How modern politicians don't rise to Machiavellan morality. posted by lenin

Populism, then? No. I am not bashing politicians as such; everyone has to have a job, and administration is important. We need stationery and things. I wanted to actually talk a bit about Machiavelli since, like Richard III, he is much maligned and misunderstood.

Machiavelli favoured direct democracy. He was a civil republican, who favoured the rule of the masses by the masses, as he explained in The Discourses and The Histories. That said, he did write some bloody book called 'The Prince' (or Il Principe) which, although it was often presumed to be a satire, later emerged in published letters from Niccolo to be a deadly serious text designed to ingratiate himself with the Medicis.

Meet the new boss

Let's back-track. The Medicis were an extraordinarily powerful merchant family in Renaissance Italy, who tried and often succeeded in finding establishment religio-political support. They had ruled Florence since 1434, but were briefly interrupted by a powerful reform movement in 1494 that included the renovation of ancient-style democracy (as with so much else, Renaissance political ideas merely recuperated and updated the ancients). During this time, Machiavelli was a diplomat and was sent on missions to other city-states, which caused him to conclude that some societies (corrupt and effete) need a smack of tough government. The Medicis regained power in 1512 with the help of Spanish troops, and Machiavelli was deposed from his public office, imprisoned and tortured with the strappado (a technique recently revived in Guantanamo ).

In his youth, Machiavelli had watched Savonarola from afar; the great religious charismatic was both anti-Renaissance and opposed to the new merchant class that was emerging. Lorenzo de Medici was to become the target of his preaching, and it was Savonarola's students who would collect mirrors, 'pagan' books, gaming tables, dresses etc and burn them in "The Bonfire of Vanities". Machiavelli later developed, like Hobbes, a comprehensive disdain for religion. Hobbes said:

If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with it, prognostics from dreams, false prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for simple disobedience. (Leviathan, chapter 3, page 15).

We know what Hobbes thought of civil disobedience, and we also know what he thought of fear, whether inspired by goblins or external enemies: "it is impossible to approve any virtues that do not arise from fear, fear of violent death, and whose essence consists in the conquest and denial of fear". (Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, 1952). Fear enjoins us to prudence, and Machiavelli was not immune to it, hence Il Principe. Machiavelli says in it: "men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are wretched creatures, is broken on every occasion".

Morals and morons

During Machiavelli's life-time, Italy was a loose collection of city-states, sometimes ruled by Princes, otherwise ruled on a republican democratic basis. These states were extremely small, powerless, and therefore vulnerable to being overrun by the King of France or the Holy Roman Emperor. As far as Machiavelli was concerned, republican liberty was not even possible unless the ruler of the country or state was adequate to the situation: that is, adequate to repelling a foreign invasion. For this reason, he argued that a certain code of ethics applied to rulers that didn't necessarily apply more generally to people. To a large extent, this position derived from his hostility to religious morality. He could believe that individuals had their private morality to pursue, if they must, but insisted that a different morality applied to the rulers of states since, without their success, one's private morality would not be possible. So, what would be immoral in a private citizen may be mandatory for a ruler. (See Isaiah Berlin, The Originality of Machiavelli, 1998, pp. 269-325; also this 1971 article for the New York Review of Books ). Machiavelli puts it thus:

You must realise this: that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things which give men a reputation for virtue, because in order to maintain his state he is often forced to act in defiance of good faith, of charity, of kindness, of religion. And so he should have a flexible disposition, varying as fortune and circumstances dictate. (Il Principe, 2003, p 57).

The kernel of liberalism resides here: while the Christian political tradition venerated humility, self-abnegation and so on, Machiavelli argued that the state's primary obligation was to provide a framework of civil peace, and therefore that rulers were answerable to different standards of behaviour. Rulers must be bold, power-hungry, cunning and brutal, particularly in order to withstand threats from without. Hobbes would have rejected these as virtues as such, since they pertain only to a state of nature which is, for him, a state of war. Initially a fan of aristocratic virtue, he later dismissed it as so much strutting. Nevertheless, the similarity in Hobbes' and Machiavelli's view of human nature and the necessary safeguards against it is striking.

But while Hobbes was a rationalist, Machiavelli was an historicist. Since, he maintained, human beings shared essential, common features, "animated by the same desires and passions", it should possible to study historical parralels and draw relevant conclusions. For any political problem one might encounter, there was a historical database that would suggest solutions. Hence, much of Il Principe is given over to mining historical episodes like the Alexandrian conquest of Darius III, the last Achaemenid King of Persia for career lessons. Similarly, "I know no better precepts to give a new prince than the ones derived from Cesare [Borgia]'s actions". But the main repository of historical comparison for Niccolo is, obviously enough, ancient Rome, and he read the first printed edition of Livy's works when the enterprising Petrarch collated the dispersed manuscripts into a single text.

Courage, skill and women.

The conclusions he drew from that included the idea that a ruler's task is structured around three inter-playing factors: necessita, fortuna and virtu. The first is more or less what it sounds like, physical and practical necessity. Not a believer in Christian telos or divine necessity, he means simply that array of very probable circumstances that any ruler has to face. From historical example, he draws prescriptive generalisations that he says should guide a ruler (the necessity, for instance, of the "faculty of accusation" for "the maintenance of liberty").

Fortuna is - well, as he put it, la fortuna e donna: fortune is a woman. Impetuous, uncontrollable, unpredictable and dangerous, fortune is more readily wooed by a man who is himself impetuous, and siezes the opportunity, than one who makes "cold advances". Fortune "is the arbiter of one half of our actions", so any ruler had better make sure to recognise where fortune was heading, sieze chances, and act impetuously. Men, being set in their ways, do not respond adequately to fortune's alterations. Pope Julius II, for instance, fared well on account of being impetuous when the time was apt for it, but would not have done so well if fortune had altered significantly in his lifetime. So, fortuna entails flexibility of strategy in response to changing times.

Virtu refers to manliness and valour, but also skill, cunning and prowess. Chutzpah is close to its sense. How quickly does one see the opportunities and react to them? How readily does one spot similarities with past situations, but also important differences? It involves a "politics of the will" in which a person's capacities and proclivities are at the fore.

Republican virtue

But these are skills required of a ruler who must protect his territory from some perpetual outside threat. How can Machiavelli square that with his belief in republicanism and the active involvement of the citizenry in government? Although Machiavelli was an essentialist about human nature, he was aware that skills were unevenly distributed among the public. Some were suited for leadership, others to making hats and farming. Even in a civil republic, leaders would emerge who had the quality of virtu, who could negotiate with fortune, and who understood political necessity.

This is all very well. A new political morality compatible both with direct democracy and the rule of the ruthless and conniving. "That's very Leninist", I hear some of you titter. Shut up. But what is interesting is the conclusions some liberal theorists draw from this: Of course our governments lie, of course we don't expect to be told the truth about weapons of mass destruction or the overthrow of democracy in Chile. Rulers are obliged to lie, and we expect them to. Frankly, I think that's bollocks. Machiavelli devised a narrow political science to help leaders achieve an end that might otherwise be relinquished to failure. But this is for rulers of states whose invasion or extinction is a genuine possibility, not venal mass murdering bastards who simply want to extend their reach in the world. And, at any rate, until we have our direct democracy and genuine republican liberty, we are doomed to be at the mercy of those who do not have our best interests at heart.

Therefore, channelling the spirit of Machiavelli, I suggest we undertake to throw off our rulers by whatever means necessary and choose for ourselves a polity, economy and popular music industry in which the masses are directly involved and those who hold any office or power whatsoever are directly accountable to them. A suggestion, like I say, no more than that.

Israel Shamir is an anti-Semite, not an anti-Zionist. posted by lenin

I first heard of Israel Shamir through an acquaintance who had read something of his on the internet. He was, so I was told, a compelling critic of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. A good number of people who are generally on the left and don't harbour any racist animus against Jews also believe he is a reputable defender of the Palestinians, a humanist anti-Zionist and so on. He is purported to be a Russian-Israeli who has turned against what he describes as 'Jewish supremacism'.

He is not. Israel Shamir is a Swedish neo-Nazi whose criticisms of Israel are rooted in the thesis that it is the Jewish religion that is behind Israel's crimes. His new name, for anyone who insists on quoting his recent work, is Joran Jermas.


Jermas associates himself with several anti-Semitic publications. The first of the anti-Semitic publications he writes for and links to on his website is a filthy Christian anti-Semitic journal called 'the Jewish Tribal Review' (the 'tribe' again) and the second is Overthrow.com (published by White Politics Inc.).

There is a very good summary of the background info here . In particular, see the letter written by Ali Abuminah and Hussein Ibish. Abuminah is a media critic for Electronic Intifada , a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and opponent of anti-Arab racism. But he is not taken in by Jermas.

To put it as mildly as I possibly can, anyone who thinks that 'Israel Shamir' is a defender of the Palestinians and a sensible critic of Zionism needs to urgently reconsider.

Generative grammar. posted by lenin

Oliver Kamm move over - I've just discovered that Noam Chomsky is a plagiarist! I quote from the late Mr Thomas Hobbes work Leviathan:

The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this was sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the experience and use of the creatures should give him occasion; and to join them in such manner by degrees, as to make himself understood; and so by succession of time, so much language might be gotten, as he had found use for; though not so copious, as an orator or philosopher has need of. For I do not find anything in the Scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all figures, numbers, measures, colours, sounds, fancies, relations; much less the names of words and speech, as general, special, affirmative, negative, interrogative, optative, infinitive, all which are useful; and least of all, of entity, intentionality, quiddity, and other insignificant words of the School.

As a Militant Liberal, I am disgusted by Chomsky's reactionary obscurantism. My fellow left-winger Stephen Pollard recently noted that Chomksy had ripped Hobbes' conclusions from their mechanist-monarchist background in order to support his anarcho-syndicalist precepts. Hobbes' sensible conclusions about the necessity of strong government, particularly in order to combat the disruptive effects of terror on the market, are belittled and disfigured by Noam Chomsky's pathetic diminutions and depredations. Chomsky imagines that an essentialist view of human nature which sees it as generative and creative is somehow compatible with 'workers control of industry'. He once again proves the dictum, which I passed on to my uncle Martin Bell, that...

Sorry, for a second I turned into Oliver Kampf .

Death goes to Ramadi. posted by lenin

Apparently a major offensive is on the way to Ramadi:

Residents of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province some 100 km east of Baghdad, have started to flee the city following the latest offensive launched by US Marines and the Iraqi army.

The military have carried out raids in the province over the past few days in an attempt to crack down on insurgents, with the main focus of operations eing Ramadi, a rebel stronghold.

Worried that the offensive could proceed as it did in nearby Fallujah, where he majority of the city's population was forced to flee during a near hree-month long campaign, many Ramadi families are taking personal effects and food supplies and heading to relatives' houses in the capital, or to the same camps where residents from Fallujah fled.

More here and here .

Who's afraid of Galloway? posted by lenin

New Labour are :

Labour's general election managers are treating Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's normally rock-solid constituency as a marginal, according to the party's official list of its most vulnerable seats leaked to the Evening Standard.

...

The list, showing the 106 "key seats" Labour considers most at risk, includes the constituencies of three Cabinet ministers.

...

In London, the list includes the East End seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, where the pro-war Labour MP, Oona King, faces a challenge from Respect's George Galloway.

Ms King's seat is theoretically one of the safest in London with a majority of more than 26 per cent. But Bethnal Green's Bangladeshi voters, who make up half the electorate, are expected to desert Labour in droves.

An ICM poll this week showed Labour's overall lead cut to three per cent, with a Mori survey in the Financial Times showing a two per cent lead.

Protecting the Khmer Rouge genocidaires. posted by lenin

I've written at some length before about Western complicity with the Khmer Rouge , and about the attempts by politicians like Sam Rainsy to exploit discontent in Cambodia about the increasingly authoritarian trends in the Hun Sen government.

Now, as there are attempts to prosecute those responsible for the Cambodian genocide, signed into law by the UN and the Royal Government of Cambodia on 6th June 2003, some are naturally very worried. For instance, in the same month, Colin Powell took a brief trip to Cambodia to persuade Prime Minister Hun Sen to sign an Article 98 agreement. An Article 98 agreement is one in which nations that are party to the International Criminal Court agree to exempt US personnel from prosecution. The agreement was signed and endorsed by the Cambodian government on 3rd October 2003. No one will stand trial for the criminal bombardment of Cambodia in the years 1969 to 1973, which killed hundreds of thousands of people; no one, Chinese, British, American or Australian, will stand trial for aiding and abetting the Khmer killers when they were attempting to retake the country during the 1980s; no British or American government figure from the time will stand trial for attempting to block NGO assistance to a struggling post-Pol Pot country. The trials will be temporally limited to the period of Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-9, in which between 1.5 and 2 million people died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

No reason to be purist about it: those who were involved in that grotesque regime deserve to be tried, even if it is only a partial victory, even if the other criminals are left out of it for reasons of geopolitics. However, the arduousness of this process, and the attempts to block it by governments who legitimise their actions with the language of human rights, should not be forgotten.


Pol Pot with Chinese ambassador Sun Hao at Phnom Penh airport.

Aiding and abetting.

China was initially the only regime to give the Khmer Rouge regime aid. In 1979, however, Jimmy Carter approved aid to the recently deposed regime, and gave the green light for continuing recognition of the KR at the UN. Although the Whitehouse and the CIA knew the locations of the KR in Thailand, although they knew of the whereabouts of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, there was no interest in arresting them or trying them. (To this day, the KR member and delegate to the UN, lives at Mount Vernon, New York, untouched and untouchable, like so many of the US' former war criminal proteges). Indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski later admitted that even when Carter's official policy was to disapprove of the Khmer Rouge regime, he was secretly backing the Chinese policy:

I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the DK [Democratic Kampuchea] ... Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could.

Well, Carter emoted when Pol Pot finally kicked the bucket, before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Gregory Stanton took leave from his studies of International Law at Yale in 1980 to direct the CARE field office in Phnom Penh. He realised that Cambodia was state-party to the Genocide Convention, and the Khmer Rouge still officially held Cambodia's seat at the UN. This meant that there was a good case for taking Cambodia to the World Court for breach of the Genocide Convention. He himself had been present, along Ben Kiernan, at the exhumation of a mass grave where 7,000 people had recently been buried. So, he approached the Chairman of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists. Nothing doing. The Chairman, a lawyer named William Butler, discussed the idea with the State Department and came back saying that he could not assist and that he did not know whether the killings even constituted genocide.

Similarly, when David Hawk, the chairman of the Cambodian Documentation Committee, tried to get Australian backing for such a case, he found a receptive ear in the Labour government's foreign minister Bill Hayden, but the government eventually declined the case. It transpired that the Australians had been in contact with the State Department, who remained opposed to any prosecution on the grounds that it would risk breaking up the coalition (composed mainly of Khmer Rouge and Norodum Sihanouk's 'non-communist resistance') it was supporting in Cambodia to oust the Vietnamese. The State Department had gone behind Hayden's back to warn Prime Minister Bob Hawke that such moves would put serious strains on US-Aussie relations.

When in 1987 the Cambodian Documentation Commission mounted a public and vociferous campaign, involving 200 survivors of the KR regime, there was much air-kissing and arse-kissing from the world's governments. A lowly figure from the Reagan administration called David Lamberton expressed sympathy, but said that invoking the Genocide Convention was fraught with political complexities, and could be precipitous. It could indeed, for the US had only ratified the convention in 1986 after 40 years of stalling, and its implementation was only to be approved by Senate in 1988, with a cluster of 'sovereignty' protections which reduced it to a symbolic gesture. Bob Hawke was 'deeply moved', but worried about the possible implications of trying Khmer Rouge members on the Genocide Convention (especially since his ally, the Indonesian junta, was barking similar pleas at the time). Those states that supported the KR politically and militarily were not about to challenge them legally; those states that did not pretended that they couldn't support a legal challenge, since that would de facto 'recognise' the KR as the natural government of Cambodia (red herring, since the Genocide Convention applies to states not specific governments). Under Article 8 of the Genocide Convention, the UN itself was allowed to take action: it, typically, ignored that suggestion, and shelved any reports referred to them on the matter.

Inviting the tiger into the tent.

One thing that would certainly have put a stop to any trial attempts would have been the inclusion of the KR in government. Yet, when the Hun Sen regime started serenading for peace negotiations, the one thing that was insisted upon by Western and Eastern governments was that the KR would have to be part of any future government. This was first articulated by the US ambassador in Bangkok in response to Thai initiatives to secure a peace between the warring factions that would have excluded Pol Pot's men. China also insisted that no government could be formed without the KR, and the majority of the UN Security Council, including France, the UK and America would, sided with them. They even went as far as to insist that in the negotiations (at the Paris Peace Conference, see passim), Hun Sen be seated next to the KR representative. When the talks broke down, the US Secretary of State James Baker accused the Hun Sen regime of being 'stubborn' because they insisted on the exclusion of Pol Pot's men.

The USSR agreed with Hun Sen - a four-party government that would legitimise 20,000 KR militants, leaving them free to roam Phnom Penh, would have dangerous implications. When, in October 1989, the last of the Vietnamese troops left Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk urged a general uprising, and the KR launched an initiative that eventually took Pailin. Meanwhile, back at the negotiating table, Sihanouk was still trying to blot out the word 'genocide' from discussions, while Khieu Samphan indignantly rejected such language on behalf of the KR. Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans regretted that the talks had broken down over 'atmospherics'. As the KR continued its offensive, ambushing several trains and killing the civilians in them, there were angry grumblings from the US Senate about cutting off support for the KR-dominated 'coalition'. James Baker announced in July 1990 that it was no longer the position of the US to support the CGDK's filling of Cambodia's seat at the UN.

The KR continued to be represented at talks, in particular by Khieu Samphan and the former interior minister responsible for the secret police Son Sen. Pol Pot was also present at the talks in Pattaya (a seaside resort in Thailand largely known to US navy men for furnishing unlimited sexual satisfaction at low prices), although his presence was a closely guarded secret until the journalist Nayan Chanda and the photographer Nhem Eng reported it. The proposed deal that emerged was one largely based on China's terms, fully backed by Washington. The USSR and Vietnam, though unhappy, urged the Cambodian government to accept. When the Japanese proposed a commission to investigate crimes by the KR in early 1991, US diplomat Richard Solomon shot it down, saying it would 'confuse' the international peace settlement. At the second Pattaya meeting in October 1991, it was agreed that Pol Pot and his men would enjoy the same rights as any other citizen. Although they themselves would not stand for election in any future poll, they would be allowed to campaign for their men. There was to be no sanction, no trial, no reference to genocide in the final text. Full and unequivocal legitimation of the KR was entailed.


Pol Pot with Ieng Sary, (left) and Son Sen (right).

Khieu Samphan and Son Sen returned to Phnom Penh, free men, legitimised by an international consensus supported by America, Britain, France, Australia and China. Angry protesters confronted the two men, and Khieu Samphan had to take refuge in a wardrobe until rescued by security forces, by then bleeding from his skull and ignominiously bandaged with a pair of Y-fronts.

KR-controlled Pailin and Anlong Ven continued to experience the brutality of Pol Pot's men, even as UN Human Rights Day was celebrated in Phnom Penh. The UN's press-release on the day made no reference, even euphemistically, to the genocide. UNTAC, which was to supervise the elections for a new government, could not enter KR controlled territories. Not one of the pledges made by the KR at Paris was adhered to, they refused to disarm and continued their campaign of terror in several parts of the country, killing many of ethnic Vietnamese origin. Even UNTAC sustained many casualties, with 20 of its personnel being killed in attacks. The Thai military did not bother adhering to its agreement to cease arming the KR, and the two parties did profitable business in rubies from Pailin. UN military observers and peacekeepers on the Thai border were shelled and kidnapped.

Through all of this, UNTAC never called the KR to account, and it was the KR in the end who decided to close down their legally sanctioned headquarters in Phnom Penh and escalated attacks on the UN, threatening to sabotage the forthcoming elections. Had they not done so, it is probable that some of Pol Pot's henchmen would have joined the new government, sanctioned and approved by the 'international community'.

Changing alliances, permanent interests

Campaigning groups like the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge (CORKR), which involved Cambodian activists as well as Gregory Stanton, David Munro, Ben Kiernan and John Pilger, could begin to claim some success by 1994, however. It had gained backing from over 100 NGOs and, pressing for a Cambodian Genocide Justice Act, several Senators. The Act was finally passed into law by Congress, and Bill Clinton signed it off in May 1994. Naturally, the Act's temporal applicability was limited to the period from 17th April 1975 to 7th January 1979. It did, however, lead to US government funding for the Cambodian Genocide Program headed by Ben Kiernan. It also saw the Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations launched.

At the same time, the UN's outlook had dramatically changed. The International Criminal Tribunals set up in response to crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda had set legal precedent, however selectively applied. The new Special Representative of the Secretary General for Human Rights was Thomas Hammarberg, a former executive director of Amnesty International in London. On the geopolitical side, the policy of bleeding Vietnam white had been largely successful, and the Khmer Rouge were no longer essential allies of the West. Many tourists were kidnapped and executed by the KR, including a British de-miner called Christopher Howes in 1998. This brought Derek Fatchett of the Foreign Office into the situation, and he demanded that certain men, including the murderous Ta Mok, be brought to justice. This proved difficult, since those responsible were part-time residents in Thailand, with whom Britain enjoys a cosy relationship. No significant pressure was placed on the Thai authorities, and no one has been charged with Howes' murder.

Ta Mok.

At the same time, factions which had been involved in the CGDK movement in the 1980s began to have severe differences with Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP). The two sides fought it out on the streets, and the CPP side won, forcing Prince Ranarridh (son of then King Sihanouk) into exile. 70 civilians were killed, and several military officers from Sihanouk's Funcinpec movement were executed. Ranarridh and Sam Rainsy, both formerly in coalition with the KR, protested before the UN, and the Credentials Committee voted to keep Cambodia's seat vacant.

The Khmer Rouge was simultaneously disintegrating into inner schisms, and this was evidenced by Pol Pot ordering the assassination of his former ally, Son Sen, and the subsequent 'trial' in which Pot was 'convicted' of crimes of leadership, none of which had to do with the genocide against the Cambodian people. Pot kicked the bucket in 1998, just as the US finally reversed years of support for him and decided to support moves for an international criminal tribunal. Negotiations did begin between the UN and Cambodia, although it was clear throughout that China was adamantly opposed to any trial.

Sam Rainsy, a former CGDK spokesperson, reactionary anti-Semite, viciously anti-Vietnamese demagogue, and failed finance minister, did his best to exploit fears about any possible trial by telling the lower ranking KR members in Pailin and elsewhere that the only way to avoid trial was to vote for him in the 2003 elections. In those elections, he gained 22% of the vote. His party's candidate for governor in Pailin had been Ta Mok's neice, Ven Dara.

Nevertheless, and inter an awful lot of alia, the negotiations continued and finally produced an agreement between the UN and the Royal Government of Cambodia in 2003, which was then ratified by the UN General Assembly. A tribunal is now supported by Britain and America. Although most KR officials remain at large and are ageing (they are now mostly in their seventies, and the notorious torturer Kang Kek Iue has recently been admitted to hospital), negotiations are continuing as to the possible framework for trying them.

It would be ridiculous to oppose the trials, but no amount of sanctimony from our own governments, and no amount of belated attention to Khmer Rouge atrocities, should endear us to them. If there was to be a proper tribunal in Cambodia, many British, US and Chinese personnel would be among those standing in the docks.

(Some references: Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis, Getting Away with Genocide? Elusive Justice and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, 2005; John Pilger, Heroes, 1986; Pilger, Hidden Agendas, 1998; Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, 2000; http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=cambod ; http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/cambodia/reports.do ; http://www.un.org.kh/ ; Yale Cambodia Genocide Project ).

Killer Fact. posted by lenin

Jim Carrey has a chef for his pet iguana . True, this is an old story, but I still think I could do Harry Hutton's job for free.

Tomorrow, I want to talk about the attempt to try genocidairres in Cambodia again. I may also try a review of Paul Foot's excellent new book on The Vote: How it was won and how it was undermined. A revolutionary classic.

But for now, just know this: Jim Carrey has a chef for his fucking iguana. That has to be wrong.

Links and comments. posted by lenin

A few days ago I linked to a short missive by the redoubtable Andrew Bacevich, a conservative US International Relations theorist. LewRockwell.com isn't my favourite site, but it does carry an excellent riposte/complement to Bacevich here . Specifically, Michael Gaddy says, the US is not merely failing to win, but it never intended to win:

This war was, from the very get-go, designed to be a war of occupation and not a war for any other purpose. The constantly changing "goals," like the rabbit running ahead of the greyhounds, is proof positive. It was not deposing Saddam, eliminating the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or implementing democracy: the true goal was establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. Had any of the aforementioned causus belli been the real purpose of this war, our troops would have been brought home when the stated goals were reached. If Bush or these Neocons had a simple cursory knowledge of history, they would know that wars of occupation always develop into a quagmire.

The author cites the Project for the New American Century and generally does the paleoconservative hatchet job on the neocons. But he goes one further, and this is a stroke of genius. He gets Larry Diamond, former senior adviser to Paul Bremer of the late CPA in Iraq, to corroborate him:

While first speaking as a supporter of the Neocon/Bush program, Diamond stated, "First of all, let me say that this election on Sunday, from everything I have read and heard, was a profoundly moving and historic experience; for Iraq, for the Middle East, and potentially for the world." This he later counters with a truth nugget, "…it was a very superficial election and in some ways a very unfair election. There were more than one hundred parties in lists. Most of them had no money, no access to the media, and no ability, obviously, in the state the country was in, to campaign."

...

"…there is something that could help now on the part of the United States which tragically is not going to happen…. One of the things that is necessary to wind down the insurgency and create a much more hopeful, enabling environment for the development of democracy and even political stability in Iraq is for Iraqis, and particularly those Iraqis who are involved with or sympathizing with the insurgency, to become convinced that we really are going to leave. That the American military occupation of Iraq is going to end and that they are going to get their country back. I urged the administration to declare when I left Iraq in April of 2004, that we have no permanent military designs on Iraq and we will not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. This one statement would do an enormous amount to undermine the suspicion that we have permanent imperial intentions in Iraq. We aren't going to do that. And the reason we're not going to do that is because we are building permanent military basis in Iraq." (emphasis added) Here a man on the inside confirms Bush intends for our soldiers to have a permanent presence in Iraq. How many lives and how many trillions will this cost?

Meanwhile, Doug Ireland sends me a brilliant but flawed essay on Isaac Deutscher's Trotsky trilogy .

Brian Cook of In These Times has a chuckle at the expense of David Horowitz and his whacky new 'Discover the Network' Project', casually slipping a knife or two between the right-wing troll's shoulder-blades as he does so.

Devizes Melting Point is a great blog that will find its way onto my blog roll before being categorised somehow. The post on the Renaissance is particularly interesting, and worthy of some expansion.

Finally, I'm sure I must have mentioned it before, but I feel compelled to point out again that Alphonse is splendid. The careful montage of philosophical and classical citation expertly punctuated by Aesopian reference is accentuated by a sharp political analysis. And 'he' can be pungent too. When Susan Sontag died, all the lefties cried - but not Alphonse, who laid a few brutal kicks into her handsome corpse.

Finally, I never thought it would last . Abbas can't deliver peace to the Israelis because he has no mandate to do so, and if Al Aqsa* - which is part of the Fatah movement that Abbas heads - will not adhere to his strictures no other group will. Israel has to fulfil its obligations in international law, stop murdering Palestinians, offer generous compensation, and make arrangements for the refugees displaced by its disgusting policies. At least, if it has any concern for its citizens, it will do that.

*Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade claims responsibility for the attack, on a beach club in Tel Aviv, but is rivaled by Islamic Jihad.

Lay off asylum seekers. posted by lenin

I'm sick of the dickheads that are fortunate enough to share a land-mass with me bleating about immigrants. If any of you pompous, self-pitying arse-wipes happen to be reading, there's a few things I want to tell you.

First, asylum seekers aren't taking your jobs. They aren't allowed to work until they cease being asylum seekers and become human beings. Or perhaps they are, secretly, on the down-low. But if a guy who's weak from malnutrition and torture, and who has English as his second language, can make a better pitch for a job than you can, you have some serious fucking questions you better start asking yourself. Like: "why am I such a dingbat?"

Second, asylum seekers aren't taking your money. If they didn't give asylum seekers £40 a week, they'd only spend it on a new Trident or some other stupid bloody thing. The government gives millions to companies like Fujitsu and those fuckwits who keep crashing the trains, and you never say shit - so shut it. Home Office research shows that immigrants give back in tax more than they ever take in benefits. Yes, that's 're-search', two syllables, shouldn't be that fucking difficult.

Third, asylum seekers aren't flooding into this country. They are trickling. Despite being (arguably) the fourth largest economy in the world, Britain still only takes 0.05% of the world's total refugee population. In June 2001, the top four countries of origin were Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Sri Lanka. Most refugees int the world still travel to the nearest country on foot, which means they move around between poor countries.

Fourth, we need immigrants, just to keep the things we use like the NHS and the fire service running. The Chancellor's budget forecasts show that we need an increase in the labour force due to immigration of at least 0.5% a year. This is due to the falling birth rate and the falling death rate, which is leaving us with a higher dependent population and fewer people entering the labour market. To put it bluntly, we are in need of loot and they can provide it.

Oh. You still aren't convinced are you. I can here your gnat-like whining from fucking miles away. "They get child support, healthcare, free housing, they drive BMWs, stay in the top hotels..." Yeah yeah yeah. Shut it, you feral shit-merchants. I've encountered piles more intelligent than you.

The X Factor revisited. posted by lenin

Several months back, I made fun of some countryfucks who stormed parliament, evidently expecting to find the polestar of human evil residing there:

[I]sn't it strange how protest seems to have involved a lot of penetrating this enclosed space, this theatre of power-struggle that is represented to us on the news but never disclosed in the flesh. Even if you want to see it in real time from the gallery, you have to go through an intensive search, give up all items from your pockets, surrender your coat etc. And you must agree not to make a noise, pick your nose, make any rude hand gestures etc. (I went there myself once, and had the pleasure of being eyed suspiciously by Brian Mawhinney MP). However, to get into that phantasmatic space, irupt into its core - you'd actually think you were busting right into the centre of power. The hidden assumption is that power has some final stopping point, some person or persons at the end of a chain of command whom one can demand to see and shoot if necessary.

But even in terms of private companies, this is no longer the case. Ownership is usually diffuse, managers are responsible to shareholders, and power is delegated down and out in increasingly specialised ways. It isn't that there is a capitalist who controls the levers and dispenses orders. Similarly, there is no chain of power leading up to parliament, and no hidden 'X' of authority once you get there. Far from encountering the human face of power etc., you discover the human faces of over-worked, cynical, seasoned politicians with only a limited and minor say in how the country is actually run. It is a failure in cognitive mapping, an inability to see power as anything but an open or concealed conspiracy, a direct organisation of people into structures and roles. Hence, the pathos of the spectacle in which angry, militant furry-bangers can only scamper around the chambers for a few seconds before realising that there's nothing going on there, and the real problem they face is in the wider society.

Would that I had the words for this . The totalising apparatus of Marxist thought is stood properly on its head, given a malicious twist, vulgarised into conspiratorial constructions. The left are everywhere, osmotically channeling their subversive energies into the pockets of mainstream liberalism. You just have to follow the network .

Incidentally, the little-known tabloid journalist Oliver Kamm links to the site approvingly because it reproduces some of his myopic anti-Chomsky screeds. He says he will link to the site and cross-post his Bloggerel there. So, aside from being an assiduous stalker, a dishonest debater who likes to cite or criticise texts he has never read and a humourless, pompous buffoon, he is also an active supporter of paranoid right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Credulous twits. posted by lenin

Harry's Place are all excited by the prospect of the war on Iraq spreading democracy to Syria & Lebanon:

Now comes news of a remarkable conversation David Ignatius of The Washington Post had with Walid Jumblatt, a leader of Lebanon's Druze community.

Jumblatt dresses like an ex-hippie, in jeans and loafers, but he maintains the exquisite manners of a Lebanese aristocrat. Over the years, I've often heard him denouncing the United States and Israel [that's putting it mildly], but these days, in the aftermath of Hariri's death, he's sounding almost like a neoconservative. He says he's determined to defy the Syrians until their troops leave Lebanon and the Lahoud government is replaced.

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

This would be Walid Jumblatt, the anti-Semite and anti-American conspiracy theorist ?

For example :

"The Lebanese MP is also known for espousing conspiracy theories against America. On April 28, 2004, he gave an interview to Al Arabiyya TV, in which he detailed how America was really behind September 11: 'Who invented Osama bin Laden?! The Americans, the CIA invented him so they could fight the Soviets in Afghanistan together with some of the Arab regimes. Osama bin Laden is like a ghost, popping up when needed. This is my opinion.'"

The National Review continues:

"In addition to hating America, Mr. Jumblatt has also spoke against the countries that support America. Lebanon's Daily Star published a February 3, 2003, article quoting him as saying that the true axis of evil is one of 'oil and Jews' ... The oil axis is present in most of the U.S. administration, beginning with its president, vice-president, and top advisers, including [Condoleezza] Rice, who is oil-colored, while the axis of Jews is present with Paul Wolfowitz.'"

For a serious, non-whacko commentary on the situation in Lebanon, have a read of Lebanese socialist Bassem Chit's article for Socialist Worker. For anyone who wants to follow this story and the left reaction to it in Lebanon, see Beirut Indymedia .

Iraqi National Foundation Congress: "The Iraqi resistance is a popular resistance". posted by lenin

Interviewed by ZNet, the Iraqi National Foundation Congress continue to espouse secularism, national unity and support the resistance:

The show of unity was organized by groups behind the Iraqi National Foundation Congress (INFC), a broad coalition of Iraqi political forces, which some see as a possible nucleus for the emergence of a united front against the occupation. Founded in May this year, the INFC is an umbrella group that includes leftists, nationalists, and Islamists from various tendencies who opposed Saddam’s regime and who refused to be part of any US-installed political body. Membership in the Congress is open to all who subscribe to its minimum bases of unity: an unequivocal call for the withdrawal of occupation troops and opposition to any possible division of Iraq’s territory and people on religious or sectarian basis.

Among its members include Dr Muthana Harith al Dhari from the Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq’s largest network of Sunni clerics, Najaf-based Shia religious leader Ayatollah Ahmad al Baghdadi, and Wamid Nadhmi, an academic at the Baghdad University who also serves as the group’s spokesman. The al-Sadr movement has a representative in the general secretariat.

Conscious of the occupiers’ strategy of fomenting sectarian strife, the INFC is a deliberate project to bring together Sunni and Shia Muslims, Arabs, Kurds, Turcomen, Assyrians and other minorities. The INFC condemned both the US-led offensive against the mainly Shi’ite city of Najaf as well as against the mainly Sunni city of Fallujah. It has also been instrumental in defusing sectarian tension in highly charged Kirkuk and Mosul.

Then:

What are the Conference’s main political demands?

We have elaborated a political program and everyone who wants to join has to accept the points of the program declaration. First, we demand an immediate retreat of the occupation forces and a complete return of sovereignty to Iraq. Second, we insist on the unity of the Iraqi territory. Third, we support the legitimacy of resisting occupation by any means necessary. Fourth, we refuse any division of the Iraqi people on religious or sectarian basis.

You call for an immediate withdrawal of occupation forces. What do you say to those who argue that the troops should not be withdrawn yet because there will be chaos if the troops leave?

We are also afraid of a political vacuum in Iraq. When we say “immediate retreat of occupation,” we know that this will not happen in one day. But it’s necessary to set a timetable. During the intervening period, the Iraqi police and army can be built up. In any case, we don’t expect things can get much worse when the occupation troops leave Iraq than what’s happening today. What’s happening today is so bad that after the retreat of the occupation forces, the situation could not be worse.

What about those who are saying there will be civil war when the troops leave?

They are trying to legitimise a long occupation by the United States. They are puppets of the Americans.

US officials always say that those who are fighting the occupation forces are “anti-Iraqi” forces” or “Baathist dead-enders” or…

According to the US military, in Fallujah they captured 1,065 people. Among them. They found only 25 non-Iraqis. All the others were Iraqis. The resistance is an Iraqi resistance – a popular resistance -- which is spreading now. Among the resistance groups, there are former officers of the army who are using their expertise to help the resistance. But the main ideological current inside the resistance is a popular and moderate Islamic current – not a Baathist one. It is popular, patriotic, and Islamic ...

There are people in the anti-war movement, in the left, and even those in the right who also oppose the occupation who say that we shouldn’t support the resistance because they’re being led by either Baathists and “fundamentalists” and we shouldn’t allow them to take over Iraq in case the US leaves.

It is the occupation forces who are spreading this line. As one French deputy said a few months ago, the Iraqi resistance was like the French resistance: one day it will defeat the occupation forces and take power in Iraq.

When I say “Islamic current” inside the resistance, I mean moderate Islamic current. It is not the Islamic current portrayed in the media. It is an Islamic current that is defending it’s own culture and nation but which is not hostile to other cultures and other nations. It is not hostile to the American people but it is opposed to the project of American domination of our region and the world.

Johann Hari for post-Zionism; wrong about Zionism. posted by lenin

I am glad to see that Johann Hari has embraced the ideas of post-Zionism in an article about anti-Semitism today. However, he offers a stupendous and frankly unbelievable hostage to fortune in the process:

So let’s get this straight: Zionism was created by a desperate people – many of them still emaciated from the camps – fleeing genocide.

I'm afraid this is a standard myth. True, most of the inhabitants of Israel when it was founded in 1948 were shipped in directly from Europe. But let's get this straight: Zionism was created by a minority of Jewish leaders who had initially little support from most European Jews, who supported socialist organisations like the Bund. Nor was the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians which Johann refers to merely a reaction to the Nazi holocaust. Plan Dalet, the Zionist plan for the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what would become the State of Israel, undercuts the mythology that Haganah and the Irgun were compelled by war to expel the Arabs and commit the massacres that they did. (Uri Milstein, an authoritative Israeli military historian, suggests that "every skirmish" in the 1948 war "ended in a massacre of Arabs"). And the reasons for this are reasonably well known - both Labour and Revisionist wings of Zionism were committed to the Greater Israel which would have fluid, biblical borders rather than be contained in a defined land mass. The Zionists had never any intention of accepting even the unfair division of Palestine proffered by either the Peel Commission or, later, the UN. Ben Gurion explained in 1937 that "Transfer [of Palestinians] is what will make possible a comprehensive Jewish settlement programme. Jewish power will increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale." Later, he told the Zionist Congress, "we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine" (quoted in Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 24. See, for more on this, Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall, 2004, particularly pp 16-19, or Ilan Pappe's The Making of the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1947-1951).

Johann goes on to say in the comments box:

Herzl first realised the Jews would need a state after witnessing the naked Jew-hating Deryfus Trial.

Herzl did indeed draw that conclusion, but he drew many others besides. For example, he was convinced that anti-Semitism was natural and not a lot could be done about it. Jews could not live with non-Jews. He would be scandalised by contemporary New York. He was also convinced that an influx of interlopers into Palestine would "end badly...unless based on assured supremacy", which could only come through statehood. (Theodor Herzl, "The Jewish State", page 29). Herzl told his diaries that to this end, the Zionists would have to acquire the land of their choice by force. He himself was indifferent to where that land should be, but the prevalent opinion among Zionists was that Palestine was the homeland to which centripetal forces would drive the Jewish people. (Herzl, "Besammelte, Zionistiche Schriften", Volume I, page 114).

He also 'portrayed the prospective Jewish state as Europe's "wall of defense against Asia", and an "outpost of civilisation against barbarism".' (Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Verso, 1995, pp 100-1).

Johann goes on to say:

Many people believe Zionism would never have come to fruition - e.g. gained the support of President Truman - had it not been for the Holocaust

.

It didn't need the support of President Truman. The British were crumbling in Palestine, the Haganah and associated Zionist groups were successfully preparing capture, and the UN Special Committee on Palestine were all but suckers for the Zionist lobby when they got there and found that the Arab Higher Committee wouldn't talk to them. The Nazi holocaust did not provide the impetus for Zionism, nor did it necessarily prompt the foundation of Israel. The project was well under-way.

And the attempted extermination of the Jews did not even provide a particularly good alibi for the Zionists. Need we recall Ben Gurion's position on the Nazi holocaust?

"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative."

We might also remember the President of the World Zionist Organisation telling the world as far back as 1912: "each country can only absorb a limited number of Jews … Germany has already too many Jews". Or the Zionist Federation of Germany and their grovelling letter to Hitler with whom, so they said, they shared so much in common.

The Zionist movement does not have the moral authority, therefore, to preach about anti-Semitism. In terms of accomodation with anti-Jewish racism and fascism, in terms of disregard for Jewish lives, some of its most outstanding leaders and most prominent exponents have behaved and spoken contemptibly. Zionism is not a movement of Jewish liberation, but of chauvanism and nationalism. It is not unique in this regard, but what is unique is that it has legions of defenders across the world. It was initially a reaction to anti-Semitism, but just happened to be the worst possible reaction.

Finally, Johann is right that many anti-Semites use anti-Zionism as a cover for their filthy prejudices. But let's not go down the 'why do you always talk about Israel' route. Who would have said this of the anti-apartheid campaign in the Eighties but apologists and reactionaries? So, let's not descend to such pedantries now.

Dr Adnan Siddiqui on Malcolm X. posted by lenin

This week's Socialist Worker is particularly strong, with a good article by an ActionAid campaigner on the British sale of arms to warring and repressive regimes in Africa. Complimenting this is a supplement on Malcolm X , in which the best article is by Dr Adnan Siddiqui of Stop Political Terror . Siddiqui was the GP who examined Babar Ahmad after Inspector Knacker kicked the shit out of him.

He writes:

Malcolm X fought for the rights of 22 million African-Americans, but he articulated this struggle in a global framework by arguing for universal human rights and an end to imperialism. His statement that “the only way we will get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world” encapsulates this vision. It is a message that Muslims everywhere need to grasp urgently.

Currently the Muslim world consists of a motley array of autocrats, dictators and kings whose only commonality is that they are not representative of the people and are strongly tied to Western interests.

In addition Muslims in Europe number about 15 million and have all the worst social indicators in terms of housing, health and education. We are effectively “economic slaves” in Fortress Europe.

Malcolm was fighting a similar situation at his time and because of his irrepressible nature he was labelled an “extremist” and a “militant”. If he had been alive today he would have been called a “terrorist” and would probably have been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay or at “her majesty’s pleasure” in Belmarsh or Woodhill.

More: "Show me a capitalist and I'll show you a bloodsucker" .

Kurdish Attacks on Assyrians, Turkmen. posted by lenin

It is one of the under-covered angles of the current war in Iraq, but a column in today's Guardian provides the occasion to talk a bit about it. I mentioned yesterday the fact that Kurdish peshmergas had been used by the US to attack Shia Turkmen in Tal Afar. It is totally hypocritical of Turkey to be angry at what is being done here, given its murderous policies toward the Kurds both in Turkey and in Northern Iraq. But that hardly exonerates the peshmergas and the Kurdish leadership.

It was Kurdish paramilitaries tied to Massoud Barzani's KDP that launched a wave of attacks against Assyrians before the election. Dr Odisho Malko of the Assyrian National Assembly in Iraq protests:

Since the fall of Saddam, systematic low-level ethnic cleansing has driven thousands of Assyrian Christians from their homes. Our churches have been firebombed and our women forced to wear the hijab. In northern Iraq much of this intimidation has come from the Kurdish militias. It reached a climax on election day, when ballot boxes were prevented from reaching between 200,000 and 400,000 people. On the Nineveh Plains, the last area in Iraq where our people live in sizeable numbers, six Assyrian towns, Baghdeda, Bartilla, Karemlesh, Shekhan, Ain Sifne and Bahzan were prevented from going to the polls. The western media have made much of people in the Sunni heartlands being intimidated into not voting, or refusing to vote. It does not report that the Assyrian people and other minorities wanted to vote, but were stopped from doing so.

Reluctantly, many of our people believe that Kurdish political leaders want to exclude minorities such as the Assyrians and the Turkmen. The treatment of the Turkmen has so enraged Turkey that the leader of the opposition, Bulent Ecevit, has called for action to protect them. But no one is speaking up for us. No one has reported that tens of thousands took to the streets to protest at the great vote robbery.

This was a worry long before the war began :

"They started calling us 'Kurdish Christian,'" says Odisho. "Then we should call them 'Assyrian Muslims.'"

The politics of this are straightforward enough. Since Iraq was carved out of Mesopotamia, the drive has been to make it an exclusively or overwhelmingly Arab country. When the Iraqi Kingdom was declared sovereign (even though it was a puppet government - historical repetition; first tragedy, then farce) in 1933, one of the first things the monarch did was issue an ultimatum toward Assyrians. Either they could be dispersed among the Muslim population or beat it out of the country. When many Assyrians decided to take off to Syria, the government dispatched troops. Unable to beat the armed Assyrians, the retreating troops attacked fleeing civilians, killing 3,000 of them. This was the beginning of years of repression, particularly under the Ba'athist regime, which refused to recognise such an identity (they were either Nestorians, Chaldeans or Suryan as far as the regime was concerned). Assyrian schools were closed, leading artists and singers were arrested, and many Assyrian families were deported (particularly during the Iran-Iraq war). Assyrian nationalists were detained, beaten and tortured. The Anfal campaign 0f 1988 was primarily against the Kurds, but also targeted Assyrians.

Now, the Turkmen. Scott Taylor, the US journalist who was captured by some mujahiden in Iraq then released after 5 days, has written a book precisely on this topic. In it, he reports an encounter with a British journalist who, asked about the Turkmen's fate, replied "What's a Turkman?" Taylor explained that the Turkmen were the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, approximately 2 million strong (although Juan Cole says this is a massive over-estimate, the true figure being closer to 700,000), and the majority population in Kirkuk, where some of the most ferocious battles with Kurds have taken place. The British journalist eyed him suspiciously and said "Can you prove any of what you are telling me?"

The Turkmen arrived in Iraq principally through the Ottoman conquest of Iraq in 1535, but were marginalised under Ottoman rule, then the British and finally under the Ba'athists. The 'Arabization' policies of the Ba'athist regime involved Kirkuk particularly. 300,000 Arabs were encouraged to migrate to the city, Kurds and Turkmen were not allowed to buy houses in the city, while those who insisted on retaining a non-Arab identity were deported, their farmlands confiscated and given to Arab families. The forced expulsion of Kurds and Turkmen from Kirkuk, Khaniqin, Makhmour, Sinjar, Tuz Khormatu, and other districts as part of its `Arabization' program should have, you would think, created solidarity between the two. But as soon as the Kurds gained their autonomous region in the north, there was competition. In particular, the KDP and PUK began attack members of the Iraqi Turkomen Front, while the PUK targeted the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq. Turkmen schools were required to raise the Kurdish flag, even though they did not consider themselves Kurdish. When Saddam's regime fell, there was immediate competition between the two factions as to who would control Kirkuk. Fights broke out over the control of specific properties. The Kurds announced that they intended to annexe Kirkuk into a specifically Kurdish canton, leading to strikes by the city's Turkmen which were supported by al-Sadr's militias.

Forgive me if I slip into the obvious now, but I'm just setting the scene. The Kurds see themselves as a nation, and want a state to represent their interests. They too have suffered enormously under Ba'athism in ways some of which are now widely understood. The 'Arabization' of Kurdish areas began in 1960 under the Qassim regime, but continued after the CIA-sponsored Ba'athist coup of 1963. This included armed warfare, the destruction of villages and the deportation of Kurds. The Kurds began to resist, and in the 1970s began to receive help from Iran, just as Hussein was gaining control of the Ba'ath party. They were subjected to several massacres, most notably the Anfal campaign. They, along with thousands of Shi'ites, were subjected to a massive campaign of slaughter for their part in the 1991 uprising against Saddam's rule. This uprising, encouraged by Bush, was blocked with the assistance of US troops, and we later learned that what Bush actually wanted was for the military to instigate a coup. John Major famously seethed:

"I don't recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection. We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein." (John Major on ITN, 4 April 1991)

Brent Scowcroft admitted:

"We clearly would have preferred a coup. There's no question about that." (Interview
on ABC news 26 June 1997 quoted in Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam: The Politics of Intervention in Iraq, 1999, p. 19.)

Anyway, autonomous zones in the north and south were initially enforced as a result of international pressure under Operation Provide Comfort, although the southern zone was quickly re-taken. With control over the autonomous north, the two main Kurdish parties began quickly to compete both with each other and with other groups for control. The repression of the Turkmen and communist groups mentioned above was accompanied by some appalling sell-outs. In particular, Jalal Talabani's PUK invited the Iranian military into its controlled area to fight Barzani's men. The PUK turned a blind eye to the capture and massacre of Iranian Kurds hiding there. Meanwhile, Barzani invited Saddam's military to re-enter the north and crush the PUK. Hussein, in return, was allowed to capture and kill Kurdish dissidents loyal to Talabani.

Now, both the KDP and PUK are working together, but their years of conflict have spawned an Islamist opposition which al-Zarqawi is supposed to have been associated with. At the same time, they have been engaging in attacks on Turkmen and Assyrians, as reported above, in their drive to create an autonomous Kurdish region with the possible foundations of a state in mind. This process, which has been called 'Kurdification' by its victims, is fast becoming another tragic example of the oppressed becoming oppressor.

British establishment vs war on Iraq. posted by lenin

There was some derisory snorting in some quarters when Bat speculated that disgust at the war on Iraq had percolated up into some parts of the establishment, particularly the legal establishment in light of the unequivocal ruling in Galloway's favour. No ruling class stitch-up a la Hutton. No sophistical m'lud caveats:

"This raises the intriguing possibility that disgust at the conduct of this war – and in particular, at the warmongers' contemptuous attitude to legality, civil rights and truthfulness – has penetrated deeply into the heart of the legal establishment itself."

It was suggested by others that the difficulty the government had in getting legal backing for the war was one symptom of this. Difficulty, chortled HP Sauce, what difficulty?

Only this :

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq that military action could be ruled illegal.

The government was so concerned that it might be prosecuted it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action in an international court.

And a parliamentary answer issued days before the war in the name of Lord Goldsmith - but presented by ministers as his official opinion before the crucial Commons vote - was drawn up in Downing Street, not in the attorney general's chambers.

Further:

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq as a "crime of aggression".

She said she could not agree to military action in circumstances she described as "so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law".

Her uncompromising comments, and disclosures about Lord Goldsmith's relations with ministers in the run-up to war, appear in a book by Philippe Sands, a QC in Cherie Booth's Matrix chambers and professor of international law at University College London.

Vipers in the nest of the establishment. The Guardian goes on:

Separately, the Guardian has learned that Lord Goldsmith told the inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to war that his meeting with Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan was an informal one. He did not know whether it was officially minuted.

Lord Goldsmith also made clear he did not draw up the March 17 written parliamentary answer. They "set out my view", he told the Butler inquiry, referring to Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan.

Yet the following day, March 18, that answer was described in the Commons order paper as the attorney general's "opinion". During the debate, influential Labour backbenchers and the Conservative frontbench said it was an important factor behind their decision to vote for war.

This government? Liars? Who would have thought that?

Credit Cards for the poor: 70% interest rates. posted by lenin

Loan sharks wish they had this much sophistication. A company called Vanquis has launched a new financial service for the poor :

A new credit card aimed at millions of low-income families is to charge interest at up to 70% - the highest ever charged by a credit card company.

Marketed under the slogan: "Stay in control of your budgeting", the typical interest rate on the new Vanquis card will be 49.9%, but for some customers the company judge as high risk, it will be 69.5%. MPs and debt campaigners yesterday condemned the rate, which is 15 times the Bank of England base rate and triple the standard rate on other cards. The card also has an annual fee of £19.

Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk, who recently completed a Treasury select committee investigation into credit cards, called the rate "staggeringly high". He added: "People on a low income tempted by it need to be given a clear financial health warning." Debt on our Doorstep, an umbrella group that includes Oxfam, credit unions and Church Action on Poverty, said: "It's an absolute disgrace that Vanquis should even be suggesting people borrow money on a credit card at that rate."

I've been in dire enough straits to get cheques cashed at those dodgy shops which charge exorbitant rates and seem to take an overwhelming interest in any jewellery you might have. I have even sold household goods down the Woolwich flea market (the traders love that: "oh, back again are we? Let's see what I wanna give yer for this loada crap here."). But you'd have to be thicker than shit to take a card that charged this much interest. Loan sharks can charge up to 150% interest (its three per cent a week, so its about 150% 'vig' per annum) on the illegal side. Vanquis can, at the moment, quite legally extract almost half that amount without breaking any legs or 'reposessing' any videos or wedding rings.

As Brecht once remarked, "what is robbing a bank compared to founding one?"

Congestion charging works; but it's the wrong policy. posted by lenin

There is no doubt about it. The traffic chaos in central London has been greatly eased. Overall traffic on the affected roads (which are enclosed in a ring road circling Marylebone, Westminster, the City and Southwark) is down 18%, which must make bus travel much easier. Main roads like Oxford Street are strangely calm compared to a couple of years ago. The leaves on the bare-forked shrubs that the council provide are still blackened, but may well be offering up a bit more oxygen these days.

But it was still the wrong policy, and voters in Edinburgh's referendum were right to dismiss the scheme for their area. Flat charges tend to be regressive in their impact. Workers who might otherwise use the roads find they can no longer afford it, so they pack themselves into some decrepit object of rolling stock that should be in the London Transport museum, commit involuntary frottage with their fellow passengers, take occasional breaths and hope not to pass out. When the morning train pulls into its final destination and spills its contents onto the concourse, you could swear it was like Dr Who's TARDIS - cubically bigger on the inside. In this way, the roads are freed up for the wealthy as well as for cabbies who still manage to whinge their fucking arses off about it.

People need cars, and it is a utopian fantasty to imagine we can do away with them. If there must be a charge, why not ration car use on the basis of need? True, some exemptions are allowed for the disabled and for those who miraculously own an electrically-propelled car. So, why not extend that logic and give free permits for essential workers, (nurses, teachers, other hallowed public sector types), and for those whose income is below a certain threshold?

The most obvious solution to our transport problems is to make the car a less necessary beast. There is more than enough money in this country, and especially in London, to pay for a better, more efficient and cheaper transport system. Come on, Ken. Instead of whacking more on council tax, why not put a tax on some of those obscene mega-profits sloshing around the city? I hear tell that the total financial value of fraud in the City is greater than the total cost of all other economic crime in Britain. Send the police in there, make them do their fucking jobs, nick some stock-brokers . As Mark Steel suggests, isn't it time we saw some bobbies breaking down the great oak doors and yelling "Alright you shareholding bastards, we've got you now!" If the police won't do their job (and they won't), put a tax on them. Windfall them. Reclaim some of those ill-gotten gains and build that bloody Crossrail at long last. Also, as you're in a particular mood, ban those fuckers who scream "EeeeninStannnaard!!" at every tube and train stop in the goddam city.

Hunter and prey. posted by lenin

He who lived by the gun died by it. Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most gifted (if erratic) voices in journalism appears to have shot his filthy, perceptive, drug-addled, humorous, seething mind out yesterday. There's no point in pretending otherwise: he was probably pissed, tripping and gripped in a knot of self-hatred at the time. It wasn't a heroic death, but at least he left life on his own terms. My guess is that this is a belated reaction to Bush's victory. The government which he so despised, and which he characterised more than once as Fascist, being re-elected by his compatriots must have driven him crazy. So, he decided that the world was fucked and he wasn't waiting for the final orgasmic show-down. Pity that some newspapers can't work out what age he was when he snuffed it (he was 67).

I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1997, and it insults pedantry to note that I was shaken, stirred, rocked by a series of lexical explosions, foul-mouthed insults and hallucinatory landscapes. High on cocaine, ether, mescaline, LSD, marijuana and tequila, he still saw more truth about the American dream than most serious authors did in sober tomes (it was violent, frigid, electrically obsessed with money and status, sexually perverted and stale). Similarly, his book on the Hells Angels, although a more sober account, was still highly involved and involving. He exposed press lies about the group, showed how they revelled in their outsider status, yet were oddly closer to their cop enemies than they imagined, inasmuch as they were violent, anti-intellectual, contemptuous of the effete, elitist and infinitely corruptible.

Aside from his published books, he wrote articles which bristled with wit. Forget the stupid films about him (Bill Murray should be so ashamed), read some of his work. An epigrammatist with a penchant for obscene, he produced a number of memorable phrases and passages which should be plagiarised, often. I present a few of them here, and casually piss on his bones as he would have wished:

"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are whores for power and oil with hate and fear in our hearts."

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

"So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here—not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms."

"Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."

"Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don't tell them anything."

Bush "is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of 60 million voters."

"I watch three or four frantic network-news bulletins about Iraq every day, and it is all just fraudulent Pentagon propaganda, the absolute opposite of what it says: u.s. transfers sovereignty to iraqi interim "government." Hot damn! Iraq is finally Free, and just in time for the election! It is a deliberate cowardly lie. We are no more giving power back to the Iraqi people than we are about to stop killing them."

Livingstone tells em to fuck off. posted by lenin

Or something not dissimilar to it .

I haven't said much about this, because it is a total non-issue. What Ken Livingstone said was not anti-Semitic. No, he should not apologise, and I'm glad to see he's come out fighting again.

I do think it interesting that the ferocity of Ken's counter-attack belies earlier reports that he would 'express regret' and make "a carefully pitched appeal to critics". What's the first thing out of Ken's mouth?:

A week ago I said it was not my intention to apologise to the journalist from Daily Mail group or his employers. Upon a further week of reflection in which I have read everything written in the press about this controversy and after considerable debate with many Londoners I have decided to stand by that position. There will therefore be no apology or expression of regret to the Daily Mail group.

Fantastic.

More on US-insurgent negotiations. posted by lenin

Patrick Cockburn brings the tale to Independent readers:

The Sunni guerrillas want a timetable for a US withdrawal, first from Iraqi cities and then from the country as a whole. American officials aim to see if they can drive a wedge between nationalist guerrillas and fanatical Islamist groups.

Abu Marwan, a resistance commander, is quoted as saying that the insurgents want to "fight and negotiate". They are modelling their strategy on that of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. This means creating a united political organisation with a programme opposed to the US occupation.

US military commanders are now dubious about the chances of winning an outright military victory over the Sunni rebels who have a firm core of supporters among the five million-strong Sunni Muslim community. The US military has lost 1,479 dead and 10,740 wounded in Iraq since the invasion began in March 2003.

The talks so far are tentative but they indicate a recognition on the part of the US that it will need a political solution. Those willing to sit down with US diplomats and officials are "nationalists" composed primarily of former military and security officers from Saddam's Hussein's government.

The Iraqi resistance is highly fragmented and regionalised. Groups often only exist in a single city. In guerrilla warfare this may be an advantage since no command structure can be penetrated or disrupted.

The schismatic and regionalised development of the resistance has been its greatest weakness to date. Without a defined political programme that enables it to make a broad appeal, it has been calumniated by every vicious attack on civilians mounted by the likes of Tawhid wal Jihad. There is a slight analogy with the anticapitalist movement here, in which the majority were slandered because of the actions of the Black Bloc, which many in the movement believe is packed with far rightists and police provocateurs anyway. Because fragmented, without any unifying structure, any group of idiots calling themselves anti-capitalist can ruin a decent protest. Similarly, although TwJ are a sectarian group whose main aim is to start a Sunni-Shia war, although its attacks constitute a tiny fragment of the total; although most resistance attacks have targeted troops, Bradley tanks and so on - it has been possible because of the disgusting acts of these tiny outlying groups to impugn the whole resistance.

The fact that a bunch of former Ba'athist military officers are trying to place themselves at the fore-front of a regionalised grass-roots resistance is another symptom of this. True, there does need to be a unified nationalist resistance with a defined political programme: but if it is seen as a vehicle for the re-emergence of Ba'athism, it can never win. Similarly, it is unsurprising that those most eager to chat with the US are their former allies, the ones who must have mourned Reagan's death and still wonder why Rumsfeld is no longer picking up the phone.

As it is, the grass-roots resistance has shown itself capable both of independence from the mukhabarat thugs who wish to hegemonise it, and of overcoming sectarian divisions. In Tel Afar, for instance, Sunni guerillas worked with Shi'a Turkmen against the US and the Kurdish peshmergas deputising on its behalf. During the April 2004 assault on Fallujah, the beseiged Sunni city was assisted by Shi'ites and Sunnis from across Iraq, who brought medical and food aid for their compatriots. They chanted, "No no Sunni, No no Shia, Yes yes Islam". In Baghdad, Sunnis and Shias filled the Sunni Amm al-Qura mosque, while 200,000 gathered in Baghdad for a demonstration against the assault.

However, while the election boycott in Sunni areas seriously damaged the credibility of the vote, it also exposed the possibility of a Sunni-Shia rift. Now, some Sunni leaders see participation in the political process, along with Shi'ites as their best hope for ending the occupation. If they succeed in forcing a US withdrawal from key cities, they may have won half that battle already, but that is a massive 'if'. It is also doubtful whether the participation of a section of the Ba'athist elite in government, locally or nationally, will stop the resistance when the occupying troops provide such ample grist for its mill every day. Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that the bulk of the resistance is Islamist-nationalist rather than Ba'athist, composed of those who would have opposed Saddam. Just as it was an Islamist movement that kicked the US and then Israel out of Lebanon, it is probably just such groups who will continue to come to the fore in militarily opposing the occupation.

"Cult classic, not best-seller". posted by lenin

Thus The Streets, and thus also the SF novelist and blogger known as Ken MacLeod (known as such, because that is his name). I just wanted to draw attention to this classic post :

The great scandal of Lenin was that he taught realpolitik to the lower classes and backward peoples. If the working class was ever to become a ruling class it had better start thinking like one, and for a ruling class there are no rules. There is only the struggle to get and keep power. This is not to say that the Leninists and the imperialists are without moral feelings. Individually they are for the most part perfectly normal. Their compassion for their enemies' victims is absolutely genuine. So is their outrage at their enemies' moral failings and blind spots. In the 1980s I found it very difficult to regard supporters of the Chinese Communists' consistently anti-Soviet international policies as anything but scoundrels and scabs; but they were merely applying the same criteria as I was, to a different analysis of the world; and their indignation at my callous calculations and selective sympathies was just as real. I had the same sort of arguments with Trotskyists who supported the muj.

'How can you ...?' 'How can you ...?'

Morality has very little to do with choosing sides. It can tell us that a given act is dreadful, but it can't tell us whether to say, 'This is dreadful, therefore ...' or 'This is dreadful, but ...' We still often believe that we oppose our enemies because of their crimes, and support our allies despite their crimes. I wouldn't be surprised if Margaret Thatcher was quite sincere in condemning ZAPU as a terrorist organization because it shot down a civilian airliner, and in supporting one of the mujahedin factions, despite the fact that it had deliberately blown up a civilian airliner. Sometimes our moral justifications can blunt our moral sense. Think of the incendiary bombings of Germany and Japan. Suppose they were a military necessity. If so, better to accept that what 'our side' is doing is wrong and do it anyway than to persuade ourselves it is right because it is in a just cause.

(The writings of a great amoralist - a de Sade, a Stirner, a Nietzsche - can inspire a handful of murders in two centuries. Over the same period, the writings of a great moral philosopher - an Aquinas, a Kant, a Bentham, a Mill - can justify, if not indeed incite, the deaths of millions in just wars and just revolutions. Morality is an immensely dangerous and destructive force, which must be restrained by the strongest human passions and sympathies if it is not to break all the bonds of society.)

Morality is real. Morality is ideology. It is the heat given off by the workings of quite different machinery. In measuring the heat while ignoring the mechanism - in making a moral case for or against a particular war, for example - the moral philosopher reasons 'consciously indeed, but with a false consciousness'. The screams of those caught in the machinery continue unabated. They cry to heaven. It is only in what Locke called the 'appeal to heaven' - the clash of arms - that anyone (apart from, of course, 'pacifists, Quakers and other bourgeois fools' as someone said, who indulge in 'pacifist-Quaker-vegetarian prattle about the sanctity of human life', as someone else said) sees a hope that some day the machinery can be made to stop, and the screams to cease. That hope itself is the machines' fuel.

Bacevich: US isn't fighting to win. posted by lenin

I've often enjoyed Andrew Bacevich's smooth, premonitory dispatches about US foreign policy. As a moderate, pro-American conservative, he has a suppleness and flexibility in his approach that few of his compatriots can, or are willing to, match. The virtues and vices of conservatism are always present, as in his excellent book American Empire: The realities and consequences of US diplomacy (2002). There isn't a terrific concern for the other guys, the victims of US power, but there is a devastating analytical edge, one that subverts expectations on almost every page. That is by way of introducing the author of a tiny piece for today's LA Times which - because is is tiny - I reproduce in full here:

We Aren't Fighting to Win Anymore
U.S. troops in Iraq are only trying to buy time.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University and author of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" (Oxford University Press, 2005).

February 20, 2005

Americans of a certain age will recall Douglas MacArthur's pithy aphorism: "There is no substitute for victory." The remark captures an essential element of our military tradition. When the United States goes to war, it fights to win, to force the enemy to do our will. To sacrifice our soldiers' lives for anything less — as MacArthur charged was the case in Korea and later unambiguously became the case in Vietnam — smacks of being somehow un-American.

But among the various official statements being issued to explain events in Iraq, any mention of military victory has become notable by its absence. Tacitly — unnoticed even by the war's critics — the Bush administration has all but given up any expectation of defeating the enemy with whom we are engaged.

In the early days of the insurgency, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez vowed to use "whatever combat power is necessary to win," displaying all the pugnacity of a George Patton or Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf. "That's what America expects of me," declared Sanchez in December 2003, "and that's what I'm going to accomplish." Senior commanders no longer make such bold promises. Nor do senior civilian officials in Washington.

Indeed, today the Bush administration's aim is not to win but to relieve itself of responsibility for waging a war that it began but cannot finish. Debate in national security circles focuses not on deploying war-winning technologies or fielding innovative tactics that might turn the tide, but on how we can extricate ourselves before our overstretched forces suffer irreparable damage.

Optimists are placing their hopes on a crash program to create a new Iraqi security force that just might permit us in a year or so to begin reducing the size of our garrison. Pessimists have their doubts. But virtually no one is predicting we will be even remotely close to crushing the insurgency. The decisive victory promised by the war's advocates back in March 2003 — remember all the talk of "shock and awe"? — has now slipped beyond our grasp.

Of course, following the heady assault on Baghdad, the conflict took an unexpected turn — precisely as wars throughout history have tended to do. As a consequence, today a low-tech enemy force estimated at about 10,000 fighters has stymied the mightiest military establishment the world has ever seen. To be sure, the adversary cannot defeat us militarily. But neither can we defeat it. In short, U.S. troops today are no longer fighting to win, but simply to buy time: This has become the Bush administration's substitute for victory. Worse, in a war such as in Iraq, time is more likely to work in the other guy's favor.

Whether this reality has yet to fully sink in with the majority of the American people is unclear. No doubt President Bush hopes the citizenry will continue to snooze. Better to talk about Social Security reform and banning gay marriage than to call attention to the unhappy fact that we are spending several billion dollars per month and losing, on average, two soldiers per day — not to prevail but simply to prolong the stalemate. Moreover, if the administration gets its way, we can expect that expenditure of blood and treasure to continue for many months, until there emerges an Iraqi government able to fend for itself or Iraq descends into chaos.

Pending the final judgment of President Bush's war, this much we can say for sure: Two years after the dash on Baghdad seemingly affirmed the invincibility of the U.S. armed forces, the actual limits of American power now lay exposed for all to see. Our adversaries, real and potential, are no doubt busy contemplating the implications of those limits.

So too must we. Our effort to do so should begin with the admission that the idea, promoted during the heady spring of 2003, that through the aggressive use of military power the United States might transform the Islamic world and cement U.S. global preeminence was a dangerous delusion. It remains a delusion today.

In a short article, Bacevich says more than many others can compress into a lengthy review. It isn't a moral argument but, invaluably, it cuts the new imperialism down to size. It deflates the pretty ideas with which neoconservative fanatics legitimise their present disposition, and does so convincingly. I strongly recommend that you check this man's writing out.

US talking to insurgents. posted by lenin

Apostate Windbag floated it , now Time magazine confirms it. The US is conducting secret negotiations with insurgents in Iraq:

Pentagon officials say the secret contacts with insurgent leaders are being conducted mainly by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. A Western observer close to the discussions says that "there is no authorized dialogue with the insurgents" but that the U.S. has joined "back-channel" communications with rebels. Says the observer: "There's a lot bubbling under the surface today."

Over the course of the war in Iraq, as the anti-U.S. resistance has grown in size and intensity, Administration officials have been steadfast in their refusal to negotiate with enemy fighters. But in recent months, the persistence of the fighting and signs of division in the ranks of the insurgency have prompted some U.S. officials to seek a political solution. And Pentagon and intelligence officials hope the high voter turnout in last month's election will deflate the morale of the insurgents and persuade more of them to come in from the cold.

Apostate Windbag speculates that it could now be strategy to reincorporate elements of the old Ba'athist regime or indeed just reinstate a more moderate Ba'athism, as is suggested in a document publicised by Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation. I sort of doubt that. Although US policy has previously been inclined to prefer a Saddam-like ruler who was not called Saddam, they no longer control the trajectory of Iraq as they'd like to. Certainly, deciphering US policy at the moment is difficult, and it would seem to be characterised by some contradictory impulses. On the one hand, we hear that the US is arming certain Sunni groups to disrupt Shia rule; on the other, they are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to crush the insurgency, including the destruction of an entire city. Now, we hear they are negotiating. It looks like a balancing act. The US is caught between two anti-occupation forces in Iraq right now: one largely peaceful, Shi'ite, but pro-Iranian; the other violent, Sunni, but desperate not to be sidelined under Shi'ite rule. Hence, a strategy of playing one off against the other.

Graceless gloating. posted by lenin

British Blogs Top Ten does what it says on the tin - it monitors the most popular British blogs, whose stat pages are accessible to the public. This is a problematic listing, since it leaves out those whose stats are not publicly available - like Harry's Place and Normblog , both of which are well-linked and must pull in about 1,000 a day or more. However, one thing does strike me about the list: I've beat Stephen Pollard , the impervious, tumescent ego that inadvertently ended Blunkett's career, and also Peter Cuthbertson , The Guardian's poster-boy of youthful Tory fogeyism. Now, Cuthbertson gets to have a column in the National Review Online on the basis of his 348 daily readers. In the interests of balance, I demand a New Statesman diary column. Now!

The only thing that saddens me is that all the people above me are, without exception, purveyors of unmitigated pap. Well, at least the author of the reactionary Policeman's Blog (he should have called it The Secret Policeman's Ball) can occasionally turn a decent phrase. But that's it.

One last thing. I am alarmed by the apparent absence of a certain part-time tabloid journalist who works in the City. Please pay him a visit .

Labour's election strategy: back to the future. posted by lenin

The self-confidence of the Blairite circle-jerkers within the New Labour elite has been battered and bruised for the last two or three years, at least. New Labour retains a substantial lead over the Conservatives, depending which poll you take. However, the Prime Minister's approval rating is in minus figures ( -12% ). Support for the war has plummetted ( 38% ). Yet, they seem to have little to offer but more of the same, then blaming the victims. The warnings from the likes of Robin Cook that the government needs to define itself as a more left-of-centre party is are unlikely to be heeded and don't have the kind of backing that could force an agenda. I have argued for some time that the Labour party has become a different organisation. Its membership is disproportionately middle-class, and there is no indication that they are about to buck the leadership.

Consider the 2003 party conference, the one held just after the biggest protest movement in British history filled central London:

Judy Cox reported:

"They gave health minister John Reid a standing ovation when he told them he wanted for the NHS exactly what Margaret Thatcher had wanted.

They got up again for the despicable David Blunkett when he banged on about crime and asylum seekers.

It seemed that no violation of labour movement traditions, from any cabinet minister, could stop them clapping."

"Party fixers or small numbers of hardcore Blairites could not have bullied all these delegates to their feet. Their applause was genuine." ( Judy Cox , Socialist Worker, 11th October, 2003).

In the minutiae of detail, too, the Labour activists aligned themselves with Tony Blair. Nick Cohen bitterly reported:

"Activists from constituency Labour parties usually backed Blair by a majority of three-to-one. The majority never fell below two-to-one, however contentious the issue. From now on when the whips confront a rebellious Labour backbencher, they will be able to tell him he isn't standing up for his local party workers but flying in the face of their express wishes." (Nick Cohen, The Observer, October 12th, 2003).

So, the approach to the upcoming election is hardly different than it was almost eight years ago. The new slogan: "forward, not back" . Tony Blair doesn't have a reverse gear (unless it takes him back to Gladstone or the Old Testament). Alan Milburn, who is running the campaign, knows what's wrong with New Labour's record:

Mr Milburn, presenting private polling yesterday to the cabinet, admitted that many voters are angry about the government's record on violent crime, anti-social behaviour and asylum.

This recalls the Prime Minister's famous 'leaked memo' , in which he revealed his Tory predilections:

On asylum, we need to be highlighting removals and decisions plus if the April figures show a reduction, then a downward trend. Also if the benefits bill really starts to fall, that should be highlighted also...

On crime, we need to highlight the tough measures: compulsory tests for drugs before bail; the PIU (Performance Innovation Unit) report on the confiscation of assets; the extra number of burglars jailed under the "three strikes and you're out"...

We should think now of an initiative, eg locking up street muggers. Something tough, with immediate bite which sends a message through the system.

Maybe, the driving licence penalty for young offenders. But this should be done soon and I, personally, should be associated with it...

On the family, we need two or three eye-catching initiatives that are entirely conventional in terms of their attitude to the family. Despite the rubbish about gay couples, the adoption issue worked well. We need more. I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible.

Yet, there should be no surprise in this as much of it was advertised in advance. To get a sense of the arrogance and Whiggish sympathies of the Blairites, have a look at Labour's 1997 election manifesto . The couching of conservative policies in the language of the left is only half the story. What is more striking is just how much of the Tory language New Labour accepted. In fact, you cannot understand the purbling pursuit of unpopular, costly and inefficient policies like PFI , Almos , tuition fees and so on unless you realise just how ideological New Labour is about its acceptance of rightist claims about the efficiency of the private sector etc. This is more obvious when you look at the full-frontal assault on the firefighters when the "overwhelming majority of the public" backed the strike . The decision to abandon the Dockers (500 Livepool dockers were sacked for refusing to cross a picket-line in 1995, and subsequently embarked on a series of protests and flying pickets which gained widespread international support) is another such example: the government was the majority stakeholder in the shipping company Torside and could easily have reinstated the men. Take a look at Labour's 1997 manifesto, and you have the reason why: "we make it clear that there will be no return to flying pickets, secondary action, strikes with no ballots or the trade union law of the 1970s".

Of course, there was a convenient myth about the 1997 elections, which sometimes persists today: Labour won because of its right-wing policies and jazzy new image. In fact, polls at the time showed that on most crucial issues, the public - especially the Labour voting public - were well to the left of new Labour. For example, 70% of British people said they believed the unions were too weak; between 70 and 80% believed that the railways should be renationalised; 43% of voters and 61% of Labour voters said that there should be socialist planning in the economy; 76% polled said that there was a class struggle in Britain. Now, the axis of politicisation has shifted from domestic policy to foreign policy, but it isn't the case that one has obliterated the other. The unions' high standing in public opinion remains, and their involvement in the antiwar movement can only have helped that. During the firefighters' strike, it was speculated that the government would be unable to go to war on Iraq if the strike was prolonged. Indeed, while Alan Milburn can only see a cluster of overlapping issues on the right which possibly threaten new Labour's vote, there is discernible a clear left-wing body of opinion in which the issues of opposition to the war and to privatisation, anti-racism, support for civil liberties and support for the unions are vital. The lacklustre Blairite campaign means there is a vacuum to the left of the political spectrum.

Hence, Respect .

Darfur: support the rebels. posted by lenin

So, the UN won't call it genocide, but it "may be no less serious and heinous than genocide" according to the UN's Commission of Enquiry for Darfur in a report written by Louise Arbour. Arbour, to be sure, is a partisan spokesperson. Both she and her successor in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY, Tribunal) helped Nato avoid facing trial for war crimes committed during the assault on Serbia, specifically the targeting of the civilian infrastructure. Nevertheless, the crimes of the Sudanese government are not in doubt, and have been documented extensively . For the workshy, they include summary executions, torture, rape , the horrifyingly standard array of repressive measures by a government seeking to secure its territorial control. (There are similarities with what is being done to Aceh by the Indonesian government, similar political dynamics hold, although the differences ought to be too obvious to bear repetition).

Some, however, have been led astray by the calls in some quarters for war on Sudan. It is a red herring, since it seems highly unlikely that this will take place. Before getting back to that, it is worth looking at some of what has been said about Darfur of late.

Not more than six months ago, the US was accusing others of complicity in the Darfur genocide. Aid workers retorted that the US was hyping up genocide fears to serve its own interests. The Economist reported that the Darfur rebels murder too , which borders on pedantry - since when did insurgents have bloodless hands? Mercedes Taty of Medicin Sans Frontieres said :

I don’t think that we should be using the word "genocide" to describe this conflict. Not at all. This can be a semantic discussion, but nevertheless, there is no systematic target — targeting one ethnic group or another one.

It doesn’t mean either that the situation in Sudan isn’t extremely serious by itself. But, I think it’s important not to mix things and not to standardize our words. So, I would say no, I can not speak about genocide.

Nevertheless, MSF described an extremely needful situation. Malaria, starvation and inadequate water supplies combined with displacement and militia attacks to create vast numbers of starving, desperate people.

Despite the fact that ceasefires have been negotiated with the secular Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M), and the Islamist Justice and equality movement (Jem), the Sudanese government is known to be routinely ignoring the conditions of the ceasefire to continue attacks. Hence, an international spokesperson for the SLA/M told Democracy Now in December that the West should either supply them with the weapons they need to overthrow their government, or they should apply pressure to the regime through various means. The rebels, too are said to be violating the ceasefire , but in all likelihood this is a response to the continuing atrocities of the Janjawid militias.

On January 16th, a preliminary peace deal was signed in Cairo between the government and opposition forces. Subsequently, a deal was reached in the capital of Chad, N'Djamena this week. However, villages continued to burn, the government forces have yet to withdraw from land taken since the September 8th peace agreement, and the rebels say they will not return to full peace talks without seeing some movement on these issues.

At the moment, there are international moves to try genocidaires in the International Criminal Court. Guess who's blocking these moves? The US government, for well-known reasons, oppose the ICC, and would rather set up an ad hoc tribunal based in Tanzania. Human rights organisations and the UN oppose this for a number of perfectly excellent reasons: it would be unnecessary procrastination, involving a great deal of time in construction; ad hoc tribunals are time-limited, thus providing an incentive for non-cooperation, since the Sudanese government may simply decide to sit it out; the US proposal actually costs more than the ICC, and they expect countries that already pay for the ICC to stump up for their ad hoc tribunal; the ICC is widely supported in Africa, especially in the African Union; an ad hoc tribunal would be dependent on the goodwill of the US to keep it running.

As Human Rights Watch notes, "The United States could kill the court at any time." Which I sort of feel is the whole point. Britain's public position is that it supports the ICC proposal - but only if the US agrees . China, which has enormous oil interests in Sudan, would rather not pursue the ICC route either. Clearly, the ICC is only one means, and probably not a particularly effective means, of answering the disastrous and needful situation in Darfur.

A number of factors command this situation if you ask me. First, the legitimate demands of the rebels and the illegitimacy of the Bashir regime. Second, the absolute moral idiocy of hoping that the self-interest of the West will generate sincere 'humanitarian intervention' or that it would be effective in any case. Third, the desperate neediness of the displaced, diseased and starving, and the paucity of humanitarian measures to date. In that context, I can only agree with Peter Hallward's recommendation made last August:

Had we been serious about the claims of Darfur's farmers for a more equitable distribution of wealth, we should have explored ways of contributing to their non-violent pursuit, or else supported the Sudan Liberation Army when it launched its initially successful rebellion in February 2003 - not simply waited to provide charity to its survivors in the refugee camps of 2004.

And if we are still serious about the SLA's claims now, then we should debate their merits and decide whether, and how, to help those struggling to achieve them. This is a political question before it is a moral or humanitarian one. Today's humanitarian crisis is precisely a result of past political failure.

(Sidenote: Hallward's article came in for some dishonest, myopic criticism from the philosopher-blogger Jonathan Derbyshire here . Suffice to say, having a realistic appreciation of the moral culpability of those Western voices no claiming the moral highground is "downplaying Khartoum's crimes", while the penultimate sentence in the quoted passage is travestied as 'political not moral', as if instead of providing the analytical framework for understanding moral question, politics somehow obliterated morality. He misrepresents Hallward's recommendations by casually dropping the first and most important of them. There's more, but Derbyshire's whole piece is a shocking example of low-rent polemicising from someone who is trained in philosophy).

The rebels are entirely justified in what they seek, and the government deserves to lose its fight against them. What we must do is support the rebels - not uncritically - and pressure our governments to provide sufficient humanitarian aid to those in need of it. Recall the response to the tsunami; public contributions easily and swiftly dwarved initial promises made by the government, shaming them into upping their game. We haven't had that kind of campaign over Darfur, but it would be a good start. And the SLA's request for arms is not an unreasonable one either - if Britain can flood war-torn Sierra Leone with arms which end up in the hands of children, and contribute to the genocide in the Congo (real genocide, 4 million killed) by arming every actor in it, it can help the rebels in Sudan. It could also help peace negotiaitons: the main problem to date has been the intransigence of a government which feels it has the upper-hand. More power to the rebels would perhaps force them to reconsider their position. I'm not saying it will happen. To use a New Labour metaphor, pigs might fly before we see it. But such would constitute a reasonable response to the calamitous situation in Darfur. We should, as Hallward rightly points out, treat the crisis in Sudan in terms of "actors and principle rather than victims and confusion".

The Bush administration is torture. posted by lenin

The rumours about torture at Bagram were true. The torture in Iraq was (is?) even more widespread than we imagined. So says The Guardian this morning:

New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.
Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar.

The documents also indicate that US soldiers covered up abuse in Afghanistan and in Iraq - even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year.

A thousand pages of evidence from US army investigations released to the American Civil Liberties Union after a long legal battle, and made available to the Guardian, show that an Iraqi detained at Tikrit in September 2003 was forced to withdraw his report of abuse after soldiers told him he would be held indefinitely.

Meanwhile, photographs taken in southern Afghanistan showing US soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Battalion posing in mock executions of blindfolded and bound detainees, were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage", the documents show.

In the dossier, the Iraqi detainee claims that three US interrogators in civilian clothing dislocated his arms, stuck an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, choked him with a rope until he lost consciousness, and beat him with a baseball bat.

"After they tied me up in the chair, then they dislocate my both arms. He asked to admit before I kill you then he beat again and again," the prisoner says in his statement. "He asked me: Are you going to report me? You have no evidence. Then he hit me very hard on my nose, and then he stepped on my nose until he broken and I started bleeding."

The detainee withdrew his charges on November 23 2003. He says he was told: "You will stay in the prison for a long time, and you will never get out until you are 50 years old."

A medical examination by a US military doctor confirmed the detainee's account, yet the investigation was closed last October. "It is further proof that the army is not seriously investigating credible allegations of abuse," said Jameel Jaffar, a lawyer for the ACLU.

Still, at least they're not as bad as the turrssts, eh? Unsurprisingly, some Iraqis were primed to resist the occupation from the beginning. "Leave our country now":

Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight. The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq. Journalists who dare to report the truth of what is happening have been kidnapped by terrorists. This serves the agenda of the occupation, which aims to eliminate witnesses to its crimes.

Workers in Iraq's southern oilfields began organising soon after British occupying forces invaded Basra. We founded our union, the Southern Oil Company Union, just 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. When the occupation troops stood back and allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources.

...

Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer, due to "fears of civil war", are in fact speaking only for themselves and the minority of Iraqis whose interests are dependent on the occupation.

We as a union call for the withdrawal of foreign occupation forces and their military bases. We don't want a timetable - this is a stalling tactic. We will solve our own problems. We are Iraqis, we know our country and we can take care of ourselves. We have the means, the skills and resources to rebuild and create our own democratic society.

Finally, Porter Goss was wildly and accurately derided as a Republican political appointee when he was made director of the CIA. Now, John Negroponte, the death squad guru, has been made Director of National Intelligence , overseeing 15 different intelligence agencies including his old haunt, the CIA. This move is utterly characteristic of the combative Bush administration, as it devises increasingly novel ways to wind the world up something rotten.

Stalinislamofascistrotskyalidocious!! posted by lenin

How my heart went out to David T, one of the more sensible writers at HP Sauce, when he attempted to tackle the slippery topic of Islamism . He used a prophylactic, of course, finding some fictitious fault with some sinistral others who remain unnamed, (but you-know-who-they-are), and who apparently interpret Islamism purely as a liberatory force. Yet, for that, his argument was perfectly sensible if incomplete. He said:

The political themes of islamism aren't foreign. Nor are they fascism ... They are entirely comprehensible and familiar, and should be as well understood as the tenets of socialism or the principles of liberal democracy, by all people who wish to be informed.

He added:

The failure - in general - to engage with islamism, conceptually, except at the level of islamophobic caricature, is a dangerous one. Ignoring islamism is scarcely better than allying with it.

I like my arguments to be a little more argumentative than that, but it's a small lacuna of sanity in a mucky little cuckoo's nest. Now that Johann Hari has, Big Chief-style, broken out of the asylum, all that is left is for the remainder of the social misfits to follow him and leave the Chronics tied to the wall, dribbling and pissing through catheters between sedation.

Yet, it points to (ie. is not part of) a tendency - I'll put it as weakly as that - toward re-marketing tired conservative shibboleths as funky new contrarian understandings. (I blame Christopher Hitchens, for this and almost everything else. He was the one who started bleating about the 'supererogatory' nature of totalitarian regimes, 'sinister perfectionism' and so on). At any rate, a tendency, which usually manifests itself in the form of "look how the rhetoric of the far right and the far left overlap; isn't this the secret of totalitarianism - no matter what their apparent political and philosophical differences, the far right and far left have more in common under the skin than either dare admit?" Etc. Slavoj Zizek describes how “if, at a Cultural Studies colloquium in the 1970s, one was innocently asked ‘Is your line of argumentation not similar to that of Arendt?’, this was a sure sign that one was in deep trouble.” Today, by contrast, leftists and liberals are inclined to calumniate their opponents as totalitarian at the drop of a sequinned hat. (For example, Paul Berman recently describing Che Guevara as a totalitarian on the grounds that he was “pro-Soviet” – a questionable assertion in itself. Similar language has been used of Hugo Chavez by American radicals like Marc Cooper. Also, cf the Livingstone saga, the 'anti-Semitic' jibes over Labour's election posters etc).

Certain bloggers revel in this kind of anfractuous illogic. Here, for example, is a Tribune columnist who thinks that the Left is worse than Blair. I sympathise, of course. If one works for the minute Tribune, one's perspective on the Left is bound to be jaundiced. However, note the following phrases: "reactionary Islamists", "Sunni-supremacist 'resistance'", "the early-21st-century equivalent of the old Communist Party of Great Britain’s endorsement of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939". In a similar vein, one finds this . If you need supplementary evidence, take a cursory glance at Oliver Kamm's blog archive.

I have already dealt at length with the idea that Islamism is, must be, politically reactionary. I'll summarise the main point thus: Islamism is partially a conservative reflux, but also a radicalisation; it rejects imperialism, and seeks to solve the stagnation and decline of the 'Muslim world' by mobilising its best civilisational qualities against the West. Islamism can be - and has been - politically reactionary, liberal, and leftist. This is simply because the texts on which it stakes its claims are too indeterminate to yield only one definition, and only one set of recommendations. Islamic economics, for instance, (the sort propounded by the Dawa party in Iraq) amounts often enough to a watered down version of social-democracy, because the Quran has just so little to say about polities, economies, technology etc.

Similarly, the Sunni 'supremacist' resistance is neither specifically Sunni nor 'supremacist' (although only a fool would deny that such elements operate in it). For instance, recently the citizens of Fallujah have been burying their dead after a deadly American onslaught. What does a non-masochist do in the face of such brutality but resist, calling to hand whatever ideological and organisational resources are available?

The notion of the 'totalitarian' also needs to be challenged. A decent attempt was made in issue 12.2 of Historical Materialism. Dominico Lusurdo, professor of Philosophy of History at the University of Urbino (Italy) noted, after a brisk discussion of Hannah Arendt, that:

A product of organicism, or of right-wing or left-wing holism, and somehow inferable a priori from this poisoned ideological source, totalitarianism (in both its opposite configurations) explains all the horror of the twentieth century: such is today the predominant vulgate.

The author goes on to note that many aspects of Western civilisation overlapped with fascism. The Nazis admired the American South and its handling of racial distinction, while Hitler himself marvelled at the British Empire. The dehumanisation of one's enemies was not exactly absent from Allied propaganda during WWII, which allowed for two annihilating explosions - in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - to go off without much of a bang (in 1995, 59% of Americans still approved of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). In fact, the genealogy of the idea of totalitarianism is interesting, at least inasmuch as Arendt's early text displays a great deal of concern with English imperialism and Lord Cromer in Egypt. Similarly, while Arendt eventually located the totalitarian bug in Marxism or Bolshevism (the methodological level fluctuated), she initially made a distinction between the liberatory impulse of Leninism and the deathly bureacratic animus of Stalinism. It is also interesting that in the later and more cited texts, Arendt identified only the USSR and Nazi Germany as totalitarian. No, that isn't quite true: Spain, Portugal and Italy were spared the charge of totalitarianism, yet India and China, "the lands of traditional Oriental despotism", were ripe for it.

Totalitarianism is a shifting, polysemous notion. It lends itself to such rebarbative portmanteaus as 'Islamofascism', yet contains its own immanent critique (Muslims are thus dehumanised and can be locked up in Guantanamo; but isn't this itself a kind of totalitarianism?). It allows clueless, barbie-doll 'leftist' commentators to resort to moral absolutism, avoid political complexity and assert their own monopoly on the moral high ground because they oppose what they designate as 'totalitarian'.

I'll finish by noting that religions will have, on most definitions, totalitarian impulses. The 'three great religions' are all susceptible to this charge, although their adherents may aptly and justly interpret the texts in a humanist or universalist way. The point, therefore, is to take the mono- and poly-theisms at their word and see how they are applied. For instance, imagine someone referring to 'Judeo-fascism'. If that person were, say, the mayor of London, he would have only a shred of career left with which to cover his dignity. Yet, the 'totalitarian' aspect of Judaism is precisely what Israel Shahak insisted on pointing out. After discussing racist and dehumanising passages in the Hassidic and orthodox traditions, he says:

All Jews who really want to extricate themselves from the tyranny of the totalitarian Jewish past must face the question of their attitude towards the popular anti-Jewish manifestations of the past, particularly those connected with the rebellions of enserfed peasants. On the other side, all the apologists of the Jewish religion and of Jewish segregationism and chauvinism also take their stand - both ultimately and in current debates - on the same question. The undoubted fact that the peasant revolutionaries committed shocking atrocities against Jews (as well as against their other oppressors) is used as an 'argument' by those apologists, in exactly the same way that the Palestinian terror is used to justify the denial of justice to the Palestinians.

Our own answer must be a universal one, applicable in principle to all comparable cases. And, for a Jew who truly seeks liberation from Jewish particularism and racism and from the dead hand of the Jewish religion, such an answer is not very difficult.

Precisely, the universal standard in which all human lives are worth the same. It is not, as some have it , that the Left seeks to apply a different standard to the US than to everyone else. It is precisely that we apply the same standards on the US as any other polity. It is precisely that, to use another example, the 'Jewish State' is not ethically superior to the 'Muslim State'. The warmed-up Enlightenment 'universalism' of the imperial left is entirely bogus because it refuses to judge, say, America or Israel by the standards it would apply to any non-Western state, and because it minimises the actual crimes of those states.

"A story half-told" posted by lenin

In response to a rather obtuse article by John Aglionby in today's Guardian, I fired off the following letter:

Dear John,

I read your article in today's Guardian with growing alarm. You are right to note that human rights organisations and aid agencies are desperately trying to end the current control of aid distribution by the Indonesian military (TNI), but - ironically - you only tell half the story.

As Tapol, the Indonesian human rights organisation notes (http://tapol.gn.apc.org/pr050104.htm), it is the status of 'civil emergency' which Indonesia presently enforces in Aceh that is causing real problems for aid distribution. You mention martial law only in a positive context - that of providing an immediate response to the disaster. Yet you do not mention that the TNI has been continuing its repression in Aceh throughout this disaster, rejecting an early ceasefire from the GAM.

True, the TNI and the local police blamed reports of violence on the GAM rebels (http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1386804,00.html), but this was not what a UN observer witnessed (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1279107.htm). And what is more, TNI leaders themselves acknowledged that they were continuing operations (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E03B6E8D-A411-455F-A007-00CDCF939621.htm). Further, refugees from the tsunami have reported to the Western press that they saw the TNI shoot seven unarmed villagers dead during a 'counter-insurgency operation' (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18690-1436908,00.html). Naturally, it has been difficult to get information on this because journalists access has been blocked as has become typical in Indonesia in recent years, where reporters are expected to write "in the spirit of nationalism" (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/indonesia1103/3.htm)

You refer to "28 years of seccessionist violence and mutual mistrust" as if it were not the TNI which broke a previous ceasefire in 2003 to impose martial law. Further, the record of the TNI in Aceh is a brutal one: torture, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial killings, summary killings, rape and other forms of sexual violence. (See here: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/indonesia0904/5.htm#_Toc83043018 and here: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/indonesia1203/ as well as here: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA210332004).

There are peace negotiations now, but this is because the GAM repeated their ceasefire offer (http://www.axcessnews.com/worldnews_011305c.shtml).

One of the real problems now is that the Indonesian government are urging non-TNI troops to leave because it said it wanted to introduce three new battalions of soldiers and one new battalion of “mobile brigade” police. These latter are the most notorious and brutal among Indonesian forces, as the New York Times reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/international/worldspecial4/12cnd-indo.html). A valid fear must be that the TNI intend to continue their repression, using the dislocation created by the tsunami to attack rebels and drive them from their strongholds. This can only amplify the present humanitarian disaster.

Finally, one last thing. It is because you mention nothing of the TNI's violence that you don't have anything to say about their sponsors (http://tapol.gn.apc.org/pr030710.htm and http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0715-02.htm). By all of this, I mean to convey as clearly as I can that you don't even tell half the story, and let far too many actors in that terrible situation off the hook.

Best wishes,

Etc.

Labour Friends of Iraq attack SWP. posted by lenin

Gary Kent of Labour Friends of Iraq is no fan of the far left. He isn't a particular fan of the Stop the War Coalition either, and his windy rants have been parsed on the Tomb before. Just a few quick words on his latest . He doesn't pull his punches:

The SWP's report of the recent TUC conference on solidarity with Iraqi
trade unions selects those bits that suit it best.

Its report quotes one official as saying that some people who supported the war were now trying to use the issue of solidarity to justify the occupation and concludes that "The clear and overwhelming message throughout the day was that the anti-war movement will not be thrown off course by the warmongers' efforts to confuse the growing feeling against the occupation."

Actually, it was dominated by trying to understand the politics of the new Iraqi labour movement with few references to Stop the War activity.

Damning. Except, of course, that the report he cites was about a Stop the War conference which was much larger and took place two days earlier.

Suffice to say everything that is supposed to follow from Kent's initial premise is therefore nonsense - as is most of the left-baiting drivel that appears on that idiotic website. Pull your trousers up, sunshine.

Update: Kent has removed the offending post from the main page, but the link to the specific post still works so you can still view his work. Incidentally, if the link disappears forever, or fossilizes into a 404, I have a copy of the post sent to me by e-mail which I will make available on request. I'd hate to see Kent's classic expose disappear down the Memory Hole.

Torture, m'kay? posted by lenin

Stop being so squeamish. Measures have to be taken to protect lives. We know when we ask them straight questions, they lie through their asses and suppress a hearty giggle. If we continue to allow these fuckers to send us on wild goose chases, we will never put an end to their murderous schemes. Hence :

After prolonged soul-searching, I find myself in reluctant agreement with those who consider torture permissible under certain limited circumstances, with appropriate oversight. I propose, therefore, that Congress' power to subpoena Executive officials be supplemented as follows: Upon certifying to the President its finding that a substantial likelihood or reasonable suspicion exists that a member of his Cabinet or personal staff is a lying bastard, or that his or her testimony is an utter pile of horseshit, Congress shall be authorized to insert sanitized needles under his or her fingernails, or to resort to whatever other coercive measures it finds necessary, to extract the truth. Of course, this still prohibits rendition of Ms. Rice to a jurisdiction beyond U.S. oversight and accountability, and would require compensation upon any finding that she had been, despite all expectations, telling the truth.

"Israel doesn't recognise Israel". posted by lenin

Jews Sans Frontieres links to a fabulous essay by the late Israel Shahak, posted at Jews Against Zionism . He quotes:

The routine means for enforcing discrimination in everyday life is the ID card, which everyone is obliged to carry at all times. ID cards list the official 'nationality' of a person, which can be 'Jewish', 'Arab', 'Druze' and the like, with the significant exception of 'Israeli'. Attempts to force the Interior Minister to allow Israelis wishing to be officially described as 'Israeli', or even as 'Israeli-Jew' in their ID cards have failed. Those who have attempted to do so have a letter from the Ministry of the Interior stating that 'it was decided not to recognise an Israeli nationality'. The letter does not specify who made this decision or when.

But he ought to have also quoted from the gorgeous little foreword by one of the Tomb's favourite authors, Gore Vidal:

Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.

Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in forty-five years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and Samaria. Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live with them as equals. This was not meant to be.

This is classic Gore, and that is either good or bad depending on your viewpoint. First, a Palimpsest-style reminiscence about Jack Kennedy (who Vidal probably had the horn for). Then, a beautifully sarcastic expression of disdain for religious fundamentalism, (whether the God is of the sky or earth-bound). Finally, innocent expectations betrayed - no, the American Republic betrayed, just another declension in its freefall into the entanglements of empire.

US Soldiers Witness Civilians Being Killed. posted by lenin

From MSNBC :

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers.

...

They claim heavily armed security operators on Custer Battles' missions — among them poorly trained young Kurds, who have historical resentments against other Iraqis — terrorized civilians, shooting indiscriminately as they ran for cover, smashing into and shooting up cars.

On a mission on Nov. 8, escorting ammunition and equipment for the Iraqi army, they claim a Kurd guarding the convoy allegedly shot into a passenger car to clear a traffic jam.

"[He] sighted down his AK-47 and started firing," says Colling. "It went through the window. As far as I could see, it hit a passenger. And they didn't even know we were there."

Later, the convoy came upon two teenagers by the road. One allegedly was gunned down.

"The rear gunner in my vehicle shot him," says Colling. "Unarmed, walking kids."

In another traffic jam, they claim a Ford 350 pickup truck smashed into, then rolled up and over the back of a small sedan full of Iraqis.

"The front of the truck came down," says Craun. "I could see two children sitting in the back seat of that car with their eyes looking up at the axle as it came down and pulverized the back."

"I said, 'Wow, what hit this car?'" remembers Hough.

Could anyone have survived?

"Probably not. Not from what I saw," says Hough.

The men assume that in all three incidents the Iraqis were seriously hurt or killed. But they can't be sure.

"It was chaos and carnage and destruction the whole day," says Craun.

Addendum to 'Notes on Rhetoric' posted by lenin

The author of Charlotte Street has produced some invaluable Notes on Rhetoric , which are occasionally updated .

I have a suggestion for another entry:

You know perfectly well/Obviously.... This is a perfect argumentative recourse when you wish to make a point about which you are uncertain. You make up for your own uncertainty by imputing a surfeit of certainty to your opponent. Knowing your point is dubious, or impossible to substantiate, repeatedly assert that it is 'obvious'. Variants include, "you know full well that", "as you are perfectly well aware" or "you say that as if you didn't know better". If you are given to fustian language, you could also signal a bit of condescension at the same time by affirming that your point is "elementary". (Cf. Norman Finkelstein on Christopher Hitchens: "It's almost an inside joke as he signals each ridiculous point with the assertion that it's 'obvious.'")

Obviously, there is no answer to that kind of cut.

Whitehouse converts to anti-imperialism. posted by lenin

You could call it the St Valentine's Day massacre. A suicide bombing went off in Beirut, killing 15 people and injuring 120 others. The target was former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed in the attack. The BBC reports :

Before leaving Damascus, US Ambassador Margaret Scobey delivered a note to the Syrian government expressing US outrage over the killing.

State department spokesman Richard Boucher said the US was not blaming Syria directly for Mr Hariri's death.

But he said the incident underlined what he called the distortions caused by the presence of 14,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon.

"Yesterday's bombing calls into question the stated reason behind this presence of Syrian security forces: Lebanon's internal security," Mr Boucher said. [Emphasis added]

Further :

Condoleezza Rice - who has recalled the US ambassador to Syria - said she was not blaming the attack on Syria but its presence in Lebanon was destabilising. [Emphasis added]

They logic is, of course, unimpeachable. If you occupy someone else's country, whether with 14,000 or 130,000 troops, you can expect insecurity and instability. If you then experience insecurity and attacks because of it, you can't then claim that your presence there is to maintain the security of the country you are occupying. Hence :

"The United States takes this opportunity once again to call for the immediate implementation of Resolution 15-59, including the withdrawal of all Syrian forces, the disbanding and disarmament of all militias, and an end to foreign interference in the political independence of Lebanon. The Lebanese people must be free to exercise their political choices without intimidation or the threat of violence".

Irony, like Karma, is a considerable pain in the arse.

WAR CRIMES IN FALLUJAH: PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE. posted by lenin

Socialist Worker has the scoop:

Doctor Salam Ismael took aid to Fallujah last month. This is his story of how the US murdered a city

IT WAS the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to describe, and one that will never leave me. It was the smell of death. Hundreds of corpses were decomposing in the houses, gardens and streets of Fallujah. Bodies were rotting where they had fallen—bodies of men, women and children, many half-eaten by wild dogs...

This article is accompanied by quite revolting photographs. The following press release from SW explains more:

Socialist Worker publishes the first evidence of
a massacre of civilians by US troops in Fallujah

LONDON, 15 FEBRUARY 2005 -- In November of last year, US forces
in Iraq launched an all-out assault on the city of Fallujah. They claimed they were hunting down terrorists.

Tomorrow Socialist Worker carries the first hard evidence that the attack on Fallujah involved the systematic and deliberate murder of hundreds of civilians. We print at length the testimony of Dr Salam Ismael, who visited Fallujah last month with humanitarian aid from Britain.

He describes his interviews with eye-witnesses to the massacre, including a 17 year old girl who saw her whole family shot dead in their home by US troops. Another family talks of how US snipers opened fire on a crowd of civilians that had been ordered to gather outside a mosque carrying white flags.

Dr Ismael worked with Michael Burke, the award-winning cameraman
and producer, to produce video footage of mass burials of civilians outside Fallujah. This may be aired by Channel 4 News this week.

"Nobody know how many died. The Americans are now bulldozing the
neighbourhoods to cover up their crime," says Dr Ismael. "What happened in Fallujah was an act of barbarity. The whole world must be told the truth."

Continue...

For more on the mass burials, and stills from the footage, see here . 'Sorrow and fury as dead are buried in Fallujah':

The first truck arrives, it has 77 bodies. One by one the black body bags containing the remains are unloaded. Each bag is numbered. They are lined up to match the number painted on bricks that are to serve as tombstones.

The bags are carefully opened and each corpse is checked for some form of identification. Only five have names. Many of the bodies are swollen and blackened, their faces and limbs eaten by dogs. They have been dead for some time.

There are murmurs of prayers from the men preparing their last resting place. Each person is carefully laid to rest in a carved hollow inside a long trench.

Occasionally one of the bodies is recognised and a howl of tears and rage goes up from the crowd.

US arming Ba'athists? posted by lenin

From Asia Times :

To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord.

A military analyst familiar with strategic and proxy operations commented that there is a specific reason behind procuring arms from Pakistan, rather than acquiring US-made ones.

"A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas," the analyst maintained.

The obvious reason for this tactic is to give the impression that the resistance acquired its arms and ammunition from different channels and from different countries - and anywhere other than the United States.

Conscientious objector. posted by lenin

George Solomou in The Guardian today:

I am resigning from the Territorial Army because I believe the war in Iraq is wrong. This has not been an easy decision. I have been in the TA for five years - years in which I have learned a lot; won a humanitarian award for helping save the life of a fellow soldier; made many friends; and, I hope, contributed something to this country.

...

People have said to me that we created this mess, we should sort it out. The Iraqis need many things: they need medical supplies, they need their infrastructure rebuilt, they need jobs. The one thing they don't need is foreign troops on their streets. In fact, it is the presence of US and British troops that is creating the tension and violence, which seems certain to continue regardless of last month's elections. We have become symbols of foreign domination. That is why there is no way we can provide security. Only the Iraqis themselves can do that, and the longer we stay, the more the situation will get out of hand. We must allow the Iraqis to get on with building their own future - even if they make mistakes.

The continuing occupation is a disaster for the people of Iraq and a nightmare for the British and US troops on the front line. I am resigning as a conscientious objector because I don't want any part of it, and also because I hope my action might just encourage other soldiers to speak out or opt out.

Wilfrid Owen, A Terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers:

'I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone'
Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:
The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.
'Pushing up daisies' is their creed, you know.

Military Families Against the War .

Iraq election news. posted by lenin

Tex has the news:

*UIA, the main Shiite list: 47.6 per cent
*PUK/KDP Kurdish coalition: 25.4 per cent
*Allawi's list: 13.6 per cent.

That accounts for 96.6% of the total vote, and is very close to what Juan Cole has been predicting . Cole reports that:

The Sunni Arabs (20 percent of the population and the former ruling group) mostly did not come out to vote. Only 2 percent voted in Anbar province, where Fallujah and Ramadi are. (Remember Condoleeza Rice talking about people voting in Fallujah? That was propaganda pure and simple.) In Ninevah province about 17 percent of the population voted, but a lot of those were Kurds and Turkmen. The list of old-time Sunni Arab nationalist Adnan Pachachi, the Independent Democrats, only received 17,000 votes, not enough to seat him or any of his other party members in parliament. Interim President Ghazi al-Yawir's Iraqiyun list got less than 2 percent and probably will only get 4 or 5 seats in the 275-member parliament. Al-Yawir is from the largely Sunni Shamar tribe.

Noticeably, the Iraqi Communist Party have got fuck all for throwing their credibility in with the Americans. Their slogan wasn't all that great either: "Free homeland, happy people!" No no no - free booze, happy people. Socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, happy people. Occupiers out, happy people. Work on it, boys.

And of the Sunnis who overwhelmingly did not vote? Tex cites MSNBC :

[T]he minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein will have few seats in the 275-member assembly that will be formed by the election — and little political influence.

"Which underestimates the political influence of bombs and guns, doesn't it?" He quips.

So, much as anticipated. The distribution of votes points to a Shia-Kurd alliance, although that could be fractious. Allawi is reduced to leading a rump with the policies of Hun Sen and the popularity of Charles Kennedy. The turnout was on the lower end of what was anticipated (50-80%).

Riverbend , who has a new book coming out, is a little worried:

I literally had chills going up and down my spine as I watched Abdul Aziz Al Hakeem of Iranian-inclined SCIRI dropping his ballot into a box. Behind him, giving moral support and her vote, was what I can only guess to be his wife. She was shrouded literally from head to foot and only her eyes peeped out of the endless sea of black. She stuffed her ballot in the box with black-gloved hands and submissively followed a very confident Hakeem. E. turned to me with a smile and a wink, “That might be you in a couple of years…” I promptly threw a sofa cushion at him.

Most of our acquaintances (Sunni and Shia) didn’t vote. My cousin, who is Shia, didn’t vote because he felt he didn’t really have ‘representation’ on the lists, as he called it. I laughed when he said that, “But you have your pick of at least 40 different Shia parties!” I teased, winking at his wife. I understood what he meant though. He’s a secular, educated, non-occupation Iraqi before he’s Sunni or Shia- he’s more concerned with having someone who wants to end the occupation than someone Shia.

Read the whole post.

HP Sauce slanders the Tomb. posted by lenin

This post at Harry's Place accused myself and Mark Elf of being 'Former anti-fascists'. It is a pretty odious charge to make against Mark Elf who, as a Jewish anti-Zionist, has taken the trouble to criticise anti-Semitism when it appears in the media, (even, worryingly, in a favourite Harry's Place publication known as Weekly Worker). Elf, like self, remains an anti-Fascist . Harry's post also seriously misrepresents my argument, and insinuates a great deal besides what it actually says. I've written a brief missive:

Harry, you have closed your comments box on the post relating to my discussion of increasing anti-Semitic attacks, but I think - given what you insinuate and openly state - that I am entitled to reply.

I'd like to make a few things clear.

You say: "I do however recall people arguing that we should not believe what we read in Searchlight magazine because it was produced by Jews. The people who put forward that argument were fascists and neo-Nazis."

I do read Searchlight and recommend it to anyone as a genuine anti-fascist magazine. I don't always agree with it, but my positive reaction to it has nothing to do with it being produced by Jews. My 'caveat' about the report in the Independent had nothing to do with the Judaism of those who produced the CST report, but with the ideological commitment to the defense of Israel. I believe there are reasonable grounds for supposing that the report could include some spin. I also believe that much of the increasing manifestation of anti-Semitism is related to the Middle East and a small minority of idiots - both Muslim and non-Muslim - accepting the conflation of Judaism with Israel. It is precisely that conflation that I was arguing against.

You say that I blame the rise of anti-Semitic attacks on "those Jews who support the existence of Israel."

I do not. To support the existence of Israel is one thing. My objection is to those who conflate Israel with Judaism, and therefore brand criticism of Israel, particularly anti-Zionism, as anti-Semitic. Not only is it a disgraceful gesture, but it places individual Jews in danger from the idiots who accept such a conflation. I do not believe this attenuates the force of any judgement against those responsible for such attacks.

I argued at the end of my post for a united front, if you like, of people from all races and creeds against these attacks and other forms of racist attack, which are also increasingly common. That is why I remain a paid-up member of the Anti-Nazi League, have been active in it, and cheerfully condemn - without reserve - all those who engage in racist attacks.

"lenin"

PR & the Iraqi election. posted by lenin

The lies we are hearing about Iraq are not accidental or incidental, but part of a carefully choreographed PR campaign. I'm hungover and grumpy, so I'll cut to the chase and list them ordinally before revealing the men behind the curtain.

1) Turnout was higher than expected. According to polls touted by occupation sources before the election, 80% of Iraqis were expected to turnout. Iraq's President stated in public that he expected the majority of eligible voters to turn out at the polls. The lowest estimate was 50-60% , which is now the highest reputable estimate of actual turnout. The much drooled over 72% figure offered by a lone election official before the voting was even complete has largely been abandoned. It is still being said that about 8 million Iraqis voted, which would be around 57% of registered (rather than elibible) voters. There is little to base this figure on other than a wink from the Electoral Commission about whom we know - about whom we are allowed to know - so little. The turnout in the Sunni heartland was negligible, of course - so much so that the Christian Science Monitor felt compelled to lard praise on the Fallujah turnout ( 8,000 of 300,000 residents voted). Further, as Iraqi blogger Raed points out, the total number of Iraqi eligible voters inside and outside the country is more than 16.75 million, and the number of people that actually voted is less than 8.25 million.

Less than 50% of all eligible voters actually voted.

Turnout expectations ranged from 50-80% before the election. They now range from below 50% to 57%. Not a miraculous turnout, then.

2) The vote legitimises the occupation. Most Iraqis want the troops out . Most Iraqis voted for parties demanding, at the very least, a timetable for withdrawal. Most Iraqis voted overwhelmingly for programmes totally opposed to the Bremer-imposed 'free market' chaos. Naomi Klein summarises :

Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."

There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set timetables," George W. Bush said four days after Iraqis voted for exactly that. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way--he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as leader of Iraq's next government.

3) Iraqis were overjoyed with the elections. Some presumably were, but the imagery we associate with this election was tightly controlled by the occupiers. As Julian Manyon of ITN told CNN International:

[There is a] wide range of factors which are actually preventing journalists from covering this election properly, and one of those factors, for example, is the way in which the American handlers who are actually running the Ministry of Information's affairs here in real terms, have designed the whole thing. I would say that along with the violence, it is just as serious an impediment for journalists.

Why, for example, we've been limited to filming at only five polling stations, and we discovered when the list of the five polling stations was published that four of those five polling stations are actually in Shia areas, and therefore by definition will shed very little light on whether Sunnis vote or not.

The suspicion, entirely justified, is that the coalition carefully selected voting stations where they knew the turnout would be high, and where they expected that loyalty to Sistani would produce scenes of happy voters eager to raise the purple finger®. Jonathan Steele reported in yesterday's Guardian:

"I tore up my ballot paper," said a young woman who works for a US government-funded NGO in Basra. "But I wanted my finger inked, in case the religious parties check on people in the street."

Others abstained for different reasons. "Many of my friends will not be voting," Sayed Mudhaffer, a Basra official of the Writers' Union, told me. "Some don't know which list to vote for, because there hasn't been enough campaigning on what they stand for. Some think that because the United Nations isn't supervising, it won't be fair or honest."

His last point is well taken. As the old saying has it, what matters is not who votes, but who counts. Because of security fears there were even fewer international monitors in Iraq than in Afghanistan last year, and most stayed only a few minutes in the polling places they visited. They saw very little.

Why is it taking as much as two weeks to come up with a result in Iraq? In the polling station, where I watched the count, when the doors closed last week, they tabulated all 1,500 votes in just over three hours. Everything seemed above board and the results were given out "on background". But they had to be sent to Baghdad for "checking" before a public declaration.

Undoubtedly, many Iraqis were happy to be voting - but not for the reasons Washington might assume. Steele continues: "Most gave mundane reasons for their vote: patriotism, a sense of duty, concern over joblessness and power cuts, and the hope that the election might be a first step towards change. There was also a strong underlying feeling that having an elected government could hasten the restoration of sovereignty and an end to the occupation.

The stage-managing of the electoral process has produced imagery and associations that have little to do with how Iraqis actually felt about the elections, and which do not capture the fact that there were conflicting views on their legitimacy.

4) Iraq's elections were 'free and fair'. We already know about the allegations of ballot fixing , the 'irregularities' and the exclusion of thousands of voters .

However, we ought to have known before the voting even began that something was up. Juan Cole reported that the 'pockets' that Allawi said might not be able to vote contained about 3 million people . And follow the money: USAID allocated $30 million to a CIA front organisation, the National Endowment for Democracy (which was involved in assisting putschists in Venezuela), to allocate to parties regarded as 'moderate'. Ex-patriot parties had already developed a monumental material advantage by working with the occupiers, from whom they received $100 million before the invasions. Dahr Jamail reported that Iyad Allawi had so much he was giving it away - to journalists . The US taxpayer was tapped for $80 million (on top of everything else) to pay for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) to use in manipulating the Iraqi elections. From MediaLens :

Professor William I. Robinson of the Global and International Studies Programme at the University of California calls NDI and IRI "extensions" of the US State Department:

"I suspect that [NDI and IRI] are trying to select individual leaders and organisations that are going to be very amenable to the US transnational project for Iraq."

Foreign observers were first of all to be banned , but the tiny number that eventually made it could only descend on the polling booth for a nano-second before buzzing off. And this in a country in which fighting persists daily, the occupying troops carry out war crimes , the trainee Iraqi police forces torture prisoners and hundreds of thousands live in refugee camps In fact, there was so much wrong with the process that Julian Manyon remarked:

I mean, we've got a situation in Mosul, for example, where American troops, we now discover because the Iraqi employees of the election organization have deserted en masse, it's American soldiers who will be transporting the ballot boxes around when they are full of votes. This is really very far from ideal, and if it were happening in any other country -- I mean, one could mention Ukraine, for example -- there would be a wild chorus of international protest.

Jonathan Steele remarks that "TV images usually simplify, if not falsify, the story", having cited the images from Vietnam and El Salvador which did exactly that. Precisely the point, in fact. What we were treated to was a crude production, a PR exercise that fed a steady stream of disinformation, partial information and outright falsehood to domestic populations. The 'branding' involved was particularly stark. The 'purple finger' has all the hallmarks of a PR consultant gimmick, (just like, in fact, the 'Orange revolution' theme in Ukraine). It is such a gimmick that a new company has been founded in America to sell t-shirts and baseball caps on the theme:

A new company called FreedomInPurple.com launched a website that the founder, Israel Amadores, says "is a reminder of the success of the Iraqi elections and the further validation of the ongoing march of democracy." The company initially is selling tshirts, mugs. and, caps but plans to expand into other venues with the main design logo being a hand with outstretched index finger stained purple. It hasn't been without controvery however. Asked about the design that says "give a liberal the finger," Amadores says that "it is just a playful way of saying that the power of democracy should never be underestimated and is the rightful domain of all people.

Some on the left in this country have a negative or pessimistic view regarding the power of democracy, the tshirt just reminds them of the power of democracy in a lighthearted way."

Giving the purple finger is also said to be sexy . Hill & Knowlton ran the propaganda campaign for the US government in the first Gulf War. This time round, they set up the Iraq Public Diplomacy Group composed of elements of the CIA, the National Security Agency and others to target 'opinion leaders' with propaganda. The Whitehouse and Number Ten have embarked on a number of PR campaigns before, during and after the war. (Even Allawi got in on the act : he "hired the law firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and the New York public relations firm of Brown Lloyd James" to push his bid to run Iraq). Guess who organised the Iraqi election campaign? Be upstanding "Tony Marsh and Lance Copsey, principals of the Republican media consulting firm Marsh Copsey & Scott" who now work for the International Republican Institute (IRI) :

Marsh Copsey & Scott recently signed a major contract with the International Republican Institute to develop an election media center. The media center will be a critical component to help Baghdad’s candidates and political parties in Iraq’s first ever free and fair election.

Marsh Copsey & Scott will design and construct the media center, install the equipment and provide guidance and training as needed to the Iraqi nationals who will use it.

And who are the IRI? Well, they claim to support the fostering of democracy, but they seem to whiff of scorched corpses from Haiti , Cuba and Cambodia . They were also involved in the CIA's attempt to hi-jack dissent in Ukraine . (For more on that, see here ).

The skillful production of emotionally potent over-simplifications thus has its sources in PR, and one expects that the Bush team makes direct use of one of the major international PR firms. The lies listed above may seem obvious or cack-handed, but remember that they don't have to stick. They are merely intended to dazzle, bewilder and divert, and thereby lower one's resistance to the carefully constructed narrative that much of the media is all too willing to convey. Just bear it in mind, that's all.

Death of a playwright. posted by lenin

Arthur Miller is dead :

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller has died at the age of 89.

Miller died on Thursday night at his home in Roxbury of heart failure with his family at his bed side his assistant, Julia Bolus, said on Friday.

His plays, with their strong emphasis on family, morality and personal responsibility, spoke to the growing fragmentation of American society

.

Miller on capitalism , socialism , Israel and McCarthyism .

Anti-semitic attacks 'at record level' posted by lenin

You can't accuse The Independent of being slow to report the news. This report , however, seems remarkably similar to one carried in The Observer about three weeks ago. I would place a caveat on swallowing the item whole, because of the way the data is presented and because of the source (the Community Security Trust is an outfit affiliated to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a Zionist organisation with an agenda of supporting Israel). See Jews Sans Frontieres for more. Michael Whine, a CST spokesman, told The Observer that:

'The continued demonisation of Israel has meant the shock-horror aspect of anti-semitism in Britain has reduced over time.'

Bullshit. The 'demonisation' of one of the world's most militarily powerful states with an atrocious human rights records could only contribute to increased anti-Semitism if someone was going around claiming that Israel represents the Jews, speaks for them, acts on their behalf and is effectively their voice in the world. Who would be so odious and ridiculous as to do such a thing?

That aside, there is without doubt a serious threat that the resurgence of the far right is going to lead to - has led to - increasing acceptance of racism, and therefore of racist assaults - against Jews, Muslims and non-Whites. The response to this should be universalist and not particularist, especially since in countries where the far right has succeeded in returning to the mainstream attacks on Muslims and Jews have increased concurrently. Which is to say, instead of taking the abuse, physical or otherwise, of British Jews as an opportunity to defend the indefensible, how about calling for an alliance of anti-racists from all 'communities' (apologies for that greasy word, but my mental thesaurus is down this morning) to oppose it?

'Our bastards' posted by lenin

The advantages of having pro-American dictatorships in the Middle East are legion for the torture presidency :

Britain maintains the main reason it will not deport prisoners being held without charge at Belmarsh prison is the fear they will be tortured or otherwise abused by their home country. But a series of cases has emerged which, critics say, exposes the Government's dishonesty by suggesting information provided by Britain about its citizens and residents has led to the capture and eventual torture of Islamic terrorist suspects.

Britain is also an operational base for two executive jets regularly used by the CIA to carry out so-called "renditions". One Gulfstream jet - used for taking prisoners to Egypt and Jordan from countries including Sweden and Indonesia - has called regularly at Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick and Northolt airports

See also William Pfaff on the 'torture presidency'.

Killing of 'Al Hurra' journalist. posted by lenin

At the considerable risk of being misunderstood, I'd like to point out how pointless this is, if it is supposed to be an act of resistance. The gangland-style shooting of a journalist and his three-year-old son is obviously exceptionally cruel, and surprising, given that it took place in Basra where the fighting is supposed to have died down.

We are told that this journalist worked for the US-funded television station Al Hurra (meaning 'The Free One'). The television station carries such delights as 'Free Hour' and documentaries about Marlon Brando, which I doubt the average Fallujan can really do without. It is fooling no one , of course, and may well be doomed . More info here and here .

He also edited a local newspaper and was a prominent member of the al-Dawa party, which nominally opposes the occupation and calls for Iraq to become an Islamic state. It is anti-sectarian, in that it unites Shiites and Sunnis, but was originally founded by the Shiite Sheikh Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. It will have its own militia and private intelligence networks from its years of resisting Saddam from bases in Iran. They have worked with the Interim government under Iyad Allawi, and are now recommending a candidate for Prime Minister, who acted as vice-President under Allawi (this will have to be approved by Sistani ). I confidently expect, then, that this killing is less a strike against the occupation than part of an internal power-struggle. Whichever it is, there is no justification for it. (I hate to platitudinise, but there it is).

Here is a rather crushing irony:

A safe house in Baghdad for abused and threatened women — a refuge that a Nashville Army Reserve major helped establish — has fallen.

But rebels didn't take it. Instead, with no advance warning, the interim Iraqi president ordered the eviction of the women and staff, according to a U.S. Embassy daily report.

"One of President Ghazi al-Yawer's staff, accompanied by eight armed guards, evicted the occupants … with only 30 minutes' notice," said the Feb. 1 memo.

Imperial(ist) war and resistance. posted by lenin

Responses to the Hitchens tale cited below varied from the amused raised eyebrow to raucous belly laughs on the whole, but I did also provoke this odyssey in incomprehension from the otherwise intelligent blogger known as John.

John objects to this passage:

There is an inherent connection between national independence and individual autonomy; in colonial situations, the self-determination of peoples is contiguous with the self-determination of people. It is a sad reminder of how far we have fallen back that it is necessary to disinter these elementary lessons of Empire.

My categories are stale, and my argument is riddled with 'New Left 101' cliche - so I'm told. I direct you to the post itself to see my full response, but suffice to say the author reminds me of what I already know, engages with what I don't say, indulges in some rather feeble rhetorical jibes ('Marxism-Leninism', for some curious reason, is given a kicking) and permits himself some shocking logical and empirical errors, which is quite unexpected from someone who is, by his own admission, philosophically trained.

Have a peek here .

Nothing. posted by lenin

This photo is nothing :



According to Corporal Daniel Kenyon , pictured, who is facing trial for the torture of prisoners in Iraq:

That to me is absolutely nothing, he's just posing for a picture and that's it.

What kind of a pose? Well, the corporal went on to explain (so says the television news) that it was just like someone pulling a face in the background while a photo was being taken. What kind of fucking circles does that guy move in? Ever seen that in a wedding album?

He goes on to say that the pictures in which soldiers are seen wielding sticks weren't merely for show:

"It's been described before as they were getting tapped with sticks," he said.

"They weren't - they were getting a proper beating with sticks."

Why?

"Because if no fear is instilled into any sort of thief or rapist, whatever they may be, then they will just keep doing the same thing over and over again."

Fantastic. The hang 'em and flog 'em lobby, thriving in Iraq today. How long before we see the Express headline: "You CAN torture robbers!"?

Sanity. posted by lenin

Most Americans think Bush should tap his rich friends to pay for Social Security:

Americans think the wealthy should help bolster Social Security, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday suggests.

More than two-thirds of 1,010 adults contacted from Friday to Sunday said it would be a good idea to limit benefits for wealthier retirees and for higher income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all their wages.

Currently, the cap on wages taxed for Social Security is set at $90,000.

Other options to change Social Security fell far behind -- 40 percent of respondents said reducing benefits for early retirement is a good idea; 37 percent said increasing the tax for all workers would be a good idea; 35 percent said the government should increase the age at which people could receive full benefits; and 29 percent said reducing benefits for people under 55 was acceptable.

The margin of error for the poll was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

About 55 percent of respondents thought Bush's proposal that would allow wage earners to invest some of their Social Security taxes in private investment accounts in the future is a "bad idea" -- the same percentage as a month ago before the president began his campaign for the plan.

Pah! Evildoers the lot of them!

Meanwhile, President Bush has some words on what it means to be American:

An exchange between George W. Bush and Mary Mornin, "a divorced, single mother with three grown, adult children," one of whom, Robbie, is "mentally challenged":

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.) ("President Discusses Strengthening Social Security in Nebraska," February 4, 2005)

Yep, uniquely American. One job doesn't pay enough (hence, declining participation in the labour market ).

Saudi Spring; Egyptian Summer. posted by lenin

Saudi Arabia and Egypt, "America's two Middle Eastern allies" as Bush calls them, are developing inner movements for reform and democracy, under the most difficult conditions. In Saudi Arabia, anti-Royal dissidents are usually punished with a few hundred lashes to the back. Yet there have been demonstrations for democracy with increasing regularity, which the regime has felt the need to crack down on, even as it concedes 'partial elections' , in which - of course - women are not allowed to participate. The recent trial of the 'Riyad Triad', a group of liberal Islamists who support democracy but don't call for the end of monarchy, reveals some of the tensions. Initially, nine journalists covering the trial were arrested without apparent reason, but shortly afterward seven were released. The arrest of the Riyadh three in March 2003 was a blow to democracy campaigners in the country, and came in tandem with a new law preventing all public service employees (40% of the workforce) from expressing any criticism of government policy. At the same time there has been what Amnesty International calls a "disturbing increase in executions" .

President Bush has hypocritically attempted to attach his voice to the demand for democratic change in Saudi Arabia, but the US remains a supporter of the monarchy and a State Department report in 2003 omitted Saudi Arabia from criticism for religious oppression, because it was "determined not to be particularly severe". Saudi Arabia has traditionally received strong backing from America, particularly in arms exports . Even in recent years, when the rhetoric from the Whitehouse has been more critical of the Saudi oligarchy, the US continued to supply torture equipment to the regime.

Rosemary Hollis of the Royal Institute of International Affairs points out that the reaction in the Arab world to Bush's claim to support democracy in Saudi Arabia has not been sanguine:

The reaction in the region has been to say, if only the Americans acted like that themselves. They invaded Iraq, they refuse to recognize Yasser Arafat who was elected, and they would not dare to unleash opinion in Saudi Arabia because it might be anti-royal and anti-American.

The movement for democracy in Saudi Arabia needs and deserves better 'allies' than the Bush Whitehouse.


Bush, Mubarak and Abdullah - the sum total of US support in the Arab world.

Meanwhile, in Egypt - where the Cairo declaration against US imperialism was first formulated, and where antiwar demonstrations were among the strongest in the Middle East, socialists and other dissidents have been arrested as part of a state crackdown on dissent. The death penalty is increasingly coming into use, particularly against activists. And, as usual, for all the sweet noises being made by the US government, Egypt remains the second largest recipient of US military aid in the world. Relations between Bush and Mubarak remain warm .

The anticapitalist movement has spread its tentacles into the Middle East through the antiwar movement, and it is terrifying the ruling elites, driving them to greater and greater repression. Again, precisely at this moment, activists in Egypt and Saudi Arabia need international solidarity. Why not show your support?

Egyptian dissidents need solidarity : Send messages of protest to The Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 26 South Street, London, W1Y 6DD. Fax: 020 7491 1542.

E-mail: etembuk@hotmail.com

Fallujah turnout 'best in Sunni triangle' posted by lenin

To get a high turnout among Sunnis, it seems, you had to bomb them to bits and obliterate their cities. Such is the lesson of Fallujah, according to the Christian Science Monitor :

Nearly 8,000 people here defied insurgent threats and voted, according to US military officials. That figure accounts for 44 percent of all votes cast in Anbar Province, which includes the Sunni triangle, where antielection feeling was so strong that less than 7 percent voted at all.

8,000, with a total population of 300,000 isn't all that impressive notes Left I .

And Dahr Jamail reports on a family that could not have voted even if they wanted to:

“One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old,” he says of one of the testimonies he video taped recently, “She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything.”

The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and witnessed the war crimes first-hand.

“They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head,” he said. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead.

“She continued hiding after the soldiers left and stayed with her sisters because they were bleeding, but still alive. She was too afraid to call for help because she feared the soldiers would come back and kill her as well. She stayed for three days, with no water and no food. Eventually one of the American snipers saw her and took her to the hospital,” he added before reminding me again that he had all of her testimony documented on film.

Meanwhile, the leading Shi'ite candidate for Prime Minister of Iraq, a former nuclear scientist jailed by Saddam, brands Allawi's regime the most corrupt in Iraq's history . One expects that he is maneouvring for support from Sunnis who didn't vote with that statement, but if he is right then consider the competition Allawi was up against.

And as large numbers of US soldiers return from Iraq with mental disorders , many would be fighters are fleeing to Canada . Keep repeating: Iraq is not Vietnam. We don't do historical comparisons, unless Auschwitz is involved.

Dinner party imperialists. posted by lenin

Parse the following :

Iraq is the bellwether state. It's the only Muslim country in the Middle East with a chance to choose its own destiny. Baathism will never come back. The hated ancien regime couldn't be any more discredited than it already is. But Iraqis may decide that after decades of secular totalitarianism they want to swing the other way into the arms of religious totalitarians. Moqtada al Sadr's Shi'ite insurgency was a bad omen. Here we go, I thought. Iraqis who don't know any better think Iran is the way to go.

I'm not going to comment on it except to say that it is by way of a preview into the purview of Michael J Totten, a 'liberal' blogger and columnist on the other side of the Atlantic. I put the word liberal in scare quotes because although the usual fixtures of dead-centre post-Cold War liberalism are evident, he does link to a rather dubious hard right propaganda website . But aside from that, like I say, the cynosures of centrist liberalism punctuate his text with tic-like frequency.

To the point. Here is a snippet from his report of a dinner party he had with Christopher Hitchens and some pro-occupation Iraqis:

Christopher Hitchens said to Ghassan Atiyyah: “If the Iraqis were to elect either a Sunni or Shia Taliban, we would not let them take power.” And of course he was right. We didn’t invade Iraq so we could midwife the birth of yet another despicable tyranny. “One man, one vote, one time” isn’t anything remotely like a democracy.

But Atiyyah would have none of that. He exploded in furious rage. “So you’re my colonial master now, eh?!” You have to understand – this man’s voice really carries.

Suddenly, Atiyyah did have defenders at the table. I could see that coming in the shocked expressions on the faces of the other Iraqis when they heard what Hitchens said. Ahman al Rikaby, intriguingly, was an exception. He just looked at Atiyyah with a cold and sober stoicism. But Hitchens had a defender, too. He had me.

“I agree with Christopher,” I said. “We didn’t invade Iraq to let it turn into another Iran.” I knew damn well all the Iraqis at the table were staunch opponents of religious fascism. This shouldn’t have been a point of contention. But, boy, was it ever.

“Who the hell are you?” Atiyyah said to Hitchens as if I weren’t the last one to speak. “Some Brit who lives in New York!”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but it wasn’t up to me where I was born,” Hitchens said.

“What do you mean when you say we?” Hassan Mneimneh said to me.

“I mean the US and Britain,” I said, “along with – hopefully – everyone here at this table.”

“Who are you to tell us what to do!?”

Totten smells the burning sulphur, and intervenes:

“First of all, it is our business if Iraqis or anyone else wants to put a Taliban government into power. People like that murdered thousands in our country and thousands more in countries all over the world - including Iraq. Second, I can assure that you Christopher and I would do everything we possibly could to prevent any Taliban-like force from taking power in our own country, as well as in yours. This has nothing to do with us telling you what to do and everything to do with fighting fascism wherever in the world it exists. And as long as Iraqis aren’t our enemy, I don’t care what they do. It’s none of my business. I certainly don’t want to rule over you or anyone else.”

There's more, and a rather sickening moment ensues in which Totten, after agonising about whether these Iraqis could tell the difference between American military might and past imperialists, emotes about how "They are not servile people. They will never, ever, be anyone’s puppets..." No, they aren't servile people, but they won't after all be in charge of their own future if Hitchens gets his way.

I'm less interested in Totten's post-prandial bloviations than the situation which prompted them, but I will note that Iran, which is the more relevant point of comparison, has had nothing to do, as far as we know, with terrorism in the United States. In fact, as near as I can tell, it was a non-state formation (dubbed 'Al Qaeda' by US intelligence) that carried out the attacks on American soil on September 11th 2001.

However, there are a couple of points to make about that exchange. Hitchens and Totten both speak as if they do so on behalf of the United States government, although I sort of feel they don't have much of a say in these matters. There will, very probably, be some kind of Islamic jurisprudence in Iraq - which has been a mainstay of political Islam for some years. There may well be a government formed in Iraq which is pro-Iranian and inclined to derive its legitimacy from religion (although, much like in Iran, its decisions will be driven by more quotidian concerns).

Since Hitchens and Totten are not ventriloquising on behalf of President Bush, we have to deal with their asseverations as recommendations. Hitchens recommends that, if Iraqis vote for a theocratic government, the US military should step in and deny the government-elect access to power. Does he know what he is recommending? The resistance in Iraq now is a storm in a tea-cup compared to the tsunami of violence and civil strife that would be aroused if Iraqis saw that they were to be subjected to permanent occupation. (Interesting that Totten references the political and military investment that the US has already made in Iraq - 'we didn't come this far to...'. Lesson one of imperialism: the more one kills and maims, the more one is obliged to kill and maim). I confidently expect that Hitchens is replaying the Algerian civil war in his head, in which the military preempted a likely electoral success by the Fronte Islamique du Salut (they had already done exceptionally well in first round of elections) and promulgated martial law. The FIS was banned in 1992, and the subsequent civil war claimed 100,000 lives. Hitchens has said that "if we hadn't won that war, and thousands of refugees had fled to France as a result, Jean Marie Le Pen would probably be the President of France today." 'We' again. Suffice to note that quite a few refugees did make it to France, which had supported the junta, and some of them brought nightmarish explosions to the capital.

There are lessons in that, and lessons in this as well: someone who prefers dictatorship to democracy because of the risks that democracy entails, and would rather see civil war and mass murder than chance anything but strictly secular governance is not exactly what I would call an opponent of fanaticism. I'll put it no more strongly than that. There is an inherent connection between national independence and individual autonomy; in colonial situations, the self-determination of peoples is contiguous with the self-determination of people. It is a sad reminder of how far we have fallen back that it is necessary to disinter these elementary lessons of Empire.

Greens on Iraq: small is beautiful, big is dangerous. posted by lenin

The Green Party's media savvy and erudite spokesperson Dr Caroline Lucas has produced a digestible statement of the party's position on the continued occupation of Iraq, which the editors of MediaLens have transcribed. I've saved the whole thing here .

I have a number of problems with it, not least of which is the reliance on the overused term 'globalisation'.

‘Globalization’ is used to refer to different, incommensurable processes which run parallel to one another, but not strictly as part of the same movement. For instance, there is no obvious correlation between the freer movement of capital and that of labour. At the same time, it is often alleged that the state is finding its powers encroached on: but while many relinquish certain social welfare functions, most are accruing to themselves greater authority of governance over non-economic life, a process with only tenuous connections to the internationalisation of capital. ‘Globalization’, in falsely bundling together these different processes, is a fiction, an ideological construct. What Branko Milanovic is complaining about when questioning the failure of 'globalization' is an economic orthodoxy, generally known as neoliberalism. If he said that globalization was making the poor worse off, while someone else said that it enabled one to communicate with many people of different faiths and backgrounds, they would not be disagreeing because they are speaking of different things. Therefore, I think it useful to chuck the whole discourse out and say what we mean: capitalism, imperialism, nationalism, class etc. These are the precise, robust categories that we need. The discourse of 'globalisation', because vague, is too inclusive, and allows woolly liberals to pose as radicals by invoking its name.

The main problem, though, is the way in which the violence of the oppressed is attributed to "the forces of globalisation", and aver that:

“The attacks – such as the two reported car bombings which killed 33 Iraqi police officers just last night – will continue as long as the occupying forces preside over the take-over of the Iraqi economy by the forces of globalisation.”

This is highly reductionist. Caroline Lucas always prefers to explain terrorism as a result of poverty etc., when it has been a reasonable fixture of political science for some time that it is more closely correlated to local state oppression and the perceived or (more likely) actual Western involvement in that. (Of course, for those who insist upon focusing on and magnifying such things, I will readily concede the semi-autonomous weight of ideology, religion and so on, so long as it is understood that the main issue in Iraq - and Palestine - is one of occupation and violence.)

But there is also the hidden punch in the term "forces of globalisation". Isn't this precisely the language of new Labour? Doesn't Norman Fairclough describe precisely such a rhetorical turn, in which agency is removed and bad things are seen to result from vague 'forces' that be beyond our control, aaahr. I strongly suspect that this is precisely how the Green political and intellectual leadership sees the current predicament: it isn't a problem of capitalism, just one of too excessive internationalism - those 'forces' have got beyond our reach. Hence, 'localisation'. It is no surprise that the Greens find themselves on the right of the anti-capitalist movement with the likes of Bernard Cassen of Attac. They believe that by reining in corporate power and enhancing the power of the nation-state, they can humanise capitalism. Hence, Colin Hines (in Localisation: A Global Manifesto, ) talks of the need to "improve the functioning of the market", and provide "secure demand levels" to bail out the market. Hence the call for the WTO to be replaced by an International Localisation Organisation, (a UN of world trade). Centre-left Keynesianism in green.

In this respect, they have mistaken the problem. The nation-state is not less powerful than it was before. It has simply switched from, as the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman put it, "social state to security state" (Europe: An Unfinished Adventure, 2004). As states eschew the regulatory functions of the Keynesian Welfare National State, they accrue increasing powers of intervention in the private lives of their citizens, as well as increasingly aggressive military postures. In fact, the agents, and guarantors of 'globalisation' are nation-states. Business rely on them to support markets, regulate labour, maintain infrastructural conditions, provide effective financial structures etc. States, in turn, work to advance the general interests of national capital, ensuring dominance among geopolitical competitors, securing opportunities abroad etc. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it bluntly: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US army, air force, navy and Marine Corps".

It makes no sense, then, to talk of the 'forces of globalisation' in Iraq unless one is using the phrase as a synonym for American imperialism.

It is indicative of the Greens' inability to see the nation-states for the multi-nationals that Dr Lucas concludes:

“Last week’s historic, if flawed, election was a step forward for the peoples of Iraq, but only a tiny first step. It’s no surprise that it hasn’t put a stop to the violence.”

The elections were not merely 'flawed' but fundamentally fraudulent and unfair. The occupation in Iraq is not producing resistance merely because of privatisation and neoliberalism, but also largely because of political revulsion at the idea of being run by a foreign power. The CIA's profile of the resistance fighter is not one of an unemployed, desperate pauper seeking work at a newly constructed McDonalds - it is a person who has experienced or witnessed severe violence at the hands of the occupiers and who has taken a political (nationalist/religious) stand against that occupation. The problem, therefore, is not 'globalisation' but capitalism and its corrollary processes.

Haiti: the multilateral invasion. posted by lenin

Remember they ousted Aristide and told the world that they were doing it for democracy and human rights? Well :

After ten months under an interim government backed by the United States, Canada, and France and buttressed by a United Nations force, Haiti’s people churn inside a hurricane of violence. Gunfire crackles, once bustling streets are abandoned to cadavers, and whole neighborhoods are cut off from the outside world. Nightmarish fear now accompanies Haiti’s poorest in their struggle to survive in destitution. Gangs, police, irregular soldiers, and even UN peacekeepers bring fear. There has been no investment in dialogue to end the violence.

Haiti’s security and justice institutions fuel the cycle of violence. Summary executions are a police tactic, and even well-meaning officers treat poor neighborhoods seeking a democratic voice as enemy territory where they must kill or be killed. Haiti’s brutal and disbanded army has returned to join the fray. Suspected dissidents fill the prisons, their Constitutional rights ignored.

...

The injured prefer to die at home untreated rather than risk arrest at the hospital. Those who do reach the hospital soak in puddles of their own blood, ignored by doctors. Not even death ends the tragedy: bodies pile in the morgue, quickly devoured out of recognition by maggots.

More here , here and a typically propagandist view here .

More on the Iraqi election/occupation. posted by lenin

A very interesting study of just how much power the occupiers retain here . It was written after the July handover, but little has changed. Note the kinds of laws that the Iraqi government won't be able to change:

The (New and Improved) Bremer Orders
A sampling of the most important Orders demonstrates the economic imprint left behind by Bremer:

Order #39 allows for the following: (1) privatization of Iraq’s 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) “national treatment” of foreign firms; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses. Thus, it allows the U.S. corporations operating in Iraq to own every business, do all of the work, and send all of their money home. Nothing needs to be reinvested locally to service the Iraqi economy, no Iraqi need be hired, no public services need be guaranteed, and workers’ rights can easily be ignored. And corporations can take out their investments at any time.

Order #40 turns the banking sector from a state-run to a market-driven system overnight by allowing foreign banks to enter the Iraqi market and to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks.

Order #49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40% to a flat rate of 15%. The income tax rate is also capped at 15%.

Order #12 enacted on June 7, 2003 and renewed on February 24, 2004, suspends “all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq, and all other trade restrictions that may apply to such goods.” This led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap consumer products, which has essentially wiped out all local providers of the same products. This could have significant long-term implications for domestic production as well.

Order #17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq ’s laws. Even if they do injure a third party by killing someone or causing environmental damage such as dumping toxic chemicals or poisoning drinking water, the injured third party can not turn to the Iraqi legal system, rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts under U.S. laws.

Order #77 established the Board of Supreme Audit and named its president and his two deputies. The Board oversees inspectors in every Ministry with wide-ranging authority to review government contracts, audit classified programs, and prescribe regulations and procedures.

Order #57 created and appointed an inspector within every Iraqi Ministry with five-year terms who can perform audits, write policies, and have full access to all offices, materials, and employees of the Ministries.

Then there are the approximately 200 mostly U.S. and other international advisers who will remain embedded as consultants in every Iraqi Ministry well after the official occupation has ended.

Clearly, the Bremer Orders fundamentally altered Iraq’s existing laws. For this reason, the Bremer Orders are also illegal. Transformation of an occupied country’s laws violates the Hague regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva conventions, both ratified by the United States), and the U.S. Army’s Law of Land Warfare. Indeed, in a leaked memo, British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Tony Blair that “the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by international law.”

Well, what is the situation with that today? Obviously, the bulk of Bremer's orders still stand, barring the ones regarding de-Baathification which he revoked in his last days. There was an obvious impact on the elections, since Coalition Provisional Authority orders 92, 96 and 97 prohibited parties that are "associated with or indirectly financed by" any group that was ever armed, or any group judged to engage in "hate speech." Anyone judged by the electoral commission to lack "a good reputation" was also prohibited from running for office.

Meanwhile, more complaints are emerging about 'irregularities' in the election, denying thousands the right to vote. There have been demonstrations involving "hundreds". Meanwhile, Dick Cheney thinks the Shi'ites recently elected will insist on retaining the occupation . Is it wishful thinking or does he know something we don't?

Finally, why did the press whoop for joy and glory at the colonial elections? Jonathan Steele has the answer.

Ali in The Guardian; Abu Ghraib revisited. posted by lenin

The Street Fightin' Man is back with an assessment of the Iraqi elections and occupation:

The 2004 Afghan elections, even according to some pro-US commentators, were a farce, and the much vaunted 73% turnout was a fraud. In Iraq, the western media were celebrating a 60% turnout within minutes of the polls closing, despite the fact that Iraq lacks a complete register of voters, let alone a network of computerised polling stations. The official figure, when it comes, is likely to be revised downwards (according to Debka , a pro-US Israeli website, turnout was closer to 40%).

And, while I'm dredging up Abu Ghraib (see passim), here's a Valentine special from Time magazine.

And, the CIA have produced a study of the resistance fighter which is almost touching for its anthropological curiosity:

"This person, with a tribal background, has a mix of motives including a family grievance, someone was hurt by coalition forces," said the official, who asked not to be identified because the reports are still classified. "There is also [in this Iraqi insurgent] religion and nationalism that results in a view he must fight on to get non-Muslims out of Muslim territory."

Somebody has obviously thought long and hard about that one.

Links and comment. posted by lenin

A few people I should have linked to ages ago, and one person who should know better.

Norman Geras , a Marxist theorist for whom I would otherwise have a lot of time, has gone barking up the neocon tree; he could have modestly proposed that supporting the war would possibly lead to some benefits for Iraqis, but insisted that this would not redound to the credit of an administration whose barely concealed aim is the construction of a US imperium - instead he has gone and lent his support to the most reactionary President in US history. It's old news, of course, but the ever vigilant Times has caught up.

On an entirely different topic, totally unrelated to moralising about the war on Iraq, here is a link to an old story about the torture of children in Iraq - by the occupying troops:

"The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking," said Hersh. "And this is your government at war."

I should have linked to the Den some time ago, and for some reason never did. Let me just make something clear: if I haven't linked to you yet, laziness and conceit has allowed me to forget it. It isn't that you are insignificant in my eyes. Its just that I am a dirty fat slut, and I've downed one pie too many with one lager above the vomit threshold. I will get round to it.

And finally, Paisley's Pants have come alive, extricated themselves from that volumous waist and started a blog. They are, blessedly, more eloquent and compelling than their owner and master*. They puke at the sight of self-congratulating politicians, snigger at their fatuous rhetoric and exude more pungent whiffs than the average heated skunk. That's a compliment.

*I'm assuming, probably incorrectly, that the title of the blog is a reference to the current leading Unionist politician in that wearily familiar shithole I come from.

Iraq: The Bullet and the Ballot Box. posted by lenin

"Demonstration elections" are "organised and staged by a foreign power primarily to pacify a restive home population, reassuring it that ongoing interventionary processes are legitimate and appreciated by their foreign objects." (Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, South End Press, 1984, p.5)

These elections have certainly satisfied some domestic audiences, but the effect in Iraq is likely to be more complex - I'll get to that in a minute. First of all, interesting to note that Julian Manyon of ITN suddenly develops enormous balls when reporting for CNN International. Yoshie discovers a transcript in which Manyon casually destroys the euphoria around the elections, saying they would fail to meet international standards:

[I]t's disturbing quite frankly because it's very difficult to see how these elections can live up to international standards in terms of dispassionate supervision and policing of the polls"

. . . I mean, we've got a situation in Mosul, for example, where American troops, we now discover because the Iraqi employees of the election organization have deserted en masse, it's American soldiers who will be transporting the ballot boxes around when they are full of votes. This is really very far from ideal, and if it were happening in any other country -- I mean, one could mention Ukraine, for example -- there would be a wild chorus of international protest. [my emphasis]

This isn't the first time Manyon has broken with the script. MediaLens reports him as saying, before the assault on Fallujah:

"We've had now, this morning, the formality - some would call it, I'm afraid, the fiction - that Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq, has given the official order to commence the operation against Fallujah. Of course in reality it is an American operation." (Manyon, ITV News, 12:30pm, November 8, 2004)

Some have hailed the allegedly high turnout which, at the present rate, will be revised down to 2% by next week (see Yoshie again on those numbers). However, as Justin Hickman pointed out in relation to the Afghan vote you shouldn't mistake quantity for quality . The elections were shambolic for a surfeit of reasons , and it can't be a surprise to hear Iraqi participants in the World Social Forum at Porto Allegre denounce them , categorically.

However, if we can hear above the metallic clank as Condoleeza Rice sits down for another meeting with European leaders, there are interesting noises coming from Iraq.

The fall-out from the elections in Iraq continues to redound to the considerable disadvantage of Washington's man. Iyad Allawi has about 18% of the vote so far, which, as Juan Cole points out , is likely to fall given a very high turnout among Kurds. It looks likely that the new organ - although it will have no real governing power - will become a constant thorn in the side of the United States. Already some radical Sadr supporters are demanding the withdrawal of US troops. Given further atrocities by the US, (which are becoming so frequent that they no longer stretch credulity), it is hard to see even the more accomodating Shi'ites in the new body can sustain their position by simply acquiescing or cheering the occupiers on as Allawi's regime did. There is an overwhelming mass of opinion in Iraq that favours removing the occupation and, now that the elections have been held, the minority who thought the US should stay until the votes were cast will have no incentive to wait any longer.

The fact that Sunni leaders are offering cooperation with the Shi'ite-led body is a double-edged sword. Some will take it as a sign that the resistance is collapsing, or becoming more isolated - I kind of doubt that. The most important consequence is that the body which the US has invested so much of its domestic credibility in will be implicated in prevailing anti-occupation feeling across the country. It is a fact that these elections happening at all, under one-person one-vote rules, is an achievement of Iraqis and probably to large extent of the Iraqi resistance.

So, for all the fixing and lies that have surrounded this election process, and for all that it excluded large sections of the population, the process has never been entirely driven by the coalition. The trajectory of the entire occupation has been driven by the war of attrition between the resistance and the occupiers, so that the pace of events is no longer dictated by the US. My guess, therefore, is that the political process that the US has designed is lifting off, breaking the surly bonds of Washington, and heading to parts unknown.

My goodness, Ayatollah, what big votes you have! All the better to eat you with.

Nothing like bloggery on a Friday night. posted by lenin

A few links and comments, then. First of all, did you know that "It's fun to shoot some people" ? It's true! Thanks to a revolutionary new product from the Whitehouse, any moron who can do fifty push-ups can experience the thrill of the kill. Lt. Gen. James Mattis says it's "fun ... a hoot"! Call now. Operators are standing by.

The bad man of southern Iraq is back and ready to tussle.

Juan Cole is suggesting that Allawi's coalition may not even get into the new government. Allawi's approval ratings had been sliding since his new Interim government had received broad backing in Iraqi opinion polls at the end of July 2004. Even in the largely Sunni Baghdad, about three times as many voters backed the United Iraqi Alliance as backed Allawi's coalition. With a large majority, the list blessed by Ayatollah Sistani could simply coalesce with the Kurds, who are likely to get 20%. I don't like the politics of either group, but Cole hints at a possible 'historic compromise' between the two groups. Such a deal negotiated over the heads of the Sunnis is unlikely to succeed, however, particularly given tensions between Sunnis and Kurds in some northern Iraqi cities. Meanwhile, the rumours that say Allawi shot dead six prisoners roll on and gather moss. And, why does the UN still apply sanctions to Iraq?

The doyens of despair among the American left can take heart! A majority of American disapprove of Bush's Iraq policy, as well as his social security policies and his handling of healthcare, the budget deficit, the economy, and immigration. What more could he possibly be wrong on? Well, prepare to grind your teeth:

Bush got high approval ratings for coping with terrorism (61 percent) and education (56 percent). In foreign affairs, environmental issues and taxes, respondents were divided.

However Bush's overall approval rating stood slightly higher than last month at 52 percent, and 55 percent of those surveyed said they expected him to do a better job as president during the next four years than he did in his first term.

Yeah, those first four years were just him arsing about. He's about to get serious any minute now.

And, as the Whitehouse spews bellicose smoke and fog about Iran, the Christian Science Monitor reports that US servers are shutting down Iranian blogging services:

Some Iranian bloggers argue that it suits Tehran's hard-liners, as well as hawks in Washington, to silence the Iranian public on the international scene, enabling both to manipulate the reality of Iran to advance their agendas.

'Hawks' and 'hard-liners', two sides of the same dismal coinage.

Finally, a word to London's taxi-drivers: I'm not interested. Whatever it is, I don't give a fuck, and don't tell me about it. To explain. Some cabbies get a bit bored driving silent, sullen passengers around all day. The passengers are silent and sullen because they know the cabbie is taking the route most likely to be clogged with traffic and seems to drive like a snail over empty patches of road. So, to get round that, the cabbie starts a conversation. It's usually about Livingstone and congestion charges. Last week, I had a crumpled, grey, bespectacled man in the front pissing and moaning about the proposed extension of the zone. I nodded and yeahed, chipped in with uncontroversial comments and generally appeased the bastard as one does. He began on traffic wardens. "Yeah, I had this woman in the back and she's had her car pinched - totally illegally, course - and I've taken her dahn to the place, and she's gone 'here y'are, could you come in and I'll pay ya', so I've gone in. So, she's in there and I'm standing about, and I says 'they'll never give it back to yer love, not unless you pay 'em that two hunnerd pahnd they're gonna charge yer'. But you see, these people are very smart, oh yeah, very smart. Cos they employ these Africans and they's raised to be ig'rant, know what I mean? Then it's all that 'me know know, me not know' malarky. I'd ship 'em outa the country meself. She had to pay the fine and everything, and she was only a workin class girl, couldn afford it. Its like I says to her..."

I now understand why London cabs have bullet-proof glass separating driver from passenger. Because if it had been up to me, his fucking head would have struck the steering wheel a hundred times in quick succession before being detached from its natural home and tossed out the window. Shut it, cabbies. I overpay you to drive, not to dribble fuckheaded opinions.

Increased repression in Cambodia; Sam Rainsy exploits discontent... posted by lenin

I've written about this before , but it is worth remembering that the present regime in Cambodia is largely US-imposed. For years, the US supported the Khmer Rouge and their allies (the so-called Non-Communist Resistance) as they fought the Vietnamese rulers who ousted the Pol Pot regime.

Today, the opposition leader Sam Rainsy has called for foreign intervention , although not an invasion, claiming that the government is becoming corrupt and autocratic. His claims about the government are solid, and his party in particular has been subject to intimidation. Before you start moistening for the poor opposition repressed by an authoritarian state, however, there are a couple of things you need to bear in mind.

Funcinpec, a political party set up by then Prince and now ex-King Norodum Sihanouk in 1981, is now in a ruling coalition with the Cambodian People's Party (CPP, led by Hun Sen, formerly of the Vietnamese-imposed regime), with the CPP in overwhelming majority. The Sam Rainsy party became the official opposition when this coalition was announced. Since then, Rainsy has styled himself as an anti-corruption campaigner. In reality, he is a reactionary demagogue who is manoeuvring for control of an increasingly authoritarian state.

Rainsy was a member for Funcinpec since its inception. As the vehicle of the crackpot and Khmer Rouge sympathiser, Sihanouk, it fought alongside Pol Pot's forces to oust the Vietnamese with considerable US support. In 1989, he became its European spokesman. In 1987, peace talks had begun between Sihanouk and Sen, (romantically enough, the pair began making sweet noises at each other in a Paris hotel room). Eventually, in 1989, this led to France hosting the Paris International Conference on Cambodia (PICC), a peace process involving four key Cambodian parties: the Sihanouk faction (Funcinpec), the Son San faction (KPNLF), the
Khieu Samphan faction (the Khmer Rouge), and the Hun Sen faction (the Phnom Penh government). It also drew in the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, six Asean members, Australia, Japan and several non-aligned countries.

Agreement was reached between the parties in September 1991 and, on the basis of this, the UN launched a transitional authority in Cambodia (known as UNTAC). Elections held in 1993, (opposed by the Khmer Rouge for the perfectly excellent reason that no one would vote to increase their likelihood of being exterminated) saw Funcinpec win 58 of 120 seats, while the CPP won 51 seats. Rainsy was made Finance Minister, on a pro-Western free-market ticket, but ran his office so incompetently that he was expelled after a vote of no confidence.

Stripped of his seat, he formed his own party - the Khmer National Party, and declared a personal war on 'the Communists' (the CPP). Standing in the 1998 elections, his party (by then renamed the Sam Rainsy Party) won only 14% of the popular vote. However, his later claims that the elections were marred by extensive state violence are well-founded. The Joint International Observation Group (JIOG), a U.N.-coordinated body of thirty-seven countries, declared the elections 'free and fair' before the counting was completed, having only stayed for a few days and despite considerable evidence of intimidation and violence. Both the Sam Rainsy Party and Funcinpec refused to recognise the results.

Rainsy has lobbied energetically to terminate all foreign aid to Cambodia, and opposes the country's admission to Asean. His party has ties with the International Republican Institute, and is therefore influential overseas. Although he has not resiled from his right-wing economic policies, he now poses as a friend of the workers, throwing himself along with his wife into agitating among garment workers. Rainsy is not averse to stirring up racism, saying he will crack down on Vietnamese living illegally in Cambodia because he accuses them of 'misappropriating land'. ("They are more into creating their own villages and do not understand the culture they're living in," Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian Son Chhay said. "That's dangerous.") He has described the Vietnamese as "yuon", meaning "savage", and describes the Israeli occupation of Palestine as 'the Jew occupation' . He is presently in alliance with his old party, the vehicle of a demented ex-monarch known for his complicity with the Khmer Rouge.

Rainsy is a disappointed authoritarian, a reactionary and a demagogue. He is using his international leverage, which matters a great deal in Cambodia, in his attempt to win control of a state which would be no less brutal under his rule. Everyone should support the struggle for workers rights and democracy in Cambodia; no one should be taken in by the bigoted opportunist presently serenading the Western media.

"Laughed my ass off, went about my day"... posted by lenin

I stole this story from the Bill Hicks* message board, but it bears repeating:

Research which said it is possible to live normally while regularly taking heroin has prompted a fierce debate.
The Glasgow Caledonian University study of 126 users of the class A drug found many were holding down normal jobs and relationships and passing exams.

The report said heroin could be taken in a controlled way for a period.

Kids, you have your instructions. Never mind that fucking homework, just get my needle ready - and tap up a vein in the leg this time. My forearm has more perforations than a Tetley's tea bag.

*Late comedian, genius and political revolutionary. Author of title quote: "I took drugs and I had a real good time. Sorry. Never murdered anyone, never raped anyone, never robbed anyone - laughed my ass off, went about my day. Sorry."

Bush: Iran is the 'primary state sponsor' of terrorism. posted by lenin

Bush is at it again:

Bush called Iran the "world's primary state sponsor of terror" and reiterated his accusations that the country is striving to develop nuclear weapons, a charge denied by Iran. He also promised to "stand with" the Iranian people in their quest for liberty, a veiled jab at the republic's ruling clerics.

The Bush tryptich: terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, liberation. Etched in his rock-like skull and endlessly applicable. On Syria :

The president then singled out Syria, which he said "still allows its territory and parts of Lebanon to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region."

"We expect Syria to end all support for terrorists and open the door to freedom," he said, to heavy applause from members of Congress.

Which makes the Iraqi elections all the more ironic. Imagine, for a second, that there was no fixing, no bribing, no exclusion of masses of votes, no boycott. Even if Iraq's elections had been the kind of shining example of democracy that no one could reasonably complain about. There would still be a government coalition formed that was pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian. Which could explain this .

Lenin vs Linda Grant. posted by lenin

Grist for my mill, dears! Linda Grant, whom you know I was pestering a few days ago for a source on her vulgarising claims about suicide bombers, has taken the trouble to write to me again, this time about a post of mine from a few days ago.

The exchange began with the following note from Linda:

"Israel is perhaps the most successful and enduring occupation in history."

http://perc.ca/PEN/1992-04/lor.html

Over 1.6 million Tibetans have died as the result of their occupation by China, according to this source

And more

http://www.tv.cbc.ca/newsinreview/sept%2099/tibet/occupation.html

all very quiet on the Tibetan front, the most successful and enduring occupation, predating the Israeli occupation by over a decade, murdering more people, but hush, do not speak of it, it would only complicate things for the left.. Sssshhhhhh. That’s right, nice blanket of silence. We knew we could rely on the left to leave it to a few vapid movie stars to say a few vapid things and then nothing.

Ssshhhhhhhh, nothing going on in Tib. . .

The rest of the exchange is recorded here .

Watch, smitten reader: the insinuations, the glib phrases that connote more than they denote, the back-tracking...

That's an unfair summary, but then I am an unfair witness.

Kilroy's: Vox populi, ex nihilo, er, veritas odit mundi, er... posted by lenin

A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Woooooo hoo hoo hoo hoooo!! Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!!

Sorry, I can't contain myself. Kilroy has decided to form a new political party called Veritas . Veritas, a latin tag meaning 'truth', has to be the least likely name for any 'party' Kilroy would lead - but why did he settle for a Latinism? A cosmopolitan sophisticate like Kilroy should know that the Russian word for truth is Pravda. Surely better?

The spirit of James Goldsmith lives.

New Labour vs Wheelchair Layabouts... posted by lenin

If you thought there was no remaining defenseless group New Labour could pick on, you were wrong. Now, they're after the disabled . They're going to make it tougher, apparently, to receive these benefits, despite the fact that they are desperately needed by those who receive them and research by the TUC shows that:

a) "[L]ess than 1% of claimants were fraudulent".

b) Many disabled people face "prejudice when trying to find work", even though four in ten of those who are on incapacity benefit actually want to be in work.

c) "The number of people who get [incapacity benefit] has been falling for years."

d) "Britain spends much less on employment help for disabled people than other European countries."

This has to be understood as part of Blair's strategy of temporarily paying for the pensions crisis, which he intends to do through "cutting welfare costs by making changes to incapacity benefits" . Instead of forcing companies to run decent pension schemes and putting a tax on the stupendous profits of recent years (ie by raising rather than cutting corporation tax) to pay for decent pensions, they would rather lead an attack on one of the weakest sections of society on grounds that are utterly spurious.

This weak and nasty government seems determined to perpetually make the most eloquent case against its re-election.

Aaronovitch to war critics: "move on". posted by lenin

It is time to get a life, and stop harping on about the war. It is over now, and what we must do is support democracy in Iraq. That is David Aaronovitch in The Guardian today revealing the lessons he has learned from the elections on Sunday.

I wouldn't subject readers to the unholy stink of sanctimony and logical confusion that characterizes Aaronovitch's column, so I'll cut to the chase. He says that we must not set a date for withdrawal from Iraq, and of those who say we should, he adds:

The point is, who judges? Do we listen to and consult with the elected Iraqis, or do we just ignore them? Never mind the men and women of Mesopotamia, do we take democracy seriously? Don't the politicians of Iraq, who have refused to be drawn into ethnic or religious conflict despite the most agonising provocations, deserve such consideration?

A unilateral decision about troop withdrawal would be a fit continuation of the west's record of amorality and error in Iraq. But, after Sunday, we have no more excuses. The elections, so vilified in some quarters, were a revelation. Those anti-war people who could escape their hooks saw millions of ordinary people delighting in the process of voting, and many thousands risking everything (where we would risk nothing) to cast their ballot.

That, now, is all that matters. Not whether you were for or against the war, for or against Blair, for or against Bush. Are you for or against democracy in Iraq? The rest is air.

Forget, if you like, that Aaronovitch cannot distinguish between supporting democracy and supporting a colonial occupation. Forget also that he can't tell the difference between criticising shambolic elections conducted under occupation and rejecting the legitimate demands for real elections in toto. Just think about this: In every available poll, the Iraqi people are saying that they want the occupiers out - in overwhelming numbers.

Yet such a decision would be "unilateral"? And why does he think he is entitled to this conclusion: because Iraqis turned out (in what numbers we do not yet know) to vote in the Sunday elections. The one poll in which they couldn't express an opinion on the occupation, and Aaronovitch thinks that legitimizes our remaining there.

No, it is time for those who have been making excuses for the occupation to move on. There is no excuse now: the Iraqis want the occupiers out and soon; the elections have been held and the occupiers have deemed them successful, so there is a process for Iraqi self-governance in place (an excuse previously used by some to support the continued occupation was that it would leave a 'vacuum'); the moral failure of the occupation is established beyond reasonable doubt - criminality on every front including murder, torture, rape and robbery is the hallmark of this occupation; the resistance is growing, and will not subside until the occupation ends.

If you claim to care about what happens to Iraq, you have to demand an expeditious and sensitive withdrawal. And don't give me any of that shit about "oh, there'll be a bloodbath if we leave" (an argument with more than a hint of racism about it) - there is already a bloodbath. The bloodbath will not cease until the occupiers absent themselves or until they are evicted. Troops out, now.

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