Syrian Crisis: On the Usless British 'Stop the War Coalition'.

Thursday's vote by MPs to bar the way to British involvement in a war against Syria is a vindication of the mass anti-war movement in this country over the last decade. Parliamentarians of all parties claimed that they had "learned the lessons of Iraq". Better late than never, of course.

The problem with the Stop the War Coalition is that it is led by the dregs of the hard left who have rigid ideological motives for opposing any war other than those which are against 'imperialism'. The very term 'anti-war' is deeply Orwellian as nobody wants to to be 'pro-war'.

Official dissimulation and spin from governments is as inimical to a democracy as the depressing fact the StWC leadership is less interested in war because it means 'more death' but because it is a great propaganda opportunity to harness in support of its underlying hard left agenda.

Andrew Murray remains a supporter of one of the world's most lethal totalitarian regimes in history the USSR which throughout its brutal and democidal existence brought militarism, the one party state, labour camps, political repression to an apogee and an unwanted empire to Eastern Europe after 1945.

If that had no bearing on the leadership of the StWC or the desire to channel 'outrage' at wars branded as 'liberal intervention' by those for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars towards 'anti-imperialist' agitation, then the propaganda of the StWC could just be seen as mere populist annoyance at 'warmongering'.

But the fact is that those pursuing wars of 'humanitarian intervention' are not pantomime style villains 'concealing' their 'imperialism' with pleasant sounding words. All Murray has done as a leader in the StWC is demonstrate the spin doctors obsession with framing and fixing the debate.

Take this,

'The "special relationship" and "liberal interventionism" have alike been exposed as preoccupations of the establishment – indeed, only a section of it now – with no democratic mandate underpinning them. The possibility is now open for Britain playing a different role in the world, breaking with the policies and preoccupations of imperialism'.

The US is an imperial power but Britain is not. Moreover, many nations participated in the 'liberal intervention' in Afghanistan for reasons that have never been completely understood. No war is ever only about one thing but much evidence points to most wars since 1990 being resource wars.

Murray hypocritically condemns wars as being only a product of establishment preoccupations and 'imperialism'. But it seems clear most of the liberal interventions were partly about bringing democracy to countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. These were wars advocated according to enlightened self interest.

No foreign policy ever has an exact 'democratic mandate' as if all people should be given a direct vote on whether war should happen or not. It is also difficult to understand why that is so important to Murray in any case given the StWC leaders have a history of supporting dictatorships.

Yet foreign policies based on 'democracy promotion' are intended to promote democracy and open access to the resources that enable the vast majority of consumers in the West to enjoy their high octane lifestyles. In order to criticise foreign policy one first has to understand what is really at stake.

The myth that military interventions are only 'all about oil' and corporate profit is a comforting one because in means the political elites-or Them-are wholly responsible and those who are not members of an elite would not benefit from stable or falling oil prices and gas.

Many people probably really value the economy more than morality. Where do you think the gas is going to come from ? As North Sea gas depletes, Qatar has become a main supplier to Western economies of LNG. Qatar backs the anti-Assad insurgents as do Saudi Arabia so the West supports them.

If they at least knew the facts, they might change their mind. But that the geopolitics of energy resources and pipeline routes are a major factor in the calculations of the main regional and global players in the Middle East is just not mentionable in front of the children.

The StWC also has no interest in an intelligent consideration of what military interventions are about. It had no clear 'position' on Syria and did not even care much until it seemed possible that Britain might join the US in intervening. As such the StWC had zero influence in the Parliamentary vote on Syria.

That is why Murray is attempting to take the credit for 'stopping the war'. As usual, self important StWC leaders are trying to justify their usefulness as any careerist politician, spin doctor or hack journalist does. There is no chance of averting future conflicts unless people understand how the world actually works.

That means going beyond rant filled embittered diatribes about 'warmongering' and 'hypocrisy' because in some sense unless a person is prepared to live without a car, not fly Easy Jet, never buy out of season fruit or advocate nuclear power then the possibility of conflicts over access to oil and gas resources is set to stay.

As Tolstoy wrote “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” The constant finger jabbing accusations about the 'hypocrisy' on the political elites' as opposed to 'ordinary people' is a common populist one made by those outside the established political system

Anyone can oppose wars whose origins are, in fact, not all identical or reducible to 'our imperialism'. The StWC was set up to 'stop' the 2001 Afghanistan War and, in fact, any war, But the proposed missile strikes, whatever one thinks of them would not amount to a war in themselves.

Murray does not understand the nature of the Syrian Crisis. That becomes quite obvious when

'This is the case in Syria, too, where the crying need is not for more bombing by anybody, but for a concerted drive for a Syrian-based political solution. The starting points have to include the west abandoning its cynical policy of basically prolonging a civil war which it wants neither side to win.'

This is not the situation.

The entire foreign policy of Washington on Syria has been and is about taking sides in the civil war and supporting its allies in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia who are backing the militias fighting against Assad. The only reason it does not want Assad 'to go' is that Washington fears chaos and Al Qaida.

The intention behind the threat of missile strikes is to convince Assad that he will never win the civil war and to compel him to negotiate from the position of weakness at any forthcoming Geneva Conference. That would ensure, so the idea goes, that more pro-Western members of the SNC take power.

The reason is that the Western powers, primarily the US, France and Britain are strong allies and 'strategic partners' of Qatar and Saudi Arabia who support anti-Assad insurgents absurdly referred to as 'the rebels' against 'the regime'. Qatar supplies a large proportion of LNG to the West.

Iran, of which there is no mention here, is the regional enemy of Saudi Arabia and supports Assad and Hizbollah in the civil war. Washington does not want Iran to extend its influence through Iraq and Syria towards the Mediterranean, not least by building a gas pipeline from the South Pars gas field in the Gulf.

Ultimately, the geopolitical wrangle is crucially about the oil and gas supplies and regional influence. Qatar wants to build a gas pipeline between the same gas field that it shares with Iran. The US does not want Iraq moving towards Tehran through the proposed construction of its pipeline.

It is not possible to have a credible organisation that opposes the drive towards military intervention unless its leading figures understand the nature of these geopolitical struggles. If Britain cannot produce better and more sensible opponents to the drift towards a future of resource wars they will go ahead regardless.

It is lamentable that Murray is the deputy leader of a 'Stop the War' movement with a 'stance' on Syria does not even mention the alleged chemical weapons attack which, if it were proven to have been used by Assad, is the justification being used by Washington for why it should intervene militarily.

The suspicion that Cameron was leading Britain into 'Another Iraq' by preempting the findings of the UN inspectors does not, thereby, mean that the situation is directly the same as Murray is trying to pretend. The spin was similar but the actual situation is hardly 'the same'.

'It is now clear, as indeed it was in 2003, that most people have no wish to embroil Britain militarily in the Middle East, that they want the government to abide by international law and the authority of the UN, and that standing "shoulder to shoulder" with the US come what may has no purchase on their views or feelings.'

Obviously, 'most people' did not want Britain to invade Iraq or to by dragged in to a potential region wide conflict. Nor did they seem to want even the idea of a 'limited' and 'proportionate' response using cruise missiles. But, most of all, neither they nor many MPs thought the evidence was there.

However, the Labour amendment was about, among other considerations and conditions, about waiting for the findings of the UN inspectors. 'Most people' were not convinced of Cameron's case for war and the same id true of Labour, except Miliband did not actually rule out military intervention if CWs were used.

The fact is Murray would have opposed any military strike irrespective of the specific issue of chemical weapons but he does not want to draw attention to that. Even so, unless a person is a complete pacifist ( and nobody who supports the ex-USSR or dictatorship is ) then his stance on CWs is needed.

The reason for this is that no organisation can be a 'Stop the War' coalition' unless it understands what the case for the war they actually want to stop is. Murray nowhere engages in whether the case for intervention is valid or invalid, justified or unjustified. Other leading figures he works with, though, do have views on CWs.

The StWC also has George Galloway MP as a prominent member of a group absurdly termed a 'broad coalition' by Murray. On Iran's Press, TV George Galloway claims 'his theory' is that Israel gave Al Qaida the chemical weapons so that they would use them and bring in the West to destroy Syria.

"If there has been use of chemical weapons, it was al-Qaida. Who gave al-Qaida chemical weapons?...Here's my theory. Israel gave them the chemical weapons..If there has been any use of nerve gas, it is the rebels that used it."

Now this sort of conspiracy theory mongering may well advance Galloway's media career as a left wing shock jock but it discredits sensible opposition to wars that need to be based on evidence and making a strong case against wars on the rationales being given for them.

This includes countering official 'public diplomacy' with another form of misleading propaganda that relies upon distortion, a vision of the US as representing some cosmic power of Evil that can manipulate events to its exclusive and malign will, where protests to 'Stop an Iraq' War have 'stopped' it in Syria.

I have dealt already with this distortion of fact with regards what Washington's foreign policy is and it certainly is not about deliberately and intentionally prolonging a civil war that it has not a great deal of control over. To pretend the US does have control over it is, ironically, to accept the idea the US is omniscient.

This is the basis for the line about 'the West' which is said to be 'basically prolonging' the Syrian Civil War because it 'cynically' wants neither side to win. As this is factually untrue, the cynicism is Murray's because he is simply not interested in the Syrian Civil War for any other reason than to blame the West for it happening.

The reason for this crude propaganda line is that Murray just must 'prove' that the Syrian Civil War is not about sectarian enmities between Shia and Sunni Muslims or ethnic tensions that are present in Syria itself because that might upset the supporters in the Muslim Association of Britain.

So in order to formulate the Correct Public Doctrine, Murray spins the line that the civil war can only be solved politically if 'the West' stops trying to 'prolong' as if that were, in fact, 'Western' policy' without mentioning the fact that it is Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Iran who are backing the rival sides directly.

Using casual phrases such as the West 'basically prolonging' the civil war is a propaganda assumption designed to pathetically keep up the 'Islamophobic West' line ( despite a number of Syrians wanting Western intervention ) and to give the false hope that if protest can stop intervention it stops the problem.

Yet the entire way a very serious matter of war has been hijacked by the same well organised dreary fanatics in the StWC is one obvious reason why there is no intelligent alternative to the ever greater move towards military engagement in volatile oil rich lands or those strategically adjacent to them over the past decade.

Zizek: How to Use Theory to Avoid Looking at Facts.

Zizek has written an LRB article on global protests and revolt entitled 'Trouble in Paradise'. It appeared on 18 July and did not consider the obvious fact that on July 2 the army gave a 48 hour ultimatum to Morsi that proceeded to turn into what it widely regarded as a military coup d'etat by July 4.

Zizek is rather like other radical theorists and revolutionary enthusiasts who seem to have remained silent about how the military takeover has affected the revolution. Chomsky has said nothing on this major development either because it is clearly popular in Egypt and this provides problems for positioning himself

Basically, these thinkers seem to be hedging their bets as they cannot be seen to back a military coup, regarded the Muslim Brotherhood as reactionary and having failed to deliver any real change and do not want to be seen as not backing the will of the people in the streets.

Zizek is in a pickle now because he has consistently and mechanically wrote off any attempt to separate the Islamist concept of radical change from the secular ones in Egypt. Back in 2011 he declared,

'The uprising was universal: it was immediately possible for all of us around the world to identify with it, to recognise what it was about, without any need for cultural analysis of the features of Egyptian society.'

Nothing has dimmed that enthusiasm for dismissing reality. Nor the fact Egyptian society is deeply divided culturally between protesters on the streets who support the Muslim Brotherhood and those who radical secularists who regard it as counter revolutionary.

The fallback option now in 2013 is to switch attention away from these awkward facts and repeat the theory that those who insist that the Egyptian revolt did reflect Egypt's particular history are effectively being the dreaded reactionaries.

So Zizek writes,

'In 2011, when protests were erupting across Europe and the Middle East, many insisted that they shouldn’t be treated as instances of a single global movement.'

And,

' It is easy to see how such a particularisation of protest appeals to defenders of the status quo: there is no threat against the global order as such, just a series of separate local problems.'

Still there is no attempt to look at the obvious fact that in Egypt the street fights between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and those wanting him out was used by the army as a pretext to intervene on the side of those against Morsi to boot out an elected president.

'The general rule is that when a revolt against an oppressive half-democratic regime begins, as with the Middle East in 2011, it is easy to mobilise large crowds with slogans – for democracy, against corruption etc. But we are soon faced with more difficult choices.'

True, such as what challenge is posed by the fact that many in Egypt clearly think the revolution has been saved by the intervention of the military whereas others who went on the streets two years before are now back on them fuming that their revolution has been stolen from them.

Reflections on the 2013 Uprising in Egypt and the Reaction in Britain.

Journalists in Britain are already attempting to view the mass protests in Egypt, Brazil and Turkey as part of a wider global trend towards revolution against the 'neoliberal world order'. Each uprising has its own particular dynamic but Seumas Milne is already offering his version of these events.

As in 2011, the opposition is a middle-class-dominated alliance of left and right. But this time the Islamists are on the other side while supporters of the Mubarak regime are in the thick of it. The police, who beat and killed protesters two years ago, this week stood aside as demonstrators torched Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood offices. And the army, which backed the dictatorship until the last moment before forming a junta in 2011, has now thrown its weight behind the opposition.

Whether its ultimatum to the president turns into a full-blown coup or a managed change of government, the army – lavishly funded and trained by the US government and in control of extensive commercial interests – is back in the saddle. And many self-proclaimed revolutionaries who previously denounced Morsi for kowtowing to the military are now cheering it on. On past experience, they'll come to regret it.

Milne's interpretation is aptly titled Egypt, Brazil, Turkey: without politics, protest is at the mercy of the elites. Milne does not believe in spontaneous protests. Real democracy means the Jacobin-Bolshevik model whereby tightly organised vanguard elites channel protest into the politically correct direction.

So he knows a lot indeed about how organisation is essential in order to hijack revolutions.

Milne's sole criteria , however, for judging protests is whether they fit into his Manichean worldview of being objectively pro or anti-US. As a consequence, Milne's outlook , as always, seems to be based on the luxury of having things both ways so as to be 'right' no matter what the outcome of the mass protests.

Clearly, given that he has tended to back Islamists in the past, in so far as they were against US backed authoritarian regimes, he cannot now deny the failures of Morsi's regime nor does he bother to mention the fact many do not like its Islamisation of Egypt nor the attacks on the Coptic Christians.

Instead he chooses to use weasel language like this, 

The protesters have no shortage of grievances against Morsi's year-old government, of course: from the dire state of the economy, constitutional Islamisation and institutional power grabs to its failure to break with Mubarak's neoliberal policies and appeasement of US and Israeli power.

To get around these inconvenient facts he uses jargon such 'constitutional Islamisation'. Milne claims there are 'no shortage of greivances' but 'appeasement' of the US is not really up there as a main one: many protesters just seem to not want the US to back Morsi.

Milne's main concern is not that of the protesters, though he affects to be partly on their side, and it boild down to only one thing-whether the new government will be anti-US or not before it has even been constituted.

..the reality is, however incompetent Morsi's administration, many key levers of power – from the judiciary and police to the military and media – are effectively still in the hands of the old regime elites. They openly regard the Muslim Brotherhood as illegitimate interlopers, whose leaders should be returned to prison as soon as possible.

Yet these are the people now in alliance with opposition forces who genuinely want to see Egypt's revolution brought at least to a democratic conclusion.

There is no evidence that undefined 'opposition forces' are 'in alliance' with the army or Mubarak era elites as Milne insinuates . On the streets there is simply the hope that the army, which remains largely secular, will guard against any attempt by the Islamists to mobilise their supporters should Morsi actually be forced out.

That hope may well prove to be naive. But it is what the protesters demanding the revolution to be pushed towards its democratic conclusion actually want as well as an end to Morsi's retention of the structures of dictatorship and attempt to control the state for the exclusive benefit of his party of God.

Milne, by contrast, seems to care more about any revolutionary purity not being sullied by any relationship with the US despite the fact it's aid to Egypt is minute compared with the billions of dollars that oil rich Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are investing under Morsi ( some $10bn so far )

If Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are forced from office, it's hard to see such people breaking with neoliberal orthodoxy or asserting national independence, as most Egyptians want.

By 'such people' Milne means any future government that isn't explicitly anti-American. That concern takes priority over any form of economic recovery to benefit Egyptian people no matter what their particular political allegiances are or mere 'formal' middle class ( i.e "bourgeois" ) democracy.

If Egyptians are split into two rival camps between those who support the Muslim Brotherhood and illiberal general will conceptions of democracy, with the prospect of majoritarian tyrannies, and those who oppose that for various reasons then there is obviously no consensus on what 'most Egyptians' want.

In accordance with doublethink, Milne both accepts that Egyptians want to bring the revolution to a democratic conclusion and denies it. If any new government-even a transitional ' managed change of government'-has the potential to move  towards the US for whatever reason, it isn't what 'most Egyptians' want.

Hence,

Instead, the likelihood is that the Islamists, also with mass support, will resist being denied their democratic mandate, plunging Egypt into deeper conflict.

In other words, if Morsi's pro-US Muslim Brotherhood government is replaced by a more openly democratic Eygptian government that is favourable to the US and does not break with neoliberal policies then that will entail necessary resistance from the Islamists.

The fact is that the Egyptians in Tahrir Square seem to want a proper representational democracy first which protects minorities, is open and not full of cronies and corruption and does not try to impose one version of a Godly regime on all of them the better to enhance the power of the state over society.

Milne,however,  is only interested in 'framing' the perception of the Egyptian revolution for radicals in the West with a veneer of objectivity that can be easily peeled away by looking forensically at Milne's logic and language. He tends to fit the facts into a a rigid propaganda screed.

The Egyptian revolution is far more complicated than Milne is intentionally portraying it. There are two broad currents of popular opinion in Egypt.The first are those who believe in pushing Egypt towards becoming a more Islamic republic under Morsi.

Those who support Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are usually poorer and more uneducated with little understandind of what the procedures of a functioning democracy are beyond imposing the will of the 'Godly' people against those forces that are not.

The second consists of a broad coalition of the educated and more secular minded Egyptians, Coptic Christians and anti-Islamist Muslims who resent the Muslim Brotherhood because its puritanism and incompetence is bad for the economy and the tourist industry.

For years before the 2011 revolution, Egypt was trapped in a cycle of fanatical Islamist revolt and state repression. When terrorists murdered tourists in Luxor in 1997 there was mass revulsion against Islamists who reacted with a ceasefire against Mubarak.

Subsequently, the more moderate Islamists represented by Morsi built up a rival power base and were dedicated to working their way to power through a democratic mandate as a means to impose their brand of state power on society in a way that cannot be other than polarising and divisive.

The problem has been, set against the background of a collapsing economy, that the Morsi regime has been seen to be allowing radicalised Islamists some freedom to persecute minorities such as the Christians in order to retain a populist power base, a strategy that shows continuity with Mubarak's dictatorship.

The opposition to Morsi is based upon those politically minded Egyptians with a memory of constitutional rule for thirty years before Colonel Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak ended the free expression of opinion, imposed military rule and dictatorship.

Needless to say, Nasser is feted by Milne and Galloway and those in the farcical "anti-war" left in Britain which is only against imperialist wars and not revolutionary guerrilla wars that are lauded on the sole basis of "resistance" to any force not utterly hostile to the US.

The Egyptians who want a functioning democracy are being pragmatic and are not focusing their attention on the US. Only embittered monomaniacal ideologues such as Milne and Galloway see every event connected with the Arab Spring in relation to some vast geopolitical struggle against the US.

The point is not that the US has not played a part in shoring up corrupt authoritarian regimes in the Gulf to protect its oil and strategic interests. It is that in Egypt there is a social and cultural unity absent in other Arab lands and the first demand in Cairo is a proper democracy.

Milne is less interested in that than in whether any new government will be anti-US or not. It's his sole criteria for assessing whether a revolution is good or bad. The aspirations of the people on the ground are only as important as ciphers in his messianic geopolitical calculations.

In that sense, ironically, the 'hard left' in Britain follows closely the sort of thinking pursued by fanatical neoconservatives who actually did try to promote choreographed 'Colour Revolutions' from Serbia to Ukraine and Belarus, from Lebanon to Georgia ,that were to benefit pro-US elites.

Milne, however, is trying to impose a vulgar Marxist-Leninist class based analysis on events in Egypt. The reference to the 1848 revolutions in Europe hints at the idea that revolutions must be permanent to achieve true freedom or else they will be co-opted by state power.

Essentially Milne is cunningly setting up his propaganda so that if the military take control in Egypt or oversee a transition to the new state is pro-US, whether democratic or not, it is a 'betrayal'. Then he can say as journalists like to 'I Told You So'.

Thought this may not seem very important, Milne is a leading propagandist for the self appointed extra-parliamentary opposition to Anglo-American foreign policy in Britain.  He is a leading figure on Stop the War Coalition platforms and a supporter of George Galloway whom radical journalist John Pilger regards a man of principle.

Criticism of US foreign policies is one thing but the problem with ideological Anti-Americanism is that-a is clear with Milne-is that the reality on the ground in places such as Eygpt and Turkey is distorted to fit an agenda pleasing to many radical leftists in the West.

Not only does this lead to disinformation, it actually retards any ability to criticise what is actually wrong about Anglo-US foreign policy. Contrary to what many on the radical left believe, the US does not have some almost supernatural ability to manipulate events globally.

This paranoid worldview comes close to conspiracy theorising as what evidence does Milne actually have that the 'middle class' protesters are somehow in league with the army and the remnants of the Mubarak regime ? Milne has none and simply inserts an ideological template for interpreting any future development in place of actual evidence.

Milne wants to portray the Egyptian revolution in class warfare terms, the masses against the 'pro-US state'. He simply ignores the division between the Islamist conception of democracy and the constitutional democratic one supported by many protesters.

The US has interests in the balance of power in the Middle East but it simply cannot control events in the way Milne wants his fans to believe. It's necessary to maintain this fiction so that if or when things go wrong it will be wholly the fault of the US.

No doubt the US will respond to events in Egypt if things spin out of control and that reaction will be judged on whether it is beneficial to Egypt or not. The Anglo-US response to Syria has been largely been malign and based on a form of messianic Cold War thinking towards Iran as an 'existential threat'.

The irony is that the radical left opposition to Anglo-US foreign policies is equally based on a form of Cold War thinking given that "anti-war" groups are full of ex-communists who cannot get over the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed and no longer acts as a "systemic alternative".

There are, in my opinion, many in Britain who oppose Anglo-US foreign policies on constructive grounds and would like to put pressure on the government not to totally ignore public opinion in being prepared to play dangerous power games in the Middle East.

But these voices of sanity are drowned out by noisy rabid fanatics who hijack that opposition to espouse positions that rationalise jihadi Islamist terrorism, see the US as a unique and cosmically Evil Empire and often support just any regime on the sole grounds it is anti-US.

It is Orwellian and makes intelligent discussion of events in the Middle East impossible, not least when the British government itself resorts routinely to justifying decisions by oily 'public diplomacy' and there are no confrontational or real debates over foreign policy in Parliament.

Ken Livingstone's Opposition to Thatcher is Based on Double Standards

Ken Livingstone's spleen against Thatcher is hypocritical given that he is on record as greasing up to China, to get more capital into London, by making an odious comparison with the Poll Tax Riots of 1990 with the Tianamen Square protests against a one party state.

The Poll Tax Riot contributed to the downfall of his enemy .Chinese protesters were protesting for the democracy the British take for granted. Given Livingstone is without any ethical sense when making such comparisons two conclusions are necessary.

1) Livingstone, as a 68er, believes in a faux cultural left politics of a sort that appeals to "identity politicians". That leads him inviting repellent Islamist ideologues as Quradawi to London just to get votes, despite this clerics illiberal views and detestation of the secular left.

2) Livingstone poses as being against Thatcher because she was ultra-capitalist and did not care for workers. Yet he seems to think Chinese state capitalism is quite a good thing.. No less than Thatcher, far more so in fact, Livingstone espouses authoritarianism.

Linvingstone is 'objectively pro-capitalist' ( to use a phrase, ironically, of the communist USSR he once was in symapthy with ) He supports the City of London's grotesque expansion and revolting buildings as The Shard ( built with UAE capital ).

Livingstone would regard this as "realism" just as he did when giving qualified support to the USSR.

"Red Ken" then opines,

"Thatcher's great friend Augusto Pinochet used machine guns to control labour, whereas Thatcher used the less drastic means of anti-union laws. But their goal was the same, to reduce the share of working class income in the economy"

No, but Arthur Scargill, whom Livingstone supported, was quite content to oppose Solidarnosc in Poland, a workers movement whose striking members in Bytom in Upper Silesia were shot dead. No word on that.

By all means Thatcher destroyed London governance by getting rid of the GLC. Yet Livingstone's policy of being sympathetic to the IRA alienated him too from electors across Britain.

Thatcher may have supported Pinochet , yet Livingstone gave qualified suport the the USSR, a state that over a period of under half a century murdered 20 milion people. Perhaps, Livingstone should re-evaluate his own myths before commenting on the myth of Thatcherism. He then states,

Labour will win the next election due to the decline in Tory support, which is even lower under Cameron than Thatcher. But Labour must come to office with an economic policy able to rebuild the British economy – which means a clean break with the economic policies of Thatcher

The policies are then what? Go ahead and explain then. Nobody wants more political cany about what Labour "could, should or must do" in rhetorical terms. The sort espoused by witless nonentities as Neal Lawson of the "Compass". think tank  How about a real set of concrete proposals drafted in ethical language.

As opposed to bland platitudes and windy drivel. Which was not the case in London's past. From the Leveller's in Putney, to Christian Socialist George Lansbury and Poplarism. Does it really need an anti-neoliberal Tory in the tradition of Cobbett and Dr Johnson to point that out ?

Why George Galloway is a Demogogue.

There is a tendency due to his publicity stunts and hyperbole to regard George Galloway, Repect MP for Bradford as a "character" and some sort of "working class hero " or voicebox for the oppressed Muslims of Britain ( never , of course,  those Muslims in less fortunate lands murdering one another in scores for reasons entirely unrelated to any actions of "the West" )

Now, as opposed to taking Galloway not-so-seriously, and as a mere joke, his various "positions" need to be explained for the entire notion of what he term the "Bradford Spring" of 2012 is important in it's feeble attempt to yoke together the disaffected in "the Muslim World" with Britain. This makes it no less farcical, of course, but his erstwhile followers tend to take themselves seriouslywhen they listen to and amplify  Galloway's propaganda riffs uncritically.

Galloway's  Respect, the very name being designed to appeal to the right on streetwise nature of disaffected British ' yoofs', shows that the entire political platform he stands on is a sort of shitty rehash of certain themes of 1960s anti-Vietnam counter-cultural rebellion. This is shown by the contrived nature of Galloway's politcal-cum-autobiographical book "I'm Not the Only One", a line taken from John Lennon's dire and dreary dirge "Imagine".

Bizarrely, for someone lauding a pacifist peace song one moment, he tends to extol violence. As when he commented on Sky News that the Israeli IDF were getting a "bloody good hiding" from Hizbollah during the conflict of 2006. Whatever the conflict's causes there, such language of lip smacking  aggression is both vulgar and unbecoming of honourable people. But it appeals to the brutal instincts of certain working class Muslims in gritty de-industrialised nothern mill towns and students.

Galloway is not much more than a rapacious political entrepreneur who saw a gap in the market for ideals vacated by the bland nonentities in Parliament as politicians became reduced to PR middlemen acting between Britain's dysfunctional casino economy, the "markets" and the people. By posing as being an extra-parlimentary activists yet within Parliament he can pose as an outsider to the new "politician-as-celebrity" trend so common in Britain today.

Unfortunately for his mesmerised fans, they seemed to have been largely unaware that Galloway is simply fiddling them as well no less. Only he has  carved out a career as a left-wing show jock demagogue that's hardly relevant to either being an MP nor a serious democratic reformer. But that's not important. In boring Britain, student SWP activists and deracinated Muslims are itching for outrage, the latter usually due to the low level of their education ( as is obvious too with their BNP rivals ).

After all, as already mentioned, politics itself has been downgraded to part of Britain's pathetic "entertainment economy" where MPs are little better, very often, than celebrities. Galloway has nothing radical to offer other than as selling political "passion" and "conviction", rolled around with the Scots accent to give an image of Red Clydeside radicalism. That radicalism used to be transfered to anti-imperial nationalists as the IRA ( as with the slimy newt loving ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone ).

George Galloway is a colossal demagogue. His position is essentially a crude populist version of old hard left Bolshevist propaganda tropes about "imperialism" wrapped up in Islamist draping and boomed out to those whose background and stunted semi-educated worldview absorb it as it appeals to their emotional resentments. In that way he has much in common with a number of journalists who harbour a colossal vanity to be lauded by "yoof" such as journalists John Pilger.

With the decline of universities and the expansion of mediocre institutions under the disastrous government of Tony Blair, mediocre students, often members od Islamic radical associations, simply do not engage in public life or discussion but amongst one another where anti-Western hatred is standard and the propaganda culled from the relevant cult gurus and passed around uncritically. Such individuals, simply by the fact they oppose bad foreign policies does not axiomatically make them right.

On the contrary it leads to those organisations controlled only a coterie of cretinous would be jihadists from places like Bradford and Birmingham whose fantasies of hate and outrage tie in with those of immature student activists simarly lacking in knowledge and ego security.As well as a dire education system that swelled the numbers of dimwits into the "polyversities who would have been better off sweating out their energies in grubby fast food chicken outlets.

The evident absurdity of Galloway's grandstanding on international politics to gain domestic Muslim votes is shown in the failure to take any sort of coherent position on Syria. The double standards of Britain's shoddy realpolitik in the Middle East is evident. But pointing out obvious double standards is not enough.

Not least, as George Galloway's double standards are often as flagrantly as bad , if not worse, than those he criticises and he has no position of moral superiority upon which to harangue the nation. True, he doesn't make decisions in foreign policy that can cause the sort of catastrophe Blair unleashed in Iraq. Yet propaganda, if it becomes commonplaces, can become very important. And blanket anti-Westernism is what Galloway has been instrumental in spreading

The facts are :not only that he has shown a demonstrated sympathy to the Soviet Union, a lethal ideological empire that crushed out the lives of millions, but his approach to the Middle East is a sham. For Galloway has been favourable to President Assad and his regime. Yet it is Allawite and against the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood has been anti-imperialist elsewhere and looked on sympathetically by the Muslim Association of Britain and elements of the Muslim Council of Britain. And these have provided key allies in Respect.

Now, the Respect Party has essentially aligned in solidarity with Hizbollah's struggle against Israel. Unfortunately for the Party Line, it gets complicated as Hizbollah is an ally of Iran which is supported by Assad's Syria. After the Arab Spring, the Muslim brotherhood is now powerful in Egypt and for the rebels. So anti-Western hatred can fuel any number of jihadists from jetting off to Syria to fight as "warriors".

So it's clear that though the entire Galloway Line is pure tripe, it is central in becoming a popular part of an uncritical and blind hatred of 'the West'. For the Leader of the "Bradford Spring" , one who laps up "Allah Akhbar " from his deranged mob like followers, is an erstwhile great admirer of Colonel Nasser of Egypt, a secular Arab nationalist whose position on Islamists was to have their leaders executed in the 1960s. Including Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual forebear of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida.

If British foreign policy is going to be criticised ( as it must for the follies, errors and bungling idiocy of it as regards Afghanistan, the "War on Terror" and Iraq ) it should come, at least, from organised groups of intelligent critics as opposed to a coterie of self-aggrandising cranks, pinheads, fanatic and zealots who want to profit from credulity and stupidity. The inability of public intellectuals and politicians to demolish with precise logic these inchaote positions of hatred is a form of ignorance.

Why the the Stop the War Coalition is a Fraud: Thoughts on the Response to the Syrian Civil War.

Given that conflicts across the globe often have complex origins, one of the besetting mental vices of progressive politicians in the West has been the tendency to believe that "humanitarian intervention" ( military action ) in nations from Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya can make the situation better rather than worse.

The additionally unfortunate fact is that groups that are supposedly claim to be maintaining an organised opposition to such military adventures consist of a narrow coterie of propagandists and ideologues. The Stop the War Coalition is just such a group think a simplistically anti-Western line somehow adds up to a coherent opposition.

Of course, the StWC is not one coherent organisation. It is, as the name suggests, a "coalition" of people who claim to be anti-war. The main thing their leading lights and members all have in common is that they are broadly "anti-imperialist". But this has often not turned out to be quite the case in practice.

For some leading formerly associated with showing admiration and sympathy for the Soviet Union, the largest Land Empire in history until it collapsed in 1991. George Galloway, a current Vice President called the end of the Soviet Union "the saddest day of his life". Well, he must have had a limited experience of life beyond his bleak and emotive viseral political rants.

Andrew Murray, who was the Chairman until 2011, was a card carrying member of the British Communist Party. By advocating a "Stop the War" they believe they are halting Western Imperialism and by "the West" it is largely the USA, and any nations that side with it. But he seems to be a rather simple minded ideologue with a sense of overinflated self importance.

Consequently, in the light of the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War since October 2011, the StWC has had problems in trying to "take a position" or "a stance" on a situation where Arab revolutionary militias  have sought to overthrow President Assad's dictatorship because it was never backed by the West.

In a very botched and confused way the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland attempted to criticise the StWC on these lines. Freedland claimed that the STWC were only interested in Arab casualties when the West could be blamed but had nothing to offer on Assad's forces slaughtering civilians.This was because there was no Western intervention in Syria.

This led StWC's Lindsey German to opine,

"Contrary to Freedland's claims that western intervention is nigh on impossible, the west and its supporters – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – are already directly intervening, providing arms and other military support"

This is not quite factually correct. The USA and Britain ( which is not "the West"-is Germany part of this policy of intervention) is not directly providing arms. It is Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are doing that as part of their proxy struggle against Iran. Whilst the US and Britain does nothing to prevent that it is untrue that it directly supplies arms as tet.

So whilst that foreign policy entails a tacit backing for a Saudi regime which has an undoubtedly far worse human rights record than Iran, that Saudi policy reflects its own geopolitical enmity towards Iran and less something "directly" created by "the West". The conflicts have their own long standing historical origins.

German goes on to write,

'The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya were all portrayedas helping the peoples of those countries. They have caused untold misery and extremely high death tolls. Stop the War campaigns to prevent the people of Syria suffering the same fate'

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq clearly made things worse. Yet if the STWC is to vaunt its "internationalist" stance, it can not ascribe the violence in Syria wholly to "Western intervention". For a start, the USA is not responsible for what Assad has done to his people: these conflicts have their own sectarian and ethnic origins prior to US involvement in the Middle East.

The regional realities of the Middle East have a dynamic of their own that exists independently of Britain and the USA.This is not something that comes out in what can only be termed the crude propaganda of the StWC which comes across as the ourpouring of those sorts of anorak clad neurotics who have most like frustrating jobs in high schools.

There are plenty of intelligent criticisms of the futility of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that do not dovetail with the hard left totalitarian school of cliched agitprop positions advocated by Murray and German. The most formibible comes from writers and intellectuals such as John Gray in his Black Mass

German moans "Freedland is wrong to say that Stop the War is "not active on Syria". We have held a number of public meetings and demonstrations on Syria and Iran, including a well attended fringe meeting at the Labour party conference which he seems to have overlooked". Well since they know little about the conflict who cares about what one hack thinks of another hack propagandist?

Anyway, hat does not add up to any position on Syria that takes into account the dynamics of the conflict as it is in Syria. The standard reflex of fitting the facts to fit a position already decided upon. That we shall go against any faction or movement in Syria that the USA could see as serving its interests ( i.e removing Assad ) if it benefits the USA

It is clear that Clinton and Hague's foreign policy is both messianic and bungling, calling for "Assad to go" ( effectively meaning "regime change" ) whilst threatening Russia and China that they will "pay a price" for not backing a policy of removing Assad, as is presumed to be the 'democratic will of the Syrian people'.

Yet the StWC offer nothing but platitudes and slogans on Syria as it is simply not interested in the fate of Syrians. That is fine if an isolationist stance is being taken in the way some anti-war conservatives do on the principle that it is a matter of indifference whether one group of foreigners slaughters another in a far off place.

But German does not take that line. She was at pains to deny that the StWC had been "active on Syria".

But the StWC theme is against western intervention in those countries, rather than taking a position about what is happening domestically. We take the view that it is for Syrians to decide what happens in Syria.

Yet if a military intervention is purely hypothetical, then the claim that Syrians can decide what happens in Syria amounts only amount to copping out of actually having any opinion on the crisis in Syria. In which case, until Britain does actively intervene, they should just be quit and try to learn some history.

The problem that SWP ideologues such as German are going to have with trying to "take a position" on Syria is that President Assad and his regime is Allawite and against the sunni Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood has been anti-imperialist elsewhere and supported by the SWP.

In turn, the SWP via the StWC and Respect ( at least until 2007 when it split from Galloway ) have all aligned themselves in solidarity with Hizbollah's struggle against Israel. Unfortunately for the Party Line, it gets complicated as Hizbollah is an ally of Iran which is supported by Assad's Syria.The absurdity is manifest in these muddled headed diatribes.

The Galloway line was always tripe anyway. For the Leader of the "Bradford Spring" is a great admirer of Colonel Nasser of Egypt and yet courted British Islamists ( including the MAB ) who were favourable to the Muslim Brotherhood which Nasser had crushed in 1966 having executed leading members.

If British foreign policy is going to be criticised ( as it must for the follies, errors and bungling idiocy of it as regards Afghanista, the "War on Terror" and Iraq ) it should come, at least, come from organised groups of intelligent critics as opposed ot cranks, pinheads, fanatics, zealots and platform demagogues.

German writes 'Their interests are hardly humanitarian...' This is hypocritical coming from someone who lauds the liberating role played by Leon Trotsky in the Russian Revolution. and who himself condemned the "slug humanitarianism' of Western liberals and those who rejected the possibility that any Workers Opposition in Russia could now remove Stalin's consolidated dictatorship.

So can German fails to explain how criticising the Western Powers for their lack of humanitarianism dovetails with the SWP venerating Leon Trotsky, a commissar responsible for mass bloodshed, eulogising terror, savagely crushing independent bloodshed, eulogising terror, savagely crushing independent workers organisations and helping to found the world's first totalitarian state.

When the StWC jettisons ideologues and cranks who are terminally incapable of admitting the Bolshevik Revolution was a a total catastrophe, and drops this doublethink version of "imperialism" in looking at the world simplistically in accordance with whether rebellions are 'objectively' pro-US or not, more might listen.

Britain stands in need of what AJP Taylor once termed The Troublemakers, those who challenged Establishment Foreign policy. But the opposition has to be based not on a one dimensional hatred of the USA as if that alone were the only basis for forming any sort of opinion about international relations.

Regrettably, only the cranks have a prominent platform to criticise British foreign policy, at least as far as organised protest movements are concerned. It is to be hoped a new generation of principled opponents to foreign misdaventures can emerge. These people, to borrow their hero's phrase, should be dumped in the "dustbin of history"

Oil wheels the Hypocricy of Politicians and the Public

On the subject of politicians being part of the 'entertainment economy', and being very shoddy players within it on the whole, it is interesting that on occasions a TV comedian can actually be more serious than those who are supposed not to be 'trivial' but dealing with weighty matters of state.

One article that caught my eye last year on Monday, 19 October 2009 in The Observer was one by David Michell called Oil wheels the Hypocracy of Politicians and the Public . On Iraq, Mitchell said,

....this kind of cynical foreign affairs wheeler-dealing gets a terrible press and causes public handwringing...."We only went into Iraq because of oil, you know." "We only appease Saudi Arabia because of oil, you know." To hear people talk sometimes, you'd think they never used oil.

Oil is vital and Britain hasn't got much of it. I hope it won't be vital forever but it certainly still is. There are worse reasons to fight or appease than the procurement of a necessity. If we went to war for food, I doubt anyone would blame us.

.I completely agree that this sort of cynicism is immoral. What I don't like is people claiming it's all the work of a few malevolent patricians – a self-serving ruling class getting off on their own acquisitive misanthropy – rather than a political community responding obediently to our loudly expressed democratic will.

Oil, trade, employment and money are important to us – and, by us, I mean we the people, not just they the politicians or business interests.

When there's a controversial war, some nice, middle-class people go on an organised weekend stroll. When petrol is too expensive, lorry drivers blockade the major roads and the country grinds to a halt. Our leaders would have to be fools to take the former more seriously than the latter.

But they're so craven, so much the creatures of our favour, that they'll let us hide from our own self-interest.

They indulge us in our belief that they're hypocrites, when in fact it's us. We live in comparative luxury, squeal like a stuck pig at the first sign of its diminution and blame the world's problems on politicians.

there are millions of us in .. being told we can have it both ways – reduced carbon emissions and cheap air travel, an enlightened policy towards the Middle East and affordable petrol, cuts in spending but not services – because we won't vote for anyone who doesn't

It's depressing that such a vital point has been made by a comedian, David Mitchell, whilst most serious journalists and activists, including John Pilger, never have the guts to confront the fact that protesting against wars and realpolitik for control of oil supplies is the only way to give 'The People' what they really think they want.

Democracy has been hollowed out in the West : without the consumer economy a significant number of Britons would demand Fascism if it meant the human right to drive a petrol guzzling SUV or fly to Prague to puke their guts up on Stag Night parties in Krakow, Prague, Riga, Bratislava and Tallinn.

This is partly because people are denied the information that would allow them to understand the world but not entirely. It's that when people are mollified by consumerism and entertainment divertions they need not thnk too deeply, not least if the reality is so frightening that it goes against the hedonistic pleasure ethos that drives the economy and society.

The 'Make Tea Not War' pseuds who protested against the Iraq War in February 2003 did so through their desire for collective narcissism, the hunger of bored consumers for something to stimulate their adrenals, to state 'I Was There' and not through any real belief that the political system must be changed.

Mitchell is an 'ironist' of the trendy 'alternative comedy scene but he's really touched a raw nerve here. Where are the George Orwell's who want to tell people that liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear ? That the quest for diminishing oil will lead to greater terrorist threat and the growth of a national security state.

Writers like Pilger and Chomsky blame the wars for oil on 'rapacious foreign policy' in such a way that is not challenging people to 'think differently' about the world's problems. It encourages the cosy view that only our governments are to blame and if 'we' change them the entire world will be better.

This is a stupefying myth,a parochial remnant of the Eurocentric revolutionary progressive tradition that fails to grasp with intractable problems like overpopulation, resource shortage, and global heating-for progressives these problems can be solved by human mastery and willpower, in overcoming global inequality rather than global numbers.

Mentioning that conflicts over oil are caused by every single person who demands an energy intensive lifestyle is usually written off by those who lack the courage to confront this threat to civilisation. Especially by the kind of doltish Jeremy Clarkson figure whose gung ho defence of the Great Car Economy is environmental imbecility. But he's just doing his job, I suppose.

For inequality to diminish economic growth must proceed apace. Poor people in Third World nations are not more inherently virtuous because poor. They are just poor and history shows that such people will be far more "materialistic" and demand to have a chance at becoming like the West.

More generally the moralistic outrage over conflicts over oil reflects guilt and bad faith, an inability to confront the true driving force behind the rising terror threat-that the West needs falling or stable prices for oil, the Middle East needs rising prices to feed its growing populace. This is going to be a source of war and instability in the 21st century.

Cocooned in wealth and consumerism with corrupt governments supported by the West ,its hardly surprising that Islamists will be intoxicated with hatred because Muslims have died in order that 'we' in the West might live better. If no amount of protest can change it, then only raising the blood price will.

Such are the emerging psychopathologies behind terrorism and the resentment which is the result of being overdependent upon oil in dangerously unstable regions in the Middle East and Central Asia. Revealing the hypocrisy of governments that prate human rights but practice realpolitik.

Oil like sex in Victorian times is the great unmentionable in polite political circles and shattering the taboo by doing the dirty on politics through suggesting 'they' are all corporate stooges rolling around in oil wealth is a projection on to them of the greed that the vast majority of Westerners demonstrate; hence the vitriol directed against Them.