Death of a BLF Stalwart:: VALE Neville Killer Kane1941-2012. By John Tognolini

Killer with the beanie & The Black Rat during their crane occupation in April 1986.

Picture this scene, late April 1986, a group of a dozen builders labourers on a cold Melbourne morning. The time is around 7.30am. Their picketing a building site where they’ve been sacked for refusing to resign from their union the Builders Labourers Federation, that has just been deregistered. A “nice term” for outlawed by Bob Hawke’s ALP federal government. Hawke is joined in this by the ALP premiers of New South Wales and Victoria, Neville Wran and John Cain. An army of police has been deployed to building sites in Melbourne, Geelong, Canberra, Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle to attack the right of freedom of association. The right of workers to be in a union of their choice, not the bosses or the state.

BLF organiser John ‘Cummo’ Cummins, has just driven up to the picket. I notice as he opens the boot of his car, a large steel chain and he shows it to Neville ‘Killer’ Kane and Jimmy ‘The Black Rat’ Wilson and third Builders Labourer. Within ten minutes, the three sacked BLF men have occupied a crane on a nearby building site. They’ve used the chain to lock the trap door of the crane to prevent police from removing them. They have no food or water and occupy the crane for over 72 hours and leave it on their terms after making a defiant protest and shutting a building site down. They have also endured three bitterly cold nights.

As Killer said,” It happened really fast. I was on the Market Street site and they [the cops] came down on the job... I was sacked because I refused to join the BWIU [Building Workers Industrial Union, now the CFMEU]. I could have been the shop steward on site for the BWIU. All I had to do was to change over. But I decided to stick with the BLs.” Other workers were locked on the jobs, surrounded by rows and rows of police and threatened with the sack, threatened that they couldn’t leave the site till they’d signed over to another building union.

So it’s not surprising that when Killer lost his fight with leukemia last week that a few days later, that 175 construction workers on a Melbourne CBD building site gave him a minutes silence. Or that the Red Flag flying over Melbourne Trades Hall was at half mast for him. That flag has been sent to Killer’s widow Margaret. Over 400 people attended Killer’s funeral on Monday April 2 which had Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams send a message to it, recognising Killer’s life long support of the Irish fight against British Imperialism.

In many ways Killer, reflected the staunch, militant working class traditions of the BLF. The union was a rank and file membership controlled organisation. It’s no wonder that Hawke and the ALP outlawed the BLF. Hawke did his best to criminalise militant unionism. It was he who created the Australian Billionaires with the greatest redistribution of wealth in Australian history and the working poor. Killer and men and women like him opposed that in the 1980’s. With being in the BLF, he and about 500 of us suffered for our militant dissent with being blacklisted and starved out of work.

Margaret, his lifelong wife and partner was actively involved in organising the wives and girlfriends of BLF men during the outlawing of the union. She once appeared on Ray Martin’s Midday Show,a national television show and Martin basically surrendered his show to her with her elegant defense of the BLF. This is interview is in my film The Deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation-The Victorian Story 1986-1992.

I would have made the 830 kilometer trip from Wellington in Central West NSW to attend Killer’s funeral in Melbourne, if it was not for my partner’s recovery from cancer. However, I was fortunate enough to catch up with Killer and Margaret last September after the Melbourne Climate Change/Social Change conference at their home in Longwarry. I played my guitar to them and sung my version of Roaring Jack’s Lads of the BLF that was played at Killer’s funeral. I also played them Back Home in Derry, that is the poem The Voyage written by Irish Hunger Striker Bobby Sands, and made famous as song by Christy Moore and played some Johnny Cash.

In remembrance of Killer but also for the other BLF Stalwarts who are no longer with us such as John ‘Cummo’ Cummins and Jimmy ‘The Black Rat’ Wilson. DARE TO STRUGGLE. DARE TO WIN. IF YOU DON’T FIGHT. YOU DON’T WIN.

A Death Sentence for Greece by MIKE WHITNEY

“We are facing destruction. Our country, our home, has become ripe for burning. The centre of Athens is in flames.”

– Costis Hatzidakis, conservative parliamentarian 

On Sunday, the Greek parliament approved a new round of austerity measures that will further deepen the 5-year depression and sever the last fraying threads of social cohesion. In order to secure a 130 billion euro loan, Greek political leaders agreed to comply with a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) that will not only intensify the sacrifices of ordinary working people, but also effectively hand the control of the nation’s economy over to foreign banks and corporations. 

The Memorandum is as calculating and mercenary as anything ever written. And while most of the attention has been focused on the deep cuts to supplementary pensions, the minimum wage, and private sector wages; there’s much more to this onerous warrant than meets the eye. The 43 page paper should be read in its entirety to fully appreciate the moral vacuity of the people who dictate policy in the EZ. 

Greece will have to prove that it’s reached various benchmarks before it receives any of the money allotted in the bailout. The Memorandum outlines, in great detail, what those benchmarks are— everything from reduced spending on life-saving drugs to “lift(ing) constraints for retailers to sell restricted product categories such as baby food.” 

That’s right; according to the author’s of this fuliginous memo, the only way Greece is going to be able to lift itself out of the doldrums is by poisoning its kids with banned baby food.

The MOU also calls for a 10 percent cut to government workers wages, cuts to “social security funds and hospitals”, and more privatizing of publicly-owned assets, all of which will only further shrink GDP.

On Privatisation: “The Government stands ready to offer for sale its remaining stakes in state-owned enterprises, if necessary in order to reach the privatisation objectives. Public control will be limited only to cases of critical network infrastructure.”

Instead of providing fiscal aid so Greece can meet its budget targets and can get back on its feet again, the troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) is using the crisis to snatch vital state assets and deliver them to its corporate friends. The MOU is opening new avenues for exploitation and plunder. And there’s more: 

“The Government will neither propose nor implement measures which may infringe the rules on the free movement of capital. Neither the State nor other public bodies will conclude shareholder agreements with the intention or effect of hindering the free movement of capital or influence the management or control of companies. The Government will neither initiate nor introduce any voting or acquisition caps, and it will not establish any disproportionate and non-justifiable veto rights or any other form of special rights in privatised companies.”

Well, that’s pretty clear: Capital Rules. The interests of corporations and banks will take precedent over those of the people. The proclamation limits the role of government to rubber stamping the predatory actions of cutthroat speculators whose only interest is fattening the bottom line for their shareholders. 

There’s also a long section on “Growth-Enhancing Structural Reforms” that never explains how the economy is supposed to expand when austerity measures are reducing the amount of consumer spending and business investment. Instead, the Memo focuses laserlike on eviscerating trade barriers and slashing workers’ wages. Here’s a sample: 

“Given that the outcome of the social dialogue to promote employment and competitiveness fell short of expectations, the Government will take measures to foster a rapid adjustment of labour costs to fight unemployment and restore cost-competitiveness, ensure the effectiveness of recent labour market reforms, align labour conditions in former state-owned enterprises to those in the rest of the private sector and make working hours arrangements more flexible. This strategy should aim at reducing nominal unit labour costs in the business economy by 15 percent in 2012-14. At the same time, the Government will promote smooth wage bargaining at the various levels and fight undeclared work.” 

Don’t you think, dear reader, that if you had recommended policies that resulted in a severe two-year recession and record-high unemployment (Greek unemployment is now at a peak of 20.6 percent), that you’d keep your mouth shut and admit that you don’t know what the hell you were talking about? 

Not if you were a EU finance minister, you wouldn’t. You’d prescribe the very same policies that had failed throughout; the policies that have reduced spending, shrunk government revenues, increased joblessness, and deepened the slump. This is the type of idiocy that passes as policy in the eurozone. 

The Memorandum also contains an illuminating section on “Business environment”, which covers everything from perks for industry to unrestricted free trade. Here’s a typical example:

“…cease to earmark the non-reciprocating charge calculated on the fuel price infavour of Mutual Distribution Fund of the Oil-Pump Operators of Liquid Fuel.”

Ka-ching! More freebies for big business. The whole memo reads like this, just one corporate handout after another. 

“Implementation of law 3982/2011 on the fast track licensing procedure for technical professions, manufacturing activities and business parks and other provisions”.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? 

It doesn’t. It just shows what the MOU is really all about. It’s a corporate “wish list”; a mix of punitive belt tightening policies for working people and perks for big oil, big gas, electric, aviation, railroads, communications etc. “Fast track licensing” and “baby food” have nothing to do with helping Greece reach its budget targets. It’s a joke. Just look at this: 

Memo: “In line with the policy objectives of Law 3919/2011 on regulated professions, the Government removes entry barriers to the taxis market… in line with international best practice.”

So even taxi drivers get a spot at the trough? Doesn’t that seem a bit irrelevant? 

None of this has anything to do with helping Greece. It’s just corporate pillaging gone haywire. Greece is a big pinata that’s just been cracked open and everyone is pushing and shoving to grab their fistful of candy. 

Memo: “The Government establishes a task force (to) review the ….judicial case management, including the possibility of removing dormant cases from court registers.” ….Following on the submission of the work plan for the reduction of the backlog of tax cases in all administrative tribunals and administrative courts of appeal in January 2012, which provides for intermediate targets for reducing the backlog by at least 50 per cent by end-June 2012, by at least 80 per cent by end-December 2012 and for the full clearance of the backlog by end-July 2013, the Government presents by end-May 2012.”

If Greece wants to increase its revenues, then why restrict the pursuit of tax cheats? Isn’t that counterproductive? This is just another sign that the Memo was crafted by powerful men operating behind the cover of their political lackeys. 

Memo: “The Government implements the Presidential Decree on the reform of the magistrates’ court by creating their new structure, filling vacant positions with graduates from the National School of Judges and redeploying judges and administrative staff on the basis of existing resources available within Greece’s judiciary and public administration.

The Government launches, jointly with an external body of experts, a study on the costs of civil litigation, its recent increase and its effects on workload of civil courts, with recommendations due by end-December 2013.”

Sure; just let big finance and corporate elites “streamline” the courts or load the bench with their “picks” and lawsuits will be cut in half. What does say about the men who authored this text?

You can see what a farce this so-called Memorandum of Understanding really is. It won’t help Greece emerge from its depression, and it won’t lead to more eurozone integration. It’s just another feed for the corporate hyenas. 

What Greece needs is a radical restructuring of its debt. It needs to wipe out bondholders, recapitalise its banks, and increase fiscal support until the economy gets back on its feet. Another loan package won’t help to achieve those goals. It will only delay the day of reckoning. It would be better for everyone, if the country defaulted quickly and began the process of digging out now rather than later. 

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

 from CounterPunch 12-1-12

Mark Steel on the the death of Christopher Hitchens

"Just because you're an atheist doesn't make you rational "

Having followed the latest debate about religion, I'd say the conclusion is obvious that the only thing as disturbing as the religious is the modern atheist. I'd noticed this before, after I was slightly critical of Richard Dawkins and received piles of fuming replies, that made me think that what his followers would like is to scientifically create an eternity in laboratory conditions so that they could burn me there for all of it.

It's not the rationality that's alarming, it's the smugness. Instead of trying to understand religion, if the modern atheist met a peasant in a village in Namibia, he'd shriek: "Of course, GOD didn't create light, it's a mixture of waves and particles you idiot, it's OBVIOUS."

The connection between the religious and the modern atheist was illustrated after the death of Christopher Hitchens, when it was reported that "tributes were led by Tony Blair". I know you can't dictate who leads your tributes, and it's probable that when Blair's press office suggested that he made one to someone who'd passed on, he said: "Oh, which dictator I used to go on holiday with has died NOW?"

But the commendation was partly Hitchens's fault. Because the difference between the modern atheist and the Enlightenment thinkers who fought the church in the 18th century is that back then they didn't make opposition to religion itself their driving ideology. They opposed the lack of democracy justified by the idea that a king was God's envoy on earth, and they wished for a rational understanding of the solar system, rather than one based on an order ordained by God that matched the view that everyone in society was born into a fixed status.

But once you make it your primary aim to refute the existence of God, you can miss what's really fundamental. For example, the ex-canon of St Paul's, presumably a believer unless he managed to fudge the issue in the interview, was on the radio this week expressing why he resigned in support of the protesters outside his old cathedral. He spoke with inspiring compassion, but was interrupted by an atheist who declared the Christian project is doomed because we're scientifically programmed to look after ourselves at the expense of anyone else. So the only humane rational scientific thought to have was "GO Christian, GO, Big up for the Jesus posse."

Similarly, Hitchens appears to have become obsessed with defying religion, so made himself one of the most enthusiastic supporters for a war he saw as being against the craziness of Islam. But the war wasn't about God or Allah, it was about more earthly matters, which the people conducting that war understood. And, as that war became predictably disastrous, they were grateful for whatever support they could find. And so a man dedicated to disproving GOD was praised in his death by the soppiest, sickliest, most, irrational, hypocritical Christian of them all.

So the only thing I know for certain is that I would become a Christian, if I could just get round the fact that there is no GOD.

Arundhati Roy: "The People Who Created the Crisis Will Not Be the Ones That Come Up With a Solution"

Arundhati Roy

The prize-winning author of The God of Small Things talks about why she is drawn to the Occupy movement and the need to reclaim language and meaning.

Sitting in a car parked at a gas station on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, my colleague Michelle holds an audio recorder to my cellphone. At the other end of the line is Arundhati Roy, author of the Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things, who is some 2,000 miles away, driving to Boston.

"This is uniquely American," I remark to Roy about interviewing her while both in cars but thousands of miles apart. Having driven some 7,000 miles and visited 23 cities (and counting) in reporting on the Occupy movement, it's become apparent that the US is essentially an oil-based economy in which we shuttle goods we no longer make around a continental land mass, creating poverty-level dead-end jobs in the service sector.

This is the secret behind the Occupy Wall Street movement that Roy visited before the police crackdowns started. Sure, ending pervasive corporate control of the political system is on the lips of almost every occupier we meet. But this is nothing new. What's different is most Americans now live in poverty, on the edge, or fear a descent into the abyss. It's why a majority (at least of those who have an opinion) still support Occupy Wall Street even after weeks of disinformation and repression.

In this exclusive interview for the Guardian, Roy offers her thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, the role of the imagination, reclaiming language, and what is next for a movement that has reshaped America's political discourse and seized the world's attention.

AG: Why did you want to visit Occupy Wall Street and what are your impressions of it?

AR: How could I not want to visit? Given what I've been doing for so many years, it seems to me, intellectually and theoretically, quite predictable this was going to happen here at some point. But still I cannot deny myself the surprise and delight that it has happened. And I wanted to, obviously, see for myself the extent and size and texture and nature of it. So the first time I went there, because all those tents were up, it seemed more like a squat than a protest to me, but it began to reveal itself in a while. Some people were holding the ground and it was the hub for other people to organise, to think through things. As I said when I spoke at the People's University, it seems to me to be introducing a new political language into the United States, a language that would be considered blasphemous only a while ago.

AG: Do you think that the Occupy movement should be defined by occupying one particular space or by occupying spaces?

AR: I don't think the whole protest is only about occupying physical territory, but about reigniting a new political imagination. I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost. The fact that in New York and other places where people are being beaten and evicted suggests nervousness and confusion in the ruling establishment. I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.

AG: At the same, occupying public spaces did capture the public imagination. Why do you think that is?

AR: I think you had a whole subcutaneous discontent that these movements suddenly began to epitomise. The Occupy movement found places where people who were feeling that anger could come and share it – and that is, as we all know, extremely important in any political movement. The Occupy sites became a way you could gauge the levels of anger and discontent.

AG: You mentioned that they are under attack. Dozens of occupations have been shut down, evicted, at least temporarily, in the last week. What do you see as the next phase for this movement?

AR: I don't know whether I'm qualified to answer that, because I'm not somebody who spends a lot of time here in the United States, but I suspect that it will keep reassembling in different ways and the anger created by the repression will, in fact, expand the movement. But eventually, the greater danger to the movement is that it may dovetail into the presidential election campaign that's coming up. I've seen that happen before in the antiwar movement here, and I see it happening all the time in India. Eventually, all the energy goes into trying to campaign for the "better guy", in this case Barack Obama, who's actually expanding wars all over the world. Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end up in exactly the same place.

AG: Your essays, such as "The Greater Common Good" and "Walking with the Comrades", concern corporations, the military and state violently occupying other people's lands in India. How do those occupations and resistances relate to the Occupy Wall Street movement?

AR: I hope that that the people in the Occupy movement are politically aware enough to know that their being excluded from the obscene amassing of wealth of US corporations is part of the same system of the exclusion and war that is being waged by these corporations in places like India, Africa and the Middle East. Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries. So, whether this movement is a movement for justice for the excluded in the United States, or whether it is a movement against an international system of global finance that is manufacturing levels of hunger and poverty on an unimaginable scale, remains to be seen.

AG: You've written about the need for a different imagination than that of capitalism. Can you talk about that?



AR: We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States – that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars.

In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties. Money need not be our only reward. Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop.

The whole privatisation of health and education, of natural resources and essential infrastructure – all of this is so twisted and so antithetical to anything that would place the interests of human beings or the environment at the center of what ought to be a government concern – should stop. The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people's wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed.

AG: What would the different imagination look like?

AR: The home minister of India has said that he wants 70% of the Indian population in the cities, which means moving something like 500 million people off their land. That cannot be done without India turning into a military state. But in the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost.

India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are being killed and imprisoned in their thousands. Theirs is a battle of the imagination, a battle for the redefinition of the meaning of civilisation, of the meaning of happiness, of the meaning of fulfilment. And this battle demands that the world see that, at some stage, as the water tables are dropping and the minerals that remain in the mountains are being taken out, we are going to confront a crisis from which we cannot return. The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.

That is why we must pay close attention to those with another imagination: an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism. We will soon have to admit that those people, like the millions of indigenous people fighting to prevent the takeover of their lands and the destruction of their environment – the people who still know the secrets of sustainable living – are not relics of the past, but the guides to our future.

AG: In the United States, as I'm sure you're aware, political discourse is obsessed with the middle class, but the Occupy movement has made the poor and homeless visible for the first time in decades in the public discourse. Could you comment on that?

AR: It's so much a reversal of what you see in India. In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms. Whereas, here, the poor have been invisibilised, because obviously this model of success that has been held out to the world must not show the poor, it must not show the condition of black people. It can only the successful ones, basketball players, musicians, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. But I think the time will come when the movement will have to somehow formulate something more than just anger.

AG: As a writer, what do you make of the term "occupation", which has now somehow been reclaimed as a positive term when it's always been one of the most heinous terms in political language?

AR: As a writer, I've often said that, among the other things that we need to reclaim, other than the obscene wealth of billionaires, is language. Language has been deployed to mean the exact opposite of what it really means when they talk about democracy or freedom. So I think that turning the word "occupation" on its head would be a good thing, though I would say that it needs a little more work. We ought to say, "Occupy Wall Street, not Iraq," "Occupy Wall Street, not Afghanistan," "Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine." The two need to be put together. Otherwise people might not read the signs.

AG: As a novelist, you write a lot in terms of motivations and how characters interpret reality. Around the country, many occupiers we've talked to seem unable to reconcile their desires about Obama with what Obama really represents. When I talk to them about Obama's record, they say, "Oh, his hands are tied; the Republicans are to blame, it's not his fault." Why do you think people react like this, even at the occupations?

AR: Even in India, we have the same problem. We have a right wing that is so vicious and so openly wicked, which is the Baratiya Janata party (BJP), and then we have the Congress party, which does almost worse things, but does it by night. And people feel that the only choices they have are to vote for this or for that. And my point is that, whoever you vote for, it doesn't have to consume all the oxygen in the political debate. It's just an artificial theatre, which in a way is designed to subsume the anger and to make you feel that this is all that you're supposed to think about and talk about, when, in fact, you're trapped between two kinds of washing powder that are owned by the same company.

Democracy no longer means what it was meant to. It has been taken back into the workshop. Each of its institutions has been hollowed out, and it has been returned to us as a vehicle for the free market, of the corporations. For the corporations, by the corporations. Even if we do vote, we should just spend less time and intellectual energy on our choices and keep our eye on the ball.

AG: So it's also a failure of the imagination?

AR: It's walking into a pretty elaborate trap. But it happens everywhere, and it will continue to happen. Even I know that if I go back to India, and tomorrow the BJP comes to power, personally I'll be in a lot more trouble than with the Congress [party] in power. But systemically, in terms of what is being done, there's no difference, because they collaborate completely, all the time. So I'm not going to waste even three minutes of my time, if I have to speak, asking people to vote for this one or for that one.

AG: One question that a lot of people have asked me: when is your next novel coming out?

AR: I have no answer to that question … I really don't know. Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us.

AG: So this inspires you, as a novelist, the movement?

AR: Well, it comforts me, let's just say. I feel in so many ways rewarded for having done what I did, along with hundreds of other people, even the times when it seemed futile.

• Michelle Fawcett contributed to this article. She and Arun Gupta are covering the Occupy movement nationwide for Salon, Alternet and other outlets. Their work is available at occupyusatoday.com

Wednesday 30 November 2011

by: Arun Gupta, The Guardian UK | Op-Ed

War and shopping - an extremism that never speaks its name by John Pilger

John Pilger in London defending Julian Assange last year.

Looking for a bookshop that was no longer there, I walked instead into a labyrinth designed as a trap. Leaving became an allusion, rather like Alice once she had stepped through the Looking Glass. Walls of glass curved into concentric circles as one "store" merged into another: Armani Exchange with Dinki Di Pies. Exits led to gauntlets of more "offers" and "exciting options". Seeking a guide, I bought a lousy pair of sunglasses: anything to get out. It was a vision of hell. It was a Westfield mega mall.

This happened in Sydney - where the Westfield empire began - in a "mall" not half as mega as the one that opened in Stratford, east London on 13 September. "Everything" is here, reported the architectural critic Jonathan Glancey: from Apple to Primark, McDonalds's to KFC and Krispy Kreme. There is a cinema with 17 screens and "luxurious VIP seats", and a mega "luxury" bowling alley. Tracey Emin and Mary Portas lead the Westfield "cultural team". The biggest casino in the land will overlook a "24-hour lifestyle street" called The Arcade. This will be the only way into the 2012 Olympic Games for 10m people attending the athletics. The simple, grotesque message of "buy me, buy me" will be London's welcome to the world.

"If you've seen the Disney film Wall-E," wrote Glancey in 2008, "you'll certainly recognise Westfield and malls like it. In the film, humans who long ago abandoned the Earth they messed up through greed, live a supremely sedentary life shopping and eating. They are very tubby and have lost the use of their legs. Is this how we'll end up? Or will we plunge into the depths of some mammoth recession... with nothing and nowhere to spend?" In the less apocalyptic short term, Westfield is "a step towards our collective desire to undermine the life and culture of the traditional city, along with its architecture, and to shop and shop some more."

The original development plan for Stratford City evoked Barcelona: a grid of defined streets of shops and places to live. Modern, civilised. Then the Olympics loomed and so did Westfield, a major corporate sponsor. The mega mall, the biggest in Europe, is built in the midst of grey tower blocks not far from where the recent riots occurred, its "designer" products, made mostly with cheap, regimented labour, beckon the indebted. That it stands on a site where London workers made trains - thousands of locomotives, carriages and goods wagons -in what was once called manufacturing is of melancholy interest. The mega mall's jobs produce nothing and are mostly low-paid. It is an emblem of extreme times.

The co-founder of Westfield is Frank Lowy, an Australian-Israeli billionaire who is to shopping what Rupert Murdoch is to media. Westfield owns or has an interest in more than 120 malls worldwide. The Sydney Tower, the city's most visible structure, is emblazoned "Westfield". Lowy, a former Israeli commando, gives millions to Israel, and in 2003 set up the "independent" Lowy Institute for International Affairs which promotes Israel and US foreign policy.

On the day after the Stratford mega mall opened, Unicef researchers reported that British children were caught in a "materialistic trap" in which they were bought off with "branded goods". Low-income parents felt "tremendous pressure from society" to buy "branded clothes, trainers, technology" for their children. TV advertising and other seductions of the "consumer culture", together with low pay and long working hours, were responsible. Children told the researchers they preferred to spend time with their families and to have "plenty to do outdoors", but this was often no longer possible. As "welfare" has become a dirty word, basic facilities for the young such as youth clubs are being eliminated by local authorities.

Four years ago, Unicef published a league table of children's wellbeing across 21 industrialised nations. The UK was bottom. A fifth of British children live in poverty: a figure forecast to rise in the Olympic year. The priority of Britain's political class, regardless of party, is the repayment by ordinary people of "the deficit", a specious and cynical term for the epic handouts to crooked banks, and the simultaneous waging of squalid colonial wars for the theft of other countries' resources. This is extremism that never speaks its name.

It is an extremism that has emasculated the social democracies that were Europe's redemption following the second world war. The forced impoverishment of Greece with exorbitant returns demanded by German and French central bankers is likely to produce another fascist military coup. The forced impoverishment of millions of Britons by the ancien regime of David Cameron, with its growing police state and compliant bourgeoisie, especially in the media, will produce more riots: nothing is surer. One can count upon the extremism of apartheid in any form to trigger such a result, no matter its consumerist gloss hermetically sealed in a mega mall. The prospect is democracy for the rich and totalitarianism not only for the poor; and "liberal intervention", as the Guardian calls it approvingly, for those useful foreign parts too weak to resist our "precision" Brimstone missiles.

I went to Parliament Square the other day. The graphic display of state crimes mounted by peace and justice campaigner Brian Haw had been finally removed by the Metropolitan Police, knowing that Brian could no longer stand up to them, bodily and in the courts, as he did for a decade. Brian died in June. Visiting him one freezing Christmas, I was moved by the way he persuaded so many passers-by and the power of his courage. We now need millions like him. Urgently.

22 September 2011

Tariq Ali:America's selective vigilantism will make as many enemies as friends

Under the guise of humanitarianism, the frontiers of the west's squalid protectorate are being decided in Washington

"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception," Carl Schmitt wrote in different times almost a century ago, when European empires and armies dominated most continents and the United States was basking beneath an isolationist sun. What the conservative theorist meant by "exception" was a state of emergency, necessitated by serious economic or political cataclysms, that required a suspension of the constitution, internal repression and war abroad.

A decade after the attentats of 9/11, the US and its European allies are trapped in a quagmire. The events of that year were simply used as a pretext to remake the world and to punish those states that did not comply. And today while the majority of Euro-American citizens flounder in a moral desert, now unhappy with the wars, now resigned, now propagandised into differentiating what is, in effect, an overarching imperial strategy into good/bad wars, the US General Petraeus (currently commanding the CIA) tells us: "You have to recognise also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually… Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives." Thus speaks the voice of a sovereign power, determining in this case that the exception is the rule.

Even though I did not agree with his own answer, the German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas posed an important question: "Does the claim to universality that we connect with human rights merely conceal a particularly subtle and deceitful instrument of western domination?" "Subtle" could be deleted. The experiences in the occupied lands speak for themselves. Ten years on the war in Afghanistan continues, a bloody and brutal stalemate with a corrupt puppet regime whose president and family fill their pockets with ill-gotten gains and a US/Nato military incapable of defeating the insurgents. The latter now strike at will, assassinating Hamid Karzai's corrupt sibling, knocking off his leading collaborators and targeting key Nato intelligence personnel via suicide terrorism or helicopter-downing missiles. Meanwhile, sets of protracted behind-the-scenes negotiations between the US and the neo-Taliban have been taking place for several years. The aim reveals the desperation. Nato and Karzai are desperate to recruit the Taliban to a new national government.

Euro-American liberal and conservative politicians who form the backbone of the governing elites and claim to believe in moderation and tolerance and fighting wars to impose the same values on the re-colonised states are still blinded by their situation and fail to see the writing on the wall. Their pious renunciations of terrorist violence notwithstanding, they have no problems in defending torture, renditions, targeting and assassination of individuals, post-legal states of exception at home so that they can imprison anybody without trial indefinitely. Meanwhile the good citizens of Euro-America who opposed the wars being waged by their governments avert their gaze from the dead, wounded and orphaned citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan … the list continues to grow. War – jus belli – is now a legitimate instrument as long as it is used with US approval or preferably by the US itself. These days it is presented as a "humanitarian" necessity: one side is busy engaged in committing crimes, the self-styled morally superior side is simply administering necessary punishment and the state to be defeated is denied its sovereignty. Its replacement is carefully policed both with military bases and money. This 21st-century colonisation or dominance is aided by the global media networks, an essential pillar to conduct political and military operations.

Let's start with homeland security in the US. Contrary to what many liberals imagined in November 2008, the debasement of American political culture continues apace. Instead of reversing the trend, the lawyer-president and his team have deliberately accelerated the process. There have been more deportations of immigrants than under George W Bush; fewer prisoners held without trial have been released from Guantánamo, an institution that Barack Obama had promised to close down; the Patriot Act with its defining premises of what constitutes friends and enemies has been renewed; a new war begun in Libya without the approval of Congress on the flimsy basis that the bombing of a sovereign state should not be construed as a hostile act; whistleblowers are being vigorously prosecuted and so on – the list growing longer by the day.

Politics and power override all else. Liberals who still believe the Bush administration transcended the law while the Democrats are exemplars of a normative approach are blinded by political tribalism. Apart from Obama's windy rhetoric, little now divides this administration from its predecessor. Ignore, for a moment, the power of politicians and propagandists to enforce their taboos and prejudices on American society as a whole, a power often used ruthlessly and vindictively to silence opposition from all quarters – Bradley Manning, Thomas Drake (released after a huge outcry in the liberal media), Julian Assange, Stephen Kim, currently being treated as criminals and public enemies, know this better than most.

Nothing illustrates this debasement so well as the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad. He could have been captured and put on trial, but that was never the intention. The liberal mood was reflected by the chants heard in New York on that day: "U-S-A. U-S-A. Obama got Osama. Obama got Osama. You can't beat us (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap) You can't beat us. Fuck Bin La-den. Fuck Bin La-den." These were echoed in more diplomatic language by the leaders of Europe, junior partners in the imperial family of nations, incapable of self-determination. Cant and hypocrisy have become the coinage of political culture.

Take Libya, the latest case of "humanitarian intervention". The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity, and trying to restore the status quo ante. As is now obvious, the British and French are boasting of success and that they will control Libyan oil reserves as payment for the six-month bombing campaign.

Civil society is easily moved by images and Muammar Gaddafi's brutality in sending his air force to bomb his people was the pretext that Washington utilised to bomb another Arab capital. Meanwhile, Obama's allies in the Arab world were hard at work promoting democracy.

The Saudis entered Bahrain where the population is being tyrannised and large-scale arrests are taking place. Not much of this is being reported on al-Jazeera. I wonder why. The station seems to have been curbed somewhat and brought into line with the politics of its funders. All this with active US support. The despot in Yemen, loathed by a majority of his people, continues to kill them every day by remote control from his Saudi base. Not even an arms embargo, let alone a "no-fly zone", have been imposed on him. Libya is yet another case of selective vigilantism by the US and its attack dogs in the west. That the German Greens, among the most ardent European defenders of neoliberalism and war, wanted to be part of this posse reveals more about their own evolution than the intrinsic merits or demerits of intervention.

The frontiers of the squalid protectorate that the west is going to create are being decided in Washington. Even those Libyans who, out of desperation, are backing Nato's bomber jets, might – like their Iraqi equivalents – live to regret their choice.

All this might trigger a third phase at some stage: a growing nationalist anger that spills over into Saudi Arabia and here, have no doubt, Washington will do everything necessary to keep the Saudi royal family in power. Lose Saudi Arabia and they will lose the Gulf states. The assault on Libya, greatly helped by Gaddafi's imbecility on every front, was designed to wrest the initiative back from the streets by appearing as the defenders of civil rights. The Bahrainis, Egyptians, Tunisians, Saudi Arabians and Yemenis will not be convinced, and even in Euro-America more are opposed to this latest adventure than support it. The struggles are by no means over.

The 19th century German poet Theodor Däubler wrote:

The enemy is our own question embodied

And he will hound us, and we will hound him to the same end.

The problem with this view today is that the category of enemy, determined by US policy needs, changes far too frequently. Yesterday Saddam and Gaddafi were friends and regularly helped by western intelligence agencies to deal with their own enemies. The latter became friends when the former became enemies. And so the planetary disorder continues. The assassination of Bin Laden was greeted by European leaders as something that would make the world safer. Tell that to the fairies.

The Guardian Tuesday 6 September 2011

Mark Steel: Bankers: eight billion years in jail should do it

Instead of this pointless Vickers Report about how to sort out the banks, the investigation should have been carried out by Supernanny. She'd have sorted it.

Because the problem seems to be they've got no discipline. And governments have been like these soppy posh parents you get who watch their toddlers go berserk in public, and eventually say, "Polyglot, darling, I've warned you haven't I, about drilling through a stranger's leg with a masonry bit. Now please put the tools down or you won't get a canapé."

For example, David Cameron said the banks would face a "day of reckoning" for destroying the economy, which is true in that he's told them, "I reckon you can carry on doing whatever you want."

Now the Vickers Report suggests the banks should have two sections, one that's "ring-fenced" and behaves reasonably, and a separate wild part where they can carry on gambling with the country's finances, because we all need a bit of fun and relaxation sometimes. And the Government really means it because they've given the banks only eight years to put this in place or else.

The trouble is they're already squirming out of the report's suggestions, by arguing that anything that could slightly lower their profits will be damaging to the economy. So that's why they've carried on drawing the same bonuses as before – it's an act of generosity to protect the economy. When Bob Diamond of Barclays received £6.5m on top of his salary this year, he must have thought, "Oh no, I've got nowhere to put this. But if I don't accept it the economy might suffer so I suppose I should be community-minded and take it," and then I expect he spent it on setting up a hospital for sick mice.

The bankers often suggest it's in the country's interest they take this money. Because when they're asked why they should have it, none of them say, "So I can buy the South of France". Instead they make up something like, "If you look at the history of recessions, it's clear that if the banks' profitability is reduced, the nation tends to catch fire. So if we cut bonuses everything will burn to the ground, and that could threaten consumer confidence, as no one will go shopping because everything will be too hot."

One way to deal with this would be to make the rules consistent. So after an inquiry into the riots, the gangs would be given eight years to separate their regular mooches round shopping centres from their time looting Dixons. Or we could apply the same sentence to bankers as to looters for each pound's worth stolen. So as one looter was given four months for stealing two bottles of water, the average banker would be jailed for around eight billion years, though obviously they could be out in four billion for good behaviour.

But such stern measures would be unfair. It's not their fault they're irresponsible. They've been allowed to get away with it, with no boundaries or guidance to give them a sense of discipline. This is where Supernanny would be so helpful. Instead of dithering with unclear proposals, her report would go: "In order to ensure a stable banking system that may enhance sustainable economic growth, you'll get NO more salaries until you've worked off all those bonuses you swiped. So to start with Mr Goodwin, you're going to clean up all the leaves in Scotland. I don't care WHAT your prime ministers let you do, we've got new rules now."

For a while we'd have to endure bankers banging on the door and shouting, "I HATE YOU, give me my five million NOW!" and screaming "HOW can I invest in a HEDGE FUND while I'm on this stupid NAUGHTY STEP?" But eventually they'd learn self-respect and control, and then we could reward them with treats, so if they didn't take a Christmas bonus for being a director of a bank that had lost 80 million quid they'd get a day out at Alton Towers.

Because there's no such thing as a naughty banker, they just need to be shown how to behave.

The Independent Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Mark Steel: Welcome to the Wapping Experience

As the Murdochs are selling off their plant at Wapping, it should be bought by English Heritage the way they do with other shut-down workplaces, and turned into "The News International Experience".

Visitors could be offered headphones with a commentary that plays as they go round, saying: "Hi, I'm Bob Hoskins, and I've seen some right goings-on round the East End I can tell yer, but what they got up to in 'ere takes the bloomin' biscuit. Come with me on a journey through the grime, the backhanders and the porky pies for a tale of right slippery so-and-sos, you wouldn't believe."

There could be an interactive section where you ask questions to actors playing Rupert and James and see if you can get them to remember anything they've ever done. And children could be given one of those sheets of paper with a series of questions to answer from what they see on the way round, to see if they've got what it takes to be a top policeman. If they throw it away and say, "There's no point in trying to find anything out", they pass.

It would have the impact of museums about slavery or the First World War, where people sign a book as they leave, adding comments such as: "We must never let this horror happen again." Then at the gift shop you could buy a story written about yourself based on messages hacked from your phone as you were queuing to pay.

The other possibility is News International will keep the building and turn it into one of these new free schools. To pass history, students will have to write an essay on The Battle of Waterloo, giving an objective and accurate view in not more than 20 words. They'll get an A* if they put: "It's Napoleon Torn-apart. Our boys give frogs the Wellington boot."

As future visitors wander round the museum, the question they may ask is why did so many people let him walk all over them, to the extent that Alastair Campbell's deputy described Rupert Murdoch as the 24th member of his cabinet? Blair might dispute this, arguing: "No he wasn't. Gaddafi was the 24th member, Murdoch was third, then came Bush, Berlusconi, Cliff Richard and, at the back, the Foreign Secretary."

Partly it may be Murdoch benefited from an old tradition among British politicians, of bravely standing up to tyrants, as long as they've already been overthrown. Then they're fearless, condemning apartheid or Victorian mill owners or Nero with not a thought for their own safety. It just seems to be that minority of tyrants who still have power they have difficulty with.
So for 30 years the political system in Britain cowed to him, especially when Fortress Wapping was created, as the reason he moved there was to destroy the print unions. The argument was that we couldn't carry on letting printers get paid ridiculous amounts. So I wonder what Murdoch did with all those printers' wages he saved. I haven't looked it up but I imagine he gave it to old blind people and a leper colony. It's also possible that history might be different if proper trade unions had existed inside Wapping. Because everyone seems to agree now that the culture inside News International made it impossible for anyone to object to the company's methods and stay in the job, which a union could have resisted.

You can tell how powerful that culture is from the way that even now it carries on, because in the past six months News International has used private investigators to follow the lawyers that are trying to sue them. It's as if they can't help it, it's a compulsive disorder, and if they were stranded on a desert island they'd be planting bugs to listen in to the parrots, who would wonder why there was a story written about them having a row with a chimpanzee.

For their own safety the board of News International should be confined to a cage in the new Wapping museum, where Bob Hoskins can encourage children to point at them and poke them with sticks.


Wednesday, 7 September 2011 The Independent

Robert Jensen:Imperial Delusions: Ignoring the Lessons of 9/11

Ten years ago, critics of America’s mad rush to war were right, but it didn’t matter.

Within hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was clear that political leaders were going to use the attacks to justify war in Central Asia and the Middle East. And within hours, those of us critical of that policy began to offer principled and practical arguments against aggressive war as a response to the crimes.

It didn’t matter because neither the public nor policymakers were interested in principled or practical arguments. People wanted revenge, and the policymakers seized the opportunity to use U.S. military power. Critical thinking became a mark not of conscientious citizenship but of dangerous disloyalty.

We were right, but the wars came.

The destructive capacity of the U.S. military meant quick “victories” that just as quickly proved illusory. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on, it became clearer that the position staked out by early opponents was correct -- the wars not only were illegal (conforming to neither international nor constitutional law) and immoral (fought in ways that guaranteed large-scale civilian casualties and displacement), but a failure on any pragmatic criteria. The U.S. military has killed some of the people who were targeting the United States and destroyed some of their infrastructure and organization, but a decade later we are weaker and our sense of safety more fragile. The ability to dominate militarily proved to be both inadequate and transitory, as predicted.

Ten years later, we are still right and it still doesn’t matter.

There’s a simple reason for this: Empires rarely learn in time, because power tends to dull people’s capacity for critical self-reflection. While ascending to power, empires believe themselves to be invincible. While declining in power, they cling desperately to old myths of remembered glory.

Today the United States is morally bankrupt and spiritually broken. The problem is not that we have strayed from our founding principles, but that we are still operating on those principles -- delusional notions about manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, the right to take more than our share of the world’s resources by whatever means necessary. As the United States grew in wealth and power, bounty for the chosen came at the cost of misery for the many.

After World War II, as the United States became the dominant power not just in the Americas but on the world stage, the principles didn’t change. U.S. foreign policy sought to deepen and extend U.S. power around the world, especially in the energy-rich and strategically crucial Middle East; always with an eye on derailing any Third World societies’ attempts to pursue a course of independent development outside the U.S. sphere; and containing the possibility of challenges to U.S. dominance from other powerful states.

Does that summary sound like radical hysteria? Recall this statement from President Jimmy Carter’s 1980 State of the Union address: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” Democrats and Republicans, before and after, followed the same policy.

The George W. Bush administration offered a particularly intense ideological fanaticism, but the course charted by the Obama administration is much the same. Consider this 2006 statement by Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense in both administrations: “I think the message that we are sending to everyone, not just Iran, is that the United States is an enduring presence in this part of the world. We have been here for a long time. We will be here for a long time and everybody needs to remember that -- both our friends and those who might consider themselves our adversaries.”

If the new boss sounds a lot like the old boss, it’s because the problem isn’t just bad leaders but a bad system. That’s why a critique of today’s wars sounds a lot like critiques of wars past. Here’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assessment of the imperial war of his time: “[N]o one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

Will our autopsy report read “global war on terror”?

That sounds harsh, and it’s tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honor those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the U.S. empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11. But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary.

We should take time on 9/11 to remember the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day, but as responsible citizens, we also should face a harsh reality: While the terrorism of fanatical individuals and groups is a serious threat, much greater damage has been done by our nation-state caught up in its own fanatical notions of imperial greatness.

That’s why I feel no satisfaction in being part of the anti-war/anti-empire movement. Being right means nothing if we failed to create a more just foreign policy conducted by a more humble nation.

Ten years later, I feel the same thing that I felt on 9/11 -- an indescribable grief over the senseless death of that day and of days to come.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center . His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity; and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online here

Published on Friday, September 9, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

John Pilger:Hail to the true victors of Rupert's revolution

On 13 September, one of the world's biggest arms fairs opens in London, backed by the British government. On 8 September, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled "Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies". The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs. According to Amnesty international, the victims of cluster bombs are 98 per cent civilians and 30 per cent children. The Royal Bank of Scotland has received £20 million in public money. The blurb for the bank's arms party reads: "The Middle East is one of the regions with the greatest number of opportunities for UK defence and security companies. Saudi Arabia... is the world's top defence importer, having spent $56bn in 2009... a very worthwhile region to target."

Such are the Cameron government's priorities following the great "humanitarian" victory in Libya. As Margaret Thatcher once declared: "Rejoice!" And as the bankers and arms merchants raise their glasses, let us not forget the heroic RAF pilots who made Libya ours again by incinerating countless "pro Gaddafi elements" in their homes and cots and clinics, and the unsung stalwarts of the British drone industry at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire who, before and after lunch, provide the information for drone targets so that Hellfire missiles can flatten homes and suck the air out of lungs, a specialty. And cheers to QuinetiQ's drone testing site at Aberporth and at UAV Engines Limited in Lichfield.

The west's humanitarian mission is not quite finished. Nearly six months after securing a UN resolution authorising "the [protection] of civilians and civilian-populated areas under the threat of attack", Nato is raining fragmentation bombs on civilian-populated Sirte and other "Gaddafi strongholds" where, says a Channel 4 News reporter, "until they cut off the head of the snake, Libyans will not feel safe". I quote that not so much for its Orwellian quality but as a model of journalism's role in justifying "our" bloodbaths in advance.

This is Rupert's Revolution, after all. Gone from the Murdoch press are pejorative "insurgents". The action in Libya, says The Times, is "a revolution... as revolutions used to be". That it is a coup by a gang of Muammar Gaddafi's ex cronies and spooks in collusion with Nato is hardly news. The self-appointed "rebel leader", Mustafa Abdul Jalil, was Gaddafi's feared justice minister. The CIA runs or bankrolls most of the rest, including America's old friends, the Mujadeen Islamists who spawned al-Qaeda.

They told journalists what they needed to know: that Gaddafi was about to commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence, unlike the abundant evidence of "rebel" massacres of black African workers falsely accused of being mercenaries. European bankers' secret transfer of the Central Bank of Libya from Tripoli to "rebel" Benghazi by European bankers in order to control the country's oil billions was an epic heist of little interest.

The entirely predictable indictment of Gaddafi before the "international court" at The Hague evokes the charade of the dying "Lockerbie bomber", Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, whose "heinous crime" has been deployed to promote the west's ambitions in Libya. In 2009, Al-Megrahi was sent back to Libya by the Scottish authorities not for compassionate reasons, as reported, but because his long-awaited appeal would have confirmed his innocence and described how he was framed by the Thatcher government, as the late Paul Foot's landmark expose revealed. As an antidote to the current propaganda, I urge you to read a forensic demolition of el-Melgrahi's "guilt" and its political meaning in Dispatches from the Dark Side: on torture and the death of justice (Verso) by the distinguished human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce.

This is not to detract from Gaddafi's awful dictatorship, a "rendition" destination for MI6, we now learn. But his odium is unrelated to the rape of his country by imperial caricatures such as Nicholas Sarkozy, a Napoleonic Islamophobe whose intelligence services almost certainly set up the coup against Gaddafi. US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks disclose the west's panic over Gaddafi's refusal to hand over the greatest source of oil in Africa and his overtures to China and Russia.

Propaganda relies not only on Murdoch but on apparently respectable voices inducing historical amnesia. The Observer, which has yet to apologise for its catastrophic promotion of Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, is in thrall to the "honourable intervention" of Sarkozy and Cameron and their "humanitarian and emotional" motives. Its political columnist Andrew Rawnsley completes an impressive double. As Media Lens reminds us, in 2003, Rawnsley wrote of Iraq: "The death toll has been nothing like as high as had been widely feared." A million dead Iraqis later, Rawnsley insists that, in Libya "Britain got it right" and "the number of civilian casualties inflicted by the air strikes seems to have been mercifully light". Tell that to Libyans with loved ones obliterated by corporate-friendly Hellfires.

Nato attacked Libya to counter and manipulate a general Arab uprising that took the rulers of the world by surprise. Unlike his neighbours, Gaddafi had come to power by denying western control of his country's natural wealth. For this, he was never forgiven, and the opportunity for his demise was seized in the usual manner, as history shows. The American historian William Blum has kept the record. Since the second world war, the United States has crushed or subverted liberation movements in 20 countries, and attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratic, and dropped bombs on 30 countries, and attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

Rejoice!



8 September 2011