Biden and Business As Usual - Liberal Delusion Number 119

 One week out from the US Presidential election and, not entirely unlike last time, the so-called progressive wing of the Establishment, the liberals and social democrats, their sponsors and media mates, have perhaps a little more cautiously than last time more or less called it for Joe Biden. Trump is toast, disintegrating faster than bone spurs in an X-ray machine.

Yet, while yesterday's Rasmussen national poll giving the incumbent Trump a 1% lead is still something of an outlier, most other polls, while giving Biden a lead of around 7% on average all show things tightening. With the impact of the efforts by Republican governors to effectively disenfranchise poor and black voters over the last two years, a tack seen on balance as favouring Trump, and the robust efforts to impair voting by mail in this virus-ridden poll, the result may yet be much, much closer than the broad left, and some traditional conservatives, might like to wish. 

Certainly, it is far too soon to call the result – especially once you factor in the massive pile up of Democrat votes in relatively few big states set against the need to balance that with wins in smaller states to tilt the winner-takes-all maths of the Electoral College (the body that actually elects the President). As we know from 2016, the President does not need a majority of votes cast to carry the college. He just needs to come close and come ahead in the right places.

Taking a hunch, Biden on balance may probably win; and yet his victory will be a truly hollow one; less the routing of far right, neofascism and rather more the temporary stopgap Hindenburg provided against Hitler’s Nazis in their 1932 contest. That even now the outcome is actually still in question with Trump averaging the support of around 9 in 20 voters demonstrates that this vote will not conclude anything in spite of all the pious hopes of liberals for the USA to return to being “a normal country” and of their counterparts everywhere for “politics as usual”, a resumption of the comfortable spin of two sides of the same capitalist coin taking buggins turn at squandering people’s hopes and dreams and our planet’s resources and biosphere alike.

Biden’s legacy is toxic – from his active  backing of crime legislation that has incarcerated almost 3 million predominantly black people to work for free on behalf of the military and big corporations in a form of modern slavery under Bill Clinton to fostering the continent-wide fracking rolled out under Obama. Like many liberals his stance is that of a chameleon, from cold blue to hot red and back again depending on circumstances. And, in Biden’s case, it seems to also be who he listened to last - Bernie or Barack, Kamala or Hillary.

Trump has made much play of Biden’s memory issues. Some have seen this as a 74 year old man trying to disingenuously portray a 78 year od man as “past it”. But in truth Joe’s memory lapses extend far back in time to much younger days: this is a man who in his first run for President, way back in 1988, forgot to credit Bobby Kennedy when he used his words to invoke patriotism, forgot to mention he was quoting UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock when he asked why his wife was the first in her family to go to college and who somehow forgot that rather than topping his law class, came 74^th out of 86 and, in a strikingly Trumpian outburst, told a questioner he almost certainly had the higher IQ.

Biden’s 1988 primary candidacy collapsed with his hubris and lies, but this year it seems the Democratic National Committee was so fearful of a truly transformational candidacy in the shape of Bernie Sanders that they set aside everything. From Joe’s economy with actualite through his son’s unquestionably dodgy dealings in Ukraine to the outstanding, un-investigated claim of sexual assault by him on a young female intern working in his office in the 1990s, it doesn't matter - all that does is that he isn't Trump.

And it shows.

Biden was credited as the winner of the final debate last week: most polls found him to have stood up to Trump, though relatively few were enthused by him. The debate was seen as treading water and unlikely to shift more than a handful of voters. And yet a throw away comment by Biden in the closing moments may yet prove to be disastrous.

Asked about climate change, Biden seemingly boldly announced he would close down the oil industry. Unsurprisingly, Trump suggested this was the big news of the night, leaving Biden stumbling to correct himself that this would be done “over time.”

It is true we need to shut down oil, but the fact is Joe Biden has no particular interest in doing so. Nor does he have much understanding of what might replace it. Where Bernie Sanders (or the Green Party Presidential candidate Howie Hawkins) might have talked about transitioning jobs in oil into renewables, Biden betrayed his lack of knowledge and even belief in the need to change by having little to nothing to say. It was after all, under the Obama-Biden Administration that the plug was effectively pulled on the previously burgeoning US renewables industry in favour of opening up the country to fracking - so much so that his now running mate, Kamala Harris, sued them unsuccessfully in her capacity as Attorney-General of California to stop them drilling off the seismically sensitive Pacific coast.

In the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, once a Democratic bastion but in many counties now with a registered Republican majority, Biden’s confusion and slipperiness may be his undoing. For this is where liberal managerialism comes unstuck – it was precisely its detached elitism, foisting fracking on poor communities and now after they have made some modest economic gain from it in spite of their environmental catastrophes deciding to shut it down, that turned voters away from the likes of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. 

Biden had established a narrow lead with the prospect of winning the state's vital Electoral College votes back, but on the ground Trump’s campaign by all accounts is reaping a swift dividend from Sleepy Joe’s apparent wish to now shut down the very industry he and Barak Obama imposed on the state. The very latest Pennsylvania statewide poll, out tonight, gives a 2% advantage to the President.

Donald Trump is an appalling, nasty, greedy, sociopathic narcissist. It is truly difficult to find any redeeming features in the man at all. Yet like Hitler, he has fed on genuine grievance and directed it to his advantage, however dissembling and disingenuously. Unlike Hitler, he has no ideology and is not as well organised, but that is not to say that, once he is gone, someone more coherent won’t emerge at the head of his huge and still very much intact base vote and the armed militias he has told to “stand by”. 

That the Democrats have singularly failed to destroy him and his creed is proof enough that they have yet again failed to even begin to understand the forces that created him in the first place – because they and the corrupt elitism they represent and buttress are perhaps the primary force. They, like New Labour under Blair in the UK,  saw so many working class Democrats as having nowhere else to go and so eminently betrayable to the corporate interests that have bought the Dems lock, stock and barrel – so much so that a movement like Sanders’ socialist one was seen as a threat rather than the once-in-a-generation transformational opportunity that it was.

And if in the end Joe Biden just squeaks in, with a half-baked programme, a promise simply to not-be-Trump and a Supreme Court soaked in Tea Party bigotry, the next four years are already lost and the next forty seriously at risk.

Bernie Sanders and the Revolution to Come

Passing the Progressive Torch: Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders

And so democratic socialist standard-bearer Senator Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for US President.

With around half the primaries contested, he trailed former Vice-President Joe Biden by over 300 delegates and with surveys giving Biden a roughly 2:1 advantage in forthcoming contests, Sanders could not see a realistic way to win. Coupled with the hobbling of his campaign, which had thrived on mass rallies and town hall events, by the coronavirus crisis, the institutional barriers thrown up by the Democratic Party establishment in the form of the Democrat National Committee have yet again stopped any progressive traction within the party.

There is some evidence of ballot tampering - notably, on Super Tuesday, when Biden's campaign decisively pulled ahead after a dreadful start, data indicated something amiss in states where Sanders won the exit polls but lost the actual vote, but with extraordinary differences well beyond the normal margin of error. And from the outset the mess in Iowa stymied Sanders' momentum, although it did get moving afterwards for a short period until the sudden turnaround in favour of the previously badly flailing Biden in South Carolina. The withdrawal of all the centrist candidates in favour of the clearly ailing former VP, coupled with Elizabeth Warren's refusal to back Sanders when she withdrew, effectively handed the nomination to Biden and his vague, liberal platform.

And so, just as Corbyn was crucified by a range of tactical manoeuvring by his centrist opponents and their corporate media paymasters in the UK, so in the USA once again the Establishment has spiked and neutralised a major challenge. They may be popping the champagne in the DNC tonight, but in truth the path ahead for them is infinitely harder than the typically pompously naive centrists can imagine.

Joe Biden - confused

For Joe Biden has to be arguably one of the worst, if not the worst, candidates the Democrats have ever nominated. Aside from his self-evident health issues, which appear to be some form of dementia or Alzheimers, his provenance is poisonous.

While faced with the mercurial Trump some may still fondly remember the Obama years, when Biden served as the President's loyal deputy, many aspects of his career raise serious questions - his civil rights record, contrary to his propaganda, is poor going back decades, as has been his approval of wars and welfare cuts. A rape allegation from a Democrat activist and former staffer of Biden has gone uninvestigated alongside a myriad of other issues about his invasion of women's personal space and unwelcome touching. And while Democrats may have invoked legal process to try to impeach Trump as ineffectually as Don Quixote tilting at windmills, the incumbent President was in fact worrying a very real sore when he tried to induce the Ukrainians to investigate Biden's son Hunter over his lucrative involvement in the energy sector in their country.

Senior Democrats seem to acknowledge this and blatantly, having rid themselves of Sanders' challenge, rumour is rife that Biden will, in fact, not become their final candidate for President. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose profile has been substantially boosted by his very visible leadership of the state's response to the Covid-19 epidemic, or even former 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton, are both touted as possible replacements, in spite of neither having won a single delegate to the Democrat Convention. Taking the democracy, such as it is, finally and irrevocably out of the Democratic Party.

So what now for the progressive and socialist movement? Sanders' relentless advocacy for fully-funded public health has been completely and dreadfully validated as tens of thousands of US lives succumb to coronavirus, with poorer and ethnic minority communities disproportionately affected. His huge movement, which has effectively mobilised tens of thousands of younger people and others towards a socialist or at least social democratic platform, remains intact and vibrant, hungering for change and social justice. And with the pandemic set to utterly transform politics around the globe, the USA will be no exception.

All the inequality, the underinvestment in crisis preparation and lack of effective public health facilities and staff, as well as the low level of welfare in the USA, has never been more poignantly and powerfully evident than now. While President Trump has enjoyed, inevitably, a miniature boost in the polls as he heads up the government response to the national crisis, his veering backwards and forwards around how to respond to a threat he ignored for weeks, then played down for weeks and for which even now he declares all manner of wild and unproven solutions that never turn out leave him vulnerable to attack.

Just as Cameron and Osborne's prominent involvement in the Remain campaign handed the UK Euro-referendum to the Brexiteers, so the DNC's eagerness to put up Biden or Clinton or even Cuomo against Trump plays directly into his hands in the November poll. It is unsurprising that a leaked recording showed that he feared Sanders above all other potential Democrats - for Sanders' stance on issues like opposing free trade deals like the job-thieving NAFTA, or on tackling the influence of political lobbying in "the swamp" posed a direct threat to Trump's tried and tested card, even as the incumbent, of being in Washington but not of it. While centrists fantastically claim that Biden can reach out to supposed "moderate" Republicans who nevertheless backed Trump in 2016, in truth, it is Sanders' agenda of radical change that is far more likely to cut into the President's base of the alienated and oppressed working class and turn their anger into something more positive.

By contrast, Biden or Clinton could not appeal to such voters in a century of trying - it is precisely because of them and their betrayal of the decades' old New Deal Coalition that Trump and other populists have been able to rise and harness voters' disillusion into racism and xenophobia rather than challenging the gross wealth of the tiny elite.

With a clearly misplaced loyalty, Sanders has already lauded Biden in a show of unity, while stating he will stay on the remaining primary ballots, though inactively, in order to influence the final party policy platform in the autumn. But that is almost certainly a forlorn hope. Biden and his ringmasters have made clear that they will stick with the same unimaginative, business-as-usual Democrat agenda that left Trump catapulted into the Oval Office four years ago.

Sanders' socialist torch will now pass on, skipping a generation from him to much younger politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and their colleagues in the Progressive Caucus within Congress and others outside the legislature. The Green New Deal, central to Sanders' movement, will continue to inspire and attract millions of younger voters as the climate crisis eclipses by far the current virus pandemic, but it will also increasingly raise the question of how long, and why, they should persist with the institutionally totalitarian, pro-corporate, corrupt Democratic Party - or go their own way. With socialism as popular as capitalism among young US adults even before the current crisis, new routes to change will inevitably be mapped out and taken. If ever there was a time for a third party/ independent run by a credible progressive candidate, it is now.

Third parties are effectively barred from competing in the USA, a fact missed by much of a world  still dazzled by the propaganda that it is supposedly the "land of the free". While not formally banned, they frequently have to find much higher, often prohibitive thresholds of sometimes tens of thousands of electors to nominate their candidates while Democrats and Republicans enjoy automatic ballot access and even then remain excluded from the public funds handed over to the two main parties. With the media stitched up to advocate the status quo, like much of the rest of the world, voters are powerfully corralled into voting for the "right" candidates, who, contrary to myth, are distinctly not the best of the USA.

Yet the Republicans themselves once replaced the Whigs almost overnight, and strong third candidate Presidential runs have occurred as recently as 1992 when Ross Perot polled nearly one in five votes running as an independent on an anti-free trade platform. With Biden or any replacement distinctly flaky and Trump vulnerable over the Covid-19 crisis and the economic one to follow, could there be a better time? Wouldn't a Sanders-Cortez ticket, perhaps in conjunction with existing radical third parties such as the Greens, have a uniquely powerful chance of delivering the revolution he and his supporters have worked so hard to prepare for?

It sadly remains an unlikely outcome, but in a world of social lockdown, viral pandemic and economic dislocation, this may be the best and possibly last chance to effect real change to the USA, and the rest of the world, before the gathering storms of global warming, resource depletion and societal collapse hit our fragile Earth.

And while an independent candidacy is remote, the challenge will endure - the ideas and the movement Bernie Sanders shaped, harnessed and energised will go on. As the crises facing the planet and our species become clearer, its cry will become sharper, and as the vested interests threatening our survival are ultimately forced break cover, its demands will become ever more radical.
 "Not me. Us."

Video: Hitler Hears Sanders Won't Stand Down

Bernie Sanders won a further primary victory this week and ran Hillary Clinton agonisingly close in Kentucky, less than 2,000 votes behind her out of over 550,000 cast. With just ten primary contests to go, he trails her by over 250 in the elected delegate count, but with more than 750 still to be selected, it is at least technically feasible for him to win - although with her 9 to 1 inbuilt majority among the unelected "superdelegates", Clinton seems guaranteed to have a majority when the Democrat Convention gathers in Philadelphia in July. Consequently, although Clinton fought to the very end in 2008 against Barak Obama, she and her media allies are increasingly trying to pressure Sanders into stepping down now, rather than see the electoral process through to its supposedly democratic conclusion.

It is not how the script was meant to be, of course: from the outset, the Democratic National Committee and the mass liberal media had crowned her the heir presumptive to President Obama before a single vote was cast. Sanders' socialist-inspired insurgency, drawing in millions of independents and socialists who would otherwise never vote Democrat, has torn asunder the Establishment's plans, just as his mirror opposite Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party.

Notably, while the two men could not be further apart in almost every way, their respective insurgent platforms appeal to a surprisingly large number of "crossover" voters: people who, like growing numbers throughout the world, feel disenfranchised and ignored by the political elite,and are more than ready to support anyone who challenges the status quo. Consequently, opinion polls show that, while Sanders would comfortably see off Trump in the full Presidential election, as an establishment candidate, Clinton could potentially struggle and even lose to the eclectic Republican maverick.

But perhaps this is what happens when liberalism, like the market capitalism it depends upon, draws towards its close. Just as the economics no longer work, nor do the politics. People are less and less inclined to trip once every four or five years to ballot boxes to simply confirm the elite's right to rule over them, bar the odd, minimal policy variation. The politics of tomorrow, if not quite yet today, will again be the politics of ideas and vision; not the politics of managerialism and consumerism.

But that is not to say that the current Establishment will give way gracefully or democratically. As evidenced by the shutdown of voting procedures at the Nevada Democratic Convention (backed by sinister looking security personnel and police) and the media campaign to deflect criticism from Sanders' supporters by labelling their anger as extremist, the kick-back has already begun and it is likely to get much, much worse in the times ahead.

Police State: the Nevada Democratic Party Convention last weekend.

American Psycho

The USA has seen two of the most tumultuous and ultimately troubling primary contests in recent history, both now drawing to a close in terms of voting and with the formal nominating conventions on the other side of summer.

On the Democrats' part, Bernie Sanders has led a incredibly powerful insurgency against the establishment candidate Hillary ("It's my turn") Clinton. The DNC's response has been to put up all means of obstacles to Sanders en route, and we have seen voters disenfranchised, claims of vote-rigging and of course the power of the appointed super-delegates, whose utterly unwarranted say in the process rips away any shred of democratic pretence. Like so many liberals, these people see elections as a mere ritual where the grateful masses confirm their right to govern - democratically, of course. As soon as they start choosing the "wrong" candidates, the people are being "unrealistic", "not taking it seriously" and, by some paradox, even "undemocratic".

Clinton is now likely to be the Democrat nominee - though as Sanders' unexpected win in Indiana last week shows, it ain't over until it is over. And, in spite of the establishment, there is even now a faint possibility that the FBI may yet subpoena Hillary over its investigation into her emails, an unprecedented situation for a Presidential candidate (well, other than for early 20th century Socialist Eugene Debs, who fought one entire election from his prison cell).

This opens up the terrifying prospect of a Republican Party Presidency under their own insurgent nominee, Donald Trump - for the polls all show that, while Sanders would pull enough independent voters to the Democrats to trounce The Donald, Clinton struggles to stay just ahead. The very latest poll gives Trump a two point advantage over her.

Trump. What can you say?
An Ego, wrapped in an Id, inside a toupee...

This man has built his entire career on an unwarranted image of entrepreneurship that never happened, trust that was actively betrayed and success that went down the toilet. Yet, it shows the depths of disconnection of the American political class and system from ordinary people that his rambling, incoherent rage and bile simply piles up more and more votes for him. The Republican party establishment is in meltdown even more than the DNC, but they have only themselves to blame - it was they who created the narrative of xenophobia and global aggression that Trump is now simply taking to a logical, if extreme, conclusion. That Ted Cruz, a man who thinks Jesus had sent him to bomb the deserts of Syria "until they glow", was his only serious rival shows just how hollow the party of Lincoln now is.

So, much more on this in the weeks ahead. For now, a little gallery of the American elections memes on the Viridis Lumen facebook page, collected here to amuse and terrify, possibly in equal order.

1. Atomic Finger...

There was a time it just seemed too incredible.

2. Netrump
Donald had problems with the internet of ideas. Best to shut it down. Or bits of it. Maybe.

3. Game of Trumps
Republicans aren't good on tackling climate change. Donald saw some snow in December, so what the heck's all the fuss about?

4. Gremlins Ex Machina
Jeb Bush was meant to be the Republican candidate. It was his turn after all. But if you feed an Ego, it can multiply without warning...

5. No Muslims. Mates excepted
Building on years of paranoia whipped up by the Establishment, Trump has used Islamophobia to announce he will "shutdown" American to Muslims. Did he mention his extensive business links with the Muslim world? And the people there who are, erm, Muslims?

6. Major Cruz to Ground Control...
Latterly, the only semi-serious challenge to Trump's nomination was Senator Ted Cruz. He dislikes most people apart from Jesus, though Jesus has been quiet on his own thoughts about Cruz.
Ted notably wants to visit the Holy Land so he can help along that whole Armaggeddony process thing.

7. Comedy of Terrors
Someone organised a Shakespeare for Republicans Day to highlight the tragedy and face. But are we laughing?

8. Feel The Bird
Bernie Sanders had a major comeback after a little bird hoped onto his lectern during a rally. Quick to the moment, the Socialist Senator announced that although it didn't look like it, it was a dove of peace. Here's Birdie Sanders...

As Sanders' poll ratings, votes and delegate count started to ratchet rapidly upwards, the Clinton camp was in panic, trying to pull all manner of stunts to make Hillary look sort of regular.

9. Office for Sale
Sanders has raised virtually all his campaign finance from small individual donors. Clinton by contrast has taken millions from corporate America to fund her drive to supposedly represent ordinary people.

10. American Psycho
We won't know the final outcome until November, and many variants from police investigations to third party runs may yet skew what happens. But one thing is for sure - Bernie aside, the collection of truly bizarre, corrupt, narrow-minded and frankly dangerous egotists running this year has put any and all attempts at satire, parody or allegory far beyond the pale. There is a very good chance of someone becoming President who categorically refused when asked to rule out dropping a nuclear bomb on Britain, let alone scores of other places.

“I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.” - Donald Trump, Republican Presidential candidate.

“What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?” - Katrina Pierson, Trump spokesperson.
(Both statements 20 December 2015)  

Perhaps only the dark dreams of apocalyptic science fiction-turning-to-fact can give us any warning, if little in the way of any comfort.

This Is Not Who We Are?

This is not who we are.

The words of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton today as she reacted to the brutal murders of 16 innocent Afghan villagers - including two year old babies shot in their heads - by a US trooper who set out on a long walk from his base with slaughter his sole aim. Clinton looked suitably shocked as President Obama called Afghan President Karzai to offer apologies and condolences.

Not who we are?

Doubtless, within hours, or days at most, the American soldier will be declared insane, his terrible act of destruction the foaming fury of a madman out of control, a man possessed by crazy delusions. Not one of us at all. Perhaps, deep down, not even responsible for his own awful actions - gripped instead by some sort of traumatic stress disorder, in turn a symptom of the great stress he was under while on his fourth tour of duty in war torn Afghanistan. Indeed, when you look at it that way, perhaps his actions were caused by the Afghans. Maybe, deep down, these unruly people with their civil war and unholy faith were really asking for it. Perhaps, he had become one of them in his red mist blood lust...

Not who we are?

Tell us another Hilary. The soldier's actions were extreme, in some respects, but his only "crime" was to do what he did without being under orders at the time. Because increasingly, the American military has become defined by precisely this sort of arrogant brutality, a death-soaked zeitgeist that lifts so-called western civilisation above the value of troublesome mountain peasants and Muslims. This was evident in spade in Farenheit 9/11, when Michael Moore interviewed American tank crews who revealed that driving into Iraq in 2003, they sat in their tanks with their MP3 players streaming music to kill by as they shot up the ill-equipped Iraqi fighters outside their mobile armoured fortress - "It was like a computer game!" one gunner approvingly revealed."The ultimate rush!"

And so it went on - the horrors of Abu Ghraib, where American troops subjected Iraqi prisoners, many taken there on the slenderest of pretexts, to tortures and "heavy interrogation" that a good number did not survive. Photos that were released were just the tip of the iceberg - showing hooded prisoners menaced by dogs or threatened with electrocution. President Obama decided in the end to suppress hundreds of photographs, including many allegedly showing the rape of many of the women prisoners kept by the US soldiers in the former Saddam prison.

And then there was the case of six US soldiers charged with plotting for some weeks before seizing a 14 year old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, and repeatedly raping her. They then murdered her, her 5 year old sister and her parents and set their bodies on fire. The crime only came to light when one of the soldiers revealed the incident months later to his psychologist.

Abeer - raped and murdered by the US army

The same army later spawned the "Kill Squad" in Afghanistan under one Sargent Morlock, who led his men in killing innocent Afghans for sport. Other instances that have come to light - collecting body parts as trophies, playing football with the decapitated heads of Afghans, firing at random into queues of civilian vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and pissing on the corpses of the dead. There are many, many more, few covered by the mass media and, of course, there will be many others we know nothing about. 

What drives them to these things? The standard excuse is stress and fear - except that nearly all these cases have taken place outside of combat zones, where the perpetrators were in no fear of their lives and where their victims represented no threat at all. The arrogant dehumanizing of their enemies by these men reaches something of a hubristic crescendo in their apparent eagerness to display their exploits, caught on ubiquitous mobile phone cameras, on youtube and Facebook. The immensity of their war crimes seems to slip by these "warriors".

Referring to the Kill Team in an interview following yesterday's atrocities, Mark Boal, screenplay writer of the Hurt Locker, explained a key motive was boredom and frustration with lack of kills of Taliban fighters. He reported a high level of racism endemic among the regiment involved and how this, in turn, affected their attitude and behaviour towards the Afghans. No hearts and minds here - just pure, brute force. Brute force and profit, of course - because alongside the US army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Blackwater mercenary company has implanted thousands of security contractors into both countries. Even less disciplined that the regulars, Blackwater has been associated with dozens of violent incidents, including killing 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Nisour square in Bagdhad in order to "clear a path" through people shopping at market.

From the My Lai massacre of 500 innocent villagers in Vietnam to the gunning down of ambulances and children by whooping helicopter gunners above Bagdhad in the video below (released by Wikileaks), the brutality of the American army is frankly far beyond doubt. If the Taliban are vicious, the US forces are constrained purely by the light restraint of vaguely possible bad publicity, a factor that clearly has little impact on what happens on the ground.

American soldiers raped and killed over 500 people at My Lai.

But then, it is not just the poor bloody infantry on the front line defending the corrupt Karzai regime, the young western lives being thrown away on a pointless war, that are responsible for the brutality of the American war machine. The massive carnage among non-combatant civilians that goes by virtually unacknowledged, allowing both the alienation of the Afghans and the continuing brutalisation of often young soldiers, is in fact a product of formal American military policy and planning.

In spite of the dreadful deaths and injuries, Afghanistan actually represents one of the safest wars for US and allied troops in history. The casualty rate pales into insignificance beside the tolls of the second world war, and even of the Korean war. This is because, ever since Vietnam, driven by the exposure of sensationalist 24 hour TV news, US policy has been to promote military adventures as being comfortable, even risk free - the safety of their own troops utterly paramount regardless of the impact on innocent civilians - defined now by the sick and sinister sanitised term, collateral damage.

Hence the use of drones, piloted from thousands of miles away, to spy on and increasingly attack ground targets - indiscriminately causing collateral damage. And plans are increasingly concentrating on making the US military capable of massive armed interventions with the use of fewer and fewer soldiers by means of "smart" weapons and robot technology. Popular with western media for its protection of western soldiers, this strategy will simply make armed conflict all the easier for the Pentagon and the collateral damage all the more acceptable, and the bitter harvest of terrorism and war without end all the harsher and more severe for decades to come.

The American soldier's "inexplicable" actions yesterday then become very explicable indeed - the mindset developed to turn ordinary humans into brutal killing machines inevitably dehumanizes their targets, whether combatants or civilian bystanders. With much military training neatly segued from increasingly life-like computer gaming into training programmes into reality, the boundaries are blurred between fact and fiction, like the tank commanders storming into Bagdhad to the sound of drums: and what the rogue soldier did becomes routine, becomes precisely who we are. It may not be what many of the troops put into the front-line start out being, but the cynical exploitation of their commitment - and often their dire economic circumstances when they sign up - means that the strategy and tactics of the Armed Services sooner or later makes it what they become. And, as America seeks to shore up its declining world power, we will see more and more of this in the years ahead as  the USA continues to spend more on its military than every other nation on the planet put together.

So, this is not who you are?

Are you so sure Hilary? As you stand next Commander-in-Chief Obama, you should know better.

.

Death of a Dictator

Moammer al-Gaddafi is dead. Trapped near his hometown of Sirte by a combination of NATO drones and Libyan NTC fighters, a storm drain was his final refuge as his bodyguards fought to the death around him. Then, filmed as ever these days by mobile phone cameras, he was dragged to a truck, pleading for his life and brutalised to death. His bloodied corpse was then dragged around, still filmed, before being taken to a hospital in Misrata for crowds to come and stare, and photograph a bit more.

The photographs and video footage have been transmitted around the world already - shown on websites, TV channels, newspapers and even described in some detail on the radio. And as the world has gawped and Libyans celebrated, western leaders like Obama, Cameron and Clinton have hailed the moment, declaring their pride.

Gaddafi's regime was a harsh one, no doubt, although many others are worse and to the end the Leader clearly retained the loyalty of many of his compatriots. Thousands died or were tortured in his prisons; his agents killed his opponents at home and abroad (although it remains exceedingly unlikely that he had anything to do with the Lockerbie bombing); and he was one of the few African leaders to launch an invasion of a neighbouring state - attacking Chad four times in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He showed little mercy for sure.

And yet, in these final moments, bloodied and humiliated, pleading for his life in front of the cameras, the overwhelming sense was that here was a small, frightened and helpless old man, a human being like all the rest of us, deluded perhaps by his long years in power, but flesh and blood still. In the hands of his captors, he was no longer a threat to anyone. In the frenzy of the moment, after years of persecution, it is perhaps unsurprising that those who seized him killed him. But it does not make it right - and it certainly is nothing for David Cameron to feel proud about, or for Hilary Clinton to breathe a sigh of relief as she claims she did.

No international pariah after all...

These are the same people who happily did business with Gadaffi right up until the uprising against him began., who bought his oil and sold him his weapons and, in Britain's case, trained his security services. While it does seem to stretch incredulity given today's heated incidents to suggest any conspiracy to kill Gadaffi, Clinton's relief may well be as much to do with being spared the embarrassment of a trial and the evidence that would have come out about the West's involvement with the old regime as anything to do with an end to the fighting.

And, yet again, the western media have outdone themselves in lurid excess - the graphic pictures of Gadaffi's final minutes should make any vaguely compassionate person retch: and while in a country as inured to state propaganda as Libya has been, showing his body may serve some purpose in convincing the population that he really is gone, it raises yet more questions about how the international media use the now so readily available means of recording and transmitting the most gruesome and humiliating images to sell copy.

When Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were killed by Italian partisans in April 1945, most newspapers did not print the now infamous photograph of their dead bodies hanging upside down at a petrol station in Milan - that Il Duce's trousers were firmly buckled on and Petacci's skirt carefully pinned up was surrealistically tasteful in comparison to today's Saharan gore-fest. Even as late as 1989, when Ceaucescu was executed by a hastily organised firing squad as he tried to flee Romania, the cameras turned away as he and his wife were shot. But perhaps it was Saddam Hussein's execution in 2006 that showed at once the power of mobile technology - an initial, official video of him walking to the scaffold in apparent calm was soon superseded by several mobile captures of a baying mob remonstrating with him as he tried to pray, and then more of his body falling through the trap door and then his corpse in the hospital. of course, the media just couldn't resist...

That things went even further today with Gaddafi should perhaps be no surprise and it would without question be wrong to ban footage - but the use of frame by frame images of his treatment by his captors on tabloid websites is little more than publishing torture porn to gain an audience. Saw 7 or 8 would struggle to compete with the Daily Mail's series of snuff photos.

More will mourn Gaddafi's passing than the West will ever admit to: his regime was violent and repressive, but it was not without its supporters and in the context of the Maghreb, his government led the way in provision of free health and education services, massively reducing illiteracy rates, and greatly improved the position of women and black Africans in a traditionally patriarchal, Arab society. Many Libyans were sent to the West for their higher education - I recall meeting several at both Glasgow University and Bradford University, all of them proud of their nation's achievements and complimentary of their Leader even in situations where they had no need to be. That, in time, Gaddafi so perverted the dreams of his popular revolution that he brutalised his nation is the truly enduring tragedy for Libya - because today, the violent men who have replaced him, including their western sponsors, by their eager celebration of his killing augur no better future at all for the people of Gaddafi's battered nation.

No page has been turned, no new chapter begun. There is nothing to be proud of - no refreshing rain falls on the deserts of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica tonight; only spilled blood mixes in the Saharan sands, a legacy of the hubris that has been and an omen of the hubris still to come.

In better times: the Libyan Leader with the G8 Heads of State, including his nemesis, President Sarkozy of France

"Tolle divitem!" : why abolishing the rich would do us all a favour

"Mankind is divided into three classes - the rich, the poor, and those who have enough...Abolish the rich and you will have no more poor...for it is the few rich who are the cause of the many poor."

Radical words. An extract from Marx's "Das Kapital"? A trade union leader rallying their members against job losses? A motion passed by the last Green Party conference declaring its support for a maximum wage?

It could be any of the above, but in fact its none of them. The words were written by an author known as the "Sicilian Briton" in the first few years of the fifth century. As the Roman Empire was beset by barbarian invasions and usurper Emperors, the plebeian and slave classes began to agitate for a fairer share of the resources of the world's first superstate. While some openly rebelled and established their own states as the bacaudae, the western world's first social revolutionaries, others used parts of the newly established Christian church to demand change - the Sicilian Briton, a monk himself, was one of their spokespeople.

But what happened?

History tells us how the Roman State died, not with a bang but with a whimper - its once mighty body ebbing slowly over three generations or more before it simply faded from view and was lost to history. All through its long demise, its richest citizens clutched onto their possessions, hiding their wealth, claiming all manner of privileges (privi-legium: the law of the individual) to avoid paying taxes or contributing to the common cause. While demanding and receiving continued status as the Optimates, the "best citizens", they continuously connived to abrogate themselves of any obligation to serve their society. When Alaric the Goth stood with his army at the gates of Rome demanding gold to go away, the Senate refused him even although most of its members could have easily met the amount demanded from a modest portion of their own purse. While lamenting the darkness of their times, they willingly sacrificed their City to preserve their own wealth.

Yesterday Rome, tomorrow...?

I quote this passage from an obscure, 15 centuries old source for two reasons - one because of the old saying that if we do not learn from history we are bound to relive it; and second because the parallels between fifth century Rome and our modern world are so striking and relevant.

This week, in the UK, the Government is pledged to undertake massive spending cuts in public services. In spite of a few feints to fairness, the clear story is one of the unremitting gloom of an assault on education, welfare, transport and even aspects of the military. The reason is allegedly because of a national debt described by the Government as "record breaking" in peace time.

Except that this is far from true - indeed, it was higher than it is now every single year from 1916 until 1971. Its actual record high was in 1947, unsurprisingly just after the second world war, when it peaked at 238% of annual gross domestic product (GDP) - over four times its current level of 56%. However, that did not prevent the government in the following year launching the National Health Service. Nor did debt levels well in excess of 100% of GDP prevent the economic boom of the 1950s, with Tory Premier Macmillan boasting to a grateful electorate that "We've never had it so good!"

It was only with the Thatcherite revolution from 1979 onwards, with the Conservatives adopting the monetarist doctrine of American economist Milton Friedman (a doctrine taken up by Reagan's America as well) that it became the orthodoxy that low national debt was essential for prosperity, embraced even by pseudo-social democratic parties like New Labour and Clinton's Democrats. In Britain, public services were cut relentlessly and people thrown out of work until in 1991 national debt stood at just above 25% of GDP.

Parallel to this "tight money" policy, and the true reason for it then and now, Governments also reduced taxes for the better off, with more and more exemptions for the richest of all. Globally, off-shore tax havens have allowed an estimated $250,000,000,000 per annum of tax to be legally evaded by the very wealthiest. Britain is particularly culpable for this trend - 11 out of 40 havens identified by the OECD are British Overseas Territories; with the UK itself now an effective tax haven for "non-domestic" millionaires. Corporation tax is legally avoided by many large companies at a cost of nearly £7 billions per annum to the British Government - almost the same as the planned reduction in spending on social housing.

Even in the last recessionary year the wealth of the richest 100 people in the UK has risen by over 30% to over £355 billion. Internationally, as financial cuts bit hard across the planet, the Forbes Rich List found that 611 of the 1,011 billionaires on the Earth had increased their wealth - only 70 had seen an appreciable reduction. The richest man in the world - the ironically named Carlos Slim Herlu of Mexico weighed in with over £35.7 billion, his wealth greater than the annual GDP of over sixty nation states.

Of course, whichever country we live in, we are told we must indulge these people otherwise they might go somewhere else and we would lose their vital talents. Much better to waive their bill and hope they will stay, graciously permitting their wealth to trickle down to the rest of us in dibs and drabs. Meantime, the rest of us ingrates will need to accept increased taxes and massively reduced services to bailout these geniuses when their schemes collapse around them, as it is predicted will happen again with the British banks in 2011.

In spite of initiatives such as introducing national minimum wages these have not stopped the rise in inequality - one report found Britain to be the fourth most unequal society out of 25 affluent nations studied. Instead, in the absence of any cap on individual or corporate wealth, fantastic fortunes have been amassed by a tiny elite of super-rich people, whose lifestyles and power are ruining the lives of billions and relentlessly driving the planet to resource depletion and environmental disaster.

Professor Greg Philo of the Glasgow University Media Group has recently proposed a one-off tax on the richest 10% of Britons - taxing just 20% of their assets would raise over £800 billions. That would be enough to pay off the entire national debt and massively reduce the deficit. Unfair? Hardly, given that much of that wealth is unearned and in many cases will have been obtained by avoiding tax in the first place. Moreover, as the salaries (as well as the untaxed share options) of top executives have burgeoned to ridiculous levels in recent years, isn't it time to claw back some of that unfairly paid money?

In the years ahead, as our resources become scarcer and billions more mouths have to be fed, we need to share our wealth more equitably - between countries and within them as well. There is still enough to go round to feed and support people fairly and sustainably, but only if it is shared fairly. The capitalist system, with its focus on individuals seeking to maximise their material gain and a theoretical basis of limitless supply, is not fit for purpose for the challenges to come. Rather, left unchecked, it will simply hurry us over the precipice towards not only its own collapse, but of society and human civilisation itself. With a "perfect storm" of competing demands for food, water and fuel predicted to come as early as 2030, time is short.

We may be fifteen centuries late, but we are not too late. Not just yet. But we need a new, radical will and the sense to do us all a favour. Change the politics. As the Romans used to say: "Tolle divitem!" Abolish the rich!