Clearly Not Welcome

This march has been banned. Come out and call their bluff.

(Why not set one of these images as your profile picture on facebook?  Bit of virtual flyposting, if loads of us do it it really creates an atmosphere of something big happening)

Anti-Bush demonstration banned from Whitehall.

The Stop the War Coalition has been informed by the Metropolitan Police that a proposed march, co-organised with CND and the British Muslim Initiative, to protest George Bush’s visit will not be allowed. The Coalition has organised scores of marches on this route, including during Bush’s last visit in 2003.

It seems that when George W Bush visits this country traditional rights of assembly are to be removed from the people. This would be unacceptable for the visit of any foreign leader, but for George Bush, a man many regard as a war criminal, it is particularly deplorable.

We are calling on those who care for our democratic rights to come to Parliament Square at 5.0 pm on Sunday 15 June. Some of those who signed statements accusing Bush of war crimes will be leading this protest.

Maybe we can do a Monbiot, not only staring down the threat of arrest (again) but see about arresting a genuine threat to society. After the protests that have greeted Bush pretty much every time his set foot in Europe, we can hardly let him down for his last trip, can we? Plus there’s the surprise formal colonisation of Iraq afoot, the 100th British soldier killed in Afghanistan, a possible renewal of the threat to attack Iran, in short, plenty of reasons to go and protest the war on terror…

…in spite of which I, for one, thought I would be too busy and too skint this weekend - but I will sure as hell make the effort now they’ve tried to ban it. It really baffles me that they do things like this, y’know. They talk about the antiwar movement in the past tense, as if it had become completely irrelevant, and then go and prove its relevance once and for all with this kind of stunt. Anyway, we really had better show em what for.

“George Bush has been dictating British foreign policy for many years. Now it appears his security services are determining our rights of protest. This is a disgrace and we will challenge the ban” - Lindsey German, Convenor Stop the War Coalition

“The ban on the Stop The War Coalition march in protest at the visit of President Bush to this country is a totalitarian act. In what is supposed to be a free country the Coalition has every right to express its views peacefully and openly. This ban is outrageous and makes the term ‘democracy’ laughable”. - Harold Pinter

Battles on Democracy

Before criticising the security law recently put forward by the Venezuelan government, we should take a moment to consider the fact that it is under persistent low-level (and occasionally intense) attack from the world’s only superpower. Chavez’s fear of being Allende‘ed is certainly more justifiable than Gordon Brown’s fear of monstruous terrorists slipping through the net after four weeks in custody (when just two more weeks would have been enough to nail them). Nevertheless, comparisons to the Patriot act and its UK equivalents are perhaps justified, and so I’m glad to see that the law is to be rewritten in consultation with civil rights groups. Not a bad idea. While you’re doing your ringrounds Gordon, I’m sure you have Sami Chakrabati’s number.

Then there’s Bolivia, where the Eastern states have been voting, one by one, for autonomy from the central government. This has less in common with Scotland’s vague struggle for independence than with the issue of “States’ rights” in relation to the Civil Rights movement of the US. When the federal government moved against the apartheid system of the South, you see, it was in fact oppressing the states, depriving them of their innate right to oppress their black populations. In Bolivia, a near-revolutionary movement of the mainly brown masses has put a brown socialist into the President’s office with a strong mandate for nationalisation and redistribution of the nation’s resources. And in the regions where those resources can be found, the mainly white rich folks are having none of it.

That the results of the autonomy referenda have all been overwhelmingly positive, however, doesn’t tell us that the whole Eastern half of the country wants to jealously guard its gas and oil wealth. There were none of the usual international observers checking that everything was above board, a great many people boycotted the elections to undermine their legitimacy, and those inclined to vote “no” anyway faced massive intimidation from the neo-nazi student groups allied with the autonomists. President Morales can’t even visit parts of the country without his supporters facing terrifying racist attacks like this one; the autnomists claim that they’re resisting the repression of the central government, but they really represent reactionary forces of the most vicious kind.

If you really want to see state repression in Latin America, try Colombia. President Alvaro Uribe can’t stand by watching his entire party go to jail, one by one, as their links to right-wing death squads are brought to light. So he’s going after the opposition, en masse, calling them (and Chavez) stooges of the FARC. His evidence? A laptop that the Colombian army seized from the FARC a few months ago. Interpol say that there’s no proof that the Colombian regime definitely just made the whole thing up, and the entire anglophone press seems to interpret this as proof that the Colombian regime definitely didn’t just make the whole thing up. For more on the magic laptop and the Colombian paramilitary scandal, I recommend Toni Solo’s editorials at the Fanonite blog; BoRev.net is also great.

Anyway, when I say that the Colombian army seized the laptop from the FARC, I forgot to specify that they seized it in Ecuador, after a massive, illegal cross-border raid. This kind of behaviour earned it the censure of pretty much everyone else on the continent; in the words of Chavez, Colombia is now the Israel of Latin America. It’s certainly America’s favourite deputy gendarme in the region, and its rapidly growing army is now considerably larger than Israel’s, and overtaking Brazil as the largest in the region despite having a much smaller population. Plan Colombia remains the Empire’s most effective weapon against the people of Latin America.

Oh, and then there’s Peru: Alan Garcia is a fat imperialist. Evo Morales is worried.

Off to a good start 2 - No pasaran

Now that the dust has settled, we can get the BNP’s recent electoral successes into perspective. As the indispensable anti-fascist blog Lancaster Unity reminds us:

The results are not good - there’s no getting away from that fact - though the BNP’s net increase of ten councillors and the idiotic Richard Barnbrook’s election to the London Assembly are more as a result of the rocky position in which the current government finds itself rather than anything the BNP has done or said. That said, the result is very far short of the BNP’s expectation - they were hoping for forty new councillors and three Assembly members. And there is even more good news, as reported by Searchlight, which pointed out very clearly how the BNP’s vote in many of its heartlands has gone down, in some cases quite considerably. Nevertheless, with the Euro-elections coming up, we need to remain alert and to keep working hard and continually against the ever-present threat of the far-right.

That’s certainly not something I’d dispute. The BNP’s London breakthrough is not symptomatic of a sudden rightwards surge in public opinion.  Left unchallenged, however, Barnbrooke (once he sobers up after his slurred-but-scary victory speech) and co are sure to drag fascist ideas even more into the mainstream.  Already the BBC laments the plight of the forgotten whites and the respectable “liberal” media hypes up the Islamic threat, and it’s hard to see the rhetoric getting much worse without a significant escalation in racist violence.

That’s why Love Music Hate Racism has called a demonstration outside City Hall at 6pm on Tuesday; hopefully the momentum generated by the spectacularly successful carnival will carry accross to make this a big success; I’d urge anyone in or near London to get down to it.

The far-right have long enjoyed much less success in Britain than elsewhere in Europe, and this is in large part because anti-fascist movements have enjoyed much more success here.  In 1936 the lefties, Jews
and Irishmen of the East End united to stop Mosley’s fascists from marching down Cable Street, in what many saw as an extension of the Spanish Civil War.  The Blackshirts never recovered.  A broad anti-racist coalition - in which my very own SWP played a leading role - won a similar victory in Lewisham in 1977, galvanising an antifascist movement that smashed the NF for a generation.  In both cases, the police made themselves the vanguard of the fascist marchers.  Now I wouldn’t like to see the state banning fascist marches and organisations, given that they would ultimately end up applying those powers against us more than against anyone else, but it’s interesting to see how far they’ll go.  Compare the beating, arresting and, in at least one case, killing to defend the fascists’ “freedom of speech” with the attempted banning of the antiwar protest in October, the absurd restrictions placed upon anti-corporate campaigners, the arrest of the “lyrical terrorist” and other Muslims with questionable reading material, and tell me you don’t see a pattern of hypocrisy emerging.

But I digress.  It is because of the Anti Nazi league and its successors that the BNP have had to take the electoralist pretence of respectability so seriously.  In the continent, where the Neo-Nazis have not faced such vigorous and consistent challenges, they are in positions of much greater strength.  It’s a lesson they are now applying in Germany; in news every bit as encouraging, in its own way, as the spectacular antiwar dockers’ strike in America on the same day, 7000 antifascists thwarted a 1000-strong fascist march on the streets of Hamburg this Thursday.  Incidentally, while you could argue that the Hamburger partisans went a bit far, you have to remark at the BBC’s spectacularly biased reporting of the incident.

In this spirit, I’ve been listening to theexcellent Battle of Lewisham discussion from last year’s Marxism festival over at Resistance MP3s.  Whether such street fighting will become necessary this time around remains to be seen - and I for one sincerely hope it doesn’t - but we cannot afford to let the Nazis go unchallenged.  If there’s one thing that literally everyone should have learned from history, that should be it.  Wherever they pop up to spread their hatred, we must be there to stamp it out.

In the long run, we must accept that people turn to the BNP because they are desperate, because they feel abandoned by the system and its incumbent leaders, and we must be there to provide an alternative.  The token anticapitalist rhetoric common to acolytes of Mussolini, Hitler and Nick Griffin shows just how important it is that the Left puts its politics forward and guide that disillusioned dissent the right way (as opposed to the Right way).  This is why, for all the frustration and the setbacks, projects like Respect and the Left List remain so important.

At the same time, it is important to keep the antifascist movements as broad as possible, and resist the urge to tie them down to any particular political project.  For all the energy we may rightfully expend opposing Labour and the Tories, they are welcome allies in the fight against fascism (like when Buffy the vampire slayer accepts help from Spike the vampire to prevent Angel from destroying the world at the end of series two, ahem).  See Lenin’s post on antifascism and the left.  And I promise to talk about something else in my next post; isn’t it high time I commented on the goings on in Latin America?

Left List in Rusholme and Levenshulme

Don’t forget to vote.

Here’s Sue, our candidate for Levenshulme and Gorton South:

In Gorton South as first timers I think we have run a fantastically energetic campaign including attending a very lively hustings meeting organised by the Friends of Levenshulme group on Saturday. The 3 minute introductory speeches by the candidates have been transcribed and MP3 versions are all available (or will be) on the Friends of Levy website www.levenshulme.wetpaint.com. We really have got the rest of the candidates worried because we are the only ones talking any politics and any sense in fact!

The response on the doorstep also reinforces the fact that we are opening up a gap in Gorton South politics. On Sunday our canvassers had a great time including coming across a street full of health workers who know about Karen Reissmanns dispute and were voting for us already on the basis of the first leaflet. Knocking on doors now is more about motivating people to actually get to the polling booths on Thursday. We have already convinced many people that they should vote for us but they are delighted that someone is actually making an effort to call on them.

And here’s Nahella, for Rusholme:

See also an endorsement of the Left List from Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union.

Troops Out (of Manchester) Now!

On the one hand, five years of horrible and unpopular wars have made a lot of people not want to join the military.  On the other hand, ten years of horrible and unpopular economic policies (with the current crisis as the icing on the cake) has made a lot of people quite desperate.  Hence the intensified drive to recruit, especially targeting students, ethnic minorities and working class children.

And hence, after UCL and the NUT, it’s Manchester’s turn to kick them off campus.  Well, we’ll be voting on it at the next general meeting on Wednesday, and hopefully it will pass.  It’s already provoked some hysterical flak from the Manchester Evening News and the BBC (although that’s nothing compared to the rightwing counterattack that UCL students have had to face).

The text of the motion follows below the fold.  We’ll also be voting to commit the union to a fight for a free education - equally important given the fees review this year, and the right’s victory in the elections to the union executive.

Vote Left List on the 1st May

I want to talk about yesterday, but I’m not finding the time.  For now, here’s the election broadcast from Respect’s Left List:

That was for London.  There are few things to say about the London elections.  The transferable vote system for the mayoral race makes it possible to challenge New Labour’s Ken Livingstone from the left while still defending him from the right, by voting Lindsey German first and Ken second.

The former is made all the more important by Ken’s rapprochement with the most hated elements of the New Labour machine (a far cry from the situation 8 years ago, when he made an immensely popular left challenge to that machine) but quite frankly we can’t let someone who covers up for racist murdering cops, pushes the systematic criminalisation of working class youth, who consistently cosies up to the City that got us into the mess we’re in today, and who tells workers to cross picket lines when his privatisation programmes meet with resistance, go unchallenged.

On the other hand, Boris Johnson is a big posh racist, and if he wins in London it will make a Tory government all the more likely at the next election.  Not that big a change, you might think, but a change for the worse nonetheless.  Hence Ken second, to keep out Boris, and Lindsey first to give Ken a richly deserved and sorely needed kick in the rear.

More important than the mayoral race, though, is the election to the assembly.  Proportional representation gives small parties a good chance at getting onto the GLA, and last time Lindsey German came within a hair’s breadth of the 5% threshold needed.  It would, obviously, be very good to break through this time.  At the other end of the scale, the BNP will almost certainly win one seat, and possibly several.  Not voting makes this all the more likely to happen, and frankly I would rather see you vote Green, Labour, Lib Dems or even Tories than leave the door open to the neonazis.  Fortunately, with PR, a vote for Lindsey will block the fash just as effectively as a vote for the establishment.

It’s not only London where there are elections, though.  There are seats up for grabs on councils around the country, and a number are facing left challenges.  Some Green candidates are quite good, but if you’re thinking of voting Green it’s worth checking out the individual - there are Red Greens and there are Tory Greens - and in some places George Galloway’s breakaway Respect “Renewal” or else the Socialist Party that was once Militant Labour are running.  I have massive problems with the above groups, but at the end of the day they are fighting back, and you really should vote for them.  However, It’s really the Left List* I’m excited about, and I’ve been very involved in their campaigns for two South Manchester constituencies (Rusholme and Gorton South).

As the only party to campaign against council house privatisation, we are able to strike a chord with a lot of residents, and I’ve been pleased to see the response we’ve been getting on the subject of crime.  The right-wing logic of “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” is often superficially more attractive than the arguments of the left, but there really does seem to be an understanding of - and resentment towards - the criminalisation and neglect of young people.

For a while in 2003, it seemed that the war was the subject on everyone’s lips.  Now it’s the economy, and people are talking about left politics in a way we haven’t seen for a generation.  Whether this will show itself in the election results remains to be seen; the big parties have an obvious interest in keeping people disengaged from politics, and we’re the only ones going round talking to people about the real issues.  The mere fact that we’re trying to engage with residents in this way seems to be impressing some people, and while the Lib Dems have traditionally done well locally out of their antiwar credentials they sound more and more like the Tories on economic issues.  Their response to the teachers’ strike speaks volumes: ban the teachers from striking.

We’ll see what happens.  Putting a cross on piece of paper once every couple of years is only a tiny, minuscule sliver of democracy, but since it’s the only part that a lot of people are yet conscious of it remains an important sphere of activity.  We’ll see what happens.  So, what did you think of the video?

Radical Student Renaissance (UPDATED WITH VIDEO)

As was reported in a much-better-than-anyone-would-have-expected Channel 4 news report (as usual, I am the one in the hat), radical student activism has thwarted a right-wing attack on student democracy. Decades of hegemony were about to come to fruition with the various Labour party student groups’ “governance review”, a white paper that would have “modernised” the NUS beyond all recognition. This would have replaced the union’s conferences (already much reduced) with a short “celebration” of the NUS, and subordinated democratic decision-making to an unelected board. Basically, it would have dealt the final blow to the NUS as a student campaigning body, leaving nothing but an overpriced discount card and a managerial lobbying organisation where future NuLabour cadres and NGO managers could cut there teeth. Had they won, it would have looked amazing on their CVs, and that’s basically what student politics is about for a lot of people.

Fortunately, the Death Star was destroyed before they could use it, mainly thanks to the efforts of left activists in winning over the undecided. Our politics defeated their gimmicks and freebies - and it felt so good, especially after the crushing defeat in Manchester last month - leading not only to a rejection of the review but also to an unprecedented electoral success for Student Respect. It is now encumbent upon the student left to build upon these acheivements; defending the NUS’ democratic spaces from a right-wing attack is a good start, but now we need to use the momentum and legitimacy which we’ve now earned to reinvigorate the student movement, to build campus-level activism and to repoliticise the NUS.

World Against War

World against War protest yesterday.  See reports with pics from Jamie and Lenin.  Turnout was a few tens of thousands - a pretty impressive mobilisation, all things considered - of which 6 buses from Greater Manchester.

I will probably provide more detail - and link to reports on the other protests around the world - later, currently quite exhausted.

The Sorriest Of Times (Updated)

1. “Tears will be shed and there will be much emotion, but it will be over by next week.”

Last Wednesday, new Australian PM Kevin Rudd lived up to the hype by making it all better for the country’s oppressed indigenous population, saying “sorry” on behalf of the state for the mass kidnapping of children - the Stolen Generation - in a sustained attempt to wipe the inferior aboriginal race from the face of the Earth. It’s not before time but, as John Pilger points out, it’s just so many words.

Australia has, in his view, “treated its indigenous people worse than any other developed country”, but it has done so consistently - only last year Rudd’s predecessor John Howard was reinvading aboriginal communities for their own supposed good - creating a genuinely oppressed underclass. A meaningful apology would be one that put an end to that oppression, “an honest and massive rehabilitation campaign of all resources available to Aboriginal people” to match the very fine words. Barring such a real apology, the Pilge suggests Australians boycott the superficial one.

While apologies are being given out, Geoffrey Robertson demands one from Britain too. From the beginning of colonisation, before there were any Australians in the sense in which we use the word today, the servants of the British Empire saw the aborigines as pests, vermin, and dealt with them as such. Worse still, the eugenecist theories promoted by the “socialist” Fabian Society - including pretty much all the celebrity left-liberals of the day - called for responsible whiteys to exterminate them once and for all, laying the ideological foundations for the Stolen Generation.

2. “Let there be no doubt that anyone will be allowed to resort to lawlessness in the garb of allegations about rigging in the elections,”

The delayed elections in Pakistan are due to take place tomorrow. Another terrorist massacre of PPP supporters may deliver a sympathy vote to Benazir’s party; for all that her husband and effective successor “Mr Ten Percent” is despised, so is Musharraf. The former General’s appeal thus far has been based entirely on his crusade against the nation’s corrupt former rulers, a crusade to which he effectively negotiated an end last Autumn - and anyway, many people would sooner forgive corruption than what “Busharraf” has done, turning Pakistan into another front in the war of Afghanistan.

The bombing of Pakistani villages by American and Pakistani planes, the proliferation of devastating suicide attacks, the machine-gunning of the Red Mosque and the regime of state terror: these are all things that will count against the incumbent and, for all that they would probably carry on doing exactly the same thing (ah, democracy…), it is likely to be the opposition - Zardari and the PPP, Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N, or an alliance between the two - that wins the vote tomorrow.

Except the signs are now hinting at a day of massive fraud. The Attorney General has been recorded apparently admitting that the election would be rigged back in November, and the lack of exit polls is supremely fishy. With big, tough words coming from both sides, even suspicions of rigging can only blow up. We could be about to see another “colour revolution”, or we could be about to see another Kenya. Maybe it’s the pessimism that comes with being hungover, but I predict the latter.

3. “Dreams are infinite, our challenges loom large, but nothing can deter us from moving forward to the greatness that history has reserved for us.”

The latest step in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia came today, as Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia (and, in practice, its effective dependence upon Albania). The next step, logically, would be the seccession from Kosovo and reattachment to Serbia of the Serb majority areas, and then the migration of anyone on the wrong side of this Partition. The potential for violence hardly needs pointing out - although, to be fair, the rhetoric of the Kosovo independence movement has been worlds away from its quasifascist equivalents in the 1990s, eschewing tolerance and good relations. We’ll have to see.

As if they had learned nothing from Croatia - whose seccession, egged on by Germany and the Vatican, basically kicked off the whole catastrophe of the Balkan 1990s - the US and several European nations are set to recognise the new nation more or less instantly. With support from Russia - and nations, like Spain, keen to avoid giving their own restive regions any big ideas - clearly inadequate to the Serbian cause, there’s a bizarre rumour going around the Serbian press that George Clooney and Sharon Stone are to start protests on their behalf, but the consensus is stacked against them.

Anyway, from Throw Away Your Telescreen:

To mark the occasion of the latest step in the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, I bring you a 2006 interview (36 mins) with Noam Chomsky on Serbian TV.

As it becomes less and less possible to hold up the invasion of Afghanistan as the good war that justifies our imperialism, tame media pundits can still look back fondly upon the 1999 bombing of Serbia as a truly humanitarian intervention. In fact that war fits the pattern set by its successors: a propaganda fairy story of saving savages from each other to disguise the violent projection of Western power.

Update 19/02/08

The PPP has won the Pakistani elections, with the PML-N close behind. Zardari (PPP) hopes to form a “consensus government” coalition with Sharif (PML-N) - this is significant, because Sharif’s is the only large party to be demanding a reinstatement of the pre-emergency independent judiciary. (see al Jazeera, wikipedia).

In spite of all the speculation, there doesn’t appear to have been any cheating - although there has been some violence - and the turnout wasn’t significantly lower than usual. Remember, though, Musharraf stays on as President until 2012, as he held the presidential elections while Sharif and Benazir were still out of the country.

Four-figure crowds of Kosovo Serbs have been attacking border posts in a protest against the state/province/nation/entity’s independence.

Also in the news, Castro has resigned and, in Britain, freedom of information campaigners have got the original (pre-up-sexing) Iraq WMD dossier released. No prizes for guessing that the phrase “45 minutes” doesn’t feature.

Twenty Noughtyseven: Review of the Year

2006 ended with the shock execution of Saddam Hussein, and 2007 ended with the shock assassination of Benazir Bhutto. As 2007 began, Tony Blair’s departure was still months away, but the speculation on when, how and for whom was already getting pretty boring, and as 2008 begins I’m already sick and tired of the race for the U.S. presidential elections in November. That’s not to say nothing has changed though; this review is far from exhaustive, but I think I’ve covered some important trends.

The War Against Terror

Those of us opposed to the violent extension of imperial power spent the year going half-mad over an ever-imminent attack on Iran. Destruction was averted - for now - at the last minute when the neocons were undermined by their own intelligence services, and when events in Pakistan demanded their more immediate attention. Those events were themselves a direct result of T. W. A. T., into which the Pakistani military have been reluctantly drafted, and the response to those events may well be the de facto occupation of Pakistan. What other hope is there for the occupation of Afghanistan, where even with the Pakistani supply lines secure NATO’s only convincing strategy has been to seek an alliance with the evil Taliban.

In Somalia, meanwhile, the progress of 2006 has been more than offset by the catastrophe of 2007, an Ethiopian occupation with U.S. backing that has created a humanitarian crisis to rival Darfur and the Congo. For America military planners, it seems Africa is the new Middle East, and the strategic interest evidenced by the creation of “Africom” goes hand in hand with a propaganda drive. Sudan, home not only of the Darfurian genocide but also of that bloody Teddy bear, is now well and truly part of the Axis of Evil, but the one to really watch is Eritrea which, like Iran, has now been officially branded a terror state.

And then there’s Iraq where, by the sheer monstrosity of the numbers involved, the human costs of war have long surpassed our ability to make sense of them. As Lenin says, these days…

global violence reaches and breaches new threshholds in the space of months, not years. The potential for new peaks of depravity is almost as limitless as the capacity for allowing each new ongoing atrocity to slip tactfully into the background. Soon it becomes normal. 100,000 deaths is shocking until it becomes 650,000, which is in turn stunning until that again almost doubles. So, allow me to remind you of the exponential function: if the rate of death in Iraq doubles each year, as it has been doing consistently, then about 1.3m will have died between June 2007 and June 2008. Then a further 2.6m the next year, and so on. If the occupation were to end in the middle of 2010, which is extremely unlikely, total deaths on current trends would reach ten million. And if it did come to that, it would soon be forgotten about.

For a while, a broad and credible resistance movement seemed to be taking hold in Iraq, though the “surge” and the concurrent intensification of bombing raids (the robotastic “secret air war”, also being fought in Afghanistan and even Pakistan) have put it in its place for the moment.

The ethnic partition of Iraq is now more or less a done deal; the death squads have done their work, although the construction of Berlin Walls through Baghdad was thwarted by massive peaceful protests in Spring. A similar wall is being built along the U.S.-Mexican border, by an Israeli company and based on lessons learnt through the walling in of the Palestinians. It’s one of many examples of the sick Naqba industrial complex that Naomi Klein revealed in one of the year’s most important articles:

Israel’s economy isn’t booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines but because of it… Many of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel’s status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom–a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world….

The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems–precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn’t threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the “global war on terror.”

While we’re on the subject of Palestine, this year has been of the grimmest yet for the inhabitants of beseiged Gaza. To bolster their new quisling Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, the Israelis have relaxed some of the restrictions on life in that territory, but the annexation rolls on with the costruction of the new E-1 settlement bloc set to completely sever the North of the West Bank from the South. All this, alongside another farcical round of talks about talks about peace talks. For more detail on Israel/Palestine, I can but recommend The Heathlander.

Kapital Krunch

The increased military aggression of the U.S. goes hand in hand with its waning economic power. The economies of America and some of its closest allies have been increasingly based on consumption, on demand rather than supply, and that demand has been financed with staggering, unprecedented debt. That debt, on the macro level, comes from the privileged role of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world, which comes from other nations’ faith in the enduring value of Uncle Sam’s IOUs, which is in turn reliant on American hegemony preventing the emergence of a rival currency.

It’s possible - and I’m probably guiltier than most - to read too much into the politics of the petrodollar, but it seems like the notorious Project For a New American century, intended to consolidate the American grip on the world through the destruction or annexation of any dissident state, has ended up revealing just how tenuous that grip was. It began with Iran and Venezuela wondering whether their money would be better placed elsewhere, and before long the spell was broken. Faith in the dollar wavered, and the U.S. treasury suddenly found no takers for the money it was printing to fund the war and the trade deficit. In this saturated market the price started to fall, shaking confidence further, and before you could say “vicious circle” the exchange rate was hitting all time lows.

Macro debt is only half the story, though. Capitalism is predicated upon spiralling debt, and requires sustained economic growth to keep mass bankruptcy at bay. During the good times, this is all well and good (except, of course, when you consider the environmental costs associated with this growth), but the times they aren’t so good. Competing with the neoliberal hyperrich in the housing market (and coping with the rising price of oil and, consequently, oil derivatives and oil substitutes) has unbalanced everyone’s budget.

The subprime mortgage crisis was when the debt bubble burst, but none of the forces have gone away that inflated the bubble in the first place, and the crisis can only deepen. Even editorials in the Torygraph are now concluding that

The strategic failure of a whole generation of economists, bankers, and policy-makers has been so enormous that it may now take a strong draught of socialism to save the Western democracies. We start - but may not end - with the nationalisation of Northern Rock.

The oil and biofuel supply shock that precipitated this long overdue crisis of capital is making itself felt worldwide. The populist Third Way on which the rulers of Iran and Venezuela have been spending their oil revenues is being overtaken by inflation. In Iran this has coincided with a break from the global media spotlight, leading to the (equally long overdue) come-uppance of Ahmedinajed. In Venezuela, it coincides with a botched constitutional reform, making the need to deepen and quicken the Bolivarian Revolution more urgent than ever.

Having considered the above, now consider the effects of this inflation in very different contexts. Consider Iraq:

The Iraqi government announcement that monthly food rations will be cut by half has left many Iraqis asking how they can survive. The government also wants to reduce the number of people depending on the rationing system by five million by June 2008.

Iraq’s food rations system was introduced by the Saddam Hussein government in 1991 in response to the UN economic sanctions. Families were allotted basic foodstuffs monthly because the Iraqi Dinar and the economy collapsed. The sanctions, imposed after Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait, were described as “genocidal” by Denis Halliday, then UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. Halliday quit his post in protest against the U.S.-backed sanctions.

The sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children, and as many adults, according to the UN. They brought malnutrition, disease, and lack of medicines.

Iraqis became nearly completely reliant on food rations for survival. The programme has continued into the U.S.-led occupation. But now the U.S.-backed Iraqi government has announced it will halve the essential items in the ration because of “insufficient funds and spiralling inflation.”

The cuts, which are to be introduced in the beginning of 2008, have drawn widespread criticism. The Iraqi government is unable to supply the rations with several billion dollars at its disposal, whereas Saddam Hussein was able to maintain the programme with less than a billion dollars.

“In 2007, we asked for 3.2 billion dollars for rationing basic foodstuffs,” Mohammed Hanoun, Iraq’s chief of staff for the ministry of trade told al-Jazeera. “But since the prices of imported foodstuff doubled in the past year, we requested 7.2 billion dollars for this year. That request was denied.”

The trade ministry is now preparing to slash the list of subsidised items by half to five basic food items, “namely flour, sugar, rice, oil, and infant milk,” Hanoun said.

…According to an Oxfam International report released in July this year, “60 percent (of Iraqis) currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004.”

The report said that “43 percent of Iraqis suffer from absolute poverty,” and that according to some estimates over half the population are now without work. “Children are hit the hardest by the decline in living standards. Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 percent before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 28 percent now.”

Consider also Britain, where the government’s response to the rising cost of living has been to cut public sector wages.

Left With Gordon

In the last years of Blair’s decade, Gordon Brown went around dropping subtle hints that he might be at least a little to the left of his predecessor-to-be. Where Bliar’s ascent had been characterised by clear contempt for the Labour Party’s principles and traditions, Brown grunted about how Labour were best “when [they were] being Labour” (as opposed, presumably, to when they were being rebranded Tories). The media, meanwhile, revealed a disturbing obsession with Tony’s balls when they tried to spin Brown the “Atlanticist” into someone who definitely wasn’t up Bush’s arse, and Gordon gave us all cause for a deep sigh of relief by simply Not Being Tony Blair. Anyone who dared to hope, though, has surely been taught a valuable lesson by what followed.

I’m not going to chart the incompetent Blairism that is Brownism. Not only would that be pretty boring, it’s also likely to be a major theme in the mainstream press reviews of the year. I’m far more interested in the responses to Brownism; if Tony Blair’s name is now indelibly linked to the savaging of Iraq, Brown will go down in history as Mr. Incomes Policy. As I’ve said, an important driving force in inflation - and a direct and intended result of New Labour policy - has been the emergence of a new class of the superrich, with whose extravagant spending the rest of us can’t keep up.

None of the political parties would dare suggest lifting a finger against the very rich - only a few rare and hesitant noises from the Lib Dems even broach the idea of a progressive tax regime - but if Gordon is to bring inflation down then someone’s spending has to be restrained, and who better than the working class? 2007’s biggest political story, by far, has been the Brown government’s incomes policy - cutting benefits, cutting public sector employment and public sector wages (in the knowledge that the invisible hand will send private setor wages the same way) - and the resistance it has provoked.

To get an idea of the kind of class battle Brown has provoked, here are some numbers from PublicNotPrivate:

While frontline staff delivering key services such as health and education were expected to be satisfied with a pay freeze, the pay packets of company bosses have boomed over the past decade. In the public sector itself, the top 300 bosses saw their salaries increase by 12.8% last year, boosting their pay to an average of £237,564. The top 10 highest paid on the list earned an average of £799,000 - or 40 times as much as the basic pay for a nurse. Royal Mail’s chief executive Adam Crozier saw his total package increase by 21% in 2006 to £1.25m while a pay freeze was imposed on ordinary staff.

Similarly, private sector bosses continue to enjoy pay bonanzas. In 2005, the average salary for directors rose by 28% - that is, 25% above the rate of inflation. The following year, boardroom pay for UK’s top companies soared £37% as full-time directors were rewarded with inflation-busting increases in basic salaries, big cash bonuses and payouts from share schemes. The surge in pay took the average wages of a chief executive to £2,875,000 and was more than 11 times the increase in average earnings and nearly 20 times the rate of inflation as measured by the consumer price.

In other words, bosses are paid 98 times more than the average worker - up from 93 times a year ago. The gap is increasing at a dramatic speed: the year before, directors’ pay climbed 28%, up from 16% and 13% the years earlier. Meanwhile, bonuses for City workers rose by 30% last year.

In many firms the pay gap between bosses and workers is even more shocking. For example, Giles Thorley, chief executive of Punch Taverns, enjoys a total salary package of over £11m - that is, 1,148 times the average salary of his employees. Meanwhile Bart Brecht, chief of Reckitt Benckiser earns 718 times the company’s average salary, while Tesco’s boss Terry Leahy enjoys a salary 415 times that of the average shelf-stacker. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research in May 2007, the proportion of wealth held by Britain’s richest 10% rose from 47% in the 1990s to 54% in 2004.

While the bank balances of Britain’s bosses are bigger than ever before, two million workers are languishing on the minimum wage. In 2001, one in four households was classed as “breadline poor”. Little wonder that research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation revealed that inequality in Britain is at a 40-year high after a decade of a Labour Government.

Bosses also enjoy incomparably better pension deals than their staff. A study in 2005 revealed that nearly 8 out of 10 of Britain’s company bosses are able to retire at 60 and enjoy a pension payout on average 26 times higher than the average worker. In other words, the average director’s pension is worth £167,000 a year compared with £6,344 for ordinary workers. NHS workers have an average pension of only £5,400 a year.

Unsurprisingly, there is overwhelming support for narrowing the gap between corporate fat cats and British workers. A recent YouGov poll revealed that 85% of Britons believed that country would be a better place if the gap was narrowed. The poll also showed that people believed nurses should be paid up to £9,000 more than their current levels; bus drivers £7,500 more; and checkout staff nearly £3,500 more.

Unsurprisingly, then, 2007 ended up being a year of renewed industrial action. Most dramatic was that of the postal workers - reported almost entirely in terms of how it would hurt small businesses - and that of the prison officers, in defiance of a government ban, but I’ve lost count of the number of strikes by council workers and industrial action has been in the air for nurses, teachers, bus drivers, the BBC and even the police. We’re by no means ready to start talking about general strikes, but this is building momentum that shows no signs of slowing down.

Working in a chronically underunionised sector, I’m no expert on the workings of trade unions, but I do know that struggle builds identity here. When a union is dominated by a labour aristocracy, cautious, conservative and sympathetic to the agenda of the capitalists, it becomes fairly legitimate to not want to bother with the union at all. By contrast, a fighting union is a useful union, and it’s not been unusual for recruitment to go up in the aftermath of industrial action.

Perhaps more importantly, it may be pay issues that have galvanised the will to resist, but they are certainly not the only issues. I’ll leave you to judge whether John Pilger’s Sicko II article was better than my post on the subject, but the fact is that the creeping privatisation of the NHS is becoming common knowledge, and struggles are forming around that too. Remember Karen Reissman, who spoke out against the PFI cuts to mental health care in Manchester, and was fired for embarrassing her despised employers? Well, a month of strikes and solidarity demonstrations hasn’t been enough to get her reinstated yet, but this was never really about Karen Reissman herself.

It has got PFI - and resistance to PFI - on the agenda, it has highlighted union-busting policies and thus made us think about why we need unions and, most importantly of all, it is allowing staff to renegotiate the cuts in mental health care provision. The battle isn’t over by any means, but the balance of power is shifting. Anyway, I’m in no position to give an authoritative summary of industrial action this year (in case anyone cares to drop a link in the comments box…), but something’s definitely happening.

Sea changes are going on within the Labour Party, too. There’s always been a significant left-wing to the party, and under Tony Blair it was left to despair and make sense of the new situation. Blair’s departure gave them the impetus to organise around John McDonnell’s leadership campaign. When this campaign was blocked by the whips, and when the party conference was cut down to an undemocratic trade fair, it became clear that those elements of the party that represent the party’s soul are being systematically excluded from the party’s decision making mechanisms. Will the Labour left (and the newly independent Bob Wareing) split off as “Real Labour” and form a united front with Respect? Well, perhaps things won’t turn out quite as I’d really really like them to, but it’s clear that there’s tension to be resolved; the Labour left are now organised and alert, and I don’t expect them to hang around waiting to be deselected forever, nor will the unions keep subsidising their class enemies in Number 10. A massive political realignment is waiting to happen, mark my words.

The polarisation of Labour and the radicalisation of the unions helps put into perspective the other story in the British left this year: the secession from the Respect Coalition of a celebrity faction, led by George Galloway and Salma Yaqoob and egged on by embarrassing swathes of the Life Of Brian left who just can’t stand the Socialist Worker Party. Thus was resolved - in perhaps the worst way imaginable, but still - the tension between activists and electoralists that had been making Respect a victim of its own success lately; with reconciliation not looking particularly likely for the time being, and with the “real” Respect now diminished in numbers and cut off from Parliamentary representation, this is all quite hard to be cheerful about, but if the Party Conference is anything to go by then we are still very live - and operating within a much livelier context than before.

What anguish remains can easily be soothed by laughing at the much messier disintegration of the BNP.

Political Ecology

I said this review was never going to be authoritative, but there’s one story to which I don’t have the time (for now) to do justice but which I can’t in good conscience ignore, and that’s the race between environmental awareness and environmental catastrophe. The subject of sustainability has become a standard mainstream discourse over the last couple of years while, in the background, every prediction the IPCC makes ends up contradicted by things going even worse. By now, most of us are rightly scared of what we’re doing to this world, but the mainstream discourse of ecocide is a dialogue of technocrats, self-conciously apolitical, alternately reinforcing despair and complacency.

Needless to say, we have to make moving on from there into one of the big stories of Twenty Noughtyeight.