Michael Meacher | ukwatch.net

The Era of Oil Wars

Ellie Keen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:36:35 +0000

Gordon Brown meeting Britain's oil chiefs to discuss higher North Sea output to bring down prices is prompted by oil prices hitting a record high of $135 a barrel, twice as high as a year ago and a staggering 12 times higher than a decade ago. The well-sourced website petrolprices.com is now predicting that petrol will reach £1.50 a litre by September, just 4 months away. Jeff Rubin of CIBC World Markets is forecasting "oil prices almost doubling over the next five years". That would mean $270 a barrel by 2013. It perhaps explains why the government is now strongly backing BP to get a big new slice of the oil drilling licences soon to be issued in Iraq, and – astonishingly – has now also made clear it intends to annex a third of a million square miles of the seabed off Antarctica to pre-empt any rights to the oil it may contain. The fight for oil has begun in earnest.

But is there the oil to go round? The authoritative International Energy Agency foresees an oil supply crunch within 5 years forcing up prices to unprecedented levels and greatly increasing western dependence on Opec. And the oil industry itself in its own report Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, produced by 175 authorities including all the heads of the world's big oil companies, for the first time predicted that oil and gas may run short by 2015.

The geopolitical implications of this gathering crisis for world oil supply 2010-15 are immense. The risk of further military interventions and conflicts in the Middle East is clearly high. Total world oil reserves are estimated at 2.5-2.9 trillion barrels, of which half has now been already consumed, while half of the 51 oil-producing countries reported output declines in 2006. Non-Opec production is expected to peak and decline within the next five years, driven mainly by burgeoning demand from China and the US, together with restricted output from Iraq. Then in the following five years Opec's diminishing spare capacity will probably become increasingly unable to accommodate short-term fluctuations, depending on how fast world demand grows and how extensively Opec invests in new capacity. The latter may well not raise production capacity high enough or quickly enough, whether for political reasons or because internal decision-making is too slow or the security environment too hostile.

There are of course exits from this doom-stricken scenario, though none is at all credible. First, discovery of major new oilfields could alter the picture. However, though billions have been spent on the search for new fields, discovery peaked in the mid-1960s and the last big ones were found in the 1970s. Only Iraq has undeveloped super-giant oilfields – at West Qurna, Majnoon, and East Baghdad – and the capacity to increase production rapidly to 8-10 million barrels a day; but ironically the US invasion, designed to produce this effect, has ruled out this outcome for a long way ahead. Already four-fifths of the world's oil supply comes from fields discovered before 1970, and even finding a field as large as the world's current biggest (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) – which is anyway almost inconceivable given the huge improvements in geological knowledge in the last 30 years – would only meet global oil demand for another 10 years.

Another option much touted is a large-scale shift to so-called unconventional oil – the Athabascan tar sands (from Alberta, Canada), extra-heavy oil (from the Orinoco belt in Venezuela), oil shale, and mature source rocks. But the almost insurmountable problem is recoverability, whether poor quality oil (extra-heavy oil), poor quality reservoirs (oil from source rocks), or both (oil shale). Worse, production may be uneconomic because of a very low net energy gain, ie it requires almost as much energy to extract the oil as is made available for subsequent use. And the enormous hike in greenhouse gases generated could produce a turbo climate change effect that would wipe out any benefit from a global post-Kyoto agreement.

But even if supply constraints are ineluctable as the explosion of Chinese growth coincides with falling non-Opec oil production and the beginnings of a slow but remorseless slippage in Opec capacity, the coming crisis could still be eased by significant demand restrictions. Clearly there is substantial room for energy-saving when half the energy generated every day is wasted and when propulsion of an average car is only about 20% efficient, heating of a standard oven only 25%, and electricity generated in some power stations only some 35%. The question, however, is whether improvement can be secured globally on the level and timescale required to push back the crisis more than a few years. Equally, taking the CO2 out of fossil fuels, especially coal, may be crucial, but a decade at least is needed even to test the carbon capture technology in pilot projects, let alone begin to mainstream it. But the most direct means of constraining world demand would be the proposed Rimini protocol, which prescribes that oil-importing countries cut their imports to match the world depletion rate (ie annual production as a percentage of remaining global reserves) now running at about 2% a year. Of course, the fundamental political problem remains that the most powerful oil-hungry countries will not agree. If not Kyoto, why Rimini?

What is most disturbing of all is that the big powers, so far from seeking major adjustments of their energy policies on either the supply or demand fronts or making a major switch into renewables, are actually massively intensifying their competitive struggle short-term for the limited oil reserves left. Despite an unwinnable war in Iraq, the US is still constructing at least five large permanent military bases there in order, according to evidence given to a US Congressional Committee, to control access to Gulf oil, including in Saudi and Iran. As one neocon recently put it, "one of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't intend to leave". The US is also trying to force through a new Iraqi oil law that would give western, primarily American, oil multinationals control of Iraqi oilfields for the next 30 years.

The US maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries under cover of the "war on terror" to defend American economic interests, particularly access to oil. The principal objective for the continued existence and expansion of Nato post-cold war is the encirclement of Russia and the pre-emption of China dominating access to oil and gas in the Caspian Sea and Middle East regions. It is only the beginning of the unannounced titanic global resource struggle between the US and China, the world's largest importers of oil (China overtook Japan in 2003). Islam has been dragged into this tussle because it is in the Islamic world where most of these resources lie, but Islam is only a secondary player. In the case of Russia, the recent pronounced stepping up of western attacks on Putin and claims he is undermining democracy are ultimately aimed at securing a pro-western government there, and access to Russian oil and gas when Russia has more of these two hydrocarbons together than any other country in the world.

The struggle has also spilled over into West Africa, reckoned to hold some 66 billion barrels of oil typically low in sulphur and thus ideal for refining. In 2005 the US imported more oil from the Gulf of Guinea than from Saudi and Kuwait combined, and is expected over the next 10 years to import more oil from Africa than from the Middle East. In step with this, the Pentagon is setting up a new unified military command for the continent named Africom. Conversely, Angola is now China's main supplier of crude oil, overtaking Saudi Arabia last year. There is no doubt that Africom, which will greatly increase the US military presence in Africa, is aimed at the growing conflict with China over oil supplies.

As Joe Lieberman, former US presidential candidate, put it, efforts by the US and China to use imports to meet growing demand "may escalate competition for oil to something as hot and dangerous as the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union".

What we need is a new dawn

Ellie Keen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:02:06 +0000

Gordon Brown's apparent decision to build more nuclear power stations because fuel prices are going through the roof is bizarre. It takes 15-20 years to build a nuclear power station. Hard-pressed hauliers and the fuel poor cannot wait that long. Nuclear power is irrelevant to addressing the present cost of fuel. And it can do next to nothing to ease the cost of heating homes.

Rising oil prices are already significantly reducing car and plane use. For home heating, the sensible way to proceed is by a rapid shift to domestic renewable energy: solar, wind-power, air or ground heat pumps, biomass (wood-burning boilers) and micro-generation. Germany is already proving the huge success of this policy through feed-in tariffs which enable families to generate their own energy and sell on any excess to the national grid at a profit.

Sadly, the British Government has turned its back on such ideas because it is committed to industrial vested interests. We hear a lot about empowering the consumer, but where this would really count – with decentralised energy systems – the fossil fuel and nuclear industries have the inside track.

This is not the only example of Government prejudices holding back desperately needed changes. In the current turmoil in financial markets, as the crisis broke and it became clear that City trading in near-worthless financial derivatives or “structured investment vehicles” had been a major ingredient in the collapse, it was decided there would be no change in light-touch regulation.

No committee of inquiry would be set up to deal with the rottenness of the financial system. Despite the toxic mix of poor accounting transparency, risk-laden financial products, evasive offshore operations, weak banking regulation and a gross lack of public accountability, a return to business-as-usual (if that were possible) was judged better than cleaning out the Augean stables.

As far as housing is concerned, the shortage of social, affordable housing has reached crisis levels. There are 1,634,000 households on the waiting list in 2004, according to the latest available data. The actual figure is probably nearer two million. In addition, nearly 100,000 households are registered homeless. Yet virtually no council houses have been built over the past 10 years.

Local authorities get no grant from the Government for house-building and are forbidden to borrow on the open market against the security of their housing stock to fund the tens of thousands of affordable houses for rent that are needed. However, housing associations are permitted to borrow on the market, to an extent equal to their grant from the Government, so that their house-building is doubled. Making a political point against council housing because of an obsession with owner occupation is wholly unacceptable.

If council tenants want their homes to be repaired and modernised, they have been required to vote in a ballot either to be transferred to a private landlord, a housing association or a so-called arm’s length management organisation. If they reject these options and opt to stay with the council, their homes have simply been left to deteriorate.

This is about ideology, not meeting housing need. Are ministers oblivious to the needs of the quarter of the population with the lowest incomes who do not have the wage levels or the regularity of employment to afford owner-occupation when mortgage debt to income is now on a six-to-one ratio or even higher?

Some people are rather better off. The chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies now take home on average more than £71,000 a week. Meanwhile, employees in their companies on the minimum wage take home £200 a week – 350 times less. Like other bosses before him who brought down their companies, Adam Applegarth was able to walk away from Northern Rock with a golden goodbye (£760,000 in his case), while hundreds of jobs could be lost in the north-East of England with little or no compensation.

Non-domicile tax refugees, many of them millionaires, are untroubled by the Inland Revenue because taxing the rich is a reminder of the bad old days. The Treasury has even retreated from the minimalist proposals on non-doms.

The fiasco over the abolition of the 10p tax band has still not been properly rectified. Alistair Darling’s compensation scheme, which still leaves 1.1 million of the 5.3 million losers worse off, comes to an end after one year. What is needed is not a bit more tax credit adjustment, but the re-introduction of the 10p tax rate with the £6.6 billion cost funded by redistribution from the richest 5 per cent in society with incomes over £150,000 whose wealth has quadrupled under this Government.

The enthusiasm for the private sector in all things has led to more problems. Through 1997-2002, the public accounts were in surplus. However, instead of the huge public rebuilding programme being financed cheaply via the Public Works Loan Board, the decision was made to hand over the construction and management of new hospitals, schools, roads and prisons to Private Finance Initiative schemes. This is a distinctly “unsound money” policy – top-slicing public expenditure for 30-50 years ahead, pushing a number of health trusts into bankruptcy and opening up re-financing scams offering even bigger profit rake-offs. And it has been pushed through with future liabilities for the public purse of more than £100 billion, even though many surveys have found that the PFI does not generally offer the best value for money.

The poorest in our society are probably more vulnerable now than at any time for a century and workers can still be arbitrarily dismissed in their first year of employment without any rights. Yet the Government continues to restrict trade union rights. Nor will it implement the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights for all citizens, which all the other 26 EU member states have accepted without demur. The charter bans excessive working hours (British workers work longer hours per week than anyone else in Europe) and would allow secondary action in industrial disputes (which is not an issue anywhere else in Europe).

It’s not Gordon Brown’s leadership that’s the problem. It’s the policies that have alienated Labour’s core vote. Changing the leader will alter little unless the policies are altered in a manner to convince those voters Labour is now fully on their side.

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton and a former environment minister

We're Still too Fixated on Oil

Ellie Keen — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:29:16 +0000

Is this Government really serious about climate change? We've just learnt that it is now lining up behind BP to get a decent-sized chunk of the oil-drilling licences soon to be issued in Iraq. That's in line with the discovery that Britain is also planning to lay claim to over 1/3 rd of a million square miles of the seabed off Antarctica because of its oil potential.

And the UK is also already developing sub-sea claims on Atlantic oilfields around the Falklands, off Ascension Island, and in the Rockall basin, as well as large tracts in the Bay of Biscay.

Tony Blair's visit to Gadaffi in 2004 was prompted less by concern about Libyan WMD than by the goal of prising open the huge Libyan oil market. Blair's red-carpet welcome in Downing Street in 1998 for Haydar Aliyev, the ex-KGB President of Azerbaijan, was designed to secure a £5 billion oil deal for BP, which it duly did. The Government also strongly backed the construction of BP's $4bn Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan 1,000 mile oil pipeline which is now transporting a million barrels of oil a day of Caspian oil to the UK and the West. Again, Government support lay behind Shell's massive $20bn Sakhalin Energy gas and oil project in Eastern Siberia (till Russia muscled its way into taking it over in 2006) and Shell's equally costly Athabascan tar sands project in Alberta, Canada, to extract synthetic oil from oil shales even though extracting it generates twice as much C0² as conventional oil. And of course UK participation in the American invasion of Iraq was at least partly motivated by the goal of securing for BP some significant share in Iraq's huge still-unexplored oilfields.

This policy of relentless - and extraordinarily expensive - pursuit of the remaining hydrocarbon supplies wherever they may be found across the world is both shortsighted and wholly contrary to any pretensions to be tackling climate change as being the greatest threat facing the planet. It is shortsighted because peak oil - the point at which oil production reaches its global peak before it then steadily declines - is widely expected to be reached some time between 2010-2015. At the same time the global demand for oil, driven mainly by the frenetic growth rate of the Chinese and Indian economies over the last decade and into the future, will continue to rise inexorably and the 1-1.5 trillion barrels of conventional oil that remain will be consumed in some 40 years and perhaps less. Even if the UK could secure a significant slice of the remaining hydrocarbon deposits across the world which, given that the intense competition between the US and China for the same supplies is the biggest struggle driving geopolitics today, must at best be highly optimistic, it is a policy which is absurdly short-term. Oil has no long-term future, and it is madness that so close to its demise we are not at this stage planning much more systematically for a post-oil world.

The policy also ruthlessly exposes the proud boasts that the UK is leading the world in the fight against climate change. While Government is telling people (rightly) to turn off their electronic stand-by buttons and to recycle more, which will have a useful but small effect, it is still cranking up the last enormous reserves of the fossil fuel mania which will have a vastly greater and negative effect. While 10-25% of electricity generation in Europe is derived from renewable sources of energy, and 35-50% in Scandinavia, in Britain - which as an offshore island has more windpower capacity than most of the rest of Europe put together - it is a pitiful 4%.

Still today almost every aspect of energy policy in Britain is driven by the dominating influence of the old fossil fuel industries. The Government is proposing to triple airport capacity by 2030 even though on current trends air travel emissions may well by 2050 equal emissions from all other sectors combined so that even if all the latter were reduced to zero (which is fanciful), there would still be no reduction at all in the hugely excess level of total emissions that already exists today. And since the abolition of the fuel duty escalator in 2000, there has been no policy to discourage use of gas-guzzling and emissions-inflating SUVs except the mild differential in annual car tax between small and large cars which a recent budget increased for SUVs by 80p a week - which is a joke.

Nor has industry, or at least the largest firms, been required to report annually on their greenhouse gas emissions so that the public can see whether they, and particularly the most polluting industries, are making their due and proper contribution to cutting emissions by at least 60% by 2050, as the scientists say is necessary. There was indeed a Government legislative measure to do just that in 2002, but it was dropped at the last moment in order to burnish the Chancellor's deregulatory credentials with the CBI. Nor, to cut food air miles when produce can be grown locally, are food products required to be labelled with the country of origin and the distance they have travelled to be sold.

There are however two areas where the Government is certainly headed in the right direction. One is the proposal that all new house-building by 2016 should be emissions zero-rated. This is a bold initiative, though it needs to be supplemented with measures to reduce the carbon-rating of existing buildings progressively towards zero. The second is the proposal to introduce a carbon allowance for each family, depending on its size, which will then gradually be reduced year by year, though its date of introduction should be brought forward from 2012.

The ongoing love affair with oil has got to be broken. In 1990, taken as the baseline date for climate change purposes, Britain generated about 160 million net tons of carbon a year. If we are to cut emissions by at least 60% by 2050 (though the scientists are now saying 80% will be necessary), we will have to reduce that to no more than 60 million tons - a reduction of around 2 million tons of carbon every year right through to 2050.

On that basis the total should by now have reduced by some 35 million tonnes compared with 1990. In fact it has reduced by only about 5 million tons. There could be no starker reminder that if we are really serious about stopping catastrophic climate change - in reality, not just in words - then we need as a top priority a blueprint for a zero-carbon post-oil Britain, and we then need to enforce it.

Labour means business

JamieSW — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:04:31 +0000

After witnessing yet another theatrical but shallow slogging match at prime minister's question time, I couldn't help thinking there is something really surreal about the current political scene.

As the positions of the two main parties become increasingly intertwined, and the differences between the Blairite and Brownite variations of neoliberalism become increasingly difficult to detect, the debate about the political fundamentals has dwindled almost to invisibility. Never was ideology more needed, and never was it more lacking.

It isn't as though there is little to debate. The free market Washington consensus, which has governed the global economy for the past quarter of a century, is in crisis as a result of the sub-prime market fiasco and the other excesses of two or more decades of deregulated markets. Yet neither in parliament nor in the media is there any serious debate about long-term reform.

The power structure in Britain has dramatically altered over the same period, with the growing centralisation of power around No 10 balanced by the downgrading of parliament and linked to the dominance (until now) of the City, big business and, increasingly, the media.

But nowhere is the loss of democratic accountability even discussed, let alone remedied.

And since the Iraq invasion, nearly five years ago, there has still not been a parliamentary debate with a vote on the causes, handling and aftermath of the war.

In the absence of discussion about the real big issues, politics has become a matter of narrow positioning, repositioning and counter-positioning between political elites around daily issues as they arise.

Of course, these issues have to be addressed, but addressed in terms of an overarching philosophy with which people can identify.

The Progress thinktank's talk of "a future agenda that is post-Blair, but not anti-Blair; building on the achievements of the past decade, not running away from them", is simply not fit for purpose.

Labour will only make a major and sustained recovery when it stands up for its natural supporters - potentially more than half the population - against the forces of the market, which always favour the wealthy over the powerless.

The new ultra-wealthy, epitomised by the £27m (£519,230 a week) paid to Bob Diamond, of Barclays Capital, are seen by many as greed incorporated when living in the same society as those on a minimum wage of £200 a week.

The ratio between top and bottom incomes, which was less than 50 to one only 30 years ago, has now risen to 2,600 to one. Labour voters expect their government to fight inequality, not side with it.

What Labour needs to do, to make its potential supporters believe they have a government on their side, is to change the power structure in the manifold different ways that will strengthen the hand of those who at present have little or no power.

This means implementing the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which the other 26 EU states have all accepted without demur. It means introducing the same employment protection rights as are enjoyed elsewhere throughout Europe, particularly for temporary and agency workers. And it must involve protecting individual freedoms from being eroded by cutbacks in legal aid, restrictions on jury trials, limits on the right to protest, and undue detention without charge.

Money is power, too, so raising the minimum wage, currently just £5.52 an hour, to at least £7 in the first instance would empower many with little opportunities.

And it means taking redistribution out of its taboo seclusion, and reclaiming a good chunk of the £25bn a year identified by the Institute of Fiscal Studies as tax avoided or evaded by large corporations or very rich individuals (including the hyper-rich non-doms who pay no tax at all) and using it to provide decent social care for the most vulnerable elderly.

Labour is also expected to ensure that the market is kept in its proper place and not allowed to subvert the public values that give protection and rights and meaning to citizenship.

The concept of "choice" in the health services and education has been largely a pretext to open them up to the private sector, without any firm evidence of better outcomes, and leads, bizarrely, to the Tories being rated in polls as better on health than Labour.

This aberration should be stopped now, if Labour's reputation as the party of the universality, equity and accountability of public service is to be retrieved.

There are other reasons, too, for a major change of direction here. PFI has proved enormously wasteful, over-extended IT projects have cost billions and still failed, and consultants have enriched themselves at taxpayers' expense out of all proportion to public benefit. Yet preventive health services, where both better health and much greater cost-effectiveness could be secured, remain hugely undersubscribed. A change here could bring enormous dividends.

Above all, electors want a Labour government to deal effectively with market failures and excesses. Why is Labour so timid and diffident about public ownership for Northern Rock when private ownership has so spectacularly imploded amid dodgy securitisation, sub-prime blunders, a credit crunch now threatening millions of families, extreme short-termism, and Babylonian excesses of greed?

Where privatisation has led to hospital infections and overcrowded trains, which people feel strongly about, they look to the state to act. They want a changed relationship with the market so that the private company brought in to upgrade London Underground, Metronet, cannot walk away leaving the public to pick up its £2bn debts. And they expect a Labour government to take on big business on their behalf where that is necessary: in the food industry, over unhealthy food and obesity, in the gaming industry, over casinos, in the drinks industry, over alcohol-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour, and with the airlines, over climate change.

It will not be easy for any government to begin to move away from the privatisation and deregulation, the tenets of unfettered market neoliberalism that have governed western political economy for the last three decades, and to re-establish a more healthy relationship between the market and society. But the international crisis gathering now that money and power have so clearly overreached themselves offers a real chance. And the task of reinspiring the Labour project in the run-up to the next election may leave ministers little choice.

This War on Terrorism is Bogus

Ellie Keen — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:53:12 +0000

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".

The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".

Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."

Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.

The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).

In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).

Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.

The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.

A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.

Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that "the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts" with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.

Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003 meacherm@parliament.uk

Deterring Disarmament

Tim Holmes — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:19:43 +0000

So the UK will now be going overdressed into the negotiating chamber. At the preparatory session of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva next month, countries facing international criticism over their nuclear programmes will naturally look askance at calls from the UK not to continue down the weapons development path. “You claim that in an uncertain world you need these weapons,” they will say. “What makes the situation any more certain for us?” Of course there is no adequate answer.

The risk is that instead of multilateral moves towards disarmament to make the world a safer place, we will see a cascade of nuclear weapons development and proliferation. Rather than going to the Geneva conference armed with proposals to demonstrably reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, we will be uncomfortably denuded of any moral or political case that could lead to wider disarmament.

A total of 95 Labour MPs voted for the amendment rejecting Government approval for renewal. The strong efforts made to reduce the size of the backbench rebellion, not least remarks ahead of the debate from Gordon Brown about his success in persuading MPs to vote with the Government, belie the claims that taking the decision now was a favour from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown (or any indeed other successor), in order to avoid such a divisive vote in the future. Indeed, Des Browne said as much on the Today Programme yesterday, when he admitted further decisions on submarines, warheads and delivery systems would be taken by Parliament in future years.

This makes it all the harder to understand why the Government opposed Frank Field’s amendment, which deleted nothing from the government motion but merely added a call to ensure a vote in Parliament ahead of the money being committed.

Thatcher made a virtue out of her perceived refusal ever to compromise. Blair’s attempt to appear similarly determined has been far less successful. It is this aspect which is most worrying for the future of the Labour party – an unwillingness to build bridges to MPs dissenting because their constituents express strong concerns. It’s a failure of parliamentary work that we last saw over the debate on detention without charge. Charles Clarke agreed to consult MPs further and see if a new consensus was possible. Blair’s determination to stick to the original 90 days proposal generated much disquiet amongst backbench Labour MPs and was a significant cause of the government’s defeat. The letter from Margaret Beckett and Des Browne circulated to MPs yesterday had a similar effect and magnified the size of the vote for the “case not proven” amendment.

The knock-on effects of yesterday’s vote will be seen most dramatically among party activists, causing immense disquiet. The sad fact is that we can expect to see fewer people out campaigning for Labour in the regional elections in May. Despite the repeated avowals of “respect” Tony Blair offers members who disagree with him, they would be more interested in taking part in a real debate.

In his speech yesterday, Gordon Prentice rightly described the lack of consultation as “a disgrace,” from the point when all motions discussing Trident at Labour Conference last September were ruled out of order to the truncated timetable for debate that ended yesterday. I have already said that if elected leader I would re-open this question entirely, not just on the timing, but on the principle. The Government has avoided an opportunity for promoting multi-lateral disarmament now and greater security for decades to come. We must continue to campaign so that future promised votes have a more positive outcome.

Changing Labour

Tim Holmes — Thu, 11 May 2006 05:09:54 +0000

Where does the Labour party go from here? At his meeting with Labour MPs on Monday the prime minister made two main points. One was that members should trust him and leave the timetable of his departure to him. The other was to claim that Labour would not get a fourth term unless it stuck to his strategy. Yet all the evidence over the last year suggests the opposite: that we will not win a fourth term if we stick to his strategy.

The loss of 4m votes since 1997 and of half the party's membership, and now the loss of 320 council seats, does not suggest underlying popular support. Understandably, several colleagues at the parliamentary Labour party meeting called for unity, but that can only be achieved around a framework of policies that command broad support both within the party and among the public. A change of leadership is clearly necessary; however, unity will not be achieved simply by a transfer of leadership that continues the existing policies, which have brought us to this point, but by a renewal of the party around a new and different approach.

So what is wrong with British politics today? The single biggest problem is the lack of accountability of power. It underlies every issue where the party and the public disapproves of government policy but cannot change it. There is little point in lobbying parliament or taking to the streets in protest at war in Iraq or Iran, or the replacement of Trident or a new round of nuclear power stations, or the marketisation of public services, if the government (for which often read the prime minister) has already made up its (his) mind, and can't be held to account. The checks and balances have all but disappeared.

What is needed is a new framework of power that restores the authority of the House of Commons, secures effective ministerial control of the civil service and moves to a more constitutional type of premiership. Parliament, through strengthened select committees, chosen by a secret vote of the whole house in accordance with party numbers and not by the whips, should have statutory power to ratify cabinet appointments, summon ministers and require disclosure of all relevant documents, to appoint external committees of inquiry where the government may be reluctant to do so, and to table its own motions for debate on the floor of the house at least once a month, with a vote at the conclusion. The honours system, which is corrupted by patronage, should be sharply curtailed and overseen by parliament, or preferably abolished.

If parliament were empowered to respond effectively to public and party opinion, a wholly different agenda would become possible. Inequality is now more extreme even than under Thatcher. It is true that child poverty has been reduced, pensioner allowances extended and tax credits increased. But the government's own figures show 11.4 million people, a fifth of the population, still living in poverty, while last year the average FTSE 100 chief executive earned £32,263 a week - 408 times the state pension and 185 times the minimum wage. This is utterly unacceptable: wealth is not generated by the rich but by teamwork, and pay should reflect that, but the capitalist market does not. Two reforms are urgently needed: the bonuses, so-called "fringe benefits" and stock options enjoyed by the rich should be costed and taxed at the marginal rate, which should be 50% in excess of £100,000; and the minimum wage, now £5.05 an hour, should be raised over a five-year period to the Council of Europe decency threshold (now £7.40 an hour), which would take 6.5 million people out of poverty.

A reinvigorated parliament is also needed as a bulwark for the defence of civil liberties. We are now seeing the rebalancing of power towards the state, with restrictions on jury trials, cuts in legal aid, a national database of all individuals registered via ID cards, limits on the right to protest, the use of control orders for detention without charge or trial, and even the use of the Terrorism Act to frogmarch a pensioner off the premises. Without risking genuine national security, which must remain paramount, many elements of this illiberal legislation can and should be reversed, and parliament should take the lead.

The obsessive introduction of the private-market model into every area of public services - the NHS, education, housing, pensions, probation and local-authority "strategic development partnerships" - has neither party nor public support, nor the evidence base to justify it. What is needed instead is a genuine public-service model - identifying failings in delivery of the service and vigorously remedying them, but retaining the structure and concept of a public service that uniquely expresses an equal citizenship and nationhood for all.

New measures are needed to restore equity and justice as a balance against the overriding drive for economic efficiency. As Sweden has shown, a more socially integrated society is also more economically dynamic. Social mobility, which all support, is highest in countries with much more equal distribution of income and wealth. A fixation on economic dominance within the Lisbon EU agenda has led to the downplaying of environmental goals against unfettered expansion of car and plane travel, weaker targeting of industrial emissions, and slower development of renewables and energy conservation. Equally, industrial rights in the workplace are kept suppressed in cases of unfair dismissal, reinstatement, corporate manslaughter and union recognition.

Lastly a new start is needed in our relations with the US, especially under the Bush administration. There are two arguments for the present policy of continuing to hug the US close. One is that this is the best way to influence events. But as we found out, painfully, over the Iraq war, there was no reciprocity, even in the award of contracts afterwards. The other is that we are so dependent on the US for our strategic defence capability that we have no alternative but to stay close. But politically that dependence means for ever relegating ourselves to a role of mere accessory to America's military goals, serving under its command and fostering a unilateral US hegemony, when the aim of British foreign policy should be a stronger role for the UN in support of multilateralism and the rule of international law.

__Michael Meacher, Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton, was environment minister 1997-2003; his pamphlet The Politics of Conviction is published by Catalyst.__

meacherm@parliament.uk

Britain Now Faces its Own Blowback

eddie — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 17:27:59 +0000

The videotape of the suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan has switched the focus of the London bombings away from the establishment view of brainwashed, murderous individuals and highlighted a starker political reality. While there can be no justification for horrific killings of this kind, they need to be understood against the ferment of the last decade radicalising Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in Europe.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain.

According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was "with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies".
As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent "war on terror".

For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings.

According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6.

One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now in jail in Pakistan under sentence of death for the killing of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many (including Pearl's widow and the US authorities) doubt that he committed the murder. However, reports from Pakistan suggest that Sheikh continues to be active from jail, keeping in touch with friends and followers in Britain.

Sheikh was recruited as a student by Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), which operates a network in Britain. It has actively recruited Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s, and has boasted of its numerous British Muslim volunteers. Investigations in Pakistan have suggested that on his visits there Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London suicide bombers, contacted members of two outlawed local groups and trained at two camps in Karachi and near Lahore. Indeed the network of groups now being uncovered in Pakistan may point to senior al-Qaida operatives having played a part in selecting members of the bombers' cell. The Observer Research Foundation has argued that there are even "grounds to suspect that the [London] blasts were orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan".

Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.

Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment: "To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance" - a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness.

All this highlights the resistance to getting at the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces fomenting terrorist bombings in the west, including Britain. The extraordinary US forbearance towards Omar Sheikh, its restraint towards the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Dr AQ Khan, selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, the huge US military assistance to Pakistan and the US decision last year to designate Pakistan as a major non-Nato ally in south Asia all betoken a deeper strategic set of goals as the real priority in its relationship with Pakistan. These might be surmised as Pakistan providing sizeable military contingents for Iraq to replace US troops, or Pakistani troops replacing Nato forces in Afghanistan. Or it could involve the use of Pakistani military bases for US intervention in Iran, or strengthening Pakistan as a base in relation to India and China.

Whether the hunt for those behind the London bombers can prevail against these powerful political forces remains to be seen. Indeed it may depend on whether Scotland Yard, in its attempts to uncover the truth, can prevail over MI6, which is trying to cover its tracks and in practice has every opportunity to operate beyond the law under the cover of national security.

· Michael Meacher is the Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton; he was environment minister from 1997 to 2003.

A Plan for Pension Reform

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:51:02 +0000

The pensions system is in turmoil, with 2.2 million pensioners - more than a fifth of the total in Britain - living below the poverty line.

The government's own projections estimate that workers on average earnings retiring in 2050 can expect to receive a pension of about only £100 a week at today's prices - below the level at which means-tested supplements are payable.

This reflects the fact that Britain is one of the most unequal societies in the west - the richest 10% now taking home 28% of total income; the poorest 10% getting less than 3%.

When the gap between top and bottom is some 179-fold - between the employee on a national minimum wage of £4.85 an hour, or £179 a week, and the chief executives of the top 100 FTSE firms on, including bonuses, an average £1.67m a year, or £32,115 a week - an adequate pension can only be secured in one of three ways.

Either the lowest earnings levels have to be substantially raised to project a pension above the poverty level, the array of means-tested assistance in retirement has to be even further extended, or the rules for calculating the pension must have a strongly redistributive element built in.

The Wilson-Callaghan Labour governments chose the third route by introducing the state earnings-related pension scheme in 1978. The latter, however, which would by the time it matured in 1998 have taken almost all pensioners above the poverty line, was emasculated by Margaret Thatcher and replaced by this government in 2002 as part of its plan to shift pensions provision to the private sector.

This exposed a huge swath of pensioners to the collapse in private pension values in the bear market of 2000-2003 and led to a funding gap in occupational schemes, estimated at £61bn in the case of FTSE 100 firms alone, and a large fall in the proportion of firms with final salary schemes open to new employees - from 56% in 2002 to only 38% this year.

The third major failure has been to allow employers to take advantage of the long bull market in the 90s by taking unilateral contribution "holidays", without provision for falling market values. The Inland Revenue estimates that companies with a pension deficit skipped contributions worth £27bn during 1988-2001 and employers saved about £4,000 per employee in the 90s.

So what should be done? First, the government should accept that increasing the basic state pension merely in line with prices, plus topping-up with the means-tested pension credit, is unsustainable. The basic pension, already only 16% of average earnings, will - on present trends under this policy - fall to less than 9% within 30 years.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies says the pension will be so low that 64% of pensioners will be eligible for the pension credit in 20 years' time, and as many as 82% by 2050. Worse, because of the means-testing, not everybody entitled gets it - nearly a third miss out. The basic state pension of £79 per week should be increased to the pension credit level of £105 per week and then linked to earnings.

The net cost of this rise by 2005- 2006 would be £7.3bn; if it were restricted to the over-75s, where the vast majority of poor pensioners are concentrated, the cost would be £2.7bn. But is this affordable? Britain's public pension system is one of the most meagre; coupled with the erosion of the private sector pillar, it is untenable.

The average retiree gets only a third of earnings, compared with nearly a half in the United States and threequarters in the Netherlands and Sweden. In Britain the state spends about 5% of GDP on pensions, below half of its EU partners.

A one-third rise in basic and future indexation with earnings, requiring at most a further 1.7% of GDP, is clearly achievable. The National Insurance fund had a surplus of £29.3bn for 2003-2004, £20.1bn more than the "reasonable working balance" recommended by the government actuary.

Second, given the vulnerability of over-dependence on the private sector, a much stronger state pensions sector needs to be built up with a strong redistribution element to benefit the poorest third. Even the full state second pension combined with the basic provision, despite assistance to the low paid and carers, provides an income scarcely above the pension credit guarantee.

Third, government at present grants £14bn a year towards pension contributions, including half benefiting the highest paid 10th of earners. Why does a government so set on using means tests inversely concentrate tax reliefs on those who need them least?