Election UK:Denial at the Ballot Box

For those reading from elsewhere in the world; here in the UK we've just had an election. The economy was (not surprisingly) the main issue - but also there was global warming. Now it's impossible to unpick that issue from all the other issues, but it is notable that there are 2 political parties that have strong global warming denial positions - UKIP (with Monkton as the science advisor) and the fascist BNP. Both have not done well. While both have slightly increased their votes, I think issues like immigration and dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties had a greater role to play in that. However there was a large turn-out of people who didn't vote for them, which drowned out any gain they might have hoped to make. Plus our first-past the post voting system does not favour small parties. As a result they lost 29 local councillors between them.

In the election the party with the most representatives was the Conservatives - but not enough to take power alone. I know that there are prominent Conservatives (and the supporting press) who are into global warming denial too, however the fact that they don't have the majority means that wing of the party will be held in check by the alliances they will have to make with parties who reject global warming denial totally.

Put simply in the UK denial of global warming has not been shown to be a vote winner.

Election UK: Here Comes the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

The election has come and gone with windbags of pointless speculation (me included) and the great British public has spoken and elected to: not change very much at all, thank you. Poor LibDems, I do feel for them having al that hype and expectation to find out that it's one stop forward and almost one step back. It goes to show that when it comes to political thinking, people are conservative with a small 'c' and don't really go for change very much. The positive to this is that the far-right don't get much traction. The negative to that is anyone looking for rapid social revolution will be disappointed.

So lets pick though the now rotting bones of this election...

-How Danny Kushlick did in Bristol West? Not great. 343 votes or 0.6% - but at least he beat the English Democrats. Tiny yay!

- How the Greens did in vote share in Bristol... Again, not great. Best they did was 2.5% in Bristol South.

- How much we need to be worried by the BNP vote in Bristol? Happily the BNP did not do well. Thy never got about 5% which means in all the Bristol seats they've lost their deposit. Part of the victory here must go to those people campaigning against the far-right across the city - good work people! It's hard to see how the BNP can get a better opportunity - faith the the mainstream parties was at an all time low, scare stories about immigration at an all time high - and yet they still lost their deposit. Still the local election results are not yet and they can expect to do better there compared to the parliamentary elections.

-If the BNP manages to get it's first MP and/or take Barking and Dagenham council? Ha Ha Ha!!! BNP did shit here too! This was their big hope for a breakthrough seat and they only managed a poor third - a looong way off winning. But again, local election results yet to come.

-If the Greens managed to get their first MP in Brighton Pavilion? Can the Greens also make headway in Cambridge? Congratulations to the Greens who won Brighton Pavilion with a solid victory. Note: also standing there was the fab named 'Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality'. In Cambridge the Green's came 4th but kept the deposit.

-How the bonkers proto-Taliban of the Christian Party do? Really badly. Hee hee. 2nd to last in Filton & Bradley Stoke, narrowly beating the Vote Zero None of the Above Party. Rubbish in Bath too with 250 votes (0.5%). Expect the wrath of the Almighty any day for for turning our back on the Taliban The Christian Party.

More news as I get it...

LIVE! Live Blogging Election Day

1.30AM: BNP loose deposit in Filton and Bradley Stoke with a rubbish 2.7% - Wot a fuck up.

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1.23AM: In Northern Ireland the First Minister has lost...and lost to a non-sectarian party. Fucking great! His wife was the anti-gay god-bother who also broke bible rules. BNP also lost deposit in Torbay. Woo! Going to go to bed I think. Night.

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1AM: BNP loose 2 more deposits. Hee hee.

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Witching Hour: Greens confident of talking Brighton Pavillion says Guardian. BNP seem to have lost deposit in Sunderland Central.

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11.41: Bugger - Washington & Sunderland West the vote for fuckwit BNP goes from just over 3% to just over 5% and they keep thier deposit. Shit.

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11.23PM: BNP vote down by 2% in Sunderland!!! Not very good start for the master race.

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11PM: Watching C4's comedy election coverage. After all, this current system is a bit of a democratic joke. Lancaster Unity is reporting ongoing in-fighting technical problems on BNP's website. Also lots of cops at Barking & Dagenham ready for result in tough fought battle there of coalition of anti-racists vs BNP. First results due through soon...

7.40PM: News websites are reporting a high turnout. Passed by my polling station (Bristol West) and it was brisk but not crowded.

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1PM: There are other places also live blogging the election: Lancaster Unity, which is a great sourse of news about the far-right will be starting to live blog from 10pm. They have an interesting story on how the BNP website was down briefly due to in-fighting between the webmaster and the party. The Guardian are also live-blogging today, all day too.

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11.54 AM: I'm going to be live-blogging election day where I can until I get bored and go to bed. So thus far I've voted (for Danny) and will be adding news and comment throughout the day.

To update, click the refresh button on your browser. I'll also twitter where I can.

Updating my previous post about what is of interest to me in the coming general election. So far we have:

- How Danny Kushlick did in Bristol West (Vote Danny!)
- How the Greens did in vote share (Bristol is a pretty Green city and I'm often surprised they do do better here...)
- How much we need to be worried by the BNP vote in Bristol (I'd expect a small rise, given the economic crisis, voter apathy and dissatisfaction with the existing political parties, combined with the drum-beat of anti-Muslim and anti-Immigration scare stories in the tabloids.)
- How well the candidates flagged by Ian Bone (and commentators) do.
- What the real outcome of the reported Lib-Dem swing will actually be (voters are often quite loyal to one party).
- If the BNP manages to get it's first MP and/or take Barking and Dagenham council.
- If the Greens managed to get their first MP in Brighton Pavilion.
- Can the Greens also make headway in Cambridge.
- How the bonkers proto-Taliban of the Christian Party do in Wales and in Bath with candidate Stephen Hewett.

And now..

There is also a few nutters in the Filton & Bradley Stoke constituency the hateful Nazi BNP and the bonkers UKIP and Christian Party. Let's see how they do in this newly minted boundary.

How Murdoch Corrupts Democracy

Confessions of a former Sun editor... (bold is my emphasis...)

Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election – or held the balance of power – it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.

I can say this with some authority because in my five years editing the Sun I did not once meet a Lib Dem leader, even though I met Tony Blair, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith on countless occasions. (Full disclosure: I have since met Nick Clegg.)

I remember in my first year asking if we staffed the Liberal Democrat conference. I was interested because as a student I'd been a founder member of the SDP. I was told we did not. We did not send a single reporter for fear of encouraging them.

See - it's not about reporting what is happening - it's about reporting what Murdoch wants you too think is happening. Reality engineering.

Yet another reason to move to democratic media.

Cosying up to Communism

I liked this little comment about the rabid Fox news network and it's pushing of the Obama=Socialism and Fox News=Freedom memes...

...Then there is Google's commendable withdrawal from the Chinese mainland because of censorship, which is certainly in keeping with Obama's stand on human rights in China. I mention this because while Rupert Murdoch's Fox News network in the US has been spewing out daily dose of mustard gas on the health bill, talking about freedom of choice and messy European socialism, another branch of Murdoch's unlovely empire – MySpace China – happily complies with the censorship of a socialist state.

Indeed, though it's a communist, not socialist state. Fox News's parent company is cosying up to the nasty authoritarian cousin of Socialism, Communism.

Tories sabotage anti-poverty bill

Like a wolf in sheep clothing, the Tories are trying to be positioned as the 'nice party' and not the 'nasty party' but it is hard for them to keep all the tentacles in the box. A party that has more than it's fair share of closet racists, anti-science climate change denialists and other wingnuts. Now we can add the sickening spectre of the Tories killing a bill to stop 'vulture funds' where developing nation debt is brought and sold then used to lever more cash from the poverty-stricken country into the hands of grasping financiers. Plus the duplicitous way it was done to hide the identity of the individual doing the wrecking is pretty sickening too:

The frustration has been compounded by the secrecy surrounding the events in the Commons last night. During the reading, three Tory MPs were seen to huddle together on the benches before one shouted the word "object!", which under parliamentary procedure effectively stopped the bill passing. Three Conservatives were in the chamber – Christopher Chope, Andrew Robathan and Simon Burns – but none has admitted intervening.

Nasty. So who did it? Who's going to own up to the nasty act? Nobody so far, but Chope seems to be getting the finger pointed at him. We should be told.

Election Blues

Ok, so I am already bored of the election and it has not even been announced. The endless promises that flounder in office, the pointless debates over who said what to who. I will vote, but that might only be to spoil my paper in disgust at the pathetic excuse for democracy that we have. Democracy is too important to be left to politicians.

John Gray Talk: Beware Fascism

I went along to see the political philosopher John Gray give a talk yesterday at the Watershed. It was a very illuminating talk with lots of interesting points. His main point is that regardless we admit it or not, many of us have an idea of political 'progress' as a cumulative thing. What he means is that science and technology are cumulative - as in, once we solve one issue or problem, we can build new knowledge and technology on the back of that. As our knowledge about the world gets greater and the technology we can develop also grows. For example, as our ability to understand micro-technology grows we have been able to progress that knowledge further and further so we can each have a personal PC that is many times more powerful than the one NASA used to send people to the moon in the 60s.

Gray says we all tend to fall into the trap of applying the same ideals to political progress. There these is a big narrative to history; be it religious or secular - that we think history has a direction. So once universal suffrage is gained, that's democracy sorted and we can progress to exporting it (e.g. Iraq). Those (like the Neocons) who aims for impossible gains (spreading democracy via the gun) always end up sacrificing other people's lives on their alter of progress. He suggests this is foolish, that while the progress made is a good thing (he cited women's rights, ending slavery etc as good things we should protect) that when the sit hits the fan these can(and do) get reversed very quickly.

In his 2003 book 'Al Queda and What it Means to Be Modern' he does predict the economic collapse. In the talk he pointed out that tens of thousands of practising economists failed to. What does that say about the system? It says reverses can and do happen and the happen fast. Prior to this fall he suggests the hubris was that we thought we could control risk. We could not. He now predicts that we are in the first stages of a longer collapse and that reverses will happen - that groups of humans will blame other groups of humans and turn on each other. He also predicts the return of the racist right as part of this.

Looking at the predicted gains of the BNP, even the Evening Post's acquiesce to casual racism against travellers, it seems his predictions are coming to pass. Gray suggests things like resisting ID cards are worthy because while the government may claim benign reasons for it, almost all knowledge and technology can be used for ill, and as reveres happen fast, we should not empower the state with this data.

Britain Leaves Iraq, the War goes on

So finally, 6 years later, too many dead later and over £3 billion poured into the quagmire and finally the British forces are leaving Iraq. Despite the attempted propaganda, the situation is better but not perfect as US forces are still needed in Basra to replace the British. The British forces and government are trying to put a 'mission accomplished' spin on it, but it is a faliure - no WMDs, no functioning democracy and the low-level civil war rumbles on. While not as bad as it was, there are still around 15 US troops dying per month and the last British solider killed was in February this year.

There is also the worrying trend of the power of 'our man' in Iraq that is getting, well, dictatorial;

"Dictators didn't come out of nowhere, they didn't come by a great explosion. They come by capturing small things bit by bit. Small things are very telling - they tell you the nature of things to come. One day people will wake up and ask how did we come here, it must be an awful conspiracy."

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Some Election Comments

Obviously there has been an election and lots has been written. It was historic and I was impressed by Obama's speech on the night. Here's a few bits I found of interest to share with you. Here is an image of the voting pattern where the colours are the opposite to the parties here with blue being Democrat/left-of-centre and red being Republican/right-crazies;



Now the same data but adjusted to display population not geography:



Very interesting. Taken from Pharyngula.

Also: Obama's designated a--hole - article about the powerbroker who helped turn the fortunes of the Democratic party.

How Obama learned from past campaigns and used the net to great effect.

And the Republican's turning on each other. Such fun;

As the implosion of the defeated Republican campaign continued yesterday, the landscape of American conservatism was dotted with signs that these were very strange times indeed. Rush Limbaugh, behemoth of rightwing radio, took to the airwaves to declare war on two enemies: Barack Obama and the Republican party. Bloggers at FreeRepublic.com, an internet hub for conservatives, announced a boycott of Fox News and John McCain's aides fell over one another to leak embarrassing details about the campaign to the press.

Voting for God

More on the fundamentalist nut-bags in the US;

God wants to build a pipeline;

"God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that" Says Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - and like the Blues Brothers, we are on a mission from God, but not to save an orphanage but wage war in Iraq.

And the scary/funny - The fundamentalist formula for electoral success.
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The Battle of Genoa

There is a very good write-up on the police riot of Genoa in the Guardian;

"There are several good reasons why we should not forget what happened to Covell, then aged 33, that night in Genoa. The first is that he was only the beginning. By midnight on July 21 2001, those police officers were swarming through all four floors of the Diaz Pertini building, dispensing their special kind of discipline to its occupants, reducing the makeshift dormitories to what one officer later described as "a Mexican butcher's shop". They and their colleagues then illegally incarcerated their victims in a detention centre, which became a place of dark terror....Genoa tells us that when the state feels threatened, the rule of law can be suspended. Anywhere."

We should also not forget how much of the media just climbed on-board with the faked police account of what happened. I single out the Daily Mail & it's 'journalist' Lucie Morris as the worst. But the deeper meaning in the article holds true. When the state feels threatened, than and and all means become available;

"No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges."

Buenaventura Durruti

It is worth remembering this are we move into the age of the end of oil.

Irony Overload

Clarion Events (hosts of The Baby Show) recently bought the rights to DSEi, yes the life-affirming Defence Systems and Equipment International, aka the world's biggest arms fair.

And remember how the fight in Iraq is for democracy and how the US handed power over to Iraqi's? Ironic then...

The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more or less blackmailing the Iraqi government into signing a security pact with George W. Bush. At stake is $50 bn. of Iraqi money held in the US Federal Reserve, at least $20 bn. of which could be lost to Iraq if the government of Nuri al-Maliki declines to sign on the dotted line. Cockburn also reveals that the Iraqis wanted to diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros, and that the Americans vetoed the move. Bush wants 50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.

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Kill 'Em All

There was a great 2000AD strip, The ABC Warriors, where one of the characters Mek-Quake, a psychotic robot with a tiny mental age declares that;

"We're going to fight for freedom and democracy and anyone who disagrees, we're going to kill 'em, yeah!"

Now life imitates art as it emerges that Bu$h has similar ideas. Here's what he is supposed to have said in a pep-talk to commanders via secure video link;

"Kick ass!....If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! ... Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

WTF????? Is this guy playing GTA or running the most powerful military in the world? It's beyond a joke...
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Elections: It's Iraq All Over

The collapse of the Neo-Labour vote was spectacular. This letter to the Guardian sums it up well;

The Labour party's projected share of the vote in Thursday's elections has sunk to a low not seen since the 1960s - 24% as of yesterday morning. But Gordon Brown, timid and cowardly yet simultaneously nasty though he has been since he came to office last year, should not carry all the blame for this disaster; remember this is only 2% down on the 2004 elections. The decline began after Tony Blair's immoral and almost certainly illegal invasion of Iraq. Some of us who used to vote Labour as a matter of course have not voted for the party since and will never do so again until the party members who supported this catastrophe, including Brown, have been replaced by a new generation of real Labour people.

Indeed. Brown can talk about 'listening to the people' all he wants put the core fact is that is that Neo-Labour just don't get democracy. It is not in their genes. Iraq is a good example; the largest mass of people ever in the UK protest it and they still push on - forgetting that they are supposed to work for us. But it is not only over Iraq; the sham consultations on the Heathrow expansion, ID cards and nuclear power all attest to the control-freak party intent on stifling any opposition to their plans. For Neo-Labour, spin is not about informing people about what they are up to, but a means on control - lets call their spin what it is - propaganda. The media are largely (with honorable exceptions) complicit in this because they too failed on Iraq and don't like to be reminded and they too are happy with a neo-liberal system.

I hope this represents the collapse of Neo-Labour and we can get on with the task of building a real democracy.
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Realpolitik Iraq

All those people who died to give Iraq 'freedom' and 'democracy', all those trillions spent to get it. This is what it looks like...

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

Hang on, it it not Iraq's oil? Nope - it just happens to be under Iraqi soil, but goddam it, it U$A OIL and they will do with it as they please. And before us Brits get smug over this, our government is at it too;

A social justice group has obtained documents showing that the British government tried to influence a new Iraqi oil law in favour of UK businesses. The London-based Platform group said on Friday that the documents showed British diplomats tried to exclude Iraqi oil firms in favour of firms such as BP and Shell.

(Also interesting to note as the twice-fired minsiter, now EU trade representative Peter 'Bliar' Mandelson talks down a boycott of China, the Chinese government move to buys a skate in BP.)
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Iraq in Eclipse

Heard of the Iraq Freedom Congress (ICF) - sounds a great idea;

The IFC was formed in 2005, bringing together trade unions, women's organizations, neighborhood assemblies and student groups around two demands: an end to the occupation, and a secular state for Iraq.

A secular Iraq - that sounds like a great thing for combating religious extremism, but the U$A has different ideas...

July 4, 2007 saw the Fred Hampton-style execution of the leader of a popular citizen's self-defense force in Baghdad. According to the Iraq Freedom Congress, the group Abdelhussein Saddam was associated with, a unit of US Special Forces troops and Iraqi National Guards raided his home in Baghdad's Alattiba neighborhood at 3:00 AM, throwing grenades in before them—and opening fire without warning at him and his young daughter. The attackers took Saddam, leaving the girl bleeding on the floor. Two days later, his body was found in the morgue at Yarmouk Hospital.

Another stark reality on the War of Terror. Read the full story. And there is more:

The firefighting team [sent to Iraq] had at its helm the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, ably assisted by retired Colonel James Steele, adviser to Iraqi security forces. In 1984–86 Steele had been commander of the U.S. military advisory group in El Salvador. Between 1981 and 1985 Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to neighboring Honduras. In 1994 the Honduras Commission on Human Rights charged him with extensive human rights violations, reporting the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political workers. A CIA working group set up in 1996 to look into the U.S. role in Honduras has placed on record documents admitting that the operations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by “special intelligence units,” better known as “death squads,” of CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured, and killed thousands of people suspected of supporting leftist guerrillas. Negroponte was ambassador to Iraq for close to a year from June 2004.

Killing in the name of freedom and democracy!
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What I have Been Reading Online in Jan '08

If you're interested.... Juan Cole has been laying out some very blunt advice to Iraqi politicians (my ehphasis);

Radio Sawa reports in Arabic that Iraqi members of parliament dismiss the pledge of US presidential candidate Barack Obama to end the Iraq War and withdraw US troops from the country. They say it is just campaign talk and that if Obama were elected he would swiftly become more realistic. (It is my firm impression that the Iraqi political class has unrealistic expectations of the US public. >The likelihod is that most US troops will be out by summer 2010 no matter who wins, and if Iraqi politicians want to avoid being taken out and shot in the aftermath, they had better cut some deals locally soon.

And Information Clearing House has a great article on the supposed democracy we live in;

For all we know, there is no slippery slope. It's entirely possible that extraordinary rendition, eliminating habeas corpus, and the torture camps at Guantánamo and elsewhere are exactly what the government says they are--tools for fighting terrorists, not domestic political opponents. But how likely is it?

History is clear: Over and over again, the U.S. government places fascists in powerful positions. Once in office, they exploit wars and national tragedies to roll back hard-won freedoms. They're Democrats as well as Republicans.

As has happened with increasing frequency in recent years, another blockbuster story revealing the anti-democratic impulse within the top echelon of the U.S. government has appeared and vanished overnight. According to Cold War-era files declassified last week, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly advised President Harry Truman to arrest "all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security, jail them in military prisons and try them before kangaroo tribunals that "will not be bound by the rules of evidence."

Ain't that the truth - and we see it here too with such things as 'control orders', prevention of terrorism acts and ID cards.
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Democracy - U$ Style

Democracy, the dream of many and the idea so many have died for in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has long known has had a double meaning. For U$A it translates as 'people we like in power' whereas its opposite, 'dictatorship' is 'people we don't like in power'. Here is proof - elections in Kenya which the EU observers say were not fair at all, the bastion of democracy says different;

The US, however, which enjoyed close cooperation with the Kibaki government on anti-terrorism matters, congratulated the president on his reelection and said it supported the electoral commission's decision.

State Department spokesman Robert McInturff said: "The United States congratulates the winners and is calling for calm, and for Kenyans to abide by the results declared by the election commission"

Yet when Chavez looked poised to win his election, the U$A decided that this vote looked dodgy;

Chavez appears to be in line to defeat his main rival, Manuel Rosales, governor of the country's far-western Zulia state.

Political adversaries of the government have expressed concern about the honesty of the balloting process - concerns shared by Stephen Johnson, a senior policy analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Since coming into power, Johnson said, Chavez has moved to install a "crony congress" and to impose tight controls on the news media.

"A climate of fear and intimidation" had taken hold, he said..."It is a dictatorship with the fig leaf of democracy,"

Like we should expect any more from the staunch supporters of those democratic lands of milk and honey such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan...
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PS - I got 'The Strange Death of David Kelly' by Norman Baker MP for xmas and its a great read, more on the book once finished...
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Maori Resistance and the War of Terror


I read an article in the Guardian recently about a group of Maori's who were arrested under a giant terrorist sweep:

Sixteen people are on trial in Auckland district court following the raids, the culmination of a year-long police undercover operation that involved up to 300 officers and was centred on the isolated North Island hamlet of Ruatoki, gateway to the Urewera mountains that are home to the fiercely independent Tuhoe tribe. The raids followed sightings of "armed men in camouflage and balaclavas moving through forests carrying heavy packs and firearms". There are unconfirmed claims that among the weapons seized was a napalm bomb, or perhaps some molotov cocktails, and rumours that the prime minister, Helen Clark, may have been a target

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It all sounds very dramatic and seems to follow the pattern of similar UK raids that were all hype and no substance; the duff Forest Gate raid the so-called ricin plot and so on - the War of Terror gone mad (or exploited for political reasons). Thanks to Indymedia New Zealand we are able to find out loads more about this case and how it has panned out, and yes, so far the 'terrorism' looks like all smoke and mirrors:

At a press conference broadcast live on radio new zealand, solicitor-general David Collins has announced his decision denying a police request to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. This means that none of the 17 people arrested in so-called "terror raids" will be charged under the terrorism act. The solicitor general had access to police evidence which has not been made public. Although he stated that the police had 'acted properly' in their investigation, he denied the request to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

The War of Terror has always had a duplicitous and insidious hidden agenda of geo-strategic control and this is now becoming increasingly clear - it is a War on Democracy, for example we see Musharraf in Pakistan, our ally, arresting democracy supporters under the guise of 'combating extremism', given the billions of dollars he receives in military aid, his move could not have happened without some form of complicity.

PS. Its remembrance day and a couple of links of note:
http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/
http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/index.html

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