Andy Rowell | ukwatch.net

Who is on the Side of the Angels?

Alex Doherty — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:31:12 +0000

Ever since Georgia invaded its break-away province of South Ossetia earlier this month, there has been a concerted attempt by both Georgia and its allies to portray its subsequent fight with Russia as a conflict between “David and Goliath”. Georgia is the small David fighting the Goliath of the ruthless Russian army.

Although it seems it retaliated to Russian provocation, it was Georgian forces that first moved into South Ossetia, sparking the wider conflict. However the predominant way the story has been reported in the west is that it is Russia that is the major aggressor. It is true that Russia has retaliated against the Georgian incursion into Ossetia with brutal, disproportionate force. However, the way that Georgia has tried to manipulate the crisis is in itself quite remarkable too.

In the great tradition of spinning the truth in military campaigns, Georgia may have been comprehensively defeated militarily, but it is seen as having won the propaganda war. Little, brave Georgia has taken on the nasty Russian Republic.

When the journalist Peter Whilby examined press releases issued by Georgia’s PR consultants, he noted that they used deliberate “terms that trigger western media interest” in describing the Russian actions, such as “civilian victims”, “nuclear”, “humanitarian”, “occupation” and “ethnic cleansing.”

The Georgians had also cleverly targeted bankers and analysts on Wall Street in New York that had successfully filtered their message onto prime time American TV. The effect of this, claims Mark Ames, the editor of Moscow’s alternative paper The eXile, “was brilliant”. He says “now you’re starting to see the American media shift its coverage from calling it Georgia invading Ossetian territory, to the new spin, that it’s Russian imperial aggression against tiny little Georgia.”

The propaganda battle between Russia and Georgia has even made the front-page of the magazine PR Week in the UK. In the article Georgia’s hired PR company, Aspect Consulting attacked Russian “propaganda.” Aspect Consulting’s founding partner James Hunt told PR Week how he could not understand how the PR companies working for Russia could be “comfortable about that.” He said bluntly: “I’m on the side of the angels”.

For someone who likes to portray himself on the side of good over evil, Hunt has had a controversial career. He has defended some of the biggest companies during three of the biggest environmental and health scandals of recent times in the UK. He worked for Shell on the Brent Spar debacle in the mid-nineties, when Shell attempted to recklessly dump its redundant oil platform in the Atlantic. A hugely successful public campaign by the environmental organization Greenpeace forced the oil giant to dispose of the Brent Spar on land. It also forced Shell into a comprehensive review of its environmental policies and practices.

Hunt also worked for the global fast-food giant McDonalds over what was known as “mad cow disease” in the mid-nineties as well as working with biotechnology seed companies over their promotion of genetically-modified crops, despite known health and ecological risks that those crops entail. Aspect’s current clients still include biotechnology companies such as Novartis and Exxon Mobil, the global oil company that has been at the forefront of action to deny climate change. Many would see his career as dancing with the devil, not flying with the angels.

Aspect started working with Georgia last year to assist the country become part of both the EU and Nato. The agency was reportedly paid some $750,000 to promote the Georgian cause. The agency has been trying to spin the truth over what happened, arguing that it was not Georgia that started the war, and that the war was “about punishing Georgia for wanting to pursue an Euro-Atlantic future”.

Whilst there must be elements of this, the first major act of aggression was on Georgia’s behalf against the people of South Ossetia, although there are reports that Russia was trying to provoke a Georgian attack. Moreover in that conflict, Georgia – a population of 4.4 million, with a military equipped by the Americans and Israelis – was far superior to the South Ossetians, who have a population of around 60,000. Initial reports coming out of South Ossetia talk of a ferocious assault by the Georgians in the capital city, Tskhinvali. There were reports of some 2,000 Ossetians killed, including woman and children sheltering in bomb shelters.

There is also evidence that the Georgians would not have attacked South Ossetia without American military and logistical support. There are certainly close connections between the Georgians and US neo-conservatives. One of Georgia’s top lobbyists in the last few years has been Randy Scheunemann, who recently became the Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.

Scheunemann was one of the key neo-conservative pushing for the Iraq war when he was a project director at the Project for a New American Century. Scheunemann also headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which also called for a US invasion of Iraq.

Scheunemann has a history of working with McCain on the Georgian issue. In 2005, when he was a registered lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a resolution in the US Congress that called got Georgia’s membership in NATO. The following year, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to Georgia. During the trip, McCain denounced the South Ossetian separatists, and speaking at the military base at Senaki, he declared that Georgia was America’s “best friend.” McCain also added that Russian peace-keepers in the region should be thrown out.

By April this year, Scheunemann had formally ceased his own lobbying work for Georgia. However the same day that McCain phoned the president of Georgia offering support for the country, a lobbying firm, called Orion Strategies that is partly owned by Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

A Month later, Scheunemann was forced to distance himself from the firm, but despite this the Washington Post notes “For months while McCain’s presidential campaign was gearing up, Scheunemann held dual roles, advising the candidate on foreign policy while working as Georgia’s lobbyist. Between January 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.”

Having political advisors who are also paid lobbyists for a foreign country obviously raises serious conflicts of interest that the McCain team has hardly dealt with by forcing Scheunemann to break his formal ties with the Georgians.

We should not forget how strategic Georgia is to the West because of oil. Although Georgia has no significant oil reserves of its own, it is a key transit point for oil from the Caspian and central Asia destined for the thirsty markets of Europe and the US. The 1,770km Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline pumps up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from Baku in Azerbaijan to Turkey. The pipeline route was specifically designed to avoid Russia, running in part through Georgia instead.

Russia does not escape blame in the conflict either. Last week, the Independent newspaper quoted a senior Russian military analyst saying that Russia tried to provoke a conflict to “prevent Georgia from joining Nato.” Russia has also been using PR companies to spin its message. The country uses two agencies that form part of the global giant Omnicom company. GPlus in Brussels and Ketchum in Washington.

GPlus and Ketchum were first hired by the Kremlin to cover Russia’s presidency of the G8. Gplus has received significant criticism for handling the Russian account including during the current conflict. GPlus argues that all it does for the Russians is “give them logistical support to assist spokespeople with handling the European media.” But their Georgian PR opponents have said that the PR companies acting for the Russians have been “misleading foreign journalists” and pumping out Russian Government propaganda.

However what we do know is that both sides are using propaganda and both sides have used indiscriminate force against civilians, which in itself is a war crime. The respected organization Human Rights Watch reported last week that there was “mounting evidence” that both the Russian and Georgian military had “used armed force unlawfully during the South Ossetian conflict.” According to Human Rights Watch, both sides had used “indiscriminate force against civilians.”

What we know is that in war, the situation is hardly ever black and white. The truth gets trampled on both sides, as they both issue propaganda to suit their own ends. It will be the innocent civilians who suffer, who will be bombed, killed, injured, terrorized, made homeless and starving. It will be the innocent who look for their loved ones in the burnt out buildings, over-stretched hospitals and over-flowing morgues. As the innocent die on both sides, no one can claim to be on the side of the angels.

Because there are no angels in war.

Spin Doctor Behind Davis' Campaign Promotes ID Cards

Tim Holmes — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:16:49 +0000

A spin doctor behind David Davis and his much-vaunted "freedom" campaign against creeping state surveillance is an influential figure in the worldwide promotion of identity cards.

Kevin Bell is vice-president of Fleishman-Hillard, a global public relations firm representing security companies that have introduced ID cards in the United States and Spain. Opposition to the Government's move to introduce a British ID card is a major plank of the David Davis for Freedom campaign website, which Fleishman-Hillard also set up.

Mr Bell has been close friends with Mr Davis for more than 20 years. But they appear to be on opposite sides of the national debate that the politician is hoping to spark about Britain's surveillance society.

Mr Bell has spoken at a Home Office-supported conference promoting the controversial ID card, a scheme that Mr Davis cites as one of the main reasons for his shock resignation as shadow Home Secretary earlier this month. The title of Mr Bell's speech was "Achieving public acceptance".

The embarrassing disclosure comes as Mr Davis launches his all-or-nothing attempt to return to Parliament on a civil liberties agenda. During Mr Davis's dramatic resignation speech, which has forced a by-election next month in his East Yorkshire constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, he has railed against "the database state". He attacked the British ID card plan as "the most intrusive system in the world" at the low-key launch of his election campaign last Friday.

Mr Davis's hopes of fighting a by-election to highlight Labour's "authoritarian" policies have been undermined by the fact that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and even the BNP declined to field candidates to stand against him. Instead, his best-known opponent is David Icke, a former sports presenter who has claimed he is the son of God.

Other candidates include the Church of the Militant Elvis Party, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (whose candidate is called Mad Cow-Girl), the New Party, the Christian Party, the Freedom 4 Choice Party, the Socialist Equality Party, the National Front, a market trader, a variety of independent candidates, an anti-rape campaigner and a performer who twice represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest during the 1960s.

Mr Davis's stand against "the ceaseless encroachment of the state into daily lives" already sits awkwardly for some voters with his support for the death penalty.

Britain's proposed ID card scheme, to be rolled out by 2010, could eventually cost taxpayers £6bn. One of the security firms interested in a government contract is Texas-based Entrust. It already provides software for the national identity card used by 40 million Spanish citizens.

Mr Davis criticised David Blunkett, who introduced the ID Card Bill, when the former home secretary announced he was taking up a paid consultancy with Entrust. However, Entrust is represented by Fleish-man-Hillard, whose digital media team designed Mr Davis's campaign website.

Tom Ridge, the former US minister for homeland security in the Bush administration and a prominent supporter of ID cards, sits on the PR firm's international board. Among its other American clients is Blackboard Inc, a security company responsible for the introduction of ID cards on US campuses.

Mr Davis said "Mr Bell is an old friend. He did initially help set up my website for the present campaign, for which payment will be made and declared in due course." Mr Bell did not respond.

The privileged prisoner of Black Beach

tim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:17:49 +0000

It is listed in one of the world’s top ten most notorious jails. Just the name Black Beach sends shivers down the spine of any convicted felon. The jail in Malabo, in Equatorial Guinea in central Africa has a gruesome reputation. Torture and starvation of inmates is said to be routine.

The human rights organization Amnesty International describes incarceration in the prison as “a slow, lingering death sentence”. One political campaigner from the country, released in 2006 said bluntly. “Prisoners are tortured and just disappear and die. They weight their bodies with rocks and throw them in the sea. Their families never know what happened to them.”

Equatorial Guinea is run by the iron-fist of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power in a coup in 1979. Human rights groups say Mr Obiang’s corrupt regime is one of the worst abusers of rights in Africa. His reputation is fierce and he is said to enjoy eating the brains and testicles of his political opponents.

This gruesome fate is unlikely to meet Black Beach’s most famous current inmate, the British mercenary Simon Mann, who had admitted to being central to an international plot in 2004 to overthrow the government of this oil-rich state. In his show trial this week, Mann pleaded guilty to being a member of a coup attempt to replace Mr Obiang with Severo Moto, an exiled opposition leader living in Spain.

It was back in March 2004 that Mann and 69 South African mercenaries were arrested at Harare airport with a plane load of arms en route to Equatorial Guinea. Mann, who is a soldier of fortune, was educated at Britain’s top private school, Eton and later joined the country’s most elite regiment, the SAS. He was sentenced to seven years in Zimbabwe, which was subsequently reduced to four, although he was then transferred to Black Beach earlier this year.

The bespectacled Mann has consistently tried to underplay his importance in the coup with a view of getting a reduced sentence. His friends try and portray him as an “English gentleman”. One profile of Mann on the BBC last week, included the quote calling him a "humane man, but an adventurer... very English, a romantic, tremendously good company".

Even his defence lawyer claimed last week that a “gentleman” who had collaborated with the court “out of a sincere desire to repair the damage done to our people”. But this “English gentleman” has also managed to get privileged treatment at prison, having his own his own cell, an exercise machine, books and magazines. He is allowed to make regular calls home and is said to lunches most days with the country’s Minister of Security, with special food and wine delivered to the prison.

The simple fact is that Mann collaborated with the Equatorial regime as he does not want to spend years rotting in an African jail. Mann has claimed that his collaboration is out of concern for the people of Equatorial Guinea. But the bottom line is that he is a hired killer who has made millions out of being a soldier of fortune in Africa and elsewhere.

In the early nineties he set up Executive Outcomes, that made millions protecting oil installations from rebels in Angola. He then set up another company, Sandline International, which shipped arms to Sierra Leone in flagrant contravention of a UN embargo.

As part of his strategy to gain freedom, Mann has named what he called the main backers of the plot, who remain at large. Speaking in court, Mann alleged Ely Calil, the British-based secretive Lebanese tycoon, was known to the coup team as "the cardinal”. “Calil was very much the boss. So nothing could happen without Calil telling me yes or no,” Mann told the trial. Calil, who is reported to have invested more than $700,000 in the coup attempt, has always denied the allegations.

Another person named by Mann is Mark Thatcher, son of Britain’s ex-Prime Minister. Thatcher met Mann when they both lived in South Africa. Thatcher was arrested after the aborted coup, where he struck a plea bargain with the South African authorities, fined $450,000 and given a four-year suspended sentence for “unwittingly” investing in the plot.

A rather unflattering profile of Thatcher in the British press recently said he was “Famous for getting lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally and making his mother cry in public, notorious for shamelessly exploiting her name to further dodgy business ventures, renowned for his rudeness, arrogance and pomposity, and no stranger to controversy, but none of his previous dubious escapades can compare with his reckless involvement in an ill-fated plot to oust the offal-loving president of Equatorial Guinea.”

Thatcher, like Mann, has always tried to downplay his involvement in the coup too. When Thatcher was arrested in South Africa, he said: “I have no involvement in any alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea and I reject totally all suggestions to the contrary.”

Giving evidence last week, Mann contradicted this by saying Thatcher was “not just an investor. He came on board completely and became part of the management team." Leaked documents suggest Thatcher was involved, something the plotters wanted to keep quiet. One document, that looked at “threats”, was headed by the initials “MT”, which the South African police argue stood for Mark Thatcher. It said: “If involvement known, rest of us, and project, likely to be screwed as a side- issue to people screwing him. Would particularly add to a campaign, post-event, to remove us.”

Moreover, telephone records obtained by a private detective working for the government of Equatorial Guinea, show Mark Thatcher and Mann speaking “with increasing frequency” in the days before the coup.

Other documents uncovered by the South African security services show the extent to which the coup plotters were going to exploit the resources of Equatorial Guinea. The plotters actually set up a trading company after the coup, called the Bight of Benin Company (BBC).The company would have controlled the country’s economy, its oil reserves, army and police, as a “private fiefdom”, modeled on the British colonial company the East India Company.

The documents suggest that BBC was to have “sole right to have physical or other access” to the new president Moto. It would have been the only company that could “make agreements or contracts” with the new regime.

The plotters also knew about how they would have to spin their coup to the outside world. They planned a massive public relations exercise to avoid “unfavourable scrutiny”. Part of this campaign would have been to trick the outside world that the new regime would be “transparent” over its policies, including on human rights. However this “transparency” campaign was to be followed by one of “disinformation” to convince outsiders that the Americans were behind the coup, and therefore to “back off.”

“It is potentially a very lucrative game,” one document said: “We should expect bad behaviour; disloyalty; rampant individual greed; irrational behaviour (kids in toyshop type); back-stabbing . . . and similar ungentlemanly activities.”

The truth is that, despite how supporters are trying to spin this story, Mann is no gentleman. He is a soldier of war. Mark Thatcher is no gentleman either, whose controversial business career in arms and oil has been linked with scandal. In the early eighties Thatcher was rumoured to have been paid a $2 million commission for the construction of a university in Oman, which had been negotiated by his mother, then Prime Minster. Three years later he was said to have received $24 million from the biggest arms deal in history, the $80 billion Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia, also signed by his mother.

President Obiang’s government has now issued an international warrant for Thatcher, who the President calls a “dirty player who lives his life getting himself involved in all sorts of dubious deals that are of benefit to himself”. Thatcher remains in hiding in a secure gated residence in South Spain. He is said to be running out of places to hide: South Africa has evicted him, the US would arrest him, France and Switzerland have said he is not welcome.

If Thatcher was arrested, the chances of a fair trial in Equatorial Guinea are as remote as free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. But it is time the world really found out how the son of a British Prime Minister helped finance this dirty plot and his exact involvement.

Maybe Thatcher should volunteer to be tried in neutral country. If convicted though he should not be given any privileged treatment. Neither should Mann, when he is sentanced either. Both men were reportedly set to make millions from this venture. They gambled and they lost.

As Mann has said “You go tiger shooting and you don't expect the tiger to win.” Well this time the tiger won. They can sit there together with their tails between their legs.

It's Time for Gordon to Dial the Despot

Tim Holmes — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:37:48 +0000

The Ambasciotori Palace Hotel ranks amongst Rome’s finest, being housed on the via Veneto, one of the most famous avenues in the world. It is used to hosting international dignitaries such as film stars Liza Minnelli, Sean Connery and Sofia Loren.

But earlier this month a more notorious guest stayed in a $900 a night, fifth-floor suite complete with king-sized beds, pink marble bathrooms and a luxurious jacuzzi. The guest brought with him his own uniformed butler and two chefs, who commandeered their own kitchen within the hotel to prepare succulent and delicious food for their master. No expense was spared by Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe who wined and dinned whilst back home his people slowly starve to death.

Mugabe was attending a UN food Summit in Rome. Why anyone had allowed the Southern African despot to attend the summit is beyond my imagination for here is a man whose deliberate policies on food and land have decimated his people and country. It was a fundamental mistake to allow Mugabe the prestige of rubbing shoulders with other politicians on the world stage.

Whereas other world leaders may have degrees in politics or economics, Mugabe once famously boasted that he had a “degree in violence”. And how true that is. Just days after the Summit, Mugabe’s contempt for his own people was savagely exposed yet again when his government suspended food aid in the country, on which millions of hungry people are dependent. Desperate to do anything to cling to power, food has become the latest weapon that Mugabe is using to force his people to vote for a man and his political party: ZANU-PF.

The respected Children’s charity, Save the Children, rightly said the “the suspension of aid will have appalling consequences for the country's poorest and most vulnerable children”. They pointed out that without this lifeline children would start dying.

The food aid suspension is the latest attempt by Mugabe to beat, starve, maim and murder his people into voting for him in the next run-off election that will be held on June 27th. That election should be postponed if not cancelled. There is absolutely no chance of a free or fair election. Millions cannot vote with empty stomachs. Millions cannot vote under the threat of systematic violence and abuse. Every day we hear more evidence of systematic beating and terrorizing of people from the opposition Movement for Democractic Change (MDC).

Last week, Human Rights Watch released a devastating report on the state of human rights abuses in the country. “The campaign of violence and repression in Zimbabwe, aimed at destroying opposition and ensuring that Robert Mugabe is returned as president in runoff elections on June 27, 2008 is claiming thousands of victims as the government at national and local levels actively, systematically and methodically targets Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activists and perceived MDC supporters.”

Human Rights Watch noted that the scope and scale of the violence since Zimbabwe’s first election this year in March, and far exceeds anything that they witnessed during past election years of 2000, 2002 and 2005.

Senior members of Mugabe’s army and security forces are behind the campaign of orchestrated violence and terror. At the end of last month, Mugabe’s Chief-of-Staff Major General Martin Chedondo said, “Soldiers are not apolitical; only mercenaries are apolitical. We should therefore stand behind our commander-in-chief.”

And with Mugabe as Commander in Chief, the army, its militias and supporters have set out to destroy the MDC. The Human Rights Watch report catagorized Mugabe’s campaign of terror against political opponents. At least 36 people have been killed, including many who have been abducted and tortured first. Given the movement restrictions in place and limited flow of information, Human Rights Watch believes that the number of people attacked far exceeds these figures.

In scenes reminiscent of Nazi-Germany, ZANU-PF officials and their supporters “are beating, torturing and mutilating suspected MDC activists and supporters in hundreds of base camps, many of them army bases”, according to Human Rights Watch. “Abusive “re-education” meetings are being held to compel MDC supporters into voting for Mugabe.” In one of these meetings, six men were beaten to death, seventy were tortured, including a 76-year-old woman who was publicly thrashed.

It is a campaign designed to terrorize. In nearly all the areas affected by violence, victims and eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that the violence was usually conducted at night and the abductions and beatings was systematically followed by looting and burning of huts, property and livestock. MDC supporters are routinely told that their “crime” was that they voted for the MDC in the recent election.

On one occasion soldiers addressing villagers at meetings in the village of Karoi, Mashonaland West, put a bullet in each person’s hands. They were then told: “If you vote for MDC in the presidential runoff election, you have seen the bullets, we have enough for each one of you, so beware.”

MDC members have been abducted and brutally murdered. Often victims have their eyes gouged out, and their tongues and lips cut off. Women too have been stripped naked and beaten. In other incidents men had barbed wire tied around their genitals with the other end tied around logs. The men were then forced to use their genitals to pull the logs. One man who received this kind of treatment, Joseph Madzuramhende was tortured and murdered for owning a radio. His attackers said to him: “Your particular crime is that you have a radio at your place and other villagers were coming to your home to listen to Studio 7 (Voice of America program which airs in Zimbabwe) and to listen to election results and this is your crime.”

Another person killed was Tonderai Ndira: a lifelong campaigner for political change and a man compared by some to South Africa's murdered civil rights activist, Steve Biko. When his beaten and brutalized body was found his eyes too had been gouged out, his tongue cut off and his skull crushed. The 30-year-old was so badly beaten his father had trouble identifying him. It was only a distinctive ring that finally confirmed his identity.

Last week came the news that the wife of a prominent opposition supporter, Dadirai Chipiro had been brutally murdered by Mugabe’s mob. Dadirai, a former pre-school teacher, had had one of her hands chopped off, then both of her feet. She was then thrown into her hut, which was then locked, with a petrol bomb thrown inside. She was burnt alive.

Even those beaten or tortured cannot escape the brutal intimidation. Hospital staff have been warned not to treat victims of political violence or they face retaliation. Election observers have been beaten or arrested too. In total, tens have been killed, 1,500 have been treated in hospital, 25,000 have been driven from their homes and countless more have lost their livelihoods.

So how do we get out of this mess? On 10th May, when the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced that he believed he had won an absolute majority in the first election in March, but he would contest the run-off to “knock-out the dictator for good”. He spelled out his key conditions for MDC participation, including: an immediate end to the violence; deployment of international election observers, including a peacekeeping force from neighbouring Southern African countries and full access to the media.

But none of the above has happened. There is no point in holding the election. Even if Tsvangirai wins against the odds, Mugabe would not give up power. All the indications are that there would be a military coup by Mugabe’s supporters, or that Mugabe will unleash a full scale war.

Whilst the most logical solution has to come from Zimbabwe’s neighbours, President Mbeki from South Africa, who was brought in to mediate the crisis, has been totally inept. He should have stopped this charade long ago. If he won’t act who will?

When in Rome, Mugabe predictably blamed Britain for the crisis. He accused Britain of trying to orchestrate an "illegal regime change" in his country by crippling it economically.

Whilst such arguments are so absurd they are laughable, ironically it may be Britain that could negotiate some kind of peace deal. Heidi Holland is a writer who has spent years studying the psychology of Mugabe. She also interviewed him for her book “Dinner with Mugabe: The untold story of a freedom fighter who became a tyrant”.

She argues: “I think that there is an opportunity for the British to actually get re-engaged there, in the interests of Zimbabwe, Africa having failed. Because underneath Mugabe's apparent hatred for Britain, is his love for Britain… It has the intensity of a family quarrel and I think that's all it is.”

She says that although the British don't want to re-engage with Mugabe, now that other leaders have failed “let's not waste any more time on that because people are dying… I really think there is an opportunity for the British to be big and to get involved.”

Come on Gordon Brown, pick up the phone and dial the dictator. It’s worth a try because what is happening in Zimbabwe today is a crime against humanity that should not be allowed to continue for one more day.

The First Signs of "Peak Gas"?

Ellie Keen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 23:07:39 +0000

Consumers the world over are beginning to protest at the huge gasoline prices they are paying at the pump. But whilst the world goes crazy over the oil prices, there are worrying signs about what is happening in the gas market that could also spell disaster.

But it’s the oil price that is currently attracting all the attention. Last month, the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono postponed an official visit to Europe amid nationwide protests against fuel prices increases. In Europe, French fishermen continued to blockade several strategic ports, whilst their counterparts in Spain and Portugal also threatened protests.

In the UK, truckers converged on London to ask for a reduction in fuel duty, whilst Prime Minster Gordon Brown held urgent talks with the oil industry. Over in America, the oil price was said to have forced many trucking companies to the verge of bankruptcy.

But as oil continues to hover just under record levels, there are daily warnings that the days of cheap oil have gone forever and the price of oil may soon be $150 or even $200 a barrel by next year.

There is also a daily debate as to what is actually causing these unprecedented prices. An increasing number of influential voices are saying it has nothing to do with the actual supply of oil but it is down to speculators exploiting the volatile market.

OPEC, which is under fire from many commentators for not increasing production more, argues that the market is already adequately supplied and that $35 per barrel of the recent increase can be put down to speculation.

Other voices agree, such as Jeroen van der Ver, head of global oil giant, Shell, who argues that the record oil prices are due to “market sentiment” rather than a shortage of supply. “What we say and what we see is there are no physical shortages," he says. “There are no tankers waiting in the Middle East, there are no cars waiting at gasoline stations because they are out of stock. This has to do with psychology in the markets and you cannot forecast psychology.”

His view is shared by George Soros, the multi-billion dollar financier, known as the man who nearly "broke the Bank of England", in the early nineties. Soros argues that it is financial speculators that are largely responsible for driving the crude oil price. “Speculation… is increasingly affecting the price,” he said. “The price has this parabolic shape which is characteristic of bubbles,” he said.

Political action on speculators is increasing. Last week a senior German politician proposed a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators. Uwe Beckmeyer, the head of transport for the Social Democratic party, the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, argued that the recent 25 per cent rise in oil price had nothing to do with underlying supply and demand. “It’s pure speculation,” he said, adding that his party would be calling for joint measures by the G8 to prohibit leveraged trading on energy contracts.

Also last week, in America, Senator Jeff Bingaman, the chairman of the influential Senate Energy Committee, asked the top futures market regulator in the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for more information about how much impact speculation was having on the oil futures market. Bingamen then complained he had been given “glaringly incomplete” data by the CFTC, which argued that speculative trading was not to blame for recent price rises.

If speculation is not to blame, what is? Some argue that it is the weak dollar. Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University in the US argues that “Twenty-five percent of the increase in oil prices is strictly due to the fact that the dollar has gone down by 25 percent, because oil all over the world is priced in dollars.”

However, others are now arguing that the high oil price is down to good old simple economics. Demand has outstripped supply over the last couple of years and so the price has increased, on the back of roaring demand, especially from China and the Middle East. “The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply," President George Bush's Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, said this month: “We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system.”

Others concur. One of the authoritative arbiters of how much oil there is the International Energy Agency, that is currently in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world's top 400 oil fields. Although the findings will not be published until November, according to the Wall Street Journal the IEA is “preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.”

Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, said the oil industry had entered “a new energy world order” where it was harder to keep supply and demand in equilibrium. “What has happened in the last few years has not been in line with economic theory,” he says.

For years the IEA predicted that supplies of crude would gently increase in line with demand increasing to some 117 million barrels per day by 2030. But not anymore. Buried in the IEA website are figures that up the theory that the supply of oil is in real trouble. Since the beginning of 2004, oil’s price has gone from $33 per barrel to over $130 per barrel. In the same period, demand has increased by some 4.3 million barrels per day to 86.5 million barrels per day, whereas supply has increased by only 2.2 million barrels per day to 85.6 million. Supply is already struggling to keep up with demand, let alone reach over 100 million barrels a day.

The bottom line is that demand is now outstripping supply, giving credence to the peak oil pundits that the days of cheap oil over, and the global economy could be heading for a nasty shock.

The Insanity of Biofuels

tim — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:47:21 +0000

There is something obscenely ironic that whilst the poor starve and struggle over soaring food prices, the rich convert food into fuel so they can carry on driving in their large gas-guzzling vehicles.

The rich world is rushing to invest in biofuels as one of the solutions to climate change. Fuels made from corn, sugar, or maize are seen as producing less carbon dioxide than conventional fuels from oil. As Western nations belatedly struggle to come to grips with the daunting challenge of radical reductions in climate changing gases, biofuels offer a theoretical solution.

What biofuels conveniently mean for America and Europe is that they can carry on driving and flying, thinking they have a clean conscience over climate change. Such is their appeal that last year the US Congress mandated a fivefold increase in their use. Europe, too, is committed to raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of around 2% to at least 10% by 2020.

The only problem for those who support biofuels is that despite this rush, never a week goes past without further evidence of their harmful effects. These range from rainforest destruction to being partly to blame for rising food costs.

In March, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri was the latest in a long line of people who warned of the problems of biofuels.

Speaking at the European Parliament, he said “We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security.”

Pachauri warned that the rush to convert corn to ethanol in the US was having an adverse knock-on effect on the agricultural sector. A fifth of the US’s corn crop is now used to brew ethanol for motor fuel. As farmers rush to plant corn, the acreage of other crops, particularly soybeans, has been cut. The rocketing demand for corn has also meant the price has gone up. Ironically other critics argue that the process of converting corn into ethanol actually releases more carbon dioxide per gallon than simply burning conventional fuels.

Then last month, Pachauri’s warning was followed by both the Bolivian President Evo Morales and President of Peru, Alan Garcia, who said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor. They were responding to Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who had tried to dismiss claims that biofuels are responsible for the recent rise in global food prices.

Also last month, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, did not mince his words when blaming biofuels for making the poor starve. "This is silent mass murder,” he said. Last year he said biofuels were “a crime against humanity.”

As the politicians squabble over whether biofuels are to blame for rising food prices, the poor continue to starve and the price of food becomes ever more expensive. Global food prices have increased by 83 percent in the last three years, according to the World Bank. As basic food staples become too expensive to buy for millions, anger has spread rapidly. At least six people were killed in riots over food prices that contributed to the dismissal of Haiti’s prime minister last month. Millions are struggling to survive on the island after food prices have increased 45 percent since the end of 2006.

In Africa, there have been riots in Ivory Coast, and Senegal and Egypt where the military is assisting baking bread. In Mozambique some six people were killed and in Cameroon an estimated 100 killed in protests linked to the food prices. In Burkina Faso, where there were also riots in February over food, the unions have now called for a general strike. In South Africa, there have been protest marches.

Meanwhile in Asia, fifty people were injured after factory workers protested against the food rises near Dhaka. Indonesia has also seen protests, whereas Vietnam has seen panic buying. Pakistan has reintroduced some rationing, while India has banned the export of most rice. The ruling coalition in Malaysia was very nearly ousted by voters who cited food as one of their major concerns. Last week, the Philippine government said it was introducing “rice access cards” for help the poor buy grain.

In Latin America, there have been riots in Mexico, whilst farmers went on strike for three weeks in Argentina. In Peru, farmers blocked key road links. In Europe, Russia, which has seen a six per cent increase in food prices since the beginning of the year, has been forced to freeze the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil.

Coupled with rising oil prices, rising food prices are creating global tension. “This is a perfect storm,” President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador told the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún, Mexico last month. “How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of our countries.”

Other voices agree the situation is getting critical. Earlier this month, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General warned that the global food crisis could have grave implications for international security, economic growth and social progress. “If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,” Ban told a conference in Ghana.

Last week, Ban Ki-Moon went further, saying that the UN was setting up a special task-force to address the food shortages, which was designed to avert “social unrest on an unprecedented scale”. Ban said “The first and immediate priority, that we all agree, is that we must feed the hungry”.

A second priority should be to ban biofuels that could be used for food crops. The inescapable fact is that biofuels are partly to blame for the rising food costs. The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington argues that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations comes up with a slightly smaller figure of biofuels being responsible for between 10 to 15 percent rise in food.

So concerned was it over biofuels impacts that last month, the European Environment advisory panel urged the EU to suspend its 10 per cent goal by 2020. The panel, made up of some of Europe's most prestigious climate scientists, called the 10 percent target “overambitious” whose “unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control.” Laszlo Somlyody, the panel's chairman and a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics said: “The idea was that we felt we needed to slow down, to analyze the issue carefully and then come back at the problem.”

Rather than slow down, countries in the EU are speeding up. In Britain, new legislation passed last month means that all gasoline must contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel. The same day that the legislation was passed, one of Britian’s most respected conservation charities, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, condemned the law as “over-hasty” and “utter folly”.

The situation is now getting even more ironic. As many simply cannot afford to eat, the rich world is now squabbling over the huge subsidies it gives its biofuel producers to produce more biofuels. Last week, European biodiesel producers triggered the prospect of a new transatlantic trade war by urging the EU to impose penalties on “unfair” biofuel subsidies from the US.

The subsidy allows US exporters to undercut European rivals by up to a quarter. The subsidy system is also being exploited by ruthless commodity traders, who are actually adding to climate change.

Known as “splash and dash” within the industry, the legal trick makes a mockery of the purpose of biofuels, which are meant to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. The biofuel is being needlessly shipped from Europe to the US and then back again. The traders buy biodiesel on the European market and then ship it to the US. There it is “splashed” with gasoline which means that conventional gasoline is added to the biodiesel so that traders can qualify for the export subsidy. Then the cargo is “dashed” or shipped back to Europe and resold at a subsidized price which then undercuts European producers.

Peter Power, a spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, said "We will not under any circumstances tolerate unfair trade." The EU and US are now threatening to take their argument to the World Trade Organisation.

It is also beyond irony that as they say they will not tolerate trade that is unfair to their own industries, they seem content to tolerate the fact that millions of people are slowly dying of hunger….

The Tragedy of Afghan Aid

Ellie Keen — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:45:38 +0000

It was a photo opportunity that was meant to signal a new dawn for Afghanistan. In January 2006, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted a conference for some 60 international delegates in London on the future of the country.

Standing side by side with Tony Blair for the conference photo was US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then UN head, Kofi Annan and Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. According to the US State Department, the conference “represented an historic milestone for the Afghan people and the international community” in which “Afghanistan sets its reconstruction and development priorities.”

The centerpiece of the conference was the endorsement of the “Afghanistan Compact”, which set out an ambitious programme for Afghan development, committing to specific and achievable goals in security, governance, economic and social development. The document also included an entire annex on “improving the effectiveness of aid”. At the conference, the international community pledged some $10 billion dollars in aid. For the photo, Karzai held a copy of the Compact proudly in his arms.

Now two years on a new report has shown that the Compact has been a complete failure and billions of aid money to the county has either been wasted or not even delivered. The report is published by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), which is a leading alliance of 94 national and international non-governmental organizations working in Afghanistan.

Its author Matt Waldman argues: “The reconstruction of Afghanistan requires a sustained and substantial commitment of aid - but donors have failed to meet their aid pledges to Afghanistan. Too much aid from rich countries is wasted, ineffective or uncoordinated.”

It seems the last two years of effort has been wasted. Even before the London conference in 2006, the politicians knew they had a problem with aid money. Despite the billions pouring into Afghanistan, there were already reports of wasted money, corruption and incompetence. Just two months before the London meeting, the Washington Post had run a high profile piece entitled: “A Rebuilding Plan Full of Cracks”.

The paper noted that in September 2002, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004. However, Congressional figures showed that they managed to finish and hand back to the Afghan government only 40 schools by late 2005.

This story of failure was not unique. At the time, the World Bank director in Afghanistan Jean Mazurell estimated that between 35 to 40 percent of the aid was “badly spent”. “In Afghanistan the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal,” said Mazurell. “In 30 years of my career, I have never seen anything like it.”

Other stories of wasted money began to emerge. A 45 million contract with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to supply badly needed food for the country, included the proviso that four million dollars went to financing its headquarters in Rome.

The tragedy is that aid has often been ineffectual and wasted. Often it does not even leave the country it is being offered from, as it goes to the country’s own consultants. The fraud of aid never actually leaving rich countries has been known about for decades.

In the late eighties the British All-Party Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee had noted bluntly: “In practice, the purpose of bilateral aid programmes in the UK, as in most countries, has rarely been viewed as the purely selfless promotion of other peoples’ welfare. It has always been understood that such programmes should be carried out with British commercial and industrial interests and political interests in mind.”

As Ben Jackson wrote in his book “Poverty and the Planet” published in 1990, “Aid is commonly thought of as handing over money to Third World governments for development. In fact, aid largely consists of funding from Western governments for services, machines, technical experts and consultants to be supplied by companies in rich countries, frequently their own.” The bottom line was that “most aid money is actually spent in the rich world.” Of the $20 billion the World Bank handed out in 1988, $15 billion went to its own contractors or consultants.

There are many more cases like this. Another book written around that time, called “Lords of Poverty”, examined the “freewheeling lifestyles, power, prestige and corruption of the multibillion dollar aid business.” It found, for example, that in the African country of Tanzania, “over 80 per cent of all Canadian development assistance was tied to the procurement of Canadian goods and services.”

Another problem that has been known about for years is that rich countries often promise aid, but never actually deliver it, or if they do, what they eventually give is woefully short of what they promised.

The record of failed promises is long. After Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998 only a third of pledged aid was delivered; after the floods in Mozambique in 2000 and the earthquake in Bam in Iran just over half was delivered. After the Tsunami hit Asia in December 2004, Max Lawson, from the development charity Oxfam noted that: “History has shown us pledge-making is consistently undervalued by governments delivering about half of what they actually promised.”

Nearly two years after the Tsunami, Oxfam’s worries remain true. According to the UN, America promised Indonesia over $400m, but delivered $70m. For Sri Lanka, Spain promised $60m, but delivered less than $1m. France pledged $79m and came up with just over $1m. The Chinese promised $301m and delivered just $1m. In the Maldives, Kuwait promised $10m but actually delivered nothing.

So has Afghanistan been any different? The tragic answer is no. ACBAR’s report is truly shocking. The international community has simply repeated well known mistakes. Firstly, despite the pledge made in the “Compact” the reasons for giving the money have been dictated by the big donors rather than responding to Afghan needs.

According to ACBAR, the donation of aid has “been heavily influenced by the political and military objectives of donors, especially the imperative to win so called ‘hearts and minds’.” Given to reflect expectations in donor countries, it is not what Afghan communities want and need. A significant proportion of aid to Afghanistan is being used to achieve military or political objectives, rather than help Afghans on the ground.

For example, over 70% of the Afghan population rely either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. However agriculture has received only $400-500 million since 2001, a tiny fraction of the multi-billion international aid budget to Afghanistan.
Secondly, there is a huge disparity between what America spends on war and what the international community spends on aid. The US military currently spends nearly $36 billion a year in the country, some $100 million a day; yet the average volume of aid spending by all donors since 2001 is just $7 million per day. Whilst the military budget is vast, 2.5 million Afghans face severe food insecurity, and one in five children still dies before five. Life expectancy is woefully low at 45 years.

Thirdly, over half of all aid to Afghanistan is tied, by which donors often require procurement of services or resources from their own countries. Rather than go to help Afghanistan, the money just lines the pockets of Western contractors and companies. So of the aid actually spent, a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries.

The report notes: “Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50% on a single contract ... A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors – each of whom costs $250,000–$500,000 a year.” In contrast, an Afghan civil servant is paid less than $1000 per year.

Often the contractors spend vast amounts of money on something that could be done much cheaper: For example, a road between the centre of Kabul and the international airport cost the US over $2.3 million per kilometer, at least four times the average cost of building a road in Afghanistan.

Finally, there is the inevitable short-fall of some $10 billion – equivalent to thirty times the annual national education budget. Just $15 billion in aid promised since 2001 has so far been spent. The list of culprits is long. The European Union has distributed less than two-thirds of its commitments for 2002-2008. The US and World Bank has distributed only half of their’s and the Asian Development Bank and India have disbursed only a third of what they promised.

Why do we just make the same mistakes time and again. As history repeats itself, the US and Britain wonder why they are losing the war…

Iraq: When Will we Ever Learn?

Ellie Keen — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:41:24 +0000

Five years after the American and British governments launched the most ill-conceived and fundamentally flawed war of the modern era; the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has finally promised a full-scale inquiry into the war.

Although the Labour government has held four political “Inquiries” before, this is the first time that a British Prime Minister has acknowledged that a full public inquiry is necessary to unpick the disastrous lessons of the conflict. His admission is in direct contrast to Tony Blair who said in 2005: “We have had inquiry after inquiry we do not need to go back over this again and again.”

So what would a public inquiry find? It would have to hear evidence as to whether the war was legal, and would most likely conclude it was not. One key witness would be Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who was deputy legal adviser to the British Foreign Office before the war.

Wilmshurst resigned the day the war started. She argued that without a second resolution at the UN Security Council authorizing force, the war was illegal. Her resignation letter said she could not “in conscience go along with advice” of then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, as he changed his view to try and fudge the facts to say war was justified.

Any inquiry would also have to hear from Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, who just last weekend week-end admitted the British and US governments had seriously underestimated the scale of any post-invasion task.

Powell said: “The trouble with Iraq is we were kind of preparing for the wrong sort of aftermath. We made lots of preparations for humanitarian disaster, for the lack of water, of all that kind of thing, and what we hadn’t in my view thought through was the long-term nature of this. I don’t think any of us had thought through this much bigger question of what we are dealing with.”

The truth is that the Blair and Bush governments were too preoccupied to try and spin the case for war to understand its full consequences. The falsehoods of Britain and America’s “dirty dossiers” purporting to show weapons of mass destruction have been long exposed. But in a retreat of another justification for war, the Pentagon finally acknowledged last week that a review of more than 600,000 captured Iraqi documents showed "no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida terrorist network".

The reality is one we have known all along. Al Qaeda never had a presence in Iraq, until the chaos created by the war allowed it to have one. Moreover, as the US has got bogged down in Iraq, it has allowed Al Qaeda to re-establish itself in the tribal lands of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Even the feeble justification for removing Saddam on humanitarian grounds, now, five years later, looks like a complete disaster. Let’s quickly look at the lethal legacy of the war five years on. Figures on the numbers killed vary depending on who you talk to, ranging from an estimated 90,000 by the Iraqi Body Count to 1.2 million by the British polling company Opinion Research Business.

Over 2.2 million Iraqis have fled the country, with an estimated two million internally displaced. Some 50,000 are said to be homeless in Baghdad alone. It is impossible to describe the scale of human suffering that hides behind each statistic. A generation of Iraqi children is growing up terrorized and traumatized, having witnessed or been subject to violence.

Each story is a human tragedy. “My children and I left my home in Anbar almost two years ago” thirty-eight year old Ruba told the Red Cross. “My husband had been killed right in front of us. I had to protect my children, so we fled the same night with nothing but some money. For me, there is no past and no future, only a horrible present.”

The Red Cross recently concluded that “five years after the outbreak of the war in Iraq, the humanitarian situation in most of the country remains among the most critical in the world. Because of the conflict, millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care.”

For those providing services such as health care it can be perilous: Over 2,200 doctors and nurses have been killed, with over 250 kidnapped. For many it is too much: Some 20,000 of the 34,000 registered doctors in the country have left.

The average wage in Iraq – that is, if you can get a job, is now around $150 per month, yet many families are having to spend at least $50 just to get clean water. Baghdad still struggles to get one hour of electricity per day.

To coincide with the fifth anniversary of the conflict, many media have undertaken different surveys of what life is like in Iraq. Given the appalling state of the country, an overtly optimistic picture was painted by a BBC poll that found that over 50% of Iraqis think their lives are “good.” Whilst this is a national figure, it masks the deep ethnic divisions with only 33% of Sunnis being “happy”, compared with 62% of Shias and 73% of Kurds.

This seems far too optimistic and is contradicted by other surveys and reports. For example, of the ten people interviewed for the Observer earlier this month, 3 people or 30 per cent, said they wished Saddam was still in power, another argued that the war had set Iraq back 50 years.

What the BBC and other surveys have shown is that Iraqis still rate security as the biggest problem for the country overall. Thabit is a Sunni who lives near Kirkuk. He says “before 2003 we only had to worry about not saying anything against the government. Now we can say all we want, but life is in continuous threat”. Another Iraqi, Amaal, a mother of six and teacher of biochemistry in Baghdad says: “It is true that some people are very poor in society, but I know many people who would prefer to live in poverty if they were given security.”

The US claims that the “surge” in American troops has had a dramatic effect on reducing the violence in Baghdad. They spout statistics to back this up. The number of sectarian attacks in Baghdad dropped from 2200 in December 2006 to 200 in November 2007. This, like most American military propaganda, has missed the point.

The reason that violence is fallen is that the city has now been effectively ethnically cleansed. Instisar is a Sunni accountant who lives in Baghdad. She says that in her street there are only three families left who lived there before the war. The rest have “emigrated or fled”. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi photo-journalist has just returned from the city. Able to go to districts no western journalist can go, he says that Baghdad has been transformed into a city of walls. Some 20 miles of 12 foot concrete barriers now dissect this city keeping Sunni and Shia apart. Each neighborhood or district is controlled by different militia. “The people are more desperate than ever”, reports Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.

This post-apocalyptic hell is surely not what President Bush had in mind when he said in 2003: "Iraqi democracy will succeed - and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran - that freedom can be the future of every nation."

For the Americans there is no end is sight, either: In 2008, there were more American troops in Iraq than during the invasion. Nearly 4000 American soldiers have been killed and 30,000 wounded. Over 16,000 American troops have deserted. The figure may well be higher, with many of the runaways quietly discharged. Britain may have lost far fewer soldiers – just 175 - but it has been forced to retreat out of the city of Basra and still cannot pull its soldiers out of the country.

The cost is not just in lives either. In 2003, US Defence Secretary said the cost of the war would be $60bn. To date, the US government has spent at least $500 billion on the war, with some estimates it is as high as $4 trillion. In the UK, an influential Commons Committee recently warned of a “surprising” 52 per cent increase in the cost of military action in Iraq to nearly £1.45bn, despite recent reductions in troop levels.

Gordon Brown has said of the public inquiry: "There is a need to learn all possible lessons from the military action in Iraq and its aftermath." The main lesson, according to Hans Blix the UN’s former weapons chief, is “that there are limitations to what you can achieve by military means.” But the British and Americans should have realized this before they invaded. As Robert Fisk, the award winning journalist wrote last week: “The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn”. And we don’t need a public inquiry to tell us that.

Kenya: The Colonial Legacy Behind the Crisis

Tim Holmes — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:15:41 +0000

As the once-peaceful African nation of Kenya has descended into an orgy of violence after its disputed election result, the reaction in the west has been one of outrage based largely on ignorance. Both politicians and the media have failed to fully understand the role of Kenya’s colonial past in the current crisis.

Late last month, the government of ruling President Mwai Kibati declared that he had won the country’s election. But all the indications are that the election was rigged in the closing stages, after his main challenger Raila Odinga had surged in the early exit polls.

With nearly half the vote counted Odinga had 57 percent of the vote compared with 39 percent for Kibaki. However, when the results were announced Kibaki had supposedly won by 46 per cent to 44 per cent.

Election observers were quick to point out that Kenya’s election commission ignored undeniable evidence of vote rigging. For example, in one district Kibaki’s total went from 50,145 votes after voting closed to 75,261 votes the next day. “The presidential elections were flawed,” said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the chief European observer.

Within fifteen minutes of the announcement, Kenya erupted into violence. The world has watched in horror as one of the most stable nations in Africa has plunged into anarchy and bloodletting.

Before the bloodshed started Kenya was in a position most African leaders would envy. Its stunning beaches, game parks and wildlife were the centre of a billion-dollar tourism industry. Its economy was growing at 7 percent. And compared to its warmongering neighbours - Somalia, Sudan and Congo – it was at peace.

Not any more. Up to a thousand people have been killed since the election, with hundreds of thousands made homeless. The reports coming from the country are horrifying – no more so than when up to fifty women and children were murdered in a church in western Kenya.

The people murdered in the church were Kikuyu, the biggest tribe in Kenya with about 22 percent of the population. The Kikuyu are also the tribe which historically has benefited the most since their country achieved Independence from Britain in 1963.

Kenya’s first president and elder statesman Jomo Kenyatta, was a Kikuyu as is the current President, Kibati. Both were seen as favouring their tribe over others, when it came to political appointments, money and access. In a country still rife with corruption and poverty, it helps to have a relative in a position of power.

Kibaki’s critics point to the fact that many of the top officials in his government — including the ministers of defense, justice, finance and internal security — are Kikuyus. Over the last five years, resentment has grown against him and the Kikuyu in general.

Both the BBC and leading liberal newspaper in Britain, the Observer, were quick to argue that the political tensions in the country were sown a decade ago when Kibati’s predecessor as President, Daniel Arap Moi – who had ruled practically as a dictator - was forced to introduce multi-party politics.

Moi was not a Kikuyu, he was from another tribe called the Kalenjin, which makes up about twelve per cent of the Kenyan population. The Kalenjin, who are the dominant population in the beautiful Rift Valley that carves through Western Kenya, felt threatened by the move to democracy. Moi allowed the Kalenjin to undertake a killing frenzy against the Kikuyu in the area.

Although disputes between the Kalenjin and Kikuyu, as well as wider tribal tensions are undoubtedly part of the current problem, there are other issues at play. “You have to understand that these issues are much deeper than ethnic,” argues Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. “They are political,” he said, and “they go back to land.”

They also go back to the British. To understand the current crisis in Kenya you have to understand the devastating colonial legacy of the British and other colonial powers in Africa. Firstly, the country’s boundaries were drawn by the colonial powers with no regard for the ethnic breakdown on the ground.

As Richard Dowden, the director of the Royal African Society, has quite rightly pointed out: “Africans played no part in the creation of their nation states. Their boundaries were drawn on maps in Europe by Europeans who had never even been to Africa and with no regard for existing political systems and boundaries.”

So you could argue that the current outpouring of “tribalism” as it is being called in the Western media is the direct result of imposed colonial policies, stretching back decades. Although, as Dowden, points out, Kenyans now feel proud to be Kenyan, their tribal heritage is probably of more importance to them, than being Kenyan.

So in the Rift Valley, the anti-Kikuyu feeling does not just go back a decade to the times of Daniel Arap Moi, it goes back all the way to independence, when the British government bought out Britons who owned huge, picturesque farms that nestled in the valley on prime agricultural land.

Instead of redistributing that land to the people who had lived there for centuries, like the Kalenjin and semi-nomadic Masai, Jomo Kenyatta’s government gave much of the land to other Kikuyu’s. Even today many of the top farms in the Rift Valley are still owned by White settlers or their descendents.

Resentment over land has built up over the past four decades, as it has in other parts of Africa. The British could have prevented this by establishing a system of fair land redistribution when they left, but they did not.

For example, in 2004, the Kenyan government rejected demands by the Masai for the return of one million hectares of land leased to British settlers over 100 years before. Signed on Aug. 15, 1904, with the illiterate Masai using thumbprints, the document said the Masai leaders “of our own free will, decided that it is for our best interests to remove our people, flocks, and herds into definite reservations away from the railway line, and away from any land that may be thrown open to European settlement.”

Although the Masai had no idea what they were signing, they have failed in their attempt to get their land back. In 2004, the Masai tried to forcibly invade some of the farms, leading to over one hundred being arrested and at least one person shot dead by Kenyan police, who were protecting the farmers. When the Masai tried to march to the British High Commission in downtown Nairobi, they were fired upon with tear gas.

"We're now squatters on our own land," said Ratik Ole Kuyana, a Masai tour guide. "I'd rather spend my days in prison than see settlers spend their days enjoying my motherland.” The government could not be seen to give in to the Masai, as scores of other ethnic groups in Kenya also have historical grievances against the British or the Kikuyus.

Apart from land, Britain left behind a colonial machinery that invited corruption and the enhancement of the elite to the detriment of the poor. Caroline Elkins, associate professor of African studies at Harvard University and the author of "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya” argues “Far from leaving behind democratic institutions and cultures, Britain bequeathed to its former colonies corrupted and corruptible governments. Added to this was a distinctly colonial view of the rule of law, which saw the British leave behind legal systems that facilitated tyranny, oppression and poverty rather than open, accountable government.”

It is the Kikuyus who have benefited the most from Britain’s legacy. Resentment against the Kikuyus is such that in Western Kenya it is the Kikuyus who have been forced to flee in heavily guarded buses from their homes and farms that have been burnt to the ground. As the International Herald Tribune reported “It is nothing short of a mass exodus. The tribe that has dominated business and politics in Kenya since independence in 1963 is now being chased off its land by machete-wielding mobs made up of members of other tribes furious about the Dec. 27 election.”

Kenya should feel let down by Britain in other ways too. In previous elections the UK has turned a blind eye to vote rigging and intimidation. To Britain’s credit it has poured aid money into the country, but has done nothing after watching millions being sliced off by Kenya’s ruling elite.

And in the current crisis it seems the UK was taken completely by surprise about a conflict which was essentially of its own making, and it should have seen coming. And instead of sending out a peace envoy as soon as possible, it was actually the Americans who did so first. Gordon Brown reacted to the crisis with the words “What I want to see is…” His words sounded eerily reminiscent of an old colonial master. It is a master that should shoulder some of the blame of a crisis that some now say constitutes genocide.

Growing Political Row Over “Imposition” of New EU Chemicals Boss

Tim Holmes — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:13:16 +0000

Next Monday the new head of the fledgling European Chemicals Agency will be formally appointed in Helsinki, the home of the new Agency.

Despite the formal announcement, the European Commission is facing a growing political row over its “imposition” of a business-friendly candidate to head the Agency.

The Agency is tasked with implementing REACH – the highly controversial chemical legislation that was adopted by the EU in December 2006, after years of lobbying by the chemical industry to water it down. The Agency will be hugely influential as it will oversee how 30,000 industrial and everyday chemicals that are used by the public are regulated within the EU.

The Commission’s candidate of choice is Geert Dancet, a Belgian-born economist who is currently the Interim Director of the Agency. He is a twenty-year career bureaucrat from the Commission, who critics argue will be its “puppet” and not be independent enough.

Since 2004, Dancet has headed the REACH Unit within DG Enterprise that was instrumental in formatting the chemical legislation that has been criticised by green groups as being compromised by the chemical industry.

Members of the Management Board of the Chemicals Agency from Member States argue that the selection process for his job was rigged by the Commission against candidates who would take a more critical stance against the chemical industry.

An investigation by SpinWatch has found the name of one of the strongest candidates – Ethel Forsberg, the head of Kemi, the Swedish Chemicals Agency, was removed by the Commission before the short-list of two was sent to the Management Board to decide who to pick. The short-list comprised of Dancet and Anne Lambert, the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the EU, who was not specialised in chemicals policy.

“We knew the Commission had sent three names to the Commissioners, to the College of Commissioners”, says Dr Odile Gauthier, from the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development in Paris, the French delegate on the Management Board. “None of us in France, and I think it was the same in every country, thought that something would happen at the level of the Commissioners. We were very upset because we felt the Commission was imposing its own candidate.”

Dr Thomas Jakl, the Austrian delegate from the Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management in Vienna adds: “The whole management board was quite upset by being confronted by a short-list that contained only two members, knowing that there were other people who were qualified to appear on the short-list”.

The rejected candidate, Ethel Forsberg, says “I was surprised I was not on the list. After one interview I was told that I was on the proposed short-list”. She adds: “It is hard for me not to be aware that Sweden is one of those member states whose chemical policy is quite radical. I don’t know if that was worrisome to someone if I was connected to such a chemical policy.”

When Dancet appeared before the European Parliament’s influential Environment Committee last month British MEP Caroline Jackson said he had “too cosy a relationship” with the Commission.

Several environmental NGOs, including Friends of the Earth Europe, had written to the Commission asking for a formal review of Dancet’s appointment, although this week the Commission rejected their complaint as "inadmissible".

Never Mind the Funding Crisis

Ellie Keen — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:05:20 +0000

Never Mind the Funding Crisis, Its Brown's Policies that Are Flawed

During his first few months in office, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stumbled from one lingering crisis to another, like a drunk lurching from one lamp-post to the next.

We have witnessed him dithering over whether to hold an early election, to try and contain an outbreak of the highly contagious foot and mouth disease and preside over the near collapse of the Northern Rock Bank.

Last month was seen as Labour’s worst in over fourteen years when it was also announced that a government department had lost the computer discs that contained the personal details of twenty-five million people. That is nearly half the UK population that could be at risk from the growing crime of identity fraud.

Last week's events hardly got any better, after it was disclosed that a businessman, David Abrahams, had been secretly donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Labour Party through third-party conduits, which is against the rules of how political parties can be funded. The police are now investigating.

It’s another week and it is yet another crisis.

Brown’s advisors have repeatedly said that when we find out more about Gordon, the person and understand his policies, we will get to like and respect him. If only this were true. Last week, saw Brown give a major speech to Britain’s largest pro-business organisation, the Confederation of British Industry, in which he advocated expansion of two hugely unpopular entities: nuclear power and Heathrow airport. Both policies are fatally flawed.

In the speech Gordon Brown signaled his support for nuclear power and a new generation of nuclear power stations. Brown argues that these will help fight climate change and promote energy security. The trouble for Brown is that a growing number of experts argue that expanding nuclear power will not solve climate change, but merely add to the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Moreover, how can Britain develop new nuclear plants, whilst denying Iran the chance to develop nuclear power, without looking like a complete hypocrite?

Furthermore the pro-nuclear move by Brown stinks of a conflict of interest. He is frequently criticised for only listening to a small clique of advisers. It now looks like these advisors include his brother Andrew, who works for EDF Energy, one of the main companies vying to build new nuclear plants in the UK.

Whilst singing the praises of nuclear, Gordon Brown will forget to tell you that you cannot have nuclear power without nuclear weapons and the dangers of nuclear terrorism. Just last week, Ian Dickinson, one of Scotland’s most senior policemen argued that a nuclear attack in the UK was both “inevitable and will happen soon”.

Speaking at a meeting organized by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency on the risks of nuclear terrorism, Dickinson argued that efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining radioactive dirty bombs or crude nuclear explosives were bound to fail. What Brown cannot tell you is that nuclear power makes us less safe.

In his speech to the CBI, Brown also said Britain’s “prosperity depends” on a third runway being built at London’s main airport Heathrow. Currently the airport has two runways. The pro-aviation lobby, including British Airways and the airport operators, BAA, have been pushing for expansion of the airport by arguing that the building of a third runway is necessary for the economy.

However there is no independent evidence to back up their claims. What we do know, however, is that expansion would increase the number of air transport movements at Heathrow from its current level of 487,000 to at least 720,000, maybe even 800,000 a year.

Building the third runway would lead to the biggest single expansion of Heathrow, and impact the lives of millions of Londoners who live near the airport. These people were given the assurances by the government and industry that Heathrow did not need expanding. It was only six years ago that the airport’s operator, BAA said it “would urge the government to rule out any additional runway at Heathrow”. That was a lie. One Government Inspector, who passed the Terminal Four building at Heathrow, told the local community that “this is the last major expansion of the airport”. That was a lie too.

The Labour Government is pro-expansion of the airport. In its policy document on the subject The Future of Air Transport, published in December 2003 the government made it clear that it supported a third runway at Heathrow subject to compliance with supposedly strict conditions on air quality and noise. As a further safety net for the local population it said that any expansion would only happen after public consultation.

Last week, Gordon Brown’s government pre-empted this consultation and said they were in favour of a third runway. This week, Gordon himself endorsed the plans. Documents released under British Freedom of Information regulations, show how the Government and airline industry have been colluding with the industry to “fix” the results of any consultation process before it even started.

For example, one document talked of the government’s desire to “proceed on the basis of a common position” with BAA over the contentious issue of noise from aircraft. The documents show that BAA – the operator of the airport that has a clear commercial interest in expansion of the airport– is assisting the government with the air quality and noise modeling. Local government officers believe that this process may well be rigged to try and show that expansion of the airport will have less environmental damage than is actually the case.

The documents also show it is likely that air pollution and noise will increase if a third runway is built. Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change, will also increase. The bottom line is that you cannot have airport expansion without huge increases in carbon dioxide. You cannot have airport expansion and climate protection at the same time.

However Gordon Brown is trying to position Britain as a leader in the battle to fight climate change at the same time as proposing Heathrow expansion. Scientists predict that if aviation growth is unchecked the rest of the British economy would have to de-carbonise by 2050 to compensate. This is not going to happen.

One way the European Union is trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from industry is by the setting up of what is known as an emission trading scheme or ETS. The rationale behind ETS is that it enables different industries to trade emissions, so companies can buy and sell “credits” depending if they are emitting more or less carbon than they are allowed. The aviation industry in Europe is due to join the scheme in 2011.

The problem is that due to its huge predicted growth, aviation could have taken up all the allowances of the other industries by 2017. For any emission trading scheme to work, there is no excusing the fact that aviation growth must be curtailed. But this will be made all the harder if a third runway is built at Heathrow. The only way to be serious about stopping climate change is stopping Heathrow expansion, exactly the opposite to what Brown is proposing.

Over the coming weeks, Brown will try to persuade the world he is a serious politician on climate change, but that also is a lie. When he does finally have the nerve to call a general election there is a warning from Australia he might want to take notice of.

Last month, the incumbent Australian Liberal leader John Howard was unceremoniously dumped by his electorate, in what the press had called the “world’s first climate change election”. The opposition Labour leader, Kevin Rudd, inflicted the worst ever election defeat on Howard's Liberal Party in its 63-year history.

Of course other issues such as the Iraq war and domestic Labour laws played a part in the election, but there is no denying that climate change was a key election issue. Howard, an old-school conservative, had refused to sign up to the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But Australians are on the front-line of climate change. They have witnessed five years of drought which has seen once proud rivers shrivel and die, great swathes of agricultural land suffer, and the inconvenience of urban water restrictions. Last week, the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said his first major act of office would be to sign Kyoto. Rudd is being portrayed as offering a new political start for Australia for a new century. He is said to understand the mood of the country.

If Gordon Brown understands the mood of Britain, he would understand that climate change is now seen by the younger generation as a huge issue of importance. In his speech to the CBI, Brown argued that Britain could be "one of the great global leaders" of the 21st century. But Brown is leading us in the wrong direction on both climate and nuclear power.

I fear another crisis around the corner.

A People Without A Home

Tim Holmes — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:09:02 +0000

Earlier this month, there was a small but hugely significant demonstration outside Number 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

A group of islanders from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean asked the government to stop preventing them from returning home. It is something they have been asking the British for forty years.

It was in 1966 that that the British started forcibly removing some 2000 islanders from their beautiful homeland of coral atolls that lies midway between Africa and Asia.

The British had just done a secret deal with the Americans, letting them use the main island, Diego Garcia, as a strategically-positioned airbase to counter the perceived Soviet threat for a period of fifty years. In return the British got access to American nuclear missiles at a greatly reduced cost. A non-negotiable part of the deal was the eviction of the local population at whatever the human cost.

So began yet another disgraceful episode in British foreign policy – an injustice that burns brightly to this day. Veteran investigative journalist, John Pilger, writing in his book “Freedom Next Time” which was published last year, describes how “Not only was their homeland stolen from them, they were taken out of history. Until recently, the [British] Foreign Office website denied their very existence”.

Documents from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from the time show the deceit the British planned. Internal FCO documents described how any deportations should be “timed to attract the least attention and should have some logical cover where possible worked out in advance [otherwise] they will arouse suspicion as to their purpose”.

Other documents argued that once the local population had been removed, the British would present to the outside world “a scenario in which there were no permanent inhabitants on the archipelago”. This they did. The FCO wrote to the British Representative at the UN asking him to lie to the General Assembly that the Chagros Islands were “uninhabited when the United Kingdom first acquired them”. This he subsequently did too.

One document, written by a legal advisor to the FCO in 1968, was called “Maintaining the Fiction”. The “fiction was that the local people were “only a floating population” because this would bolster our arguments that the territory has no indigenous or settled population”. This was despite the fact that the local population had lived there for generations.

Over a number of years, the islanders were removed and barred from returning. Their story is absolutely heart-breaking. The islanders were literally just dumped in the capitol of Mauritius, St. Luis. They received no help from the British in resettling them. For a people who had lived and survived peacefully by fishing and practicing subsidence agriculture, they suddenly had nothing: no homes, no jobs, no way of making a living. Moreover, much worse, is that they had no way of returning to their beloved homeland.

Over the following years, the exiled islanders died of neglect, poverty, or suicide. One islander, Lizette Talate’s two children died within days of each other. They “died of sadness” she recalls.

It is a story that is repeated. Another islander, Loius Onezime lives in cramped appalling conditions in St Louis, with a leaking roof, and no kitchen. His family often goes hungry. His young wife died of a heart attack. “She died of sadness”, he told John Pilger last year.

It is a reoccurring theme of the islanders. Sadness is killing them, one by one. The lawyer representing the islanders in London, Richard Gifford, told the Times newspaper earlier this month. “I’ve lost count of the old folk I’ve met who have subsequently died broken-hearted at the fact they couldn’t see their beloved homeland.”

So far it has been a forty-year fruitless fight for the islanders to realize their dream of going home. In 1975, the islanders petitioned the British High Commission, complaining how they used to “live free” and how “we were not dying of hunger”… “Here in Mauritius we, being mini-slaves, don’t get anybody to help us. We are at a loss not knowing what to do.”

In 1982, a group of the most impoverished islanders accepted a “full and final” settlement from the British of £4 million, which equates to less than £3,000 a head, in compensation. Many of the illiterate islanders signed the document, unable to read what they had just signed and not knowing that they had just renounced their right to return home.

John Pilger points out the bitter irony at the time. In 1982, whilst the British government offered a paltry amount of money to the 2000 black Chagossians it had illegally evicted from their homeland, it was spending £2 billion protecting some 2000 white islanders of the Falklands Islands against the invading Argentineans.

Three times in the last few years the islanders have won their legal case in the courts, only to be rebuked again by the British. In 2000, the High Court in London ruled that the islanders’ “wholesale removal was an “abject legal failure”. After the verdict, the British government accepted the Chagossians’ right to return to any of the islands except Diego Garcia.

However, then came September 11th and the islands of Diego Garcia increased in importance to the Americans due to its strategic geographical location in the new “War on Terror”. It is from Diego Garcia that B52 bomber launch bombing raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is there also that it is rumoured the CIA has secretly been holding Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders at a secret prison camp. The Americans do not want anyone living even remotely close to their secret base. So now even the outlying islands –once the proposed place the islanders could return to – is off limits to the islanders.

In 2004 the British government once again removed the right of the islanders to return home. In 2006 the High Court ruled that the Government’s move was unlawful and “repugnant”. In May this year the Court of Appeal agreed. It concluded that Britain’s actions had negated “one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings, the freedom to return to one’s homeland”.

But still the British government refused to allow the islanders to return. The government had until this month to decide whether they would fight the latest legal judgment. Days before the deadline, a selection of British MPs urged Gordon Brown to accept “the right of the Chagossians to return to their islands”. The letter argued that any further action by the British government “would waste more public funds, delay justice for the Chagossians” and “expose” Gordon Brown’s words on the right to liberty as “hollow”.

Just days later, just as they had forty years earlier, the British government used political events to cover up its continuing abuse of the Chagossians. On the same day as one of the most important events in the British political calendar – where the Queen opens the new session of parliament - the government quietly let slip that it intended to appeal again and continue the islanders’ plight.

It is difficult to overestimate the cynical nature of this move. The British government knows that many of the islanders are getting older and dying. Of the 2,000 evicted only 700 are still alive. It could well be another year before the islanders receive the next legal judgment by which time more will have died. After that there could be two or three more years of legal wranglings as to who is going to pay the meager cost of re-housing the islanders.

Standing outside Downing Street last weekend was Hengride Permal, of the Chagossian Islands Community Association. Standing dignified and tall he said simply: “We want the government to pay us compensation for 40 years of pain and suffering, and 40 years of exile. We want Gordon Brown to take action and withdraw the appeal. We want to go home to our island.”

Come on Gordon. Give up the fight. Let them go home to live in peace. Before another islander dies of a broken heart.

A People Without A Home

Ellie Keen — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 01:03:54 +0000

Earlier this month, there was a small but hugely significant demonstration outside Number 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

A group of islanders from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean asked the government to stop preventing them from returning home. It is something they have been asking the British for forty years.

It was in 1966 that that the British started forcibly removing some 2000 islanders from their beautiful homeland of coral atolls that lies midway between Africa and Asia.

Come on Gordon. Give up the fight. Let them go home to live in peace. Before another islander dies of a broken heart.