An anti-cuts activist from Glasgow was sentenced to eighteen months in HMP Wandsworth at a London court on Friday, following his arrest at the March 26th TUC anti-cuts demonstration in London. His crime? Throwing a spent joke shop smoke bomb, picked up from the street, in the direction of a branch of Topshop – apparently enough to constitute ‘violent disorder’ and a lengthy prison sentence despite no damage being done to property or person. This was just one of a number of heavy sentences handed out to anti-cuts demonstrators at Kingston Crown Court on Friday, nearly all of them for similar (non-) offences – throwing sticks or pushing at barriers. Among the only positives on the day was for fellow Glasgow protester Bryan Simpson, who following a high profile defence campaign escaped with 120 hours community service and a four months suspended sentence for ‘affray’ at a student demo in London last November.
Omar Ibrahim was less lucky, and now looks to be in prison until at least next summer. In this statement that he wrote before being remanded in custody last month, Omar describes what happened on the day and draws the links between austerity, crisis and the growing use of draconian sentencing and political policing. Over the past year this has become increasingly visible, from the teenagers locked up for making comments on social media about the August riots to the gradual normalising of exclusion zones and pre-emptive arrests.
Yesterday’s sentences followed both the failure of Charlie Gilmour’s appeal and the recent upholding of the massively overboard sentencing doled out after the August riots. Then, all normal guidelines were thrown out in favour of disproportionate sentences for minor offences, due to their ‘mob’ nature which ‘aggravated’ violence and ‘appalled decent citizens’. What it comes down to is those unfortunate enough to be caught, regardless of what they may or may not have done, being punished massively out of context to their alleged ‘crime’. An assumption of innocence is disgarded – after all, if you made a choice to go on a protest, you’re practically asking to be locked up. Omar went on a protest, picked up a children’s toy off the street – and is now spending at least the next nine months in jail for it. It’s a crazy system, but one designed to scare and demoralise the rest of us – to keep us from protesting and keep us off the streets. As we once again prepare to take action en masse – with the latest round of student demos being kicked off this Wednesday and millions of workers lining up to take strike action on 30 November, we need to be as vigilant as ever. Read up on your rights, stay aware and keep fighting back. An injury to one is an injury to all! Support our political prisoners!
A full list the sentencing for violent disorder (and a selection of others) at London anti-cuts protests since Millbank is available here.
The following open letter has been written by the newly formed Glasgow Women’s Activist Forum in response to recent events involving the ‘Occupy Glasgow’ camp in George Square, a good summary of which can be found here. SSY supports the sentiments expressed in the letter, and we are happy to share it on our blog below:
We, the undersigned, are writing to those involved in the Occupy Glasgow protest because our voices have hitherto been marginalised and our concerns systematically ignored in the days following the rape that occurred at the protest on Tuesday.
Our decision to write this letter is not based on political or ideological rejections of the Occupy movement, but is motivated by a very real concern for the physical and emotional well-being of all those involved in Occupy Glasgow, with specific concern for women and vulnerable people.
We believe that those involved in the protest failed to ensure the safety of its participants. The safety of the most vulnerable amongst us must be paramount in any organisation or movement, and a failure to construct and implement a system which ensures the safety of all its participants constitutes a failure of the movement as a whole.
In light of the gang rape that took place on Tuesday, we condemn the decision to continue with the occupation. Not only does the rape itself constitute reason enough to end the protest, but the reaction in the days which have followed has only convinced us further.
Allowing rape apology, victim blaming, and accusations of ‘fabrication’ or ‘conspiracy to bring the occupation to and end’ to be voiced in statements both on the official Occupy Glasgow facebook page and at General Assemblies without question demonstrates a complete failure of those involved to grasp the severity of the incident.
There has been insufficient effort to make necessary changes to the physical space or the safer spaces policy following the attack.
Women remain at high risk at Occupy Glasgow, and openly voiced this at the women’s meeting on Friday 28th October. Prior to Tuesday, verbal and physical intimidation had been reported by occupiers to the group, yet these issues were not addressed.
Our decision to write an open letter followed attempts to reach out to Occupy Glasgow by attending General Assemblies. However, women who have attended meetings and facilitated workshops have experienced verbal and physical intimidation from occupiers, leaving us no option but to make this official appeal to the women of Occupy Glasgow to take our concerns seriously.
We consider this matter urgent, and cannot stress enough that this appeal is motivated purely by our desire to create safe spaces for women not just within activist movements, but everywhere in society.
This week, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) fired the latest salvo in the Government’s increasingly farcical response to the manufactured panic around ‘designer drugs’- in other words substances that are created and marketed specifically to get around existing drug laws.
The ‘designer drugs’ story has all the ingredients of the best tabloid moral panics- an external threat to demonise (count how many of the sensationalist news items mentioned ‘South-East Asian laboratories’), an ’insidious’ technology that has changed society (They bought this filth ONLINE?!?!) and, of course, us feckless, wayward young people, simultaneously victim and villain, falling prey to evil Chinese megachemists cos we’d rather get mwi than get a haircut. Or something like that.
It’s a pretty neat package for establishment figures, both in the media and the state- it sells papers, provides an easy way for the government to look TOUGH ON CRIME, and provides a nice ideological smokescreen for increasing police powers. When the establishment stumbles on a win-win situation like that, the truth often gets lost (or callously exploited, depends on your point of view) somewhere in between hyperbolic headlines and self-serving ‘get tough’ schemes. As we’ve reported here before, the whole mephedrone scare was triggered by um, police getting the name of a drug wrong.
However, government have come to realise that, by their very nature, trying to legislate against designer drugs is basically a fuckin nightmare. Take the near-inconceivable chemical complexity of the human brain, throw in millions of people determined to take drugs and willing to pay for it, then add the internet, and you’ll see that it’s just too cheap, easy and profitable to create and sell new drugs for legislators to keep up.
Which brings me to the ACMD’s proposed solution. The chair of the ACMD, Les Iversen, has recommended that we adopt American-style ‘analogue’ laws, which would make any substance ‘substantially similar’ to a banned drug automatically subject to the same penalties. Sound like a neat catch-all solution to a thorny legal problem? Well, not quite.
For one thing, the American analogue law is horribly vague, with literally no grounding in medicine or chemistry. The wording is so ambiguous that some critics
What our artist thinks designer drugs might do.
have suggested that it technically renders naturally occurring neurochemicals illegal- for example dopamine, which plays a crucial function in every human brain and is synthesised as a medicine, is arguably ‘substantially similar’ to speed or meth. In the absence of any actual science, the decision on what counts as an ‘analogue’ falls to subjective and socially-determined factors like the class and status of users, how the drug is marketed, and the ‘perceived’ effects (as both scientists and drug users will tell you, how drug effects are experienced is largely dependent on ‘set and setting’- factors like where and with whom you take the drugs and what you expect from them. In other words, perceived effects are largely determined by the previously mentioned social factors.)
What this means in practice is that police and courts make these decisions based on profiles of users and the reasons they take drugs, leading to increased criminalisation and persecution of already-marginalised groups like young people and the very poor. When examined closely, analogue laws present a picture that pretty much gives the lie to the idea that drug laws exist to reduce harm to society, rather suggesting that they’re drug laws for drug law’s sake, seeking to criminalise certain forms of drug use as part of a moral crusade against the social norms of ‘deviant’ sections of society. One Colorado judge ruled that the Analogue Act was ‘unconstitutionally vague’ and that it ‘provides neither fair warning nor effective safeguards against arbitrary enforcement’. A cynical person might suggest that that’s kind of the point.
Now, I personally think it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that the UK will adopt analogue laws. For one thing, they run contrary to the common law principle that you have the right to know beforehand what is illegal and what isn’t. For another, the vague wording makes them notoriously hard to get a conviction under. However the interesting point is that this profoundly unscientific suggestion came from the ACMD, supposedly the body that advises the government on drug science. So how did the independent academic body that once pressured the Thatcher government into setting up needle exchanges, despite the powerfully anti-drug message of coked-up 80s Tories, become an unscientific front for legitimising the War on Drugs?
Just sayin like...
The process arguably began in 2004 under the Blair government. New Labour, as we know all too well, kind of has a thing for manufacturing evidence to support their policies, and the ACMD’s role as, well, people who’re supposed to tell the truth, represented a bit of an obstacle to that. In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the massively unpopular Labour Government was searching for a nice headline-grabbing distraction that would cast them in a good light, and they landed on the scourge of people giggling and seeing pretty patterns in wallpaper. At that time, although the active ingredient of magic mushrooms was illegal, the law did not prohibit the sale or possession of mushrooms themselves. Labour decided, bastards that they are, that it would be a good idea to launch a crackdown on mushroom use and unilaterally made them a Class A drug without consulting the ACMD. This decision was, in fact, illegal, as the Misuse of Drugs Act that established the ACMD states that they must be consulted on any changes in drug policy.
Heartened by the positive headlines this gathered them, they next decided to contradict ACMD recommendations again, and whipped up a ridiculous media frenzy about so-called ‘super-skunk’, mad dangerous weed that makes you go mental and die. Having manufactured this public health scare, they then stepped in to appear responsible and public-minded and reversed the earlier decision to downgrade cannabis to a Class-C drug. Again without consulting the ACMD, again illegally. This was accompanied by a police crackdown, sniffer dogs on the London underground, and a massively disproportionate rate of conviction for young black men.
By this time it was becoming clear that there had been a cultural shift in government, and that the independent drugs advisory body was basically considered a bit too independent. When the former chairman of the ACMD, David Nutt, presented extensive scientific evidence to the government that Ecstasy and MDMA don’t do sufficient social or medical harm to warrant Class-A status they went one step further than simply ignoring his recommendations and sacked him for causing them embarrassment. This was followed by mass resignations of most of the experienced scientists on the ACMD, outraged at the way their professional integrity had been compromised.
Those who did not resign were promoted, and the rest replaced with more compliant figures. The process of eroding the ACMD was now complete. First illegally stripped of its role in forming drug policy, it gradually morphed into a useful propaganda tool for shifting debate rightwards, by making unscientific, reactionary, crackpot suggestions such as those of the last week. This means a further step away from real science forming our society’s attitude to drugs, which in turn means more needless drug deaths, more addiction and ruined lives, more costly and pointless imprisonment, more police repression and racial profiling.
But, just as we saw with mephedrone, you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Naturally the Spanish PM has spoke of ETA’s declaration as a victory over terror and a rebuke to radical Basque nationalists. In reality, the use of shootings and bombings by a group the size of ETA is unable to bring independence to the Basque country, and skews the coverage of the conflict as one between the Spanish state and a small armed organisation. This totally ignores the strength of the Basque radical pro-independence movement, and acts in the interests of the Spanish state by making the dispute about a conflict against terrorism that the Basques cannot win by military means.
The position of the Basque independence left is one the untold success stories of the Socialist movement in Europe. In almost every town and city, the left pro-independence movement -- known as the Abertzale or patriotic left -- controls youth centres, pubs and social clubs. These community facilities are considered such a threat to the Spanish state that one of them was recently demolished, despite public opposition. The Basque Left can also wield a significant section of the popular vote in the Basque country -- almost certainly larger than anywhere else for the Socialist Left in Europe.
In the recent municipal elections in the Spanish State, the Basque Left party Bildu stood and took a whopping 25% of the vote -- the largest ever vote recieved by the pro-independence left, who historically took between 10% and 20%. This makes Bildu the opposition party in the Basque country, to the pro-independence moderate party the PNV which took 30% of the vote. This combined vote shows there is a solid majority in favour of independence for the Basque country.
The vote for the pro-independence left was even more impressive giving the Spanish State had tried to ban Bildu from standing -- claiming that it was a front for ETA and Batasuna, a radical Basque party the Spanish state previously banned that took between 15 -- 20%. This ban was ridiculous considering that Bildu declared it did not support ETA attacks to bring about independence, and that ETA itself had declared it’s intention to end it’s campaign.
Despite ETA’s repeated attempts to engage with the Spanish State in a peace process, both the right-wing Popular Party and the New Labouresque Spanish Socialist Workers Party refused to enter into any meaningful negotiation to end the conflict. Unreported from the majority of the world’s media is the ongoing political repression in the Basque country -- in which political parties like Batasuna were banned, Basque newspapers were shut down, prisoners are tortured, youth organisations are prohibited and radical Basque politicians jailed for insulting the monarchy. This repression hasn’t all come from the right wing of Spanish politics either -- it was the “Socialist” Workers Party who set up death squads to assassinate and torture ETA members and Basque radical politicans, with the authorization and support of Government ministers.
Banned Basque pro-Independence Left group SEGI
The Spanish State refuses to enter a peace process because it knows what the result inevitably will be -- almost every single election since the overthrow of Franco in Spain has produced a majority nationalist administration in the Basque autonomous region. Spain has refused any discussion on Independence for the Basque country -- with the Spanish Parliament vetoing even unofficial referendums on the Basque country’s future, fearing the inevitable yes vote for Independence.
The modern Spanish state never really decisively broke with it’s fascist past -- there were no trials or truth and reconciliation commissions for those who tortured and murdered leftists, trade unionists and Basque and Catalan nationalists under Franco. Instead an agreement was struck between the conservative and centre-left parties not to pursue justice for these people, and to enshrine in the Spanish constitution the illegality of any form of independence for nations that are currently part of the Spanish State. The so-called democratic post-Franco constitution made it illegal for the Basque country to become independent without the sanction of the central Spanish Government. It was for this reason that the majority of Basque voters abstained and voted against accepting this new constitution -- and why despite the overthrow of Franco, ETA continued an armed campaign.
Basque political prisoners are dispersed - this poster demands their return.
Now it’s become clear the Basque independence movement has stronger weapons in it’s arsenal than bombs or bullets, weapons the Spanish State cannot easily quash. With the support of a third of the population, and dozens of community facilities across the Basque country the pro-Independence left is ready to wage a war of the people against the Spanish State.
SSY was proud to host a group of Basque Abertzale youth at our camp last year. One of the motivations they had in coming to Scotland was to observe the possible referendum on Independence here. Unfortunately, we never got a chance to vote for Independence in 2010 because the Unionist parties blocked it. However as you’ve probably noticed, the recent SNP landslide means there will be a definite referendum in the next 4 years. This isn’t just important for Scotland -- it’s a message to the Spanish State and the Basque people as well. If Scots are allowed to vote in a free vote on our future, without being blocked by the Spanish Government, tortured, shot by death squads, having our political parties banned, our newspapers closed down, community centres demolished -- why shouldn’t the Basque Country have that choice as well?
FREEDOM FOR THE BASQUE COUNTRY -- GORA EUSKAL HERRIA!
5000 Basques march in Bilbao against "Hispanity day" in Solidarity with massacred American indians.
Mass protest outside the Greek Parliament in Athens on Wednesday
On Thursday evening, the Greek Parliament voted through its latest austerity package – approved by all but one of the deputies from the ruling ’social democratic’ party, PASOK. Tens of thousands of workers will now suffer dramatic wage cuts of 40%, the slashing of pensions and the tearing up of collective bargaining agreements, on top of tax hikes and 20% unemployment (youth unemployment being nearer 50%).
In reality, the real authority in Greece is now the ‘Troika’, meaning the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank. These three institutions are holding the Greek government hostage, demanding the complete destruction of the country’s public sector in return for the continuation of the €110bn bailout package which is keeping the country afloat, if far from stable. Greece can now keep paying its bills for a few months more, but a default on their national debt in the not too distant future is still almost certain.
Wednesday and Thursday saw the biggest days of action against austerity in Greece so far. Huge numbers were on the streets across the country, as hundreds of thousands of private sector workers joined the strikes for the first time. There were chaotic scenes in Athens, as stewards from the Stalinist trade union federation PAME clashed with other demonstrators. Amid the chaos, a PAME supporter died – although reportedly from breathing difficulties caused by police teargas.
The world economy is in crisis: Greece is the testing ground – and austerity isn’t working. By forcing ever deeper and harder cuts – this is the third drastic, emergency austerity package pushed through the parliament this year – the government is facing the growing contradictions of the system. Minus 7 percent “growth” is not going to cure the deficit. A default is probably on its way, and has actually already happened to a limited, controlled extent: Greece’s creditors have already accepted that they’ll only ever get back 79 cents for every euro lent. However controlled or uncontrolled the default turns out to be, the impact on northern European banks, and the Euro, will be profound, and there’s a risk the ‘contagion’ could spread to Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Greece has entered a situation where the vast majority of the population have lost all faith in the political system and the government, who cling on through necessity to implement the orders of the Troika. Class war is being raged by the elites, meaning the absolute destruction of welfare and living standards, plunging millions into poverty. The economist Paul Mason has described what’s happening in the country as “anomie”, meaning the gradual breakdown of social order through the effective withdrawal of the state from public life: schools without textbooks, mass unemployment, general lawlessness and, among swathes of the population, little hope that anything can get better – as summed up in this report from a few weeks ago.
Europe is watching: Greece was first, but will not be the last. Organise, counter-attack!
Nuanced and understated as ever, the front page of today’s The Sun celebrates the demise of a despised despot, class enemy and war criminal whose decades-long rule has created untold misery for millions, and whose stubborn refusal to step aside has led to civil war amid the ruins of his former empire and destruction on a mass scale. Or something.
He lived his life like a candle in the wind. A mad candle, ranting that people on ecstasy were trying to overthrow his regime and replace it with Al Qaeda but a candle nonetheless. With the news that Colonel Gaddafi has died in his hometown of Sirte, who now will fill the shoes of craziest head of state? Whose going to design the uncrashable cars? Call for the abolition of Switzerland? Accuse the H1N1 virus of being an imperialist plot?
Colonel Gaddafi’s death comes as a massive relief to the Libyan rebel National Transitional Council. While it was impossible Gaddafi would ever be able to rule Libya again his continued survival could have provided inspiration and encouragement to Libyan’s opposed to the new council. Only a few days ago a gun battle erupted in Tripoli between the NTC and Gaddafi loyalists. And despite Tripoli falling months ago, Sirte and Bani Walid managed to hold out until today, against both the NTC and NATO bombardment. This suggests Gaddafi has -- or at least had -- a section of the population still willing to fight for him even when his rule was clearly finished. Neutralising that potential insurgency is probably the top priority of the NTC, especially given that the rebel council itself is not homogeneous and has former Gaddafi ministers and Islamists sitting around the same table.
For NATO the bombing campaign of Libya has been a success -- especially when you consider the long weeks of apparent stalemate, and the fact that the bombing campaign was the most unpopular war fought by the United States in recent memory. The push for NATO involvement in Libya was led by the UK and France, who are showing that despite planned defence cuts, they can still wield a big stick to maintain their sphere of influence in North Africa -- and at a cost of £1 Billion, can still find the money to do it in a time of austerity. The reality is that despite the language of human rights and democracy, NATO’s involvement in Libya has been motivated by far less noble and more complex factors.
The root cause of NATO intervention in Libya lies with the rebellion itself in early 2011. Following on from the wave of revolution that toppled Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Mubarak and Egypt Gaddafi’s regime was the next to face a popular uprising. This began in the eastern city of Benghazi -- a stronghold of the opposition to the Colonel, and a Libya’s second largest city -- where Libyan’s took to the streets to protest the pre-emptive arrests of human rights campaigners. What happened next is disputed -- Gaddafi’s loyalists claim the rebels stormed the barracks and staged an armed uprising without provocation, while the protesters claim they were fired upon by soldiers first. This uprising therefore started in quite a different way from that of Tunisia or Egypt -- instead of demonstrators occupying a square and demanding the resignation of a despot, this was more an armed insurrection with attacks on barracks and police stations to secure guns in cities and towns across the country.
The Libyan uprising took this form because the regime in the country is very different from that of Tunisia or Egypt. In Tunisia and Egypt the two strongmen dictators, Ben Ali and Mubarak, were dependent on their power from many other forces in their societies -- that of the army, the business class, western imperialism etc. Ben Ali and Mubarak were the public faces of the regimes -- but they were disposable once they became a liability to those forces. Hence why the Egyptian military was unwilling to risk it’s stake in Egyptian society (as a massive business empire) by shooting demonstrators in a Tienanmen Square-style massacre of the demonstrators to keep Mubarak in power. In these countries when the protest movement became unstoppable, the forces in control of Egyptian and Tunisian society had a quiet word with the strongmen leaders and told them to resign -- so that the business interests of those countries could be preserved, and stability for western imperialism be consolidated.
Libya -- or to give it it’s proper title under Gaddafi, “The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” -- was a bit different from those countries as the official name might suggest. If you’ve not heard of the word “Jamahiriya” before it might be because it is a word Colonel Gaddafi made up that means “state of the masses”. Obviously what a country calls itself doesn’t reveal everything about how it is run -- but the fact that the official name of the country was invented by Gaddafi himself suggests he had a much bigger role to play in that regime than Mubarak or Ben Ali did. You might also have noticed the different flags the rebels and Gaddafi supporters have used -- the rebels use the Libyan independence flag, flown under the monarchy which is red, green and black with a crescent moon, while Gaddafi’s supporters use the official Libyan Jamahiriya flag, which is solid green. The flag was picked by Gaddafi to tie in with his book of mad things he wrote -- “The Green Book”.
So when you have a society that’s official organs and symbols are named around the eccentricities of it’s mad ruler, you see how difficult it could be in trying to remove him peacefully. Gaddafi intentionally kept different parts of Libyan society -- most importantly the military -- weak so that they could not be used to remove him in a coup, or force him to stand down the way the Egyptian army did with Mubarak when his time was up. Instead, Gaddafi was able to use armed forces loyal to himself and the Libyan “Jamahiriya” he created to suppress the rebellion with lethal force.
Gaddafi was also able to stay in power thanks to an additional factor that Mubarak and Ben Ali did not have -- a section of support amongst the population. Gaddafi took power in Libya in a bloodless military coup in 1969, with the same program as other Arab nationalist movements like Nasser in Egypt. Under Gaddafi’s rule the oil was nationalised and used to develop the country’s infrastructure, building roads, schools, hospitals -- even a massive irrigation project called the Great Man-Made River -- which transformed Libya from the poorest country in the world to the richest country in Africa, with a Human Development Index comparable to that of Eastern Europe and Portugal. Gaddafi’s success in these social projects shouldn’t be used to whitewash his regime as a socialist paradise -- the unemployment rate in Libya in 2009 was over 20%, and hundreds of thousands still lived in poverty. But the fact that Libya did develop infrastructure and social programs better than most of Africa under Gaddafi allowed him to secure a base for his regime, particularly in the western part of Libya where the rebellion was weaker.
Gaddafi was able to pursue these social policies because despite being no socialist, he took a path independent of western capitalism for most of his reign, able to use oil funds that would have been privatised in other western puppet states to develop the country. While Gaddafi reached an accommodation with the West since dismantling his WMD program and handing over the alleged Lockerbie bomber -- notably culimnating in getting off with Tony Blair in a tent in the desert -- he still maintained policies independent of western imperialism. Jack Ferguson, formerly an SSY columnist here before he got too old outlines a few of these policies in his excellent blog post here.
Gaddafi maintained an independent state-controlled banking system, with the power to issue it’s own money -- different from the other neo-colonies in Africa whose currencies are guaranteed by western powers like France. This meant that the Libyan economy -- unlike so many other African countries -- did not have massive levels of debt to western powers. As Libya was a country independent of western financial control, it was able to use it’s economic power to assist African development in the construction of telecommunication satellites and even more dangerously for western banks, propose an African currency guaranteed with Libya’s gold reserves. The use of a currency not in hoc to the western powers would undermine the financial enslavement of Africa by the European powers. The last person to try something similar was Saddam Hussein, who started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars before he was toppled by the United States. One of the first thing the rebels did was set up a new central bank, which raises questions about what kind of economic program they want to install in Libya now Gaddafi has been toppled.
Gaddafi also repeatedly used racist attitudes in Europe regarding immigration to his favour, warning western leaders that Europe would “turn black” unless he received the aid he demanded. Gaddafi played a cynical game with the lives of thousands of immigrants to Europe, selectively detaining them or letting them emigrate to Europe depending on what suited his interests. Gaddafi has also historically had a lot of influence in Africa -- one of the reasons why the African Union vociferously opposed NATO’s program of regime change in Libya. The nationalized oil wealth has been used in a combination of military assistance and aid packages to bolster the African regimes the Colonel supported.
Libya's influence throughout Africa.
All of these policies -- independent currency for Africa, state control of banks, refusal to play ball on immigration, regional power status in the African continent -- made working with Gaddafi a grudging necessity for western powers. Despite their rapprochement with him, Gaddafi was never a western puppet in the same way Mubarak or Ben Ali was. This doesn’t make Gaddafi a hero -- in fact his response to protests was more brutal than Mubarak or Ali, and his refusal to stand down has brought NATO bombing and civil war to his country -- but it does explain why the West intervened in Libya but will not intervene in a variety of other African conflicts or assist other pro-democracy movements in the Arab world. Gaddafi was bombed by NATO because he pursued a path independent of the west to some degree, and because he refused to step down when his time was up. His refusal to resign like Mubarak made Libya an unstable country, unacceptable to the European countries who purchase Libyan oil.
Gaddafi’s already paid the personal price for his rule -- his firing on demonstrators, repression of students, prison massacres -- with grisly photos of his corpse circulating the internet. But there’s a potentially darker side to the fall of Sirte than just the death of this despot, that may go unreported -- the fate of thousands of Black Libyan African men. In the opening days of the uprising in Benghazi there was footage circulated, alongside rumours, that Gaddafi was using foreign African mercenaries to crush the protesters. Whatever Gaddafi did during the opening days of the uprising, human rights organisations have investigated the claim of mercenaries and can find no evidence to support it. Unfortunately these rumours were circulated by tv stations like Al Jazeera and now as the rebels have taken control of most of Libya, Black Libyans are effectively being lynched by racist forces within the uprising.
The siege on the city of Misurata was widely reported, with a spotlight on Gaddafi’s forces shelling the civilian population. Whats not been reported as widely is the fate of a neighbouring town -- Tawergha, which was accused by the rebels of being pro-Gaddafi and assisting the siege. When the siege of Misrata was lifted, the rebels advanced on Tawergha and to all intents and purposes cleansed it. As one rebel commander said “Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata”. A city of 10,000 Black Africans has effectively been ethnically cleansed, with racist graffiti declaring the rebels are “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” being daubed across the city. The rebels themselves say the Tawergha will return to their city “over their dead bodies”. Many of these refugees fled to Sirte, a city that may face a similar fate as Tawergha.
The ghost town of Tawergha, ethnically cleansed by the rebels.
This is not the only human rights abuse the rebels have committed. As the western media entered Tripoli after the fall of Gaddafi, they found corpses with their hands bound behind their back and bullets in their heads in Gaddafi’s Bab Al Azziya compound. Naturally the suspicion fell on a massacre committed by Gaddafi. But many of these victims were Black Africans with foreign passports -- suggesting they were migrant workers who had been summarily executed by the rebels. These crimes against Black Libyans have been committed across the country as the Libyan civil war became a war not just between the East and West, but between African and Arab.
Racist lynching of Black Africans conducted by the rebels in Libya
Not all rebels are motivated by racism -- the Libyan Youth Movement for example has been key in supporting the uprising and is inspired by the youth movements in the wider Arab world. Unfortunately, many of those opposing Gaddafi are not so clean cut. The chairman of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil was Colonel Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister. Jalil was happy to act as one of Gaddafi’s lackeys when it suited him -- including the torture and rigged trial of Bulgarian nurses accused of giving Libyans HIV. Alongside Jibril are many other former diplomatic and military staff who happily served under Gaddafi. The highest ranking defector was Abdel Fattah Younis, a Major General in the Libyan army. Despite being described as a defector, privately Younis was captured by the rebels when he tried to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Unsurprisingly many of the rebels were not to keen on receiving military commands from someone who was so pivotal in Gaddafi’s regime -- particularly those who fought a long guerilla war against him.
The uprising in Libya was not a CIA/Al Qaeda plot to remove an anti-imperialist, before anyone suggests that -- it was a genuine popular social movement, taking it’s roots in the poorest cities and towns in Libya, and led by young revolutionaries inspired by the toppling of Arab dictators (that Gaddafi had supported). Who will come out on top is by no means certain. But what is certain is that NATO involvement means that the West now has a massive sway over Libya’s revolution, that they clearly do not have in Egypt or Tunisia, and they are already trying to put their own people in charge. Gaddafi might be dead, but as Iraq shows there is absolutely no guarantee that things will get better when a despot is removed. In fact, they can always get much, much worse.
The past year has seen a groundswell of opposition and resistance to the cuts and austerity plans the governments and financial institutions of the world are trying to inflict upon millions of people. In Greece, the government is threatened with mass strikes and will be forced to default on its debt, and in Spain and the US “Los Indignados” and the Occupy Wall Street movement have brought anti-capitalist ideas into the mainstream, a charge that’s being led and supported by thousands of newly radicalised young people in those countries. In Scotland this growing radicalisation has also been observed, as alongside traditional and established forces of the labour movement, fresh momentum has been gained by new mobilisations of young people, from the student demonstrations against fees, to the six month long Hetherington Occupation and the recently launched Coalition of Resistance in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
This new participation of young people in the anti-cuts movement is a product of the changed attitudes in society. Today, opposition to capitalism is no longer a fringe political viewpoint. Millions of people have lost faith in the entire economic and political system – from the raw greed of the banks, the expenses scandal in Westminster and the police cover up of News of the World phone hacking. The ideas of the socialist left – that capitalism is unsustainable, unworkable, unfair, corrupt and that mainstream politicians slavishly defend this system – are much more widely held amongst the population than ever before. But despite this change in public consciousness, it has not translated into votes for the parties of the socialist left. In fact at the last Holyrood elections, the socialist parties got their lowest vote since devolution. At the height of the SSP’s success in 2003 it got 130,000 votes and 6 MSPs – despite the obviously rosier situation for capitalism and the free market at that time.
The fact that the SSP was a united party at that point, and has since been divided is the biggest single factor in the collapse in the left vote. In the five years since that split, there have been several unity initiatives – including No2EU and TUSC – that have attempted to unify sections of the left but with little electoral success. As the council election approaches, a similar initiative has been put forward – four leading left wing trade unionists have proposed a meeting to discuss standing anti-cuts candidates in next year’s local government elections.
Any moves towards genuine left unity are to be welcomed. But for initiatives like this to be successful, they must take account of the fact that currently, the majority of people on the left and in the anti-cuts movement are not in any established Socialist organisation – be that the CWI, SWP, Solidarity, SSP, ISG etc – but are rather unaligned, from trade unions, anti-cuts campaigns, the student movement and so on. If there is to be a meeting to decide terms for standing anti-cuts candidates, SSY believes it must be done in recognition of this fact, with the involvement of these independents and a feeling that they have ownership over the process as opposed to a perception that it is simply a front or carve up between existing socialist organisations.
Therefore SSY is calling for the meeting on October 22nd not to take any immediate decisions regarding the standing of candidates or in what council seats, as the majority of the left and anti-cuts movement has not been involved or aware of this process.
To ensure the involvement of these forces instead we call for:
The meeting on the 22nd to call for an open conference to discuss a socialist and anti-cuts slate at a later date
That this meeting is widely advertised to all left and anti-cuts campaigns in unions, workplaces, educational institutions and communities
That there are open pre-meetings to discuss the agenda for this conference
That the conference is organised in a bottom up format, splitting into groups to encourage participation and deter dominance from speakers from any one political group or party
No final decision on involvement in an anti-cuts electoral slate can be take until it is discussed in respective organisations, in our case the SSY and SSP. There is also already a sitting SSP councillor, Jim Bollan in West Dumbartonshire, which will need to be taken into account in any anti-cuts council elections slate. But we believe that if a campaign to form an anti-cuts slate is conducted with the proposals we outline above – that candidates are not chosen just now and that time and energy is taken to include a broad swathe of the newly radicalised forces in Scottish society, then there is a much better chance of genuine left unity that encompasses all those who want to fight the cuts, not limited to the existing socialist organisations.
National Executive Committee,
Scottish Socialist Youth
The US government has foiled a terrorist plot involving Iran, Mexican drug cartels, Cuba, Hezbollah, and Osama Bin Laden’s reanimated corpse. Ok, ok they’re actually only claiming the first two. In news that will bring joy to 24 season writers and Tea Party members, the United States Department of Justice has allegedly exposed an Iranian terrorist plot to strike the heart of America. The Attorney General, Eric Holder outlined an alleged terror plot in which Iranian agents would oversee the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States as well as a bombing campaign against Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington DC. If that didn’t sound crazy enough, the Iranian’s were alleged to have orchestrated this plan by approaching the Mexican drug cartel Los Zeta’s for help -- the cartel was to be paid $1.5 million and supplied with Iranian opium for carrying out the attacks.
US Attorney General Eric Holder
Unfortunately for the Iranians the Zeta’s contact in this (alleged) plot was in fact a DEA informant -- presumably Jack Bauer on spring break getting MWI in Tijuana. As well as closely fitting the plot of a recent Tom Clancy novel, detailing Taliban collusion with the Juarez Cartelthis cartel connection could ostensibly be used for deploying the US army into Mexico, to fight the increasingly brutal drug war going on there -- as one Republican Presidential candidate has already suggested. This would give the United States two wars to fight, one in Mexico alongside Iran presumably. Attorney General Holder announced that in the next few hours, measures against Iran would be outlined -- that could range from sanctions to bombing a fourth Muslim country in ten years.
There are two factors that may spare Iran war -- one is that so far the US Government is accusing “factions” of the Iranian Government as being responsible for the plot, something quite different from saying the actual leadership of the country is behind the assassination attempt. After all it was only a few weeks ago the US accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting insurgents in Afghanistan, despite Pakistan being a US ally. Here it’s specifically it’s the Revolutionary Guard of Iran who are being accused of funding and planning this plot. The Revolutionary Guard are a 125,000 strong armed wing of the Iranian military, whose specific remit is the defence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution -- similar in respects to Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, in their role as the best equipped, most loyal defence of an autocratic regime. Naturally this position gives them significant influence in Iranian society, which means it is possible they could have independently organised a terrorist plot in the United States without the knowledge of Iran’s President Ahmadinejahd or the real power in the country, the Guardian Council. That’s one reason Iran might not be a gigantic car park by the time I finish typing.
The second reason is that Iran is no Iraq -- bombing, invading and occupying Iran will not be as easy as the invasion of Iraq. And as some of our more eagle eyed readers may have noticed, invading Iraq was not the greatest plan ever. Iran is a regional power in the Middle East with an army that has not been broken under the weight of sanctions and war, as Saddam Hussein’s was by 2003. Also Iran has significant influence outside it’s borders -- namely in Iraq and Lebanon, where Iranian support is provided to the Shia parties of Iraq like SCIRI (The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and more famously, Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. Any attack on Iran would result in attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Hezbollah -- which proved it’s competence as a fighting force in the 2006 war on Lebanon -- attacks on America’s ally Israel. Alongside this ability to exert force across the Arab world, Iran would also be able to halt shipping through the Straits of Hormuz -- effectively halting a majority of the world’s oil supplies, potentially tipping the entire world into another recession.
Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi ambassador anyway? Israel seems an obvious enough target, but why target the Saudis? Alongside the well publicized Arab-Israeli conflict, there’s another less well known cold war in the Middle East -- that between the regional powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It goes right back to Iran’s revolution itself, which overthrew the pro Western monarch of Iran, The Shah. The Gulf is chock a block full of similar pro Western monarchs -- in Dubai, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and the biggest one of all, Saudi Arabia. All of these rulers are shit scared at the idea of being overthrown by the poor and dispossessed sections of their society, mobilised under the flag of Islamic revolution. One most recent example of this was in Bahrain, where the monarchy (who are Sunni Muslims, and the minority of the population) faced an uprising from the population (who are mostly Shiite Muslims). Here the US sided with Bahraini government, who allow the US to station a naval base in the country and turned a blind eye to the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s deployment of armed forces to the Kingdom to suppress the rebels.
Bahrain's uprising, crushed by Saudi troops.
The movement in Bahrain was not Islamist in nature, and a far cry from the Islamic revolution in Iran during the late 70’s -- instead taking it’s inspiration from the secular movement that brought down Mubarak in Egypt. But any mobilisation of Muslims against these Gulf monarchies -- specifically those of the Shia -- will always be linked to Iran by their ruling elites. That’s why there’s a Saudi Arabia/Iran hostility in the Arab world -- a hostility that even sometimes breaks ranks with the traditional Arab/Israeli confrontation, like when Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister described the Shiite and Iranian supported Hezbollah millitia as a “bunch of adventurers” and blamed them, and not Israel for the 2006 war. Saudia Arabia ’s even shares Israeli and US hostility to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme -- a wikileaks cable revealed the Saudi King Abdullah was encouraging the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Saudi Arabia have -- alongside Israel -- played the role of US ally in the Middle East for decades, and have been armed to the teeth by the West. The United States simply can’t allow the world’s largest oil producer to fall to an Arab nationalist or Islamic revolution. It’s why despite spending $39 billion on arms, the Saudi Arabian army is deliberately kept weak; the weapons are “pre-positioned” to be used by US forces to quash any uprising, and the army is kept weak to stop any coup against the monarchy.
Despite all the hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia there’s still no guarantee the US Government of all people are honest in this terror accusation -- America has been chomping at the bit for years to attack Iran, and now they may have their pretext. The Iranians would have to have been spectacularly reckless to believe they could blow up the Saudi Ambassador in America’s capital -- particularly through the alleged middlemen of the Zeta’s cartel, a non-political organisation whose only objective is to sell drugs and make money -- without facing retaliation. The Zeta cartel themselves would have a lot to lose by signing up to such a scheme -- almost guaranteed US military assistance to the beleaguered Mexican Government that’s desperately trying to crush them. These accusations against the Zeta’s only serve to make them sound even more like something out of a Bond movie -- the Los Zeta’s Cartel were originally an elite special forces squad in Mexico, who decided that there was a lot more money in drugs so decided to defect to the side of the cartels they used to fight. Their special forces background means they’ve been able to run rings around the Mexican state, and many US government agencies too…
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Quality polis, aw the way.
Which brings us to scandal that’s gone unreported this side of the Atlantic, which has embroiled the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) bureau of the US Government and the Attorney General Eric Holder -- who broke the story about the alleged terror plot. The scandal sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie -- specifically the title -- “Operation Fast and Furious”. This ATF operation didn’t involve Vin Diesel in charge of a carjacking ring though -- instead it was an authorized US Government operation to force gun stores in the US to sell firearms to people with links to drug cartels. Here ATF officers ordered gun stores to sell firearms to criminals, ostensibly so they could be tracked to the leaders of the cartel and convicted on conspiracy charges. But the entire operation was blown when a US Border Patrol guard was shot dead by one of the “Fast and Furious” weapons and an ATF agent blew the whistle. It’s been described as Obama’s “potential Watergate” due to the national scandal of a US Government agency allowing the sale of thousands of firearms to be used to kill on both sides of the Mexican border. Some of the Right Wing in the USA have an easy answer as to why this gunrunning was allowed -- to allow the Democrats to clamp down on gun sales in the States, in the wake of massive violence from the Cartels.
ATF Whistleblower exposes state sanctioned supply of arms to drug cartels
But there is another more convincing -- and sinister- explanation; the US Government is deliberately facilitating the sale of arms to one side in the Mexican drug war -- the Sinaloa Cartel -- in exchange for that organisations assistance in destroying rival cartels. Rival cartels like Los Zetas. Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the US went further and claimed the Sinaloa Cartel were actually allowed to transport cocaine across the border without US Government interference. It may sound far fetched, but it’s happened before. The entire crack epidemic which took hold of the USA in the 80’s was orchestrated by the anticommunist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, with the CIA turning a blind eye to their shipments of cocaine to the US that were used to fund their war against the Socialist Sandinista Government.
There’s also been collaboration between US agencies and Latin American Governments with drug cartels in the past. In Colombia, during the hunt for Pablo Escobar the Billionaire drug lord, an organisation called Los Pepes sprung up. Los Pepes ostensibly stood for “People persecuted by Pablo Escobar” but was in reality a front for the Cali cartel who were in competition with Pablo’s Medellin organisation. Los Pepes were vital in helping the US bring Pablo down, as they could wage a war of terror against his family and business associates that the Colombian state was unable (openly) to do. Because Los Pepes were murdering his lawyers, cousins, business partners Pablo was unable to launch a full scale war against the Colombian wealthy for fear his wife and children may be killed (who were refused amnesty by the US). Previously when Escobar was on the run from the Colombian state he deployed his private army to indiscriminately terrorize the wealthy in Colombia -- with bombings, drive by shootings and kidnappings against the well heeled. This had the desired effect of Colombia’s elite feeling the heat of the drug war and demanding the Colombian Government give in to his demands -- which were effectively to continue running his own business from a luxurious private “prison” he designed, built and staffed.
Coming soon to an ATF bureau near you.
Killing Escobar itself had no real effect on the drug trade. With Escobar removed the Cali cartel simply took over the gap in the market. And then when they were removed, the Mexican’s took over the trade. If Apple stopped producing computers tomorrow people would still buy computers -- it’s just that they would buy them from Dell or Microsoft. The same principle works for cocaine. Remove one supplier and another takes their place. So why were the American’s desperate to destroy Escobar? Largely because he became a threat to the Colombian state and American security itself. Escobar did not keep his head down like the Cali cartel, and carry out business discreetly. Instead Escobar was elected as a Colombian Senator, funded welfare projects for the poor -- and bombed an airline to try and assassinate a Colombian Presidential candidate who threatened him with extradition. This bombing killed US citizens, and was an unacceptable level of violence for a drug lord in the eyes of the US Government.
Given the accusations against Los Zetas -- that they were approached by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to conduct terrorism - could the ATF be repeating the strategy used by previous US administrations to bring down Escobar? Perhaps Los Zetas have now become a threat to the national interests of the US in the same way Escobar was, and the US Government is willing to fund and assist a rival cartel to see their removal. There’s already been accusations that the Mexican Government has not prosecuted it’s war on drugs against the Sinaloa cartel to the same extent that it fight Los Zetas. It’s possible these accusations against Los Zetas to justify US military intervention against a well organised drug cartel manned by former special forces.
It might even be just the stimulus package the ailing Obama administration needs -- invade Mexico and Iran, and kickstart your economy with World War 3.
The pavement outside the Radisson Hotel on Argyle Street, Glasgow was the setting of a showdown last night between electricians -- currently fighting the tearing up of a national pay agreement that will see wage cuts of up to 35 percent and the wholesale de-skilling of their trade -- and industry bosses, who were arriving for a glitzy awards bash.
Around one hundred electricians and supporters gathered outside the hotel from early evening in a protest organised by Unite, as tuxedo-attired construction chiefs, visibly shaken, sipped champagne within the glass confines of the hotel. Industry bosses were heckled and booed as they entered the hotel, with chants going up of “we’re going to ruin your party” and “we’re coming to get you!”.
This was the latest in an ongoing series of protests following the decision by eight major firms to pull out of the national JIB agreement, which offers protection on pay and conditions. Already one company has been forced to enter back into the agreement -- the other seven have yet to follow.
This is a vital struggle to protect workers’ rights in the private sector, with the economic crisis being used as a pretext to smash the joint-industry agreement. Further protests are set to be staged over the few next weeks across the country, including at Govan Shipyard this Wednesday 12 October. Unite have told their members to get organised and to get ready for a ballot, as the employers prepare to impose deadlines for signing onto the new terms and conditions.
An anti-cuts activist from Glasgow was sentenced to eighteen months in HMP Wandsworth at a London court on Friday, following his arrest at the March 26th TUC anti-cuts demonstration in London. His crime? Throwing a spent joke shop smoke bomb, picked up from the street, in the direction of a branch of Topshop – apparently enough to constitute ‘violent disorder’ and a lengthy prison sentence despite no damage being done to property or person. This was just one of a number of heavy sentences handed out to anti-cuts demonstrators at Kingston Crown Court on Friday, nearly all of them for similar (non-) offences – throwing sticks or pushing at barriers. Among the only positives on the day was for fellow Glasgow protester Bryan Simpson, who following a high profile defence campaign escaped with 120 hours community service and a four months suspended sentence for ‘affray’ at a student demo in London last November.
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