The Perfect Husband

We all remember the wonderful Tessa Jowell – the woman who signs her mortgage agreements over the breakfast table without asking her husband what it is she is signing - *cough* allegedly! Whilst many of us may well have hoped she had disappeared from politics for good, it turns out that she is actually holding down two jobs currently - Minister for the Olympics and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. However, it is fair to say that Tessa will always be remembered as the woman who divorced her husband to save her political career, after they had accepted £400,000 from Silvio Berlusconi following Mr Mills giving evidence in a court case in defence of the corrupt Italian former PM. Today Judges in Milan have sentenced David Mills to 4 and a half years in prison for bribery and corruption, and ordered him to pay £250,000 damages to the Italian State. Mr Berlusconi himself can not be prosecute after he passed a law while in power exempting him from prosecution (interestingly very swiftly after Mr Mills had lied for him in court to protect him from prosecution for bribery and corruption!).
I’m sure Tessa Jowell will have little or nothing to say on this subject, and play heavily on her separation from Mr Mills, but one has to wonder about the endemic corruption in politics and query whether dearest Tessa was really unaware that the nearly half a million pounds she and her husband had used to pay off their mortgage stemmed from Mr Mills knowingly lying in court in defence of the then PM of Italy. In fact, Tessa claimed at the time she not only had no idea where the money came from, as she didn’t think to ask her husband where he’d found a little under half a million pounds from, but that she was also unaware they had used it to pay their mortgage off, as she had simply signed some paper work over breakfast one morning. What a marriage! The type where your husband comes home from work one day with half a million quid, doesn’t tell you, then uses it to pay your mortgage off without telling you that either.

Lord Blair Champion of the Free World

I spotted this today:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Tony-Blair-Former-Prime-Minister-Wins-Million-Dollar-Prize-For-Achievements-That-Shape-Society/Article/200902315224001?lpos=Politics_Second_Home_Page_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15224001_Tony_Blair,_Former_Prime_Minister,_Wins_Million_Dollar_Prize_For_Achievements_That_Shape_SocietyWhich

In short, Tony Blair has been ‘awarded’ £697,000 from the Dan David Foundation in Tel Aviv for being “one of the most outstanding statesmen of our era”. Notwithstanding the utter ridiculousness of that sentiment, and the amazing amnesia as concerns Iraq and Afghanistan, does it not strike anyone else as a possible conflict of interests to be employed as the “Middle East Peace Envoy” whilst accepting a million dollars from one of the most eminent charitable bodies in Israel? OK, so Blair is ‘donating’ the money to his own “Faith Foundation” but nevertheless it seems to me that someone who wines, dines and courts the favours of one side to the point where they pay him a million pounds, yet has never had the courage or moral fortitude to even set foot on the Gaza Strip, may just, possibly, be a little biased in their outlook.

As for the Award, the Dan David Foundation has recognised Blair’s” achievements that shape and enrich society today". Although they conveniently forgot to mention the millions of dead innocent Iraqi and Afghan men, women and children who were murdered due to Blair’s desire to enter into a modern day crusade alongside his pal Bush. They did mention Kosovo, claiming "From the time he assumed leadership of the British Labour Party in 1994 until he stepped down as prime minister in 2007, he showed exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral courage and leadership. It was the Kosovo crisis in particular that transformed Tony Blair into an international leader on the basis of his steadfast determination and morally courageous leadership." Which is some of the best historic revisionism I have seen in a long time (you would have thought Israelis more than most would shy away from historic revisionism, but apparently not). The statement is also laughable.

Because as anyone that observed the situation with their own eyes and not via the auspices of Murdoch’s news empire remembers, Kosovo was a bloody tragedy where Blair managed to get himself dragged in as poodle to the US President (Clinton not Bush as it happened), then exacerbated the situation though inaction, then finally decide to react with a show of force that directly led to the deaths of tens of thousands. During the conflict our ‘protection’ of the Kosovans led to over a million ethnic Kosovars being internally displaced, of which a quarter of a million remain as internal refugees today, and ethnic tensions still continue to cause intermittent bloodshed. So a good job well done by Blair. Give the man an award. It is also interesting to note that in the Kosovo intervention which Blair is here lauded for, Blair and his chums intervened to protect Kosovans who had fought a bloody and brutal armed guerrilla war against the occupying powers of the Serbo-Croat alliance. And yet Blair refuses to accept that the Palestinians are engaged in a guerrilla war against an occupying power. Strange. Also interesting to note that both the situation in the Balkans and the situation in the Middle East are direct results of British nation building after the First World War where we arrogantly assumed that we could draw lines on maps, create countries, and force different peoples to live together despite thousands of years of bloody conflicts suggesting otherwise.

What perhaps upsets me more however is that this award continues our ‘civilised’ societies determination to honour, reward and make heroes of the men who lead us to war. If Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terror, and the situation in Israel today teach us anything, surely it is that armed conflict only begets more armed conflict, more pain, bloodshed and suffering, which the people on the street always bear the brunt of, while the war makers, the arrogant men with their delusions of grandeur, are decorated with awards and pieces of gold.

The Blatancy of Lies

Just a few short words to highlight the absolute supremacy of the victors discourse in the hell of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It seems that such is the mendacity of the world’s media, the governments of the West (and indeed plenty of our puppet-regimes and receivers of military aid amongst the leaders of the Arab world) and the state of Israel itself, that lies and crimes are now reported as fact, and the facts remain unreported.

Example one: a seemingly innocuous article about an archaeological dig, picked up, amongst others, on the BBC news website and Sky news. Both reports detailed how The Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) had discovered a rare Roman-era marble statuette in Jerusalem. Both reports note, without any further comment, that the 1,800-year-old figurine made of marble and depicting a miniature image of a bearded man's head was discovered in an archaeological excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority in occupied east Jerusalem (my emphasis). Now, on the one hand you could argue that the word occupied is included in the articles, and that proves that the BBC and Sky are reporting impartially. Frankly, that’s bollocks. It doesn’t explain who is occupying East Jerusalem (the state of Israel), who it is that is being occupied (Palestinians), how long this has been going on (since 1967), the context for the land being occupied (naked aggressive military expansionism and religious zealotry by the state of Israel), or the legal consequences (that occupying east Jerusalem is illegal in international law and that in so occupying the area Israel are in material breach of UN resolutions Furthermore that Jerusalem as a whole is a ‘corpus separatum’ which is supposed to be under a special international regime administered by the UN). All in all the article fails to highlight that Israel has no legal right to be in east Jerusalem, and that it therefore has no right to be conducting archaeological excavations there and keeping any antiquities it finds.

Example two: an article that appeared in some mainstream media (the BBC, Independent, Reuters, Haaeratz, Irish Times and Guardian for example) of a Rabbi for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) who had been handing out questionable religious guidance leaflets to troops entering Gaza. All of the articles were small and crammed in the ‘other news’ column inches. All simply stated that a controversy was brewing over Rabbi Avichai Rontzki (the army chief chaplain) giving out these leaflets for their alleged incitement against Palestinians. Ah, ‘alleged’, there’s that conditional word, that safety net for the media. Now, the leaflet itself was considered so extreme in its intolerant and fundamentalist religious views that many within Israel have been uncomfortable with it (Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group said the booklet's contents could be "interpreted as a call to act outside the confines of international laws of war"). It called on the IDF soldiers to ‘show no mercy’ (not only a statement born of hatred and a refusal to differentiate one Palestinian form another, but also a call for IDF soldiers to avoid the usual ‘rules of war’ which explicitly call for mercy and humanity, especially towards civilians, women, children, the elderly and the wounded). The leaflet went on to claim the IDF’s "cruel enemy" was "terribly immoral" and advised soldiers they were fighting "murderers." The booklet, it transpired was written by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a main figure in the Jewish settler movement in the occupied West Bank – and thus a proponent of an act which is illegal in law and at the heart of the ongoing conflict – illegal settlement. Now, consider for one moment if news had emerged that the chief Imam to Hamas had distributed a comparable leaflet – we’d have heard once again that Hamas are a terrorist organisation dedicated to wiping Israel off the map and who exhibit all the signs of religious fundamentalism and extremism that threaten to eradicate the very fabric of civilisation. This may well be true. But why would one side elicit one reaction and the other side none?

Finally, consider the declaration reported today by the leader of Israel's right-wing Likud party, Binyamin Netanyahu. In the run up to the forthcoming general election in Israel Netanyahu informed Tony Blair, the Middle East Peace Envoy (setting aside the cynicism and hypocrisy of that appointment for one moment to allow us to consider the point), that if elected Prime Minister (which seems likely) he will continue to expand existing settlements on the West Bank. Now, how was this reported in most western media? Why, of course, it was reported as “Netanyahu vows, No New Settlements”. How cynically disingenuous. Of course no one is denying that Netanyahu did indeed make that promise (whether to believe him is another matter entirely). But the angle that was most definitely NOT reported was “Netanyahu vows to continue illegally expanding illegal settlements in illegally occupied land belonging to Palestinians, taken from them by force, and illegally occupied in breach of a number of UN resolutions for over 40 years”. Because of course that might help people understand a little more about this conflict. We are of course told, and supposed to believe, that this conflict is so complex, so long standing, that it defies human comprehension. Utter bollocks. For those with time (say half a day), and the ability to read (at above, say, a Key Stage Three level), the situation is easily understandable. As is the reason for the current impasse. No lasting, viable settlement is going to be reached without a viable Palestinian state being established. To be viable you need to not be occupied by a foreign ,military power. You need to not have checkpoints manned by said foreign military power hindering the free movement of people within your territory, you need to have control over your natural resources, access to water, aquifers and farmland, and you need to not have expanding illegal settlements, separated from you by barbed wire, fences and trenches, serviced by separate roads and defended by an illegal occupying army and armed religious extremists. And yet Netanyahu can come out and brazenly boast about his intention to continue to expand existing settlements on the west Bank – an act illegal in law and preventing any hope of lasting peace between Israel and Palestine – without censure. Let us consider for a moment the scale of his boast. Since 1967 Israel has built 120 illegal settlements on the west Bank, housing 261,879 people. A further 102 ‘Outposts’ have been built. An ‘Outpost’ is an illegal illegal settlement; often no more than a couple of caravans on a hill top they are usually home to the most extremist settlers, and despite not being formally recognised by the Israeli government, enjoy the same protection from the Israeli military, the same funding from Israeli nationals and the same special treatment from Israeli authorities, such as roads, utilities and schools for the exclusive use of settlers, as the settlements themselves. The “outposts” are, in fact, settlements by another name, as a report on the “outposts” commissioned in 2005 by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pointed out. Further more, there are illegal settlements in East Jerusalem too. As noted above this is illegal, a breach of a UN Resolution (446), and a flagrant attempt to alter ‘the facts on the ground’ prior to any negotiated deal with the Palestinians. In just 12 settlements in East Jerusalem 182,460 illegal settlers live, protected as usual by the might of the worlds fourth largest army. In total therefore, there are currently 417,723 Israelis living illegally on the West Bank. And yet no one talks about this, no one censures this fragrant breach of law and morality, this barest of thefts and ongoing provocation to the Palestinians who are supposed to be constructing a viable state on the 58% of their country which is not illegally settled by an occupying army. And Netanyahu and the rest can openly boast of their support for expanding existing settler communities and still be reported as moderates.

Gaza

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. T. S Eliot

I have been unable to write anything about the situation in Gaza while the Israelis were caring out their wanton slaughter, too numb and horrified by what was unfolding before my eyes to respond coherently. Now that, for the Israelis at least, Operation Cast Lead is now over, people have begun to seek answers and analyse the motives and objectives of the Israeli military and government in entering into this bloody operation.

The quote above I think captures a lot of people’s reasoning for the timing of operation cast lead - a vicious military assault slipped into the dying days of a lame duck president and timed to maximise the seeming humanitarian impact of Barack Obama. But I'm not sure I buy that. Sure, the timing suited Israel, it suited Bush, and it suited Obama. But I think that's just by the by.

Whilst others will claim it is related to the Israeli's mentality of victimhood, seeing the abused become the abuser, and others will claim it is the clear and single minded desire to 'solve' the Palestinian problem once and for all, I am not so sure. I certainly don’t buy the Israeli argument that it is all the fault of Hamas. And for a number of reasons. Yes, there are some on the Israeli side (especially amongst the ultra orthodox and ultra zionist) who see it is a question of military might combined with god given right to obliterate the Palestinians, and others who worry that if not tightly controlled the 'Palestinian question' could, in time, lead to a resumption of blatant anti-semitism and attacks on a country that sees itself as surrounded by enemies. But I am no psychologist and do not want to fall into the trap of using cod-psychology and wild generalisations to explain the actions of a government and its army. Indeed, actions such as Operation Cast Lead are far too clinical, too meticulously planned, to be the result simply of some psychological driver. Indeed the operation must have been planned months in advance, and the sudden increase in shipments of weaponry, notably ‘bunker busting’ bombs, by the US military in the months leading up to this operation suggest that it was not only the Israelis who had been planning this for months.

Far more interesting I think to assess Operation Cast Lead in terms of an action located within the nexus of standard capitalist-imperialist territorial expansionism. Removing the religio-ethnic strata from any analysis (which is not to say these are not factors, for both sides) is also helpful if one wishes to look at the situation without getting dragged into 100 years of recent history, and indeed the entire history of a people and their god.

But first, let us start by assessing the stated aims of operation cast lead, as laid out by the IDF:
1. To halt the fire of rockets by Hamas from Gaza into Israel
2. To prevent the smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza via a network of underground tunnels.
3. To teach Hamas, and by extension Gazans, a valuable lesson about the consequences of breaching an Israeli ceasefire (indeed one Israeli politician talked of visiting a holocaust on the Gazans – not, one would imagine, an accidental choice of words).

Well, objective one is easily dismissed - throughout the operation Hamas rocket fire into Israel continued unabated and there is no question that Hamas still retain the capability to begin the barrages if they so choose. Secondly, news has emerged today that the smuggling tunnels are already back in use and providing valuable and vital diesel into Rafah and the rest of Gaza. Finally, it is essential to note that it was actually Israel who broke the Hamas declared ceasefire and precipitated this entire crisis.

So, it is clear that the objectives above do not ring true (and indeed many Israeli military analysts have lined up to question the sense of these stated objectives as militarily unachievable). I very much wonder whether the actions in Gaza don't in fact mask a rather more mundane (in one sense of the word) set of motives. I consider Israel to be a prime example of the development of a capitalist nation state - one which exists almost perfectly as a microcosm of the different stages of capitalism, and its inherent logics and rules. From a country that did not exist 100 years ago, the state of Israel has developed perhaps more rapidly than any other nation state. First it experienced rapid industrialisation and economic development, as the deserts were greened, and an economy developed (initially predominantly agricultural, but now encompassing manufacturing, military-industrial development, and financial and service industries). In part this was driven by the massive influx of immigration from across Europe and the wider world. Next was a phase of blatant and aggressive imperialist expansionism, as the state militarily and unilaterally re-defined its borders by occupying parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza.

Coupled with this imperialism came the standard othering of subservient populations (in this case the Arabs - both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians) to create a pool of affordable and readily available cheap labour. In this way the state of Israel has grown in a little under one hundred years to a position as a dominant developed nation state, a noted military force and an economic powerhouse, both within its region, and also vis-à-vis Europe and the US.

The importance of the Israeli economy to other developed economics can not be underestimated. To the UK, French, and US in particular, Israel is a vital source of economic fluidity - both as an investment opportunity for surplus capital, and as a key purchaser of military technologies (and recipient of military aid - a financial deal which benefits both the western arms manufacturers and the Israeli economy). So perhaps operation cast lead should be looked at not in relation to its timing regarding the US presidency, but rather its timing in relation to the world economy. The world economy is currently in crisis, predominantly due to the inherent crisis tendencies that are the central logic of the system itself. These crises - always painted as being unforeseeable and unique, are in fact as predictable as night following day, or the Met undercounting demonstrators on marches in London. This time, there is a failure in monetary circulation - the cyclical process of creative destruction has slowed, and there is seemingly no available capital to grease the wheels of greed. However, it is the case that there is no actual shortage of money, just a shortage of investment opportunities seen as risk-free enough to entice the big investors of the global capitalist market who are recovering form having their fingers burnt by Enron, Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, sub prime securities, and the like.

Those who until recently would have gambled on hedge funds and short selling need another outlet for their surplus capital, and quick, before the economic 'downturn' begins to affect them, and not just the ordinary schmuck on the street. Seen in that light, the bombardment of Gaza takes on a new complexion. Witness the clamour to talk about aid and reconstruction, witness the huge sums of money being promised. Even better than a normal investment opportunity, with its attendant risk, this situation is like manna from heaven to the global capitalist class. Huge redevelopment grants, with contracts underpinned by governments and international aid agencies. You simply can't loose. And the picture gets rosier and rosier for these purveyors of destruction in the name of development - the absolute crisis of leadership in government in Gaza (and indeed in the West Bank - one led by an Israeli stooge and supported tacitly by billions of dollars of Israeli money, the other ruled by a democratically elected organisation who the world has made clear will not be allowed to rule much longer) presents an excellent opportunity for the capitalist class to operate without checks or balances, exactly as they see fit, making partnerships and soliciting support with the simple persuasive power of hard currency. It is no coincidence that large reserves of gas have been found off the shores of the Gaza strip, in Palestinian waters. These resources want exploiting (apparently, at least according to British Gas who are eager to get their hands on it) and you can bet your last dollar that Hamas and the mass of the Palestinian populous will not be allowed to profit from this.

And don't think this war on Gaza is only about Gaza: while the Israelis continue to crow about their unilateral withdrawal from Gaza (in actual fact a forced retreat under the pressure of legitimate resistance by Gazans) more settlers have settled on the West Bank than were pulled out of Gaza in the intervening years. The West Bank remains the critical objective for Israeli expansionism. Whether you believe that to be religiously driven expansionism to occupy and own biblical greater Israel, or economic expansionism based on the material wealth to be found on the West Bank (aquifers, fertile land, habitable space for an expanding population), Gaza is a mere smoke screen. The creation of 'facts on the ground' remains Israel’s objective - to occupy and retain the areas of the West Bank so vital to their long-term economic security.

And finally, in closing, let us remember that, macro and micro objectives, analysis and reasons aside, some very stark facts were hammered home in Gaza these past few weeks. The Israelis committed war crimes (targeting of civilian areas, populations and infrastructure; the use of white phosphorous in civilian areas; disproportionate response to violence; collective punishment of an entire population), the West sat by and cheered them on, and the civilians of Gaza paid the price. The media were central too, continuing the uneven discourse that seeks to portray every Israeli action as an equal and measured response to a Palestinian provocation. For the record then:

• Israel broke the ceasefire
• Over the last 7 years – 22 Israeli deaths have resulted from Palestinian violence
• In the same time period Palestinian deaths through Israeli violence have numbered over 5000
• During Operation Cast Lead more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed and 5,000+ wounded, half of them women and children
• In the same period 13 Israelis were killed – 4 by IDF ‘Friendly Fire’, a further 6 IDF soldiers killed within Gaza
• Thus the ratio of death in this asymmetric warfare is 1300 Palestinian to 9 Israelis
• More than 4,000 buildings have been destroyed in Gaza, and more than 20,000 severely damaged
• 50,000 Gazans are now homeless and 400,000 without running water

Data/Control

I read an incredible article today on the BBC news website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7340174.stm) . Unsurprisingly I did not find it incredible because of its powerful journalism or dissenting viewpoint, I found it incredible because it was yet another of those initiatives that ought to leave middle England spluttering into their cornflakes, but instead passes by without a second look, and confirms this countries descent into fascism and enforced conformity.

The story outlines how the police have been ‘learning lessons’ form the recent protests around China hosting this years Olympics. One assume they have not been learning the lesson ‘don’t’ give the Olympics to totalitarian regimes with appalling human rights records’, but have perhaps been learning a thing or two about policing from their Chinese special forces counterparts. The article outlines how in the interests of ‘security’ police are spending £600million in the run up to the 2012 Olympics to:

> Install a “technological footprint” across London as a “first line of security
> Introduce state of the art technology that tracks all spectators from the venue right to their homes, through the use of special tickets with trackers in them
> Deploy advanced identity-recognition techniques to monitor the crowds,
> Deploy enhanced car number-plate recognition systems
> Buy three new helicopters to carry out close surveillance
> Install biometric fingerprint checks for all workers on the Olympic sites

Two thoughts follow form this revelation: one, who are the police expecting at the 2012 Olympics that they feel the need to deploy the biggest security operation this side of Dunkirk; and, are people simply going to stand by and allow this to happen?

Sadly there is no debate about it at all for the most part. News items like this are not widely reported, you have to look for them and keep your eyes and ears open, and certainly the majority of the population that maybe don't take a paper or watch news, or the rest that read tabloids and watch sky news (i.e. those being spoon fed Rupert Murdoch’s agenda) have no idea, or regurgitate the old chestnut that "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear".

For me it has been proven time and time again that technologies like this can not and will not make any real, quantifiable difference to security. Thus, you have to wonder about other motives and forces drive these decisions. And I think the prime one is a desire to know more and more information. Begging the question, why? Well, I think governments are increasingly in the pockets of business interests (I know it has always been the case, but I think the way globalisation has led to a huge re-scaling of business from a primarily local, or national enterprise to a series of huge global conglomerates has grossly reinforced the power and control by business over government).

And I think that in the 21st Century, the so called 'Knowledge Economy' and focus on technologies, means that one of the most valuable commodities in the world is data. Our governments collect data on us. Our credit cards collect data on us. Our mobile phone collects data on us. Our internet service providers collect data on us. Everyone is busy collecting data on us. You think how many times in a day or a week you have to provide data to various external organisations and government departments. And why? It's always portrayed as being for our security, or to make our lives easier, or to improve the shopping experience by allowing retailers to tailor their products or their special offers to our own individual needs. I actually think the desire of business to get their hands on our data is at least as insidious as the governments desire.

Both have one driving influence in their quest for knowledge. Power. If you have enough information on us you have power over us. Either the power of the government to monitor and record so much information on us that they can keep us supine and docile (who wants to go on a demo if the police are going to be there videoing you with a digital camcorder that when run back against a computer checks your facial biometric details against the record of biometrics they take when you renew your passport, thus allowing them to conclusively prove you took part in an 'illegal' activity, allowing them to arrest you, and take more of your details: your dna and fingerprints, etc) or the power of business to market products at us, offer credit to us, get us locked into a never ending contract of debt, desire and consumerism.The worrying trend is that the government now sells the data it collects on us to businesses, and businesses collect data on us which they hold for many years and pass, if asked, on to the various law enforcement agencies. I believe it is a new form of control, certainly in advanced western countries, to replace the reliance on physical force. Whilst that option will always remain for governments, they have realised it is much cheaper, much more effective, and much better for public relations, to control the population implicitly rather than brutally and explicitly. So perhaps one lesson that the English police are learning form the Chinese experience of the Olympics is that it is better to invest heavily in security than have the spectacle of protestors fighting police on the capitals streets.

So many of the things that saddle and burden us these days exist to subtlety condition our behaviours. Who feels able or motivated to stand up and protest/live autonomously/make a stand/complain when they are saddled with debt, fear, and unfulfilled (and unfulfilable) desire? Debt coupled with false expectations. For why do people get into debt? Because it is easy. Because the banks make it far too easy for people to get their hands on money they can not ever hope to repay. Because people are led to believe form an early age that status is achieved through material possession. That owning a house, a car, gucci jeans, rayban sunglasses, the latest blackberry, a 32" plasma TV, or a big new shinny car makes you a better person. And now, with the level of data control it is even easier to control this pattern. Banks and businesses know what your interest are, they know what your dreams are (after all they have spent vast sums of money trying to condition your dreams and desires), and they know how to interact with you. You have been segmented, placed into a specific demographic field, you are communicated with very very specifically.

In creating the twin leviathans of debt and desire you control a population much more thoroughly than through the mere threat of violence. Effectively you have made each person internalise the system of control, so instead of needing external physical forms of control (i.e. the police) individuals now do their own policing. They stop to think, can I afford to jack this job in? Can I afford to stand up for my rights? Can I afford to get cautioned if it affects my ability to go abroad? Can I afford to get arrested if it affects my chances of getting a good job? And if you decide you can’t afford it, then just take out a loan, get another credit card, or re-mortgage your house.

And interestingly, for the people that see through this lie, and who choose to live and exist autonomously as individuals, the more traditional, old fashioned sort of control, that borne of physical violence, is rolled out. And interestingly, the roll out of force is more often that not preceded by, directed by, and driven by, data. Hence the emergence of ‘intelligence led policing’, which more often than not exhibits the antithesis of intelligence, and simply relies on observation, phone tapping, the trawling of various radical websites, and the use of agents to infiltrate groups and organisations. (Only this week the anti-airport expansion group Plane Stupid exposed one of their newer members as a stooge working for a private security firm with very concrete ties to BAA.). The state powers seem offended by groups and individuals that refuse to play ball and share all their data in the public domain. Indeed this offends them so greatly that they will go to extremes just to infiltrate these groups, gain information, and then crack down physically on them. And of course their end goal, to complete this vicious cycle of control, is to capture data. Names, dates, plans, networks, phone numbers, email addresses, finger prints, dna. Enough data to ensure that they do not have the same difficulties tracking you or your groups in future. One of the many fascist tendencies of the recent terrorism legislation was its bestowing of powers on police to be able to force individuals to give up data without even being suspected of a crime (let alone involved in one).

And so we come full circle. The government wishes to control us, and operates at the behest of elite interests, predominantly the interest of capital. Hence they wish to host global spectacles like the Olympics as it is a great way to boost business, open new markets, gain media exposure, and so on. This desire rides roughshod over the desires of anyone else. From the people displaced by the building needed for this global spectacle of capital to take place (whether those displaced in China, or those displaced in east London) to those that object to China’s record in Burma, Tibet, and within its own borders to those that simply question whether their taxes should be spent to boost the flow of capital in the global economy; there are many who do not feel the Olympic spirit. And these dangerous, dissenting voices must be controlled. Only, you understand, in order to defend the Olympic ideal.

Those police on foot, on bike, on roller blades, on buses, in helicopters, and observing through the lenses of camcorders and CCTV cameras who so valiantly defended the Olympic flame as it passed through London, Paris and San Francisco, were all defending the Olympic ideal! And in order to do so they needed to observe and record, to capture data, to infiltrate dangerous and subversive groups, and to deploy physical violence (alongside some Chinese special forces in nice tracksuits) to catch those who dissented. And when these reprobates had been caught they were sifted for data and forced to provide permanent forms of ID (dna, fingerprints and photos) in order to improve security.

Security to allow the games to take place. So that more products can be sold, more records kept (why on earthy would you need a ticket that can track your movements!?). You can buy your official 2012 Olympic tickets with your Visa card (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics), possibly online using software by Microsoft (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics ), print your directions on your Samsung printer (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics ), purchase a McDonalds (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics), shave with a Gillette macfusionpowervibratesuper (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics) , drink a coca cola (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics), or if it all gets too much for you why not stay at home and watch the spectacle on your Panasonic 32” plasma TV (official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics). You get the picture.

But don’t forget the Olympics is all about a sporting ideal. One borne of wide spread drug abuse admittedly, but hey, don’t let that stop you consuming. The Olympics drive the economy, they encourage consumerism, and in doing so they continue the conditions for a free flow of data form consumers to corporations and governments. These corporations and governments will not allow anything to stand in the way of this 21st economic ideal, and so will, borne of necessity, share data with the forces of law and order to ensure your security and the security of the games(after all how would the world continue if the men’s 85kg straight lift didn’t go ahead?!). If threatened they will deploy force to uphold the noble traditions of the Olympics.

This little musing may appear to have developed on twin tracks, the Olympics and the quest for data, but the two are related. The quest for data underpins the quest for increased consumerism, increased consumerism produces more and more data, and once you get used to having more and more data taken from you and recorded (both by state and businesses) you will be de-sensitised to it. You will also be controlled. You will know that they know. You will think twice about fighting your corner. So bear two things in mind – think about the data you are asked for and daily provide. Think who is asking for it, what they will do with it, and why they need it. And refuse to play along. Your information is yours, don’t’ allow it to become another commodity because commodities feed consumerism and the free play of consumer capitalism requires security. Everything needs increased security these days it would appear. But why? If the Olympics just didn’t go ahead would it matter? Would the world stop? Would all those hormone and steroid ridden athletes implode with disappointment? Only if the lack of Olympics meant they could no longer be the official face of Nike, official sponsor of the 2012 Olympics.

The Roadmap to Peace

There has been renewed interest in issues around the Israel/Palestine conflict in the last few weeks. Firstly, I can only presume that this is directly related to our (and indeed the USA’s) need to divert attention away from the increasingly disastrous operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as hoping to provide a smokescreen from any future plans we may have to attack Iran. The idea, I suppose, is that if we pretend to look half interested in sorting out a little bit of land the Palestinians can play at statehood on, we get to look good in the eyes of the Middle East. Laughable assumption though it may be, it would seem to fit with current UK/US government ideology, removed as it is from any semblance of reality. Secondly, as is always the case when talking about this subject I feel the need to set a few ground rules: there is no ‘Israel/Palestine conflict’, all there is is one continuous 60 year illegal occupation of sovereign Palestinian land , punctuated with uncounted acts of violence, aggression and terrorism not by one side, but by both. It remains the case that while groups on both sides have committed unspeakable acts of horror on each other, the Palestinians retain a right to self defence and self determination, and this will continue until they regain control of all of their land, their borders, their airspace, their ports, water, electricity, economy, and most importantly, dignity.

Thus, in the last few weeks, we have witnessed the spectacle of the US, the Quartet, and Israel all, to various extents, stating their eagerness to restart the ‘roadmap’ and ensure a ‘viable Palestinian state’. Legitimised by their stooge Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Bantustan of Rammallah and de facto spokesperson of the Palestinian people, various ideas have been floated in recent weeks, that in the mainstream media stand as proof of the serious nature of the current push for peace. However, to those observers with an interest in the ‘facts on the ground’ (a particularly popular piece of semantics within the Israeli government and their US counterparts) and even a passing knowledge of the history and the current situation in Palestine, and undoubtedly for the Palestinians themselves, the latest moves are simply one more slap in the face for their rights and their never ending quest for justice. Interestingly even the UN, that talking shop for nations with its historic role as arbiter and legitimator of US foreign policy since at least the Suez crisis, is beginning to feel embarrassed at the extent to which the Palestinian people themselves are painted out of the peace process. After all, until their leadership acquiesce to the concessions demanded of them by the Israeli government, the Palestinians are not to be allowed a voice in this process to determine their future and their fate.

Not that this should come as a surprise to the informed observer. After all, the Palestinians have been powerless to speak for themselves, determine the outcomes of their own lives, even control the most basic elements of their lives and existences (including their movement, economy, security, education, electricity, water, airspace, borders and welfare). Hence in the current discussions we are casually informed by the media that the Quartet feels that there may be the possibility of progress if the Palestinian negotiating team are willing to come to the table and discuss a land swap, whereby the Palestinians will be allowed to keep land equivalent to the landmass of the West Bank in return for allowing the Israelis to retain key settlements on the West Bank.. Until they agree to this demand to concede land it is the Palestinians who are held up as standing in the way of peace. This whole argument is erroneous. The absolute incontrovertible truth which this demand seeks to bypass is that the land in question all belongs to the Palestinians. Not by claim, historical fact, or ‘facts on the ground’ but in the legal framework which ought to guide this whole process but is consistently overlooked – the internationally agreed UN 1967 green line (which itself is already a concession of land on the part of the Palestinians vis-à-vis the original 1948 UN partition of British mandate Palestine or even the 1949 UN armistice line). [I feel I should add here, that upon re-reading my blog it looks very much like I’m a big fan of international law and the UN. I’m not. Its just that, for one, I believe that in a non-hierarchical democratic system, the rules and rights ordinary people would choose to confer on each other would roughly measure up to the basic tenants of our UN agreed human rights, and secondly, that in the context which many of the struggles I mention exist we have to force the debate onto agreed international terms to bypass the might of the US, and that whilst I would love to advocate anarchy as a solution to, for instance, the Palestinian problem, I feel it more realistic to strive for justice in language everyone else can understand]. After all, were we to discuss historical facts there would be a strong social justice argument for the talks to only proceed when the Israeli government is willing to discuss returning lands it seized militarily between its military offensives of 1948, 1967 and 1973 (and indeed continues to seize for ‘security purposes’ to this day). The notion that it is the Palestinians who ought to come to the table willing to discuss giving over control of land, any land, anywhere, to the Israelis is laughable. The argument continually proffered by the Israelis and their US allies, is of the necessity of addressing the current peace process to ‘facts on the ground’. At the heart of this argument is the fact that there are hundreds of Israeli settlements (as well as over 400 checkpoints) within the 1967 agreed Palestinian borders, covering somewhere in the region of 40% of 1967 Palestine and providing homes to over 400,000 Israelis (including East Jerusalem, still over 250,000 discounting the residents there). The argument is made that removing these settlements, as happened in Gaza (of which I will speak more later), is simply unrealistic, and that they therefore must remain, and be taken into account in any final settlement (no pun intended, this is no laughing matter).

Of course what this entire argument fails to mention is that these are all illegal settlements. Illegal under international law, illegal under the terms laid down for occupying armies in the Hague Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention, immoral, and unjust. These are settlements built on land stolen by force. Settlements that bisect the west Bank in such a way as to create a series of Bantustans in the West Bank which make the notion of a viable Palestinian state ridiculous and insulting. Settlements that have been a deliberate policy of successive Israeli governments for at least the last 25 years, precisely designed as a long term ploy to create irreversible facts on the ground to force any final status settlements in the ‘peace’ process heavily in the favour of the Israeli negotiating position. Let us be clear about some basic and irrefutable truths which ought to form the absolute basis of any Palestinian negotiations:

The only viable borders for a Palestinian state are the UN agreed 1967 green line

There can be, nor should be, any negotiations while any Israeli settlements remain anywhere within the 1967 green line

There can be, nor should be, any negotiations while there remains any Israeli military or security apparatus on any Palestinian land

The apartheid wall is immoral, unspeakably cruel, and illegal in international law. It must be torn down and repartitions made to all those whose lives it has destroyed

The peace process, which can only begin when the above issues have been rectified, must recognise the inalienable right of return of all Palestinian refugees

The peace process must recognise the views of all Palestinians, including the millions of refugees scattered across Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, the rest of the Middle East, Europe, America and elsewhere (estimated to be in the region of three million people). These people and/or their forefathers were forced to flee their homeland and have a right to have their views, opinions and desires represented by those selected to negotiate for the Palestinian people

Mahmoud Abbas is not a suitable negotiating partner. He represents a minority of the Palestinian people, is the choice figure of the US and to an extent the Israeli government, rather than the Palestinian people, and is the successor of the morally bankrupt Yasser Arafat and his Fatah party. For many years, since at least their retreat to Tunis, Fatah represented an autocratic, corrupt and self serving institution that gradually failed to speak for, or speak to, the mass of the Palestinian people it claimed to speak for. In gradually gaining the support of the Israeli government and the US it delegitimised itself, and came to rely on the support of those it claimed to oppose to legitimise and support its rule. Through the deliberate policies of the Israelis, with the full support and connivance of the US, it came to need these alleged ‘foes’ to cement its position. In supporting Fatah for so long, and creating a gulf between Fatah and the Palestinian people, the Israelis and US have, much to their chagrin, provided the perfect conditions for the emergence of Hamas as the spokespeople of the Palestinian people. For so long the Palestinians retained a mainly secular political outlook, but in viewing the increasing ineffectiveness and corruptness of Fatah they have been forced toward a position where the only radical voice speaking for, and acting in the interests of, the Palestinians, was Hamas. Effectively, the Israeli government, the US, the UK, and the EU have all sought to punish Palestinians for electing Hamas in free and fair democratic elections. We can see why the people of Palestine may have been pushed towards voting in these right wing religious fundamentalist zealots by considering the political, economic and military situation in Palestine since at least the first intifada. Now consider the illogicality of trying to punish the Palestinians for their choice: all that will happen is that by punishing the Palestinians choice with tanks, missiles, sonic booms, incursions, bored closings and electricity blackouts, you push the people of the West Bank, and especially Gaza, further and further into the arms of Hamas, the most hard line option with their promises of blood and death and terror. It is always the same when you try to intimidate another with violence and bloodshed, you push them towards the bloodiest and most violent group or individual they can find as they seek comfort, protection, and revenge. Now the Israeli/US nexus have made this bed they must lie in it. They offered the Palestinians democratic elections, and the Palestinians held democratic elections (ratified unanimously by the independent UN election observers) and elected Hamas. However much the Israelis, the Quartet, the UN, the EU, the UK, and many people the world over, may disagree with Hamas policy and actions, we must recognise that they are the elected voice of the people and are a reflection of the views of Palestinians, created by the facts within Palestine.

For let us not forget that when your opinions of the situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are formed not by CNN, the BBC, and Haratz, but through your daily suffering in Gaza or the West Bank, the view looks very different. The resort to violence, the constant attempts to defend themselves and respond to Israeli actions and incursions, the use of suicide bombers and Qasam rockets, these all seem much different when you have lived in the squalor, violence and apartheid of the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. When you have experienced your loved ones killed with high velocity munitions shot from militarised observation towers, witnessed women refused passage though ‘checkpoints’ and forced to deliver their babies in the dirt at the side of the road then watch their babies die in their arms, seen your home bulldozed for ‘security’ purposes, lived with the daily humilities and inconveniences caused by these same checkpoints, been subjected to nightly sonic booms by F16 jets, seen your land stolen, your crops destroyed, your youth fired upon, stood by powerless while your farmland is cut off form you by a wall that makes its former counterpart in Berlin look like a garden fence, and your history and culture ridiculed and destroyed, things seem very different. When you have watched all this occur in the context of settlements linked together by high quality “settler only” roads springing up unendingly on your land, when these settlements appropriate your water, your farm land, your ancestral homes, when these settlers attack you, use you as slave labour to fuel their expansion into international markets for clothing, food, and flowers, and when these settlements use what land remains to you as their personal garbage dump, things look very different. When those occupying your land have the 4th largest army in the world, armed not just by their own burgeoning military-industrial complex, but by the most modern weaponry provided by the US, UK, France, and others, and have recourse to tanks, APCs, Apache Helicopters, F16 jets, Cluster Bombs, heavy artillery and every type of gun and munitions available things look very different.
The Palestinians right to defend themselves from the brutal, bloody and murderous events that daily occur in their illegally occupied homeland (but which are so infrequently reported to us here in the West) is unquestionable. Having said that it remains, without a shadow of a doubt, indefensible to target these attacks at civilians, at women and children, and people in bars, clubs, cafes, schools, and so on. But this resort to terror is not the solely a crime committed by Palestinians against Israelis. There can be no doubt from the frequency with which it occurs (whether we in the West get to hear about it from the mainstream media) that the IDF deliberately target civilians in their operations in the West Bank and Gaza. In doing so they commit terrorist offences too. Terrorism is not only confined to guerrilla groups and Palestinian resistance movements – states too can commit terrorism. Indeed, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy comments, as part of his analysis of the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel form Gaza, and the subsequent IDF military incursions into the Gaza Strip, “anyone who takes an honest look at the progression of events during the past two months will discover that the Qassams have a context: they are almost always fired after an IDF assassination operation, and there have been many of these. The question of who started it is not a childish question I this context. The IDF has returned to liquidations [e.g. targeted assassinations], and in a big way. And in their wake there has been an increase in Qassam firings”. So, in direct contravention to the discourse we get here in the UK, even the Israeli media accepts that more often than not the Palestinian violence is a tit-for-tat response to its constant precursor, Israeli violence. Indeed, it is worth noting (especially in the context of the attempts to reinvigorate the ‘roadmap’ and talk about ‘peace’) that from 16 July this year when US President George Bush announced November’s peace meeting the Israeli military killed 104 Palestinians (21 in the West Bank; 83 in the Gaza Strip; 12 children); injured 442 (251 inthe West Bank; 191 in the Gaza Strip; 54 children); and arrested 1,181 (1,096 in the West Bank; 85 in the Gaza Strip; 54 children); as well as setting up 29 additional military checkpoints in the West Bank.

So we cans see if we take the time to really look what is happening that any current discourse about ‘peaces’, especially one that holds up the Palestinians as being unable or unwilling to renounce violence whilst painting the Israelis as the innocent and injured party desperately seeking peace with its blood thirsty neighbour, is laughable. Until the conditions I outlined above are met, or at least acceptable as the bottom line for any future negotiations, any attempts to find a solution will be externally imposed and doomed to failure. And yet it will be the Palestinians who are held up as being opposed to peace while the Israeli government is shown to be doing all it can. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take as an example the recent withdrawal form Gaza. Heralded as being the most brave and humanitarianly minded move yet in this whole grotesque saga, the move was indeed highly desired by the residents of Gaza. Offered the chance to have all illegal settlements removed and the end of military occupation seemed like the endgame for Gazans. To finally control their own movement, destiny, economy, borders, and future seemed the final solution all had been striving for. And yet it has not turned out like this at all. Israel has indeed removed all settlements (blowing many up as it left to prevent the Palestinians benefiting form them) and no longer occupies Gaza militarily. At least not on the ground. There are still incursions. They still shell Gaza. They still send in Apache helicopters to carry out ‘targeted’ assassinations. They still use F16 jets to cause sonic booms over the tower blocks of Gaza City. And they still control every element of life for Gazans. For they control the border crossings, the airspace, the sea, the water, the electricity, the jobs, the economy, and thus the fate of 1.5 million people. Since the Israelis closed the borders to all movements of goods and people the frail economy in Gaza has crumbled as fast as the health and dignity of its population. Now some 85% of Gazan’s are unemployed, all building work (including vital repairs to the sewage system) has halted as the Israelis refuse to allow the importation of concrete, the price of flour has soared 80% due to its scarcity (the UN provide emergency food aid to over 600,000 in the Gaza Strip), and even the provision of electricity is subject to the whims of the Israeli government. For whilst the discourse in the UK has been around the Israelis using electricity blackouts as some sort of collective punishment (illegal under international law) in retaliation for Qassam rocket attacks, we cans see that the Qassam rocket attacks are themselves responses to Israeli violence against Palestinians. And so the cycle of violence continues. And yet the disintegration of the Gaza strip is held up as just another example of the inability of the Palestinians to rule themselves, and their violent nature and lust for blood. Whereas, what Palestinians really seem to want is a few basic tenants of humane and human existence: land, water, electricity, jobs, food, security, peace.

Met Exonerated Over de Menezes Murder

So, two enquiries this week, one by the Courts under the auspices of Health and Safety Legislation, the other by the "Independent" Police Complaints Authority, have both, to all intents and purposes, found the Met not guilty over the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. The first ruling by the H&SE effectively found that the Met had placed sections of the public at risk through various failings in their operational procedures. In much the same was as a supermarket puts the public at risk when it mops the floor and doesn't put one of those folding yellow warning signs out. Rather than placing the public at risk by shooting innocent commuters to death on the tube, for instance. I suppose it's not the H&SE's fault in one sense, they are more often charged with fining companies with sub-standard wiring than being the arbiter of justice in a murder case.

The second investigation this week, by the "independent" police complaints authority, found that it had all been a bit of a shambles in the Met, sort of maybe thought about half heartedly suggesting that some actual people be charged and take responsibility, and called for a public debate about the incident and wider issues of how to police potential suicide bombers. Well, I'm all up for a public debate about the incident and the wider context of the "war" on terror. One, the people that shot Jean Charles de Menezes should be held personally accountable for his murder. From the goons with the guns right up to Ian Blair, those people in the chain of 'command and communication' responsible for an innocent man having his head caved in by 7 shots at point blank range have to be held to account. Secondly, I do agree that we need to have a series debate about the wider context of what we do in the 'film script scenario' we are so often presented with of "what would you do if a known suicide bomber was about to blow himself up on a bus" (interestingly, a close cousin of the other catch all question designed to trip loonies and lefties up "If a man was in captivity and knew the combination to defuse a bomb that was going to destroy new york city, surely it would be acceptable to torture him"). Well, for one, realise that this is a one in a million scenario and not worth the focus it gets as the centre point for all other discussions about how to proceed with a "counter terrorism policing policy". However, I will countenance this theoretical proposition in the context of Jean Charles de Menezes to uncover the stupidity which is central to it. Because of course, as everyone knows, prevention is always better than cure. So, the easiest way to prevent having to make those sorts of discussions is to make sure that you don't allow a situation to develop where there is a potential suicide bomber, a packed tube, and a pig with a gun. There are two ways of doing this, either ensure that the conditions do not exist to ignite radicalisation and extremism (the argument that is always overlooked as being unrealistic, wacky, soft, etc..., i.e. change our ways, remove our government, get the hell off of other peoples lands and resources and start working towards a way we can all live non-hierarchically unshackled from the restraints of governments and imposed systems of work, behaviour and rules), or if this has failed (or in our case not even begun to happen) then don't let the situation get to critical. In the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, don't let him onto a bus, then a tube, then shoot him.

Indeed, this is amply illustrated in the words of one of the officers involved, speaking at the H&SE hearing. 'Andrew' stated that officers were trained to fire "as a last resort, when conventional methods have failed". Begging the question what, exactly, were the conventional methods deployed to halt the journey of their so called suicide bomber? It is true to say that in this case pretty much fuck all other methods had been undertaken - the police didn't confirm Jean Charles' ID as the surveillance officer assigned to watch him was having a piss, they let him get on a bus, let him get off a bus, let him walk into a tube station, down two sets of escalators, let him get on a tube, sit there for two minutes, then shot him in the head 7 times without warning. With 'dumb dumb' bullets - bullets which are illegal and outlawed under the terms of the Geneva Convention and various subsequent treaties for military use on the grounds of being inhumane, but apparently perfectly OK loaded into the guns of London's finest the Met. But then that should come as no surprise to anyone - anyone that has ever had the misfortune to come into contact first hand with the Met; from Jean Charles de Menezes to anyone who has even been in London on May Day, anti-War marches, or demos in Parliament Square; knowns that the Met operate under a totally diffeent set of rules to everyone else.

Slipping Standards, Rotting Minds

Just one quick observation today. A recent survey for channel 4 found that during last year the show 'Celebrity Love Island' accounted for three quarters (yup, thats right, 75%) of ITV's factual programming. Unbelivable as that may sound, such is the slippage of standards on terrestrial TV, that a show featuring a bunch of over hyped pituary retards trying desperately to ignore their hang-ups and phobias long enough to manage to fuck one another accounted for 75% of ITVs contractually obligated "factual programming". Begging the question how such a piss-poor excuse for a TV show gets to be classified as 'factual'. Unless of course the factual content is contained in the fact that this show clearly and demonstratably highlights how facile and unquestioning the population of this country now is. We will accept anything shoved our way, we will be distracted by it, and we will swallow it hook line and sinker. So, in a year when our government was waging an illegal war in Iraq, occupying Afghanistan, supporting US war crimes in Guantanamo, and so on, ITV managed to fob the entire population of the UK off with a show where a bunch of emotionally crippled attention seekers lie around on a beach moaning about how hard their lives are for a month. Factual programming?? I don't think so.

Getting Back To Agreed Standards.......

I guess one of the themes running through this blog is that there do exist between nations, and between humanity as a whole, a pre-agreed set of basic laws, assumptions and standards which we have collectively agreed in order to define the limits of our acceptance. They may not be perfect, there may be elements of these rules and laws that some want to quibble over or change to some degree, but ultimately, these agreed upon notions exist to guide humanity away from the evils and destruction visited upon us during the last two centuries when the mechanisation of war and the industrialisation and capitalisation of society have provided a glimpse of the brutality of which the human race is capable.

Hence, there exists conventions on human rights, rules for wars, norms of decency; a set of standardisations to point out those who clearly transgress from the safe middle ground. For instance, Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as:

"Wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including...wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

This seems entirely reasonable, does not seek to restrict a nation or its army from waging war and engaging in acts of an offensive or defensive nature. This is the norm. For me, it does not go far enough: as a pacifist it simply seems to seek simply to make war and destruction acceptable. And yet, it exists as the norm for delimiting the acceptable act of war from the unacceptable, from the criminal. Which is why it annoys me so much when opponents of brutality and state sanctioned terror are painted as imbeciles and idiots for voicing concerns, or for daring to utter the accusation of 'war crimes' against the UK, the US, or Israel. While all these countries and their morally bankrupt politicians and leaders would happily agree that War Crimes have occurred in Somalia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in Sudan, they baulk at the accusation that they too are guilty of these crimes. Yet they are. They are guilty in an objective, legally agreed sense.

These rules exist to govern these actions, they have transgressed these rules, clearly and without argument, and yet they object and react to accusations they are war criminals as if we had accused of them of the most onerous and horrific crimes. And yet, who in their right minds would disagree that the US has been guilty of "unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person" in relation to their Extraordinary Rendition flights and the facilities at Guantanamo Bay? Who would seriously defend the Israeli Defence Force and the thus the Israeli government from accusations that it is guilty of "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly"? And who could possibly defend charges that the UK government, especially in relation to its new 'anti-terror' laws, is not guilty of "wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial."? In these objective terms all of these countries governments are clearly guilty of war crimes.

These are not sensationalist claims dreamt up by the left, but objectively provable facts using guidelines agreed upon internationally by the very countries now charged with breaching them. In the same way as it is true to state that were the Nuremberg Trials occurring today, in this country, Tony Blair would be found guilty and hung. After all, the defendants at Nuremberg were not even tried with committing war crimes, but simply with "waging and executing an aggressive war". Again, not sensationalist hyperbole, but fact. Tony Blair is a war criminal, and would have been hung for his crimes at Nuremberg.

Democracy?......

Two things made me really incensed this week... (Well, there were probably more, but two sprang to mind): one watching Rob Newman talking about the us 'bringing democracy to the middle east' (in a humorous and sarcastic way - he didn’t make me angry, the implications of what he was saying did), and secondly, the news on the bbc website today regarding the us government urging Nicaragua’s not to vote for Daniel Ortega when he stands (fairly and democratically) for election as president later this year. Of course there are two interesting things about this. One, how is it democratic, or supportive of democracy, for a country to attempt to tell the population of another country how to vote. How can it be acceptable for the largest superpower in the world to attempt to dictate to Nicaraguans how they should vote? Can you imagine the outcry in the US if china began issuing statements telling us citizens how they should vote? And secondly, isn't there the usual hint of sickening irony and hypocrisy about this news - the US government telling the people of Nicaragua not to vote for Ortega? Because, of course, we all remember what happened last time the people of Nicaragua DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED by a free fair national vote of 63%, ratified by international observers, Daniel Ortega as there president don't we? He, and the Sandinistas he had led in defeating the fascist dictatorship of the US backed Somoza regime, were subjected to 12 years of the most brutal, violent and immoral repression meted out by the US government and their CIA funded, armed, and backed paramilitary front the Contras. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were deliberately targeted by the Contras after the US used AWACS planes to inform the rebels where the Sandinistas were so they could AVOID them and attack unhindered the villages and autonomous communities of the Nicaraguan people. And now the US government has the audacity to inform Nicaraguans not to democratically elect Ortega president.

Well, its been ages since I wrote anything, so I thought I better get my ass in gear. First off, the eagle eyed among you will have spotted a new link to the right of this page for a new Amnesty campaign on internet freeomd. Click it for more info........

Secondly, I am becoming increasingly pissed off at the vitriolic, hate filled bile spewing forth in most circles about the "immigration crisis" at the moment. For one there is no crisis, and for another thing, people seem to be totally incapable of differentiating between economic migrants, legal migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and terrorists. This pisses me off, as it is irresponsbile and only further muddys the debate. I find it sickening to hear the bile and lies spewing forth from the foul mouthpieces of the Murdoch Empire, the Sun, the Daily Hate Mail and the Torygraph. Their respective editors editors have felt obliged to show little interest in the fact that the real story is that the vast majority of migrants have
come to the UK to escape repression and the grinding poverty which has been
forced upon them by the economic policies of the UK (and the US, G8, IMF, World Bank et al - i.e. neoliberalism) and a bunch of wars where we have wrecked thier countries. And then these bastards moan that we can't 'send them back' due to some lefty conspiracy to protect their 'human rights' as they will undoubtedly get tortured if we send them back to the places from whence they came. Well, maybe we should have thought about that before we and/or the US ran around the world teaching every dodgy regieme and failed state the latest in torture techniques, before legitimating torture internationally through our actions in Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

Next up, here in Britain, we lurch closer and closer to a police state, bereft of freedom, with only a thin veneer of democracy, and people do nothing, content with their nice house, small wage rise, lower tax threshold and Sky TV. It struck me the other day that we will soon be in a position where our kids will read a book like Orwell's 1984 and it won't seem like a nightmarish vision of the future, but an accurate portrayal of reality. The state pass more and more legislation allowing them to spy on us, keep personal information about us, trade this information for profit (more anon), remove and curtail our liberties and freedoms, all in the name of 'protecting' us. But from who?? The mythological terrorists? the bogeyman? Ourselves? The only people we need protecting form is the state and the corrupt and moribund politicians who are solely focussed on their own comfort, and on profit - both for themselves, and for the businesses and corporations who are their masters.
Alongside the proposed ID card which would allow them to hold a database containing our fingerprints, DNA, biometric data, and full background information from the day of our birth, through our schooling, our school reports, our jobs, our taxes, our bank accounts, our movements, our beliefs, and so on, they now propose that this information be expanded with the information that businesses collect on us daily. So they would buy information on our credit and debit card transaction, out internet usage, our phone conversations, our shopping habits, our holiday destinations, and so on. They would buy this information from business, and they would sell the information they held on us back to business to allow business to 'better tailor their products to our needs'. Frankly, that terrifies me, and yet the general public sit and accept it without even a whimper of objection. The few that rise above this apathy are singled out and labelled as 'terrorists', 'troublemakers', 'dissidents' and 'loonies'.

For instance, there is Brian Haw. He is a husband and a father, a committed Christian, and a protestor against the Iraq war. He felt so strongly that the war was illegal and atrocious, and was so upset that it was being waged in his name by 'his' 'democratically elected' government, that 5 years ago he went to London, and set up opposite the Houses of Parliament with some placards to protest against the war. He has been there constantly since. For five years he has lived and slept on
the pavement, heckled and berated by passers by, spat on, assaulted, threatened. The police harass and intimidate him. And yet he has stayed. This has upset the sensibilities of Parliament so much that they have written a new law just for him. As part of their new 'Serious and Organised Crime' law (SOCPA) which covers international drug trafficking, terrorism, threats to national security and so on, they included a passage which makes it ILLEGAL to hold any protest within one square mile of the Houses of Parliament. Despite the right to free assembly and the right to freedom of protest being enshrined in our laws, the European Union Human Rights
Act, to which we are a signatory, and international recognised standards of human rights, it is now illegal for a citizen of this country to protest outside our own parliament, to which we elect people to represent us (apparently). A few brave individuals instantly protested this abomination of a law, and were promptly arrested, fined heavily, banned from protesting, and threatened with jail. One man held a picnic opposite parliament, with no placards, he simply sat there drinking tea wearing a T-Shirt that read 'protesting is not a crime'. He was promptly
arrested and charged, fined, and banned from protesting. As for Brian Haw, he
successfully challenged the ruling by arguing that he preceded the law and so it didn't apply to him. Yesterday, at 3am, 50 police arrived and dismantled his display, removed his placards, stole all of his personal possessions, and served him with a court order informing him that if he has more than twenty people visiting or standing with him at any time, uses a megaphone or loudspeaker, displays placards, or rings a hand bell, then they will arrest him. Apparently he threatens the security of the Houses of Parliament. What a joke. I wonder how these politicians and police and judges can sleep at night. But more than that I wonder how the
population of my country became so lazy, so blind, that they would sit passively
by and watch this dictatorship, this fascism, take hold. We, the Brits, love
to hark on about how our grandfathers fought and died in the World Wars to save England from the threat of fascism and totalitarianism in the guise of Nazism. And yet this terrible evil threat which so many millions died to defeat has snuck in through the back door, in the guise of a "democratic" "Labour" party. While we sit passively by and allow this to be done to us, the state becomes more and more paranoid. They pass more and more laws to keep us down, and more and more laws to give our freedoms, our birthrights, to the corporations and businesses that I truly believe are destroying the world. When I go on protests now I risk being arrested not for whatever offence I may or may not be committing (i.e. trespass, obstructing a highway, public order offences, etc) but being arrested under the 'prevention of terrorism act'. Terrorism? When did protest become the same as crashing planes into buildings? Companies can now apply for it to be illegal to protest against them. Whole areas, streets and neighbourhoods can be designated 'no protest zones'. Now, in many places there is a designated protest zone, where protestors are herded into prebuilt steel cages, well away from the eyes of the public and media, to be
'allowed' to protest.The police and state have more power and we have less, and yet
this seems to worry no one.

Sometimes I despair. I'd leave the country, but where would I go?? This situation is happening everywhere. As the US brings freedom and democracy to some places at gunpoint, its allies too are forced to fall into line of risk its wrath. Hence Canada and England and Europe looking more and more like the police state which is America. The only places left to go are the 'undeveloped' places. Because they
are the only places where the big business/corporation/EU-US neoliberal agenda
has not been able to take root yet. Or, thankfully, the places where the
people still have cojones and see when they're being shafted, and actually
respond. Places like some of Latin America, where the businesses have promised development and progress, and used these promises to blind the people while they rape and pillage and steal their natural resources. Thank god the people responded. Assuming Morales resists the inevitable corruption that comes when you have money and power, thank god he's kicking the businesses out and taking back the resources. These people are realising something that we long ago forgot - that development is
something which can only be achieved collectively by the people on the ground.

All this bullshit we're offered by the lackys and theorists of the neoliberal
new world order about 'trickle down benefits' from big business making big bucks is seen by people like Morales, like Chavez, like the Zapatistas, the indigenous, the masses or poor people at the coalface, for the crock of shit it is. What is more, as the world succumbs to climate change, as oil and gas run out, we need to realise, collectively, that we actually need less development. That the only hope for long term survival is to buy less, use less, waste less. For their to be less travel, less business, less consumerism. These people we in the west so patronisingly refer to as 'peasants', 'tribal', 'indian', etc, know more than we could ever understand about the natural world, about the respect needed to live in harmony with nature, about how to live naturally in a symbiotic relationship with our world. But we laugh at them, kill them, displace them, force them to move to the shitest parts of the worst cities, just so we can steal their land, its contents, its riches. Whilst they much hate and resent us, you can imagine they also must smile to themselves, as
they know that ultimately we will bring this whole system crashing down around
us, and they will be left as the only people with the knowledge to survive
when the world returns to its primordial state. And one of the ways that this neoliberal order, this US led global hegemony (which is noting more than the continuation of the previous British empire, which began this process of neoliberalism, 'free' trade and globalisation) has managed to be so successful (apart from being a sickeningly powerful military force led by a bunch of religious fundamentalists with their fingers on the nuclear button) is by instilling this animalistic sense of individualism in us. Since the start of the last century there have been concerted attacks on anything which represented collectivity. The
unions were busted, the idea and the spirit of the working class was crushed,
and it was all replaced with this rampant individualism, couched in the religion of consumerism. The British people lie down while our hard earned freedoms and liberties are stolen because we see ourselves not as a group, a collective with common cause, but as individuals. And what can one person do? Besides, why would each individual wish to react, when it might place in peril their job, their money, their future earning potential, their ability to watch TV, take three foreign holidays a year, and enjoy the expropriated products and services of the 'third' world. We are far to comfortable buying our 'made in china' electronics, and using them to purchase holidays in Indonesia, where we can lie in the sun while the
locals are forced to work 14 hour days to manufacture, for 10 pence a day,
clothes which we happily buy for £40. We see it as natural. They have to work in shit conditions for shit pay making our luxury goods, after all, if they don't how are they ever going to develop?? The hypocrisy is sickening. We like to kid ourselves they are undeveloped because of some natural law, or because or their sheer stupidity and laziness. we never stop to think that it is the very system of globalized neoliberalism which has caused this disparity. We have systematically stolen their resources, subjugated them to our laws, stolen anything of any real value, then sold them the dream of McDonalds, TV, Nike, of unfettered consumerism as the goal to be attained. We need to learn again what so many people struggling against this global power in the undeveloped corners of the world already now. The only power we have is the power of collective action. Individualism is destroying
us. Here in Britain, when we do talk about issues like Climate Change, its
always in terms of what single action or actions can be taken by government, by business, by individuals. The middle classes, once they have got rich and sent their children off to university to be tutored in the ways of business, build their dream eco-homes, and pat themselves on the back, because they have done their bit. But we don't realise, it is all of us, together who must act. Whole communities must come together and rediscover the benefits of acting in the interest of others, not only
of ourselves. All these ideas we have been told are old fashioned, backwards,
are, conversely, our future. We can only hope to consume less, use less, have less impact on our environment if we see things through a collective groups lens, not from within our own little gated communities. But the problem is that the government, at the behest of the criterion of business, refuses to place an economic value on things like community, environment, planet. They will never act of their own free will to safeguard tradition, communities, the environment, for the simple reason that they are unable to make a profit form doing so. Likewise, individuals are prone to only seek to make changes to their own lives, their own patterns of energy use and consumerism, if there is an economic benefit to it. We have to start
to see that our blindness to anything non-economic will ultimately destroy us.
That's why I don't believe we should expect governments, even OK ones like
Bolivia or Venezuela, to do the right thing, to save their people, or their
countries. That's why I think we must fight them to prevent them removing the last spaces we have to be free in and to experience and live liberty in. Not as an end in itself, but in order to give us the room to act collectively to establish a better and different order, freed from the shackles of their greed and corruption. We need to look at the whole story of human history and see that everything which has been achieved to the benefit of the greater good of mankind has been achieved through
collective action. The vote, the abolition of slavery, civil rights, human right.
No individual won these changes. No government introduced these changes through their own benevolence. These changes occurred because we, the people, made the tiny groups that try to run our lives scared, and in doing so, forced their hand.





One last example of the way my country's going, before I get back to work!!! The government is in the process of changing the rules which govern being in the army. The current illegal and immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have prompted an unprecedented number of soldiers to either refuse to serve in the first place, or go AWOL once they see what they're facing. One recent example was Ben Griffin, who resigned from the SAS and refused to go back to Iraq, declaring "I didn't join the army to carry out American foreign policy". Blair is now forcing the new 'Armed Forces Bill' through Parliament, which recommends sentences up to life imprisonment for those refusing to serve in a war, whether it's legal or not. Although this
would breach the Nuremburg principles which enshrine in international law the responsibility of everyone to "refuse to obey illegal and immoral orders from any government". The Bill also proposes that those who get a free education while in the Forces must remain a soldier until they're 40! This bill will have its third and final reading on the 22nd May. It's sailed through the first two readings without a whisper of opposition. Imagine this scenario. A normal civilian member of UK society could go out, commit premeditated murder, and get a sentence of 'life' meaning, in reality, 16 years, of which he may serve less than 12. The latter half of his sentence would be spent in a low security prison with satellite TV, a gym, sports pitches, free education, the chance to work and earn money, and conjugal visits. Conversely, a UK soldier who refused to go to Iraq because the war is illegal and he
DID NOT want to commit premeditated murder against an Iraqi civilian, could face
life in prison, meaning, in reality, 35 years in a high security military jail. We are now punishing those with a conscience more than those without. This country is fucked.