The simple fact that George Bush is holding “peace talks” should have all the laughable irony it takes to be sceptical of what is happening in Maryland this week. It could only be topped by making Harold Shipman the Chairman of Age Concern. However, peace talks there is, though optimism surrounding these is significantly less than the optimism that surrounded the Madrid talks in 91. Although there are a considerable number of groups attending, little will be achieved by what is essentially a PR exercise.
Mahmoud Abbas is seen largely as a Western puppet by Palestinians, particularly in the prison that is the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately he is their only option since the democratically elected
Hamas are designated a terrorist organisation by the US and UN. Without the backing of Hamas there can be no peace settlement. With less of a backbone even than Arafat, Mr Abbas, it is suspected will concede rather too much in return for the long fabled Palestinian state.
Whatever the outcome is, western media organisations cannot revert to their mendacious ways of post Camp David in 2000. The truth must be reported. After the meeting of Yasser Arafat with Ehud Barak it was reported and unchallenged in almost all media outlets that Barak offered “90 per cent” of the West Bank which Arafat ignorantly refused. The truth is somewhat different. Israel rejected the Palestinian offer of a state for Israel including some land captured since the six day war of 1967, including a large majority of its “settlers”; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in history; and Jewish security guaranteed by a US led international presence. The Israeli offer that was ultimately refused was a cessation of no more than 12% of occupied territory, and certainly none of Greater Jerusalem was to be relinquished. The majority of illegal settlements controlling 42% of the West Bank and Gaza would stay, with the land given back mostly infertile, and used for Israeli toxic waste dumping. This offer when worked out mathematically left a Palestinian homeland on 15% of pre-Israel Palestine. Noam Chomsky called it “a Bantustan proposal of the kind that South Africa instituted in the darkest days of Apartheid”. The tiny part of east Jerusalem being offered could not be used as the desired Palestinian capital. This, it was proposed, should be moved to Abu Dis, a village which the Israeli's used as a rubbish dump. On top of this, Israeli courts would hold a veto over any proposed Palestinian legislation, which equates to self-government, what this is all about really, would have been null and void.
Should the current talks reflect the manner the Camp David talks took, then Abbas should get up and casually leave and settle for nothing less than a reasonable outcome for the impoverished people he has been charged with representing. Integrity must win the day, one way or the other.
]]>Tomorrow the Oxford Union invites David Irving, celebrity holocaust denier and “historian”, and Nick Griffin, political leader of the BNP to their dispatch box. Many people on the left ion this country have fallen in to the trap of calling for censorship of these people and I for one can not agree.
David Irving is a joke who has peddled offensive filth about Jews for years, with comments such as “Yes, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, but there were no factories of death. All that is a blood libel against the German people” and “Without Hitler, the State of Israel probably would not exist today. To that extent he was probably the Jews' greatest friend.” While Nick Griffin two pigs on his farm in Wales called Anne and Frank! Go figure.
However, it is because of the views of these people that their right to free speech should be defended, for if we defend free speech for only those views palatable to us, then free speech loses all its value, and becomes a stuttering contradiction. Freedom of expression or speech gives us the opportunity to see these people, hear their drivel and show them up for what it is. I hardly think the members of the Oxford Union, the greatest debating society there is are going to be taken in by the fascists. If we don't know what they represent, and what they say, how can we defend our own right of reply that is incorporated in to the movement of free speech, and moreover defend the potentially repressed.
I am a white Christian and probably don't fall in to the demographic that these two people find reprehensible, and I find their views poisonous in the extreme. However I want to know what they have to say so I can denounce it as nonsense and try to help other people understand why it is nonsense. If put our hands over our ears, the voices don't go away. If we try to ban them, or their views, we become their best friends because it gives them notoriety, and with that comes sympathy. Also, this is a debate, not merely a platform for them. It will be balanced panel with opposing views and would make for riveting discussion.
They're like the bully in the school playground. Until you stand up to them, they just get stronger.
]]>Coke kills indeed, and not just by contributing to diabetes levels and heart disease. I just watched an interesting episode of Dispatches on Channel 4 by Mark Thomas about the actions of Coca Cola in third world and second world countries. I have heard Mark talking about this sort of thing at one of his live shows and his stories are very moving. I'd like to condense some of the programme here, and add some further info on the “family friendly” brand.
A lawsuit is being brought by the workers for Coca Cola in Columbia regarding alleged connections between Coke and union busting militia groups. Coca Cola is also currently the subject of a suit in Turkey due it's alleged part in the intimidation and torture of union members and their families. The company has also been accused of union busting activities in Pakistan, Guatemala, Russia and elsewhere.
This is all alongside ongoing accusations of stealing abundant sources of water from poor community aquifers, destroying local agricultural livelihoods and leading to potential famines as well as selling water back to the people that is theirs as a basic human right. Not only this but there is evidence to suggest that Coke is dumping toxic waste in other water supplies used for drinking and washing in rural communities near bottling plants. The blatant irony in all this is that Coca Cola have the audacity to be one of the main sponsors of the “World Water Forum”.
In Kaladera in India since Coke began operations there local water supplies have more than halved from an already unsustainable amount. In El Salavador a Coke bottling plant is accused of polluting the local river in Nejapa, which is villagers only supply of water, to five times the acceptable limit for consumption. There is evidence too which proves that Sugar Cane plantations from which Coke derives the sugar for it's drink, have children working on them despite this contravening countless international legislation on the forced labour of minors.
These are not isolated examples. The catalogue of worker abuse, water stealing, waste dumping and more is available to view at the War on Want website .
All this ripping off of the poor goes on behind the scenes while the squeaky clean image portrayed on the adverts around the world costs a mind-blowing £1,000,000,000. That's a billion of yer English pounds!!! Many people and organisations are waking up to the methods Coke is using to stay number one in the market. Become one of them!
]]>There are many odious sections of society that would have you believe that Poles, Romanians, Bangladeshi, Indian people etc are a drain on resources, scrounge benefits, steal jobs and women, create crime and intolerance, don't mix and a thousand other scare stories. A small amount of people do come here for a free ride, however a larger amount of “indigenous” people are just as bad or worse. Step in to any job centre and you will see more yobbish British types than any other nationality trying to get benefits.
The truth is that the country wouldn't operate and there would be a huge tax deficit were we to “send them back” as the phrase goes. Migrants create £2.5billion net profit in taxes for the economy, with many minorities historically working in the health services, and tertiary industries. A third of UK doctors and 13% of nurses are foreign born. That statistic doesn't include second and third generation migrants. Without sounding too crass try getting a taxi, or something to eat after 6pm and not using some kind of foreign associated service. Immigration alone is why Gordon Brown was able to predict a larger year on year growth rate as chancellor.
There is, contrary to reactionary belief, no proof that migrant workers have supplanted local labour supply with unemployment down year on year now for almost 10 years. Some people claim wage undercutting goes on. If that is the case, and occasionally it is, then why are the workers to blame? If I were to be given a pay cut at work, would it be my fault? Of course not, it would be the money grubbing chief executive, foreman, owner that should be to blame. If people are working for below minimum wage then unions and the Government must step in a put a stop to this, with tougher legislation against organisations that pay illegal wages.
The baby boomers are now retiring, and there have to be some workers to support the state pension system. As the age of our society becomes disproportionately older, the financial burden becomes stronger as these people are no longer economically active. The BNP solution is compulsory euthanasia at 80, I can't agree. After years of service to this country it is right that people should be able to expect to be looked after in their retirement, and to a high standard. This would be impossible without economic migration.
Refugees are a separate issue but one that should be clarified. We should be proud to take downtrodden peoples from everywhere, and used to be so in the days of Empire. However Pakistan, Iran, Armenia all take more asylum seekers than we do. Also, Britain is 10th in the list of EU countries for the amount of asylum applications received. We also turn more of these down than most of our European partners, as though it is something to be proud of with New Labour shouting in the commons about how many people they've “sent back” in a squalid vote stealing exercise. They also are not given more money than others as is commonly stated. The average received by a refugee in this country is 70% of basic income support – less than £40 a week. We detain more asylum seekers while processing their claim than any developed nation and are the only country in the world who locks up refugee children in detention centres. Furthermore and most importantly Asylum seekers cannot be illegal. The UN Convention on Refugees guarantees the right to flee using false papers if necessary, and for an asylum seeker to remain while their case is being heard. Most asylum seekers arrive “illegally” because the government demands visas from countries suffering persecution and civil war.
It is easy to continue with these statistics and facts, people either know them or don't believe them. The fact is immigration benefits us all, it's how the US became the leading superpower in the world. It is an immigrant nation, much like us and how we were once the most powerful nation on Earth. Right wing reactionaries will continue to stick their fingers in their ears and go “la la la”.
]]>It has to be said you won't find me often feeling sorry for the bloodsucking globalised creatures known as corporations, however I find myself in this unlikely quandary by proxy. In a national newspaper today it has been announced that the US administration is throwing its weight around with regards to industry. European businesses are being given orders to cease trading in any way with Iran, with an ominous caveat of “or else”. This ancient playground jibe relates to blackmail in the sense that European interests in the US will be compromised.
Quite how such influence on private capitalist interests can be wielded by so called financially liberal governments is bizarre to say the least, and not a little beyond the pale. We're talking about companies like BP, Shell, HSBC, Siemens etc whose tolerance of impending state control is usually fiercely contested backing down in the face of blatant financial fascism. If these companies have the right to rip all Europeans, Americans and Australians off, then they should have the right to rip off people in the middle east too.
The spineless European administrations rather than contesting this creeping imperialism are genuflecting towards the great super power and complying in earnest by encouraging their FTSE 100 companies et al to do as Old Sam says or they won't let us have our cough drops. You would have thought that with the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Iraq that the threat of a similar situation in Iran would have rattled some cages and contributed to resistance, as the heroic Jacques Chriac (never thought I'd write those words) showed in 2003. The European Union as a whole should stick a large two finger salute in Washington's direction and allow its own capitalist demons to decide for themselves which country they invade financially, and not pay attention to the ludicrous sanctions being placed on Iran at US insistence. Sanctions that clearly have worked so well in other areas throughout history: Iraq, South Africa, Burma (Myanmar) and Sudan but to name a few.
It's time to get rid of this yellow streak that runs down the heart of Europe.
]]>What is happening in Iran is an example of an oil rich country trying to raise its profile with a populist agenda with a view to becoming an important player on the world stage. Granted there are countless human rights abuses, much like there was in Iraq, and are in Burma, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea but the latter three have nothing mineral based to gain from imposing regime change. However the freedom of the Iranian people while far from perfect is far far more advanced than Saudi Arabia who lead the world in freedom stealing. It just happens that Saudi Arabia's royal family is little more than a puppet government of the US in the region, and thus unthreatenable.
The best case scenario is a George Bush not being tempted in to a final “double or quits” strike at the end of his term to make his legacy seem anything less than a disaster. There is even more chance of an armed strike if the Gallup poles suggest a Democratic victory at the next election in Washington. Bush has nothing to lose, and if it goes wrong and the Democrats are in, it becomes their fault. So international failure becomes US domestic policy faults. The likely scenario is such a strike, but there is a worst case scenario not yet contemplated.
A revitalised Russia is not taking kindly to the US throwing around its weight in the middle east which Putin considers his back yard. China too, who have historic links with Iran through oil and weapons sales are not wont to be ordered around by Washington, even less so due to the Dalai Lama being given the congressional medal by Bush which Beijing sees as an affront to itself. Three potentially trigger happy nuclear powers fighting over a country for whatever the reasons is not a palatable situation for anybody.
]]>Where and when did the bastions of progressive democracy become their worst nightmare? At which stage did the personal freedoms of the populous become secondary to the centralised control of the state, all be it at the wheel of a free market 4x4? The truth is this was always the case. From the very first Hollywood witch-hunts, the fear of communism was espoused to a society in an attempt to render it petrified and thus subject to the enslavement of ideas, liberties and ownership of humans as commodities.
The reason the US has become so insular is a direct result of the promotion of such a media. Should Americans be subject to observing real democracy in action such as in France or, ironically Germany they would rightly ask why the US is different? Furthermore the nightmare scenarios that were put forth in 50s and ever since regarding communism failed to tell the public anything about this phenomenon that was sweeping eastern Europe, new independent Africa and South America, anything factual that is. Communism was presented as some lizard from the planet Marx, in the galaxy of Lenin. If Americans were taught what Communism really was, they would have realised much sooner the creeping centralising of everything in the US under a guise of privatisation and capitalism.
The dichotomy of US communism however equates to two, rather than one class of people. The communist structure is reserved for the poorest people, where social mobility has been obliterated and where each person must help the next for all to survive. The golden ouvre of democracy, that shining torch which the US has deemed itself worthy of defending, regardless of whether it is in danger or not, is reserved for the richest members of society. The ones that benefit from the free market, from capitalism, from inflation, from stock markets, from ultimately, democracy, are the ones that have always benefited from staying out of a system where the each man lives for the next. To stay a member of the upper class, you must always have a lower.
So liberties and freedoms will continue to be eroded in favour of democracy by name, while a badly organised and ill-treated communism will continue to emerge for the poorest people. Perhaps it's time to give the Statue of Liberty back to France?
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