Cuba & Revisionism

I don’t want to stray into a minefield, but the problem with Cuba is the self-denial of its protagonists. Nobody – least of all me – suggests that ALL has been bad since the revolution or indeed in the making of it. On the other hand, the protagonists seem incapabable of acknowledging that ANYTHING was or has been bad, such as – as Briggs has pointed out before – the brutality of Che Guevara or the ossification of Cuba’s society since the revolution.

An ossification the regime is now trying to put right, but they clearly cannot avoid the key question: If some economic liberalisation and basic freedoms are right NOW then why have they been WRONG for the last 50 years? Bit like the Catholic church and celibacy. The Pope CAN’T abolish this basic lunacy since it would prove they have been wrong for about TWO THOUSAND YEARS. It would also mean he has had a lifetime of self-restraint for NOTHING!!

As for the “key question syndrome”, I wonder if Balls is asking himself it in Labour’s case? If “reality” and financial restraint (which means of course the dreaded “cuts” they have been whinging on about since the last election) are correct NOW then WHY weren’t they correct for Labour’s Binge Years? In their case they could and should blame it on Brown, as I do, but I suppose thy don’t want to be “disloyal” – a bit like Stalin putting the fear of God into the Bolsheviks even after his death.

(I have decided to refer henceforth to the Labour years as “The Binge Years” since – like the Cultural Revolution, The Black Death, the Terror and so on the phrase is A) appropriate and B) sticks in the memory.)

Oh dear ……

 

The UK’s 50p Tax Rate

Daniel Hannan in “The Telegraph” is bleating on about the unfair and “morally and intellectually indefensible 50p tax barrier”.

Indeed, but the RICH-POOR gap is increasing ALL THE TIME. In the USA it has become OBSCENE, not YET quite as bad in the UK. The remuneration of directors has gone up VASTLY, the multiple salary received by top people over ordinary workers FAR more than just 25 years ago.

Are you happy to see this go ON and ON, with a deeply-impoverished plebian class and a small number of hyper-rich?

And as for this “they’ll go to Singapore or Switzerland” scaremongering, well let them.  I’d like to see all the supperrich in Monaco and find out what their slaves in other countries are going to do about the situation.

It has gone TOO FAR and will end in revolution unless something is done. It’s almost as bad as in Victorian times.

SEE THIS:
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

NOBODY can earn a vast amount without the PLEBS doing most of the real work. Soon the plebs are going to do something about this vast inequality, which is EXTREMELY BAD for a society and has ALWAYS preceded the collapse into chaos and revolution.

 

E-Waste & the Law

BBC World put out a documentary yesterday about e-waste from the UK. This is discarded electronic equipment, a large part of which is televisions. The lasting image from the programme is of a young Ghanaian teenager  burning a whole bunch of wiring, the aim being to extract the raw copper, which earns him about $1 a day. His hands were black, pitted and scarred and no doubt his lungs were full of toxic fumes, as were those of the other kids scavenging the dump.

The destruction and/or recycling of electronic waste is dangerous, principally because of the toxic nature of many of the materials, including lead. This is why it is ILLEGAL to export it; it HAS to go to a specialist recycling centre in the UK. We saw one; the owner said a massive investment had been made in state-of-the-art processing facilities, but the plant was running at only around 40% capacity. Why? Because even today it is believed that over HALF of the e-waste produced in Britain is being illegally exported. It ends up in dumps in Nigeria, Ghana and other poor countries.

OK so far ….. NOW, the punishment for breaking this law about exporting e-waste is A) unlimited fines and B) up to two years’ imprisonment. However, according to the programme, NOBODY HAS EVER BEEN JAILED for breaking this law and the HIGHEST FINE EVER IMPOSED was £12,500.

Those who complain about too many people being sent to jail should perhaps consider what the hell is going on here. Criminals are CALLOUSLY exporting toxic and dangerous material to poor countries KNOWING that people (children are people, too ……..) will be POISONED and in many cases have their health ruined FOR EVER.

The chances of the criminals getting caught are – it seems – small, and even if they ARE caught, the punishments cannot in ANY way be considered a deterrent. This situation is a MASSIVE betrayal of poor people – principally in Africa.

Toxic fumes waft across the dump ......

Many people – including me – will think the law is a sick joke. Wanting REALISTIC punishments which will act as a deterrent is not the mark of a “hang-em-high” Tory but the mark of a rational person who is disgusted by the – in this case British – exploitation and poisoning of the poor of another country. What is the POINT of (feeling good about) giving aid with the LEFT hand while the RIGHT hand is tolerating the poisoning of the poor?

So Mr Ken Clarke? Where do YOU stand on this?

 

Obama on Israel

I listen to Obama …. that rhetoric, those cadences; the studied pauses, the soundbite “Yes we can.” ….. and I struggle to find any real content.

Since 9/11, WHAT HAS THE US ACHIEVED ON PALESTINE? The latest achievement is to lose George Mitchell, who seems to have given up in despair at the lack of White House backing with any teeth.

OBL may have been a murderous religious nutter, but the problem is that in some areas he had a point …… In the 63 years since 1948, the plight of Palestinians who lost everything has not changed.

I compare the US glee expressed at his capture with the silence on the Palestine “peace talks”, during which Israel unfroze its settlement building.

And now many Palestinians have been shot dead by the Israeli army in the Golan Heights (occupied by Israel after the 67 war) and Ramallah in the West Bank. Why not just let them demonstrate? It would all have passed over …. instead, we have more deaths and bitterness.

And the Obama silence on Bahrein is deafening, as indeed is that of the F1 circus. No country and no individual can occupy the peak of the moral high ground, but the US is far down in the valley, picking and choosing its moral favourites with breathtaking unevenness.

 

TARGETING GADDAFI

Few would weep for Colonel Gaddafi, but targeting him is wrong

RUBBISH of course. “Might” IS right. Might is the ONLY thing that allowed Gaddafi to seize and hold power for 42 years. It is the ONLY thing that will remove him. It was NO DIFFERENT from Hitler. It is NOW no different in Syria, Bahrein and Yemen and elsewhere, including Saudi Arabia, Burma, North Korea and indeed China.

We may all WANT to live in a world of law, but WE DON’T. “International law”? Sanctioned by many despotic countries. The world’s biggest dictatorship (remember Tiananmen Square??) sits on the Security Council.

GADDAFI is responsible for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of deaths and maimings. How come it is “right” for him to indiscriminately shell civilians day after day yet NOT right to kill him? What a BIZARRE logic!  He is personally directing the “fight” (basically long-range random shelling) against “his” people.

HE HAS NO LEGITIMACY. He is NOT the “leader” of Libya. He is  MASS-MURDERING GANGSTER THUG; It is pretty despicable that people like the writer defend some sort of “law” that A) doesn’t exist and B) if it does is INDEFENSIBLE.

The ordinary people of Libya live in the REAL WORLD, not the comfy one of reporters, or indeed of judges sitting in a posh and above-all safe office in the Hague or somewhere.

What happened with EMPATHY with all these people? You’ve sitting under the incoming rockets and shells from Gaddafi’s gangster army. Your kids could be blown to pieces at ANY minute. Killing Gaddafi MIGHT stop it.

I’m with the VICTIMS of these criminal tyrants.

 

Gaddafi’s “Support”

Dictators who won’t respect the majority will ….. (do any?)

All the appalling chaos and bloodshed in Ivory Coast is the fault of Gbagbo who did not go gracefully when he lost the election that the UN stated was free and fair and who is now whipping up his supporters into a frenzy of anti-sectarian hatred, much as happened in Rwanda.

There will be no peace in the world until it is rid of dictators who think they have the right to rule other people’s lives and who are the cause of immense misery, suffering and often premature and violent death to millions of people.

It is the moral duty of all free people to fight where possible to rid the world of this scum oppressing their fellow-humans. Anyone DEFENDING a dictatorship is as morally bankrupt as the dictatorship itself. Such people involved in and/or defending dictatorships have removed themselves from the mainstream of humanity and all that is best – or could be – about the Human Spirit.

Fundamentalist Islam is of course in the vanguard of this loss of humanity, supporting as it does the dictatorship of religion. That democracies themselves are not perfect is no reason to defend dictatorships.

“GADDAFI HAS MORE SUPPORT THAN WE THINK.” -  Really? Only a complete moron could spout such rubbish.

A) How do we know about Gaddafi”s “support”? Only a secret BALLOT BOX could tell us this. Dictators don’t do free and fair elections.

B) Much of his “support” is from foreign mercenaries used as I write to snipe to death ordinary civilians in Miseratu.

C) Most of his “supporters” were born and have grown up knowing NOTHING ELSE but his murderous regime, except that for those of course who received the money and favours it obviously seems “a good thing”.

D) Anyone showing anything BUT “support” in areas his men control risks torture and death. Hardly surprising such areas are quiescent. Where people HAVE dared to rise up, they have been mercilessly eliminated, and there are LOTS of towns even in WESTERN Libya where this has happened, as it still is happening in Miseratu.

 

Let them fight it out

Of course, in this business it is essential to know who to believe. One can start by working out whom NOT to believe or indeed listen to.

- First of course, is Chavez of Venezuela. As Sibyl Fawlty said: “I’ve seen headless chickens running round farmyards with more sense.”

- Second is anything whatsoever that Libyan “state” television says. At the very moment as a govt spokesman was announcing that a ceasefire was in place (without looking at the camera – is it a Muslim fascist thing? I’ve noticed that Gaddafi rarely looks the camera in the eye – in his latest rants he hasn’t even shown his face.) armour was advancing towards Benghazi in a stupid but murderous attempt to take the city before the “no-fly zone” came into operation. NINETY-FOUR people were killed during this incursion, which was repulsed. The injured included a young boy and his mother shot. The injured in all cities subject to Gaddafi’s indicriminate shelling are often disfigured, limbless for live – their lives totally destroyed.

Allah be praised for the French, whose planes destroyed these scum as they scurried out of the city back west.

And of course the Libyan “govt” is claiming that the Allies hit a hospital. Anyone who believes that has less sense than the aforementioned headless chickens.

- Third is the Russians who want us to “avoid indiscriminate action”. They of course are the experts on this, having honed the art in Chechnya. All their actions were extremely discriminate, though whether that made any difference to those killed by their soldiers is a moot point.

Of course, Russia is led by Putin formerly of the KGB of the USSR which certainly avoided “indiscriminate action” in Katyn Forest, where they machine-gunned TWENTY-THOUSAND Polish intellectuals, high-ranking military and so on. One can certainly admire the Russian’s stoic defence of “indiscriminate action”. They have a different philosophy; “If you’re going to kill someone, do it with discrimination.”

As for the action, what a pity that so few speak the truth. The murder and oppression of civilians will continue until Gaddafi is removed from power, most likely dead. This has always been true of tyrants. And the idea that this can de done without killing a lot of his people is stupid, just as the Nazis and Wehrmacht soldiers had to be defeated and in most cases killed before victory came.

Which reminds me of “letting them fight it out”. What a hilarious, morally-vacuumed nonsense! Can you pls tell me why my father had to flog his way across North Africa and then all the way from Normandy to Berlin when we could QUITE EASILY have let Hitler and Stalin “fight it out”?

We could easily have made a separate peace with Hitler – after all, the French did. He wasn’t interested in us. After all, we were mostly Aryians, weren’t we? He was only interested in Lebensraum and the extermination of the Jews and Slavs.

Come on – let’s hear it. Why DID we fight Hitler, killing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of innocent Germans? Why did we put our men in danger, resulting in the deaths and maiming of MILLIONS on the Allied side? Why did Taffy Evans risk his life every day on convoys to bring aid to Russia?

Because it was the RIGHT THING TO DO TO FIGHT FASCISM.

TODAY’S FUNNY? Gaddafi complaining that “foreigners have no right to interfere in Libya” HA, BLOODY HA ….. and I supposed the massed mercenaries from black Africa are Libyans are they?

And again: “What right has America et al to interfere in Libyan affairs?” What a MORON. He clearly cannot see that he himself HAS NO RIGHT TO RULE, having NEVER BEEN ENDORSED by the people. More than that, he has systematically opressed and murdered “his” people for FOUR DECADES, quite apart from those OUTSIDE the country.

As for “Gaddafi has more support than we realize” (from the headless chicken brigade) let’s review this when Tripoli falls, shall we, where the mass of the population are terrified. And so would you be; in true despot fashion, Gaddafi’s diehards even shoot their “own” soldiers who refuse to kill civilians.

As for the action, Gaddafi’s, tanks have finally broken into Miseratu, which has heroically held out for weeks against overwhelming odds. No doubt the Gaddafi people will strap kids to their tanks to use as human shields – another fascist ploy. And a ship is supposed to be preventing aid reaching the people from the sea. I hope the insufferable Yanks sink the ship and supply the “rebels” with anti-tank weapons. That should bring home the message.

This won’t end till Gaddafi is dead, and the sooner the better. All this pissing about pretending otherwise is pathetic. It was true FORTY YEARS ago, and every year since, and it is still true. It was EXACTLY the same with Hitler as it ALWAYS is with dictators, unless they manage to flee at the last minute. Can we look forward to Chavez presenting Gaddafi as a “hero of the people” at a press conference. He is of course a clown already, but that will prove he is a headless-chicken brained one, too.

“Let them fight it out”! Christ, what an appalling moral sickness has seized some people’s brains.

 

The UN Charter

The UN Charter …

“to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest,”

Here is the crux. I believe that it is clearly in the “common interest” to – where possible – save fellow-humans from oppression, torture and death.

Others, however, believe that the “common interest” means “letting them fight it out” so that we can continue our comfortable lives unaffected by the suffering of others at the hands of dictators.

If we deny that aiding – where possible – those oppressed by dictators is relevant to the “common interest”, we are underlining OUR interest and not any interest that is COMMON to the oppressed. The oppressed, tortured and murdered are thereby EXCLUDED from “the common interest.”

Well done, Chavez, Castro, Mugabe et al.

 

National Interest

We must work out what our national interest is,
and then we must act upon it, writes Simon Heffer.

What an UTTERLY selfish point of view. OF COURSE “national interest” is important, but it is not the MOST important thing.

Ordinary people are dying AT THIS MINUTE in Libya after FORTY-TWO YEARS of brutal tyranny and the free world has done almost NOTHING to save these people against a KNOWN MASS-MURDERER.

The G8 have just threatened Gaddafi with “dire consequences”. What a FATUOUS LOAD OF BLATHER. About as surreal as Ban Ki-Moon saying TWO WEEKS AGO that the UN had taken “effective measures”.

These are our FELLOW-HUMANS being killed, bombed, tortured, blown up by a GANGSTER, and our “NATIONAL INTEREST” is all that matters? EVEN IF you are so morally bankrupt that this is true, then our NATIONAL INTEREST in the long-term CLEARLY lies in backing the Arab man in the street against the sordid bunch of fascist kleptomaniac family and monarchical thugs that currently rule most Middle-Eastern countries. IRAQ is of course an EXCEPTION, having been liberated by the Allies, but the stick they got for that is so great that we now hesitate to act.

“National Interest”? Why did we declare war on Hitler? We could have collaborated as France did. He didn’t want to fight us, only the Russians, but THOUSANDS OF US DIED TO HELP RUSSIA when we could have declared it our “national interest” to stay out of WWI, as did Switzerland, Spain and Vichy France. Our parents and Grandparents had a different idea of “national interest”. These are OUR BROTHERS BEING KILLED BY FASCISTS. I’m sorry, but your viewpoint is morally depraved.

“Why stop at Libya?” ANOTHER STUPID ARGUMENT. We cannot do EVERYTHING but we can do SOMETHING and at present we are doing NOTHING. Gaddafi is a tin-pot despot cretin with a pitiful army led by family members and cronies that could be smashed in two days, thus liberating the people after four decades of HELL. Yes, it could get messy afterwards (ALWAYS the way when you get rid of a dictator, since they deliberately destroy most normal state infrastructure) but then THEY CAN SORT IT OUT. The assets are in place NOW to stop Gaddafi with relative ease. The failure to do this is DISGUSTING. “Wait for the UN”? Excuse me. The UN voted Gaddafi onto its Human Rights Advisory Body. Two members of the SC are fascist states themselves.

Do you propose to wait and watch as Gaddafi smashes Benghazi and Tobruk to pieces, while the ordinary people try to defend themselves against modern weapons that WE supplied? And then watch as he strings people up from lampposts as he did the LAST TIME the Libyans tried to escape from this tyranny?

Gaddafi’s forces are removing journalists from cities which he is “cleansing the rats” from. Any guesses as to WHY he is doing this? Have you READ the reports of summary executions, kidnappings, amputations and torture of those who dared to rebel against him? These are all well-known TERROR tactics employed by all dictators, and Gaddafi has a CLEAR track-record of butchery of his enemies.

It is all frankly QUITE UNBELIEVABLE. I am ashamed of the free world. No, we can’t and shouldn’t intervene EVERYWHERE, but EACH CASE must be studied on its merits. The innocent PEOPLE of Libya have BEGGED us to help and we COULD help. Almost the WORST aspect of this is the HYPOCRISY. They talk about “effective measures” and “dire consequences”, but it is all a LIE.

 

The Insufferable Yanks

“I know lots of nice Yanks; it is only when they go abroad that they become insufferable.”

Indeed. Of course, they were certainly insufferable during WWII, stealing all our girls while they were based in the UK while they prepared to die on the beaches of Normandy to save Europe.

Mind you, I grant you that the Nazis almost certainly found them insufferable, too. As indeed did the Soviets, since without the Yanks in Germany deterring them the whole of Europe would no doubt have fallen under Russian control. BTW, thank you Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and France for your enormous contribution to the defeat of fascism. And aren’t all those countries so lucky not to have had the insufferable Yanks stationed in their countries rather than in Germany?

I suppose the Serbs also found them fairly insufferable, preventing them from ethnically-cleansing the whole of Kosovo. This of course was after the rest of Europe had done fuck all to save these European Muslims – yes, MUSLIMS! Well, well … AND they have no OIL!!!!!

Japan? Without the insufferable Yanks they might still be living under a fascist military empire. I’m sure they are glad to have escaped that fate, even if it was messy as it ALWAYS is when cutting out the cancerous growth of fascist power.

I wonder if the South Koreans find them insufferable when they contemplate the difference between their country and the North Korean concentration camp. (I must check – is NK actually IN the United Nations? Is there ANYONE outside NK who feels “united” with that country?)

No doubt Gaddafi would find the Yanks insufferable were they to help the Libyan population in its uprising. However, as the whole of the west has become so pathetically soggy and forgotten

A) that Gaddafi has murdered many of its own citizens as well as “his own” and

B) he is a gangster and war criminal

C) he supplied arms to the IRA to kill people

D) he has sown misery and mayhem all over sub-Saharan Africa with his support for very nasty regimes, two of which are currently helping him (Zimbabwe and Angola) – funny how you can judge someone by their friends – China & North Korea come to mind, as do Mussolini and Hitler of course

E) plus of course many other things, including his total illegitimacy to “rule”

… I don’t suppose the fascist Gaddafi thugs have much US insufferability to worry about.

I also think we should ask the liberated people of Iraq whether they find the Yanks “insufferable”. Of course, the Sunni minority certainly do, since their cosy, murderous dictatorship was snatched away from them by the liberating Allies.

The most “insufferable” thing of course is the constant, mindless mantra of anti-American sentiments trolled out at every opportunity. It is in fact this endless pathetic carping, bitching and sniping that has caused the Yanks to give up on much of Europe and the main reason for the reluctance of Obama to help those who deserve help in the name of humanity and freedom.

I find the failure to give ANY tangible help WHATSOEVER to the people dying for their freedom in Libya against someone with NO RIGHT to rule who is accused of crimes against humanity and who has murdered our own citizens astonishing and appalling. Dictators worldwide must be looking at this with enormous encouragement. They realize now that they can get away with ANYTHING within their borders as long as they are ruthless enough. The oppressed, murdered, tortured and impoverished PEOPLE do not count, as they have NO WEAPONS, NO RIGHTS, NO FREEDOM and above all NO FRIENDS. Gaddafi, even though he is patently batty is nonetheless CUNNING. In the “Dictatorship for Idiots” manual that he surely authors is now added a new chapter: “Only give modern weapons to your close friends and paid mercenaries and use those that the free world sells you to kill your enemies.” Great – apparently the most modern weapons in his armoury are Italian howitzers. Well done, Italy. Each of your shells is now coated with the bloody and shattered remains of ordinary Libyan civilians fighting for their freedom after FORTY-TWO years of brutal tyranny.

Who were the only Arab countries opposed to a No-Fly zone, even though they grudgingly voted for it in the end?

Saudi Arabia -> kleptomaniac, fascist, fundamentally-looney, family dictatorship (but great friend and ally of the west – in this the Yanks are indeed somewhat insufferable – but nobody’s perfect after all)
Syria -> gruesome, pseudo-socialist murderous dictatorship
Algeria -> corrupt, incompetent, fascist scum regime

No surprises there, then, but let’s salute at least their coming on board, even if the no-fly zone in itself is fairly fatuous – far more needs doing to rid Libya of Gaddafi.  This of course would not be clean and surgical – getting rid of the scum that stick round dictators never is, but that’s the price to pay for tolerating them in the first place.

As for OIL, my understanding was that the Casto and Chavez axis of mindless anti-American hatred was predicting the US would “seize Libya’s oil”?  Oh dear …. As I recently pointed out, the US has almost NO oil contracts with the Iraqi government. This is of course a very inconvenient truth for the mindless, but perhaps the Yanks have INDEED seized Iraqi oil somehow but in a way too subtle for anyone to perceive – well, me at least.

I hope you enjoy the reports of the slaughter that will take place in Benghazi if nothing is done to help these people. Mind you, we won’t know much about it as all the journalists will be either kicked out, arrested & tortured, hung from lampposts or shot, as an Al Jazeera cameraman has just been – or have their arms and feet amputed as is reputed to have happened in Ras Lanuf.

Of course, the Nazis also tried to hide the evidence of their crimes but the Yanks got to the death camps too quickly for them to cover it all up. Yup, those insufferable Yanks again.