Politics
The SNP needs leaders who do not embrace neoliberalism
I wrote about the SNP leadership election in my column in The National yesterday. I was not endorsing any candidate. I certainly do not think that is within my remit. I did, however, express concern about some of them. John Swinney and Kate Forbes were my particular focus of concern, as former finance ministers for Scotland.
As I put it:
To see John Swinney and Kate Forbes emerge as the front runners in the current SNP leadership race was troubling (though Forbes has now said she will not run). To describe their similar approaches to economics as conventional is to be kind. Their experience has, of course, been framed within the environment of Holyrood, where the Government has no choice but to balance its books, but to date, neither has shown the imagination or leadership that would suggest that they are even aware of the different, and necessary, economic approaches that could be adopted if independence was achieved.
As I also suggested:
It is fair to say that this failure to understand the ways in which the economic potential of Scotland might be unleashed is troubling, and that it is appropriate to say so because of the adoption by the SNP leadership of what I might describe as a "central bankers’ view" of the economy. That approach does not represent a source of hope.
The Scottish independence movement, in which at present the SNP is the largest political party, might have the short term goal of controlling the Holyrood parliament, inadequate and inappropriate as its powers are. But that, many think, should not be its primary focus. The goal of recreating Scotland as an independent country has that status.
In that case breaking Scotland from the shackles of neoliberal thinking should be very high on its agenda, and yet it keeps getting leaders who seem more than happy to embrace that approach, and make Scotland suffer for it. I do think it my responsibility to point this out in my column, and I wish the SNP, as a whole, took notice.
We need the water companies of England to be nationalised
I posted this video on YouTube this morning, touching on a theme that might well recur here many times:
The link is here in case it is needed.
The transcript is as follows:
We need the water companies of England to be nationalised.
I stress I'm talking about England because Scotland and Wales have already got nationalised services for water, at least with regard to private consumers - households that is. England has not. Almost uniquely in the world - not quite uniquely, but almost uniquely - we supply water through private companies and we know that isn't working.
We don't get the clean water that we want all the time and we definitely do get polluted rivers and polluted beaches.
We are being sold short on the most essential commodity, apart from air and food, that we require to literally live.
We are putting the safety of the entire country in the hands of private companies who, quite clearly, are incapable of considering anything but the well-being of their directors and the companies that own them. That is ridiculous.
So, what do we need?
Well, these are natural monopolies, and a natural monopoly is a service where we have no choice about who supplies us, and we don't.
If you live in the Thames Water area, you have to buy your water from Thames Water. If you live in Northumberland, Northumbria Water are going to supply you. I have no choice but buy from Anglia Water. You couldn't have clearer indication that there is a monopoly in operation and monopolies, even regulated monopolies like these ones are, literally can impose prices on us.
We can see that because Thames Water is actually asking to increase the price that it charges to its consumers by 45 per cent per annum - a totally impossible poll tax that it will be imposing upon the residents of the Thames Valley and the wider area around it if it gets its way.
So, we need to do something else. And the something else is we need to nationalise water, which of course we did until the Conservatives were stupid - so stupid, and I use the word advisedly - to literally privatise something that should never have gone into the private sector.
Will it cost anything? No. I keep on being told by Labour and others we can't possibly afford to nationalise water.
Look, water companies are bust. Let's be blunt about it. They simply cannot pay their ways. So the value of shares in these companies is completely zero.
That's particularly true if we take into consideration the investment that they've got to make to meet their environmental requirements and to meet their net zero obligations laid down in law, which have got to be achieved by 2050, and which at present they have no way of raising the capital to deliver.
As for the loans, yes, some of those loans will have to be paid - there's no doubt about that - but they will take what's called a haircut. What does that mean? It means that part of the value of the money that was lent to the company is written off, and only the remainder is then subject to repayment.
But let's be clear. The repayment will not be of the loans that were originally made to the companies. Those loans will be replaced by government bonds and government bonds are always rolled over. In other words, there's never a repayment required. They just last in perpetuity. So all we'll be paying is a small percentage interest rate for a long time on the debts that these companies pay .It's not enough to worry about.
But what we will then have is the platform to deliver the investment to ensure that we have safe water supply, safe rivers, safe beaches, a tourist industry that can supply, nature that is not being polluted by our own excrement - let's be blunt about that - and we will have the foundations for the future of our country, which without clean water literally cannot exist, as our health care will fail.
So, Labour has no choice, it has to nationalise water.
What will make politicians notice climate change?
I often wonder when it will be that climate change will create pivot points that have sufficiently deep social and economic consequences that politicians will finally be required to take note, and pursue serious action.
Curiously, the collapse of Humza Yousaf’s government in Scotland is an early indication that failure to properly manage issues relating to climate change targets will have political consequences. His departure from office is the result of his failure to manage this issue. I do not, however, think that sufficient warning to create a widespread reaction, as yet.
There are, however, issues on the horizon that make it look like such reactions might be possible. For example, it is forecast that there will be a significant increase in cocoa prices very soon as a result of a twenty per cent decline in the likely world crop, almost entirely due to climate change, with the impact arising over the next year or so.
Coffee prices are already increased for the same reason.
In addition, the wheat crop is expected to be 20% down in the UK this year with unknown price consequences as yet because this may not be true worldwide.
There can be no doubt that other yields are increasingly at risk. The obvious risk is to vulnerable people because of rising food prices, to everyone because of potential inflationary risks that no amount of interest rate increases will address, and ultimately to the viability of life on earth as we currently know it if this trend continues and we are unable to feed people. At some point the risk of major involuntary migrations is also possible as a consequence.
Will this be enough to require change from governments? And if not, what will be?
The Bizarre Gymnastics Of The Gaza Aid Pier
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/367b5bba5e8ec55b675c4f5904bec7ca/href
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So glad Trump lost in 2020 otherwise we’d be seeing fascistic crackdowns on political dissent, police brutalizing protesters, tyrannical suppression of free speech, and the facilitation of racist and Islamophobic agendas. That psycho would probably be committing genocide by now.
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So let me get this straight. The US wound up building its “floating pier” a few miles off the coast of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid, but nobody will be able to ship the aid directly to the pier to get it to Gaza. Instead, the aid will be delivered to Cyprus via air or sea, and then from Cyprus the aid will be shipped 200 miles to the pier. From there the pallets of aid will be loaded onto smaller US army boats, which will then carry the aid from the pier to a long causeway on Gaza’s actual coast. Those pallets will then be carried from the boats to the shore via the causeway — possibly by British troops or possibly by Israeli troops depending on what source you’re reading — and taken into Gaza by IDF troops after careful examination and approval of their contents. All to deliver some 90 to 150 truckloads worth of aid per day, which is far short of the 500 truckloads the UN says Gaza needs.
And this is all being done because Israel isn’t simply letting people drive an adequate amount of aid through the custom-built gates directly into Gaza. Since Washington doesn’t want to exert any pressure on Israel to allow such a self-evident move, this immensely complicated and expensive dance is being performed to deliver a pathetically inadequate amount of aid instead. Aid that is only necessary because Israel has been destroying Gaza in its genocidal bombing campaign which it has been carrying out with total impunity.
Cool. Very normal and cool.
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "US: We trust Israel to investigate itself on all allegations of war crimes.US: Israel please investigate yourself for these alleged war crimes.Israel: No.US: Well that settles it then, we see no evidence that Israel has committed any war crimes. https://t.co/6Kllp6p3Jp / Twitter"
US: We trust Israel to investigate itself on all allegations of war crimes.US: Israel please investigate yourself for these alleged war crimes.Israel: No.US: Well that settles it then, we see no evidence that Israel has committed any war crimes. https://t.co/6Kllp6p3Jp
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In a speech on Thursday Biden defended the violent nationwide police crackdowns on university protests against his genocide in Gaza, saying “dissent must never lead to disorder”.
Ah yes Joe, that’s very progressive of you. Dissent obviously should always be completely innocuous and obedient and not disruptive in any way. As Martin Luther King Jr said, “Our foremost value is to obey the law at all times and inconvenience nobody, because dissent must never lead to disorder. That’s why our civil rights movement famously never has any run-ins with law enforcement.” He said this in one of his most influential works, Letter from Birmingham Candy Shop.
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The Wall Street Journal has an article out titled “In Gaza, Authorities Lose Count of the Dead,” which confirms what’s been obvious for months: the Gaza health ministry doesn’t have the infrastructure to keep track of how many people Israel is killing. This means the official death toll from the Israeli onslaught is almost certainly a massive undercount.
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“You guys I’m super sincerely concerned about hate speech on university campuses,” said the person who’s made an entire career out of pushing for the mass murder of brown-skinned foreigners at every opportunity.
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "https://t.co/pz95epfOI5 pic.twitter.com/KOGWAAhw88 / Twitter"
https://t.co/pz95epfOI5 pic.twitter.com/KOGWAAhw88
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The US war machine views Palestinians as an inconvenient obstacle to its military agendas in the middle east, in the same way it views the local flora and fauna as an inconvenient obstacle when it’s constructing a new military base, or how it sees whales as an inconvenient obstacle because of public concern about navy sonar testing damaging their hearing and killing them. Palestinians are just viewed as an annoying indigenous animal that gets in the way of the imperial war machinery, and they’d be more than happy for that nuisance to be eliminated completely.
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I’ve had multiple Biden supporters seriously tell me that January 6 was worse than backing a genocide in Gaza in order to argue that Trump was worse than Biden. The mainstream liberal worldview will twist you up so bad inside that you can’t even see Palestinians as human beings.
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Everything Americans were warned would happen under Trump has happened under Biden. The only retort Democrats have to this is “oh yeah well this all woulda been way worse under Trump,” a claim which is (A) based on literally nothing and (B) completely unfalsifiable.
As I’ve said before, the lesson here is not that Trump is better than Biden or that you should support Republicans. The lesson is that no matter who you vote for you get surging authoritarianism at home and war, military expansionism and brinkmanship abroad, and that this system has got to go.
To look at what’s happening and make it about who you should vote for is to completely miss the lesson of what’s happening: that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, because the system is rigged to only let you vote for murderous tyrannical imperialists who serve the interests of plutocrats and empire managers instead of normal human beings. That bickering about where your votes should go is exactly what those plutocrats and empire managers want you to do, because it keeps you trapped within the framework of status quo politics and prevents you from looking at measures that could actually bring about real change like direct action, general strikes, the fomenting of revolutionary ideas, and the emergence of a powerful revolutionary faction.
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ScoMo Banned From Dymocks Burwood For Hassling Customers To Buy His New Book
Former Prime Minister (yep, really), Scott Morrison, has been asked to leave Dymocks Burwood after repeatedly hassling customers and trying to foist his new book on them.
”It was really embarrassing, he was standing at the door trying to lay hands on people, then whilst praying for them he’d slip his book in their shopping bag,” said a Dymocks Customer who wished to remain nameless. ”Also, he’d managed to put the book into every section of the store.”
”It was in romance, young adult, but not in the leadership section.”
When reached for comment on how the book sales were going, the former PM said: ”It’s a very exciting time and the books are literally flying off the shelves.”
”Why just yesterday I popped my head into a book shop and when people saw me they started running away. I assume they were running to buy a copy of my book so that I could sign it for them.”
”Funnily enough none of them came back, must have been too intimidated.”
”Anywho, must be off, I’m going to sneak a couple of copies of the book into the local street libraries. Just cause you can’t afford it doesn’t mean you should miss out on the gospel according to ScoMo.”
Mark Williamson
@MWChatShow
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From UCLA to Columbia, Professors Nationwide Defend Students as Politicians and Police Attack
Fireworks launched into a group of students. Mace. Vicious slurs and unabated assault. A pro-Israel mob enacted this and more upon the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles on Tuesday night, as the police stood by and let it happen.
The scenes inspired outrage across the country, and even California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the police for failing to respond to the attacks. Undeterred by the violence, the students stood their ground in the encampment, a show of solidarity with the people of Gaza. They were joined by university employees who raised a banner that read “We stand with our students.” The UCLA chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine called for a day of strike in solidarity with their students and in protest of the administration. By Wednesday night, the police finally responded: shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at the pro-Palestine students who had just been assaulted the day before.
The faculty intervention at UCLA is just one of the latest examples of college professors putting their bodies and livelihoods on the line in defense of their students who are protesting their tax and tuition dollars contributing to a plausible genocide. At schools across the country, faculty have locked arms to form a protective barrier in front of their students and have been arrested and brutalized themselves.
“This moment has actually brought faculty together in a way I’ve never experienced in 20 years on campus. I’ve found myself working closely with colleagues I’d never met before,” Columbia University history professor Nara Milanich told The Intercept. “People have dropped everything to support students and respond to this moment.”
The groundswell of faculty support has come amid demonstrations at over 154 university campuses nationwide. The student protesters have called on their schools to cut financial ties with Israel, whose war on Gaza has so far killed more than 34,000 people. University administrations — propelled by Republicans, who have maintained carnal hunger for more war, as well as moderate Democrats — have in response sicced riot police armed with tear gas, stun grenades, and even snipers onto America’s students. The militarized response reached an apex on Tuesday night, when police, with a megatruck in tow, invaded Columbia’s campus and removed students occupying Hamilton Hall, an action inspired by past protests against the Vietnam War, racism, and apartheid South Africa.
There have now been Palestine solidarity & anti-war student actions on at least 154 U.S. college campuses in the past two weeks pic.twitter.com/YTBOZFE6VP
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) May 2, 2024
Milanich described the raid as “authoritarian political theater” and said it sickened her that administrators had not only invited the “charade,” but were also defending it. Since Tuesday, she noted, the entire main campus has been closed to faculty, staff, and students other than those who live on it.
“The only folks on campus are the police. This feels like as good a representation as any of the administration’s handling of the situation. Our campus no longer belongs to faculty, staff, and students; it has become an occupied zone ceded to the NYPD.”
For the faculty at Columbia, President Nemat Minouche Shafik’s testimony in front of the GOP-led House Committee on Education and Workforce on April 17 was a turning point. During the hearing Shafik and her colleagues David Schizer, Claire Shipman, and David Greenwald seldom advocated for their students and faculty, failing to challenge the hearing’s unproven premise that Columbia was plagued by rampant antisemitism and accepting the idea that they needed to crack down harder on students. “President Shafik had an opportunity to defend the basic values of the university and instead she totally capitulated to a group of congress people with their own agendas,” Milanich wrote in a message.
Related
I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged.
The police raid the next day, during which more than 100 students were arrested, only intensified the faculty’s fury. Theater professor Shayoni Mitra said faculty came together across ranks, schools, disciplines, and ideologies in outrage and collectivity in a way she hadn’t seen before: faculty walkouts, dissent from permanent law school professors, condemnation from scientists around the world, and even mass global academic boycotts against the school. “We do not stand behind this militarization of campus,” Mitra said. “We stand behind our students.”
Faculty and students alike have been especially troubled by the perception that their administrators are not only refusing to affirmatively defend them from external attacks, but are also actively welcoming them. For example, after getting bludgeoned by Republicans for allegedly overseeing a campus rife with antisemitism — and then inviting the mass arrest of pro-Palestinian protesters — Shafik then allowed Republicans House Speaker Mike Johnson, Virginia Foxx, Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, and Anthony D’Esposito to deliver a press conference at the center of Columbia’s campus. While being met by boos, the Republicans used their platform to condemn Shafik, and the students she oversees, and to call for her resignation.
As GOP Reps. Johnson, Foxx, Malliotakis, D'Esposito, and Lawler leave Columbia, a voice bellows: "That's right get the fuck out of here.”
Crowd cheers.
All 5 Reps have had no issue with Israeli forces killing 34,000 people in Palestine or Trump's friendliness with antisemitism. pic.twitter.com/sqmv7VAMcb— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) April 24, 2024
“We need to reclaim our campus from outside groups — congresspeople engaged in political theater; agitators on social media; the NYPD — so that faculty and students can get back to the critical business of the university: teaching and learning,” Milanich said.
Israel’s War on Gaza
This week, after Shafik announced the end of negotiations between the school and students over their divestment demands, faculty locked arms to defend their students from being evicted from their protest encampment. Later that night, students took over Hamilton Hall. Columbia once again escalated, inviting hordes of police onto campus to sweep the building and the campus encampments. In the process, the school cleared out the campus, blocking faculty from stepping in to defend their students and journalists from capturing the events as they unfolded.
“The university has chosen to escalate at every turn here,” said Bassam Khawaja, a lecturer at Columbia Law School. “These measures seem much more disruptive to campus life than the original encampment.”
Police officers detain a demonstrator during a pro-Palestinian protest against the war in Gaza at Emory University on April 25, 2024, in Atlanta.
Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images
What started at Columbia quickly spread across the country — both the protest encampments, and the disproportionate, haphazard violent police response. At Northeastern University, officers arrested 100 students on the pretense of antisemitic hate speech that was actually espoused by a pro-Israel agitator. At Virginia Commonwealth University, swarms of officers were deployed to barrage and tear gas students under the auspices of restoring order during “finals week.” At Emory University, officers were seen brutalizing protesters, including by tasing an already restrained Black student. At Indiana University Bloomington and Ohio State, officers were posted on roofs with long-range rifles trained upon the students below.
Related
Judith Butler Will Not Co-Sign Israel’s Alibi for Genocide
At almost every turn, college professors flocked to protest sites to protect their students. At Emory, a professor who saw police pinning a student to the ground asked officers what they were doing, all to be thrown down and arrested herself. At Washington University in St. Louis, a professor who was filming police was brutally beaten, slammed, and dragged across campus — reportedly suffering broken ribs and a broken hand. At Dartmouth University, officers threw to the ground and arrested 65-year-old labor historian and former head of Jewish Studies Annelise Orleck.
“Those cops were brutal to me. I promise I did absolutely nothing wrong. I was standing with a line of women faculty in … their 60s to 80s trying to protect our students. I have now been banned from the campus where I have taught for 34 years,” Orleck said.
At Northwestern University, as police began pursuing arrests for students conducting an encampment last week, a group of professors linked arms to defend the protest. “You will not touch our students,” insisted Steven Thrasher, Daniel Renberg chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.
Thrasher told The Intercept that he was moved to action partially in response to the politicians who were fanning the flames against student protesters. He said he was “appalled” by President Joe Biden’s knee-jerk condemnation of antisemitism on campus in response to the Columbia encampment, which Thrasher had visited. He also blamed Johnson, the House speaker, for stoking “all this fear and anxiety into a moral panic” during his press conference at Columbia.
“Young people are overwhelmingly for the end of the genocide in Gaza,” Thrasher said. “And President Biden is campaigning as if he’s the only thing between fascism that will come with Donald Trump — but he’s enacting the fascism. He’s the one that’s trying to whip up hysteria and make people frightened.”
On Monday, over 500 faculty at the University of Texas at Austin expressed no confidence in President Jay Hartzell, following the arrests of 57 students on campus last week. That same day, police once again returned to campus, this time using pepper spray and flash-bang grenades on students, dragging them across their own campus in the scorching heat as student medics donning pink shirts rushed to aid their classmates.
Amid the chaos, and beyond simply standing for their students’ right to protest, the school’s faculty hosted a silent demonstration calling directly for an end to the war in Gaza and to commemorate professors who have been killed there.
UT Austin faculty and staff hold silent demonstration calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
The building behind them reads:
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." #campusProtests #UTAustin pic.twitter.com/UGp62uMtPM— Toni Waterman (@ToniWaterman_) April 29, 2024
“It was powerful, it was absolutely powerful,” Roger Reeves, a professor of English and creative writing at UT Austin, told The Intercept. “Folks came out and stood silently with us. And I don’t know if you know, Texas, but it’s hot right now. They stood in the sun. They stood with us. There were students out there, and everybody was just silent for 45 minutes and we sweated, but we stood.”
During the demonstration, Reeves held a sign in honor of Rizq Arruq, a professor from the Islamic University of Gaza who was killed. He continued holding the sign for several hours after the protest, he said. “It felt as if I was in some ways holding his body. I think the silence was just as powerful as the shouting in some ways.”
Reeves noted the faculty faced toward the direction of the Texas Capitol. “There’s this term in African American literature that I teach called ‘oppositional gazing.’ It’s from bell hooks. It comes out of slavery: when you couldn’t always speak back to the master, but you can look at him defiantly. So this subversion — we were gazing back at this power that is just repressing our students, this power that we’re exporting to all parts of the globe. So it was a powerful silence. It was an important silence. It was a humble silence.”
The post From UCLA to Columbia, Professors Nationwide Defend Students as Politicians and Police Attack appeared first on The Intercept.
Weeping for the children in Gaza
For the past seven months, life as I knew it has stopped. The enormity of the genocide in Gaza inhabits me. My short nights of interrupted sleep are bookended with hours at the computer combing the news of Gaza. Meal times are now brief moments to gulp tasteless food. A sentence or a photo triggers Continue reading »
Climate security risks and Australia’s failure
You can’t solve a problem without talking about it, honestly. Take the impact of climate disruption on security. “Too hot to handle: The scorching reality of Australia’s climate–security failure” is a report published this week by the Australian Security Leaders Group (ASLCG) . This article is an extract from the report. One line of evidence Continue reading »
China studies in crisis: Time for change
At a time when China is becoming increasingly more important to the Australian economy as well as to our stability and security in the Asia-Pacific, the overall decline in Australia’s China knowledge capability runs counter to our national sovereign interests. The opportunity to congratulate Colin Mackerras on his six-decade long involvement with China is bitter-sweet. Continue reading »
Domestic violence and I
If we don’t recognise and understand the history of the struggle to end violence against women it will undermine efforts to eliminate it. On Anzac Day, April 25, the Australian media made sure we remembered the men who fought for Australia both recently, and a century ago in WW1. I am the daughter of an Continue reading »