Conservatives, Extremism, and the Ghost of Enoch Powell

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/conservatives-extremism-and-the-ghost-of-enoch-powell/

Subjecting protestors to greater demonisation through the redefining of ‘extremism’ is just another chapter in the Tories’ painful history of hypocrisy.

If you paid much attention to Rishi Sunak’s speech outside No. 10 on March 1, you would think our country had been overrun by anarchists and fanatics. Extremist groups are ‘trying to tear us apart,’ said the PM, decrying a ‘shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality’ in Britain since October 7. Michael Gove has been at it too. Some pro-Palestinian events have ‘been organised by extremist organisations,’ claimed the Communities Secretary. These are the same protests incidentally that have been acknowledged by the Metropolitan Police as disciplined, orderly, and professionally-managed.

The anarchy-obsessed Conservative government now has Gove announcing a new definition of extremism. As part of Sunak’s drive to crack down on Islamist extremists and far-right groups, the revised definition identifies extremism as an ideology that “undermines the rights or freedoms of others.” It differs from the old definition in that there has been a shift in focus from action to ideology. The previous definition, which was introduced in 2011, said extremism was the “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and belief.”

The same week that Gove announced his controversial new anti-extremism measures, a revelation hit the press that suggested the Tories’ biggest donor is an extremist himself, who upholds the most abhorrent views. Claims were made that Frank Hester, the healthcare technology business magnate who has donated £10m to the Tories in the past year, had said Diane Abbott made people “want to hate all black women” and “should be shot.”

The alleged comments mark a depressing new low for British politics. And the story gets worse. When asked whether the Tories should hand back the £10m donation, energy minister Graham Stuart told reporters that it would be wrong for a businessman to be ‘cancelled’ for his comments, and that the party should ‘welcome’ such donations.

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/conservatives-extremism-and-the-ghost-of-enoch-powell/

Response to Rishi Sunak's extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024.
Response to Rishi Sunak’s extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024.
Continue ReadingConservatives, Extremism, and the Ghost of Enoch Powell

Rishi Sunak & Co expected to engage in dirty racist general election campaign

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Parody remarks attributed to Sadiq Khan highlights the hypocrisy and double standard applied to Antisemitism and Islamaphobia.
Parody remarks attributed to Sadiq Khan highlights the hypocrisy and double standard applied to Antisemitism and Islamaphobia.

Based on Rishi Sunak’s recent ‘mob rule’ comments, his extremism speech and Lee Anderson’s comments – which are universally not recognised as Islamaphobia or anti-Muslim racism – I expect Rishi Sunak and the UK Conservative Party to engage in a dirty racist general election campaign. They’ve started how they intend to continue. I suggest that the response to it should be to insist that the police prosecute cases of anti-Muslim racism as they should.

Continue ReadingRishi Sunak & Co expected to engage in dirty racist general election campaign

‘If This Isn’t Genocide, I Don’t Know What Is,’ Says Lula of Israeli Attack on Gaza

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Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivers a speech during the launching ceremony of a Petrobras cultural investment project at the Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on February 23, 2024.  (Photo by Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images)

“What the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people is not war,” said the President of Brazil. “It’s not soldiers who are dying, but women and children who are dying inside the hospitals.”

Just days after Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was announced to be ‘person non grata’ by the Israeli government for critical comments he made about its conduct in Gaza, the leftist leader known as Lula remained outspoken over the weekend as he condemned the military onslaught that has claimed nearly 30,000 lives, mostly innocent civilians, in just over four months.

“What the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people is not war, it is genocide,” Lula thundered in remarks Friday during an event in Rio de Janiero. “They are killing women and children. There are thousands of children dead and thousands missing. It’s not soldiers who are dying, but women and children who are dying inside the hospitals.”

He continued: “If this isn’t genocide, I don’t know what is.”

In his remarks, Lula condemned the failure of the UN Security Council to intervene in a meaningful way to stop the carnage in Gaza. On Feb. 19, the United States once again used its veto power to reject a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

The UNSC “represents nothing,” he said. “It does not take any decisions, it does nothing for peace,” he added, while decrying the amount of “hypocrisy in the world today” when it comes to political leadership.

Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘If This Isn’t Genocide, I Don’t Know What Is,’ Says Lula of Israeli Attack on Gaza

UK accused of hypocrisy in not backing claim of genocide in Gaza before ICJ

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https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/07/uk-accused-of-hypocrisy-in-not-backing-claim-of-genocide-in-gaza-before-icj

Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on 7 January. Photograph: Mohammed Dahman/AP

Experts say submission to international court of justice on Myanmar six weeks ago makes stance ‘wholly disingenuous’

The UK is facing accusations of double standards after formally submitting detailed legal arguments to the international court of justice in The Hague six weeks ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group through its mass mistreatment of children and systematically depriving people of their homes and food.

Tayab Ali, the head of international law at Bindmans, said the significance of the UK’s submission on Myanmar “lay in showing the importance the UK attaches to adherence to the [UN] Genocide Convention and in showing the UK took a wide, and not a narrow, definition of acts of genocide, and the intent to commit genocide. It also made clear that the court should take into account risks to life after a ceasefire caused by disabilities, inability to reside in their homes and wider injustices.

“It would be wholly disingenuous if the UK, six week after advancing such a significant and broad definition of genocide in the case of Myanmar, now adopts a narrow one in the case of Israel.”

South Africa is likely to highlight the UK’s arguments about Myanmar, submitted in conjunction with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, when it makes its high-stakes accusation of genocide against Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/07/uk-accused-of-hypocrisy-in-not-backing-claim-of-genocide-in-gaza-before-icj

Continue ReadingUK accused of hypocrisy in not backing claim of genocide in Gaza before ICJ

Genocide in Gaza Would Not Be Possible Without Western Complicity

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Original article by RAMZY BAROUD republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A pro-Palestinian protester holds a placard accusing Biden, Sunak and Netanyahu of war crimes at a demonstration against Israeli attacks on Gaza in central London, UK.  (Photo by: Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come.

On October 20, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stood on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, between Egypt and besieged Gaza.

Guterres was not the only international figure to travel to the Gaza border, hoping to mobilize the international community in the face of an ongoing genocide, in an already impoverished and besieged Strip.

“Behind these walls, we have two million people that is suffering (sic) enormously,” Guterres said.

These efforts, however, paid little dividends.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement on October 24, that the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is “too slow (for it to) change the reality” on the ground.

Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge, or even the self-serving humanitarian.

This means that the seemingly endless UN Security Council debates, General Assembly resolutions and calls for action did little to alter the tragic situation in Gaza in any meaningful way.

This begs the question, what is the use of the elaborate international political, humanitarian and legal systems, if they are unable to stop, or even slow down a genocide that is being aired live on TV screens all across the world?

In previous genocides, whether those accompanying the Great Wars or that of Rwanda in 1994, various justifications were offered to explain the lack of immediate actions. In some cases, no Geneva Conventions existed and, as in Rwanda, many pleaded ignorance.

But, in Gaza, no excuse is acceptable. Every international news company has correspondents or some presence in the Strip. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, bloggers, photographers and cameramen are documenting and counting every event, every massacre and every bomb dropped on civilian homes. It is important here to note that scores of journalists have already been killed in Israeli attacks.

Scientific approximations are telling us, for example, that nearly 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel in the first 27 days of war. It is equivalent to two atomic bombs, like those dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

When US President Joe Biden callously tried to question the numbers of the Palestinian dead, the Gaza medical staff, who are forced to perform life-saving surgeries on the dirty grounds of hospitals, took the time to prove him wrong. On October 26, they produced a list containing the names of 6,747 Palestinian casualties who were killed in the first 19 days of war.

Thousands have been killed and wounded since then, yet Washington and its Western allies insist that “Israel has the right to defend itself” even if this comes at the expense of a whole nation.

The Israelis are not masking their language in any way. The New York Times reported on October 30 that “in private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II … to try to defeat those countries.” A few days later, Israeli Minister Amichai … has openly declared that nuking Gaza is an option in his country’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people.

On the day the NYT report appeared, Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.

He still used the same guarded language, as if not to offend the sensibilities of Israel and its Western allies. “Crimes allegedly committed in both places have to be looked into,” he said, referring to both Israel and Gaza.

One could excuse Khan by arguing that legal jargon must be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely conducted when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine.

When an investigation is carried out, international judges frequently find themselves accused by the US and Israel of bias or worse, anti-Semitism. In the case of the investigation spearheaded by a respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone in 2009, the man was forced to retract part of his report.

Khan knows this too well because he is currently sitting on a large and growing file of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, insisting on delaying the procedure under various excuses. Obviously, the US does not favorably view ICC judges who advance war crime cases against Israel. The anti-ICC sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration in 2020 are an example.

Many officials in Western institutions are becoming aware of this hypocrisy. On October 28, Craig Mokhiber resigned from his position as the Director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in protest of the UN’s failure to stop “a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”

On October 20, around 850 members of the EU staff signed a letter to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, criticizing her “unconditional support” for Israel.

The letter was polite and diplomatic, considering the horrendous moral failure of Von der Leyen, especially when her gung-ho approach to the Russian war in Ukraine is compared to her blind support of Israeli crimes in Gaza. “Only if we acknowledge Israel’s pain, and its right to defend itself, will we have the credibility to say that Israel should react … in line with international humanitarian law,” she said.

The International Olympic Committee, which insists on separating between politics and sports, has no problem meddling in politics when the enemy is a Palestinian.

The IOC issued a statement on November 1, warning any participant in the Paris Olympics, scheduled for 2024, from engaging in any “discriminatory behavior” against Israeli athletes, because “athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments.”

The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come. Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge, or even the self-serving humanitarian.

This is not a difficult conclusion to reach. Gaza has been turned into a Hiroshima as a result of Western bombs and the blank political check handed to Israel by Western governments and leaders from the onset of the war, in fact, 75 years prior.

Nothing will ever alter this fact, and no ‘strongly worded’ future statements will ever help the West redeem its collective moral failure.

Original article by RAMZY BAROUD republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingGenocide in Gaza Would Not Be Possible Without Western Complicity

Coalmine approvals in Australia this year could add 150m tonnes of CO2 to atmosphere

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Coal loader P4393. Part of the coal loading facility at Kooragang Island, NSW Australia. Image by eyeweed, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Emissions added by coalmine expansions this year are equivalent to one-third of the country’s annual climate pollution. Image by eyeweed, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/02/coalmine-approvals-in-australia-this-year-could-add-150m-tonnes-of-co2-to-atmosphere

Expansion of metallurgical coalmine in Queensland will add 31m tonnes alone with activists accusing Albanese government of being reckless

Coalmine expansions and developments approved in Australia so far this year are expected to add nearly 150m tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over their lifetimes – equivalent to nearly a third of the country’s annual climate pollution.

The Albanese government this week gave the greenlight to an expansion of the Gregory Crinum coalmine in central Queensland. It produces metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking.

According to an analysis by the Australia Institute, it is likely to extend the development’s life by 11 years – until the mid-2030s – and add about 31m tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere once it is burned. That equates to 6% of Australia’s annual emissions. The owner, Sojitz Blue, will have until 2073 to decommission the mine.

Climate and conservation groups accused the government of recklessness and hypocrisy given its promise to act decisively on the climate crisis, pointing out it had the power to change the environment law to give it the power to block new fossil fuel developments if it chose.

The Climate Council’s chief executive, Amanda McKenzie, said the mine expansion approval showed Australia’s environment laws were “absolutely broken”.

“The Albanese government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to arrest this decline,” she said. “Strengthening our national environment law, with climate at the heart of it, will safeguard our health, grow the economy, and protect our treasured natural places.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/02/coalmine-approvals-in-australia-this-year-could-add-150m-tonnes-of-co2-to-atmosphere

Albanese Government’s stunning hypocrisy: coal mine extension gets the go-ahead

THE CLIMATE COUNCIL has labelled the decision to approve an extension to the Gregory Crinum coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin until 2073 as ‘stunning hypocrisy’.  

Just one week after Climate Minister Chris Bowen toured the Pacific to promote Australia’s climate credentials, and with all warning sirens blaring about a climate change-fuelled summer of extreme heat and fires ahead, it beggars belief the Albanese Government has thrown a lifeline to a fourth highly-polluting fossil fuel project. 

The approval was granted under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC), Australia’s key national environmental law, which ironically fails to deal directly with the main threat Australia’s environment now faces: climate change

Continue ReadingCoalmine approvals in Australia this year could add 150m tonnes of CO2 to atmosphere

Starmer asked judge to hide paedophile’s identity and ‘leniency of sentence’

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

More hypocrisy

Keir Starmer has rightly been under fire since Labour last week exploited abused children by publishing a Twitter post claiming Rishi Sunak doesn’t care about protecting children from paedophiles. Sunak is abysmal, but he has no role in the sentencing of offenders – and Starmer himself, as then-Director of Public Prosecutions, played a key role in creating the sentencing guidelines that courts still follow, including specific recommendations on sentencing sex offenders.

Starmer’s anonymity request was not his only controversy regarding sex offenders

And further hypocrisy in Labour’s current stance has come to light thanks to Gil O’Teane, who pointed out that – as a barrister acting on behalf of a convicted paedophile – Starmer asked a judge to keep secret both the offender’s identity and the leniency of the sentence he had received:

There is no suggestion that Starmer was acting improperly in representing his client in 2002 – but there is every suggestion that a man who understood the nuances of sentencing in 2002 is profoundly hypocritical and reckless to disregard his own history in order to make a vile, misleading and inflammatory smear against a political opponent. Especially one who was running the CPS when it chose not to prosecute Jimmy Savile.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Continue ReadingStarmer asked judge to hide paedophile’s identity and ‘leniency of sentence’

Labour right look to kick out SHA over criticism of Streeting and crushing defeat in exec elections

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-commercial use

Right-wingers hammered in Socialist Health Association elections said to be aiming to disaffiliate SHA on pretext after organisation condemned Starmer and sidekick Streeting for appalling health policy

The Labour right is angling to kick the Socialist Health Association (SHA) out of the party after the faction was crushed in the SHA’s internal elections – and in revenge for the SHA’s resounding condemnation of Labour’s privatisation-friendly health policy.

The right-wing slate had tried to boycott the elections claiming, presumably after seeing how poor their chances were, that the election was set up against them – but left it too late and the vote went ahead, with the right losing by a ratio of roughly six to one. As one wag put it, it must have been quite some fix to achieve that kind of ratio.

The previous SHA exec last month issued a scathing condemnation of Keir Starmer and his health spokesman Wes Streeting’s plan to extend the use of private healthcare in the NHS, the contempt the pair have shown for the health policy unanimously voted for by Labour members at last year’s party conference and the pair’s readiness to accept large donations from donors with private health interests – a position now resoundingly re-endorsed by SHA members:

At the 2022 Labour Party Conference, the Health Composite Motion moved by the Socialist Health Association (“SHA”) stated that Labour would adopt “a position of outright opposition to and commit to vote against any and all forms of privatisation of the NHS” and “commit to returning all privatised portions of the NHS to public control upon forming a Government”. It also banned Labour MPs from accepting donations from private companies interested in outsourcing NHS functions. See Conference Arrangements Committee Report 4, page 12.

The SHA’s motion was endorsed by a compositing process involving rank and file members, local constituency parties, trade unions, and the shadow frontbench. The Labour Conference passed it unanimously.

The NHS is at breaking point after 12 years of Tory privatisation and outsourcing. It is therefore beyond disappointing that Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has come out in favour of using private providers to bring down NHS waiting lists.

That is not the position democratically agreed at Labour Conference. And it is simply wrong, for the following reasons.

  1. It is simply wrong to say that the private sector has greater capacity to clear NHS backlogs. The people working in the private healthcare sector are, by and large, the same doctors and nurses who work in the NHS, and with the exception of the overseas health workers, the vast majority of them were trained in the NHS. Every hour of staff time devoted to private healthcare is an hour of staff time taken away from public healthcare for those who need it most.
  2. It is simply wrong to say that the private sector is more “efficient”. One example of this is that the Institute for Public Policy Research has found that Tony Blair’s Private Finance Initiatives cost the NHS almost £80 billion for only £13 billion of investment. The only party which benefits ‘efficiently’ from private finance is big finance – not patients.
  3. It is shameful that the Shadow Cabinet has failed to stand shoulder to shoulder with health unions in demanding fair pay and conditions for their members. The BMA has calculated that junior doctors have suffered a real pay cut of 26.1% since 2008 – meaning an exodus of qualified doctors driven out of the public sector just when patients need them most. Staff working conditions are patient treatment conditions.

The impetus for Labour’s ban on accepting donations from private companies interested in outsourcing NHS functions was a report that, in  2022, Wes Streeting accepted a £15,000 donation from hedge fund manager John Armitage. Mr Armitage’s fund owns shares worth more than half a billion dollars in UnitedHealth. UnitedHealth is America’s largest health insurer. It has spent millions of dollars lobbying US politicians against healthcare reform through seven different lobbying forms. This includes lobbying against the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would guarantee supplies to insulin to diabetics who depend on it to survive. It is one of the largest profiteers from NHS outsourcing and one of the biggest potential beneficiaries of future privatisation.

It is therefore also beyond disappointing to see that Wes Streeting has accepted a further £60,000 from MPM Connect. Wes Streeting and the other recipients funds from MPM Connect (including Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Mayor Dan Jarvis) should urgently confirm just what MPM Connect does; the terms under which they accepted a total of £340,000 from MPM Connect; just what MPM Connect expects in return; and whether its “investments in the employment sector” include further NHS outsourcing.

Accepting donations from private companies interested in NHS outsourcing creates an apparent conflict of interest, and undermines public confidence in Labour’s commitment to rebuilding a publicly owned and provided NHS.

We call on Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting to commit to the policy democratically agreed by the Labour Party – preventing further privatisation and immediately returning all privatised parts of the NHS to public ownership and control.

Mark Ladbrooke
SHA Chair

Harry Stratton

SHA Secretary

Esther Giles
SHA Treasurer

In apparent revenge, Skwawkbox understands that the Labour right – which now dominates the party’s national executive, is planning to table a move to expel or disaffiliate the SHA from the party, on the pretext that the result was somehow rigged despite the massive majority for the left slate, along with the membership status of one or more of the SHA’s elected officers.

The gross hypocrisy of this excuse cannot be overstated. The right-wing ‘Jewish Labour movement’ – of which many of the SHA right-wingers are strong supporters – was not disaffiliated by the party even though it retained members and officers who were actively, openly and officially campaigning against Labour and for the CUK ‘funny tinge’ party in UK elections, an act that is supposed to result in automatic expulsion and lengthy ineligibility to rejoin.

But it seems the right is so desperate to eradicate any left strongholds in the party – and to cover up the betrayal of the NHS by what passes for Labour’s ‘leadership’ – that it will resort to even the most grotesque and shameless lengths to achieve it.

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-commercial use

Continue ReadingLabour right look to kick out SHA over criticism of Streeting and crushing defeat in exec elections

Varoufakis Details Vision for Ending ‘Global Empire of Capital’ to Avert Catastrophe

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Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Yanis Varoufakis. Image: Olaf Kosinsky (kosinsky.eu) Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0-de

Creating a new international economic order “sounds like an impossible dream,” said the former Greek finance minister, but “not more impossible than the principle of one person, one vote, or of the end of the divine right of kings once sounded.”

KENNY STANCILDecember 12, 2022

Humanity faces a grim fate because the global ruling class refuses to depart from the capitalist status quo even as their quest to maximize profits intensifies the climate crisis and the prospects of a nuclear war. But with enough solidarity, progressives around the world can build an egalitarian, democratic, peaceful, and sustainable society.

That’s the message shared Monday by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who outlined his vision for how the left can work together to end the “global empire of capital” and forge a humane future—part of a Progressive International-led effort to chart a path toward a “New International Economic Order for the 21st century.”

Varoufakis began by noting that “we have never been closer to a nuclear holocaust than today,” as the doomsday clock that scientists invented in the 1940s quickly approaches midnight. Meanwhile, there is another clock “counting down to the moment humanity will have passed the point of no return from climate catastrophe.”

“What is the global ruling class doing to avert these twin calamities?” asked Varoufakis. “Their best to push humanity over both cliffs at once.”

“They have started a new Cold War,” said Varoufakis. “They are pursuing white-hot endless wars around the world—wars that help them sell more weapons than ever.”

“They are drilling with renewed gusto for oil and gas, while delivering speeches on environmental protection,” he continued. “They are turning the screws on workers everywhere, while waxing lyrical about social responsibility.”

“Enough of their hypocrisy, their war-mongering, their financialization of lives, and the privatization of our commons,” Varoufakis declared. “Progressives of the world refuse to take sides on this new ‘cold’ hot war. We are instead building a new non-aligned movement to fight for humanity’s survival by working for peace, solidarity, and cooperation,” he added, referring to the assemblage of Third World nations that refused in the wake of decolonization and throughout the Cold War to side with either the United States or the Soviet Union.

According to Varoufakis, the “one thing” that undercuts cooperation, solidarity, and peace is “the reign of capital over labor and the debt bondage it inflicts upon the majority everywhere—in the Global South, but also in the Global North.”

As the 50th anniversary of the United Nations’ 1974 adoption of the original non-aligned movement’s proposals for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) nears, Varoufakis argued that to turn progressives’ yearning for a NIEO into reality, a revived non-aligned movement must “direct large quantities of money into the things humanity craves, from plentiful green energy to public health to public education and poverty alleviation.”

Just imagine, said Varoufakis, if existing international financial institutions were restructured and invested “10% of global income into the green transition, especially in the developing world.”

“Unless we bring down the global empire of increasingly concentrated capital, there is no chance we can end wars, eradicate poverty, or avert climate disaster.”

“Of course,” he acknowledged, “this will remain a dream unless our movement manages to dismantle the global empire of capital.”

To end “the tyranny of capital over people” and reclaim “plundered commons on land, in the oceans, in the air, and soon in outer space,” Varoufakis called for two key reforms.

The first is to ensure that “corporations belong to the people who work in them on the basis of one person, one share, one vote,” said Varoufakis. The second is to deny “banks a monopoly over peoples’ transactions.”

Once that happens, banks and profits will “wither as society’s main drivers,” the political economist argued, “because the banks will be defanged” and the distinction between profits and wages erased. “The simultaneous euthanasia of the labor markets and the share markets, along with the defanging of the banks, will automatically redistribute wealth and as a magnificent byproduct, remove the main incentives for waging war.”

Moreover, “the end of capital’s power over society will allow communities collectively to decide health provision, education, [and] investment in saving the environment from our virus-like growth,” he continued. “Genuine democracy will at last be possible, to be practiced in the citizens’ and the workers’ assemblies—not behind the closed doors where oligarchs and bureaucrats gather.”

Varoufakis admitted that “the twin democratization of capital and of money sounds like an impossible dream.” However, he countered, “not more impossible than the principle of one person, one vote, or of the end of the divine right of kings once sounded.”

“Unless we bring down the global empire of increasingly concentrated capital, there is no chance we can end wars, eradicate poverty, or avert climate disaster,” said Varoufakis. “This twin democratization is nothing short of a precondition for our species’ survival.”

The former Greek finance minister concluded by calling on progressives everywhere “to unite in a common struggle not just for humanity’s survival but for a chance at giving every child that is born tomorrow and in the future a chance at a successful life… on a livable planet, where war has become extinct, along with poverty and fear.”

Varoufakis’ address is part of a campaign that Progressive International launched last Thursday at the People’s Forum in New York City, where scholars and policymakers from around the world met “to present, deliberate, and develop proposals for a New International Economic Order fit for the 21st century.”

In a pair of videos shared Monday, Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the thinkers who participated in last week’s discussion, stressed the need to ditch neoliberal policies, to “claw back some of the rights that we have lost over the past 50 years, and to reinvent what we see as a just, equitable, sustainable, viable international economy.”

To start with, policymakers must “undo the major privatizations” of the past half-century, said Ghosh. Alluding to the ongoing refusal of wealthy countries and pharmaceutical corporations to share know-how and transfer technology that would enable the expanded production of Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, she also called for action to address “the concentration of knowledge, which has become something that is actually obscene and actively killing people.”

As part of its campaign to win a fresh U.N. declaration on a NIEO by 2024, Progressive International has also launched The Internationalist, a subscription-based newsletter featuring exclusive interviews; accounts of struggle from trade union, social movement, and political leaders; academic research; translations; art; and more.

The latest edition includes an interview with Andrés Arauz, an economist and former minister of knowledge and human talent under ex-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The conversation with Arauz, who narrowly lost the 2021 presidential election in Ecuador and was part of last week’s panel convened by Progressive International, focuses on the “political economy of under-development in the Global South.”

During last week’s event, Yusnier Romero Puentes, deputy permanent representative of Cuba to the U.N., announced that the Cuban government had invited Progressive International to host a NIEO-focused summit in Havana on January 25, 2023.

Progressive International general coordinator David Adler told the audience that “we are again in a moment of rapid geopolitical transformation with the end of the unipolar domination of the United States—but we lack a common vision of the multipolar world that is now in formation.”

“Next month in Havana, we will bring together governments, political representatives, popular movements, scholars, and policymakers to start the process of constructing that common vision and building the power to bring it about,” he added.

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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WSWS on “Free speech” hypocrisy following Charlie Hebdo

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The World Socialist Website comments on Western “Free Speech” hypocrisy after the strange events of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

While I support free speech, some reporting has been worse than useless. Does anyone know if there were two or three attackers yet? Were they Kalashnikovs or AK47s? I know what a rocket launcher is, but what’s a rocket grenade launcher? Do you really believe that an attacker left his identity card in the getaway vehicle? How fortunate … and haven’t we heard that one before many times?

“Free Speech” hypocrisy in the aftermath of the attack on Charlie Hebdo

Throughout Europe and the United States, the claim is being made that the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo was an assault on the freedom of the press and the unalienable right of journalists in a democratic society to express themselves without loss of freedom or fear for their lives. The killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an assault on the principles of free speech that are, supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus, presented as an another outrage by Muslims who cannot tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion must be drawn that the “war on terror”—i.e., the imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia and North and Central Africa—is an unavoidable necessity.

In the midst of this orgy of democratic hypocrisy, no reference is made to the fact that the American military, in the course of its wars in the Middle East, is responsible for the deaths of at least 15 journalists. In the on-going narrative of “Freedom of Speech Under Attack,” there is no place for any mention of the 2003 air-to-surface missile attack on the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three journalists dead and four wounded.

Nor is anything being written or said about the July 2007 murder of two Reuters journalists working in Baghdad, staff photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. Both men were deliberately targeted by US Apache gunships while on assignment in East Baghdad.

The American and international public was first able to view a video of the cold-blooded murder of the two journalists as well as a group of Iraqis—taken from one of the gunships—as the result of WikiLeaks’ release of classified material that it had obtained from an American soldier, Corporal Bradley Chelsea Manning.

And how has the United States and Europe acted to protect WikiLeaks’ exercise of free speech? Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, has been subjected to relentless persecution. Leading political and media figures in the United States and Canada have denounced him as a “terrorist” and demanded his arrest, with some even calling publicly for his murder. Assange is being pursued on fraudulent “rape” charges concocted by American and Swedish intelligence services. He has been compelled to seek sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which is under constant guard by British police who will seize Assange if he steps out of the embassy. As for Chelsea Manning, she is presently in prison, serving out a 35-year sentence for treason.

That is how the great capitalist “democracies” of North America and Europe have demonstrated their commitment to free speech and the safety of journalists!

Continue ReadingWSWS on “Free speech” hypocrisy following Charlie Hebdo