Tiresome Intellectuals




George Monbiot must have been peeing his pants about this 'clever' article for The Guardian in which he asks why stop at the un-Islamic when we could, in fact, bomb the whole of the Muslim world?

Now George, of course, is one of the tiresome intellectuals who compared the news about disaffected young people going off to fight for the un-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, with the International Brigades who fought for democracy and against fascism during the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939).

Which tells you a lot about George's politics, his grasp of history and generally where he is coming from - Planet Monbiot if you ask me.    

Because why would someone ask such a stupid question when they know the answer already? Perhaps he's just a narcissistic show off, who knows.

The air strikes against the un-Islamic State is not a war against Islam, as George knows only too well, and the objective is to prevent mass murder and genocide, as was the case in Libya or Bosnia, for example.

Air strikes and military intervention cannot solve deep-rooted political and religious conflicts, but they can stop genocide in its tracks and arguably that is what should have happened in Rwanda in 1994 when up to 1,000,000 civilians were killed in a 100-day murderous civil war between Hutus and Tutsis.  

Now the 'we' George refers to in his article is never explained and it would surely be better all round if the regional powers in the area along with the United Nations were to agree a way forward based on power sharing, democracy, religious tolerance, the rule of law and respect for human rights.

But until we get there, which could be a very long time, George's intellectual answer to the problem is to wash out hands of it all because when it comes down to it, 'we' don't really have a dog in the fight.   

Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world?


Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East


By George Monbiot - The Guardian
'Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success.' Photograph: ASAP/ECPAD/Corbis

Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?

How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis. Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August. They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure” once Isis has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida”.

What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion” (suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qur’an was symbolic rather than literal). Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from above? Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet. One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.

Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft. It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups”. In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis. Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?

The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and west Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.

Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the Earth by the destroying angels of the west.

Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.

Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to al-Qaida, together. More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.

And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.

While the bombs fall, our states befriend and defend other networks of death. The US government still refuses – despite Obama’s promise – to release the 28 redacted pages from the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, which document Saudi Arabian complicity in the US attack. In the UK, in 2004 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating allegations of massive bribes paid by the British weapons company BAE to Saudi ministers and middlemen. Just as crucial evidence was about to be released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation. The biggest alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar. The SFO was investigating a claim that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn in secret payments from BAE.

And still it is said to go on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi national guard. When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to the British Ministry of Defence, instead of taking action it alerted his bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi jail.

There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect, sponsor and arm selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslim nations, they have made life worse for those who live there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are those that suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither coincidental nor surprising.

Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.



Problem with Intellectuals (16 February 2014)


After reading this article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, I was left with the distinct impression that George approved of all the actions being taken to oust Bashar al Assad and his murderous regime from Syria - including the suicide attack on Halab prison in Aleppo.

But then I stopped and wondered to myself is the the same George Monbiot, a prominent supporter of the Stop the War Coalition, who opposed an limited military strike on the Syrian regime last year - which failed to win support in the House of Commons?

If so, I think we should be told because I'm confused as to what George Monbiot is on about as he appears to support the rebels in Syria who are fighting to oust President Assad while drawing no real distinction between the Free Syrian Army insurgents and those linked to al-Qaida such as the al-Nusra Front.  

George asks us to consider whether the suicide bomber was really a hero rather than a terrorist, but the answer that lies not so much in the act of blowing up the prison gates as in what al-Qaida stands for - what kind of society al-Qaida wants to create, if peace ever comes to Syria.

I read about the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 the other week so Monbiot is far from being the first person to raise the link between civil war in Spain and Syria (almost 80 years later), yet the similarities are wildly overblown since the 2006 Terrorism Act is about the prevention of potential terrorist acts in the UK. 

Here are the main provisions of the 2006 Act and having read them carefully, I'm not sure what point George is trying to make, although I suppose that's the curse of being branded an intellectual, of being too clever by half. 

MAIN PROVISIONS

• Extends police powers to hold terrorist suspects from 14 days to 28 days without charge.
• Makes it a criminal offence to encourage terrorism by directly or indirectly inciting or encouraging others to commit acts of terrorism. This includes an offence of "glorification" of terror – people who "praise or celebrate" terrorism in a way that may encourage others to commit a terrorist act. The maximum penalty is seven years' imprisonment.
• Grants the home secretary greater powers to ban groups that glorify terrorism and to prevent proscribed organisations from using front organisations to continue operating
• Creates new offences relating to the sale, loan, distribution or transmission of terrorist publications. These can be: 
(a) publications that may indirectly or directly induce others to commit terrorist acts or 
(b) information that could be useful in the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism, eg a bomb-making manual. 
• Creates new offences to allow the prosecution of anyone who gives or receives training in terrorist techniques and to allow the prosecution of those who attend terror training camps or are believed to be preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
• Amends the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to increase the possible jail term for refusal to provide an encryption key from two years to up to five years and amends the same act extend the maximum period that intercept warrants can be issued for.
• Extends terrorism stop and search powers to cover bays and estuaries, and to enable the police to search boats and other vessels.
• Creates new offences relating to making or possessing radioactive devices or material and amends the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act to make it a criminal offence to trespass on a nuclear site, punishable by imprisonment for up to 51 weeks. 
• Sets out new procedures in preparing terrorist cases for trial

Since drafting this post I have since read that the British suicide bomber referred to by George Monbiot - Abu Soleiman al-Britani was a longstanding member of the banned Islamist group al-Mahajiroun and was questioned by the police during an investigation into a plot to bomb a shopping centre in Kent.

Now a man is innocent of a crime until proved guilty in court, beyond a reasonable doubt, but how coincidental is that - and how stupid does George Monbiot look for even raising the possibility that this poor chap (who had a wife and children) might be a hero. 
Orwell was hailed a hero for fighting in Spain. Today he'd be guilty of terrorism

The International Brigades are acclaimed for bravery. But British citizens who fight in Syria are damned. If only they did it for the money



By George Monbiot


'The British government did threaten people leaving to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act. But the act was unworkable.' Photograph: Christopher Thomond

If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government against a fascist rebellion would have no bearing on the case. They would go down as terrorists.

As it happens, the British government did threaten people leaving the country to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870. In 1937 it warned that anyone volunteering to fight in Spain would be "liable on conviction to imprisonment up to two years". This was consistent with its policy of non-intervention, which even Winston Churchill, initially a supporter, came to see as "an elaborate system of official humbug". Britain, whose diplomatic service and military command were riddled with fascist sympathisers, helped to block munitions and support for the Republican government, while ignoring Italian and German deployments on Franco's side.

But the act was unworkable, and never used – unlike the Crown Prosecution Service's far graver threat to British citizens fighting in Syria. In January 16 people were arrested on terror charges after returning from Syria. Seven others are already awaiting trial. Sue Hemming, the CPS head of counter-terrorism, explained last week that "potentially it's an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict, however loathsome you think the people on the other side are ... We will apply the law robustly".

People fighting against forces that run a system of industrialised torture and murder and are systematically destroying entire communities could be banged up for life for their pains. Is this any fairer than imprisoning Orwell would have been?

I accept that some British fighters in Syria could be changed by their experience. I also accept that some are already motivated by the prospect of fighting a borderless jihad, and could return to Britain with the skills required to pursue it. But this is guilt by association. Some of those who go to fight in Syria might develop an interest in blowing up buses in Britain, just as some investment bankers might be tempted to launder cash for drug dealers and criminal gangs. We don't round up bankers on the grounds that their experience in one sector might tempt them to dabble in another. (The state won't prosecute them even when they do launder money for drug gangs and terrorists, as the HSBC scandal suggests.) But all those who leave Britain to fight in Syria potentially face terrorism charges, even if they seek only to defend their extended families.

Last week a British man who called himself Abu Suleiman al-Britani drove a truck full of explosives into the gate of Halab prison in Aleppo. The explosion, in which he died, allowed rebel fighters to swarm into the jail and release 300 prisoners. Was it terrorism or was it heroism? Terrorism, according to many commentators.

It's true that he carried out this act in the name of the al-Nusra Front, which the British government treats as synonymous with al-Qaida. But can anyone claim that liberating the inmates of Syrian government prisons is not a good thing? We now know that at least 11,000 people have been killed in these places, and that many were tortured to death. Pictures of their corpses were smuggled out of Syria by the government photographer employed to record them. There are probably many more. That combination of horror and bureaucracy – doing unspeakable things then ensuring that they are properly documented – has powerful historical resonances. It haunts us with another horror, and the questions that still hang over the Allied effort in the second world war: how much was known, how much could have been done?

As no one else is now likely to act, and as the raid on the prison would probably have been impossible without the suicide bomb, should we not be celebrating this act of extraordinary courage? Had David Cameron not lost the intervention vote, and had al-Britani been fighting for the British army, he might have been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

When you think of the attempt by the British battalion in the Spanish civil war to defend a place they called "Suicide Hill", with the loss of 225 out of 600 men, do you see this as an act of terror – a suicide mission motivated by an extreme ideology – or as a valiant attempt to resist a terror campaign?

Sue Hemming claims it is "an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict", but that is not always true. You can be prosecuted if you possess a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" for getting involved, but not, strangely, if you possess a financial motive. Far from it: such motives are now eminently respectable. You can even obtain a City &Guilds qualification as a naval mercenary. Sorry, "maritime security operative". As long as you don't care whom you kill or why, you're exempt from the law.

I expect that's a relief to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary who now chairs parliament's intelligence and security committee, where he ramps up public fears about terrorism. For several years he was chairman of ArmorGroup, whose business was to go out and get involved in conflict. The absence of one word from the legislation – financial – ensures that he is seen as a scourge of terrorism, rather than an accomplice. The British fighters in Syria should ask their commanders to pay them, then claim they're only in it for the money. They would, it seems, then be immune from prosecution.

Talking of which, what clearer case could there be of the "use or threat of action ... designed to influence the government ... for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause" than the war with Iraq? Tony Blair's ministers were, of course, protected by crown immunity, but could they have experienced no flicker of cognitive dissonance while preparing the 2006 act?

Whatever you might think of armed intervention in Syria, by states or citizens, Hemming's warning illustrates the arbitrary nature of our terrorism laws, the ring they throw around certain acts of violence while ignoring others, the risk that they will be used against brown and bearded people who present no threat. The non-intervention agreement of 1936 was not the last elaborate system of official humbug the British government devised.

Popular posts from this blog

SNP - Conspiracy of Silence

LGB Rights - Hijacked By Intolerant Zealots!