prison as disneyland | Chris hedges waistband reaching could get you killed | john eskow tony blair’s dodgy award | feliCity arbuthnot ColdType writing worth reading issue 92

dougie wallace finds chaos in a London suburb where reality merges into scenes of crazy fantasy the wild wild east plus: excerpts from new books on the labour movement and drone warfare, by thomas geoghegan and grégoire chamayou Cover Photo: Dougie Wallace, from his book, “Shoreditch Wild Life” ColdType issue 92 / january 2015

3. alcatraz: prison as disneyland chris hedges 7. walking wilbur dell franklin 10. kicking the drone habit kathy kelly 12. of drone strikes and suicide bombs tim holmes 14. democracy’s moment of truth stan winer 17. breaking the silence george monbiot 19. a nation built on the rule of lawlessness rick salutin 22. we are the enemy john w. whitehead 24. waistband-reaching could get you killed john eskow 25. hurwitt’s eye mark hurwitt 26. the ghosts of vietnam danny schechter 29. war by media and the triumph of propaganda john pilger 34. cover story - the wild wild east dougie wallace

40. clashing on torture ray mcgovern 44. why one boss isn’t worth 175 employees michael meacher 47. israel – america’s biggest frenemy justin raimondo 49. world of fantasy thomas georghegan 52. will germany and russia save europe? pepe eskobar 54. bendib’s world khalil bendib 55. counter-insurgency from the air gregoire chamayou 62. tony blair’s dodgy award felicity arbuthnot 66. was nelson mandela a communist trevor grundY 72. us exceptionalism and us torture? william blum

editor: tony sutton – [email protected]

2 ColdType | January 2015 Jail tales alcatraz: prison ColdType as disneyland chris hedges joins a group of sightseers on a trip to america’s most notorious prison, where he finds a distorted account of history

took the ferry from Pier 33 on San Fran- in prison deserve it; in foreign lands they the alcatraz cisco’s Embarcadero to Alcatraz. I stepped are imprisoned unjustly. The Disneyfica- narrative as onto the island from the gangway, walked tion of Alcatraz is the equivalent of turning presented by the up the hill to the old prison entrance and one of Stalin’s gulags into a prison-themed national park I service ignores was given a portable audio guide. I spent amusement park. Prisons are institutional- two hours going through the corridors and ized evil. And whitewashing evil is a moral the savagery cells where horrific suffering and trauma monstrosity. and injustice crushed human beings. Alcatraz purport- The Alcatraz narrative as presented by of america’s edly had the highest insanity rate of any the National Park Service ignores the sav- system of mass federal penitentiary of its era. agery and injustice of America’s system of incarceration, I was regaled through the headset with mass incarceration, in which we today im- in which we today stories about famous Alcatraz inmates prison 25 percent of all the world’s prison- imprison including Al Capone, Robert “Birdman” ers although Americans are only 5 percent 25 percent of Stroud and George “Machine Gun” Kelly, of the global population. It ignores our all the world’s escape attempts, the 1946 armed uprising decades-long use of torture, isolation and prisoners that was ruthlessly put down by the Marine trauma to turn prisoners into psychologi- Corps, and intrepid FBI agents who hunted cal cripples. It ignores that most prisoners down the nation’s most notorious criminals are poor and never had adequate legal de- and brought them to justice. In this binary, fense. It ignores how people of color in our cartoon narrative of good guys and bad guys, urban “internal colonies” are worth noth- of cops and gangsters, even the repugnant J. ing on the streets but, in cages, each gener- Edgar Hoover was resurrected as a virtuous ates $40,000 to $50,000 a year for corpora- symbol of law and order. tions. It ignores that prisoners are repeat- At the end of the tour – 5,000 people a edly punished and given longer sentences day, some 1.4 million a year, visit the prison not for crimes they committed while free – we were funneled into the gift shop. It was but for amorphous infractions such as “dis- possible to buy T-shirts, replica blue prison- respect” and “agitation” done in prison. It er shirts, replica tin prison cups and other ignores the prison system’s one-sided “jus- Alcatraz souvenirs. We were encouraged tice” that denies prisoners a fair hearing. It to take cards from a wooden rack and mail ignores that a guard is God, that he or she them to foreign governments on behalf of can verbally and physically abuse a prisoner selected prisoners of conscience. The mes- without repercussions. It ignores that pris- sage was clear: In the United States those ons are despotic fiefdoms. It ignores the

January 2015 | ColdType 3 Jail tales

To anyone who daily humiliation, despair and pain of those at Alcatraz were forced to strip and stand has worked or trapped inside. It ignores that prisoners who naked before the guards. This ritual, re- been in a prison, initially believe in the system, who think peated daily in prisons across the country, the physical and justice is possible, are usually the first to is primarily a rite of humiliation, a way to psychological have psychological breakdowns or commit deny prisoners their dignity. Prisoners must structure of suicide. It ignores – and here is the greatest be broken. Forcing prisoners to stand naked Alcatraz – where crime – the deep and profound humanity before the guards begins the process. Those there was no of many of the prisoners themselves, who who resisted authority in Alcatraz – and re- attempt at are as caring, intelligent and loving as those sisting authority often meant merely talk- rehabilitation and outside the walls. It ignores, finally, who we ing back to a guard – were thrown into iso- usually a fifth of are as a nation, how callous and brutal we lation cells known as “the Hole.” This too is the population of are to the dispossessed and how we revel in a contemporary experience. about 250 was stories of violence and human degradation. In Alcatraz on the bottom tier of the rotated in and This excitement, and this fictitious narra- three-tier D Block were four isolation cells. out of isolation tive of good and evil, is possible only if we I walked into one. This is where men were cells – is chillingly see prisoners as less than human. And this locked for up to 19 days in total darkness, familiar is a task perfected to an art at Alcatraz by denied a bath and had no change of clothes. the National Park Service, and by popular The toilet was, for a long time, an eight-inch culture. Anyone who truly grasped what hole in the floor. The prison often rever- took place at Alcatraz, and what is taking berated with the screams of inmates being place in prisons across the country, would beaten by guards in darkened isolation cells weep. in D Block. And when those in isolation I thought, as I stepped away from the were released they were often disoriented gaggles of tourists and stood alone in an and psychologically impaired. Many, weak open cell, of the students I teach in prison. and barely able to walk, were taken directly How would they have reacted? What would to the prison infirmary, suffering at times they have felt about the tourists who lapped from pneumonia after sleeping for over two up the stories of crime and retribution? weeks on wet concrete. There were some What trauma and pain would they have ex- who never left the Hole alive. perienced upon stepping once again into an At Alcatraz there was one place worse isolation cell? My students think of them- than the Hole – the dungeon. It was not selves as slaves – under the 13th Amend- on the tour. Prisoners, if they were not bro- ment prisoners are forced to work for no ken in isolation, were hauled to a staircase pay or perhaps for as little as a dollar a day. in front of A Block that led downward to a They see prisons as replicating the power heavy steel door. Behind the door were the structure of plantations. And listening to old gun ports from the prison’s days as a the audio-guide stories would, for them, be fortress and later an Army prison that held like a former slave taking a tour of his or her Native Americans who had resisted being old plantation while being fed tales of shift- herded, and, during World War I, consci- less and lazy “Negroes” in the cotton fields entious objectors. Prisoners were stripped and the gallantry of Southern whites. and chained to the wall in one of two rooms To anyone who has worked or been in near the old gun ports. They were given a a prison, the physical and psychological bucket for a toilet that was emptied once a structure of Alcatraz – where there was no week. They were fed primarily bread. attempt at rehabilitation and usually a fifth The psychological destruction of prison- of the population of about 250 was rotated ers was common, as it is in today’s prisons. in and out of isolation cells – is chillingly Capone, who suffered from dementia caused familiar. Prisoners as soon as they arrived by syphilis and compounded by abusive

4 ColdType | January 2015 Jail tales

Alcatraz: From top security prison to tourist trap. Photo: Mattias Olsson treatment, was reduced to idiocy. Guards re- climb down. Guards reported ported finding him crouched in fear in the Ed Wutke committed suicide by using finding Al Capone corner of his cell or lying on his cot weeping. the blade of a pencil sharper to cut his jugu- crouched in fear At the end of his time in prison he some- lar vein. in the corner of times babbled in unintelligible sounds and The park service omits these stories, and his cell or lying on was incontinent. He would sit on his cot for many more like them, from the tour. his cot weeping. hours in a near-catatonic state or get up at If an inmate did not have a prison job At the end of his night and manically arrange and rearrange at Alcatraz he spent 23 or 24 hours a day time in prison his magazines, repeatedly dress and undress in a cell, a practice that remains common he sometimes or make his bed over and over. throughout the US prison system. babbled in Another prisoner, Rufe Persful, suffered Even guards knew of prisoners who unintelligible from frequent delusions – he claimed there should never have been imprisoned. George sounds and was was an alligator in his cell. He attempted on H. Gregory, in his book “Alcatraz Screw: incontinent several occasions to make a noose out of his My Years as a Guard in America’s Most No- sheet. He eventually took a hatchet off the torious Prison,” tells of a prisoner he calls side of a prison fire truck and nonchalantly Kevin. hacked four fingers from one of his hands in “Kevin, a young black kid, was involved the view of the guards. He also had intend- in some clothing-room fights. He was in ed to hack off his feet and his other hand, prison because he did a favor for a person he he told the deputy warden later in the in- didn’t know. Kevin had worked in a theater firmary. He was not declared insane by the in a southern state. A man came in, handed prison authorities. him a small package, and told him to give Joe Bowers, who robbed a post office of it to a person who would come in and ask $16.63 and was sentenced to 25 years, cut for it. Kevin didn’t know what was in the his throat with a piece of glass from his eye- package. He was arrested and convicted of glasses but survived. He repeatedly butted handling dope. his head against his cell door. He was shot “Kevin told me the story of his arrest and to death when he partly scaled a fence in the thirty days he spent in quarantine. The front of guards and ignored warnings to kid was put in a dormitory with a group of

January 2015 | ColdType 5 Jail tales

Prisons expose aggressive studs. Unable to defend himself, Robert Stroud, known as the “Birdman” the dark heart of he was raped five times the first night.” after he adopted, cared for and published America. They Relatives who visited prisoners endured books about birds while he was a prisoner at expose the lie of a gantlet of body searches and verbal abuse Leavenworth, ended up at Alcatraz. Stroud, impartial justice. from the guards. This ritual too is familiar to who had become nationally known for his They expose those who visit today’s prison population. studies of sick birds, was prohibited from re- the raw forms Being with prisoners was made so unpleas- building his bird sanctuary at the California of coercion, the ant that many family members never went institution. He was serving a life sentence physical and back, and the situation is unchanged. for stabbing a guard to death in 1916 after psychological I stood in the visitation room at Alcatraz the guard taunted him and stripped of his torture we have and looked at a circle on the wall. It was visitation privilege, meaning he could no institutionalized three inches in diameter and perforated longer see his younger brother. He was sent and directed with tiny holes. The only way to be heard to Alcatraz in 1942. Of the 54 years he spent mostly against through the holes was to shout, meaning in prison, 42 were in solitary confinement. our poor everyone around you, including the guards, “I remember watching him through the could hear the conversation. If the prisoner window when he was taken to the yard, all and the visitor wanted to see each other they by himself, every week, for the one hour had to stand up and look through a thick, he was allowed outside,” Lopez wrote. “I narrow strip of glass, but when in that posi- would see him walking by himself, an old tion they could no longer talk to each other. man pacing back and forth across the tiny The system was intentionally designed for yard. He was hunchbacked by then, and he maximum frustration and embarrassment. would wear a green visor that gamblers of- “Actually, there were very few visits dur- ten wear. He was a very intelligent man who ing all the years I was on Alcatraz,” Ernie knew five or six languages well, and he got Lopez remembered in his memoir, “To Al- As on all the courses that he took by mail catraz, Death Row, and Back.” “I didn’t re- from Stanford University.” ceive one until I had been there nine years. Prisons expose the dark heart of Ameri- This was not uncommon.” ca. They expose the lie of impartial justice. Letters from outside were reduced to They expose the raw forms of coercion, three or four cryptic lines by the guards, the physical and psychological torture we who handed the brief note to the prisoner have institutionalized and directed mostly and destroyed the letter itself. Some prison- against our poor. Prisons are about state- ers never received letters that were mailed sanctioned sadism and dehumanization. to them. The infirmary was primitive and That is the story of Alcatraz. It is the story poorly equipped. Seriously ill prisoners who of all prisons in America. But it is a story the were deemed escape risks were sent there state does not want you to hear. These insti- to die rather than be transferred to a federal tutions were and are consciously designed prison hospital. A dentist came only once to deform and destroy souls. And for “who- every three months. The food, former pris- ever destroys a soul,” the Talmud reminds oners say, was rancid, although the audio us, “it is considered as if he destroyed an tour assured listeners it was plentiful and of entire world.” CT high quality. Decades in prison reduce prisoners to Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning glassy-eyed wrecks who hold conversations reporter, writes a regular column for with themselves and shuffle in a daze down Truthdig every Monday. Hedges’ most recent prison corridors. Younger prisoners see book, written with Joe Sacco, is “Days of these specters wandering the prison and Destruction, Days of Revolt” tremble. They wonder if that is their fate.

6 ColdType | January 2015 on the beach Walking Wilbur Dell Franklin takes his dog for a stroll in an upmarket seaside town

y mostly part-time woman of over 25 years, Colleen, and my full-time dog, Wilbur, and I Mmade a getaway two-day trip to luxurious, upper-than-up-scale Carmel- by-the-Sea to celebrate our birthdays. I found Wilbur in a Labrador rescue shel- ter down south last Thanksgiving. He’s a hefty, floppy Chocolate Lab with a white beard. He was around eight when I got him, had been in the shelter more than seven months, weighed around 63 pounds, his coat more dun than brown, and he was wild and suspicious of strangers and dogs, with a left front fang pulled, his fleas so bad when they found him abandoned in San Pedro that he had chewed off his original coat and grown a new one. When I brought him to the sleepy sleepy, dog-crazy California town of Cayu- cos, he was hyper-vigilant, and so aggres- sive (like he’d been in prison) I couldn’t take him to the Morro Bay dog park, where he fought, and had to walk him in places Wilbur and his master prowled the streets of Carmel-By-The-Sea, the where there were no dogs. His abandon- bejeweled local dogs and their owners avoiding eye contact. ment issue was so severe he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. But eventually he When a friend visits, he tries to climb atop calmed down and adjusted and became them, lay his head on their chest, and gaz- a model citizen at the dog park. He now es up with sad, needy eyes, a shameless weighs 85 pounds and his coat is a rich glutton for affection. chocolate and he nuzzles strangers and After we settled in our cozy third-story plays with other dogs and goes out of his room with private balcony and an ocean way to make friends with neighbor cats. view of Carmel-By-The-Sea, I decided to

January 2015 | ColdType 7 on the beach

The bejeweled take Wilbur for a walk before a sauna, dogs, who are beseeching in their need for dogs, like their swim in the pool, shower, and booze hour. a pet, a nuzzle, perhaps a biscuit; while masters, avoided We started off down San Carlos Street, their masters engage in small town chit- eye contact and headed for the main downtown drag, chat, the dogs smiling and sniffing. marched by Ocean Avenue. An athletically thin wom- Up and down the main drag we plunged, an anxious-to- an in designer sweat suit, ball cap and big old Wilbur clearing a path as Carmel- make-friends shades headed toward us on the same side By-The-Sea denizens (among the high- Wilbur and me as of the street. She began looking nervous est dog owning population per capita in if we didn’t exist as we approached, Wilbur pulling because the country) avoided Wilbur and me and and were perhaps he wanted to nuzzle and sniff her two im- scurried to the edges of the sidewalk and a plague maculate toy poodles who looked to have sometimes into the street! come from a dog show. When Wilbur decided to take a shit at The woman hastily – one hand holding a manicured bush on the sidewalk, I was a cell phone, the other a double leash – embarrassed, quickly pulled him away, dragged her yipping dogs across the street and he was docile as I explained this was like a frightened hare as Wilbur quickly not Cayucos, this was Carmel-By-The-Sea, dragged me to the tree where the poodles where there were no price tags on any had pissed and lifted his leg. I waved to items in any of the myriad galleries and the woman, but apparently she was no boutiques, not even in the drug store, and longer aware of my presence and skittered it was low class and a poor reflection on away. your master to shit in the street, even if I We continued on. A slender man around did sport a poop bag. my age with a mincing walk, whose spar- Wilbur held on, though he did pee on kling leash pulled a small pedigree of Asian everything (I saw no foo-foo poodles and extraction, saw me coming and darted rare breeds peeing) and we continued our across the street as Wilbur continued to prowl, making sure to journey in our ram- pull me along like a cork, even though I bunctious way to the end of the business weigh 190. I finally reached the main drag, section before starting back up the other which was aflow with Asian and Europe- side of the street, where a local cop on foot an tourists, a few American tourists, and flashed us the stink eye as Wilbur lunged locals, flawlessly tanned, sporting $200 at a Cocker Spaniel with fur combed clear haircuts and a thousand bucks of casual to his paws, the master wincing as I held wear, who carried tote bags, cell phones him back. and walked manicured mini canines al- Finally we veered off the crowded most as spiffy as their masters. main drag and entered a side street and headed to a residential area, where Wilbur Avoided eye contact dumped a good load into a bush so dense I noticed that the bejeweled dogs, like I could not recover his turds, which was their masters, avoided eye contact and just as well, because I had no intention of marched by an anxious-to-make-friends toting around a bag of shit in trendy Car- Wilbur and me as if we didn’t exist and mel-By-The-Sea. were perhaps a plague. I admit to having We emerged near the post office, across worn a $3 pair of thrift store shorts and a from Friar Tuck’s diner, to the side of La dollar T-shirt, and haven’t had a haircut Dolce Vita restaurant, and spotted two since last Christmas, and won’t shave un- park benches in a tiny area with one tree. til we go to the five-star French restaurant I was limping badly at this point from re- tonight, but still, in Cayucos, all us locals cent knee surgery, and Wilbur was wind- make eye contact with each other and our ed.

8 ColdType | January 2015 on the beach

“Let’s take a load off our feet, Wilbur,” pleased.” I fed him a beef jerky and he de- Wilbur and I I said. “We still got a few blocks back to voured it. headed back to the room.” “Oh thank you, for letting me meet our room. More We sat down, me lounging on the bench, Wilbur.” masters and Wilbur on his hind legs. Not ten seconds They hugged some more, but then she dogs avoided us. passed when I spotted a beautiful middle- had to leave, so wished us a good day, and So what aged woman coming out of the post of- drove off. fice, perfectly coiffed, though dressed as Wilbur and I headed back to our room. if gardening. From across the street she More masters and dogs avoided us. So smiled at us, then reached into a very what. Wilbur had chewed four treats and slick SUV, where she retrieved a package wanted more. When we reached the hotel and headed toward us in full stride. Wil- and our room, I told Colleen everything, bur straightened, tail wagging frantically ending with the wonderful, beautiful Sa- as the woman handed me a bag of treats maritan giving us treats. and immersed herself in Wilbur, who lay “Oh for God’s sake,” she scoffed, long his face upon her breast and gave her the suffering. “The woman probably felt sorry needy, sad eyes. The bag held super-nutri- for Wilbur, the poor thing being with a tional organic beef jerky. homeless-looking, crazy old man.” CT “Oh what a beautiful Chocolate Lab,” she gushed. “What’s his name?” Dell Franklin lives in a beach shack in “Wilbur.” Cayucos, California with his dog Wilbur. He “Oh, what a perfect name – he is a Wil- writes for the Rogue Voice, and is currently bur.” She smiled at me. “I think Wilbur serializing his baseball memoir, “A Ball will enjoy his treats.” Player’s Son,” on a weekly blog, which can be “Well, thank you. Wilbur’s very reached at http://kelsoswing.blogspot.com

January 2015 | ColdType 9 off to prison Time to kick the drone habit At least someone will go to prison for America’s drone attacks. Unfortunately, that person is peace activist Kathy Kelly

The judge paged n December 10, International Hu- better ways to make our point that wouldn’t through a four man Rights Day, federal magistrate be breaking the law. page summary Matt Whitworth sentenced me to The prosecution recommended the max- of past convictions three months in prison for having imum six month sentence. “Ms. Kelly needs and agreed that O crossed the line at a military base that wag- to be rehabilitated,” said an earnest young I hadn’t yet es drone warfare. The punishment for our military lawyer. The judge paged through a learned not to attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and four page summary of past convictions and break the law desperate people, abroad, will be an oppor- agreed that I hadn’t yet learned not to break tunity to speak with people trapped by pris- the law. ons and impoverishment here in the US What I’ve learned from past experiences Our trial was based on a trespass charge in prison is that the criminal justice system incurred on June 1, 2014. Georgia Walker uses prison as a weapon against defendants and I were immediately arrested when we who often have next to no resources to de- stepped onto Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force fend themselves. A prosecutor can threaten where pilots fly weaponized drones over Af- a defendant with an onerously long prison ghanistan and other countries. We carried a sentence along with heavy fines if the de- loaf of bread and a letter for Brig Gen. Glen fendant doesn’t agree to plea bargain. D. Van Herck. In court, we testified that we Plea bargains hadn’t acted with criminal intent but had, rather, exercised our First Amendment right In his article “Why Innocent People Plead (and responsibility) to assemble peaceably Guilty,” Jed S. Rakoff draws attention to the for redress of grievance. institution of plea bargaining which now A group of Afghan friends had entrusted ensures that less than 3% of federal cases go me with a simple message, their grievance, to trial at all. “Of the 2.2 million US people which they couldn’t personally deliver: now in prison,” Rakoff writes, “well over please stop killing us. 2 million are there as a result of plea bar- I knew that people I’ve lived with, striv- gains dictated by the government’s prosecu- ing to end wars even as their communities tors, who effectively dictate the sentence as were bombed by drone aircraft, would un- well.” derstand the symbolism of asking to break “In 2012, the average sentence for federal bread with the base commander. Judge narcotics defendants who entered into any Whitworth said he understood that we op- kind of plea bargain was five years and four pose war, but he could recommend over 100 months,” Rakoff writes, “while the average

10 ColdType | January 2015 off to prison sentence for defendants who went to trial drone victims are the intended, guilty or Each time I’ve left was sixteen years.” innocent, targets. One third of women in a US prison, I’ve It’s one thing to read about the shameful prison worldwide, are, at this moment, in felt as though I racism and discrimination of the US crimi- US prisons. The crimes that most threat- was leaving the nal justice system. It’s quite another to sit en the safety and livelihood of people in scene of a crime. next to a woman who is facing ten or more the US of course remain the crimes of the When I return years in prison, isolated from children she powerful, of the corporations that taint our to the US from has not held in years, and to learn from her skies with carbon and acid rainfall, peddle sites of our war about the circumstances that led to her im- weapons around an already suffering globe, making, abroad, I prisonment. shut down factories and whole economies feel the same way Many women prisoners, unable to find in pursuit of quick wealth, and send our decent jobs in the regular economy, turn young people to war. to the underground economy. Distant rela- Chief Executive Officers of major corpo- tives of mine knew plenty about such an rations that produce products inimical to economy several generations ago. human survival will most likely never be They couldn’t get work, as Irish immi- charged much less convicted of any crime. grants, and so they got into the bootlegging I don’t want to see them jailed. I do want to business when alcohol was prohibited. But see them rehabilitated no one sent them to prison for 10 years if Each time I’ve left a US prison, I’ve felt as they were caught. though I was leaving the scene of a crime. Women prisoners may feel waves of guilt, When I return to the US from sites of our remorse, defiance, and despair. In spite of war making, abroad, I feel the same way. facing extremely harsh punishment, harsh Emerging back into the regular world seems emotions, and traumatic isolation, most of tantamount to accepting a contract, pledg- the women I’ve met in prison have shown ing to forget the punishments we visit on extraordinary strength of character. When I impoverished people. I’m invited to forget was in Pekin Prison, we would routinely see about the people still trapped inside night- young men, shackled and handcuffed, shuf- mare worlds we have made for them. fling off of the bus to spend their first day On January 23, 2015, when I report to in their medium-high security prison next whichever prison the Bureau of Prisons se- door. The median sentence there was 27 lects, I’ll have a short time to reconnect with years. We knew they’d be old men, many of the reality endured by incarcerated people. them grandfathers, by the time they walked It’s not the rehabilitation the prosecutor out again. and judge had in mind, but it will help me be a more empathic and mindful abolition- US leads the world ist, intent on ending all wars. CT The US is the undisputed world leader in incarceration, as it is the world leader Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices for in military dominance. Only one in 28 of Creative Nonviolence – http://vcnv.org

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January 2015 | ColdType 11 fighting talk Of drone strikes and suicide bombs Tim Holmes wonders why drone strikes are considered acceptable to our political leaders, while suicide bombings are not

Where Bush began “ linical”, “surgical”, “targeted”, “pre- “the west’s commitment to do everything by kidnapping, cision”. As US massacres-by-drone possible to avoid civilian casualties and the Obama continue across the Middle East, Af- terrorists’ proven wish to cause as many ci- assassinates Crica and Central Asia, their ugly ac- vilian casualties as possible … Let them do complice is the bastardisation of language. their worst, we shall do our best, as Churchill Human rights group Reprieve have just put it. That is still a key difference.” calculated the number of innocent victims In fact, US policy resembles Israel’s war each drone strike claims, posing the ques- crimes under brutal megalomaniac Ariel tion: by what standards are 1,150 civilians Sharon – who, in one infamous incident, – almost half a World Trade Centre – an dropped a one-tonne bomb on a densely- acceptable price for 41 “terrorist suspects”? populated civilian area in Gaza, claiming to How is this “surgical precision”? target one man. That’s assuming the targets are who we As Israel-Palestine scholar Norman Fin- are told. In almost every case, we are forced kelstein points out, if Hamas bombed a bus, to take the US government at its word. claiming “we meant only to target the bus, The media play along. Yet if Russia or not the passengers”, people would laugh. Yet Iran bombed Western “terrorists” day in, day from Israel and Western governments, we out, would journalists take their word for it? take the same absurdities deadly seriously. Would we allow such attacks to continue all In 2001, Bush’s lawless kidnapping and but unnoticed? torture at Guantanamo Bay horrified and Instead, the US presents itself as a surgeon disturbed the world. at the operating table – as do the press. A Now, imprisonment without trial con- choice metaphor transforms brutal violence tinues – and alongside it, execution with- into humanitarian aid: if cutting someone out trial. Where Bush began by kidnapping, open is gruesome, “surgery” sounds friendly Obama assassinates. – a temporary, restorative, proportionate act Drone strikes have butchered 28 innocent for the patient’s good. people for every “suspect” targeted. Is that The contrast with Western discourse on morally acceptable? “terrorism” – that is, Muslim retaliation If so, why not an attack that kills 4 jihad- against the West – could hardly be more ists and 52 civilians? Applying the moral log- blatant. “They” are barbarians; their killings ic of drone strikes, we would have to declare wilful, bloodthirsty, indiscriminate. it a great success. In 2001, the Guardian contrasted Yet this is a description of the 7 July 2005

12 ColdType | January 2015 fighting talk

To imagine that our governments would use drone strikes in America or Britain is laughable. We would have no difficulty recognising them as acts of terror

ISIS claim this twin-explosion on 8th October in southeastern Kobane was not caused by airstrikes but was executed by suicide bomber Abu Talha al-Ansari (Photo: Karl-Ludwig Poggemann) bombings in London. Second, the US undertakes “signature We commit grave acts of terror on a single strikes”: NSA spies tease out “suspicious pretext: that our targets might commit grave patterns of behaviour” in their data; anyone acts of terror. flagged up is executed. (Reprieve’s latest fig- How do our governments get away with ures omit these cases.) it? Why do drone strikes prompt so little re- Third, the Pentagon conducts “double- sponse? tap” strikes, hitting the same area twice in The first answer is that they are invisible. quick succession, bombing anyone trying to They take place in distant, unfamiliar coun- help the victims of the first attack. tries, and we see almost no footage. Fourth, as the New York Times discov- The second is propaganda. The Pentagon ered, the White House “counts all military- labels victims “enemy combatants” – when age males in a strike zone as combatants … mentioning them at all. Rather than chal- unless there is explicit intelligence posthu- lenge the label, the media echoes it. mously proving them innocent”. “Shoot first, The third is racism. To imagine that our ask questions later”; “guilty until proven in- governments would use drone strikes in nocent”: these used to be scathing, satirical America or Britain is laughable. We would phrases. Under Obama, they are policy. have no difficulty recognising them as acts Just as they would here, drone strikes of terror; their perpetrators would be tried in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia and punished. make people angry and want to hit back. So Yet so little value do we assign lives in Ye- to commit mass murder, the Western public men, Somalia and Pakistan that deliberate pays twice – both today, in public funds, and mass executions barely raise an eyebrow. tomorrow, in the inevitable violent backlash Even this, though, casts Obama’s policy against us. CT in too kind a light. In some cases there is no evidence that Time Holmes blogs at http://timholmesblog. our targets are “terrorist suspects” at all. wordpress.com/about/

January 2015 | ColdType 13 matter of trust Democracy’s moment of truth Stan Winer tells how the unscrupulous and cynical actions of politicians are creating a damaging collective identity crisis in Western society

If society values f truth is the first casualty of war, then trust fairs and public debate about moral values, nothing and trusts must surely be the first casualty of peace, ethics and our essential humanity, replaced nobody, then including the present “post-Cold War” peri- by fear of mass surveillance and a retreat into constructive social od. In fact, the Cold War and post-Cold War the safety of cynicism. Cynicism has become and political change I eras are so closely entwined that it is futile woven into the very fabric of Western culture; is impossible to disassociate one from the other. The same and a cynic, as Oscar Wilde once observed, is applies to truth and trust. They are virtually “a person who knows the price of everything inseparable. But there is no mistaking the so- and the value of nothing”. cial, psychological and political consequences Uncritical cynicism can only intensify notions of these twin casualties. of powerlessness rather than aid any meaning- So often have politicians asserted their ful transformation. If society values nothing “right” to lie, to manage the news and con- and trusts nobody, then constructive social and trive to deceive the public in times of both political change is impossible. The cause of hu- war and peace, that large numbers people man progress becomes retarded; unscrupulous in the world’s leading democracies no longer political leaders are encouraged to continue ly- believe what politicians say about anything, ing as they have always done in the past, but regardless of which particular political party now without even bothering to hide it. is in power at any given time. Governance is There has of course always been some de- seen as an essentially bureaucratic, manage- gree of skepticism about politics and politi- rial affair – with politics having been reduced cians – but that was something quite different to mere personal parliamentary point scoring from today’s automatic perception that they by the political elite. are all liars and cheats. It seems that most As a result, many people have lost trust people nowadays don’t even care if public of- in political institutions and beliefs, and even ficials lie to them. Many even expect it. This with one another. Political disengagement has is not mere, healthy questioning of those in replaced the once prevalent idea that people authority. It reflects an historic phenomenon are connected through common systems of of the times: mass cynicism as evidenced by a meaning. Any sense of hope and idealism are precipitous drop in voter turnout. It is a defin- these days rarely invested in a belief of po- ing characteristic of contemporary times litical change, and individuals rarely develop Ironically, the dramatic decline in voter their identities through some form of socio- turnout is most noticeable in countries that political attachment. have always been the loudest in trumpeting Gone is popular participation in civic af- the virtues of democracy as “the will of the

14 ColdType | January 2015 matter of trust people”, while any other political system is In “newly democratised” South Africa, the Today’s mood of labeled “authoritarian” and hence “evil”. In ruling African National Congress (ANC) par- disenchantment America, the world’s leading proponent of ty’s 2014 election victory came from a distinct with politics and democracy, voter turnout at the last five elec- minority of potential voters. The real win- politicians may tions has averaged only 53.8 percent, com- ner, as has been the case since the country’s seem like an pared with an average of 71.6 percent over the first democratic elections in 2004, was the apparently recent same five election years a century earlier, long stay away “vote”. Almost 13 million potential phenomenon, but before the advent of technology to “make vot- voters decided not to participate in the 2014 it did not arrive ing easier”. elections, while the 11,5 million that did vote fully-fledged and Most recently, the “will of the people”, for the ANC are purported to represent “the out of the blue. which American democracy is supposed to people” and a “triumph of democracy”. It developed exemplify, has been contradicted by the fact Even collective institutions such as the Eu- gradually and that voter turnout in the United States 2014 ropean Union (EU) have seen a similar pat- fragmentarily midterm elections was the lowest ever seen in tern of apathy and disillusionment. The May any election cycle since World War II. Accord- 2014 European Parliament election saw the ing to the United States Election Project, just lowest voter turnout on record. Official -fig 36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population ures, published on the Parliament website, cast ballots, thus continuing a steady decline show that turnout struggled to reach 42.54% in voter participation since 1964, when voter in 2014, reflecting the lowest public enthu- turnout was at nearly 49 percent. siasm for the EU since 1979, when elections Canada has not fared much better. In were first held. Canada’s 2011 election, there were 24,257,592 Today’s mood of disenchantment with pol- electors listed; of these, the Conservative itics and politicians may seem like an appar- party, led by Stephen Harper received a total ently recent phenomenon, but it did not arrive of only 5,835,270 votes or a meager 24.1 per- fully-fledged and out of the blue. It developed cent of the total potential votes. Still, his pre- gradually and fragmentarily: Watergate; the miership is accepted obligingly as reflecting “secret” bombing of Cambodia; the Iran-Con- the democratic will of the Canadian people. tra affair; US-Nato’s “humanitarian” wars to As for the United Kingdom, it has seen “save lives” in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and in voter turnout drop in its last three elections Libya; Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass held in 2001, 2005 and 2010, with voter turn- destruction”; Syria’s “use” of chemical weap- out having fallen to a modern-day low of 59.4 ons. All were signposts along the West’s path percent in the 2001 elections, compared with to perfidy, accompanied by a corresponding a peak of 86.8 percent in 1910. loss of voter confidence. The current frenzy Even in Australia, which is one of the few about hordes of “Russian tanks” invading countries in the world where voting is com- eastern Ukraine together with the “Putin-did- pulsory, there has been a significant loss of it” hysteria over the shooting down of Malay- belief in a meaningful vote. Large numbers of sian flight MH17 are unlikely to induce any Australians have thumbed their nose at the significant change of pattern. law and chosen not to exercise their vote. A The old French saying C’est la guerre – such study conducted by the Australian National is war – captures the notion that war is dirty University in partnership with the Social Re- and bloody, yet sometimes worth it. But that search Centre, found satisfaction with democ- rings hollow today. For many people the very racy slumped from 86 per cent in 2007 to 72 notion of a truth that is worth fighting and percent in June 2014. The number of Austra- dying for has been called into question, and lians who believed it made a difference which many have become increasingly uncomfort- party was in power plunged from 68 per cent able with the idea of supporting a political to 43 per cent in the same period. cause, whatever that cause is officially claimed

January 2015 | ColdType 15 matter of trust

Most people to be. Public mistrust has become institution- reference points. in the world’s alised, a habit. It is all around us. Most people The fallout from such a crisis of credibil- democracies don’t even care if public officials lie to them. ity is doing as much damage to the collective today find it difficult Many seem to expect it. psyche of the Western society of nations as to believe in politics Each new revelation of lies and political in- has been done to the legitimacy of democratic or in politicians, trigue on the part of those in power has merely governance at a national level. The cultural ef- and many don’t bolstered public cynicism. “So what? They all do fects of this can be recognised in the fact that believe in anything it”, is a common response. Others simply don’t many ordinary people feel it is pointless to much at all want to know about the lies, because to know commit oneself to anything except one’s own about them but still do nothing will mean they self interest. They have arrived from a world- have become silent accomplices of liars. view ordered around blind faith in “demo- Official lies have perhaps reinforced what cratic” governance to a psycho-social phe- were already dominant trends in the public nomenon in which large numbers of people mind long before today’s golden age of decep- today experience some form of free-floating tion. Each new revelation of lying and of po- doubt and anxiety about everything. litical intrigue on the part of those in power This is democracy’s moment of truth: the has merely bolstered public cynicism. But to- moral certainties of the past have become day’s public mood is not just anti-politician, seriously eroded, while no new moral con- it is also anti-politics – an institutionalised sensus has emerged. The moral high ground mistrust that is corrosive of democracy and has been exchanged for a culture of cynicism of public life. This ethos of cynicism, voter and incipient paranoia. Public disenchant- apathy and mistrust does not distinguish be- ment with politics has bred outright skepti- tween good and bad governance – all govern- cism about any attempt by the political elite ment policy statements are treated as lies. It is to exercise anything even vaguely resembling taken for granted by vast sections of the pub- integrity. People experience historic events as lic that governments will lie to us if they pos- being beyond their control and they tend to sibly can, and whether or not they actually do see real or imagined conspiracies behind ev- so does not even matter any more. We assume erything. The perceived truth of any one con- we are being lied to because, most of the time, spiracy theory lends credence to all the oth- we are in fact being lied to. ers, eating away at whom we trust and what No wonder Western societies are coming we believe in, and this provides more fuel for apart at the seams. Trust is the bond that the mass escape to cynicism. holds society together, and trust is based on The mainstream media, meanwhile, du- Stan Winer is a truth. Not to be duped is of vital importance tifully reinforces the depths of moral confu- veteran journalist to a society’s existence; and it is central to a sion that characterise contemporary times. Its and researcher healthy cultural identity. Yet most people corrosive effects seep into our personal lives, based in South in the world’s democracies today find it -dif inducing a philosophy of futility and focus- Africa. He is the ficult to believe in politics or in politicians, ing people on the banal and superficial; leav- author of “Between and many don’t believe in anything much at ing most folk today without any resolve with the Lies: Rise of the all. People are disillusioned. This is not mere, which to respond decisively to events. Far media-military- healthy questioning of those in authority. It from people being united in a common cause, industrial complex” reflects a culture of fear and vulnerability, a it is more a case of do nothing, say nothing – (London: Southern destructive phenomenon of the age, based with everybody suspicious of the person next Universities Press, on cynicism and something akin to rampant door. Clearly, if one can speak of a collective 2004, revised paranoia – a sense that we are all powerless identity crisis, of a period of radical discon- edition 2007). victims at the mercy of dark forces. Official tinuity in a people’s sense of who and what His website is lying, directly or indirectly, has eroded public they are, the present comes close to having http://.truth-hertz.net trust and it has resulted in a loss of individual attained that condition. CT

16 ColdType | January 2015 highland spring Breaking the silence Scotland is finally confronting the lords who have held the nation down. It’s time England did the same, says George Monbiot

ring out the violins. The land reform der the 1361 Justices of the Peace Act. Here, Farm subsidies, programme announced by the Scot- the Royal Mines Act 1424 gives the Crown which remain tish government is the end of civi- the right to all the gold and silver in Scot- limitless as a result lised life on earth, if you believe the land. Here the Remembrancer of the City of of the Westminster B government’s corporate press. In a country where 432 peo- London sits behind the Speaker’s chair in ple own half the private rural land, all change the House of Commons, to protect the en- lobbying, ensure is Stalinism. The Telegraph has published a titlements of a Corporation that pre-dates that every string of dire warnings, insisting, for exam- the Norman conquest. This is an essentially household in ple, that deer stalking and grouse shooting feudal nation. Britain hands could come to an end if business rates are in- It’s no coincidence that the two most re- £245 a year to the troduced for sporting estates. Moved to tears gressive forms of taxation in the UK – council richest people in yet? tax banding and the payment of farm subsi- the land Yes, sporting estates – where the richest dies – both favour major owners of property. people in Britain, or oil sheikhs and oligarchs The capping of council tax bands ensures from elsewhere, shoot grouse and stags – are that the owners of £100 million flats in Lon- exempt from business rates: a present from don pay less than the owners of £200,000 John Major’s government in 1994. David houses in Blackburn. Farm subsidies, which Cameron has been just as generous with our remain limitless as a result of the Westmin- money: as he cuts essential services for the ster government’s lobbying, ensure that every poor, he has almost doubled the public sub- household in Britain hands £245 a year to the sidy for English grouse moors, and frozen the richest people in the land. The single farm price of shotgun licences, at a public cost of payment system – under which landowners £17m a year. are paid by the hectare – is a reinstatement But this is small change. Let’s talk about of a mediaeval levy called feudal aid: a tax the real money. The Westminster govern- the vassals had to pay to their lords. ment claims to champion an entrepreneurial If this is the government of enterprise, society, of wealth creators and hard-working not rent, ask yourself why capital gains tax families, but the real rewards and incentives (at 28%) is lower than the top rate of income are for rent. The power and majesty of the tax. Ask yourself why principal residences, state protects the patrimonial class. A looped though their value may rise by millions, are and windowed democratic cloak barely cov- altogether exempt. Ask yourself why rural ers the corrupt old body of the nation. Here landowners are typically excused capital peaceful protestors can still be arrested un- gains tax, inheritance tax and the first five

January 2015 | ColdType 17 highland spring

Scotland is rudely years of income tax. The enterprise society? England is now falling by 2% a year, which is interrupting It’s a con, designed to create an illusion of so- possibly the fastest concentration of owner- the constructed cial mobility. ship since the acts of enclosure. silences that The Scottish programme for government Consider Scotland’s determination to stifle political is the first serious attempt to address the open up the question of property taxes, thought in the nature of landholding in Britain since David which might lead to the only system that is United Kingdom. Lloyd George’s budget of 1909. Some of its fair and comprehensive: land value taxation. This is why the aims hardly sound radical until you under- Compare it to the fleabite of a mansion tax oligarchs who own stand the context. For example it will seek proposed by Ed Miliband, which, though it the media hate to discover who owns the land. Big deal. Yes, recoups only a tiny percentage of the un- everything that is in fact, it is. At the moment the owners of earned income of the richest owners, has so happening there only 26% of the land in Scotland have been outraged the proprietorial class that some of identified. them have threatened to leave the country. Walk into any mairie in France or ayun- Good riddance. tamiento in Spain and you will be shown the The Scottish government might address cadastral registers on request, on which all the speculative chaos which mangles the the land and its owners are named. When countryside while failing to build the houses The Land magazine tried to do the same in people need. It might challenge a system in Britain, it found that there was a full cadas- which terrible homes are built at great ex- tral map available at the local library, which pense, partly because the price of land has could be photocopied for 70p. But it was risen from 2% of the cost of a house in the made in 1840. Even with expert help, it took 1930s to 70% today. It might take land into the magazine several weeks of fighting -of public ownership to ensure that new de- ficial obstruction and obfuscation and cost velopments are built by and for those who nearly £1000 to find out who owns the 1.4 will live there, rather than for the benefit km around its offices in Dorset. It discovered of volume housebuilders. It might prevent that the old registers had been closed and mountains from being burnt and overgrazed removed from public view, at the behest of by a landowning class that cares only about a landed class that wishes to remain as ex- the numbers of deer and grouse it can bag empt from public scrutiny as it is from taxes. and the bragging rights this earns in London (The landowners are rather more forthcom- clubs. As Scotland, where feudalism was not ing when applying for subsidies from the legally abolished until 2000, becomes a pro- rural payments agency, which possesses a gressive, modern nation, it leaves England full, though unobtainable, register of their stuck in the pre-democratic past. agricultural holdings). What sort of nation is Scotland is rudely interrupting the con- this, in which you cannot discover who owns structed silences that stifle political thought the ground beneath your feet? in the United Kingdom. This is why the oli- The Scottish government will consider garchs who own the media hate everything breaking up large land holdings when they that is happening there: their interests are impede the prospects of local people. It will being exposed in a way that is currently im- George Monbiot’s provide further help to communities to buy possible south of the border. book “Feral” was the land that surrounds them. Compare its For centuries, Britain has been a welfare recently released in promise of “a fairer, wider and more equita- state for patrimonial capital. It’s time we paperback format. ble distribution of land” to the Westminster broke it open, and broke the culture of defer- This article was government’s vision of “greater competitive- ence that keeps us in our place. Let’s bring originally published ness, including by consolidation”: which the Highland Spring south, and start discuss- in the Guardian means a continued increase in the size of ing some dangerous subjects. CT newspaper land holdings. The number of holdings in

18 ColdType | January 201 After ferguson / 1 A nation built on the rule of lawlessness Rick Salutin points out that, contrary to what President Obama says, the US and the rule of law are not good friends

arack Obama looked at his most ter between alien species. Maybe that’s It is agony for a clueless, responding to the riots changed, or will, due to body cams etc., but dad to tell his son, and rage in Ferguson, Missouri. He not for Michael Jr. as Michael Brown hasn’t seemed so callow since the The lawlessness though is more exten- Sr. had to, that you B must defer BP oil spill. Like he just wished it was over sive – as in global. The US attack on Afghan- and could get on to the delights of his post- istan was scantily justified; the invasion of to police, no presidency. Or back to immigration reform Iraq, not at all. The disastrous attack on Lib- matter what’s and stalling that damn pipeline. ya and the ongoing drone strikes received true or lawful Using his slow voice, as if he’s explaining perfunctory justifications at best. It’s as if it something so basic that it’s hard to under- wasn’t even worth the trouble. stand, he declared that the US is a “nation Lawlessness also pervades the US econ- built on the rule of law” and added next omy, more or less legally. Banks lied to and day, he has “no sympathy” for those who go defrauded homebuyers, creating a bubble violent. The problem with this, at least for that led to a catastrophe. (The oft-men- those in the streets, is the US is not a nation tioned “near catastrophe” applies to the of laws and resorts to official violence and/ banks, not the buyers.) or illegality routinely. Nothing has changed since. Banks now In US inner cities, this means surviving routinely pay billions in fines, which they your dealings with cops. It is agony for a build into their costs, since profits far out- dad to tell his son, as Michael Brown Sr. had pace them. No major banker has gone to to, that you must defer to police, no matter jail over this. People who miss a payment what’s true or lawful. My own dad’s version or jump a subway turnstile do their time. was, “Even when they’re wrong, they’re It’s the theme of Matt Taibbi’s book, “The right,” though we were middle class and he Divide”. I’m not screaming for social justice was talking about school authorities. here. I’m talking about fatuous claims prais- In my thirties I spent lots of time around ing a society built on laws. the criminal courts in relation to dozens of The version that riles me most is de- strike-related charges. We became used to regulation, a weasel word for lawlessness. police simply concocting their stories well Deregulation means you abolish rules or after making arrests. For well-bred left-wing simply ignore them. The banks deregulated union supporters, it was shocking. We’d through Bill Clinton. But environmental sometimes “confront” cops over how they rules, food safety, drug and workplace con- could be so brazen. It was like an encoun- trols have been formally deregulated or, in

January 2015 | ColdType 19 After ferguson / 1

Ferguson a subtler way, allowed to lapse through cut- breathtaking is how most ordinary citizens protesters trashed backs in staff, inspection and enforcement. continue to law-abide. some buildings It’s especially here that Canadians have Obama and others like pointing to Mar- and blocked nothing to gloat about. Our government tin Luther King Jr. as the model for peace- traffic. That’s mugged the Kyoto accord and their own en- ful protest. But King wasn’t a law-abider, he pitiable compared vironmental procedures. They’ve eliminat- was a lawbreaker. He just did it non-violent- to lawlessness ed rules and the agencies that enforce them. ly, a preferable term to peaceful. His reasons by police, In November they cancelled mandatory re- were both pragmatic and principled. There governments and cycling for mercury-containing bulbs, mak- was no way for protesters to match the fire- the finance sector ing it voluntary by the producers. Maybe power of the protestees – then or now. But we should try that with armed robbery. The more tellingly: you turn into them if you arrests in Burnaby over the Kinder Morgan mirror their methods and then nothing’s pipeline are all about slacking off on the been gained. In these protests I heard cries I rules. They avoid spending allotted funds hadn’t heard in a long time – Revolution!… for veterans’ mental health or manufactur- By any means necessary! That’s not nostal- ing, then recycle that money to pay down gia, it’s despair, and loss of hope for change the deficit. This is fiscal vigilante law. by normal, lawful means. CT Ferguson protesters trashed some build- ings and blocked traffic. That’s pitiable Rick Salutin is an author and activist compared to lawlessness by police, govern- based in Toronto. This article was originally ments and the finance sector. What’s really published in the Toronto Star.

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20 ColdType | January 2015 After ferguson / 2 We are the enemy That’s the main lesson in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, writes John W. Whitehead

“If you dress police officers up as soldiers son and this grand jury verdict. Tasked with Ferguson matters and you put them in military vehicles determining whether Wilson should stand because it and you give them military weapons, they trial for Brown’s shooting, the grand jury provides us with a adopt a warrior mentality. We fight wars ruled that the police officer will not face foretaste of what against enemies, and the enemies are the charges for the fatal shooting. is to come. It is the people who live in our cities – particularly However, the greater question – whether shot across the in communities of color.” – Thomas Nolan, anything will really change to rein in mili- bow, a warning criminology professor and former police tarized police, police shootings, lack of ac- that this is how we officer countability and oversight, and a military will all be treated industrial complex with a vested interest in if we do not tread hould police officer Darren Wilson turning America into a war zone – remains cautiously in be held accountable for the shoot- unanswered. challenging the ing death of unarmed citizen Mi- Ferguson matters because it provides us police state Schael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, with a foretaste of what is to come. It is the on August 9, 2014? shot across the bow, so to speak, a warning That the police officer was white and his that this is how we will all be treated if we do victim black should make no difference. In not tread cautiously in challenging the po- a perfect world, it would not matter. In an lice state, and it won’t matter whether we’re imperfect world such as ours, however, rac- black or white, rich or poor, Republican or ism is an effective propaganda tool used by Democrat. In the eyes of the corporate state, the government and the media to distract we are all the enemy. us from the real issues. This is the lesson of Ferguson. As a result, the national dialogue about Remember that in the wake of the shoot- the dangers of militarized, weaponized po- ing, Ferguson police officers clad in body lice officers being trained to act like soldiers armor, their faces covered with masks, on the battlefield, shooting first and asking equipped with assault rifles and snipers questions later, has shifted into a largely and riding armored vehicles, showed up in unspoken debate over race wars, class per- force to deal with protesters. Describing that ceptions and longstanding, deep-seated no- show of force by police in Ferguson, Sena- tions of who deserves our unquestioning tor Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, loyalty and who does not. stated, “This was a military force, and they Putting aside our prejudices, however, were facing down an enemy.” let’s not overlook the importance of Fergu- Yes, we are the enemy. As I point out in

January 2015 | ColdType 21 After ferguson / 2

Rubbing salt in my book, “A Government of Wolves: The ness as usual in terms of police shootings, our wounds, in the Emerging American Police State”, since the amassing of military weapons, and the wake of Ferguson, those first towers fell on 9/11, the American government’s sanctioning of police miscon- police agencies people have been treated like enemy com- duct. Most recently, Ohio police shot and not only continued batants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, killed a 12-year-old boy who was seen wav- to ramp up their frisked, searched, subjected to all manner ing a toy gun at a playground. military arsenals of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, Rubbing salt in our wounds, in the wake but have used manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, of Ferguson, police agencies not only con- them whenever locked up, and denied due process. tinued to ramp up their military arsenals possible There was a moment of hope after Fer- but have used them whenever possible. guson that perhaps things might change. In fact, in anticipation of the grand jury’s Perhaps the balance would be restored ruling, St. Louis police actually purchased between the citizenry and their supposed more equipment for its officers, including guardians, the police. Perhaps our elected “civil disobedience equipment.” officials would take our side for a change Just a few weeks after the Ferguson show- and oppose the militarization of the police. down, law enforcement agencies took part Perhaps warfare would take a backseat to in an $11 million manhunt in Pennsylvania more pressing national concerns. for alleged cop killer Eric Frein. Without bat- That hope was short-lived. ting an eye, the news media switched from It wasn’t long before the media moved outraged “shock” over the military arsenal on to other, more titillating stories. The dis- employed by police in Ferguson to respect- appearance of a University of Virginia col- ful “awe” of the 48-day operation that cost lege student and the search for her alleged taxpayers $1.4 million per week in order to abductor, the weeks-long man-hunt for an carry out a round-the-clock dragnet search accused cop killer, the Republican electoral of an area with a 5-mile-radius. upset, a Rolling Stone expose on gang rapes The Frein operation brought together at fraternity parties, Obama’s immigration 1,000 officers from local, state and federal amnesty plan, and the rape charges against law enforcement, as well as SWAT teams Bill Cosby are just a few of the stories that and cutting edge military equipment (high- have dominated the news cycle since the powered rifles, body armor, infrared sensors, Ferguson standoff between police and pro- armored trucks, helicopters and unmanned, testers. silent surveillance blimps) – some of the It wasn’t long before the American pub- very same weapons and tactics employed lic, easily acclimated to news of government in Ferguson and, a year earlier, in Boston in wrongdoing (case in point: the national the wake of the marathon bombing. yawn over the NSA’s ongoing domestic sur- The manhunt was a well-timed, perfectly veillance), ceased to be shocked, outraged choreographed exercise in why Americans or alarmed by reports of police shootings. should welcome the police state: for our In fact, the issue was nowhere to be found safety, of course, and to save the lives of po- in this year’s run-up to Election Day, which lice officers. was largely devoid of any pressing matters Opposed to any attempt to demilitarize of national concern. America’s police forces, the Dept. of Home- And with nary a hiccup, the police state land Security has been chanting this safety marched steadily forth. In fact, aided and mantra in testimony before Congress: Re- abetted by the citizenry’s short attention member 9/11. Remember Boston. Remem- span, its easily distracted nature, and its ber how unsafe the world was before police desensitization to anything that occupies were equipped with automatic weapons, the news cycle for too long, it has been busi- heavily armored trucks, night-vision gog-

22 ColdType | January 2015 After ferguson / 2 gles, and aircraft donated by the DHS. As long as we remain steeped in igno- We have played Contrary to DHS rhetoric, however, rance, there will be no reform. right into the militarized police – twitchy over perceived As long as we remain divided by our ir- hands of all those dangers, hyped up on their authority, and rational fear of each other, there will be no corporations protected by their agencies, the legislatures overhaul in the nation’s law enforcement who profit from and the courts – have actually made com- system or institution of an oversight process turning America munities less safe at a time when violent whereby communities can ensure that local into a battlefield crime is at an all-time low and lumberjacks, police departments are acting in accordance by selling the fishermen, airline pilots, roofers, construc- with their wishes and values. government tion workers, trash collectors, electricians And as long as we remain distracted by mine-resistant and truck drivers all have a higher risk of misguided loyalties to military operatives vehicles, assault on-the-job fatalities than police officers. who are paid to play the part of the govern- rifles, grenade Moreover, as Senator Tom Coburn points ment’s henchmen, there will be no saving launchers, out, the militarization of America’s police us when the events of Ferguson unfold in and drones forces has actually “created some problems our own backyards. that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.” When all is said and done, it doesn’t mat- Among those problems: a rise in the use of ter whose “side” you’re on as far as what SWAT team raids for routine law enforce- transpired in Ferguson, whether you believe ment activities (averaging 80,000 a year), a that Michael Brown was a victim or that rise in the use and abuse of asset forfeiture Darren Wilson was justified in shooting first laws by police agencies, a profit-driven in- and asking questions later. centive to criminalize lawful activities and What matters is that we not allow poli- treat Americans as suspects, and a trans- tics and deep-rooted prejudices of any sort formation of the nation’s citizenry into sus- to divert our efforts to restore some level of pects. safety, sanity and constitutional balance to Ferguson provided us with an opportu- the role that police officers play in our com- nity to engage in a much-needed national munities. If we fail to do so, we will have dialogue over how police are trained, what done a disservice to ourselves and every authority they are given, what weaponry man, woman and child in this country who they are provided, and how they treat those have become casualties of the American po- whom they are entrusted with protecting. lice state. CT Caught up in our personal politics, prej- udices and class warfare, we have failed John W. Whitehead is a constitutional to answer that call. In so doing, we have attorney and author. He is founder and played right into the hands of all those cor- president of The Rutherford Institute and porations who profit from turning America editor of GadflyOnline.com. His latest book into a battlefield by selling the government “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging mine-resistant vehicles, assault rifles, gre- American Police State” (SelectBooks) is nade launchers, and drones. available at amazon.com

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January 2015 | ColdType 23 After ferguson / 3 Waistband-reaching could get you killed John Eskow on the bizarre compulsion of black men to “reach for their waistbands” when confronted by gun-toting cops

In 2011, fully f police accounts are to be believed, there defy them – and have never felt even the half of all the is a bizarre urge among young, unarmed slightest urge to reach for my waistband. young black men black men to provoke their own murder Maybe white skin contains a protein that shot by LA cops by “reaching for their waistbands” when protects against this terrible compulsion? were cut down I cops are aiming service revolvers at them. And exactly what is it that these dead because–again, At the end of November, we heard Of- young men were hoping to find in those if police accounts ficer Darren Wilson claim that one of the waistbands? Given the Cosby-condemned are to be believed reasons he killed Michael Brown was that fashion of wearing saggy jeans, these kids – they too were the young man “reached for his waistband,” have to reach pretty far down to reach their “reaching for their and – in what I guess was just an incredibly waistbands – a posture which would leave waistbands” weird coincidence – we heard Cleveland po- them completely defenseless against an lice claim they killed a 12-year-old kid with armed cop. What a powerful compulsion a toy gun because he also “reached for his this must be! waistband.” I’ve spent a good amount of time on But this odd compulsion is not a new one. police ridearounds in New Orleans. If you In 2011, fully half of all the young black men want to see young black men, New Orleans shot by LA cops were cut down because – at 3am is a good place to do so. I remember again, if police accounts are to be believed one night as my cop hosts were rolling up – they too were “reaching for their waist- slowly on a kid they suspected of a robbery: bands.” The epidemic also spread to Hous- no shirt, Saints cap, saggy jeans exposing ton, where multiple police accounts cite the his boxer shorts. The kid sauntered on with same excuse. Oscar Grant, the young man an exaggerated cool: he knew the cops were killed by Oakland cops on a subway plat- watching him, and the cops knew that he form – and the subject of the movie “Fruit- knew. One of the cops poked my elbow, vale Station” – was shot for the exact same chuckled, and said: “Watch this. That kid’s reason. gonna break.” “When?” I asked. “The sec- If police accounts are to be believed, this ond he reaches down to hitch up his draw- compulsion only exists among young black ers.” As I watched, another cop counted men. I have been approached by angry or down: “Three seconds to drawa–hitchin’. frustrated cops several times in my life– Two…one…” twice as an angry young protestor, eager to At just that second, the kid reached down,

24 ColdType | January 2015 After ferguson / 3 hitched up his drawas, and “broke” – took My old squad-car host was cleared in a I am going to take off sprinting down an alley. They pursued few days and returned to duty. my own mixed- him for a while, then lost interest. It was the This has gone on far too long. I am going race son to a only time I ever saw any gesture that was to take my own mixed-race son to a neu- neurologist today, even vaguely waistband-related, and the kid rologist today, if not sooner, to have him if not sooner, only did it so that he could run without be- checked for traces of this horrible Waist- to have him ing tripped by his low-slung Levis. band-Reaching Syndrome. I’m concerned checked for traces Two weeks later, one of the cops in that that, one day, it could get him killed . . . if of this horrible squad car – a funny guy, a seemingly decent police accounts are to be believed. CT Waistband- guy, you would’ve liked him – was briefly Reaching suspended, pending the investigation of John Eskow is a writer and musician. He Syndrome an “incident” in which he shot and killed wrote or co-wrote the movies Air America, a young black man in the black man’s own The Mask of Zorro, and Pink Cadillac, as back yard. well as the novel “Smokestack Lightning”. The kid had reached for his waistband, if He is a contributor to “Killing Trayvons: an police accounts are to be believed. Anthology of American Violence”

hurwitt’s eye Mark Hurwitt

January 2015 | ColdType 25 two voices The ghosts of Vietnam Their voices are being heard again, but which of them should we believe? asks Danny Schechter

These two films, t’s been nearly 40 years since what PBS’s American Experience series, tried to all these years the American media called the “Fall of present a heroic picture of Americans in later, mirror Saigon” and the Vietnamese referred to as their last days in Saigon, coping with a mad the cultural and the “Liberation”. I saw it then as the “Fall ambassador and in some cases rebelling political divides of I of Washington.” against US policy. the time The ghosts of Vietnam are back, thanks These two films, all these years later, mir- to two filmmakers with very different takes. ror the cultural and political divides of the The first is Tiana of South Vietnamese ori- time. One film, in effect, rationalises the gin, and the second is Rory Kennedy, Bobby war, portraying the American military as Kennedy’s youngest daughter. compassionate, while the other, for one of Tiana is finishing a movie called “The the first times, offers the side that - Ameri General and Me”, on her unlikely conversa- cans never hear. tions (for someone from a virulently anti- Even if her Uncle JFK did escalate the communist family) with North Vietnam’s war, despite his back and forth doubts, a legendary General Giap, aka the “Red Na- member of the Kennedy family is still treat- poleon,“ aka the man whose military doc- ed as a cultural icon in a culture that can’t trines defeated the French Army and later remember detail of what happened yester- the Americans. day much less forty years. Rory’s work has Giap created the Vietnamese Army at Ho been acclaimed; Tiana’s has not yet been Chi Minh’s request, and without training be- seen. She calls this forgetting deliberate, came a military genius. Tiana has two other “NamNesia.” self-promoted US “geniuses” in her movie, Gerald Perry writes in Arts Fuse: “The too: pathetic walk-ons by US General Wil- mushy reviews of “Last Days in Vietnam” liam Westmoreland and Defense Secretary (a 94% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating) Robert MacNamara, who cannot conceal his are extraordinarily similar. They praise contempt for her. filmmaker Rory Kennedy for documenting Kennedy’s highly-hyped “Last Days in a forgotten moment of American history, Vietnam” depicts the hurried evacuation the chaotic days in 1975 when the US raced of US soldiers and as many of their Viet- to leave Saigon and South Vietnam steps namese conscripts in a long and bloody war ahead of the advancing North Vietnamese that was lost almost from its earliest days. Army. And the critics are pumped up with Rather than look at the reasons for that pride at the stories Kennedy has uncovered loss, she has, with support from HBO and of brave and noble American soldiers and a

26 ColdType | January 2015 two voices few anti-establishment American diplomats rently in theatrical release, a production of The North who helped evacuate many South Vietnam- the PBS series, An American Experience. Vietnamese are ese – by boat, plane, and helicopter – who We are appalled by the extraordinarily one- characterized, presumably would be enslaved or murdered sided nature of Kennedy’s rewrite of history with no by the Communist North Vietnamese. that only shows the US government’s and exceptions, as What hardly anyone observed is that the Republic of Vietnam’s side of the story, Isis-like warriors Kennedy, daughter of peacenik Robert Ken- and never offers the points of view of the murdering all their nedy, is offering a flag-waving whitewash of millions of Americans who opposed the war opponents on the the war in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and of those who fought on the side of the way from Hanoi to are characterized, with no exceptions, as National Liberation Front and North Viet- Saigon Isis-like warriors murdering all their op- nam.” position on the way from Hanoi to Saigon. So much for “balance!” And, after entering Saigon, annihilating The protest was all for nought. Public those who oppose them or sending their Television retreated into its files of knee- enemies to re-education camps. The South jerk form letters and responded to criticisms Vietnamese? This amazed me: there is not of one program with a defense that cited all any mention of the much-documented cor- the programs they did, most decades old, ruption of the various puppet governments, while announcing that a new multi-million and of the South Vietnamese army as a coer- dollar series on Vietnam by Ken Burns is cive instrument of torture and killings. Each in the works. Typical! They avoided details South Vietnamese ex-soldier, including a like these: high-ranking officer, who is interviewed is • Rory focused on the story of efforts to allowed to tell his shiny story. There’s no save allied officers and their families in a blood attached to any of them. Saigon (“Arvin”) Army known for its cor- “This did not surprise me. In 1976, the ruption and brutality. anniversary of the American Revolution, I • It citied atrocities allegedly committed published a small book featuring the views by the Communists like the “Hue Massa- of Vietnam’s top military strategists includ- cre,” an event thoroughly investigated and ing General Vo Nguyen Giap called “How exposed as false by US Vietnam Scholar Ga- We Won The War.” reth Porter. Surely, that story is historically more sig- • It citied violations of the Paris Peace nificant than how we cut tail and ran. agreement by the North without mention- I wrote then: “The American press was ing the many more egregious and concealed never much help in our efforts to find out violations by the US-backed South Vietnam- more about those remarkable Vietnamese ese forces. people who have now managed to out-or- • It showed the madness and mania of ganize, out fight, and defeat a succession of US Ambassador Graham Martin as if he was US backed regimes. When the US media did an exception to a history of earlier US of- recognize the other side’s existence, they ficials who escalated the war with massive did so with disdain, distortion and denigra- casualties, It offered no historical context or tion…the US never came to terms the fact it background. was defending a government which had no • It implied that all the people of Saigon support and attempting to crush one that would be butchered or imprisoned; that did.” was not the case. A group of LA-based film critics later • It referenced escaping ships racing to wrote to PBS: “Rory Kennedy’s egregiously ConSon Island without mentioning that unbalanced, out-of-context, dubiously pro- that Island off the coast of Saigon hosted, pagandistic “Last Days in Vietnam” is cur- like Guantanamo today, was a brutual pris-

January 2015 | ColdType 27 two voices the obama on camps filled with “tiger cages” where Its been 40 years. What have we learned? administration, Vietnamese opponents of the military re- The Obama Administration, aided by its aided by its gime were kept, killed and tortured. Secretary of State, a Vietnamese speaker secretary of state, • Perry asks: “Where in this documen- no less, named John Kerry, once the leader John kerry, once tary are the anti-war voices of those who of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, had the leader of were American soldiers in Vietnam and be- turned into an apologist for the American vietnam veterans came disillusioned by the terrible things we role in the war, and an arms salesman to against the war, did there? Who in this film speaks of our Vietnam which fears the Chinese today had turned into an random bombing of North Vietnam? Of the more than the Americans. apologist for the massacre at My Lai? And for the CIA, where Whose voice should we listen to? Rory american role in is mention of the heinous tortures of South Kennedy with her slick well funded mocku- the war Vietnamese under CIA director William Col- mentary of history or Tiana who is strug- by? As for Kissinger, it’s madly frustrating to gling to bring Vietnamese voices and a de- see his self-serving rhetoric go completely liberately buried history to life? CT unchallenged. Where are you, Errol Morris, when needed? Instead, the world’s number Danny Schechter reported in North and one war criminal at large (Vietnam, Cam- South Vietnam in 1974, and returned in 1997. bodia, Laos, Chile, etc.) is a welcome and He has written widely on the issues of the honored guest to this documentary com- war. He edits Mediachannel.org and blogs at missioned by PBS’s American Experience.” Newsdissector.net. Comments to Dissector@ And, on and on. mediachannel.org

DAVID MICHAEL GREEN | DISPATCHES FROM THE END OF EMPIRE CAPITALISM VERSUS DEMOCRACY | ERIC RUDER IMPERIAL HUBRIS | RICK ROZOFF JOHN W. RUTHERFORD | A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF A POLICE STATE MAD, PASSIONATE LOVE. AND VIOLENCE | REBECCA SOLNIT A GLIMPSE OF ANOTHER BRITAIN | JOHN PILGER DIANA JOHNSTONE | THE IMPERIALIST CRIME COVER‒UP COOKIES WITH CHRISTIANITY | BILL BERKOWITZ THE FIFTH HORSEMAN | GLENN ASHTON MARCH ���� AUGUST ���� JUNE–JULY ����

Cold ype Cold ype WRITING WORTH READING T ISSUE �� WRITING WORTH READING T ISSUE �� Cold T ype WRITING WORTH READING ISSUE 57 WHY IS THE WEST SO INTENT ON REPEATING ITS MILITARY DISASTERS IN IRAQ AND LIBYA? THE ROAD

TO WAR Essays by ● DAVID EDWARDS ● DIANA JOHNSTONE ● PHILIP GIRALDI BLACK HAT ● STUART LITTLEWOOD ● WILLIAM BLUM ● BARRY LANDO AGENT OF THE PEOPLE ● DAVID SWANSON HYPOCRISY Why Julian Assange won top journalism award BLAIR’S LEGACY – TWO OPINIONS: Jonathan Cook tells why the West has no right to play God JOHN PILGER AND TREVOR GRUNDY in Iraq, Libya, Syria, or anywhere else in the Middle East

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28 ColdType | January 2015 whose truth? War by media and the triumph of propaganda John Pilger tells how the mainstream media has stopped providing us with information and is now in the business of disseminating propaganda

hy has so much journalism media; demonology by media; retribution The world succumbed to propaganda? by media; diversion by media – a surreal is facing the Why are censorship and distor- assembly line of obedient clichés and false prospect of major tion standard practice? Why is assumptions. war, perhaps W nuclear war – the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious This power to create a new “reality” has power? Why do the New York Times and the building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, with the United Washington Post deceive their readers? a book entitled “The Greening of America” States clearly Why are young journalists not taught to caused a sensation. On the cover were these determined understand media agendas and to challenge words: “There is a revolution coming. It will to isolate and the high claims and low purpose of fake ob- not be like revolutions of the past. It will provoke Russia jectivity? And why are they not taught that originate with the individual.” and eventually the essence of so much of what’s called the I was a correspondent in the United China mainstream media is not information, but States at the time and recall the overnight power? elevation to guru status of the author, a These are urgent questions. The world is young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His facing the prospect of major war, perhaps message was that truth-telling and political nuclear war – with the United States clearly action had failed and only “culture” and in- determined to isolate and provoke Rus- trospection could change the world. sia and eventually China. This truth is be- Within a few years, driven by the forces ing turned upside down and inside out by of profit, the cult of “me-ism” had all but journalists, including those who promoted overwhelmed our sense of acting together, the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in our sense of social justice and international- 2003. ism. Class, gender and race were separated. The times we live in are so dangerous The personal was the political, and the me- and so distorted in public perception that dia was the message. propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays In the wake of the cold war, the fabrica- called it, an “invisible government”. It is the tion of new “threats” completed the po- government. It rules directly without fear litical disorientation of those who, 20 years of contradiction and its principal aim is the earlier, would have formed a vehement op- conquest of us: our sense of the world, our position. ability to separate truth from lies. In 2003, I filmed an interview in Wash- The information age is actually a media ington with Charles Lewis, the distin- age. We have war by media; censorship by guished American investigative journalist.

January 2015 | ColdType 29 whose truth?

Had journalists We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few The main whistleblower during this ter- done their job, had months earlier. I asked him, “What if the rible, silent period was Denis Halliday. Then they questioned freest media in the world had seriously Assistant Secretary General of the United and investigated challenged George Bush and Donald Rums- Nations and the senior UN official in Iraq, the propaganda feld and investigated their claims, instead Halliday resigned rather than implement instead of of channeling what turned out to be crude policies he described as genocidal. He esti- amplifying it, propaganda?” mates that sanctions killed more than a mil- hundreds of He replied that if we journalists had done lion Iraqis. thousands of our job “there is a very, very good chance What then happened to Halliday was in- men, women and we would have not gone to war in Iraq.” structive. He was airbrushed. Or he was vili- children might be That’s a shocking statement, and one fied. On the BBC’s Newsnight programme, alive today supported by other famous journalists to the presenter Jeremy Paxman shouted whom I put the same question. Dan Rath- at him: “Aren’t you just an apologist for er, formerly of CBS, gave me the same an- Saddam Hussein?” The Guardian recently swer. David Rose of the Observer and senior described this as one of Paxman’s “memo- journalists and producers in the BBC, who rable moments”. Last week, Paxman signed wished to remain anonymous, gave me the a £1 million book deal. same answer. The handmaidens of suppression have In other words, had journalists done their done their job well. Consider the effects. In job, had they questioned and investigated 2013, a ComRes poll found that a majority of the propaganda instead of amplifying it, the British public believed the casualty toll hundreds of thousands of men, women and in Iraq was less than 10,000 – a tiny fraction children might be alive today; and millions of the truth. A trail of blood that goes from might not have fled their homes; the- sec Iraq to London has been scrubbed almost tarian war between Sunni and Shia might clean. not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic Rupert Murdoch is said to be the godfa- State might not now exist. ther of the media mob, and no one should Even now, despite the millions who took doubt the augmented power of his newspa- to the streets in protest, most of the public pers – all 127 of them, with a combined cir- in western countries have little idea of the culation of 40 million, and his Fox network. sheer scale of the crime committed by our But the influence of Murdoch’s empire is governments in Iraq. Even fewer are aware no greater than its reflection of the wider that, in the 12 years before the invasion, the media. US and British governments set in motion The most effective propaganda is found a holocaust by denying the civilian popula- not in the Sun or on Fox News – but beneath tion of Iraq a means to live. a liberal halo. When the New York Times Those are the words of the senior British published claims that Saddam Hussein had official responsible for sanctions on Iraq in weapons of mass destruction, its fake evi- the 1990s – a medieval siege that caused the dence was believed, because it wasn’t Fox deaths of half a million children under the News; it was the New York Times. age of five, reported Unicef. The official’s The same is true of the Washington name is Carne Ross. In the Foreign Office in Post and the Guardian, both of which have London, he was known as “Mr. Iraq”. Today, played a critical role in conditioning their he is a truth-teller of how governments de- readers to accept a new and dangerous cold ceive and how journalists willingly spread war. All three liberal newspapers have mis- the deception. “We would feed journalists represented events in Ukraine as a malign factoids of sanitised intelligence,” he told act by Russia – when, in fact, the fascist led me, “or we’d freeze them out.” coup in Ukraine was the work of the United

30 ColdType | January 2015 whose truth?

States, aided by Germany and Nato. the Washington Post and the Observer – the An American This inversion of reality is so pervasive latter having previously distinguished itself general who that Washington’s military encirclement and with lies and fabrications that backed Blair’s heads Nato and is intimidation of Russia is not contentious. invasion of Iraq, as its former reporter, Da- straight out of Dr. It’s not even news, but suppressed behind vid Rose, revealed. Strangelove – one a smear and scare campaign of the kind I There is almost the joi d’esprit of a class General Breedlove grew up with during the first cold war. reunion. The drum-beaters of the Washing- – routinely claims Once again, the evil empire is coming to ton Post are the very same editorial writers Russian invasions get us, led by another Stalin or, perversely, a who declared the existence of Saddam’s without a shred of new Hitler. Name your demon and let rip. weapons of mass destruction to be “hard visual evidence The suppression of the truth about facts”. Ukraine is one of the most complete news “If you wonder,” wrote Robert Parry, blackouts I can remember. The biggest “how the world could stumble into world Western military build-up in the Caucasus war three – much as it did into world war and eastern Europe since world war two is one a century ago – all you need to do is blacked out. Washington’s secret aid to Kiev look at the madness that has enveloped vir- and its neo-Nazi brigades responsible for tually the entire US political/media struc- war crimes against the population of east- ture over Ukraine where a false narrative of ern Ukraine is blacked out. Evidence that white hats versus black hats took hold early contradicts propaganda that Russia was re- and has proved impervious to facts or rea- sponsible for the shooting down of a Malay- son.” sian airliner is blacked out. Parry, the journalist who revealed Iran- And again, supposedly liberal media are Contra, is one of the few who investigate the censors. Citing no facts, no evidence, one the central role of the media in this “game journalist identified a pro-Russian leader in of chicken”, as the Russian foreign minister Ukraine as the man who shot down the air- called it. But is it a game? As I write this, the liner. This man, he wrote, was known as The US Congress votes on Resolution 758 which, Demon. He was a scary man who frightened in a nutshell, says: “Let’s get ready for war the journalist. That was the evidence. with Russia.” Many in the western media haves worked In the 19th century, the writer Alexander hard to present the ethnic Russian popula- Herzen described secular liberalism as “the tion of Ukraine as outsiders in their own final religion, though its church is not of country, almost never as Ukrainians seeking the other world but of this”. Today, this di- a federation within Ukraine and as Ukraini- vine right is far more violent and dangerous an citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated than anything the Muslim world throws up, coup against their elected government. though perhaps its greatest triumph is the What the Russian president has to say is illusion of free and open information. of no consequence; he is a pantomime vil- In the news, whole countries are made lain who can be abused with impunity. An to disappear. Saudi Arabia, the source of ex- American general who heads Nato and is tremism and western-backed terror, is not a straight out of Dr. Strangelove – one General story, except when it drives down the price Breedlove – routinely claims Russian inva- of oil. Yemen has endured twelve years of sions without a shred of visual evidence. His American drone attacks. Who knows? Who impersonation of Stanley Kubrick’s General cares? Jack D. Ripper is pitch perfect. In 2009, the University of the West of Forty thousand Ruskies were massing England published the results of a ten-year on the border, according to Breedlove. That study of the BBC’s coverage of Venezuela. was good enough for the New York Times, Of 304 broadcast reports, only three men-

January 2015 | ColdType 31 whose truth?

I doubt that tioned any of the positive policies intro- In 1977, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, anyone paid the duced by the government of Hugo Chavez. revealed that more than 400 journalists and Washington Post The greatest literacy programme in human news executives worked for the CIA. They and many other history received barely a passing reference. included journalists from the New York media outlets to In Europe and the United States, millions Times, Time and the TV networks. In 1991, accuse Edward of readers and viewers know next to noth- Richard Norton Taylor of the Guardian re- Snowden of aiding ing about the remarkable, life-giving chang- vealed something similar in this country. terrorism es implemented in Latin America, many of None of this is necessary today. I doubt them inspired by Chavez. Like the BBC, the that anyone paid the Washington Post and reports of the New York Times, the Washing- many other media outlets to accuse Edward ton Post, the Guardian and the rest of the Snowden of aiding terrorism. I doubt that respectable western media were notoriously anyone pays those who routinely smear Ju- in bad faith. Chavez was mocked even on lian Assange – though other rewards can be his deathbed. How is this explained, I won- plentiful. der, in schools of journalism? It’s clear to me that the main reason As- Why are millions of people in Britain sange has attracted such venom, spite and are persuaded that a collective punishment jealously is that WikiLeaks tore down the called “austerity” is necessary? facade of a corrupt political elite held aloft Following the economic crash in 2008, a by journalists. In heralding an extraordinary rotten system was exposed. For a split sec- era of disclosure, Assange made enemies by ond the banks were lined up as crooks with illuminating and shaming the media’s gate- obligations to the public they had betrayed. keepers, not least on the newspaper that But within a few months – apart from published and appropriated his great scoop. a few stones lobbed over excessive corpo- He became not only a target, but a golden rate “bonuses” – the message changed. The goose. mugshots of guilty bankers vanished from Lucrative book and Hollywood mov- the tabloids and something called “auster- ie deals were struck and media careers ity” became the burden of millions of or- launched or kick-started on the back of dinary people. Was there ever a sleight of WikiLeaks and its founder. People have hand as brazen? made big money, while WikiLeaks has Today, many of the premises of civilised struggled to survive. life in Britain are being dismantled in order None of this was mentioned in Stock- to pay back a fraudulent debt – the debt of holm on 1 December when the editor of the crooks. The “austerity” cuts are said to be £83 Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, shared with Ed- billion. That’s almost exactly the amount of ward Snowden the Right Livelihood Award, tax avoided by the same banks and by cor- known as the alternative Nobel Peace porations like Amazon and Murdoch’s News Prize. What was shocking about this event UK. Moreover, the crooked banks are given was that Assange and WikiLeaks were air- an annual subsidy of £100bn in free insur- brushed. They didn’t exist. They were un- ance and guarantees – a figure that would people. No one spoke up for the man who fund the entire National Health Service. pioneered digital whistleblowing and hand- The economic crisis is pure propaganda. ed the Guardian one of the greatest scoops Extreme policies now rule Britain, the Unit- in history. Moreover, it was Assange and his ed States, much of Europe, Canada and Aus- WikiLeaks team who effectively – and bril- tralia. Who is standing up for the majority? liantly – rescued Edward Snowden in Hong Who is telling their story? Who’s keeping Kong and sped him to safety. Not a word. record straight? Isn’t that what journalists What made this censorship by omission are meant to do? so ironic and poignant and disgraceful was

32 ColdType | January 2015 whose truth? that the ceremony was held in the Swedish the Russians called perestroika – an insur- What we need parliament – whose craven silence on the rection of subjugated knowledge. I would is a Fifth Estate: Assange case has colluded with a grotesque call it real journalism. a journalism miscarriage of justice in Stockholm. It’s 100 years since the First World War. that monitors, “When the truth is replaced by silence,” Reporters then were rewarded and knighted deconstructs said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the for their silence and collusion. At the height and counters silence is a lie.” of the slaughter, British prime minister Da- propaganda and It’s this kind of silence we journalists vid Lloyd George confided in C.P. Scott, edi- teaches the young need to break. We need to look in the mir- tor of the Manchester Guardian: “If people to be agents of ror. We need to call to account an unac- really knew [the truth] the war would be people, not power countable media that services power and a stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t psychosis that threatens world war. know and can’t know.” In the 18th century, Edmund Burke de- It’s time they knew. CT scribed the role of the press as a Fourth Es- tate checking the powerful. Was that ever This article is a transcript of John Pilger’s true? It certainly doesn’t wash any more. address to the Logan Symposium, “Building What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism an Alliance Against Secrecy, Surveillance that monitors, deconstructs and counters & Censorship”, organised by the Centre for propaganda and teaches the young to be Investigative Journalism, London, on agents of people, not power. We need what 5-7 December, 2014. John PIlger is now ‘crowd funding’ his latest movie, “The Coming War”, at http://indiegogo.com/projects/john-pilger-the-coming-war-documentary

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January 2015 | ColdType 33 in the frame The Wild Wild East Dougie Wallace finds chaos in a London suburb where reality merges into scenes of crazy fantasy Text by Michael Smith

essy, absurd, hilarious, and full to the brim with the joy of being alive on a sunny weekend in Shoreditch, Mthe pictures in Dougie Wallace’s new book, “Shoreditch Wild Life,” fizz with the The State History throbbing life-force of this peculiar square mile Museum in of East London. Big black blokes dressed head Bishkek is chock to pointy toe in gold lame, a girl squatting in full of displays cowboy boots with a plastic pint glass, who has featuring Lenin, the look of someone who’s not quite sure what Marx, and the party she’s at anymore, wasted women who whole commie look like the best kind of trouble, and all the gang while there’s a crashed car upside down in the street while the party gets madder all around it: in short, total fucking chaos, a chaos I’ve never seen so condensed into one square mile anywhere else. I didn’t know people lived like this before I moved to Shoreditch as a young man, and now, all these years later, as some- body who’s much more likely to be walking his dog round the park than stuck five hours into a drinking session come Saturday evening, I still can’t quite believe they do. As much as he captures the mad night out, Dougie also gets the morning after – specifi- cally, the equally off-kilter, spontaneous street theatre of Brick Lane market. Is the girl striking a pose for a fashion shoot or just for the passers

34 ColdType | January 2015 October/November 2014 | ColdType 35 in the frame

by? What, really, is the difference anyhow? These streets are one big fash- ion parade. They feel like a slightly demented parallel reality, a pocket of weirdness and colour, the Ditch beyond the Roman wall of the City where all the tat and flotsam Shore up, the no-man’s-land where everything mad and messy collides: roll up, roll up, come and get your plastic pink flamingoes, two for the price of one! There’s lots of pink in these photos, and lots of gold lame: glamour on the cheap, creating glamour out of nothing, which says a lot about the spirit of Shoreditch. Dougie’s work is often about mismatches and juxtapositions: the head- on collision of the trendies and the old East End market traders, a car crash of different sensibilities that don’t belong together, an old bloke selling stuff off his stall with a motorbike helmet on, surrounded by stolen bikes and trendy graffiti, pensioners with walking sticks in 90s rave clothes, horrified

36 ColdType | January 2015 All human life is here and then some . . . photos from Dougie Wallace’s book “Shoreditch Wild Life” (Hoxton Mini Press)

January 2015 | ColdType 37 in the frame

old Bangladeshi ladies bemused by the rake- thin young chap at a bus stop wearing the bin- di and little Indian dress. Ultimately, I think, “Shoreditch Wild Life” is about the adventure of getting lost in cities: the strangeness of look- ing at the streets, the kaleidoscope bloom of the flower market, a sensory overload, a world far too complex and full of difference to possi- bly understand, especially if you’re a bit all over the shop come Sunday morning. For a moment it seems as if a poster of a lady in a pimped-up sports car miraculously comes to life, and she steps out onto streets strewn with cigarette multi-packs and cardboard box- es. Fantasy merges with reality, just as it prob- ably did for Dougie one bleary-eyed Sunday morning, all the wrong connections joining up into wonderful, impossible scenes, at least for the brief split-second of a photograph. CT l See more of Dougie Wallace’s photographs at http://dougiewallace.com

38 ColdType | January 2015 Shoreditch wild life East London Photo Stories Book Four Dougie Wallace Hoxton Mini Press £14 http://hoxtonminipress.com

January 2015 | ColdType 39 clash of fundamentals Clashing on torture Ray McGovern comes to-face with the ex-House Intelligence chief and refuses to let him get away with his defence of torture

I had been trying hen you get an opportunity like dunk” George Tenet. Tenet left in disgrace in hard to decode this, don’t fall back – I heard my July 2004, still vainly seeking those notional for the TV Irish grandmother telling me as Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”. audience the I took my place at the table to Early in December, amid the unfolding bull-excrement W discuss the mid-December report on US tor- torture scandal, Hoekstra went on CCTV coming from ture with a former congressional committee America’s daily talk show, “The Heat,” to Hoekstra and chairman whose job it was to prevent such offer a heated defense of what he insisted others quoted torture. on still calling “enhanced interrogation on the program Almost rubbing shoulders with me on my techniques.” My opportunity for a blunt right was former House Intelligence Com- exchange with him over exactly what the mittee chair (2004-2007) Pete Hoekstra, a House Intelligence Committee knew came Republican from Michigan. Central China near the end of the show. TV had asked both of us to address the find- I had already been trying hard to decode ings of the Senate Intelligence Committee for the TV audience the bull-excrement com- report on CIA torture. I said yes, of course, ing from Hoekstra and others quoted on the since I was highly interested in how Hoek- program. At one point, as luck would have stra, with his front seat for the saga of “En- it, the moderator asked me about the CIA’s hanced Interrogation Techniques,” would fear-driven argument that the “urgency” of try to ‘splain it all. preventing additional terrorist attacks justi- Here was a unique chance to publicly fied short-cuts like torture. confront a malleable, moral dwarf who had A hat tip here to my VIPS colleague Larry been in a uniquely powerful position to end Johnson, who had called my attention ear- the torture. The moment was also an odd lier that day to the actual time sequence one, for Hoekstra seemed oblivious to his involving the capture and interrogation of gross misfeasance and dereliction of duty. Or detainee Abu Zubaydah, noting that if that how his behavior might look to non-torture scenario reflected “time-urgency,” we are all aficionados. in serious trouble. Hoekstra took over the House intelli- After FBI interrogators, using the tradi- gence “oversight” committee in 2004 when tional rapport-building approach to Abu former chair, Porter Goss, a Republican from Zubaydah, extracted a good deal of useful in- Florida, was picked as the perfect – as in formation from him in April 2002, Washing- fully-briefed-and-complicit – functionary to ton (for reasons not yet fully clear) ordered become director of the CIA, replacing “slam- the FBI to hand him to CIA officials. They

40 ColdType | January 2015 clash of fundamentals kept him in solitary confinement, asking … characterized them as legal. To say that I still thought I’d him no questions, from mid-June until Au- you were aghast that we heard, no.” give the former gust 4, 2002, giving time for torture-friendly McGovern: “I’m aghast that you were congressman a lawyers in Washington to come up with le- briefed on it. You’re supposed to be over- path out of the gal justifications to “authorize” waterboard- seeing these things, you should stop these pro-torture ing and other abusive techniques. Zubaydah things. … You were co-opted.” corner that he was then waterboarded 83 times, yielding no Hoekstra: “No, we weren’t. Republicans was painting useful intelligence. and Democrats were fully briefed on these himself into, by programs and we agreed with them.” suggesting that he Clashing with Hoekstra might be simply As the program neared its end, the host I still thought I’d give the former congress- embarrassed turned back to me and asked me to respond man a path out of the pro-torture corner that that he had been to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s ar- he was painting himself into, by suggesting misled by the dent defense of the torture program. I fo- that he might be simply embarrassed that CIA and the Bush cused my criticism on Cheney as the “emi- he had been misled by the CIA and the Bush administration nence grise” behind the Bush administra- administration, that he had been kept in the tion plunge into the “dark side.” dark about the darkest of the dark side, but But I also saw an opportunity to press Hoekstra just kept painting. Hoekstra on his knowledge and complicity, though I framed my question to give him McGovern: “You were lied to and you’re an out on direct knowledge about the grisly ashamed to admit that you were lied to.” torture techniques, from waterboarding and Hoekstra: “I’m not ashamed that I was hanging people from ceilings to forced nu- lied to. I’m admitting that these programs dity and “rectal rehydration.” were briefed to us. I’ve talked to my staff go- “I don’t know if he [Cheney] checked ing back and said after this ‘revelation’ came with you, Congressman Hoekstra, he really out …how much of what is in this Dianne should have, but I’m amazed if you were ei- Feinstein report, this partisan report, this ther unaware of these things or whether you Democrat report, how much did we know? condoned them,” I said, addressing Hoek- Ninety to 95 percent.” stra only inches away. McGovern: “Oh, my God! What a terrible “I think I’ve been very open,” Hoekstra admission! Aren’t you ashamed?” responded, indicating that he did know and Hoekstra: “No, I’m not ashamed.” did approve. McGovern: “My God!” McGovern: “You condoned them. My God!” Then, Hoekstra tried to suggest that I was Hoekstra: “I explained this to you. Mem- being disloyal to my former colleagues at the bers of Congress, Republicans and Demo- CIA as if the few senior officials who pushed crats, leadership on both sides, Gang of for the torture and the few – mostly contrac- Eight …”. tors – who carried it out were representative McGovern: “Thought that torture was of most CIA personnel among whom I had okay?” served for 27 years. Hoekstra was waving a Hoekstra: “Thought that the enhanced red flag, so I played the bull, forsaking the interrogation techniques … usually obligatory deference and polite- McGovern: “That’s torture.” ness. I let him have it. Hoekstra: “… were appropriate.” McGovern: “Let’s not use these sobri- Hoekstra: “I reached a different conclu- quets. This was torture.” sion as did many of your colleagues at the Hoekstra: “No, the Justice Department CIA …”

January 2015 | ColdType 41 clash of fundamentals

For some reason, McGovern: “These are not my colleagues! low him all the way down to Atlanta?” US media remain These are thugs hired by Dick Cheney!” No personal animus, I could honestly uninterested in my Hoekstra: “These are people you walked explain to Paula; I just have this thing blunt commentary away from. These are heroes for Ameri- about folks who start wars of aggression on the subject of ca…” and enable torture (the sobriquet “en- torture McGovern: “These are thugs headed by hanced interrogation techniques” was Dick Cheney!” not put into the public lexicon until four Hoekstra: “…who are protecting Amer- months later). ica.” As for following Rumsfeld “all the way That was when the host politely brought down to Atlanta,” I explained that I had got- the program to a conclusion. ten to Atlanta the day before – very pleased to have been honored with the ACLU’s Na- Limited US wiewing tional Civil Liberties Award (won the previ- Few Americans are likely to be among those ous year by Coretta Scott King). The chance who saw “The Heat” on December 11, 2014, to attend Rumsfeld’s speech was just a bo- or will see it on YouTube. But there is some nus. consolation in the claim that, according to But I must confess. I do have a personal CCTV, a billion Chinese-speakers normally beef with Hoekstra, who, in 2006, pulled one watch the dubbed-into-Mandarin version of of the dirtiest tricks I ever encountered per- this program, and not only in China. Even sonally. Without telling other members of if the actual number is only half that, well, the House Intelligence Committee, he added that will amount to about 500,000 viewers to the draft Intelligence Authorization Act more than the audience in the United States. for FY’07 (HR5020) a provision enabling the Some solace. government to strip intelligence veterans of Since December 9, when the Senate re- their government pensions. HR5020 passed port was released, I also have been inter- the full House, but Congress opted instead viewed on Canadian TV, Aljazeera, Russian for a continuing resolution. TV, Sky News (UK), two taped Russian So maybe it is more a case of Hoekstra prime-time Sunday evening TV programs, having some animus toward my veteran Radio Scotland (BBC), Radio New Zealand, intelligence colleagues and me, who had and three Radio Pacifica programs. Some of been exposing the torture overlooked (if the above hosted me as many as four times, not blessed) by his committee. His attempt and I have had to turn down, or refer to oth- to make revoking our pensions legal came ers, additional invitations (yes, all of these shortly after March 2, 2006, when – as a from abroad, as well). matter of conscience in protest against For some reason, US media remain un- torture – I went to his House office and interested in my blunt commentary on the returned the Intelligence Commendation subject of torture. As the CCTV interview Medallion given me at retirement for “es- indicated, I cannot be counted on to be pecially meritorious service,” explaining pleasant when discussing torture, particu- “I do not want to be associated, however larly with those who could have, and should remotely, with an agency engaged in tor- have, prevented it. ture.” Which reminds me that after my four- On December 11, after time ran out for minute impromptu debate with Donald “The Heat,” I took the opportunity to let Rumsfeld in Atlanta on May 4, 2006, I was Hoekstra know very directly that we were asked by CNN’s Paula Zahn, “How long have very much aware of his low-life move against you had this personal animus toward the us. Secretary of Defense? And why did you fol- Earlier, when the CCTV moderator, in in-

42 ColdType | January 2015 clash of fundamentals troducing me, had noted that I had returned in Iraq, including a few in which detainees I waited until we my Intelligence Commendation Medallion died during interrogation. ran out of time to over the issue of CIA torture, I was sorely The obeisance of CIA directors George Te- tell him we are tempted to ask Hoekstra why he sent me net and Porter Goss in heeding illegal White aware of what neither acknowledgment nor reply to my House directives has done irreparable harm he had tried to letter. But I quickly decided that it would to the CIA and the country – not to mention do and what we likely be easier – and far more important those tortured and killed. That you, as Chair thought of it, – to call him to task on his unconscionable of the House Permanent Select Committee and suggested misfeasance in condoning torture itself, on Intelligence, show more deference to the that the sooner than on the dirty trick he almost succeeded White House than dedication to your over- he went back in pulling on my former intelligence officers sight responsibilities under the Constitution to Michigan the and me. is another profound disappointment. How better it would be So I waited until we ran out of time to tell can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Rob- for honest people him we are aware of what he had tried to erts, turn a blind eye to torture – letting some in Washington do and what we thought of it, and suggested people get away, literally, with murder – and that the sooner he went back to Michigan square that with your conscience? the better it would be for honest people in If German officials who were ordered to Washington. do such things in the 1930s had spoken out early and loudly enough, the German people Letter to Hoekstra might have been alerted to the atrocities Below is the letter I gave Hoekstra in April being perpetrated in their name and tried 2006. Actually, I had to give it to his aides; harder to stop them. When my grandchil- there were indications that he was hiding in dren ask, “What did you do, Grandpa, to stop his inner office, but they said he was not. the torture,” I want to be able to tell them Perhaps he was at CIA being briefed on “En- that I tried to honor my oath, taken both as hanced Interrogation Techniques.” an Army officer and an intelligence officer, to defend the Constitution of the United States March 2, 2006 – and that I not only spoke out strongly Dear Congressman Hoekstra: against the torture, but also sought a sym- As a matter of conscience I am returning bolic way to dissociate myself from it. the Intelligence Commendation Award me- We Americans have become accustomed dallion given me for “especially commend- to letting our institutions do our sinning for able service” during my 27-year career in us. I abhor the corruption of the CIA in the CIA. The issue is torture, which inhabits the past several years, believe it to be beyond re- same category as rape and slavery — intrin- pair, and do not want my name on any me- sically evil. I do not wish to be associated, dallion associated with it. Please destroy this however remotely, with an agency engaged one. in torture. Yours truly, Reports in recent years that CIA person- Ray McGovern CT nel were torturing detainees were highly disturbing. Confirmation of a sort came last Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, fall, when CIA Director Porter Goss and Dick a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church Cheney – dubbed by the Washington Post of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He “Vice President for Torture” – descended on served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence Sen. John McCain to demand that the CIA be officer and then as a CIA analyst for a exempted from his amendment’s ban on tor- total of 30 years, and is now a member of ture. Subsequent reports implicated agency the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence personnel in several cases of prisoner abuse Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

January 2015 | ColdType 43 Against plutocracy Why one boss isn’t worth 175 employees Michael Meacher tells Britain’s Parliament why it’s time for a law limiting the excesses of corporate pay

Official statistics moved a motion on the floor of the [Brit- sequences. Then there were the strictures of show that average ish] House of Commons on November 27 Christine Lagarde, the managing director of weekly pay in arguing that the near-quadrupling of the the International Monetary Fund, arguing June this year gap between top and bottom ratios should that the current explosion of inequality was was £477, while I be drastically reduced: now acting as a brake on growth. They all the average say that inequality fosters fear, creates too annual take-home Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Roy- much demand for credit to compensate for remuneration ton, Labour) squeezed living standards, drives asset price among the I beg to move, bubbles, catalyses financial instability, and, FTSE 100 chief That this House calls on the Government by displacing too much risk on those who executives was to set guideline targets for remuneration cannot bear it, undermines the legitimacy £83,000 a week which over time reduce the ratio between of capitalism. top and bottom incomes in large organisa- The facts on ballooning inequality are tions to no more than 50 to 1. broadly well understood. Official statistics Even at this rather late hour, when the show that average weekly pay in June this first debate would normally be drawing to year was £477, while the average annual a close, I am nevertheless grateful to the take-home remuneration among the FTSE Backbench Business Committee for grant- 100 chief executives was £4.3 million, or ing this debate on inequality – not least £83,000 a week. The ratio between their because the excesses of extreme inequality remuneration and the remuneration of are increasingly seen as a serious, moral, the average UK worker is therefore about economic and social problem, yet the issue 175:1. That needs to be put into perspective. has not received the attention in this House In 1998, according to the High Pay Centre that it clearly deserves. think-tank, a FTSE 100 boss was typically It is worth saying at the outset that con- paid 47 times more than their workers. In cern over this matter is not the preserve of other words, in just 16 years, the gap be- the political left. In this past month, Mark tween top incomes and the average wage Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has nearly quadrupled. The obvious ques- and Janet Yellen, the chair of the US Federal tion then is: is all this justified? In fact, there Reserve, have both argued that the enor- is rather little correlation between the surge mous growth in inequality over the past few in executive remuneration and company decades was not only wrong morally but was performance; sometimes, there is even a having increasingly baleful economic con- negative correlation.

44 ColdType | January 2015 Against plutocracy

The director of the High Pay Centre, equality have always traditionally argued One could reduce Deborah Hargreaves, explains the phenom- that it does not because it does no harm to a £2.5 million enon. She says: other people. Peter Mandelson notoriously income by almost “The only reason why their pay has in- argued that new Labour was “intensely re- 95% and the creased so rapidly compared to their em- laxed about people getting filthy rich”. recipient would ployees is that they are able to get away But he did add “as long as they pay their still be in the top with it.” taxes.” 1% of all earners in They are able to get away with it largely That was partly on the grounds that the UK because of the structural divide in the way wealth would then trickle down to every- in which pay is determined in this country. one else, but it has not trickled down; it has For manual workers, it is by collective bar- gushed up as if from a geyser. According to gaining. That has dramatically declined in the Sunday Times rich list, the richest 1,000 the past 30 years, leading to a very sharp fall persons in this country – just 0.003% of in the share of wages in GDP from 65% to the adult population – have doubled their about 53%. For white-collar workers, it is by collective wealth in the six years since the private contracts, which are laid down by crash, from a staggering £250 billion to the employers. But for chief executives in more than £500 billion. Moreover, that does the boardroom, it is by remuneration com- harm other people. It leads to smouldering mittees, specifically chosen by the board it- resentment, which can at times explode if self, which largely operate on the principle triggered by a sudden event, such as the of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch five days of rioting after Mark Duggan was yours.” That is not a system that carries shot in August 2011. It undermines trust credibility across the whole spectrum of the and solidarity and it weakens the social fab- work force. ric of communities. Above all, it has been One might even question why such elab- shown unequivocally by Richard Wilkin- orate devices are needed for top executives son and Kate Pickett in “The Spirit Level” to secure a maximum uplift in pay, since that across all countries – it is not just the one would have thought that £80,000 a UK – the greater the inequality, the greater week was far beyond what is necessary for the degree of social pathology in terms of the most comfortable lifestyle. Indeed, one homicide levels, crime and violence, men- could reduce a £2.5 million income by al- tal illness, imprisonment, teenage pregnan- most 95% and the recipient would still be in cies, obesity, maths and literary educational the top 1% of all earners in the UK. That is a scores, life expectancy, infant mortality and staggering fact. many others. Are incomes 10 or 20 times more than the It is not just the poor who suffer, although earnings of those already considered very, they certainly suffer the most; those impacts very rich strictly necessary? The only an- extend widely across the whole society. It is swer seems to be that these turbo-charged not just the social impacts of inequality that salaries have almost nothing to do with per- damage society, but the economic ones as formance and everything to do with chief well. It weakens aggregate demand, which executive officers keeping up with each oth- is serious at times like the present when er in a status race. In other words, rather as all the other potential sources of demand – in the end of the Victorian period, which we Government expenditure, business invest- are getting closer to now, the very rich con- ment and net exports – are negative. stantly demand yet more wealth to show Andy Haldane, the chief economist at it off in order to demonstrate where they the Bank of England, recently summed up stand in the pecking order. the economic impacts of excessive inequal- Does that matter? The apologists for in- ity. He said that “there is rising evidence

January 2015 | ColdType 45 Against plutocracy / 2

Corporate power that extreme inequality harms, durably and pressures needs to be recalibrated. and the greed significantly, the stability of the financial I have already quoted Deborah Har- and self-interest system and growth in the economy. It slows greaves’s remark that executive pay soars that go with it development of the human, social and because they can get away with it. Corpo- have increased physical capital necessary for raising living rate power and the greed and self-interest dramatically over standards and improving wellbeing. That that go with it have increased dramatically the past three penny is starting to drop among policymak- over the past three decades and they are decades and they ers and politicians.” still increasing. That needs to be redressed. are still increasing I hope that his last comment was right. There are several measures that could help. What should be done? The terms of One is the mandatory publication of com- the motion suggest that the Government pany pay ratios, as is already operated by should set guidelines for remuneration John Lewis, where the ratio is 75:1, and TSB that, over time, reduce the ratio between bank, where it is 65:1. Another would be to top and bottom incomes in large organisa- strengthen the coverage of trade union col- tions to no more than 50:1. That would still lective bargaining, which has shrunk dra- allow top incomes to reach nearly £24,000 matically over the past 30 years from 82% to a week or £1.25 million a year. I think that a wholly inadequate 23%. that is justified on two grounds. First, in the A further measure would be to increase period when capitalism flourished most in the prevalence of work-force-wide profit the UK – that is, the three decades after the sharing. In my view, the most effective war – the ratio was 40:1 or less. Secondly, mechanism would be the introduction in the most successful dynamic economies all large companies of what I would call an with the highest long-term growth figures enterprise council, made up of representa- and the greatest social cohesion in the past tives of all the main grades of employees 40 years – I am thinking of Japan up to the and meeting at least once a year to open up 1990s, the east Asian tiger economies, Swe- the books, look at all the company’s activi- den, Norway and Singapore, among others ties, consider how failures could be correct- – all had a ratio of less than 50:1. ed and performance improved, think about Of course, there are other ways of mov- the financial implications of depreciation, ing towards the same objective. The Busi- investment, stock control, dividends and so ness Secretary introduced new regulations on and then examine the bids for pay in- that became operative this year, empower- creases across the company over the next ing shareholders with a binding veto over year. That would strengthen the cohesion company executive pay policy. Despite his and solidarity of the company, greatly im- good intentions and the shareholder spring prove morale and productivity and almost that peaked in 2012, that has not ever been certainly enhance profitability. I commend called on, partly because the holdings and that, and all the other measures I have pro- voting rights on pay are controlled by very posed, to the House. CT wealthy fund managers and the work force have no say in the process at all. That sug- Michael Meacher is the Labour Party MP gests that the structure of incentives and for Oldham West and Roysen in England.

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46 ColdType | January 2015 friends like these Israel – America’s biggest frenemy The Jewish State in the Levant is a burden we shouldn’t have to bear, writes Justin Raimondo

n November 24, 2014, the deadline Palestinian helots to conditions not seen Aside from North for the closing of a deal with Iran since South Africa’s apartheid, and smiled Korea, Israel is the regarding their nuclear program, tolerantly, as one would at an obstreperous only nuclear power no one should have been surprised child, while they noisily spat in our faces at that has managed O to get away with that Israel was marking this deadline with every opportunity. And what have we got in a threat to attack Iran regardless of the out- return? Insults, interference, and outright thumbing its nose come of the negotiations. As the Jerusalem threats – not to mention one of the most ef- at the international Post reported on its front page: fective (and obnoxious) spying operations community over “Israel has issued a stark, public warn- conducted on our soil by a foreign power. this issue ing to its allies with a clear argument: Cur- For years, the War Party has been accusing rent proposals guarantee the perpetuation Tehran of running a secret nuclear weapons of a crisis, backing Israel into a corner from program, although no convincing evidence which military force against Iran provides of this has ever been produced. The Israelis the only logical exit.” and their international assets – notably the This is a lie, and is widely recognized as MEK terrorist group – have done their best such: the Israelis don’t have the military to doctor up convincing forgeries, albeit to capacity to take out all the Iranian nuclear no avail. They’ve run all kinds of interfer- sites without American assistance. Aside ence in order to prevent the normalization from that, however, they never attack those of US-Iranian relations. Their goal: to ensure capable of hitting back in any significant that Israel’s regional monopoly on nuclear way, so we can write off this latest threat as weapons remains intact. just so much kvetching. Yet one has to won- Aside from North Korea, Israel is the der: is this the way an ally is supposed to act only nuclear power that has managed to – never mind one that we enjoy a purported get away with thumbing its nose at the in- “special relationship” with? ternational community over this issue. The The reality is that Israel is our biggest Iranians submitting themselves to a strict frenemy. inspections regime will doubtless turn the For decades the Israelis have lived off our world’s attention to the weapons of mass largesse without having to offer anything of destruction in the hands of Israel’s leader- value in return – unless Israeli interference ship – a political class increasingly seen as in American politics is considered of value. extremist by outsiders. Steadfastly refusing We’ve handed them over $3 billion a year in to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty, along tribute, stood by while they subjected their with North Korea, the Israelis have managed

January 2015 | ColdType 47 friends like these

The Israelis think to maintain what is referred to as “nuclear In politics as in real estate, the domi- they can get away ambiguity,” but there is absolutely nothing nant factor is location, location, location. In with torturing ambiguous about the destructive power of choosing the Middle East as the site of their the Palestinians, their arsenal. “Jewish nation,” the early Zionists ensured provoking “Ambiguity” is not a concept that applies that their state would eventually lose touch endless wars, to Israel these days. There’s no doubt about with its European roots and become just and engaging where they stand – or what they are becom- another Oriental despotism. The Jewish set- in the kind of ing. Their latest shtick: taking out the part tlers are said to have transformed the land, blatant racism about being a democracy in their Basic Law, but in reality the opposite occurred: the land that gets Hungary and putting in “no Arabs need apply.” Or, as transformed them. sanctioned as an the Age puts it: “ The Israelis think they are immune from “illiberal” state “The proposal would mean Israel would condemnation: they think they can get away no longer be defined in its Basic Laws as with torturing the Palestinians, provoking ‘Jewish and democratic’ but instead as ‘the endless wars, and engaging in the kind of national homeland of the Jewish people.’” blatant racism that gets Hungary sanctioned What the great Israeli classical liberal Ye- as an “illiberal” state. And given the behav- shayahu Leibowitz rightly called the “Judeo- ior of the political class in America and the Nazi” trend in that country’s political life has West, they have every reason to think this now come to the forefront: they aren’t pre- kind of “Israeli exceptionalism” is going to tending to be the Gallant Little Democracy hold, but they are living inside an illusion. of the Middle East any more. Nope, they’re The Israel lobby is losing its grip: the coming out of the closet as ethno-religious American people – previously inclined to fanatics, just like their opposite numbers a support Israel no matter what – show signs few kilometers away in the Islamic State. In of waking up to the danger posed by our Is- tandem with the new law, Prime Minister rael-centric foreign policy. In Europe, where Benjamin Netanyahu announced the intro- the Israel lobby has always been weaker, duction of legislation stripping “anti-Israel” they are in real trouble. The Israelis’ recent Arab activists of their Israeli citizenship, slaughter in Gaza has done much to open along with their entire families. And so the the eyes of a new generation to real the na- Jewish State of Israel in the Levant – JSIL – is ture of the Jewish State in the Levant. That’s born. why the boycott and divestment campaign In the past, the Israel lobby has offered aimed at Israel is taking hold, despite the a number of arguments in favor of main- frantic efforts of Israel’s amen corner to taining the US-Israeli “special relationship.” smear and even outlaw it. (Yes, the illiberal And while strategic military and geopoliti- policies of the Jewish State in the Levant are cal factors were a big part of their routine even seeping into the United States – a re- during the cold war era, with the collapse volting prospect, indeed.) of communism this became less important Israel today is a tyranny on the order of Justin Raimondo and so a new party line was trotted out: the the old South Africa, with one added fac- is the editorial claim that we share important values with tor: they are armed with nuclear weapons. director of Antiwar. the Israelis, especially those associated with As such, the Israelis represent a threat to the com, and a senior liberal democracy, i.e. tolerance, diversity, peace of the world, one far more dangerous fellow at the etc. Yet the truth of the matter is that Israel than Iran will ever be. Randolph Bourne is no longer a liberal democracy: indeed, as Their pernicious influence on American Institute. He is a they tighten the screws on their Palestinian politics is the biggest arrow in the War Par- contributing editor untermenschen, the Jewish State in the Le- ty’s quiver. In the end, as Americans rebel at The American vant is becoming the mirror image of its au- against the regime of perpetual war, this will Conservative thoritarian Arab neighbors. be their undoing. CT

48 ColdType | January 2015 book excerpt / 1 world of fantasy an excerpt from only one thing Can save us: why america needs a new kind of labor movement, the new book by thomas geoghegen

ndeed, as I sit here at my desk, I’m still one for every striker. I was just a bystander. the board of getting over the shock. At last, in my old But for the previous two years, some- education has age, I saw a true strike, big and breath- what to my surprise, I had been one of the been laying off less, right in front of my eyes, right in my lawyers for the CTU. Our little firm filed the thousands of I teachers – some hometown. For ten days in September 2012, CTU’s suit in federal court to stop teachers the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was on from being not just “laid off” but in effect of the very best strike, and it was covered around the world. fired, where they had no right of recall of in the system – Shortly after it ended, I had lunch with a any kind. Do you think it’s hard to get rid of and bringing in friend, a scholarly professor, who gave an a tenured teacher? raw rookies off impartial thoughtful analysis. In fact it’s easy. The board of education the street to fill “Well,” I said, “what did you has been laying off thousands positions that the think of the strike?” of teachers – some of the laid off teachers “I loved the strike!” he said. very best in the system – could fill See? That’s thoughtful. And and bringing in raw rook-rook that’s what I thought: I loved ies off the street to fill posi-posi the strike! Before, I’d been tions that the laid off teach-teach wondering if I’d ever see one ers could fill. again. Two years ago, to stop Of course, a strike is a these effective firings, we risky thing, and God knows, went to court for the CTU. We in my youth as a lawyer for even won an injunction in the the United Mine Workers, US district court, and then we I saw many of them go won again in the US court of ap-ap awry, but . . . it’s still hard peals. But in the end we lost. to imagine a labor move- Most of these teachers, by the ment without them. only one thing way, had “excellent” and “supe“supe- Nunc dimittis, as Simeon says can save us rior” evaluations. Some were re- in the Gospel – although, unlike Why America Needs ally the elite of the elite – teach- him, I’d like to stick around. a New Form Of Labor ers who mentored other teachers. Believe me, I had nothing to do Movement Why would they get rid of the with this strike and had no role in Thomas Georghegan best teachers and bring in new the bargaining. I didn’t even get The New Press hires off the street? one of those 26,000 red T-shirts: $ 25.95 Money, of course, but it was

January 2015 | ColdType 49 book excerpt / 1

The Sunday night also to break the CTU, or to make clear to then Lake View High School, and it was a before the strike every teacher that she could be tossed out glorious late-September morning. I took my I had worried, at any time. morning walk, and I saw all these teachers since I’m a lawyer, Oh, I wish we’d won that case! outside in red T‑shirts, which made me ad- and they are my And, now disgusted, the teachers – the mire whoever the quartermaster general of clients, and I’m clients I had failed – were on strike. Of the CTU may be: they all looked so good! supposed to worry course, the right to recall was only one of And they had their Starbucks cups, since many issues. The strike really arose from a this was the North Side, and it seemed im- feeling that the mayor and his liberal bil- possible that these teachers of first graders lionaire friends wanted to fire teachers en and kindergartners at Blaine would be so masse and privatize the public schools. pumped up, pumping their signs: In that sense, it was a political strike, like “CTU” the strikes that fill up the streets in Paris. “We want smaller class sizes!” (I still And that’s why people like me said, “I love see that sign planted in a neighbor’s front the strike.” We loved the strike because it yard.) was giving the finger to Rahm Emanuel, “Honk if you want more arts education.” Obama, the whole managerial culture they And people did honk. They drove past represent: Bill Gates, Jamie Dimon, Penny the Music Box, with all the Iranian films Pritzker, Bain Capital, Teach for America, showing, and they honked. They honked and that whole bunch. from tractor-trailers. They honked from Stephen Lerner of the SEIU argues that BMWs. They honked from all sorts of cars. the only strikes that work now, like the 2012 Thank God, I thought: they’re honking. Houston janitors’ strike, are political strikes, Our side is going to win! which are not just for the strikers but for But this was only the first day, and the entire community. later that day I spoke to a teacher, a very Well, the CTU strike was a brilliant politi- thoughtful, Seven Sisters type of woman cal strike, and it worked because it was not who seemed anything but political. She was simply a strike for more money, tenure, or a worried. better evaluation system. It worked because “I worry how the media will portray us.” a lot of people – above all, parents who had I could tell she was already flagging. kids in the public schools – saw it as a strike It’s hard to be on strike after 8:30 or 9:00 in favor of good old-fashioned neighbor- a.m. That jolt of Starbucks wears off. It’s hood public schools. exhausting to stand around and do noth- A few days after the strike, I dropped ing all day. On Election Day I used to work in for dinner at Tre Kronor, a little offbeat the polls, and it’s much the same thing. Swedish restaurant, and tacked up on the Precisely because there is noting to do, and billboard under the map of Sweden there because the sugar highs keep wearing off, was a message from the CTU to all the din- many a striker is a wreck at the end of the ers: “Thank you for supporting the strike.” day; it’s hard to imagine getting up the next It was assumed the diners supported the day and having nothing to do again. For the strike, and they probably did. That was the sake of solidarity, I was tempted to get in my moment I really knew the CTU had won. car and drive from one school to the next and wave to the strikers. It seemed treason The Sunday night before the strike I had to sit in the office. worried, since I’m a lawyer, and they are my Besides, I was curious to get a gander: it’s clients, and I’m supposed to worry. Ah . . . a shameful to say, but for all the time I spent on strike? But Monday morning I woke up and our CTU case, I had very little idea how teach- walked past Blaine Elementary School and ers looked. Some on the picket line looked

50 ColdType | January 2015 book excerpt / 1 like those joggers in spandex who cut in dren” – but most parents seemed to grasp Of course, there front of me at Whole Foods, some looked like the teachers were striking because in fact were endless Trotskyite intellectuals, and a few just looked they did care. press stories like your good old uncle Charlie (albeit your Children supported the strike. about the uncle Charlie who watches Rachel Maddow Children held up picket signs saying, “I unfairness to every night), but all of them were on strike or Don’t Like You, Rahm.” parents who had had voted for a strike – not just 60 percent, or But it was a young teacher who held up no place to send 70 percent, or even 85 percent, but way over the meanest one: the kids, but polls 90 percent (and remember, there are 26,000 “Rahm Likes Nickelback.” A spokesman showed that the teachers). That’s what made this a different for the mayor had to issue a statement that large majority kind of strike: it was a strike by my neigh- he did not. CT of the parents bors, the kind who end up running the condo supported the board. Who could be against them? Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Geoghegan. strike Of course, there were endless press sto- This excerpt originally appeared in “Only ries about the unfairness to parents who had One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs no place to send the kids, but polls showed a New Kind of Labor Movement”, published that the large majority of the parents sup- by The New Press Reprinted here with ported the strike. permission. True, most white parents were against the strike, but most white parents send Thomas Geoghegan is a practicing attorney their kids to private schools. Black and La- and the author of several books, including tino parents whose kids go to public school, “In America’s Court: How a Civil Lawyer some of whom actually need the free break- Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal fast programs, were largely in favor of the Trial”, “Which Side Are You On?: Trying strike. to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back”, Why not? They know that some of the “See You in Court: How the Right Made first-grade teachers have up to forty kids in America a Lawsuit Nation”, and “Were You a class. They don’t have the wherewithal to Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the send their kids to faraway charters and leave European Model Can Help You Get a Life”, all work early to pick them up after school. published by The New Press. He has written Still, the news media struggled mightily to for The Nation, the New York Times, and rattle them – “No one cares about your chil- Harper’s. He lives in Chicago.

South Africa before the revolution Freedom’s WORDS and Children Photographs by PICTURES Duncan Mangham Download ColdType’s photo ColdType essays at http://coldtype.net/photo.html

January 2015 | ColdType 51 war games Will Germany and Russia save Europe? Pepe Eskobar wonders if Europe is heading for another disastrous war and what can be done to prevent it

It’s pointless to re the United States, the North Russian “aggression”. compare the Atlantic Treaty Organization and As Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland strategic nuclear Russia on a mad spiral leading to persist in compounded hysteria about such capabilities of the yet another war in Europe? Is it in- “aggression”, the option of a post-MAD (Mu- US and Russia A evitable? Far from it. tually Assured Destruction) US-Russia nucle- based on numbers, The US-propelled vassal currently starring ar war, terrifying as it must be, is now – casu- but not on quality in the oligarch dance in Ukraine, Petro Po- ally – back on the discussion table. At least roshenko, recently advanced the proposition there’s a countercurrent: strands of informed that Ukrainians in the near future, after his Americans are wondering why the US should “reforms”, will be asked to vote on whether be paying for Europe’s defense when Euro- to join NATO. pean GDP is larger than that of the US. Let’s be serious here. Many of you will be Wanna play war, boy? familiar with the concept of “shatter belt” – Now for the “threat” of nuclear war in territories and peoples that historically have Europe – bogus or otherwise. It’s pointless been squeezed between the Germanic Eagle to compare the strategic nuclear capabilities and the Russian Bear. of the US and Russia based on numbers, but As we stand, the whole shatter belt – apart not on quality. from Ukraine and Belarus – has signed up Take the compounded GDP of US, Ger- to NATO. A new Berlin wall, this time US- many, France and the UK and compare it to built – from the Baltics to the Black Sea now Russia; it’s a victory by landslide. Then ex- runs through Kiev. Were Ukraine to become amine the strategic nuclear scenario, and it’s a NATO member in an albeit remote future, a totally different story. GDP alone does not the shatter belt buffer zone would disappear. “win” anything. This means NATO – essentially the US – War paranoia planted right on Russia’s western border. Washington has just announced that it Washington/Wall Street elites are now deep will be pre-positioning more military ve- into nuclear war paranoia. A Council on For- hicles in Europe to be used in exercises or eign Relations study basically “found out” “potential military operations”. This is per- what Pravda had already reported. Other fectly in tune with the relentless US Think pieces such as this at least hint at the obvi- Tankland spin that NATO and the US will ous – glaring US strategic shortcomings. be “forced” to balance their commitment to Consider some of the basics: security in Eastern Europe against potential Russian ICBMs armed with MIRVs travel

52 ColdType | January 2015 war games stock

at about 18 Mach; that is way faster than any- ventional attack. Moreover, a few thousand Moscow has thing in the US arsenal. And basically they S-400 and S-500 systems are enough to block already made it are unbeatable. a US nuclear attack. very clear Russia The S-400 and S-500 are double trouble. None of this hair-raising Apocalypse Now would use their Moscow has agreed to sell the S-400 surface- scenario is even taking into account the Rus- awesome arsenal to-air missile system to China. The bottom sia-China alliance – the major, game-chang- of 5,000-plus line is this will make Beijing impermeable ing Eurasian story of the 2010s. tactical nuclear to US air power, ICBMs and cruise missiles. Just in case the “pivoting to Asia” gang weapons – and Russia, for its part, is already focusing on starts harboring funny ideas about the Mid- whatever else the state-of-the-art S-500 – which essentially dle Kingdom as well, China is massively in- it takes – to makes the Patriot anti-missile system look vesting in bouncing lasers off satellites; sat- defend the nation like a V-2 from World War II. ellite-hitting missiles; silent submarines that against a NATO The Russian Iskander missile travels at surface beside US aircraft carriers without conventional Mach 7 – with a range of 400 kilometers, car- prior detection; and a made-in-China anti- attack rying a 700 kilogram warhead of several vari- missile missile that can hit a reentering satel- eties, and with a circular error probability of lite moving faster than any ICBM. around five meters. Translation: an ultimate In a nutshell, Beijing knows the US sur- lethal weapon against airfields or logistic in- face fleet is obsolete – and undefendable. frastructure. The Iskander can reach targets And needless to add, all of these Chinese deep inside Europe. modernizing developments are proceeding And then there’s the Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA. way faster than anything in the US. Talk about a real near-future game-changer. A modest proposal NATO clowns dreaming of a war on Russia would have to come up with an ironclad sys- The spin by the Washington establishment tem to knock out the Iskanders. They don’t has been relentless: Russia is expanding to- have any. Additionally, they would have to wards a 21st century empire. face the S-400s, which the Russians can de- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ploy all over the spectrum. explained how this is undiluted rubbish. Think of a hefty batch of S-400s posi- What has actually happened is that Moscow tioned at the enclave of Kaliningrad; that deftly called the Brzezinski-inspired bluff in would turn NATO air operations deep inside Ukraine – with all its overtones. No wonder Europe into an absolutely horrendous night- the Empire of Chaos is furious. mare. On top of it, good ol’ NATO fighter jets And yet there is a solution to defuse the cost a fortune. Imagine the effect of hun- current, hysterical rush to war logic. I have dreds of destroyed fighter jets on a European examined in some detail how Washington Union already financially devastated and is playing Russian Roulette. Now it’s time to austerity-plagued to death. advance a modest proposal – as it has been As if this was not enough, no one knows floated by a few concerned analysts from the the exact extent of NATO’s strategic capabili- US, Germany and Asia. ties. Brussels is not talking. Extra-officially, Essentially, it’s very simple. It’s up to Ger- these capabilities are not exactly a marvel. many. And it’s all about undoing Stalin. And Russian intelligence knows it. Stalin, at the outset of World War II, took Still assuming those NATO clowns would East Prussia from Germany and moved the insist on playing war, Moscow has already eastern part of Poland into Ukraine. East- made it very clear Russia would use their ern Ukraine was originally from Russia; it awesome arsenal of 5,000-plus tactical nu- is part of Russia and was given by Lenin to clear weapons – and whatever else it takes Ukraine. – to defend the nation against a NATO con- So let’s have East Prussia returned to Ger-

January 2015 | ColdType 53 war games

There would be many; the eastern part of Poland returned to East Prussians to present the facts to An- no more chaos to Poland; and eastern Ukraine as well as gela Merkel. Let’s see if she’s able to get the manipulated Crimea – which Khrushchev gave to Ukraine message. CT to justify a – returned to Russia. crusade against Everyone get their share. No more Sta- Pepe Escobar’s new book, just out, is bogus Russian lin. No more arbitrary borders. That’s what “Empire of Chaos”. He is also the author of “aggression” the Chinese would define as a “triple win” “Globalistan: How the Globalized World is situation. Of course, the Empire of Chaos Dissolving into Liquid War” (Nimble Books, would fight it to death; there would be no 2007), “Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of more chaos manipulated to justify a crusade Baghdad during the surge” (Nimble Books, against bogus Russian “aggression”. 2007), and “Obama does Globalistan: The ball is in Germany’s court. Now it’s up (Nimble Books, 2009).

Bendib’s world http://otherwords.org

54 ColdType | January 2015 book excerpt / 2 counterinsurgency from the air an excerpt – Chapter 11 – from the new book, a theory of the drone, by grégoire chamayou

“Air power contains the seeds of our own weapons were considered totally impotent against bunches destruction if we do not use it responsibly. or – worse still – counterproductive. In the of furtive We can lose this fight”. – General Stanley A. absence of concentrations of troops detect- combatants, as McChrystal able from the sky, bombing inevitably im- skilled at hiding plied a bloodbath among the civilian popu- in the mazes of hen Ernesto “Che” Guevara lation. But in reality the reasons for rejecting the landscape as wrote these lines, in 1960, they this doctrine were less moral than strategic: in the recesses were still true: while the declared objective of counterin- of society, aerial “One of the favorite arms of surgency warfare was to rally the civilian weapons were W considered the enemy army, supposed to be decisive in population, the use of blind violence was modern times, is aviation. Nevertheless, this likely to have the opposite effect, driving ci- totally impotent has no use whatsoever during the vilians into the arms of the enemy. or – worse still – period that guerrilla warfare is in Hence the theoretical marginalmarginal- counterproductive its first stages, with small con- con- ization of aerial weaponry centrations of men in rugged in this form of strategy. As places. The utility of aviation late as 2006, the American lies in the systematic destrucdestruc-- army’s Counterinsurgency tion of visible and organized Field Manual devoted no defenses; and for this there more than a few pages to must be large concentrations aerial weaponry, relegating of men who construct these them to an appendix. defenses, something that In practice, however, the does not exist in this type situation was already beginning of warfare.” to swing the other way. With the Up until very recently, use of drones rapidly spreading, in what used to be called from the 2000s onward aviation the “imperialist camp,” was becoming one of the essential strategists of counterinsurgency weapons in American counterincounterin- warfare subscribed to Guevara’s a theory of surgency operations. A few stratestrate- opinion. Against bunches of fur- the drone gists set about theorizing this si- tive combatants, as skilled at hid- Grégoire Chamayo lent changeover: their aim was to ing in the mazes of the landscape The New Press make military practice selfaware, as in the recesses of society, aerial $ 26.95 whatever the cost of a major doc-

January 2015 | ColdType 55 book excerpt / 2

An insurgent trinal upset. hopelessness that arises from the inevita- confronted by an Deploring the time lag between theory bility of death from a source they cannot army of drones and practice, Air Force strategists began to fight.” 5 He goes on to say, “The precision no longer has any call for the explicit adoption of a doctrine of and persistence of today’s airpower creates target to attack aerial counterinsurgency. These supporters opportunities to dislocate the psychology of of airpower clashed head-on with the ortho- the insurgents.” The idea is not a new one. dox theorists of groundcentered counterin- In the twentieth century, Sir John Bagot surgency, “an outworn paradigm . . . too nar- Glubb had already expressed it in very simi- rowly focused,” which “relegates airpower to lar terms when speaking of the aerial bomb- the support role while the ground forces do ing by means of which the British put down the real work.”2 In opposition to that archa- native rebellions in the interwar period: ic world, it would be necessary to accept the “Their tremendous moral effect is largely evidence and fully come to terms with the due to the demoralization engendered in new air-centered strategy in which drones the tribesman by his feeling of helplessness have already become the foremost instru- and his inability to reply effectively to the ment. However much certain insurgents attack.” remained, as Carl Schmitt put it, essentially It is fighting by means of terror, and no “telluric,” 3 contemporary counterinsur- attempt is made to disguise the fact. Says gents had become “stratospheric.” Guerrilla Dunlap, “American precision airpower is warfare has always posed problems for ma- analogous (on a much larger and more ef- jor powers, which regularly become bogged fective scale) to the effect that insurgents down in asymmetrical conflicts. Instead of try to impose . . . through the use of impro- direct confrontation, insurgents, in order to vised explosive devices.” 8 The point could compensate for their provisional weakness, not be made more clearly: at a tactical level favor skirmishes and ambushes. By striking, (and setting aside technological sophistica- then immediately withdrawing, they re- tion), drone strikes are equivalent to bomb main elusive. The drone seems to provide a attacks. They constitute the weapons of tardy resolution to this historical problem: state terrorism. in a radically absolute form, it turns against Air force strategists are well aware of the the guerrillas their own long-established objections that theorists of the “historical principle, namely, deprive the enemy of an channel” of counterinsurgency never fail enemy. An insurgent confronted by an army to raise. What the latter urge, in so many of drones no longer has any target to attack. words, is to remember the lessons of the “We pray to Allah that we have American past: what is being presented as a new strat- soldiers to kill. These bombs from the sky egy has already been tried out, with remark- we cannot fight,” said Maulvi Abdullah Hai- ably disastrous results. The doctrine of “air jazi, an Afghan villager reacting to Ameri- control” is no different from that behind can strikes.4 American officers delight in the Royal Air Force (RAF) air raids used af- those words; they consider the statement as ter World War I to “disrupt and destroy vil- confirming the implacable efficacy of their lage to force the local populace to adhere to new weapon. British mandates.” In making combat impossible and trans- That policy ended in bitter failure. An as- forming armed combat into execution, the sessment made by a British officer in 1923 aim is to annihilate the very willpower of describes perverse effects strangely similar those opposing them. As Charles Dunlap, a to those seen today, three generations later, major general in the US Air Force, explains, in the same regions of the world: “By driv- “Death per se does not extinguish the will ing the inhabitants of the bombarded area to fight in such opponents; rather, it is the from their homes in a state of exasperation,

56 ColdType | January 2015 book excerpt / 2 dispersing them among neighboring clans advantages” of aviation. In fact, they go on People were and tribes, with hatred in their hearts at to say, it was those unfortunate historical congratulating what they consider ‘unfair’ methods of war- experiences that lent credibility to “the tru- themselves on fare, these attacks bring about the exact po- ism that COIN is about boots on the ground short-term tactical litical results which it is so important, in our and that airpower is counterproductive.”13 successes without own interests, to avoid viz. the permanent But all that is now behind us: the drone is a seeing that they embitterment and alienation of the frontier highly technological instrument. would pay dearly tribes.” The twofold revolution in persistent sur- for them at a As Angelina Maguinness, an intelligence veillance and in the precision of targeting, strategic level officer at US Special Operations Command, they declare, has consigned those old objec- somewhat prophetically pointed out, in tions to the dustbins of history. view “of the historical lessons from the As Hannah Arendt warned us, the prob- implementation of RAF air control, it is lem of political lying is that the liar himself interesting that prominent airpower theo- ends up believing his lies. Certainly the rists would offer airpower as an alternative overall impression here seems to be that to large ground forces in COIN strategy.” of a discursive self-intoxication. As a result In more emphatic terms, she goes on to of repeatedly proclaiming that drones and reproach the partisans of the air-centered other surgical strikes are so accurate that model for making a fundamental mistake they cause no more than negligible collater- about the very essence of counterinsurgen- al damage, supporters of that strategy seem cy strategy: truly to have come to believe that all seri- “[Airpower theorist Phillip] Meilinger ous adverse effects have been eliminated. fails to consider the nature of insurgency However, the facts won’t go away, and their and COIN. If the center of gravity is the message is quite the opposite. population and the population resides, op- David Kilcullen is certainly no pacifist. erates, and identifies itself in the ground This former advisor to General David Petra- dimension, then it is foolish to assume the eus in Iraq is today considered to be one of US can modify the nature of COIN warfare the United States’ most eminent experts in to that which it wants to fight and still suc- the doctrine of counterinsurgency. In 2009 ceed. . . . Insurgencies are by nature primar- he, alongside Andrew McDonald Exum, co- ily ground-oriented; thus, effective COIN signed an op-ed piece in the New York Times campaigns are primarily oriented in this calling for a moratorium on drone strikes in manner as well.” Pakistan. Their diagnosis was simple: those This debate over the respective merits of operations were dangerously counterpro- ground and air warfare is of a quasi-meta- ductive for American interests. physical nature: can counterinsurgency rise People were congratulating themselves to the level of an aero-policy without los- on short-term tactical successes without ing its soul? There is of course a risk that seeing that they would pay dearly for them in the course of the operation, the strategy at a strategic level. – together with politics – may be lost in the In the first place, they pointed out, the clouds. end effect of such strikes was to drive the The partisans of counterinsurgency with civilian population into the arms of the ex- drones claim to have succeeded in avoiding tremist groups that on the whole appeared the mistakes of the past, and all thanks to “less ominous than a faceless enemy that the progress of technology. To be sure, in wages war from afar and often kills more the past “the negative effects of imprecise civilians than militants.” They went on to weapons and collateral damage appear to declare: “The drone strategy is similar to have more than counteracted the tactical French aerial bombardment in rural Algeria

January 2015 | ColdType 57 book excerpt / 2

Che Guevara, in the 1950s, and to the ‘air control’ meth- center of gravity is the local population, and many others. ods employed by the British in what are who must be disconnected from the enemy From their cursory now the Pakistani tribal areas in the 1920s. and won over to one’s cause. The strategic reading of theories The historical resonance of the British effort aim is to marginalize the enemy and deny it of revolutionary encourages people in the tribal areas to see its popular base. Once that is achieved, the warfare they had, the drone attacks as a continuation of colo- victory is won. for their own nial era policies.” For those who adhere to this notion – purposes, noted Second, this anger and tendentious radi- Kilcullen, for example – the antagonism the following calization of public opinion were not lim- between insurgency and counterinsurgency fundamental ited to the region suffering such strikes. is seen as “a struggle to control a contested thesis: the In a globalized world, armed violence political space.” This cannot be engineered struggle is above produces transnational repercussions, and from outside; in order to reconquer the ter- all political the widely shared perception is that of a rain, which is both geographical and po- hateful power that is both cowardly and litical, you have to be there, on the spot. A contemptuous. Beware of a backlash. terrain cannot be controlled vertically, from Third, and perhaps above all: “The use the skies, only horizontally, on the ground. of drones displays every characteristic of This is particularly true when the actual a tactic – or, more accurately, a piece of “terrain” is human, namely, the population technology – substituting for a strategy.”18 itself, starting with what it thinks, believes, Their final diagnosis was that by resorting and perceives. The art of counterinsurgency, on a massive scale to a technological gadget meanwhile, is “ ‘political warfare’ in which that took the place of a genuine strategy, the perception of the action and its politi- the state ran the risk of a rapid stupefying cal results are more important than tactical political effect. successes on the field of battle.” 22 What is What is in fact at stake here, deep down at stake are the perceived political effects of in these internal debates within the US mili- the military operations upon the popula- tary apparatus, is nothing less than an un- tion, and it is those effects that determine derstanding of politics. To understand this the pertinence of the tactics and weapons fully, a very brief and partial genealogy of employed. As the time-honored expression the doctrines being torn apart here may be has it, conquering the “hearts and minds” necessary. of the population presupposes mobilizing This genealogy starts with a number of a whole vast spread of “military, political, French strategists who were attempting to economic, psychological and civic” means, elaborate a counterrevolutionary strategy among which open force is not always nec- and had dipped into the works of Mao Ze- essarily the principal component.23 Those dong, fine words, of course, should be set in com- Che Guevara, and many others. From parison to the corresponding historical their cursory reading of theories of revo- practices. lutionary warfare they had, for their own The fact remains that it is this funda- purposes, noted the following fundamental mentally politicomilitary understanding of thesis: the struggle is above all political. Da- counterinsurgency, paradoxically inherited vid Galula, who taught in military schools from a revolutionary Marxist understand- across the Atlantic after serving in Algeria, ing of armed violence, that today causes condensed those theories into a canonical the advocates of the demographic- and ter- formula: “The battle for the population is ritory-centered orthodox doctrine to reject a major characteristic of the revolutionary the promotion of the drone to the position war.” 19 Like guerrilla warfare, counterin- of being the almost exclusive weapon of surgency warfare is above all political. Its American-style counterinsurgency.

58 ColdType | January 2015 book excerpt / 2

When Kilcullen opposes the technologi- of pure evil. Whereas cal fetishism of the drone, it is in the name With these new labels, the targets are no counterinsurgency of that strategic conception, following di- longer political adversaries to be opposed, is essentially rectly in the footsteps of Galula. “At the op- but criminals to be apprehended or elimi- politico-military, erational level counterinsurgency remains nated. Whereas counterinsurgency strategy antiterrorism a competition between several sides, each aims above all to “defeat the insurgents’ fundamentally has seeking to mobilize the population in its strategy, rather than to ‘apprehend the per- to do with policing cause,” he writes. “The people remain the petrators’ of specific acts,” antiterrorism and security prize.” adopts a strictly opposite way of proceeding: As the counterinsurgency specialists see its policing logic individualizes the problem it, what is happening is a dangerous para- and reduces its objectives to neutralizing, digm switch that undermines both the strat- on a case-by-case basis, as many suspects egy of the American armed forces and their as possible. Whereas counterinsurgency is own institutional position within those population-centered, antiterrorist action forces. To those specialists, the droniza- is individual-centered. It is a matter not of tion of operations signals the preeminence cutting the enemy off from the population of the antiterrorism paradigm over that of but solely of rendering it impossible for him counterinsurgency. personally to do any more harm. In these Originally, they explain, the two expres- circumstances, the solution lies in tracking sions were virtually synonymous, differing such people down one by one, regardless of only in the way they were used. The “anti- the social or geopolitical reasons for the an- terrorism” label was, on account of its nega- tagonism they express. Within the catego- tive connotations, used mostly as a rhetori- ries of policing, political analysis dissolves. cal means of delegitimizing adverse insur- Antiterrorism, which is both moralizing rectional movements. It was in the 1970s in and Manichean, abandons any real analy- Europe, faced with the actions of the Red sis of the roots of hostility and its own ef- Army Faction and the Red Brigades, that an- fects upon it. The binary nature of good and titerrorism progressively turned itself into evil is no longer just a rhetorical ploy but an independent paradigm, founded upon is imposed as an analytical category, to the different principles that broke away from detriment of any consideration of the com- the classic doctrinal framework of counter- plexity of strategic relations. Whereas coun- insurgency. The differences are significant. terinsurgency strategy implies (apart from Whereas counterinsurgency is essentially brute force) compromise, diplomatic action, politico-military, antiterrorism fundamen- pressure, and agreements, all of which oper- tally has to do with policing and security. ate under constraint, antiterrorism excludes This fundamental divergence in orienta- any political impact upon the conflict. “We tion is reflected in several other distinctive do not negotiate with terrorists” is the key features. phrase in radically nonstrategic thought. First, there is a difference in the way that Dronized manhunting represents the tri- the enemy is conceived. Whereas the first umph, both practical and doctrinal, of anti- paradigm regards insurgents as the “repre- terrorism over counterinsurgency. sentatives of deeper claims at the heart of According to this logic, the total body society” (and it is important to understand count and a list of hunting trophies take the the reasons for this, in order to counteract place of a strategic evaluation of the politi- them effectively), the second one, by label- cal effects of armed violence. Successes be- ing them “terrorist,” regards them above come statistics. all as “aberrant individuals,” dangerous fig- Their evaluation is totally disconnected ures, quite simply mad, or as incarnations from their real effects on the ground.

January 2015 | ColdType 59 book excerpt / 2

Evidence provided The partisans of orthodox doctrine are achieve.” Furthermore, he pleads that it is by a Pakistani uneasy: as they see it, in the middle or important not to “undervalue the function Taliban leader, long term, this reorientation is bound to of force in suppressing intractable insur- Baitullah Mehsud, produce effects that are strategically cata- gents.” “Where historically there was much illustrates the strophic for American interests. Drones discussion about the effect, or the lack apparent truth are without doubt excellent at pulverizing thereof, of airpower on the civilian popu- of that thesis: bodies from a distance but are totally un- lations of hostile nations, now the issue is “I spent three suited to winning over “hearts and minds.” very different: it focuses on the psychologi- months trying to As Peter Matulich writes, “The current use cal impact on the insurgents themselves, recruit and only of drones in counter-terrorism strikes in not the civilian population.” got 10–15 persons. Pakistan is contrary to the effective COIN What we are witnessing here is a redis- One US attack doctrine the US has developed over the tribution of priorities: the yield from a pol- and I got 150 past ten years. . . . [Drone operations as icy designed to terrorize and eradicate now volunteers” they currently stand are of limited use if takes precedence over any consideration not counterproductive. of its political effects on the population. Drones alone are incapable of facilitating So what if the drones make the popula- the populationcentric goals of COIN. Their tion turn away from us? Who cares? What use in ‘clearing’ operations produces nega- do the “hearts and minds” of villagers in tive effects including collateral damage and Waziristan or anywhere else matter? And the militarization of local populations. This in any case, unlike in the old colonial wars, not only alienates populations but can fuel the objective is no longer to conquer a ter- further insurgency.” ritory but simply to eliminate from afar the Evidence provided by a Pakistani Taliban “terrorist threat.” leader, Baitullah Mehsud, illustrates the ap- Seen in this light, the intensive recourse parent truth of that thesis: “I spent three to drones takes on new meaning. Richard months trying to recruit and only got 10–15 Andres, an Air Force special advisor, re- persons. ports that the tactical limitation of the old One US attack and I got 150 volunteers.” air weapons was that “they could not kill This pattern seems to have been forgotten or suppress insurgents fast enough to over- by the American forces, which is particularly come enemy recruiting.” Reading between surprising since it appears printed in black the lines, we should understand that an and white in the military’s own handbooks: armada of hunter-killer drones at last does “Confrontational military action, in exclu- possess that capacity: it can win that race sion, is counter-productive in most cases; it and eliminate individuals at least as fast as risks generating popular resentment, creat- new ones are recruited. ing martyrs that motivate new recruits, and The strategic plan of air counterinsur- producing cycles of revenge.” But is it really gency is now clear: as soon as a head grows a case of forgetfulness? back, cut it off. And never mind if, in a spi- Perhaps, but perhaps not; for, as defend- raling development of attacks and reprisals ers of the orthodox doctrine fear, it is per- that is hard to control, the perverse effect of fectly possible that the proposed reorgani- that prophylactic measure is to attract new zation of airpower may in fact be far more volunteers. From this point of view, the ob- radical, purely and simply doing away with jection that drone strikes are counterpro- the political aspects of classic counterin- ductive because they allow the enemy, in a surgency theory. Thus Dunlap insistently classic pattern of action and repression, to stresses that the official doctrine tends to recruit more volunteers no longer applies. “overemphasize what ‘hearts and mind- Never mind if the enemy ranks thicken, winning’ efforts by occupying troops can since it will always be possible to neutral-

60 ColdType | January 2015 book excerpt / 2 ize the new recruits as fast as they emerge. weapon of “antiterrorism” promise a war caught up in an The cull will be repeated periodically, in a without losses or defeats. endless spiral, pattern of infinite eradication. What they fail to mention is that it will the eradication Once antiterrorism overtakes counter- also be a war without victory. The scenario strategy is, insurgency, we are led to understand, the that looms before us is one of infinite vio- paradoxically, sufficient aim becomes a regular elimina- lence, with no possible exit; the paradox of destined never to tion of emerging threats, which takes the an untouchable power waging interminable eradicate form of a periodic reaping: “Kill enough of wars toward perpetual war. CT them and the threat goes away. . . . How- ever, the ‘kill list’ . . . never gets shorter, Copyright © 2014 by Grégoire Chamayou. the names and faces are simply replaced.” This excerpt originally appeared in “A Theory Caught up in an endless spiral, the eradi- Of The Drone”, published by The New Press cation strategy is, paradoxically, destined Reprinted here with permission. never to eradicate. The very dynamics of its perverse effects prevent it from ever fully Grégoire Chamayou is a research scholar decapitating a hydra that regenerates itself in philosophy at the Centre National de la ceaselessly as a result of the strategy’s own Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He is also negativity. the author of “Manhunts: A Philosophical The partisans of the drone as a privileged History”. He lives in Paris

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January 2015 | ColdType 61 saving face Tony Blair’s dodgy award Felicity Arbuthnot is shocked by a recent award to the former British PM, whose illegal war caused the deaths of so many children

Between “If anything happened to one of my children dren a month to death (UN figures) was Madeleine I would go mad with grief.” (Tony Blair after awarded Save the Children’s Global Legacy Albright’s Omagh bombing, August 1998) Award at an event held at The Plaza in New admission York. that “over half a hen the Orwellian-named Lest we forget, Blair is a former British million children “Middle East Peace Envoy” Prime Minister (May, 1997-June 2007) and had died”, and Tony Blair was named “Phi- Leader of the Opposition (July, 1994 - May Blair’s tenure lanthropist of the Year” by GQ 2007). In both roles, he emphatically en- from 1997 to the W Magazine in September, for “his tireless dorsed the Iraq embargo, thereby contrib- invasion six years charitable work” (tell that to the dismem- uting, along with Madeleine Albright, to the later, another bered, dispossessed, traumatized of Iraq, silent infanticide of Iraq’s children. Then half a million and Afghanistan), there was widespread came the dodgy Downing Street dossier children died disbelief. Although mind-stretching, the GQ quoted by Colin Powell at the UN to justify award was hardly a heavyweight accolade, the invasion of Iraq, followed by the subse- coming from a publication with, seemingly, quent holocaust, which caused as many as a strange fetish for David Beckham’s knick- one and a half million deaths in a country ers and little grounding in reality. where nearly half the population was chil- The magazine’s editor, in lauding Blair’s dren. “achievements”, included his “reconciling Between Madeleine Albright’s admission the three Abrahamic faiths.” Hmm, he may on May 12, 1996, that “over half a million know about men’s knickers, but he clearly children had died”, and Blair’s tenure from has not heard of Iraq. Receiving the award, 1997 to the invasion six years later, another Blair said, “I feel the pulse of progress beat- half a million children died. ing a little harder,” a variation on his tacky, Now, Save The Children – whose com- less-than-humble, thoughts on his work in mitment is “No Child Born to Die” – hon- Northern Ireland, “This is no time for sound ours this tyrant! bites, but I feel the hand of history on my “From the beginning of humankind there shoulder.” has been brutality, conflict, intrigue, the Then came the Big One . . . destructive obsession with a narrow self- On 19th November, 2014, the Butcher of interest”, said Blair in acceptance (1) 0f the Baghdad, Master of the Dodgy Dossier, and award, as he also heaped praise on USAID Sanctions Endorser of 13 years of embargo and “the magnificent American and British that condemned an average of 6,000 chil- military” along with Save The Children and

62 ColdType | January 2015 saving face other NGOs for their work in Africa (2.) ber 2014.) Blair fled his posh That’s the same USAID whose decades- Jonathan Powell, Blair’s most longstand- pad in Jerusalem long interstepping with the CIA is a dark, ing political aide (1995-2007) and his Chief and gave a two shocking saga (3.) And the same US and UK of Staff, both while he was Leader of the month early military which, in destroying Iraq, left five Opposition and Prime Minister, joined the “surprise birthday million orphans, a million widows and five board of Save the Children International in party” for his wife million displaced. Those same organisa- 2013. in one of his seven tions were now in Africa, he said, “setting Sam Sharpe chief financial officer of Save UK mansions, up treatment centres, tirelessly providing The Children, “worked for nearly 30 years safely out of the shelter, hygiene and education”, of which with the UK Government development pro- firing line and said facilities they had bombed back to a pre- gramme”, including under Tony Blair. And nothing about industrial age in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Fergus Drake, director of global programmes saving Gaza’s Watch out Africa. since 2009, previously “worked for the Of- children, or indeed fice of Tony Blair in Rwanda advising Presi- anyone else “We’re all in it together” dent Kagame.” Why this shameful lauding of a man who Slight conflicy of interest there, I’d should be answering to a modern-day think. Nuremberg Tribunal and upon whom the The day after Blair’s award, Save The Chilcot Inquiry is still to release its find- Children, with UNICEF and other aid agen- ings? cies released a statement headed, “On the A look at the organisation’s leadership 25th anniversary of the Convention on The might help explain things: Rights of the Child – Stepping up the global The chief executive of Save the Children, effort to advance the rights of every child.” Justin Forsyth was, in 2004, “recruited to No Its commitments were “… not only to 10 (Downing Street) by Tony Blair”, later be- some children, but to all children … not coming Strategic Communications only to advance some of their rights, and Campaigns Director to but all their rights – includ- Gordon Brown, Blair’s ing their right to survive successor (4). Brown and to thrive, to grow had been Chancellor and to learn, to have of the Exchequer un- their voices heard der Blair and wrote and heeded, and the cheques for the to be protected ten years of illegal from discrimina- UK bombing of tion and violence Iraq before the in- in all its mani- vasion and the de- festations.” (5) struction of the Irony, chutz- country. pah, hypocrisy, A c c o r d i n g eat your hearts to Save the Chil- out. dren’s chief execu- As defence- tive Jasmine Whit- less Gaza, with no bread, Forsyth played a army, navy or air key role in Blair’s selection force, was decimat- for the award, indeed it seems ed again in July and he also delivered the invita- August, resulting tion. (Guardian, 28th Novem- in over 2,000

January 2015 | ColdType 63 saving face

Saving children deaths, including nearly 500 children, September 2012. Despite those denials, in- seems to be “Peace Envoy” Blair fled his posh pad in ternal mails on the dispute obtained by the somewhat of a Jerusalem and gave a two-month-early Center for Investigative Reporting in Paki- selective process “surprise birthday party” for his wife in stan (8) which can be read in full (9) make at this agency one of his seven UK mansions, safely out interesting reading. which operates of the firing line, and said nothing about Now, Save The Children has appointed in “more than 120 saving Gaza’s children, or indeed any- British Prime Minister David Cameron’s countries” one else. He has subsequently been silent wife Samantha as “Ambassador” for Syria. about 475,000 souls living in emergency Since the organization is not trusted in Syr- conditions, 17,200 destroyed homes and ia, she reports from neighbouring countries. 244 damaged schools. Cameron’s Britain is among countries arm- Incidentally, if you are considering donat- ing and training the beheading, hand chop- ing to Save the Children, give generously. Mr ping, crucifying bands of Syrian insurgents. Forsyth and his colleagues struggle along on It’s worth remembering that 33% of Syria’s about £160,000 a year and the Chief Execu- population is 0-14, while the population’s tive makes do on £234,000 annually (6.) median age is 23.3. Cameron, a Blair admirer, is on record as Don’t mention the war taking the advice of the former PM, who is Saving children seems to be somewhat of a enthusiastic for another illegal invasion in selective process at this agency which op- Syria, while having “no regrets” over the erates in “more than 120 countries.” In No- war on Iraq. Blair told the Chilcot Inquiry vember 2003, the Guardian reported that on 29th January 2010 that he would make “Senior figures at Save the Children US … the same decisions again. demanded the withdrawal of … criticism As Save The Children lauds Blair and and an effective veto on any future state- trumpets the Rights of the Child, the or- ments blaming the invasion for the plight ganisation should reflect upon the horror of Iraqi civilians suffering malnourishment he has wrought. In Iraq, malnutrition has and shortages of medical supplies.” stunted the physical or intellectual devel- Fast forward to another US extrajudi- opment of one in four children. There are cial assassination, the man purported to be an estimated 35,000 infant deaths annually, Osama bin Laden in May 2011, in Abbotta- while three million suffer post traumatic bad, Pakistan. Save The Children “had been stress disorder. (War Child: “Mission Unac- under suspicion ever since a doctor accused complished”, 2013.) of assisting the CIA in its search for the al- Om addition, the use of depleted urani- Qaida leader claimed that Save the Children um (DU) weapons will haunt future genera- had introduced him to US intelligence offi- tions for ever. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion cers.” (7.) years and will still be poisoning humanity, Dr Shakil Afridi, currently serving 33 fauna and flora, when the sun goes out. Ra- years in jail, was “accused of setting up a dioactive and chemically toxic, it has been bogus hepatitis B vaccination campaign in linked with the spiraling numbers of birth the Abbottabad area to try to pinpoint bin defects and cancers in the country since the Laden’s exact location”, via DNA samples 1991 onslaught. which “were to be tested by the CIA for ge- At the time of the war on Iraq, the UK netic matches to Bin Laden.” Atomic Energy Authority warned the gov- Save The Children, which emphatically ernment that if 50 tonnes of the residual denied employing or paying Dr Afridi or dust remained “in the region” there would, indeed having a vaccination programme in they estimated, be half a million extra can- Abbottabad, was expelled from Pakistan in cer deaths “by the end of the century” (ie

64 ColdType | October/November 2014 saving face

2000). And, according to one study (10), I am bccing this email to about a thou- “In Mr. Blair’s Tony Blair’s war has left 300 contaminat- sand people, and I hope that all who receive case, the ed sites identified so far, with more than it will take note and, in future, direct their ‘accumulated 300,000 DU rounds estimated to have been efforts to help children to … other organiza- evil’ now includes fired. Total volume used is currently esti- tions who are not complicit in whitewashing hundreds of mated at 400 tonnes (almost certainly a the mass murder of children in Iraq. thousands of massive underestimate) added to an upper With all due (but greatly diminished) re- people killed, estimate from 1991 of 750 tonnes. spect – Nicolas J S Davies, Author of “Blood cities and villages On Our Hands: the American Invasion and reduced to Damage limitation? Destruction of Iraq.” CT rubble and the Save the Children may be mortally wounded destruction of an by its decision to honour Blair. Leaked emails Felicity Arbuthnot is a political activist and entire society” confirm a desperate damage limitation exer- author, based in London, England cise by Jasmine Whitbread, the organisation’s chief executive. They were, she said, “trying Notes to contain the situation and stop things esca- lating further.” Staff across the world had ex- 1. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ pressed “concerns.” Staff reportedly signed people/tony-blair-honoured-with-save-the- an outraged petition and subscriptions have childrens-global-legacy-award-at-charity- been cancelled in droves. gala-attended-by-ben-affleck-and-lassie- Perhaps one letter encapsulates the an- 9873596.html ger at Save The Children for their aberrant, 2. http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/ action, as calls for a boycott echo around entry/tony-blair-presented-with-save-the- the world: childrens-global-legacy-award/ 3. http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-front- Dear Save the Children, usaid-spreading-democracy-gearing-up-in- I am outraged that “Save the Children” ukraine-suharto-ii/5381174 has seen fit to contribute to the impunity, 4. http://blogs.savethechildren.org.uk/au- whitewashing and rehabilitation of one of thor/jforsyth/ the most serious war criminals of our time, 5. http://www.savethechildren.net/sites/ Tony Blair, by awarding him a Save the Chil- default/files/CRC_25_Joint_UNICEF_CSO_ dren Global Legacy Award. As Prime Minis- Statement.pdf#overlay-context=news ter, Mr. Blair was warned consistently and re- 6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ peatedly by FCO legal advisers that to invade article-2550648/Fury-234-000-salary-boss- Iraq would constitute the crime of aggres- Save-Children-Charity-chiefs-huge-wages- sion, which the judges at Nuremberg called reined-say-MPs.html the “supreme international crime” because it 7. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/ “contains within itself the accumulated evil sep/05/pakistan-voluntarysector of the whole.” In Mr. Blair’s case, the “ac- 8. http://cirp.pk/e-mail.htm cumulated evil” now includes hundreds of 9. http://defence.pk/threads/leaked- thousands of people killed, cities and villages emails-ot-save-the-children-confirms-paki- reduced to rubble and the destruction of an stan-full-of-cia-agents.268832/ entire society. 10. http://www.theguardian.com/ This award is especially horrifying coming world/2014/jun/19/us-depleted-uranium- from Save the Children, because Mr. Blair is weapons-civilian-areas-iraq legally culpable in the deaths of tens of thou- 11. http://www.amazon.com/Blood- sands of children killed in Iraq, mainly by Our-Hands-American-Destruction/ coalition air strikes … dp/193484098X

January 2015 | ColdType 65 into the past Was Nelson Mandela a communist? The former South African president died without answering a key political question. Trevor Grundy went to a conference that tried to find the answer

What was his e’re now well into the post-Man- legacy and was dela age but it seems we still he, or was he not, can’t get enough of a man so of- a member of the ten described as the world’s best South African W known secular saint. Those who love him, Communist Party’s love him so fiercely that debate is often out central committee of the question. But, as George Orwell said in in the early 1960s? an essay he wrote about Gandhi (Reflections on Gandhi), “Saints should always be judged guilty until proved innocent.” So, even if you’ve read Stephen Ellis’s “Ex- ternal Mission –The ANC in Exile 1960-1990”, eagerly page-turned “The Hidden Thread – Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era”, by Irina Filatova and Appolon Davidson, devoured “Mandela –The Official Biogra- phy”, by Anthony Sampson, absorbed “The Nelson Mandela: Communist or not? That Lusaka Years – The ANC in Exile”, by Hugh is the question. Macmillan and flicked your way through a dozen or so other books about South Africa’s academics, politicians, journalists, histori- first black president, two important and un- ans and members of the public a chance to answered questions stay with us: What was step back from the emotion and the building his legacy and was he, or was he not, a mem- up of the image of a saint, who – in a way – ber of the South African Communist Party’s couldn’t be emulated elsewhere because he central committee in the early 1960s? is almost too lofty. A seminar at The Senate (London Univer- “We have, at last, managed to open up a sity) on December 5, 2014, was titled “Nelson lot of issues that nobody wanted to talk about Mandela: Myth and Reality”, and was de- at the time of his death,” he said. “Nobody scribed by the former Trotskyite activist and wanted to be seen as spitting on his grave. author Paul Trewhela, as ‘historic.’ Now people aren’t seen as doing that. They’re One of its main organisers, the BBC’s Keith seen as people who are looking at someone Somerville, said that a year on from Nelson who is a much revered, much admired, but Mandela’s death, the one-day seminar gave far from perfect character. And I think he

66 ColdType | January 2015 into the past would never have described himself as a per- thinking about Africa. Ellis told the fect character. And so, we have been able to In his widely read book, “External Mis- seminar that it is look at him from a whole new different se- sion –The ANC in Exile 1960-1990”, (Hurst& most important ries of perspectives, with different views be- Company, London, 2012) Ellis insists that to know the truth ing presented and discussed that will help to Mandela was not only a member of the Com- about Mandela’s open the way for a really in-depth look over munist Party in 1961 but that he had also membership the next few years at the real Mandela and been co-opted onto the membership of the of the SACP – his lasting legacy.” SACP’s Central Committee. Ellis said it is im- partly because More than 100 people were there – almost portant to know this and to understand the it validates the all of them Europeans with African creden- way the SACP gave birth to and then struc- language it uses tials, but also men and women who left the tured the armed wing of the ANC’s military today so-called “Dark Continent” for new and wing, Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto we much safer lives in Britain, the USA, Canada, Sizwe). Australia, New Zealand and different parts of But not once did Mandela admit to being Europe. a member of the SACP. He made no men- For many of them, Mandela’s alleged tion of it in his autobiography “Long Walk membership of the SACP in the late 1950s/ to Freedom”, neither does Sampson in the early 1960s remains a burning issue. official biography. At a time when South Africa is riddled So far, only Ellis and the Russian writers with corruption, plagued by crime and Filatova and Davidson have highlighted this mounting public concern that the African possibility. Nationalist Congress (ANC) led government I asked Ellis if what he says and writes is of Jacob Zuma plans to curtail the freedom true, had the Mandela Myth been based on of the press in 2015, one wonders why this is a lie? such an obsession. He replied: “Mandela, for various reasons, denied at his trial that he was a member of Does it really matter? the SACP. He was on trial for so many seri- Of what possible importance, of what possi- ous offences and he was going to minimize ble relevance was this to South Africa in the the seriousness of what he had done. And second decade of the 21st Century, asked Dr he carried on denying it all through his life. I Moses Anafu, former head of the Africa sec- think it’s a pity in many ways that after he’d tion at the London-based Commonwealth become president and a world figure and the Secretariat. “I don’t understand why it is Cold War was over that he didn’t actually tell so important whether he was a Communist us more about his exact relationship with or not. Maybe – and only maybe – Mande- the Communist Party in his early days. But la was a Communist. Well and good. If he he chose not to.” wasn’t, that’s his own business.” Ellis told the seminar that it is most im- Anafu was reacting to earlier speeches by portant to know the truth about Mandela’s European academics, Professor Stephen El- membership of the SACP – partly because lis of the University of Leiden (Netherlands) it validates the language it uses today – lan- and Dr Hugh Macmillan of the University of guage familiar to readers of George Orwell’s Cape Town and Africa Studies Centre, Oxford book “1984”. University (England). He said: “It’s one indication of the degree Ellis is the former editor of Africa Confi- to which, after Mandela was sent to prison in dential magazine, which is seen in some Brit- 1962, the SACP came to exert a very strong ish and African Left-wing/socialist circles as influence – I would say control – over the a publication with a remarkable ability to ANC. South Africa is still one of the few anticipate what the British Government is countries in the world where people talk this

January 2015 | ColdType 67 into the past

Had Mandela’s Marxist jargon. I mean, political actors from (two of the SACPs best known leaders, one membership of the mid-20th century talk about the patriotic white the other black) and others in estab- the SACP been bourgeoisie, the national democratic revolu- lishing Umkhonto we Sizwe after the SACPs widely known tion, the proletariat, the two-stage revolu- 1960 National Conference”. overseas, the tion. This vocabulary is simply not adequate In response, Hugh Macmillan (author ANC would never to discuss the problems of South Africa in of “The Lusaka years – The ANC in exile in have received the the 21st century. So, I think, that if you’re in- Zambia”, published by Jacana, South Africa support that it did terested to know how it (South Africa) got in 2013) said that all this reminded him of – both financially stuck with this vocabulary, you need to look what the South African government said and morally – at the nature of the relationship quite clear- about Mandela at the time of his trial in 1962 from Europe and ly. Until you appreciate history and how the which led to his incarceration for 27 years. America ANC came to adopt some key Marxist con- Said Macmillan: “This claim is linked with cepts, above all a Marxist/Leninist vocabu- what I see as a revival of the apartheid gov- lary, you can’t understand why the South Af- ernment’s legend that the SACP, acting on rican public is so ill-equipped to discuss the the instructions of Moscow and/or Peking real problems in their country today.” decided to launch the armed struggle and – He said that had Mandela’s membership to again quote Stephen Ellis – bounced the of the SACP (which served Moscow so well, ANC into this. And the implication is that so obediently and for such a long time) been the ANC was pushed into armed struggle widely known overseas, the ANC would against its will, or better judgment, by the never have received the support that it did SACP. And I don’t think there’s any reason – both financially and morally – from Europe to believe this. There was a lot of pressure to- and America. He said: “Since the end of the wards sabotage and armed struggle coming Cold War, non-one has wanted to come to from below and, more importantly, the ANC terms with South Africa’s history. Part of the was in intense competition with the Pan Af- reason is that Mandela denied his member- ricanist Congress and the PAC made a move ship of the Communist Party right up to the towards armed struggle before the ANC and time of his death”. And Ellis said that “a cold leaders of the ANC were well aware that they response” from the ANC meets anyone at- were in a competition for radicalism.” tempting to unravel the “truth” about Man- It was the PAC that alerted the world to life dela’s membership of the SACP. under apartheid by organizing the burning of He said his book had been greeted with passes (needed by all Africans to move any- “a very eloquent silence “by the ANC, add- where in their own country) in March 1960. It ing, “Anyone who starts to inquire seriously led to the Sharpeville Massacre (69 black peo- into their history . . . well, they sooner or later ple shot dead). Macmillan said: “I am alarmed direct a volley of abuse at you and the aim, that a new kind of orthodoxy is gaining ground of course, is to discredit you and prevent any and it is based largely on an article by Stephen discussion. If you looked objectively at what Ellis and on the book he recently published. the SACP in the 1960s and 1970s was up, In the article he claimed that he had proved you could find that it manipulated the ANC. beyond reasonable doubt that Mandela was a That’s what they are afraid of people finding member of the SACP. It is being accepted – if out about them.” there is such a thing – as a historic fact. And I He said several members of the SACP simply don’t think that it is”. claimed Nelson Mandela became a member Meeting the media of the SACP in 1960. “It is,” he said, “entirely credible that Nelson Mandela was co-opted Whether or not Mandela had ever been a onto the Central Committee of the SACP to Communist was the day’s number one topic, work closely with Joe Slovo and Walter Sisulu thought two journalists Peter Biles (ex-BBC

68 ColdType | January 2015 into the past in South Africa) and Richard Dowden (ex- should have spent much more time listen- “They fail to see Independent newspaper journalist in South ing to ordinary people, hearing their stories that their house in Africa) provided light relief with amusing and how they had suffered under apart- Cape Town costing stories and some anecdotes about Mandela heid. Mandela, who should have listened £I million pounds and his meetings with the Press. to the poor and the wretched and said to or £10 million But after I’d left the room, where a million them, “Your story matters”. Mandela had is because of words had bounced around like tennis balls, surrounded himself with so many dubious apartheid” and went out to enjoy several glasses of white characters and today South Africa is sitting wine with men who only a few hours earlier on a “time bomb” because of high unem- looked as if they were ready to slaughter one ployment, corruption and the emergence of another, I realised how it was not the words of men and women ready to take advantage of either Ellis or Macmillan that rattled around mass dis-satisfaction and lack of belief in the in my brain but those of a young South Af- ANC – the political system in general. rican called Khalo Matabane, who makes And on racial reconciliation in the once documentaries and lives in Cape Town. His massively acclaimed “rainbow nation”? film, “Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me”. “There’s a number of white South Afri- had kicked off the day’s proceedings. cans who do not feel that something wrong “Perhaps we’ll never understand you,” happened to South Africa who today tell you we heard him almost whisper as the young to move on. “Some of them saw my docu- Mandela – who strongly resembled Joe Louis mentary and said – ‘Oh, you’re stuck in the in his prime – waved to his followers outside past’. They have no sense of responsibil- a courtroom. “You are our imagination and ity like, ‘Oh, we did wrong and our grand- the truth about you lies in your contradic- children have benefitted and are who they tions.” are today because we benefitted because of apartheid’. They fail to see that their house Thoughts on his legacy in Cape Town costing £I million pounds or And on the train back home I listened to £10 million is because of apartheid. There is what I’d recorded. What Ellis and Macmillan no sense of acknowledgment. The danger in said seemed rather remote, but what Mata- South Africa today is that the guys on the Left bane said was explosive. While admiring with the right kind of rhetoric are playing on Mandela for his courage, for the long years sentiments that the ANC didn’t transform he spent in prison and his refusal to com- enough. The present frustration is opening promise his principles, Matabane had this up a door and all sorts of people will come in to say about the great man’s legacy: and say, “We’ll make sure there is economic “For me, I think there were tactical errors justice for you.” where he focused too much on trying to un- I listened again. “The guys on the Left derstand the enemy and sort of humanise with the right kind of rhetoric.” And I re- the enemy and show the enemy the light and membered what Professor Ellis had said. all those kind of things, which were amazing The debate, like the African revolution, gestures. But actually his mandate should continues. CT have been on the majority of Africans who are poor and marginalised. That’s where he Trevor Grundy is a British based journalist should have spent his time. That’s my criti- who lived and worked as a reporter and cism. I feel that he spent so much time try- broadcaster in Central, Eastern and Southern ing to say ‘You can find your humanity inside Africa from 1966-1996. Today he is an author yourself’, and I’m not sure that has worked and researcher based in Kent, Southern for South Africa.” England. He may be contacted at He repeated it several times . . . Mandela [email protected]

January 2015 | ColdType 69 anti-empire report US exceptionalism and US torture William Blum on lies, hypocrisy, propaganda and amnesty

No one does n 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, brainwashing coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left both he and Leon Panetta, the Director of the like the good ol’ than that) government and proceeded to rule CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not Yankee inventors with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979 being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported of advertising and I the regime passed an amnesty law blocking the at the time: “Under executive orders issued by public relations prosecution of its members for torture and oth- Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to er crimes. The amnesty still holds. carry out what are known as renditions, secret That’s how they handle such matters in what abductions and transfers of prisoners to coun- used to be called The Third World. In the First tries that cooperate with the United States.” World, they have no need for such legal niceties. The English translation of “cooperate” is In the United States, military torturers and their “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing tor- political godfathers are granted amnesty auto- ture. There was no other reason to take pris- matically, simply for being American, solely for oners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, belonging to the “Good Guys Club”. Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian So now, with the release of the Senate Intelli- Ocean island of Diego Garcia, amongst other gence Committee report on CIA torture, we have torture centers employed by the United States. further depressing revelations about US foreign Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house policy. But do Americans and the world need large and very secretive American military bas- yet another reminder that the United States is es – if not some of the other locations, may well a leading practitioner of torture? Yes. The mes- still be open for torture business, as is the Guan- sage can not be broadcast too often because tánamo Base in Cuba. the indoctrination of the American people and Moreover, the key Executive Order referred Americophiles all around the world is so deeply to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “En- embedded that it takes repeated shocks to the suring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major system to dislodge it. No one does brainwashing loophole. It states that humane treatment, in- like the good ol’ Yankee inventors of advertising cluding the absence of torture, is applicable and public relations. only to prisoners detained in an “armed con- The public also has to be reminded yet again flict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an en- that – contrary to what most of the media and vironment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly Mr. Obama would have us all believe – the presi- prohibited. But what about torture within an dent has never actually banned torture per se, environment of “counter-terrorism”? despite saying recently that he had “unequivo- The Executive Order required the CIA to cally banned torture” after taking office. use only the interrogation methods outlined in

70 ColdType | January 2015 into the past in South Africa) and Richard Dowden (ex- should have spent much more time listen- “They fail to see Independent newspaper journalist in South ing to ordinary people, hearing their stories that their house in Africa) provided light relief with amusing and how they had suffered under apart- Cape Town costing stories and some anecdotes about Mandela heid. Mandela, who should have listened £I million pounds and his meetings with the Press. to the poor and the wretched and said to or £10 million But after I’d left the room, where a million them, “Your story matters”. Mandela had is because of words had bounced around like tennis balls, surrounded himself with so many dubious apartheid” and went out to enjoy several glasses of white characters and today South Africa is sitting wine with men who only a few hours earlier on a “time bomb” because of high unem- looked as if they were ready to slaughter one ployment, corruption and the emergence of another, I realised how it was not the words of men and women ready to take advantage of either Ellis or Macmillan that rattled around mass dis-satisfaction and lack of belief in the in my brain but those of a young South Af- ANC – the political system in general. rican called Khalo Matabane, who makes And on racial reconciliation in the once documentaries and lives in Cape Town. His massively acclaimed “rainbow nation”? film, “Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me”. “There’s a number of white South Afri- had kicked off the day’s proceedings. cans who do not feel that something wrong “Perhaps we’ll never understand you,” happened to South Africa who today tell you we heard him almost whisper as the young to move on. “Some of them saw my docu- Mandela – who strongly resembled Joe Louis mentary and said – ‘Oh, you’re stuck in the in his prime – waved to his followers outside past’. They have no sense of responsibil- a courtroom. “You are our imagination and ity like, ‘Oh, we did wrong and our grand- the truth about you lies in your contradic- children have benefitted and are who they tions.” are today because we benefitted because of apartheid’. They fail to see that their house Thoughts on his legacy in Cape Town costing £I million pounds or And on the train back home I listened to £10 million is because of apartheid. There is what I’d recorded. What Ellis and Macmillan no sense of acknowledgment. The danger in said seemed rather remote, but what Mata- South Africa today is that the guys on the Left bane said was explosive. While admiring with the right kind of rhetoric are playing on Mandela for his courage, for the long years sentiments that the ANC didn’t transform he spent in prison and his refusal to com- enough. The present frustration is opening promise his principles, Matabane had this up a door and all sorts of people will come in to say about the great man’s legacy: and say, “We’ll make sure there is economic “For me, I think there were tactical errors justice for you.” where he focused too much on trying to un- I listened again. “The guys on the Left derstand the enemy and sort of humanise with the right kind of rhetoric.” And I re- the enemy and show the enemy the light and membered what Professor Ellis had said. all those kind of things, which were amazing The debate, like the African revolution, gestures. But actually his mandate should continues. CT have been on the majority of Africans who are poor and marginalised. That’s where he Trevor Grundy is a British based journalist should have spent his time. That’s my criti- who lived and worked as a reporter and cism. I feel that he spent so much time try- broadcaster in Central, Eastern and Southern ing to say ‘You can find your humanity inside Africa from 1966-1996. Today he is an author yourself’, and I’m not sure that has worked and researcher based in Kent, Southern for South Africa.” England. He may be contacted at He repeated it several times . . . Mandela [email protected]

January 2015 | ColdType 69 WriTing WorTh reading

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