Blonde hair and blue eyes brings a smile to her chops

Over the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a meeting of the youth wing of her Christian Democrat Union (CDU, kind of like the German Tories) party that multiculturalism had “failed, utterly failed” in Germany.

What this amounts to of course is a massive attack on the communities of immigrant descent in Germany, from the top of government.

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Berlusconi and Gaddifi bonding over how much they both hate black people.

You may have noticed that the leader of Libya, Colonel Gaddafi, has been on a state visit to Italy over the past few days, where he has been generally making a nuisance of himself by trying to convert Italian women to Islam, and attempting to charge the EU  five billion euros in exchange for preventing Africans from illegally immigrating to Europe.

In Gaddafi’s farewell speech, he told an audience in Rome:

Italy needs to convince her European allies to accept this Libyan proposal – five billion euro to Libya to stop illegal immigration.

Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration, it could turn into Africa. We need support from the European Union to stop this army trying to get across from Libya, which is their entry point.

At the moment there is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe and we don’t know what will happen. What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans?

We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion. We have to imagine that this could happen but before it does we need to work together.

Wowza. Offensive, right? But, unsurprisingly, Italian MPs are more angry about the fact that Gaddafi wants money in exchange for stopping immigrants, rather than his insanely racist rant – and the insanely racist social policies in Italy that make talking like this in an official capacity totally acceptable.

Colonel Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi are two sides of the same disgusting racist coin.

As socialists, we believe that the world belongs all people, and we should all be free to travel, live and work wherever we choose. No one is illegal.

The Institute for Public Policy Research  have been analysing support for the BNP and trying to determine what causes communities to turn towards the far-right. You can see their findings here.

The BNP would have us believe they are supported by people whose communities are over-run with immigrants and asylum seekers. But they’re lying. The more immigrants living in your community, the less likely you are to vote BNP.

Our findings suggest that areas that have higher levels of recent immigration than others are not more likely to vote for the BNP. In fact, the more immigration an area has experienced, the lower its support for the far right. Rather, the evidence points to political and socio-economic exclusion as drivers of BNP support.

We therefore urge mainstream politicians to strongly resist the notion that people have been driven into the arms of the BNP by the harm immigration is causing to their communities. Instead, they must focus on building strong communities and strong education systems, and on rebuilding trust and confidence in democratic politics, so that marginalised people do not feeling so disconnected. This should allow them to both better serve the interests of these communities, and undercut support for the BNP.

We couldn’t agree more.

This just goes to show that anti-immigrant feeling is not rooted in reality, but is shaped by the racism of the policians and the media. People who actually live next to immigrants know that they are no more evil than any other part of society.

Sexing it up is a good way to attract voters

Catastrofuck in the government! Today, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a huge cock up when he, after being filmed talking to an OAP about her concerns (her pension, her grandkid’s uni debt, the Eastern Europeans..) was then caught on microphone in his car calling her a “bigoted woman”.

This issue is a bit delicate. Undoubtedly what she was saying, which basically amounted to ‘Eastern Europeans come here to scrounge off benefits’, WAS bigoted. This is the basic level of racism that is on display throughout the whole of society, you come across it all the time. Does that mean it’s her fault, or that she is a nasty person? Not really. These views are supported and perpetuated by the government and the main opposition parties all the time, and it plays into the hands of far right parties like the BNP and UKIP. Just look at the way our own government treats asylum seekers in this country, and the language that has been used to discuss immigration throughout the election debates -- the system isn’t trying to challenge racist ideas, it’s trying to pander to them and perpetuate them. If someone holds a bigoted view, does that make them a bigot? Not really -- if your only reference point for what is going on in your country is the media, particularly the tabloids, then you’re having that view pumped into you day after day. I’m certain that this woman isn’t a hateful person, just misinformed.

So on one level it’s a good sign that our Prime Minister recognises that this sort of view is wrong -- you can bet your last cigarette that David Cameron would never be caught on tape making a blunder like this, because he more than likely agrees with the view of this woman. On one hand that makes him a man of principle. On the other hand, it makes him completely full of shit. He doesn’t agree (at least to an extent, as far as we’re now aware) with this sort of casual racism, he knows what the word bigoted means, yet he’s still willing to push this ‘we must be tough on immigration/benefit scroungers/whatevs’ line that we as socialists know amounts to racist horseshit. Desperate, is what I’d call him, especially after seeing his snivelling apology. How we deal with racism in society is both more nuanced and more simple than hiding in your car and calling people bigots -- we have to recognise that there are deep seated societal issues, mostly led by the fucked up control that the media has over our political experiences, which lead to people coming to hold these views. But also, for the government the solution is simple -- stop telling fucking lies to support and pander to this shite. You’d think not lying would be a pre-requisite for huge fucking governmental responsibility.

What bothers me about this whole ‘blunder’, is how everyone is so concerned about haranguing GB for not being polite to an old lady, but none of the media seem to be bothered that what this really exposes is the extent to which elections and the government in general aren’t about principles -- it’s solely about stage management. It only takes a gaffe like this to show you how fragile the whole thing really is. Let’s recap for you here: Prime Minister is ambushed by TV cameras just waiting for him to fuck up, Prime Minister says a few things that are either excruciatingly vague or he doesn’t really agree with, Prime Minister forgets to take microphone off in car, Prime Minister says what he really thinks (and undoubtedly wasn’t even smiling in the car behind the scenes, the fucker), media goes apeshit and handily happens to still be near the wronged pensioner at the time, Prime Minister grovels.

It confirms what we’ve long known: that The Thick of It actually is just a documentary.

Here we see what happened when Peter Mandelson found out about the catastrofuck:

In fact, this whole thing just reminds me of a certain factory visit undertaken by our good friend Hugh Abbott.

The US state of Arizona has just passed some of the strictest anti-immigrant laws in US history, in a move that enshrines racism in law.

Throughout the US it’s well known that migration cops use racial profiling to target people who have the most brown skin or look the most like they might have some Native American ancestry for questioning about their immigration status. This is a scandal throughout the country, but the difference about the new Arizona law, SB1070, is that it enshrines the right to do this with legal protection.

The law allows law enforcement to approach anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” of being an illegal immigrant, i.e. anyone who looks Latino, and demand they produce ID to confirm the citizenship status. Failure to do so will lead to their automatic arrest without a warrant. This effectively puts the law in Arizona on a par with the infamous “pass laws” in Apartheid South Africa, or indeed the way people were treated during the Nazi occupation of France.

The new law also makes it a major felony to give shelter to illegal immigrants, in a state where thousands of people die every year trying to cross the desert from Mexico in search of a better life. Across the whole US/Mexico border, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission estimates 3 migrants lost their lives every 2 days in 2007 and 2008.

Self-promoting wankstain Joe Arpaio on the cover of his book

The laws were heavily supported by notorious knobend Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who styles himself “America’s toughest sheriff.” Among his bright ideas in his own Maricopa County are the creation of a tent city gulag in the desert, where offenders are kept in conditions of extreme heat, with little shelter or access to basic services or even enough food. Many people have died in tent city, either as a result of the conditions, beatings and taserings from the guards, or violence from fellow inmates, which is deliberately fostered by the prison regime. He also makes criminals parade through the streets in nothing but pink underwear, and sells pink underwear merchandise as a personal money spinner. He has spent taxpayers money on purchasing for himself a penthouse apartment, a machine gun, an armoured personnel carrier and a full sized tank. The man loves publicity, and has become notorious across the US.

The issue of migration is at the heart of American politics now. As Leftfield has previously reported, the US is facing the consequence of its policies in Latin America, which have caused mass poverty for millions of people. Desperate to find a chance of economic survival, huge numbers of Latin Americans have moved to the US, where they are systematically discriminated against. The mass movement for immigrant rights has put hundreds of thousands of people on the street in recent years. However, it faces opposition from the right wing racists who fear they are losing control over the US.

What’s particularly ironic about the case of Arizona is it’s one of several state that were violently conquered by the US in the 19th century. In the Mexican-American war of the 1840s the US seized over half of Mexico’s territory by force, and later integrated the lands into the US. White Arizonans are effectively the descendants of the colonial settlers after this. Mexicans trying to cross the border are only trying to enter what was once Mexican territory.

This map shows Mexican territory lost to the US. The darkest shade is Mexico today, the lighter two what was once Mexican as well

The case of Latinos in the US is just one example of what is happening across the rich world, as people from the parts of the planet that have been devastated by the economic and ecological disasters of capitalism try to escape to the places on Earth where they face a chance of survival and a decent life. The situation is similar on the frontiers of the European Union. It may be the greatest human rights battle of the 21st century to defend these people from the racists who want to keep them out.

In the US, several prominent figures have called for a boycott of Arizona and its products in protest at the racist laws. To promote the campaign, Chuck D of hip hop group Public Enemy has released the song ‘Tear Down This Wall,’ and says in a statement:

“In 1991 I wrote a song criticizing Arizona officials (including John McCain and Fife Symington) for rejecting the federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The same politics I wrote about in “By the Time I Get to Arizona” are alive and well in Arizona today, but this time the target is Brown people.

These actions must stop. I am issuing a call to action, urging my fellow musicians, artists, athletes, performers, and production companies to refuse to work in Arizona until officials not only overturn this bill, but recognize the human rights of immigrants. This should include the NBA playoffs, revisiting the actions of the NFL in 1993, when they moved the Superbowl to Pasadena in protest against Arizona’s refusal to recognize Dr. King. We all need to speak up in defense of our brothers and sisters being victimized in Arizona, because things are only getting worse. What they’re doing to immigrants is appalling, but it will be even more damning if we remain silent.”

You can listen to the song below, or download it for free if you sign up for an account at SLAMjamz.com

All that's missing is a smiling pic of the Dear Leader

For over a year now people have been gearing up for the potential horror of David the Replicant Cameron’s Tories taking power in May. In the face of this, not much attention has been paid to the many shite things promised by a potential incoming Labour government.

Yesterday Labour launched their manifesto, giving us a peek at their wonderful plans for us all to walk forward into a glorious dawn over a landscape of cartoon fields. Or that’s what the cover of ‘A Future Fairer for All,’ would have you think. Personally my first thought on seeing it was that it looked like a piece of socialist realism, but others have been comparing it to Labour election images from 1923 and 1945. The idea is to make you think you’re getting something pretty left wing, as they try desperately to make you feel like Labour is a decent alternative to the Tories.

When you take a look inside, the first thing that jumps out from the contents page is the fact that Labour obviously have no intention of standing up to the BNP line on immigration. Labour’s strategy for winning back support they’ve lost to the far right isn’t to actually offer support for the working class, but to help push racist ideas. The fact that there’s one section called ‘Crime and Immigration’ says it all.

Just now if you’ve been living in the UK for five years you can apply for citizenship, but Labour promise to break that link and make gaining citizenship based on what skills it’s been decided the British economy needs “making sure we have the amount of immigrants we need and no more.” This is because, Labour  say, “living in Britain is a right not a privilege.”

In other words, immigration is going to be determined based on the needs of employers, and pay no attention to people who have been living in Britain for years, and who’s whole life may be here. It’s going to make life a nightmare for thousands of people. Besides which, how do we define what Britain gains from immigration? I think we can all agree it would be a shit place to live without the contribution of different cultures to our boring society.

Labour are quite willing to along with the racist idea, pushed by the right wing press and unfortunately accepted by many people, that immigrants are all criminals who are out to cheat and steal. they proudly boast of how they’ve made immigrants subject to a high tech police regime of biometric controls enforced by thousands more personnel for the UK border agency, which has faced persistent allegations of racism in how it treats people.

They also promise to “stengthen” the ridiculous Britishness test, where immigrants are forced to prove their knowledge of things

"I totally forgot to put down the Royal Variety Performance!"

supposedly integral to everyday life in Britain, despite the fact that most folk born in the UK probably couldn’t tell you half the answers. Do you know which of these courts uses a jury system: Magistrates’ Court, Crown Court, Youth Court or County Court? Or could you concisely sum up in an exam the Queen’s official role and all her ceremonial duties? More importantly, why would you need to know this stuff just to get on with living your life in the UK? How about if more children live in single parent families or step families?

The ‘All immigrants are sponging criminals’ section also is none to kind for youth, with a return to the ASBO agenda of scapegoating young people for the social collapse caused by neoliberal government policies. They promise to introduce a ‘Preventative element’ to ASBOs, though quite how this Minority Report style promise will be carried out isn’t made clear. They’re also promising to make fines higher for teenagers for those who’ve been caught for minor offences that aren’t worth taking them to court for.

There’s more scapegoating on offer for the unemployed, with the expansion of plans to make the unemployed work for their benefits, which Leftfield has already reported on. They villify the unemployed as “scarred by joblessness”. I suppose that working in a shite job for virtually no wages or rights or you lose your benefit would definitely be less scarring than just being able to get your dole when there are no actual jobs going.

There’s no commitment to any kind of spending to try and alleviate the poverty being faced by the working class that Labour policies helped create. Instead, like their election broadcast of a man trudging along a deserted road, we’re all apparently going to make tough choices. In fact, there’s a whole page of “tough choices”, the toughness seemingly going to be mainly falling on public sector workers who will see their wages capped.

To try and make it seem like they’re doing something leftish, there’s lots of talk about encouraging co-ops and and mutualising public services. In fact, what this is likely to lead to in practice will be more undemocratic bureaucracies like Glasgow Housing Association, and other supposedly “not for profit” provision of things the government or councils used to do, before they spent all their money on giving banks wads of cash. This couldn’t be more clear in their pledge to continue the creeping privatisation of the NHS by turning every hosptial into a foundation hospital.

To try and demonstrate a commitment to the NHS, the manifesto launch took place in a brand new hospital in Birmingham. What they didn’t tell you is that a hospital that should have cost £627 million is actually going to cost the taxpayer a whopping £2.6 billion because it was built under the insane PFI scheme where private companies end up owning public facilities.

Ellie Gellard next to the man she previously called for to be sacked

At the launch itself, the show was introduced by one of those totally awful Labour student types who’ve got an eye on a cushy job as an MP in a couple of years. You can see Ellie Gellard’s speech here, which is mainly about how you need to make sure everyone you know watches Labour’s youtube videos. Unfortunately for Labour, journalists were quick to catch on that she hasn’t always been so keen on Gordon Brown, having previously blogged that he should quite as PM.

The sad fact is that both Labour and the Tories are equally committed to cutting the living standards of the working class in order to recoup the money they handed over to the banks. They’re also totally shameless about employing racist rhetoric and encouraging people to blame immigrants for problems which they in fact are responsible for. Peter Mandelson was right to describe the manifesto as ‘Blair Plus’, the plus being an added, pathetic and unconvincing, attempt to look left wing.

Every year thousands of poor people from Latin America attempt to cross the border between Mexico and the US, in search of work so they can support their families.

Most of these people are victims of economic policies imposed by the US government and international capitalism. Because of the free trade agreement NAFTA and the policies of organisations like the WTO, millions of poor farmers around the world have been thrown off their land so it can be used for corporate agribusiness. International policies mean that poor countries are unable to put any kind of protection on their domestic industries, or enact laws that protect workers’ rights. This means that it can be very hard to find a job in countries like Mexico, and if you can it will be so low paid it will be hard to feed your family.

Latin American people who find themselves living next door to the richest country on Earth have little choice but to try and use any means necessary to cross into the US to find work. But the US border is one of the most militarised on Earth, with armed border police using the latest technology aimed at finding immigrants and preventing them crossing.

It’s also a very hostile environment-much of the border runs through desert, and huge numbers die every year of dehydration or exhaustion. Others are attacked by human predators, waiting to abuse, steal and murder immigrants. There’s little choice for most people but to hire a coyote, a professional people smuggler, to help them get across. But these people will often charge the equivalent of your life savings, and even then there’s no guarantee they won’t just take your money and run.

The ridiculous thing about the harsh enforcement regime is that it actually increases the numbers of illegal immigrants in the US, because if after all that you succeed in getting to a job in America, you’re unlikely to want to leave it and go home, knowing what would be involved if you ever tried to come back.

In short, life is not easy for people migrating to the US from Latin America. Once they’re in, they usually do the lowest paid, most menial jobs in the economy, such as cleaners, or farm labourers. The oppressive immigration laws imposed by the US government means that many have to live illegally, and are therefore in little position to take action to defend their rights, form a union or try and get their wages raised.

The only people that benefit from this state of affairs are the rich, who get super cheap labour within the US. The inability of immigrants to fight for their rights at work also helps drive down wages for workers born in the US as well. In the last few years, so many people have been impoverished by capitalism in Latin America, that the US is being transformed by Latino immigration. The centre of American manufacturing and industry has shifted from the North and Northeast to the South, and Southwest, where there are the most immigrants available.

Reform of the immigration system, so that immigrants can begin to play a full role in US society, is an absolute priority. In recent years immigrants have begun to organise a huge mass movement, capable of putting hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and in 2006 they organised the incredible national one day strike known as ‘The Day without Immigrants.’

The weekend before last, when the US media was consumed by what was happening in Congress with Obama’s healthcare reforms, and the only protests being covered were the insane right wingers outside shouting abuse, there was another, much bigger protest taking place in Washington. Over 200, 000 people flooded into the city to demand the government take action on immigration reform, as part of the March for America. People who had come to the US from all over the world, not just Latin Americans, took part. If you look at the footage below, you’ll see the huge participation by Asian Americans, with signs in Chinese and Korean, for example.

Obama directly addressed the march through a video link, and pledged to “fix the broken immigration system.” Many on the march were greatly heartened to hear they have the support of the President. However, unfortunately, yet again Barack Obama’s government is talking progressive whilst failing to live up to his own rhetoric.

The Obama supported proposals that are likely to go to Congress, known as the Schumer/Graham proposals after the Senators who drew them up, still stand by the idea of being “tough on illegal immigrants.” These so-called reforms may actually make things worse for many immigrants.

Most importantly, the Schumer/Graham plan completely ignores the role of US policy in creating the flow of immigrants in the first place. It does nothing to tackle the unfair trade agreements impoverishing people in Latin American and round the world.

Under the plan, immigrants would be forced to carry a biometric Social Security card, which would be swiped by employers to confirm their identity. This will do nothing to stop people coming to the US illegally, but it would mean more and more people getting caught and getting sent to privately-run, for-profit immigration prisons.

The proposals treat people coming North as a labour supply rather than human beings. They propose “guest worker” programmes that would allow employers to temporarily bring in people for a limited amount of time. These immigrants would have few rights, and would be totally at the mercy of their employers. The Southern Poverty Law Centre has called the existing guest workers programmes “close to slavery.”

The central demand of the immigration reform movement is that those people already living and working in the US are legalised, so that they can begin to take a full part in American society. Schumer and Graham are arguing that people that came to the US illegally must first of all “admit that they broke the law”, and face up to the consequences-fines, community service or even prison. They then will have to “get to the back of the line”, in their words, and prove their worth as part of a lengthy process of achieving citizenship that could take years.

One of the few SBInet towers to actually get built

Crucially, the plan includes increased funding for the border patrols, greater militarisation of the border, and increased raids and policing of immigrant communities. It pledges huge sums of money for high-tech attempts to clamp down on illegal immigration. This comes after the news this week that plans to create a “virtual fence” along the Mexican border have had to be abandoned because they didn’t work.

Dubbed “the great wall of Boeing,” SBInet was a plan to create a vast chain of towers along the border, equipped with long range cameras, infrared thermal imaging, motion sensors and seismic sensors to measure people moving along the ground. This would have been supported by aerial robots scanning the border from the skies. All information would then be sent to “command centres”, where the deployment of border control agents would be controlled.

After the US government spent $1.1 billion on commissioning Boeing to develop this system, it’s emerged that it’s a bit of a high tech fantasy that won’t actually work. Huge sums of money have been wasted on the project with nothing to show for it, unless you’re a Boeing shareholder. However, leaving aside the criminal waste of public money this project represents, it’s good news that the Department of Homeland Security has finally come to its senses on the issue and cancelled it.

Another piece of good news this week is that the anti-immigrant, racist, vigilante group the Minutemen has disbanded. The Minutemen were armed groups who go out into the border crossing area to try and prevent immigrants from reaching the US. The group has taken part in many documented cases of violence, and two Minutemen members are about to go on trial for the murder of a little girl and her father when they broke into their homes.

It’s stuff like this that has led the group’s President Carmen Mercer to declare it disbanded. The Minutemen faces increasing legal costs from having to defend the actions of their members, at a time when its leaders have attempted to become more respectable, and take part in lobbying and the political process. In an internal conflict that in many ways reminds you of some of the fights that have taken place inside the BNP over here, the leaders have found it difficult to control the many members who are drawn towards far-right violence and paramilitary politics. Unfortunately, it’s likely that many of these people will keep up their campaign of racist violence under another banner.

Check out this insane recruiting video for the Minutemen, which features a mix of a ridiculous song that sounds like it was made up by South Park, chilling footage of vigilante violence, and people dressing up as if they were in a Western:

And if you doubt the racism that motivates the group, check out this footage, filmed by a man of Mexican origin, at a Minutemen protest:

In the face of organised racist violence, and their fake supporters in Congress and the White House, the need for a strong, organised movement defending immigrants in the US has never been greater. What’s crucial is that as the movement goes forward, it uses the power of workers that are already mobilised to make their own demands, and not just accept the proposals coming from the Obama administration. Here’s a few ideas that could really “fix the broken immigration system in the US”:

-Repeal all the unfair trade agreements, such as NAFTA and CAFTA that force people into poverty and migration in the first place.

-Make it quick and easy for immigrants to get legal citizenship. End the huge backlogs of cases that have kept people waiting years for a decision.

-Protect the rights of all workers, enforcing legal requirements on employers to provide decently-paid and safe jobs. Stop workers from being fired for standing up for their rights.

-Allow people to come to the US with visas that are not tied to them working, and end the near-slavery conditions of the “guest worker” programmes.

These are all things that the US Congress could do right now, that would make a huge difference to the lives of millions of Americans, and would benefit everybody, not just immigrants. But in the longer term, we all have to start asking why it is that the global elite have the right to move their money, or the production of goods, anywhere around the world they want, but working class people are restricted in where they can go.

Historically, the restrictions now placed on immigration in most countries were enacted in the 20th century. The rise of immigration controls goes along with the rise of generally accepted “scientific” racism. The reason they exist is so that states can control the ethnic make-up of their own people, and they are inherently racist. If in the future socialists and others are successful in building a more equal and fairer society globally, it’s to be hoped that more people won’t be forced to leave their homes because of poverty. But as things stand, everyone in the world has a right to survival, and to go wherever and do whatever it takes to ensure they can feed themselves and their families.