Tag: Politics

Only by unthinking obedience to our leaders can we remain free?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Moments of crisis tend to expose unthinking mantras that have held up conventional wisdom for decades with the assurance of Doric columns on a bank; but which only look solid because they are unexamined.

The recent article – ‘Andy Burnham is right: Social cohesion is key to national security’– on Labour List by Sara Khan and Matthew Godwin (not Goodwin – a different character altogether) is a collection of such mantras. In previous times these may have locked together like an impervious Lego wall of unexamined presumptions, but now stand exposed as flimsy stage furniture for a play that has exceeded its run.

They start with a quote from Burnham. “I see strength at home and our strength in the world as indivisible”. This sounds similar to, but is a long way from, Clive Lewis MP’s argument that national security will be undermined if the transfer of spending from improving people’s lives onto war preparation impoverishes people and neglects social and physical infrastructure that is already crumbling. A modern version of a line an old Labour Party member in Bermondsey came out with at the start of the Thatcher Prime Ministership; “a few more years of this government, and we’ll all be living in tents surrounded by cruise missiles”.

Instead, they pose the sense that 61% of people in the UK have that “the social contract is broken” not on the feelings people get when they smash their suspension or bike wheels on pot holes, have to wait for 8 hours in A&E (and have to get a cab there because it will be quicker than an ambulance) struggle to cope in a heat wave, have to pay through the nose for heating because their house is badly insulated, see their rivers filling with toxic waste while the water companies falsify tests and bank their dividends: none of that. For them its the result primarily of ideological interventions by “our international adversaries – particularly Russia and Iran” who are seeking “the destabilisation of Western democracies” and to “disable the Western Alliance”.

They go on to outline a series of far right propositions that now have mass support, with 40% of people thinking of “Tommy Robinson’s” marches as “patriotic”, 33 per cent supporting calls for “remigration”, 31 per cent supporting the view that non-white people will never be as English/Scottish/Welsh as white people and 29 percent believing in the ‘Great Replacement’ theory. At no point do they join the obvious dots that these views reflect those we are being bombarded with from the world’s leading bully pulpit – the Presidency of the United States. They mention a meeting between “Tommy Robinson” and Elon Musk’s Nazi father without noting that “Robinson” is being funded by Musk; who is also promoting Rupert Lowe and Restore; who split from Reform because Farage was wary of linking up with him. Nor do they make any mention of the overlap between the US and UK Right and Far Right, seen recently in the ARC conference in London (an “anti elite” event that cost its participants £1500 for a ticket) denouncing everything from the reality of climate change to any notion of equality, nor the wholesale capitulation to them by the Conservative Party, nor the ongoing flow of funding, ideas and media, with US shock jock radio and Fox News the model for loss making but potent platforms like GB News, nor US tech bro platforms prioritising far Right content. This supplements the deep penetration of US influence at every level of the British state, particularly its military and Intelligence services. To misquote LBJs observation about J Edgar Hoover, in the case of British society, the USA is both in the tent and pissing in.

And this poses a big question about “Western Democracy” (with or without capital letters). Do the authors consider the United States to be democratic? They talk of the need to emphasise the differences between “Western Democracies” and “authoritarians”. Leaving aside Peter Theil and Alex Karp’s opposition to “democracy” (for the masses) as antithetical to “freedom” for the billionaires who run the show, and Marco Rubio’s racialised notion of “European civilisation” battling against the developing world, that should be kept in its place – and the people who live there, who should be kept out – that’s in the context of the Trump government unleashing ICE on communities across the country, levels of gerrymandering and voter suppression that are verging on the surreal, attempts to define social democratic opposition as “far Left Terrorism” by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. So, supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America, like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and broadcasters like Amy Goodman, along with “anti-fascists” in general are now defined as “terrorists” by the administration. And that’s just domestically. Internationally they have sanctioned the International Criminal Court and its judges – international rule of law anyone? They have funded and backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon, backed and funded Far Right candidates across Latin America, put Cuba under siege in a way that is causing terrible suffering, launched a globally destabilising war on Iran which includes attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals, energy and water treatment plants that can only be described as war crimes, have bombed Nigeria and are lining up an intervention in Mali. And that’s leaving aside its trade wars and attempts to assert “Global Energy Dominance” by doubling down on the fossil fuels that are making the planet less and less habitable the more we burn them Its no wonder that a majority of people in a majority of countries across the world see the United States as the most destabilising country in the world. That includes majorities in the UK and…the United States.

It is this drive for a New American Century that underpins the rise of the Far Right in every country where the US has influence. In a country like Britain, where the US Embassy is a positively Viceregal building, this leads to “mainstream” parties bending the knee and repeating the lines they are fed from across the Atlantic to keep in line and out of the firing range. Hence Starmer’s “Island of Strangers” speech. That struck a bum note for most of us here, but its audience was in the White House. Its effect, along with the performative cruelty of immigration control measures modelled on the US, was to help legitimise “extremist views” so they are now indeed “polluting the mainstream”.

That is where “the root of hate” is.

For the authors, all this seems to have come from nowhere. There is no active agency involved. By omission, the US still stands as the core of the “Western democracies” that they want to defend – not what it actually is. For good measure, we should note that only a minority of people in the US think that their country is a democracy in Harvard’s surveys of opinion; because it is not run in the interests of the majority. The sense of broken social contract, particularly among young people, comes from “deep economic insecurity, eroding trust in democratic institutions, and growing social fragmentation”.

To put that another way, fail to improve people’s lives and that erosion will continue, handing people over on a plate to the far Right. Such a failure is baked in to the plans to increase war expenditure to a level that will suck the life out of any meaningful attempt to invest in improvements in anything else. In that situation, the house will indeed be divided against itself. Demands are arising for social justice, for proper levels of investment; something Andy Burnham is acknowledging with the real, albeit small, gestures in that direction in his first week, like the £2 bus fare cap. However, paying for that not by taxing the wealthy and reducing inequality but by seeking to squeeze money back from international climate finance is a wrong road and a short one. Similarly, more agency at local level in Burnham’s devolution agenda, while welcome, can only go so far without the investment needed to solve the problems that people identify. Once a renewed squeeze for arms spending kicks in, the pressure will be felt in all those unrealised aspirations. Can’t help but be. In that context, it becomes imperative for the ruling class to deflect any resistance downwards away from them and ruthlessly drive divisions among the majority, so the mainstreaming of racism isn’t something to be avoided for them, but a necessary tactic.

Khan and Godwin are, possibly despite their intentions, playing a soft part in this drift. In drawing a veil over the actual role of the United States, a veil with “Western Democracies” written on it, pointing to “international adversaries” (of the United States) as the culprits – and, inevitably, lazily and mendaciously smearing the movement against war and genocide in West Asia as “coopted” by “Islamic extremists” – they fail to deal with real contradictions that tear holes in their worn out world view; and become complicit in the suppression of democratic dissent that, again following US models, has banned Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, gagged defendants, suppressed the rights of juries and threatened barristers with jail for reminding them that they have them.

Their solutions to “heal the wounds that divide us” do not involve any reassessment of the UK’s auxiliary role for the US; which at the moment is taking the form of aiding and abetting bombing runs into Iran from RAF Fairford that are primarily hitting civilian infrastructure. A big majority opposes this complicity. We are being ignored.

Instead they argue for a “Total Defence” strategy that requires ideological conformity at home as part of military credibility abroad. That in turn requires an even stricter policing of dissent on traditional and social media. The paradox of their argument is that they are right that far Right arguments have for the most part been capitulated to and promoted not tackled, but because they don’t identify where these arguments come from, nor in whose interests they are being put, they end up (start out) aligned with the very forces that are pushing them; and the “anti extremist” agenda, in being directed against US targets, boils down to policing internal dissent from the Left “like we did in the Cold War”. So much easier for the UK’s traditional alliances if no news from Gaza is allowed to filter through unmediated by “reliable sources”.

So, we end up with a “democratic” society in which deviation from standing to attention and saluting the right shibboleths – which will increasingly be the Right shibboleths – will be treated as treason and terror. Be prepared.

Approving Rosebank and Jackdaw will not “keep the North Sea Working”

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

There is a lot of media hype that Andy Burnham will approve the Rosebank oilfield and the Jackdaw gas field in his first week as PM, even though the government has been very clear up to now that doing so won’t take a penny off bills nor help energy security, as most of the production would be for export.

They would also do virtually nothing to defend jobs. The most optimistic projections of jobs creation from Adura – the lash up of Shell and Equinor set to run the projects – is for 3,500 jobs “at peak production”, so short term construction jobs, and 880 long term jobs to keep them going. This is a much larger projection than that of the BBC in 2023, which had 1600 in construction and 450 long term; but taking it as good coin, it is a miniscule proportion of the jobs lost (at a rate of 725 a month) since 1979.

That looks like this (even using Adura’s, possibly inflated, figures).

As you can see, the long term jobs are barely visible. Comparing the new Rosebank and Jackdaw jobs with the projected jobs decline up to the early 2030s shows a similar picture.

Assuming that government policy changes and these fields are approved. It is quite evident that the long term jobs in Rosebank and Jackdaw are a drop in the bucket and no amount of additional licences and tie ins will make any qualitative difference to the scale and speed of the job losses; as there are no other substantial fields left, and the remaining North Sea reserves cannot be “economically” extracted.

From a jobs point of view its a distraction from the main issue, because, without a plan for a transition to offshore renewables work, 60,000 workers will still lose their jobs within the decade whether they open or not. We need unity between all the North Sea unions and the climate movement to campaign for such a plan; which is the campaign we should have had all along.

Abusive verbal attack on Green canvassers

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is quite a disturbing post, put up by a guy who is evidently proud of it. It records a 2 minute discussion in the street during the local elections between three Green Party canvassers and an irate local resident; which starts off with him being quite calm and reasonable but ends up with him shouting abuse at them. They remain calm and polite throughout. He was filming the encounter from the start – presumably with a view to putting it about on social media afterwards, as he did.

His tone first starts to rise when he starts to argue that the motion put to the Green Party conference in March that Zionism is racism indicated “you don’t like Jews actually” because “95% …98%” of the Jewish community identify with Zionism. This is wrong on two counts.

1 Those figures are inaccurate. According to this article from the Jewish Chronicle from February 2024, in UK 63% identify as Zionist. And in the US thats 58%. And support for Israel is declining among Jewish people, just as it is more widely; because of what Israel is doing. That 63% in the UK is down from 72% in 2010. This is particularly the case among younger people. 8% in the UK considered themselves to be “anti Zionist” and 15% “non Zionist”. This active opposition is divided between religious currents that see a return to Israel before the coming of the Messiah as heresy, and internationalist Jews who see the adoption of communalist nationalism as a betrayal of the best humanist Jewish traditions. We should note that this survey was carried out by JPR, as the Chronicle puts it “before the current Hamas war,” and “found that support for the ideology of Zionism is slipping in UK Jewry as a whole” even then. So, what we have is not a community united around the Zionist project, but one that is deeply and traumatically fractured by its consequences. Some of that trauma is expressed by the increased vehemence of its supporters as more and more people are shocked by what they see.

2 The core of the argument is, however, whether Zionism can be described in any other way than racist. Liberal Zionists like Jonathan Freedland are without doubt appalled by the behaviour of people like Ben Gvir, partly because its bad PR, but also because it cuts against what they genuinely think Israel can represent. In his arguments around the IHRA definition, Freedland put the point that it is not antisemitic to criticise the state of Israel, but it would be to criticise a state of Israel. The distinction being that to criticise what a state does is legitimate, but not what it is. His problem is that it is impossible to envisage any state of Israel based on the core Zionist principle that the state is, and has to be, fundamentally a Jewish state, that did not treat the Palestinian population that also lives there as a threat; even if just demographically, and did not discriminate against them as second class citizens at best, subject, occupy, ethnically cleanse and expel and, in extremis, bomb them at worst. Its a bit like arguing that you can criticise Apartheid South Africa as it was, but not the principle of Apartheid South Africa. The problem for people like Freedland is that were Israel to treat the Palestinian population that lives under its rule with equality, it would cease to be Israel as a Zionist project and to maintain Israel as it is requires increasing levels of repression. Faced with challenges, “facts on the ground” have to be stamped down harder and harder. And as the power of the United States wanes, the viability of survival as a pro US military frontier state declines with it. The demonstrative violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon prioritise tactical victories over strategic viability and are a demonstration of weakness because they have to do this and keep playing double or quits until they can’t do it anymore. Rowing back from that course before that point is reached would be preferable for all concerned.

The final part of this film is quite surreal. Three very polite, slightly hurt and unhappy looking Green canvassers walking politely away from a man who is yelling at them to “F*** off!” and calling them “Nazis” in full confidence that they are nothing of the sort. Actual Nazis would have attacked him brutally and, I have no doubt, the Green Party people would have defended him from them. Embrace communalist nationalism and alliances get turned on their heads. The paradox of this is expressed by two young Jewish guys I was sitting beside on the tube when J and I were on our way to the Nakba demonstration last weekend. They were quiet outer suburban professionals, having a conversation about how people here had “had enough” and were looking to buy houses in Israel and how prices were now low (which indicates that more people want to sell/leave than move in; because Tel Aviv is actually a lot less safe than London and always will be). As we went along they were sharing info from their mobiles from family who were on the Tommy Robinson march, which they were joining themselves. And that’s where you end up. Finding common cause with people who want to “Unite the Kingdom” by deporting our neighbours.

On the Nakba Day demonstration, there were, among others, powerful and passionate Jewish speakers – you could have heard a pin drop for Stephen Kapos – and all the speakers called for unity against all forms of racism, stressing that “antisemitism has no place in our movement”. On the, much smaller, “Robinson” march Islamaphobia was common ground, with a big Christian Nationalist contingent who want to ban all other religions. When they come for the Mosques in the morning…People like our irate resident and the two young guys on the tube should think that through.

What a “hate march” looks like

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

For anyone with any difficulty identifying a “hate march”, it looks like this report of this year’s Jerusalem Day demonstration from Deutche Welle.

A crowd chanting “Death to Arabs”, “may your villages burn”, “Gaza is a graveyard”, forcing the Palestinian population to board up their shops and stay inside for fear of the attacks they make on targets who cross their path. It happens every year on May 15th – an Israeli national holiday to mark the conquest of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six Day war in 1967.

This march is a naked celebration of racial supremacy; a model for what a fascist march through a diverse community might look like if it had overt state backing; and it punctuates and celebrates the ethnic cleansing which is displacing the Palestinian population in Jerusalem as well as the West Bank.

There’s a really strange dissonance from a young woman interviewed in the middle of the clip who says “Jerusalem is the heart of Israel. Its the place where you can recognise notes of peace and harmony and basically all the goodness and moral compass that Judaism is trying to show the whole world”. She really seems to believe that. Its hard to think that she’s looking at the same event that the rest of us can see with our own eyes; or what she has to ignore to interpret it like that.

An increasing number of Jewish people across the world are rejecting this kind of disavowell. Many, in the UK, will be on the Nakba Day march today to oppose this “racist system of oppression … ethnic cleansing, settler-colonialism, apartheid and genocide” and “against the far right in Britain who glorify Israel’s racism and brutality.” A support that will be in evidence today on the second “Unite the Kingdom” march called by Tommy Robinson, deliberately timed to clash, for those “who have had enough of migration and mass immigration”.

That, I fear, will be what a hate march looks like.

But, as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign puts it “Our unity and solidarity is stronger than their hatred and division.”

Local elections – three different boroughs, three different planets

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Make no mistake, 1445 new Reform Councillors is 1445 too many, but this is below the 1625 they were projected to win and to have maintained the same momentum that they had in last year’s elections, they’d have gained 2050.

So, any story that they are building momentum should bear that in mind. They have about 25% of the vote, and slowly declining, and generate enormous antipathy among much of the remaining 75%.

As almost all of the new Reform councillors are new and inexperienced, the scope for screw ups is immense, and that will slow their further momentum, as the experience of their control in places like Stafforsdhire and Kent already has to some extent; but not derail it in areas where they are strong.

I was looking at the results in the three boroughs I either live in or have some connection with and its like three different planets.

In Islington its a more or less straight Labour – Green conflict. The Lib Dems, who ran the council up to 2010 are a faded force. Tories are nowhere. Nor is Reform. In some wards – on a turn out that ranged from 39 to 49% -Labour candidates were getting around 1600 votes. Greens came in over 2000. Overall, Labour held on with 32 councillors to 19 for the Greens.

In Brent everything is fragmented and gone to NOC. 26 Labour, 11 Tory, 11 Lib Dem, 9 Green. Reform are nowhere, even though they’ve managed to bolt on a white racist, angry motorist vote with some of the Hindutva Modi supporting Indians who are still mostly solidly with the Conservatives. A film of a Reform canvassing squad in Queens Park and Kilburn looked like a group of Gujarati football hooligans. Outside Kingsbury tube station last night there was a poster from LBC with Farage on it saying that “Reform is here to stay”. My immediate thought was “not round here you’re not”.

In Thurrock, on the other hand, we are drowning in a Turquoise sea. Reform 45, Labour 2. Conservative 2. On a big turnout. In the East of the borough, despite having the experience of voting in a Reform MP, a former Leeman Brother banker, so obviously not part of “the elite” –  who subsequently lost the whip for dodgy dealings during COVID; claiming grants for companies that had no employees and no turnover – and is, by all accounts totally useless if anyone tries to contact him for help – Reform candidates got voted in with over 2000 votes in several wards. The Conservatives are a busted force, largely because they bankrupted the council when they were running it by investing in speculative solar farms without doing due diligence on the con man who pocketed the money. Greens are weak locally. Labour quite a close second in a few places, but nowhere near close enough. I had a chat with one of the Labour candidates when I was clipping the hedge last weekend. Friendly young black woman, with a competent sort of air about her. She got over a hundred fewer votes than her colleagues, who were both white, which tells you something about this area can still be like sadly, even though its much more diverse than it was. She was also leafletting on her own in one of the wards where there was a projection that Labour could hold out. The leaflet she was giving out had NO political content at all, just a reminder to vote. Without taking the fight to Reform, that could have been counter productive.

There are now a large number of councils where the result is so fragmented that the colour coding looks like a knitting design by Kaffe Fasset; which poses the question of who does deals with whom to do what; and what the national political consequences of that could be.

  • Conservative/Reform blocs are likely to facilitate the reconsolidation of the Right with Reform absorbing the Tories – as both are agents of the Trump administration and will ultimately do what they are told.
  • The dynamic between Labour and the Greens is less straightforward; as all the pressure from the powers that be will be to a) blunt the Greens radicalism b) lock Labour into its current dead end of prioritising military spending and Cold War posturing over the measures needed to improve living standards while doubling down on trying to ape Reform’s xenophobia in the weird delusion that this will attract support. The current Labour leadership seems quite prepared to destroy the Party in so doing.
  • A concrete example of that is the latest teachers pay offer. This is not only below inflation, but unfunded. That means that it would have to come from school budgets; a form of self cannibalisation that will impoverish our schools. The prospect of a teachers strike is now back on the agenda as a result. Not something a government interested in resetting and rebuilding support would want to do.
  • If Labour members want it to survive as a Party with any kind of positive role to play, looking to the example of Pedro Sanchez in Spain – not agreeing to 5% of GDP on war – welcoming migration – stepping up green transition, and building a more positive relationship with China to help do that – would be a step forward.

Why the education system does not meet the challenge of climate breakdown…yet

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Photo: Suzanne Jeffery

This is the text of my talk at the Climate and Nature Education Festival on 14th March.

  1. It is obviously in the interests of humanity as a whole to act together to limit the damage done by GHG emissions.
  2. But this isn’t happening – fast enough – because the society/economy/polity/education system we have globally isn’t based on the interests of humanity as a whole and the interests of nations not on the interests of the nation as a whole. When Donald Trump says “America will make a lot of money” on the back of the current oil price strike arising from his attack on Iran, he means the US oil companies that will rake it in from inflated prices, not the people paying through the nose for increased petrol prices at the pumps. On a more parochial level, we hear a lot about “the national interest” and it’s important to be clear that this is not the interests of the people who live in the country, but that of the people who OWN it; which is not only not the same thing but often – usually – contradicts it.
  3. An anecdote. My Dad worked for Proctor and Gamble at the West Thurrock factory for most of his life. When he was about 40 he and several other shop floor “mature work oriented individuals”, as the company put it, were put on a course to make them more valuable and motivated human capital for the company. As part of this they were asked “What do you think the company is for?” Thinking about what they did all day, and being use value oriented, as working class people tend to be, they said “to make soap powder”. “That’s where you’re wrong” they said “The purpose of the company is to make money (Exchange Value in Marxist terms) If we could make more money doing something else, we’d do it”. That’s probably why P&G manufactured both Sunny Delight and Napisan (and in blind taste tests…)
  4. And that’s the crunch. When it comes to many aspects of the green transition that we need, it cuts across profitability. Take insulation. If done properly that cuts demand, costs and CO2 emissions. Win, win, win for us. But lose, lose, lose for the companies that make money off selling the fuel. The same goes for efficiency standards. It’s why Trump is relaxing them. 
  5. And on the level of profitability, for Oil and Gas companies that were flirting with renewable divisions a few years ago (Beyond Petroleum and all that) Fossil Fuel investment has a rate of return between 4 and 5 times greater than investment in renewables. It may be going to kill us to keep doing it, but the bottom line is the bottom line. This is judged in quarterly returns…and in the long term, as Keynes so rightly said, we’re all dead. And that doesn’t just motivate the direct FF companies, but also the banks that lend to them. A CEO of one of the big US banks that pulled out of Mark Carney’s attempt to set up a global financial alliance for transition investment said they were doing so because putting any consideration other than maximum returns for shareholders is “immoral”. This was also expressively put by Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI who said “I think AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.” So, that’s alright then…
  6. So, the transition won’t simply not be led by these people, they have been, are and will resist it. And this is not simply at the level of companies and civil society, but state capture. The Trump administration in the US is the acme of this. I’d argue that Trump is not an aberration but an expression of Tech Bro Fossil Fuel dominance in the world’s leading imperialist and petro state in an attempt to reassert its slipping global dominance by bullying other countries into buying their oil and LNG and throwing its immense military weight around ($1.5 Trillion war budget coming next year, so the manic pace that we’ve already seen this year is just an overture) before the 60% of the world that has already passed peak FF use really consolidate that with a flood of cheap Chinese solar panels and get out from under.
  7. A central aspect of this is a war on scientific truth on climate and environmental protection that defunds and deplatforms both study and teaching – presumably on the philosophy that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. And the promotion of abject subaltern political formations that will do likewise across the world, like Reform here. And not just Reform. “The model” for Kemi Badenoch (and this is a quote) “is Javier Millei”. We can guarantee that a Reform/Tory government will mean a direct assault on any attempt to address climate change in schools.
  8. I’d also argue it is no accident that the core of industrial/energy transition globally is China – where, even though they have a very powerful private sector – in the final analysis, the economic plan is determined by the state (and 50% of wind/solar installations are done by state owned enterprises).

I’ll end with some thoughts from Antonio Gramsci, who argued that any education system exists to replicate the social order that it serves. And that’s not just a matter of educating for necessary technical skills, but also attitudes, morals, aspiration and narrative frameworks that sustain that society as it is. Our problem is that the society/economy/polity that we have is unsustainable and that sets up a tension and contradictions that we have to fight our way through. The need to anticipate and prepare not simply for “the jobs of the future” but prepare future citizens for a social and economic order that we don’t have yet runs slap up against all the inertia and commanding heights of an education system designed to sustain the order that we have. In that context we have to use whatever levers and footholds we have within the system – embodied in eg the DFE NZ strategy like sustainability leads, climate action plans, national education nature park etc to prise these contradictions apart and push them further – for whole school curricular and campus transformation initiatives and pushing through the ambiguities of the DFE’s “Impartiality Guidance” – on the basis that recognising the reality of climate change is – as the guidance states – true; so Parties that deny it are not basing their politics on reality…and should be treated as such. A clear consensus for the education unions on this point – that climate change is not “above politics” but foundational to any relevant politics is essential – if we want to safeguard our students from Fossil Fuel glove puppets and charlatans.

“Forward to the Past”- Rubio’s Munich Security Conference speech.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is a brief letter to Labour List, which they published in their “Letters of the Week” section.

Marco Rubio’s speech to the Munich Security Conference was a call for a reassertion of unashamedly racist “Western” imperial dominance, for Europe to slash its welfare states and green transition, to prepare to compete for “new frontiers” of exploitation in the global South through assertions of raw military power. The audience gave him a standing ovation. This is a route to catastrophe; austerity and crumbling infrastructure at home, along with tearing our communities apart ICE style, and military adventurism abroad – replacing aid with raids. It should be utterly rejected, not greeted with “sighs of relief”. 

Laura Kyrke-Smith and Melanie Ward’s argument that Europe “must stand strong” on its own does not confront the projection by George Robertson that doing so militarily within the current framework of escalating  the confrontation with Russia, would cost not 5% of GDP but 7%. That’s an additional £135 billion every year. That would be ruinous in the immediate term and, in so far as it sucks resources away from the energy transition, will kill us in the longer term, even if the temptation to use all this hardware is resisted and it didn’t lead to nuclear war within the decade.

What we need instead is meaningful peace negotiations with Russia over Ukraine to resolve this European civil war, reintegrate our economies within a mutual security arrangement that would also help us form a more developmental relationship with China and the rest of the global South.

With less concern for brevity I could have added that

  • “Europe lay in ruins” in 1945 precisely because the dog eat dog rivalry between imperial powers that Rubio sees as a model for the future, came home to roost in the imperial heartlands in two World Wars once the global South had been fully carved up.
  • Saying “we are not afraid of climate change” is an attempt to will it away instead of dealing with it; empty bragadochio an expression of fears that have been suppressed.
  • In claiming the Rolling Stones as exemplars of White Western Civilisation, he obviously hadn’t done his homework on who the Rolling Stones themselves were inspired by, or heard anything by Muddy Waters.

“Terrorists” don’t litter pick

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

I have spent too long in the last two years feeling inhibited about wearing a keffiyeh; because it felt disrespectful to people who have been so relentlessly bombed and starved. To identify with them without undergoing what they are going through seemed somehow trivialising. Not worthy. This was, of course, absurd self indulgence. The point of wearing it is to show solidarity. Now that we are over two months into a “ceasefire” during which the IDF have carryied on relentlessly, remorselessly firing and killing people every single day, it feels disrespectful not to put it on.

On my way to the Palestine soldarity demonstration last Saturday, I was walking down an extremely steep hill that should probably have bannisters, when a woman coming out of her house spots my keffiyah and asks if I’m going to the football, before correcting herself, because its obviously not a team scarf. “No, the Palestine demonstration” I say cheerfully, smiling at her, because its something that should not be seen as an“out there” activity – the way the government and press presents it – only carried out by people you can put in a pigeon hole marked “dangerous” – when anyone can go, and a vast range of people who have basic human empathy do. As a result, its also a lot safer and more peaceful than a lot of football matches too of course; and a lot more good natured.

In something of the same spirit, as I’m leaving the flat with the keffiyeh on, and come across a pile of potato peelings, old spuds and eggshells that someone has considerately left splattered across the pavement, I go home, get my spade and food waste caddy and shovel it in; because “terrorists” don’t litter pick. And I am extra polite and considerate all day for the same reason. If you are wearing something that identifies you with people who are being attacked, and the commanding heights of government and media are portraying those people and anyone expressing solidarity with them as some sort of threat, opening the door for people, or gesturing for someone to get on the bus first with a smile, undercuts their smears about who we are. Speak softly and carry a strong message.

The opposite of the approach recomended by the pharmacist in my local chemists, with whom I often banter. “How you doing?” “OK, pootling along. One day at a time”. “Good idea. Keep your head down”.”Nah. Won’t be doing that!” At times like this, we need to keep our heads, and elbows, UP.

Walking on further, it occurs to me that during that whole hyped up broo ha ha about the ban on Tel Aviv Maccabees fans travelling to that game at Aston Villa, and subsequent witch hunting of the West Midlands chief constable out of his job – as if these fans didn’t have a reputation inside Israel for racist thuggery, and as if the Amsterdam riots hadn’t happened in the way we saw them do – put emotively as “Jews are being banned from watching football” (as if all Jewish people are complicit in their behaviour, as antisemitic an identification as any you could wish for) no one mentioned the fact that football teams, or players, from Gaza were routinely not allowed out of the strip in the “normal” conditions before Oct 7th nor that, as of August last year, the IDF has killed over 672 Palestinian athletes since, including over 240 footballers; so perhaps some sense or proportion might be in order.

A sartorial paradox is that I’m also wearing my Dad’s old raincoat, bought from Israel supporting Marks and Spencers. A strict interpretation of BDS would consign this garment to the bin, but in some ways wearing it could be seen as a sartorial expression either of a two state solution and/or a one state solution – an Israeli mac and a Palestinian keffiyeh coexisting alongside each other, or, indeed, together in one ensemble.

On my way past the last contingents streaming into Whitehall from the Strand two hours after it started, with a spirited version of Bella Ciao belting out from a mass drum band powering the sort of resistance dancing that uncowed people do, an old friend tells me to “watch out for the far right in Trafalgar Square”. The last bitter fragment of UKIP, people for whom Nigel Farage is too much of a softy sell out, a sliver of ice in the heart of the body politic, “the cold cursing the warmth for which it hungers” as Tolkein put it, had planned a march on Tower Hamlet that afternoon. Anything Oswald Mosley could try. Perhaps for their own protection, the police had banned them from doing so and given them a route provocatively close to the Palestine demo, perhaps hoping for incidents that could then be played up to ban future marches. Checking out their route before coming in to Central London so I wouldn’t walk into the middle of them unawares, I’d noticed that they had been given an embarassingly tiny, tiny patch of Marble Arch to assemble in; with strict instructions to stay on it or face arrest. Walking up alongside the Square, where they were supposed to be rallying, there was no sign of them until a small knot of people, that could at first glance be mistaken for a tourist walking party, could be glimpsed gathered in a desultory huddle outside the National Gallery. One or two Union Jacks, a couple of wooden crosses of the Christian nationalist persuasion and, at the back, a small phalanx of Iranian monarchist flags mark them out as the weird bloc they are. I head into St Martins crypt for a coffee and to meet a man about the climate crisis.

Why Peter Hain is wrong

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Labour List published an article from Peter Hain this morning arguing that the government should take on debt to finance its war preparations. This is my letter in response, which I’m pleased to say that they published as the top letter. Some of the points will be familiar for anyone who reads these blogs, but bear repeating because they are routinely ignored in the mass media.

Peter Hain’s argument that the government should borrow to finance an armaments drive has three problems.

  1. The quantity of money required to reach 5% of GDP on war would be £77billion every year. George Robertson’s projection for Euro NATO standing alone without the United States is 7%. The costs of paying the interest on this rapidly accumulating debt would be crippling, and it would act as an enormous financial black hole sucking resources away from everything worth while that government can do. Overseas aid was just the start. A militarisation drive would impoverish us across the board, as well as, with “a whole society approach”, copper bottom restrictions on dissent and pose questioning as treason. “Military Keynesianism” is also a mirage. Investment in weaponry does not build anything worthwhile that people can use, or that makes life better, as investment in sustainable energy, health services, public transport etc do. 
  2. The presumption of an impending war with Russia – in which we should be prepared to “lose our children” -is a form of madness. It is posed as a defensive response to Russian aggression. But Russia has neither the capacity nor the desire to attack the rest of Europe. It has taken them four years to occupy parts of Ukraine that mostly speak Russian and where they have substantial local support. Trying to occupy Western Ukraine or, say, Poland, where they would face intense hostility from the top to the bottom of society would be, as US Conservative analyst John Mearsheimer puts it “like trying to swallow a porcupine” At the moment, Euro NATO, without the USA, already outspends the Russians by 3.5 to 1, has twice as many service personal and advantages in all kinds of war material that range from twice as many aircraft and tanks to three times as many artillery pieces. Trying to double this again cannot be seen as defensive, but is preparation for a possible offensive operation which, if carried out successfully, couldn’t help but trigger Russia’s nuclear thresholds so, to put it bluntly, this is a course that can only end in us all being killed by it. The alternative of finding a European modus vivendi with Russia through negotiation seems to have been lost in a red mist. Time to sober up.
  3. There is no collision with Trump. European NATO countries will not stand up to him over Greenland, they will accommodate. Justified hostility to Trump is being used to give him exactly what he wants – a huge arms drive that will further disadvantage European economies, lock them into a confrontation with Russia, to the mutual harm of both – and leave him with a free hand to intervene at will across the rest of the world while preparing for the ultimate military showdown with China  before its too late (before the US is overhauled by peaceful economic competition and its fatal, fossil fuel based paradigm of modernity tossed into the dustbin of history by the spread of cheap Chinese solar panels). 

None of us has any interest in any of that. We cannot afford to sleepwalk into World War 3 the way that the Great Powers did into World War 1; any talk of war being “inevitable” tends to become a self fulfilling prophecy. As we won’t survive such a war, it is profoundly irresponsible and light minded to become a cheer leader for the course towards it.

Please note that Facebook blocks my blogs, and doesn’t reply tom questions why, so, if you think these argumenst are worth getting about, please pass them on through other media.

One is not supposed to weep at the Radetsky March

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

I have, nevertheless, been doing so since the Vienna New Years Day Concert in 2014. Barenboim was conducting, and, as he marched on stage for the traditional final encore with an imperious flick of his baton, rather than crashing straight into the opening chords, a snare drummer tapped out a call to arms – tappity tappity tappity tap – trrr rrrr – RAT TAT TAT!

A whole set of emotions welled up. That sort of rhythm is designed to do that, meant to rouse the listener into a heightened emotional state and carry them away to take the Emperor’s Schilling; and visions of drumhread recruitment in towns and villages all across the Austro Hungarian Empire – and the rest of Europe – invaded my mind, along with a historical memory of what happened next that none of those swept up in war euphoria, or war fatalism, a hundred years before could possibly have had.

Painting of a soldier undergoing surgery by surgeon and painter Henry Tonks circa 2015 from Faces of Britain by Simon Schama.

A quote from the same book. The nature of trench warfare, punctuated as it was by futile forays over the top, had exposed the heads of soldiers, nothwithstanding their helmets, to taking fire in the face. Exit wounds were gaping. Some shells had been designed to spray schrapnel, to devastating effect. Magnesium fuses were encased within, expressly intended to catch fire when lodged in tissue, resulting in the burning away of noses, eyes and cheeks.

More than 20 million dead at the end of it. And a comparable number wounded or mutilated. And World War 2 was worse. World War 3 has been unthinkable because there would be no one left at the end of it, brief though it would be.

Yet now we have the uncrowned heads of Europe and their media shils single mindedly trying to make it thinkable. Preparing us for a war with Russia by the end of the decade. Mark Rutte thinking he can succeed where Charles XII, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler failed.

Posing a war of choice as “defence”, as they always do, as every power did in 1914, avoiding any mention of the nuclear risks, avoiding any mention that they already outspend the Russians 3.5 to 1, avoiding any mention that Russia has neither the intention nor the capacity to invade the rest of Europe, avoiding mention of any alternative course, as if “war, war” is better than “jaw, jaw”.

This is part of a “whole society” approach aiming to make us stand to attention and salute without question. The most dangerous aspect of this sort of war fatalism, linked to escalation in arms build ups and suppression of dissent as treason, is that it poses war as inevitable – and when all sides accept that that is the case, war is what you get.

None of us has any interest in that. Not least because we’d all be dead at the end of it.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin did it again in this year’s concert. He made the usual speech before the encores – “music can unite all of us because we live on the same planet” – which felt peculiarly hollow this year, given the way the drums are beating all over Europe. Then off into Blue Danube and Radetsky, with the drum call to start and the well heeled Viennese spiessburger audience clapping enthusiastically along in a joyful romp towards Armageddon, just like so many of their ancestors did in 1914.

In an ironic counterpart, the final song in Jules Holland’s New Year Hootananny the previous evening was a singalong version of “Enjoy yourself (its later than you think)”.

New Year resolution for 2026, to beat a different rhythm and break up the march to war.