Bloody Oil

So, in one sense it is not news. Ask anyone why the West gets involved in overseas wars and the answer nine times out of ten is "oil". The public know this, and somehow cynically accept it, bemoaning the fact, but often simultaneously setting it to one side, perhaps in the hope that, while it is necessary for the sake of our current carbon fuel-dependent societies, it can't really be that bad. Can it?

Well, yes it is, and worse. We heard earlier this year, Tony Blair's sanctimonious defence of his toadying up to George Bush over the bloody war in Iraq, shifting from his original claims about weapons of mass destruction to defending the objective of regime change, allegedly because this would be good for the Iraqi people. The tens of thousands of deaths, the millions of refugees and the immense damage to infrastructure caused by his activities were all apparently worth it on these grounds.

And this week, we have found out for certain just exactly who all this mayhem was for.

The "Independent" newspaper in the UK published a series of emails showing how in the months up to the Iraq invasion - when Blair was publically insisting that war might still be avoided - BP and other oil companies were busy petitioning the UK Government for a slice of the anticipated post-war bonanza. They even went so far as to claim that if the Iraqi oil fields were privatised (rather than kept in the hands of the new supposedly democratic government to hel rebuild the country) this would represent an apparent reward for the UK's support of the American invasion.

So now we know, our troops were there to kill and be killed so that, in return, BP, a big multinational company with a deeply tarnished history of involvement in killings and corruption in the Middle East, could get a reward.

And it duly has. Unreported, unfocused on by the complicit western media, the Iraqi state was dismantled following the war. Its assets were sold off to foreign companies and individuals - many of them Israelis - and among these BP benefited with good deals on acquiring huge stakes in large tracts of the rich Iraqi oilfields. Even where they don't own the fields, the oil companies make a killing, extracting oil at less than $1.15 per barrel and selling them on at over one hundred times (or, put another way, 10,000%) that cost. They were by no means the only oil company involved, and the American government was even more generous to its friends, such as Halliburton and Blackwater, in doling out Iraqi money, largely unaudited and unaccounted for. But Blair's sickening insistence that he acted out of pure motives and a desire to do the right thing finally stand exposed as nothing more than a squalid deal with big corporations - both of the oil and non-oil varieties.

And what of now, in Libya? Again and again in recent weeks, the Gaddafi regime has been portrayed as somehow uniquely brutal among Middle Eastern despots and so deserving of unique treatment by the West. Even although Gaddafi's government has now offered an internationally monitored ceasefire and elections for the leadership of the country run by the UN, the mysterious coalition of rebels continue to receive unqualified western aid in spite of rejecting the offer. We are indefinitely underwriting a bloody war with allies of dubious provenance even although the other side have accepted more than the original demands of the United Nations.

Why? It could be for oil - but with just 2% of the world's reserves, while rich, Libya does not represent to carbon cornucopia that Iraq offered. And BP was already well-ensconced with the Gaddafi regime, so regime change could potentially disturb rather than assist their exploitation of the country's richest natural resource (although, of course, any Middle Eastern war is handy for oil companies in facilitating a rise in prices at the pumps - entirely unnecessary and unjustifiable, but easily sold to an unsuspecting public).

Libya offers other delights for western companies, however, just as Iraq did but other states like Bahrain and Egypt did not. Both Saddam and Gaddafi, for all their brutal faults, came from socialist backgrounds. Acquiring power was not purely about self-aggrandisement, though both men clearly revelled in it. It was also about using the state for the benefit of the citizens, however totalitarian in their control of their citizens they sought to be. Consequently, both Iraq and Libya under their respective tyrants had large public sectors and enjoyed some of the best education, health and welfare systems in the world - all free of charge. And, of course, all hanging like ripe fruit to fall into the bags of privatising privateers when the American juggernaut crashed into town.

Under the neoliberal philosophy that continues to inform American and British foreign policy, "freedom" is not at the end of the day expressed via the ballot box or by the mass of citizens. When they talk of freedom, it is in  fact about free markets - about private enterprise and the supposed freedom to buy and sell, accumulate, speculate and profit. Hence, under this philosophy, oil as a bounty for blood is more than acceptable - indeed, it is necessary, it is the whole purpose of the exercise. And not just oil - just as whole segments of Iraqi public services have been auctioned off to western-owned interests, so Libya now holds the same tempting prospect.

It is for this reason that so much of the opposition to the West in the Arab world stems from a religious starting point. Although castigated in the West as wild-eyed bearded ones lusting for blood and vengeance for ancient slight, groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hizbollah in the Lebanon are widely supported by their people because they are grounded in ethics and principles diametrically opposed to the corrupt regimes such as Mubarak's sponsored and sustained by the West (the USA for example, paid for Mubarak's brutal security services for most of his rule).

Old Friends - The British Queen & The Blood-soaked Emir of Bahrain

It is also why the West is so deeply distrusted in the Arab world - every time Arab people have agitated for freedom, they have been opposed by dictators whose strings have been pulled very firmly either by western governments or by western oil companies or, more often than not, by both. The brutal regime in Bahrain is probably the epitome of this, but in the West, it is exempted from the fate of the Libyan regime. Bahrain is sanitized by the approval of its regime by the British monarchy and the repeated visits by members of the Royal Family (who invited the ruler of Bahrain to kate and William's Big Day just hours after the massacre of 45 protesters on the streets of his capital city), - and besides, we already own everything there anyway; there is nothing left to sell.

But in Benghazi...never mind the crosshairs; its dollars that are in western sights.

Alternative Vote Referendum: Vote YES

O Fortuna, I think I am becoming a god: the hubris of Humanity

The head of the allegedly "greenest government in (British) history", David Cameron, announced yesterday his intention to repeal a raft of environmental legislation, including laws protecting wild bird's nests and eggs, as well as, crucially, the Climate Change Act. This latter law currently requires the Government to take steps to ensure that the carbon emissions of the UK are 80% below their 1990 level by 2050 - this is the minimum reduction many climate change scientists argue will be necessary across the world to prevent runaway climate change and the destruction of human civilisation.

Why has Cameron, aided and abetted by his supine Liberal Democrat Orcs, decided on this?

Well, apparently such rules are "red tape" which hinder the onward march of British industry. They crush creativity and damage our competitiveness with overseas trade rivals. Much better to set our resource-gobbling entrepreneurs free to sate their lust for profit on the altar of profligacy and excess.

Cameron and his free marketeer allies like David Laws and Nick Clegg claim of course that this is the genus of capitalism unbound - free to develop, to cater for every human demand and whim, somehow, by magic, it will find the answers to our environmental problems, invent amazing new technologies that will defy the laws of physics and breach resource limits. Hence the move towards freeing up GM food and the view of Climate Change regulations as a hindrance to the mystical Invisible Hand of the Mighty Market that will mysteriously provide for us all. In doing so, it might ravage the planet of its natural beauty, destroy its ecosystems and rape it of its resources, but that won't matter - somehow, as long as we work hard enough and don't think of some free ride on the state benefits express, Capitalism will provide.

And so we have a government informed by neo-liberal economics and the freak theories of people like the Campaign to Repeal the Climate Change Act. See a video interview with one of their leaders here (click here to link)...a man so breathtakingly arrogant in his ignorance that he defies belief outside of the realms of bad science fiction movies. This man feels that any suggestion that we might limit our use of resources or seek to limit or even just slow the exponential growth rate of humanity is a slight to his warped version of reality. By his arguments, the more the merrier - more humans will not bust the planet, but rather somehow create the ingenuity that will allow us somehow to cram more and more people onto our tired piece of space rock, forever gobbling resources, flying everywhere, driving everywhere, living like Americans everywhere...

Of course, he is in a fantasy world: one where anything that might rain on his parade is in fact a socialist plot. Peak Oil? Nonsense, he scoffs, if we begin to run out of oil, having another three billion people on the Earth will not massively increase demand for the dwindling black stuff and make its price rocket, but rather provide the creative brainpower required to invent new ways of miraculously creating and consuming more and more outputs for fewer and fewer inputs. Anyone who disagrees is just a havering hippie.

But then this denial of reality also invents any kind of excuses or explanations for our current realities - of rising energy prices, of rising global temperatures, of billions living on the edge of existence shorn of the ownership of anything of value. Doubtless, all these will be down to the failure of a state somewhere to implement full-on market capitalism. All they need is to let business and industry find a way.

This is the hubris of humanity, exemplified as never before by our strange advocate and the men he stands proxy for. Somehow, we will always find a way out, create something that will make it right, even if it is just on time and millions may suffer in the meantime. Somehow, we have reached a stage in our history where government policy and the cultural zeigeist do truly hold that creativity is spawned far more effectively by seeding it with the prospect of dollars cash rather than by the prospect of public service or even simple satisfaction.

The transient Triumph of Vespasian

In ancient Rome, Emperors were declared gods when they died. When Vespasian heard the Shades whispering to him in AD79, he wryly observed, "O Fortune, I think I am becoming a god" before passing away.

Our modern Masters may sadly no longer worship Zeus and give thanks for the planet the gods bequeathed them, but they clearly see themselves and their favoured sons and daughters as capable of godly deeds as the Earth spins towards catastrophe. To rein them in as they wipe out our rainforests, jet the world over day after day and continue with conspicuous consumption, would by their argument amount to heresy. To suggest that industry might serve people and planet rather than the other way round can be to invite the full Inquisition, castigation as a utopian dreamer or schemer. Rather, it is time to unite around the consensus that somehow Capital will find a way, no matter how pyrrhic its inevitable Triumph.

But Rome is long gone, and the halls of Olympus lie empty. And our modern would-be gods, just as they claim to hold the very key to knowledge, in truth stand empty, nothing more than false gods and hollow men.

We make our obeisances and sacrifices to them at our peril.

Happy Birthday Mr Chaplin

As Google has reminded everyone today, it is Charlie Chaplin's birthday - he would be 122 if he was still with us.

He is remembered as the clowning Tramp for his many silent movies along that ilk. Like many stars of the silent era, he struggled once the "talkies" came along, although he continued in films until his final commercial venture in 1967, "A Countess from Hong Kong" (which he also directed).

As well as the talkies, he had to contend with the political bigotry of the McCarthyite era in the USA, forcing him to leave the ever-dubious "land of the free" and settle in Switzerland until his death on Christmas Day 1977. McCarthy had assailed Chaplin for his left-wing political views, and leaving Hollywood was in effect the death knell for his acting career.

Yet it was his politics and his concern for things far removed from the slapstick comedy he is famed for that forged what many consider to be his finest work, "The Great Dictator" made in Hollywood in 1940 as the Battle of Britain was raging. In this (talkie) satire, written and direced by Chaplin, and in which he played on his mustachioed similarity to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler (who was born just 4 days after Chaplin), he used the medium to demonstrate the illusory allure of fascism to those without hope and to expose its ultimate naked brutality, culminating in a powerful call to arms for a better, fairer, democratic world. It was controversial not least in that the USA was still at peace with Germany when it was released and there was a powerful lobby in American politics to ensure that remained the case right up until the attack on Pearl harbour over a year later.

Rightwing hostility towards him grew with the release of Chaplin's first post-war film, "Monsieur Verdoux", a dark comedy, satirising capitalism as essentially pyschpathic.In due course, it was all apparent grist to Senator McCarthy's view of Chaplin as a man too dangerous to remain in the United States of America.

The FBI had kept him under constant surveillance and even a degree of harassment during the war, identifying him as a possible communist. In due course he was accused of "un-American activities" in the late 1940s, although the Senatorial Committee baulked from calling him to testify, fearing he might lampoon them. Another way was found when he went on a business trip to his home country of Britain in 1953 and FBI Chief J Edgar Hoover seized the opportunity to have Chaplin's right to live in the USA revoked (after 39 years). He was never to return, writing soon after that:

"I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States."

Chaplin's message in The Great Dictator remains as clear and vital today; while the intolerance and paranoia of McCarthyism remain as constant a threat as ever in its new forms of Islamophobia and a crushing consensus around state surveillance and restriction of individual liberty.

So it is all the more worth watching again the nemesis of the Great Dictator. And being thankful for Charlie Chaplin, the clown who made the world think.

SMILE (composed by Charles Chaplin)

Libya war IS about regime change / Britain / Home - Morning Star

Libya war IS about regime change / Britain / Home - Morning Star (click for full M.S. article)

The West has gone far beyond the concept of a protective no-fly zone and is now advocating regime change - even although the rebels are a very uncertain band containing some rather unpleasant passengers. In addition, they have refused to even contemplate any negotiations with Tripoli and gave the recent African peace envoys an incredibly hostile and violent reception when they visited Benghazi to sound out the possibility of peace talks.

Why is such intransigence now being underwritten by an open-ended guarantee to the rebels from Britain, France and the USA for continuing and increasing military support and aid with arms supplies?

What has gone largely unreported is that the revolt against the Gaddafi regime developed from rallies called by religious groups to commemorate the 2006 publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, which upset Muslims around the world given their faith's injunction not to make representations of any human form, let alone such an important one. Most fundamentalist Muslims see Gaddafi as an enemy of their faith given his closure of Islamist schools, his taunting of the veiling of women and his call for Arabs to "put the Koran away on the bookshelf" as a relic of a former age.

Whilst the Transitional Rebel Council is composed of a rather motley bunch of academics, lawyers and army commanders, many of whom were senior members of the Gaddafi regime until just a few weeks ago, there is much evidence of more radical religious elements running through the revolt. What is for sure is that this is no democratic uprising like the ones in Tunisia and Egypt - where, especially in the latter case, the West were so incredibly hesitant about calling for Mubarak to resign. But, of course, as history has shown time and again, the West's interests and frequently violent intervention in the Arab world has never been about democracy, and indeed as often as not has been to squash the demands of the Arab people for reform.

Gadaffi, of course, is no democrat either. But the West is not concerned about that. His sin, unlike Mubarak and the Saudis, has been to not always toe the line with the West. That makes him no saint, but equally, it begs the question as to why Libya is such a special case as to now require our active intervention, not merely to provide some sort of protective no-fly zone around Benghazi, but to continue every day to bomb large tracts of Libya and say that this will continue until Gaddafi is gone.

Our Masters have decided Gaddafi must go, but sit on their butts in Bahrain as the political opposition is destroyed and people shot on the streets - in the same city as the largest overseas US naval base in the world.

Yet there again, they're Our Bastards, and he isn't.  At least, not one of Ours.

Green Party Election Broadcast: No Joke

What is happening in Britain is no joke. Caroline Lucas MP, Green party leader, at the Comedy Club.

Local Lies

"The time has come to disperse power more widely in Britain today."

A portentous call to arms, these words rang from the Coalition Agreement signed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg back in May 2010. The Liberal Democrats especially hailed it as a declaration of intent to devolve power to communities and give back control to local people. The Tories gleefully portrayed it as a decisive step away from the centralism of the defeated labour Government, its years tarnished by control freakery and an anal obsession with targets.

Key to the process has been the Localism Bill, currently due to become law later this year. The Government has trailed this as doing away with Westminster control of what happens in our communities, especially in areas like planning and development, and putting people in charge of their local area. Local referenda on a host of subjects will be able to be called by local people.

Just last week, I took part on a panel of local election candidates debating the Local Development Framework proposed by our local Council Planning department under the Labour Government's rules on strategic planning for most of the next two decades. Tens of thousands of new homes are proposed - with several thousand on greenbelt land and more on greenfield land - even although the statistics used to forecast need are, at least, unproven. Needless to say, everyone on the panel agreed with the angry audience of some 150 local people that the local greenbelt/greenfield should be protected and the houses not built. But local people and even the local councillors would not have the final say - this would be taken instead by the full council for the district, where these people and their representatives would have only a small say and represent 3 votes out of 99.

Step forward the local Tory MP with his brilliant solution - delay the vote, delay any decision. The Government is about to do away with the old targets and although local authorities will still need to plan ahead, local people can develop their own neighbourhood plans and even hold local referenda to prevent buildings they don't want.

Sounds good. Almost too good to be true?

Indeed, it is at best a case of blatant "over-selling". Localism and the legislation enacting it, on closer inspection, turns out to be little more than a messy "pig-in-a-poke". No surprise given its provenance on the desk of Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and his trusty Orc, Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister.

The Localism Bill proposes to give communities - either Parish Councils or undefined "Community Forums" - the right to establish Neighbourhood Development Plans. Under these, these groups will be able to identify where they want houses to be built and what types of houses are required - "providing the plan is in line with the strategic vision for the area set by the local authority", local people can then vote on it and if they pass it, the houses (or other types of buildings) can be constructed more quickly than under the current planning regime.

Save our fields from the Sontarans - Pickles at work

Nothing there about stopping unwanted developments. Indeed, the Bill goes further to create a "right to build" to community groups wanting to construct small developments (no definition of small, or of community groups).

And if some big developer decides they want to plop a giant housing scheme in the local area, what powers to resist will local people have?

Well, the developer will have requirement to consult with local people before submitting their plans. Consult? That's all. People can be as against it as they like, the developer can still go ahead and submit the application. And with new Government rules creating a default "yes" to development, it will be difficult to stop the process. The guidance is unclear - it does seem there may be some right for locals to demand a referendum, but the local council will only have to take its outcome into account - it will not be binding.

With the Government now offering cash-strapped councils bonuses for each new house built, and opening up a potential scandal with proposed land auctions, the momentum will be with the developers and what little new "power" local communities may have will be swept away under a thick layer of concrete and tarmac. Little wonder that, after some initial concerns, the British property Federation Chair has welcomed the Bill on the grounds that they are:

...re-assured by the emphasis that the Government is now placing on growth and the way in which localism is to be used as the vehicle for encouraging communities to opt, not for nimbyism, but for the sustainable development of both the homes and commercial property that our economy so desperately needs.

So much for power to the people and so much for protecting our green and pleasant land.

A grim future for the green belt?

When the Porterhouse Blue comes to Westminster

In the excellent Channel 4 TV adaptation of the Tom Sharpe novel, "Porterhouse Blue", the deferential College Porter Scullion, played by David Jason, reveals what in 1982 was seen as the ultimate scandal: a British university was selling university places for money!

How times change, when we hear this week the apparent "news" that nearly every English University has put its  fees at or near the new, trebled maximum of £9,000 per academic year, to the apparent shock of the Con Dem Government. It seems no one mentioned it too them - or, rather, they truly were deaf to the protests of students that were so violently suppressed by the authorities last autumn on the streets of London.

The Government is now clearly panicking on two fronts - there is a wealth of evidence that, contrary to all their platitudinous assertions, the new fees policy is deterring potential students from applying for courses. Nil points for social cohesion and mending "broken Britain".

Secondly, and far more galling to this regime of neo-conservative financial pygmies is the prospect that the Government won't be able to afford its own policy! Sound strange when we've heard so much funding is being slashed from Universities, including public support for the humanities - apparently pointless subjects like History, English, the Arts - being reduced to absolutely nothing, zilch, not a penny?

Well, in the debt-ridden world of contemporary students, the Government is committed to lending them the cost of their fees up front, expecting them to pay it back, with interest, through most of their working lives. But it has to find the money first, and with so many Universities taking the increasingly incompetent Vince Cable at his word and charging the maximum permitted, the Government's bill is soaring. It had banked on Universities charging an average of £7,500 per student - not the 20% higher rate that is emerging.

Hence the panic this week.

Scullion: the Nick Clegg of Porterhouse?

Of course, they were warned, but they ignored their opponents, preferring to cast honest young people as bloodthirsty anarchists and revolutionaries. We face the surreal prospect that British Universities are increasingly enrolling more and more overseas students with the cash to help them survive, while the hysterical rightwing press, who supported the Government's policy changes, carp on about too many foreigners in UK educational establishments. Meanwhile, with India now emerging as a new world superpower, its well-regarded Universities are offering British students degree courses which will cost them 40% less than going to a UK establishment. Even the Mexican President has offered sunnier university options at lower than the UK cost to British students - immediately after talks with Clegg.

So well done to Vince and the Cleggeron. If there is any advertisement more clearly speaking against Coalition Governments, its this hybrid Lie that passes for the British Government. They are dismantling our Welfare State, our NHS and our education system piece by piece allegedly to save us from a non-existent economic catastrophe. The levels of outright dishonesty are beyond belief.

But of course, just as Scullion ends up as the enfeebled puppet of the Establishment in Porterhouse Blue, so the Liberal Democrats have sold their souls out even faster than they have sold the country down the river. As the Dean says in the final scene to the stricken Porter-become-Master, "Master may not have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he will certainly die with one in it."

And die they will, starting with the elections on 5 May. And deservedly so.

--------------------------------

On the day Parliament debated the new fees regime for English Universities, thousands of young people and their supporters demonstrated peacefully in London. The only significant casualty of the day was student Alfie Meadows, who was left brain damaged after being assaulted by a police officer who has never been identified. Watch the horsemen cometh on this video, see the fear induced on the faces of British citizens asserting their right to stand and protest. This is Liberal Democrat Britain. I hope they are proud of themselves while they still can be.

Porridge for Profit - Privatizing Prisons

The announcement yesterday that a Birmingham prison is to be moved into the private sector is yet another huge and disgraceful step towards the total dismantling of the public sector by the Con Dem Government. Ethically, it is a terrible social decision to allow companies to profit from the incarceration of prisoners and raises many deeply troubling questions about the future of the prison system and rehabilitation of offenders.

It is not the first case of privately run prisons in the UK - 11 have been contracted out since the 1990s, and about 12% of prisoners are already held in the private sector, not that you would know from the condemnation by Labour MPs in response to yesterday's news. But this is first case of an existing public sector prison being privatized, and Group 4 Security, who have won the contract, operate as a profit-seeking company. They do not have social objectives in what they do - an outgrowth of private security guard operators, they are known for low wages and operational mismanagement. They do make nice profits for their shareholders, and in this context, what genuine interests might they have in running a prison?

Far from wanting to rehabilitate offenders, a private prison operator will inevitably see much merit in repeat offenders - guaranteeing a continued supply of business. Likewise, facilities for prisoners during their stay in jail would be kept to a bare minimum to drive costs down and again increase returns - the track record of existing private jails pretty much confirms this. And of course, doubtless arguing that this might save the public purse costs, the operator would logically look to maximise the financial returns to be had from cheap/free prison labour.

Unlikely? Well, take a look at the USA, where so many of this government's ideologically-motivated initiatives have their origin.

The USA has privatised scores of its prisons, precisely as, under the barbarically inhumane "three-strikes-and-you-are-out" rule implemented by many states, the prison population has trebled in recent years, with even minor shoplifters (like Gary Ewing) now imprisoned for life. Deploying the cost argument, these prisoners have been conscripted into all sorts of labour - the bulk of US armed services uniforms and ordinance is now manufactured, free of charge, by (disproportionately black) prisoners. The private company Unicor "employs" 20,000 prisoners in 70 US jails to carry out work which even includes making components for Patriot missiles.  Wages can be as low as 23 cents (or 15 pence in UK terms) per hour. Prisoners are also used for a huge range of contracted-out services, including corporate payrolls and call centre work, sometimes placing customers data privacy at some risk, but keeping plenty of income flowing into owners' pockets. The twisted "three strikes" policy ensures a continuing supply of such handy, exceedingly low-cost labour.

If this was happening anywhere else, such as Iran or Zimbabwe, it would be condemned as slave labour. But instead, the US example is being used as a model for Britain. With foaming rightwing papers like the Daily Mail and the Sun backing the move precisely as a means of saving the taxpayer money and vindictively dehumanising prisoners, the Lib Dem Minister, Sarah Teather, blandly states that it doesn't matter who runs prisons, as long as prisoners are rehabilitated effectively.

Prison: no such thing as a free bowl of porridge...

This more than anything betrays her lack of understanding of what is going on in the minds of the corporations bidding for contracts like this, and others in services like health and elder care. This is a company that exploits the staff who apply to work for it voluntarily, minimising wages and maximising working hours - is it suddenly going to be infected with some sort of social concern virus when it takes on prison work? Or is it going to drool at the prospect of virtually free labour and an endless supply of new business?

How we treat prisoners is a mark of how civilised we are, or not. Not only should many of those in prison not be there to begin with, but anyone in a prison is still a human being. They deserve dignity, even if in some cases they are there for removing dignity from others, because the prison system should not be about vengeance or humiliation, but about correction and support to find a better life when they come out again. There are many examples of former prisoners going on to make good and contribute very effectively to society, not least in helping younger people avoid getting into the sort of trouble they have experienced themselves.

But if we give prisons and their inmates over to the likes of Group 4, the emphasis on rehabilitation will no longer be at the heart of the system; rather it would be viewed by corporate executives as being like turkeys voting for Christmas - leaving us with the real prospect that, in future, prison may well work, but only for the purpose of filling the pockets of Group 4 shareholders.

Melting the Cold War: Gorbachev at 80

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, turned 80 on 2 March and this evening a gala concert is being held in London to mark the event and seek to raise millions for cancer charities in memory of his wife Raisa, who died of the illness. International pop stars and singers have gathered at some cost to remember a man whose time in power marked the end of an era, of a system and a country.

This evening, RT ran an interview with his translator and assistant, Pavel Palazchenko, the mustachioed man who seemed constantly at his side as he shuttled from Rekjavik to Helsinki and New York in the round of diplomatic initiatives that marked the end of the thirty year "Cold War". He mentioned his regrets about many of the things that happened in Russia following Gorbachev's downfall at the end of 1991, but, he remarked, compared to the world of 30 years ago, he had no regrets about his involvement with Gorbachev and his "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (reconstruction) initiatives.

In some ways, he is very right - for those of us who remember the constant international tensions of the 1970s and 1980s, the Americans' increasing belligerence under Reagan with their talk of the viability of "limited nuclear war" and the ludicrous "Star Wars" programme, it does well to stop and consider that the world of today, for all its multiple ills, no longer has an international system constructed on such appalling concepts as "Mutually Assured Destruction" by mass nuclear conflagration. The very worst of the dreadful acts played out in Iraq and Libya, or the very worst imaginable al-Qaeda attack, are as nothing to the crisis of 1961, when Kennedy and Khrushchev eyeballed each other over Cuba. Nor do they compare to the potentially much worse 26 September 1983 incident when an accidental nuclear war was avoided only by the prompt thinking of Soviet airforce officer Stanislav Petrov, who correctly diagnosed as false an attack alarm.

And in the former Soviet Union, some states enjoy a degree of political freedom that was unprecedented in the Soviet era. Gorbachev's liberalism has flourished in places such as Estonia, though in others, such as Lithuania, it has been tarnished by deep seated anti-semitism, persecution of the Romany and even of ethnic Russians. Elsewhere, many of the nationalist hatred suppressed (though sadly not removed) by the Soviet era have resurfaced, often violently, and some successor states, like Belarus and Uzbekistan, have become the personal fiefdoms of dictators with powers rivalling Stalin at his worst.

And of course Russia itself, the heartlands of the former Soviet Empire, is today far from free. Putin's methods of autocratic rule are not of the level of the old days, but we see a nationalist state, with limited political choice, a managed media, over-powerful private corporations and a willingness to squash genuine dissent by extra-legal means - rather like its old rival, the United States.

In addition, the early 1990s saw the destruction of many of the highly successful social gains of the old Communist states - health and education services collapsed as industry was privatised into the hands of robber-barons, inequality rocketed and political freedoms became meaningless as people went hungry. I well recall some friends who went on a school exchange to Moscow to be hosted by a Russian family who had saved up all year to treat them to a meal in the then sole branch of McDonalds in the Russian capital - in spite of my friends' offers and protests, their hosts waited outside while they ate, unable to afford to join them but too proud to accept a treat from their guests. For many Russians, they could say what they wanted, but with empty mouths. Little wonder then that at his final shot at the Russian Presidency, the hero of Glasnost polled less than 1% of the vote.

To be fair to Gorbachev, much of the privatisation and full-on rush to naked capitalism happened under his successors, egged on by the Thatcher Foundation and other western think tanks and well-paid economic consultants. The emergent, oil-soaked kleptocracy has been labelled with all manner of opprobrium by the West, but the truth is that Russia today is a strong reflection of its critics, perhaps discomfited that it has succeeded in rivalling them once more as a world power, though one more in the Czarist than Communist tradition.

We should thank him for his positive achievements - it is too easy to forget (and for growing numbers born since the mid-1980s, something completely unknown) how truly frightening some periods of confrontation were in the early 1980s. It was not just peace campaigners who thought the holocaust could be imminent - both then and now we know many American military planners were quite eagerly contemplating circumstances where they might turn Europe into a radioactive desert, somehow believing America might acceptably survive such a scenario.

Yet on the other side, the fall of the Soviet Bloc also, bizarrely, marked a headlong rush from socialism by the Left. In country after country, Communist and Socialist groups renounced their ideologies and even their names, pandering to a zeitgeist a la New Labour that, as Fukyama prematurely declared, we had reached the end of history and liberal capitalism was the only game in town.

Gorbachev - architect of glasnost

I like to think that we know better now, understanding that the old Soviet states were neither socialist nor Marxist in the true sense of these words. And that many people across the world are slowly re-embracing the concepts of social justice, community and equality, not least to face the challenges of resource depletion and climate change. In a number of countries, the Communists or their successor parties have even been re-elected to office, amply demonstrating that the old claims that these regimes were universally hated by their citizens were nothing but western myths and lies.

So I wish Mr Gorbachev a happy 80th birthday, and hope that an evening with Elton John and Shirley Bassey does not spoil it too much for him. But his legacy is a mixed one. While we should undoubtedly be grateful that his bold efforts made the world much safer, for a time at least, and perhaps gave it the breathing space it needed to reconfigure itself to face the new, equally fatal challenges of climate change, we need to cut past any uncritical celebration of the man to remember that the "New World Order" that subsequently emerged is not the one we need to save our species from itself.

From Tahrir to Trafalgar

The "Battle of Trafalgar Square" screams the lead story in the Mail on Sunday today, complete with dramatic pictures of allegedly violent anti-capitalist protesters silhouetted against flames. And on some leftwing internet forums and liberal papers, parallels are drawn between yesterday's anti-cuts demonstration and the Egyptian protests that toppled the Mubarak regime from their centre in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

There is more than a little hyperbole on both sides here - anyone watching the live broadcast on late night BBC TV last night could see that there was no violence and only a handful of people "kettled" by a much larger contingent of police (by then on super-overtime rates I should think). There was a fire - of placards stacked against a wall where people denied the right to leave were trying to keep warm in the chilly night. In spite of the best efforts of the BBC anchorwoman to make out that bloody violence had come to London's streets, both the rather calm footage and a phone interview with a Guardian journalist with the protesters in the Square itself belied the attempted drama.

Needless to say, the BBC and the rightwing press have seized on a handful of incidents, such as smashing the windows of a branch of corporate-tax-dodging Topshop, as typifying the demonstration and calling into question Labour leader Ed Miliband's judgement in addressing the quarter of a million people who attended, nearly all of them peacefully. With fewer than 200 arrests, it was in fact one of the most peaceful mass events ever in London, not that you'd know from a lot of the coverage.

Yet of course, Trafalgar is no Tahrir - to suggest so is to deny both the bravery and success of the Egyptians. It is true the Cameron Government is determined not to listen to the protests of those at the sharp end of their cuts programme - Vince Cable was adamant on the TV this morning that there would be no change, while Michael Gove yesterday derided the protest as meaningless. But at least we will have an opportunity to show our feelings about their policies at the local elections on 5 May, a right previously denied to the Egyptians.

The question for 5 May of course is who to vote for to make the anti-cuts voice come over as loudly as possible. On the face of it yesterday, the trade union movement continues to view Labour as the best vehicle for this, but you might question why.

Labour went into the last General Election pledged to cut even deeper - about 25 %  of public spending than the 21% target of the current Con Dem Government. The only difference was that they would have taken a bit longer to do it, so year on year the impact may have been not just quite as harsh as it is going to be. And throughout their 13 years in power, New Labour did nothing to address the fundamental issues in our society of inequality and poverty - indeed, they eased tax regulations to the benefit of the rich and their lax approach to the excesses of the City and the financial sector led directly to the banking crisis which the Tories now want the public to pay for. As yet at any rate, new leader Ed Miliband has not signalled any significant change to this approach.

So is voting Labour a real option for those opposed to the massive cuts in public spending, most of them targeted at support for the most vulnerable in our country - the elderly, the disabled, the young and the sick? It seems not and the trade unions are fools to themselves for continuing to see Labour as offering new wine in their old and chipped bottle.

There are genuine options - the Greens for example oppose the whole cuts package. Greens argued at the election for tackling the deficit by a combination of sustainable economic initiatives such as a national energy efficiency programme that would have created jobs and skills; a fundamental shift to better public transport and a massive attack on tax avoidance which costs tens of billions to the Treasury each year. They also called for a maximum wage of £150,000 p.a. and a progressive tax regime to redistribute the skewed wealth in British society.

And yet yesterday, in spite of repeated requests, the Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas MP, was denied the right to speak by the trade union organisers of the anti-cuts demonstration. The only national leader actually opposed to cuts in public spending was not allowed to put her views across to crowds opposed to the cuts: instead, the pro-cuts Labour leadership were given the platform.

Labour have a lot to answer for still: Miliband does seem mildly refreshing as being genuinely to the left-of-centre after years of essentially rightwing Blairite pragmatism, but he has given no clarion call for real reform. And rather than a root-and-branch purge of the decidedly non-socialist platform of New Labour in favour of genuinely social democratic views, he has blandly called for a rewrite of policy starting with a blank sheet - how inspiring! Indeed, how Blairite.

The opinion polls look good for Labour, mediocre for the Tories and deservedly frightening for the craven Liberal Democrats. But for genuine change, people need to be able to hear the real alternatives offered by groups like the Greens and what is left of the Respect Party and others on the socialist left. The media might be expected to be hostile to these groups, but the trade unions are making a strategic mistake by denying them a voice and continuing to hitch their wagon to the tired old nag that Labour now is, shorn of its soul and in dire need of new direction.

Killing Knut

Knut the polar bear, the cute little white ball of fluff with the appealing black nose rejected by his mother in Berlin zoo in 2006, has died very prematurely of a brain disease. Feted by the international media and quickly commodified by the zoo into everything from soft toys to fridge magnets and dvds, adoring crowds of thousands flocked to see him take his first steps in the intimacy of his enclosure, while article after article featured the close relationship forged with his keeper, who hand-reared him. Like so many anthropomorphised creatures in human zoos, Knut was turned into the essence of an manufactured life form - unnatural, cuddly as opposed to a killer, the epitome of a thousand children's Christmas tales.

Knut, 2006 -2011, r.i.p.

Yet of course the true story was much bleaker - Knut, furry and cute, was indeed still a potential killer and had to be separated from his keeper when he grew too large. The keeper was later found dead in his flat, cause unknown. Isolated in his man-made environment, Knut languished thousands of miles from his real habitat - though, thanks to human meddling by breeding several, successive generations of zoo-reared polar bears divorced from their real environment, it was a habitat that would have killed him had he been placed in it. Depressed, diseased and confined, wasn't it only a matter of time before this sad moment came to pass?

Knut's tale is far from unique. Zoos, sanitised into family adventure parks and lauded as preserving rare species, in truth are what they are: prisons for captive animals. Many zoos have come a long way from their origins - cages tend to be bigger and "safari parks" in rather unlikely locations such as Longleat  and Loch Lomond, deliberately cultivate the image of animals roaming free as People Carriers packed with holidaymakers trundle slowly through their enclosure.

Yet what does this do to the animals themselves - detached from what their Nature requires of them, urges them, and makes them need? There is little doubt of the intelligence and empathy inherent in many species of animals, yet we connive to do them the supposed kindness of caging them in climates and conditions far removed from their real homes.

I have only ever seen a polar bear once for real. It was an experience that has stayed with me all the 24 years since - for all the wrong reasons. It was in July 1987. I had just been to a graduate careers fayre in Edinburgh with some former classmates and, on a baking hot summer's day, we decided to stop at the zoo on the way home. And there she was - a huge, once magnificent creature, stuck in a direct suntrap on a single rock barely larger than her own body, positioned below the circular wall round which kids and adults alike stood, peering down, pointing at her as she baked on the rock, her white fur distinctly browned and yellowed and matted. As she swung her head ceaselessly from left to right and back again, sweet wrappers and drinks cans floated and bobbed on the dirty water surrounding her cramped perch as a zookeeper babbled on about how this apparently simulated the Arctic environment, a place she was doomed never to see.

Perhaps, ironically, there was some truth in his words. The Arctic is melting far faster than anticipated because of man-made global warming and for the first time in recorded history the once fabled North-west passage is now a reality in the summer months. Polar bears are changing their habits, having to swim ever further to find ever smaller morsels of food. In 2009, one starving bear swam two hundred miles from Greenland to Iceland, only to be shot dead on arrival. In Canada, as they move further south and by force change their diet, they are mixing with grizzlies to create a new, blond bear species - though that still does not stop the slaughter by bloodsports enthusiasts, like their helicopter hunting poster girl Sarah Palin.

The slaughter continues...

So the commodification of Knut has a double-edge to it: while some no doubt genuinely hope that it will help promote conservation work and protect endangered species (endangered by who, of course?), it turns the actual creatures in the zoos into saleable goods, marketable property, if not directly (other than to other zoos perhaps), then certainly as false images of what they are. And on that basis, many people are left unquestioning about our treatment of them, our denial of their individuality or any right to dignity and freedom. Just as, tens of thousands of miles away, we are also denying their right to a natural habitat and even their right to exist. We watch documentaries about their plight, then can go and coo at them in the zoo, be told conservation work is being done, and go home feeling ok.

In this context, the Berlin bear becomes just more tabloid fodder, another tragic soap tale set alongside the latest on Jordan's divorces and Kate Middleton's dress. His demise at such a young age is grist to the mill of pulp magazines, marking the all too early passing of this artificial creation of humanity. Poor Knut.

Let's hope some "intelligent" species never decides to conserve us - from ourselves, perhaps.

The Human Zoo...

No Flying Into Oblivion

The United Nations "No Fly Zone" has today seen rather a lot of flying by the planes and missiles of the western allies, unsurprisingly bombing Libyan Government airforce and radar installations, but more controversially bombing military columns to create a defensive cordon around the rebel held city of Benghazi and last night bombing the Government compound in Tripoli in spite of the hundreds of civilians camped around its walls. For those of us who supported, tentatively, a "No Fly Zone" when it was repeatedly called for by the rebels and after increasingly bloodthirsty threats from the regime, the instant escalation to significantly greater military involvement than a "no-fly-zone" raises grave concerns as to what the endgame is going to be. This is especially the case when the rebel faction has made clear it is not willing under any circumstances to consider a negotiated settlement, which rather suggests we might be there a very long time indeed. 

Armed intervention, unless you are a pacifist, needs always to be a very final option in a handful of cases. And yet, genuinely humanitarian interventions are few and far between. The Bosnian intervention came three years too late to save tens of thousands of innocent Bosniac civilians - 90% of them Muslims; and although the Kosovan intervention did undoubtedly prevent a repeat massacre, the wide range of targets hit in civilian areas hinted at darker motives than purely protecting civilians. By contrast, the wars more enthusiastically waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the secret war against Iran, have somewhat more questionable motives. Ones rooted in self-serving business interests and where humanitarian concerns, including democracy, are very far removed from the real priorities of securing profitable energy resources for our oil-addicted world.

What then of Libya? What is the motive here? Given that we gladly did business with Libya in spite of previous bloody massacres of sometimes hundreds of opponents, humanitarian concerns have not been the top of the West's agenda in this relationship for a very long time. So what is the real driver now?

Oil again seems obvious, except for the fact that Libya's dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi has pretty happily engaged with western oil companies since the great rapprochement of 2004. If anything, the oil industry would be perfectly happy for him to stay - any new regime, especially a democratic one, would be likely to disturb their modus vivendi in a country where oil extraction is about as cheap and profitable as anywhere in the world.

Our man in Tripoli

Former British Premier, Tony Blair, has come under criticism for his visit to Qaddafi back in 2004, when Libya was allowed to open up to international trade after years of sanctions. In recent weeks, Coalition politicians in Britain have been queuing up to denounce him; yet their wisdom is somewhat one of hindsight. Take a look back at their words at the time and, while some were hesitant, nearly all of them supported Blair's move:

"The potential prize of helping Libya in from the cold makes Mr Blair's risk worth taking,"- Menzies Campbell, Lib Dem Foreign spokesman, 2004

Conservative leader at the time, Michael Howard, condemned Blair's visit only because he felt it was at too high a level. He supported the overall process of re-engagement.

Infamously, current Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, worked for p.r. firm GJW during the 1990s, when it was hired by Qaddafi to improve the Libyan regime's image.

The truth is that Qaddafi is one side of the capitalist coin that governs our world. Many on the Left have been seduced for years by his eclectic and self-serving adoption of supposedly progressive causes. Yet all the  while, he has ruled with a brutal iron fist at home and cavorted at every chance with the oil companies and international businessmen who have made him personally a very rich man indeed.

What has happened is this - Qaddafi has not been strong enough to crush the revolt quickly enough; had he suppressed the rebels in a few days then, as Bahrain is doing now, no matter how savage his retribution, after 18 months of purdah, he would have been welcomed back to his corporate family. As it is, he has taken too long to reassert himself and so has outlived his usefulness - Capital abhors a vacuum and so he must go. Hence the intervention has quickly become far more than a No Fly Zone. With the Chavez Peace Initiative ignored by the West and any and all prospects of a negotiated settlement compehensively rejected by the Libyan rebels, the agenda is clearly now one of regime change.

Strange as it may seem, but at least for the last decade, Qaddafi has been the West's creature - perhaps more obviously an untamed Frankenstein than the royals in the Gulf that Cameron gently admonishes for their civilian massacres - but our creature nevertheless. Just last year Britain sold £200 millions of "crowd control" equipment to him and the SAS trained his elite guard on surveillance techniques, while the French provided him with a wide range of military support.

That is why the West has in truth been reluctant to do what it is doing - until now. Qaddafi and Big Oil have profited very nicely from their mutual dealings. How annoying that the Libyan people have spoiled and confused things so terribly by getting in the way of this most symbiotic of relationships. They deserve better than this bastard of a twin-headed hydra that has buried itself deep in their troubled land. Sadly, whatever the outcome, just as Iraq is slipping back into dictatorship and Afghans are governed by a western-sponsored kleptocracy, it seems unlikely that they will get it.

From 2009:

Fat Cats Ate My Sunshine

Yes, you've seen them - the shady characters, gliding up in their electrically powered 4X4's, sharp suits crafted from recycled "Green Worlds" as they size up sites for the latest windmills - the ultimate in Battery Farming - and cashing in greedily on the sickening trade in Solar Futures: who says the Sun will always shine tomorrow? These guys are speculating on a Long Dark Night, I tell you....

This surreal fantasy is actually at the heart of current Government thinking. Just a matter of weeks after effectively abolishing corporation tax on overseas earnings for our poor struggling bankers, the Lib Dem Secretary of State has boldly set his sites on the Government's next target - the far more urgent and dangerous phenomenon of "solar fat cats".

I kid you not - the Government is set to seriously restrict the financial advantages of the "feed-in tariff" for solar energy. Apparently worried about big business cashing in on subsidies to encourage installation of solar energy panels, it has decided to cut back massively in support for non-domestic panels. Perish the thought that any public money might find its way into the hands of profit-seeking energy companies, quite the opposite of the smooth, clean, super-efficient operation of the financially solvent nuclear power industry...

Just as carbon fuel prices soar, edging ever higher with each new crisis in the Arab world, our supposedly greenest Government in history has at a stroke set back hope of a substantial increase in solar energy generation in spite of its increasing efficiency. Support will still be available to small schemes, but as soon as anyone with some serious investment began sniffing around the subsidy pot, the lid was slammed shut.

How bizarre, when the nuclear industry needs tens of billions of taxpayers money just to keep going each year (let alone the massive bill looming for decommissioning the current aging reactor plants). Mr Huhne is by contrast loathe to supply even £40 million p.a. (about 67p per inhabitant of the UK) to foster solar power (mostly recouped from higher charges and not even from the public purse itself).

Of course, it is pretty much a ruse to cut more spending - big business did not show any serious signs of piling into the industry, although there are plans for some interesting medium sized schemes. One scheme, an amusement park company, will likely lose out now and, in these recessionary times, may not proceed with their plans to become carbon-neutral. Jobs are at risk as well and Britain looks set to lose out in the valuable skills development in emergent technologies that the alternative energy industry offers. In the name of short term financial efficiencies, the longer term is being sacrificed.

You have been warned...

Yet at the same time, tens of billions of pounds are set to be handed out in tax cuts to multinational corporations under the new tax reform regulations on Controlled Foreign Companies going through Parliament - a clear case of choices being made rather than necessary cuts in public finance. While no one wants subsidies snatched and gobbled up by a handful of big players, the strategy should be to put money into encouraging an exponential increase in alternative energy rather than tax relief for capitalist pirates. This is a greenwash Government, and this episode shows just how paper thin their commitment to alternative energy is.

As we face the chaos and cost of Peak Oil, there will be a high price to pay for this most ignorant of decisions.



The only song about solar electricity to make the UK charts (at 99!).



Palestine Elections: Voting the Right Way for Europe

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, fresh from his confused Libyan spy adventure, demonstrated his ignorance of another Middle Eastern issue yesterday. After Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, one of two claimants to be President of the Palestinian National Authority, called for immediate elections to the National Council, his party's main rivals, Hamas, denounced the idea, saying there had to be a reconciliation process before any elections are held.

Hague was quick to denounce Hamas' opposition to voting:
‘Hamas should not be allowed to “stifle the democratic expression of Palestinians”, he thundered, or more likley croaked after his troubles of the last few days.

On the face of it, who but rabid anti-democrats would oppose elections? In liberal democratic terms, is anything more important than getting to a ballot box?

Yet what Mr Hague did not acknowledge, either from ignorance or deviousness, was that Palestinians have gone to the polls before, voted and elected Hamas as their government. Here are the results of the Palestinian General election of 2006:

• Hamas          - 440,409 votes;  74 seats
• Fatah/PLO   - 410,554 votes;  45 seats
• Others          -   97,815 votes;  11 seats

At the same time, in a direct election, Fatah's Abbas was elected as President and both he and the National Council were to have a five year term with elections due again in January this year.

Yet, inspite of this, with the then Conservative Opposition's full support, the British Government and its American and European counterparts refused to acknowledge Hamas' election, repeatedly rebuffing their attempts to enter the international stage and conniving with Israel in its dreadful blockade of Gaza which continues even today. Because, just as we have seen in Egypt recently, for all the West's claims to want to export the Holy Grail of electoral democracy to the world, it turns out that elections are quite disposable if the results turn out to be wrong. For democracy to work, it seems, people have to vote the right way.

Deep in brutalised Gaza, Palestinians worry endlessly about voting reform

.

And so, isolated and ignored in spite of their vital importance to any peace process, Hamas currently control the Palestinian territory in the Gaza strip after a break between them and Fatah, who control the myriad of PNA statelets scattered around the Israeli controlled West Bank. After the violence and the disputed arrangments in the territories since, a reconciliation process is absolutely vital.

Abbas is effectively grandstanding for the benefit of his Washington sponsors in calling for elections - no outcome would provide a satisfactory or peaceful settlement if it was not preceded by talks and agreement. That agreement, of course, needs first and foremost to be between Palestinians, but also vital is agreement from America and Europe - including Mr Hague (assuming he remains Foreign Secretary in spite of everything) - that they will respect the outcome of any elections as the genuine wishes of the Palestinians and undertake to engage with whoever wins.

After all, surely the sole purpose of Western foreign policy is to promote democracy around the world? That's what Iraq was about, wasn't it? And why all these people have to die in Afghanistan? And why we sold all these weapons to nice Mr Mubarak? Isn't it?

Standing With Our Sisters - International Women's Day

A message to misogynists everywhere...

Today is (still just) International Women's Day, a day to mark both the contribution of the majority gender and to highlight the discrimination and misogyny which, even now, continues to plague so much of the planet.

Today, I have read about child brides in Yemen bleeding to death, of the public stripping of Dalit women in India by upper caste men intent on humiliating them, and of women attacked on the streets of Cairo for daring to demonstrate to have at least one solitary female voice among the many male ones busily drafting Egypt's supposedly new liberal constitution.

In many societies, violence against women is not only still legal, but even women have been drilled socially into seeing it as acceptable - for example, a survey found that 8 out of 10 Zambian women feel their husbands should beat them if they go out alone: the western press ignores that this is in a prevalently Christian country, concentrating instead on the preachings of certain Islamic scholars who accord a similar view of females in Islam.

Yet it is not only in these most horrific of cases in countries far away that there is a need for a day like today. The West, so smug in its supposedly liberal traditions and democratic zeitgeist, concentrates rather more on the statistics of how many women are in managerial jobs or taking seats in the Boardroom, important though these are, and rather less on the more salacious and sometimes truly disturbing undercurrents that continue to inform society's view of women on all too many occasions.

Consider these facts:

- American legislators, just six weeks ago, sought to redefine rape by making a distinction between forcible rape and, well, presumably some other type of rape. After a storm of protest, the Republican Party proponents of the new definition reluctantly withdrew it, but that such an idea could be seriously entertained at all in Congress is proof enough that misogyny is a long time dying. And it is little coincidence that religious fundamentalism was a key motive in the move. Indeed, the idea of "forcible rape" perhaps is rooted in the biblical passage of Deuteronomy which prescribes the killing of rape victims who do not scream loudly enough - "ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city."

- It is not only in Zambia that women believe that if they are beaten it is all that they are due. An Edinburgh Napier University study last year found alarming views among 11 and 12 year old schoolchildren in Scotland. An overwhelming majority felt that violence by men against women can be justified if there is a reason! A staggering 80% felt that it would be permissible for a man to hit a woman who had not prepared his meal on time for him. The figure rose to nearly 100% if a man discovered his wife or girlfriend was having an affair. Among British adult women, one in ten think they deserve to be hit if they flirt with someone other than their partner, and one in five people see domestic violence as acceptable at times - this even although two women are killed by their partners every week.

- Police, sometimes including female officers, have on many occasions assaulted women in ways that never quite seem to occur with men in custody - for example, the disturbing footage of British police stripping and beating a young woman who had been arrested after arguing with her boyfriend; or the American police who beat a handcuffed woman when they lost patience with her lack of co-operation. Although there is sometimes some half-hearted prosecution by the authorities when somehow the incidents leak out, convictions and even dismissals are relatively few.

I could go on. Sure, there are many other wrongs in the world, and many men suffer greatly in many ways as well as women. But given that in some countries women's testimony still counts as less than a man's in court; in others they are confined to the home or forced to cover up out of doors at threat of severe punishment, or subjected to a media that simultaneously casts women as sexualised objects and then screams in faux horror and sensationalist coverage at sexual violence, International Women's Day should give an opportunity to think and act for genuine equality.

Employment, economic and legal equality are absolutely vital. But so too is respect and dignity and valuing of the person and the current cuts in support for victims of domestic violence in the UK are sending out all the wrong signals. In a world where so much of humanity is degraded and debased by our pernicious and exploitative economic system, gender inequality and the denigrating of women in so many ways is somehow all the greater an affront to our species. Today is a chance to change and make a better world for us all, sisters and brothers together.

                  

Spies Like Us

The advent of box sets of old TV series can create new addicitons. Having made my way through four years' worth of Battlestar Galactica and all five seasons of Babylon 5, my more recent viewing has been the BBC historical drama "Fall of Eagles" from 1974. A little dated now, but with some solid turns by Charles Kay as Czar Nicholas, Barry Foster as Kaiser Wilhelm and the truly inspired casting of a young, but apparently ageless Patrick Stewart as Lenin, it charts the decline and fall of the European Empires of the 19th century.

Britain doesn't figure much in the series as our crumbling Empire dragged on for another three decades after Austro-Hungary ceased to exist, but we were reminded today that in one respect parts of our Government still apparently haven't quite got the message that the Great Game is long over.

A rather bizarre affair has emerged from Benghazi in Libya, the centre of the rebel revolt against Colonel Gaddafi's regime. Six members of the Special Air Squadron (SAS), Britain's elite military unit, were arrested along with two diplomats when they turned up uninvited. Suspicious locals apprehended them and took them in for questioning. Their nervousness about these strangers would be understandable given the repeated assaults on the city by the regime, but what was truly bizarre was that the SAS arrived, unannounced, by helicopter, landing on the edge of the city to proceed on foot. No surprise at all then that they were arrested - more surprising perhaps was the fact that they were not fired on or their helicopter shot down.

The Empire Strikes Back - Hague's hubris

There was at least a grain of comedy to be had in this grim situation - the British Ambassador to Libya phoned from London to a rebel leader in Benghazi and had his conversation hacked by Gaddafi's officials, who recored it and promptly played it on Libyan TV. The hesitant diplomat explained to the rebel that the British Government was keen to make contact and see what sort of humanitarian help might be needed and so wanted to send some diplomats for talks. But, he explained, they had sent a small party ahead (the SAS men in their helicopter) to find a hotel!  Yes, that's right - these gun-totting commandos were dropped out of the sky to make their way into Benghazi to check out the bed and board rates and book some rooms for the mandarins.

Now, I know the Government wants to save costs in these supposedly hard economic times, but was this the most effective way to ensure they got the best deal for the diplomats' stay? Couldn't they have used Google or lastminute.com or something like that? The episode is all the more incredulous given that a British navy destroyer was docked in Benghazi port at the very same time. Couldn't the Captain just have popped ashore and asked around? No wonder UK Foreign Secretary William Hague was so circumspect when asked about the incident.

But of course, the very presence of the destroyer, albeit to help evacuate people, raises questions about how even now we conduct our business in places like Libya. We happily arm the regime to the teeth - selling Gaddafi £200 millions of "crowd control" equipment last year alone - and then think when there is trouble we can arrogantly send not only ships but armed men into foreign countries to act with impunity. How would we have reacted if a group of armed Arabs turned up in London during the chaos of the student fees protest? Somehow, I suspect, with rather less restraint than that shown by the beleaguered Benghazis.

Yet aside from the farcical nature of this incident, there is one positive note - that nowhere have any of the protestors or rebels asked for any outside help, other than that we should stop our enthusiastic business dealings with the dictators. Mr Hague may like to sit in his office imagining some sort of steampunk fantasy where Britain still rules the waves and gunboat diplomacy gets results; but the rest of the world has moved on.

A Lesson from Ireland

The Irish general election has effectively seen the emergence of a new party system - the centre-right Fine Gael party has stormed to victory in a likely coalition with the Labour Party, between them polling over 60% of the vote. They have eclisped the previously dominant Fianna Fail, notionally to the left of centre but, as someone on an English Green Party board posted, more closely associated with a mafiosi-style of pork barrel politics.

But it is not just the collapse of Fianna Fail that is of note - the election produced significant results in two other respects: one was the rise of anti-establishment parties in the shape of Sinn Fein and the United Left Alliance (a grouping of leftwing socialists) who between them have ended up with 18 seats and 12.5%; and the other was the collapse of the Green Party which had been in a rather unholy Coalition with Fianna Fail. The Greens' vote collapsed from slightly under 5% to just 1.8% and their parliamentary presence was eliminated.

It is a hard lesson, but not a new one - if you are a radical party seeking the challenge the system, it does not pay to sign up to the system for the sake of trying to appear "responsible" or to "work from the inside.". The Irish Greens used this latter argument to justify combining with Fianna Fail. And they did gain some environmental kudos - Eire increased investment in alternative energy. Yet at the same time, Greens had to support airport expansion and motorway building. As the economic crisis swept over the country after some ludicrous dealings by large construction companies and the banks that financed them, any social justice measures were quickly swept aside by the Year Zero economics imposed by the IMF. Consequently, precisely at a time when the Greens could have been showing Eire a viable, radical alternative to "business as usual", they are impotently relegated to the sidelines.

In England in recent weeks, with local councils having to set budgets that, by law, must comply with central Government strictures about cutting services to save costs, Greens have been confronted with the dilemma of whether to vote for budgets required by central diktat, or to vote against at the risk of being portrayed as either dreamers or schemers - or both. In our local area, Kirklees, the four Green Party councillors were the only party group on the Council to vote against a budget that will reduce spending on services by nearly a quarter over the next four years - including taking £20 millions out of adult social care.

The debate can be seen here and it is about a damning an indictment of the standard of political debate in British local authorities as you will find anywhere. The hostility to the Greens and the Independent who spoke against the cuts budget is palpable, the three big parties repeatedly sneering and deriding their opposing viewpoints. There is no engagement in debating the issues - simply an announcement that the budget proposed by the three big parties is the "least worst option" and any variation will not work.

It would be easy in such circumstances for Greens to accept the oft-cited argument that Councils have to set legal budgets and so vote for cuts. But only by opposing them at local level can the counter-argument be put against the received wisdom peddled by the Coalition Government that cuts in spending are essential. Greens have never accepted this approach and so why should they vote for it on the councils where there is Green representation? If they did, who would be speaking up for the alternative?

By contrast to the Irish, the Scottish Greens have worked on a case by case basis with the SNP Government over the last four years, carefully maintaining their independence and avoiding being sucked in too deep by offers of jobs and influence. Consequently, if current polls remain solid, they hold the not unrealistic hope of an increase in MSPs from 2 to 6 or more at the elections in May.

So for Green radicals, it seems Ireland is a warning signal - short term gains are just that; short term, limited and, if you are wiped out for missing the tsunami of social and economic issues confronting your voters, any small gains will as likely be not be wiped away in the twinkling of an eye. Hold steady and an electorate increasingly wearied of the mind-numbing sterility of the Establishment parties may begin to turn and look for something genuinely new.