The short-sightedness of environmentalism

We're making a big mistake. We are seeing saving the planet as separate to a wider vision of society.

This accusation is not true of some of the campaigners and thinkers that have been around the environmental movement forever, such as the Green party and the ever younger looking George Monbiot. But it is true for many of us, and those commentators, thinkers, influencers and politicians that have begun to be convinced that preserving the environment for our children's future is unquestionably the right (fashionable?) thing to do and have rendered the cause meaningless as it has become disconnected with wider social goals and visions for our future.

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We are becoming predictably American about the environment. It's become fashionable for us all to be doing something, so we are clambering around to recycle things by putting things into a separate bin (revolutionary!), planting trees in Nicaragua by credit card (long live the Sandanistas!), and rub our chins seriously at the threat because the scientists at the UN, the brilliant BBC wildlife team and big fat Al “I diluted Kyoto when I was in power” Gore tell us that it is serious. Americans, with their evil climate-change-denying ways, have been recycling and looking down on their non-recycling friends with disapproval for years and now we follow.

Whilst I mock, all this hullabaloo is not inherently a bad thing (perhaps this is how more strategic change happens, with, as marketers call them, the early adopters piloting change prior to mass mobilisation), because climate change due to humankind's activities is happening and we need to act concertedly to ensure we keep temperature change within the 2-3 degree margin.

But the way we are responding to it is fairly random and depressingly unconnected to a vision of building a better world. We are getting very pleased with ourselves (except the luddites that deny that climate change is happening or the doomsayers saying it's all too late anyway) with turning off the TV, changing light bulbs, talking about taking less flights, carbon off-setting and weeping at the sight of animals becoming extinct, that we are forgetting to look at the big picture, and even forgetting, it seems, to ask why do this at all?

The answer: because saving the planet is a necessary component of building the good society that we strive. But are our green ways enabling more people to live lives of their choosing? Is it adding to our freedoms? Is it enabling us to act in collective and intelligent ways to ensure rights for all and to ensure the greatest positive outcomes for as many people as possible?

It can. But we definitely need to move past this fashionable choice-based, market-led approach to managing climate change that seems to have formed the consensus amongst excited journalists, serious politicians and appropriated scientists. The randomness in our current response to climate change - so important to our neo-liberal political-economic consensus that places consumer choices above collective will, immediate goals over long-terms plans - have led to some problematic consequences. Some examples…

1. A large proportion of our recycling is being shipped to China. Worth noting again: a large proportion of our recycling is shipped to China. Great to keep our landfills from overflowing, but adding massively to our air and sea miles.

2. The demand for rape seed oil, as a replacement for crude, is contributing to a rise in food prices as less and less land is being used to grow food stuffs. Due to the way in which global agribusiness has developed, thanks to our friends at the World Bank and IMF, large parts of the world's arable land is being tilled as international cash crops rather than managed in a sustainable fashion that serves local economic and nutritional needs. This same outcome is occurring as corn growers, cow grazers and the like are now becoming tree planters to reduce the rich North's carbon footprint. The free-marketers among us would argue that a balance would be achieved over time (expensive foodstuffs become more profitable and more farmers grow it and reject rape seed oil etc...). All well and good for those who can afford significant shifts in the price of basic commodities or live in societies where the state is rich, responsible and stable enough to cushion these shifts, but that is the vast minority of the world's population.

3. The move to fly long haul less could threaten the best outcomes of our long tradition of internationalism - people meeting in unpredictable ways around the world due to trade, exploration and tourism. This could happen because it is the gap-year students, the Guardian reading lefties and charity workers (and not the resort-goers) who are at the vanguard of this internationalism and these folk are the most likely to feel guilty about their carbon stamp and instead plump for the rough shores of the West Highlands. Green induced nationalism would be an irony too far.

The good intentions of people are having some rather unintended consequences. This is because they are structured within a quick-win, choice-based culture. And whilst the targets of this blog seem to be the poorly thought out actions of individuals, it is through collective action that we really must focus our lens on. Collective actions that would make a real difference include:

• population control through universal education, which includes family planning classes for all, as possibly the most efficient form of environmental protection
• loosening the grip on patents on clean technology to support poor nations to technology leap-frog
• managing the movement of people as a result of environmental degradation, including encompassing environmental catastrophe within the legitimate causes of becoming a refugee
• developing international mechanisms for managing arable land, which would involve a system of subsidies and support alongside the promotion of market mechanisms to ensure land is used in a sustainable fashion that benefits all, particularly the most vulnerable for whom it has supported for centuries
• an international clearing house that vets climate change policies to ensure that crops, workers' lives and poor people's access to goods and services are not compromised to enable rich individuals and nations reduce their carbon footprint and meet their Kyoto targets
• putting the contraction and convergence framework at the heart of global treaties for managing the climate and organising global redistribution.

The reason these actions need to be put at the forefront of our thinking is that they are all located within broad goals that do not just include managing climate change. Family planning is closely connected to a rise in women’s and children’s rights; managing land sustainably is about ensuring biodiversity and affordable food for local people; having a clearing house is about ensuring pro-poor policies. They are about reducing poverty, promoting rights, enabling effective redistribution, building structures that advocate for otherwise disenfranchised people as well as serve to protect the environment and reduce our carbon footprint.

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Despite calls from excited journalists, serious politicians and appropriated scientists that preventing climate change is our ultimate challenge, it must be seen as just a huge step on the journey to building the good society. If it is not, the changes will not occur in an ideological vacuum, but will provide further strength and grounding to current neo-liberal ideologies.

As a social democrat, that vision of the good society involves working towards greater freedom and equality (for they are fundamentally connected) for all globally; underpinned by a framework of human rights and institutions that ensure access to knowledge, skills, good health and essential resources, and provide the greatest number of opportunities to participate in public life through open and non-distorted political and free-market systems.

The real challenge climate change adds to this well grounded ideology is shifting policy, which is usually about working within a generation (at best), to become intergenerational. Radical ideas to institutionalise intergenerational policy making - such as giving rights to future generations, or giving formal protections to life that lives well beyond our lifespan (eg trees) - need to be considered, so that supporting a planet that can sustain all of us is integrated within our vision of the good society.

The current absence of ideology in politics is currently pervading our response to climate change and preventing us and our leaders find connections between the major challenges we face and building a coherent path for the future. We need to be reminded that keeping Earth’s temperature within a certain variance is not our ultimate goal; it is a necessary step to building the good society.

Africa and the death of ideology

I have less and less time for the work of the organisations and people launching their work from London, DC, Tokyo and Paris - the DfID’s, Oxfam’s and Save the Children’s of this world - who claim to be central to bringing development of Africans and those parts of the world that are in a similar mire.

Not because they are bad or do bad things. Clearly they have capacity for good – but, in their current guises, they have little or no role in the kind of transformative change I (and I think most progressives) really believe in.

For example, take Bob “man of 2005” Geldolf. Whilst he might claim that he’s been able to save a million children’s lives in Africa, him and his entourage of charities, musicians and politicians have done more than anyone else to justify the global, regional and national power structures that stamp out any hope of freedom, diversity and equality for poor people living in Africa. And furthermore they’ve done more to silence those who legitimately cry for a shift in power structures that shape their world. They are responsible for Africans finding themselves humiliated once more.

But this article is less about the mega NGOs - they will carry on milking the guilt of the rich and perform some vital and important acts, particularly in sharing expertise and providing vital resources in emergency situations. This article is more about how Africa is losing one of its core tools for self-realisation: ideology.

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The independence era, which you hear people talk about in terms of bitterly missed opportunities or “at least I was there in that time of hope” fondness, was a time where African leaders were globally great (see, for example, George Alagiah’s account of Ghana’s independence days in his book A Passage to Africa). They were espousing new and great theories that would set the path of Africans to homespun emancipation. Nkrumah, leader of Africa’s first independent country, Ghana, talked about a political economy that would both meet the rigours of the global economy, through state control of natural resources and aspirations of African unity, whilst at the same time build domestic structures that would ensure that all Ghanaians, from very diverse backgrounds can develop in the ways that are meaningful for them. On the other side of the continent Nyrere, the independence leader of Tanzania, was building a Ghandi-inspired socialist vision of the country that was built on the notion of homegrown economic development.

These ambitions and dreams were lifted by the spirits of newly emancipated, self-determined people across a continent that had, for the previous 400 years, been a cauldron for big companies and countries to spoon whatever took their fancy, from humans to diamonds to oil.

50 years on, the resources of Africa continue to serve small elites, many more are dark skinned now, but the capital flight from the continent is indicative of how the development of Africa is not for Africans or owned by Africans, even in supposed cases of success like Botswana. The main crisis of the continent is not the widely written problems you know of, such as:

• imperialism built through the military-industrial complexes of the US and EU
  
• savage out-of-view exploitative global corporatism
• race to-the-bottom principles of the WTO.

No. The main crisis is that the North’s development discourse is the increasingly unchallenged idea at the centre of Africa political thought. This non-ideological, management-bureaucratic thinking of “development” (as defined by the Washington Consensus groups) is largely accepted among the political and business groups across Africa for pragmatic, coerced or corrupt reasons, rather than ideological ones.

The result is elections between people wearing different colours but talking the same talk: reducing the size of the state; privatising public services; opposing corruption; developing stable macro-economic institutions to inact monetarist policies; empowering women. These decisions, which may or may not be right for the myriad of countries of Africa, are plucked out of World Bank papers (read: manifestos) time and time again, for African country after African country, by African leader after African leader without grounding these policies in big picture values that paint an impression of what their countries can be like and should look like, and how they will get there. (And by big pictures values, I don’t mean the usual tripe that basically means a little richer than now.)

The lack of big picture values and ideology, of visions of utopia, leave the African elite with an empty bureaucratic leadership. The visions of the great African leaders were so important because they were visions that merged socialist, capitalist, ruralist, village-based conceptions of the world and twisted them into a uniquely African phenomenon. They may have been flawed but they were developed with the view to connect to the everyday experiences of the vast and diverse rural experience of Africans with their newly independent destiny. Anti-corruption may well be something that connects to the everyday experience of rural and urban Africans, but without a clear value base that attempts to deconstruct why it has permeated and infected so many levels of African societies (beyond the usual simplicity of “poor leadership”), there will be no clear strategy that effectively removes that cancer.

The real power of values - whether it is Nigerian religious-individualism or Tanzanian market-collectivism - is that it mobilises, it engenders, it creates opposition, and it creates accountabilities. An ideological landscape is utterly practical and utterly essential to development.

The fact is, however, that ideology is not dead in Africa, it is underground. Bright thinkers traverse the continent debating, dissecting every political theory that exists in the world, building African derivatives and making new ones. The problem is that these political fighters and intellectuals are being prevented to build their voice and gain in strength to be major political players. It is here we come back to the development industry, because it is this philanthropy that removes the working class and poor African political voice on the local and global level, reducing them to starving wrecks or white-saved, white-teethed, carefree bathers bathing under newly, white-fitted water pumps.

On an everyday level people are intellectually and emotionally dispossessed of their political urgency by external money changing their worlds with little or no local accountabilities and control - on scales that are huge. Everywhere in Africa the unionists, environmentalists, Marxists, feminists, libertarians, pan-Africanists are debating the future, but this debate is extinguished from national or local debate as soon as foreign money comes into play and decisions are made.

“Better wages for cotton T-shirt workers” doesn’t fit well with a bid for cash for a free school, which could have been funded locally if employees were given living wages. But whilst better wages would be the one sustainable thing to do for improving the lives of this community, the free school (which only has funding for 2 years and therefore will be shut down after that) both sustains the influence and power of the big external NGOs and the influence and power of the politicians who can claim that they are not renegading on their educational duties to their people, whilst keeping international finance and industry happy.

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Ideology needs to return to centre stage in African political discourse on a huge scale. This is largely going to be an internal exercise. But external actors can look to campaigns like the abolition of slavery and anti-apartheid campaigns, which were based on solidarity rather than charity, so we hear and connect with the many political voices from Africa.

The development NGOs and government organisations, however, have no mandate for the politicisation of people. So they are stuck in a quagmire of doing a bit of good, in a wider environment that does a lot of damage. That’s why I simply don’t really care about them any more.

Any organisation, like unions, political parties, think tanks, libraries, museums, universities and schools, that can build mutual links with African groups should; and allow us to hear the ideological visions of every voice in Africa. We’re all fed up of the diet of ultra-sad dying or ultra-happy saved Africans, solidarity links will give us a glimpse of reality and might also help fuel a renaissance in African political philosophy.

The courage of being an individual

Insights sometimes come from the least likely conversations and they sometimes set a clear path forward. This one seems obvious (at 1.30am), but is rarely (if ever?) mentioned in the battle against racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, ageism...

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To be true to our liberal values - which we follow to liberate ourselves and others and live better, more enlightened lives - we seek to see the individual value and qualities of people, refrain from passing judgement based on day-to-day or historic stereotypes, and we seek to be reflective so that we judge on evidence.

This liberating gaze - which seeks to enable us to see as it really is, and not glibly crush the dreams and happiness of the other - asks much of the viewer.

However, what is the responsibility of the viewed? Doesn't she have a responsibility to be an individual? Doesn't she have a responsibility to refrain from defining herself by her group? Doesn't she have a responsiblity to be seen in all her glory; free in herself and her capacity and her personal, individual history? And if she doesn't take that responsiblity, does she renegade on her freedom of being gazed as an individual?

This "thought of the day" type post is thanks to a conversation with a young friend. He was being disparaging about some former friends. These classmates were, despite being only 13 and 14, separating themselves from the majority of the other kids and defining themselves increasingly by their religion. Whilst critical of his knee-jerk response, there was a limit that I could condemn him. When individuals aggressively define themselves by their chosen group, it may be quite appropriate to dislike that person for being too white, Muslim, gay, Christian, black, laddish, Jewish, English...

...because, it is depressingly unenlightened and damn annoying, when people fail to have the courage of being an individual and ask you to judge them on their commonness to a group, rather their uniqueness as an individual.

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If this blog post represents a reasonable thought, the implications for setting the ethical path for our better, more integrated, trusting society shifts away from just the viewer, from which we have focused all our attention, but also to the viewed. If this is nonsense, I'm sure you'll tell me.

Save the electorate

We seem to live in rather bizarre political times. There was a time when a politician could sensibly say that the polls should be read with a huge pinch of salt. Even though you knew the politician was a dedicated pollster (usually a Tory who was humbled by poor ratings), you knew the politician was basically right. Through the Thatcher years where no-one outwardly claimed to be a Tory, but then went on to give the Iron Lady the mandate, polls were an expression of the snapshot mood of a bunch of people (a large chunk who were undecided), not the electorate's opinion on parties' proposals.

Fast forward to the present and we find the polls doing a roller-coaster dance. And more amazingly the polls having the most incredible impact on politics. No longer are they swallowed with a pinch of salt, but they are changing our political terrain.

Just a few months ago I was thinking of writing a polemic of how Brown has assembled an astonishingly impressive cabinet (for example... Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, who's greatest achievement, and this is truly a great achievement, has been to not be in the news that much; David Miliband, foreign secretary, whose penchant for debate is re-engaging our spurned global partners; Ed Balls, education, who has sought to temper the worst of New Labour's policies and extend the best and, of course, Brown himself with his unfussy politics of performance over show). But now, with a nod to tax cuts by the Tories, and a wobble by Brown, how passée that seems. And with Ming gone due to LibDem diving opinion polls, it seems that a new found respect for the opinion polls has entered politics and the media's analysis of it.

Even BBC's Newsnight has endlessly used Frank Luntz, the American pollster, to get people's mindless and incoherent views on major political speeches in real time (have you seen these votometers? wtf?). Luntz's techniques are only valid (read: popular) as our politics continues its managerialistic phase (as I've commented previously). Pollsters' craft is revered when the only difference between the left and right is who can find the policy (whether it sits traditionally on the right or the left) that will secure them another ladle of middle England votes.

In these confused times, where the electorate are nothing more than consumers of their own experiences through spin, TV and newspapers, we seem to prefer make-overs rather than principles. So suddenly Cameron does a "no hands" speech and Osborne plays the goddamn-it's-so-obvious tax card and they jump ahead in the polls, Brown plays the whole game poorly and collapses in a pile of his own sombreness. And Ming's dynasty is determined by sinking polls that go down as quickly as the public perceive his age to go up.

But is this the true story? What is going on? Who are these people who are changing their minds with such regularity? The simply truth is that polls are snapshots for a feeling about how politicians are thought about at that time... ie they are bollocks descriptions of the electorate's views. But, they are hugely powerful momentum builders or breakers for parties, with currently the Tories riding the wave and Labour and the LibDems washed up in the new democracy of constant polling.

The polls do not represent the true story. The polls do not represent the electorate, but instead infantalise the electorate and create mutual cynicism between voter and voted. Instead of trust building from the supposed communication of polls, it creates disgust at an imaginary fickle public and an actual spineless politics.

The respect given to these polls are such a poor reflection of our political times. Times that are defined by managerialist, target driven, number crunching, low input, high output, what-works policies that has swept aside big debate about how we should live and how best to get there. Even when it comes to huge issues like the environment it is all about a minor tax shifting in a shifty way. These are times that see pollsters' graphs with red, blue and yellow wobbly lines as the holy grail.

To our political and media leaders:

"Please save the electorate, please save us. Because whilst our views should define the political landscape in deep and meaningful ways, we really only need to be asked every four to five years for each set of our representatives. Forget these endless 'representative' polls and just stop asking us so much what we think, because if you sit back and look at it all we just become zombies that you increasingly have less respect for and, vice versa, because you respond to us, we have less respect for you.

If we have a really strong opinion we'll tell you. Remember February 2003? We'll tell you when you don't like things, so listen then. When you ask us endless questions, we just become performing monkeys playing to the internalised political narrative that is not of our making. We both know that this is a mockery of democratic voice.

Leave us alone, and listen."

A revolutionary war (otherwise known as don't forget Iraq)

This piece was originally written on 17 April 2003, soon after “mission accomplished” was announced by Bush on a warship far from Iraq. Back then it all seemed like a sick joke. What are we supposed to feel now? Reading the BBC article detailed in the post below set off so many feelings that I thought it correct to resurrect this essay languishing in My Documents. As such, please excuse the mistakes and the length. Today I’ve added some notes throughout and a small postscript.

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The war has ended, or at least I think it has. Nearly. Just a few more bombs to drop on the pathetic rabble to finish off the liberation of Iraqi souls by the holy spirit of depleted uranium.

The headline in the World section of BBC news is entitled "Tough talk looms over Iraq oil". The money men and women are getting itchy-feet, the war is definitely ending. [Note 1: Whilst the war didn’t end the influence of money men is particularly relevant now. The Iraqi parliament is being heavily encouraged to pass a law that will give their oil over to British and American oil companies rather than retain state control. Guess who’s pressuring them to pass this law? Interestingly the law has not been passed before the summer recess, but it looks as it will as Saddam-esque legislation has been passed banning union activities - the main organised groups who are opposed to the oil law are secular workers’ and peoples’ representatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_oil_law_(2007)]

It was a good war wasn't it? That is what you feel isn't it? I feel the same. In the confused logic of Bush's new world order I can convince myself that because it was short (barely a month) it was good. How fucked up must the English language become to place "good" next to "war".

Wait a minute. Let's unpick this. Lest we forget why millions of people marched and argued and everyone got hot under the collar (except Dubya and Blair) about this war.

There was no justified reason for this war. Is it possible for something without a raison d'etre to be good?

We were told that there may be a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam. The link between the US (historically) and the Al Qaeda is stronger than the link between Saddam and the terrorist organisation. In fact the US has a stronger link with Saddam, than Saddam has with the terrorist organisation.

That phrase, terrorist organisation... in an ironic twist of language (this tale is very confusing, you've heard of the "fog of war", this is the atomic cloud of post-9/11 international relations) this phrase "terrorist organisation" has a romantic slant to it in the Western mainstream media... it used to be romantic for the radical left, think Che, think Mandela, think the black panthers, think the IRA (sexy for the Americans)... but now when the lackeys for Anglo-Western hegemony (the BBC and CNN) write or utter "terrorist organisation" they induce images of bearded men in caves across the world (from Finchley Park to the Khyber Pass) with masses of computer screen looking in to the lives of English speaking white people and Israeli's and drooling whilst they send kamikaze recruits to their spiritual liberation. And when the reality comes home to roost, specs of Ricin in a flat above a shop by some scared and hating folk, the media love to play it up - "terrorist link smashed". The right now find exciting exotic romance in terrorist organisations. For the left terrorist organisation has very little meaning. It is unfair to call the British and American administration terrorists, but it is also unfair not to call them terrorists. [Note 2: The Ricin plot never happened. There was no ricin - it was a big media and political hoax. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Green_ricin_plot.]

The next reason: weapons of mass destruction (WMD)… and furthermore (and this is the really vital bit) the high propensity to use them. (Remember, it is OK to have WMD, we, the Brits, have them remember, but we would not use them to destabilise world peace, would we Tony?) Well Saddam is a tyrant, no-one disagrees, but he’s been one very well behaved tyrant. In the face of extreme adversity (I'd say bombs a-falling on your head is a bit more offensive than a piddly little internal uprising), he is acting very responsibly not to let his hordes of WMD loose. They (our troops) are still looking for the WMD, I hear. [Note 3: Back then there was a small likelihood that WMD was still going to be found.]

Then we were told that there was a moral case for entering Iraq. Trust us, I heard. Trust us like you trusted us with Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Somalia, we had good intentions. Some people it seems did trust them. They obviously forget the farce that the US got embroiled in with Venezuela about 6 months ago. The US were shocked sideways when Chavez, a socialist general, won an election becoming president of that small and insignificant country (it is only the 6th biggest oil producer in the world). The US declared hostile relations with Chavez and upped its support for rightwing politicians. Was it because the elections were a fraud? (Yes, you guessed it; Chavez was elected with a greater majority than Bush.) Was it because Chavez was a brutal leader crushing his opposition? (In fact, Chavez, the first indigenous leader of Venezuela, has limited the powers of the police – notoriously gun toting cowboys who ran amok in the big cities – unique in our era of illiberal anti-terrorists bills.) Or was it because Chavez nationalized the oil industry and began trading Venezuela’s oil by bartering with other developing countries? I don’t know, but may be, the US felt a kick to its international economic sovereignty on two fronts. First, American companies lost profitable contracts. Second, the oil was not being traded on the traditional market; it was not being traded in dollars. Or maybe it was because Venezuela became friendly with Cuba, the Columbian dissidents and dare I say it Iraq?

So when there was a coup led by the big businesses and it was successful, the US rushed in to declare this coup as legitimate without a second thought! “Chile and Pinochet all over again”, I hear you cry, but you are wrong. It was the shortest coup ever. Without infrastructure and popular backing the US backed right-wing revolutionaries failed and Chavez was reinstated and the US has more egg on its face than Baghdad battery chickens. (Source: BBC – Newsnight May 13, 2002– OK so the Beeb aren’t all that bad.)

Kenneth Clarke, a man who was against the war, on BBC 1’s “This Week” TV programme, said he was convinced that the US went in to Iraq for sincere reasons, I laughed, or may be I cried, and thought that British American Tobacco trades in Burma for sincere reasons.

So why did we go in? Beats me. The argument for oil is a strong one. However, I heard many times that if the US wanted to have some of Iraq’s oil it could – after all she used to be friends with Saddam. These tend to be (generally pro-war Labourites and the rabble of the Tory party) the same people who deride the protest movement for having “no understanding of the complexity of international relations”. I’ll let you finish this paragraph for yourself. …In fact no I won’t. The gall of the pro-war vigilantes to at once attempt to moralise the argument (utterly unconvincingly, type “US hypocrisy” in Google and press “I’m feeling lucky” and then realise some bugger in the world certainly isn’t) and then patronise the anti-war movement, with simplistic arguments about international relations.

But oil may still be nothing to do with it, I’m happy to accept that. In this atomic cloud my eyes are watering and I cannot see clearly. The atomic cloud stretches everywhere. So perhaps the US administration was also blinded and they had no logical reason for going to war? Perhaps the decision was built around an irrational force such as racism? Wolfowitz talks about hopping around the Middle East leaving democracies in the US’s wake. I imagine an adolescent soldier convinced of this nonsense (CNN reports that 42% of the American public believe that Saddam is directly responsible for 9/11) scrawling on his Syria/Iran bound 5000lb missile “Kiss my explosive ass and love the sweet smell of democracy in the morning!”

Racism and stereotyping are immensely powerful. They prevent people communicating on an equal level, which leads to ending communication all together, which leads to unnecessary and false barriers being created and next thing you know you are occupying another people’s territory shooting women and children because you fear they may be a kamikaze nut, but shit, they were just driving the car a bit fast.

But may be I’m wrong. May be there is no racism at all. After all, the administrations of America have been friends with, supported and traded massively with the administrations of the Middle East. At the expense of Arabs citizens, America has supported many brutal dictatorships in the Arab world. In fact, may be Bush senior is experiencing pangs of guilt about his past record. Perhaps he sits with Bush-junior on his knee and says “we’ve done some bad things to the Arab people. We need to make amends. We have the power to make amends.” Bush junior (who remember was not interested in international politics when he forced his way into power asks “why does it have to be us?”. Daddy responds “because these people only understand military force, and no-one has the force that we have”.

I have still failed to understand the reason for this war. But wait a minute; was it even a war at all? Or is this what (post)modern war is? There is no question of who will win before the war, there are not any major battles and there is no stated believable aim to the war…

The rich and traditional English speaking white world have hated post-modernism. It’s virtually a dirty word in the US and the UK. Mention Derrida and they’ll deride, mention Foucault and they’ll run screaming the “Fuck the French!” But they’ve created the post-modern war. Baudrillard, in a typically French gesture, said the first gulf war was a virtual war. This is even more relevant this time. War is not even the right word.

When the colonising countries of Europe went into Africa, Asia and the Americas these were not called wars. They “went in” and took the land – through genocide, through slavery, through bribery, through religion, justified by racism and greed. Sometimes there was opposition to the colonial trajectory. These were not called wars. They were massacres. Guns versus guile. Guns win (in the short term). They were not called wars because they were not wars.

The attack on Iraq is not completely similar to the brutality of colonialism, but as an act of historic cowardice it resembles it closely. Spend twelve years to bring a country to a standstill, using the UN as your foil, and then when the military might has completely dissipated, attack! In the words of Arundhati Roy:

“Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don’t think so. It’s more like Operation Let’s Run a Race but First Let Me Break Your Knees.” (Guardian, April 2, 2003)

This is nothing like a war. It is more like police going in to the “local rogue’s” flat in an ex-mining sprawling estate with 70% unemployment and where the playground looks like Beirut. The rogue puts up a chase but the police are waiting in the garden. The rogue manages to land a couple of punches on a copper’s kidney. But the games up. In fact there wasn’t ever a game. He’s arrested, taken away and temporarily order can be reinstated. Perhaps they put a “nice family” in the vacated flat and hope that this family will bring some good vibes to the estate? (And the police will install CCTV everywhere and make sure the people on this estate behave well.)

And so the US will place a “nice guy” in the top job in Iraq. And there will be a military presence placing an imperial order on Iraq for some time. The UN will be brought in to do the chores (health, education, food and water). But in Iraq, like the estate, there will be new rogues and new problems and, like the estate, the police/army will get fed up and leave them to rot, especially if the media and politicians forget about them… [Note 4: Back then I believed that we would be out and forgetting Iraq much quicker. But then I never imagined it would become such a hellhole.]

So the US and the UK did something (for it wasn’t a war) for no obvious reason. Thousands of people died. [Note 6: Hundreds of thousands.] The future hope however comes in the knowledge that millions of people participated in confronting the incoherent might of the single remaining super-power. Millions of people became more informed and more involved in politics of global peace, human rights, freedom and equality. [Note 7: As the British went on to vote Blair again this hope has become another false dawn. The hope is in fact in the US where an opposition to Bush is real and will lead to electoral change.]

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Postscript – 07 August 2007

I publish this essay as Brown leads the British Government with new vigour, but has illustrated no direction for the region. Bush continues to be at the helm of the "evil empire", but is now a lame duck. So where do we go? Where now? Do we rip ourselves apart with guilt?

How about forgetting instead? The arguments in this essay are largely forgotten. But history won’t forget this neo-imperialistic horrific adventure. But remember one thing, this war had no liberal basis to it and cannot be confused with humanitarian intervention.

WMD finally found in Iraq

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6932710.stm

I'm thinking that all imperialist actions, masquerading as doing good, verge towards sick jokes.

Tory voters in 7th heaven; Tory MPs in the doldrums

Two key themes have dominated commentary about the current malaise of the Tory party and Cameron's polling.

The first is that David Cameron got it all wrong declaring himself as 'heir to Blair'.

This seemed so right at the time – about a year ago as Dave was cementing his newly won leadership - but it seems that as Blair's time was ending we began to look romantically at TB’s record.

His oratory and media skills were not called spin any more, his ability to read the mood of the people was not called populism, his global stature was not only defined by his relationship with Bush, but also by his heroic status in places like Kosovo and Sierra Leone, his failures in Europe were turned around into how his politics and style were being copied across the continent, and, of course, Northern Ireland was spread liberally alongside all his achievements.

However, a surprise to me, although predicted by many seasoned hacks, was how quickly Blair was forgotten and how his shadow became both a curse and a blessing. As Brown manoeuvres magically (ie using spin) into a position of ‘change, yet more of the same,' all the curse of Blair's shadow seems to have landed on Cameron.

The second, more interestingly, is that the Tories have no real hunger for power.

This is surprising to hear. Remember this is the party that ditches a leader as soon as it fails at one election, compare that to the party that stuck with Kinnock through 3 losses. This is the party that has dominated British politics for the last 100 years and should be galled at 10 years away from the reins.

However, look at the winners and losers of 10 years of Labour and Tory apathy is a little less surprising. Simply put, the people who live in Tory safe seats have done immeasurably better than those living in Labour safe seats. Whilst those in true blue areas have become much richer in the last 10 years, those in the red still are, with their economies stagnating.

Tory safe areas have benefited most from 10 years of Labour government. So what have they got to lose? Especially as Brown will continue to bend over backwards for the private equity kings, support the renewal of trident, be 'tough on terror', build DNA databases by stealth and lower taxes (he did at his last budget and my bet is that, a budget prior to an election, there'll be some clever giving with one hand, to much fanfare, and taking with the other, with few people noticing).

Quite simply, there is no reason for Tory voters to worry about the next election; they've got it in the bag. Good, sound corporate-friendly economics and domestic strong-arm policies that benefit and protect the upper middle classes combined with sufficient progressiveness that keeps the masses from revolting.

For the Tory MPs, however, it is a different matter - they've got everything to worry about. There is no motivation for the ranks to line up behind their inexperienced, naive-looking leader, when instead they can comfortably indulge their political fancies (anti-Europe, small state, lower-taxation, tough on crime), knowing their ever healthier bank balances are in the background.

For those that still have a belief in the good of the Labour party, this is some, if small, comfort that the better party should win the next election. After that I think it will be time for a grand left coalition (with Lib-Dems and possibly the Greens?) to "keep the Tories out for a generation" as Blair so wished. The Tories will get hungry for power and Cameron's carefully crafted journey to the centre (and even over to the centre-left?) will come across as heroic by the excited media after two terms in opposition. Especially as Blair’s shadow will have more benign implications for Cameron than it does now.

Genius and music (and not having to worry about getting into classical music any more)

I was going to write an earnest piece about legalising drugs or something, but events have taken over and instead I am writing the piece that came to me last night whilst at a Prince concert. Be warned, like the drunken text sent to the girl you fancy at the end of the night, this is going to sound really wanky and I'm going to regret this pretty quickly...

***

There is this shadowy pressure amongst educated, rounded, and seen to be rounded people. As they move into and beyond their 30's the pressure is to drop their whimsical, low-brow love of pop music (and all its related industries from jazz to heavy metal) and start getting serious. Start listening, loving and being able to talk about classical music.

Whatever I or others may say about the relative nature of music, about the subjective nature of beauty, Western classical music is seen as the peak: complex, intellectual, visionary, requiring advanced levels of practice and expertise and emerging only from true musical geniuses.

However, this illusion, for it always was an illusion propagated by those within the industry, cultural imperialists and Tories, was surprisingly and dramatically ripped apart as I watched in thrall Prince play in concert last night. It struck me, high on the moment and a with the help of a good number of beers, that the genius being displayed surpassed anything that classical music has to offer.

There is no musician that I know of like Prince. Pained as it is for me to say this (see postscript). Prince plays all instruments - particularly the guitar, bass, keyboard and piano - to such an expertise his musicianship is unparalleled. Prince brings together an orchestra of brilliant, independent minded, jazz and rock influenced musicians and enables them to be coordinated yet free. Prince is a singer with such a vocal range that in spoken word he's as cool as Gil-Scott Heron, singing white rock numbers he screams with greater energy than Mick Jagger and during his ballads he sings with an Ella Fitzgerald-style poetry. And he seems to have the incredible vocal range of Jeff Buckley, who himself has been compared to classical singers. Furthermore, Prince has written for everyone - particularly in the eighties and nineties - from Sinead O'Connor to Chaka Khan, illustrating his irrepressible, prolific songwriting career. As he said immodestly, but quite truly: "I got too many hits for you".

And there is Prince the consummate and complete entertainer. The combination of a smooth dancer with an eccentric personality where his androgynous façade jars with his hyper-heterosexuality, an eye for the visual sensation (his stage was shaped in his trademark symbol) and flanked by his brilliant musicians, singers and two Beyonce-esque dancers a show was produced that completely commanded the huge O­₂ concert hall and all the twenty thousand attendant fans.

And finally, Prince is not simply an entertainer, he has a unifying theory. His work comes together under the belief that you should love what you do and do it lovingly. And in his case it has something to do with women.

Prince’s work is music at its very finest and classical music can only blush in embarrassment. And whilst people may disagree about this particular nearly-50 year old pop genius, what he does comes only from the pop genre. Those that have bridged songwriting, orchestration and entertainment such as James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and U2 could never come from the classical field.

***

No longer is there the shadowy pressure of having to get in to classical music, the best music is located in the broad sphere of pop, jazz and rock. This is the music where true modern genius and where the best musical talents lie.

***

Postscript:

1. I've never liked Prince, in fact I've positively hated Prince until last night
2. Due to the Colosseum, circular nature of The O2 centre, Prince actually had his back to us all the time
3. If "cock" comes up in the comments, I will not get angry this time.

Bring back smoking

Does anyone get this burning feeling that we've got it all wrong with this smoking ban business? Everyone, bar some serious smokers and clubbers who'd smelt Irish and Scottish sweaty dens, were celebrating the coming of 1 July 2007. Weary smokers were looking for another excuse to quit; non-smokers were waiting for the fresher air. I was certain that this was a triumphant, brave decision by our in-touch politicians to bring England into the 21st century - let's make our country healthier.

But I'm now getting the niggling feeling that we've got it all wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking about this from a petty personal point of view - I like the clear air that doesn't make my eyes water. Also, I'm not a member of the "second hand smoke is not harmful" nuts that still exist out there. No. I'm not writing this for my self-interest. I’m thinking that we’ve got it wrong, because we’ve let the government legislate on a trendy hate.

I think we've let ourselves, fellow Englanders, down. We have let science, fashionable hates and popular moralising merge in such an insipid way that we forgot to think about our liberal principles, the limited role of the state and our choices as free individuals.

The legislation that led to the day of the ban is, granted, informed on science and history that weighs a heavy burden on the brutal tactics of big fag companies. But, if you’ve got a problem with the world smoking too much, I think you better ask questions of the corporate and political elite that has backed the big tobacco companies. (Particularly as these companies continue to use the same hard sell techniques – smoke and you’ll look better, feel better and have more sex – in the third world that we got rid of ages ago.) But, don’t support this fashionable legislating at its very worst.

Forever a decade behind the US (why not the French? they are cooler), smoking has becoming such a hated activity on these shores over the last few years. It has become so fashionable to hate smoking that scientist salivate in their descriptions of what smoking does to you, artists preserve rotten lungs, libraries of books are published detailing how smoking can fuck you up. Hating smoking has become such a popular part of the art and media culture it was only a matter of time that politicians were to align themselves to the sweet air of the anti-smoking lobby. As Wilson hung with the Beatles and the ‘66 winners and Blair basked in Cool Britannia, backbenchers wanted to get in on the cool anti-smoking act. And how they seemed so right. So in touch. Their finger on the pulse of the nation. Oh, how wrong we were to let the government meddle. Now it feels we are on a slope, waiting to be lubricated by the Daily Mail, for us to slip down into a pool of conservative forced pleasantness (or incarcerated if you’re in any way unpleasant).

***

Let’s make a new rule: never again shall we use the blunt instrument of legislation to randomly manage risks that involve our choices.

Smoking is a risk, but a risk that it is free for people to take. Passive smoking is a risk, but one that can be significantly limited through public pressure by creating smoking only zones and well circulated environments, which was being achieved in recent years.

Driving is a risk, but a risk that is free for people to take. Passive driving (walking, cycling, running) is a risk, but one that can be through pressure be severely limited by creating speed limits etc.

Banning smoking in pubs is like banning driving on country roads.

The analogy may not be water-tight, but the logic is plain to see. (Simon Jenkins' analogy with cats and dogs is better.) If you want legislation to manage risk that involve our choices, let’s do it properly, let’s go the whole hog and ban everything. Let’s ban driving on country roads and cats and dogs anywhere…

…or perhaps let’s not legislate for every risk that becomes fashionable and let’s not become a short-sighted, paternalistic nation.

But that's where I wake up and realise that we are already there. Selling arms everywhere whilst upgrading cannabis to grade B. Banning smoking indoors over here whilst selling ciggies the good old fashioned way over there.

Fuck it, on that note I'm starting smoking. Won’t you join me outside?