Sex, Lies and Incompetence: Britain’s Ruling Establishment in Crisis

Deepak Tripathi

Barely five months after a general election in the United Kingdom, the government of Prime Minister Theresa May looks doomed. It could fall any day, next week or next month. Within her Conservative Party and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in other European countries and beyond, speculation is rife that Theresa May’s days in office may be numbered. Scandals involving sex, lies and incompetence unfold day after day. The rot has set in at the heart of Britain’s power centre.

As the deadline for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (March 29, 2019) approaches, rival factions in the government and the Conservative parliamentary party are engaged in fierce battles over what kind of Brexit they want. Once a Conservative Member of Parliament and now a distinguished commentator, Matthew Parris, says, “The sooner Theresa May goes, the better.”

Ministers operate like freelance diplomats and traders, not like members of a cabinet which has collective responsibility, without reference to the protocol and the Prime Minister’s Office. Claims of sexual misconduct by politicians of various parties, but more seriously by ministers, abound. Allegations of groping have ended the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon’s career, after his confession that at times his behaviour had fallen short. And the First Secretary of State (in effect deputy prime minister), Damian Green, has been accused by a much younger woman activist, Kate Maltby, of making sexual advances and sending “suggestive” text messages to her. These accounts are widely reported in the media.

Further, there are claims, backed by a former senior police officer, that pornography was discovered on Damian Green’s office computer some years ago. He denies the allegations, and the Prime Minister has ordered an investigation. But, unlike Michael Fallon, Damian Green remains in his post.

Sleaze at the heart of power goes back to the time when Theresa May’s predecessor, David Cameron, was in office. A well-known television producer, Daisy Goodwin, has alleged that she was groped by a staff member in the then Prime Minister David Cameron’s official residence. According to Goodwin, when she challenged the man who was much younger than her, he dropped his hand from her breast and laughed nervously. Ex-Prime Minister Cameron now says he is “alarmed, shocked and concerned.”

At the same time, it emerged that another minister, the International Development Secretary Priti Patel, went on “holiday” to Israel and held 12 meetings with Israeli officials, including the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. First, Patel said that she had informed the Foreign Office about her visit. It turned out that she had not. She apologised and was let off the hook. Then, news leaked out that she had had more meetings with Israeli officials and had not declared them. That was too much. Priti Patel was summoned back to London from a visit to Africa and left the Cabinet soon after.

Leaks also revealed that Patel had visited the occupied (Syrian) Golan Heights. She inspected an Israeli army hospital where Syrian “refugees” and anti-Assad rebels are treated. And she was in talks about ways to divert British foreign aid to the Israeli army. The United Kingdom does not recognise Israeli control in occupied Arab territories. British ministers do not visit those areas. When they do they have to maintain a strict protocol and meet Palestinian as well as Israeli officials to give the appearance of balance. The International Development Secretary broke all the rules.

Theresa May’s minority government is beset by crises of its own making. Having supported the option to stay in the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum, she has become a fervent Leaver since becoming Prime Minister. And her calculations have gone badly wrong. She called a general election in June 2017, dead certain of winning a big majority in Parliament and thereafter doing what she liked in exiting the EU and shaping the country in her own post-Brexit vision. Instead, she lost her majority in Parliament. A number of sitting MPs of her party were defeated. She snatched defeat from the jaws of victory many in her party had anticipated.

Now, she barely governs as head of a Conservative minority government. She is sustained in office by 10 MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party which has promised to support her in any motion of confidence. She has bought the DUP’s support with a billion pound additional funding for Northern Ireland. But the deal has raised serious questions over the British government’s impartiality in the peace process and power-sharing between the province’s Catholic and Protestant communities that ended decades of conflict in April 1998.

In her party, Theresa May’s position is made even more precarious by about 35 hard-line MPs who would not accept any compromise in forging a new relationship with the European Union. Since triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty in March 2017 to exit the European Union, she is under relentless pressure from these uncompromising anti-EU MPs to make no concessions to the other side. Whether it is about paying the exit fee to meet the UK’s commitments to current EU projects and pension liabilities etc., accepting the EU requirement of four freedoms (movement of goods, services, capital, people) in a future trade relationship or the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice for settling disputes between the UK and the EU.

A number of her MPs want the British government to simply walk away from the talks, arguing that it will be the EU that will come back to negotiate trade with the United Kingdom. Others want a soft Brexit and trading as open as possible thereafter. Still others insist that the UK must leave the EU in March 2019, and any transition arrangement must be as short as possible.

In a leaked secret letter setting out their terms of exit, the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, and the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, have written to the Prime Minister that after the UK ceases to be a member of the EU in March 2019, any transition period must end precisely on the last day of June 2021. Writing in the Guardian, the newspaper’s political columnist Rafael Behr called it ego-wrestling in the British cabinet. The Prime Minister can neither sack Boris Johnson nor Michael Gove, because by doing so she will risk bringing down her government.

The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has a history of making off-the-cough remarks, a bumbling style and public buffoonery. Currently, he is in serious trouble following his careless, and false, comments before a parliamentary select committee. Speaking about Iran and a British-Iranian dual citizen being held in jail on accusations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, the Foreign Secretary said that the woman was only teaching journalism there. Actually she had gone to see her elderly parents and was arrested by Revolutionary Guards as she was about to board a flight to return to Britain.

The Iranian authorities jumped on Johnson’s comments, claiming that his remarks proved that the woman was guilty, and are threatening to double her five-year jail sentence. In prison, Nazanin Zaghary-Radcliffe’s health is declining. Her daughter is being looked after by her parents while her British husband, Richard Radcliffe, battles to get them back home. For several days, Boris Johnson resisted calls to apologise for making a false statement which has caused a British family a lot of trouble. Finally, he did apologise, but the woman’s fate remains in the hands of the Iranian authorities.

So, the government of Theresa May stumbles from crisis to crisis as the United Kingdom approaches exit from the European Union, the biggest trading bloc which surrounds it.

When she succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister in July 2016, many people had assumed that she would be a safe pair of hands. However, her actions, her dependence on a small number of advisers personally loyal to her and her inability to win the party’s and people’s confidence have proved otherwise. In the midst of scandals involving sex, lies and ineptitude at the highest level of her government, she now fights for her own political survival as Parliament scrutinises the EU Withdrawal Bill.

Is Trudeau Ready for a Middle East war?

MURRAY DOBBIN

The world is now at the mercy of a coalition of three of the most dangerous autocrats on the planet:  Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s new absolute ruler Mohammad bin Salman a name that will become increasingly familiar as the months go by. These three ‘leaders’ are now collaborating in an incredibly reckless plan to permanently reshape the Middle East.

The final outcome will unfold no matter what Canada does. But unless the Trudeau government gets a grip on reality Canada will be drawn into this potential catastrophe by virtue of foreign policy positions it has already taken. Geopolitics is getting incredibly complex and there is little evidence that the Liberal government has a clue how to navigate through the dangers. The problem is that despite all the hype about “being back” Canada’s foreign policy under Trudeau and Freeland is still characterized by cynicism and ill-considered trade-offs on files within the broad spectrum of foreign affairs – including investor rights agreements like NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Obviously a certain amount of realpolitik is inevitable and even necessary to protect Canada’s interests. But even so it begs the question of how Canada’s interests are defined. How much of the store is Trudeau willing to give away to buy favour with the US on NAFTA, especially when it seems concessions like putting our troops on Russia’s border has gotten us nothing in return? With Trump and his redesigned US Empire, there is no quid pro quo.

The embarrassing “me too” gang up on Russia is bad enough. The Canadian version of the US Magnitzky Act is a pathetic effort to please the US (EU allies in NATO are increasingly uneasy about Russophobia given their own particular national interests). And Putin can hurt Canada and Canadian businesses more than we can hurt Putin and his oligarchs – and he has promised to do so.

And the Middle East is a whole other question. Canada’s past sins like torture in Afghanistan, and the destruction of Libya can be dismissed by the government as old news. Canada has thankfully avoided getting re-involved in the chaos that is Middle East politics. But with the coming to (absolute) power of the new and reckless Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman Middle East policy is suddenly fraught with danger and risk for any country allied with the US or with any claim to interests in the region.

The new Saudi prince (who has arrested everyone who might challenge his authority) is encouraging Israel to invade Lebanon, urging the Israelis to do what they want to do anyway: deal a crippling blow to Israel’s most effective foe, Hezbollah. Hezbollah basically governs Lebanon and has its own well-armed force. Funded by and allied to Iran, it fought the Israeli army to a standstill in 2006. It is this fact that prompted the Saudi’s to force the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri: he refused or was unable to curb Hezbollah’s political power. The Saudi government upped the ante saying the Lebanese government would “be dealt with as a government declaring war on Saudi Arabia.” It ordered all Saudi citizens to leave Lebanon.

For the Saudi’s the ultimate target is Shiite Iran and its significant influence in the Middle East and presence, directly or indirectly, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. When bin Salman declared that a rocket attack on Riyadh by Yemeni rebels could be seen as an act of war by Iran, the US backed him up, implicitly giving the Saudi dictator a green light for more aggressive action.

Given the political situations in the he US, Israel and SaudiArabia all sorts of sorts case scenarios are now being speculated about.

With the potential for a rapid escalation of military confrontations, to the point of risking a confrontation between the US and Russia. The first would be an Israeli assault on Hezbollah and Lebanon’s infrastructure. That could be followed by a Saudi-led invasion of Qatar and the removal of its government. While less likely, another confrontation could see the US launch a campaign to seize Syrian territory reclaimed by the Assad regime, on behalf of Israel and risking a direct confrontation with Russia.

All of this could be a prelude to an attack on Iran itself and possibly the use by Israel of nuclear weapons. The rich potential for unintended consequences includes world war three.

If all of this sounds fantastical consider who currently runs Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu is mired in his own corruption scandal and needs a distracting war to survive. Bin Salman has already demonstrated a stunning recklessness and ruthlessness: the brutal bombing of Yemen (and now a blockade of food and medicine), the blockade of Qatar, and the house arrest of another country’s prime minister. As for Trump (and some of his generals) he seems to genuinely believe that the US is invulnerable, a truly suicidal assumption. All three heads of state adhere to the doctrine of exceptionalism: the normal rules of international behaviour don’t apply to them.

If one or more of these scenarios begins to play out just what will Trudeau do? His government’s policy towards Israel is driven by political cowardice rooted in fear of the Israel lobby. Towards Saudi Arabia, it is driven by sales of armoured personnel carriers and a blind eye towards gross human rights violations. With respect to the US it is characterized by ad hoc efforts to predict the unpredicatable.

If any of this war scenario plays out Trudeau will suddenly be pressed to come up with principled positions in response and not just political opportunism and calculated ambiguity. And he should take note: Canadians’ attitudes towards Israel have turned very critical with 46 percent expressing negative views and just 28 percent positive views of that country. As for our proposed $15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, 64 percent disapprove.

While these progressive attitudes lie relatively dormant at the moment another slaughter of innocents will bring them to life.  Is the Prime Minister prepared?

TPP, Indo Pacific, QUAD: What’s Next to Contain China’s Rise?

GERRY BROWN

After throwing Obama’s TPP out of the window, Asia experts in Washington were busy looking for alternatives to TPP which excluded China. Lo and behold, they found the term “Indo Pacific”! Trump dutifully brandished the term like a new toy before leaving for his longest tour to Asia. Indo Pacific became vogue in the media overnight. To spice up the alphabet soup,  QUAD (comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia)  was served up as a new strategy to slow, if not thwart, China’s rise as the predominant economic powerhouse in Asia Pacific.

There are two problems with that geostrategy. One, Trump is agnostic about multilateral trade arrangements, to put it mildly. Two, Australia, Japan and India, the other three co-conspirators in QUAD, have China as their largest trade partner. They aren’t about to jeopardize their trade relations with China by ganging up with America to antagonize Beijing. As one commentator put it : “Whatever their problems with China, America will not be the answer.”

China’s rise is inexorable. No one could disrupt, much less stop, China’s re-emergence without hurting itself more than it can hurt China. Moreover, China isn’t engaging in exclusive, zero-sum globalisation. As a major beneficiary of globalisation, China has stepped up to the plate to promote trade at a time when America is retreating from world trade behind the “America First” policy.

China isn’t “skilfully and relentlessly” easing America out of Asia. Over the last decade, Chinese leaders have repeatedly told American politicians that the Pacific is big enough to accommodate both China and America.

Most Asian states and many European nations have hitched on to the bandwagon of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the new frontier of trade and investment in the 21st century.  The question facing nations, big and small, is NOT how to contain China’s rise, which will be futile and counterproductive. Rather, the question is how they can derive the most benefit from the new world economic order offered by BRI.

A Kiss is Not a Kiss: Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children

Cesar Chelala

The recent denunciations by several young women who claimed that they were sexually abused by Senate nominee Roy S. Moore, some of them when they were younger than 18 years-old, underscore the widespread nature of this phenomenon. What makes it even more serious, is that it involves all social and economic groups of people, mostly men, who can do permanent damage to their victims.

Sexual abuse of children, many of whom are then forced to go into prostitution, is a worldwide phenomenon that can take several forms. In some cases, the parents of children involved are led to believe by traffickers that their children will become domestic workers or waitresses in the countries’ big cities.

Throughout the world, organized groups kidnap children and sell them to go into prostitution in neighboring countries, with border officials and police being accomplices in this process. Because of their often undocumented status, language deficiencies and lack of legal protection, kidnapped children are particularly vulnerable in the hands of smugglers or corrupt government officials. Abject poverty sometimes forces parents to sell their children to unscrupulous merchants of sex.

Malika Saada Saar, executive director of Rights4Girls, makes an important clarification regarding sexually abused children. According to her, those girls that are repeatedly raped, abused and exploited are not child prostitutes but rather they are victims and survivors of child rape, deserving all legal protections and support services.

Excessive materialism, however, may also play a role in some cases. In a survey carried out in the north of Thailand some children expressed that they would like to work as prostitutes when they grow up. Many girls dream of working in Bangkok and, since they do not have any special training, work as prostitutes to be able to afford beautiful clothes and jewelry, something they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. This is a difficult problem to solve, because in those situations school children go voluntarily into prostitution, and don’t see themselves necessarily as victims.

It is estimated that, annually, 4 million women and girls are bought and sold worldwide either into marriage, prostitution or slavery. Approximately one million children enter the sex trade (although most are girls, boys are also involved) every year. And as many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe are brought to the United States and forced to work as prostitutes, servants or as abused workers.

For the past two years in the United States, the Government has prosecuted only a handful of cases, involving less than a few hundred victims. In other countries where this problem is frequent, the prosecution rate is even lower.

According to UNICEF, 10,000 girls annually enter Thailand from other countries in the region (Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Southern China), and end up as sexual workers. They are just a fraction of the estimated 800,000 to 2,000,000 prostitutes working in Thailand, a significant proportion of them coming from Burma.

The number of Burmese women and girls working as prostitutes in Thailand has increased considerably in recent years. Among the reasons are increased political upheaval in Burma and worsening economic conditions. The children more likely to be exploited are those from tribal groups and ethnic minorities, as well as those that become refugees. In Nepal, between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepali girls are transported through the border to India each year and end up in commercial sex work in Mumbai, Bombay or New Delhi.

Although the greatest number of children working as prostitutes occurs in Asia, Eastern European children (from countries such as Russia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic) are increasingly vulnerable. According to estimates, more than 2 million children under 18 are involved in prostitution worldwide, of which 1 million are in Asia and 300,000 in the United States.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is increasing worldwide. There are several causes for this situation which include increased trade across national borders, poverty, unemployment, low status of girls, lack of education (including sexual education) of children and their parents, inadequate legislation, lack of or poor law enforcement, and eroticization of children by the media, a phenomenon increasingly seen in industrialized countries.

There are also special social and cultural reasons for children entering into the sex trade in different regions of the world. In industrialized countries, children may enter the sex trade because they are fleeing from abusive homes. In countries from East and Southern Africa, children who became orphans as a result of AIDS frequently lack the protection of care-givers and are, therefore, more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation. In countries in South Asia, traditional practices that perpetuate the low status of women and girls in society are at the base of this problem. A history of bonded labor and the caste system in India mean that children belonging to lower castes are more likely to be trafficked.

Increasingly, children’s prostitution is related to tourism. In Brazil, according to social worker Maria Pinto Leal, “sexual exploitation of minors occurs in networks of prostitution and trafficking, pornography and sexual tourism.” In urban centers in Brazil, children and teenagers frequently enter prostitution to escape from situations of family violence and extreme poverty.

Violence in the family is a frequent precursor of prostitution. In Chile, a study found that physical violence in the family was present in 63% of surveyed homes. In Colombia, a country plagued by chronic violence, the International Police (Interpol) estimated that 35,000 children and teenagers are involved in prostitution. In Nicaragua and Honduras, child prostitution is a growing phenomenon affecting all sectors of society.

In the United States the phenomenon is a growing problem affecting younger children, who are lured by pimps into prostitution. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are sexually exploited through prostitution or pornography. Many among those children are runaways who have suffered rape, incest or abuse in their homes.

Because their tissues are more easily torn, children exploited sexually are prone to have sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. A study conducted in Thailand found that a third of the children involved in prostitution were HIV-positive. Concern about AIDS among customers has driven the sex industry to supply younger girls, who can be sold as virgins and are, therefore, free from AIDS. In addition, because of the special conditions in which they live, children involved in prostitution can become malnourished, and develop feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and mental depression.

Throughout the world, many individuals and NGOs are working intensely for the protection of children’s rights. In the Philippines, several communities have volunteer patrols that monitor bars and brothels for the presence of children. The Domestic Workers Movement in India provides legal protection, education and counseling to its members, many of whom have been victims of sexual abuse.

Among the UN agencies, UNICEF has been particularly active in calling attention to this phenomenon. It is addressing the root causes of sexual exploitation by providing economic support to families, by improving access to education, particularly for girls, and by becoming a strong advocate for the rights of the child.

UNICEF supports the Protection Project, sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The project’s main objective is to research national and international legislation protecting women and children from commercial sexual exploitation. Through this project, it is expected that baseline information will be obtained on related laws world-wide.

The work of NGOs and UN agencies such as UNICEF should be a complement to governments’ policies and actions to solve this problem. The prevention of sexual exploitation should be carried out through social mobilization and awareness-building, the provision of social services to exploited children and their families, the creation of the legal framework and building capacity for psycho-social counseling and for the appropriate prosecution of perpetrators. It is only by openly discussing it and exposing child sexual abuse that we will eventually stop and eradicate it.

The Biggest Threat To World Peace Is NATO

Eric Zuesse

On November 8th, Britain’s Daily Mail bannered “NATO tells Europe to prepare for ‘rapid deployment’:” and sub-headed “Defence chiefs say roads, bridges and rail links must be improved in case tanks and heavy vehicles need to be quickly mobilised” (to invade Russia, but the newspaper’s slant was instead that this must be done purely defensively: “In October, NATO accused Russia of misleading them, saying that Moscow had deliberately violated international rules of military drills”).

The article continued:

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for the infrastructure update across Europe as NATO is set to overhaul its command structure for the first time since the Cold War

During a press conference in Brussels, Stoltenberg said NATO needs a command structure to ensure ‘we have the right forces, in the right place, with the right equipment at the right time.’

He then added: ‘This is not only about commands. We also need to ensure that roads and bridges are strong enough to take our largest vehicles, and that rail networks are equipped for the rapid deployment of tanks and heavy equipment.

‘NATO has military requirements for civilian infrastructure and we need to update these to ensure that current military needs are taken into account.’ 

The NATO military alliance against Russia has been continuing the Cold War, and is now intensifying it, after the voluntary end of the Cold War in 1991, by the Soviet Union, and by its mirrored military alliance, which was the Warsaw Pact.

With that end of communism, and end of the communist military alliance, all of the constructive reason for NATO likewise ceased, and so NATO should have ended simultaneously when the Soviet Union and its military alliance did; but, instead, certain corporate interests in Western nations have prevailed; and, so, the Cold War is now ratcheting up even further on the U.S.-NATO side. This escalation, which is being done under false pretext (on the basis of lies), is forcing Russia to similarly increase its military budget and military exercises (such as the drills that are the pretext for NATO’s latest aggressive move here) — and Russia’s responses are being called by NATO ‘Russian aggression’, as if NATO hasn’t actually forced Russia to increase its military defenses (including those “drills”).

The need that the NATO-supplying corporations, such as Lockheed Martin and BAE, have — companies whose enormous profits depend heavily upon intensifying the Cold War instead of ending it (such as ought to have happened in 1991) — has become the mass-murdering and land-destroying corporate tail, which is actually wagging the governmental dogs, of Western nations’ (especially of America’s) foreign policies, so as to increase global expenditures into the mass-killing industries (most of which are U.S.-based), in order to keep their war-profits high. Wall Street is heavily involved in this, and most of America’s billionaires have these types of investments.

Economic theory considers all purchases and sales to constitute ‘economic growth’; and, so, expenditures and purchases for mass-killing and bombing, and for defenses against same, are considered just as much ‘economic growth’ as if those expenditures had gone into building things, instead of into destroying things — and neoliberals are therefore just as supportive of the military-industrial complex as are neoconservatives — neoliberals merely view the matter from the perspective of internal domestic policies (‘growth’), instead of from the perspective of external foreign policies (conquest). Both perspectives serve the aristocracy, the billionaires. This neoliberal-neoconservative consensus, in the West, keeps the profits going for the owners of all sorts of corporations — it’s “the Washington Consensus” that’s sold to vassal nations by promising that this path will allow them to join in the imperial nations’ ‘growth’. The leadership of the Soviet Union was sold a neoliberal bill of goods by the the Harvard economics department in around 1990, and the World Bank and Harvard’s people took the Russians for all they could, which was able to be done because Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was naive and accepted neoliberalism — he didn’t know about its neoconservative side, the aristocracy’s pursuit of conquest. He had rejected Marxist economics, and thought that the only alternative would be capitalist economics.

Back in 1991, when Gorbachev ended the Soviet Union and its military alliances, NATO had 16 member-nations. Later in the decade, in 1999, NATO under U.S. President Bill Clinton, started expanding — taking on as new members, nations that had previously been allied with Russia.

The Soviet Union had consisted of: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Estonia (the last of which was forcibly joined with it in 1940 so as to assist Russia’s fight against the Nazis). NATO has since absorbed, into its anti-Russia ranks: Lithuania (2004), Latvia (2004), and Estonia (2004), and is seeking the additional admissions of Ukraine, and of Moldova.

The Warsaw Pact, of Soviet-allied nations, had included: U.S.S.R., Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. All of those except the Russian portion of the U.S.S.R. have since been absorbed into the anti-Russian military alliance, NATO. In the brainwashed U.S.-allied countries, this growth of the anti-Russia alliance isn’t considered “aggression,” even though it’s being done by NATO’s adding former Russia-allied nations, and though Russia’s former military alliance against NATO, the Warsaw Pact, ended in 1991. Aggression by “the West” is not acknowledged by “the West.” Even the U.S. group’s blatant aggressions that destroyed Russia-friendly nations such as Iraq, Libya and Syria aren’t. The fact that the U.S. is considered overwhelmingly throughout the world to be “the biggest threat to peace” is likewise ignored by the Empire’s ‘news’media.

Thus: 10 formerly Russia-allied nations have now been switched into the anti-Russia military alliance. And NATO accuses Russia of ‘aggression’. Nobody talks about how the U.S. would react if Russia had a military alliance which included both Mexico and Canada, and called upon them to strengthen their bridges so as to be able to carry today’s Russian battle-tanks. But, the people who are doing this, know very well what they are doing, and why, and to whom. They play dumb but they aren’t.

In addition, Yugoslavia was non-alligned, but now most of its parts have joined NATO: Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro. (Montenegro was brought into NATO on 5 June 2017, by U.S. President Donald Trump, who is being investigated by the rabidly anti-Russia U.S. Government, for allegedly being insufficiently hostile against Russia. His response to the accusations has been to try to out-do his domestic opponents’ hostility against Russia — to up their anti-Russia ante, instead of to wage political war against America’s military-industrial complex and its owners.)

And, the other parts of the former Yugoslavia continue to be courted. On November 15th, Radio Free Europe headlined “Serbia Hosts Joint Military Drills With U.S. As Bosnia Hosts NATO Delegation”. They reported: “NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a joint news conference with visiting Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Brussels on November 15, said ‘there is no doubt whatsoever that we absolutely respect the decision by Serbia to remain a military neutral country.’” Were Hitler’s troops being allowed to hold military exercises in neutral Switzerland? Of course not. Obviously, this isn’t any ‘military neutrality’. Instead, it’s those small countries trying to avoid becoming targets of U.S. missiles and bombs.

Most of the 13 new admittees to NATO after the 1991 end of the Cold War (on Russia’s side, but not on America’s), are located to the east of West Germany (closer to Russia than even East Germany was). In the negotiations to end the Cold War, the understanding that George Herbert Walker Bush’s people communicated to Mikhail Gorbachev’s people was that if the Cold War ends and East Germany becomes absorbed into West Germany to become again simply “Germany” and thenceforth a capitalist country (such as all did happen), then NATO would not move “one inch to the east.” That’s the basis upon which Gorbachev ended the Cold War. George Herbert Walker Bush lied — via his agents. Gorbachev was incredibly naive, and he didn’t specify that NATO would need to end if the Warsaw Pact would end. He believed in the goodwill, and honesty, of Bush and of his agents. He accepted merely the vague verbal promise that NATO would’t be expanded even “one inch to the east.” He didn’t know that he was dealing with people who were negotiating on behalf of, and who were following the instructions of, a super-scoundrel — U.S. President Bush. Bush’s dream, of encircling Russia with U.S. bombers, missiles. and tanks is now coming true. Would the U.S. tolerate Russia placing its invasion-forces on and near our borders, in Canada and in Mexico?

If this isn’t the time to end NATO, then when will be? And how much time to do it remains, before there is a WW III? Anyone who is supportive of the formation of a non-profit “End NATO Now” is hereby invited to indicate so, in a reader-comment to this article, at Washingtonsblog; and, if enough people indicate there that they would be willing to donate time or money to such an organization, then I shall establish it. Because: if we don’t end NATO now, then maybe NATO will end us all, surprisingly soon.

First World Day Of The Poor-19 November 2017

Moin Qazi

 Poverty won’t allow him to lift up his head; dignity won’t allow him to bow it down
 — Malagasy Proverb

The global battle against poverty has acquired a new dimension this year with Pope Francis declaring   19 November 2017 as the First World Day of the Poor. Hereafter it will be observed on 33rd Sunday of every year. The occasion provides us an opportunity to reflect on growing inequalities and realign our thinking and approach in the light of our learning and experiences.

The perception that the poor do not have skills or would not be able to survive on their own is a myth. This conclusion is grounded in the premise that a paternalistic conceit has hindered the development of poor families and negative beliefs perpetuated about them. The new   findings are challenging traditional development wisdom—particularly the assumption that poor families need a great deal of advice, aid, support, and motivation  to improve their lives. instead of  engaging in wishful   thinking we need to do  honest analysis

Experts who have been scratching their heads for breakthrough solutions suggest that the poor no longer have mindsets that expect governments riding a white horse with a bucket of money to fill their bowls. They argue that strategies that ensure wider participation of the poor in programmes meant for them deliver amazing outcomes.

Development is fuller when put in people’s hands, especially the poor, who know best how to use the scarce and precious resources they could be provided with for their uplift. The first generation leaders of independent India believed that economic justice would be advanced by the lessons of cooperation where common efforts to achieve the common good will subsume all artificial differences of caste, community and religion.

There is a lot of discussion in public forums of involving the stakeholders in development progammes. However, poor people rarely get the opportunity to develop their own agenda and vision or set terms for the involvement of outsiders. We need to develop our human capital which is an important   piece in this ecosystem. The entire participatory paradigm illustrates that people are participating in plans and programmes that the outsiders have designed. Not only is there little opportunity for them to articulate their ideas, there is also seldom an institutional space where their ingenuity and creativity in solving their own problems can be recognised, respected and rewarded. The poor are themselves best placed to figure out how to get out of poverty and also have ideas about how to get their lives together.

One can’t talk about design of programmesa without quoting Steve Jobs: “Design is a funny word. Some people think design is how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”We need to be better informed about what the poor value, what they think could be done to improve them, and how they could work better. There is also a need   to focus on social welfare programs through a very specific gender lens. Most of our extension efforts have tended to bypass the women who actually hold the key to the poverty puzzle .They are a vital piece n the entire development ecosystem.

If the primary focus is really ending poverty, a partnership must be established among poor communities so that they learn from one another and share traditional, practical knowledge and skills. The field   has shifted profoundly and has become much more nuanced but far too   still we cling to the old development playbook. There is need to properly understand the interplay of various factors to assess their impact   in the whole constellation.

The hallmark of any intervention for the poor is that it should stand on the following legs: empathy, humility, compassion, conscience. Observations  like, ‘I am a farmer myself’, ‘ you can’t pull wool over my eyes’ and ‘I was born and brought up in a village and know rural problems better than anybody else’ are a sign of arrogance and will not go down well with the people with whom one wants to work.

Importing unworkable ideas, equipment and consultants destroys the capacity of communities to help themselves. Ensuring that those most in need are not forgotten and that they have the freedom to make their own choices is just as important as delivering concrete development outcomes. The people who pioneered the world’s most successful development programmes recognised this potential and always sought to evoke it. These are the ones who enabled the poor to take the right step on the right ladder at the right time. The results have been miraculous.

The truth of a village can come out only with time—time for trust to build between the villagers and outsiders and time for the outsider to peel away all the layers to get at the truth. In his reflections on fieldwork, the doyen of Indian anthropologists—Professor M.N. Shrinivas—has talked of successful ethnography as having to pass through three stages. An anthropologist is once-born when he initially goes to the fields, thrust from familiar surroundings into a world he has very little clue about. He is twice-born after he spent time living among the tribe and is able to see things from their viewpoint. To those anthropologists, fortunate enough to experience it, this second birth is akin to a Buddhist urge of consciousness for which years of study or mere linguistic facility is not enough to prepare. All of a sudden, one is about to see everything from the native’s point of view—be it festivals, religious  rites or  social  mores.

Economic development and social change must begin from within even though the initial nudges may have to come from outside. Well-meaning people should have the open-mindedness to listen to those who work in the field and live the day-to-day challenges. That respect opens many doors. Lasting change comes about so slowly that one may not notice it until people resist being taken care of and they need to be given a chance to fulfil their own potential.

When solutions that recognise the poor as clients or users and not as passive recipients of charity are designed, a real chance to end poverty is created. Humility is needed for any revolution to succeed. This logic comes from the power of empathy—not a form of empathy that comes from superiority, but one born from a profound humility.

From the drawing board to delivery, one has to inhabit the product and the programme, living every detail as if it were a living, breathing organism. One has to put so much of life into this thing and there are such rough moments that most people give up. They cannot be blamed. One has to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that (s)he wants to right. If one is not passionate enough from the start, (s)he will never stick it out.

As Pope Francis says, while underlining the solemnity of dedication of this day for the poor:” We may think of the poor simply as the beneficiaries of our occasional volunteer work, or of impromptu acts of generosity that appease our conscience.  However good and useful such acts may be for making us sensitive to people’s needs and the injustices that are often their cause, they ought to lead to a true encounter with the poor and a sharing that becomes a way of life.“

Canada backs Spain’s crackdown on Catalan independence referendum

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones 

Canada’s Liberal government has fully endorsed Spain’s violent crackdown on the October 1 Catalan independence referendum, Madrid’s subsequent suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy and imposition of authoritarian rule over the region, and its arrest and jailing of separatist leaders.

The right-wing Popular Party government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy deployed thousands of riot police to Catalonia October 1 to intimidate, harass and brutally assault people seeking to exercise their democratic right to vote. Well over 800 people were injured as officers assaulted protesters, dragged voters away from polling stations and threw people to the ground.

The Canadian government has backed Madrid throughout the secession crisis. A government statement released immediately following the October 1 repression justified Madrid’s actions in the name of upholding the “rule of law”—i.e. Spain’s reactionary constitution, which declares the unity of the state inviolable.

Following the vote by the Catalan regional parliament October 27 in favour of independence, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly proclaimed his government’s backing for “one united Spain.” “We understand there are significant internal discussions that they are going through right now and we simply call for those discussions to be done according to the rule of law, according to the Spanish constitution, according to the principles of international law,” declared Trudeau.

Trudeau delivered these hypocritical and sanctimonious remarks knowing full well that Rajoy’s government was, in the name of upholding the “law,” about to invoke the Spanish constitution’s draconian Article 155. So open a break is Article 155 with bourgeois democratic norms, its use was described even in ruling class circles as “the nuclear option.” By invoking Article 155, Madrid was able to sack the regional government and, with the backing of national police and military forces, impose an unelected authoritarian government on Catalonia beholden to Madrid.

Catalan’s elected President Carles Puigdemont fled to Belgium to escape arrest, while other ministers were detained, stripped naked and thrown into jail for organizing the referendum and backing the independence vote in parliament. This turn to authoritarianism has been accompanied with the whipping up of reactionary Spanish nationalism, enabling neo-fascist forces to parade in the streets.

Led by Germany and France, the European Union, and Britain and the United States have cheered on this wave of repression, unprecedented since the downfall of Franco’s fascist regime 40 years ago. The EU dismissed Puigdemont’s appeals for it to mediate, declaring Rajoy and Madrid their only interlocutors and the Spanish government’s violence a lawful and “proportionate” use of force.

The EU’s staunch support for Spain’s hardline stance was in part aimed at discouraging separatist movements in other member states, as illustrated by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Junker’s remark that the EU could not become an organization with more than 90 members.

However, even more decisive is the fact that Europe’s ruling elites are turning to authoritarian methods of rule to preempt and suppress working class opposition to the program of militarism and austerity every government from Berlin to Athens and Warsaw is implementing.

In France, anti-democratic emergency powers have been made permanent, granting the state sweeping powers to crack down on popular protests, such as to the anti-worker labour “reforms” President Macron recently imposed by decree. And in Germany, the government shut down a left-wing political website in September and is turning ever further to the right with the entry of the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany into parliament.

Canada is no different in this regard.

Trudeau’s Liberals have carried on seamlessly from Harper’s Conservatives in erecting the scaffolding of a police state and criminalizing social opposition to its aggressive, militarist foreign policy and attacks on social and democratic rights. Under Bill C-59, the Liberals have retained all of the key elements of Harper’s Bill C-51, which in the name of fighting “terrorism” arrogated vast powers to the national security apparatus. Meanwhile, federal and provincial governments of all political stripes routinely outlaw job actions, effectively abolishing the right to strike.

This anti-democratic record has not stopped Canada’s ruling elite from cynically invoking concerns over “human rights,” “democracy” and “self-determination” to advance its predatory imperialist interests around the world. As a major player within NATO, Ottawa took a leading role in the war of aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999. This conflict, which involved a protracted bombardment of Belgrade, was sold as a crusade to defend the “human rights” of the Kosovars and their struggle, led by corrupt and outright criminal elements within the Kosovo Liberation Army, to establish an independent state by breaking away from Serbia.

However, when it comes to Spain, the fourth largest economy in the Euro zone, Canadian imperialism’s interests dictate its unflinching support for the preservation of “one united Spain” through mass repression and the imposition of authoritarian rule.

Canada’s ruling elite is anxious to ensure the stability of NATO, which it helped found and continues to view as vital for asserting it interests on the world stage, and the EU, with which it is in the process of finalizing a free trade agreement. But that is only part of the story.

The Canadian ruling elite’s “Plan B”

The Trudeau government’s and the Canadian bourgeoisie’s attitude toward Spain’s secession crisis is bound up with concerns over potential threats to the integrity of the Canadian federal state. In backing Madrid’s efforts to prevent the Catalan people from expressing their views on independence and to forcibly retain Catalonia within the Spanish state, Canada’s ruling elite is making clear that, should circumstances so require, it would not shrink from using similar methods in confronting a secessionist threat from Quebec.

In the aftermath of the 1995 Quebec referendum, which the federalist forces won with just 50.58 percent of the vote, the Canadian bourgeoisie adopted a new hardline strategy on Quebec separatism, dubbed “Plan B.” Its key provisions, many of which had been advocated by the right-wing Anglo-chauvinist Reform Party, were subsequently blessed by Canada’s Supreme Court and enshrined in the Chretien Liberal government’s anti-democratic Clarity Act.

Its name notwithstanding, the Clarity Act’s provisions are deliberately vague. This is so as to give the federal government and the Canadian bourgeoisie the greatest latitude to maneuver in a secession crisis, including refusing to recognize a majority vote in favour of separation.

It empowers the federal parliament to determine after any future independence referendum whether the question was “clear” and whether a “clear” majority of voters backed independence. But it refuses to spell out what would constitute a “clear” question or a “clear majority”—although the implication is it would need to be significantly greater than 50 percent.

In the event parliament were to concede that the question and majority had been “clear,” the Clarity Act lays out a long list of issues, including Quebec’s borders and share of the national debt, that would have to be resolved through negotiation with Ottawa and the nine other provinces before independence would be legal.

The Clarity Act thus provides Canada’s ruling elite with a mechanism to depict, as Madrid has done, an anti-democratic policy as defence of the “rule of law” and to legitimize repression, including military intervention.

Especially incendiary is the Clarity Act’s stipulation that Quebec’s borders be negotiated—a provision meant to signal that Ottawa could seek to ethnically partition a seceding Quebec by carving off parts of western Quebec, including the western half of the Island of Montreal, which are home to large numbers of English-speakers and immigrants. Under the Clarity Act, Ottawa also reserves the right to accept applications from First Nations whose territories are within Quebec’s borders to remain part of Canada.

Almost two decades after its passage, the Clarity Act is celebrated by Canada’s ruling elite as a signal achievement of the Chretien Liberal government. Like Trudeau’s endorsement of Madrid’s dictatorial actions, it demonstrates that the Canadian bourgeoisie would be ready to resort to “Spanish methods” or even civil war to retain the integrity of the Canadian imperialist state.

The Quebec nationalists’ anti-democratic and anti-working class program

As they are its principal target, the Quebec indépendantistes have long railed against the Clarity Act. Predictably they have also broken with the ruling class consensus on Spain and are seeking to use Ottawa’s support of repression to cloak their own reactionary project—the creation of a third imperialist state in North America—in democratic garb.

Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Jean-François Lisée has called the October 1 crackdown a “black day for Europe and for democracy” and denounced the Canadian government for sanctioning it. He even succeeded in winning the support of the other parties in the Quebec National Assembly for an October 4 motion denouncing the Spanish government’s “authoritarianism.”

But the PQ’s handwringing over anti-democratic measures is, to say the least, highly selective. Whenever the Quebec separatists have formed the provincial government, they have come into headlong conflict with the working class, criminalizing strikes and implementing devastating social spending cuts.

The PQ and its sister party in the federal parliament, the Bloc Québécois (BQ) have been in the forefront of whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment. When the PQ last held office it pressed for the adoption of a “Charter of Quebec Values” under which hospital workers, teachers and other public sector workers would have been threatened with the loss of their jobs if they wore “ostentatious religious symbols,” like the hajib, Sikh turban, or kippah, but not “discrete crucifixes.” Just days after chastising Trudeau for supporting Madrid’s trampling on Catalans’ rights, Lisée said a PQ government would consider making it illegal for devout Muslim women to wear the niqab or burka in public.

A major factor motivating the PQ’s drive for independence is to gain unbridled power to impose discriminatory legislation targeting immigrants, and religious and linguistic minorities.

The Quebec separatists, like the Catalan nationalists, speak for a regionally based faction of the bourgeoisie that wants to be free of central government control so they can strike their own bargains with global capital and the principal imperialist powers.

The Catalan nationalists are committed to membership in the EU, the enforcer of brutal austerity measures, and in NATO, which has played a central role in most of the US-led wars over the past two decades and is the pivot of the imperialist military-strategic offensive against Russia. One of their principal arguments for independence is that it will free Catalans from “subsidizing” poorer regions of Spain.

The PQ and the BQ insist a République du Québec will be a member of NATO, NORAD, and NAFTA. They have been outspoken proponents of Canada’s involvement in imperialist wars, including against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and the ongoing conflict in Iraq and Syria

The separatists’ explicitly right-wing program did not stop Quebec’s pseudo-left, including the Pabloite Gauche Socialiste, joining hands with the big business PQ, BQ, and right-wing populist ADQ during the 1995 referendum campaign. Some two decades on, Québec Solidaire, the Syriza-style party of the Quebec pseudo-left, is a loyal member of the PQ-led sovereignty coalition “Yes Quebec,” and calls the PQ complaints about the “excessive accommodation” of immigrants “legitimate.”

The pseudo-left’s alignment with such right-wing, anti-working class forces underscores that the working class is the only social force capable of defending the democratic rights of the Catalan people and opposing the turn of the bourgeoisie internationally to authoritarianism and reaction, including the scapegoating of immigrants and minorities.

But to do so, it must be united internationally under the banner of socialism, not fragmented along regional and ethnic lines as the separatists propose. In Canada, this means fighting to unite French, English, immigrant and indigenous workers and youth against the Canadian imperialist state and its predatory interventions around the world, and against the retrograde, chauvinist program of Quebec independence.

Artist lists names of fortress Europe’s 33,000 refugee victims

Dietmar Henning 

Artist Banu Cennetoğlu has published a list with the names of 33,293 asylum seekers, refugees and migrants who have died since 1993 while fleeing to Europe or in connection with Europe’s refugee policies.

The 48-page list was enclosed in the November 9 edition of the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel. As part of Berlin’s autumn salon at the Maxim Gorky Theatre, pages from the list will be posted on advertising pillars in the centre of the city.

Cennetoğlu said the list exposes only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, many more people have died while fleeing, including those who drowned in the Mediterranean. “The List” documents what could be compiled from available data, wrote Tagesspiegel. The data is based on work by the European network United for Intercultural Action.

November 9 was deliberately chosen as the publication date, Tagesspiegelexplained in a comment, because in Germany it is a day laden with history. This date is connected with the 1918 revolution, which was suppressed by the Social Democratic Party, the failed putsch by Hitler and Ludendorff in Munich in 1923, the Nazis’ pogrom against the Jews in 1938, known as Kristallnacht, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Born in Ankara in 1970, Banu Cennetoğlu is an internationally successful artist. Her work concentrates mainly on the collection, archiving and publishing of books and newspapers. Giving a place for and names to the countless victims of Europe’s refugee policy has been a part of her work for several years.

In cooperation with Cennetoğlu, the Greek newspaper Ta Nea published in 2007 a list of 8,855 deaths. In 2010, a poster campaign for “The List” organized by the Kunsthalle Basel included the names of 13,284 victims.

Cennetoğlu emphasised that this is not about her or the names. This list is not a work of art, and the publication is not an artistic act, she said. “It is what it is,” she added. She insisted on only one condition: the list cannot be published in part, but only as a whole.

Behind every name there is a human tragedy. Most have drowned in the Mediterranean. Others died in refugee camps, including by committing suicide “with a few shoelaces out of fear of being rejected and sent back home” (Mikhail Bognarchuk from Ukraine in deportation detention). The scale of hopelessness outmatches all power of imagination, added Cennetoğlu.

Tribute is also paid to the 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean near the Turkish city of Bodrum while fleeing Syria on September 2, 2015. The heart-wrenching pictures of the dead boy lying face down in the sand on a beach shocked people around the world. They cast a grim light on the desperate dramas playing out on Europe’s borders.

“It is horrifying how the refugee catastrophe meets with general acceptance,” said the artist. It is not a major priority on the political agenda, she added. If it were a natural disaster, things would be different.

Behind each name on the list there is therefore also an indictment: an indictment of the wars waged by the US and its allies, which are the main reason why millions have been forced to flee their homes.

The decades-long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Mali, Somalia and Syria, to name only the most important, transformed these countries into a hell on earth. More than 65 million people have been forced to flee from wars and unbearable living conditions.

The European Union member states have responded and continue to respond to the wave of refugees exclusively with suppression and deterrence. They erect barbed wire fences, build mass camps and mobilize police to keep the desperate people away, and in so doing condemn thousands to certain death.

Every name on the list is also an indictment of the “Fortress Europe” established by Europe’s governments.

Only a tiny minority of the world’s 65 million refugees have sought to reach Europe. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 153,355 people have reached Europe across the Mediterranean so far this year, and almost 3,000 have drowned in the process or are missing.

The Mediterranean remains a mass grave for refugees. Supported by the EU, Italy has concluded a similar deal with the various warlords and rulers in Libya as the EU did with the authoritarian regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Refugees are thus prevented from traveling to Europe.

Italy has supplied the Libyan coastguard with patrol boats, helicopters, specialized vehicles, communications gear and other equipment with which they will attempt to prevent boats carrying refugees from leaving Libyan territorial waters. The coastguard has murdered refugees on the high seas and attacked human rights organizations because they wanted to assist refugees.

Since this past summer, hardly any private sea rescue services are operating. Italy forced human rights organizations to sign a code of conduct that included the acceptance of armed police and Frontex officers on their ships. Many organizations, including “Doctors Without Borders” and “Save the Children,” refused and suspended their sea rescue services. Other aid organizations were taken to court on the basis of accusations of assisting smugglers.

The EU boasts that it has destroyed smuggler networks in Libya. Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti claimed in May, “The people who arrive in Italy have put themselves in the hands of brutal human traffickers. We are merely saving them from this fate.”

The cynicism of the former Stalinist Communist Party member is breathtaking. In reality, the former smuggler groups are earning more money by preventing refugees from traveling than they did from organizing flight. Italy and the EU pay more than the desperate refugees.

The refugees being held back from traveling to Europe live under inhumane conditions. In Libya alone some 700,000 people are being detained. They are systematically abused, raped and executed at random. Those who cannot pay their guards are often killed or starved to death. Others are sold at modern slave markets in Tripoli—women as sex slaves and men as slave labor.

Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors without Borders, who was in Libya in the late summer, described in an open letter the way refugees are dealt with there. She wrote of a “flourishing business of kidnappings, torture and blackmail,” and accused the EU of being jointly responsible for this. The price for declining numbers of arrivals in Europe is “rapes, torture and enslavement by criminals,” she declared.

The thousands who die in Africa on the way to the Mediterranean coast or in Libya itself are not included in the list collated by Banu Cennetoğlu. They remain nameless.

Grenfell Tower “independent” task force produces whitewash report

Steve James 

The Independent Grenfell Recovery Taskforce’s first report, nine weeks in the making, confirms that the taskforce is neither independent nor intended to speak for survivors of the catastrophic June 14 tower block fire.

In the days immediately following the Grenfell Tower fire, amid conditions of immense suffering, anger and confusion, the British government set up a Gold Command structure to take over operations from the despised Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) council. The council was widely viewed as guilty of creating the conditions for the disaster.

The recovery taskforce was set up at the end of July, with the aim of handing back all responsibility for dealing with the fire’s continuing aftermath to RBKC.

The report entirely avoids any reference to the fire’s origins in national and local policy decisions, including the wholesale deregulation and privatisation of fire safety and building control and fire service cuts. It avoids any reference to specific decisions within RBKC that might have contributed to the fire and does not cite a single complaint or comment from anyone, let alone those impacted. It does not name names or policies. The report is far more concerned with salvaging the reputation of local government in North Kensington and beyond.

The first of the taskforce’s 13 recommendations, following the worst fire disaster in Britain since World War 2 and whose terrible human cost is still emerging, is that a review should be carried out of “what good looks like in relation to the behaviours and performance in role of [council] Members.” The lessons of this should be included in the “induction for new Members, post local election in May 2018.”

The authors go on to express great concern that “few Council Members... have a firm grasp of the challenges that RBKC now faces.” They warn that “trust of the council in the North of the borough has been eroded to such an extent that to recover from this will require a major shift in the members’ awareness and focus.”

The four person taskforce was appointed by the Conservative government’s Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Sajid Javid, a former vice president of Chase Manhattan and managing director of Deutsche Bank. Javid clearly sought out well connected operators, skilled in navigating large and lucrative projects through the political opposition and social tensions they generate—and no doubt versed in the language of “diversity.”

Task force members are:

* Aftab Chughtai MBE, a Birmingham business man, chair of West Midlands police independent advisory group, adviser to the Conservative Party and a Leave campaigner in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

* Jane Antoinette Scott, Baroness Scott of Bybrook OBE, Conservative leader of Wiltshire county council and its predecessors since 2003, supervising massive job losses and rationalisations across the county. She is also a member of the House of Lords.

* Chris Wood, former chief executive of Labour-controlled Newham Council in East London and currently running an international housing consultancy offering “first-hand knowledge of the economic and political pressures in your world.” Wood supervised Newham Council’s operation during the London Olympics in 2012 and the authority’s “regeneration” programme for neighbouring Canning Town.

* Javed Khan, chief executive of the children’s charity Barnardo’s.

The quartet’s cursory 20-page report reads like an internal report into a medium size business venture gone awry, not a mass killing. It aims to plump RBKC back into shape, minimising extra costs and political fallout by making a few recommendations and re-organisations before moving on. The language is vague—there is only one statistic, no evidence for any of the report’s assertions is provided, there are no transcripts of interviews and only brief notes of discussions with resident groups.

We are told that RBKC was “distant from its residents; highly traditional in its operational behaviours; limited in its understanding of collaborative working and insular, despite cross borough agreements; and with a deficit in its understanding of modern public service delivery.”

There are no examples, even the most egregious, of RBKC’s behaviour. Instead, readers should be reassured that RBKC is now “working hard to develop and deliver effective support and services to survivors and the wider community.”

This claim is made despite the report admitting to the disorganised housing and support assistance for Grenfell survivors. But the answer is an anodyne suggestion that “Greater pace and focus needs to be added to the delivery effort. Promised actions must be delivered within agreed timescales.”

The report notes the “painfully slow” pace of rehousing the 320 households that are still, according to the report, in hotel accommodation. Even here there is confusion. RBKC’s written response to the taskforce report claims that “113 of the 203 households have been matched with new homes.” RBKC make no effort to reconcile this with the report’s figure of 320 households. Why this contradiction? How many households are affected?

Elementary information is still not easily available for all survivors. The authors “heard several times that there needs to be a leaflet or booklet with a comprehensive list of all services available to victims and survivors, and that this has been promised.”

It seems RBKC does not even have a coherent record of everyone impacted. The report comments that it is “hard to understand why the various responders continue to say they don’t have a common and comprehensive list of survivors and displaced residents, where they are currently living, and what their assessed needs are.”

Nor have individual “key workers,” to co-ordinate assistance and act as a point of contact, been appointed for all affected individuals. The report refers to a “discredited first attempt at a Key Worker programme, initially set up and run by London Gold.” This “left many survivors feeling let down at their time of greatest need.” There is no investigation of these failings or citation of examples.

The authors, speaking from experience, seize the opportunity to place blame on employees of RBKC, who are accused of “silo working.” This is corporate speak for not being allocated to multiple jobs at once. RBKC are encouraged to look at “innovative ways that will increase capacity quickly, for example looking at re-prioritising work across RBKC.” In other words, cut provision in other hard-pressed areas of what remains of social provision in North Kensington by demanding greater staff flexibility, bigger workloads, redeploying staff and so on.

On the management of Lancaster West estate, the report recommends that the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) be closed down and control of the estate passed to another, as yet undefined group. No explanation of why another group would be more effective is given.

An October 14 posting from the Grenfell Action Group warned that efforts to prematurely close down the KCTMO could be designed to evade prosecution for corporate manslaughter, prevent legal disclosure and witness participation. After residents raised concerns, a KCTMO annual general meeting on October 17 was adjourned and no decision taken. Noting this, the taskforce authors cynically hinted at the need for “requisite choreography” for whatever new management structure was finally set up.

In the sole recommendation that goes beyond its remit, the taskforce proposes that Grenfell Tower, still a crime scene and under Gold Command, be covered over as soon as possible, commenting that “extended delays will further add to the ongoing trauma that the community is living with.”

This is not the only cover-up with which the report is concerned.