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Britain

Guardian columnist gets a clue(TM)

2005-07-10

The instinctive response of a significant portion of the rich world's intelligentsia to the murder of innocents on 11 September was anything but robust. A few, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, were delighted. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was 'the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos,' declared the composer whose tin ear failed to catch the screams. Others saw it as a blow for justice rather than art. They persuaded themselves that al-Qaeda was made up of anti-imperialist insurgents who were avenging the wrongs of the poor. 'The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty, so what is 20,000 dead in New York?' asked Dario Fo. Rosie Boycott seemed to agree. 'The West should take the blame for pushing people in Third World countries to the end of their tether,' she wrote. Article continues In these bleak days, it's worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that 'we had it coming'. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought. All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we've got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair's fault but there wouldn't be indiscriminate murder because 'the threat' was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him. I'd say the 'power of nightmares' side of that oxymoronic argument is too bloodied to be worth discussing this weekend and it's better to stick with the wider delusion. On Thursday, before the police had made one arrest, before one terrorist group had claimed responsibility, before one body had been carried from the wreckage, let alone been identified and allowed to rest in peace, cocksure voices filled with righteousness were proclaiming that the real murderers weren't the real murderers but the Prime Minister. I'm not thinking of George Galloway and the other saluters of Saddam, but of upright men and women who sat down to write letters to respectable newspapers within minutes of hearing the news. 'Hang your head in shame, Mr Blair. Better still, resign - and whoever takes over immediately withdraw all our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,' wrote the Rev Mike Ketley, who is a vicar, for God's sake, but has no qualms about leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Iraq to the Baath party and al-Qaeda. 'Let's stop this murder and put on trial those criminals who are within our jurisdiction,' began Patrick Daly of south London in an apparently promising letter to the Independent. But, inevitably, he didn't mean the bombers. 'Let's start with the British government.' And so it went on. At no point did they grasp that Islamism was a reactionary movement as great as fascism, which had claimed millions of mainly Muslim lives in the Sudan, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan and is claiming thousands in Iraq. As with fascism, it takes a resolute dunderheadedness to put all the responsibility on democratic governments for its existence. I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them. But it's a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors. Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC. Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows. The only plausible excuse for 11 September was that it was a protest against America's support for Israel. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden's statements revealed that he was obsessed with the American troops defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein and had barely said a word about Palestine. After the Bali bombings, the conventional wisdom was that the Australians had been blown to pieces as a punishment for their government's support for Bush. No one thought for a moment about the Australian forces which stopped Indonesian militias rampaging through East Timor, a small country Indonesia had invaded in 1975 with the backing of the US. Yet when bin Laden spoke, he said it was Australia's anti-imperialist intervention to free a largely Catholic population from a largely Muslim occupying power which had bugged him. East Timor was a great cause of the left until the Australians made it an embarrassment. So, too, was the suffering of the victims of Saddam, until the tyrant made the mistake of invading Kuwait and becoming America's enemy. In the past two years in Iraq, UN and Red Cross workers have been massacred, trade unionists assassinated, school children and aid workers kidnapped and decapitated and countless people who happened to be on the wrong bus or on the wrong street at the wrong time paid for their mistake with their lives. What can the survivors do? Not a lot according to a Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He told bin Laden that the northern Kurds may be Sunni but 'Islam's voice has died out among them' and they'd been infiltrated by Jews. The southern Shia were 'a sect of treachery' while any Arab, Kurd, Shia or Sunni who believed in a democratic Iraq was a heretic. Our options are as limited When Abu Bakr Bashir was arrested for the Bali bombings, he was asked how the families of the dead could avoid the fate of their relatives. 'Please convert to Islam,' he replied. But as the past 40 years have shown, Islamism is mainly concerned with killing and oppressing Muslims. In his intervention before last year's American presidential election, bin Laden praised Robert Fisk of the Independent whose journalism he admired. 'I consider him to be neutral,' he said, so I suppose we could all resolve not to take the tube unless we can sit next to Mr Fisk. But as the killings are indiscriminate, I can't see how that would help and, in any case, who wants to be stuck on a train with an Independent reporter? There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long.

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Britain

Fun & Games as G8 looms

2005-07-05

EDINBURGH: Up to 1000 anarchists have been blamed for bringing the Scottish capital to a standstill and provoking fierce confrontations with police. The centre of Edinburgh was flooded with hundreds of riot police who fought anti-capitalist protesters repeatedly less than 48 hours before the start of the G8 summit. With more trouble predicted for today's summit opening at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, police said up to 30 protesters had been arrested. Tom Halpin, Assistant Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police, accused protesters of "reckless and irresponsible behaviour". However, protesters accused police of being heavy-handed after several dozen officers, in full riot gear, drew their retractable truncheons as they ran through Prince's Street Gardens, on the northern side of Edinburgh's main thoroughfare, striking onlookers as well as protesters. A cyclist trying to move out of the way of a skirmish was hit with a baton. Tensions had been rising all day during the unofficial "Festival for Full Enjoyment", a series of marches and blockades across the city involving about 1000 anarchists, clowns, drummers and a troupe with sparkly wings calling themselves the Fairy Army. What, no giant puppets? The protest began quietly, with journalists and police outnumbering the marchers by at least four to one. Marchers blew bubbles, shook bells, waved streamers and scattered fake bank notes. One carried a placard saying: "Unemployed and loving it". Yeah, having a job really cuts down on the time you have available to protest people with jobs A winged member of the Fairy Army said he was there to have fun and to "spread a little magic". But the presence of small groups of masked youths, some waving black flags, betrayed a more sinister element. Hundreds of anarchists mingled among the protesters and by mid-afternoon most of Prince's Street was sealed off by riot police. A handful of officers moved among the crowd photographing people. In Canning Street, in Edinburgh's financial district, police hemmed in about 300 protesters. One scaled a 7m wall and mooned police below. The police response could not have been more different from the low-key presence at Saturday's well-organised and peaceful Make Poverty History march, attended by an estimated 200,000 people. The turning point was a scuffle in Prince's Street Gardens, in which anarchists tore up plants from flower beds and threw them at police. Chuffy Dominguez, 18, from Glasgow, who was dressed as a clown, said: "This is unbelievable. The police are baton-charging people who are here today to party on the streets. It's a deliberate ploy to stigmatise anarchists by flooding the place with riot police and penning us in. It's a sad day."

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Britain

What Labour Wants out of the Push for African Aid

2005-06-12

The last half of an article in the Tory magazine the Spectator. Free reg required. The broader political significance of this poverty agenda has not yet been noticed. It has its roots in the terror all mainstream politicians feel at the collapse of mass party politics. The Labour party and the Tory party, which both enjoyed memberships of over one million voters barely a generation ago, today cannot count on more than 500,000 between them. By contrast, the four largest aid agencies — Oxfam, Christian Aid, Action Aid and Save the Children — have the best part of three million members. Just before the general election the ace Labour strategist Douglas Alexander, now minister for Europe, delineated the problem in a pamphlet, Telling It Like It Could Be. 'Citizens are increasingly participating in activities such as single issue campaigns,' wrote Alexander, 'without seeing these as activities in which party politics should or could play a role. Labour needs to engage these people in our vision of the good society.' Alexander, a key adviser to Chancellor Gordon Brown, argues that Labour must take full advantage of all this energy. His pamphlet, though published before the election, was a manifesto for much that has happened since. It explains exactly why the British government is so mesmerised by the Geldof agenda, and accounts for the perplexing collusion that will take place when the G8 summit takes place in Scotland: the British government conspiring with protesters by urging them to come and disrupt its own event. For New Labour, Make Poverty History will win back the voters lost over Iraq. It is, of course, good that we should think about Africa, and there is no denying that Bob Geldof is a wonderful man. Nevertheless, there are substantial reasons for concern at this new method of making policy. For one thing, it is not democratic. Africa did not loom large during the general election campaign. Pretty well all MPs report that alarm about mass immigration was a much bigger issue. And yet we have heard nothing about immigration since 5 May. The day after the election Tony Blair announced that he had been chastened by the result, and would spend much more time addressing the domestic agenda. Instead, he has set about the prodigious task, which has frustrated all politicians since Alfred Milner a century ago, of how to solve the African problem. This project is about re-energising lost activists, not appealing to the average voter. Giving way to pressure groups like Make Poverty History is as bad a way of making policy as surrendering to corporate lobbyists. Its agenda — debt forgiveness and a huge increase in aid — is very hard to defend. As Richard Dowden of the Royal Africa Society notes, 'If aid were the solution to Africa's problems it would be a rich continent by now.' Tony Blair is open to the same criticism over Africa as over Iraq: that he is guilty of a naive belief in interventionism. The contrast between the British insistence on aid and the American focus on proper governance is very striking. Nevertheless George Bush did his best for Tony Blair this week in Washington. He is extremely fond of the British Prime Minister, and the real venom is felt towards Gordon Brown. The Chancellor badly upset the White House when he tried to railroad Condoleezza Rice over Africa at a meeting in the British Foreign Office on 4 February. According to well-placed sources, he treated Rice with the same contempt that he normally hands out to Cabinet colleagues. Afterwards the Americans briefed that Brown's financing plan was poorly thought through and would 'be forgotten within a year'. Well-informed sources say that President Bush is proud of what he has done for Africa, and is 'affronted by the way Gordon Brown is trying to get cheap publicity ahead of the G8'. The US President may well have spent a portion of his private meeting with Tony Blair this week urging the British Prime Minister to remain in power as long as possible. Meanwhile the volume of private briefing against the Chancellor from within the White House is remarkable by any standards. None of this will do Gordon Brown any harm at all with the Labour party. Quite the reverse: falling out in such a spectacular fashion with the White House, and the prospect of a sharp cooling in the special relationship with Brown at No. 10, will help ensure him the succession. Even so, the Chancellor's clumsy, bullying diplomacy raises real questions about whether he has the calibre to be prime minister.

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Fifth Column

Anarchist groups plan takeover of Geldof's march

2005-06-05

Anarchists from around the world are planning to cause chaos at next month's G8 summit in Gleneagles as a row broke out last night between Bob Geldof and DJ Andy Kershaw over the absence of black musicians at events staged to benefit Africans. Picky, picky, picky. If they're not happy without black musicians, let them turn down the money, if any... With police fears mounting over Geldof's call for one million people to protest at the summit, Kershaw last night condemned the almost exclusively white line-up for the pop concerts to coincide with the summit. "If we are going to change the West's perception of Africa, events like this are the perfect opportunity to do something for Africa's self-esteem," he said. "But the choice of artists for the Live8 concerts will simply reinforce the global perception of Africa's inferiority." I dunno. Maybe they'll escape being associated with what looks like it's going to be a riot by dipshits... Bob Geldof last week called on one million people to descend on Edinburgh on 6 July - a move branded irresponsible by city leaders and local police. Geldof's fellow campaigner, Midge Ure, later claimed the one million figure was "symbolic" and talks between the campaign groups and police appear to have resolved any potential problems for the march. "What we meant was 'a whole bunch.' Yeah. That's it..." But The Independent on Sunday can reveal that anarchist groups that have rioted at previous G8 gatherings are planning similar disruptions in Scotland and plan to hijack Geldof's "long march to freedom" on 6 July and the Make Poverty History rally on 2 July. Anarchist groups will encourage protesters to "Make Capitalism History" instead. Seems like having a job would be a fine antidote to poverty, but I suspect that professional anarchists have found another method of avoiding it... Several organisations will meet at an undisclosed location in south-east England on Saturday to discuss plans to disrupt the G8 summit. These include a series of blockades and protests, which they hope will bring the event to a standstill. Over the coming weeks teams of security experts are slowly turning the Gleneagles complex and the 850 acres of countryside surrounding it into a technological fortress. In addition to fears that militant anarchists could cause havoc there is also the recognition of just how tempting a target the summit could appear to the forces of terrorism. ... which tend to blend right in with the anarchokiddies...

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Noted statesman Bob Geldof urges G8 protests

2005-06-01

BOB GELDOF was yesterday accused of being "irresponsible" by a senior police officer after he invited hundreds of thousands of protesters to the G8 summit in Edinburgh. The prospect of "up to a million people" descending on the capital for an event that has already prompted security fears has infuriated local authorities and Lothian and Borders Police, who warned that such a massive influx could "end in tragedy". Especially if ANSWER and the WWP are there, and they will be. At a press conference to launch Live 8, Geldof urged every man, woman and child in Britain to give up work and school and march in their thousands to a rally in Edinburgh on 6 July, in an attempt to influence the G8 summit of world leaders. Geldof said Britain had an opportunity "to do something unparalleled in the world, and especially at the beginning of the 21st century, and that is to tilt the world a little bit on its axis in favour of the poor". Eradicating poverty in Africa could be momentous work for the leaders of the world's richest nations, he said. "It is intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus." Seems intellectually absurd that a continent — an entire continent — remains mired in poverty and ignorance due to the near uniform ineptitude and rapacity of its native ruling classes. It's not the civilized world's fault that Zim-Bob-we, formerly the breadbasket of Africa, has managed to reintroduce starvation. It's not the civilized world's fault that the Congo, chock full of diamonds, gold, and other riches, has never managed to make it out of internecine warfare, hereditary rule, and even cannibalism. It's not the fault of the civilized world that Somalia can't even set up a blasted government, fergawdsake. He had been reluctant to repeat the Live Aid of 1985, but said that this time the aim was "political justice". The vast amounts of money raised by Live Aid '85 went missing, right into the bank accounts and armories of the Ethiopian klepto-thugocrats. Whence it was recycled to Switzerland the the Caymans. Instead of asking for cash for charities, he was asking people to "get to Edinburgh, get up there". He continued: "Give up two days of work and there is a chance that maybe, just maybe, you can change things. What's better - two days of work? Two days of geometry? Or participating in something you will remember all your life?" Bringing the UK economy to a grinding halt for two days is a good way to destroy the resources the Western countries can provide to Africa, dingbat. Are you giving away your concert tickets for free? Didn't think so. In his inimitable style, the singer warned the G8 leaders that they should sit up and take notice. "If you're not prepared to do that, you're not welcome in my country," he said. "If anyone won't come to our party, they can f*** off." Midge Ure, fellow Live Aid founder and organiser of Live 8 in Scotland, predicted "tens of thousands" of dupes fools rubes dingbats people would turn up in the capital. They always do for G8 conferences, don't they? He called for the protests to take the shape of the Ban The Bomb demos in the Sixties: "Go there, be part of it. This is something special. We may never have the opportunity of having these people on our shores again." There was talk of "planes, trains, buses" and even a flotilla of boats to transport protesters north of the Border, but few details had been worked though, Ure admitted. Not real big on oraganization, are they -- that's why ANSWER is able to pull off their stunts. He acknowledged that the local authorities were "scared", but he called on the people of Scotland to open their doors to the protesters. "We want every church, synagogue, mosque to open their doors and let people in. Scotland has an amazing history of being big-hearted, we are big-hearted and we mean well. Let these people into your spare room, garage, your garden." So that they can trash the place and leave you big-hearted people holding the bag. When asked if Edinburgh could handle a million protesters, Geldof said he didn't see a problem if people were well-behaved. "You will get a few looney toons, but, as Midge Ure says, it will be a party. But how disgraceful to behave like a twat in the face of such poverty. Let's calm down and let's get things done." However, a senior officer at Lothian and Borders Police said that the city's accommodation was fully booked during the summit and would not cope with a surge of protesters. "Sorry, old man! We're all booked up!" "Try the French Riviera. It's warmer and you won't stand out as much." When asked if Geldof had been "irresponsible" with his invitation, the officer said he had. Yesterday, Assistant Chief Constable Ian Dickenson, head of G8-related events in the Lothian and Borders Police area, warned: "We cannot allow the policing capability or any infrastructure to be overwhelmed and compromise the safety of those involved." In a statement issued after the Live 8 launch, Mr Dickenson said: "We were already planning for more than 100,000 people to take part in the Make Poverty History march, which would have been the biggest event ever in Scotland. Now there has been talk of up to a million people coming to Edinburgh but, frankly, it is difficult to conceive how they could all get to this area in the first place and where they could assemble in safety. Crowds of this size are potentially hazardous. No-one wants tragedy to distract world attention from the real aims of the campaigners." He added: "It is one thing to mobilise tens of thousands of compassionate people with good intentions in an organised event. It is something else to manage such numbers without organisation, accommodation or support." Donald Anderson, the leader of Edinburgh City Council, said the council would have to "go back to the drawing board to ensure there is sufficient campsite space in the city". He also warned that people intending to come to Edinburgh "need to ensure they have made arrangements to stay". At the launch of Live 8 in the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, which was also attended by Sir Elton John, one of the original Live Aid acts, Geldof said he hoped the concert would put pressure on world leaders at the G8 summit into dropping Third World debt. The concerts, featuring Madonna, Paul McCartney, REM, Elton John, Robbie Williams, The Cure and Razorlight, will be held in five cities - London, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Philadelphia. They have been organised in support of the Make Poverty History campaign, an alliance of UK charities, trade unions and other organisations. The Pope, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama are due to be asked by Geldof to address the audience during the main concert, possibly by satellite link. The campaign focuses on three areas: debt, aid and trade. Organisers believe Western governments should cancel the debt of the poorest countries, increase international aid by at least $50 billion (£27 billion) per year and end export subsidies which would stop big businesses from profiting at the expense of poor communities. Sigh. Big businesses give poor families jobs, at least in those areas where there's such a thing as property rights. In the areas where there aren't property rights, the poor go right on being poor... Let's cancel the debt for Somalia, Zim-bob-we and the Congo. Should clear things right up ... Richard Curtis, the director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, who is a spokesman for the campaign, said: "World poverty is sustained not by chance or nature, but by a combination of factors: injustice in global trade, the huge burden of debt, and insufficient and ineffective aid. Each of these is exacerbated by inappropriate economic policies imposed by rich countries." I can remember when Japan was a bombed out hulk of a nation, noted for its export of cheap knock-offs, when "Made in Japan" meant cheesy. I can remember when South Korea was a war-ravaged mostly agricultural backwater. I can remember when Taiwan was no great shakes, mainly notable for its seemingly never-ending crisis over Quemoy and Matsu. The Thailand I remember was a land of agriculture, with water buffaloes and occasionally elephants roaming the streets. I can remember when Malaysia was poor and backwards, and I can remember being admonished to eat all my dinner and to think of the starving children in India. Somehow all of them managed to overcome those injustices in global trade, their own loads of debt, and the inefficiencies of aid programs. Bob missed all that, I guess. Maybe he wasn't paying attention back then. Each day 50,000 people die as a result of extreme poverty, he said. Curtis added: "If 50,000 people died in London on Monday, in Rome on Tuesday, in Berlin on Wednesday, in New York on Thursday and in Paris on Friday, the G8 leaders in Gleneagles would find the money and the solution to the problem as they walked from the front door to the reception desk."

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