Springtime in Plutocracy

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Matt

It’s fair to say that this week won’t go down as a highpoint in Lord Snooty’s waning  prime ministerial career.   It wasn’t just that he was forced to appeal to Labour to get his gay marriage bill passed – an issue that has pushed  the ongoing ‘ civil war in conservatism’ to open insurrection.  Or Norman Tebbit warning of the threat of a Lesbian Queen (you at the back -  stop sniggering now!) and the even more alarming possibility that he might marry his own son.

Nor was it Gerald Howard condemning the bill as another sign of the ‘aggressive homosexuality community.’  Such statements certainly add some substance to the notion of ‘swivel-eyed loons’ -  regardless of  the Prime Minister’s rather desperate insistence that it isn’t a notion that he shares.

All of that doesn’t help His Lordship’s increasingly tenuous position in a party where the lunatics are now roaming the asylum in their bed clothes, even if it is hugely enjoyable for those of us who can’t wait to see the back of him and his loathsome government.

But now, to add insult to injury, some of Britain’s leading multinationals have told Cameron to tone down his ‘rhetoric’ about ‘aggressive’ corporate tax evasion, on the eve of next month’s G8 Summit in Northern Ireland.

They include Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone, BAE Systems,  GSK, Google, Marks and Spencers and BAE Systems (naturally), all of whom sent representatives to a meeting in London convened by Oxford University’s Said business school, where the head of CBI Sir Roger Carr, condemned the fact that:

‘ It is only in recent times that tax has become an issue on the public agenda – Starbucks, Google, Amazon – businesses that the general public know and believe they understand; businesses with a brand that become a perfect political football, the facts difficult to digest; public passions easy to inflame.’

Indeed they are – can’t think why, can you?   Carr insisted that tax avoidance ‘cannot be about morality – there are no absolutes’.  In these circumstances, any proposals for dealing with avoidance should avoiding the moral debate and concentrate on ‘fixing the rules on an international stage, not unilaterally’ through consultation with the companies themselves.

This is the same Sir Roger who praised the government only last week for ‘ lowering taxes, both corporate and personal; reducing regulation; supporting sectors, not picking winners; encouraging diversity and discouraging greed, by dialogue and debate – not legislation and diktat.’

In the same speech,  Carr warned that next month’s Government Spending Review should not ringfence health, schools and international development funding in 2015/16 and become ‘a licence for inefficiency.’  He also declared that:

 ‘As a nation, I believe there is a growing recognition that we are entitled to nothing – that welfare cannot be provided without wealth creation and grudging acceptance that austerity at home and exports abroad must be the twin track solution to our problems.’

I don’t know about you, but that ‘recognition’ sounds a lot like a moral ‘absolute’ to me, and Carr’s insistence that ‘austerity’ must be inflicted on the population in the name of ‘financial rigour’ and ‘efficiency’ sounds like an order.

Now the head of CBI – and a man tipped to head Britain’s sleaziest corporation BAE Systems -  is telling Lord Snooty to leave morality out of the equation when it comes to multinational ‘tax engineering’,  and also that any attempts to impose restrictions on such practices should be carried out in consultation with …those same corporations!

All of which places His Lordship on the horns of a dilemma.  If he continues to respond rhetorically to those irrational public ‘passions’ about corporate tax evasion, justice and unfairness or – God forbid – actually attempts to do something about them, he risks adding really powerful enemies to an already bulging list.     If he doesn’t he just looks like a weak and powerless windbag.

You have to feel sorry for him – ok, maybe not too much.   Because these are the choices that democratically-elected politicians are sometimes obliged to make in these days of endless crisis;  cutbacks,  poverty and ‘austerity’  for the majority and the ongoing destruction of the public sector on one hand – and total and unrestricted freedom for corporations to make as much money as possible, when, how, and where they like.

As Carr pointed out last week, Cameron has done pretty much everything that was expected of him.  But at the same time the scale of tax evasion and fraud in the UK and beyond is so enormous and so glaring that even His Lordship’s government of millionaires have been obliged to at least talk about it.

Now the plutocracy has warned him to tone it down, and something tells me that he probably will.

 

 

Posted in UK politics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Ukip: pretty straight racist guys

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Matt

Two days ago, all 16 Ukip councillors in Lincoln refused to reaffirm an anti-racism pledge, originally put forward by Labour six years ago, which asserts that Lincolnshire County Council will serve all people in the county equally.

Why wouldn’t they sign it?   Because Chris Pain, the leader of the county council’s Ukip group says that leader of the county council’s Ukip group said he could not sign a document that  ‘pushes forward the chance of multiculturalism, one of the fundamental things that’s wrong with our society’.

Pain insisted that this position is ‘not racist’ and that ‘ Our stance is on space and space alone.’  Why, he’s also told the Huffington Post ‘ I have friends of all creeds and colours, there is no way you can describe this [abstention] as a racist.’

This is the same Chris Pain who,  according to a Sunday Mirror investigation yesterday, left the following comment on his Facebook page:

‘Have you noticed that if you ­rearrange the letters in ‘illegal ­immigrants’, and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-********, raghead ******** with you.’

Yes, we see.    Pain says his account was hacked, to which one can only reply, well he would,  wouldn’t he?  But then the Huffington Post found this piece of ‘satire’, which Pain doesn’t deny, that went up on his Facebook page last year:

‘Today’s program features another chance to take part in our exciting competition: HIJACK AN AIRLINER and win A COUNCIL HOUSE!”

Anyone can play, provided they don’t already hold a valid British Passport, and you only need one word of English:
‘ASYLUM’

Prizes include all-expenses-paid accommodation, cash benefits starting at £180 a week and a chance to earn thousands more begging, mugging, burgling and accosting drivers at traffic lights.

This competition is open to everyone buying a ticket or stowing away on one of our partner airlines, ferry companies or Eurostar.’

Let no one say that Ukippers don’t have a sense of humour.  These guys are a laugh a minute.   Take the Ukip councillor from Manchester in the Mirror investigation who described Barack Obama as a Muslim and suggested he might be a potential suicide bomber.  You don’t think that’s funny?   Oh come on.

And the Mirror story also shows that they are posing important, penetrating questions that the ‘politically correct’ establishment doesn’t dare ask, such as the Ukip councillor who laments the fact that a mosque is being built in ‘quintessentially English’ Cambridge, and exclaims ‘Is nowhere sacred for the Brits in Britain any more?’

Probably not.   I mean, just look around you almost anywhere and you’ll see that the 51,745,135 people defined as ‘white British’ (81.9% of the UK total population) are becoming an endangered minority in their native land.    That might be why David Abbott, a member of Ukip’s national executive committee,  once gave money to American Friends of  BNP,   and hung out with Nick Griffin at a conference of white supremacists in the States.

And as if it wasn’t bad enough that the immigrants are destroying our way of life, the politically correct multiculturalist scum in Brussels, Westminster, the BBC, etc.,etc. are promoting homosexuality, which according to prominent Ukippers in another Mirror investigation earlier this year,   is closely linked to paedophilia and bestiality.

All this is worth remembering the next time you read some of the explanations for the rise of Ukip that have been floated in the media the last few weeks; how Ukip represents a general disenchantment with mainstream politics;  how Nigel Farage is just a down-to-earth straight guy who likes a pint and, unusually for politicians,  sounds like a human being rather than a robot; how Ukip appeals to ‘anxieties’ about national identity and multiculturalism and public ‘concerns’  about immigration; how its pathological loathing for the European Union has gained ground because the British are worried about jobs, pensions etc and fear becoming like Spain or Greece.

Because the statements of Pain & Co suggest that behind the ‘anxieties’ and ‘concerns’ and ‘euroscepticism’ and Farage’s grin, lies a toxic cesspool of bigotry and racism that appeals to the most primitive xenophobic nationalistic instincts of the British people, while simultaneously seeking to give these sentiments a veneer of political iconoclasm and respectability.

Ukip’s leadership will continue to deny all this, of course, and it may occasionally be forced to sack members who voice such views too openly and too loudly ( something that has yet to happen with Pain, but we’ll see).

But these are the people who are flocking to join the party.

And the rest of us ought to wonder why that is, and consider the possibility that Nigel and his fun-loving crew may not be very funny – and not very nice – at all.

 

 

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Sibel Edmonds: the woman no one wants to hear

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Matt

Anyone interested in getting to grips with the twisted and murky contradictions of the great war on terrorism should read the absolute must-read story by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed on the Ceasefire webzine on the FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.

A former translator for the FBI, Edmonds has been subjected to successive gagging orders by the US government for more than a decade now, ever since she tried to go public about evidence she came across suggesting that some of her colleagues were engaged in espionage.

That would be interesting enough to the US government and to the public, one would have thought.  But Edmonds also has some very  interesting revelations that she wants to share with the world.   According to Ahmed:

In interviews with this author in early March, Edmonds claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time, had innumerable, regular meetings at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, with U.S. military and intelligence officials between 1997 and 2001, as part of an operation known as ‘Gladio B’. Al-Zawahiri, she charged, as well as various members of the bin Laden family and other mujahideen, were transported on NATO planes to various parts of Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations.

‘ Gladio ‘, for those that don’t know, refers to the ‘stay behind’ networks established by NATO in Europe during the Cold War, which spawned all kinds of nebulous alliances between European fascists and secret services, particularly in Italy.   The existence of the European Gladio network is well-established – and so is the fact that some of its offshoots deliberately carried out ‘terrorist’ attacks in Italy and other countries as part of the ‘strategy of tension’ developed by fascists/militarists and Cold Warriors in various countries.

Now you would have thought, given the tumultuous events of the last decade or so, that American politicians and the media would want to consider whether there is any truth in Edmonds’ allegations, perhaps starting with the very simple question: Why was the second-in-command of al Qaeda participating in ‘Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations’ in 2001 – the same year in which al Qaeda was preparing to bring down the World Trade Centre?

I mean, you have to admit it’s a question worth posing, just for the sake of argument.   Yet strangely, hardly anyone wants to ask it.     US officials have done everything possible to shut Edmonds down and stop her talking.  The US media might as well stick its fingers in its ears and shout la-la-la-la-la whenever her name is mentioned.  The ’9/11 Commission’ once  took evidence from her and then completely ignored  everything she had to say from its final report.

And now, says Ahmed:

According to two Sunday Times journalists speaking on condition of anonymity, this and related revelations had been confirmed by senior Pentagon and MI6 officials as part of a four-part investigative series that were supposed to run in 2008. The Sunday Times journalists described how the story was inexplicably dropped under the pressure of undisclosed “interest groups”, which, they suggest, were associated with the U.S. State Department.

Which really says a great deal about the mess we’re in.   Not that the State Department would behave like that – nothing too surprising there.  But the fact that one of our most illustrious newspapers should have buckled on such an explosive story is really not the greatest advertisement for the fourth estate.

There is no doubt that it’s a story that would require lifting a lot of rocks and some very queer and probably not very savoury life forms would probably be uncovered in the process.    An investigation into Edmonds’ allegations would require real journalists to ask some probing questions not only about 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, but about the alliances between Western governments and al Qaeda-like formations that go right back to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

Inquisitive and truth-seeking newspapers would then pick up the ball and run with it to look at ‘Al Qaeda in the Maghreb’; at some of our jihadist allies in Libya and Syria, or some of the groups that now make up the ‘Taliban’ that once benefited from Western largesse in the days before we went to save Afghanistan from them, and ask why Western governments keep supporting the same groups that they are also fighting.

Some might end up  concluding that the ‘war on terror’ is a black farce and a dark manipulative game that has very little to do with fighting terrorism and a lot to do with projecting Western military power into areas of geopolitical and strategic interest, and disciplining the public in a period of chronic economic and social crisis.

They might then ask why Michael Sheehan, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations has declared that the war on terror could go on for ‘ At least 10 or 20 years’ – when the organization that the US is supposedly fighting in the name of civilisation has actually been a Western asset – at least from time to time.

But these aren’t questions that the MSM is much interested in.   And so it has been left to Ceasefire to pick up the baton and talk about the woman no one wants to hear – a woman with great deal more courage than many of those who are trying so desperately to ignore her.

Posted in Middle East, Terrorism, Terrorwar, US politics | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Black Holes in Benghazi

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Matt

Far be it from me to stand up and defend Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton.  But the Republican attempt to embroil his administration in a ‘cover-up’ over the killing of four Americans, including the US ambassador,  in Benghazi last September says a great deal about the intellectual and moral vortex into which American politics has descended.

Obama has just released 100 e-mails containing ‘talking points’ with the administration in the aftermath of last year’s attacks, in order to refute Republican accusations of a cover-up.   What does this ‘cover- up’ consist of?   According to the Republicans,  the administration presented last year’s attack as  an ad hoc protest against the Islamophobic ‘Innocence of Muslims’ video,  rather than the work of  a terrorist organization, in order to deflect criticisms that might have affected Obama’s election chances.

There may well be some truth in these allegations, a) because the idea that some bunch of guys simply happen to show up outside the US embassy on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and open fire with an RPG simply because they feel angry about a video is not entirely credible, and b) the administration may well have been reluctant to accept that the attack on the Benghazi embassy was a pre-planned ‘terrorist’ attack.

But such reluctance is not the same thing as a ‘cover-up’ – and even if it was it pales into insignificance in comparison with some of the mountain of sleaze that Republican governments have built up over decades.

Nevertheless the Republicans are clearly determined to use Benghazi, just as they once used Monica Lewinsky’s dress and the Starr Inquiry, to compensate for the fact they have currently made themselves unelectable.

Leading Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner and Karl Rove are using the Benghazi ‘cover-up’ not just to attack Obama and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, but also to discredit Hilary Clinton, in what appears to be a pre-emptive move to disrupt her presidential chances, should she choose to run in the next election.

The result is a carnival of lies, stupidity and sheer bad faith.   Take Dick Cheney, that shining beacon of truth and probity, accusing the administration of  having ‘ ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the threat. They ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they needed more security.’

Cheney even has the gall to suggest that Obama should have scrambled fighter jets or unleashed special forces in response to the Benghazi attack, just like the Bush administration, because, according to the former Veep ‘ In my past experience when we got into these situations — especially after 9/11 — we were always on the step, locked and loaded, ready to go on 9/11.’

The dishonesty of that statement is so gross that I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, so I think I’ll just let out a strangled croak instead.   Or better still, move on to  Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post, shaking his semantic maracas,  accusing Obama of playing down the significance of the Benghazi attack, by describing it as ‘ act of terror’ rather than an ‘act of terrorism’.

Whooo, come on and feel the nuance.   Ok, maybe don’t bother, because this really won’t take you very far in any direction.   And hey, isn’t that John Bolton, the mustachioed troglodyte who has hardly even seen  an Arab country that he didn’t want to blast to smithereens, shuffling his tail out there at the back of the procession?   It is indeed he, telling Newsmax  – a webzine that makes Fox News look like The Guardian that

‘The failure of the administration eight months after the attack either to retaliate, to avenge the killing, to exact retribution, to make it clear to the terrorists you can’t do this and get away with it, is much more serious….It tells terrorists, you can attack Americans with impunity, and that’s very dangerous.’

Who would Bolton like to ‘retaliate’ against, given that the people who attacked the Benghazi embassy were in fact de facto allies of the United States and the EU during the overthrow of Gaddafi?   The Great Avenger doesn’t say.

There is clearly not much point in bombing Libya – already done that.   Or Mali -  the French have got it covered.   At least Israel is bombing Syria – something that will undoubtedly warm Bolton’s heart.   And in Bolton-land, it’s almost certain that Iran had something to do with Benghazi, and even if it didn’t, it’s still probably worth unleashing some shock n’ awe just to keep the Persians in place.

Nowhere in this scandal-in-a-teacup, is there the slightest acknowledgement either by the Democrats or the Republicans that what took place in Benghazi is a direct consequence of a fraudulent ‘humanitarian’ intervention to ‘ prevent a massacre’ (in Benghazi) and overthrow a dictator that has effectively ripped to pieces yet another Arab society – while simultaneously opening new spaces for al-Qaeda-like Salafist formations to spring up like poisonous mushrooms.

There is a debate to be had there, which could also address the question of why the same process is being repeated in Syria.   But these aren’t debates that either the Democrats or the Republicans are interested in having, because all the latter really want to do is ditch Obama and they don’t care what it takes.

And their efforts will always bear fruit in the land of McCain, Limbaugh and Beck.  Thus  a Public Polling Policy poll has found that 55 percent of ‘very conservative’ respondents and 41 percent of Republicans believe that Benghazi is the ‘biggest political scandal in American history’.

Which only proves that conservatives know nothing about American history, and that the Republican party has become a black hole in which  truth, rationality and honesty simply vanish – never to be seen again.

Posted in Terrorism, US politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment