Time to change course?

Time to change course?

I, like many on the Left voted for Brexit because the EU is demonstrably an undemocratic organisation, representing the interests of capital and the few, higher developed and dominant countries in the group. Its structure makes it virtually impossible for any member country to determine its own economic parameters or to develop socialist forms. That said, I feel the present chaotic and dangerous situation must make all of us review our positions. When I voted, I certainly didn’t envisage negotiations on Brexit being undertaken and completed by one of the most right-wing and incompetent Tory governments of all time. I am also unhappy at finding myself in bed with a whole number of unsavoury characters like Nigel Farage and Co.

We are also deceiving ourselves completely if we imagine that most of the Brexit voters did so for good left wing reasons. Those who did so can be roughly broken down into a few distinct groups: a miniscule minority on the Left who would like to see our country in a position to build a socialist society, then the majority – in the main, north of London and working class – who were fed-up with austerity and their lack of representation both in Westminster and Brussels, then a backwoods Tory grouping comprising those who look back with nostalgia to the Empire days and, finally, the xenophobes who just hate all things foreign. Not a simple or straightforward ideological mix.

Irrespective of whether Brexit goes through on May’s deal or as a no-deal hard Brexit, no rational person will deny that the consequences for the UK are incalculable and full of bear traps. There is no doubt that the Tory hardline Brexiters, like Liam Fox, would be more than happy to see Britain fall into the arms of the USA and become the 51^st state. And that is certainly not what we want.

For those of us who would like to see a Labour government under Corbyn, bring in genuine socialist policies, the chances of this coming about are far from certain. Since Thatcher demolished most of Britain’s manufacturing industry, the country has become reliant on financial trading, foreign-owned assembly-belt industries and the service sector. Even if a left-wing government under Corbyn were elected, the country would need immediate and massive investment (where would the money come from?) and it would take generations to re-establish a skilled and educated workforce and years to rebuild a domestic manufacturing infrastructure.

There is a strong feeling in the country, including many on the Left, particularly young people and a majority in Momentum – whose enthused commitment will be vital for any successful election campaign – that Brexit as it stands – May’s deal or no deal – offers no solution to our problems and could plunge the country into more chaos and impose a more dire austerity. The wealthy, as always, will not suffer either way; they have already parked their wealth in offshore tax havens and invested elsewhere. It will be those already bearing the brunt of Tory polices who will suffer. There will be mass sackings by those firms reliant on European exports and no new jobs without mass investment.

If an election is called, many will be very reluctant to vote Labour because they see the leadership’s present stance as equivocal, and they can’t see how a Corbyn government could obtain a better deal than May has. The process has now gone too far for any meaningful re-negotiations.

The overwhelming majority of those who voted Brexit, apart from the few committed Lefties, will not be persuaded to vote for Labour. They are fully behind May, who they feel is courageously ‘fighting Britain’s corner’ against a bullying EU, in the old Churchillian spirit. They say, get on with it, Brexit now, whatever the cost! In a new election, it would not be too wild an assumption to see the Tories romp home again and Labour’s vote split on this issue alone. While correctly continuing to argue that the EU is undemocratic and not reformable in its present form,  we have to draw back from the brink and adopt a different strategy, joining most of the other left-wing European parties, if we are to maintain a united movement.

Why has the Russian government let loose its secret service on the West?

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Why has the Russian government let loose its secret service on the West?

There is little doubt, based on the evidence available, that the Russian state security services have been behind a number of recent attempts to hack into Western institutes and organisations as well as interference in elections. According to US intelligence officials, Russian hackers made repeated attempts before the most recent US presidential election to penetrate major US institutions, including the White House and the state department. They also made used of Wikileaks to hack into Hilary Clinton’s emails.

German officials say a Russian hacking group was behind a major attack last year on the parliament in Berlin. The attack – like those in the US – involved phishing emails. They were sent from an account, un.org, which appeared to come from the United Nations. The hack may have gone on for several months.

There is also evidence that the hackers have attempted to target Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party too.

The most recent attempt has been a Russian cyber-attack on the headquarters of the international chemical weapons watchdog, which was foiled by Dutch military intelligence only weeks after the Salisbury novichok attack. All this has led to an escalation of the diplomatic war between the West and Putin.

The targeting of individuals, like the ‘traitors’ Litvinenko and Skripal is part of the pattern.

           

Outrage at such subterfuge and callousness by or with the collusion of the Russian state is understandable. But all this evidence is being used to demonise Russia even further and increase its isolation, instead of using diplomacy to persuade the Russian government to stop using such tactics. So why does Russia feel the need to risk worldwide opprobrium by adopting such tactics in clear contravention of international law?

What is deliberately ignored in the coverage of all these events, is the political and economic background.

While abhorring illegal and inhuman acts, and not wanting in any way to excuse Putin’s government of culpability, I am interested in discovering the motivation for recent Russian misbehaviour on the international stage, and looking back into history can help explain these issues.

There are clear precedents as seen in Stalin’s behaviour after the death of Lenin vis a vis the West. At the time, Stalin’s policies were explained as due to his serious psychotic state, his paranoia and callousness. However, if we step outside the box and for once view things from a Russian point of view, Stalin’s paranoia and more recent events take on a very different shape.

Immediately after the revolution, Russia was invaded by a whole number of Western powers, Britain, the USA, France, Poland and Romania as well as Japan. Deeply alarmed by the ‘Bolshevik threat’, Churchill poured troops into Russia to assist the counter-revolutionaries during the so-called wars of intervention. ‘The foul baboonery of Bolshevism’, as he called it, must be ‘strangled in its cradle’. Churchill was concerned that Bolshevism could spread to Germany and so urged his colleagues at the Paris Peace Conference to treat Germany as a friend in the post-war world: ‘Kill the Bolshie, Kiss the Hun,’ as he wrote to Violet Asquith at the time.

With the rise of fascism, Stalin was once again confronted with Western duplicity, when these governments made every attempt to appease Hitler and send him East rather than invading Western Europe. A strategy that fatally misfired. If Stalin tended towards paranoia right from the start, Western policies certainly compounded it, as they are doing today with Putin.

British and US attempts to bully the post war Soviet Union with their new ‘super weapon’, the atomic bomb, also misfired when the Russians managed (with the help of sympathetic Western scientists) to build their own.

When the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan in 1979, largely in a move to protect its vulnerable south-eastern flank, the West mobilised the Taliban with the help of Bin Laden to confront their forces, and look what that mushroomed into.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1990, we all thought the Cold War as well as the continued threat of a hot war was over and we could all breath a sigh of relief. Many of us expected NATO to be disbanded as the Warsaw Pact no longer existed. How naïve.

Despite the break up of the Soviet Union and its adoption of a capitalist system, Western powers still fear its geo-political strength. Despite promises made to Gorbachev by Reagan and George Bush sr. that NATO would not attempt to move its forces up to the Russian border, that has happened. Former Soviet Republics have been encouraged to join NATO, Ukraine has been actively encouraged to confront Russia. Putin has been demonised and ostracised. Is it any wonder that Russia fears Western motives and is determined to take every measure possible to protect itself?

From the Western perspective, Russia remains the only large stumbling black to western capital’s total hegemony over Europe and that part of Asia. Admittedly, the action Putin and his government have taken has not made it particularly easy to look sympathetically at the Russian case, but that should not be the focus.

Putin, while ideologically undoubtedly on the side of capitalism, is also a strong nationalist and, like Stalin before him, is determined to protect Russia in the face of determined aggression. His fears, just like Stalin’s, are not based on a wild imagination. The media do not mention the continual spying, subterfuge and hacking that the Western powers have continuously undertaken against, first the Soviet Union and then Russia, as if interference is a one-way street.

We need honest diplomacy from both sides, as well as enforceable agreements to prevent electronic interference in each other’s internal affairs and a moratorium on espionage activity. And we also have to recognise Russia’s genuine concerns and demand that NATO pull back its forces from the border. Co-operation rather than confrontation is essential if we are to avoid a new and dangerous escalation.

Sex and the porn industry –  a time bomb

The feminist movement has achieved considerable progress over recent decades, but what it still has not been able to successfully counter is sexual objectification. This issue affects both men and women, but for women it is arguably more insidious because it invariably involves characterising them as passive and (sexually) submissive.

With the internet everyone now has access not only to useful information but also to numerous pornographic sites. With virtually no controls or regulation, these are increasingly being accessed by children and providing their sexual initiation.

Since the advent of mass advertising, young people, particularly girls have been under extreme pressure to conform to its fashion standards of beauty, from body shape to facial expression. Now, on top of those pressures, comes the impact of pornography. Even very young girls are increasingly facing demands made on them by boys whose only sexual experience has been gained through watching pornography.

Online pornography has become the number one source of sexual ‘education’ for many boys. From such sites they learn to view women as sexual objects for their sole gratification, to be used, abused and demeaned. The examples they see, encourage them to make demands on girlfriends to perform and behave in ways they see women doing in porn films. Many girls not only find such demands and pressure difficult to reject, but find themselves bullied and ridiculed if they try to.  We have reached  a new crisis in adolescent rites of passage, not only in the UK.  The ubiquity of pornography is perhaps even more insidious in those countries with little structured education and certainly no sex education and often discriminatory attitudes towards women, but widespread access to the internet.

One recent survey on the effects of pornography and the internet is Don’t send me that pic published in October last year by Plan International Australia and Our Watch.

The survey gathered responses from girls and young women aged 15-19 in all states and territories of Australia. In the report participants said that online sexual abuse and harassment were becoming a normal part of their everyday interactions.

If there are still any questions about whether porn has an impact on young people’s sexual attitudes and behaviours, perhaps it’s time to listen to young people themselves, the reports argues. Girls and young women describe boys pressuring them to provide acts inspired by the porn they consume routinely.

It found that girls are tired of being pressured for images they don’t want to send, but they seem resigned to send them anyways because of how normal the practice has become. Boys then use the images as a form of currency, to swap and share with their friends.

Girls describe being ranked at school on their bodies, and are sometimes compared to those of porn stars. They know they can’t compete, but that doesn’t stop them from thinking that they have to. Girls who don’t undergo porn-inspired waxing are often considered ugly, dirty, or gross by boys, as well as by other girls. Some girls suffer physical injury from porn-inspired sexual acts, including anal sex and even torture.

Requests for genital surgery among young women aged 15-24 has increased starkly, the report says.

Sexual bullying and harassment are part of daily life for many girls growing up as a part of a digital generation. However, more girls are now speaking out about how these practices have links with pornography – because it’s directly affecting them.

Pornography is moulding and conditioning the sexual behaviours and attitudes of boys, and girls are being left without the resources to deal with such porn-saturated boys.

The Australian Psychological Society estimates that adolescent boys are responsible for around 20 per cent of rapes of adult women and between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of all reported sexual assaults of children. Emeritus Professor Freda argues that online pornography is turning children into copycat sexual predators, acting out on other children what they are seeing in porn.

Another, earlier report found that adolescent consumption of internet porn was linked to attitudinal changes, including acceptance of male dominance and female submission as the primary sexual paradigm, with women viewed as sexual playthings eager to fulfil male sexual desires. The authors found that ‘adolescents who are intentionally exposed to violent sexually explicit material were six times more likely to be sexually aggressive than those who were not exposed’.

According to some experts the new pressures are causing widespread depression, even suicidal tendencies and a deep crises of self esteem among girls. Enormous pressure, not only from boys but also from the girls to fit certain roles or conform to bodily perfection demands, like the shaving of body hair. There is great pressure to be ‘attractive’ and if you aren’t considered to belong to that group, then you are ostracised.

The Guardian (6 October) reported that the incidence of mental health issues among all school students is at an all time high. In the UK, more than 50,000 young people called Childline last year seeking help with serious mental health issues. The helpline has seen a 36% rise over four years in young people needing help. In the 12-15 age group girls were seven times more likely to seek help than boys.

Although, in the UK, we are supposed to have sex education in schools, the subject is still treated as an ‘add-on’ if dealt with at all. Teachers themselves often find sexual issues embarrassing or difficult to talk about, and pornography is rarely mentioned. It does little to counteract the pressures young people are facing. 

So what can be done about this disturbing trend, which is common to many countries?

It is certainly criminal negligence to leave sexual formation in the hands of the global sex industry. We need to do more to help young people stand up against warped notions of sexuality as conveyed in pornography.

The proliferation and globalisation of hypersexualised imagery and pornographic themes makes healthy sexual exploration almost impossible. Sexual conquest and domination take precedence over respect, intimacy and authentic inter-human relationships Young people are not learning about intimacy, friendship and love, but about cruelty and humiliation, the Australian report says.

We have to establish counter-culture which can provide the basis for educating boys and girls on these issues.  We need to enlighten not only schools students, but parents and teachers as well about healthy, respectful relationships, and to challenge everyday sexism. Boys need to be taught not to become offenders rather than telling girls not to go out at night or not to wear certain clothing. Women and girls should not have to modify their behaviour to avoid being targets of harassment and abuse. Perpetrators must learn that aggressive and disrespectful behaviour and harassment against women is unacceptable. It is intimacy and tenderness that so many girls and young women say they are looking for, but how will young women find such experiences in men indoctrinated by pornography

The over-sexualised imagery and behaviour we are confronted with daily through the media and internet are also abetted by some publicity-hungry celebrities. Those women who choose to promote their careers through the misuse of their bodies are also complicit in the creation of stereotypical gender attitudes which are so influential on young people. When those in the public spotlight willingly allow themselves to be used as sex symbols and ostentatiously flout their sexuality, they are reinforcing that male view of women as sexual objects for their own gratification.

Each of us is clearly also faced with a mental dichotomy: the internal battle between our rational and ethical selves and our atavistic, visceral animal instincts. While many heterosexual women crave sensitivity and empathy from men, they are invariably attracted by imagery of the savage he-man, the warrior, the muscle-bound hero. Hollywood films in particular invariably glorify such men, and they clearly appeal to many women as much as men. Parallel to this ‘man’ image is a glorification of violence which is not unconnected with men’s treatment of and attitude towards women. Why was there a wildfire-like infatuation with the sight of Colin Firth’s body seen thorough a wet shirt when, in a scene in the film of Pride and Prejudice, he strips off to swim in a lake, or the ecstasy engendered by a naked Aidan Turner in the bath tub in the TV series Poldark, or the incredible popularity of 50 Shades of Grey with its sado-masochism and dominant, handsome male and submissive female. These are just three examples that reflect a widespread preoccupation with raw physicality rather than inner qualities such as sensitivity and empathy. Our deeper psyches are pre-programmed from our animal heritage, on the part of women to react instinctively to the appearance of very masculine males and, on the part of men, to voluptuous females. But the internationalisation of such imagery, the ease of transmission and availability makes it more potent than ever today. Such imagery has nothing directly to do with pornography but does set up role models and helps reinforce clichéd attitudes towards male and female roles.

According to some experts the new sexual and conformist pressures are causing widespread depression, even suicidal tendencies and a deep crises of self esteem among girls. Enormous pressure, not only from boys but also from the girls to fit certain roles or conform to bodily perfection demands, like the shaving of body hair. There is great pressure to be ‘attractive’ and if you aren’t considered to belong to that group, then you are ostracised.

As a society, we need to be able to demonstrate that healthy relationships are built on equality, honesty, respect, and love. In pornography, it is the reverse: interactions are based on domination, disrespect, abuse, violence, and detachment. This generation is the first having to deal with the issue of pornography on such an intensity and scale. If parents, educationalists and the relevant authorities don’t take a stand, the problem will only get worse. The pornographic industry is also complemented by the Hollywood-driven ‘hard man’ films of war and violence that often reinforce stereotyped gender roles. Both sides are driven by the profit motive and a disdain for social values. The profiteering from such forms of ‘entertainment’ needs to be made increasingly difficult.

The education system needs to do much more to actively counter artificially-imposed standards by powerful advertising companies as well as pornography itself. There have been a whole number of reports and research papers written about sex education and impact of pornography but little effective action is being taken anywhere as yet.

Electoral manipulation is nothing new

The myth of Trump’s ‘mate’ Putin swinging the election in his favour has now become an accepted factoid in the mainstream media. The real issue behind the public exposure of Hillary Clinton’s emails have, in the meantime, been obscured under the mountains of speculation about Russian interference. Julian Assange’s  revelation of  how Clinton was involved in the process of taking weaponry from Libya and sending it to Syria, and her generally hawkish attitude on the Middle East has been well documented, but has, in the meantime, been well buried.

However much the Russian state was actually involved in influencing the outcome of the 2016 US election, it was actually Hillary Clinton who was doing her best to sabotage that Presidential Election, according to another Wikileaks release. It shows that Clinton campaign staffers bribed six Republicans to ‘destroy Trump’. The evidence includes an email from her campaign chairman John Podesta discussing diverting Clinton campaign funds to various Republicans who were secretly on the Clinton payroll.

Whether Putin and the Russian state were directly involved in the hacking of her campaign team’s emails is still an open question, but the rationale behind it could hardly have been to win the election for Trump (surely a hubristic and fantasy goal anyway), but simply to undermine the ‘clean’ credentials of a hard-line, hawkish and establishment politician. The fact that Trump was in the end elected has more to do with the underlying factors of deprivation, anger and disillusion with mainstream politics by millions of US citizens that anything the Russians could achieve by subterfuge.

Perhaps the most infamous attempt by the establishment and secret services to rig an election was the infamous Zinoviev Letter. This ‘letter’ was a controversial document ‘exposed’ by the Daily Mail just four days before the 1924 general election. It purported to be a directive from the Communist International in Moscow to the British Communist Party suggesting that the resumption of diplomatic relations (by a Labour government) between the two countries would hasten the radicalisation of the British working class. This scare tactic was intended to lose Labour the election and it appeared to succeed admirably, as the Conservatives won an overwhelming majority.

In Iran in 1953 the CIA together with the British secret services launched Operation Ajax and engineered a coup d’état against the democratically elected, progressive and secular government of prime minister Mossadegh. Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, cancelling its oil concession and expropriating its assets. The West was determined to prevent this happening. The coup was prepared by the placing of false news stories in the press to the effect that Mossaddegh and his ‘communist friends’ would undermine Islam, thus invoking the ire and outrage in an overwhelmingly Muslim country.

In Italy and France after the Second World War with the communists’ role in the resistance against the fascists garnering them much respect and esteem, they appeared certain to win influential positions in government once free elections were held. The Mafia (in Italy) and the Catholic Church in both countries were mobilised to undermine the communists and a re-invigorated left-led trade union movement. Under the former communist and then avid red-baiter, Jay Lovestone, the US set up AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development). It was a covert arm of the US foreign policy establishment with the aim of preventing the establishment of progressive unions in Europe after the war. Not only did the organisation help mobilise the Church and press against the communists, but nor did it shy away from arranging the murder of leading left trade unionists through its Mafia henchmen.

On 15 July 1948, L’Osservatore Romano, the daily of the Vatican State, published a decree which excommunicated those who propagate ‘the materialistic and anti-Christian teachings of communism’, which was widely interpreted as an excommunication of the Communist Party of Italy. The excommunication extended to any Italian Catholic who was a communist candidate in the parliamentary elections. This decree was actively supported by the Christian Democratic Party which was actively promoted by the CIA. In 1949, the Holy Office issued the Decree Against Communism, which excommunicated any Catholic who joined or collaborated with the Communist Party. In a country with a large population of devout Catholics, this policy was extremely effective.

Twenty years ago, Time magazine reported on the feats of American political consultants who managed — much to the satisfaction of the US government — to ensure Boris Yeltsin won re-election to the Russian presidency.
The report was titled ‘Rescuing Boris,’ and bore a subtitle oddly similar to headline allegations two decades later.  The sub-tile was: ‘The secret story of how four US advisers used polls, focus groups, negative ads and all the other techniques of American campaigning to help Boris Yeltsin win.’

While the mainstream media today scream ‘fake news’ and dismiss the successes of alternative media’s reporting on corruption in the Democrat Party and the significance of Hillary Clinton’s emails, by deeming it all ‘Russian propaganda’, it would seem the entire country has forgotten US exploits elsewhere. In fact, those American advisors literally meddled in the Russian election of that year 1991 — and as TIME, itself, pointed out, changed the course of the country’s politics forever.

The more recent hacking and sabotaging of the Iranian nuclear programme by US and Israeli agents using the computer virus Stuxnet is another example of blatant electronic US interference, and what about the hacking of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel’s phone? All these examples are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg concerning Western interference in other countries’ affairs, but memories are short and deliberately made so.

To Brexit or not to Brexit?

As Theresa May’s self-imposed deadline of the end of March for triggering Brexit is only 130 days away away, even the run-up process is turning out to be more chaotic and painful than imagined.

I was one of those who voted for Brexit because I wanted to help send a strong signal to the political elite in Europe and at home that we, the people, were not happy with the undemocratic way the EU was being run. I did not imagine for a moment that the majority would vote for it. I felt somewhat uncomfortable about my vote because I found myself, unwittingly, in bed with some unsavoury characters. And, as we have seen the campaign around Brexit, waged by the right wing on both sides of the divide, was mendacious, superficial and incompetent.

The much more cogent left-wing arguments for opting out of the EU were given no airing by the mainstream media, which were more interested in the sensationalist mock battles between Farage, Gove and Johnson versus Cameron and Labour grandees. The right-wing Brexiteers, led by UKIP, played on widespread fears of immigration and whipped up xenophobia. A state, as Lenin noted, can only be truly democratic if its people are fully informed. On Brexit there was scant information but tons of noxious hot air.

It is now generally recognised that the unexpected majority vote for Brexit reflected more people’s anger and disgust at a political elite divorced from and uninterested in the lives of ordinary people, rather that being a vote against the EU as such.

What has become very clear as the details surrounding the Brexit process now emerge is that a so-called ‘hard’ Brexit which seems increasingly unavoidable will be very painful indeed, and it will hit working people hardest. What the Tory government is asking for is akin to someone filing for divorce but demanding that his partner continues to honour her marriage vows while leaving him free to go off and philander as he wishes.

What the government seems unable to understand is – in terms of trade, research, human rights and inter-state co-operation – Britain needs the rest of Europe much more than the other way around. The big players in the EU are making it very clear that if Britain triggers Article 50 there will be no soft landing; they will make sure we land head-first on the rocks. The EU has been so designed that  an injury-free opting out is almost impossible; no parachute has been included in the package.

A document prepared by consultants on behalf of the government reveals that Whitehall officials from different departments have listed 500 projects relating to our departure from the EU that would require 30,000 extra staff to untangle. Article 50 gives the leaving country two years to negotiate an exit deal, and once set in motion, it cannot be stopped except by unanimous consent of all member states. To untangle and renegotiate our contractual relations with the EU could not be done within that timeframe. ‘Article 50 is a bit like The Bomb: best kept as an implicit threat.’ David Cameron’s former special advisor, Mats Persson, once said, but now the timing device is ticking.

There is a whole raft of EU legislation that most of us would agree that we should keep and other items which we could and should dispense with but untangling these many agreements, laws and regulations would take longer than the two-year timetable allowed for leaving the EU once Article 50 has been triggered.

The implications are momentous. Apart from the threatened loss of our biggest trading partner or the imposition of draconian customs tariffs, what happens to all those Britons now working in Europe or married to European partners? What about health insurance outside Britain?

Keir Starmer, Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, says Labour would not block a parliamentary vote to trigger article 50 but would insist on first knowing the government’s plans for how it would proceed. He also said that the party could try to amend any bill to begin the process of beginning Brexit, and would seek to preserve access to the EU’s customs union and elements of the single market. He is said to be furious about McDonnell’s recent policy speech, in which he said: ‘Labour accepts the referendum result as the voice of the majority and we must embrace the enormous opportunities to reshape our country that Brexit has opened for us’.

Of course it would be gratifying if we could return to Britain’s glorious past as an independent manufacturing centre, but since Thatcher destroyed all that we have hardly any manufacturing infrastructure left and those few big companies operating in the country today are almost all foreign-owned. To re-establish a manufacturing base – essential if we want to survive Brexit economically ­–­ we would have to invest enormous amounts into manufacturing industries and rapidly develop the skills needed, something that could be done but that would take decades.

These uncomfortable truths have to be faced by all of us, however we voted. To ignore them, would be infantile and dangerous. But once Brexit is triggered our lifeboat will be cast off and set adrift with no land in sight.