I have just seen an Isreali spokesperson claim that the fact a major offensive only happened now is testement to isreals restraint in dealing with Hamas...

OK, lets ask ourselves a question here.  Do Isreal want peace?  Its a simple enough question, yet the answer is anything but.  Lets look at it more closely.

What is this major offensive likely to achieve?  Well, certainly it will have dented Hamas's capabilities in firing the unguided rockets which cause random destruction and the very occassional Isreali death (15 in seven years)... in the short term.  Um... thats about it to the positive side for Isreal. What about negatives?

Well, they've just created maybe a thousand more willing martyrs in the families of the innocent civilians they have killed (more in one day than the rockets have killed in seven years).

And so the cycle continues.

Lets break it down further.  Both sides governments  (not the people) are guilty of killing innocent people.  Isreal does it in retaliation for random strikes against their people, Hamas because Palestine is a prison where over a million people have no access to healthcare, food, electricity, jobs... and because Isreal holds the key to all off that with their wall, checkpoints and constant blocking of aid.

Is it not time to forget the who did what first?  Fact is, this is all that people under 40 have ever known.  I know of no philospher who has ever contended that force is unjustified in the face of such repression.

Force begats force.  Desperation begats hopelessnes, anger and despair.  Isreal, as a whole, have a good quality of life.  They face, from the palestinians, no greater danger than we in the UK faced from the IRA (which got weapons from america... take note those bringing Irans name into this).  Yet we did not feel the need to collectively punish all of Ireland, subject them to poverty and then airstrike them when they fought back.  We tried for a while, sure, but had we continued to take Isreals logic Ireland would, by now, be a festering prison island.  Instead, we have peace.

Isrealis will claim that Hamas see no right in Isreals existence.  So?  Do they have nukes?  Would Iran really go that route?  The IRA saw that Norther Ireland had no right to exist but heres the thing.  It is only an idea.  There is absolutely no practical way that Hamas could do anything about it anyway.  Besides, whats the ideas of a few crackpots compared to the ongoing humiliation of an entire people?

Isreal alone hold the key to finding peace.  If they want it.  I say this because many in the media have pointed to the upcoming election where the hardliner Netinyahu is looking like succeeding.  Funny how this show of force will help with that.  Add this to the booming security industry and this status-quo, having to deal with untargeted rockets which only hit anything by fluke, may not seem to bad.

I'm not anti-Isreali, im anti-isreali policy regarding palestine.  It is a war crime.  It is collective punishment. 

Cause-and-effect.  It rules our civilisation like it rules physics.  Occupation, the wielding of power in denying basic human rights... these only breed greater (and justified) anger and the urge for revenge.  Hamas is, like Isreal, unable to distinguish between innocents and those in the ruling bodies.  This is a crime all governments are guilty of.

Surely even the most ignorant person cant pretend that peace can be brought forth from smoking carnage like a flower budding unmolested in a crater-strewn battlefiled.  Peace needs a safe home in which to grow, to forget its past traumas, to protect it from the frost and the rain and await a time not too distant where the sun can come out once more.  Only Isreal can give or take away that protection, the nurturing that peace so badly needs.  Or it can continue to root it up everytime someone snaps, someone who may have nothing left to lose in the world.

P.S

Im hardly alone in thinking that the IRA were well within their rights to fight back against the english over a hundred years ago.  They were at our mercy, repressed and killed and given no voice, no future.  It was only after they had fought and won their freedom, when we ceded ireland to them and ended the brutal repression, that they lost their legitimacy not simply philisophically, but with the Irish people themselves.  No one wants to see war.  If the alternative is peace in ones own land, the desire will evaporate and leave a hardcore for whom nothing more can be done.  Crucially though, the constant stream of new comers will cease, and so will the animosity and anger. 

Until Isreal does this, there will be no end. 

There was recently a court case involving the parents of a young ex-rugby player who, having been paralysed from the neck down in a rugby match, had attempted suicide three times.  The parents, who had implored their son to reconsider, accompanied him to switzerland where he died through assisted suicide.  The Judge declared it would not be in the public interest to sentance the couple despite their being adequate evidence.  Once more the debate has been stirred, with the same old arguments being levelled.

Concerns amount to a degredation in how we value life, an argument that only God should choose when we die and that the process could lead to a change in the relationship between carers, families and patients.

Sorry for putting this bluntly, but what the fuck is it to anyone not directly involved in such a heartbreaking and emotional period? Seriously.  No one is suggesting bumping off inconvenient people, or pressure the ill to die.  It could quite easily be regulated, allowing people the option in cases of paralyses, terminal or deteriarative diseases to apply for permission to have the procedure in this country.  If this were the case, many people would be able to prepare and state their case whilst still in a sound state of mind.  Only these people know the pain that they are in.  To have this gaurantee would enable them to enjoy the rest of their life safe in the knowledge that, though they are no longer able themselves to do the deed, someone can be there to help.  The alternative is that they have only until they are still able to travel alone, suffering alone.

How on earth is this even possibly the moral answer!

As for the God argument, this I find interesting.  Had it not been for the advent of modern technology, "God" would have happily recieved them into heaven long before they are held in stasis in intensive care.  How is keeping people alive indefinately not acting God?  We have a level of humanity for pets that we have yet to apply to those who choose it for themselves.

At the end of the day, no-one has the right to even attempt to deny genuine cases of assisted suicide.  A persons life is their own ultimate right, and invoking religious reasons into such a crushing situation is as insulting as it is irrelevent.

I've just finished reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, author of the much feted No Logo.  It's one of those books that make you realise that despite years of learning world history, you actually knew shit all.  Read It.  Now.

The book takes a historical look at the spread of freidmanite free-market ideology, the assumption that a completely unfettered, unregulated economic system of free-markets will settle, through the powers of supply and demand, into calm equilibrium, maximising wealth and benefitting the world through a 'trickle-down' effect.  I first heard of the trickle-down effects in Geography, learning about how tourist markets in the developing world help generate wealth for the whole community.  This was apparantly a simple fact regarding human geography.  It is also, to a large effect, absolute bollocks.  Yes, people get jobs... but, since free-markets only work with no interference (so the theory goes), they also lose any semblance of minimum-wage, labour unions or labour regulation.  Such negative consequences were strangley lacking in my lessons.

Free-market ideology was the backbone of economics at Chicago University throughout the sixties, headed by the infamous Milton Friedman.  At the time, America was fighting a war against communist isdeology (read: facist ideology) in Russia and as such saw the emerging leftist governments in South America as a significant threat.  With their militant workers unions, state owned companies and controlled markets, they represented an independant and economically strengthening bloc somewhat too close to home.  One by one, America funded coup attempts:  Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Guatamala... each time a new regime came to power, there they were: Chicago trained friedmanites dominated economic policy having received a free education at the expense of the U.S tax payer. 

In each case, the new ruling Junta accepted the washington consensus: that to be a part of the globalising community one had to privatise, privatise, privatise.  State onership was socialist.  In the wake of each of these radical reforms, hundreds of thousands of state employees were laid-off, unions were beaten, kidnapped and murdered into submission, prices soared as caps were lifted and cheap, foreign (often american) imports flooded the market, causing widespread hardship.  It is a little stated fact that switching to a free-market can only occur in a repressive dictatorship (though Poland and South Africa would prove that other ways would be found).  It is not hard to see why.

In every country, the effect of this 'shock therapy' was the same: mass unemployment, skyrocketing prices, repression and an ever increasing wealth gap.  As the poor got more numerous, the rich got obscenely rich.  Government ministers joined foriegn investors in buying up state companies and natural resources for a fraction of their worth on long-term contracts.  Within a few years, this economic elite toasted the ingernuity of chicago and the logistical support of washington, benefitting all the while from the exploitation and repression of the indiginous community. 

The IMF have, for decades now, ignored their original function of being a shoulder to lean on and instead reverted to a much more profitable (for america anyhow, who essential control this 'multi-national' institution) role of black-mailing enforcer.  If a country goes tits up, it's there... dangling a huge loan on the condition that the country undergo radical free-market reform.  If it meets these demands of opening up there resources and unregulated labour to foriegn investment, only then will they help. 

IMF:  I see your economy is in a rather bad way after all the civil wars youve been through

Ruling Junta:  Yes, We need billions of dollars to help our people...

IMF staffer with conscience standing at back (under breath):  What, the people you use the cattle prods on?  the ones with 'made in the USA' on?

IMF:  OK, but first you must lower public spending, scrap healthcare, privatise all your companies, lay-off thousands of people, scrap price caps, allow cheap imports to devestate your agriculture industry and what little manufacturing you have and persuade those pesky workers unions to see fair will ya?

Ruling Junta: er... OK, we can do that... so... um... am I right in thinking we can just claim shares in these privatised companies and make loads of cash? 

IMF: what? sorry? did you say something?  No?  well, ok, see ya then.


This happened time and time again.  Wonder no more how the american economy has grown despite the primary and secondary industries declining...

I'll leave the rest for you to read.  It's shocking stuff..  Ford actually had a torture room in their factory (argentina.. or chile possibly) ready for when the bosses picked out the union members to the secret policy.  And thats not the half of it.

In short, it is the much ignored history of the second wave of colonial exploitation and domination.  Instead of using our own resources, we bank-roll whichever brutal elite takes charge and, under the shadow of a shocked population, unleash the 'freedom' of free markets.  The death toll is, by now, in the millions. 

Yet will anyone be held to account?  It will truely be a measure of mankinds advancement when it is at least agreed that there is a case to be answered.

Even though I stayed up deep into the morning, long enough to know that Obama had clinched it, when I turned on the news today tears welled in my eyes.  After the bewilderment and hurt four years ago, I daren't get too optimistic, my mind never far from the thought of florida and ohio.  Yet it is happened, and today people all around the globe are waking up to a world with renewed hope.  The republican war-mongerers are no more!

This is an historic moment.  That such a multi-cultured, intelligent and unifying president has been elected sends a message to the world that the american people are not one with the imperialistic, corporate machine that was the neo-cons.  It also shows the world that after two highly contentious elections democracy can work in america after all.  John Bolton, ex US ambassador to the UN, was keen to point out that money won this election on the BBC coverage (in between accusing the BBC of bias... though who can blame them for not controlling their joy at the way things were going).  Well, think on this Bolton.  Obama's massive, record-breaking fundraising mission took donations from unheard of numbers of average americans, each contributing a small amount.  So, yes John, money did win this election; except for once this money didn't come from lobbyists.  It came from the people.

The american people won this election.  Period.

A deep, heart-felt thankyou goes out to all those americans who queued for hours to do the right thing.  When the number of people around the world crying with joy upon hearing the news far outwieghs the tears shed for he who lost... then you can honestly say you did the right thing.

Even though I stayed up deep into the morning, long enough to know that Obama had clinched it, when I turned on the news today tears welled in my eyes.  After the bewilderment and hurt four years ago, I daren't get too optimistic, my mind never far from the thought of florida and ohio.  Yet it is happened, and today people all around the globe are waking up to a world with renewed hope.  The republican war-mongerers are no more!

This is an historic moment.  That such a multi-cultured, intelligent and unifying president has been elected sends a message to the world that the american people are not one with the imperialistic, corporate machine that was the neo-cons.  It also shows the world that after two highly contentious elections democracy can work in america after all.  John Bolton, ex US ambassador to the UN, was keen to point out that money won this election on the BBC coverage (in between accusing the BBC of bias... though who can blame them for not controlling their joy at the way things were going).  Well, think on this Bolton.  Obama's massive, record-breaking fundraising mission took donations from unheard of numbers of average americans, each contributing a small amount.  So, yes John, money did win this election; except for once this money didn't come from lobbyists.  It came from the people.

The american people won this election.  Period.

A deep, heart-felt thankyou goes out to all those americans who queued for hours to do the right thing.  When the number of people around the world crying with joy upon hearing the news far outwieghs the tears shed for he who lost... then you can honestly say you did the right thing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/22/chagos-islanders-lose?commentpage=1&commentposted=1

Today i write this blog shaking my head in utter disbelief and sadness.  My heart goes out to all those who have continued to fight through the courts against the all-powerful arseholes that is the UK government.

In 1971, we handed over the pacific island archipelago of Diego Garcia to the americans for an air base which now houses hundreds of extraordinarily renditioned prisoners.   It was home to a few thousand inhabitants living a self-sustainable life on secluded tropical islands.  After gassing their pet dogs and forcibly evicting them from their homes, we left them with nothing to continue to this day in poverty, longing for their homeland.

Today, after previous victories in the courts led the government to appeal to the Lords, they ruled 3-2 in the governments favour.  These poor souls have been denied the possibility of returning. 

The QC acting on behalf of the government actually had the gall to say that these islanders held no property rights for the islands.  PROPERTY RIGHTS?  IS THIS SOME SICK JOKE?   What possible need did they have for them before we showed up?  Where were are property rights when we stole their home?  At the end of a gun and noweher else.

This is sick!  This is despicable!  This is like something out of the 1800's!  Surely we've realised that imperial disregard for others rights is a crime? 

I really dont know how on earth i can write in words just how low and evil this is.  I cant possible express the contempt and loathing i feel for our government, and indeed our nation for not standing up and demanding this kind of action be stopped.  Time and again we continue our domination over those of different colours when it suits us.  It doesnt matter if we are supplying arms to Indonesia for genocide or evicting an entire people from their home, we have absolutely no right to claim any sort of moral high-ground.

The one difference between terrorists and the west is that the media focuses on the terrorists using a compilation of soundbites and quotes from the western governments sources.  Imagine creating a newspaper which focused on our war crimes using the voices of the victims only.  It would be deemed extremist liturature and could get you thrown in jail in all likelyhood!  Yet would it be any less true?

Imagine for one moment... an island of british citizens have their pets gassed, get beaten and carolled off the island and into abject poverty by, say, Iran, so that they could build a military base in which hundreds of europeans were held prisoner with no rights and torture used routinely. 

Take out the names of the countries and you have identical situations.  Now ask yourself what the reaction of our governments would be.  Its ironic.  If ever there was a situation which would have been a just war, it would be the chagossians.  If they had an army they would be have full justification for engaging america and having them tried for war crimes at the UN.  Yet all they can do is try, through the enemies own courts, to fight it legally with nothing but hope.

We have denied them even this. 

Today, i am ashamed to call myself British.

In fact, thats the straw that breaks the camals back.  I no longer have any desire to associated with the countries corrupt and wicked ways. 

I am me.  Nothing More.