War is Peace
If the corporations (in particular the oil business) think their best interests are served by attacking Syria or Iran then it will happen regardless of who the president is.

The initial working title for the invasion of Iraq was "Operation Iraqi Liberation" until someone pointed out that the initials were a bit of a giveaway.

If they decide on war they know their tame media (Fox) will be baying for blood from day 1.

The condition of permanent war which Orwell suggested in 1984 is aptly covered by the concept of the "War on Terror" - it is a war without end. It is defined however the government and the media choose to define it. Torture of unarmed captives, imprisonment without charge or trial, closing down TV stations which disagree with the government, bombing hospitals - they are all justified by the "war on terror"

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Ward Churchill attacked by Fox News
There was an interview with Prof Churchill on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/

It suggests that what he said has been distorted. For example.

"AMY GOODMAN: What are you saying was in the World Trade Center?

WARD CHURCHILL: There was a Central Intelligence Agency office. There were Defense Department offices. There was, I believe, an F.B.I. facility. All of which fit the criteria of the bombing target selection utilized by the Pentagon. If it was fair to bomb such targets in Baghdad, it would be fair for others to bomb such targets in New York. That's what I'm saying. I don't think it's fair to bomb such targets in Baghdad, therefore I reject New York, but so long as United States is applying those rules out in the world, it really has no complaint when those rules are applied to it. "

Ward Churchill's statements seem to be a legitimate part of the debate. Night after night after night, Fox news has distorted this into a call for further terrorism. Clearly it is no such thing.

American military targets have included:
Baby food factories
Roads
Bridges
Railway stations
hospitals (Fallujah!)
Civilian homes
Unarmed prisoners

It is not "calling for the killing of American citizens" to point this out.

He also referred to some of the victims as "Little Eichmanns". (How often have you referred to a traffic warden or a bossy receptionist as a little Hitler? Has anybody suggested you should be sacked for it?)

"Well it goes to Hannah Arendt's notion of Eichmann, the thesis that he embodied the banality of evil. That she had gone to the Eichmann trial to confront the epitome of evil in her mind and expected to encounter something monstrous, and what she encountered instead was this nondescript little man, a bureaucrat, a technocrat, a guy who arranged train schedules, who, as it turned out, ultimately didn't even agree with the policy that he was implementing, but performed the technical functions that made the holocaust possible, at least in the efficient manner that it occurred, in a totally amoral and soulless way, purely on the basis of excelling at the function and getting ahead within the system that he found himself. He was a good family man, in his way. He was loved by his children, participated in civic activities, was in essence the good German. And she [Arendt] said, therein lies the evil. It wasn't that Eichmann was a Nazi or a high official within Nazidom, although he was in fact a Nazi and a relatively highly placed official, but it was exactly the reverse: that given his actual nomenclature, the actuality of Eichmann was that anyone in this sort of mindless, faceless, bureaucratic capacity could be the Nazi. That he was every man, and that was what was truly horrifying to her in the end. That was a controversial thesis because there's always this effort to distinguish anyone and everyone irrespective of what they're doing from this polarity of evil that is signified in Nazidom, and she had breached the wall and brought the lessons of how Nazism actually functioned, the modernity of it, home and visited it upon everyone, calling for, then, personal accountability, responsibility, to the taking of responsibility for the outcome of the performance of one's functions. That's exactly what it is that is shirked here, and makes it possible for people to, from a safe remove, perform technical functions that result in (and at some level, they know this, they understand it) in carnage, emiseration, the death of millions ultimately. That's the Eichmann aspect. But notice I said little Eichmanns, not the big Eichmann. Not the real Eichmann. The real Eichmann ultimately is symbolic, even in his own context. He symbolized the people that worked under him. He symbolized the people who actually were on the trains. They were hauling the Jews. He symbolized the technicians who were making the gas for I.G. Farben. He symbolized all of these people who didn't directly kill anybody, but performed functions and performed those functions with a certain degree of enthusiasm and certainly with a great degree of efficiency, that had the outcome of the mass murder of the people targeted for elimination or accepted as collateral damage. That's the term of the art put forth by the Pentagon.

AMY GOODMAN: How many people have interpreted this, "if as you said, true enough, they were civilians of a sort, but innocent, give me a break. They formed a technocratic core at the very heart of America's global financial empire, the mighty engine of profit, to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved, and they did so both willingly and knowingly." How many people have interpreted this as that they deserve what they got?

WARD CHURCHILL: Well, I'm not a judge. I don't make the assessment as to what it is they deserve. I'm simply pointing to the reality of it. I don't know that I even agreed with the execution of Eichmann, per se. I'm not repudiating it. I'm not taking exception to it and defending the man, but I don't make that decision. What I did was posit the reality with the intent of allowing the reader or compelling the reader even to draw their own conclusion. If their conclusion is that if you do these things, you deserve death, then that's the conclusion they've drawn.

AMY GOODMAN: What conclusion...

WARD CHURCHILL: Apparently...

AMY GOODMAN: What conclusion have you drawn about September 11th and the...

WARD CHURCHILL: Well, I posit my conclusions that if you want to avoid September 11s, if you want security in some actual form, then it's almost a biblical framing, you have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As long as you're doing what the U.S. is doing in the world, you can anticipate a natural and inevitable response of the sort that occurred on 9/11.

(and I suggest you read the whole transcript. Democracy Now! publishes transcripts of all its major interviews)

Not a racist
Even the BNP put out leaflets saying "we are not racists" these days.

Of course there is "nothing racist" in saying all immigrants should have HIV tests it is a "sensible health precaution." Likewise it is a sensible health precaution for all Conservative MPs to have HIV testing but they would be entitled to ask why they are being singled out and what the subtext of the suggestion was. They might go so far as to say it was politically motivated :)

Have a nice day.

(my letter about the police choosing not to prosecute the fox hunters (see below) was in the Guardian and it led to an old friend emailing me for the first time in ages and the Dimbleby program ringing up to invite me to join a program audience...an invitation I couldn't take up unfortunately)

Turning a blind eye
The news today is that the police will concentrate on other matters and not prosecute those who break the law against fox hunting too strenuously.
Do you think the police will be kind and tell us what other crimes they want to turn a blind eye to? It would be useful for us to know where we stand. They will never turn a blind eye to peaceful legitimate protest against the war - they will slap anti-terrorist orders on peace protestors as soon as look at them, but they want to tell the Countryside Alliance well in advance they can commit crime with impunity. Cheeky!

Sorry Mr Blair but not sorry enough
What a whining pathetic performance from the Prime Minister! There really does seem to be precious little choice in the coming election: vote for a corporate Tweedledum or a corporate Tweedledee: both overtrumping each other with the so-called "race card".

Whoever wins is likely to do so on the grounds people want to vote against their opponent rather than for anything positive.

I understand why people are tempted to vote for the LibDems and it is not their lack of experience which prevents me voting for them. It is the perception that when it came to the war they opposed it right up until it started then they went all patriotic, with privatisation they oppose all the schemes but think it is OK if called "liberalisation". I think we have to begin the long slow (well hopefully not that slow) task of building an alternative. I think the respect coalition could help and I think the trade unions could help more.

More and more people in the trade unions are concerned that their political levy is going to fund New Labour privatisation and war. Indeed unions without a political fund have discussed setting one up to oppose New Labour's appalling policies.

Standing protest candidates to fight against privatisation and war is better than people voting with their bottoms and staying at home on polling day! It is time for a change.

http://socialism.org.uk

Actuarial calculation
Public sector unions are responding to the concerns of their members over the pensions robbery. The more people know about it, the more likely they are to be angered by it.

Also there is a freedom of information issue. The government's sums are based on a cynical calculation. Teachers who work to 65 will die younger and therefore cost less in pensions. The government must have access to actuarial calculations on this. They should be made public.
(This presupposes actuaries presenting the information in a form which mere mortals can understand of course!)

The worm has turned (for now)
Now the teacher union leaders, once lukewarm, have turned around and endorsed a one day strike over pensions - urging members to vote for that option

If someone is being robbed and they have the temerity to shout out "stop thief" it makes no sense to stand around saying "oh dahling that is so seventies."

People are reluctant to take strike action for a number of reasons but now that Sinnott has been elected as leader of the union (I voted for Martin Powell-Davies) and now he is calling for action it is best to take him at his word.

Union leaders do not have to be "soft on Blair and soft on the causes of Blair". Let's see how far we can push them. It is an election year. Do that New Labour canaille want a massive public sector strike or do they want to stop bullying and start being sensible?

Excellence revisited
Even further back in the day: Men used to queue at the dock gates. A chargehand would appear before the shift was due to start and chuck a handful of tickets in the air, the men would fight sometimes to get the jobs available. Only the "excellent" ones got in.

As long as the owners could keep the dockers fighting amongst themselves they would never have to raise their pay.

If teachers spend all our time bickering amongst ourselves we will stand about as much chance against this ruthless and dishonest government as...shall we say...the People's Front of Judea?

New model army
Mr Tony Blair's latest stunt is to seek to involve NATO in the training of "new Iraqi security forces." The idea is to have a colonial model of security with Iraqi cannon fodder taking the risks and American and European advisers giving the orders. It is a policy which has been tried before. There is a name for this policy. President Nixon used to call it "Vietnamisation of the war".
It didn't work.


Apparently limb amputations have been carried out at Abu Ghraib prison. According to Time Magazine:

"Medical personnel and others who worked at the prison tell TIME that, with straitjackets unavailable, tethers--like the leash on Gus--were put to use at Abu Ghraib to control unruly or mentally disturbed detainees, sometimes with the concurrence of a doctor. That such a restraint-- which is supposed to be placed around legs, arms or torsos--ended up instead around a man's neck seems to be a case of a medically condoned practice degenerating into abuse. But there was also medical disarray at the prison: amputations performed by nondoctors, chest tubes recycled from the dead to the living, a medic ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide. That in itself would have made Abu Ghraib a scandal even without the acts of torture inflicted on the inmates by their guards."

Excellence
The government's latest stunt is to call some teachers "excellent" and pay them more, instead of paying all teachers more. By implication most teachers do not deserve more money.
The TES website debate included the following contribution from a teacher:
"Back in the day, Enoch Powell met a delegation of nurses. He told them that they were wonderful people doing a job which really made a difference to their patients. They were angels of mercy. So they had better forget any nonsense about trying to get more pay because they would tarnish their image. (Or to put it another way the newspapers would make damned sure it was tarnished).

"Lavish words on the teachers - they don't cost anything. The "excellent" ones are defined as those who can be relied on to denigrate the rest."

The new website for Socialist Party teachers is now up and running on http://www.socialistteachers.org.uk and has articles on this and other matters including government proposals to rob teachers of their pensions.