I am writing this post in the light of one remarkable piece of false historical revisionism that is being peddled in the context of the deficit negotiations currently underway in the US. This is the claim that the US has never previously defaulted on its debts.
This is simply untrue. In 1933 the US government decided that it would no longer honour its obligation to exchange its currency for gold and to pay its debts in gold as it had previously committed itself to do. It simultaneously devalued its currency reducing its value as against what those who were holding it had thought it was worth. This was an openly acknowledged default as was admitted at the time and as a Judgment of the US Supreme Court shortly after confirmed. In 1971 the US government broke the remaining link between the US dollar and gold, which meant that the US thereafter refused to honour its previous obligation to exchange dollars for gold on demand from foreign (principally European) central banks. That too by any definition was a default.
The UK has similarly made grandiose claims about how it too has supposedly never defaulted on its debts since the fourteenth (or was it the thirteenth?) century. This too is nonsense. In 1931 the British government also decided that it would no longer honour its previous commitment to exchange its currency for gold and to pay its debts in gold. This was possibly the biggest psychological shock the world financial system has experienced to date. The British government had succeeded in maintaining sterling's value on the gold standard without interruption since the sixteenth century. The idea that sterling might come off the gold standard and no longer be exchangeable for gold in peacetime was thought inconceivable. The entire world financial system had been constructed on the assumption of sterling's stability and convertibility into gold so sterling's sudden devaluation caused a total collapse in confidence across the whole world financial system. To make matters worse the British government shortly after in 1932 announced that it was making a straightforward default on repayment of its war debt to the US, which it had incurred during the First World War. The ensuing panic caused a bank run in the US and led directly to the US default of 1933.
The UK undertook two further major devaluations of its currency in 1948 and 1967. These too should be treated as defaults since they took place during a time of fixed exchange rates. The effect of these devaluations was that individuals who held sterling on the assurance that it could be converted into other currencies at a certain value found overnight that their holdings of sterling were worth less than the British government had told them would be the case. Subsequent devaluations that have happened since 1967 differ in that save for the brief period when sterling was within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism the British government has not committed itself to holding sterling to any particular value.
These are the most obvious and best known defaults by the US and British governments made over the course of the twentieth century. There have certainly be others in previous centuries. Charles I was for example obliged to convene parliament in 1641 because he too could not honour his debts. I believe that the US government also defaulted on its debts during the Civil War.
I do not know where the fantasy that the US and the UK have never defaulted on their debts comes from but as I hope I have made clear in this post this claim has no basis in fact.
Saturday 23 July 2011
OSLO
There has been a rush to judgement in connection with the Oslo tragedy. Now that the possibility that the act was the work of Islamic groups has been excluded I would merely say this: Norway is an orderly and stable democratic country. That will not change if the tragedy is the work of a neo Nazi or far right group as some are suggesting. Nor will it change if, as at the moment seems more likely, it is the work of an angry and deranged individual. In the latter case there is a limited amount that any society however peaceful and orderly can do to guard itself against such people. At this moment on this day further analysis or judgement about what happened is out of place.
Friday 22 July 2011
REPORTING SYRIA
Every Friday for several weeks now the western media publishes the same story. This is of protests in Syria, which are invariably said to be the "amongst the biggest" or "the biggest ever". A list of towns in Syria is given where the protests are said to have taken place. References are made to film supposedly of the protests appearing on YouTube. Reports are provided of violence against the protesters by the security forces. Dozens and sometimes scores of people are said to have been killed. These deaths are then added to a mounting total of deaths since the protests began, which is then published every week and now runs to well over a thousand.
It requires careful reading to notice that these reports all have one origin, which is the Syrian opposition, and that they lack any credible outside verification or corroboration. Whilst protests have unquestionably taken place it is a remarkable act of faith to assume that those who claim to be organising the protests are the ones who can be trusted to report them accurately.
It is an act of faith which recent events show is unwarranted. Back in February, just a month before the protest movement in Syria began, a wave of protests hit Libya. As is now the case with Syria western reporting of the protests in Libya amounted to reproducing claims about the protests made by the Libyan opposition. Many of these claims were extremely lurid. Thus the western media uncritically reproduced stories of peaceful protesters being fired on by heavy machine guns, of mercenaries attacking protesters with machetes and of the Libyan air force bombing residential suburbs. Inflated claims were made of the number of protesters killed with figures eventually running into thousands leading to talk of genocide charges.
On the ground investigations in Libya by such agencies as the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International have since shown that the claims about the protests made by the Libyan opposition in February and uncritically reproduced by the western media at the time were almost entirely untrue. The Libyan authorities did not fire on peaceful protesters with heavy machine guns. There are no large numbers of machete wielding mercenaries in Libya. The Libyan air force did not bomb residential districts. As for the number of people killed the true number turned out to be not the thousands claimed by the Libyan opposition but the hundred or so reported at the time by the Libyan government.
There is no reason to think that the claims the Syrian opposition are making today are any more reliable than the claims the Libyan opposition made in February. Uncritical acceptance of Libyan opposition claims led western governments into a military intervention they probably now regret, which has turned out to be based on a string of wrong assumptions and false facts. Given that this is so one wonders why in reporting Syria the western media seems so intent on making the same mistake.
It requires careful reading to notice that these reports all have one origin, which is the Syrian opposition, and that they lack any credible outside verification or corroboration. Whilst protests have unquestionably taken place it is a remarkable act of faith to assume that those who claim to be organising the protests are the ones who can be trusted to report them accurately.
It is an act of faith which recent events show is unwarranted. Back in February, just a month before the protest movement in Syria began, a wave of protests hit Libya. As is now the case with Syria western reporting of the protests in Libya amounted to reproducing claims about the protests made by the Libyan opposition. Many of these claims were extremely lurid. Thus the western media uncritically reproduced stories of peaceful protesters being fired on by heavy machine guns, of mercenaries attacking protesters with machetes and of the Libyan air force bombing residential suburbs. Inflated claims were made of the number of protesters killed with figures eventually running into thousands leading to talk of genocide charges.
On the ground investigations in Libya by such agencies as the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International have since shown that the claims about the protests made by the Libyan opposition in February and uncritically reproduced by the western media at the time were almost entirely untrue. The Libyan authorities did not fire on peaceful protesters with heavy machine guns. There are no large numbers of machete wielding mercenaries in Libya. The Libyan air force did not bomb residential districts. As for the number of people killed the true number turned out to be not the thousands claimed by the Libyan opposition but the hundred or so reported at the time by the Libyan government.
There is no reason to think that the claims the Syrian opposition are making today are any more reliable than the claims the Libyan opposition made in February. Uncritical acceptance of Libyan opposition claims led western governments into a military intervention they probably now regret, which has turned out to be based on a string of wrong assumptions and false facts. Given that this is so one wonders why in reporting Syria the western media seems so intent on making the same mistake.
WHY THE MURDOCH SCANDAL IS LIKE WATERGATE
Before giving the Murdoch scandal a rest there are two claims concerning it which I wish to challenge: These are
1. That the scandal concerns essentially trivial subjects and is the product of hysteria; and
2. That because the public is uninterested in the scandal it will fade away.
Both of these myths, which have many takers in the news media, betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the scandal.
This is not a scandal driven by public outrage. Nor, as I have previously said, is the scandal ultimately the result of media exposure all the claims about the importance of the Guardian's coverage of the scandal notwithstanding. Once all the false commentary and analysis is stripped away the true driver behind the scandal stands revealed as the police investigation launched following the High Court's decision to grant John Prescott a Judicial Review.
The moment this fact is grasped the dynamic of the scandal becomes clear. The reason we now know about the hacking of Milly Dowler's telephone and the bribing of police officers is because these facts have been discovered as a result of the new police investigation. The reason the News of the World was closed down is because these facts had come to light as a result of the new police investigation. The reason Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks have been arrested and in the case of Rebekah Brooks forced to resign is because the new police investigation has made them criminal suspects. The reason Cameron has been embarrassed by the scandal is because of his personal links with Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, who the new police investigation has shown are criminal suspects. The reason senior police officers have resigned is because the facts brought to light by the new police investigation have called into question their decision to close down the earlier police investigation.
None of this would be happening if the new police investigation had not produced evidence that serious criminal offences had been committed. Industrial scale hacking of people's phones and the bribing of police officers are very serious criminal offences especially when, as in this case, they seem to have been done as part of "fishing expeditions" and not as part of a journalistic investigation into a serious story to which the public interest defence might apply.
In addition, as often happens when the corrupt practices of a large organisation are being investigated, the new police investigation has brought a host of other illegal practices to light. Over the last few weeks we have heard allegations of theft, burglary, perjury and obstruction of justice. Only yesterday on Newsnight we learnt that Mark Lewis, the solicitor who represents some of the people whose phones have been hacked, had himself apparently been spied on and hacked. If true (and it has not been denied) this would be interference in the confidential relationship between a lawyer and his clients, which is another serious criminal offence.
All this makes for a complicated and messy story. It is understandable that amidst the welter of claims and allegations the public has lost track of the detail and become bored. Once however it is understood that public outrage and media frenzy are not the motor driving this scandal the fact that the public is bored can be seen to be largely beside the point. Given the inexorable nature of the criminal legal process it ultimately does not matter whether the public are bored or not. The scandal will grind on regardless up to the point when the criminal legal process is finally exhausted. Given the scale of the wrongdoing so far exposed this could take years.
The best parallel is the Watergate scandal in the US in the early 1970s. That too began with the discovery of a serious criminal offence, namely the burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic Party's Presidential campaign in the Watergate building in Washington. Proper investigation of that crime (and burglary is a very serious crime) was also initially suppressed through use of illicit pressure on the police and the payment of hush money to the burglars. Though the seriousness of what had happened was obvious to a small number of people (notably the two Washington Post reporters Bernstein and Woodward and their editor) the political class and the public initially showed no interest. As with the Murdoch scandal the Watergate scandal finally exploded only when the investigation of the burglary was reactivated after evidence of the suppression of the previous investigation was exposed. As with the Murdoch scandal this brought to light a whole host of other criminal offences that often had no connection to the burglary but which did expose the culture of criminality in the organisation under investigation, namely the White House staff. As with the Murdoch scandal the public quickly became bored with a scandal the details of which it was unable to follow, a fact which induced a false sense of complacency amongst those being investigated and their supporters, which as the criminal investigation ground inexorably on was eventually shown to be misplaced.
The Murdoch scandal is not quite as serious as the Watergate scandal because the person at its centre, Rupert Murdoch, does not occupy the kind of constitutional position held by Richard Nixon, the person at the centre of the Watergate scandal, who was President of the United States. This should not disguise the fact that the current scandal is for Murdoch every bit as dangerous as the Watergate scandal was for Nixon. For one thing the crimes exposed in the course of the two scandals, wire taps, phone hacking, burglaries and conspiracies to obstruct and pervert the course of justice, are exactly the same. The fact that the driver of the scandal is a criminal legal process over which unlike public opinion Murdoch has no control means that the scandal is more dangerous to Murdoch not less.
1. That the scandal concerns essentially trivial subjects and is the product of hysteria; and
2. That because the public is uninterested in the scandal it will fade away.
Both of these myths, which have many takers in the news media, betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the scandal.
This is not a scandal driven by public outrage. Nor, as I have previously said, is the scandal ultimately the result of media exposure all the claims about the importance of the Guardian's coverage of the scandal notwithstanding. Once all the false commentary and analysis is stripped away the true driver behind the scandal stands revealed as the police investigation launched following the High Court's decision to grant John Prescott a Judicial Review.
The moment this fact is grasped the dynamic of the scandal becomes clear. The reason we now know about the hacking of Milly Dowler's telephone and the bribing of police officers is because these facts have been discovered as a result of the new police investigation. The reason the News of the World was closed down is because these facts had come to light as a result of the new police investigation. The reason Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks have been arrested and in the case of Rebekah Brooks forced to resign is because the new police investigation has made them criminal suspects. The reason Cameron has been embarrassed by the scandal is because of his personal links with Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, who the new police investigation has shown are criminal suspects. The reason senior police officers have resigned is because the facts brought to light by the new police investigation have called into question their decision to close down the earlier police investigation.
None of this would be happening if the new police investigation had not produced evidence that serious criminal offences had been committed. Industrial scale hacking of people's phones and the bribing of police officers are very serious criminal offences especially when, as in this case, they seem to have been done as part of "fishing expeditions" and not as part of a journalistic investigation into a serious story to which the public interest defence might apply.
In addition, as often happens when the corrupt practices of a large organisation are being investigated, the new police investigation has brought a host of other illegal practices to light. Over the last few weeks we have heard allegations of theft, burglary, perjury and obstruction of justice. Only yesterday on Newsnight we learnt that Mark Lewis, the solicitor who represents some of the people whose phones have been hacked, had himself apparently been spied on and hacked. If true (and it has not been denied) this would be interference in the confidential relationship between a lawyer and his clients, which is another serious criminal offence.
All this makes for a complicated and messy story. It is understandable that amidst the welter of claims and allegations the public has lost track of the detail and become bored. Once however it is understood that public outrage and media frenzy are not the motor driving this scandal the fact that the public is bored can be seen to be largely beside the point. Given the inexorable nature of the criminal legal process it ultimately does not matter whether the public are bored or not. The scandal will grind on regardless up to the point when the criminal legal process is finally exhausted. Given the scale of the wrongdoing so far exposed this could take years.
The best parallel is the Watergate scandal in the US in the early 1970s. That too began with the discovery of a serious criminal offence, namely the burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic Party's Presidential campaign in the Watergate building in Washington. Proper investigation of that crime (and burglary is a very serious crime) was also initially suppressed through use of illicit pressure on the police and the payment of hush money to the burglars. Though the seriousness of what had happened was obvious to a small number of people (notably the two Washington Post reporters Bernstein and Woodward and their editor) the political class and the public initially showed no interest. As with the Murdoch scandal the Watergate scandal finally exploded only when the investigation of the burglary was reactivated after evidence of the suppression of the previous investigation was exposed. As with the Murdoch scandal this brought to light a whole host of other criminal offences that often had no connection to the burglary but which did expose the culture of criminality in the organisation under investigation, namely the White House staff. As with the Murdoch scandal the public quickly became bored with a scandal the details of which it was unable to follow, a fact which induced a false sense of complacency amongst those being investigated and their supporters, which as the criminal investigation ground inexorably on was eventually shown to be misplaced.
The Murdoch scandal is not quite as serious as the Watergate scandal because the person at its centre, Rupert Murdoch, does not occupy the kind of constitutional position held by Richard Nixon, the person at the centre of the Watergate scandal, who was President of the United States. This should not disguise the fact that the current scandal is for Murdoch every bit as dangerous as the Watergate scandal was for Nixon. For one thing the crimes exposed in the course of the two scandals, wire taps, phone hacking, burglaries and conspiracies to obstruct and pervert the course of justice, are exactly the same. The fact that the driver of the scandal is a criminal legal process over which unlike public opinion Murdoch has no control means that the scandal is more dangerous to Murdoch not less.
Sunday 17 July 2011
THE MURDOCH SCANDAL - TAKEN AT THE FLOOD
The shock resignation of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and the arrest and questioning for a whole day of Rebekah Brooks shows that the Murdoch scandal has now acquired a terrifying momentum that may be impossible to stop.
Off the top of my head I cannot remember a single previous example of a Metropolitan Police Commissioner resigning in quite this way. Inevitably the resignation will excite speculation about whether Sir Paul Stephenson knows or suspects things that have not yet been made public and has left his post before these things are exposed. Whether or not this is the case the pressure upon other police officers and upon Assistant Commissioner Yates in particular can only now intensify and the chances must be strong that more resignations from within the Metropolitan Police will now follow. Sir Paul Stephenson's resignation must also make it more likely that this affair will end in criminal charges with some of those involved going to prison.
There is a tide in scandals as there is in the affairs of men and this one is now in flood.
Off the top of my head I cannot remember a single previous example of a Metropolitan Police Commissioner resigning in quite this way. Inevitably the resignation will excite speculation about whether Sir Paul Stephenson knows or suspects things that have not yet been made public and has left his post before these things are exposed. Whether or not this is the case the pressure upon other police officers and upon Assistant Commissioner Yates in particular can only now intensify and the chances must be strong that more resignations from within the Metropolitan Police will now follow. Sir Paul Stephenson's resignation must also make it more likely that this affair will end in criminal charges with some of those involved going to prison.
There is a tide in scandals as there is in the affairs of men and this one is now in flood.
ED MILLIBAND AND THE POLITICAL IMPACT OF THE MURDOCH SCANDAL
The media, which has spent the better part of the nine months since Ed Milliband was elected Labour leader, pouring ridicule on him has now as a result of his handling of the Murdoch scandal suddenly discovered his qualities. The result is that where he was previously subjected to a torrent of criticism he is now receiving a cascade of praise. Journalists, particularly left of centre journalists but even some more right wing journalists, have been falling over themselves in praise of Ed Milliband's brilliant handling of the crisis, which has supposedly rescued his leadership. The Independent a few days ago published an editorial saying that the scandal was the "making of a Labour leader" whilst in the Observer today Andrew Rawnsley in a typical piece says that as a result of the crisis Ed Milliband "has taken off his L plates".
I agree that Milliband's handling of the Mudoch scandal has been deft. At the outset of the scandal he demanded that the BSkyB bid be dropped, that there be a single judge led inquiry and that Rebeka Brooks should resign. All three of these demands have been conceded. In the meantime Cameron has been made to look uncomfortable and evasive.
Having conceded this point, I feel I must make the point that the Ed Milliband of the last two weeks was the same Ed Milliband who led the Labour party during the previous nine months. Ed Milliband was not "failing" as Labour's leader during this period as the media said. On the contrary under his leadership Labour has been making steady if unspectacular progress as shown by the party's electoral performance, which has improved substantially over that in the general election a year ago. Since Milliband became its leader Labour has won every by election it has fought and came first and substantially increased its vote in May's English local elections. The defeat of the AV referendum and the SNP victory in the Scottish elections in May were not electoral disasters for Labour but for the Liberal Democrats.
This sort of progress would not have happened if Ed Milliband had not been leading the Labour party with some skill. Media criticism of Ed Milliband has been thoroughly misplaced and reflects the extreme disjunction which exists between politics as the media perceive them and as they are perceived in the rest of the country. As for Ed Milliband's effective handling of the Murdoch scandal, this is not because he has suddenly discovered great qualities in himself that no one knew existed. Rather it is because Ed Milliband is and always has been a much more intelligent and skilled political tactician than the media (and his Blairite critics in the Labour party) have up to now wanted to acknowledge.
The same disjunction also exists with respect to the Murdoch scandal as a whole. Though the scandal has shaken the political geometry in Westminster and shocked the press, I doubt that it has had anything like the same impact in the country. One should remember that most people have daily contact with the tabloids and the police in a way that the sophisticates of the Westminster village do not. When it comes to the tabloid press and the police most people, at least in my experience, have always taken a pretty cynical view of them both. It will not have come as a surprise to most people that the Murdoch organisation engages in hacking, robbery and other criminal activity or that police officers take bribes.
For this reason I doubt that the electoral impact of the scandal will be very great. What matters to the larger electorate is the deteriorating state of the economy and the fact that the standard of living is continuing to fall as people become more and more financially pressed. I suspect that Ed Milliband, who strikes me as having a much better grasp of political realities than do his present admirers and previous critics, understands this fact well.
I agree that Milliband's handling of the Mudoch scandal has been deft. At the outset of the scandal he demanded that the BSkyB bid be dropped, that there be a single judge led inquiry and that Rebeka Brooks should resign. All three of these demands have been conceded. In the meantime Cameron has been made to look uncomfortable and evasive.
Having conceded this point, I feel I must make the point that the Ed Milliband of the last two weeks was the same Ed Milliband who led the Labour party during the previous nine months. Ed Milliband was not "failing" as Labour's leader during this period as the media said. On the contrary under his leadership Labour has been making steady if unspectacular progress as shown by the party's electoral performance, which has improved substantially over that in the general election a year ago. Since Milliband became its leader Labour has won every by election it has fought and came first and substantially increased its vote in May's English local elections. The defeat of the AV referendum and the SNP victory in the Scottish elections in May were not electoral disasters for Labour but for the Liberal Democrats.
This sort of progress would not have happened if Ed Milliband had not been leading the Labour party with some skill. Media criticism of Ed Milliband has been thoroughly misplaced and reflects the extreme disjunction which exists between politics as the media perceive them and as they are perceived in the rest of the country. As for Ed Milliband's effective handling of the Murdoch scandal, this is not because he has suddenly discovered great qualities in himself that no one knew existed. Rather it is because Ed Milliband is and always has been a much more intelligent and skilled political tactician than the media (and his Blairite critics in the Labour party) have up to now wanted to acknowledge.
The same disjunction also exists with respect to the Murdoch scandal as a whole. Though the scandal has shaken the political geometry in Westminster and shocked the press, I doubt that it has had anything like the same impact in the country. One should remember that most people have daily contact with the tabloids and the police in a way that the sophisticates of the Westminster village do not. When it comes to the tabloid press and the police most people, at least in my experience, have always taken a pretty cynical view of them both. It will not have come as a surprise to most people that the Murdoch organisation engages in hacking, robbery and other criminal activity or that police officers take bribes.
For this reason I doubt that the electoral impact of the scandal will be very great. What matters to the larger electorate is the deteriorating state of the economy and the fact that the standard of living is continuing to fall as people become more and more financially pressed. I suspect that Ed Milliband, who strikes me as having a much better grasp of political realities than do his present admirers and previous critics, understands this fact well.
Friday 15 July 2011
THE POLICE, THE MURDOCH SCANDAL AND JOHN PRESCOTT
As far as I can tell the defence the police are making for their failure to pursue the original hacking enquiry is that the branch of the police charged with investigating the matter was inundated with what it felt was more important work, namely its anti terrorist investigations.
This excuse grossly underestimates the seriousness of the crimes that are being alleged. Industrial scale hacking of people's private messages and conversations is or should be a very serious matter. When this is being done for financial profit, as it obviously was in this case, it is more serious still. If the branch of the police that had conduct of the case was unable to accord it sufficient resources then the correct response should have been not to close the enquiry down but to transfer its conduct to a different branch of the police or even to call for help from other police forces. Besides this excuse does not explain why, given the constant flow of revelations, the police stubbornly refused to reopen the enquiry for so many years after they originally closed it down.
There are two other important points I want to make.
The first is that this affair has exposed an extremely ugly form of inverted snobbery in British life. It seems that the police, most of the press and a large section of the public believe that breaking into someone's private correspondence and conversations is fine so long as they are rich and famous but unacceptable if they are "ordinary people". I am not usually someone who defends the rich and famous but I am unable to see why the fact that someone is rich and famous should make that person fair game or excuse criminal acts of which they are the victims.
Secondly, the claim that it was the press that exposed the story is untrue. Though the Guardian and its reporter Nick Davies deserve credit for keeping the story alive, the true hero of this affair is John Prescott who successfully brought a judicial review against the police and their failure to take the hacking of his phone seriously. From my personal knowledge I know how very difficult it is to get the High Court even to issue claims against the police and how reluctant the High Court is to meddle in the police's work. Bringing proceedings against the police in the knowledge that behind the police stood Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers required considerable courage and Prescott (who has been the object of press attacks on many occasions and who must therefore have known what he was potentially letting himself in for) on this occasion showed it. Once the High Court found in Prescott's favour and the police became obliged to conduct a proper investigation of the matter it was only a question of time before the truth came out.
This excuse grossly underestimates the seriousness of the crimes that are being alleged. Industrial scale hacking of people's private messages and conversations is or should be a very serious matter. When this is being done for financial profit, as it obviously was in this case, it is more serious still. If the branch of the police that had conduct of the case was unable to accord it sufficient resources then the correct response should have been not to close the enquiry down but to transfer its conduct to a different branch of the police or even to call for help from other police forces. Besides this excuse does not explain why, given the constant flow of revelations, the police stubbornly refused to reopen the enquiry for so many years after they originally closed it down.
There are two other important points I want to make.
The first is that this affair has exposed an extremely ugly form of inverted snobbery in British life. It seems that the police, most of the press and a large section of the public believe that breaking into someone's private correspondence and conversations is fine so long as they are rich and famous but unacceptable if they are "ordinary people". I am not usually someone who defends the rich and famous but I am unable to see why the fact that someone is rich and famous should make that person fair game or excuse criminal acts of which they are the victims.
Secondly, the claim that it was the press that exposed the story is untrue. Though the Guardian and its reporter Nick Davies deserve credit for keeping the story alive, the true hero of this affair is John Prescott who successfully brought a judicial review against the police and their failure to take the hacking of his phone seriously. From my personal knowledge I know how very difficult it is to get the High Court even to issue claims against the police and how reluctant the High Court is to meddle in the police's work. Bringing proceedings against the police in the knowledge that behind the police stood Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers required considerable courage and Prescott (who has been the object of press attacks on many occasions and who must therefore have known what he was potentially letting himself in for) on this occasion showed it. Once the High Court found in Prescott's favour and the police became obliged to conduct a proper investigation of the matter it was only a question of time before the truth came out.
RUPERT MURDOCH AND THE SCANDAL
Ever since the News International story broke Rupert Murdoch's whole approach has been that of a tabloid editor intent on making the story bigger. He closed the News of the World though this was something no one had asked him or expected him to do but which guaranteed that anybody who had previously doubted the importance of the story would now know that it was big. He leaked the story about bribes being paid to the police, apparently in the expectation that this would embarrass the police and divert the story from himself, instead infuriating the police and making the story bigger. He clung on to Rebeka Brooks long after she had been discredited and had himself photographed in a suggestive pose with her that has inevitably excited comment and given the story a salacious twist. He has now been forced to accept her resignation, just as Prime Ministers who his newspapers have hounded were forced to accept the resignations of ministers whose transgressions his newspapers had exposed, thereby calling his judgement into question and ensuring that the story gets bigger still. He has scarcely spoken in public since the start of the scandal allowing every rumour to go unanswered. He first refused and then almost immediately agreed to appear before the House of Commons Committee,thereby simultaneously giving the impression that he has something to hide and that he is on the run. In a word he has done everything possible to encourage the "feeding frenzy" and to ensure that the story just goes on getting bigger.
I am no friend of Murdoch. I consider his exposure utterly essential for Britain's political health. I totally disagree with an article by Adrian Hamilton in the Independent today that says that criticism of Murdoch is a diversion from the real issue, which supposedly is the lack of transparency in British political life. That sort of logic dangerously underestimates the power and influence Murdoch has exercised until now and risks letting him off the hook leaving the situation exactly as it was before. It is also insensitive to the seriousness of the crimes that we now know have been committed.
At the same time I have to concede that there is something bizarre and even slightly pathetic about a vain old man who has so obviously lost the plot. I suspect that Murdoch has been surrounded by flatterers for so long that he has begun to lose his grip. His assertion to the Wall Street Journal that the matter has been handled "well" is astonishing and shows how out of touch with reality he has become.
Before writing Murdoch off as some sort of latter day Lear a word of caution is however in order. He remains a ruthless and powerful man and one not to be underestimated. He continues to enjoy powerful support from much of the press (not just the press he owns), which is becoming alarmed at the prospect of statutory regulation and of an inquiry into its methods and behaviour. The Daily Mail has for example concentrated its fire not on Murdoch but on the supposed hypocrisy of his critics. Murdoch also continues to have powerful support within the Conservative party. Practically unnoticed have been several statements of support for him by several Conservative MPs some of whom rebelled against their leadership by refusing to support the motion against the BSkyB bid at Wednesday's debate. His summons to appear before the House of Commons Committee on Tuesday may be the event that finally concentrates his mind and brings him back to earth.
I am no friend of Murdoch. I consider his exposure utterly essential for Britain's political health. I totally disagree with an article by Adrian Hamilton in the Independent today that says that criticism of Murdoch is a diversion from the real issue, which supposedly is the lack of transparency in British political life. That sort of logic dangerously underestimates the power and influence Murdoch has exercised until now and risks letting him off the hook leaving the situation exactly as it was before. It is also insensitive to the seriousness of the crimes that we now know have been committed.
At the same time I have to concede that there is something bizarre and even slightly pathetic about a vain old man who has so obviously lost the plot. I suspect that Murdoch has been surrounded by flatterers for so long that he has begun to lose his grip. His assertion to the Wall Street Journal that the matter has been handled "well" is astonishing and shows how out of touch with reality he has become.
Before writing Murdoch off as some sort of latter day Lear a word of caution is however in order. He remains a ruthless and powerful man and one not to be underestimated. He continues to enjoy powerful support from much of the press (not just the press he owns), which is becoming alarmed at the prospect of statutory regulation and of an inquiry into its methods and behaviour. The Daily Mail has for example concentrated its fire not on Murdoch but on the supposed hypocrisy of his critics. Murdoch also continues to have powerful support within the Conservative party. Practically unnoticed have been several statements of support for him by several Conservative MPs some of whom rebelled against their leadership by refusing to support the motion against the BSkyB bid at Wednesday's debate. His summons to appear before the House of Commons Committee on Tuesday may be the event that finally concentrates his mind and brings him back to earth.
THE SELF DESTRUCTION OF A COMMENTATOR
Media headlines today in Britain are dominated by one story: the resignation of Rebeka Brooks from her job as Chief Executive of News International. Elsewhere there is the continuing drama in Libya and the rest of the Middle East, rumblings in Egypt, a brewing financial crisis in the Eurozone and a gathering deficit crisis in the US where the parties cannot agree on a debt reduction plan whilst economic data (eg a shock rise in unemployment) suggest that the economy is teetering on the brink of a crash.
One high profile political commentator prefers to ignore these issues whilst focusing on something else, which he presumably feels is more important. That commentator is the Independent's former chief political editor, John Rentoul. His post in the Independent today is not about any of the matters that presently dominate the news but about a written submission made by the former foreign minister Jack Straw to the Iraq inquiry.
John Rentoul was once one of the most incisive and influential voices in British journalism. At some point however he succumbed to Tony Blair's charm and ever since he has been Blair's most passionate defender in the media. Ever since Blair's resignation his posts and commentaries have been dominated by one subject: Blair's virtue and why Blair was right to attack Iraq. In post after post and in article after article he returns to the subject obsessively, discussing in extraordinary detail and at astonishing length every twist and turn and revelation in the Iraq war saga in order to vindicate his hero. His use of Straw's latest submission to the Iraq war inquiry is a case in point. Stated briefly Straw's point is that the war against Iraq became necessary because the sanctions were disintegrating and in the absence of the inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had expelled in 1998, the strategy of "containing" Saddam Hussein had failed. Rentoul appears to think that this somehow proves that Blair was right. He implies that the reason no other newspaper or commentator has mentioned Straw's submission is because of this.
In reality Straw's point, as one might expect coming from such a source, is a clever inversion of the truth. In making it Straw starts with an outright lie, which is that Saddam Hussein "expelled" the inspectors in 1998. He did no such thing. This lie is one that has been repeatedly refuted including by the inspectors themselves, a fact which does not however prevent apologists for the war from constantly repeating it. Both Straw and Rentoul must know it is untrue. In any event the point about the "expulsion" of the inspectors in 1998 is neither here nor there given that in 2002 Saddam Hussein allowed them back.
As for the disintegration of the sanctions regime, this was undoubtedly taking place largely because most countries by 2001 had concluded that the British and Americans were using the question of Saddam Hussein's supposed secret weapons as an excuse to maintain the sanctions against him indefinitely. There was I remember growing international irritation at this and at the way in which the question of the weapons was being kept artificially alive with many starting to question why Iraq was being punished because three countries (the US, Britain and Israel) had a feud with its leader, Saddam Hussein. I have always thought (and thought at the time) that the true reason the war was launched when it was, was precisely because the US and Britain were becoming alarmed that the sanctions regime was about to collapse and decided that they could not afford the humiliation of having this happen with Saddam Hussein still in place. For what it is worth I would say that Straw's latest comments tend to bear this out. Whether they do so or not they do not excuse or justify the war or Blair's conduct.
Whatever, John Rentoul's endless harping on the same point reminds me of a pub bore. He is entitled to his views about Blair and Iraq even if he is now the only one to still hold them. He cannot complain that we do not know what his views are since for the last ten years he has passed up no opportunity to remind us of them. He has long since passed the point when it was wise for him to stop. If he cannot stop now then the Independent should ask itself whether he continues to deserve the very generous salary it pays him.
One high profile political commentator prefers to ignore these issues whilst focusing on something else, which he presumably feels is more important. That commentator is the Independent's former chief political editor, John Rentoul. His post in the Independent today is not about any of the matters that presently dominate the news but about a written submission made by the former foreign minister Jack Straw to the Iraq inquiry.
John Rentoul was once one of the most incisive and influential voices in British journalism. At some point however he succumbed to Tony Blair's charm and ever since he has been Blair's most passionate defender in the media. Ever since Blair's resignation his posts and commentaries have been dominated by one subject: Blair's virtue and why Blair was right to attack Iraq. In post after post and in article after article he returns to the subject obsessively, discussing in extraordinary detail and at astonishing length every twist and turn and revelation in the Iraq war saga in order to vindicate his hero. His use of Straw's latest submission to the Iraq war inquiry is a case in point. Stated briefly Straw's point is that the war against Iraq became necessary because the sanctions were disintegrating and in the absence of the inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had expelled in 1998, the strategy of "containing" Saddam Hussein had failed. Rentoul appears to think that this somehow proves that Blair was right. He implies that the reason no other newspaper or commentator has mentioned Straw's submission is because of this.
In reality Straw's point, as one might expect coming from such a source, is a clever inversion of the truth. In making it Straw starts with an outright lie, which is that Saddam Hussein "expelled" the inspectors in 1998. He did no such thing. This lie is one that has been repeatedly refuted including by the inspectors themselves, a fact which does not however prevent apologists for the war from constantly repeating it. Both Straw and Rentoul must know it is untrue. In any event the point about the "expulsion" of the inspectors in 1998 is neither here nor there given that in 2002 Saddam Hussein allowed them back.
As for the disintegration of the sanctions regime, this was undoubtedly taking place largely because most countries by 2001 had concluded that the British and Americans were using the question of Saddam Hussein's supposed secret weapons as an excuse to maintain the sanctions against him indefinitely. There was I remember growing international irritation at this and at the way in which the question of the weapons was being kept artificially alive with many starting to question why Iraq was being punished because three countries (the US, Britain and Israel) had a feud with its leader, Saddam Hussein. I have always thought (and thought at the time) that the true reason the war was launched when it was, was precisely because the US and Britain were becoming alarmed that the sanctions regime was about to collapse and decided that they could not afford the humiliation of having this happen with Saddam Hussein still in place. For what it is worth I would say that Straw's latest comments tend to bear this out. Whether they do so or not they do not excuse or justify the war or Blair's conduct.
Whatever, John Rentoul's endless harping on the same point reminds me of a pub bore. He is entitled to his views about Blair and Iraq even if he is now the only one to still hold them. He cannot complain that we do not know what his views are since for the last ten years he has passed up no opportunity to remind us of them. He has long since passed the point when it was wise for him to stop. If he cannot stop now then the Independent should ask itself whether he continues to deserve the very generous salary it pays him.
Saturday 9 July 2011
RUPERT MURDOCH IS THATCHER'S CREATION
It has taken a former Conservative cabinet minister David Mellor writing in the Guardian today to state what broader commentary has avoided saying, which is that Rupert Murdoch is Margaret Thatcher's creation. Before Thatcher, Murdoch was the owner of two uninfluential tabloids, the Sun and the News of the World. Both were considered a fun read by the largely male working class readership that bought them. They attracted such readers not because of their politics but because of their cheerful exuberance, easy writing and girlie photos. They did not at this time possess the air of menace for which they are famous and which they have today.
The "Murdoch empire" as we know it today emerged during the 1980s. In 1981 Thatcher set aside competition law to hand over to Murdoch the Times and the Sunday Times. Contrary to what Murdoch's admirers say he is not the "saviour" of the Times or of the Sunday Times. When Murdoch bought the Times it was still considered the best and most authoritative British newspaper whilst the Sunday Times had shortly before experienced a glorious era under the brilliant editorship of Harold Evans. Under Murdoch the Times has suffered an astonishing eclipse, losing influence and readers so that it is today a shadow of its former self. No one today would count the Times as a leader in global news or would claim that it has the international reputation or influence of the Guardian or of the Financial Times. As for the Sunday Times, though its circulation has increased it too has suffered a dramatic loss in reputation and prestige.
Ownership of these two titles however gave Murdoch a dominant position in British newspapers. As the owner of the Times and of the Sunday Times he was taken seriously in a way that he simply had not been before. The prestige that Murdoch gained by acquiring these two titles also undoubtedly helped him as he began his assault on the US media market. The Times was by far the best known British newspaper in the US at this time and as its owner Murdoch possessed a credibility that he would simply not have had if he had come to the US as just the owner of two down market tabloids.
Thatcher's support was also crucial in enabling Murdoch to get his Sky venture off the ground. Central to the success of the Sky venture was Murdoch's acquisition of exclusive football rights, someting that again could not have been achieved without the Thatcher government's support.
As for the claim that Murdoch and Sky improved the quality of British television by allegedly increasing its diversity, the claim is bizarre. On the contrary until the 1980s and the appearance of Sky British television was universally acknowledged to be the best in the world, something which no one would seriously claim today.
What the emergence of Sky and the relentless war Murdoch has waged against the BBC and the other terrestial broadcasters has done is sap the self confidence and morale of the BBC and the other terrestial broadcasters and undermine their public service ethos. In the case of the two commercial terrestial broadcasters, ITN and Channel 4, they also lost advertising revenue as viewers were drawn off to Sky as a result of its possession of exclusive football rights. In order to try to preserve their audience share and in the case of the terrestial broadcasters some of their advertising revenue the BBC and the other terrestial broadcasters were forced into a ferocious ratings war with Sky in which Sky had an immense built in advantage as a result of its possession of the exclusive football rights. What suffered was the quality of British television, which experienced an immediate and sustained collapse. Broadcasters such as Channel 4, which had made their name as quality producers, had to move down market embracing such things as reality television with programmes such as Big Brother.
As for Sky (or BSkyB as it eventually became), its most notable characteristic as a broadcaster is its failure to spend money on programme making. Sky's business model is largely based on imports from the US where Murdoch's eventual ownership of Twentieth Century Fox gives it a further advantage. In this way it keeps down its costs and increases its profits. In order to compete the terrestial broadcasters, ITN and Channel 4 and eventually Channel 5, found themselves obliged to copy this model. Failure to do so would have put them at a disadvantage in attracting outside investment. As a result programme making budgets and activity across the whole range of British television have been slashed. The effect has been demoralising with a general impoverishment of British television, which has gone from thinking of itself as a public service into becoming a mere business driven purely by profit making. Even the BBC has been affected by the general malaise, a condition exacebated by the perpetual war Murdoch wages against it in which he can count on the support of those politicians who for whatever reason are in his pocket.
Overall as one looks at the effect Murdoch has had on British television the conclusion has to be that his effect has been overwhelmingly negative. The tradition of brilliant and sustained programme making and exceptionally high production values that was once British television's glory has been lost. There has been a general coarsening and a loss of diversity, not its increase. Anyone who remembers what British television was like before Thatcher, Murdoch and Sky knows that this is so. For those too young to remember I challenge them to compare old serials like Quatermass, The Prisoner, I Claudius and Brideshead Revisited with anything made today.
Thatcher's support also enabled Murdoch to win his battles against the print unions and to transfer his newspaper operation to Wapping. In the realm of right wing folklore this squalid dispute distinguished above all by Murdoch's ruthless methods towards the strikers and the intimidation and harassment of the strikers by the police, has been invested with a sort of Homeric quality. It is falsely represented as some sort of existential struggle in which Murdoch allegedly broke the stranglehold of the print unions thereby liberating newspapers from their grip and enabling them to survive.
It should be said outright that this fantasy, like all the other anti union fantasies of the 1980s, has no basis in fact. New technology made change inevitable whilst the claim that but for Murdoch's victory in the Wapping dispute newspapers in Britain would have died out is ridiculous. Newspaper circulation post the Wapping dispute is lower than it was before and continues to fall whilst newspapers are actually less profitable today than they were then. The mythology of the Wapping dispute serves as yet another example of the right wing tendency to blame Britain's economic problems not on the incompetent managements that run its businesses but on the hapless workers employed by them.
In return for this help Murdoch gave Thatcher the unstinting support of his media group. This went far beyond the usual expressions of support for her and for her policies. It was during the 1980s that the Sun under the brutally effective editorship of Kelvin Mackenzie developed its bullying tone and its technique of character assassination. It was also during this period that the Sun developed its method of crude news manipulation and distortion of news.
Murdoch placed these dark arts at Thatcher's disposal. Throughout the 1980s she was their beneficiary and her political enemies, whether Labour or Conservative, were their victims. The reason Thatcher never had an Alistair Campbell is because she did not need one. Murdoch did the job for her. The two became so close that they routinely spent Christmas in each other's company, a fact conspicuously not mentioned by Thatcher in her memoirs where in fact she does not mention Murdoch at all.
Following Thatcher's fall Murdoch was left in the immensely powerful position he had built up with her help. He has never had the same kind of close relationship with subsequent Prime Ministers that he had with Thatcher. What he has instead done is trade the techniques he perfected on her behalf in the 1980s in return for ever growing political influence, which he has used to advance his private commercial interests. This means that he has effortlessly switched support between Conservatives and Labour whilst inciting both to engage in a bidding war against each other for his favour. Following the May 2010 election his influence reached its apogee with the appointment of Andy Coulson, one of his key lieutenants, to the post of the government's Director of Communications. This set the stage for his intended takeover of the remaining shares of BSkyB.
The irony is that as Murdoch's political influence has grown the actual sway of his newspapers has declined. It is probably true that Labour support was affected in the 1980s and early 1990s by the vicious press campaigns he waged against it. The effect was not however as great as was widely supposed. Labour lost support in the 1980s not because of Murdoch's hostility but because of its vicious civil war, which did the party's reputation immense damage and from which it took a full decade to recover. Labour's recovery and its landslide victory in 1997 owed nothing to Murdoch. On the contrary Murdoch's decision in the mid 1990s to throw his weight behind Labour was based on his calculation that Labour was going to win. As a seasoned political blackmailer Murdoch realised that he could not afford to be seen to back a loser. By backing Labour he was able to take undeserved credit for its victory whilst keeping his reputation as a kingmaker intact. The lack of Murdoch's real influence on the political allegiances of the British electorate is shown by the fact that notwithstanding all the shifts and turns in Murdoch's political loyalties the greater part of the working class readers who buy the Sun have consistently done what working class voters normally do, which is vote Labour.
The "Murdoch empire" as we know it today emerged during the 1980s. In 1981 Thatcher set aside competition law to hand over to Murdoch the Times and the Sunday Times. Contrary to what Murdoch's admirers say he is not the "saviour" of the Times or of the Sunday Times. When Murdoch bought the Times it was still considered the best and most authoritative British newspaper whilst the Sunday Times had shortly before experienced a glorious era under the brilliant editorship of Harold Evans. Under Murdoch the Times has suffered an astonishing eclipse, losing influence and readers so that it is today a shadow of its former self. No one today would count the Times as a leader in global news or would claim that it has the international reputation or influence of the Guardian or of the Financial Times. As for the Sunday Times, though its circulation has increased it too has suffered a dramatic loss in reputation and prestige.
Ownership of these two titles however gave Murdoch a dominant position in British newspapers. As the owner of the Times and of the Sunday Times he was taken seriously in a way that he simply had not been before. The prestige that Murdoch gained by acquiring these two titles also undoubtedly helped him as he began his assault on the US media market. The Times was by far the best known British newspaper in the US at this time and as its owner Murdoch possessed a credibility that he would simply not have had if he had come to the US as just the owner of two down market tabloids.
Thatcher's support was also crucial in enabling Murdoch to get his Sky venture off the ground. Central to the success of the Sky venture was Murdoch's acquisition of exclusive football rights, someting that again could not have been achieved without the Thatcher government's support.
As for the claim that Murdoch and Sky improved the quality of British television by allegedly increasing its diversity, the claim is bizarre. On the contrary until the 1980s and the appearance of Sky British television was universally acknowledged to be the best in the world, something which no one would seriously claim today.
What the emergence of Sky and the relentless war Murdoch has waged against the BBC and the other terrestial broadcasters has done is sap the self confidence and morale of the BBC and the other terrestial broadcasters and undermine their public service ethos. In the case of the two commercial terrestial broadcasters, ITN and Channel 4, they also lost advertising revenue as viewers were drawn off to Sky as a result of its possession of exclusive football rights. In order to try to preserve their audience share and in the case of the terrestial broadcasters some of their advertising revenue the BBC and the other terrestial broadcasters were forced into a ferocious ratings war with Sky in which Sky had an immense built in advantage as a result of its possession of the exclusive football rights. What suffered was the quality of British television, which experienced an immediate and sustained collapse. Broadcasters such as Channel 4, which had made their name as quality producers, had to move down market embracing such things as reality television with programmes such as Big Brother.
As for Sky (or BSkyB as it eventually became), its most notable characteristic as a broadcaster is its failure to spend money on programme making. Sky's business model is largely based on imports from the US where Murdoch's eventual ownership of Twentieth Century Fox gives it a further advantage. In this way it keeps down its costs and increases its profits. In order to compete the terrestial broadcasters, ITN and Channel 4 and eventually Channel 5, found themselves obliged to copy this model. Failure to do so would have put them at a disadvantage in attracting outside investment. As a result programme making budgets and activity across the whole range of British television have been slashed. The effect has been demoralising with a general impoverishment of British television, which has gone from thinking of itself as a public service into becoming a mere business driven purely by profit making. Even the BBC has been affected by the general malaise, a condition exacebated by the perpetual war Murdoch wages against it in which he can count on the support of those politicians who for whatever reason are in his pocket.
Overall as one looks at the effect Murdoch has had on British television the conclusion has to be that his effect has been overwhelmingly negative. The tradition of brilliant and sustained programme making and exceptionally high production values that was once British television's glory has been lost. There has been a general coarsening and a loss of diversity, not its increase. Anyone who remembers what British television was like before Thatcher, Murdoch and Sky knows that this is so. For those too young to remember I challenge them to compare old serials like Quatermass, The Prisoner, I Claudius and Brideshead Revisited with anything made today.
Thatcher's support also enabled Murdoch to win his battles against the print unions and to transfer his newspaper operation to Wapping. In the realm of right wing folklore this squalid dispute distinguished above all by Murdoch's ruthless methods towards the strikers and the intimidation and harassment of the strikers by the police, has been invested with a sort of Homeric quality. It is falsely represented as some sort of existential struggle in which Murdoch allegedly broke the stranglehold of the print unions thereby liberating newspapers from their grip and enabling them to survive.
It should be said outright that this fantasy, like all the other anti union fantasies of the 1980s, has no basis in fact. New technology made change inevitable whilst the claim that but for Murdoch's victory in the Wapping dispute newspapers in Britain would have died out is ridiculous. Newspaper circulation post the Wapping dispute is lower than it was before and continues to fall whilst newspapers are actually less profitable today than they were then. The mythology of the Wapping dispute serves as yet another example of the right wing tendency to blame Britain's economic problems not on the incompetent managements that run its businesses but on the hapless workers employed by them.
In return for this help Murdoch gave Thatcher the unstinting support of his media group. This went far beyond the usual expressions of support for her and for her policies. It was during the 1980s that the Sun under the brutally effective editorship of Kelvin Mackenzie developed its bullying tone and its technique of character assassination. It was also during this period that the Sun developed its method of crude news manipulation and distortion of news.
Murdoch placed these dark arts at Thatcher's disposal. Throughout the 1980s she was their beneficiary and her political enemies, whether Labour or Conservative, were their victims. The reason Thatcher never had an Alistair Campbell is because she did not need one. Murdoch did the job for her. The two became so close that they routinely spent Christmas in each other's company, a fact conspicuously not mentioned by Thatcher in her memoirs where in fact she does not mention Murdoch at all.
Following Thatcher's fall Murdoch was left in the immensely powerful position he had built up with her help. He has never had the same kind of close relationship with subsequent Prime Ministers that he had with Thatcher. What he has instead done is trade the techniques he perfected on her behalf in the 1980s in return for ever growing political influence, which he has used to advance his private commercial interests. This means that he has effortlessly switched support between Conservatives and Labour whilst inciting both to engage in a bidding war against each other for his favour. Following the May 2010 election his influence reached its apogee with the appointment of Andy Coulson, one of his key lieutenants, to the post of the government's Director of Communications. This set the stage for his intended takeover of the remaining shares of BSkyB.
The irony is that as Murdoch's political influence has grown the actual sway of his newspapers has declined. It is probably true that Labour support was affected in the 1980s and early 1990s by the vicious press campaigns he waged against it. The effect was not however as great as was widely supposed. Labour lost support in the 1980s not because of Murdoch's hostility but because of its vicious civil war, which did the party's reputation immense damage and from which it took a full decade to recover. Labour's recovery and its landslide victory in 1997 owed nothing to Murdoch. On the contrary Murdoch's decision in the mid 1990s to throw his weight behind Labour was based on his calculation that Labour was going to win. As a seasoned political blackmailer Murdoch realised that he could not afford to be seen to back a loser. By backing Labour he was able to take undeserved credit for its victory whilst keeping his reputation as a kingmaker intact. The lack of Murdoch's real influence on the political allegiances of the British electorate is shown by the fact that notwithstanding all the shifts and turns in Murdoch's political loyalties the greater part of the working class readers who buy the Sun have consistently done what working class voters normally do, which is vote Labour.
Friday 8 July 2011
CLOSING THE NEWS OF THE WORLD
I write this post hours after James Murdoch on the instructions of his father announced the closure of the News of the World.
No one should be under any doubt of the purpose of this manoeuvre. It is to draw attention away from the fact that nothing has really changed. The News of the World will doubtless be replaced by a Sun on Sunday whilst the management of News International (including Rebeka Brooks), which bears ultimate responsibility for what has happened, remains in place. John Prescott was totally correct when he said that the closure of the News of the World punishes the innocent (the workers and reporters whose lives are bound up with the paper) whilst letting the guilty walk free.
Meanwhile the government has pressed ahead with its plan to conduct two separate inquiries into the scandal. The inquiry into the misconduct of the police will be conducted by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an organisation that I know well and which in my experience can be relied upon to protect the police. There is no word so far about the form or purpose of any other inquiry or who will head it. Nor is there any indication that the government is prepared to stop News International's takeover of BSkyB. As I discussed in my earlier post the beneficiaries of these moves are Rupert Murdoch and News International.
No one should be under any doubt of the purpose of this manoeuvre. It is to draw attention away from the fact that nothing has really changed. The News of the World will doubtless be replaced by a Sun on Sunday whilst the management of News International (including Rebeka Brooks), which bears ultimate responsibility for what has happened, remains in place. John Prescott was totally correct when he said that the closure of the News of the World punishes the innocent (the workers and reporters whose lives are bound up with the paper) whilst letting the guilty walk free.
Meanwhile the government has pressed ahead with its plan to conduct two separate inquiries into the scandal. The inquiry into the misconduct of the police will be conducted by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an organisation that I know well and which in my experience can be relied upon to protect the police. There is no word so far about the form or purpose of any other inquiry or who will head it. Nor is there any indication that the government is prepared to stop News International's takeover of BSkyB. As I discussed in my earlier post the beneficiaries of these moves are Rupert Murdoch and News International.
Thursday 7 July 2011
THE ABSURDITY OF INTERNATIONAL CREDIT AGENCIES PART II
A few hours following my post though obviously not in response to it the Daily Telegraph published an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard defending the credit rating agencies. Allegedly "suppressing" the credit rating agencies amounts to "suppressing" free speech. Evans-Pritchard even goes so far as to adapt in their defence Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous poem "First they came...", which given that this poem concerns the Nazi genocide some of us might feel is both tasteless and grotesque.
What is bizarre about Evans-Pritchard's article is that he actually concedes the main part of the case against the credit rating agencies, which is that they absurdly over assessed the credit worthiness of the Mediterranean economies before the crash. What I find still more bizarre is that though he admits the credit worthiness of the Mediterranean economies was grotesquely over assessed he nonetheless says that the bond holders who made loans to these economies in "good faith" should be protected and even "cherished". Instead he puts all the blame for the catastrophe in the Eurozone squarely on the euro.
Let me say at once that I accept some of the case that is being made against the euro. As I shall argue in a later post the way the euro was created was almost guaranteed to exarcebate the differences between the more industrially advanced economies of the north and the poorer and more backward economies of the south. That does not justify using the euro as a scapegoat to shield the international financial community from its mistakes. Why should mere membership of the Eurozone encourage lenders to throw caution to the winds and lend money to fragile economies without heed to their underlying lack of competitiveness and their deteriorating balance sheets? Why should membership of the Eurozone encourage credit rating agencies to over assess the credit worthiness of those economies? Why should bond holders engaging in commercial decisions be protected from their losses? Why should credit rating agencies that blundered so catastrophically be allowed to walk away with their reputations and authority intact? Lastly, why should bond holders who relied on these credit rating agencies be protected?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's article is in fact a classic example of the refusal of advocates of untrammelled free markets to practise what they preach. The reality behind the over assessment of the Mediterranean economies by the credit rating agencies and the willingness of private lenders to lend to these economies in disregard of their economic fundamentals is that an assumption existed that if any of these economies ran into serious trouble Germany would pay to bail them out. Nothing in the European treaties or that the German or any other government ever said ever so much as hinted at such a thing. On the contrary the relevant treaties and repeated statements by the German government made it absolutely clear that the Eurozone is not a transfer union and that Germany does not stand as guarantor for the debt of any other country merely because that country happens to use the euro. Anyone who loaned money to such a country on that assumption was therefore quite simply making a mistake for which they have no one to blame but themselves. To talk of such lenders acting in "good faith" and of the need to "cherish" such lenders is therefore preposterous. That however is what Evans-Pritchard is saying, which is another way of saying that he thinks that despite the clear language of the treaties and of the numerous statements of the German government bond holders who foolishly made loans to these countries should be allowed to keep their profits whilst the overburdened German tax payer should shield them from loss.
What is bizarre about Evans-Pritchard's article is that he actually concedes the main part of the case against the credit rating agencies, which is that they absurdly over assessed the credit worthiness of the Mediterranean economies before the crash. What I find still more bizarre is that though he admits the credit worthiness of the Mediterranean economies was grotesquely over assessed he nonetheless says that the bond holders who made loans to these economies in "good faith" should be protected and even "cherished". Instead he puts all the blame for the catastrophe in the Eurozone squarely on the euro.
Let me say at once that I accept some of the case that is being made against the euro. As I shall argue in a later post the way the euro was created was almost guaranteed to exarcebate the differences between the more industrially advanced economies of the north and the poorer and more backward economies of the south. That does not justify using the euro as a scapegoat to shield the international financial community from its mistakes. Why should mere membership of the Eurozone encourage lenders to throw caution to the winds and lend money to fragile economies without heed to their underlying lack of competitiveness and their deteriorating balance sheets? Why should membership of the Eurozone encourage credit rating agencies to over assess the credit worthiness of those economies? Why should bond holders engaging in commercial decisions be protected from their losses? Why should credit rating agencies that blundered so catastrophically be allowed to walk away with their reputations and authority intact? Lastly, why should bond holders who relied on these credit rating agencies be protected?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's article is in fact a classic example of the refusal of advocates of untrammelled free markets to practise what they preach. The reality behind the over assessment of the Mediterranean economies by the credit rating agencies and the willingness of private lenders to lend to these economies in disregard of their economic fundamentals is that an assumption existed that if any of these economies ran into serious trouble Germany would pay to bail them out. Nothing in the European treaties or that the German or any other government ever said ever so much as hinted at such a thing. On the contrary the relevant treaties and repeated statements by the German government made it absolutely clear that the Eurozone is not a transfer union and that Germany does not stand as guarantor for the debt of any other country merely because that country happens to use the euro. Anyone who loaned money to such a country on that assumption was therefore quite simply making a mistake for which they have no one to blame but themselves. To talk of such lenders acting in "good faith" and of the need to "cherish" such lenders is therefore preposterous. That however is what Evans-Pritchard is saying, which is another way of saying that he thinks that despite the clear language of the treaties and of the numerous statements of the German government bond holders who foolishly made loans to these countries should be allowed to keep their profits whilst the overburdened German tax payer should shield them from loss.
NEWS INTERNATIONAL AND THE GOVERNMENT
The latest news on the News International story is that the government is refusing to postpone consideration of the BSkyB takeover whilst at the same time appearing to resist calls for an inquiry to be headed by a judge. No cogent reason has been given as to why the inquiry should not be headed by a judge. Given the nature of the allegations that the inquiry will have to consider the logic of appointing a judge to head it seems irresistible. Failing to appoint a judge to head the inquiry will weaken the inquiry and diminish its impact.
The government seems also to be trying to set up two separate inquiries even though the logic of the situation clearly requires one inquiry. It is totally unclear why there should be two inquiries instead of one when any inquiry if it is to do its work properly has to look at all the facts. Having two separate inquiries not only runs the risk of the two inquiries working at cross purposes but also means that their respective reports will have diminished impact since they will each deal with only part of the matter. Frankly the attempt to set up two inquiries looks like an attempt to narrow their terms of reference and to limit the matters they are able to consider in a way that can only help News International.
After hearing this news I am sure I will not be the only person who will be wondering why the government is bending over backwards to help News International despite all the evidence of illegal and criminal activity that now exists. Nor will I be the only person to start to wonder about the reasons for the Prime Minister's behaviour as he puts his reputation on the line not just on behalf of News International but also on behalf of Rupert and James Murdoch, Andy Coulson and Rebeka Brooks, all of whom it turns out he counts as his friends.
The government seems also to be trying to set up two separate inquiries even though the logic of the situation clearly requires one inquiry. It is totally unclear why there should be two inquiries instead of one when any inquiry if it is to do its work properly has to look at all the facts. Having two separate inquiries not only runs the risk of the two inquiries working at cross purposes but also means that their respective reports will have diminished impact since they will each deal with only part of the matter. Frankly the attempt to set up two inquiries looks like an attempt to narrow their terms of reference and to limit the matters they are able to consider in a way that can only help News International.
After hearing this news I am sure I will not be the only person who will be wondering why the government is bending over backwards to help News International despite all the evidence of illegal and criminal activity that now exists. Nor will I be the only person to start to wonder about the reasons for the Prime Minister's behaviour as he puts his reputation on the line not just on behalf of News International but also on behalf of Rupert and James Murdoch, Andy Coulson and Rebeka Brooks, all of whom it turns out he counts as his friends.
THE ABSURDITY OF INTERNATIONAL CREDIT RATING AGENCIES
News that Portugal's credit rating has been downgraded from "AA" to "AA minus" has provoked a storm of criticism in Europe. The downgrade will make it more difficult for Portugal to borrow on the international money markets because international banks use a country's credit rating when assessing whether to lend to that country. A country's credit rating also determines the rate of interest it pays on any loans. The decision to downgrade Portugal's credit immediately after it has received a bailout is akin to pulling the rug from under Portugal's feet. It also negates the steps the European Union is taking to try to help Portugal.
Personally as someone who has had bitter experiences with credit rating agencies I think the whole practice needs to be outlawed. Firstly there is no rhyme or reason to how credit rating agencies assess individual countries. Portugal's current rating of "AA minus" remains substantially higher than Russia's junk bond "BBB" rating notwithstanding that Russia has paid off most of its debt, has the lowest debt to GDP ratio of any G20 economy, runs a substantial trade surplus, has a balanced budget and at around $500 billion possesses the world's third biggest foreign currency reserves. Portugal's rating is only marginally lower than China's, which is "AA3", notwithstanding that China also runs a large trade surplus and at around $3 trillion possesses the world's biggest foreign currency reserves. As of 1st January 2011 Portugal's credit rating at "AA" was actually higher than China's, which was then "A1". That the credit rating agencies have assessed all three countries wrongly is shown by the fact that since the financial crisis hit in August 2007 it has been Portugal that has needed bailout support whilst Russia and China have not. In the meantime the two countries whose economies stand at the epicentre of the world financial crisis, the US and Britain, and which continue to run massive trade and budget deficits and where government and private debt has exploded to many times the level of GDP, retain an "AAA" rating.
Secondly use of credit rating agencies means that banks instead of carrying out a proper investigation of a country's fundamentals and exercising their own judgement in effect contract this function out to the credit rating agencies. The whole financial disaster the world has experienced is to a large extent a direct consequence of the way in which banks have relied on credit rating agencies to make their decisions for them.
This is bad practice at many levels. Firstly instead of making individual assessments credit rating agencies rely on mathematical formulae when deciding what ratings to set. This reflects the fallacy, especially prevalent in the US, that results drawn from mathematics are somehow "objective" and "scientific" and therefore true. In reality this results in absurd outcomes as I know from my own personal experience. When I needed urgently to borrow some money some years ago I found that banks would not lend to me because my previous avoidance of debt meant that my credit rating as assessed by the credit rating agencies was poor. The rationale was that as I had never taken on debt I had no previous credit history on which the credit agencies could assess me. The result was that I was unable to borrow from the banks even though I had never defaulted on a loan and even though I possessed assets with a far higher value than the money I needed to borrow.
Secondly, though the fact is never admitted, there is obvious political bias in the way the credit rating agencies do their work. All three of the big credit rating agencies are American and are funded by US banks. Not surprisingly they continued to give the big Anglo American banks the highest "AAA" ratings right up to the moment when they all crashed. Similarly they continue to give the US and Britain "AAA" ratings even though the US's and Britain's exploding debt levels and systemic budget and trade deficits scarcely justify this.
In fact the true purpose of credit rating agencies is exposed by my last paragraph. It is to ensure that international capital continues to flow into the US and Britain and specifically to the US and British governments and to US and British banks. Given that this fact is so obvious it is difficult to understand why anyone else takes them seriously.
Personally as someone who has had bitter experiences with credit rating agencies I think the whole practice needs to be outlawed. Firstly there is no rhyme or reason to how credit rating agencies assess individual countries. Portugal's current rating of "AA minus" remains substantially higher than Russia's junk bond "BBB" rating notwithstanding that Russia has paid off most of its debt, has the lowest debt to GDP ratio of any G20 economy, runs a substantial trade surplus, has a balanced budget and at around $500 billion possesses the world's third biggest foreign currency reserves. Portugal's rating is only marginally lower than China's, which is "AA3", notwithstanding that China also runs a large trade surplus and at around $3 trillion possesses the world's biggest foreign currency reserves. As of 1st January 2011 Portugal's credit rating at "AA" was actually higher than China's, which was then "A1". That the credit rating agencies have assessed all three countries wrongly is shown by the fact that since the financial crisis hit in August 2007 it has been Portugal that has needed bailout support whilst Russia and China have not. In the meantime the two countries whose economies stand at the epicentre of the world financial crisis, the US and Britain, and which continue to run massive trade and budget deficits and where government and private debt has exploded to many times the level of GDP, retain an "AAA" rating.
Secondly use of credit rating agencies means that banks instead of carrying out a proper investigation of a country's fundamentals and exercising their own judgement in effect contract this function out to the credit rating agencies. The whole financial disaster the world has experienced is to a large extent a direct consequence of the way in which banks have relied on credit rating agencies to make their decisions for them.
This is bad practice at many levels. Firstly instead of making individual assessments credit rating agencies rely on mathematical formulae when deciding what ratings to set. This reflects the fallacy, especially prevalent in the US, that results drawn from mathematics are somehow "objective" and "scientific" and therefore true. In reality this results in absurd outcomes as I know from my own personal experience. When I needed urgently to borrow some money some years ago I found that banks would not lend to me because my previous avoidance of debt meant that my credit rating as assessed by the credit rating agencies was poor. The rationale was that as I had never taken on debt I had no previous credit history on which the credit agencies could assess me. The result was that I was unable to borrow from the banks even though I had never defaulted on a loan and even though I possessed assets with a far higher value than the money I needed to borrow.
Secondly, though the fact is never admitted, there is obvious political bias in the way the credit rating agencies do their work. All three of the big credit rating agencies are American and are funded by US banks. Not surprisingly they continued to give the big Anglo American banks the highest "AAA" ratings right up to the moment when they all crashed. Similarly they continue to give the US and Britain "AAA" ratings even though the US's and Britain's exploding debt levels and systemic budget and trade deficits scarcely justify this.
In fact the true purpose of credit rating agencies is exposed by my last paragraph. It is to ensure that international capital continues to flow into the US and Britain and specifically to the US and British governments and to US and British banks. Given that this fact is so obvious it is difficult to understand why anyone else takes them seriously.
BSKYB TAKEOVER
One comment that repeatedly gets said with which I must take issue is the suggestion that Ministers cannot simply block the BSkyB takeover because the process is somehow "quasi judicial".
Obviously I am not party to the legal advice but I question whether this is so. The mere fact that the decision rests with Ministers surely means that they do have discretion. If the decision was indeed "quasi judicial" then it would not be made by Ministers but by some sort of impartial "quasi judicial" body like a tribunal. Judicial Review is a mechanism whereby the High Court can review the way Ministers make a decision to ensure that the decision itself is legal and that it is made in a lawful way. I do not see why a decision to refuse News International's takeover of BSkyB would be illegal. Contrary to what is often said about judicial meddling the High Court is actually very reluctant to interfere with a Minister's exercise of discretion so provided it is all done in a lawful way I cannot see why the High Court would want to overturn it. To my mind this whole business of Ministers being supposedly "forced" to make a decision in News International's favour smacks of an excuse concocted to allow the government to do something it has decided to do, which is hand over BSkyB to News International, which it knows is controversial and unpopular.
Obviously I am not party to the legal advice but I question whether this is so. The mere fact that the decision rests with Ministers surely means that they do have discretion. If the decision was indeed "quasi judicial" then it would not be made by Ministers but by some sort of impartial "quasi judicial" body like a tribunal. Judicial Review is a mechanism whereby the High Court can review the way Ministers make a decision to ensure that the decision itself is legal and that it is made in a lawful way. I do not see why a decision to refuse News International's takeover of BSkyB would be illegal. Contrary to what is often said about judicial meddling the High Court is actually very reluctant to interfere with a Minister's exercise of discretion so provided it is all done in a lawful way I cannot see why the High Court would want to overturn it. To my mind this whole business of Ministers being supposedly "forced" to make a decision in News International's favour smacks of an excuse concocted to allow the government to do something it has decided to do, which is hand over BSkyB to News International, which it knows is controversial and unpopular.
Wednesday 6 July 2011
PHONE HACKING SCANDAL
The media today is dominated by stories of the phone hacking scandal with news that private detectives employed by News International hacked the telephones of various famous murder victims. It seems that the police have been provided with copies of emails by News International's Andy Coulson authorising payments of tens of thousands of pounds to individual police officers. This is incendiary. It means corruption on the part of the police and a system of organised bribery by News International. If News International has been in the habit of bribing police officers whether for information or for some other purpose this may explain why the police have proved so reluctant up to now to investigate its affairs. Buying information and protection from corrupt police officers is the sort of activity one associates with the likes of Al Capone, not with a reputable news organisation and is enough by itself to justify a public enquiry.
Saturday 2 July 2011
LABOUR WINS INVERCLYDE BYE ELECTION
To the general surprise of most political commentators and to the disappointment of quite a few the Scottish Nationalist Party not only failed to obtain an upset victory at the Inverclyde bye election but came a distant second to Labour. Though the SNP vote increased considerably this was at the expense of the Liberal Democrats whose vote collapsed. The Labour vote held firm.
Followers of this blog will find nothing surprising about this result. It exactly repeats the results of the Scottish Assembly elections in May. Those elections have been misreported and misunderstood as a disaster for Labour whereas in reality the Labour vote held firm. What the Scottish Assembly elections and the Inverclyde bye election both show is a collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote in Scotland as Scottish voters who formerly voted Liberal Democrat react extremely negatively to the Liberal Democrat Party's coalition with the Conservatives in Westminster. What the Scottish Assembly elections and the Inverclyde elections also show is that these former Liberal Democrat voters for the moment overwhelmingly prefer the SNP to Labour so that the increase in the SNP vote is almost exactly proportional to the collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote.
Since what these voters at the moment are doing is registering a protest vote this is not surprising. The reason many of these voters voted Liberal Democrat in the first place was because they are anti Labour. The SNP provides them with the perfect vehicle to register their protest vote without voting Labour. This does not mean that these voters necessarily support independence. Nor does it mean that the SNP will win a general election in Scotland given that as I said in a previous post in such a general election when Scottish voters will be voting for a government in Westminster and not registering a protest vote or voting for an Assembly in Scotland the dynamics of the contest will be completely different.
Followers of this blog will find nothing surprising about this result. It exactly repeats the results of the Scottish Assembly elections in May. Those elections have been misreported and misunderstood as a disaster for Labour whereas in reality the Labour vote held firm. What the Scottish Assembly elections and the Inverclyde bye election both show is a collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote in Scotland as Scottish voters who formerly voted Liberal Democrat react extremely negatively to the Liberal Democrat Party's coalition with the Conservatives in Westminster. What the Scottish Assembly elections and the Inverclyde elections also show is that these former Liberal Democrat voters for the moment overwhelmingly prefer the SNP to Labour so that the increase in the SNP vote is almost exactly proportional to the collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote.
Since what these voters at the moment are doing is registering a protest vote this is not surprising. The reason many of these voters voted Liberal Democrat in the first place was because they are anti Labour. The SNP provides them with the perfect vehicle to register their protest vote without voting Labour. This does not mean that these voters necessarily support independence. Nor does it mean that the SNP will win a general election in Scotland given that as I said in a previous post in such a general election when Scottish voters will be voting for a government in Westminster and not registering a protest vote or voting for an Assembly in Scotland the dynamics of the contest will be completely different.
Thursday 30 June 2011
LIBYA - BREAKING THE ARMS EMBARGO
Recent revelations from France that the French military has been supplying small arms to the anti Gaddafi rebels has triggered discussion about whether this action breaches the terms of the arms embargo imposed on Libya by Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973. Supporters of arming the rebels say it does not allegedly because Security Council Resolution 1973 allows "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Purportedly "all necessary measures" can extend to arming civilians if this is necessary for their protection.
This line of reasoning is absurd. The arms embargo is imposed by Security Council Resolution 1970. This forbids any and all shipments of arms to Libya without distinguishing between the government forces or the rebels. Security Council Resolution 1973 reaffirms this embargo and contains further provisions for its enforcement. Neither Resolution 1970 nor Resolution 1973 say that the rebels are excluded from the embargo. Had this been the intention the Resolutions would have said as much. To suggest that the expression "all necessary measures" in one part of Resolution 1973 somehow invalidates or qualifies the arms embargo in another part of Resolution 1973, thereby rendering the Resolution self contradictory and void on one of its most important points, is nonsensical.
I would add that both Resolutions 1970 and 1973 end with the expression that the "Security Council remains seized of the matter". In other words the Security Council has ownership of the Resolutions. This means that it is for the Security Council and not for the French or the British or anyone else by themselves to decide what steps are "necessary" to protect civilians and whether the arms embargo imposed by the Resolutions should be relaxed or set aside. If the French, the British or anyone else feel that arming the rebels is "necessary" to protect civilians then according to the text of the Resolutions they have to seek permission to do this from the Security Council, which is the only body that has the power to decide the matter. If the Security Council decides that such a step is needed then it can relax the arms embargo by amending Resolutions 1970 and 1973.
In other words the French arming of the rebels is simply another in a long list of breaches of the two Resolutions. It is not even the most flagrant. The bombing and killing of civilians in Tripoli and elsewhere is.
An at least equally serious breach of the Resolutions arises from the presence of military or paramilitary personnel in Libya to provide training and advice to the rebels and to provide guidance to NATO's bombers. Claims that this does not breach Resolution 1973 because these personnel are supposedly not an "occupation force" again ignores the simple wording of Resolution 1973, which clearly forbids an occupation force "in any form" and "on any part" (ie even the smallest part) of Libyan territory. This clearly forbids the deployment of so much as a single soldier. To argue otherwise is ridiculous.
In reality any foreign armed presence on the territory of a state without the permission or agreement of the government of that state is an "occupation force" and it is absurd to argue otherwise. As for the claim I have seen, that the soldiers who have been seen in Libya are not an occupation force because they are retired rather than serving soldiers, those who make this claim are obviously unaware that paragraph 9 of Resolution 1970 (expressly reaffirmed by Resolution 1973) also prohibits the entry of mercenaries into Libya and calls on UN Member States to act to prevent the deployment there of mercenaries when they are their own nationals.
The simple reality is that the operation against Libya is now so far in breach of Resolutions 1970 and 1973 that there is no point in trying to relate it to those Resolutions. In truth the Resolutions were never more than a figleaf for military action, which would surely have happened anyway whether the Resolutions were passed or not.
This line of reasoning is absurd. The arms embargo is imposed by Security Council Resolution 1970. This forbids any and all shipments of arms to Libya without distinguishing between the government forces or the rebels. Security Council Resolution 1973 reaffirms this embargo and contains further provisions for its enforcement. Neither Resolution 1970 nor Resolution 1973 say that the rebels are excluded from the embargo. Had this been the intention the Resolutions would have said as much. To suggest that the expression "all necessary measures" in one part of Resolution 1973 somehow invalidates or qualifies the arms embargo in another part of Resolution 1973, thereby rendering the Resolution self contradictory and void on one of its most important points, is nonsensical.
I would add that both Resolutions 1970 and 1973 end with the expression that the "Security Council remains seized of the matter". In other words the Security Council has ownership of the Resolutions. This means that it is for the Security Council and not for the French or the British or anyone else by themselves to decide what steps are "necessary" to protect civilians and whether the arms embargo imposed by the Resolutions should be relaxed or set aside. If the French, the British or anyone else feel that arming the rebels is "necessary" to protect civilians then according to the text of the Resolutions they have to seek permission to do this from the Security Council, which is the only body that has the power to decide the matter. If the Security Council decides that such a step is needed then it can relax the arms embargo by amending Resolutions 1970 and 1973.
In other words the French arming of the rebels is simply another in a long list of breaches of the two Resolutions. It is not even the most flagrant. The bombing and killing of civilians in Tripoli and elsewhere is.
An at least equally serious breach of the Resolutions arises from the presence of military or paramilitary personnel in Libya to provide training and advice to the rebels and to provide guidance to NATO's bombers. Claims that this does not breach Resolution 1973 because these personnel are supposedly not an "occupation force" again ignores the simple wording of Resolution 1973, which clearly forbids an occupation force "in any form" and "on any part" (ie even the smallest part) of Libyan territory. This clearly forbids the deployment of so much as a single soldier. To argue otherwise is ridiculous.
In reality any foreign armed presence on the territory of a state without the permission or agreement of the government of that state is an "occupation force" and it is absurd to argue otherwise. As for the claim I have seen, that the soldiers who have been seen in Libya are not an occupation force because they are retired rather than serving soldiers, those who make this claim are obviously unaware that paragraph 9 of Resolution 1970 (expressly reaffirmed by Resolution 1973) also prohibits the entry of mercenaries into Libya and calls on UN Member States to act to prevent the deployment there of mercenaries when they are their own nationals.
The simple reality is that the operation against Libya is now so far in breach of Resolutions 1970 and 1973 that there is no point in trying to relate it to those Resolutions. In truth the Resolutions were never more than a figleaf for military action, which would surely have happened anyway whether the Resolutions were passed or not.
PUBLIC SECTOR STRIKE
In disussing the public sector strike today the British newspapers have divided into two camps. One is a large group of right wing newspapers (the Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Sun). This group unequivocally condemns the strike often in the harshest terms. The other is a much smaller group of left and centrist newspapers (the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror), whose editorial pages have to accommodate the fact that many of their readers support the strike. These too oppose the strike whilst expressing some pallid words of sympathy for the strikers.
It needs to be said clearly that whether the strike succeeds or fails the strikers deserve sympathy and support. As someone who has worked in the same field in both the public and the private sector I can unequivocally say that workers in the public sector have to work harder for far longer hours and for much lower pay than equivalent workers in the private sector. This is so despite the fact that the work the great majority of public sector workers do is more difficult and more important for society than most of the work done in the private sector. This reality has over the last thirty years been clouded by the exponential growth within the public sector of an overpaid and inefficient managerial class. The point that is rarely made or admitted is that this managerial class is the product of the unending "reforms" of the public sector which since the 1980s have sought to introduce into the public sector the cultural mores and practices of the private sector. Despite this development my underlying point about the greater necessity and importance of the work the public sector still holds true. That this is so can be easily illustrated by the fact that though it is difficult to imagine any class or group of private sector workers so indispensable that modern society could not function without them it is absolutely impossible to imagine a modern industrialised society without such public sector workers as teachers, health workers or policemen and women.
Once upon a time this fact was well understood. In the heyday of British power Victorian public servants were well regarded and well paid. Victorian civil service salaries were much higher than equivalent salaries today and Victorian civil servants enjoyed lifestyles of a sort that no equivalent civil servant today could even dream of. Thus William Michael Rossetti, brother of the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and of the poetess Christina Rossetti, could maintain a large family in some style by working full time as Senior Assistant Secretary of the Inland Revenue whilst still having the time to be a founder member of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, a member of the Shelley Society, a prolific literary editor and critic and the person who introduced Walt Whitman to a British readership.
Lest anyone suggest that this difference in attitude applied only to the upper tiers of the Victorian civil service, let me say that on the contrary it extended all the way down to the lowliest public sector worker or clerk. There is simply no comparison between the high regard in which the Victorians held such supposedly lowly officials as police and postal workers and the barely concealed contempt in which they are held today. The modern practice of scapegoating such workers as the cause of the country's problems would have struck the Victorians as counterproductive and absurd.
This scapegoating has now reached the point where public sector workers though comparatively low paid and overworked are expected to make the biggest sacrifices in order to get the country out of an economic crisis which they have in no way caused. This demand goes hand in hand with overblown and ridiculous claims about "gold plated pensions" in the public sector, which are typically made by right wing journalists and commentators whose rates of pay and pensions are many times higher and who can of course be counted on to resist any suggestion that they make sacrifices for example by paying more in taxes. In the meantime those who are actually responsible for the crisis, the millionaires in the City with their multi million pound bonuses, walk off free.
It needs to be said clearly that whether the strike succeeds or fails the strikers deserve sympathy and support. As someone who has worked in the same field in both the public and the private sector I can unequivocally say that workers in the public sector have to work harder for far longer hours and for much lower pay than equivalent workers in the private sector. This is so despite the fact that the work the great majority of public sector workers do is more difficult and more important for society than most of the work done in the private sector. This reality has over the last thirty years been clouded by the exponential growth within the public sector of an overpaid and inefficient managerial class. The point that is rarely made or admitted is that this managerial class is the product of the unending "reforms" of the public sector which since the 1980s have sought to introduce into the public sector the cultural mores and practices of the private sector. Despite this development my underlying point about the greater necessity and importance of the work the public sector still holds true. That this is so can be easily illustrated by the fact that though it is difficult to imagine any class or group of private sector workers so indispensable that modern society could not function without them it is absolutely impossible to imagine a modern industrialised society without such public sector workers as teachers, health workers or policemen and women.
Once upon a time this fact was well understood. In the heyday of British power Victorian public servants were well regarded and well paid. Victorian civil service salaries were much higher than equivalent salaries today and Victorian civil servants enjoyed lifestyles of a sort that no equivalent civil servant today could even dream of. Thus William Michael Rossetti, brother of the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and of the poetess Christina Rossetti, could maintain a large family in some style by working full time as Senior Assistant Secretary of the Inland Revenue whilst still having the time to be a founder member of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, a member of the Shelley Society, a prolific literary editor and critic and the person who introduced Walt Whitman to a British readership.
Lest anyone suggest that this difference in attitude applied only to the upper tiers of the Victorian civil service, let me say that on the contrary it extended all the way down to the lowliest public sector worker or clerk. There is simply no comparison between the high regard in which the Victorians held such supposedly lowly officials as police and postal workers and the barely concealed contempt in which they are held today. The modern practice of scapegoating such workers as the cause of the country's problems would have struck the Victorians as counterproductive and absurd.
This scapegoating has now reached the point where public sector workers though comparatively low paid and overworked are expected to make the biggest sacrifices in order to get the country out of an economic crisis which they have in no way caused. This demand goes hand in hand with overblown and ridiculous claims about "gold plated pensions" in the public sector, which are typically made by right wing journalists and commentators whose rates of pay and pensions are many times higher and who can of course be counted on to resist any suggestion that they make sacrifices for example by paying more in taxes. In the meantime those who are actually responsible for the crisis, the millionaires in the City with their multi million pound bonuses, walk off free.
Wednesday 29 June 2011
BRITAIN AND THE WORLD ON THE SLOPES OF AN ECONOMIC VOLCANO
The economic news in Britain goes from bad to worse. Though interest rates are close to zero house prices are falling and retail sales are collapsing. Latest GDP figures for what they are worth show an economy that has flatlined. Given that inflation is said to be 5% real wages are falling and what is even more astonishing given the very low interest rates disposable income is also falling. Meanwhile the Coalition's hope that job losses in the public sector would be made up by job creation in the private sector are proving delusional. With house prices and retail sales falling retail chains are closing outlets and are laying off people by the thousand. I visited Portobello market for a walk today and was horrified at how many of the shops there are boarded up. A few months ago the government and the media were congratulating themselves on a manufacturing recovery. That has proved to be a mirage with manufacturing output such as it is is now contracting. Meanwhile despite all the brave talk of a fiscal consolidation and of spending cuts the budget deficit is actually growing as tax receipts fall and social security spending rises because of the economy's decline.
All this is extremely dangerous. The Bank of England has said that it will not raise interest rates whilst the economy remains so weak. In truth it has no choice. Given the fall in real wages and in disposable income any rise in interest rates at a time when household budgets are under such strain and house prices are already falling would lead to a foreclosure and repossessions crisis the like of which we have probably never seen. House prices would go into freefall causing the weak underlying position of the banks to become exposed. We could in that case easily find ourselves facing a bank run and credit shutdown worse than the one in 2008 and this at a time when the government's fiscal position and therefore its ability to take palliative action is far weaker than it was in 2008.
On the other hand keeping interest rates so low at a time of inflation punishes savers and prevents capital accumulation, which is vital for the economy's long term return to health. How is the financial system going to recover to the point when it can start to lend if people are being deterred from saving? As it is the money the Bank of England and other Central Banks have pumped into an unreformed financial system through such devices as quantitative easing has largely vanished into the black hole of speculation in products like derivatives and commodities. This has provided a temporary boost to the Stock Market and enabled the bankers to pay themselvers their accustomed bonuses but it has done nothing to cure the underlying problems in the economy or in the financial system.
In addition despite protestations to the contrary there is no doubt that the slack monetary policies and poor fiscal discipline of the world's Central Banks, first and foremost the US Federal Reserve Board but also the European Central Bank, the Bank of China and the Bank of England, is the cause of the worldwide inflation as confidence in currencies such as the dollar, the euro and the pound has weakened and as the speculation they have encouraged has pushed up prices for commodities like oil and food. This in turn has led to the decline in disposable income and falling demand that is causing the present problems.
What makes this picture even more alarming is that there are clear signs that things are going wrong everywhere. Economic news from the US appears to be every bit as bad as it is in Britain with the fiscal position over in the US being actually and significantly worse than it is in Britain. The problems of the Eurozone are so well known as to require no discussion. In India inflation is now running at 10% and the economy shows all the signs of severe overheating. China is reporting industrial production as flat in the first three weeks of June suggesting a severe fall off in global demand whilst its massive fiscal and monetary stimulus has generated inflation within its own economy (currently running at around 6%) and left its financial system exposed to bad debt.
It seems to me that what is happening is that the massive reflationary exercises carried out in the US and China and elsewhere at the end of 2008 and at the beginning of 2009 have now run their course. They did not fix the underlying problem of the world economy, which is a grotesque excess of debt caused by a banking system that is completely dysfunctional and a trade system that is completely unbalanced. On the contrary by adding more debt, by creating inflation, by increasing trade imbalances, by weakening the fiscal position of governments and by postponing a proper reform and restructuring of the financial system, they may have made things worse.
The response of policy makers to this gathering crisis is the same everywhere: play for time in the hope that something will turn up. Thus Greece gets its bailout though everyone acknowledges that it will in the end only make matters worse since Greece has no prospect of repaying its debts. In Britain and the US the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Board insist they will keep interest rates low despite the havoc this is causing through the inflation it is generating. Real action to deal with the underlying problems, such as a genuine nationalisation of the banks accompanied by an orderly cancellation of debts and a review of the system of international trade, continues to be furiously resisted. Even the most moderate proposals to deal with the real cause of the problems fail because of the resistance they meet. When the German government sensibly raised the possibility of Greece's creditors agreeing to a partial debt write off or "hair cut" the response bordered on the hysterical. In the absence of any real action it is difficult to see what it is that will turn up to turn things right but let us hope that whatever it is it turns up soon.
All this is extremely dangerous. The Bank of England has said that it will not raise interest rates whilst the economy remains so weak. In truth it has no choice. Given the fall in real wages and in disposable income any rise in interest rates at a time when household budgets are under such strain and house prices are already falling would lead to a foreclosure and repossessions crisis the like of which we have probably never seen. House prices would go into freefall causing the weak underlying position of the banks to become exposed. We could in that case easily find ourselves facing a bank run and credit shutdown worse than the one in 2008 and this at a time when the government's fiscal position and therefore its ability to take palliative action is far weaker than it was in 2008.
On the other hand keeping interest rates so low at a time of inflation punishes savers and prevents capital accumulation, which is vital for the economy's long term return to health. How is the financial system going to recover to the point when it can start to lend if people are being deterred from saving? As it is the money the Bank of England and other Central Banks have pumped into an unreformed financial system through such devices as quantitative easing has largely vanished into the black hole of speculation in products like derivatives and commodities. This has provided a temporary boost to the Stock Market and enabled the bankers to pay themselvers their accustomed bonuses but it has done nothing to cure the underlying problems in the economy or in the financial system.
In addition despite protestations to the contrary there is no doubt that the slack monetary policies and poor fiscal discipline of the world's Central Banks, first and foremost the US Federal Reserve Board but also the European Central Bank, the Bank of China and the Bank of England, is the cause of the worldwide inflation as confidence in currencies such as the dollar, the euro and the pound has weakened and as the speculation they have encouraged has pushed up prices for commodities like oil and food. This in turn has led to the decline in disposable income and falling demand that is causing the present problems.
What makes this picture even more alarming is that there are clear signs that things are going wrong everywhere. Economic news from the US appears to be every bit as bad as it is in Britain with the fiscal position over in the US being actually and significantly worse than it is in Britain. The problems of the Eurozone are so well known as to require no discussion. In India inflation is now running at 10% and the economy shows all the signs of severe overheating. China is reporting industrial production as flat in the first three weeks of June suggesting a severe fall off in global demand whilst its massive fiscal and monetary stimulus has generated inflation within its own economy (currently running at around 6%) and left its financial system exposed to bad debt.
It seems to me that what is happening is that the massive reflationary exercises carried out in the US and China and elsewhere at the end of 2008 and at the beginning of 2009 have now run their course. They did not fix the underlying problem of the world economy, which is a grotesque excess of debt caused by a banking system that is completely dysfunctional and a trade system that is completely unbalanced. On the contrary by adding more debt, by creating inflation, by increasing trade imbalances, by weakening the fiscal position of governments and by postponing a proper reform and restructuring of the financial system, they may have made things worse.
The response of policy makers to this gathering crisis is the same everywhere: play for time in the hope that something will turn up. Thus Greece gets its bailout though everyone acknowledges that it will in the end only make matters worse since Greece has no prospect of repaying its debts. In Britain and the US the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Board insist they will keep interest rates low despite the havoc this is causing through the inflation it is generating. Real action to deal with the underlying problems, such as a genuine nationalisation of the banks accompanied by an orderly cancellation of debts and a review of the system of international trade, continues to be furiously resisted. Even the most moderate proposals to deal with the real cause of the problems fail because of the resistance they meet. When the German government sensibly raised the possibility of Greece's creditors agreeing to a partial debt write off or "hair cut" the response bordered on the hysterical. In the absence of any real action it is difficult to see what it is that will turn up to turn things right but let us hope that whatever it is it turns up soon.
Sunday 12 June 2011
BLAIRITE PLOTTING
This weekend we have witnessed the latest in a seemingly endless succession of Blairite plots to recapture the leadership of the Labour party. That is how I interpret the flood of leaks and articles published this week whose obvious purpose has been to damage Ed Miliband and to call into question his leadership of the Labour party.
These Blairite plots extend back to the autumn of 2006, following Blair's forced announcement of his resignation. They all have the same objective, which is to make David Miliband the leader of the Labour party. They exactly parallel the Thatcherite plots within the Conservative party in the decade following Thatcher's fall in the autumn of 1990. As is the case with the Labour party now Thatcher's successors then (John Major and William Hague) had to face a seemingly unending series of plots whose purpose was to make Michael Portillo leader of the Conservative party.
Both sets of plots share a common characteristic. On both occasions the plotters have been deluded on the subject of their champions' public appeal. Far from being the sure fire election winners their supporters have supposed Michael Portillo and David Miliband are deeply unpopular with most voters. The irony is that this unpopularity is largely due to the way they have become identified in the public mind with the endless plotting undertaken on their behalf. In both cases this has meant that when Portillo and David Miliband have faced actual electors they have lost. Portillo unexpectedly lost his seat in the 1997 general election and came third in the party leadership election of 2001. David Miliband lost the party leadership election of 2010 because trade union voters, who share the sentiments of most voters, rejected him and voted for his brother. The plotting carried out on Michael Portillo's and David Miliband's behalf has therefore had a paradoxical result. By making them unpopular it has ensured that neither has become the leader of their respective party. Instead it has brought their respective careers to a premature end. Both have been forced into political retirement so that Portillo is now a guest on television programmes and David Miliband is a backbench MP.
The one big difference between Portillo and Miliband is that whilst there is no doubt that Portillo was party to the plots undertaken on his behalf I doubt that this has been the case with David Miliband. Throughout Gordon Brown's troubled premiership David Miliband repeatedly refused to support the plots against Gordon Brown even though these plots had the declared objective of making him leader. David Miliband also refused invitations to stand against Gordon Brown in the party leadership election of 2007. His statement of support today backing his brother Ed Miliband's leadership is so unequivocal that I find it impossible to believe that he has been engaged in any of the plotting that I have no doubt has been underway over the last few weeks. If I am right about this and if David Miliband has been innocent of the plotting carried out on his behalf then the plotters have destroyed his career and he is their victim. Had there been no plotting to make him leader it is very likely that he would be Labour's leader now.
The Thatcherite plotting following her fall in 1990 and the Blairite plotting following the announcement of his resignation in 2006 were and are political cul de sacs for their respective parties. In neither case could such plotting succeed since in both cases it has amounted to an attempt to recreate a political environment (that of Britain in the early 1980s and of Britain in the mid 1990s) which no longer exists. Such plotting is therefore incapable of generating policies and ideas that are relevant to Britain's contemporary problems. What such plotting does instead is distract attention away from the real issues. By doing so it impoverishes debate and fabricates divisions over issues that do not exist.
These Blairite plots extend back to the autumn of 2006, following Blair's forced announcement of his resignation. They all have the same objective, which is to make David Miliband the leader of the Labour party. They exactly parallel the Thatcherite plots within the Conservative party in the decade following Thatcher's fall in the autumn of 1990. As is the case with the Labour party now Thatcher's successors then (John Major and William Hague) had to face a seemingly unending series of plots whose purpose was to make Michael Portillo leader of the Conservative party.
Both sets of plots share a common characteristic. On both occasions the plotters have been deluded on the subject of their champions' public appeal. Far from being the sure fire election winners their supporters have supposed Michael Portillo and David Miliband are deeply unpopular with most voters. The irony is that this unpopularity is largely due to the way they have become identified in the public mind with the endless plotting undertaken on their behalf. In both cases this has meant that when Portillo and David Miliband have faced actual electors they have lost. Portillo unexpectedly lost his seat in the 1997 general election and came third in the party leadership election of 2001. David Miliband lost the party leadership election of 2010 because trade union voters, who share the sentiments of most voters, rejected him and voted for his brother. The plotting carried out on Michael Portillo's and David Miliband's behalf has therefore had a paradoxical result. By making them unpopular it has ensured that neither has become the leader of their respective party. Instead it has brought their respective careers to a premature end. Both have been forced into political retirement so that Portillo is now a guest on television programmes and David Miliband is a backbench MP.
The one big difference between Portillo and Miliband is that whilst there is no doubt that Portillo was party to the plots undertaken on his behalf I doubt that this has been the case with David Miliband. Throughout Gordon Brown's troubled premiership David Miliband repeatedly refused to support the plots against Gordon Brown even though these plots had the declared objective of making him leader. David Miliband also refused invitations to stand against Gordon Brown in the party leadership election of 2007. His statement of support today backing his brother Ed Miliband's leadership is so unequivocal that I find it impossible to believe that he has been engaged in any of the plotting that I have no doubt has been underway over the last few weeks. If I am right about this and if David Miliband has been innocent of the plotting carried out on his behalf then the plotters have destroyed his career and he is their victim. Had there been no plotting to make him leader it is very likely that he would be Labour's leader now.
The Thatcherite plotting following her fall in 1990 and the Blairite plotting following the announcement of his resignation in 2006 were and are political cul de sacs for their respective parties. In neither case could such plotting succeed since in both cases it has amounted to an attempt to recreate a political environment (that of Britain in the early 1980s and of Britain in the mid 1990s) which no longer exists. Such plotting is therefore incapable of generating policies and ideas that are relevant to Britain's contemporary problems. What such plotting does instead is distract attention away from the real issues. By doing so it impoverishes debate and fabricates divisions over issues that do not exist.
Saturday 11 June 2011
TWO LABOUR NON STORIES
The media this week has been full of news about the Labour party with the Daily Telegraph making play about leaks that supposedly show that Ed Balls and Gordon Brown were plotting to oust Blair in the immediate aftermath of the 2005 election and the Guardian leaking the text of what would have been David Miliband's speech had he been elected Labour leader.
Neither of these stories is in itself at all significant. The papers leaked by the Daily Telegraph do not show that there was a plot to depose Blair in 2005. The year before Blair had said he would resign at some point after the 2005 election. The papers the Daily Telegraph have leaked show the preparations Brown and his team were making in anticipation of that resignation. There is nothing remotely strange or sinister about this. One of the paradoxical aspects of the way in which British politics has been reported over the last fifteen or so years is that whilst Brown is invariably represented as plotting against Blair there is in fact no evidence of this at all. By contrast the plotting by Blair and his followers against Brown is ignored even though it is an acknowledged fact. There is no evidence of any plot against Blair until the autumn of 2006 (ie shortly before his resignation and after he had already said that he would not lead Labour into the next election) whilst no Prime Minister in modern history has had to face as many plots and attempts to remove him as did Gordon Brown.
As for David Miliband's speech, this is a double non story in that he lost the Labour leadership election and never delivered the speech. What the speech shows is why he lost. It seeks to position Labour to the right and comes perilously close to endorsing the coalition's deficit reduction plan. Had Labour pursued this strategy its criticism of the coalition's economic policy would have been neutered and the coalition's claim that the financial crisis was Labour's fault would have been given credence. Labour supporters in the country would have been further demoralised and Labour's opposition to the coalition would have been reduced to that mixture of tactical positioning and right wing populism on law and order issues that Blair perfected but which in the end caused the party's support in the country to drain away.
As for Ed Miliband's leadership, contrary to what some sections of the media are saying, it is in no danger. Whilst his impact has hardly been spectacular he has made no obvious mistakes and under him Labour progress has been steady. Every single Labour leader that I can remember with the sole exception of Tony Blair has been rubbished by the media. Whilst this causes problems for the Labour party it has not prevented Labour from winning elections in the past and there is no reason why it should so do so now.
Neither of these stories is in itself at all significant. The papers leaked by the Daily Telegraph do not show that there was a plot to depose Blair in 2005. The year before Blair had said he would resign at some point after the 2005 election. The papers the Daily Telegraph have leaked show the preparations Brown and his team were making in anticipation of that resignation. There is nothing remotely strange or sinister about this. One of the paradoxical aspects of the way in which British politics has been reported over the last fifteen or so years is that whilst Brown is invariably represented as plotting against Blair there is in fact no evidence of this at all. By contrast the plotting by Blair and his followers against Brown is ignored even though it is an acknowledged fact. There is no evidence of any plot against Blair until the autumn of 2006 (ie shortly before his resignation and after he had already said that he would not lead Labour into the next election) whilst no Prime Minister in modern history has had to face as many plots and attempts to remove him as did Gordon Brown.
As for David Miliband's speech, this is a double non story in that he lost the Labour leadership election and never delivered the speech. What the speech shows is why he lost. It seeks to position Labour to the right and comes perilously close to endorsing the coalition's deficit reduction plan. Had Labour pursued this strategy its criticism of the coalition's economic policy would have been neutered and the coalition's claim that the financial crisis was Labour's fault would have been given credence. Labour supporters in the country would have been further demoralised and Labour's opposition to the coalition would have been reduced to that mixture of tactical positioning and right wing populism on law and order issues that Blair perfected but which in the end caused the party's support in the country to drain away.
As for Ed Miliband's leadership, contrary to what some sections of the media are saying, it is in no danger. Whilst his impact has hardly been spectacular he has made no obvious mistakes and under him Labour progress has been steady. Every single Labour leader that I can remember with the sole exception of Tony Blair has been rubbished by the media. Whilst this causes problems for the Labour party it has not prevented Labour from winning elections in the past and there is no reason why it should so do so now.
Wednesday 8 June 2011
THERE IS NO CRISIS OF THE LEFT
The latest elections in Portugal have produced a further wave of soul searching on the part of some people on the Left who appear to have convinced themselves that they provide further evidence for a supposed pan European drift to the Right. When the Socialists lose the elections in Spain next year, as they are bound to do, this mood is likely to intensify.
What happened in Portugal a few days ago and what will happen in Spain next year and what happened in Britain last year is not some great existential crisis of the European Left. Rather it is a totally normal and utterly predictable reaction to an economic crisis. As is almost invariably the case in times of crisis voters turn against the party in government. In Hungary in 2009, in Britain last year, in Portugal this year and in Spain next year the beneficiaries of this swing have been and will be parties on the Right because in every case these countries have had governments of the Left when the crisis has struck. By contrast when the crisis struck in the US in 2008 and in Greece in 2009 the governments of those countries were governments of the Right so the winners in the elections held in those countries in those years were candidates and parties of the Left. In US terms Obama is so far to the Left that it is difficult to believe that he would have won if economic conditions had been different.
In the elections in Germany the Social Democrats who are on the Left paid the penalty for being the junior party in coalition with Merkel's Christian Democrats who are on the Right. As I have repeatedly said in these posts junior partners in coalitions invariably suffer disproportionate damage in electoral terms. The beneficiaries of the decline of the Social Democrats were not however the parties of the Right but other parties to the Left of the Social Democrats especially the Greens. Overall there was no marked swing in Germany either to the Left or to the Right though if anything the aggregate vote of the Left marginally increased. Since the parliamentary elections in Germany the big winners in state elections have been the parties of the Left, whether the Social Democrats in Hamburg, the Greens in some of the western states or the Links party in some of the former East German states.
Elsewhere right wing governments have won electoral victories in Sweden and Canada largely because these countries have avoided the worst of the economic crisis. The result in Canada is however misleading since the most striking feature of that election was the substitution of the Liberals as the main opposition party by the Democrats, who are well to the left of the Liberals. In other words the Canadian elections witnessed if anything a swing to the Left. In Ireland the position is more complicated since the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, are both parties of the Right. Fianna Fail as the governing party when the crisis hit saw its vote collapse. It has been replaced by a coalition of Fine Gael, which is as I said a party of the Right, and Labour, which is notionally a party of the Left. The biggest vote winners in the Irish elections were left wing parties to the left of Labour so the swing again was if anything to the Left. Lastly in Iceland the right wing government there has been voted out and replaced by a government headed by the Social Democrats, who are on the Left.
Further afield both Italy and France have unpopular right wing governments. In my opinion the decline in popularity of Berlusconi and Sarkozy is due more to the difficult economic conditions in both countries caused by the world financial crisis than any personal unpopularity caused by their colourful lifestyles and the sexual and financial scandals in which they are involved. Both Berlusconi and Sarkozy are however fortunate in facing weak and divided oppositions that have struggled to mobilise the very substantial opposition to both in the wider electorate. For this reason I expect Sarkozy for one to win re election next year though the opinion polls at the moment say otherwise and the result is not a foregone conclusion.
To talk of a crisis of the Left in Britain is particularly absurd given that the meltdown in the Labour vote that many expected in 2010 failed to take place and given that the Labour party managed to hold on to a sizeable majority of its seats. The single most important feature of the 2010 election was not the failure of the Left but the failure of the Right. Specifically the Conservatives failed to win a majority in conditions in which they should have secured a landslide. Their vote did increase but only marginally. Overall a clear majority of votes were cast for parties that were or which claimed to be on the Left or on the centre Left, something which has been true in Britain in every election since the 1960s.
What the panicky reaction to routine and utterly predictable electoral setbacks shows is not that there is some great existential crisis of the Left or that voters in Europe have turned their backs on the Left. What it shows is the extent of the Left's collective loss of nerve. This is a problem that is far more insidious and dangerous than one or two predictable electoral defeats. It is a problem that has afflicted the Left since at least as far back as the 1960s and which is getting worse. It explains why when left wing parties do form governments those governments prove so disappointing and why at a time when the Right's chosen ideology is in crisis the response of the Left is so ineffective and confused.
What happened in Portugal a few days ago and what will happen in Spain next year and what happened in Britain last year is not some great existential crisis of the European Left. Rather it is a totally normal and utterly predictable reaction to an economic crisis. As is almost invariably the case in times of crisis voters turn against the party in government. In Hungary in 2009, in Britain last year, in Portugal this year and in Spain next year the beneficiaries of this swing have been and will be parties on the Right because in every case these countries have had governments of the Left when the crisis has struck. By contrast when the crisis struck in the US in 2008 and in Greece in 2009 the governments of those countries were governments of the Right so the winners in the elections held in those countries in those years were candidates and parties of the Left. In US terms Obama is so far to the Left that it is difficult to believe that he would have won if economic conditions had been different.
In the elections in Germany the Social Democrats who are on the Left paid the penalty for being the junior party in coalition with Merkel's Christian Democrats who are on the Right. As I have repeatedly said in these posts junior partners in coalitions invariably suffer disproportionate damage in electoral terms. The beneficiaries of the decline of the Social Democrats were not however the parties of the Right but other parties to the Left of the Social Democrats especially the Greens. Overall there was no marked swing in Germany either to the Left or to the Right though if anything the aggregate vote of the Left marginally increased. Since the parliamentary elections in Germany the big winners in state elections have been the parties of the Left, whether the Social Democrats in Hamburg, the Greens in some of the western states or the Links party in some of the former East German states.
Elsewhere right wing governments have won electoral victories in Sweden and Canada largely because these countries have avoided the worst of the economic crisis. The result in Canada is however misleading since the most striking feature of that election was the substitution of the Liberals as the main opposition party by the Democrats, who are well to the left of the Liberals. In other words the Canadian elections witnessed if anything a swing to the Left. In Ireland the position is more complicated since the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, are both parties of the Right. Fianna Fail as the governing party when the crisis hit saw its vote collapse. It has been replaced by a coalition of Fine Gael, which is as I said a party of the Right, and Labour, which is notionally a party of the Left. The biggest vote winners in the Irish elections were left wing parties to the left of Labour so the swing again was if anything to the Left. Lastly in Iceland the right wing government there has been voted out and replaced by a government headed by the Social Democrats, who are on the Left.
Further afield both Italy and France have unpopular right wing governments. In my opinion the decline in popularity of Berlusconi and Sarkozy is due more to the difficult economic conditions in both countries caused by the world financial crisis than any personal unpopularity caused by their colourful lifestyles and the sexual and financial scandals in which they are involved. Both Berlusconi and Sarkozy are however fortunate in facing weak and divided oppositions that have struggled to mobilise the very substantial opposition to both in the wider electorate. For this reason I expect Sarkozy for one to win re election next year though the opinion polls at the moment say otherwise and the result is not a foregone conclusion.
To talk of a crisis of the Left in Britain is particularly absurd given that the meltdown in the Labour vote that many expected in 2010 failed to take place and given that the Labour party managed to hold on to a sizeable majority of its seats. The single most important feature of the 2010 election was not the failure of the Left but the failure of the Right. Specifically the Conservatives failed to win a majority in conditions in which they should have secured a landslide. Their vote did increase but only marginally. Overall a clear majority of votes were cast for parties that were or which claimed to be on the Left or on the centre Left, something which has been true in Britain in every election since the 1960s.
What the panicky reaction to routine and utterly predictable electoral setbacks shows is not that there is some great existential crisis of the Left or that voters in Europe have turned their backs on the Left. What it shows is the extent of the Left's collective loss of nerve. This is a problem that is far more insidious and dangerous than one or two predictable electoral defeats. It is a problem that has afflicted the Left since at least as far back as the 1960s and which is getting worse. It explains why when left wing parties do form governments those governments prove so disappointing and why at a time when the Right's chosen ideology is in crisis the response of the Left is so ineffective and confused.
Tuesday 7 June 2011
FROM BAD TO WORSE IN AFGHANISTAN
There is a fascinating article in the German magazine Der Spiegel that explains much of what is going wrong in Afghanistan.
As part of the NATO contribution the German army sent a contingent of troops to northern Afghanistan. Ever since the British and Americans have criticised the Germans for their "passive" behaviour, their reluctance to close with the enemy, their point blank refusal to undertake "search and destroy" missions to "root out" the Taliban in the villages in their area and their general policy of live and let live. This criticism has been accompanied by a series of mocking articles in the British and American press ridiculing the German troops for being cowardly, pampered, overfed and overweight. In reality the German policy, the diametric opposite of the aggressive tactics pursued by the British in Helmand, has meant that their area of Afghanistan has been largely peaceful. Relations with the locals have been relaxed and German casualties have been very low.
All that has now changed following the deployment of US Special Forces in the area. Without the knowledge or consent of the Germans these Forces have engaged in a policy of "kill or capture" targeted at local people identified as Taliban leaders. In practise as the article in Der Spiegel makes clear, there is a great deal of "kill" and almost no "capture". Scores of people have been murdered in this way, some of them doubtless Taliban sympathisers and some possibly not.
The totally predictable consequence of this murderous policy has been to inflame the local people and to turn them against NATO. The totally predictable consequence of that is that they are now joining the Taliban in large numbers and are turning their guns against NATO. Since the US Special Forces that carry out these murders rarely stay in the area for very long the target of their attacks are the German troops. The result is a sudden rise in attacks on the Germans with a sharp increase in the number of Germans who are getting killed. Meanwhile a formerly peaceful area of the country is descending into chaos and violence and filling up with insurgents. The article in Der Spiegel was full of alarm at the spread of "hate" and the seemingly "unending flow of insurgents" in an area where there had been little of either.
Some years ago at an earlier stage in this conflict I watched a television documentary that followed a British army unit as it advanced into an "enemy" village. I was immensely impressed by the calm display of courage by the officer and by the discipline and professionalism of the men under his command. I was however completely unable to understand the point of the whole exercise. What did possession of one village more or less matter against the larger aims of the war, whatever those are? What was the point of putting the lives of the British soldiers at risk and of bringing death and destruction to the village when it was obvious that it would have to be abandoned anyway soon after it was captured?. There will never be enough troops to occupy every village and hamlet in Afghanistan so the temporary capture of one village was totally without significance.
There was some attempt to rationalise the policy on the basis that by driving the Taliban out of the village an opportunity would be given to the local people to defend it from the Taliban. The trouble was that it was absolutely clear to me that the "Taliban" who the British soldiers were fighting in the village were the local people of the village who were defending the village and their homes and families from soldiers they obviously saw as invaders. Whether they had been "Taliban" in any political or ideological sense before the British attacked their village was a moot point but there was no doubt that following the attack that was what they had become.
In other words the capture of the village did not represent its "liberation" from the Taliban. Rather it represented a further stage in the extension of the war. Not surprisingly given these tactics Helmand, which had been a largely peaceful province before the British came, is now a centre of the insurgency.
Judging from the article in Der Spiegel it seems that the politics of the so called Surge are to extend this mistaken policy to every corner of Afghanistan and to do so moreover in an even more violent and aggressive way. The article in Der Spiegel shows how this sows the dragon's teeth. In pursuit of our elusive victory we take death and destruction to places where before our coming there was none of either. When the situation becomes critical we will withdraw and it will be the local people who as always will pay the price.
As part of the NATO contribution the German army sent a contingent of troops to northern Afghanistan. Ever since the British and Americans have criticised the Germans for their "passive" behaviour, their reluctance to close with the enemy, their point blank refusal to undertake "search and destroy" missions to "root out" the Taliban in the villages in their area and their general policy of live and let live. This criticism has been accompanied by a series of mocking articles in the British and American press ridiculing the German troops for being cowardly, pampered, overfed and overweight. In reality the German policy, the diametric opposite of the aggressive tactics pursued by the British in Helmand, has meant that their area of Afghanistan has been largely peaceful. Relations with the locals have been relaxed and German casualties have been very low.
All that has now changed following the deployment of US Special Forces in the area. Without the knowledge or consent of the Germans these Forces have engaged in a policy of "kill or capture" targeted at local people identified as Taliban leaders. In practise as the article in Der Spiegel makes clear, there is a great deal of "kill" and almost no "capture". Scores of people have been murdered in this way, some of them doubtless Taliban sympathisers and some possibly not.
The totally predictable consequence of this murderous policy has been to inflame the local people and to turn them against NATO. The totally predictable consequence of that is that they are now joining the Taliban in large numbers and are turning their guns against NATO. Since the US Special Forces that carry out these murders rarely stay in the area for very long the target of their attacks are the German troops. The result is a sudden rise in attacks on the Germans with a sharp increase in the number of Germans who are getting killed. Meanwhile a formerly peaceful area of the country is descending into chaos and violence and filling up with insurgents. The article in Der Spiegel was full of alarm at the spread of "hate" and the seemingly "unending flow of insurgents" in an area where there had been little of either.
Some years ago at an earlier stage in this conflict I watched a television documentary that followed a British army unit as it advanced into an "enemy" village. I was immensely impressed by the calm display of courage by the officer and by the discipline and professionalism of the men under his command. I was however completely unable to understand the point of the whole exercise. What did possession of one village more or less matter against the larger aims of the war, whatever those are? What was the point of putting the lives of the British soldiers at risk and of bringing death and destruction to the village when it was obvious that it would have to be abandoned anyway soon after it was captured?. There will never be enough troops to occupy every village and hamlet in Afghanistan so the temporary capture of one village was totally without significance.
There was some attempt to rationalise the policy on the basis that by driving the Taliban out of the village an opportunity would be given to the local people to defend it from the Taliban. The trouble was that it was absolutely clear to me that the "Taliban" who the British soldiers were fighting in the village were the local people of the village who were defending the village and their homes and families from soldiers they obviously saw as invaders. Whether they had been "Taliban" in any political or ideological sense before the British attacked their village was a moot point but there was no doubt that following the attack that was what they had become.
In other words the capture of the village did not represent its "liberation" from the Taliban. Rather it represented a further stage in the extension of the war. Not surprisingly given these tactics Helmand, which had been a largely peaceful province before the British came, is now a centre of the insurgency.
Judging from the article in Der Spiegel it seems that the politics of the so called Surge are to extend this mistaken policy to every corner of Afghanistan and to do so moreover in an even more violent and aggressive way. The article in Der Spiegel shows how this sows the dragon's teeth. In pursuit of our elusive victory we take death and destruction to places where before our coming there was none of either. When the situation becomes critical we will withdraw and it will be the local people who as always will pay the price.
Sunday 5 June 2011
WESTERN COMPLICITY IN THE GLOBAL DRUGS TRADE
My previous post provoked some comment from two readers one of whom expressed surprise about my claim that the US provided covert support to the drugs gangs that controlled the heroin trade in south east Asia's Golden Triangle during the Vietnam War and wondered about the extent to which it had been documented. She also raised the question of the so called French Connection.
The extent of US involvement in heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle has been exhaustively documented most famously by Alfred W. McCoy in The Politics of Heroin: CIA involvement in the Global Drug Trade (first edition 1973 and third edition 2003). At the time of initial publication McCoy's book was vigorously criticised by the CIA, which was granted by the publisher a right of criticism and reply. The criticisms the CIA duly made of the book were acknowledged to be weak and unconvincing and its thesis is now accepted as true by mainstream scholarship.
McCoy is a serious academic based at Yale and his book was something of a tour de force involving extensive field work in the area. He established that the gangsters initially behind the heroin trade in south east Asia were anti Communist Chinese belonging to the Kuomingtang movement that had governed China before the Communist Revolution. As such they were reliable allies of the US in the war against Communism in south east Asia. It seems that US assistance to these criminals even extended to the CIA arranging for some of their heroin to be shipped to the US in its own aircaft.
As for the French Connection, this was a criminal gang that in the 1960s and early 1970s processed Turkish opium into heroin in the south of France and then smuggled this heroin into the East Coast of the US (principally New York) from the French port of Marseille. It achieved worldwide fame as a result of a feature film made in 1971 called The French Connection.
The French Connection serves as another example of the collusion between western governments and drug traffickers that I discussed in my previous post. The French Connection was set up after the Second World War by a group of French Corsican gangsters who during the war had served in the Carlingue, the French auxiliary arm of the Paris Gestapo. After the war they avoided punishment for collaboration because the CIA and the French secret service the SDECE used them to fight the Communist party, which during the war through the maquis had gained strong influence along the French Mediterranean coast especially in Marseille. Under cover of this protection and using funds originally stolen by the Carlingue they set up the French Connection. When in the 1970s it became clear that a Communist takeover of France was not going to happen the French Connection lost its usefulness to its CIA and SDECE protectors and was quickly wound up.
The background of the French Connection was also touched on by McCoy in his book. It received no mention in the film, which makes it appear a rather more glamorous and civilised organisation than it actually was.
In making these points I repeat again a point I made in my previous post. I do not say that all drugs traffickers enjoy the favour and protection of the western powers. An astonishingly high proportion of them however do, which makes the effort to wage the War on Drugs futile and ridiculous. Any discussion of the War on Drugs that pretends to honesty and objectivity must face this reality. So far none has done so.
PS: I would just add as a brief postscript a reference to the latest James Bond novel Devil May Care. This is set against a backdrop of the Soviet Union hatching a nefarious plot in the 1960s to flood the western world with heroin in order to demoralise western society. In fact the Soviet Union and its allies were never involved in any aspect of the illegal drugs trade whilst the involvement of the western powers in the illegal drugs trade is a matter of record.
The extent of US involvement in heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle has been exhaustively documented most famously by Alfred W. McCoy in The Politics of Heroin: CIA involvement in the Global Drug Trade (first edition 1973 and third edition 2003). At the time of initial publication McCoy's book was vigorously criticised by the CIA, which was granted by the publisher a right of criticism and reply. The criticisms the CIA duly made of the book were acknowledged to be weak and unconvincing and its thesis is now accepted as true by mainstream scholarship.
McCoy is a serious academic based at Yale and his book was something of a tour de force involving extensive field work in the area. He established that the gangsters initially behind the heroin trade in south east Asia were anti Communist Chinese belonging to the Kuomingtang movement that had governed China before the Communist Revolution. As such they were reliable allies of the US in the war against Communism in south east Asia. It seems that US assistance to these criminals even extended to the CIA arranging for some of their heroin to be shipped to the US in its own aircaft.
As for the French Connection, this was a criminal gang that in the 1960s and early 1970s processed Turkish opium into heroin in the south of France and then smuggled this heroin into the East Coast of the US (principally New York) from the French port of Marseille. It achieved worldwide fame as a result of a feature film made in 1971 called The French Connection.
The French Connection serves as another example of the collusion between western governments and drug traffickers that I discussed in my previous post. The French Connection was set up after the Second World War by a group of French Corsican gangsters who during the war had served in the Carlingue, the French auxiliary arm of the Paris Gestapo. After the war they avoided punishment for collaboration because the CIA and the French secret service the SDECE used them to fight the Communist party, which during the war through the maquis had gained strong influence along the French Mediterranean coast especially in Marseille. Under cover of this protection and using funds originally stolen by the Carlingue they set up the French Connection. When in the 1970s it became clear that a Communist takeover of France was not going to happen the French Connection lost its usefulness to its CIA and SDECE protectors and was quickly wound up.
The background of the French Connection was also touched on by McCoy in his book. It received no mention in the film, which makes it appear a rather more glamorous and civilised organisation than it actually was.
In making these points I repeat again a point I made in my previous post. I do not say that all drugs traffickers enjoy the favour and protection of the western powers. An astonishingly high proportion of them however do, which makes the effort to wage the War on Drugs futile and ridiculous. Any discussion of the War on Drugs that pretends to honesty and objectivity must face this reality. So far none has done so.
PS: I would just add as a brief postscript a reference to the latest James Bond novel Devil May Care. This is set against a backdrop of the Soviet Union hatching a nefarious plot in the 1960s to flood the western world with heroin in order to demoralise western society. In fact the Soviet Union and its allies were never involved in any aspect of the illegal drugs trade whilst the involvement of the western powers in the illegal drugs trade is a matter of record.
Wednesday 1 June 2011
HYPOCRISY AND THE WAR ON DRUGS
There has been a spate of articles about the futility of the so called War on Drugs. As someone who has never tried any illegal drugs but who is a strong opponent of the present policy of prohibition I have little to add to the general discussion save one point, which is never mentioned even though I would have thought it was both obvious and important. This is that one of the key reasons why the western powers are losing the so called War on Drugs is because at the same time that they claim to be waging this war they are also the patrons and allies of the world's leading drug traffickers. A brief survey of recent history shows that this is the case.
The international drugs trade took off in the 1960s with mass imports of heroin into the United States sourced from the so called Golden Triangle of south east Asia. What very few know is that the people behind the cultivation of opium in the Golden Triangle were assorted criminals and gangsters who were able to operate with virtual impunity because they were being sponsored by the United States as part of the so called "third force" that was fighting the Communists in the Vietnam war. Later the centre of opium cultivation switched to Afghanistan where it took off in the 1980s. There the major cultivators and traffickers of opium and heroin were assorted criminals and gangsters who made up a large proportion of the so called Mujaheddin who the western powers were supporting because they were fighting the Soviets. These people were able to use the anti Soviet war as a cover and protection for their criminal activities. Later these same people formed the core of the so called Northern Alliance, which in alliance with the United States overthrew the Taliban in 2001. The Taliban had tried to eradicate opium cultivation and heroin trafficking. Following their overthrow both resumed with a vengeance.
Further afield many people are vaguely aware that cocaine production and trafficking took off in Columbia in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when the right wing pro American Columbian government was fighting a counterinsurgency war against a left wing guerrilla movement known as the FARC and that this war has been continuing ever since and is continuing to this day. Some people also know that the government in this war is supported by right wing paramilitary death squads. Very few people know that the Colombian drugs cartels and the right wing paramilitaries who operate the death squads are the same people.
Turning to Europe, few people know that the major transit route for Afghan heroin into Europe is through the Balkans and specifically through Albania and Kosovo Fewer people still know that this route is largely controlled by various gangsters and criminals many of whom were involved in the Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA, which the western powers supported in the war against the Serbs in 1999. Repeating what has happened in Afghanistan, following the war some of these people under western protection are in power in Kosovo now.
These are perhaps the most flagrant examples but they can be multiplied. For example the proliferation of vicious drugs gangs across Central America in recent years is again directly traceable to US support for paramilitary groups in the struggle to defeat Communism that took place there during the 1980s.
I do not wish to suggest that the only people who engage in drugs trafficking are friends of the United States. It is an acknowledged fact that the FARC in Colombia is now also involved in the international cocaine trade. My point is that whenever there is a conflict between the so called War on Drugs and the geopolitical ambitions of the United States and of the other western powers it is always and invariably the geopolitcal ambitions that win out and that this is key to understanding why attempts to limit or control the spread of illegal drugs always prove so ineffective.
What is more disturbing still is that though the facts speak for themselves they are never discussed. I can remember vividly the heroin epidemic that hit Britain in the summer of 1981. Before 1981 heroin abuse in Britain was an insignificant problem limited to a very small number of relatively affluent people. It was during the heroin epidemic of 1981 that heroin penetrated the council estates and became a mass problem. Since then the level of heroin abuse has ebbed and flowed but remains embedded in British society to an extent that was unthinkable before 1981. Where heroin led cocaine followed and this too has gone from being a drug confined to wealthy Bohemians to becoming a drug of mass consumption. It is fair to say that Britain's problem with hard drugs began in 1981.
It was obvious to me at the time that the cause of the 1981 heroin epidemic was the anti Soviet war that was being fought in Afghanistan. The source of the heroin that was flooding Britain was freely discussed and it was widely and openly acknowledged that it was coming from Afghanistan. Yet though the connection with the war was obvious it was never mentioned. The entire establishment including the government, the opposition, the police, the local authorities, the charities and the media combined to impose silence on the subject. The entire focus was instead on poverty and unemployment, which did play a role, and the supposed culture of hedonism and immorality, which did not.
If western governments give the War on Drugs so much lower priority than they do the pursuit of their geopolitical objectives then the War on Drugs cannot be won, should not be fought and is not worth fighting . It is absurd and wrong that billions should be spent on it and millions of people should be locked away to fight a War on Drugs that western governments through their allies and proxies are waging against themselves.
The international drugs trade took off in the 1960s with mass imports of heroin into the United States sourced from the so called Golden Triangle of south east Asia. What very few know is that the people behind the cultivation of opium in the Golden Triangle were assorted criminals and gangsters who were able to operate with virtual impunity because they were being sponsored by the United States as part of the so called "third force" that was fighting the Communists in the Vietnam war. Later the centre of opium cultivation switched to Afghanistan where it took off in the 1980s. There the major cultivators and traffickers of opium and heroin were assorted criminals and gangsters who made up a large proportion of the so called Mujaheddin who the western powers were supporting because they were fighting the Soviets. These people were able to use the anti Soviet war as a cover and protection for their criminal activities. Later these same people formed the core of the so called Northern Alliance, which in alliance with the United States overthrew the Taliban in 2001. The Taliban had tried to eradicate opium cultivation and heroin trafficking. Following their overthrow both resumed with a vengeance.
Further afield many people are vaguely aware that cocaine production and trafficking took off in Columbia in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when the right wing pro American Columbian government was fighting a counterinsurgency war against a left wing guerrilla movement known as the FARC and that this war has been continuing ever since and is continuing to this day. Some people also know that the government in this war is supported by right wing paramilitary death squads. Very few people know that the Colombian drugs cartels and the right wing paramilitaries who operate the death squads are the same people.
Turning to Europe, few people know that the major transit route for Afghan heroin into Europe is through the Balkans and specifically through Albania and Kosovo Fewer people still know that this route is largely controlled by various gangsters and criminals many of whom were involved in the Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA, which the western powers supported in the war against the Serbs in 1999. Repeating what has happened in Afghanistan, following the war some of these people under western protection are in power in Kosovo now.
These are perhaps the most flagrant examples but they can be multiplied. For example the proliferation of vicious drugs gangs across Central America in recent years is again directly traceable to US support for paramilitary groups in the struggle to defeat Communism that took place there during the 1980s.
I do not wish to suggest that the only people who engage in drugs trafficking are friends of the United States. It is an acknowledged fact that the FARC in Colombia is now also involved in the international cocaine trade. My point is that whenever there is a conflict between the so called War on Drugs and the geopolitical ambitions of the United States and of the other western powers it is always and invariably the geopolitcal ambitions that win out and that this is key to understanding why attempts to limit or control the spread of illegal drugs always prove so ineffective.
What is more disturbing still is that though the facts speak for themselves they are never discussed. I can remember vividly the heroin epidemic that hit Britain in the summer of 1981. Before 1981 heroin abuse in Britain was an insignificant problem limited to a very small number of relatively affluent people. It was during the heroin epidemic of 1981 that heroin penetrated the council estates and became a mass problem. Since then the level of heroin abuse has ebbed and flowed but remains embedded in British society to an extent that was unthinkable before 1981. Where heroin led cocaine followed and this too has gone from being a drug confined to wealthy Bohemians to becoming a drug of mass consumption. It is fair to say that Britain's problem with hard drugs began in 1981.
It was obvious to me at the time that the cause of the 1981 heroin epidemic was the anti Soviet war that was being fought in Afghanistan. The source of the heroin that was flooding Britain was freely discussed and it was widely and openly acknowledged that it was coming from Afghanistan. Yet though the connection with the war was obvious it was never mentioned. The entire establishment including the government, the opposition, the police, the local authorities, the charities and the media combined to impose silence on the subject. The entire focus was instead on poverty and unemployment, which did play a role, and the supposed culture of hedonism and immorality, which did not.
If western governments give the War on Drugs so much lower priority than they do the pursuit of their geopolitical objectives then the War on Drugs cannot be won, should not be fought and is not worth fighting . It is absurd and wrong that billions should be spent on it and millions of people should be locked away to fight a War on Drugs that western governments through their allies and proxies are waging against themselves.
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