Letter: Ban the ultra-right? (2006)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ban the ultra-right?

Dear Editors

I read your article titled “the case against censorship” (March Socialist Standard). I am also in favour of freedom of speech. It is true that Islamists and racists as individuals should be free to express their viewpoints and that atheists and socialists should also be free to criticise them by any unconditional means they find appropriate.

Islam’s “prophet” knew how to read and write and wrote the Qoran that reflects the tribal beliefs of barbarian Arabs who lived in pre-feudal socio-economic conditions but announced that was unable to read and write and that the “holy” book had been “posted” by god to his address in Saudi Arabia.

Racists deny equal rights for non “white” and non “English” citizens of this country and want to apply force and remove them from this bullshit country and also answer workers’ and socialists’ demands for the right of freedom of speech, press and organization by police force, jail, torture and murder exactly like terrorist Muslims. In other words, they both represent social forces that want to add more dictatorship to the present level of dictatorship of capitalists and their murderous suppressive British regime.

I think that those Islamic organizations that support and organize terrorist activity and also “white founded” organizations that preach for “white power” or even “English power”, should be banned from doing activity, since every year quite a few “whites” and a few more “non whites” are killed by these terrorist organizations.

When we can make workers accept that ultra right, whether it is Muslim terrorist or racist fascist, should not exist as an organization we would deprive the capitalist ruling class of the use of the ultra right to suppress the looming socialist revolution by using these ultra reactionary forces as its political and suppression machine representatives.

Siamak Haghighat,

London

Reply :

We are opposed to appealing to the capitalist state to ban any political ideas. It doesn’t work anyway.

– Editors

Islam: sigh of the oppressed (1987)

From the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The bloody conflicts of the Middle East have complex causes — economic, strategic, religious and racial. But there has been little attempt by the western media to try to understand the whole picture. Instead there is a tendency to attach simplistic labels — "extremists", “fanatics”, "terrorists"— But those labels tell us very little. They offer nothing in the way of explanation. Instead we are given partial pictures of the bits of the Middle Eastern conflict that it is assumed are of interest to the west — the humanitarian efforts of medical workers in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon; the naive attempts by Terry Waite to get western hostages released; the covert attempts by the American government to do deals with the Iranians.

But we are given very little that enables us to understand why Palestinians were under siege in refugee camps; why Israel invaded southern Lebanon; why armed groups are holding westerners hostage; why Islam is such a potent force throughout the Middle East; why Iran and Iraq are still engaged in a bloody war.

The Sword of Islam

Islam is the world's fastest growing religion. Five times a day 900 million Moslems turn towards Mecca and kneel down to pray. It is a religion closely related to both Christianity and Judaism. Indeed Mohammed is seen as the last and greatest in a line of prophets that includes Moses and Jesus. Until the resurgence of fundamentalist Islam it was a religion of no more political importance than any other. As Islamic countries developed economically there was increasingly a separation between religion and politics. Religion, as was the case in most developed countries. was something separate from business, trade and politics, an anachronism that fitted uneasily with the demands of modern capitalism, to be paid lip service to only on high days and holidays.

The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 changed that. Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran by exploiting the thwarted aspirations of the poor who had seen Iran grow rich under the Shah but were excluded from a share in that wealth. The Shah's close ties with the west — especially America — meant that it was easy for the Ayatollah to shift the blame for the poverty of the Iranian people on to the effects of western involvement in Iran. According to Islam westerners are infidels; according to the Ayatollah America is the "great Satan". In place of the huge disparity between rich and poor and decadent western culture the Iranian people were offered a revolutionary Islamic programme that combined religion with politics, the establishment of an Islamic republic with the Ayatollah at the helm. All Iran's problems would be solved, it was claimed, if there was strict observance of Islamic law. The inevitable failure of the regime to deliver the social justice that had been promised could easily be blamed on the vestiges of American imperialism.

Iran-Iraq Bloodbath

In 1980, shortly after the Iranian revolution, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq took advantage of the turmoil in Iran to settle outstanding Iraqi territorial claims (as well as historic Arab grievances against Iraq's Persian neighbour). Iraq invaded Iran at a time when Iran was weakened by purges of the army, minority uprisings and internal chaos, with the aim of recovering land along the frontier as well as regaining control of the strategically important Shatt al-Arab waterway. But what is essentially a territorial conflict has been hugely complicated by longstanding racial and religious hostility between the two countries.

Iraq is controlled by the Ba'ath party under Saddam Hussein. Ba'athism is a secular pan-Arabist ideology which has very few supporters inside or outside Iraq. Hussein maintains his position through the activities of ruthless internal security services. And the opposition is hopelessly divided: Kurdish rebels pursuing their own nationalistic goals in the north; disaffected Shias who are more in sympathy with the Iranian "enemy" than with the Ba'athist regime but who nevertheless fear the consequences of an Iranian occupation.

Iraq's intention was to administer a swift, sharp blow to Iran. Almost seven years later it is now obvious that the Iraqi regime seriously miscalculated the strength of the Iranian resistance. For Iran has managed to turn it into a "holy war" and has made slow but inexorable advances into Iraqi territory.

Despite Iraqi weapons superiority, Iran has managed to fight back by sending thousands of young Iranian fighters to the front in wave after wave. And there seems to be no shortage of volunteers willing to die a martyr's death and thus be assured a place in heaven. Khomeini has successfully used the war and the revolution to justify each other. But he has also painted himself into a corner. Iran is now seriously weakened economically by the war. There is a strong case for ending it. However, the Iranian leadership has consistently sought to justify the bloodshed as being a necessary sacrifice in a fight to the death in a holy war. It would be difficult for the Ayatollah to now enter into negotiations to end the war without doing serious damage to his credibility as a religious and political leader.

The American Arms Connection

Another problem that the Iranian regime faces is access to weapons. Prior to the revolution America had been Iran's main arms supplier. Now Iran gets weapons from Israel (despite the regime's official anti-Israeli stance), South Korea and Taiwan. And, as has become apparent in recent months, there have also been covert arms deals between Iran and America in return for the release of western hostages held in Beirut.

For the American administration. Iran's need for weapons was a weakness which they hoped to exploit in order to open up a channel of communications with Hojatolislan Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament and likely successor to the Ayatollah. He is seen by the west as a "moderate” with the potential to give the Americans a way back in to this economically and strategically important area. As we now know, American attempts to "normalise" relations with Iran went badly wrong. Not only has Reagan's credibility been badly damaged by the "Irangate" affair, but so too has that of the Iranian regime. If people in the west were scandalised at the hypocrisy of an American government which used emotional rhetoric about not doing deals with terrorists, then in Iran too there is a scandal in the making about the regime there doing deals with the "Great Satan". This has made it even less likely that the Iranians will risk further loss of face by negotiating a peace treaty with Iraq. In fact Khomeini has recently declared that his objective is to overthrow Hussein and the Ba'athist ruling party and also to capture Basra and the "holy" city of Karbala.

Flashpoint in the Lebanon

The seeds of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are well known. The consequences of that conflict have been bitter and wide-ranging but in recent years have focussed increasingly on Lebanon. Many Palestinians, dispossessed of their land, entered the Lebanon as refugees. Their presence in the south of the country and Israel's allegations that they were using bases there to launch guerrilla attacks on Israeli settlements in northern Galilee provided the justification for the Israeli army to invade Lebanon in 1982 with the declared aim of forcing the Palestinians out of southern Lebanon.

When the Israeli army entered the region Shia Muslim villagers welcomed them as liberators. For when the Palestinians had arrived from Jordan, they had taken effective control of the area. PLO checkpoints had been set up, taxes imposed and land taken away from the local people. The Shias also feared that the presence of Palestinians would lead them into conflict with Israel — a conflict which they didn't want. At first Shia villages had taken the Palestinians in as refugees. But by the time the Israeli army arrived the Palestinians had alienated the villagers who felt as dispossessed as the Palestinians themselves.

The Israeli army drove the PLO north as far as Beirut where they were trapped and finally surrendered; 14,000 Palestinian fighters went into exile. The Israeli army stayed on with consequences for the whole region.

Shia Resistance

The presence of an Israeli army of occupation in southern Lebanon and the brutality that was meted out to Shia villagers quickly turned the initial welcome into hostility and hatred. The Israelis raided their villages and Shias were killed. For them occupation by the Palestinians had been replaced by occupation by the Israeli army who maintained order with an iron fist, fearful that if they left the Palestinians would move back in.

In Beirut too, the Shias were caught up in the war between Israel and the PLO. Before they went into exile the PLO was holed up in the western part of the city. The Israelis indiscriminately blew up apartment blocks, killing PLO fighters as well as Shia civilians who had stayed in the war-torn city for fear that if they did not their homes would be taken over by Palestinians displaced by the bombing of refugee camps.

Israel had hoped that by eliminating the PLO from Lebanon their allies, the Christian Phalangists, could be restored to power in Lebanon. In fact in September 1982 the Christian President-elect. Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated. The new pro-Phalangist government of Amin Gemayel could only hang on to power with the support of the American-led multi-national peace-keeping force. But it was too late for them to wield effective political power — by this time Lebanon had disintegrated into a series of armed factions battling it out for political control.

By the time that Israel was finally driven out of Lebanon at the beginning of 1985 Lebanon had become a disaster area. The Israeli ruling class had realised none of their objectives: Israel's northern border was, if anything, less secure than it had been prior to the invasion. The PLO had been driven into exile in Tunisia but the Israelis now had a new enemy in southern Lebanon — the Shias; the Christian Phalangists had only nominal power and Israel's alliance with them had been discredited as a result of the horrific massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla by Phalangist forces, which the Israelis had done nothing to prevent. But it has been the resistance by the Shia militia, Amal. which has had the most lasting effect.

In their fight against the Israeli army of occupation the Shias in Amal have shown the same willingness to sacrifice themselves as had the soldiers in the Iranian army. Their tenacity had driven back the Israelis, inflicting the most significant defeat they had ever known. Furthermore, by 1984 Amal had taken to the streets of Beirut and had entered the battle for power between the Moslems and the Christians. Amal won control of West Beirut.

The influence and example of Iran on the Shia resistance is obvious as teenage boys and young men throw themselves willingly into the bloody street fighting around the Green Line which separates Christian East Beirut from Moslem West Beirut.

But for some Amal was not religious enough. They joined Hizbollah, the 'Party of God", the most extreme of the Islamic sects, which is fighting for an Islamic republic along the lines of that in Iran. Not surprisingly Hizbollah receives massive funding from Iran. It consists of small semi-autonomous groups which use a variety of different names, each taking responsibility for their own kidnappings and murders. Their attitude towards the west and Israel is uncompromising. It was Hizbollah which was responsible for the suicide bomber who drove into the American marines base killing 240 Americans and prompting their withdrawal. Since then there has been no shortage of willing volunteers for similar missions — young men willing to die as martyrs for the Islamic cause, Hizbollah, unlike some of the other Islamic groups, is not nationalistic. Its aim is nothing short of the creation of a world Islamic republic.

Syrian involvement in Lebanon

Syria has for a long time been a key factor in the Middle East. The regime of President Hafez Assad has an interest in keeping Lebanon divided. That way, it is hoped, it can be turned into a Syrian puppet state. As a result the Syrian government has cynically exploited the divisions, offering support to first one side, then another. Syria first intervened in Lebanon in June 1976 to prevent a coalition between the Palestinians and left-wing Lebanese which would have enabled them to secure an outright victory in the civil war.

The PLO has been based in Beirut since the late 1960s and, for the last 20 years, Syria has tried to curb Palestinian aspirations for independence while at the same time giving them support in their war against Israel. The Assad regime fears a fully independent PLO for two reasons. Firstly, they are scared that such a development might provoke Israel into attacking Syria. Secondly, they fear that the PLO might make a separate peace with Israel that would leave the Syrians out in the cold. For the Syrian ruling class, the "Palestinian Question" is much too important to be left to the PLO alone.

Syria withdrew its forces from Beirut in June 1982 — after reaching a ceasefire agreement with the invading Israelis. From then until Syria's return to Lebanon this year Assad had tried to achieve Syrian objectives there by means of support for various of the armed groups. In particular Shia Muslim groups are given logistical support by Syrian intelligence and Amal was encouraged to subdue and take control of the Palestinian camps. It was their failure to achieve this objective which led to the return of the Syrian army this year.

The War of the Camps

The Palestinians in the refugee camps of south Lebanon were those who had been left behind when the PLO was forced into exile. They include many women, children and old people. As the Israelis withdrew and the civil war continued, they were caught in the crossfire between the rival militias fighting to secure control of the rubble that was once Beirut. Amal's control of the area around the camps and their long-standing resentment towards the Palestinians led to the camps being laid siege to. The inhabitants were forced to live in appalling conditions of squalor and starvation, risking being shot at if they left the camp in search of food. It was this worsening situation which led to the return of Syrian troops. The refugees in the camps had no option but to accept the protection of the Syrian army.

The Bloody Reality of the Middle East

It is necessary to describe the shifting alliances, political manoeuvrings and shady deals of the ruling class in the Middle Eastern countries for an understanding of the complex web of war and politics in that region. But to do so gives little insight into the millions of lives that have been blighted through war, poverty, insecurity and fear or into the future of children who are growing up in an atmosphere of racial and religious hatred and bloodlust. Each piece of the complex Middle East jigsaw represents millions of scarred lives.

• The Iran-Iraq War is still going on. Hundreds of thousands of lives have already been lost; millions of people have been maimed for the sake of a small stretch of strategically important water and the political credibility of the leaders of the two countries. For this, ordinary workers are being sent in wave after wave to the front as cannon fodder.
• The Israeli invasion of Lebanon achieved nothing even in terms of the objectives of the Israeli ruling class. As well as lives being lost on both sides, the experience of life under yet another army of occupation has driven still more people into the bloody arms of Islam. And Israel continues to launch raids on South Lebanese villages claiming they are "terrorist" strongholds. It is often civilians — women and children included — who are killed.
• The PLO, newly reunited under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, is likely to launch a new campaign in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Guerrilla attacks in those areas will be met by mass arrests, detentions and deportations of Palestinians and pre-emptive and retaliatory strikes by the Israeli air force across the Lebanese border.
• Lebanon continues to be torn apart by civil war. Palestinians in the refugee camps are protected for the moment by Syrian troops, but the Syrians have no control over Hizbollah which is not fighting for control of West Beirut but for a world Islamic republic.

It is tempting to see the Middle East as inhabited by religious fanatics willing to die for causes that we have no understanding of. let alone sympathy with. But fundamentalist Islam has grown out of the same roots as evangelical Christianity in the United States and similar reactionary religious movements elsewhere in the world — discontent and alienation. That so many young people are willing to die as martyrs in the hope that they will then have the key to paradise says something about the misery of their lives here on earth. For the very countries where militant Islam has the most adherents — Iran, Egypt. Lebanon — are the very same countries where the ostentatious wealth of the minority is on display in the cities while the vast majority live in grinding poverty. It is not difficult to understand the anger and resentment that is caused. Neither is it difficult to see how that wealth and opulence, and the decadence and corruption that often go with it. comes to be identified with "the west". It is often the multi-nationals who own and build the luxury hotels that the poverty-stricken workers who built them will never have the opportunity to enter; foreign companies that exploit them in factories, mines and oilfields. And the ruling class is quick to adopt western lifestyles. Little wonder then that the poor are attracted to a religion that portrays the west as "the Great Satan" — bleeding the workers of the Middle East, imposing "their" alien and decadent culture. Little wonder that the deceptively simple solution of the establishment of an Islamic republic which promises justice and a restoration of traditional values and codes of behaviour, should seem attractive. As Marx wrote:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people.

But Islam, unlike opium, will not numb the pain caused by years of bloodshed.

Janie Percy-Smith

Blogger's Note:

Janie Percy-Smith's article also included the following informational material reproduced below in separate, standalone boxes.

Egypt

Although the Islamic revolution in Iran was successful, there had been similar rumblings in Egypt in the 70s. Ever since then Islamic fundamentalism has been on the increase, especially among the young, who are disillusioned with a system that has failed them and who harbour a deep-seated resentment which goes back to Nasser's accession to power in Egypt. Moslem militants helped him to power but, in his bid to create a modern state, Nasser crushed Moslem militancy. That resentment was increased by Egypt's defeat in the 1967 war against Israel. Moslem leaders saw that defeat as a punishment for the country's desertion of Islam.

Nasser was succeeded by Anwar Sadat who trod a tight-rope between his aim of building a modern capitalist state with the help of western investment, and his image as a devout Moslem, largely put on to placate the Islamic militants. A few Egyptians got very rich, but at the same time people were leaving the countryside which was no longer able to support the rapidly expanding population. They entered the cities in search of waged work and were condemned to live in poverty and squalor alongside the wealth that their labour had created. Islam seemed to provide a means for understanding their situation.

In 1977 Sadat cut subsidies on basic foods in an attempt to deal with the country's worsening economic situation. There were riots and Sadat was forced to back down Instead he took a gamble — to sign the Camp David Agreement with Israel — the enemy of Islam and the cause of Egypt's humiliation in the 1967 war. Under the agreement Jerusalem, which contained the third most important Moslem shrine, was to remain in Israeli hands. In return for the agreement America promised increased aid. But this did little to appease the fundamentalists who protested at what they saw as a sellout. Sadat responded by cracking down on the Moslem Brotherhood — the main Islamic group. As a result Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

Since then there have been no concessions made to the fundamentalists by Sadat's successor, Mubarak. Their protests have been met by repression which has served only to harden their determination. Islamic self-rule as in Iran is increasingly seen as the solution to all their problems and some groups, at least, are willing to use any means at all to achieve that objective.

The PLO

In April this year, while the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were still under siege in the camps in Lebanon, the Palestinian National Council (the highest policy-making body for the 4-5 million Palestinians scattered around the world) met in Algiers. In recent years the PLO has been divided by internal dissension and leadership battles. But Yasser Arafat, leader of the mainstream Fatah movement, and a shrewd political operator, successfully reunited the PLO under his leadership. However, in order to secure his position he had to make concessions to hardliners like George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. These concessions include the distancing of the PLO from Egypt's President Mubarak, considered to be too soft on the Israelis, an escalation in the armed struggle against Israel and the demand that the PLO have the sole right to represent the Palestinian people at any future international peace conference.

These concessions will make the holding of such a conference unlikely. Israel will not agree to sit down at a negotiating table with the PLO. Relations with Jordan — one of the prime movers behind the proposed conference — are now strained because of the more militant stance adopted by the PLO. Both Jordan and Egypt have already agreed that the PLO will not be invited to an international conference unless it first endorses UN Security Council resolution 242 which implicitly recognises Israel's right to exist. The PLO is unlikely to do this.

Israel

The invasion of Lebanon by Israel was a disaster not only in military terms but also in political terms. The official justification for the invasion defence of Israel's northern borders was not considered sufficient by many Israelis. The national consensus on defence, which had existed since the founding of the state of Israel, was broken. For the first time there was a significant number of Israelis who were willing to accept the consequences of being conscientious objectors in a highly militaristic country. There were demonstrations against the war and some of the demonstrators were army officers appalled at what they had seen in Lebanon. The news of the barbaric massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps and Israel's connivance in it increased the revulsion of some sections of the population against the war

But, while some Israelis are at last asking questions about whether "secure borders" are really worth the cost in human lives, there are others who are motivated by a religious fanaticism that bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Islamic fundamentalists. It is these right wing Jewish militants who regard Jewish settlement on the West Bank as necessary — whatever the cost. The Kach movement, led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, is a racist political movement which wants to expel all Arabs from the Jewish state. The right wing are a minority — but a minority that is increasingly attractive to many young Israelis disillusioned with the failure of the political solutions so far offered. Just as Islam offers its adherents certainty in place of ambiguity, simplicity instead of complexity, and a morally superior cause for which to fight, so too does right wing Judaism offer its adherents absolutes as well as a "Promised Land" of milk and honey instead of poverty and insecurity.

And that insecurity looks set to continue. For the last 30 months Israel has been ruled by a coalition government made up of the Labour Party under Shimon Peres, currently Foreign Minister, and the right wing Likud Party, under Yitzhak Shamir, currently Prime Minister. That coalition looks more and more fragile and is likely to break up over the question of an international Middle East peace conference as proposed by the United Nations. Peres is broadly in favour of participation in such a conference. Shamir is opposed. Like the population as a whole the government is divided on the question of “land without peace" or "peace without land". Those who defend the idea of a "Greater Israel" — including the right — are opposed to the idea that any of the land captured in 1967 — the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights — should be given back. The Palestinians are unlikely to agree to a solution which did not include at least this.

The Middle East Connection (2001)

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The first war of the 21st Century” was how Bush has described the events sparked off by the suicide –and murderous – attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on 11 September. A chilling reminder that, under capitalism, things are going to be no different this century than they were in the last. But Bush’s claim was not entirely accurate, since the attack on America that Tuesday was the continuation of a conflict that has been going on for half-a-century, irrupting from time to time in open warfare: the struggle for the control of the oil resources of the Middle East.

America didn’t share in the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War but managed to get a foothold in the Middle East with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1949 as a colonial outpost, a puppet state peopled and run mainly by European immigrants to serve as their proxy gendarme in the region. Rivalry between the Western powers continued – and still continues – throughout the period but fifty years ago they were joined by a new rival: a section of the local capitalist class. In 1951 the Mossadeq government in Iran nationalised the oil industry – and was overthrown in a Western-engineered coup. Then the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956 for nationalising the Suez canal, at the time the main trade route for bringing Middle East oil to western Europe. Then the Yon Kippur war of 1973 at a time the post-war boom was coming to an end and which helped accelerate this. Then the Gulf War, ten years ago, to take back the Kuwaiti oilfields which Iraq had grabbed from the West, a war which has continued ever since at a lower level of intensity with regular bombings of Iraq by US and British warplanes.

The conflict in Chechnya too had an oil dimension, since a planned pipeline to get Caspian Sea oil out westwards made control of Chechnya of strategic importance to Russia. In fact, the collapse of the Russian state capitalist empire re-opened the Caspian oilfields to Western penetration and control, bringing Afghanistan into the equation as a possible alternative route via Turkmenistan for a pipeline to get Caspian oil out without having to pass through Iran.

The West’s rivals for the control of the Middle East oilfields and the trade routes to get the oil out, as well as of the strategic areas and points to protect these, have been sections of the local capitalist class in the region. The ideology they used, to begin with, to get a mass following was an anti-imperialist nationalism which had a leftwing tinge and even employed a “socialist” terminology. This was the ideology of Mossadeq in Iran, Nasser in Egypt, of the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq and of the PLO in the 1970s.

It is still a significant political force but, since the 1980s, has more and more been challenged by Islamic fundamentalism as the ideology of those who want local capitalist, rather than Western imperialist, control of the oil resources of the Middle East. A key factor in this change was the triumph of the “Islamic revolution” in Iran in 1979. But not to be neglected is the influence of the long-established fundamentalist regime in Saudi Arabia which, while not anti-Western, used a part of its oil rents to wean Arab militants away from leftwing nationalism. This had been encouraged by America as part of its struggle with Russia for world hegemony. It is now a notorious fact that Osmana Bin Laden – a billionaire member of the extended Saudi royal family – was armed by America and sent into Afghanistan to fight against this country falling under Russian control.

That those who attacked America on 11 September should have been Islamic fundamentalists was therefore no surprise. This has become the ideology of many of those in the predominantly Muslim countries of the Middle East who want to wrest control of the oil resources of the region from the West for the benefit of local capitalists.

The West’s reaction has been revealing. A grand coalition is being organised to combat “terrorism”. But not terrorism in general. The Western powers are not concerned about the Tamil Tigers or ETA or the IRA or the various South American guerrilla groups. They are out to get Islamic fundamentalist terrorism because this is the rising ideology of their rivals for control of the Middle East oilfields. This, not terrorism in general, is the threat to the supply of this key resource. Russia has no problem in joining this coalition since its oil supplies too have been challenged by the same movement, as in Chechnya.

The one accurate thing Bush, Colin Powell and the US media have said about the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon was that it was an “act of war”. It was. The latest act in the 50-year struggle for the control of Middle East oil. This of course is not how they see it, or rather, how they present it. For them it is an attack on “civilisation” and “freedom-loving people everywhere” and (Blair’s favourite) “democracy”. It is appalling, virtually unbelievable, that any human being would hi-jack an airliner full of people and deliberately fly it into a tower block where thousands more worked. It is also true that the establishment of Islamic States everywhere would undo the Enlightenment and plunge the world back a thousand years (and has done so in Afghanistan). But this is not the issue.

The Islamic fundamentalists who flew those planes would indeed completely suppress freedom of thought and speech and replace ruled by elected politicians by the rule of ignorant and obscurantist priests, but those who trained and sent them weren’t attacking America because it was “democratic”. They would still have attacked America even if it had been a fascist dictatorship or a Christian theocracy.

Socialists of course appreciate the existence of secular, political democratic forms, limited as we know they are, and wouldn’t want to see these replaced by an Islamic State. But “democracy” as an ideology is something different. It is based on the idea that everybody living under a democratic state (as a state allowing the election of certain state officials) share a common interest. This is a lie that socialists challenge.

Under capitalism, whatever the political form, society is divided into two classes with conflicting interests: those who own and control the means of production and the rest of us who have to work for them. This is not changed if the excluded majority are allowed to vote for those who run the political side of capitalism – and who define the “common interest”, inevitably since they are governing on behalf of the capitalist class, as in fact the interest of that class.

What Blair and the others call “democracy” is not genuine democracy, which can only exist in the classless context of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Their democracy is the inevitably limited and narrowly political democracy that is the most that can exist under capitalism. But, in any event, it is not even this stunted, political democracy that is at stake. It is oil.

So, the line-up in the next – military – episode in the continuing struggle for control of the oil resources of the Middle East is, on the one side, a section of the local capitalist class using Islam to rally mass support and, on the other, the Western capitalist powers using “democracy” as their ideology to win mass support for war. But “Islamic State” versus “Democracy” is only the ideological smokescreen disguising the real issue at stake: control of oil resources and trade routes. It is not an issue worth the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood.

As Socialists we declare our opposition to both sides in this war and call on the working class of the world to unite to bring capitalism to a rapid end so that no more lives are sacrificed to further the economic interests of rival sections of the world capitalist class.

Adam Buick

Unholy Wars (2001)

Book Review from the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unholy Wars – Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism by John K. Cooley (Pluto Press, 299 pages)

 

This new edition of a book first published in 1999 provides a first rate insight into the US relationship with militant Islam during and since the Cold War and provides much ammunition for those holding to the line that in supporting the likes of Osama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the US was indeed sowing the seeds of a bitter harvest reaped on September 11th 2001.

The USA did not only support those opposing the Soviet forces in the Afghan War, forming a deadly and unholy alliance with militant Islam in the process, it very much instigated the war. When President Carter signed a directive for covert support for the enemies of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul in July, 1979, he was informed that do so would lead to Soviet intervention. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, would comment: “We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we consciously increased the probability that they would do so . . . This secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap.” He later wrote to Carter: “Now we can give the USSR its own Vietnam War.” (p. 19)

The US support for the mujahedin and other groups would turn out to be phenomenal. Billions of dollars were pumped into the Afghan cause and thousands of Islamic zealots were given specialist training in the US and Britain.

As Cooley observes: “In the United States they experienced tough courses in endurance, weapons use, sabotage, and killing techniques, communications and other skills. They were required to impart these skills to the scores of thousands of fighters who formed the centre and the base of the pyramid of holy war.” (p. 81)

The training of the warriors of jihad not enough, the CIA also promoted drug trafficking in Afghanistan, one result being that the trade found easy access into the Soviet Union and helped destabilise civil society there. Moreover, “Nowhere did the growing addiction to locally-produced drugs, encouraged by those in the CIA…wreak greater havoc than in the Red Army…on an even larger scale than the addiction of American GIs during the Southeast Asian wars.” (p.5)

And of course there was the oil. One reason why the US nurtured the Taliban was that American oil companies wanted to build an oil pipe-line from Central Asia, through Afghanistan, to the Indian Ocean. It was hoped, states Cooley,, “…that the Taliban, once in control, would be a security blanket. It would be able they conjectured, to secure the truck highways and eventually routes for oil and natural gas pipe-lines.” (p. 147)

In this updated edition of the 1999 publication, Cooley brings his topic up to date with an insight into the Bin-Laden-linked international terrorist network, as well as providing information on the post 1999 Pakistani coup.

For the socialist there is much in Unholy Wars we can use in the battle of ideas, revealing the lengths the US will go to, and the stinking depths it will plummet to secure its own ends, regardless of the cost of life. Where there is profit to be made, where US interests are challenged, nothing is sacred. People, no, whole nations are there to be manipulated.

John Bissett

Editorial: Bombings, Bombers and a Bomb (2005)

Editorial from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent traumatic events in London provide a poignant reminder of the depths of anger,  frustration and outrage simmering beneath the outward demeanour of many people who are leading apparently normal lives.

When such extreme acts of violence,with their tragic repercussions, happen so close to home, they understandably impinge more acutely on our consciousness  and touch us in a far more personal way. Straightaway our thoughts become crowded with the names and faces of any family or friends who might possibly have been travelling near the affected area and we anxiously seek assurance of their wellbeing.

Fortunately such barbarous occurrences remain comparatively rare in London or the other major cities of Western Europe but in some parts of the world, alas, they are an almost daily experience. Any half-decent, sensible human being quite properly deplores the invidious, misguided zeal – be it personal, political or religious – that spawns such a terrible, unreasoning thirst for bloody retribution in the name of whatever injustice or absolute truth. Political leaders, of course, waste no time in making a sanctimonious response by roundly condemning the “evil terrorists” and “brain-washed fanatics”.

Doubtless their perception of the public mood is accurate but the weasel words of politicians assuming the high moral ground are an unwelcome encroachment. They intrude upon the very real sympathy and feeling of support we reserve for the victims of such atrocities by inducing another kind of feeling altogether: one of profound nausea.

The breathtaking hypocrisy with which these serial perpetrators of ultimate, officially sanctioned, state violence, denounce those who, unofficially, pursue similar tactics – which, though horrendous, are on a far small scale – is truly stomachchurning.

They uniformly assert that only warped minds, with a callous disregard for human life, would deliberately choose to detonate bombs in an environment (such as a tube train) specifically selected to cause the most damaging effects and indiscriminately kill or injure the greatest possible number. And without giving any prior warning. And in the rush hour when the maximum number of people would be exposed.

State-approved violence has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths. The ethics of “legitimate” or “just” war have no bottom line. If there ever was such a bottom line, the saturation bombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, generating the new military tactic of fire-storms, certainly plummeted below it. These raids resulted in vast numbers of victims exceeding by far any previous tally.

Sixty years ago, this month, on the 6th August 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was virtually flattened – unnecessarily – by a single atomic bomb carried by a single plane. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The city of Hiroshima was specifically selected (though obviously not by warped minds with a callous disregard for human life) as a target with an environment likely to cause the most damaging effects and indiscriminately kill or injure the greatest possible number. Many of its buildings were composed of paper, wood and straw. Mock-up structures built from similar materials had earlier been erected in the Utah desert for testing incendiary potential. Also, Hiroshima had been spared any previous aerial bombardment so that the precise effects of the explosion could be determined. The bomb was dropped at 8.15 am, without prior warning. In the rush hour when the maximum number of people were exposed. The official recorded number of deaths from the bomb is 186, 940.

The London bombings: recruiting killers (2005)

From the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s not hard to see military recruitment going on. American comic books have full page adverts exhorting readers to become an ‘Army of one’.  Documentary-makers have followed US recruiters visiting poorer neighbourhoods offering education, prospects, a future.  In the UK on high streets, recruiters put up boards showing abseiling, skiing, diving – anything other than riddling another human being with bullets or shrapnel. 

The army has historically been a way out for the poor and powerless.  A source of empowerment (or at least of feeling that someone somewhere is in control), of belonging, of being part of a corporate body and a story of positive action and values.

It’s a tragic irony of humanity that the statues and memorials for military murderers are almost invariably bigger, better and more splendid than others.  Battles – like Trafalgar – are commemorated, whereas anniversaries on the first use of anaesthetic would pass us by unmarked except by ultra-enthusiasts. 

The glorification of those who die in battle is a near constant of any military society.  London is disfigured with a war memorial dedicated ‘To the glorious dead’ – as if there was ever anything glorious about a nineteen-year old boy hanging on the barbed wire.  To die nobly is often rewarded with a Victoria Cross.  Dying in action is always referred to as sacrifice, a gift from the soldier to the community.  For the First World War, Felicia Hemans’ The boy stood on the burning deck, a poem about a young sailor dying at his post, was used in recruitment drives in this country.

The actions, then, of the four young men, three of them from Leeds, in callously slaughtering over fifty fellow humans, are not so alien as some would think at first.  Shehad Tanweer,  Hasib Hussain, Mohammed Sadiq Khan, from Leeds, were all described by their stunned friends and relatives, as perfectly ordinary, nice and polite young men.  Not bug-eyed ranting fanatics.

The psychological hunt has begun to understand their motives – experts in terrorism discuss how suicide murderers require a wide support network to cajole and reassure them, assist them and point them in the right direction.  People look to fanatical Islamic preachers, or the visits to Pakistan made by some of these boys when their families thought they were going off rails – trained in one of the Madrassa theological schools there.

The West Yorkshire metropolis – like many post-industrial northern towns – has deep cultural divisions.  These were exposed some years back in 2001 with the Bradford riots, after which there were claims that the local Asians who turned out to fight against fascists were given disproportionate sentences.  The communities live in the same towns, but do not mix, and so distrust is sown between white-skinned and brown-skinned workers’ families.  Otherwise sensible people will tell tales of the shocking conduct of the other community.

These areas are scenes of depoliticisation – Leeds and Bradford have some of the lowest turnouts in elections.   The area of Leeds that Tanweer was from has almost double the unemployment of other parts of the city.  He himself left school with virtually no qualifications. 

Relatives and friends talk of how young men who come back from Pakistan are shocked by the poverty they witness there.  Others have talked of how it is not difficult to feel solidarity with the people they identify with – with Muslims who are oppressed in other parts of the world.  They can draw a line between that poverty and oppression and their own experiences.  It is not beyond wit or reason to see how these young men might become inclined to join up.

All it requires then is someone wealthy enough, organised enough to provide them with training and hard-to-come-by chemical explosives and equipment.  Someone ruthless enough to be willing to send suicide murderers into crowds of people totally unconnected to their grievances simply to send a message to the powerful.  Although it is unlikely the London attack was directly the responsibility of Saudi Arabian capitalist Osama Bin Laden, the profile of the leadership of the Islamic movement is very much one of aspirant, educated, relatively wealthy men from frustrated elites across the Arab world.

Just as rulers and wannabe rulers throughout the ages have used religion as a motivator, to provide the appearance of a common cause between them and their potential recruits, so too do the modern day variety, attempting to build a coalition of people from many different backgrounds based on the historical experience of islamic culture.  Incorporating their local grievances into a single paranoiac cloth whereby America, Zionists and ‘crusaders’ were the cause of all ills was an integral part of that project.

The left – monomaniacal as ever – see this as ‘the violence of the oppressed’, as objectively anti-imperialist.  After the London bombings, the Socialist Workers Party studiously avoided condemning them. A chorus has gone up that Britain should change its foreign policy, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, to stop us being targets.  This of course is no real solution – the war would go on if not here in other parts of the world – and young Yorkshiremen would travel to other parts of the world to join this fight.  Terrorist insurgency is not an instinctive reaction to injustice, but a policy choice both for footsoldiers and generals alike.

Religion is the heart’s cry of the oppressed, soul of a soulless world, it inspires utopian and thus reactionary politics.  It cannot be stopped by suppression, harassment, the silencing of radical preachers – that would only aid and abet the feeling of persecution. It must be defeated by reason, by practical action to demonstrate that there are prospects for taking control of their own lives. 

This means an open movement desperately needs to be built to create a real prospect of change, not just in the UK but in the world.  We cannot rely on military force, or the state, the great and the good bullying moderate Muslims to speak out, it needs to come from the massed ranks of workers, set on using their creative industry to take real control of the world around us.  An end to oppression, and an end to ambitious elites using human corpses as stepping stones to wealth and power.

Pik Smeet

Material World: Proxy warring in Syria (2020)

The Material World Column from the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month’s Socialist Standard focused upon Turkey’s policy to grab a share of the Eastern Mediterranean gas fields. Turkey, once called the ‘sick man of Europe’, is endeavouring to confirm its role as a regional power. In the chaos of Syria, Turkey has been an active participant.

Recently there have been incidents where Turkish troops suffered numerous casualties caused by the Syrian government, which led to Turkey retaliating.

It was clear that working people in Syria started the uprising against the Assad regime because of the lack of freedom and social justice, the prevailing corruption and discrimination. Life for the majority was dismal with low incomes, a rising cost of living, homelessness, and unemployment, which all served to spark Syria’s ‘Arab Spring’. However, foreign powers and various Islamic jihadists became involved and changed the direction of the people’s uprising. The popular protests were diverted by neighbouring rulers into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Turkey with the support of the US and Western nations on one side with Assad’s government, Iran and Russia on the other. The Syrian civil war proceeded to develop into a series of sieges.

Way back at the beginning of Syria’s civil war, Turkish authorities facilitated the involvement of the Islamists by permitting the infiltration of jihadists into Syria via its borders. It also allowed commandeered oil that financed ISIS/ISIL operations to be transported through Turkey to be sold on the world market.

As the Syrian situation escalated it resulted in the mass movement of refugees, with Turkey hosting millions of displaced Syrians fleeing for safety. Turkey is also the route for refugees to reach Europe and it entered into an agreement with the EU to stem the flow of refugees. These desperate and vulnerable people have now become political pawns used by Turkey with Greece now ignoring international law and slamming the doors shut in the faces of refugees.

At first the Kurdish independence movement tried a third way in that it would side neither with the regime nor with the opposition. It would defend itself, but it would not wage war. Starting in mid-2012, various places in the Kurdish areas were one by one freed from Assad control. When Kurdish separatists created an autonomous region, Rojava, this was seen as a direct threat to the rule of Turkey and it led to a direct invasion of Syria to neutralise the PYG/PKK (Kurdish People’s Protection Units/Kurdistan Workers’ Party). It meant a military stand-off with the US who inserted its forces within the Kurds’ defences to assist the Kurds in combating the Islamist terrorists. This ended when Trump re-deployed US forces to secure Syria’s oil fields and it left Turkey along with Syrian mercenaries with a free rein to launch an assault against the Kurds who quickly then looked to the Syrian government and its Russian mercenaries for protection.

Added to this complex situation is the current Syrian regime’s advance to retake the last rebel-held territory in the country, the province of Idlib which is under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate. Turkey is backing these anti-Assad rebels. This has brought Syria and Turkey into direct conflict and created a possible confrontation with Russia. If the Syrian government is victorious, there will be a new flight of refugees fleeing towards the safety of Turkey increasing the refugee burden Turkey already carries.

But Turkish military expansionism has not stopped the UK from selling Turkey weaponry. The UK has licensed sales of military equipment to Turkey worth more than £1bn since 2013, according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, principally aircraft, helicopters, drones, grenades, small arms and ammunition. Leading armament manufacturers BAE Systems and TAI were awarded with an Open General Export Licence that makes the flow of weapons to Turkey easier. It wasn’t until October 2019 that the UK government halted new sales of weapons to Turkey while still honouring existing arms contracts.

In fact the world’s arms traders – the ‘merchants of death’ – are literally making a killing out of this war, with those in Turkey and Russia being able to test their weapons under battlefield conditions.

ALJO

Background to terrorism (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jenny Tonge MP, of the Liberal Democrats, was sacked from her front bench position for claiming she understood why militant Palestinians were carrying out suicide attacks against Israel, and for further suggesting she might have become a suicide bomber if she had been living for decades in a refugee camp. The Prime Minster’s wife, Cherie Blair, over a year ago, made a similar attempt to understand Palestinians, to equal outrage from the capitalist authorities and media here and in Israel. It was said Tonge’s comments were unacceptable and incompatible with liberal principles. Capitalists who support, or at the least are silent on, the terrorism of the CIA and the Israeli State were delighted she was disciplined. Tonge’s attempt to understand, we were told, amounted to tacit support for suicide bombers, which would also encourage them to continue or even step up their campaigns of terror. It seems therefore that people are not to understand the ugly side of our world or try to explain why humans behave as they do within the capitalist mode of production, for fear they might be seen as an apologist or even as encouraging the ugliness to continue. To explain and understand our world is a vital process to the progression of human society, a custom that socialists practice constantly and encourage fellow-workers to do too.

Right now the world is suffering from international acts of terrorism at a level unprecedented in recent times; hardly a day goes by without an act of terrorism – or certainly the threat that one might occur. Of course, there might well have been an overwhelming focus on terrorism by the media here since ‘9/11’ and in response to the campaign against terrorism feigned by both the US and Britain. One may observe, though, that threats of terrorism are more often reported than actual acts committed. We also observe, that the notorious three B’s (Bush, Blair and Bin Laden) are on a tirade of death and destruction the world over in their pursuit of power and wealth.

Now, a one-sided view of terrorism would suggest that terrorism is perpetrated by small groups in the shadows of society who make strange and uncompromising political or religious demands of the world, demands which “we” – the civilised and satisfied members of society – could not possibly meet and continue our present lifestyles. A more complete view might reveal that as well as the above groups, the uncivilised, terrorism itself is carried out by other groups in society who might be considered civilised. There are in society non-violent as well as violent forms of terrorism. In a sectarian society such as capitalism we have a variety of groups with specific interests to defend and promote: capitalists, gangsters, governments – chiefly among the latter, the United States of America through its international agent the Criminal Intelligence Agency. In addition, workers on a “work-to-rule” or out on “strike” might be viewed by capitalists as conducting terrorism, as would anti-Globalisation anarchists who are good at wrecking the world and building nothing.

The workers can however hit back even harder in their criticism of the capitalists. Over and above the terrorism conducted at home and abroad by their various State agencies and proxies, we can point to the various acts of terrorism which are the everyday activities of capitalists and which they undertake with the same vigour and coldness as Osama bin Laden for his cause. The pitiless use of unemployment; the reckless trashing of means of production and finished products (commodities) in times of economic crises; the callous wrecking of the environment; and the dumping of chemicals onto land, into the sea and the air. Furthermore, we can see the destruction of the human frame with use by the capitalists of cheap and inferior quality (junk) foods which are also full of chemicals unnecessary for human nutrition. We are witness to the decimation of wild life for their skins, tusks and other body parts for erroneous medicines and freakish commodities to eat, to wear and to embellish our homes and workplaces with. Finally, we can further elucidate the stinting of human emotions and potentials for creativity, leisure and happiness among workers in general by the relations provoked by the capitalist mode of production and the deleterious affects that it has on all aspects of our lives. Indeed, here we get to the crux of the matter – the actual cause operating in given circumstances to produce all the terrorism in human society – an economic system of society based on perpetual war and competition between individuals, businesses and countries – capitalism.

The groups contemplating acts of terrorism of the violent kind generally take their cue from the tactics of their State enemy who have engaged in acts of terrorism against them or their people. In the case of Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden his enemy trained and set him up in business.

Acts of terrorism by small groups like Al-Qaeda are in response to their warped rationale. This unfortunately suggests to these groups that the only way they can place their arguments for discussion onto the local or world agenda is to kill people and destroy property. Here the media, who love to shock and scare us, duly aid the rise of the political/religious thug. Can anyone, even among the keenest political minds, truthfully say that they had ever heard of Osama bin Laden and his demands before 9/11? Now thanks to his outrages and as a result, his western notoriety – indeed, his world fame – his views of the world are truly worldly in the sense that there is hardly anyone on the planet who has not heard of him – he has his public voice. ‘Oh yes, I love it, when a plan comes together’, says Osama.

To promote violence and war in bourgeois society, a society based on perpetual war, is not too difficult for it is a violent society by its nature. Governments, religious authorities, most political parties, businesses and media institutions, all accept the need for violence in society to settle or solve particular problems, which our chaotic capitalist world throws up as the various protagonists go about their daily business of making a killing. Here the resulting relations suggest to humans that fighting and violence is a legitimate way to settle disputes. In the United States, eleven thousand individuals are killed every year, and that is just with firearms; the country promotes the death penalty at home and funds generously organisations that promote violence worldwide and act as their proxies in particular battlefields too dangerous for American soldiers for particular causes and interests dear to them.

Not all minorities with strange or unusual demands who are denied what might ideally be considered fair treatment by the media resort to violence. We in the Socialist Party, ready to celebrate our 100 years as a party in relative obscurity, know all too well about media attention – or precisely, the lack of it. While socialists have no time for terrorism or violence, and maintain that there will always be violence in a society founded on violence, we can understand the frustrations of political groups who cannot get access to the mainstream debate. Those who live in the US or Europe are told they are lucky to live in a democracy and are able to speak out against the excess of governments and private enterprise. We remember, though, top American news anchor Dan Rather complaining that one could not speak out against American foreign policy in the days, weeks and months after 9/11, and we further remember a majority of people in Britain being against the war over Iraq and it still going ahead.

The aim of Al-Qaeda has nothing to do with a “clash of civilisations”, as some have suggested. Instead, it is merely a tactic to force members of the “host country” (the country they seek to influence by acts of terrorism) to listen to their demands and to pressurize their governments not to do what irks them and to leave them be to set their own standard of life, in the part of the world where they live. Others have also suggested that the West gets only what it has asked for by interfering in other countries: why, so the logic continues, can we not accept the fact that a nation or people are likely to defend “their” country when we are supposed to stand up and defend “ours”? Well, welcome to capitalism. The capitalists who have something to gain (oil and huge reconstruction contracts in Iraq) do not take the risk and are generally protected against acts of terrorism, and do not fight on the battlefield. Unhappily, on all occasions, we the proletariat are the class who fight and die for others’ profits.

As long as we have capitalism, that is, competition and contest between capitalists and capitalist states, buying and selling, land grabbing for profits and other gains, which leads to bulling, threatening, spying, open hostility, conflict, terrorism and open military war, we will never be free of violence and terrorism.

William Dunn

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jenny Nicholson is tired of hearing how the poor are poor because they make poor choices. Let’s see what kind of choices you make when it’s your turn to be flattened by the economy. That’s the idea behind Spent, an online game Nicholson created to challenge popular misconceptions about poverty. Play it at www.playspent.org.

[LINK]

#    #    #    #

Some children in the North [of China] live ferally: they are known as kotjebi, or “fluttering swallows”, and roam in packs. When they cannot steal in the markets, they eat dead dogs and rotten food (reportedly chewing toothpaste in the belief that it prevents food poisoning).

[Dead Link]

#    #    #    #

A typical prize for a children’s contest might be a backpack, a lunchbox or maybe some toys. But not in Somalia. Over the weekend, a Somali radio station run by the Shabab, the most powerful Islamist  militant group in the war-ravaged country, held an awards ceremony to honor children who were experts at Shabab trivia and at reciting the Koran . The prizes? Fully automatic assault rifles and live hand grenades.

[LINK]

#    #    #    #

What makes individual stockbrokers blow billions in financial markets with criminal trading schemes? According to a new study conducted at a Swiss university, it may be because share traders behave  more recklessly and are more manipulative than psychopaths:

[LINK]

#    #    #    #

A Saudi Arabian ministry statement carried by the state news agency, SPA, stated that Abdul Hamid al-Fakki “practiced witchcraft and sorcery,” which are illegal under Saudi Arabia’s Islamic sharia law. Al-Fakki was beheaded in the western city of Medina on Monday, the interior ministry announced:

[LINK]

#    #    #    #

Mr. Daisey’s trip to Shenzhen, China, where he posed as a wealthy businessman to infiltrate factories where Apple products and other electronics are made. He says he witnessed inhumane conditions and interviewed workers outside of factories who said they were as young as 12.

   ‘What was shocking to me was the level of dehumanization built into the systems that have been put into place by American corporations in collusion with suppliers…… There’s a hunger in very controlling companies like Apple to create planned obsolescences sooner rather than later, so it will become more and more difficult to stay functional’:

[LINK]

#    #    #    #

Eight in 10 British workers are overweight or living with long-term illnesses that limit their productivity, according to early findings of a 25-year study of people’s wellbeing:

[LINK]

#    #    #    #

Tobacco companies knew that cigarettes contained a radioactive substance called polonium-210, but hid that knowledge from the public for over four decades, a new study of historical documents revealed:

[LINK]

The Love of Gods (2012)

The Halo Halo! column from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The thing that convinces people that their religion is true, is that the more they study it the more they realise that God hates the same people as they do”. So runs an old witticism and it’s probably true in many cases.

Another is, “The difference between philosophy and religion is that philosophy is questions which may never be answered, and religion is answers which may never be questioned”. Quite amusing, but the intolerant nature of gods (and their believers) whose answers cannot be questioned is extremely dangerous.

Take the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. By the time you read this she may well be dead. And if she is not it is probably because the bigoted, religion riddled, foolish old men who interpret Allah’s wishes in Iran can’t decide how to kill her.

In 2006 she was convicted of being an accessory to her husband’s murder although her confession, some human rights activists believe, was made under duress. She was given 99 lashes and jailed for ten years. She was then convicted and sentenced to be stoned to death for conducting an illicit relationship outside marriage, a charge, which, says Amnesty International, she denies. One of her lawyers Houtan Kian is in jail after speaking to the media. Her other lawyer, Mohammed Mostafaei, was also arrested and forced to flee. He now lives in Norway.

After an international outcry by various human rights groups, Malek Ajdar Sharifi, head of judiciary in East Azerbaijan, said she may escape stoning because her prison did not have the “necessary facilities” to carry it out. “There is no rush” he said. “Our Islamic experts are reviewing Ashtiani’s sentence to see whether we can carry out the execution of a person sentenced to stoning by hanging instead”.

It’s not only in Iran, of course, where Allah’s words and answers must never be questioned. In Derby, as this column is being written, five men are on trial for allegedly handing out leaflets calling for gay people to be killed. One of the accused told police that the leaflet, which suggested three different ways to kill gay people, simply expressed what Islam says about homosexuality and it was his duty therefore, as a Muslim, to condemn it. (Guardian 11 January).

Of course Islam doesn’t have the monopoly on religious hatred. In December there were clashes in the town of Beit Shemesh in Israel between secular and moderate Jews on one side, and an ultra-orthodox group known as ‘Haredi’ on the other.

The Haredim have been demanding enforced gender separation on public transport, in shops and in medical centres, and a ban on women soldiers taking part in singing and dancing events organised by the army.

What really upsets the Haredi men though, and has led them to spit, and shout “whore” and other insults at a group of females, is their “immodest” style of dress – knee-length skirts and tops with sleeves to the elbow. The females concerned are girls as young as six whose school happens to be next to an ultra-orthodox enclave.

NW

Rear View: Return to hell (2016)

The Rear View Column from the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Return to hell

We the 99 percent suffer worldwide, but in some areas more than others. Haiti could reasonably be described as hell on Earth. 2010’s earthquake and tsunami killed more than 160,000 and displaced up to 1.5 million people. More recently, the UN-caused cholera outbreak killed thousands and hospitalised hundreds of thousands. During this time hundreds of women and underage girls traded themselves for food and medicine. The Red Cross avoided killing anyone but after raising half a billion dollars built just six homes – about as effective as using a Band Aid on a tumour. Last month, over 900 lives were lost when a hurricane struck. So why is Haiti so prone to such disasters, UNnatural or otherwise? ‘More than half of Haiti’s city-dwellers live in overcrowded shantytowns that take the full force of any earthquake, hurricane, or disease outbreak… Massive deforestation has also led to soil erosion, leaving hillside huts and poorly-built houses in the capital, Port-au-Prince, dangerously exposed. In rural areas, topsoil used for agriculture is often washed away. Political instability and corruption have been a factor. Without effective government for decades, Haiti currently ranks 163rd out of the 188 countries on the UN Human Development Index. It spends little on storm defences’ (bbc.com, 7 October).

Mighty Pillock

‘An Egyptian MP has called for women to be forced to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university, it has been reported. Parliamentary member Elhamy Agina called on the Minister of Higher Education to issue a mandate requiring him or his officials to enforce the virginity tests, Egyptian Streets reports. He has suggested that university cards could only been issued to female students on completion of a virginity test. In an interview with local media, he said: “Any girl who enters university, we have to check her medical examination to prove that she is a Miss. Therefore, each girl must present an official document upon being admitted to university stating she’s a Miss.” The term “Miss” in Egyptian culture is often used to refer euphemistically to whether a woman is a virgin’ (theindependent.co.uk, 1 October). In a socialist world, education will replace schooling and have nothing to do with whether one is a virgin, can pay, possess a certain skin colour or caste origin. Such ideas will be thrown into the dustbin of history, along with degrees in conflict studies, economics, homeopathy, political geography, theology, etc.

Breaking down the profit system

‘In his 93 years, Bob Wallace has seen some product-pricing doozies over the decades, but the nonstop national furore over the stratospheric price hikes for EpiPens — now retailing above $700 for a two-pack — was the final shot . . .  So in time-honored Silicon Valley tradition — and piqued by the EpiPen-maker Mylan’s corporate tagline Seeing Is Believing — Wallace and Roland Krevitt, a veteran Scotts Valley manufacturing and tooling consultant, set out to demystify the cost to produce the EpiPen, piece by piece. The auto-injector delivers a lifesaving dose of adrenaline to treat serious allergic reactions to everything from bee stings to food. Hunched over his vintage Shopsmith table saw in his garage, Wallace sliced open the plastic injector to begin reverse-engineering the device. Then it was Krevitt’s turn to break out his gram scale and caliper to crunch the costs for molding and manufacturing the nozzle, needle, syringe, springs, safety cap — and 0.3 mg of epinephrine. Their startling estimate of the cost for a two-pack of EpiPens: $8.02 ‘ (mercurynews.com, 1 October).

$ick of the $ystem

Whether or not life-saving drugs are made is first a question of profit. Their use is not determined by need, as Dr Francisco Olea-Popelka, from the Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, confirmed recently. He said zoonotic tuberculosis is far more common than previously recognised, with over 120,000 new cases of animal TB each year. The figure is dwarfed by tuberculosis and HIV, with each accounting for between 1.1 million and 1.2 million unnecessary deaths in 2014. But Dr Olea-Popelka thinks we should care, adding ‘this is a well-known problem and has been neglected for decades, it is a disease that is preventable, treatable and curable and yet still today we have hundreds of thousands of people suffering from it’ (bbc.com, 1 October).

Terrorism: What is the Truth? (2017)

From the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It would be unfeeling not to be saddened and outraged by the Manchester and London terror attacks, or to have no sympathy for those who knew the victims. But what are we to make of the reaction to it? The traditional laying of flowers and paying of respect to the dead is one thing, and you would expect an expression of solidarity, but holding hands and singing does nothing of itself to dig down toward the causes of terrorism and the solutions to it. How can people find out the motivations and machinations behind war and terrorism? How can the public find out the truth about who is supporting, arming and supplying Islamic State, when there is little or no transparency between government and the public, and when the mainstream media hardly bothers to address these issues?

Trade Wars

‘We stand together’ said the Prime Minister; but if the public knew what she knows then they would likely refuse to stand with her. Not that we see the political parties standing together. After the expression of condolences, and the platitudes, they immediately break into open argument, live, and in public. What we see is division and factionalism. The establishment, either wilfully or through ignorance, would never go so far as to admit that the protection of trade and profit is what really drives war and military intervention in the Middle East. We socialists believe that capitalism is the root cause of war, terrorism, poverty, and all of the major social ills that plague mankind. That is why we want to get rid of it.

Radicalisation

It is clear that governments are attempting to deal with the terror situation by only addressing the symptoms. Radicalisation is not a cause of terrorism, but both a  symptom of it, and a method to inflict it. The insistence of focusing on de-radicalisation programmes won’t do much to help. Behind those that the government mistakenly describes as having ‘become radicalised’, are whole nations of people that have become ‘radicalised’ as they’ve watched their families being blown to smithereens and their countries destroyed by air strikes. People became ‘radicalised’ as soon as the first bombs fell on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on Syria. Of course, it isn’t just as simple as that. The conflicts in the Middle East have a long and complex history, but there is a kind of group denial by Western governments that the terror attacks here are in any way a result of Western foreign policy in the Middle East.

When the Leader of the Opposition suggests that British foreign policy may be playing a role in causing terrorism here in Britain, he (and anyone else who states a similar view), is slated by the government and the mainstream media. The Home Secretary’s reaction to this suggestion was to state categorically that there was no connection between British foreign policy and the Manchester bombing. And over at the BBC, the typical reaction from news correspondents to this kind of suggestion was, ‘cannot compute’. Perhaps the government’s view is that that the existence of  Islamic State is simply down to the Devil himself; and that they just happen to be particularly successful at persuading vulnerable people. Their line on this is, “Nothing to do with us, nothing to see here”.

Fake views, fake news

To kill the debate says everything about the government’s position, and given that the sale of arms has long been an important part of British foreign policy, they certainly wouldn’t compromise the relationship with, say, the Saudi Royal Family, by asking awkward questions about the alleged support and encouragement of terrorism by the Saudi government. These allegations are skirted around by the mainstream media; and if there is evidence out there which would prove the allegations, then the  Establishment will put up fierce opposition to those attempting to uncover it. But it is acceptable for western governments and mainstream media to turn allegation into fact, as with ‘Russian hacking’, but, of course, this cannot apply when it comes to their friends in the Middle East. The double standard sticks out like a sore thumb.

‘The Dove’

All wars are commercial wars. There is no humanitarian war, but governments do their best to persuade the public that we are fighting them, and for our own good. The record-breaking, corruption ridden Al-Yamamah (Arabic: the Dove) arms deal of 1985 between the UK and Saudi Arabia still has elements in it that are yet to be completed. The latest tragi-comedy is that the ‘deal-maker-in-chief’, President Trump, wants to bring peace to the Middle East by signing a new record-breaking, $350bn-over-10 years arms deal with the Saudis. Is it true that UK-made cluster bombs are currently being used by the Saudi-led coalition in the conflict in Yemen? Or are they just relics of old conflicts, as the Saudi government claims? We will probably never find out. The less that people know, the less chance of them questioning the present situation; and so it is that the reaction to the terrorist attacks here will probably remain the same, and the cycle will continue.

The truth is in there

The lack of transparency in government inevitably results in the degradation of democracy, and it is more than a little sickening to see the ‘leaders of the free world’ stand up after terrorist atrocities and state that we stand together to protect  democracy, or freedom of speech, or western values, or anything else that they can co-opt and misappropriate in order to  serve the purposes of capitalism and the capitalist class. This isn’t just social observation or commentary. War, poverty, misery, terrorism – as socialists we find it impossible to imagine that these would exist in a socialist society. We cannot state that there would never be conflicts, but these are most likely to be local, and easily and peaceably resolved.

If, by some fantastic occurrence, a truth serum was to become mixed into the water at the next G7 summit, then the revelations thereof from these renowned leaders of the free world might bring their democracy crashing down around them.

NM