I see that America is sending more “military advisers” to help the indigenous troops of Iraq, Kurdistan etc., fight ISIS (or ISIL).  Apparently they will now be allowed to actually fight too.  Well what a surprise!  I seem to remember the run up to the Vietnam war: America sent the first of its “advisers” while Vietnam was still Indo-China and under French colonial rule.  By the time the war started in earnest there were at least 11,000 “advisers” there.  I wonder how many of our troops are “advising”.  There are to be no boots on the ground, so they’ll all have to wear camouflage flip flops.

I’ve been struck again by the pointlessness of the current Scottish Independence debate: it’s like two flies arguing about who owns the turd on which they sit, while the owner of the whole dung heap looks on in amusement.

Whatever happens on Thursday (18th September is IN-D-Day) the fact remains that most of Scotland’s land, resources and physical wealth will still belong to the few rather than the many.  It is also true that many of those few will be absentees, domestic or foreign, and many of the domestic ‘lairds’ will have inherited, rather than earned, their lot.   Many of the most influential supporters of the YES campaign are also ex-patriat wealthy Scots for whom the idea of an independent Scotland is just that, an idea, as they will be very unlikely to return to Scotland and live with the consequences.  Whatever, when the dust has settled, most of the 5 million resident Scots (or neo-Scots) will still be in thrall to the robber barons, will still have mortgages and payday loans, will still slave away for a small part of what they create, all in pursuit of the illusion that what they do with their turd matters to the dungmeisters.

How we manage Globalisation, Climate Change, Rational and Sustainable use of Resources (including land), Water, Food and Security are all more important than where the boundaries lie.  If Scotland removes it’s instinctive, radical, left-leaning contribution from UK politics it will condemn the ordinary people of the rest of the UK to a generation, or more, of market driven, and increasingly isolationist Tory-led (centre-right Labour following) government.

In fact the single most distasteful, but curiously ironic, demonstation of the irrelevance of this vote was the sight of thousands of Orangemen marching through Edinburgh last week, with all their usual militaristic pomp and bluster, in support of the Union.  It brought the anachronistic tribalism of the campaign into sharp focus: two tribes locked in a 300 year old time warp.  Pitiful.  Time to move on guys.

I do get the gut desire for independence, especially in Scotland, but unless and until there is genuine democracy, and ‘community’ ownership of land and resources, it matters not a jot who is in power: in fact the idea of wielding power is illusiory in our globally interdependent context.  It may be that A. Salmond (a.k.a. wee Eck)  would really like to see a pluralistic  socialist republic, rather than a parliamentary monarchy but, even if he’d admit it, that’s never going to happen my lifetime or his.  Dream on wee Eck, dream on.  Wallace? “For Freedom”?  I’m afraid I think it’s Bollocks.

 

Pardon the Franglais, but this post is about Europe and Scottish Independence.  Today a Conservative MP defected to UKIP, citing the unwillingness of the upper echelons of Government to change things in Europe.  In Move to the Right, parts 1 &  2, I wrote about the apparent drift to the right in Europe and, consequently, in Britain.  Now jump to the Scottish Independence campaign: if the rightward drift, the anti-European drift, continues and David Cameron’s tories get re-elected, they are committed to a referendum on continuing UK membership of the EU.  If the Scots want to stay in the EU they could nevertheless very easily be dragged out by the English anti-euroists.  The ‘No’ campaign claims there is too much risk and uncertainty in a vote for independence; what about the uncertaintly for Scotland’s largely europhile people?

What the tory part of the ‘No’ campaign haven’t grasped, in fact are congenitally unable to grasp, is that the more they threaten, cajaole and especially patronise, the Scots the more likely the undecided are to say “You know what pal, youse can get tae f**k.  It cannae be worse than having tae listen to your shite”.

What they could be saying is things like “Scotland is a nation already, a proud and distinct people we love and respect, but a nation is not the same as a country.  And what the Nationalists could remeber is that country is just a political contrivance, the geographic boundaries of which rarely, if ever (if ever) coincide with ethnic, cultural or national boundaries .

 

 

My May 26th post, “Move to the right in threes”, was about the realignment of European politics following the Euro elections, in which the right of centre parties did very well.  I postulated then that the noticeable rightward shift held risks for us all, both at ‘home’ and in Europe.  Since then there has been a significant reshuffle of the UK government which, undeniably, removed a number of moderate or centre-ist politicians and replaced them with right-leaning and largely euro-sceptic ones.

Yesterday the right-wing and avowedly eurosceptic Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, declared he was, in effect, “coming in from the cold” and seeking a seat in Parliament at the next election.  It is completely reasonable to link these two events: can there be any doubt that after years of public prevarication and exile Boris has been encouraged to declare, both by the political environment and, probably, by the “men in grey suits” behind the Tory party?  He obviously feels the current of Conservatism is flowing in his direction and that his brand of right-wing Conservatism is in the ascendency.  It may well be this is part of a strategy to head off the threat from UKIP at the next election, less than a year away, and that once the Conservatives are returned with a working majority the government would return to the centre ground.  I doubt it.  I fear this reflects a more widespread shift to the right in our national life which will give comfort, if not licence, to darker forces and lead to intolerance and ugly and violent confrontations between extremes, with the rest of us caught between the hammer and anvil.

You only have to look at what has happened in Israel, and Russia, both supposedly parliamentary democracies, to see what happens when the rottweilers are unleashed, and their activities tolerated, as tools of policy (Palestine / Ukraine).  In Ukraine the so-called pro-Russian separatists are, in fact, seeking establishment of a kind of ultra-orthodox anti-gay, anti-muslim Christian theocracy.  It suits V. Putin to support them for regional strategic reasons but look at the consequences already – not least the murderous destruction of an airliner and 298 innocent lives.  In Israel, the governing balance of Orthodox vs Liberal has always been a problem.  In my opinion, despite being a parliamentary democracy, the State of Israel has never been able to separate military and executive power.  When every person must undergo military service, and maintain that as a reservist, how much more difficult is it to see gun-toting ultra-orthodox settlers as an abberation?  The lines between the governed and those who govern are blurred to the extent that a former Brigadier-General is able to openly suggest full-scale invasion and re-occupation of Palestine, and others to speak of “finishing the job”: not leaving even a child alive.  Historians know that this is precisly how Hitler came to power, and what that led to: an incremental moving of the boundary between the tolerable and intolerable until it became normal to burn shops, commit murder and, ultimately, exterminate.

I know this is a very long way from the tousle-haired Boris and his ambition to lead the Tories, but be in no doubt that even if he were the bumbling bufoon his image projects he does present a likeable personality that makes him very electable and one which the Conservative power- makers are happy to use .  He is a mask, maybe unwitting maybe not, of something more worrying and the socio-political background that is making it possible should be a concern to us all – oddly, especially to Jews who will again fall victim to the rise of the right and increasing anti-semitism.

David Cameron has just said that NATO is unprepared for a more challenging relationship with Russia.  Well, who’d have thought it?  What a surprise!  This is the same David Cameron who in only 5 years of government has presided over the evisceration of the UK armed forces.  He scrapped our (admittedly old, but serviceable) aircraft carriers, sold off our Harrier ‘jump jets’ and ordered a bunch of unproven (and so far undeliverable) American replacements for aircraft carriers that won’t be service-ready for another 5 years.  He cancelled Nimrod, leaving us entirely without a long-range anti-submarine or maritime patrol capability, disbanded whole battalions of army – citing the need to shape our armed forces to address the world as it had then become – with a benign and newly best-friendly Russia.  I seem to recall wiser counsel warning that things change very quickly in world politics, how right they were.  If NATO is unprepared for a confrontation with a Putin-led Russia, whose fault is it?  I’m no militarist but, really, Cameron must have a neck of solid brass!

I hardly know where to start.  Every night I shake my head in silent disbelief, and shame, at the news from Gaza and Israel.  As I write this blog more than 1800 Palestinians who were living in Gaza are dead, killed by the agencies of the state of Israel in 4 weeks of bombing, shelling and ground assault.  Almost 10,000 have been injured.  Most of the Palestinian casualties are (were) civilians, many of them women and children.  At the same time around 68 Israelis, almost all of them serving soldiers, have been killed.  Before the present action there had been no Israeli casualties in the current period.

The Israeli justification is one of self-defence: this time they say they are responding to rockets fired into their territory from Gaza and, a more recent threat, tunnels under the border through which fighters from Hammas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, infiltrate with the objective of killing their citizens.  There is no doubt that Hammas combatants from Gaza do act in this way, their charter is openly anti-Semmitic and, arguably, a travesty of Islamic teaching, however it should be remembered that Gaza has been in a state of seige for years, that Hammas “govern” by right of having won elections in Gaza and that the Palestinians would also claim self-defence.

This is not the first time an assault on Gaza has been justified in this way, and each time it has been a response so hugely disproportionate to the threat, or actual harm, as to beggar belief.  In recent years the image of young Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, who respond with all the sophisticated military might at their disposal, has been a powerful modern representation of David and Goliath.  If it weren’t so ghastly in its irony it would be funny.  However, now some Palestinians have got their hands on real weapons and they intend to use them.  We need to stand back from this and see where all this started.  You might say it started with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, but it is well to remember that the declaration included the following: “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.  Post 1948, following a bloody and ruthless Zionist insurrection, an artificial “homeland” for the Jewish people was indeed created – carved out of land that belonged to someone else.  It was perhaps made possible as an act of international guilt relief, redress for centuries of persecution, the obscenities of the Pogroms, Ghettos and culminating in the Nazi extermination camps of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Dachau etc.  Actually it had also a hard real-politik core: the old colonial powers needed to have a loyal and powerful client state in the volatile middle-east.   At the time the Security Council (the US and UK being permanent members) said,

“in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter.”

The General Assembly then agreed, noting the declaration by the State of Israel that it “unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations”

Whatever the rights and wrongs of all that, and the ever shifting geo-political context, the world looks on with discomfort at what it has created, supported, trained and unleashed.  We have stood by while Israel annexed and continue to occupy parts of Palestine, Syria and Jordan in the name of self-defence.  The world has acquiesced in the creation of the biggest concentration camp the world has ever seen; right-wing Zionist groups (who have representation at the heart of the nuclear empowered Israeli government) openly speak of extermination, of “finishing the job”, or leaving no Palestinian children alive.  Why can’t these ultra-Zionists, indeed all Isrealis, see that every death creates tens of new militants in their place?  Is it because they actually hope to create the conditions for a more general conflagration which would justify (in their minds) wholesale destruction and, perhaps, occupation of what remains of Palestine?  Are they being suckered into it by Hammas who might also like to see such an invasion as a way of winning support from the wider world community.  Either way, there can be no winners from this course of action.

In my eyes, and with a heavy heart as a part-Jew with friends in Israel, I have increasingly come to see the star of David, insofar as it represents Zionism rather than Judaism, as interchangeable with the swastika.  Quite how it is possible for the world to tolerate this offence against humanity is beyond me. Historically the astute Israeli military-political complex has acted when the rest of the world was divided and distracted.  Preoccupied as we are with Russia and Ukraine, Syria, and Libya the Secretary-General of United Nations has nevertheless spoken in the strongest possible terms about the repeated killing of civilians hiding in known and identified UN shelters: he has described it as a “moral outrage and a criminal act” and called for the “madness” to stop.  The US administration has tried hard to avoid doing the same, especially in the early run-up to the next Presidential election, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to play both sides of this issue. America and the EU have united to apply economic and political sanctions against Russia and yet does nothing against Israel; why?

Well, interestingly, hidden away on an aviation news website I find that Israel has now, under pressure from the US, agreed to stop supplying Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and related technology – is this part of the bargaining that is undoubtedly going on behind the scenes: “if you stop selling stuff to Russia, we’ll be a bit softer on Gaza.”  I wonder, but while publicly wringing its hands the US government has just voted through another $230 million for military aid to Israel.

Be that as it may, Israel has consistently ignored the UN, its charter, and many resolutions passed against it.  In my opinion it is time that “the west” pulled on the choke chain of the rottweiler it created, and a first step would be to promote a resolution in the Security Council which faces Israel with expulsion from the UN if it continues to default on its promises and obligations as a member.

P.S.

This morning, two things happened.

First, Israel began to withdraw its troops from Gaza in support of an Egyptian brokered truce.  Remember that the Egyptian government is no friend of the Muslim Brotherhood, and therefore neither Hammas, so how long that will last is anyone’s guess.

Second, Baroness Warsi (until recently a minister in the UK government responsible for the UN, Human Rights etc.) resigned.  She cited the morally indefensible UK position on Gaza and her inability to defend, to herself, decisions she has been party to.  This is a courageous move, but in her letter of resignation she expressed concern at the loss of expertise and experience at the Foreign Office in the recent cabinet “reshuffle”.  She especially speaks highly of the outgoing Foreign Secretary, William Haig, and fears a radicalisation of Muslims in the UK as a result of UK policy.  I wonder if it also hints that the clearout of ‘moderate’ Conservative politicians heralds a ‘radicalisation’ of policy as well as leaving a vacuum at this critical time for UK foreign policy.  Watch this space (metaphorically).

 

 

 

Those of you, dear readers, who know anything about the British military will recognise the title of this post as an order to march off in a particular formation.

It seems, after this week’s European elections, the body politic is about to march to the right, and probably with enough unison so as to appear in formation.  In France the election was ‘won’ by the far right National Front, in Britain by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and across the other states (with the exception of Greece) similar progress, if you can call it that, was made by other nationalist groups.  It is all frighteningly familiar, reminiscent of the pre-1933 rise of the Nazi party in Germany.  Hitler, and the Nazis, rose to power in a staggeringly short time against a background of unemployment and depression, of a feeling resentment of the impotence engendered by the Treaty of Versailles.  In Germany they fed off this and blamed the jews, whereas we are less specific – blaming our economic and social ills on a generalised “immigrant” population.  I have this cartoon image in my head of the figure of UKIP Brittania, with her union flag shield, in long flowing classical robes, the hem of which is protecting the less savoury trolls of fascism, anti-semitism and xenophobia.  In UK we have just returned MEPs with only one third of the electorate actually voting: UKIP polled 28% of the 35% who voted.  I am truly worried that we may sleep walk into a situation where only 10% of the electorate democratically elect a trojan horse whose hidden cargo will not liberate, but imprison, us.  Or worse.  Look at what is happening in Ukraine just now.  Prince Charles has raised a few hackles by, allegedly, comparing the actions of V. Putin with A. Hitler.  I think he’s right, and PC isn’t the most left-wing person on the planet.  V. Putin is happy to let the so-called pro-Russian militias, separatists, destabilise Ukraine by commiting violent or murderous acts while keeping his hands clean.  If he invades (further – already having annexed Crimea) he will claim that he is acting to prevent bloodshed, to protect the ethnic Russians, in Eastern Ukraine.  Anyone remember the Sudetenland?

We had a UKIP leaflet through the door which mentioned the word “immigration” several times but was curiously silent on other issues.  You have only to hear the statements of British electors, on behalf of UKIP, saying things like ” immigration is out of control, we want our country back” to know UKIP is getting its message across by tapping into a strong undercurrent of racism.  As the weeks go by to the next UK general election I fully expect to see Clegg, Milliband and Cameron all trying to Out-UKIP UKIP and there are plenty of right-wingers in the Conservative Party who will feel emboldened and encouraged to think their time has come.  I am reminded of the following, from Rev. Martin Niemoller, speaking about the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

To that list you can add travellers, gays, lesbians and transgender persons, Indians and Pakistanis (in fact any easily identified immigrant minority), liberal thinkers, CND (who must be against the Army – Help for Heroes) anti-frackers, and so on.  Wake up and vote with your head, but above all VOTE.

I believe in the need for a right of the accused to get a fair hearing in front of a jury of their peers: this is fundamental to the delivery and function of a safe legal system and of democracy itself.  What I cannot understand is the use of such rights by an accused, who appears to have been caught “red handed”, to frustrate justice or to provide a platform for publicising some ideology, and at public expense. I write here about the case of two men who were alleged to have hacked to death an off-duty soldier in London, with knives and a butcher’s meat cleaver, having first run him down with a car, and all in broad daylight.  They were put on trial and pleaded “Not Guilty” despite having admitted the offence, on camera, at the scene.

Subsequently, before the inevitable verdict of guilty, the two killers took the opportunity to justify their heinous crime as “an act of war” against a “legitimate target” – a serving British soldier doing nothing more violent than go to the gym.  Disregarding the fact that ‘correct’ Islam does not advocate violence, nor endorse or promote extremism, they were allowed, by the mechanism of simply pleading ‘not guilty’, to propagate their chillingly insane rationale while, at the same time, subjecting the poor bereaved family to horrendous detail, including film, of the butchery of their loved one.

I simply ask how is it possible, how does it serve the ends of justice or democracy, to permit this distortion of due process?

 

 

 

In 2010 the UK general election resulted in a minority party leading a coalition government.  Four years on we still hear, day and daily, that every ill that besets every facet of our national life is the fault of the previous government.  Don’t Cameron, Osborne and Co, realise how empty and fatuous it sounds to preface EVERY statement to the press and public with “We inherited (such a mess)…..” – in other words it’s not their fault.  Maybe they think that if they repeat it often enough it will stick in our collective mind as incontestible truth, just as the continual coupling of Sinn Fein and IRA by the Unionist politicians in Northern Ireland did.  Do they really think we are that stupid?  When do they propose to draw a line and say “that was then, and this is now: we did this (and it did or did not work)”.  They’ve had four years to own up; it’s only a year or so to the next general election so it seems like they could reasonably start now.

As a P.S. – I saw Osborne on the Andrew Marr Show today (Sunday 1st December) and AM asked him about the management’s new plan to roll back some ‘green’ levys on energy bills.  “Well, we inherited this system……..blah blah blah. Merchant Bankers, the lot of them.

There can’t be anyone in the UK over the age of, say, 40 who hasn’t spent some time this week reviewing their opinions of Margaret Thatcher, who died last week.  I’ll nail my colours to the mast right away and say I hated her and everything she stood for. Last year I went to see Meryl Streep portray her in “The Iron Lady” and was quite taken aback by how angry I felt.  I first became aware of Thatcher when I was a student and she, as minister for education, withdrew free milk from primary school children.  “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” was the chant then.  I am also angered that, even in death, she is manipulated by the grey suits of Tory politics to take the blame for what they, and some of the rest of us, were and are responsible for.

In many places this week she has been blamed for single-handedly creating the greedy ‘loadsamoney’ culture that ultimately bore fruit in the global financial crash.  Tosh.  She, and her backers, just created the conditions in which it thrived: the greed and selfishness of the 80’s and 90’s was just waiting to be unleashed and so it was embraced by many ordinary people.  She was doing what the rest of the Tory party wanted to do but didn’t think they could get away with.  Thatcher was quickly dumped by her own party when they realised she was an electoral liability (remember the Poll Tax?), so it wasn’t all conviction about a new order: hanging onto power was more imortant.  That’s how we got John Major instead of Neil Kinnock.  While it suited her party and her backers, they let her run her chariot all over the lives of ordinary people, as well as destroy the industrial base of Britain, and for what?  Buy your own council house (what a legacy of underprovision that has left for social housing)?   I see in one paper today that one of the first council houses sold to a sitting tenant back then for a  measly, and much subsidised, £8315 has so far been sold and resold for a total of £680,000 – yes, £680K.  Now you could argue that the wealth created by the sale and resale of that one house, in estate agencies, DIY shops and lawyers offices, is the epitome of free enterprise.  And let’s nor forget the individual wealth created for the erstwhile owners: the first owners sold it on for 7 times what they paid for it.  But it fuelled the notion of home ownership being a neccessity, not an option as it is in many less property-owning European countries, and the use of unsustainably ludicrous increases in value to underpin debt.  It appears we haven’t really learned from that: I saw an advert today offering ‘buy now-pay later’ terms on some IT kit – at 29% APR – and Pay Day loans, at up to 4000%.  I was absolutely staggered to recently have my ‘ethical’ bank offer me a loan, which I hadn’t asked for, down the ‘phone.  Apparently we are so wedded to consumerism that we are still up for debt to underpin a bankrupt lifestyle.  Ask any ‘Big Issue’ seller how they feel about the right to buy.

How about selling us shares in the industries we already owned as taxpayers, and which she privatised?  I know it will be argued that injecting the profit motive and “modern” management techniques revitalised otherwise ailing industries.  But what happened?  Energy companies, mostly foreign owned, make obscene profits while pensioners and the under/unemployed go cold in winter.  Our banking system is corrupted by roulette croupiers, our car industry is almost all foreign owned, as is what is left of our steel, while our railways stagger from one franchise crisis to another on 19th century infrastructure with shiny trains (with Richard Branson leering at us) that are overcapacity, and a fares and timetable structure you need a degree to understand, and an IT qualification to get the best value from.  The East Coast mailine franchise failed twice and, wonder of wonders, is running profitably under state control.  Meanwhile the Civil Service, and Local Government, having embraced the private business ethos, are heaving with private sector graduate-speak about mission creep, inputs, outcomes and risk analysis – but are they any more efficient at the coal face, where the ‘customer interface’ is?  Are they buggery.

Anyway, back to Mrs T.  What she presided over was a wholesale abandonment of the idea of “society”, in fact she said there was no such thing.  She sold us the idea that we would all be better off if we put ourselves first.  She took us, conveniently, to war in the Falklands; she cosied us up to Raygun Ronnie when he showed her the size of his cruise missile(s).  She emasculated the historic, honourable, trade union movement (leaving care of the weak and vulnerable to charities), destroyed our coal and steel industry, in the process disembowelling whole communities and consigning generations to unemployemt, and the even more cancerous poverty of hopelessness.  She gave us the conditions where the only ambition of a generation is “to be famous”.

One good thing she did was turn Scotland into a Conservative free zone.  It may be that an unintended part of her legacy is an Independent Scotland, but it would be a mistake to think Scotland is, or the rest of the UK will ever be, really Tory-free.  My dear old Ma would say “Scratch a Liberal and you’ll find a Tory underneath”; these days it’s hard to tell the difference between the parties as they fight over the so-called centre ground trying to out-tory each other.  I for one am glad to see the back of her but I’m happy to extend condolences to her family in the loss of their mother.  That’s the limit of my compassion, and as for a triumphal funeral procession through London – round Canary Wharf might have been more appropriate.

When Her Majesty’s Nuclear penis, HMS Conqueror, sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano in the Falklands war, The Sun newspaper had the headline “Gotcha!”  Vile and tasteless as it was in that context I can’t think of a more fitting headline for this week’s Socialist Worker, or Daily Star.  ‘Gotcha’!