Torture “now routine”

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

22 October 2012

It is becoming increasingly evident that torture is now routinely used by the armies of the self-styled civilised states of the west.

The exposure of the torture of prisoners by US troops at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004 let the cat out of the bag.

At first we had the routine military-manual evidence-free reaction from the authorities that the perpetrators were “just a few bad apples”.

But since then the evidence has been piling up that the use of torture is standard western military practice. Scads of states allied to the US in the “war on terror” – not least in Europe – have been assisting America in the transport of suspects around the world to be tortured secretly in the dungeons of states outside the reach of the rule of law. This is the anodynely named “renditions” programme.

Now Colonel Nicholas Mercer, formerly chief legal adviser to the British army in Iraq, is reported as saying last week that UK complicity in the unlawful treatment of detainees was “institutional”.

In a report in the London Guardian on 19 October 2o12, he claimed that the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) blocked his attempts to set up independent judicial monitoring of the treatment of detainees.

Giving the annual Baha Mousa memorial lecture on 18 October 2012,  Colonel Mercer is reported as saying that Britain’s obligations under domestic and international law were routinely ignored.

According to the newspaper report, Colonel Mercer described how he was gagged after he criticized senior British commanders and MoD officials in connection with the case of Baha Mousa, who died while in the custody of British troops.

The Wikipedia report on the death of Baha Mousa says:

“On 14 September 2003, Mousa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist, was arrested along with six other men and taken to a British base [in Iraq]. While in detention, Mousa and the other captives were hooded, severely beaten and assaulted by a number of British troops. Two days later Mousa was found dead. A postmortem examination found that Mousa suffered multiple injuries (at least 93), including fractured ribs and a broken nose….”

An “inquiry into his death found that Mousa’s death was caused by ‘factors including lack of food and water, heat, exhaustion, fear, previous injuries and the hooding and stress positions used by British troops – and a final struggle with his guards’. The inquiry heard that Mousa was hooded for almost 24 hours during his 36 hours of custody by the 1st Battalion of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment and that he suffered at least 93 injuries prior to his death. The report later details that Mousa was subject to several practices banned under both domestic law and the Geneva Conventions.”

“A final 1,400-page report said a ‘large number’ of soldiers assaulted Mousa and that many others including officers must have known about the abuse. The report called this death an ‘appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence’. The inquiry condemned the Ministry of Defence for ‘corporate failure’ and the regiment for a ‘lack of moral courage to report abuse’.”

 

A single soldier, Corporal Donald Payne, has admitted inhumane treatment in connectio with this case.  He was jailed for only one year and dismissed from the army.

 

Antigone1984:

The authorities have a standard procedure for dealing with allegations of torture. These include:

  • Denying the allegations outright;

 

  • Suggesting that the allegations have been fabricated either by the enemy or by parties with a grudge who want to discredit the army;

 

  • Claiming, without producing any evidence, that if anything untoward occurred only a handful of troops were involved and stating at the same time, again without providing any evidence, that the “vast majority” of troops are angels and wouldn’t hurt a fly;

 

  • Setting up a long-drawn-out inquiry, internal if possible, in the hope that (a) the investigators, mindful of the army’s reputation, will fail to uncover any incriminating evidence  and (b) that the media will have lost interest before the inquiry reports.

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Iraq, Torture, UK, USA | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A damp squib

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

21 October 2012

The little dog barked, but the caravan continued on regardless.

                                                                                          Anon.

Yesterday was a fairly wet day in London but that is not why the trade union march against austerity turned out be, predictably, a damp squib.

The protest was doomed before it started.

The aspirations of the organisers – the trade union umbrella body, the Trades Union Congress – were so low that it is a miracle the march got going at all.

The TUC had clearly called the protest demonstrate to trade union members that their generally moribund unions were “doing something” to counter-act the current attack by the state on the living standards of the middle-classes and the poor ( or “the 99 per cent”, to use the terminology of the “Occupy” movement).

Britain’s trade unions have largely sat on their hands for at least the past fifteen years as Tory and so-called Labour governments, nominally opponents but allies in reality, have competed with one another to slash workers’ wages and pensions, jack up the minimum retirement age – the “work till you drop” programme – and, worst of all, strip the sick and disabled of social benefits, forcing chemotherapy patients with terminal cancer out into the streets to search for non-existent jobs.

The current UK government, headed by Dave “Flashman” Cameron, has out-Thatchered Thatchered in its determination to go down in history as the most brutal administration since the vicious anti-worker Tory governments of the 1920s.

What has been the reaction of the British trade unions? Sweet fanny adams. Trade union bosses have mostly continued to collect their own substantial pay packets while turning to look the other way as British workers are frog-marched into unprecedented austerity by the corporate fat cats whose interests alone the current government represents.

According to the organisers, the London march attracted more than 150 000 participants. However, this is a big declination compared with the turn-out of more than 250 000 at a similar anti-austerity rally in March last year.

There were no reports of any violence or any arrests.

The meekness and good behaviour of the London demonstrators  – in contrast to the more robust protests that have taken place recently in Greece, Spain and Portugal – have proved conclusively to the UK authorities that they have nothing to fear from the British working-class, which is not going to do anything significant to resist the government’s austerity drive, the object of which is nominally to reduce the government’s budget deficit but in reality to sell off public assets and services to government supporters in the private sector.

The march in London followed the time-hallowed pattern: a long walk followed by a rally at which assorted bigwigs preached predictable sermons to the faithful. You could see it as a sort of church service for unbelievers. After such rallies, the marchers invariably go home and brew a pot of tea. That is the English way of protest. The effect on the government is nil – necessarily so, moreover, since if the protests looked likely to be in any way effective, the authorities would ban them. The main object of the day of action has nothing to do with putting pressure on the authorities. It is to encourage solidarity and stimulate a vague feel-good sensation among participants. Seeing the long lines of fellow marchers with their banners, balloons and brass bands, participants could be forgiven for thinking that the whole country was behind them. It is. Far behind.

It is impossible not to be struck by the contrast between the limp-wristedness of protest in Britain and the definition of revolution set out by Mao Zedong in his lapidary Little Red Book: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

One thing at least is clear:  Britain is not on the cusp of revolution.

Mind you, protesters in Britain have good reason to be cautious these days when exercising their common law right to protest. The English judiciary has, in recent times, shown especial viciousness, we would argue, towards those who have sought to question the status quo. Young people, many from poor backgrounds, who got caught up in the riots in London last autumn, received harsh jail sentences meted out with exceptional alacrity. People who have voiced non-conventional opinions on social media have also been imprisoned. Fines have been imposed on British Muslims who have demonstrated peacefully against the invasion of Muslim countries in the Middle East and Central Asia by America, Britain and a ragbag of other US satellites.Only this week an east London resident, Trenton Oldfield, was sent to gaol for six months for disrupting the prestigious Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the Thames in April last year on the grounds that this was an elitist event inappropriate at a time of increasing inequalities.

One sign that yesterday’s march was not serious was the decision by the organisers to invite Edward Miliband to address it. Miliband, a former minister in the Thatcherite government of Anthony Blair, Labour Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, is now himself the leader of the so-called Labour Party. Just like Flashman’s Tories, Miliband is actually in favour of the austerity programme. Only we shall cut back more slowly, he claims. It is like having to choose between two executioners: Flashman will polish you off lickety-split, Miliband will throttle you in a more leisurely fashion. In the England of King Henry VIII and “Good” Queen Bess a swift beheading was generally held to be preferable to being hanged, drawn and quartered.

Yet this is what the rally – desperate for a gesture of hope in the current trough of despond – heard yesterday from the Leader of the Labour Party:

“I have said whoever was in government now there would be some cuts, but this government has shown that cutting too far and too fast, self-defeating austerity, is not the answer. It is not the answer to Britain’s problems.”

To give the crowd its due,  this remark was greeted with a round of well-merited boos.

The question must be posed: why was Miliband, a proponent of austerity, invited by the TUC to speak at an anti-austerity rally?

The answer is simple: since at least the time of the rightist Hugh Gaitskell, who was Labour Party leader 1955-1963,  with a few notable exceptions the trade unions in Britain have unfailingly fallen into line with the decisions of the leadership of the pro-capitalist Labour Party. They have religiously backed the Labour Party, financially as well as electorally, whatever anti-worker policies that party has adopted as it moved steadily to the right.

One encouraging chink of light on a generally grim day was the reception given by the crowd to Bob Crow, a rail union leader, and Mark Serwotka, of the Public and Commercial Services union, who called for a General Strike.

Last month the TUC’s annual conference – one suspects much against the wishes of the TUC leadership – backed a motion calling for “consideration” of a General Strike. Note that they did not actually call for a strike. The motion was supported by Britain’s three largest unions: Unite, Unison and the GMB. The TUC is now taking soundings among its member unions on the practicalities of staging such a strike and to find out whether they have the appetite for such a radical step.

The TUC brings together a total of 54 trade unions covering six million trade unionists. However, this is only half the number of members that were affiliated to it in the 1970s (when, as it happens, Antigone1984 was actively involved in labour relations).  Membership has haemorrhaged as a result of globalisation, unemployment, and the casualisation of labour (or what capitalist apologists call “flexibility” or “structural reforms” in the labour market).

Unsurprisingly, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber  has been quick to pour cold water on the prospect of a general strike. You see, a general strike is not something that you will find Edward Miliband coming out in favour of any day soon. And main raison d’être of any TUC general secretary, in our view, is to snuff out any hint of trade union rebellion against the wishes of the Labour Party top brass.

Speaking to the BBC in a report published yesterday, Barber said he did not think a general strike was likely. “Some of my colleagues may talk about that,” he said. “I don’t hear too many people calling for a general strike.”

Barber is to retire shortly but don’t expect much change from his successor. The TUC has form when it comes to backing away from radical action. The last General Strike in Britain took place in 1926. It was called to support a strike by coal miners opposing pay cuts. After initially agreeing to a General Strike in support of the miners, the TUC unilaterally called off the action after eight days against the wishes of the miners and without obtaining any concessions from the government. The miners continued their action single-handed but eventually caved in under pressure. Many strikers were sacked and some never worked again.

The march in London yesterday was coordinated with other equally pointless demonstrations organized by trade unions in Glasgow, Scotland, and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Greece, Politics, Portugal, Spain, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“No human rights on battlefield”

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

20 October 2012

British soldiers who die or are injured in action cannot sue their government under the country’s Human Rights Act, the UK Court of Appeal has ruled in a judgment reported today in the London Guardian.

According to the newspaper, the court accepted the UK government’s claims that the battlefield was beyond the reach of the human rights legislation.

The case involves soldiers injured in the Iraq War (2003-2011) and the families of others killed there.

However, while ruling out legal action on human rights grounds, the court did reportedly allow the plaintiffs go ahead with claims for compensation from the government on the grounds that it allegedly failed to provide the soldiers with adequate equipment, thus exposing them to unnecessary danger.

Plaintiffs unhappy with the human rights aspect of the ruling may appeal to the UK Supreme Court. If that court rules against them, then as a last resort they can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Antigone1984:

The UK Appeal Court may well be right. The UK Human Rights Act may be drafted so narrowly as to exclude compensation for death or injury on the battlefield.

However, all human beings have inalienable rights at all times and in all places, even in outer space. Even when fighting on active service, they remain human beings and therefore retain their human rights.

If the UK Human Rights Act excludes the battlefield from the remit of human rights, then it is the act which is at fault and which should be redrafted. No legislation, wherever adopted, can take away rights which are universal and inalienable.

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Europe, Iraq, Justice, Military, UK | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ee, ba gum!!

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

19 October 2012

Incredible but true. This is a story of the blind shooting the blind. It raises the question of whether police authorized to fire dangerous weapons should be able to see clearly before being let loose on the public. You would think the answer to that question is obvious. Not in the North of England, it ain’t.

On 12 October 2012 an innocent blind man was shot in the back with a 50,000-volt Taser by police in Chorley, Lancashire, after they mistook his white stick for a samurai sword.

Colin Farmer, aged 61, who used to run an architects’ practice, was in Peter Street on his way to meet friends when police struck.

Farmer said: “The Taser hit me in the back and it started sending all these thousands of volts through me and I was terrified. I mean I had two strokes already caused by stress. I dropped the stick involuntarily and I collapsed on the floor face down. I was shaking and I thought ‘I’m going to have another stroke any second and this one is going to kill me. I’m being killed.’”

Farmer was subsequently taken to Chorley Hospital for check-ups.

Lancashire police have apologized to their victim but said that after receiving reports that a man was walking through Chorley with a samurai sword they had sent out patrols to look for him. After Tasering Farmer, police subsequently arrested a 27-year-old carrying a samurai sword. He is suspected of being drunk and disorderly.

Farmer has made an official complaint to the police and is said to be taking legal action. Apparently, he wants the officer involved to be charged with assault.  The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the case.

However, the police officer who fired the Taser has not been suspended from duty.

Antigone1984:

Either Lancashire police need to have their eyes tested or they should pay an educational visit to a museum of Japanese culture in order to learn what a samurai sword looks like. Maybe, while they are about it, they also need to go to an old folks’ home as well so that they can find out what a walking-stick looks like.

As the Lancashire saying goes, “Don’t some mothers ‘ave ‘em!”

In normal circumstances, unlike in many other countries, police in Britain are traditionally unarmed. However, because of the perception of an increased threat from terrorists as a result of the invasion of Muslim countries this century by the West, guns and other controversial weapons, such as Tasers, have increasingly been deployed by police forces in Britain.

Less seriously, one cannot help but wonder whether Japanese swords are not a popular accoutrement now among men-about-town in provincial Lancashire, but then “it’s grim up North” and the natives no doubt have to do something to amuse themselves.

Editorial note:

According to the 10th edition of The Chambers Dictionary, a Taser is “a small gunlike device which fires electrified darts or barbs” for the purpose of immobilizing or stunning the person targeted.

A samurai was the military retainer of a Japanese feudal lord (daimyo).

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Japan, Police, UK | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Stoic’s take on the vanity of fame

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

18 October 2012

EST  MOBILIS CELEBRITAS

…..τὸ δοξάριόν σε περισπάσει; ἀπιδὼν εἰς τὸ τάχος τῆς πάντων λήθης καὶ τὸ χάος τοῦ ἐφ᾽ ἑκάτερα ἀπείρου αἰῶνος καὶ τὸ κενὸν τῆς ἀπηχήσεως καὶ τὸ εὐμετάβολον καὶ ἄκριτον τῶν εὐφημεῖν δοκούντων καὶ τὸ στενὸν τοῦ τόπου, ἐν ᾧ περιγράφεται….

Πᾶν τὸ καὶ ὁπωσοῦν καλὸν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καλόν ἐστι καὶ ἐφ̓ ἑαυτὸ καταλήγει, οὐκ ἔχον μέρος ἑαυτοῦ τὸν ἔπαινον: οὔτε γοῦν χεῖρον ἣ κρεῖττον γίνεται τὸ ἐπαινούμενον. τοῦτό φημι καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν κοινότερον καλῶν λεγομένων, οἷον ἐπὶ τῶν ὑλικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τεχνικῶν κατασκευασμάτων ῾τὸ γὰρ δὴ ὄντως καλὸν τίνος χρείαν ἔχει; οὐ μᾶλλον ἣ νόμος, οὐ μᾶλλον ἣ ἀλήθεια, οὐ μᾶλλον ἢ εὔνοια ἢ αἰδώς᾿: τί τούτων διὰ τὸ ἐπαινεῖσθαι καλόν ἐστιν ἢ ψεγόμενον φθείρεται; σμαράγδιον γὰρ ἑαυτοῦ χεῖρον γίνεται, ἐὰν μὴ ἐπαινῆται; τί δὲ χρυσός, ἐλέφας, πορφύρα, λύρα, μαχαίριον, ἀνθύλλιον, δενδρύφιον;

“.…does the bubble reputation distract you? Keep before your eyes the swift onset of oblivion, and the abysses of eternity before us and behind; mark how hollow are the echoes of applause, how fickle and undiscerning the judgments of professed admirers, and how puny the arena of human fame….

“Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself, and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise. This applies even to the more mundane forms of beauty: natural objects, for example, or works of art. What need has true beauty of anything further? Surely none; any more than law, or truth, or kindness, or modesty. Is any of these embellished by praise, or spoiled by censure? Does the emerald lose its beauty for lack of admiration? Does gold, or ivory, or purple? A lyre or a dagger, a rosebud or a sapling?

These are two extracts  from the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius, who was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD.  The first extract comes from Book  4,  Section 3, the second from Book 4, Section 20.   The original Greek has been translated by Maxwell Staniforth and is published in the Penguin Classics series. The Meditations (“Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν”,  literally “thoughts/writings addressed to himself”) are a locus classicus of Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy of life based on an acceptance of the natural order of things and indifference to pleasure or pain.

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Greece, Italy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Silver spoon

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

17 October 2012

“I’m not here to defend privilege, I’m here to spread it.”

That’s what the UK’s Tory Prime Minister, Dave “Flashman” Cameron, told his party’s annual conference last week.

Oh dear!

It is true that Cameron knows a thing or two about privilege.

A lineal descendant of King William IV, who reigned from 1830 to 1837, he attended Eton College, England’s top school for toffs, afterwards swanning up the Thames to the ivy-hung quadrangles of Brasenose College at the prestigious University of Oxford. The son of a wealthy stockbroker, after Oxford he segued effortlessly into public relations and then politics, the old school tie proving no handicap at all to advancement.

Despite his privileged educational background, Flashman’s elementary ignorance of English history was exposed last month when he appeared in the United States on David Letterman’s television programme, The Late Show.

When questioned, Cameron did not know who composed the music for the well-known British patriotic hymn “Rule, Britannia!” – it was Thomas Arne, who lived from 1710 to 1778 – nor did he know the meaning of the Latin words “Magna Carta”, the name given to the charter of political rights agreed at Runnymede in 1215 AD between a reluctant Bad King John and his rebellious Barons. This historic document, known to every school child, is seen as the foundation-stone of civil liberties in England.

Now it seems that Cameron’s knowledge of the English language is not what it should be. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “privilege”, inter alia, as “a special advantage available only to a particular group”.

The Prime Minister apparently wants to spread it around.

But, self-evidently, not everyone can go to Eton, which educates some 1300 boys between the ages of 13 and 18.

Moreover, if scads of people have privilege, it can’t any longer be defined as privilege. He’s got the wrong word.

As Groucho Marx said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”.

And that’s not all. Cameron begins his remark by saying: “I am not here to defend privilege.”

Well, if he is not defending privilege, why then does he want to spread it around? Why does he want to spread around something he does not want to defend?

Oh dear! Sounds like he’s got his knickers in a twist.

All this hardly redounds to the credit of Cameron’s alma mater, Eton College, which must be squirming at the public gaffes of its alumnus.

Commenting on Cameron’s remark, Sara Starkey, a reader of the London Guardian, in a letter published in the newspaper on 11 October 2012, said:

“I am fed up to the back teeth that some are born with silver spoons in their mouths and the rest of us are supposed to be grateful for polishing them.”

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Harmonious fists

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

16 October 2012

GLEICHSCHALTUNG

Germany is heading towards a new Grand Coalition between the country’s two leading political parties, the right-wing Christian Democrats (CDU) and the right-wing Social Democrats (SPD), in next autumn’s elections to the lower house of the German Parliament (the Bundestag), according to predictions based on the latest opinion polls.

Opinion polls carried out by the Forsa Institute suggests that the CDU will get 36 per cent of votes cast and the SPD just over 30 per cent – enough to give a comfortable working majority to such a coalition.

This would be the second  CDU/SPD Grand Coalition with CDU leader, Angela Merkel, as Chancellor (Prime Minister).

If the coalition does come about following the elections in September 2013, Merkel’s partner in the coalition is likely to be the new SPD boss, Peer Steinbrück, who was Finance Minister in the last Grand Coalition from 2005 to 2009.

The current government in Germany is a lesser coalition between the CDU and the smaller Liberal Party (FDP), which is expected to do badly in the 2013 elections.

Antigone1984 comments:

The avowed purpose of a Grand Coalition is to reduce the influence of representatives of the minor parties – the Pirates, the Greens, the Liberals (FDP) and the Left (Die Linke) – and so prevent, as far as possible, any views other than the status quo being voiced in parliament.

The message to the electorate is: “There is only one possible point of view and that is ours.”

Another Grand Coalition is on the cards because the policy differences between the CDU and the SPD are imperceptible. An adviser to Peer Steinbrück is reported as saying that the political difference between the CDU and the SPD was “thinner than a sheet of paper”.

Antigone1984 has expatiated at length on the hollowing out of democracy represented by the homogenization – Gleichschaltung – of party political policies. In western so-called democracies, political parties fight not on the basis of differences of principle or policy, because there are none: they have no principles and their policies are identical.

That there is genuine competition between the parties at the hustings is undeniable. But the object is not to provide the electorate with alternative political options. The aim is to secure as large a parliamentary majority as possible, thus giving the party cupola as much power as possible vis-à-vis the other parties, and also, not unimportantly, to pay off the party’s loyal rank-and-file apparatchiks with as many lucrative parliamentary seats and sinecures as possible.

It is interesting that eleven months before the German parliamentary elections the two main parties appear already to be brazenly jettisoning any pretence that they will be competing on the basis of different political objectives.

For a more in-depth analysis of this subject, readers might like to check out the article mentioned in item 2 below: “Partitocracy v. Democracy”.

Editorial note:

CDU:  Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands

The CDU is active in 15 of the 16 German Länder. In the sixteenth, Bavaria, it is allied with the CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern).

SPD: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands

FDP: Freie Demokratische Partei

———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Germany, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Back to basics: Communism

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

15 October 2012

“We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy – the form of state suited to capitalism – and to the inevitable and ‘natural’ character of the most monstrous inequalities.”

Extract from The Communist Hypothesis written by radical French leftwing philosopher Alain Badiou and first published (as L’hypothèse communiste) in France by Éditions Lignes in 2009. The English version was published in UK in 2010 by Verso. Badiou was born in 1937 at Rabat in Morocco. Trained in mathematics, he holds the René Descartes chair of philosophy at the European Graduate School at Saas-Fee not far from Zermatt in the Swiss canton of Valais (Wallis).

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in France, Philosophy, Politics, Switzerland | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Anglo-French sea-battle mars Europe’s peace prize

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

14 October 2012

It is ironic that the Nobel Committee decided to award its annual peace prize to the European Union (EU) in a week which saw French and British fishing fleets fighting each other in the English Channel.

On 11 October the London Guardian reported the conflict from the British point of view, suggesting that it was French boats which commenced hostilities. We have no report giving the French point of view.

The fight took place against a background of EU quotas, which threaten fishermen’s livelihoods by limiting the amount of fish that can be landed in the interests of preserving already dwindling fish stocks.

According to the Guardian, British fishing boats were dredging legally for scallops off the French port of Le Havre when they were attacked with rocks thrown from French fishing boats, which allegedly tried to block their path.

At the height of the conflict, around eight British fishing boats were said to be involved as against 40 from France.

According to the British fishermen, in addition to throwing rocks, the French fishermen tried to damage the engines and propellers of the British boats by throwing nets at them. One British crewman was injured by a rock.

A French naval vessel was called to the scene but apparently refused to intervene.

At around the same time that the sea-battle was raging off the French coast, the Nobel Peace Committee was preparing to announce  that its annual peace prize would this year go to the European Union, of which Britain and France are both member states.

The award reflected the committee’s view that the EU had helped transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace.

It is true that since the foundations of the current 27-member European Union were established in 1952 no member state has gone to war with another.

While the pro-EU lobby claims – and the Nobel Committee clearly believes – that this is as a result of the existence of the EU, it has no way of proving that this would not have happened anyway without the creation of the EU.

Eurosceptics (like Antigone1984) can argue plausibly that by 1945, after two major worldwide conflicts, the countries of the continent, bankrupted by war, were simply tired of fighting and had lost the stomach for hostilities.

The Nobel Peace Committee is based in Oslo, Norway, a European country which, ironically, could have opted to join the European Union but decided against it.

Thorbjørn Jagland, chair of the Nobel Committee, is quoted as saying: “The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to focus on what it sees as the EU’s most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights.”

The award has triggered disbelief in Greece. Vast numbers of of Greek citizens consider that, by imposing intolerable austerity on Greece, the EU is waging an economic war against their country.

That view finds an echo in a recent article by David Priestland, who lectures in modern history at Oxford University.

Writing in the London Guardian on 13 October 2012, Priestland says: “The introduction of the euro changed the EU from an institution that used economic integration to promote peace to one that is sacrificing peace on the altar of free-market economics. Brussels is being rewarded for its pacific past at the very moment it is provoking civil strife.”

According to Priestland,  the European Union project has always had a strong element of anti-war idealism at its core, “though it would never have won a prize for internal democracy.”

However, he believes that since 2008, the catastrophic single currency has transformed the EU into a source of conflict and even violence. The euro, combined with financial deregulation, had allowed a massive build-up of debt in the south and now the bubble had inevitably bust.

“In Greece, we see Weimar-style polarisation and social breakdown. Southern Europeans denounce German ‘imperialism’ just as Germans once condemned the financial highhandedness of American ‘Jewish’ bankers. And yet as long as Brussels remains committed to the euro, dissension is bound to get worse. For the single currency stops southerners devaluing and exporting their way to growth.”

It is worth reflecting that it was this same Nobel Committee,  with Thorbjørn Jagland in the chair, that awarded its 2009 Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama – shortly before, authorising a substantial surge in troop numbers,  he stepped up the US war in Afghanistan.  New York Times columnist Yoni Brenner subsequently coined the verb “thorbjorning”, meaning to give someone a reward for something that they have not yet done.

Thorbjørn Jagland was briefly Norwegian Prime Minister from 1996 to 1997 when his performance was much criticized and even ridiculed. In addition to being chair of the Nobel Peace Committee, he is also currently Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. Unsurprisingly, he is said to be in favour of Norway joining the European Union.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Europe | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stardust politicians

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

13 October 2012

Continuing our exposure of the failings of so-called democracy in western countries, we cite in support an article by the right-wing former editor of the London Daily Telegraph Max Hastings.

The article in the London Guardian on 11 October 2012 contains a full-frontal attack on the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who is seen in Westminster as a strong contender to replace fellow Tory Party member David Cameron as UK Prime Minister if Cameron loses the next parliamentary election in 2015, as currently seems likely.

Hastings acknowledges Johnson’s wit, brilliance, showmanship and popularity with the public at large, but claims that he is unfit to be Prime Minister.

Describing Johnson as a “superlative exhibitionist”, Hastings claims that “he is “bereft of judgment, loyalty and discretion”.

Using Johnson as an example,, Hastings then lashes out at the decrepitude of democratic politics in today’s Britain.

“Only in the star-crazed, frivolous Britain of the 21st century could such a man have risen so high, ” says Hastings.

“One of our biggest problems as a society is that we have become obsessed by the X Factor culture. We no longer look for dignity, gravitas, decency or seriousness of purpose in our leaders in any field. We demand only stardust…

“I knew quite a few of the generation of British politicians who started their careers in 1945 – the likes of Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey, Edward Heath, Enoch Powell and Iain Macleod. The common denominator, whatever their party, was that they entered politics passionately believing they could change things. They were serious people. It does not matter whether they were wrong or right – almost all of them had real beliefs.

“Today most aspirant politicians of every party have not a  personal conviction between them. They merely want to sit at the top table, enjoy power, bask in the red boxes and chauffeur-driven cars, then quit to get as rich as Tony Blair.”

We have no comment from Boris Johnson but readers can assume that he rejects the negative picture of him painted by Hastings.

Here at Antigone1984 we are not particularly interested in Johnson at this stage – the next parliamentary election is not due to take place for another three years and a lot can happen in that time. However, Max Hastings’s general attack on the current generation of superficial stardust politicians we fully endorse.

Hastings’s article in the London Guardian appears to have originally featured in the London Daily Mail.

For a broader analysis of the current crisis in western democracy, readers might check out item 2 below: “Partitocracy v. Democracy”.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment