Politesse and context

Posted on January 5, 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. 

5 January 2012

Most of us are human beings. Yet how we are treated very much depends upon where we find ourselves at any particular time.

Between June and October 2011, according to the edition of Le Monde for 5 January 2012, the Paris public transport authority , which covers buses and trains (including the métro) in the Paris area,  spent 1.2 millions euros on advertising aimed at encouraging passengers to be polite to each other as well as to transport staff.

It has undertaken similar publicity since 1997, but last year, apparently, the campaign was strikingly successful in terms of the response from a travelling public which seems to have had enough of rudeness and bad manners.

Be that as it may, it is clear that travellers anywhere, not just in France, generally believe that they have a right to politeness and civility en route to and from their destinations.

Moreover, this expectation is not limited to travel. In shops, streets, parks and public spaces generally, most people prefer the oil of courtesy to lubricate their contacts with other people. And the fact is that, not always but often enough, they are treated with the courtesy that they expect to receive. Polite forms of speech are used to address complete strangers, such as “Can I help you, Sir?” or “Madam, would you like a coffee while you are waiting for your order to be processed?”

We can sum up this behaviour thus: human beings expect to be treated courteously and are often so treated in their non-producer role as citizens or consumers.

How different it is for most people at work!

The former British socialist politician, Eric Heffer, who died in 1991, famously opined that “democracy ends at the factory gates”.  The lack of courtesy shown by management to workers is an obvious symptom of this democratic deficit.

In their non-producer role citizens or consumers are relatively free agents. They have freedom of movement (provided that they have the money to pay for their carriage) and can choose how to use their leisure time. As consumers they are in a particularly strong position since they can choose whether or not to buy a particular product or service.  If the shopkeeper does not treat them courteously, he or she risks losing a sale.

How different it is in the office or on the factory floor! There the hierarchical principle governs all activity. There you are told what to do.  Faced with an order, you have only the choice of saying “yes”. Otherwise, you will lose your job and your salary and, as a result, your family will lose the roof over its head and the wherewithal to buy food.

Knowing this, employers are perfectly aware that they do not need to treat their employees with courtesy. So long as the employee is at work, he or she is effectively a slave to management – a “wage slave” is the term often used. Of course, some employers are wiser than to treat their workers with gratuitous incivility. So-called enlightened managements take the view that they may get a better yield from their human capital if they sugar the pill of authority with a saccharine coating. However, on the basis of many years of experience in industrial relations, we conclude that in general such employers constitute a minority. The vast majority of employers just don’t give a toss about the feelings or well-being of their “human resources’’.

By workers or employees we mean all those forced to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow at all levels in a business, including foremen and middle managers, up to but not including the board.

Accordingly, a shop worker may be treated with contempt in his place of employment. Yet if that employee goes into another branch of that same business and seeks, as a consumer, to buy one of his or her company’s products, they will be treated with the same courtesy as any other consumer. It is a wonder that more workers do not suffer from schizophrenia.

Yet maybe this contempt of management for their employees is a good thing.

Would one really want employees to be so molly-coddled by their managers as  to forget, even momentarily, that they are weighed down by chains?

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Cops and robbers

Posted on January 4, 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. 

We enjoyed this joke in the Guardian newspaper yesterday 3 January 2012. A bit early for April Fool’s Day (1 April), but a cracker none the less. It enables us to view the phrase “cops and robbers” from a new angle.

At least 944 serving police and community-support officers in England and Wales have a criminal record, according to the newspaper.

The story, attributed to the Press Association news agency, was based on figures released by 33 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales in response to freedom-of-information requests .

The officers in question are said to have convictions for offences that include “burglary, causing death by careless driving, robbery, supplying drugs, domestic violence, forgery and perverting the course of justice,” according to the report. “Among those with criminal records are two detective chief inspectors and one chief inspector.”

You couldn’t make it up.

The trouble is: it wasn’t made up. Yes, it’s true. No joke at all.

Thank goodness that, at least in our edition of the paper, the Guardian managed to tuck the story away in a single paragraph in the relative obscurity of an inside page. Think of the anxiety that might have been created throughout the land had this news actually been outed with the razzmatazz that it merited. Best keep these things low-key, don’t you think? No point in rocking the boat unduly.

We are still wondering, however, about the other 10 of the 43 police forces in England that did not, apparently, provide data on the number of officers with criminal convictions in their ranks? And what about Scotland and Northern Ireland?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

However, the opposite side of the coin is that the vast majority of police and community-support officers in England and Wales do not have a criminal record.

According to the Home Office statistical bulletin dated 22 July 2010, there were 143,734 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in the 43 police forces of England and Wales as at 31 March 2010.

Moreover, it is arguable that police officers should not be the only category of convicted criminal that is not entitled, after serving their sentence, to purge the stigma of their crime?

Editorial note: Humblest apologies to our Latinphobic readers – of whom we know to our cost that they are legion – for the quotation from Juvenal (Satires, No. 6, line 347).  How it got past the subs we cannot imagine. [For your diary: a blog is pending on the subject of Latin, Greek and allied controversies]

Posted in Ireland, Police, Scotland, UK, Wales | 1 Comment

Why? or How? That is the question

Posted on January 3, 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. 

Paris, 3 January 2012

To ask “why?” is to be a revolutionary.

To ask “how?” is to be a reactionary.

“Why?” is a word no authority ever wants to hear. It is a threat to their dominion.

“How?”, by contrast, is what every authority wants to hear. It is short for: “How, my Master, can I do your bidding? How, my Lord, can I obey your orders?”

“How?” is a question beloved of the slave, the conformist, the sheep in sheep’s clothing.

“Why?” is the question they asked in 1775, 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1905, 1917 and 1949.

Unfortunately, “why?” is not much used today. One might ask: “why not?”

Hamlet, act 3, scene 1, line 56:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

And by opposing end them?

——————-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Employing arsonists to put out the euro bonfire

Posted on January 2, 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. 

2 January 2012

Do arsonists make good firefighters? Maybe, but I can’t see many fire brigades signing them up.

It is a different matter when it comes to politics.

Let us consider the crisis in the eurozone.

When the euro was launched around the turn of the century, it was sold to  European electorates as the open sesame to economic prosperity, scientific innovation and social utopia. The siren voices of the europhiles drowned out common sense warnings that – in the absence of common taxation, spending and borrowing policies –  the uniform one-size-fits-all interest rates applied throughout the eurozone would inevitably exacerbate lopsided levels of economic development in the 17 eurozone countries .

And so it came to pass.

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Jacques Delors, Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt, who laid the foundations for monetary unity, have passed from the forefront of the stage, but one politician of the past who is still active is Guy Verhofstadt, Prime Minister of Belgium from 1999 until 2008. In an online report on 1 January 2012, Reuters reports Verhofstadt as saying: “One thing was evident to me from the beginning. A state can exist without a currency, but a currency cannot exist without a state.” Funnily enough, we have been unable to find any trace of Verhofstadt saying this at the launch of the euro in 1999. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In fact, euro-electorates were sold a pup. In every country where the euro has been introduced, it has led to a massive increase in prices, particularly of basic commodities.  A spate of temporary economic growth followed, fuelled, in the eurozone’s peripheral countries, by a frenzy of borrowing to take advantage of the eurozone’s low interest rates (deliberately set low to facilitate German exports).  Since much of the credit borrowed went into real estate, property prices rocketed to unsustainable levels. The bubble has now burst and the result is depression and austerity. The euro has led participating countries not into the promised El Dorado but into economic catastrophe.

What is the solution? According to the Europhiles, the solution is “more Europe”. “We did not go far enough last time,” they now say. “This time we need to unify not only our economies, but also our taxation, spending and borrowing policies. We need a single economic government for the eurozone. Then all will be well. Then we shall have our cake and eat it.”

Given that they were wrong last time – with catastrophic consequences for the

peoples of Greece, Spain and Italy, to name just the victims to date – why should anyone believe that they will be right this time?  The euro-bureaucracy in Brussels has not changed. The politicians around at the launch of the euro have given way to a new generation, the generation of Merkel and Sarkozy, but this new generation is as much a worshipper in the tabernacle of the markets as was its predecessor. Euroland does not permit consideration of any alternative to market economics, even when the markets have manifestly failed.

The question we ask is this:  why should we trust those who pitch-forked the countries of Europe into this mess to be the ones that will get them out of it?

Moreover, what do the populations of eurozone countries now being railroaded into an “ever closer union” think of surrendering their national sovereignty? What do they think of their countries being consigned to the rubbish bin of history? Are they happy to be bit-players in a Europe directed by Germany with France as its sidekick?

Well, we are never likely to know. The plethora of events planned for 2012 with the aim of  setting  up a single economic directorate for the eurozone do not include any proposal to consult the people. This business is too important to be left to the vagaries of the ordinary citizen.

French and Dutch voters had the temerity to reject the proposed European Constitution, the forerunner of the Lisbon Treaty, in 2005. They were thanked for their pains by having the right to vote on the Lisbon Treaty taken away from them: it was railroaded through, instead, by pliant national parliaments.

The Irish electorate rejected the  Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in 2008. Because they had not voted correctly the first time round, they were compelled to vote a second time in 2009, when the Treaty was approved.  “What is the point of voting No again, “ said one voter. “They are going to make us vote until we say Yes.”

The last thing the euro-elite want is the people sticking their noses into matters which are none of their business, such as economic prosperity and national well-being.

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Posted in Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain | Leave a comment

Lessons from Mencius for Warring States

Posted on January 1, 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. 


Antigone1984.com                                                                             Paris, 1 January 2012

WARRING STATES

 

 

 

We begin the year 2012 with wars ending, wars continuing and wars about to start. The Iraq War has ended after nearly nine years – the length of the Trojan War – with the US army retreating ignominiously to Kuwait, its request to continue to use Iraq as a base for further military operations being rejected by the very puppet dictatorship it put in place. The US leaves behind an Iraq torn apart by sectarian and resource-linked strife and under the sway of an Iran that is currently Washington’s public enemy number one. The war saw 4500 US soldiers killed and 32 000 wounded.  Up to 600 000 Iraqis died, while an estimated 3.5 million Iraqis were displaced. Highlights of the conflict included the alleged war crimes committed at the siege of Fallujah in November 2004, the US torture factory at Abu Ghraib, the dehumanization of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, alleged British torture in Basra, etc.

The war in Iraq confirmed widespread predictions that it would be a replay of the 1964-75 Vietnam War (the US massacre of civilians at My Lai, the carpet bombing of Hué, etc).  The Americans, like the Bourbons, had learned nothing.

On 15 December 2011, at a departure ceremony in Baghdad, the US furled its flag. According to the Guardian newspaper (16 December), “The prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the president, Jalal Talabani, did not turn up to the ceremony, with uniformed US soldiers belatedly moved into seats carrying the two Iraqi leaders’ names.” It was the ultimate humiliation for a nation which had spent an estimated one trillion dollars on the war. At a ceremony at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on 14 December 2011, US President Barack Obama told a military audience that the country they were now leaving represented “an extraordinary achievement” and said that “everything that American troops have done in Iraq – all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has landed to this moment of success”, adding that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq” (Guardian, 15 December). The next day, 15 December, at the US leaving ceremony in Baghdad, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told the departing soldiers: “You will leave with great pride, lasting pride, secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside.”

A few days later Iraqi vice-president Tariq al-Hashimi fled from Baghdad to semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan after Prime Minister al-Maliki had branded him a terrorist. At the same time, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq was warned by Maliki to stay away from the Iraqi Parliament. Finally, on 22 December 16 bombs exploded in Baghdad. By the end of the day, 63 people had been killed and 185 injured (Guardian, 23 December).

This was the “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq” that America was leaving after nearly nine years of war.

Meanwhile, the US war in Afghanistan grinds on, US drone attacks on villagers being revenged by insurgent bombs in Kabul. As the year 2012 begins, the question is where the US war machine will strike next. Iran? Pakistan? All bets are off.

LESSONS FROM MENCIUS  

According to tradition, Mencius (Mengzi) lived from 372 to 289 BC. He was a peripatetic political philosopher who moved from state to state advocating ethical government during the chaotic and brutal Warring States period (403-221 BC) when seven states battled it out in China for supremacy. Mencius is usually considered a follower of Confucius (Kongzi), who is said to have lived from 551 to 479 BC.  But his relation to Confucius could be compared to that between Plato and Socrates. Just as it can be argued that Plato was the more significant of the two Greek philosophers, so, when one compares the meagre, cryptic, conservative views attributed to Confucius in the surviving texts, it can also be argued that Mencius, with his Keynesian economics (see paragraph 3 in the citations below) and his innovatory plea for morality in politics, was the real founder of Confucianism, the political ideology to which governments in China paid lip service for much of the last two millennia while paying scant heed to it in practice. China today, a dictatorship whose free-market economy is policed by the so-called Communist Party, has set up “Confucius Institutes” to spin-doctor the country’s image in western public opinion.  Plus ça change…..

However, we are launching this blog with a few quotations from Mencius not  in order to assess his contribution to Confucianism but rather in order to ask our readers whether they think he may have anything of value to say to our current warlords.

The passages, italicised and with a slight modification of the layout, are taken from Book I, Part A, of the 2003 revised translation of Mencius by D.C Lau published in Penguin Classics in 2004.

Liang, sometimes referred to as Chin, was one of the seven Warring States.

“1. Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang. ‘You, Sir,’ said the King, ‘have come all this distance, thinking nothing of a thousand li [a li is a little over 400 metres]. You must surely have some way of profiting my state?’

 

‘Your Majesty,’ answered Mencius. ‘What is the point of mentioning the world “profit”? All that matters is that there should be benevolence and rightness. If Your Majesty says, “How can I profit my state?” and the Counsellors say, “How can I profit my family?” and the Gentlemen and Commoners say, “How can I profit my person?”  then those above and those below will be vying with each other for profit and the state will be imperilled.

 

‘When regicide is committed in a state of ten thousand chariots, it is certain to be by a vassal with a thousand chariots, and when it is committed in a state of a thousand chariots, it is certain to be by a vassal with a hundred chariots. A share of a thousand in ten thousand or a hundred in a thousand is by no means insignificant, yet if profit is put before rightness, there is no satisfaction short of total usurpation. No benevolent man ever abandons his parents, and no dutiful man ever puts his prince last.

 

‘Perhaps you will now endorse what I have said, “All that matters is that there should be benevolence and rightness. What is the point of mentioning the world ‘profit’?”’

 

2. Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang. The King was standing over a pond. ‘Are such things enjoyed even by a good and wise man?’ said he, looking round at his wild geese and deer.

 

‘Only if a man is good and wise,’ answered Mencius, ‘is he able to enjoy them. Otherwise he would not, even if he had them.

 

‘The Odes say,

 

He surveyed and began the Sacred Terrace.

He surveyed it and measured it;

The people worked at it;

In less than no time they finished it.

He surveyed and began without haste;

The people came in ever increasing numbers.

The King was in the Sacred Park.

The doe lay down;

The doe were sleek;

The white birds glistened.

The King was at the Sacred Pond.

Oh! How full it was of leaping fish!

 

It was with the labour of the people that King Wen built his terrace and pond, yet so pleased and delighted were they that they named his terrace the “Sacred Terrace” and his pond the “Sacred Pond”, and rejoiced in his possession of deer, fish and turtles. It was by sharing their enjoyments with the people that men of antiquity were able to enjoy themselves……

 

3. King Hui of Liang said, ‘I have done my best for my state. When crops failed in Ho Nei I moved the population to Ho Tung and the grain to Ho Nei, and reversed the action when crops failed in Ho Tung. I have not noticed any of my neighbours taking as much pains over his government. Yet how is it the population of the neighbouring states has not decreased and mine has not increased?’

‘Your Majesty is fond of war,’ said Mencius. ‘May I use an analogy from it? After weapons were crossed to the rolling of drums, some soldiers fled, abandoning their armour and trailing their weapons. One stopped after a hundred paces, another after fifty paces. What would you think if the latter, as one who ran only fifty paces, were to laugh at the former who ran a hundred?

 

‘He had no right to,’ said the King. ‘He did not quite run a hundred paces. That is all. But all the same, he ran.’

 

‘If you can see that,’ said Mencius, ‘you will not expect your own state to be more populous than the neighbouring states.

 

‘If you do not interfere with the busy seasons in the fields, then there will be more grain than the people can eat; if you do not allow nets with too fine a mesh to be used in large ponds, then there will be more fish and turtles than they can eat; if hatchets and axes are permitted in the forests on the hills only in the proper seasons, then there will be more timber than they can use…..When those who are seventy wear silk and eat meat and the masses are neither cold nor hungry, it is impossible for their prince not to be a true King.

 

‘Now when food meant for human beings is so plentiful as to be thrown to dogs and pigs, you fail to realize that it is time for collection, and when men drop dead from starvation by the wayside, you fail to realise that it is time for distribution.

 

‘When people die, you simply say, “It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the harvest.” In what way is that different from killing a man by running him through, while saying all the time, “It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the weapon.” Stop putting the blame on the harvest and the people of the whole Empire will come to you.

 

4. King Hui of Liang said, ‘I shall listen willingly to what you have to say.’

 

‘Is there any difference,’ said Mencius, ‘between killing a man with a  staff and killing him with a knife?’

 

‘There is no difference.’

 

‘Is there any difference between killing him with a knife and killing him with misrule?’

 

‘There is no difference.’

 

‘There is fat meat in your kitchen and there are well-fed horses in your stables, yet the people look hungry and in the outskirts of cities men drop dead from starvation. This is to show animals the way to devour men…..If then, one who is father and mother to the people cannot, in ruling over them, avoid showing animals the way to devour men, wherein is he father and mother to the people?…

 

5. King Hui of Liang said, ‘As you know, the state of Chin [Liang] was second to none in power in the Empire. But when it came to my own time we suffered defeat in the east by Ch’i, when my eldest son died, and we lost territory to the extent of seven hundred li to Ch’in in the west, while to the south we were humiliated by Ch’u. I am deeply ashamed of this and wish, in what little time I have left in this life, to wash away all this shame. How can this be done?’

 

‘A territory of a hundred li square,’ answered Mencius, ‘is sufficient to enable its ruler to become a true King. If Your Majesty practises benevolent government towards the people, reduces punishments and taxation, gets the people to plough deeply and weed promptly, ….. then they can be made to inflict defeat on the strong armour and sharp weapons of Ch’in and Ch’u, armed with nothing but staves.

 

‘These other princes take the people away from their work during the busy seasons, making it impossible for them to till the land and so minister to the needs of their parents. Thus parents suffer cold and hunger while brothers, wives and children are separated and scattered. These princes push their people into pits and into water. If you should go and punish such princes, who is there to oppose you? Hence, it is said, “The benevolent man has no match.” I beg of you not to have any doubts.”

 

———————-

Acknowledgement

Our heartfelt thanks to the late Raymond Dawson (d. 2002), Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, who introduced us many moons ago to the Chinese Classics and to Mencius in particular, thereby inculcating a lifelong interest in the lessons of Chinese civilisation.

Posted in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, USA | Leave a comment

Subjecting police to democratic control

Posted on December 27, 2011 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. 


The row over the plan by UK Tories, the majority party in the country’s current coalition government,  to introduce elected commissioners to oversee the day-to-day operations of Britain’s police is likely to rumble on in 2012. The first such elections will take place next November.

On 10 May 2011 the Guardian newspaper reported “mounting concern from senior police officers, including the Metropolitan police commissioner, over the threat to their operational independence posed by elected commissioners”. This concern is said to have been shared by leading members of the Liberal Democrat Party, which is the junior partner in the governing coalition. The next day, 11 May 2011, as a result of a Liberal Democrat rebellion,  the plans were thrown out in the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Parliament). After its defeat, the Government said it would look to redress this setback in the House of Commons (the lower chamber). The Liberal Democrats subsequently caved in and the bill introducing the commissioners was passed in the Commons.

The controversy erupted during a year when the media succeeded in exposing the widespread long-term surveillance of radical green and leftwing groups by covert police spies posing as militant activists.

Antigone1984 believes that the octopus of police state UK is winding its tentacles ever more tightly round the liberties of innocent citizens as the juggernaut of covert surveillance barrels out of control. To reverse this, one thing is essential: the hitherto untouchable sacred cow of day-to-day police operational policing must be brought under direct democratic control. The string of instances of police excesses and errors in recent years demonstrates conclusively the need to strip the police of their absolute operational independence. Occasional fireside chats on policing policy between senior police officers and ministers are no substitute for direct democratic surveillance of   routine police operations.  As things stand, the police are effectively a law unto themselves and naturally they want to keep it that way. It is more than ironic that – on the grounds that this might result in representative oversight of operational policing – the libertarian Liberal Democrats have seen fit to challenge the proposal by their coalition partner to introduce democratically elected police commissioners.  While Antigone1984 believes that any move towards greater police accountability is a step in the right direction, it can see the danger of placing too much power in the hands of a single US-style police commissioner. For this reason, it favours the election of local police commissions, composed of at least 10 members, to oversee the day-to-day operations of local police forces. These commissions would not merely comment on police operations. They would supervise and control those operations as well as police budgets. Local police forces, from chief constables downwards, would be accountable to them and subject to sanction by them.

Posted in Police, UK | Leave a comment

The Common Market 50 years on: how we got into this mess in the first place

Posted on December 26, 2011 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. 

THE ECONOMIC ORIGINS

Today’s European Union (EU) was the brainchild of a former brandy salesman, Jean Monnet, who launched the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. This became the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market in 1958. The Common Market was based on two key policies: state support for farm production and an  increasingly liberalised market in industry and services. Over the half a century since then, however, supporters of agricultural subsidies have lost ground to the free traders. None the less, in 2007 spending on agriculture – a sector employing less than 5% of the working population – still represented over 40 per cent of the EU budget. That said, the bedrock of today’s EU is economic liberalisation: Europe’s economies must be run by businesses without state intervention. The result is that elected governments in EU Member States have no right to decide what type of economic development is best for their electorates: the right to manage an economy, the most important function of government, is taken out of the hands of democratically elected governments and handed to businessmen (and particularly to the directors of huge global-sized businesses: we are not talking here about small local firms). If individual governments try to subsidise specific sectors of their economies, they are fined by the EU’s all-powerful commercial court, the European Court of Justice, and forced to backtrack. What then, one might ask, ios democracy for? What is the point of voting at all if the hands of our governments are tied from the start when it comes to their most important function, the management of their economies? The economies of “old” or western Europe, which were the first to join the Union, have now been fully integrated into the strait-jacket of the market and the emphasis now is on marketising the less-developed economies of “new” or eastern ex-Communist Europe.

THE POLITICAL HORIZON

The economic integration of Europe into a single liberalised market is now well on its way. What to do next? The next task is to create a political Europe. Big Business, which has naturally backed the Common Market from the beginning, knows that without political clout Europe cannot punch its weight adequately in the world economy. At world level, in forums such as the World Trade Organisation, what is important is the political leverage that comes from raw political power: the world economy is carved up on the basis of political decisions in a way which principally benefits the economies of the biggest political players. The European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, is an economic giant but a political pygmy. Its division into 27 different Member States leads to a cacophony of European voices on the world stage – voices which can be contemptuously ignored by the geo-political superpowers. The aim, therefore, is to create, over time, a United States of Europe.

PERFIDIOUS ALBION

After dithering since 1952, the UK reluctantly agreed to join the Common Market in 1973 for two reasons: (1) it felt it might lose out economically in the event of an upswing in the European economy, to which Britain’s economy was closely linked, and (2) it could act as a Trojan horse within Europe for the benefit of its closest ally, the United States. Playing a similar role in Europe to that played by Israel in the Middle East, Britain will always do what it can to prevent developments that might damage the economic or political interests of the United States. Not for nothing is the UK distrusted as “perfidious Albion” on the Continent. Naturally, therefore, Britain, in contrast to most EU Member States,  does not favour the development of a political Europe that might eventually become a United States of Europe and thus represent a serious political rival to the USA. With the enthusiastic espousal of Thatcherite policies by the rightwing New Labour Party and its Tory successor, Britain has become the most free-market oriented of the EU Member States. Like the USA, therefore, Britain is perfectly happy to see the Common Market expanded to include the whole of Europe plus Turkey and beyond. It is less than happy with the development of a corresponding European political community. And it cares little for the add-on policies in areas such as social security, employment or human rights since these are spheres which can act as a constraint on the market. And that is logical. Once the market is fully in place in Europe, there is no reason to stop there. The market is not sentimental about a geographical area called Europe. Today’s market place is global and getting more so. Once the EU has completed the task of providing a level playing field for Big Business in the European segment of the world market, it should wither away. The ultimate aim of capital is a fully levelled world market without local regulation. The European Union is a half-way stage towards this goal. In the meantime, then, nothing is more natural than that Britain should jib at steps that are being taken (via measures such as the 2007 Lisbon Treaty) to create a political Europe.


Posted in Europe, UK | Leave a comment

Free speech denied in France, the home of Voltaire

Posted on December 22, 2011 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. 

Anyone in France who denies that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915 will be imprisoned for a year and/or fined 45 000 euros, under the provisions of a Bill adopted on 22 December 2011 by the French National Assembly (Palais Bourbon).

The Bill was adopted overwhelmingly by a show of hands. However, only around 50 of the 577 deputies took part in the vote. The bill has still to be approved by the upper house, the Senate (Palais du Luxembourg).

This measure has the support of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his rightwing government. It also has the support of the Socialist opposition led by François Hollande as well as that of the tiny Communist Party and its allies in the Parti de Gauche.

It is opposed by many eminent historians, including Pierre Nora, who argue that it is not for Parliaments to decide what people may or may not think about what happened in history.

It is also opposed by the former President of the Constitutional Council, Robert Badinter, a Socialist, who believes that the Bill is contrary to the French Constitution. He says that what happened in Armenia in 1915 has nothing to do with France.

Senator Jean-Pierre Chevènement of the Mouvement républicain et citoyen, holds that such laws represent an attack on freedom of expression.

Turkey takes the view that the killing of Armenians in 1915 did not constitute genocide.

The bill has been tabled just four months before the French presidential elections, which is expected to be a fight-out between Sarkozy and Hollande. Half a million people of Armenian stock – a significant electorate  – live in France.

In its edition of 23 December 2011, leading French centrist newspaper Le Monde criticised the bill on the grounds that it would damage Franco-Turkish relations without providing any demonstrable benefit to the Armenian community. That same day in fact, Turkey recalled its ambassador to France and suspended military cooperation with France. Commenting on the Bill, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that Sarkozy should focus instead on the slaughter of Algerian Muslims who sought independence from France in the middle of the last century.

Voltaire, a leading philosopher of the 18 C Enlightenment, is reported to have said of a rival philosopher, Helvétius, whose work De l’esprit was condemned by the Sorbonne and burned publicly in 1759: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it“.

The Armenian genocide Bill is not the first such attack on freed of speech in France. The 1990 loi Gayssot criminalises any questioning of the reality of crimes against humanity as  defined in the Statue of the Tribunal of Nuremberg. Thus, it effectively outlaws denial of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered under the Third Reich.

In another instance of official intolerance, France recently banned Muslim women from wearing the Muslim hijab (veil) anywhere in public.

Comment by Antigone1984.  Here we have the French State deciding what clothes people are allowed to wear. Voltaire would have been turning in his grave!

Herewith a Wikipedia text on the loi Gayssot:

La loi Gayssot est la désignation courante soit de la loi française no 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990, « tendant à réprimer tout proposraciste, antisémite ou xénophobe », soit de la partie de cette loi (son article 9) qui introduit un « article 24 bis » dans la loi sur la liberté de la presse. Cette loi résultait d’une proposition de loi présentée au Parlement par le député communiste Jean-Claude Gayssot.

L’article premier de cette loi rappelle que « toute discrimination fondée sur l’appartenance ou la non-appartenance à une ethnie, unenation, une race ou une religion est interdite ». Mais cette disposition ne fait que rappeler la loi du 1er juillet 1972 relative à la lutte contre le racisme1.

La loi Gayssot innove par son article 9, qui qualifie de délit la contestation de l’existence des crimes contre l’humanité, tels que définis dans le statut du Tribunal militaire international de Nuremberg, qui ont été commis soit par les membres d’une organisation déclarée criminelle en application de ce statut soit par une personne reconnue coupable de tels crimes. Cet article 9 introduit en effet dans la loi de 1881 sur la liberté de la presse un article 24 bis dont voici le premier alinéa :

« Seront punis des peines prévues par le sixième alinéa de l’article 24 ceux qui auront contesté, par un des moyens énoncés à l’article 23, l’existence d’un ou plusieurs crimes contre l’humanité tels qu’ils sont définis par l’article 6 du statut du tribunal militaire international annexé à l’accord de Londres du 8 août 1945 et qui ont été commis soit par les membres d’une organisation déclarée criminelle en application de l’article 9 dudit statut, soit par une personne reconnue coupable de tels crimes par une juridiction française ou internationale. »

Posted in Algeria, Armenia, France, Israel, Turkey | Leave a comment

The European Union or War

Posted on December 5, 2011 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. 


EITHER THE EUROPEAN UNION OR WAR

If it were not for the European Union, the nations of Europe would once again be at war with one another. This is the Sword of Damocles hoist over our heads by the EU. Look, shriek the EU propagandists, we had two major wars in Europe during the past century. Among the states that have joined the EU, there have been none.

That is true. However, three remarks:

1. The first involves asking who declares war. Is it the people or is it their governments? We have never heard of a people declaring war. It is invariably governments that declare war. Governments whose members sit at home in luxurious offices while they send innocent squaddies abroad to die young and miserably. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. But that doesn’t mean us – or our children. It means you, the toiling masses. You and your children are the ones that are going to die. And why? Because I say so.

But how does Europe come into this? It comes into it because Eurocrats happily confess that if it were not for the EU, we, the governments of Europe, would declare war on each other. It is only the EU, they say, that is holding us back. By nature, we governments are self-righteous blood-thirsty warmongers.  Without the restraint of the EU, we should  have no hesitation in unleashing the dogs of war.

Now let us ask this question. Are we, the citizens of the states of Europe, obliged to accept that our age-old nations are to be cast into oblivion simply because the blood-thirsty elites that govern us will otherwise declare war? We think not.

Recourse to referenda in international disputes would render redundant the argument that the European Union is necessary because otherwise the countries of Europe would go to war.

2. The second point is that, even with conventional governments in power, it is by no means inevitable that war would break out in Europe in the absence of the EU. The century between the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 was a period of relative  peace throughout Europe. And yet at that time there was no EU in existence to prevent a continent-wide war. So the fact is that, contrary to the mythology of the EU propagandists, it is not inevitable that war will occur if we do not have the EU.

3. It is quite possible to envisage peaceful relations between the nations of Europe outside the European Union. The EU is not the only kid on the block. There are other ways of managing interstate relations. Nations can conclude treaties with other nations or groups of nations on an ad hoc basis, as the need arises, without needing to be confined by the strait-jacket of the EU and  its “one-size-fits-all” policies. The Rhine Navigation Treaty, in place since 1815, has quietly managed the Rhine artery for nearly two centuries now, efficiently and to the satisfaction of the riverine states, but without the ballyhoo inevitably associated with the European Union. So it can be done.

Posted in Europe, Politics | Leave a comment

Friendly fire: nuclear allies at loggerheads

Posted on December 5, 2011 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. 

 

“Nato refuses to rule out crossing into Pakistan as it targets insurgent groups”.

This was the headline over an article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on 3 December 2011 by its diplomatic editor Julian Borger.

On the same page, in a supplementary report by Saeed Shah, the paper also reports: “Pakistan’s military commanders have ordered their troops to return fire if they come under attack from Nato forces”.

Pakistan and the United States – both countries possessing an arsenal of nuclear weapons – are supposed to be allies in the so-called “War against Terror”. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Last weekend a US drone killed 24 Pakistani soldiers who were asleep in their beds in a military base at Mohmand near the border with Afghanistan. The US Nato commander General John Allen described the incident as “a tragedy”. However, given the abysmal state of relations between the two nominal allies, it is surely legitimate to ask: might the Nato attack not have been deliberate, intended as a warning to Pakistan to shift its troops out of the Afghan-Pakistan border zone so as to give the US a free hand to hunt down the insurgents there?

Borger does not pose that question in his article but his article appears to provide support for such an interpretation when it says that “an increase in cross-border raids by special forces – and even the withdrawal of the Pakistani army to create a fire-free zone – have not been excluded.”

In any case, the incident has not deterred the US from forging ahead with its plan to take out Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.

According to Borger, “Nato commanders are planning a substantial offensive in eastern Afghanistan aimed at insurgent groups based in Pakistan. It will involve an escalation of aerial attacks on insurgent sanctuaries, and cross-border raids with ground troops have not been ruled out.

“The aim of the offensive over the next two years is to reduce the threat represented by Pakistan-based groups loyal to insurgent leaders such as the Haqqani clan, Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur.”

The article continues: “The message being given to the Pakistani military is that if it cannot or will not eliminate the havens, US forces will attempt the job themselves.”

Borger quotes an unnamed western diplomat as saying: “The Pakistanis may not have the strength to defeat the Taliban and the Haqqanis on their own, even if they wanted to.”

Meanwhile, in retaliation for the slaughter of their soldiers at Mohmand, the Pakistanis have closed US supply routes through Pakistan to Afghanistan and are preventing the US from using a Pakistan airbase to launch drones.

The death of the 24 Pakistani soldiers has inflamed public opinion in Pakistan, where US popularity was already at rock bottom, particularly since its troops violated Pakistani sovereignty earlier this year when it sent in a secret helicopter mission to assassinate Osama bin Laden without giving prior warning to the authorities in Islamabad.

This story looks likely to run.

 

 

 

Posted in Afghanistan, France, Germany, Italy, Media, Military, Pakistan, UK, UN, USA | Leave a comment