Issue 322

FIVE YEARS OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

This is the 5th anniversary of the bloody invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair’s imperialist armies - a war for oil and empire.

The cost has been appalling:

[1] a million Iraqis dead

[1] hundreds of working class soldiers dead

[1] 2 million Iraqis driven out of their country

[1] $3trillion cost to the USA people - and as much again to the people of other invading countries

[1] privatisation of Iraq’s oil - plundered by western multi-nationals

[1] escalating sectarian division and bloodshed in Iraq.

Now Bush is sabre rattling towards Iran.
Demand the troops home NOW - demand a war on poverty, not people - and build links with the Iraqi trade unions –who are fighting privatisation, occupation and terrorism.

END THE WAR IN IRAQ NOW!

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Shelter Workers Strike

OVER 100 Workers and Supporters from Shelter, the Housing Charity, attended a Rally in Glasgow last Wednesday as part of their action in defence over attacks on their Pay and Conditions. The Rally was held during a One day Stoppage by affected Shelter Workers across Britain - with workplaces shut down across the country and a major demonstration held in London.
Workers are furious that Bosses want to attack their Pay and Conditions, including downgrading jobs, removal annual pay increases and increasing the working week - the equivalent of 3 weeks extra work a year with no pay! Many Workers are lone parents who may have to give up their jobs due to pay cuts and increased childcare costs. Ironically, others are now at risk of homelessness themselves, as they cannot meet their housing costs. Shelter like many modern day charities are now operating like Bosses under the worst forms of privatisation - putting profit before people.
Senior Managers say ‘ for sustainable growth’ Shelter need to rely on Statutory Funding for front line services, rather than traditional reliance on public donations, and ‘to win competitive contracts we need to drive down costs’ - Pay Cuts!
Shelter has built its reputation on its independent funding allowing its independent voice - Workers believe this change in funding will be like a strait jacket on their ability to speak out!
This is particularly hard for Workers to stomach as it was Shelter’s radical reputation as a Rights Based Campaigning Organisation which attracted workers to them in the first place.
Disillusioned Workers cannot believe Management can behave in this way and morale is at rock bottom.
While managers tell staff there has to be difficult financial decisions as this is difficult times, Workers are furious that unconfirmed reports say Senior Managers have awarded themselves a Pay Rise of over £20,000 last year - unconfirmed because Managers who ask Workers to trust them, will not confirm or deny their Pay Increase! They do confirm while calling for workers to tighten belts, that Shelter HQ was refurbished for £600,000 while cutting pay, and new highly paid management posts to implement this change have been appointed! Workers are incensed by the hypocrisy!
Currently Management refuse to meet with Workers representatives and the union have planned a further stoppage for Monday 10th March with a Rally in Edinburgh. A lobby of the Scottish Parliament is also scheduled for 12 noon on Wednesday 19 March. Please attend and contact your MSP to be sure he/she is there.
Stewards call for all supporters to get behind this campaign - its outcome matters to Workers through out the voluntary sector.
Please send messages of support to union members in Shelter: on shelterstewards@googlemail.com= and c/o Alan Scott,TGWU,Woodberry,218 Green Lanes, London N4 2HB.

[1] Please send messages of protest to Adam Sampson, Shelter, 88 Old Street, London EC1V 9HU or adam_sampson@shelter.org.u k and ask it be forwarded to the Board of Directors and copied to Shelter stewards at the above address.

Campaign gets underway for more public sector housing in Cumbernauld

LOCAL Scottish Socialist Party members launched their campaign for more public sector homes for rent in Cumbernauld town centre last weekend.
Party members are claiming that measures must be taken to cut housing waiting lists, as there is a ticking time bomb of homelessness and housing debt waiting to explode in Cumbernauld and Kilsyth.
Party member Kevin McVey commented,
“The privatisation of housing provision over the last 30 years is creating huge problems.
“If you consider that over 34 000 public sector homes have been sold under right to buy legislation across North Lanarkshire since 1979 and it’s been almost 21 years since a council house has been built in Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, it is no surprise that tens of thousands are sitting on the housing waiting list in North Lanarkshire.
“With homeless rates in Cumbernauld the highest in North Lanarkshire it is clear that this is a huge problem that must be addressed. It is for these reasons that we have launched our campaign.”
Party members collected signatures for their petition that calls for a massive expansion of public sector house building in Cumbernauld and Kilsyth over the next few years.
Kevin added. “Our campaign aims to highlight the extent of this problem but more importantly is about demanding that solutions are found. Underpinning any housing strategy has to be the building of homes for rent that are energy efficient and affordable.
“Linked to renovation programmes for existing properties this would at least begin to tackle this problem.
“With the Scottish Government recently cutting the housing budget by 6 per cent it is obvious that determined campaigning will be necessary to promote the changes that are needed.
“This is the type of relentless campaigning we are planning in the months ahead and we were encouraged by the positive response we had on Saturday.”

The Smoke And Mirrors of Modern Finance

Inflation
In a new feature Raphie de Santos, looks at the economy and explains the truth behind the jargon of capitalism.

“CREEPING inflation is the malaria of the modern mixed economy. It is uncomfortable to live with and will just not go away.” -
Paul Samuelson, Nobel prize winning economist.
As capitalism was hailing the end of boom and bust and the elimination of inflation the global economy goes pear shaped and inflation starts to again raise its ugly head. Just what is inflation, how is it measured and who’s to blame for it?
We’ll try and answer all these questions here in this article on the ‘malaria’ of capitalism.
Very simply put inflation is a surplus of spending power. A recent example of this is the housing market.
Until a few months ago banks and other financial institutions were offering credit right across the whole population in the form of loans to buy houses. This primarily came about because of low interest rates in the United States and in other major capitalist countries.
There developed a situation where there was too much, albeit borrowed, money (demand) chasing the number of properties available to sell (supply). This caused house price inflation right across the capitalist world. It was a matter of the demand (loans) for property exceeding the supply (what was available to sell).
In reality it is the excess money, in the form of credit, which has been inherent in the capitalist system since the end of the Second World War which has meant that inflation is a permanent feature of modern capitalism.
The excess demand for products and services generated by this credit cannot be met by the existing supply. This is one reason why inflation has been creeping up over the last year as the easy credit which has been available over the last six years started to create shortages in products and services
A second reason for the rise in inflation is the increased demand especially for food products from the developing countries especially China. Part of the reason has been the conversion of basic food stuffs into biofuels creating shortages which have rippled right through the food chain.
Economists have estimated that 30 per cent of food price increases have happened for this reason. The other 70 per cent of food price increases is because of growing demand for higher quality food from the growing middle-classes in the developing world.
Inflation is measured by Consumer Price Index (CPI) which the Labour government used instead of the Retail Price Index (RPI) from 1997. These indices compare the price of a household goods from month to month. Conveniently, the CPI excludes the cost of housing which makes up the largest part of a family’s monthly outgoings. In January 2008 the CPI was 2.2 per cent per year and the RPI was 4.1 per year!
The government uses the CPI as a guide to annual wage settlements. As well as using the wrong figure they forget to say that any pay increase has a marginal rate of tax of about 30 per cent. Therefore, to match the more realistic measure of inflation (RPI) pay increases for 2008 should be 5.9 per cent (4.1/0.7) and not the CPI rate of 2.2 per cent.
In the next issue of the voice we will have a go at constructing an inflation index that more accurately reflects the monthly costs of the average family and how interest rates work.

Love The Rich, Worship The Queen And Work For Buttons Says New Labour

by Ken Ferguson

IT is the logo of New labour that just when you think that they had sunk as low as they could they pop up and prove you wrong.
First, confirming Marx’s remark about history repeating itself as farce, we have Lord Goldsmith demanding that youth be conscripted to attend “ceremonies” at which they will pledge loyalty to the Queen.
On first hearing Voice readers probably checked the calendar to see if it was April 1st so ludicrous does the noble Lord’s idea seem but this only confirmed that spaced out peer was serious.
However if Goldsmith and his wacky plan represented the laughable end of New Labour’s drive to make us love Britannia and our rich betters he was quickly followed by two straight men.
One time supposed socialist Gordon Brown picked up his Parker and penned an essay for the top bosses paper the Financial Times in which he fiercely defended Blair’s “Modernisation” of the public services.
In New :Labour speak ‘modernisation’ invariably means job cuts, closures and privatisation so the Brown article will no doubt have been sweet music to the ears to the fat cats reader of the FT.
However it is also an unambiguous message to those general secretaries in the trade union movement who may still harbour illusions that replacing Blair with Brown would mean a move to the left.
The brutal reality is that Brown’s article endorses a government policy which aims to sack thousands of civil servants, peg pay rises as food, energy and other prices rocket and to press on with service cuts such as post office closures.
Indeed it can be argued that, as the architect of Blair’s economic policy little else could be expected of the neo-liberal son of the manse.
But just in case there were any still waiting for the emergence of Red Gordon it was left to ‘business secretary’ John Hutton to put any remaining socialist in the ranks straight.
The core of the ultra Blairite Hutton’s message - delivered to the pro capitalist think tank Progress - boiled down to a blunt “get over it and love the rich”.
“Rather than questioning whether huge salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country,” the well heeled Hutton purred.
And went on to spell out the remedy for millions struggling with soaring food and fuel bills telling them that “Rather than placing a cap on that success, we should be questioning why it is not available to more people.”
It seems to have escaped the hapless Hutton that questioning why mega bucks and super wealth “is not available to more people” was the key reason for setting up a trade union movement and founding the Labour Party.
Taken together the outpourings of Goldsmith, Brown and Hutton amount to the clearest confirmation yet that the Brown government and New labour inhabit a galaxy far, far away of which ordinary citizens know nothing.
It is world in which ministers rub shoulders with the super rich and enjoy the smell of money and power to the extent that any possible contact with the concerns of working people is confined to a glimpse through the window of the ministerial limo.
As we face a world in which global warming, food shortages, economic crisis and war are likely to be the daily experience of millions we need to clearly reject the ‘love the rich message of New Labour.
The key gains made by ordinary citizens from the Health Service to the under attack welfare system were won not as gifts from the rich but as a result of the fight waged for them by the people themselves.
Whether its global warming, ending imperialist wars, safeguarding democracy or any of the myriad of other issues the only realistic response is collective action not crumbs from the tables of New Labour’s rich fans.

Renfrewshire tenants slam warden plans

by John Miller

TENANTS in sheltered housing complexes in Johnstone, Elderslie and Renfrew have rejected council plans to scrap their overnight wardens service whilst introducing charges of up to £500 per year. The Scottish Socialist Party was invited by tenants to assist in performing a consultation with those staying in sheltered housing after the council refused to consult on the plans. 96 per cent of respondents stated that they did not agree with the proposed changes; 65 per cent stated that they could not afford the proposed charges; and 81 per cent did not believe that the warden service would be able to meet their needs once the changes were made.
Gerry McCartney of t h e Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party branch said,
“The council have unilaterally decided to reduce the warden service at the same time as introducing charges . Tenants are outraged that the main reason for them taking up sheltered housing accommodation is now being withdrawn.
“I suspect that many tenants will now have to move into residential care, and this will cost the council more money in the long run.
“The tenants have been treated appallingly”.
The consultation forms, which were written by the tenants themselves, also provided an opportunity for people to add comments. These showed that five main issues upset the tenants:
[1] Cost - one tenant said, “I am having my rent increased and losing the wardens service.
If this goes ahead I will be applying for new accommodation that I can afford’; another tenant said, ‘It doesn’t leave much money from the pension when rent costs £50 per week, council tax £22.25 per week and this charge of £10.70 per week. Gas and electricity has also to be taken into account when all I receive is the state pension. No other money comes my way”.
[1] Security - “I would feel unsafe without full cover of the wardens service. The building would become unsafe with no full time wardens service here”.
[1] Standard of service - “Elderly people need to speak to someone face to face and cannot always cope with asking assistance via telephone. I am concerned that there will be only limited support particularly when dealing with maintenance and financial issues. These cannot always be dealt with via community alarms”.
[1] Fairness - “I believe the charges are unfair. The SNP always maintained that they respect and look after older people, but it’s a different story when money is concerned”.
[1] Lack of consultation - “When we signed for the flat there was no mention of any extra charges. The only reason we moved here was because of the wardens’ service.
If the extra money was used to improve or even maintain the service I could understand but to ask for more money for half the service is taking a liberty”.
Gerry McCartney continued, “We will now be providing feedback to all the tenants on the consultation results and presenting our findings to the council. I hope that the council listen to what the tenants have said and reverse their decision. Tenants can help by writing to their local councillors and getting involved with future protests”.
The changes to the warden service are being introduced following a decision by the Labour council in February 2005. This was then confirmed by the new SNP/Liberal council administration in November last year when the details of the proposed changes were first published.

Community Fights Profiteers

I know people think the Royal Mile of Edinburgh must be fancy and posh but the truth of the matter is it is where Edinburgh’s workers have lived for centuries, the beauty of the Edinburgh’s Old Town is the very rich and the very poor lived by ‘cheek by jowl’ but the Canongate’s always been special - it resisted becoming part of Edinburgh for centuries, its where the gardens and cow sheds of the Old Town were and later the factories and breweries until 80 years ago there was a gas works, my great grandfather worked there, in fact I can trace my family back living consistently in the Old Town of Edinburgh since they came over from Ireland about 150 years ago. Edinburgh’s most famous socialist, James Connolly came from the Cowgate in Edinburgh’s Old Town, so the Old Town and the Canongate have a lot of meaning to me. Even Fredrich Engels wrote about the Canongate in the Conditions of the Working Class in England (sic).

On Wednesday 6 February 2008 the Planning Committee of City of Edinburgh Council voted to demolish homes and listed buildings on the Canongate of Edinburgh. There has been a battle going on for nearly three years between the community, Save Our Old Town, heritage groups, concerned citizens and the council.

The City of Edinburgh Council went into a land deal with the developer Mountgrange (Caltongate) Plc to develop the Waverley Valley (that’s the bit where Waverley train station is in Edinburgh, the valley you see looking east from the North Bridge). Mountgrange bought land on what used to be the SMT bus depot on New Street where the Bongo Club and Out of the Blue artist studios once were. The Bongo Club and Out of the Blue moved out three years ago and took up premises else where leaving behind an empty unused building. The residents of the Canongate became a bit †worried when the developers started to discuss the buildings around this site - namely the Canongate Venture, a old Edwardian sandstone school building currently used by artisans and small businesses; the Sailors Ark, an Arts & Crafts building built for sailors in the 30s and until recently homed The Ark, a homeless project and soup kitchen; the old fruit market (currently a car park for councillors and the Lord provosts car) and two tenement buildings with nine council houses. It became quite obvious the council in order to entice the developers had suggested the buildings around the old bus garage were fair game and if they were in their way then they could be demolished.

The tenements are people’s homes with nine municipal houses but the council’s attitude was ‘we’ll give them new houses’. The fruitmarket was on Common Good land, an asset owned by the people of Edinburgh NOT by the council but the council said:

‘What common good land? We don’t recognize such old laws and anyway we need to sell off the people’s land and assets to pay for new shiny buildings.’ The Canongate Venture, a listed building the council said ‘there are lots of these types of buildings about, no one will notice if we demolish it. We know it’s nice, and in use and made of perfectly good sand stone but if the developers wants to put a conference centre there well really what can we do? The Sailors Ark might be a unique Arts and Crafts building built to house the needy and for seven decades gave shelter, food and warmth to the homeless but really the homeless can move on to other projects, we’ve removed the funding from The Ark anyway’ said the council ‘and its old and needs refurbished and we have enough old buildings when we can have a nice new shiny five star hotel.’ And when they decided to build on Jeffrey St and block the views to Calton Hill they said ‘I’m hungry and we have been here all day, lets just vote it through.’

So in the Canongate we are to have a 5 star hotel, conference centre, plus dozens of ‘luxury’ homes, shops and offices. The council admitted that they are seven social houses short according to their policies. The community had put forward an alternative strategy but it could not be considered as there was no investment with it. The community state it needs more social housing, particularly three and four bedroom houses and flats to attract families into the area, (but the council have said families don’t want to live in the Canongate as there are no gardens or parking), we suggested reusing the market building as a market or converting it into an arts centre.

The community wanted to see more gardens and green space, perhaps a park for kids to play in, shops that people can buy food in instead of tartan galore. To keep The Sailor’s Ark as a homeless project. We had no objection to a hotel or any of the proposals from Mountgrange but wanted it to be sympathetic to the area and for them to get there greedy hands of our neighbours homes, the common good land and the listed buildings.

At the Planning Committee however, the contentious proposals to demolish all but the facade of historic Canongate tenements were put on hold, and the developers Mountgrange were asked to look at ways of retaining the buildings for affordable housing. The developers had planned to make one of the tenement’s facade to be the frontage of the five star hotel, and the other they want to knock a hole in to make a pend in order to get into their scheme they wish to build and over the pend they hoped to build three luxury apartments (where council housing once was) but last week agreed there should be five housing association flats there - that is their concession to our whole campaign.

Only the Green councillor Steve Burgess and the SNP’s Colin Keir opposed many of the separate plans for the Old Town site, but the rest of the greedy councillors kept pretending they were sorry to vandalise the community of the Canongate but they couldn’t turn down the promise of £300million investment. But the council won’t receive any profit sharing until the development is fully completed and ALL the buildings have been sold. They only gain from the land deals, including land and assets that don’t belong to them.

At the Planning Committee heritage bodies warned that Edinburgh could be put on the ‘at danger list’ by UNESCO, the international body that oversees heritage and unique places of beauty. Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns is a World Heritage Site and were made so to protect the heritage of Edinburgh from over development not just for the people of Edinburgh but for the rest of Britain and the world.

Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns have a unique history shaped over the centuries.

Every building may have been designed by an architect but it was the workers who built some of Scotland’s most magnificent and splendid buildings. The Old and New Town tell part of the story of Edinburgh and Scotland The Canongate was traditionally a residential area and in the last hundred and fifty years and industrial area.

Socio-economics have changed and we now have the city’s council HQ and a Parliament but that does not mean the character has to change.

The Canongate traditionally housed the workers of the gas works, the breweries and bus station but now the ex-council housing has been sold and makes up private lets, investment properties and holiday lets - there is a consistent attempt to bourgeoisify the Canongate - this has been done in the dock areas of many cities throughout Britain but because it’s common it does not make it correct.

The Canongate is not a derelict part of Edinburgh, it is the lower half of the Royal Mile and very much alive and lived in. The community that is left there has plenty to say about how they would like their community to look and develop. In 2006 the residents of the Canongate set up the Canongate Community Forum in order to promote the residents of the Canongate’s views and help set up the Save Our Old Town (SOOT) campaign. We have opened up a community centre for the next couple of months at 8 St Mary’s Street and on Sunday 16 March there is to be an open ideas day - every one is welcome.

Those against the development are not against development per se but against the size of the development and the demolitions it wants to do. But the Mountgrange developer Director Manish Chande has said from the beginning that it is an all or nothing development and without the hotel gaining The Royal Mile address, i.e. the demolitions, it won’t go ahead.

Despite the angry words and tears from the community when the Planning Committee with pound signs in their eyes voted through the proposals the community and heritage groups have vowed to fight on. They are campaigning for the Scottish Ministers to call in the plans due to the risk the World Heritage site could be put at, the loss of council housing and the land deals the council entered into without going on the open market or consultation. There is also a call for a Public Enquiry. So the fight is not finished. Get involved.

[1] For further information contact www.eh8.org.uk or follow the daily blog on www.independentrepublicofthecanongate.blogspot.com

http://www.scottishcommons.org/do cs/commongoodguide_v4.pdf

LETTERS

Iraq war 5 years on

It seems strange to consider it now but the plan to invade Iraq was once viewed in the corridors of power in the West as a very clever idea that could do wonders for the people of the Middle East.
What has become a by-word for barbarous enslavement of a population - death, destruction and misery - was once the subject of hopeful speculation and theorising in the journals of sometime liberals and former leftists.
The ‘Observer’ newspaper became a vital conduit for military placed pro war propaganda whilst left commentators like Nick Cohen relentlessly painted the Iraqi President Saddam as the Middle East Hitler who had to be removed using the benign might of the West’s armed forces.
We were told that aid for the population would arrive to the cheering Iraqis as soon as Saddam’s army was dealt with.
Of course not everyone believed the lies.
On February 15th 2003 the biggest simultaneous demonstration in human history saw 20-30 million people across the world marching to try and stop the impending war.
In every city on every continent the young and old, manual workers and academics, school students and old age pensioners raged against a war nobody except the US and UK governments wanted.
Thousands of meetings, rallies and school strikes took place but the invasion of Iraq had been a massive strategic decision taken by the US and Britain.
The only thing that could have halted the war at that point was an international general strike of workers involved in transporting and deploying the huge forces now involved.
In the 5 years since the launch of the war, every one of its justifications has turned out to be a carefully woven web of lies, deception, falsified documents and made up intelligence.
Speaking in the Scottish Parliament 3 years after the invasion in 2006, SSP national convenor Colin Fox set the record straight; "As this Parliament well knows, the Scottish Socialist Party opposed the indefensible, illegal military aggression in Iraq from the beginning. We did not accept the opinion that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; that was bogus. We did not accept that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq; that was bogus. They exist on the Clyde—that is a fact—but they did not exist in Iraq."
So why did the Americans and British invade Iraq?
Yes they wanted the oil, yes they wanted military bases in Iraq but the invasion and occupation were to be something much more than that.
It was to be a grand imperial statement to the world, and more importantly to the forces that the US regards as its enemies.
It was a moment of supreme self confidence by the mightiest force the planet has ever seen; the US military industrial complex and its smaller franchises across the globe.
With a relatively small frontline military force but with the machinery and supplies of a colossus, the US would invade the historic home of the Arabs and install a regime of its choosing. There would be no significant opposition, indeed the locals would be positively overjoyed to be conquered by the white man.
The bellicose ultra right wing US politicians who were given the levers of power in the strongest military – state apparatus the human world has ever seen were going to teach the whole world a lesson, in particular all those who opposed the plans of imperialism.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
When I interviewed a then Baghdad resident about what had happened when the American troops appeared for the first time, they were incredulous that I had asked the question; “My brothers went and got their weapons and fought them. Of course.”
The idea that the Iraqis would do anything other than resist the occupation of their country by the Americans and British had been the subject of intense pre-invasion propaganda in the West but after only a few weeks of being under occupation the Iraqis rose up.
Why on earth did anyone think they wouldn’t ?
5 years on the 21st century Crusaders have been fought to a standstill by those Iraqis who rose up in opposition to the brutal, sadistic occupation, the imperialist victors pulled down into the morass of the sectarian bloodbath they unleashed on arrival in Baghdad.
For those who march on the 5th anniversary of the war there can be no delight that it has come to this.Far from it, we are sickened by the nightmare that has been the fate of Iraq and the Iraqis following the invasion.
But having predicted the disastrous consequences of war we are entitled to demand of the government that ignored us in 2003 listen to us 5 years later in 2008 and we demand nothing less than the unconditional ending of the occupation of Iraq by the occupying powers.

US sucks the blood and oil out of Iraq

IF there were ever any doubts as to the main reason why the US invaded Iraq five years ago these have been removed by the economic policies that Bush, Blair, Brown and co have imposed on the Iraqi people.
Iraq has the third largest known reserves of oil in the world. When the two of the largest other known reserves are in Venezuela and Iran, countries which are ideologically hostile to the US you begin to understand the real reason for the invasion of Iraq.
Given the high dependence of the US domestic, commercial and industrial sectors of the economy on oil and predictions that global peak oil production is estimated to be reached at any time between five and fifteen years from now, the Bush regime was keen to secure both as much of the reserves as possible and the supply pipe lines.
These are the real reasons for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Iraq reserves and production of oil offered the only real hope to the Iraqi people rebuilding their country after years of sanctions and war that as well as killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis has destroyed the infrastructure of their country.
But the introduction of the Hydrocarbon law in Iraq in 2007 will mean that the oil and the revenues from it will end up in the pockets of western companies particularly US companies. The legislation was imposed under heavy pressure from the US government.
They basically said that heads would roll if Iraqi legislators did not pass the law.
The law promotes productionsharing agreements, which can last for between 25 to 40 years. There are stabilisation clauses which mean that the Iraqi government will not be able to change tax rates or pass any new laws that affects Western oil company profits.
It in reality passes the control of the oil to western oil companies. It takes away Iraqi sovereignty over their own oil and is a form of privatisation.
Through the law western oil companies will be able to take up to 75 per cent of the profits from oil production.
There is not even any competition from western oil companies for the oil exploration and production contracts. The US government have insisted on ‘sole-source bidding’
For example, Halliburton a US oil company with close links to present and past US administrations was awarded a multiyear contract worth almost $20billion without any rival bids!
At the same time the US and UK governments are spending thousands of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the free-market rules have not been applied to oil companies with close ties to the US government they have been applied to Iraqi economy and companies.
The Coalition Provisional Authority led by Paul Bremer, abolished tariffs on imports to Iraq and capped corporate and income tax.
This led to a general asset stripping of the Iraqi economy and exposed Iraqi firms to free competition when they had been devastated by the war leading to many closing down and the resultant unemployment of Iraqi workers.
The US and the UK governments have stripped the Iraqi people of both their dignity and their economic wealth.
We should expose to as many people as possible the full-scale of their crimes in Iraq and support those fighting back against this robbery.
The Iraqi oil workers are involved in resisting Bush and Brown’s plans for robbing the Iraqi people of their oil.

[1] You can find out about their campaign and offer support by visiting the Hands Off Iraqi Oil website at www.handsoffiraqioil.org

Cannon fodder and guinea pigs

From the mud of the Somme to the dust of Afghanistan the British state has always a steady job available for the Scots. Cannon Fodder.
In took just a few decades to transform the savage highlanders put to the sword by Butcher Cumberland at Culloden into the kilted heroes of the thin red line, loyal servants of the empire.
It’s a myth which has put down deep roots as was witnessed by the recent furore about the future of “our” Scottish regiments and the current media froth about soldiers getting jeered when walking out in uniform.
And of course we are still all dazzled by the media blitzkrieg on the role of the gallant Prince Harry in facing down the Taliban as he operated a phone link with RAF and US bombers.
Of course Harry’s cover was blown, to the sound of much synthetic anger from the generals, put on the next plane home pressing the start button on the ‘Brave lads in Helmand’ media blitz.
Not so lucky are the 1,300 Scottish troops are to be sent to Afghanistan from four of the five regular battalions of the recently formed Royal Regiment of Scotland who are bound for the deadly Helmand province shortly.
It is thought unlikely that any of the Jocks whose names become known to the Taliban will be flown out to enjoy a pint in Glasgow as the flashguns fire.
The latest deployment comes with a rising tide of gloom among NATO chiefs about the fact that they are in danger of losing the war amidst bitter recriminations that many of the NATO allies are unwilling to get involved in fighting.
Nor is there any better news from the other storm centre in imperialism so called “war on terror” Iraq.
Last year - in a different era - when Gordon Brown was popular and an election seemed likely— readers will remember a grinning PM striding among the desert fatigues and tanks in Iraq.
It didn’t get quite as crass a Bush’s infamous “Mission accomplished” but the message was clear, our boys have done their bit and the Brits are going home.
But the back peddling is underway just as we mark the fifth year of this bloodstained US led disaster.
On the pages of the house journal of the officer’s mess, the Daily Telegraph, those well placed sources reveal that far from cutting the troop numbers they are likely to remain the same.
What is coyly described as “uncertainty” over the security situation in and around Basra - code for we are losing - is given as the reason to maintain British troops at the present level.
Top commanders and defence ministry bureaucrats are due to meet this week and are likely to press the hapless Des Barlinne to keep the troops in Iraq.
They are thought likely to demand the full deployment of 7th Armoured Brigade in June, keeping overall troop levels at 4,000 amidst warning that cuts below that level will mean that all the Brits will be able to do is guard themselves.
The generals in London are growing increasingly concerned about the scale and cost of keeping a major force of 4,000 in Iraq and more than double that in Afghanistan.
And in a startling expression of the simmering resentment felt by what many officers feel about Brown’s spin on the war the commanding officer of the elite Scots Guards Lt Colonel Willie Wantin told the Telegraph that a reduction was “unrealistic”.
Another officer said: “We have invested so much blood and treasure in this mission that it would be criminal to risk it.”
Still amidst the smoke of battle the Whitehall warriors moved to ensure that, whatever else, their would be role for the Scots as guinea pigs for the war machine.
They announced that a five-day firing trial of Challenger tank ammunition tipped with highly controversial depleted uranium is to take place close to the scenic artists’ town of Kirkcudbright on the Solway.
Often compared to St Ives the sleepy Solway town has hosted an army tank range since WW2 and thousands of DU shells have been fired into the sea where they infest the seabed.
For many years the tales told by the military spin doctors was that such shells were only fired through paper targets thus falling safely below the waves with leaving no radio activity on land.
But four years ago pictures appeared showing real tanks at the range with shell holes which it is widely claimed were inflicted by DU munitions.
What is still clear that whether it is in the hills of Helmand or the leafy lanes of Kirkcudbright, the streets of Basra or the seas around Faslane, soldier or Guinea pig, the empire still needs you for its war machine.

Arms companies make a killing

by Ken Ferguson

STARTLED MPs are surprised at the soar away costs of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan as the US’s faithful poodle.
The supposedly well informed parliamentarians - most of whom prattle on about the ‘great job’ done by British imperialism war machine - appear to be surprised that alongside the immense human costs in injury and death war also costs money.
It seems to have escaped their notice that, as the dust of the Twin Towers settled and the ‘war on terrorism’ was launched, against the trends shares in arms firms rocketed in value.
In the US, which sits at the heart of war drive, military spending has gone ballistic.
In 2005 US war spending totalled $269billion, up from a modest $154billion in 2001 and budgeted military spending for 2007 was $563billion, with another $100billion unbudgeted spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, totalling 30 per cent of the US national budget.
In Blair’s modernised UK, arms exports totalled $1.9billion in 2004, putting the UK 4th in the world arms dealing league.
British Aerospace, now called BAE Systems Plc, the world’s fourth largest arms firm, earned $20,344million in military cash in 2004.
In what no doubt Labour ministers would tell us is business as usual BAE notoriously supplied Hawk aircraft to Indonesia, which they used in attacks on East Timor while its subsidiary Royal Ordnance has been accused by Amnesty of supplying torture equipment.
Other top UK arms companies include Rolls Royce with military sales worth $3,069million in 2004 and QinetiQ, the privatised Defence Research Agency with a healthy $1,399million).
BAE chief executive Mike Turner is living proof that war is a profitable business with a pay cheque reported as to £4.1million this year.
Given the super profits involved it is no surprise that our ultra business friendly government does it bit to keep the death dealers in business.
In Whitehall DESO (Defence Export Services Organisation) employs 500 civil servants to oil the wheels for arms sales around the world and promote the arms industry’s interests across government.
This old gunrunners club is further boosted by the ‘revolving door’ system which sees top politicians and civil servants retire from government only to resurface as arms dealers.
One such is Lord Levene, former government Chief of Defence Procurement, and now Chairman of General Dynamics UK and President of the arms firms lobby group the Defence Manufacturers Association.
From the political side comes the wellfed Tory Lord Soames who was a Tory defence minister and now puts his expertise in death dealing to work as a non-executive director of Aegis Defence Services.
The gunmen will, of course bombard us with propaganda about how many jobs are provided and how they are making a killing for Britain.
But it is taxpayers who pick up the bills for the “numerous urgent operational requirement orders” generated by the wars waged in Iraq, Afghanistan for equipment, ammunition and other kit.
Big ticket items include Bulldog FV430 armoured cars which have been designed to protect troops from roadside bombs while the vast amount of ammunition used stands in sharp contrast to then minister John Reid’s prediction that our boys in Helmand would not “need to fire a shot.”
It is the context of this boom that BAE has bought the US tank maker Armor Holdings and reported last year that its booming order book rose £1.5billion to £31.7billion.
The link between the super profits of the death dealers and the supposed “war on terror” is spelt out clearly by BAE themselves who told shareholders:
“The high tempo of military operations continues to generate growth in requirements for land systems in support of US and UK armed forces deployed on overseas operations,”
As has always been the case, death pays a dividend.

TORTURE THE AMERICAN WAY: INSIDE ABU GHRAIB

The Voice has a proud record of covering the events that have unfolded during the Iraq War. Here we reprint an interview from issue 234 from our correspondent in Iraq
UNTIL the US-UK invasion of Iraq, the name Abu Ghraib would have meant nothing to the outside world. A district of around a million habitants 12 miles west of Baghdad, its main claim to fame was the location nearby of Baghdad International Airport.
Abu Ghraib was also the home territory of Haj Ali-al-qaysi, known as Haji Ali. He was a mukhtar, or a village priest, in his mid-40s. He made a modest living by running a parking lot and picking fruit.
Then on 13 October 2003, his life changed forever. At around 11am that morning he was suddenly bundled into a jeep by American troops and taken to the al-Amiriya US detention centre.
After a few days he was moved to another jail nearby, the notorious Abu Ghraib jail, where he was given a prison number: 151617.
On arrival, he was subjected to intimate body searches by a number of US soldiers, both men and women. Ali tells of hands being thrust into “very sensitive places”.
This was to prove a foretaste of the nightmare that lay ahead.
After being fingerprinted and photographed, Ali was taken to a filthy toilet where he was interrogated.
The first question put to him by his US captors was, “Are you Sunni or Shia?”
They went on to accuse him of shooting at US soldiers. He pointed to his twisted, disabled fingers, which means he is unable to handle a gun.
Undeterred, his interrogators demanded information about Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Again Ali tried to reason with his captors asking:
“How can I know them directly? I am a poor man. I only know them from seeing them on TV.”
The next stage of the questioning stepped up the pressure with the US soldiers demanding that he give them names of resistance fighters.
Whether or not they were guilty was immaterial - they just wanted names: “If there’s anyone you hate, just give us their names.”
Ali replied: “I do not know anyone in the resistance and I do not hate anyone and I cannot give you innocent names.”
Events then took a sinister turn with the soldiers threatening to take him to Guantanamo Bay. Or to “the special jail no-one can survive in, not even the dogs”.
Ali told us: “After some days they took me with other prisoners by truck to another part of the jail.
“They tied our hands behind our back and they put plastic bags over our heads, except for one prisoner, because he was blind.
“Every five minutes the truck stopped and they took some of prisoners out.
“When the truck reached the final stop, there was only one other prisoner with me.
“The US solders start shouting and kicked us off the truck. We were now in different part of the prison they called ‘Fish land’. Those here were the ones the Americans called the ‘big fish’.”
He describes the living conditions in this part of the prison. “The area was divided into groups of five tents, with 40 to 50 prisoners in each tent.
“That meant about half a metre for each prisoner. There was barbed wire around each group of tents, then a 12 metre high wall.”
According to Ali the food was dreadful. Sometimes the prisoners were kept hungry and thirsty, especially during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when food was deliberately served at times when the prisoners were required to fast.
They provided just 60 litres of water a day to share among 40 prisoners - around one and a half litres per prisoner. This was their daily ration for drinking, washing themselves and washing clothes.
Three hundred prisoners had to share just three filthy toilets. Sometimes this meant waiting hours in a queue.
“From 300 prisoners if anyone was late at morning roll call, all of us were punished. We were not given any food for the rest of the day, or we kept standing for many hours.”
Ali then describes the interrogation techniques used to torture and humiliate the prioners.
“When they tortured me they took me to a special place for that and they forced me to take all my clothes off.
“They put the plastic bag on my head and put chains on my hands and legs then ordered me to go upstairs.
“I couldn’t, so they kicked me and beat me on the face with my shoes. They insulted me, then forced me to go upstairs again.
“When I tried to go up, they poured dirty water on my face and urinated on me and wrote on my body with pens.
“I was naked and they beat me on my sensitive places with M16 rifles and pistols.
“The flashes of camera told me that someone was taking photographs.
“After that, they took me to the special room - room number 4. All the prisoners in that room were naked - some of them were kept like that for three months.
“The US soldiers called this ‘the reception party’.
“They tortured the prisoners in front of us in this room and they forced us to watch. That night, we couldn’t sleep.
“A female soldier asked one of the prisoners, who was an Imam, to fuck her. When he refused, she wore a fake penis and did that to him in front of our eyes.”
Ali was taken back for a further torture session some days later, in the presence of 12 to 15 soldiers, both male and female.
“They put the plastic bag on my head again and then attached the electricity cable to my hands and made me stand on an oil-can. Then they turned on the electricity.
“When I fell down they brought in an American doctor to check me. He said I was OK.
“They repeated that many times till I fainted. Again I saw camera flashes.
“One of these pictures became the most famous picture in the world, the symbol of Abu Ghraib.
“This is American democracy and freedom. Thank you, America,” says Ali sarcastically.
Haj Ali saw many prisoners being tortured. “One of them, called Talib, was with his father, Abu Zaid.
“They tortured his father in front of his eyes and they tortured him in front of his father.
“One day when Talib wanted to go to toilet they put a plastic bag on his head and they laid his father down in front of him.
“He didn’t know his father was there and did it on his father’s body.”
Another prisoner was a 75-yearold Imam in a Fallujah mosque.
Ali refuses to reveal which mosque out of his respect for this Imam.
“They tied him by his own beard his beard for a long time and forced him to wear women’s underwear. The US soldiers took pictures for him and were laughing.”
Another Imam called Barakat was with his five sons. They forced the youngest of the sons to kick the one older than him, and the older one to kick the next one above him. The oldest son was forced to kick his father.
Haj Ali estimates that at least 90 per cent of prisoners detained in Abu Ghraib and other detention centres are innocent.
But he also believes that many are turned into resistance fighters as a result of their horrific experiences and often take up arms when they are eventually released.
Haj Ali himself has channelled his anger into the Association of the Victims of American Occupation Prisons.
Its aims are to highlight torture and abuse in Iraqi prisons, support the families of those in jail, and assist prisoners after their release.
Ali is coming to Europe on October 1st and 2nd for a conference in Italy organised by the European Peace and Anti-war Movement.

Everythings gone green

The 11th Hour, directed by Nadia Conners
Leila Conners Petersen. Out 21 March

by Jack Ferguson

AMONG the highlights of the recently finished Glasgow film festival was the new film from Leonardo di Caprio. But instead of cross class romance on a sinking boat or Shakespeare with cars and guns, this time he’s tackling global warming and the ecological crisis.
Leo has for a couple of years identified himself in public as an environmentalist, but until he made The 11th Hour the most prominent manifestation of this was his driving a hybrid car.
To his credit, he’s now put his money where his mouth is and put his cash and celebrity name behind a major documentary about how humans and the Earth came to be facing a massive ecological crisis.
His own contribution is low key, narrating and providing continuity between a series of expert talking heads who go on to give some clear and interesting ideas. The idea according to di Caprio is to use his fame to bring attention to what these people are saying.
So the film itself isn’t exactly action packed, but if you’re up for a more educational cinema experience then it’s definitely worth a watch.
That said, the expert commentary is often accompanied by breathtaking and beautiful images of the natural world, and sadly the damage we are doing to it.
The contributors range from climatologists and leading scientists like Stephen Hawking, to indigenous leaders of Native Americans and Arctic peoples testifying to the destruction of the environment where they live, to some “environmental entrepreneurs” whose contribution is a wee bit more suspect.
When explaining the reasons behind how we got to this point the film is excellent. One of the main ideas explored is that humans historically lived on only the energy that was coming to Earth by the Sun currently. But since we learned to use fossil fuels in the Industrial Revolution we have been living on the energy of millions of years of ancient sunlight that was trapped by plants that were then fossilised and turned to coal, oil and natural gas.
This has led to us being able to do far more than before economically, but has also meant unprecedented pollution and destruction of the natural world. We now have to adapt our society and develop technologies that will allow us to live only on the energy coming from the sun, the wind and the waves without having a disastrous drop in living standards.
Some of the people speaking in the film clearly identify the major political forces that stand in the way of us making the changes we need to survive. They point to how big corporations have used their money and political funding to capture control of the democratic process so that both major parties, both in Britain and the US, serve their interests rather than the people’s.
They examine how the throwaway culture of capitalism co instantly creates new commodities to generate more profits, and make people feel like they need them by promoting psychological insecurity via the massive advertising industry.
However, the film sadly stops short of following these important points through to their logical conclusion-that these powerful forces must be taken on and defeated if we are to survive the ecological catastrophe engulfing planet Earth. One of the key messages that is put forward in the film, and by Leonardo di Caprio in promotional interviews, is that: “You make a vote every time you buy something. By buying something you are saying ‘I endorse this companies policies.’”
This shows a glaring ignorance of the experience of most ordinary people in the supermarkets, struggling to make sure all their ends are met on poverty wages. I don’t endorse any of the businesses I buy the essential of daily life from, I buy from them because they’re the ones I can afford!
The film has an accompanying website called, www.11thhouraction.com with more information and encouraging people to get involved in the green movement. While I don’t have a problem with what’s being proposed, if you glance at some of the key actions proposed it’s more of the same personal, lifestyle changes that we’ve heard we should make for years-buy local, change your light bulbs, and even “Tell your mayor to use a bike”!
The problem isn’t with these things as such, but the fact is that as long as the big corporations and the ruling class view the Earth and everything in it as their property to be exploited, however much energy I as an individual use, or waste I produce, it’s going to be dwarfed by them and their pursuit for profits. If we want to really stop climate change, we have to tackle the powerful people who are primarily responsible for it happening in the first place.
The confusion is perhaps not helped by the participation of “environmental entrepreneurs” like Paul Hawken, who see going green as one big business opportunity. One of the speakers, ex-CIA boss James Woolsey, compares the eco crisis to the crisis the US faced in World War 2, and how quickly the American economy came out of the Depression to mobilise for war. This was of course followed by the biggest boom in capitalist history after the war, that made possible things like the welfare state and the NHS. It’s clear that a section of the ruling class sees a big opportunity for capitalism to get working again through green technology and things like carbon trading. Tragically though, as long as the aim of society and the economy is profit, these technologies just won’t be enough.
That said, some truly inspiring and exciting alternative technologies, from ecologically sound building techniques to using fungus to clean the polluted earth, are explored, and clearly there are a lot of people who know about solutions to our current crisis, if only we can build a political movement that allows them to do it.
I don’t know how widely The 11th Hour will be released in Scottish cinemas, but despite some of it’s political confusions around solutions, it does an excellent job of explaining the problems facing our civilisation. It’s well worth SSP branches getting hold of a copy to watch and then discuss afterwards, as even the criticisms we might have of it help inform our ideas and understand what role we can play as political activists in ensuring the survival of humanity. Given time the Earth will recover from the damage of industrial capitalist civilisation.
But it won’t be on a human timescale, and it may be too late for us unless we act decisively now to change how we live, work and consume.
As Chief Oren Lyons, a leader of the Six Nations Native American peoples says in the film: “It will regenerate. The rivers, the waters, the mountains; everything will be green again. Because the Earth has all the time in the world. But we don’t. Love the place you live in.”

The Wild Brunch
Keef Tomkinson

Keef casts his eye across life’s more leisurely pursuits in order to put a wee bit of CULTure into our lives.

Classified Ministry Of Defence: 123J7FG
Subject: Debrief of Second Lieutenant Harry Windsor.
Date: 2 March 2008. Interviewer: General Major Bertrand Stampson
10.50am: debrief begins.
GMBS: Before we begin this debrief would you like to say anything?
SLHW: I’m not a hero.
GMBS: I didn’t say you were.
SLHW: Yes, but I am just saying that I am not.
GMBS: Ok. We have that recorded on your statement.
SLHW: Fine.....and I just want to say I am just one of the guys.
GMBS: Second Lieutenant Windsor, I can confirm I will be asking the questions and that you will have time at the end of the debrief to say what you are or are not.
SLHW: Just as long as people know that I am n...
GMBS:Windsor! Can you first confirm your role in the Afghanistan operations?
SLHW: I was an air controller with the Blues and Royals. I directed supply aircraft to various bases. They would be delivering copies of The Sun, Mars bars and Des Browne.
GMBS: Did you assist in the control of combat aircraft?
SLHW: Yes. Regularly I would order attack helicopters and bombers to various village for the strategic disarming of enemy combatants and their support network.
GMBS: Disarming and support networks. Can you elaborate?
SLHW: Gunning down and families.
GMBS:Were you involved in any frontline action?
SLHW: Yes, my unit was involved in a reconnaissance operation towards no man’s land in the Helmand province. After two days in an advanced position I finally got an opportunity to make contact with the enemy.
GMBS: How did this contact manifest itself?
SLHW: I shot at them.
GMBS: Their reaction? And what developed?
SLHW: The elderly man leading them was startled and retreated with the younger men. We continued to fire until they were out of range. My commander then requested a bombardment on their position.
GMBS: You say there was more than the one elderly man. How many and what did they do in face of the bombardment?
SLHW: There were six others. They reacted to our defensive measures by appearing incredibly concerned, confused and dead.
GMBS:Was it at this point that you became detached from your unit?
SLHW: Yes.
GMBS: Can you provide all the information you can on this matter?
SLHW: I went to urinate in private surroundings. Private Surroundings objected to this so I sought another spot. While relieving myself my unit came under sniper fire and retreated to safer position. Left behind I made my way to a gully until they returned. Whilst hiding there I stumbled across a Taliban terrorist who was also hiding in some bushes. We were both unarmed – I had left my rifle where I had been urinating.
GMBS: You were missing in action for three days. How did you escape him?
SLHW: I didn’t. He did not speak English and I do not speak Taliban. We did not attempt communication for hours but he shared his food and water while I offered him a spare Swastika. After a day we helped each other build a shelter and make a fire. After a few days he was my guide back to my base camp. At that point I offered him as a prisoner.
GMBS: That situation sounds like old Lee Marvin film where he is a marine stuck on an island with a Japanese soldier.
SLHW: Paint Your Wagon?
GMBS: Err, no. Hell in the Pacific. Thank you for your time Second Lieutenant Windsor. Would you like to add anything before I close this debrief.
SLHW: I’m not a hero.
GMBS: Nobody said you were.
11.13am: debrief ends.

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Cracks setting into SNP coalition

Nick Henderson

IS the SNP coalition beginning to fall apart?
With the SNP’s Christopher Harvie, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife’s vicious attack on the entire town of Lockerbie, and a smouldering rant against the young people of Scotland for ‘looking scruffy;’ the tweeded professor has began to pull apart the fragile Nationalist coalition.
The SNP is not a party in the traditional sense, a group of people bound together by a common ideology, but instead it’s a ragtag collection of people across the country with but one idea in common - independence.
Not that independence seems to be much of a holy grail for the Nats anymore.
You would think, what with being Nationalist and all, they would be demanding a Scottish head of state and a Scottish monetary system; rather than the quasi-autonomous dominion status that Salmond has proposed.
After all, Linda Fabiani is screaming for the Lewis chess pieces to be returned to their home and native land. Christine Graham has adopted a new Scottish imperialism of late; to see Berwick merged back into the South of Scotland. But why on earth would they want to ‘come back’ with the attitude that some members of the governing party have, calling a proud small town in Southern Scotland, ‘a dump?’
So would Mr Harvie and the other fiercely regionalist Nationalist MSP’s welcome an influx of new citizens and territory anyway? “Well they’re not local!”
In the end, the SNP skeleton is made up of the Tartan Tories; short sighted, localist politicians; ‘centreleftists’ who don’t like Labour, student Nationalists who can’t quite get it together to believe in something radical, the Alex Salmond fan club and closet Republicans; all held together by Salmond with a carrot and a stick. This is where the SNP coalition begins to disintegrate.
Fundamentally - Nationalism is not an ideology that can be readily applied to domestic politics.
It is more of a state of mind - of projecting your nation and its ‘greatness’ onto that of the rest of the world.
All these competing interest groups and more cannot survive together for very long when the one thing that keeps them together, independence, is stuck in a closet with the party factions beginning to turn on each other.
We got a brief peek into the dark machinations of the SNP with the rise and fall of the leadership of John Swinney. But now they have a country to run, everyone has to keep their mouth shut in gratification and reverence to Salmond, who has managed to get them all a shot in the ministerial cars for the next four years.
More seriously, we are starting to see the political realities of being ruled by a party which has no moral or ideological compass, an obsession for gaining more and more power and consolidating that power, then using it to reward their political supporters and punish the opposition.
The transport minister, Stewart Stevenson has hatched a plan to spend £22million on a pilot scheme to slash the cost of ferry services to and from the islands by 50 per cent.
Fantastic idea! Oh no wait, its just to the Western Isles, the constituency the SNP took from Labour in the last election. And those who live on Orkney and Shetland are going to have to pay through the nose to get to and from the mainland because they never elected the SNP.
I put this to a student Nationalist the other day, “Well there are always winners and losers in Politics.”
Yes, that’s true, but there is something very rotten at the heart of any government when legislation is passed to reward the ‘winners,’ and the losers are the political opposition.

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Latin America on the brink

By Andy Bowden

AS if the world needed a descent into another catastrophic war, within recent weeks the key US ally Colombia almost brought no less than three Latin American states into conflict; Itself, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Thankfully at time of writing, the threat of war appears to have dissipated with leaders from all three nations declaring the issue “resolved”.
But how and why did the threat of war appear so rapidly?
There has been a concerted drive by Chavez, France and other forces in Colombia and internationally to find a negotiated settlement regarding the release of hostages within FARC (the rebel Colombian guerrilla army) captivity, that include a former Colombian Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.
Betancourt has a French passport and obtaining her release has been a focus for French President Nicholas Sarkozy.
Despite the Colombian Governments deliberate sabotage of any negotiated settlement - dismissing Chavez from his position as a negotiator between the Colombian Government and the FARC - four hostages were released by the FARC largely due to Venezuela’s influence.
So in an open attempt to derail any further negotiations, the Colombian military responded by violating Ecuador’s sovereignty, crossing the border and killing several FARC guerrillas - one of whom was Raul Reyes, the FARC’s second in command.
The timing of the attack was no accident; Reyes was killed the same day he was due to meet French negotiators, to negotiate a possible release of Betancourt.
The attack by the Colombian military was therefore a calculated attempt to derail any peaceful attempts at negotiation and return the arena to the Colombian Governments preferred field - military action.
In response to the Colombian military’s invasion, both Ecuador and Venezuela recalled their ambassadors to Colombia, and moved troops to the border with Colombia, to deter any further military interventions.
It was not only the ‘usual suspects’ of Venezuela, Ecuador and of course Cuba that condemned the invasion of Ecuador, but virtually all Latin American nations disapproved of the Colombian Governments actions.
In a response worthy of New Labour, Colombia then “revealed” what were supposedly secret FARC documents retrieved conveniently from the raid into Ecuador - which showed that not only did the FARC have links to the Governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, but that Venezuelan President Chavez himself had authorised $300 million to the guerrilla group. But arguably the biggest “bombshell” revealed by these super-secret documents was the existence of a FARC “dirty bomb” - so that’s where the weapons of mass destruction are!
From the unbelievable to the totally ridiculous the Colombian Government then demanded that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez be put on trial for genocide!
This is particularly hypocritical considering that Colombia has the highest rate of murders of Trade Unionists of any country in the world.
Thankfully in the face of worldwide pressure, and disbelief at such obvious fabrications, Colombia has been forced to back down.
This episode has backfired tremendously for the Colombian Government, exposing the true nature of its ‘democratic’ government which would prevent any negotiated settlement that leads to release of hostages to maintain an unwinnable war against the FARC, and potentially lead to invasions of Ecuador and Venezuela.

Pressure Mounts On Musharraf

THE two big winners in the Pakistan election have sealed a deal which lays the basis for a coalition government and ups the pressure on military strong man Musharraf.
Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated Benazir Bhutto, and Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Nawaz Sharif, whose last government was ousted in Gen Musharraf’s 1999 coup, announced their pact after talks at the resort town of Bhurban in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The duo pledged to reinstate judges dismissed by Musharraf but as they met police in the capital Islamabad clashed with protesters outside the residence of sacked chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who Musharraf suspended exactly one year earlier and accused of conspiring against him.
Riot cops in riot gear fired tear gas after some protesters tried to cut through barbed wire at concrete barricades blocking the entrance to sacked Chief Justice’s house In the election the Pakistan People’s Party won 120 seats in the 342-seat National Assembly, followed by the Pakistan Muslim League-N with 90. The pro-Musharraf former ruling party received just 51 seats.
The two party leaders declared a breakthrough on two key issues - the composition of the coalition and the future of the judiciary.
Mr Sharif said that his party would be part of a federal coalition led by the PPP, which is expected to name its candidate for prime minister this week.
In return, Mr Zardari agreed that the new parliament would pass a resolution within 30 days of its formation to reinstate dozens of judges who were sacked by Gen Musharraf when he declared a state of emergency last year.
Progressive forces in Pakistan including the Labour Party Pakistan boycotted the elections and take the view that this assisted the anti Musharaf vote to be expressed in as united fashion.
Some 18 mass rallies were held by the pro boycott All Parties Democratic Movement and all were solidly anti Musharaff in tone and the APDM parties are now pressing the two coalition parties to demand Musharraf’s resignation.
The position of the left was put by the LPP’s Farooq Tariq who wrote:
“LPP along with other Left parties will continue to press demands for the total isolation of military from politics. Those responsible for atrocities under military dictatorships be brought in peoples courts, a real accountability for the generals in politics.
“The vote on 18 February is vote of no confidence on Musharaf policies. PPP and PMLN must change the course of economic policies of Musharaf. Otherwise, with a brief period of honeymoon, they will be seen as those who have betrayed the wishes of masses.
“The parties of the rich and capitalists, the PPP and PMLN have been able to capitalize on anti Musharaf feelings of the masses. They cannot go very far on the dictations of IMF and World Bank. There is no other alternative but to build a party of the working class. That is what Labour Party Pakistan is all about.”

Public Sector Fights Back

ON 17 and 18 March, over 90,000 workers in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) will stage strikes across the UK, picketing and marching against another savage assault from New Labour and their puppets in the DWP Executive Team.
These workers are mostly low paid, and stressed out from coping with additional workload after 30,000 of them have already lost their jobs in recent years. But they are also facing renewed job insecurity with the announcement of a Business Plan that includes 12,000 further job losses and closure of another 200 offices (on top of the 600 already shut down).
Civil servants have been targeted, demonised, smeared and attacked by New Labour in a succession of announcements and measures, particularly since Gordon Brown’s proclamation of 104,000 job losses in July 2004, when MPs infamously cheered to the rafters at his declaration of war.
Chaos for those in need of help with benefits in the country’s most deprived communities has been the result of Labour’s slash and burn programme. Centralisation of offices and expansion of the Call Centre culture means the sick, disabled, pensioners, unemployed, workers and parents find it almost impossible to actually meet a human being that can deal with their urgent cases.
As one JobCentrePlus worker told me, “There is a terrible move away from decent customer services. In the past these new offices were punted by the government as one-stop offices where people of working age - but also retired people - could get face-to-face advice.
“Now people who drop in are being chased back out again, being told the benefit Delivery centre’s number, or at best being offered an appointment in a day or two’s time. When people are enquiring about a missing benefit payment, that delay can be absolutely horrendous for those living on the breadline to start with.”
Increasing delays in benefits payments even led recently to food parcels being handed out, in Stirling.
As staff cuts impact, backlogs of casework mounts up. Phone calls go unanswered. Frustration and anger sometimes boils over into abuse towards staff. Stress levels have rocketed.
Centralisation of offices means increased travel to work times, which has cut into family life.
And their financial reward?
Management imposed a paycutting 3-year deal in their November wage packets, which means 40 per cent of DWP staff get zero rise this year and a pathetic 1 per cent in 2009. This in the same department where £2.67billion has been squandered on private contracts. Where bosses enjoy chauffeur driven cars. Where consultants consume hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money.
And all that is before this new offensive!
These members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) are entirely justified in striking back. And given their employers’ increased reliance on them working overtime - precisely because of job cuts! - they are right to launch an overtime ban.
Gerry McMahon, Glasgow DWP and a member of the PCS Scottish Committee, told me how he feels.
“This strike is no longer only about pay. The announcement of 200 office closures, of which Scotland will get its share, makes it vital members support the action like never before.
“The actions of New Labour on closing offices are an outrageous waste of huge sums of taxpayers’ money.
“New Labour spent tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions, transforming DHSS offices and old Jobcentres into JobCentrePlus Offices. Even before the refurbishment programme is completed, New Labour adopt a slash and burn policy of closing offices, many which will only recently have been refurbished. You couldn’t make it up!
“On pay, it is the long serving staff who are treated most shabbily. Staff on the maximum will get no pay increase in 2008 and 1 per cent in 2009. This will be a pay cut of around 10 per cent in real terms over the three years.
“For members close to retirement this will be even worse; their pension is based on their last 3 years wages, so this will mean their works pension will be cut in real terms too.
“Many other groups of workers have pay progression, council staff for example. “However the funding for their progression comes separate from their yearly cost of living increase. In DWP and the wider civil service this is not the case. Any progression increases due to junior staff has to come from the yearly allocation from the Treasury. For example the Treasury remit for pay in the civil service this year was around 3.2 %. PCS reckon 2.5 per cent of this was used to fund pay progression for junior staff. PCS are rightly calling for a separate allocation of cash to fund pay progression.
“We are not alone. Loads of departments have taken action against poverty pay, such as coastguards, DVLA and many others. There can be no peace until we get a settlement in DWP. We must unite with other departments taking action where possible to pressurise the government.
“We need national pay, to end the vast differences in pay for doing the same job in different agencies or departments. It is good enough for nurses and teachers, so why not civil servants?
“And the money wasted on consultants could easily keep all offices open, cancel the job cuts and give a decent pay increase to all DWP staff.”
It’s not just the JobCentrePlus offices that are in chaos from cuts.
Pension centres are also dealing with mounting mayhem and rising stress levels.
As a Pension Centre worker in Scotland told me, “Masses of work has been shunted into Dundee and Motherwell offices. A few dozen extra staff are taken on and we are meant to deal with a workload transferred from offices that have been shut down in England, each of them involving hundreds of staff. It’s a nightmare, for staff and people relying on the pension service alike.”
And workers in the Child Service Agency are confronted with staff cuts and horrendous difficulty in gaining access to flexible working arrangements ñ a bitter irony, given that this agency is supposed to aid the support of children and families!
PCS members are enraged by the growing gulf between rich and poor. Bosses’ pay rose by 37 per cent last year - to an average of £2,875,000 for the fat cats at the top of the FTSE 100 top firms.
They wallow in incomes 99 times that of their workers!
This obscene class divide is further highlighted by two reports last week. One in four Scottish children live in poverty - contrary to the bogus (and feeble) New Labour promises to halve that figure by 2010. And the Forbes magazine Rich List declared Britain now has 49 billionaires - headed up by the Duke of Westminster, ‘worth’ £7billion!
The fact is that the latest assault on DWP staff is designed to enrich the rich even more. The obnoxious DWP Business Plan is based on the Freud Report on the welfare state; where David Freud stated, “JobCentrePlus is a model of public service delivery” - but then went on to recommend privatisation!
Why? Because, as he let slip in the same Freud Report, “Welfare is a £4billion market.” So there you have it, straight from the government’s hired horse’s mouth: poverty and welfare is to increasingly become a source of enrichment for the rich, who are already engorged from the privatisation of huge chunks of the public sector.
Recently, 33 contracts for the Pathways to Work scheme were put out to tender. Out of the 33, private companies were awarded 31. Only two went to charities, which are being used as a smokescreen for the butchery of the welfare state through privatisation, which the Freud report was used to ‘justify’.
This is a crude drive towards cost-cutting and privatisation. The strikers deserve widespread public support. The Scottish Socialist Party has consistently stood with PCS members in every resistance to Labour’s crazed, Thatcherite drive to slash the public sector, public services and workers’ conditions.
We will campaign on the streets and in the workplaces alongside these workers to defeat Labour’s reckless vandalism of public services, and continue to champion a different kind of society, one where people come before profit, where well-paid, secure jobs and expanded public services are funded by taking the ill-gotten wealth of the billionaires into public ownership.
We will sustain the fight for a decent national minimum wage for all over 16, of at least £8 an hour, instead of the public subsidy given to employers to keep paying low wages, through the Tax Credit system.
And rather than drive people back to the dark ages of the workhouse, of reliance on charities for handouts, or of vultures from the private sector growing fat on benefits delivery, the SSP stands for a society where the safety net of a decent welfare state is funded from taxation of the wealthy and public ownership and control of the vast natural, industrial, financial and land resources of the country.