The Middle East Quartet: A Progress Report
30 Sep 2008
Editor’s note: Below is the Executive Summary of the report, which was published on September 25. The full report is available here (.pdf). Executive Summary The humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) continues (see ?The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion?).1 Its population of 3.7 million people, 52 per cent of whom are children, struggle for their basic needs.2 Palestinian women, children, and men are increasingly dependent on aid as their livelihoods are destroyed. The only sustainable solution to the crisis is a comprehensive peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians based on international law. As humanitarian and development and human rights organisations, we believe that immediate steps can and must be taken to relieve suffering, as well as to ensure that a peace agreement is eventually reached. As this report demonstrates, the lack of progress on key goals calls the Quartet?s current approach into question. In its Berlin statement, the Quartet [comprising the U.S., EU, UN and Russia] expressed the, ?urgent need for more visible progress on the ground in order to build confidence and support progress in the negotiations launched in Annapolis?. This ?visible progress? has not materialised. Analysis of the reality on the ground demonstrates that in five of the ten areas in which the Quartet has laid down clear recommendations, there has been either no progress or an actual deterioration in the situation. Clearly, a new approach is warranted. Moreover, the Quartet?s capacity to encourage positive developments has been weakest in the three areas where progress is now most urgent: settlements, lifting obstacles to movement and access, and bringing an end to the blockade of Gaza. The Middle East Quartet, comprising Russia, USA, EU, and UN, identified 2008 as a crucial year for the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) and the period in which to realise agreements made at the Annapolis Conference on 22 November 2007.3 Quartet members committed to assisting parties to meet their specific obligations and to promoting a just, comprehensive, and lasting settlement of the conflict in the Middle East.4 The deadline for an agreement by the end of 2008 is now looming and seems unlikely to be met. Indeed, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, stated: ?so far there has been no achievement in the negotiations? I cannot say that there has been an agreement on a single issue. The gap between the sides is very large.?5 The Quartet?s meeting in New York [this took place on Sept. 26] comes at a critical moment for the Quartet to demonstrate that it can play an effective role in bringing peace to the Middle East. This report outlines the Quartet?s own recommendations across six areas that it considered to be of vital importance for the broader peace process. It assesses the impact that limited progress has had on the daily lives of Palestinians and Israelis. The Quartet?s Berlin statement provides a clear picture of the progress needed and, as the most recent declaration of the Quartet, will be used as a basis for this report.6 The statement, like this report, focuses on settlements, access and movement, Gaza, Palestinian security sector reform, donor pledges, and the revival of private sector activity in the oPt. The Quartet has rightly emphasised that progress in key areas is the only way to prevent further deterioration in the everyday lives of Palestinians and Israelis and in the overall political process itself. The Quartet?s meeting in New York provides an opportunity to re-group, recommit, and decide on additional steps that can be taken to ensure that parties comply with their obligations under the roadmap and international law. This report provides recommendations to Quartet members on how best to respond to ensure urgently needed progress. Unless there is a swift and dramatic improvement, it will be necessary to question what the future is for the Middle East Quartet. Settlements: Despite efforts by Quartet members to signal strong opposition to continued settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, there has been a marked acceleration in construction, and no serious attempts by the Israeli authorities to dismantle outposts. Settlements, outposts, and the infrastructure that serves them, illegal in international law, devastate the Palestinian economy and the daily lives of ordinary Palestinians. While the Quartet can be commended for raising the issue of settlements and outposts, there has been a marked failure to hold the Israeli authorities to their obligations under the roadmap and international law. This highlights the urgent need to go beyond rhetoric and adopt concrete measures to ensure that Israeli authorities comply with their obligations under international law. Access and Movement: The Quartet has failed in its efforts to secure the removal of checkpoints and other obstacles to access and movement for people and goods that would enable Palestinians to see a tangible improvement in their daily lives. There is no ?new reality? in the West Bank; the economy continues to stagnate, and the blockade of Gaza continues. The failure of the Quartet in this area will lead to further impoverishment and economic decline. It may also constitute a fatal threat to the broader peace process. Gaza: Despite violations on both sides, the agreement on cessation of violence endures and there have been marked improvements in security for Israelis and Gazans alike.7 However, normal civilian life in Gaza has not resumed. The Quartet has been unable to end Gaza?s isolation and facilitate adequate flows of humanitarian and commercial goods (consistent with the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA)). There have been increased supplies of fuel to Gaza, but these supplies are not yet steady or sufficient. Despite their efforts, the Quartet has failed to prompt the immediate resumption of stalled UN and other donor projects. Overall, progress in Gaza falls far short of the Quartet?s own stated recommendations. Despite its recognition of the urgency of the situation, the actions taken by the Quartet have been insufficient to kick-start meaningful changes on the ground. Comprehensive Palestinian Security Sector Reform: The introduction of an EU-trained Palestinian police force across the West Bank is reported to be beginning to deliver tangible and much-needed improvements in the stability of life across the West Bank. Nonetheless, concerns among Palestinian civilians about their personal security are said to remain. The focus on the rule of law for Palestinians, while welcome, has paid inadequate attention to human rights in the reform process. Donor Pledges: The Quartet Representative has been successful in securing substantial funding pledges. This impressive aptitude for fundraising has not yet led to the prompt delivery of projects, nor improved the lives of Palestinian women, children, and men for the better. The Quartet has not ensured that all donors make good on their pledges, in large part because the absence of demonstrable progress and real change in key areas ? particularly settlements, access and movement, and Palestinian reconciliation ? has made greater financial assistance ineffective. By adopting a twin-track approach, the Quartet has committed itself to achieving success in both promoting removal of obstacles to Palestinian economic development and increasing investment in Palestinian growth. Failure on one track, particularly the first,seriously undermines prospects for the other. Private Sector Progress: The Quartet Representative has had isolated successes in implementing a small number of the agreed projects aimed at boosting the private sector. Most notable are his efforts to enable the allocation of frequencies to the second Palestinian mobile telephone operator in the oPt. However, a holistic approach to private sector development is required. There has been almost no progress in alleviating obstacles to access and movement needed to stimulate private sector activity and invigorate the Palestinian economy. Without this, the Quartet Representative will continue to be frustrated in his efforts to improve the daily lives of Palestinians while de-development of the Palestinian economy will continue to increase. Read the full report here (.pdf). List of signatories: CAFOD, CARE Deutschland-Luxemburg; CARE France; CARE Nederland; CARE Norge; CARE ?sterreich; CARE International UK, Christian Aid, DanChurchAid, diakonia, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), medico international, Medicos del Mundo; Oxfam International, Save the Children UK; Save the Children Sweden, United Civilians for Peace (a coalition of Dutch organizations: Oxfam Novib, Cordaid, ICCO and IKV Pax Christi), World Vision Jerusalem. 1. Available at www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/downloads/oxfam_gaza_lowres.pdf. 2. See www.unicef.org/infobycountry/oPt_statistics.html. 3. See Quartet Statements of 24 June 2008, 2 May 2008, and 17 December 2007 at www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2008/jun/106215.htm, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2008/may/104319.htm, and www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/dec/97671.htm. 4. See Quartet Statement at Annapolis Conference on 27 November 2008 at www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/nov/95667.htm and President Bush, ?Joint Understanding read by President Bush at the Annapolis Conference? 27 November 2007 and speech at www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/2007/95695.htm. 5. Mahmoud Abbas quoted in Haaretz, Sunday 14 September 2008 at www.haaretz.com. 6. See Quartet Statements of 24 June 2008, 2 May 2008, and 17 December 2007 at www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2008/jun/106215.htm, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2008/may/104319.htm, and www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/dec/97671.htm. 7. The terminology ?cessation of violence? is used in this report as the generally accepted wording of the agreement by the UN.

Six Years In Guantanamo
30 Sep 2008
Sami al-Haj walks with pain on his steel crutch; almost six years in the nightmare of Guantanamo have taken their toll on the Al Jazeera journalist and, now in the safety of a hotel in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, he is a figure of both dignity and shame. The Americans told him they were sorry when they eventually freed him this year – after the beatings he says he suffered, and the force-feeding, the humiliations and interrogations by British, American and Canadian intelligence officers – and now he hopes one day he’ll be able to walk without his stick. The TV cameraman, 38, was never charged with any crime, nor was he put on trial; his testimony makes it clear that he was held in three prisons for six-and-a-half years – repeatedly beaten and force-fed – not because he was a suspected “terrorist” but because he refused to become an American spy. From the moment Sami al-Haj arrived at Guantanamo, flown there from the brutal US prison camp at Kandahar, his captors demanded that he work for them. The cruelty visited upon him – constantly interrupted by American admissions of his innocence – seemed designed to turnal-Haj into a US intelligence “asset”. “We know you are innocent, you are here by mistake,” he says he was told in more than 200 interrogations. “All they wanted was for me to be a spy for them. They said they would give me US citizenship, that my wife and child could live in America, that they would protect me. But I said: ‘I will not do this – first of all because I’m a journalist and this is not my job and because I fear for myself and my family. In war, I can be wounded and I can die or survive. But if I work with you, al-Qa’ida will eliminate me. And if I don’t work with you, you will kill me’.” The grotesque saga began for al-Haj on 15 December, 2001, when he was on his way from the Pakistani capital Islamabad to Kandahar in Afghanistan with Sadah al-Haq, a fellow correspondent from the Arab satellite TV channel, to cover the new regional government. At least 70 other journalists were on their way through the Pakistani border post at Chaman, but an officer stopped al-Haj. “He told me there was a paper from the Pakistani intelligence service for my arrest. My name was misspelled, my passport number was incorrect, it said I was born in 1964 – the right date is 1969. I said I had renewed my visa in Islamabad and asked why, if I was wanted, they had not arrested me there?” Sami al-Haj speaks slowly and with care, each detail of his suffering and of others’ suffering of equal importance to him. He still cannot believe that he is free, able to attend a conference in Norway, to return to his new job as news producer at Al Jazeera, to live once more with his Azeri wife Asma and their eight-year old son Mohamed; when Sami al-Haj disappeared down the black hole of America’s secret prisons the boy was only 14 months’ old. Al-Haj’s story has a familiar ring to anyone who has investigated the rendition of prisoners from Pakistan to US bases in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. His aircraft flew for an hour and a half and then landed to collect more captives – this may have been in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital – before flying on to the big American base at Bagram. “We arrived in the early hours of the morning and they took the shackles off our feet and pushed us out of the plane. They hit me and pushed me down on the asphalt. We heard screams and dogs barking. I collapsed with my right leg under me, and I felt the ligaments tearing. When I fell, the soldiers started treading on me. First, they walked on my back, then – when they saw me looking at my leg – they started kicking my leg. One soldier shouted at me: ‘Why did you come to fight Americans?’ I had a number – I was No 35 and this is how they addressed me, as a number – and the first American shouted at me: ‘You filmed Bin Laden.’ I said I did not film Bin Laden but that I was a journalist. I again gave my name, my age, my nationality.” After 16 days at Bagram, another aircraft took him to the US base at Kandahar where on arrival the prisoners were again made to lie on the ground. “We were cursed – they said ‘fuck your mother’ – and again the Americans walked on our backs. Why? Why did they do this? I was taken to a tent and stripped and they pulled hairs out of my beard. They photographed the pupils of my eyes. A doctor found blood on my back and asked me why it was there. I asked him how he thought it was there?” The same dreary round of interrogations recommenced – he was now “Prisoner No 448” – and yet again, al-Haj says he was told he was being held by mistake. “Then another man – he was in civilian clothes and I think he was from Egyptian intelligence – wanted to know who was the “leader” of the detainees who was with me. The Americans asked: ‘Who is the most respected of the prisoners? Who killed [Ahmed Shah] Massoud ([the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Afghan militia]?’ I said this was not my business and an American soldier said: ‘Co-operate with us, and you will be released.’ They meant I had to work for them. There was another man who spoke perfect English. I thought he was British. He was young, good-looking, about 35-years-old, no moustache, blond hair, very polite in a white shirt, no tie. He brought me chocolate – it was Kit Kat?and I was so hungry I could have eaten the wrapping.” On 13 June, al-Haj was put on board a jet aircraft. He was given yet another prison number – No 345 – and once more his head was covered with a black bag. He was forced to take two tablets before he was gagged and his bag replaced by goggles with the eye-pieces painted black. The flight to Guantanamo took 12 to 14 hours. “They took us on a boat from the Guantanamo runways to the prison, a journey that took an hour.” Al-Haj was escorted to a medical clinic and then at once to another interrogation. “They said they’d compared my answers with my original statement and one of them said: ‘You are here by mistake. You will be released. You will be the first to be released.’ They gave me a picture of my son, which had been taken from my wallet. They asked me if I needed anything. I asked for books. One said he had a copy of One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic. He copied it for me. During this interview, they asked me: ‘Why did you talk to the British intelligence man so much in Kandahar?’ I said I didn’t know if he was from British intelligence. They said he was. “Then after two months, two more British men came to see me. They said they were from UK intelligence. They wanted to know who I knew, who I’d met. I said I couldn’t help them.” The Americans later referred to one of them as “Martin” and they did not impress al-Haj’s senior interrogator at Guantanamo, Stephen Rodriguez, who wanted again to seek al-Haj’s help. “He said to me: ‘Our job is to prevent “things” happening. I’ll give you a chance to think about this. You can have US citizenship, your family will be looked after, you’ll have a villa in the US, we’ll look after your son’s education, you’ll have a bank account’. He had brought with him some Arabic magazines and told me I could read them. In those 10 minutes, I felt I had gone back to being a human being again. Then soldiers came to take me back to my cell – and the magazines were taken away.” By the summer of 2003, al-Haj was receiving other strange visitors. “Two Canadian intelligence officers came and they showed me lots of photos of people and wanted to know if I recognised them. I knew none of them.” In more than 200 interrogations, al-Haj was asked about his employers the Al Jazeera television channel in Qatar. In one session, he says another American said to him: “After you get out of here, al-Qa’ida will recruit you and we want to know who you meet. You could become an analyst, we can train you to store information, to sketch people. There is a link between Al Jazeera and al-Qa’ida. How much does al-Qa’ida pay Al Jazeera?” “I said: ‘I will not do this – first of all because I’m a journalist and this is not my job. Also because I fear for my life and my family.’” Many beatings followed – not from the interrogators but from other US guards. “They would slam my head into the ground, cut off all my hair. They put me into the isolation block – we called it the ‘November Block’ – for two years. They made my life torture. I wanted to bring it to an end. There were continual punishments without reason. In interrogations, they would tighten the shackles so it hurt. They hadn’t allowed me to receive letters for 10 months – even then, they erased words in them, even from my son. Again, Rodriguez demanded I work for the Americans.” In January of last year, Sami al-Haj started a hunger strike – and began the worst months of his imprisonment. “I wanted my rights in the civil courts. The US Supreme Court said I should have my rights. I wanted the right to worship properly. They let me go 30 days without food – then I was tied to a chair with metal shackles and they force-fed me. They would insert a tube through my nose into my stomach. They chose large tubes so that it hurt and sometimes it went into the lung. They used the same tube they had used on other prisoners with muck still on it and then they pumped more food into me than it was possible to absorb. They told us the people administering this were doctors – but they were torturers, not doctors. They forced 24 cans of food into us so we threw up and then gave us laxatives to defecate. My pancreas was affected and I had stomach problems. Then they would forbid us from drinking water.” Al-Haj says he completed 480 days of hunger strike by which time his medical condition had deteriorated and he was bleeding from his anus. That was the moment his interrogators decided to release him. “There were new interrogators now, but they tried once more with me. ‘Will you work with us?’ they asked me again. I said ‘no’ again – but I thanked them for their years of hospitality and for giving me the chance to live among them as a journalist. I said this way I could get the truth to the outside world, that I was not in a hurry to get out because there were a lot more reporters’ stories in there.” They said: ‘You think we did you a favour?’ I said: ‘You turned me from zero into a hero.’ They said: ‘We are 100 per cent sure that Bin Laden will be in touch with you…’ That night, I was taken to the plane. The interrogators were watching me, hiding behind a tennis net. I waved at them, those four pairs of eyes.” The British authorities have never admitted talking to Sami al-Haj. Nor have the Canadians. Al Jazeera, whose headquarters George Bush wanted to bomb after the invasion of Iraq, kept a job open for Sami al-Haj. But Prisoner No 345 never received an official apology from the Americans. He says he does not expect one.

Aviation’s fossil-fuelled fantasies
29 Sep 2008
Today, as UN World Tourism Day focuses on climate change, new research says economic case for airport expansion is unfounded, and international tourism is more of a risk than a benefit for developing nations. A new report from nef (the new economics foundation) and the World Development Movement released today, Saturday 27 September, UN World Tourism Day, reveals that increased air travel and tourism leaves UK taxpayers out of pocket, and benefits multinational tour operators and hotel chains, rather than poor people. And, as the fastest-rising source of emissions in the UK, aviation is a significant contributor to climate change that threatens the survival of some of the world’s poorest communities least responsible for causing the problem, but living on its front line. The new nef/WDM report, Plane Truths exposes the ‘fossil-fuelled fantasies’ behind airline bosses and government ministers’ claims that continued growth of the aviation industry strengthens the UK economy, does not undermine the emissions reductions needed to avert catastrophic climate change and can play a positive role in the fight against global poverty. Fossil-fuelled fantasy 1: Airlines claim that cheap air fares ‘democratise’ foreign travel. The reality is that highest earners still travel most frequently. People on low incomes who make up 32 per cent of the UK population, account for less than 8 per cent of all passengers on low-cost flights from the UK, while 40 per cent of all budget flights are taken by the wealthiest people in the UK. Fossil-fuelled fantasy 2: Airlines claim that tourism is developing countries boost economic development. The reality is the benefits from UK tourism to communities in far-flung destinations are minimal because: * the vast majority of British tourists travel to short haul destinations like Spain or France, or industrialised countries such as the United States, while only nine per cent of UK tourists go to the developing world. * When tourists do visit the developing world, up to 75 pence in every 1 spent goes straight into the pockets of multinational hotel chains and tour operators, not to the local economy. * Evidence from Kenya, Thailand and the Dominican Republic suggests that if the growth in UK aviation was halted, the impact of lost revenue would represent less than one per cent of GDP. * And, for the Maldives, where the contribution of tourism to the economy has been more significant, the Islands very survival is under threat from rising sea-levels Fossil-fuelled fantasy 3: Airlines and the government claim that the aviation industry strengthens the UK economy. The reality is that, in 2007 the aviation industry left UK taxpayers 10.4 billion in the red. * The World Development Movement has calculated 10.4 billion was lost to the Exchequer in 2007 as the result of tax exemptions for the airline industry. This is more than twice the 5 billion needed to ensure that every home in Britain is properly insulated, helping to combat both climate change and fuel poverty – going far beyond recent government announcements. “As people world-wide feel the impact of the credit crunch, the UK government is sleep-walking into a climate-crunch, riding high on the fossil-fuel fantasies of the aviation industry. It is time for the government to wake up. Time is short. There could be less than one hundred months to prevent catastrophic, runaway climate change. Conventional economists claim that a rising tide lifts all boats, but the plain truth is that long before the minimal benefits of economic growth, particularly from air-based tourism bring any improvement to the lives of people living in some of the world’s poorest countries, they will be sunk by the floodwaters of runaway climate change.” says Dr Victoria Johnson, nef climate change researcher and the report’s co-author. Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement said: “Poor people in the developing world will be hit first and worst by climate change and international tourism does little, if anything, to alleviate poverty – so the myths peddled by the government and the aviation industry are simply a fig leaf to justify aviation expansion. Exposing and opposing these myths is essential if we are to help to prevent hundreds of millions of people around the world from losing their lives and livelihoods.” And, as Plane Truths reveals, the majority of tourism takes place within, rather than between regions. This means that investment in better regional transport infrastructure will play a critical role in reducing emissions while maintaining the many cultural, and local economic benefits that tourism can deliver. The report finds that policy measures to date, such as Air Passenger Duty (APD) in the UK and the European Union (EU)‘s emissions trading scheme, will have little impact on the strong and environmentally destructive growth trend in aviation. The report argues that government must also show leadership, by taking action to reduce emissions from aviation, and include them in the climate change bill; halting planned airport expansion; and ensuring that proposed taxes on flights is set at a high enough rate to reduce demand for short-haul flights: * The Climate Change Bill currently passing through parliament must be amended to include emissions from shipping and aircraft. The emissions reduction target should also be increased to 80-90 per cent below 1990 levels, in line with the most recent scientific evidence. * When Airline Passenger Duty is replaced by a flight tax next year, it must be set at a proportionately higher for short-haul flights than long-haul, since aircraft burn most fuel during taxi, take-off and landing, and alternative methods of transport are often available * The funds generated from this tax should be earmarked for investment in better rail connections, and to funds to help people in developing countries adapt to the degree of climate change that is already happening.

Public sector pay: how to win
29 Sep 2008
If anything sums up New Labour as a Government for the rich, a cuckoo in the labour movement nest, it has to be their year-on-year drive to keep public sector wages below the rate of inflation. According to a report on the Joseph Rowntree website, and based on 2007 statistics, ?the public sector is a large employer of workers earning less than 7 per hour, accounting for a quarter of all such employees… the public sector employs relatively few adults of the age group where low pay is most prevalent, namely those under the age of 25. If this age group is excluded then the share of low paid workers who are in the public sector rises to 30%. Just about all of these are women.? (The 7 per hour low pay threshold is commonly used; it was, until recently, roughly two-thirds of median hourly earnings in Great Britain.) But the Joseph Rowntree figures exclude those employed by contractors in the state sector ? including tens of thousands of cleaners, catering and security staff, messengers and others on very low pay and denied the occupational pension schemes, sick pay rights and annual leave granted to directly-employed public sector workers. When these workers are included New Labour?s responsibility for low pay rises even more. PCS, the largest civil service union, points out that ?...a quarter of the civil service [earn] less than 16,500 and thousands earning just above the minimum wage… Forty percent of staff in the Department for Work and Pensions, which includes Jobcentres, will have no pay rise whatsoever this year, 30% of staff in the Identity and Passport Service are in the same situation, whilst coastguard watch assistants received a special pay rise to keep their pay above the minimum wage.? Even amongst relatively better paid public sector workers in the civil service, local government, education and the NHS, the picture is one of increasing hardship. For instance teachers? pay increases for 2008-2011 do not match the current rate of inflation. And teachers? pay increases have already been below inflation every year from 2005 onwards. Teachers have had real-terms pay cuts of up to 2000. While the Government charges interest on student debt at the rate of RPI (the inflation rate measurement which includes mortgages), it bases its pay policy for teachers, including newly qualified teachers trying to pay off their student debt, on CPI (an inflation measurement which excludes mortgages). The hypocrisy is astounding. The fact is that New Labour is consciously cutting the real living standards of hundreds of thousands of workers. In any case the official rate of inflation does not properly measures the inflation actually experienced by millions of workers. Most of the tabloids are now running ?alternative rates of inflation? based on shopping basket essentials. The Daily Mail calculates, ??someone spending 100 a week on food last year will have to find another 712 this year to put the same items on the table.? Against this backdrop the decisions of the PCS and the teachers? union, NUT, to ballot their members for national industrial action over pay is the best labour movement news in a long while ? in terms of sheer numbers of trade unionists involved, the potential for the dispute to widen to other unions such as UCU (college lecturers) and the potential for activists to link up across the unions. PCS will ballot 270-280,000 members between 24 September and 17 October for three days of strike action (two days of national action and an additional programme of rolling civil service sectoral action), to take place between November and the end of January. The NUT ballot of its 250,000 members will start on Monday 6 October. It now looks certain that PCS and NUT will coordinate at least one day of strike action in November, but if we are to shift Brown, both unions will need to plan for more strike action. Gearing up to win Every PCS and NUT member who doesn?t want to accept years of real pay cuts should be putting all their energy into securing a high turnout and a massive majority for the planned action. However, the unions belong to their members, and members should be seeking to exercise democratic control over their leaders. And activists and branches also need to draw conclusions from the experience of recent public sector strikes: ? a public-sector-wide fight back must be focussed on a few key demands that unite the unions and can be won by all unions ? such as the demand for pay rises exceeding RPI. ? The demand for a public sector wide fight back to defeat a public sector wide pay policy is absolutely right but it should not be on the basis, increasingly argued on much of the left, that major public sector unions cannot win in their own right against the government. Such a lack of confidence and drive is wrong. It ties each union to the least reliable and the least confident of the union leaderships and enabling each union leadership to blame another for any settlement on less than adequate terms. Each union must therefore work out what it needs to do to win and to be determined to do so irrespective of any backsliding amongst union leaders elsewhere. For example, the PCS rolling strike strategy is a considerable step up from the Executive?s previous flawed, and much criticised, strategy of one-day strikes separated by months. Its new strategy reflects the pressure of activists who wanted more, and the ongoing criticism of the PCS Independent Left, who have repeatedly warned that sporadic one day strikes would not force New Labour to retreat on pay. Unfortunately, the PCS leadership is not indicating whether, if need be, it will call any further action after the second national strike in January. This is a mistake. The Executive should be clear that it is planning national, sectoral, rolling, and selective strike action. Both PCS and NUT members ? and for that matter the Government ? need to know that the PCS are fighting to win. Levies should be collected to build up an additional war chest as quickly as possible. The PCS leadership has resisted this call for years but in a union with many low paid members, and where the industrial muscle varies enormously, a levy can play a vital role in supporting members and action. PCS and NUT activists and branches should be demanding that their national unions set up joint local coordinating committees, inviting representatives of other public sector unions to attend in an effort to build up the pressure for action elsewhere. Better organised PCS and NUT branches can of course just get on with the job of establishing local committees which can build support, hold their leaders to account, and win the dispute. Accountability We need to counter the ?spin? of the PCS would-be left leadership. A few years ago they claimed that they had been promised a ?fair pay system? by the head of the civil service (he made no such promise) and earlier this year they claimed to have ?achieved the first national pay negotiations in 15 years to address massive inequalities in pay.? (Left Unity National Executive election leaflet on its website). They were not the first talks in 15 years (the NEC had already spent five years in fruitless talks) and there was little or no likelihood of those talks resulting in real pay improvements for members ? hence the current ballot! We need to insist on straight and prompt reporting of all national negotiations so that we are not suddenly presented with a fait accompli deal that does not deliver on our demands. The old CPSA Broad Left (the old left grouping of a forerunner union) always argued for special pay conferences in an effort to prevent the old right wing leadership from just doing what it wanted. The need for democratic control does not disappear when would- be left-wingers control the union. Implementation of the TUC?s decision to call days of ?action?, including a national demonstration against the government?s pay policy, has to be fought for, and built, at the rank and file level. The TUC?s national pension demonstrations of a few years ago were woefully ill-prepared, resulting in small turnouts relative to a major threat to hundreds of thousands of workers. The day of the first coordinated PCS-NUT strike should see joint lunchtime marches and demonstrations taking place in every town and city. Those demonstrations and marches should be the beginning of the labour movement?s political response to the present economic crisis, and the attempt to dump its effects onto workers? shoulders. Calling for ?fairness? is pitiful ? as if ministers, the Tories, big business, and the press will not play divide and rule by dishonestly comparing public sector workers (as if they are pulling down a fortune) to private sector workers. Private sector workers, including those working for contractors in the state sector, are also sharing the misery of job cuts, low pay, and below-inflation pay increases. We need a workers? alternative plan that can be fought for in the labour movement, that will answer the most immediate concerns of workers (repossessions, mortgage costs, job losess, maintenance of living standards). The unions need to link these issues clearly in their publicity, emphasising that the fight for pay is the fight for decent services. And that means raising the demand for more funding through taxation of the wealthiest who have done very well under New Labour. It is all very well the PCS General Secretary saying, ?If the Tories win the election and industrial strife breaks out, the fault lies with Gordon Brown and the government.? We understand what he means ? don?t tell us to not to rock the boat when you?re cutting our living standards ? but it sums up the predicament of the labour movement. The New Labour cuckoos took over the Labour Party and sectarians stood aside from the fight to stop them. The leaders of the affiliated unions were complicit in that takeover. Now all we are left with is ?don?t blame us if the Tories win? when a triumphant Tory Party will simply renew the attacks. The unions urgently need to consider a political response to the current crisis ? a programme to be positively fought for, industrially and politically, on the governmental terrain. Our aim should be to defeat Brown industrially and to assert the labour movement on the governmental level as an alternative to both New Labour and Cameron.

The Emperor’s NEW new clothes
28 Sep 2008
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. – Albert Einstein The Emperors NEW new clothes Once upon a time a smart guy found a way of making a synthetic product that appeared to be as good as gold. After explaining his findings to others he began to sell his products (mortgage backed securities) on the open market at prices that bought a handsome return. Gradually other clever people cottoned on to this and they began to produce similar products. For years the market grew as demand for these valuable commodities increased. More and more producers entered the market and imitated the actions of the pioneers. Yet, the new gold depended on one critical factor. Since the value of the products depended on the price of other assets, namely residential homes and commercial property, any change in these prices would have knock-on effects. Anyone who tried to explain this to the producers and purchasers of the new gold standard currency was reminded not to worry since the prices of housing and offices were only going in one direction. Therefore the new commodity could itself only increase in value. The response from the doubters was that perhaps housing prices could fall since inequality and unemployment were increasing. As more and more capital was being invested in the strange financial products there was less and less available for investment in industry. Whilst the mortgage finance was increasing the jobs provided by construction companies, much of the new housing was being built in the suburbs and these depended on cheap oil to fuel trips to work in the city. If oil prices rose suburban housing would appear less attractive. Again the doubters were rebuffed and the market continued to grow. The only limitation was the ability of people to secure mortgages in the first place so as to continue to buy houses and many Americans were very poor and were unlikely to get loans. Then a bright spark suggested that since house prices were always rising, low-income, unemployed, and even blacks and latinos could be given loans and they could pay them back when their house had exceeded the original loan. This idea also caught on and banks and brokers feverishly lent money to these new customers so that the loans made could be converted into the new gold. At this point some commentators began to observe that there was now a great deal of the new gold in circulation and didn?t the value of the old gold depend on its scarcity. Around about the same time, others came forward with news that builders were having some trouble selling all those new homes they had built and that perhaps house prices were not going to rise indefinitely. As these concerns were raised many of those who had bought the new gold at first denied there was going to be any problem. Maybe there was going to be a short-term blip in the housing market but this would soon be forgotten about. After all these things were to be expected, weren?t they? Despite their public confidence however, some of the owners decided to reduce their inventories of the new gold in favour of the old gold and even that other precious commodity, black gold. This had various effects: The price of gold and oil were rising even faster than the price of mortgage-based securities, prompting more investors to sell the latter and buy the former. As the oil price rose, more and more Americans found that living in suburban homes which could only be accessed by private cars run on oil was not economically viable. So they looked into the possibility of selling their homes and moving to the city to rent an apartment. As these events progressed, it became clear that there was now a glut of mortgage backed securities on the market as less and less people were willing to buy them. Those left holding the baby desperately looked around for support but for a time it looked like they would lose their shirts. Now in a high state of anxiety these financialists rushed to the government, bearing expressions on their faces like the one worn by the uninsured teenager who has to tell dad that he?s crashed the family car. At first the government struggled to understand what the bankers were telling them and said don?t worry the market will take care of these things. After all the bankers had been telling government for years to let the market run the show. If the market price for milk is too low, don?t subsidize the dairy farmers. Let them go out of business and they can stop farming and become entrepreneurs. Simple as that! If the cost of food and fuel increases disproportionately for low-income households don?t worry, they can just work a bit harder and if the market also causes wages to fall then they can work a bit harder still. This time however, the bankers shouted ?don?t let the free market decide. That wouldn?t be fair to us because we deserve special protection and besides if you let us go out of business we can make things very difficult for you?. Happily, the government saw sense and decided to use all that tax money it had lying around to buy up the bankers products at a fair price. Of course this would mean that those improvements to the US healthcare system would have to be forgotten about and of course, in future many Americans would have to pay higher taxes to balance the governments books. Again the doubters began to whisper amongst themselves about potential problems such as civil unrest and the collapse of overburdened government institutions. The bankers and politicians then summoned a very nice priest and they proceeded to pray earnestly to Mammon.

Bank Role for the Left
28 Sep 2008
State intervention and nationalisationare both back with an incredible bang. Suddenly, the neoliberal orthodoxy of “Tina” ? “there is no alternative” ? to the free market looks as hollow as Brown’s promise to end the cycle of boom and bust. It reconfirms that in this age of hyper-globalisation and neoliberalism, the state and market regulation are still important. The bail-outs we’ve seen in Britain and the US are nationalisations by the neoliberals and for the bosses. If they were carried out at the behest of the left and for the workers, taxpayers and citizens, they would look entirely different. So when the senior management was changed when Northern Rock was nationalised one set of capitalist managers was merely replaced by another. The same will be true of Bradford & Bingley. The nationalisations were not to safeguard jobs or workers’ conditions or people’s savings but the British financial system upon which profits heavily depend. If the left is to make headway right now, it must start getting its ideas about public ownership out into the media, into union members’ heads and onto people’s radar screens. The left needs to start off with what public ownership is and what it is not. This would make it clear the left was not calling for a return to the age of nationalisation, where civil servants ran the industries in an undemocratic and unaccountable ways. Jobs were not safeguarded and services were often poor. It would also make it clear the left was not calling for a situation of a command economy, where the centre dictated what was produced without consulting the consumers and the localities. The lessons of history are that while coordination and planning are needed, there should be decentralised structures that allow participation and that the process is one of bottom-up democracy, not top-down diktat. One model of public ownership, for say, transport would be that the boards of management consist of a third of seats allocated to representatives from the travelling public, a third from the workforce and a third from the local authorities. Here, there would be a balance between producer and consumer interests. The issues to be resolved would include whether the unions would be the only representatives of the workforce, whether businesses would be entitled to seats and whether local authorities are closely connected enough to be the genuine representatives of the public at large. Another model would be that all members of the board of management would be elected directly by citizens and those wishing to be board members stand on platforms of representing workers’, business and passengers’ interests and so on. These are all issues which can be explored in more depth later once the debate has been won on the need for this version of public ownership. The key thing here is that the primary purpose of these services (including financial services) being in public ownership would be that they are run on the basis of social need and not private profit. What this means is that the constitution or articles of association of these organisations would be changed from the objective of pursuing private shareholder interests to providing services. The organisations would not then have to be concerned with chasing profits, market value, market share or being taken over by a rival. The banks would then operate under this system by creating social justice and social inclusion by keeping open wide branch networks (with one in each community), practice safe lending, work by the principles of ethical investment and return surplus back into their operations to increase service provision. The way in which the left can do this is by questioning each and every action of the governments by saying “Whose interests are being served by this?”, “Whose money is being used for this?” and “If public money is being used, where is the public control?” There is a role for left MPs like John McDonnell in laying bills before parliament to put organisations into public ownership instead of allowing this Labour government to remain the bankers’ friend by doling out hand outs to them. The unions need to use their influence inside and outside parliament to support these moves. Rather than being overly fixated on windfall taxes and curbing bonuses, they could tackle the underlying causes ? rather than just the symptoms ? by supporting social ownership. The odd call for public ownership of the utilities needs to be made writ large.

After the party
28 Sep 2008
There had been a long-running debate in the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) about our affiliation with the Labour Party going back to the 1980s. But it all came to a head during the 2002/2003 disputes. Our members were taken aback by how suddenly the pressure was put on by the government and the harshness with which we were treated. One Labour politician even described us as fascists. We settled the disputes in 2003 and at the following year?s conference we disaffiliated from the party. An overwhelming percentage of the FBU membership supported the decision. I suspect that in the beginning a lot of our members just wanted to give Labour a bit of a kick but they have continued to back disaffiliation in the following years. Since then we have been thinking through how we develop: what we do politically as a disaffiliated union. There was a concern among our officials that we would be left isolated and politicians wouldn?t talk to us anymore. I don?t think that has happened. We have a very good relationship with a lot of MPs and have also rebuilt some of our relations with government. Ironically, it seems that since disaffiliating we have formalised a lot more of our parliamentary work. Using the political fund We continue to use our political fund to support individual Labour MPs, such as John McDonnell in his leadership bid. Our regional groups have supported Green and Respect candidates, although the FBU nationally has not supported any other parties? candidates since Labour. In Scotland being disaffiliated has opened more doors for us. We have backed a range of candidates, including the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). We have a good relationship with the Scottish government, possibly better than the one we have at Westminster. It strikes me how different the political debate in Scotland is to England. The first minister goes to the Scottish TUC and talks openly about council housing and opposing the war ? stuff that a politician would never tell you here. We also support plenty of single-issue campaigns. This year we have worked closely with the anti-fascist movement, funding the Love Music Hate Racism march and festival. Some people think we should be moving further towards an approach where we pick out individual candidates and campaigns. I don?t agree. I feel strongly that there needs to be a wider approach ? the left and the working class needs a political party but there isn?t one for them at this time. No longer Labour In theory, you would think that if the Labour government is on the ropes it would be an ideal opportunity for the trade unions to put some demands to them. I?ve not seen any evidence, although I hope this will happen. Instead, it seems that among the affiliated unions there is currently a move to rally round the Labour Party as the election approaches. I?m pleased we don?t have that in the FBU, as I don?t think it washes with either members or people generally. There is no sign of a change in direction now and there is unlikely to be any change after an election either. There is a huge amount of frustration with mainstream politics. There is consensus among the three main parties around a neoliberal agenda. For us as trade unions that is about the privatisation and restrictions on trade union rights that have alienated Labour?s core supporters. I am no longer a Labour member. I am not convinced the party can be reclaimed in the way people want it to be at the moment. But we need to be political and the working class needs representation in parliament. How we achieve that is a drawn-out process. The trade unions that are clearly opposed to the mainstream agenda need to discuss and co-operate a lot more. The challenge for us is the need for a fundamental debate about the type of society we want. For me as a socialist, I?d like a socialist society. I think there is a growing unease about some of the developments ? ever-growing inequality and climate change, for example ? and the fact is the policies around which Labour, Liberals and Tories address those issues ? a market based approach ? can?t do anything.

Alistair Darling- International Marxist?
28 Sep 2008
When Britain?s Chancellor Alistair Darling was interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead in the August 30 edition of the Guardian, his comments created an international furore. His admission that the economic times we are facing ?are arguably the worst they?ve been in 60 years? led to accusations that he had undermined confidence in Britain?s economy and prompted a run on the pound. In some rather more limited circles, there was at least a measure of incredulity at how Darling had so blatantly lied about his political background. The interview reports, ?There was no teenage radicalism, and he would have been astonished, he says, if he?d known his future lay in politics. Studying law at Aberdeen, he stood for election in the student union, but not for a party. ?I was just quite interested in getting things done.? His manifesto favoured ?strictly bread-and-butter issues, things like food prices in the student refectory?. When he joined the Labour party in 1977, he never expected to be more than a member. ?I was enjoying becoming a lawyer.? He?d simply realised, he explains, that ?if you want to make any changes, there?s only one way you can do it, and that?s by getting into a position where you can influence things. And the obvious thing to do seemed to be to join a party.?? He was then asked by Aitkenhead, ?Why Labour?? He replied, ?Just… I suppose, overall, I thought the Tories were unfair. They were only for one side, and not for everyone. The Labour party just seemed to reflect my outlook on life?you know, that we were better working together?fairness, helping everyone to get on, rather than just a few.? Giving his sole attempt at providing political context for his decision to join, Darling added, ?The Labour government in 1977 was in a terrible mess, and I was getting fed up looking at all these things on the television, and thinking, God, surely we can do better than that. I wanted to do things. But I was never really interested in the theory of achieving things, just the practicality of doing things.? When this author read Darling?s comments, I found it difficult to understand why someone would even join the Labour Party in 1977. I wrote that ?This was a year during which Labour was in coalition with the Liberals and imposing IMF-dictated austerity measures that met with fierce resistance from the working class, and ended with the 1979 ?Winter of Discontent? and the election of the Conservatives.? (See ?Alistair Darling and the implosion of the Labour government?) Millions of working people were bitterly angry towards the Labour government and had turned against it. And within the party, there was a move by Labour?s left wing against its right wing that saw the election of Michael Foot as leader, and the adoption of the Alternative Economic Strategy as party policy. Over the next years there was a period of ideological and political warfare in the party that eventually proved to be a last gasp for social democratic reformism and ended with the triumph of the right wing. I thought, how could Darling not be involved in this? As it turns out, Darling was intimately involved. Like so many others, he is in fact someone who has traversed the political spectrum from left to right to end up as a loyal supporter of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. According to informed sources, his early years were not spent as the apolitical young man he professed, but as a member of the International Marxist Group, then the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. He must also presumably have stood in the Students Union as an IMG member and joined the Labour Party in 1977 while either still a member or under the IMG?s political influence. Certainly in the early 1980s he was still on the left of the Labour Party. The satirical magazine Private Eye was almost alone in responding to Darling?s dissembling, by drawing attention to a March 10 column in the Daily Record by the former Labour MP and now leader of Respect Renewal, George Galloway. Galloway, who is sympathetic to the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain, has no love lost for any of the various middle class radical groups which he always refers to as ?Trots,? even though many work with him politically. Neither has he forgotten how he was forced out of the Labour Party by Blair and Brown. Therefore he was not averse?and clearly took some pleasure in?trying to cause Darling some political embarrassment when he recounted his first meeting with Darling. ?When I first met him 35 years ago,? Galloway states, ?Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. ?Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council.? Galloway continues, ?Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair?s bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher?s despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time.? Galloway also states how ?The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy…? Clearly, in the long-run at least, Galloway and Speirs must have been persuasive as to the merits of collaboration rather than confrontation with Labour?s leadership. Naturally the Guardian would also have been well aware of Darling?s past, but chose not to raise it and instead allowed him to present himself as a somewhat pragmatic liberal. Its only acknowledgement of its ?error? came the following week in the form of an aside in the blog of political editor Michael White in which he stated that ?Alistair Darling doesn?t do red meat politics, though?as Private Eye pointed out this week?he did have a Trot phase in his political youth as a turbulent member of Lothian regional council, defying Margaret Thatcher?s calls to cap the rates.? Aside from this brief passage, and a side-swipe from arch Tory Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, the story then died the proverbial death. This is extraordinary. If what is said about Darling is true, we have someone who was once a member of a supposedly Marxist and even Trotskyist group who has held five ministerial posts and is today Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second most powerful position in British political life. Yet not only is this not considered as an obstacle to holding such high office, it is not even mentioned by anyone in the media?other than a few disgruntled political mavericks like Galloway. Such silence in the media can only be explained by the fact that no one within ruling circles wants to politically embarrass Darling, because he is such a key figure in government. It must also be surmised that the security services, who will have vetted Darling long ago, must have determined that no issue should be made of his youthful excesses. It is, at the same time, an indication of how the IMG itself was viewed by the security services. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the IMG established a certain base amongst radicalised students, often coming into conflict with the police in its work around the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and its support for the IRA in Northern Ireland. A 1974 protest against the National Front at Red Lion Square resulted in the death of the student Kevin Gately. Its other major activity was to regularly denounce the International Committee of the Fourth International and its then section, the Socialist Labour League, later the Workers Revolutionary Party. By the 1980s the IMG?s revolutionary posturing and flirtations with ?direct action? were to give way to total submergence into the Labour Party and support for the party?s left wing led by Tony Benn. The British state was happy to make full use of the IMG during its radical protest phase and, together with the Labour Party bureaucracy, appears to have unreservedly forgiven its former supporters for the follies of their youth, welcoming those such as Darling and others, such as journalist Tariq Ali, as trusted members of the political establishment. Along with the silence of the media, at no time, either now or in the past, has anything been said of Darling?s political history and evolution by the United Secretariat itself. Naturally, it can never be excluded from possibility that someone on what passes for the left can end up on the political right?especially when he or she comes from one of myriad radical groups characterised by opportunist and essentially reformist politics that have provided decades of slavish loyalty to Labour and the trade union bureaucracy. So-called ?entry work? in the Labour Party, apparently in Darling?s case ?deep, deep? entry, and holding positions within the trade unions are frequently the starting point for personal career advancement in which early alliances are easily shed. Thus today not a few former radicals now sit alongside former Stalinists at Labour?s top table. Even so, Darling?s political passage seems to have been smoother than most. Neither the United Secretariat, nor the IMG and its various splinters have ever felt it necessary to explain the political evolution of someone who is easily their most prominent ex-member in Britain. And there is no record of political struggle against him, either when he broke from the group or at any point when he was making his way up the ranks of the Labour Party. For his part, Darling has also kept silent about his past rather than seeking to earn his spurs by denouncing his former comrades and railing against Marxism. By way of a contrast, the former cabinet member Stephen Byers was once a supporter of the Militant group. But like many others, his march to the right involved him participating in the political attacks on the group in his position as deputy leader of North Tyneside Council from 1986 to 1992. Another prominent former member of the IMG within Labour?s leadership is the arch-Brownite Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn. As an IMG member in the 1980s he ran the ?Days of Hope? radical bookshop in Newcastle. A June 3 2000 interview with the Independent reports him stating that he ?left the IMG ?by 1984?, although there is some vagueness as to when he joined the Labour Party: ?after the 1983 election? is about as exact as it gets, leaving open the intriguing possibility that Milburn was an entryist.? Milburn too has never felt the need to attack the IMG as, like Darling, he moved effortlessly to the right of the Labour Party and took up high office in the process. Such a pact of silence regarding such renegade members could only be maintained by an organisation that is rotten to the core. The leaders of United Secretariat clearly not only understand, but indeed sympathise with, Darling?s actions in securing a place for himself within Labour?s highest echelons. They would not take issue with him in any event for fear of alienating their many friends in the party and trade union bureaucracy?and thus closing off avenues for exerting their political influence and hopefully securing their own political careers. Once again the United Secretariat and its affiliated groups have proved themselves to be the training ground for individuals considered worthy of being entrusted with the most fundamental interests of the bourgeoisie?in Darling?s case, control of Britain?s economic policy. In addition, it should be noted that the rest of the radical left has also kept quiet about Darling?s past. They must calculate that, as the old adage insists, ?People in glass houses should not throw stones.? Like doyens of a West End gentlemen?s club, they have decided that it is best not to point out the disreputable behaviour of one of their number for fear of a retaliatory citing of their own reprobate members? misdeeds, past and present.

Batting for bankers
28 Sep 2008
Gordon Brown’s plan to “nationalise” Bradford & Bingley is simply a smaller-scale replica of the Bush administration’s bail-out of a banking sector bleeding to death from self-inflicted wounds. The Prime Minister is batting for the bankers, intervening, with our cash, to ensure a resurgence of banking activity and private profits. As with Northern Rock, over which government dithered for six months, transfixed by fear over the N word, Mr Brown is not opting for nationalisation to extend democratic control of the economy. He plans to land us with 41 billion of shaky B&B mortgages, which no other bank is prepared to take off its hands, while selling the 200 high street B&B offices and savings business to other institutions. This is in addition to the 20 billion plus interest that the government still has invested in Northern Rock. These huge figures dwarf the costs associated with such proposals as a decent state pension, free prescriptions, abolition of student fees, provision of student grants, renationalisation of rail and utilities, which have all been rejected by new Labour on cost grounds. As with imperialist wars, for which Mr Brown decreed that “whatever is necessary” would be found, new Labour has infinite funds to bail out the private sector and nothing but soft soap for measures to defend working-class living standards. While working people are expected to tighten their belts, accepting below-inflation pay rises and job losses – 20,000 of which are likely in Britain’s financial sector alone – the reckless profiteers in banking boardrooms are cosseted by cash hand-outs. The PM played to the gallery at Labour Party conference, insisting on greater corporate responsibility and a curb on excessive pay-outs, which seduced some trade unionists into believing that a change of direction was in the offing. Don’t be fooled. The details of his B&B nationalisation plan illustrate where his priorities lie. He and Chancellor Alistair Darling claim that their ministerial experience means that they are best fitted to see us through this latest crisis of capitalism, but they reject the view that it has arisen largely as a result of their obsessions with reliance on market forces and minimal regulation. The B&B collapse also marks the utter failure of building society demutualisation, with every single society that opted for conversion to a bank and engaged in a voracious profits campaign, based on borrowing cheaply on world markets to fund buy-to-let and overambitious 125 per cent mortgages, going belly up to be swallowed up by bigger banks or rescued by the government. In contrast, Nationwide, which has remained a mutual, has thrived and been in a position to help smaller societies facing difficulty. Surely a reality check is called for by government leaders rather than a suicidal steady-as-she-sinks complacency. The government’s neoliberal strategy is a disaster. It has failed and there has to be a change of direction or the boardroom excesses of recent years will return to haunt us, as will today’s attempts to resolve the crisis at the expense of working people. B&B should certainly be nationalised as an entity, prime assets as well as bouncing cheques, and this, together with Northern Rock, should form a national bank to offer probity and stability in contrast to the reckless greedfest of the private sector.

Post-capitalist irony
28 Sep 2008
Ironically, the best case for the abolition of private ownership of production and finance is now being made by capitalism itself. For example, banks which until just a few months ago were firmly in the private sector are now state owned or controlled. As yet, the world as we know it has not come to an end following this remarkable turnaround. Of course, George Bush and Gordon Brown have not become revolutionary anti-capitalists. Their actions are desperate moves to prop up the failing international financial system and save it from total collapse. Every day there?s another frantic response. Yesterday, America?s Federal Reserve made $30bn available to central banks in Australia, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, to ease money markets. The American government is printing money like there is no tomorrow. What the crash of 2008 is demonstrating, however, is that a) the market-driven capitalist economy and financial system has failed big time b) there is no iron law that says private ownership is necessary and c) there are alternative ownership models which can actually work. So the crisis itself indicates the solution. Shareholder-owned and profit-driven corporations and banks have produced chaos and an impending catastrophe. Let them be commonly owned and run for the benefit of society as a whole. Of course, the capitalist state and proxy governments like New Labour are only interested in keeping the system going, if at all possible, whatever the social consequences in terms of unemployment, repossessions and lower living standards. They intend to either wind up or hand back to the private sector the enterprises they have nationalised. Yet this assumes that the financial crash is now under control and manageable. Some superficial observers even believe that current events lead back to a much more conservative financial system, where credit/debt is much reduced and the regulatory framework is tightened up. This back-to-the-future fantasy scenario is championed by liberal commentators like the Guardian?s economics editor Larry Elliott and Will Hutton, chief executive of the Work Foundation. Serious analysts know that the credit crunch is only just beginning, however. The unravelling of countless trillions of dollars of fictitious ?assets? has a long way to go and will be reinforced by the impact of recession, falling house prices and lower consumer spending. All eyes are now turning to another mysterious area ? credit default swaps (CDS). These are insurance-like contracts that promise to cover losses on certain securities in the event of a default. They typically apply to municipal bonds, corporate debt and mortgage securities and are sold by banks, hedge funds and others. Contracts can be traded ? or swapped ? from investor to investor. The instruments can be bought and sold from both ends ? the insured and the insurer. The CDS market exploded over the past decade to more than $45 trillion by mid-2007, according to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. This is roughly twice the size of the US stock market and far exceeds the $7.1 trillion mortgage market and $4.4 trillion US treasuries market. The top 25 American banks hold more than $13 trillion in CDS instruments. As asset prices plummet and companies go bankrupt leaving nothing but bad debts behind, the CDS market is ready to implode. Yet another powerful reason to refuse to pay for the bankers? crisis and to mobilise for the Stand Up for Your Rights festival on 18 October.

Renewing our obligations
27 Sep 2008
The government is committed to massive new nuclear build in Britain. We do not yet know the details of Gordon Brown’s nuclear plan, least of all how all the new nuclear power stations are to be paid for. But substantial public subsidy is definitely part of the deal, as described by David Lowry on Commentisfree and David Burke, writing in Prospect. After all, EDF would hardly have paid 12.5bn for British Energy if it did not have a clear promise of jam tomorrow. But while the Brown nuclear plan (I am referring here to Gordon Brown, of course, not his brother Andrew, EDF Energy’s head of media relations) glides serenely ahead, where does this leave the UK’s renewable ambitions? Remember that the UK already has a policy to generate 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and that this target will need to be doubled to around 40% for the UK to achieve its share of the new EU-wide target to source 20% of all energy from renewables by the same date. So far, Brown has been far more active in trying to water down the UK’s EU renewable target than in finding ways to meet it, in spite of the enormous renewable resources of wind, wave and tide, which sweep our shores. But even if he succeeds in the latest ploy to knock 11% off the UK’s target by not counting the energy used in aviation, the UK still has a lot of renewable generation capacity to build ? approaching 50,000MW of wind for a start. And this creates a problem: nuclear power and intermittent renewables make a very poor match. Ministers and most nuclear advocates now insist that they have nothing against renewables ? on the contrary, they adore them, and all they are advocating is a sensible mix of nuclear power and renewables to give the UK a wonderful new low-carbon electricity system. But the idea does not add up. The wind turbines (onshore and increasingly offshore) that will have to produce most of our renewable electricity can only generate when and where the wind is blowing. The problems of over- and under-supply created by this intermittency can be minimised by spreading wind turbines over a broad geographical area, and by mixing them with other intermittent renewables, such as wave and solar PV. But as the renewable fraction increases, so the need to smooth out the intermittency in the electricity supply rises, and to do this with coal-fired power stations is to defeat our purpose. Nuclear power has a similar but opposite problem. Once a nuclear power station is up and running, the best way to run it is to keep on producing electricity at a constant rate ? until it develops some fault and cuts out altogether, that is. Add the two together, nuclear and intermittent renewables, and what do you get? You might imagine the two complement each other. But the opposite is the case. Because nuclear is “always on”, it does nothing to smooth the supply curve from wind, or to better match total supply to demand, which is also highly variable. Indeed, the renewable supply profile fits consumer demand better than the nuclear straight-line output because the wind blows more during periods of peak electricity demand ? that is mornings and evenings, and winter. By adding nuclear power into the mix, electricity supply actually fits demand worse, not better. So, the more the government backs nuclear power, the more it is undermining the future of renewables in the UK’s energy supply. By backing the nuclear horse so strongly, it is revealing its probable real long-term aim: to use the ineffective and costly Renewables Obligation to fail to meet its targets (which it is guaranteed to do) and then claim that its nuclear power should count as “renewable” because it is low-carbon. Anyway, 2020 is several elections away, and whoever is in charge at the time can deal with the problem then. But maybe I’m wrong and the government really does want renewables to have a major role. If so, here are five important things it ought to be doing to demonstrate its good intentions: 1. The natural companion to intermittent renewables is not nuclear but hydropower, which can be turned on and off to supply electricity when it is needed, and to store energy for when it is in surplus. So, we should seriously expand hydropower capacity in the UK, which currently stands at about 1,500MW, with a view to using it not for baseload generation but to balance gaps between supply and demand. The pumped storage facility at Dinorwig in Wales is already doing this on a huge scale, if for brief periods, with its ability to kick a colossal 1,320MW into the grid at 12 seconds’ notice. We need a large number of plants designed to perform a similar role, but over periods of hours and days, rather than minutes. Small-scale hydro could also have a big role in balancing the output from individual wind farms, perhaps sharing the same grid connections. The new 100MW station at Glendoe (Scotland’s first new large hydro plant in 50 years) is to be welcomed, but there is an even bigger role for small-scale hydro, which could produce a further 650MW. 2. We should also improve our connections to other European countries, as this will help to smooth the overall renewables supply curve, and so benefit all countries. Denmark, Germany, Spain and Portugal are far enough away from the UK for their wind farms to be out of sync with ours, so by linking them all together, wind power surges in one country can compensate for dips in others. There is also growing output from photovoltaic panels (PV) in Germany, Spain and Italy, which can further smooth the renewable supply curve. Also note that Denmark uses its connection to Norway, which gets 99% of its electricity from hydro, to dump surplus wind energy, and draw on the hydro when the wind drops. We should do the same. Concentrated solar power (CSP) from Spain, Portugal and North Africa will also make a huge contribution to renewable generation and supply stability. Like hydro (and unlike solar PV), CSP can store up energy (as heat) and use it to generate electricity when needed. 3. We also need to beef up our own UK grid to link the places our renewable power will be coming from far away from existing power stations ? and using undergound power lines so as not to disfigure our upland landscapes. A new west coast interconnector would be an excellent way to link the many power sources along the UK’s western seaboard, and link to Ireland at the same time. The electricity distribution system also needs to be re-engineered to accommodate small- and medium-scale embedded generation, from local combined heat and power plants to solar PV tiles on domestic roofs. We also need to use price signals on the grid to make our demand responsive to supply, so that, for example, freezers stock up on cold when electricity is cheap, and coast along when the price is high. 4. Scrap the failed Renewables Obligation and replace it with a feed-in tarriffs system, or another system of fixed-price contracts to give renewable developers much needed security for long-term investment. This system would aim to deliver electricity quality ? that is a smooth output matching demand ? not just quantity. To do this, it would pay a premium for diversity of supply to bring in less productive locations, and less economic technologies such as wave power and solar PV. Note that the British Pelamis wave power technology has now been deployed in Portugal thanks to the far greater commitment to renewables of the Portuguese government. 5. Finally, the government should come clean about the deals it has made with EDF and other nuclear generators. It must be seen to hold firm to its promise not to subsidise nuclear power, either overtly or covertly, made in the 2006 Energy Review: “It will be for the private sector to initiate, fund, construct and operate new nuclear plants and to cover the full cost of decommissioning and their full share of long-term waste management costs.”

Lost in Transition
27 Sep 2008
SCHNEWS fails to understand the logic of climate group As global capitalism and its failing markets threaten to fall around our ears, it must be worth imagining what a different way of doing things might look like. And working towards it. That?s what the Transition Towns (TT) supporters want to do. TT’s are a ‘think global act local’ strategy for fighting climate change first put forward by an permaculture academic, Rob Hopkins, in 2005/6 in Kinsale, Ireland. It was first exported to the UK in Totnes, Devon – and converts have been eagerly promoting the idea ever since. And the message seems to be getting through. In the past couple of years the concept (and the leafleting) has been spreading around the country, nay, the world, with over a 100 communities signed up from all over the UK as well as Australia, New Zealand, Chile, the US and most recently, Japan. The movement has also been hitting the headlines here in the UK recently, with just the other week a small town a few miles down the road from SchNEWS towers, Lewes, proudly launching it?s own currency to much media fanfare. With such an emergent new force for social change, you?d think we might have mentioned it in SchNEWS before ? it?s obviously long overdue for us to put the boot in, er we mean, provide an unbiased and dispassionate rational analysis of the whole shebang. So what?s the big idea? Transition Towns (TT) make a good case for the need to change. They recognise the pressing threats of climate change and peak oil (OK, well, the end of super-abundant cheap oil we can agree on, at least – see SchNEWS 644). This means that the globalised, air-mile, oil-driven nonsense needs to stop and more locally based, lower carbon living solutions are needed. The question is, how are we going to get there? But they are not calling for major reform or revolution ? the clue is in the name, folks! – they are looking for an ordered gradual switch over ? a transition. The way they propose this should come about is a somewhat tortuous affair, with the resultant danger that the eco-system or global economic system (or both) may collapse in the meantime. To start the process of your whole town, or city, being designated a ?TT?, all that is needed is a small group of well-meaning committed do-gooders, usually PR friendly middle-class types, to form a Transition Group. This group then works on publicising themselves, arranging film showings, printing leaflets and networking. Once momentum has been sufficiently built, the group can then hold a great ?public unleashing? where the plan goes ?live?. As well as a wave of talks, trades and skills workshops and green-inspired local projects such as tree planting and small permaculture schemes, the main plank of the plan involves gradually formulating a Local Energy Descent Plan? (LEDP), to map out how the local community might one day become more self sufficient, less oil dependant and much greener. If enough local businesses, people and councillors go along with it, or palatable parts of it, the town can officially adopt the mantle of a ?Transition Town? and brand itself accordingly. Measures suggested include the laudable aims of reducing the reliance on multinational corporations for food and goods production, improving energy use and efficiency, increasing recycling, reducing car dependency and a host of other lefty-green objectives. It?s a ?big tent? which allows it to scoop up the efforts of a range of social change groups under one large banner. So what?s the problem? Whilst it?s hard to be too disparaging ? these are all people with the best intentions, attempting to actually take some sort of action as opposed to sitting idly by and waiting for the big collapse – and some change for the good is obviously better than none, there are some flaws in the thinking. Firstly, TT acknowledge that they have no desire to do away with all the trappings of capitalist society ? merely reduce local dependence on it, gradually. They avoid taking on the political roots of all the problems and concentrate on symptoms. A key aim is to get the local council on board. Which many have been surprisingly willing to do…up to a point. Local government itself is charged by central government with working out how to roll out various greenish initiatives, such as to minimise energy needs and increase recycling levels for example, and the LEDP overlaps to some degree with many of their own blueprints for the future ? as long as it?s controlled and the results leave the status quo as little changed as possible, with power flowing upwards, private money still in charge of all those recycling facilities and a capitalistic model still underpinning the local economy. So the council can now use the TT brand wagon to increase uptake of these plans on a wave of public enthusiasm, whilst simultaneously seeming uber green and championing the local over the national. Put this way, its easy to see why many a town hall bigwig are talking up the scheme. Which explains why Lewes council are so behind the latest big venture in the TT vision of the future ? launching local currencies. As people previously used to get hanged for such impertinence as starting yer own money, there must be a catch. And there is. The Lewes Pound (LP) was unveiled last week with a windfall of media coverage. As global financial markets have been taking a beating, perhaps this was a model for the brave new world? Er, not really. Because it isn?t actually a currency at all. It?s actually an ingenious scheme using existing book token legislation. It involves effectively buying a certain amount of sterling (in Lewes? case, 10,000) and then issuing vouchers to the equivalent value, accepted in local shops signing up the scheme. Which many local shops in Lewes were of course only too happy to do ? a welcome free boost to trade as consumers voluntarily pledge to spend their cash with them. Who wouldn?t? The idea is that the LP will increase interest in spending more cash locally, which in theory keeps more of the profit generated circulating locally, as opposed to being syphoned out of the community and into the pockets of global institutions (like Tesco, for example) and their shareholders. Which is great, surely. Well yes, except that the vouchers are redeemable back into cash any time you, or a business-owner wishes – presumably for going shopping at Tesco or making more import deals with third-world tat suppliers. And one of the stated aims of the year long test project is to get national chains accepting them ? which seems a rather strange measure of success and contradicts the whole stated purpose. Money already spent in local shops will continue circulating with little effect on the outside world. While OK for PR and raising public awareness of the explotation by global corporations, it’s not achieving more than affecting a few better-off people?s spending habits. In any event, in Lewes, the big launch has not really gone as planned. Whilst there was massive interest and local flag-waving parochial support for the LP, the well-meaning urging of the TT organisers to keep circulating the vouchers and not change them back into cash has not exactly been heeded. All the LP notes ?sold out? in hours… only to be hoarded and swiftly offered on Ebay for up to 40 for one Lewes Pound as the local populace immediately capitalised on the opportunity to indulge in some rampant currency speculation! They reasoned that as there is a limited supply of individually numbered LP?s, they will in the future be highly collectable – and there have been no shortage of over-the-odds buyers, leaving the whole scheme looking somewhat farcical. The TT group ? having considered but eventually rejected the idea of selling LPs itself for 10 each in order to lesson the black marketeering, have now pledged to print up some more stock – although whether they?ll ever be able to afford to devalue the LP enough to out-bankroll the speculators remains to be seen! As does the overall effect of the Transition Towns movement itself. Whilst we broadly support many of its stated objectives, we cannot see how failing to plan for the much more radical reform of society needs will really work. Attempting to push the existing power structures into implementing some of the required measures will only ever lead to partial change and speaks mainly to people who want things more or less as they are, only slightly greener. ...But we could be wrong! To judge for yourself (and don?t let us put you off working for more localisation and all things green!), see www.transitiontowns.org The Trapese collective?s in depth critique of the Transition Movement is available at www.sparror.cubecinema.com/stuffit/trapese

Lobbyists on the Attack
26 Sep 2008
?That?s an oxymoron,? quipped new, New Labour lobbyist Derek Draper, responding to a flyer on ?lobbying transparency?, promoting a fringe meeting at this year’s Labour conference. Ten years out of the game and he’s as candid as ever. Beneath the stories that dominated the headlines at conference ? Brown?s future and the country?s fortunes ? another issue was brewing. That of lobbyists and their licence to operate under the radar of public scrutiny. The lobbyists in Manchester found themselves the focus of debate thanks to two back-to-back fringe meetings, one organised by the industry’s trade body, the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC), the other by thea href=“http://www.spinwatch.org/www.lobbyingtransparency.org” Alliance for Lobbying Transparency (ALT). ALT is a coalition of civil society groups, including Friends of the Earth, National Union of Journalists, Unlock Democracy and SpinWatch, who are concerned about the influence professional lobbyists have on public policy and the lack of transparency in the industry. Some lobbyists were possibly lured to ALT?s debate, Will Lobbyists Come Clean?, keen to be the first to read a new report by SpinWatch, which was launched at the event. The report, Spinning the Wheels: a guide to the PR and lobbying industry in the UK takes readers on a walking tour of the major players in the industry around Westminster, examining the links between their lobbyists and UK politics and revealing some of the industry?s common techniques and tactics. The fringe debate touched on much of the same ground covered by the Parliamentary inquiry into lobbying, which is due to report this autumn. Speakers John Grogan MP, David Miller of SpinWatch, Jon McLeod, UK Chairman of Public Affairs at lobbying firm Weber Shandwick, and Stephen Kingston, editor of the local grassroots magazine the Salford Star presented and debated many of the current concerns people have with professional lobbying. These include: the absence of transparency in the industry; the disparity in resources and access to political decision-makers between corporate lobbyists and the public; the revolving door between the lobbying industry and MPs, Peers and government officials; the apparent unethical behaviour of some lobbying firms and the weakness of self-regulation to prevent it; and the value of ?community consultations? conducted by PR and lobbying firms on behalf of commercial interests such as developers. Not long into the debate, heckling from the back began. Someone wishing to speak claimed that the level of debate was ?low? and the speakers were being ?nave? (which given the collective experience of the panel came as something of a surprise). When it came to questions at the end, lobbyist Robbie MacDuff rose to say his piece. MacDuff is a lobbyist formerly with Ian Greer Associates, now with Precise Public Affairs. He was recently appointed head of the APPC, the trade body established in the wake of scandals in the nineties involving Ian Greer Associates, to set standards and improve transparency in lobbying through self-regulation. In a lengthy speech, and reading from cards, MacDuff set out to defend the lobbying industry. What we need is transparency in charities, he said; lobbyists work pro-bono for good causes; regulation of lobbyists would create an exclusive ?elite? and deter others from lobbying etc. As he continued another member of the audience thought to ask him if he was in fact the fifth member of the panel, so intent was he on holding the floor. Chair Nigel Pivaro, formerly bad boy Terry Duckworth in Coronation Street, stepped in on a number of occasions to try and stem the flow, only managing to stop MacDuff with a look that was pure Terry. Despite the barracking from the back row, the panel and audience ? made up of progressive business, NGO workers, local councillors, media and lobbyists ? debated the issues for a further hour, raising questions, dispelling myths and unpicking arguments. And while some stayed on for a drink, others went back to the day job, lobbying into the night. According to sources, the APPC?s own event on lobbying the following morning passed without incident. With this fringe meeting held inside the secure zone, only those with conference passes were able to attend.

Migrants exploited for cheap labour
26 Sep 2008
Detainees at the Campsfield House immigration prison in Oxfordshire are being “exploited for cheap labour” due to staff cuts, the Oxford and District Trades Union Council has revealed. The rejected asylum seekers, who are locked up for lengthy periods pending their deportation, are being paid 5 for six-hour shifts of cleaning and kitchen work. A statement by the Oxford and District TUC said: “We maintain our position that Campsfield is a shameful operation and should be closed. As long as it is open, jobs should be properly paid and be done by trained staff. For detainees there should be adequate recreational, educational and other provision? Detainees should receive an adequate financial allowance and not be obliged to act as slave labour for a multinational that makes big profits out of an operation that causes detainees enormous stress, uncertainty, general misery and often mental illness.” Tracy Ellicott from the Campaign to Close Campsfield told Corporate Watch that detainees are not forced by GEO, the company that runs the prison, to work as such. They are, however, “forced in the sense that they are locked up for 24 hours a day, uncertain of their future and with no money to purchase any essentials they may need.” She added detainees can apply to do certain ‘jobs’ in the centre, such as cleaning, kitchen work and in the library. But none of those she has been visiting was prepared to speak out about this as they are “too scared of retaliation.” The shifts are 6 hours long and detainees are paid 5 per shift, or 83p an hour. A GEO guard has reportedly said that, according to Home Office rules, they could only pay detainees a maximum of 24 a week. Radio Oxford quoted a statement from the Home Office two weeks ago to the effect that this was all above board and had been agreed with the Home Secretary. A Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) spokesperson said: “All detained persons are provided with an opportunity and encouraged to participate in activities to meet their recreational and intellectual needs. Individuals are entitled to undertake paid activities at rates approved by the Secretary of State.” As usual, GEO declined to comment. Since taking over the running of Campsfield in June 2006, Global Expertise in Outsourcing (GEO) has cut back on both staffing levels and educational, recreational and other provisions at the centre. Over the past year, GEO has sacked education workers, nursing staff have departed, staff turnover has increased, the welfare officer has left and in September, the chaplain was suspended. GEO?s main business is immigration detention centres and mental health centres throughout the world, especially in USA, UK, South Africa and Australia. It also runs a part of Guantnamo Bay base in Cuba. Private companies like GEO that run immigration detention centres make huge profits. Seven of the UK’s ten detention centres are run by private companies. The average cost for detaining someone in 2007/08 was 119 per day. “It is unbelievable that people who have done nothing wrong are not only locked up in prison like criminals, but are also being treated like slaves,” Ms Ellicott said. “GEO is obviously saving money by using their ‘captives’ to perform menial tasks for slave wages.” She added, “of course, they could save a lot more if these centres were closed altogether!”. The Home Office admitted migrants imprisoned in detention centres are “exempt from the minimum wage” but claimed they are “not forced to work.” A BIA spokesperson insisted: “This is voluntary and we are constantly looking for new opportunities to meet demand for this work.” However, according to the immigration law, all asylum seekers are prohibited from work and live on state support, which is fixed at 70% of what is deemed to be the bare minimum to live on. The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 states that “it is contrary to this section to employ an adult subject to immigration control if… he has not been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.” The majority of those held in immigration detention centres are rejected asylum seekers (have not been granted leave to enter or remain in the UK) who are waiting to be deported back home.

Nato and Russia: Georgia on their minds
26 Sep 2008
The British media coverage of the war that erupted in the Caucasus last month almost universally portrayed a fragile little democracy terrorised by its big Russian neighbour. But a closer look at what happened reveals something different – a frightening escalation of the “war on terror” that masks the US drive for markets, oil and influence around the globe. The Georgian government led by Mikheil Saakashvili is one of George Bush’s closest military allies and has aligned itself fully with US economic and political ambitions. The relationship is summed up by the chief Moscow correspondent of the New York Times: “The United States… helped militarise the weak Georgian state. In his wooing of Washington as he came to power, Mr Saakashvili firmly embraced the missions of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Saakashvili’s rise, the paper says, “coincided neatly with a swelling American need for political support and foreign soldiers in Iraq. His offer of troops was matched with a Pentagon effort to overhaul Georgia’s forces from bottom to top. At senior levels, the US helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.” Georgia began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and US firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield-management equipment, convoys of vehicles and new ammunition. According to the respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Georgia has the fastest growing military in the world. Since the 2003 “rose revolution” that brought Saakashvili to power, Georgian defence spending has increased by over 40 times. The country had 2,000 troops in Iraq and had offered to send hundreds more to Afghanistan. At home Saakashvili’s free market reforms neglected the poor, while rampant fraud and corruption led to mass demonstrations last November, which were ruthlessly put down by the security forces. This was the background to a major US military exercise in Georgia on the eve of last month’s fighting. Operation “Immediate Response 2008” involved 1,000 US military personnel and over 600 Georgian troops from 15 to 31 July. It was the first time that Georgia had hosted these annual war games, which are normally conducted in Poland and Bulgaria. On 1 August, just a day after the exercises ended, skirmishes erupted between Georgian forces and those from the breakaway region of South Ossetia, leaving several dead. It was the worst violence during long years of standoff in this conflict zone. The chronology of events makes a mockery of claims by US diplomats that they tried to calm the situation. The area was a tinderbox into which the US had poured guns, men and warcraft. A week later, on the night of 7 August, the Georgian army stepped up the violence when it began an artillery assault on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, backed up with ground troops the next day. Larisa Sotieva, an Ossetian humanitarian worker, gave the following description of what happened to the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, which is renowned for eyewitness reports from trained and trusted sources: “A massed Georgian assault began on the town. For 14 hours we were fired on without pause by every conceivable type of heavy weaponry, supported by the Georgian air force. The city was fought over in hand to hand fighting and in a night of hellish metallic hail it turned into ruins.” The US-based organisation Human Rights Watch, which usually errs on the side of sympathy for the US and its allies, entered Tskhinvali on 13 August. Its researchers reported that they “saw numerous apartment buildings and houses damaged by shelling. Some of them had been hit by rockets most likely fired from Grad launchers, weapons that should not be used in areas populated by civilians, as they cannot be directed at only military targets and are therefore inherently indiscriminate”. Human Rights Watch said it “saw several buildings that bore traces of heavy ammunition as if fired from tanks at close range. There was some evidence of firing being directed into basements, locations which civilians frequently choose as a place of shelter.” The researchers interviewed 30 civilians about the fighting in the town. They concluded that “witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian fire accounting for much of the damage”. The organisation recorded 44 dead and 273 wounded in Tskhinvali alone. At the time of writing Russia is claiming that at least 133 civilians died in South Ossetia during the fighting. Control So why did Georgian troops launch this bloody assault? What were they hoping to achieve? And why did Russia itself respond so brutally, shelling Georgian homes and setting paramilitaries loose on civilians? The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked a seismic shift in the balance of power between the US and Russia, the global tremors from which are still making themselves felt. With the Soviet regime gone and the Japanese economy in crisis, the US found itself the world’s sole superpower. It set about reaping the benefits. Through its control of major financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the US prised open the weaker economies of the former Soviet bloc, securing dominant positions for its firms in these new markets. Countries such as Georgia took out massive loans from the IMF, in return it had to accept “structural adjustment programmes” which let the market rip. At the same time, the US sought to use fear of Russia to bind former Soviet bloc countries into a military alliance, further isolating its former Cold War adversary. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became Nato members in 1999, while Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states joined in 2004. The US built up networks of non-governmental organisations backed by multibillionaires such as George Soros to strengthen Western influence among young, educated elites in these countries. When political crises broke out, organisations set up or co-opted by the US such as Otpor in Serbia, Kmara in Georgia and Pora in Ukraine helped to lead huge but largely passive opposition movements that brought pro-US politicians to power under the banner of democracy. With dizzying speed these regimes turned out to be just as greedy and corrupt as the ones they replaced. And finally, when some nations still held out against the West, the US looked for opportunities to wield its stupendous military arsenal to bring them into line. The first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1991 was the earliest such campaign. The aerial bombardment of Serbian factories, bridges and television stations by Nato forces in 1999 was principally about Western dominance of the Balkans, rather than protecting Kosovans from Serb paramilitaries. The 9/11 attacks on New York presented the US with an opportunity to step up the military wing of its campaign in the name of fighting “terror”. The Afghanistan campaign allowed the US to establish military bases in oil-rich Central Asia, surrounding its new economic rival – China – and further hemming in Russia. The invasion of Iraq was part of a far broader plan to “democratise” the Middle East – in other words, to apply the methods that had worked so well in Eastern Europe to the Arab states and Iran. This strategy was the heart of the recent events in Georgia. Military cooperation between the US and Georgia was billed as the pursuit of Al Qaida in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, on the border with Chechnya. Georgia was also a key access point to the oil and gas wealth of the Caspian and Central Asia, with two major pipelines running through its territory. But moving Georgia closer to Nato and integrating it with the US military machine inevitably meant stoking Georgia’s own ambitions to wrest back control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia – breakaway regions backed by Russia. Friction between the enclaves and Tbilisi had festered since the early 1990s. In August these tensions exploded into a war that for the first time threatened to pit the US against another major power. Russian troops poured into South Ossetia, ostensibly to protect civilians from the Georgian onslaught. But, like Nato’s attack on Serbia nine years ago, the Kremlin had other goals. Russia is guilty of savage reprisals against Georgian civilians, while its clients in South Ossetia played a clear role in provoking an escalation of the conflict. Ever since the Soviet Empire was broken apart by mass movements in 1990-1, Russia’s rulers have attempted to win back control. North Ossetia – the tiny Russian republic that borders on its linguistic partner to the south – was the scene of one of the first such moves. In 1992 Russia chose to back the local regime in driving 70,000 ethnic Ingushis from their homes in the area near the capital, Vladikavkaz, that had been annexed from Ingushetia by Stalin in 1944. Russian “peacekeepers” stood by as Ossetian militias systematically torched Ingush homes. North Ossetia was then turned into a military outpost for Russia in the Caucasus, with a quantity of arms per head of population that was the highest in the world. It was from its North Ossetian bases that Russia launched its first bloody invasion of Chechnya in December 1994. The Chechen resistance fought off the Russian troops who were demoralised and disorganised. But in 1999 the new president, Vladimir Putin, exploited a wave of nationalism in the wake of Nato’s attack on Serbia to reinvade. This time the resistance was crushed. As Russia emerged from the slump of the early 1990s, soaring oil and gas prices gave Putin the means to rebuild the military. And Georgia, with its key strategic importance in terms of Caspian oil, was a primary target. Last year Russia imposed an economic blockade and severed all transport and postal links with the republic. It deported hundreds of Georgian migrants and harassed Georgian businesses across the country, while the state-controlled media waged a racist anti-Georgian propaganda campaign. For years Georgia had been accustomed to Russian weakness, but it became increasingly clear that the Kremlin was prepared to resort to force. The rebel regime in South Ossetia was well aware of the potential for Russia to be drawn into a major firefight on its side. The enclave conducted its own military manoeuvres simultaneously with the US-Georgian ones in July. Within hours of the first casualties from skirmishes with Georgian troops on 1 August, South Ossetia had evacuated over 1,000 women and children, while hundreds of volunteers rushed from North Ossetia to take up arms. Within days 10,000 volunteers had been registered in Vladikavkaz to fight in Tskhinvali. The authoritative Russian weekly Independent Military Review therefore concluded that the Georgian side responded to Ossetian provocations. However, in an interview with the Financial Times, Batu Kutelia, the deputy defence minister of Georgia – sitting in his office in front of the flags of Georgia and Nato – admitted that Georgia decided to seize the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali in the mistaken belief that Russia would not retaliate. In any case, Saakashvili backed the Georgian assault, and Russia seized the opportunity to stamp its authority on its former colony and thumb its nose at the West – slaughtering countless Georgian civilians in the process. Earthquake After a major earthquake, it is never certain whether new tremors are merely aftershocks or the warning signs of a new quake. The seismic geopolitical events surrounding the 9/11 attacks have scattered aftershocks across the world, but they are also fraught with new upheavals as the tectonic plates of the major powers continue to grind against each other. Last month’s conflict was a clash of imperialisms, represented on one side by a client state of the US. Had Georgia been a Nato member, however, there would have been a real possibility of war between two nuclear powers. The US “war on terror”, backed slavishly by the Labour government in Britain, is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan just as an economic downturn is beginning to hit. US vulnerability in these circumstances means that the rulers of other states may feel emboldened to test the limits of US power, just as Russia has done. What is certain is that ordinary people will pay the price. There is an urgent need to break the imperialist logic that pits countries against each other in the pursuit of power and profit. We too must test the limits of US power – with our resistance to the system that breeds war.

Question time for the left
25 Sep 2008
The convention?s final session, ?Question Time for the Left?, brought together a panel from across the left to see, once and for all, if they could work together. Not to spoil it for you or anything, but the answer was ?yes?. The panel was certainly wide-ranging: the panel took in Colin Fox (SSP), Clive Searle (Respect), Lindsey German (SWP), Robert Griffiths (CPB/Morning Star), John McDonnell, (LRC/Labour left) Mark Serwotka (PCS union), Derek Wall (Green Left) and Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper). I?d be blogging all day and all night if I wrote about every question that was asked and answered: the session was rapid-fire, with speakers? points kept short and audience participation made central to the session. The ?us and them? wall was broken down once and for all. Their verdict on the convention was unanimous, though: it was ?historic? (Wainwright), ?a tremendous success? (McDonnell), and even ?maybe, just maybe, the start of 21st century socialism in Europe? (Wall). The discussion darted from why left organisations are so ?pale and male?, to the anti-war movement, to free public transport to tackle climate change ? but it somehow stayed on track, making real links between the problems we face without resorting to the old ?the problem is capitalism? schtick. Suddenly the underlying question wasn?t ?what are the problems?? or ?can we work together?? ? it was ?how will we win?? Lindsey German pointed out that not only can the left make a difference, but it does every day: on strike picket lines, in the anti-war movement, in fighting the BNP. ?I don?t think the left should beat itself up,? she said. Our groups might not be perfect, but our convention was full of life ? Labour?s conference had none. On fuel bills, most of all, the mood to go out and build a mass campaign right there and then was palpable ? some members of the audience told of how they?d seen their bills almost double. ?We need to be going straight onto action,? said John MacDonnell, while Mark Serwotka called it ?the best issue I can think of? to organise around. Colin Fox called for militant action to stop people dying from the cold: ?There are millions who will be disconnected this winter. We have to say: if they try to disconnect one single worker?? ? the rest of the sentence got lost in the wild applause. German offered a nice slogan ? ?can?t pay, won?t pay? ? while Clive Searle said it was an opportunity to really make the left relevant to people?s lives, and Robert Griffiths told an encouraging story of how well petitions on fuel bills had gone. Hilary Wainwright added: ?The importance of a mass campaign around a winnable issue is that it opens things up for us.? Other campaigns with broad support included the climate camp (which may be forced to launch direct action at Heathrow as soon as December if the third runway gets the go-ahead in parliament), civil disobedience against ID cards (the next poll tax, for sure), renationalisation of public services, and the Europe-wide mobilisations against Nato and the spread of war. When the convention?s idea of local left forums was raised again, McDonnell had news of some people who have already gone home and started setting one up: ?I think it could be a tremendous breakthrough.? Searle tackled the ?talking shop? issue head-on: ?If they were just talking shops they?d be good, if they?re talking shops linked to action it?ll be excellent.? There is going to be a ?recall conference? on 29 November to hear reports back from the local forums, so we?ll soon know whether we?re getting anywhere. Summing up, Serwotka said: ?If movements like this are to mean anything they?ve got to be linked to action. We need some victories.? So, after five days of discussions, the job of the left suddenly appears much clearer than before. All we have to do now is get started.

The New World War – The Silence Is A Lie
25 Sep 2008
Britain’s political conference season of 2008 will be remembered as The Great Silence. Politicians have come and gone and their mouths have moved in front of large images of themselves, and they often wave at someone. There has been lots of news about each other. Adam Boulton, the political editor of Sky News, and billed as “the husband of Blair aide Anji Hunter”, has published a book of gossip derived from his “unrivalled access to No 10”. His revelation is that Tony Blair’s mouthpiece told lies. The war criminal himself has been absent, but the former mouthpiece has been signing his own book of gossip, and waving. The club is celebrating itself, including all those, Labour and Tory, who gave the war criminal a standing ovation on his last day in parliament and who have yet to vote on, let alone condemn, Britain’s part in the wanton human, social and physical destruction of an entire nation. Instead, there are happy debates such as, “Can hope win?” and, my favourite, “Can foreign policy be a Labour strength?” As Harold Pinter said of unmentionable crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, has written that the Prime Minister “resembles a tragic hero in a Hardy novel: an essentially good man brought down by one error of judgement”. What is this one error of judgement? The bank- rolling of two murderous colonial adventures? No. The unprecedented growth of the British arms industry and the sale of weapons to the poorest countries? No. The replacement of manufacturing and public service by an arcane cult serving the ultra-rich? No. The Prime Minister’s “folly” is “postponing the election last year”. This is the March Hare Factor. Reality can be detected, however, by applying the Orwell Rule and inverting public pronouncements and headlines, such as “Aggressor Russia facing pariah status, US warns”, thereby identifying the correct pariah; or by crossing the invisible boundaries that fix the boundaries of political and media discussion. “When truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.” Understanding this silence is critical in a society in which news has become noise. Silence covers the truth that Britain’s political parties have converged and now follow the single-ideology model of the United States. This is different from the political consensus of half a century ago that produced what was known as social democracy. Today’s political union has no principled social democratic premises. Debate has become just another weasel word and principle, like the language of Chaucer, is bygone. That the poor and the state fund the rich is a given, along with the theft of public services, known as privatisation. This was spelt out by Margaret Thatcher but, more importantly, by new Labour’s engineers. In The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle declared Britain’s new “economic strengths” to be its transnational corporations, the “aerospace” industry (weapons) and “the pre-eminence of the City of London”. The rest was to be asset-stripped, including the peculiar British pursuit of selfless public service. Overlaying this was a new social authoritarianism guided by a hypocrisy based on “values”. Mandelson and Liddle demanded “a tough discipline” and a “hardworking majority” and the “proper bringing-up [sic] of children”. And in formally launching his Murdochracy, Blair used “moral” and “morality” 18 times in a speech he gave in Australia as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, who had recently found God. A “think tank” called Demos exemplified this new order. A founder of Demos, Geoff Mulgan, himself rewarded with a job in one of Blair’s “policy units”, wrote a book called Connexity. “In much of the world today,” he offered, “the most pressing problems on the public agenda are not poverty or material shortage . . . but rather the disorders of freedom: the troubles that result from having too many freedoms that are abused rather than constructively used.” As if celebrating life in another solar system, he wrote: “For the first time ever, most of the world’s most powerful nations do not want to conquer territory.” That reads, now as it ought to have read then, as dark parody in a world where more than 24,000 children die every day from the effects of poverty and at least a million people lie dead in just one territory conquered by the most powerful nations. However, it serves to remind us of the political “culture” that has so successfully fused traditional liberalism with the lunar branch of western political life and allowed our “too many freedoms” to be taken away as ruthlessly and anonymously as wedding parties in Afghanistan have been obliterated by our bombs. The product of these organised delusions is rarely acknowledged. The current economic crisis, with its threat to jobs and savings and public services, is the direct consequence of a rampant militarism comparable, in large part, with that of the first half of the last century, when Europe’s most advanced and cultured nation committed genocide. Since the 1990s, America’s military budget has doubled. Like the national debt, it is currently the largest ever. The true figure is not known, because up to 40 per cent is classified “black” – it is hidden. Britain, with a weapons industry second only to the US, has also been militarised. The Iraq invasion has cost $5trn, at least. The 4,500 British troops in Basra almost never leave their base. They are there because the Americans demand it. On 19 September, Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, was in London demanding $20bn from allies like Britain so that the US invasion force in Afghanistan could be increased to 44,000. He said the British force would be increased. It was an order. In the meantime, an American invasion of Pakistan is under way, secretly authorised by President Bush. The “change” candidate for president, Barack Obama, had already called for an invasion and more aircraft and bombs. The ironies are searing. A Pakistani religious school attacked by American drone missiles, killing 23 people, was set up in the 1980s with CIA backing. It was part of Operation Cyclone, in which the US armed and funded mujahedin groups that became al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The aim was to bring down the Soviet Union. This was achieved; it also brought down the Twin Towers. War of the world On 20 September the inevitable response to the latest invasion came with the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. For me, it is reminiscent of President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia in 1970, which was planned as a diversion from the coming defeat in Vietnam. The result was the rise to power of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Today, with Taliban guerrillas closing on Kabul and Nato refusing to conduct serious negotiations, defeat in Afghanistan is also coming. It is a war of the world. In Latin America, the Bush administration is fomenting incipient military coups in Venezuela, Bolivia, and possibly Paraguay, democracies whose governments have opposed Washington’s historic rapacious intervention in its “backyard”. Washington’s “Plan Colombia” is the model for a mostly unreported assault on Mexico. This is the Merida Initiative, which will allow the United States to fund “the war on drugs and organised crime” in Mexico – a cover, as in Colombia, for militarising its closest neighbour and ensuring its “business stability”. Britain is tied to all these adventures – a British “School of the Americas” is to be built in Wales, where British soldiers will train killers from all corners of the American empire in the name of “global security”. None of this is as potentially dangerous, or more distorted in permitted public discussion, than the war on Russia. Two years ago, Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian Studies at New York University, wrote a landmark essay in the Nation which has now been reprinted in Britain.* He warns of “the gravest threats [posed] by the undeclared Cold War Washington has waged, under both parties, against post-communist Russia during the past 15 years”. He describes a catastrophic “relentless winner-take-all of Russia’s post-1991 weakness”, with two-thirds of the population forced into poverty and life expectancy barely at 59. With most of us in the West unaware, Russia is being encircled by US and Nato bases and missiles in violation of a pledge by the United States not to expand Nato “one inch to the east”. The result, writes Cohen, “is a US-built reverse iron curtain [and] a US denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its own territory, even in ethnically akin former republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. [There is even] a presumption that Russia does not have fully sovereignty within its own borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow’s internal affairs since 1992 . . . the United States is attempting to acquire the nuclear responsibility it could not achieve during the Soviet era.” This danger has grown rapidly as the American media again presents US-Russian relations as “a duel to the death – perhaps literally”. The liberal Washington Post, says Cohen, “reads like a bygone Pravda on the Potomac”. The same is true in Britain, with the regurgitation of propaganda that Russia was wholly responsible for the war in the Caucasus and must therefore be a “pariah”. Sarah Palin, who may end up US president, says she is ready to attack Russia. The steady beat of this drum has seen Moscow return to its old nuclear alerts. Remember the 1980s, writes Cohen, “when the world faced exceedingly grave Cold War perils, and Mikhail Gorbachev unexpectedly emerged to offer a heretical way out. Is there an American leader today ready to retrieve that missed opportunity?” It is an urgent question that must be asked all over the world by those