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Another World is Inevitable
Another World is Inevitable
I don’t normally comment in these essays on the political affairs of other countries. As I’ve noted more than once here, the last thing the rest of the world needs is one more clueless American telling everyone else on the planet what to do. What’s more, as the United States busies itself flailing blindly and ineffectually at the consequences that its own idiotically shortsighted decisions have brought down upon it, those of us who live here have our work cut out for us already.
That said, a sign I’ve been awaiting for quite some time has appeared on the horizon—the first rumble of a tectonic shift that will leave few things unchanged. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t happen in the United States, but I was somewhat startled to see where it did happen. That would be in Britain, where Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected head of Britain’s Labour Party.
Those of my readers who don’t follow British politics may not know just how spectacular a change Corbyn’s election marks. In the late1990s, under the leadership of Tony Blair, the Labour Party did what erstwhile left-wing parties were doing all over the industrial world: it ditched the egalitarian commitments that had guided it in prior decades, and instead embraced a set of policies that were indistinguishable from those of its conservative opponents—the same thing, for example, that the Democratic party did here in the US. As a result, voters going to the polls found that their supposed right to shape the destiny of their nations at the voting booth had been reduced to irrelevance, since every party with a shot at power embraced the same set of political and economic policies.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Warns Of “Unprecedented” Russian Military Buildup In Syria: “It’s Starting To Look Like Crimea”
US Warns Of “Unprecedented” Russian Military Buildup In Syria: “It’s Starting To Look Like Crimea”
On Wednesday, we brought you an in-depth look at the latest from Syria where Russia is apparently in a mad dash to send reinforcements to Assad and his depleted army at Latakia (or at least that’s the narrative being pushed rather hard by Western media).
Meanwhile, France and Britain have apparently decided that the best way to stem the flow of refugees to Western Europe is to bomb the country from which the refugees are fleeing, which means that in relatively short order, the skies above Syria will be filled with French, British, American, Turkish, and Russian jets, a situation which quite clearly has the potential to cause an “accident.”
With the war drums now beating loudly, the media is keen on documenting anything that even sounds like it might be incremental which, in combination with the fact that situation on the ground truly is rather fluid, means we get more color on the situation with each passing hour. Case in point, from Reuters:
Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what the United States fears is a deepening Russian military role in Syria’s civil war, though one of the Lebanese sources said the number of Russians involved so far was small.
And here’s more from the Kremlin, where spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offered a damning (not to mention amusingly accurate) indictment of how Washington has sought to characterize Moscow’s relationship with Damascus:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The City’s stranglehold makes Britain look like an oh-so-civilised mafia state
‘The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament.’ Illustration: Sébastian Thibault
Be reasonable in response to the unreasonable: this is what voters in the Labour election are told. Accommodate, moderate, triangulate, for the alternative is to isolate yourself from reality.
You might be inclined to agree. If so, please take a look at the reality to which you must submit. To an extent unknown since before the first world war, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It is not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It’s that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bailouts, quantitative easing and delays in interest-rate rises, speculative investment has been so well cushioned that – as the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliott, puts it – financial markets are “one of the last bastions of socialism left on Earth”.
Public services, infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation: these too are being converted into risk-free investments. Social cleansing is transforming central London into an exclusive economic zone for property speculation. From a dozen directions, government policy converges on this objective.
The benefits cap and the bedroom tax drive the poor out of their homes. Theforced sale of high-value council houses creates a new asset pool. An uncapped and scarcely regulated private rental market turns these assets into gold. The freeze on council-tax banding since 1991, the lifting of the inheritance tax threshold, and £14bn a year in tax breaks for private landlords all help to guarantee stupendous returns.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
British Navy Admits “It Was Us, Not The Russians” That Damaged Irish Trawler In April
British Navy Admits “It Was Us, Not The Russians” That Damaged Irish Trawler In April
Back in April, European and US officials were quick to blame “The Russians” when a British fishing trawler’s nets became entangled in a submarine. The incident, one of many, was rapidly escalated as further excuse to increase NATO forces across Europe and as evidence of Russia’s aggression. There’s just one small problem… As The Daily Mail reports, in this case, it wasn’t the Russians – The Royal Navy has finally admitted one of its submarines damaged an Irish fishing trawler in April – five months after the Russian vessel was blamed for the incident.
From another incident in April blamed on The Russians, a bit more color from Live Leak:
Angus Macleod, who has fished Scottish waters for more than 30 years, told how crewmembers became alarmed when their nets began to “overtake” his 62-foot trawler, Aquarius.Speaking to the Sunday Express last night, he said: “We were midway through a trip when the boat started to slow down by around two-thirds of a knot, which can happen when the pots start to collect.
“We started to haul the nets in, and suddenly there was an external force pulling our nets ahead of the boat with some considerable force. This is something we’ve never experienced before. We always have to be ahead of the nets to keep our propeller clear.
“We caught up with them, and we continued hauling, but the nets ran forward again. The starboard net continued to lead out aft. We had to do this several times, and the winches which were hauling in the nets were beginning to strain.”
Mr. Macleod, 46, added: “At the time we just went through what needed to be done to get out of that situation. We had to keep our propeller clear – that’s our main propulsion. But afterwards we sat down as a crew and we discussed what we’d seen. There is little doubt in our minds that this was caused by a submarine.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian’s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended
The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian’s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended
In July 2013, GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency,forced journalists at the London headquarters of The Guardian to completely obliterate the memory of the computers on which they kept copies of top-secret documents provided to them by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
However, in its attempt to destroy information, GCHQ also revealed intriguing details about what it did and why.
Two technologists, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Richard Tynan, visited Guardianheadquarters last year to examine the remnants of the devices. Al-Bassam is an ex-hacker who two years ago pleaded guilty to joining attacks on Sony, Nintendo, and other companies, and now studies computer science at King’s College; Tynan is a technologist at Privacy International with a PhD in computer science. The pair concluded, first, that GCHQ wanted The Guardian to completely destroy every possible bit of information the news outlet might retain; and second, that GCHQ’s instructions may have inadvertently revealed all the locations in your computer where information may be covertly stored.
Editors of The Guardian chose to destroy the files and the devices they lived on after the British government threatened to sue them and halt further reporting on the issue, including stories on how GCHQ utilized data collected by the NSA on communications from many major Internet companies.
Footage of Guardian editors physically destroying their MacBooks and USB drives, taken by Guardian executive Sheila Fitzsimons, wasn’t released until months later, in January 2014. The GCHQ agents who supervised the destruction of the devices also insisted on recording it all on their own iPhones.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
GCHQ and me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers
GCHQ and me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers
I stepped from the warmth of our source’s London flat. That February night in 1977, the air was damp and cool, the buzz of traffic muted in this leafy North London suburb, in the shadow of the iconic Alexandra Palace. A fellow journalist and I had just spent three hours inside, drinking Chianti and talking about secret surveillance with our source, and now we stood on the doorstep discussing how to get back to the south coast town where I lived.
Events were about to take me on a different journey. Behind me, sharp footfalls broke the stillness. A squad was running, hard, toward the porch of the house we had left. Suited men surrounded us. A burly middle-aged cop held up his police ID. We had broken “Section 2″ of Britain’s secrecy law, he claimed. These were “Special Branch,” then the elite security division of the British police.
For a split second, I thought this was a hustle. I knew that a parliamentary commission had released a report five years earlier that concluded that the secrecy law, first enacted a century ago, should be changed. I pulled out my journalist identification card, ready to ask them to respect the press.
But they already knew that my companion that evening, Time Out reporter Crispin Aubrey, and I were journalists. And they had been outside, watching our entire meeting with former British Army signals intelligence (Sigint) operator John Berry, who at the time was a social worker.
Aubrey and I were arrested on suspicion of possessing unauthorized information. They said we’d be taken to the local police station. But after being forced into cars, we were driven in the wrong direction, toward the center of London. I became uneasy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Britain’s secret ties to governments, firms behind ISIS oil sales
Britain’s secret ties to governments, firms behind ISIS oil sales
In the scramble to access Kurdistan’s oil and gas wealth, the US and UK are turning a blind eye to complicity in ‘Islamic State’ oil smuggling
Key allies in the US and UK led war on Islamic State (ISIS) are covertly financing the terrorist movement according to senior political sources in the region. US and British oil companies are heavily invested in the murky geopolitical triangle sustaining ISIS’ black market oil sales.
The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq and Turkish military intelligence have both supported secret ISIS oil smuggling operations and even supplied arms to the terror group, according to Kurdish, Iraqi and Turkish officials.
One British oil company in particular, Genel Energy, is contracted by the KRG to supply oil for a major Kurdish firm accused of facilitating ISIS oil sales to Turkey. The Kurdish firm has close ties to the Iraqi Kurdish government.
Genel operates in the KRG with the backing of the British government, and is also linked to a British parliamentary group with longstanding connections to both the British and KRG oil industries.
The relationship between British and Kurdish energy companies, and senior British politicians, raises questions about conflicts of interest — especially in the context of a ‘war on terror’ that is supposed to be targeting, not financing, the ‘Islamic State.’
Kurds, Turks and blind eyes
One of ISIS’ most significant sources of revenue is oil smuggling. The Islamic State controls approximately 60% of Syria’s oil, and seven major oil-producing assets in Iraq.
Using a carefully cultivated network of intermediaries and ‘middlemen’ in the Kurdish region of Iraq, as well as in Turkey, ISIS has been able to produce a phenomenal 45,000 barrels of oil a day, raking in as much as $3 million a day in cash by selling the oil at well below market prices.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
An Open Letter to Britain’s Leading Violent Extremist: David Cameron
An Open Letter to Britain’s Leading Violent Extremist: David Cameron
Dear Prime Minister David Cameron,
It is with deep disappointment that I read excerpts of your speech provided by Downing Street to the press, purporting to set out a five-year strategy to tackle fundamentalist terrorism, which — whatever its intentions — is thoroughly misguided, and destined to plunge this country, as well as the Middle East, into further chaos and misery.
I am writing this open letter to request you, as a matter of urgency, to abide by your obligations as a human being, a British citizen, a Member of Parliament, and as our Prime Minister: to undertake proper due-diligence in the formulation of Britain’s foreign, counter-terrorism and security policies, based on the vast array of evidence from scientific and academic studies of foreign policy, terrorism and radicalisation, rather than the influence of far-right extremist ideology, and of narrow vested interest groups keen to profit from war and fear.
Ideology, innit
In your speech, you say:
“It begins by understanding the threat we face and why we face it. What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim….
And like so many ideologies that have existed before — whether fascist or communist — many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it.
We need to understand why it is proving so attractive… The root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself.”
But this is already incoherent. You state that the threat is Islamist extremism, an ideology. You then claim that we need to understand why that ideology is so attractive, and you answer the question by claiming that the “root cause” of this threat is the “extremist ideology itself.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Euro Was Doomed From The Start—–And Still Is
The Euro Was Doomed From The Start—–And Still Is
Next week will be a momentous one for Europe, with a string of crucial meetings including the summit at which the PM will table his renegotiation demands. We may be focused on our renegotiation but it is Greece which will dominate. For some time it has looked as though the Greek drama must reach its final denouement. But the Greeks have become highly skilled at managing to push back deadlines ever further into the future. Whether Greece leaves the euro or stays in, a decision surely cannot be delayed much longer. So what will this mean for the EU?
The creation of the euro has been an error of historic dimensions and done great harm to the EU, which in its first 40 years had brought economic prosperity to the citizens of the Continent. Then the less well-off countries benefited from the lowering of tariffs and the increase in internal trade. After the creation of the euro, however, economic growth slowed markedly. Poorer countries fared worse than the more prosperous countries, like Germany, which benefited from the new, weaker currency.
The Greek crisis epitomises the complete mess that Europe has made of the single currency. Greece should never have been admitted in the first place, though it was not the only country – Belgium and Italy were two others – that didn’t meet the strict criteria for membership. From the beginning, the rules put in place for the euro, relating to bail-outs, monetary financing and deficit levels, have been ignored. Europe claims to be a rule-based organisation. But however else the eurozone is run, it is not run strictly according to its own rules.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
1812: The Inconsequential War That Changed America Forever
1812: The Inconsequential War That Changed America Forever
WHY SHOULD I CARE?
Most adult Americans today are unaware of what caused the War of 1812, who started it, what the outcome was, or even who the belligerents were. If I recall correctly, my grade school / high school History Class covered The War Of 1812 — aka America’s Second War Of Independence, or America’s Forgotten War — for a total of maybe one week. And what a worthless week it was. Like most history teachers I’ve ever had, they turned an exciting story into a dry bundle of boring crap … focusing on memorizing dates and random events without getting to the real story behind the story; i.e. why did it happen, how does the war affect us today, and what can we learn from it? This is a crying shame because the war had a tremendous impact on American political development, territorial expansion, and national identity.
A 19th century French historian said, “History studies not just facts and institutions, its real subject is the human spirit.” The word ‘history’ comes from the Greek, and literally means “knowledge acquired by investigation”. So, let us investigate the War Of 1812, and the spirit of humanity which caused it … and changed America forever.
OVERALL SUMMARY
There were two major reasons given for the war.
First, Britain was at war with France since 1793. For twenty years the British claimed they had the right – as a legitimate and necessary wartime measure — to intercept American ships on the high seas, seize and keep their cargoes, and search the crews for British navy deserters. The British between 1807 and 1812 seized some 400 American ships and cargoes worth millions of dollars.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Revolution and American Empire
Revolution and American Empire
While three centuries of racist chatter leave some ambiguity around when kidnapped Africans (local societies, Africa is a continent, not a people) forced into slavery were considered human beings by White settlers, the political question was answered in 1787 with three-fifths a ‘political’ person assigned to slaves to accrue to the political representation of slaveholders. The indigenous population was excluded from Constitutional political representation entirely. This brief and greatly simplified history is presented for three reasons: 1) American ‘freedom’ as political privilege is the opposite of its generalized form as freedom from it; 2) its political meaning is tied through history to Western imperialism—U.S. history is of overthrowing democratic regimes to support U.S. economic interests and 3), ‘globalization’ presented in the present as historically unique is tied through this history to Western imperialism.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Britain: A Functioning Democracy It’s Not
Britain: A Functioning Democracy It’s Not
We at the Automatic Earth always try to steer clear of elections as much as possible, because there are no functioning democracies left in the west -no more than there are functioning markets-, and no journalists reporting on them either. Interesting question, by the way: how can a journalist report on a democracy that isn’t there? And where in that setting does news turn to mere opinion, and where does opinion then become news ?
Still, of course we caught some bits of the UK elections along the way regardless. The decisive moment for us must have been when Jeremy Paxman interviewed David Cameron at the BBC, and asked him if he knew how many foodbanks had been added in Britain since he took office 5 years ago.
Cameron, well duh obviously, had no idea, and instead of answering the question he started a flowery discourse praising the many volunteers who work in the foodbanks he didn’t know existed. Paxman cut him short and said there were 66 when Cameron came to power, and 421 now. Apparently in Britain, volunteers are needed to take care of the needy, they’re not going to pay people to do that. You would think that takes care of Cameron’s candidacy, but you couldn’t be more wrong.
At least Paxman seemed to try, but interviews like his should take place on the eve of an election, not 6 weeks before them like this one. That leaves far too much time for spin doctors to repair damage done by their candidate’s ignorance and gullibility. It’s crazy enough that party leaders can refuse to discuss each other, let alone the public, in public. Then again, that too would only be significant if there would be an actual democracy in Britain.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Leave the Houthis Alone!
Leave the Houthis Alone!
Saudi Arabia‘s US-backed aggression against the sovereignty of Yemen is a textbook example of how local conflicts are internationalized – and become tripwires for regional wars and even global conflagrations.
Like Libya, Yemen is yet another Middle Eastern country that doesn’t really exist: it is actually at least two separate countries, perhaps three – the southern provinces, which are primarily Sunni, the northern tribes, who adhere mostly to they Zaydi form of Shi’ite Islam, and the area around Sa’na, the capital, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, where all Yemen’s clashing cultural, political, and religious factions meet.
The north/south division dates back to the nineteenth century British colonization, when, in 1839, the British seized the port city of Aden and administered it as a subset of the Indian Viceroyalty. It became a major trading center after the opening of the Suez canal, and the Brits pushed outward, extending their influence throughout what had been a land perpetually divided between the Ottoman Empire and local imams, including the distinctive Zaydis in the north. In 1911, the Zaydis rose up against the British and their local collaborators, abolished the north/south division negotiated by the British Foreign Office, and established the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen under Imam Yahya. Yahya’s dream was to recreate the ancient Qasamid dynasty, founded in the seventeenth century: a “Greater Yemen” extending into what is today Saudi Arabia as well as the whole of modern Yemen.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Regime Change: US’ Failing Weapon of International Deception
Regime Change: US’ Failing Weapon of International Deception
For years, Winston Churchill’s famous quote, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried,” has served as Americans’ last word in any political discussion which requires validation of the US government, no matter how corrupt or flawed in its behavior, as the best in the planet, comparatively or by default. Never mind the meaning that Mr. Churchill had intended back in 1947, or how the international political panorama has changed during the past seven decades.
These remarks were made by Britain’s prime minister before the House of Commons a few months before there was a changing of the guards in the “Anglo-Saxon Empire” as the Brits gave away their colonial hegemony in favor of the super-influential economic and military power represented by the United States. And that was symbolically marked by Britain’s relinquishing its mandate in Palestine, and the creation of Israel.
Such reference to democracy in the quote, explicitly defining it as a “government by the people,” basically applied to Britain and the United States at the close of World War II; but such condition has deteriorated in the US to the point where the “common people” no longer have a say as to how the nation is run, either directly or through politicians elected with financial support provided by special interests, undoubtedly expecting their loyalty-vote. Yet, while this un-democratization period in our system of government was happening, there were many nations that were adopting a true code of democracy, their citizens having a greater say as to how their countries are governed. Recognizing such occurrence, however, is a seditious sin for an American mind still poisoned by the culture of exceptionalism and false pride in which it has been brainwashed.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Paul Krugman is wrong about the UK and borrowing
Paul Krugman is wrong about the UK and borrowing
Paul Krugman once did something or other quite good on the economics of trade, winning him the Nobel Prize. He also wrote some rather good stuff in the 1990s about the euro and about how Japan might escape its then-malaise. Quite a lot of orthodox economists were (and remain) fans of his writings on these topics. But regarding his analysis of government deficit reduction programmes and the options European governments in particular have had – and more specifically about how, regardless of how much they might have been borrowing they should always borrow more…not so much.
Krugman’s latest sally into European politico-economics is to bewail the state of “Britain’s Terrible, No-Good Economic Discourse” in the run-up to the General Election. He tells his unfortunate American readers that “economic discourse in Britain is dominated by a misleading fixation on budget deficits” and that “media organizations routinely present as fact propositions that are contentious if not just plain wrong”.
US readers should be aware that his “analysis” drifts between being contrary to the facts and being nonsense. Let’s start with the stuff he says that is contrary to the facts. Setting aside for now whether such a fixation would be “misleading”, economic discourse in Britain simply isn’t dominated by a fixation with government budget deficits.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
