Obama's 'just war' is the language of the Crusades

President Obama’s claim that America’s targeted assassination by remote-controlled drones is part of a “just war” reinforces the sense that his administration is equally if not more reactionary than that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama surely understood before he made his speech on America’s security that by invoking the language of the infamous Crusades, he was ensuring that the “war on terror” would continue indefinitely, even though he acknowledged this would be “self-defeating”.

The concept of a “just war” originates with Pope Urban II who in 1095 called the first Crusade aimed at restoring Christian rule in the Holy Land. This led to two centuries of warfare, which ended in the Crusade’s abject failure. Religiously-motivated “just wars” continued well into the 16^th century and helped undermine the Catholic Church’s grip.

As Obama assumes the role of America’s very own Pope, would anyone be surprised if Islamic militants respond in kind to language that implies that non-Christians are “infidels” and generally not as “civilized” as the rest of us? Many jihadists believe in Holy War themselves. Now they’ve been invited to join one by an American president.

Let’s be clear, drone attacks are a form of state-sponsored terrorism and constitute extra-judicial murder. They are clearly unlawful by any definition of international law.  

The drone is Obama’s weapon of choice. Under his presidency, drones are killing people at seven times the rate than under the Bush administration.

America has built a Disposition Matrix, a database that officials describe as a "next-generation capture/kill list". But it is more than that, creating a blueprint for tracking, capturing, rendering and especially killing terrorism suspects. Thus the use of the term “disposition”.

There is no “due process”, no opportunity to answer charges. The last thing a victim hears is the sound of a missile arriving, shortly after being fired by an unmanned drone. The trigger is pulled in US military base somewhere else.

Some estimates suggest that more people have been killed by US drones than the 3,000 plus who perished when the Twin Towers were brought down in 2001. Many of the victims are bystanders, family members or just people at a gathering wrongly identified as would-be terrorists.

On March 17, 2011 some 40 individuals – including 35 government-appointed tribal leaders known as maliks, as well as government officials – gathered in Datta Khel town centre in North Waziristan in Pakistan. They were there to attend a jirga —  a decision-making, dispute resolution institution.  

At about 10.45 am, as the two groups were engaged in discussion, a missile fired from a US drone hovering above struck one of the circles of seated men. Several additional missiles were fired, at least one of which hit the second circle. In all, the missiles killed a total of at least 42 people. The results of this particular drone attack are among the many documented in an exhaustive report into the practice and legality of drone strikes. The report concludes:

Their [drones] presence terrorises men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they’re powerless to protect themselves … strikes have undermined cultural and religious practices related to burial, and made family members afraid to attend funerals.  

In his speech, Obama cited the warning by James Madison, father of the US constitution, who declared that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare”. But Obama is ensuring that the opposite will prevail.

Federal authorities have been engaged in secret bugging of newspapers over the botched defence of the country’s Benghazi consulate building, while the tax authorities have selected targets on political grounds. Obama has retained the extensive state powers granted to Bush after 9/11. Taken together, the United States is increasingly the land of the unfree with a constitution that now protects only the interests of military-industrial-financial complex.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The state feeds on terror and ignores serious threats to society

Events in Woolwich yesterday show that the state is totally geared up for emergency action when it wants to be – committees meet, officials are called in, politicians focus their attention and insist something must be done.

One is entitled to ask why they can respond so strongly to a lone terrorist event when they are so entirely unable to react to long-term, serious threats to society – poverty, climate change, banking and tax corruption and youth unemployment to name a few? No committees met when it was reported last week that the concentration of CO2 has risen above 400 parts per million!

Cameron says the "British people" will "never buckle in the face of terror" and promised "terrorists will never win". But those who carried out yesterday's horrific attack and others like the Boston Marathon attack, were not aiming to win - they were aiming to die, and to strike a blow against their enemy as they did so.

Yet such acts of terrorism can no more “win” than the NATO powers can win their so-called war on terror. Instead, the world is now locked into a continuous conflict and the state adopts the rhetoric of “crushing” the terrorists, a rhetoric that is easily transferable to crushing all opposition.

The reaction of the state media shows the extent to which even intelligent journalists adopt distorted thinking in order to support the kind of imperialist and colonialist rhetoric that still colours so much public discourse in the UK. In an astonishing article on the BBC website, home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani says:

"For jihadists, it really comes down to the presence of soldiers - and an entire framework of belief that sees those personnel, whatever role they have been given under international law, as the enemy of Islam. That argument is often backed up with graphic images online of the suffering of ordinary women and children. It's all designed to whip up anger and a sense of burning injustice - the kind of injustice that leads people to be convinced that something must be done."

So women and children suffering in the Middle East and Afghanistan are just "images" and only serve to "whip up" a sense of burning injustice. They are not really burning injustices in themselves!  He goes on: "Now, most people who feel a sense of injustice obviously combat it in [sic] purely peaceful means. The point about terrorism is that the sense of injustice becomes a springboard for mental somersaults in the mind of someone who thinks that indiscriminate violence can create justice."

So "most people" obviously combat injustice by peaceful means? Would that include the troops sent to Mali by the French government? Or the first invasion of Iraq, after Saddam fell out with the West and invaded Kuwait? Or the second invasion, when, as Blair now admits, the goal was regime change? Or the invasion of Afghanistan in response to the attacks on the Twin Towers? Or illegal drone assassinations?

Of course not! These claim the sanction of “international law” and fighting to “preserve our way of life”, which, when it comes down to it, means sustaining corporate and financial power over ordinary people’s lives.

The last time the cabinet’s emergency unit Cobra was in almost continuous session was in 2011 when riots broke out in London and other cities – another outpouring of anger at burning injustice. On this occasion it was the injustice of police shooting a young black man and anger at the impact of the economic crisis being foisted on to the young and the poor.

The reaction was ruthless and the justice system was instructed by the government to repress those who were caught. First-time offenders were given long prison terms; young people got four years just for Facebook messages.  

Of course terrorism and rioting are not going to change the state of the world, or the state of the state. The state feeds on such acts and uses them to mobilise reactionary forces and reinforce repression against every community.

So the capitalist state is itself the problem, not the solution. It can never address the grievances that drive people to terrorism or to riot. Only when power is in the hands of ordinary people will the conditions exist for that to happen.

Penny Cole

Crying wolf is not good enough, Martin

When one of the most respected commentators on the world economy repeatedly expresses his profound pessimism about the prospects of an effective response to the “real and present dangers of climate change”, it is surely worth some serious consideration.

Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”. He is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (Oxonia) and an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham.

Despite his pessimism Wolf has clearly not given up on a campaign to convince his readers that there is still something that can be done. In his second column in two weeks triggered by the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide passing beyond 400 parts per million, he says that “judged by the world’s inaction, climate sceptics have won”.   

In his first column, he alleged that “collectively, humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount.” 

Wolf is convinced by the consensus of scientific evidence and rightly damning of the sceptics who are “corrupted by the money and fame”, but he says that there are “deep-seated” economic reasons for “our” failure “to shift our choices away from the ones now driving ever-rising emissions”.

He writes that data on the burning of fossil fuels since the mid-18th century show a consistent rise in annual emissions of carbon dioxide. There was, he adds, a slowdown in the rate of rise of annual emissions in the 1980s and 1990s. But this slowdown was reversed in the 2000s, as China’s coal-burning increased. Today, 30%  of CO2 in the atmosphere is “directly due to humanity”.

There’s a consistent theme in Wolf’s analysis that he shares with the official, “politically-correct” presentation of the science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: We’re all to blame, and seemingly helpless to do anything much about it; apart, that is, from a faint, fading hope in an eight-point shopping list of increasingly more desperate and admittedly inadequate measures, aimed at the world’s governments.

But, fortunately, he is wrong. The objective source of his ideological error lies in his blinkered view of the social, economic and political conditions which, currently, govern –  and threaten – all of our lives.  As one of its chief advocates, it would be surprising indeed if Wolf issued any critique of the profit-driven economy that became the dominant force in the 18th century and ensured that “we” set out on the path of burning the fossilised remains of millions of years of vegetation. 

But it wasn’t “us”, as Wolf claims. Responsibility lies with the system of social relations that was ushered in and consolidated during the Industrial Revolution and beyond. “Us”, the majority, had no say, and still don’t in how things are done. Capitalism “freed” labourers from the land but at the same time deprived them of the tools by which they could generate an income for themselves and their families. Instead, we all became wage slaves.

This crisis-ridden capitalist system, dependent on the accelerating exploitation of what it necessarily regards as its God-given right to the planet’s resources is the clear and present danger, Mr Wolf. 

If “we” are to survive, the choice we have to make is to bring this period of history to its conclusion.  A month ago, on April 22, The United Nations marked International Mother Earth Day by acknowledging the leading role played by the Bolivian government. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said: “We need a paradigm shift – a transformation – in the way we produce, use and share energy.”

If we are able to bring about this change, it will be through the replacement of the current social relations. We’ll need a system in which we become stewards of the Earth, not exploiters.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

We have to move beyond 'post-democracy'

 The rise of Ukip and the parallel break-up of the Tory Party are part of a wider malaise across Europe that poses a threat to the established order. What happens next depends on whether we can get our act together in the face of growing reaction.

Ukip and the 5 Star Movement in Italy are just examples of the rise of populist, anti-politics. While these movements themselves are not fascist, their language, propaganda and nationalism has a threatening logic and opens the door to other forces. Nigel Farage rages against immigration and gay marriage, while Beppe Grillo is not hostile to Italy’s fascist past and is also anti-immigrant.

The swing to anti-politics – which can also take the form of not voting – coincides with and is driven by a rejection of austerity policies. Yet its origin actually predates the economic and financial crisis and is closely related to the globalisation process.

    

From the mid-1990s onwards, in Britain anyway, we entered a period which some refer to as “post-democracy”. Under this system, all the trappings of parliamentary democracy are retained, but the system is hollowed out. Corporate lobbyists and transnational, secretive, unaccountable agencies like the European Union and the World Trade Organisation actually determine policy. Elections become meaningless because the mainstream parties have been integrated into this process.

Ukip’s fear of the rise of the European “super-state” is not without foundation. The European Council has assumed fantastic legislative powers, while the European Parliament is the only one in the Western world that does not have the power to propose legislation and can only amend it. The Council operates in secret with its own secretariat and in reality calls all the shots. Of course, this has nothing to do with any known concept of democracy. In a challenging article for the new Statewatch journal, which monitors the EU and civil liberties Leigh Phillips notes:

The legislative decision-making apparatus is not parliamentary but intergovernmental and takes place primarily between diplomats behind closed doors. In truth, this is a form of treaty making rather than legislating, a method that historically was the realm of war, peace-making, and espionage. Great swathes of policy areas have been taken out of the domain of public, contestatory parliaments and placed in the hands of diplomats and civil servants.

Unlike most observers and to his credit, Leigh does not throw up his hands in horror at the rise of the Golden Dawn, neo-Nazi movement in Greece or Hungary’s Jobbik, with its Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard) paramilitary association and what he describes as its “anti-Roma pogroms and unashamed Anti-Semitism”.

The question that he poses is what lies beyond “post-democracy”? We can’t return to the post-1945 social democratic consensus that lasted until the 1970s. That space is now occupied by the imperatives of corporate-driven globalisation. As Leigh says:

Depending on its particular flavour, anti-politics can exist as a cynical apathy that buttresses the neo-liberal post-democratic turn, or even wishes for an outright authoritarian turn with the arrival of a strongman saviour. But anti-politics can also be the germ of the overthrow of post-democracy if it embraces a progressive road that transforms anti-politics into the construction of (rather than just demand for) popular self-government.

Where his analysis falters, however, is in suggesting that “there is the possibility that the rejection of the political class transforms itself” into a belief in self-government” and “a desire for a transcendence of liberal political and economic structures”. Unfortunately, there is no historical evidence to indicate that democratic advances on this scale can take place without some decisive, organised intervention against prevailing state forces. That’s our responsibility to build. Nevertheless, Leigh reveals the dialectic in the break-up of the old order and his article is well worth reading in full.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Palestinians start campaign for one state for all citizens

Momentum for a one-state solution for Palestine is building up just as the Israeli state is destroying even a remote chance of success for any Saudi-US Arab peace plan.

Last week, Palestinians marked the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. It was also the day chosen by 22 senior Palestinian figures to announce “a popular movement project for a single democratic state in historic Palestine”.

Those calling for the creation of one democratic country between the Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan were leading members of Fatah, the movement originally led by Palestine Liberation Organisation founder Yasser Arafat.

Their document, issued after a meeting held in the town of El Bireh in the West Bank, was the result of a two-year discussion. It declared that “the racist Israeli policy of separation and segregation has made the two-state solution ‏(based on pre-1967 borders‏) unrealistic”. Therefore, the most desirable option” left for the Palestinian people and the one that will allow the right of return is, they say:  

“[A] democratic state for all its citizens, which will be based on a democratic constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and will guarantee freedom and equal rights, without discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion, gender, skin colour, language, nationality, political opinion, social origin and place of birth.”

Professor Uri Davis, from Al Quds university’s Israel studies department, explained that the concept for such a state was still under discussion, but that he personally was in favour of one state for both Israelis and Palestinians.

The announcement came only a few days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dedicated Route 20, a new highway connecting Jewish neighbourhoods in northern Jerusalem.

Former Israel Defence Forces leader, Shaul Arieli of the Council for Peace and Security, said the new roads undermined the prospect of the re-division of the city and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. All peace plans put forward so far were based on a division of Jerusalem and transfer of portions of the city to a Palestinian state.

An Israeli expert on Jerusalem’s demography, Danny Seidemann, said that “the purpose of these highways is to clearly integrate the [Jewish] settlement blocs into the national highway network of Israel and thereby place East Jerusalem and the settlement blocs within Israel’s de facto borders”.

Their views were published in the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which notes that road could be “the nail in the coffin for plans to re-divide the capital and attach its Arab areas to a future Palestinian state”.

In other words, the road project completely scuppers the notion of a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine, which the extensive Zionist settlement programme on the West Bank had already made unviable.

The highway has been denounced by United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk who is calling on the Israeli government to halt its construction immediately. He says it will ruin the livelihoods of the 9,300 Palestinian residents. 

Netanyahu’s road-building is hardly surprising considering that the Israeli Prime Minister’s aides have denounced the Arab peace plan as “trick” intended to entrap Israel.

And, as Jonathan Cook, a distinguished journalist writing for the Israeli Occupation Archive, notes, Netanyahu’s government demanded that Google should not use the word “Palestine”, claiming it was damaging the peace process.

Wikileaks has disclosed documents proving that Netanyahu is only the last of many Israeli leaders with total contempt for peace negotiations. In cables from 1975, US diplomats describe Israel as “hell-bent on self-destruction”.

The Fatah leaders’ support for a one-state solution is a crucial break from the conciliatory position taken for years by PLO president Mahmoud Abbas and Arab League negotiators who, under American pressure, conceded Palestinian territory in the hopes of a deal. A World to Win welcomes the initiative, which opens up a way forward for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

         

Amazon and Google having a laugh at taxpayers' expense

Whatever angle you come at it from, the state at national level, as well as key global agencies, exist to make life easier for corporations like Amazon and Google when it comes to taxation.

States everywhere may be short of revenue as the worldwide recession continues to takes it toll. But instead of demanding more from the corporations, the very opposite is happening. 

The ConDems are telling business they can pay less. In the March budget, they cut corporation tax for the third time since 2010. It’s now fallen to 24% and will be reduced to just 21% next year. The cut will cost the Treasury about £400 million in 2015-16.

Where’s this shortfall to come from? Chancellor George Osborne is demanding £11 billion more in spending cuts in 2015-16, a level which has even frightened most of the cabinet into passive resistance. Front-line services like fire face draconian cuts and mass redundancies following today’s announcement by the government’s former chief fire and rescue officer.

Of course, global corporations do everything they can to avoid paying tax on their operations in Britain. Instead, companies like Amazon are registered in lower-tax territories like Luxembourg. They claim that although they employ thousands of workers in Britain, they are not actually based here!

MPs on the public accounts committee can rant and rage all they want – as they did yesterday when they had Google up before them – but the fact is that the UK tax authorities are pretty powerless to do anything about it. Moral pressure cuts no ice with the Googles of this world.

Take the example of Amazon. A Reuters investigation shows that over the past six years, Amazon has paid just £5.9 million in tax on over $23 billion of sales to British customers.  Yet Amazon claims it runs a single European business out of Luxembourg.

Reuters says, however, has gathered evidence which shows that Amazon’s UK operations have a high degree of autonomy, and while the corporation likes to identity itself as a virtual company, this is far from the case. Microsoft and Expedia are other firms that claim a similar position in order to minimise tax bills.

The investigation explains: “The practice is based on international tax rules which allow companies to conduct ‘preparatory and auxiliary’ activities in a country without creating a taxable presence there. The UK tax authority, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), has never sought to define in court the limits of what an internet company can do in Britain before it is deemed to have a taxable presence.”

However, does such a limit actually exist? Not according to Jacques Sasseville, head of the tax treaty unit at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which advises rich nations on tax policy. He said where sales were conducted online, it was almost “impossible to prove a taxable presence in a jurisdiction, irrespective of how much activity is conducted in that country.”

So with the tax authorities pretty much powerless in the face of transnational, internet-based operations, Osborne is playing along. The cut in corporation tax to 21% puts the rate on a par with Luxembourg’s, although well above Ireland’s 12.5%.

Corporations exist solely to maximise profits, minimise costs (including tax) and increase the market value of traded shares. This is a legal obligation, enforced by the same capitalist state that is at their beck and call. Herein lies the problem.

The state and its agencies through essentially political actions sustain the economic system. They are a perfect example of the division of labour first noted by the economist Adam Smith as capitalism established itself in Britain. That’s why we should never look to the present state to sort out the corporations. That’s not the job of what is now a market state.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Making clothes for profit kills workers and wrecks the eco-system

The capitalist model for producing clothes – from start to finish, field to shop – is a global blight. It puts at risk not only garment workers, but textile workers, cotton farmers, retail workers and the global eco-system itself.

In Bangladesh, where over 1,100 workers were victims of industrial murder in the Rana Plaza collapse, the government helped employers keep wages down and unions in check. A decision to raise the minimum wage in the wake of the disaster won’t make a lot of difference.

One factor in keeping wages down in both Bangladesh is climate change. Thousands of people have moved from coastal areas to Dhaka in search of work because family-based fishing and agriculture is being wiped out by coastal erosion and collapsing fish stocks.

In Cambodia, where three workers were killed in a shoe factory fire earlier today, more than half a million people work in clothing manufacture. Many are driven into the factories by a massive land clearance programme.

Nearly a million hectares of land have been leased or sold to private companies for the development of agro-industrial plantations, much of it palm oil for bio-fuels. The companies, either Chinese or owned by members or cronies of the government, are ruthlessly clearing forest and jungle and destroying the livelihoods of local people.

Cotton is one of the world's most environmentally damaging crops. One kilo of cotton fabric grown by industrialised methods contains as much as 10,000 litres of fresh water. Cotton uses approximately 25% of the world's insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants).

Most cotton is produced by smallholder farmers, but to compete in the world market they have been coerced into using industrialised seed and chemicals. Their working conditions are dangerous and the chemicals pollute their water supplies. They are in effect the ruthless exploiters of themselves and their families. Where there are larger producers, forced indentured labour and child labour, is common.

Exactly the same oppressive and inhuman working conditions prevail in cotton ginning and cotton cloth manufacture.

All these millions of workers – cotton growers, textile workers and garment workers – are feeding a profit-driven market frenzy. UK consumers buy 2.15 million tonnes of new clothing and shoes each year and send over 1.4 million tonnes to landfill. There the cotton and wool rot down eventually, but the synthetic fibres remain for many decades, leaching chemicals in the land and water courses.

People are conned into joining this marketing trick. Nothing is made to last, the clothes are inappropriate for our climate and massive spending on branding and advertising are needed to draw us a belief that we must constantly replenish our wardrobes.

This is all coming to an end however, with a collapse in sales of clothes and shoes across Europe. Many retailers are facing bankruptcy and their low-paid, part time staff thrown on to the unemployment lines. As this feeds back down the production chain, millions of production workers will suffer.

There is an alternative. The Better Cotton Initiative has shown that it is possible for growers to reduce their costs whilst still producing the same quantity of cotton, using conservation methods of agriculture instead of frequent applications of chemicals.

They are supporting farmers to group together to share expertise, and also to improve their communities and family lives. Making this the mainstream, however, will be achieved in the teeth of opposition from the agri-chemical giants and their government supporters.  

Set free from the global trade profit treadmill, co-operative approaches could transform all the other elements of the production chain. Textile mills working co-operatively rather than competing to be the cheapest, can produce the textiles we need for clothes, as well as all the medical and industrial cotton products we cannot do without.

Clothes made to last by garment workers, who control their own factories and can develop direct connections with those who buy the clothes they make, cutting out the fashion fraud, will have an incentive to produce products made to last rather than disposable junk.

Penny Cole

Environment editor