and Regeneration Services. What that really means is that he was at the head of efforts to use capitalist economics to transform Glasgow, and make sure it has no future as a working class city.

Purcell’s other greatest achievement was completely pissing off parents across the city when he decided to close 25 schools and nurseries, many of them in less well off areas like the Wyndford. This idiotic decision has been fought all the way by the city-wide Save Our Schools campaign. The fight included parents going into their children’s schools to occupy them.

Many were asking themselves why there was a bottomless pit of cash for the one-off Commonwealth Games, but nothing for the long term educational needs of Glaswegian pupils.

The full story behind Purcell’s resignation will take some time to come out. The announcement that today he came out of a drugs and drink rehab clinic may be the first sniff of the truth, but it’s still unclear why he was there. We do hope however that his recent experience in rehab, surrounded by people with serious addiction problems, will open his mind on the issues surrounding drugs in Glasgow.

Say hello to our new leader, Glasgow.

Glasgow urgently needs more support services for those with addiction problems. But Scotland as a whole needs to take a radical new approach, and recognise that the war on drugs has been lost. It’s time to stop treating people with problems like criminals, and give them the help they need through the NHS.

Unfortunately there seems to be little sign of the Labour Party as a whole taking this on board. The interim leader replacing Purcell is Jim Coleman, a man who has made a career out of being anti-drugs, and opposed several different education and support organisations. Whether this stance has any bearing on his selection as city leader remains to be seen.

Future face of Kent Police

Earlier this year The Guardian reported how a group of police forces and government agencies are working with BAE systems to adapt military drone robots for use in spying on UK citizens.

The flying robots are currently used in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world to monitor and mount attacks by remote.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 it had no military robots on the ground, and only a few unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the air. Today, just in Iraq, the US military is using 7000 drones and around 12, 000 ground robots. Although the US military is driving the development of military robots, the UK and other major arms manufacturing countries aren’t far behind. The Ministry of Defence has hosted robotics competitions to design new surveillance bots, and recently bought 100 Dragon Runner robots. Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore and Israel. China, Russia and India all have military robotics programmes of their own.

Without any real public scrutiny or comment, the way our governments conduct war, and indeed carry out police operations at home, is becoming increasingly robotocised. What’s wrong with this? On the face of it surely less human casualties for our soldiers is a good thing?

In Vietnam 58, 000 US soldiers died, compared to a few thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. A lot of this has to do with advancing technology, better medical techniques etc. However, over the past century civilian casualties in war have rocketed. In World War 1 civilians were only 10% of those that died. Today they make up as much as 90% of war casaulties. For example, it’s been reported that 1 million Pakistanis have fled their homes because of threat of US drone attacks on the border with Afghanistan. The people of the North-West Frontier Province must be wondering where their John Connor is.

Predator drone

Military chiefs have recognised since Vietnam that it’s often difficult to make ordinary people pull the trigger and kill a fellow human being. Even unconsciously, many will aim their guns high rather than shoot someone. It’s one of the reasons that the US moved away from using conscription to recruiting their army. They wanted a professional force of highly motivated trained killers.

Since Vietnam, the US military has becoming increasingly dependent on air power, and satellite monitoring from space. Now the sudden upsurge in the use of robots continues the trend-increasingly US soldiers in other countries are able to kill at a distance, probably with a video screen in between. This makes it much easier to indiscriminately destroy any suspected threats, meaning more civilians get killed in the process. For a generation of military robot operators who have grown up doing similar tasks in computer games again and again, it’s easy to see how they get desensitised to the misery they’re causing from afar.

Anti-war campaigners are currently able to get a lot of support because many people in Britain and the US are angry about the numbers of our troops dying in imperial wars. One of the main drives behind developing new robots is a hope by the government that this means they can reduce the numbers dying significantly. While nobody wants to see working class kids sent to die, we also don’t want to see the government feeling free to intervene anywhere it feels like it using robot troops.

The boom in military robots is also making a lot of money for arms manufacturers, like the privatised UK government agency turned international evil megacorp QinetiQ.

And now, with the news that the police in the UK are going to have access to surveillance drones, we’re about to see a dramatic increase in the ability of the state to spy on us wherever we go. The people of the UK already have more CCTV watching them than anywhere else on Earth. There’s about 1 CCTV camera for every 14 people in Britain.

But with the use of drones the police will be able to cheaply monitor anywhere they want from above, which obviously has implications for political activists that get up to things the government don’t like.

The good news is that anti-war activists are starting to wake up to the threat posed by military robots and take action, especially in the US. In January there was a protest outside the CIA headquarters against the use of drones. Members of the Pittsburgh Organising Group blockaded the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the largest academic military contractors in the country. Fourteen activists were arrested in the action, which successfully shut down the robotics lab for the day.

Some companies, like iRobot, make both civilian and military robots. iRobot manufactures both the PackBot and the Roomba home cleaning bot. Such companies are potentially worried about public pressure, and should be targeted.

An interesting possible future development would be that the enemies of the US and its allies could get in on the military robot revolution. There’ve been reports that Hizbollah have used drones against Israel. There’s also been the news that Iraqi insurgents have been able to hack into the live feed from US predator drones.

Just in case you think I’m making this up, or exaggerating the threat, here’s a look at some of the latest developments in robotics.

This is the SWORDS robot, that is armed and able to kill:

Here’s some footage of the truly terrifying (but still cool to look at, I know) BigDog robot, designed with funding from the military to be an artificial pack mule carrying gear over difficult terrain:

BigDog has got a little friend, the LittleDog.

This is a group of swimming robots based on a fish, with obvious potential naval applications.

Something that is especially creepy is the potential now to remotely control insects and intercept what they see for the use of surveillance. Check out this cyborg moth:

Perhaps the most crazy idea of all though is the EATR. This stands for Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot. The basic idea is that it would be able to operate alone out in the field for a long period without going back to base to refuel. Hence EATR-it can take organic matter from the environment and turn it into fuel. This has, unsurprisingly, got a lot of people worried. The idea of a potentially flesh eating killer robot on the loose is something that does not appeal to anyone who is even half way sane.

Artists' impression of the future EATR robot

The manufacturers and government agencies working on this technology have strictly denied that the EATR would ever start using the “organic matter” contained in the corpses of those it kills as fuel. They claim it is strictly vegetarian. Yet their own documents talk about chicken fat as a potential fuel, so the possibility that it could use fuel derived from animals, including humans, is clearly there.

Although many of these robots are developing the capacity for autonomous action, that is to take decisions on their own without the need for a human operator, we’re still quite a few years away from something with the intelligence of a Terminator or a Cylon.

And we shouldn’t be against the advances in robotics technology going on per se. It’s just that no technology is neutral-people design things with a goal in mind. And in our society one of the main goals is to make sure that the world’s most powerful countries are able to dominate the planet and exploit its peoples at the minimum cost to themselves.

But even with the prospect of robots becoming self-aware and nuking humanity isn’t quite on the horizon yet, some experts are already calling for serious thinking about military robots. Many have demanded that governments start thinking now about the implications of taking the decision of whether or not to kill someone out of human hands and putting it on an autonomous robot.

But SSY has a slightly more radical idea: how about we just don’t build KillBots. Doesn’t sound so crazy really, does it? Here’s a couple of documentaries that might win you round if you don’t agree:

XKCD: More Accurate:

Here's a photo of the moments described in the letter

Most readers will have been following how two weeks ago thousands of anti-fascists mobilised on the streets of Edinburgh to defeat the racist Scottish Defence League through militant direct action.

If you haven’t, you can read what SSY had to say about the day here and here.

Although the day was a great success, one of the things that clearly needs to be tackled if we’re going to build mass opposition to the far right in Scotland is unity within the anti-fascist movement.

SSY and the SSP have argued that there was room for both a mass demo and rally against racism (even if we had some reservations about some of the characters on the platform, like Edinburgh City Council Leader Jenny Dawe) and for those willing and able to take mass direct action by peacefully occupying the streets.

But on the day there were tensions and disagreement between the Edinburgh Anti Fascist Alliance, who argued for direct action, and Unite Against Fascism and Scotland United, the organisers of the march and rally.

Now EAFA have written an open letter to UAF, arguing for these tensions to be resolved to allow us to make sure that the SDL won’t be able to march in Lockerbie later this month. We should stress that this letter is by the Edinburgh Anti Fascist Alliance, which involves loads of different groups and individuals, and it’s not just by SSY or the Scottish Socialist Party. Nevertheless I think it’s fair to say that SSY endorses pretty much everything it says.

Here it is:

“Subject: Open Letter to the UAF

Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance Open letter to the UAF, 28 February 2010

Fellow Anti-Fascists,

We recognise the hard work of the UAF in building for the anti-Scottish Defence League demonstration, and were pleased with the cooperative relationship we had with Unite Against Fascism in the lead up to it. We were working together in the spirit of a united response to the SDL.

We were heartened to hear in the UAF meetings we attended, that the UAF considered that there was room for the two complimentary demonstrations on the day. We hoped that the problems that occurred in Glasgow were behind us, and that the UAF and Anti-Fascist Alliance could cooperate this time.

However on the day of the demonstration some members of the UAF intended to disrupt our protest, and take it back to the Scotland United march,despite these previous assurances, and the spirit of cooperation that existed before. Some UAF and Scotland United organisers spread disinformation, and said things that were known to be untrue, to the crowd as it marched to confront the SDL at the bottom of the Royal Mile.These untrue statements included: “there are no SDL in that pub, only Hibs casuals”, and “150 fascists are about to attack the Scotland United demonstration”. This led to confusion and people leaving.

Unity and superior numbers are our strengths against violent racists like the SDL. However these strengths were jeopardised by this behaviour, and put the safety of anti-fascists at serious risk. We would not like to imagine what the situation could have been like, had the depleted number of anti-fascists met a large group of SDL thugs at the bottom of the hill.

We hope that this letter will start a fraternal discussion about how we can avoid similar situations in the future, and how we can ensure greater level of unity and cooperation between the UAF and Anti-FascistAlliance so that we have the best chance of defeating fascism. We lookforward to cooperating with you against the SDL/EDL in Lockerbie and Bolton.
In Solidarity,

Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance.”

Every single one of the German party The Left’s 76 members of the Bundestag (the German national parliament) have been expelled after a protest against the war in Afghanistan.

Die Linke holding up the names of killed Afghan civilians

The left wingers, who are members of a new party attempting to unite German socialists and that has had rapid success in elections, held up signs with the names of Afghan civilians killed in a German-ordered airstrike last September.

The protest was during a debate on extending Germany’s mission in Afghanistan. Some 429 MPs voted for and 111 against the new mandate – 16 fewer votes in favour than last time – allowing troop numbers to be increased by 850 to 5,350, and keeping German troops in Afghanistan for another nine years.

This is despite the fact that as much as 80% of the German people oppose the war, and in fact it flouts the German constitution, which orders German armed forces to only be for national defence.

Die Linke know that they can make loads of brilliant speeches in the debate and won’t get covered by the mainstream media. What this protest did was capture the imagination of TV and the news, communicating quickly and visually to millions of Germans that socialists stand up against the war.

The draconian response by parliamentary officials was ridiculous, and is reminiscent of the scandalous way Scottish Socialist Party MSPs were treated in 2005, when they held up signs demanding the right to protest against G8 leaders who were meeting in Gleneagles.

SSP MSP's protest for the right to march on Gleneagles

MSPs from all other parties then voted to ban the SSP members involved from the parliament, and deny their wages and allowances, denying hard working socialist researchers and workers behind the scenes their income as well.

When socialist parties stand in elections, we do it to try and fight to change things as much as is possible within the limits of parliaments and councils that are still overall part of the capitalist system. But that doesn’t mean that sometimes you shouldn’t stand up and show people just how ridiculous what goes on in our parliaments really is. When sign holding is treated as a more serious crime than the killing of 142 civilians, is it any wonder that so many people don’t take parliament and mainstream politicians seriously?