So Much More Invigorating

Deborah Orr writes: 

Tony Blair says he is “baffled” by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders because of “the question of electability”. 

For him, these choices are simply not pragmatic. 

No matter what fine ideas candidates may espouse, for Blair the key matter is whether they can achieve power. 

Not that he thinks Corbyn and Sanders are exactly brimming with fine ideas: “Free tuition fees: well, that’s great,” he says. “But someone’s going to have pay for it.” 

But the answer, of course, is obvious. Pragmatism itself doesn’t seem terribly pragmatic any longer. Pragmatism, as practised by Blair, ended in disaster, despite the supposed cleverness of its compromises. 

Even if the financial systems that Blair so pragmatically supported hadn’t collapsed, pragmatism had been delivering high and increasing inequality, of a type that even the most pragmatic of social democrats – which Blair claims to be – could only ever look upon and say: “I failed. I utterly failed.” 

But Blair is not quite pragmatic enough to observe that. 

It was people exactly like Corbyn and Sanders who were contemptuously ignored, when they warned about seemingly pragmatic choices actually being dangerous ones. 

Pandering to wealth creators made them more wealthy, so that they had to be pandered to more. 

When everything blew up in our faces, when the wealth they’d created was revealed as fraudulent, they’d already been pandered to so much that they were inviolable. 

There was no alternative but to do more pandering, while ordinary people, especially young people, were instructed to suffer the pain of austerity.

That’s where Blair’s pragmatism led. And he wonders why people don’t want more of it. 

There is no mystery, nothing to be baffled by, in youthful enthusiasm for Corbyn and Sanders. Pragmatism cuts no ice with those guys.

They know that Blair was unconcerned about spiralling property prices. They know he grabbed plenty of that action for himself. 

They know that Blair was unconcerned about low, insecure wages, because there were always people who had no choice but to accept them, in the globalised economy the City wanted. 

They know, even if Blair doesn’t, that the Iraq war was conceived as a dynamic economic power play, one that turned out to be exactly the disaster he was warned it would be. 

Pragmatism, people have learned, transfers ever increasing power to the already powerful, protecting them from their own huge mistakes, and exposing others to their consequences. 

People have become ardent supporters of Corbyn or Sanders partly as a rebuke against the recent past, which judged it pragmatic to dismiss their concerns and fears. 

But sometimes it’s simply because they understand that they can’t win, but vastly prefer to go down fighting anyway. 

It may not be pragmatic. But it’s defiant, hopeful, courageous, even. 

When you’re so pragmatic that you can’t see that – then it’s because pragmatism has hollowed you out, and left nothing but a ghastly husk.

Supporting Corbyn or Sanders are ways of resisting that fate. They may not be sophisticated ways. They may not be sensible. 

But they are so much more invigorating than the cowed acceptance that pragmatism demands and keeps on demanding, again and again.

From a Party of Opportunity to a Party of Opportunists

Jacob Weisberg writes:

He supported the biggest amnesty bill in history for illegal immigrants, advocated gun control, used Keynesian stimulus to jump-start the economy, favored personal diplomacy even with the country’s sworn enemies and instituted tax increases in six of the eight years of his presidency.

He was Ronald Reagan.

The core beliefs that got Reagan elected and re-elected were conservative: lower taxes, smaller government and a stronger, more assertive military.

But Reagan was also a pragmatist, willing to compromise, able to improvise in pursuit of his goals and, most of all, eager to expand his party’s appeal.

The current field of Republican presidential candidates invokes Reagan as a patron saint, but the characteristics that made him a successful politician seem lost on them.

Instead, they’ve turned his party into a swamp of nativism, ideological extremism and pessimism about the country’s future, in direct opposition to Reagan’s example.

And they’ve transformed primary season into a reality show of insults, betrayals and open feuds, defying the so-called 11th Commandment that Reagan espoused: Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican. 

Once in office, Reagan said that anytime he could get 70 percent of what he wanted from a legislature, he’d take it. 

Today’s congressional Republicans won’t settle even for 99 percent: Their mentality has shifted away from having policies and governing and toward a kind of bitter-end obstructionism. 

In the early days of the presidency of Bill Clinton, congressional Republicans essentially went on strike, treating any legislative accomplishment as a Republican defeat, but they came to the table for a budget deal in 1997. 

With President Obama, they have largely refused to accept the basic legitimacy of a Democratic president. T

The tactical obstinacy of the 1990s has curdled into the belief that any compromise constitutes betrayal, a dynamic now playing out in the primaries. 

The issue that shows the divide most sharply between Reagan and the current crop of presidential hopefuls is immigration. 

In the past, Republican candidates have been justly criticized for deploying racially coded messages around crime and welfare. 

But in the main, the party has for decades embraced Reagan’s notion of American identity based on immigration, assimilation and economic opportunity. 

Every Republican presidential nominee since Reagan has been a moderate on immigration, and has wanted to bring Latinos into the Republican fold. 

How did the inclusive, forward-looking Republican Party of Reagan become the crass, xenophobic party of Donald J. Trump and Ted Cruz? 

The rise of super PACs and the right-wing media has disempowered the party’s gatekeepers, while wage stagnation has widened the opening for populist demagogy. 

This year’s primary candidates have learned the lesson not only that exploiting prejudice around immigration and terrorism works politically, but so, too, does defying the party’s elders and its official apparatus. 

Thus Mr. Trump thrives and the establishment favorite, Jeb Bush, is already out. 

A more surprising reason for the shift? Money. In economic terms, Republican politicians see increasing returns to extremism. 

The Citizens United decision has raised the potential financial stakes of presidential elections for media companies, political professionals and candidates alike. 

The presidential campaign of 2016 will most likely cost upward of $5 billion, more than 10 times the one that elected Reagan in 1980. 

A lot of people get rich in a $5 billion industry, and some are politicians. 

Mr. Trump is not the only contender to make the calculation that running for president is win-win, burnishing “brand” value even for the losers. 

Ben Carson — yes, still in the race — seems more interested in selling books than in attaining higher office. Marco Rubio has already enjoyed years of patronage from a billionaire auto dealer in Florida. 

The examples of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee underscore the point that a no-hope presidential run has more upside than downside. 

A career as a right-wing celebrity — a stint on Fox News, speaking fees, book advances — is more profitable than one in the Senate. 

These incentives have helped to shift the Republican Party from a party of opportunity to a party of opportunists. 

The loser could be the party itself.

Unless it repudiates the inflammatory rhetoric of the primary, it will lose Reagan’s claim to the center and become more like one of Europe’s chauvinistic right-wing parties.

In the 1980s, it was said that the Democrats looked for heretics while the Republicans looked for converts. 

To watch the spectacle in the 2016 primaries is to see those tendencies reversed.

Privatising The World, Pocketing The Profits

Neil Clark writes:

By all rights, the 2008 global financial crisis should have marked the end of the era of privatisation and the return to the more equitable mixed economy model which dominated in the post-war era.

Instead, it only ushered in a new, more extreme phase in the neoliberal project.

To reduce the deficit and get the public finances “in order,” we were told we had to privatise remaining publicly owned assets.

It’s a task that’s been carried out with great relish by the Tories in Britain, aided from 2010-15 by their “Orange Book” Lib Dem coalition accomplices.

In December, it was revealed that Chancellor George Osborne was on course to sell off more public assets than any chancellor for the past 30 years, even more than Nigel Lawson.

By the end of 2015, Osborne had sold off nearly £40 billion of assets — with a further £20bn likely to come before the end of the decade.

The Land Registry, set up in 1862, is in Osborne’s sights, as is the Royal Mint, the Ordnance Survey and the Met Office.

We used to make jokes about neoliberals selling off the weather, but it’s forecast to be happening soon. In other countries too, privatisation is being extended.

In Greece the debt crisis has been used to pressurise the government to sell off important assets.

As part of the onerous bailout deal which the capitulationist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras signed up to last summer, Greece has had to transfer its “valuable assets” into a special fund, with the aim of raising €50bn.

In December, Greece sold off 14 airports to a German company.

The German government of course was the one putting most pressure on Greece to sign up to the onerous “bailout” deal. Russia, hit by Western sanctions, and low oil prices, is, according to reports, getting ready for new wave of privatisation.

The Financial Times reported earlier this month that Russia is lining up several large state companies for potential privatisation. 

Meanwhile in the US, a new Bill in Congress plans to privatise the country’s very safe air traffic control system. 

“Dozens of countries have privatised their air-traffic systems, but sceptics question whether private systems would work in the larger, more complex US airspace,” says USA Today. 

The question is — who benefits from all of this privatisation? 

While states can raise money from sales, more often than not assets are sold at below their market value, as occurred with the sale of the Royal Mail in Britain. 

And often privatisation proves to be a false economy as privatised companies receive higher public subsidies than their state-owned predecessors got.

A classic example of this of course is the handouts to Britain’s rail operators which have received up to five times more in taxpayer subsidies than British Rail received in its last year of existence. 

On so many levels privatisation makes no economic sense — until you start to look a little deeper into who benefits from this policy. 

A new, must-read report The Privatising Industry in Europe, by Sol Trumbo Vila and Matthijs Peters for the Transnational Institute “puts a spotlight on the legal and financial corporate giants making millions out of the new wave of privatisations.” 

The TNI finds that “a small coterie of legal, financial and accountancy firms, many based in the UK, are reaping huge profits from the new wave of crisis-prompted privatisations.” 

Among these firms are “financial advisory firms NM Rothschild, the UK law firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy and Norton Rose Fulbright, and the accountancy firms based in London PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young.”

The report notes that these firms “actively promote privatisation at the European level.” 

Politicians who have worked for these firms have also been among the leading advocates of privatisation. Two men have been particularly important.

In 1988, influential Tory Oliver Letwin published a book called Privatising the World, in which he outlined how barriers to privatisation could be overcome.

From 1986 until December 2009 Letwin worked at NM Rothschild, first in the firm’s international privatisation department.

When he left the company in 2009 he was a non-executive director and paid £145 an hour for his services. 

Letwin is now chairman of the Conservatives’ research department and from 2005-10 he chaired the party’s policy review.

Are we really surprised that the Tories are so keen on privatisation with people like Letwin holding important positions in the party?

Another Tory from NM Rothschild who enthusiastically championed privatisation is John Redwood — described on the Conservative Party website as “a pioneer of privatisation worldwide.” 

The current MP for Wokingham worked at NM Rothschild Asset Management from 1977-83, first as a manager and then director of “investment research.” 

In 1983, Redwood became head of the No 10 policy unit. From 1985-89 he was a director of NM Rothschild. In his book The Official History of Privatisation, David Parker writes: 

“Redwood appears to have been instrumental in persuading the PM to appoint John Moore to the Treasury to lead the programme of privatisation in her second government and in encouraging her to believe that such a programme was achievable.” 

In 1985, NM Rothschild advised the government to sell the Royal Ordnance to the already privatised British Aerospace for £190 million. 

The deal was later criticised by the National Audit Office as being a bad deal for taxpayers. 

In 1987, the government decided to sell off its remaining 31.5 per cent stake in BP. And guess who got to handle the sale?

Why, NM Rothschild.  The same firm also won the government contract to advise on the sale of British Gas. 

But for some, even Thatcher’s sell-offs didn’t go far enough. 

In 2011, the website Liberal Conspiracy revealed that in 1988 two “radical” Tories wrote a pamphlet for the Centre for Policy Studies think tank entitled Britain’s Biggest Enterprise: Ideas for Radical Reform of the NHS. 

The two Tories labelled the NHS a “bureaucratic monster that can’t be tamed.” You can see the influence of the ideas in the report when you look at the Tories recent NHS “reforms.” 

And who were the two Tories were who wrote the blueprint for future Conservative policy 28 years ago? 

Oliver Letwin and John Redwood. Redwood also wrote the foreword for Letwin’s book Privatising the World. 

Ideas that had been considered on the extreme fringe of British politics in the period 1945-79 became the new orthodoxy thanks to men like Redwood and Letwin. 

In the 1980s, privatisation was sold to us as a way of improving “inefficient” post-war economies, economies that really weren’t inefficient at all. 

Today, while the “efficiency” argument is still made by neoliberals, the main argument put forward for sell-offs is that we need to get the public finances back in order.

So even if we don’t like privatisation, we still have to do it, “to reduce the deficit.” 

But all we have to do is to follow the money trail to see that those pushing privatisation — whether it’s the German government exerting pressure on Greece to transfer its assets into a special fund or British investment banks — are the ones who benefit. 

The big losers have been ordinary people, who have seen assets they owned, sold, often for below their true worth and are now charged more for services that were provided more cheaply “in house.” 

Not that Redwood or Letwin need to worry unduly about high energy bills or rip-off rail and bus fares. 

Redwood had the third-highest outside earnings of any MP in 2014, at £213,852, while Letwin’s wealth was put at £1.6m in 2010. 

Promoting privatisation is a good business for all concerned.

Border Lines

"If migration is the issue that swings voters to leave, consider how a Brexit government would turn against the foreign-born," Polly Toynbee?

Because the EU has been such a success at precluding racism and xenophobia.

Just as it has enabled us to live in the paradise of workers' rights, consumer protection, world class public services, and state-of-the-art infrastructure, with which we are all so familiar.

Today's welfare cuts legislation is of no interest to the Boris Broadcasting Corporation and the rest of the media, so utterly unprofessional that they address him simply as "Boris".

But, like the Cabinet Ministers that he has never been (he was but briefly and unsuccessfully an Opposition frontbencher during his half-forgotten first stint as an MP), all that Johnson wants is a second referendum, but one on terms negotiated to his and their satisfaction.

It is possible that Labour is playing the long game here.

Such terms would be so outrageously unacceptable, even compared to the present ones, that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would have to campaign for a vote to reject them, as of course they long to do this time.

There is also the fact that few people in Great Britain, and practically none of the anti-EU Right, could conceive of their country's having a land border.

To them, it is precisely the absence of such neighbours that is the key to their own self-understanding.

The re-enforcement of the United Kingdom's actually existing land frontier as a hard border would boggle their minds, as well as almost certainly being more or less impossible to do these days.

Purely as a matter of fact, it is very highly likely that withdrawal from the EU would be followed in short order by withdrawal from Ireland, entirely regardless of what anyone there might happen to think.

The Pro-Life Case for Paid Maternity Leave

Courtney Reissig writes: 

My sister-in-law returned to work as an administrative assistant in an architecture firm four weeks after her first son was born.

Luckily, family helped care for the baby so she could go back to work; at the time, she was the breadwinner while my brother finished school.

And yet, at one month post-partum, most new moms aren’t physically or emotionally ready for work.

Even if they had an uncomplicated vaginal birth, they’re just beginning to return to their body’s regular rhythms—not yet cleared for physical exercise, drained from the trauma of birth, and still in pain from cramping abdomens, stitches, and breastfeeding—all on top of the sleepless stress of a needy newborn.

At the time, it bothered me that she had to return so soon, but I didn’t think too much about it.

Now that I know what it’s like to deliver a baby, nurse a baby, and have a new baby turn your life upside down, I’m furious and heartbroken to know that she and so many others have to leave their infants behind so early.

When I gave birth for the first time, my twin boys spent five long weeks in the NICU. I cried when I left them behind for just a few hours.

The mother in the room next to me—already back to work at her fulltime job—cried knowing she wouldn’t see her baby again for days. I can’t imagine.

Ever since then, I haven’t been able to think of parental leave in the same way.

For a while, paid maternity and paternity leave were considered just another benefit at the cost of employers or the government. The political right and left took their expected sides. 

Republicans fear a mandate for paid leave hurts businesses and fosters government overreach. Democrats see it as a social good that benefits entire society.

Both care about people and want to do right by them. But this election season has revealed a shift in our partisan divide over paid parental leave.

Republican presidential candidate and father of four Marco Rubio has a paid leave policy, touted as the first of its kind in the Republican field.

Some polls reveal that a majority in both parties support some sort of paid leave for parents (Democrats 82% and Republicans 55%).

We still see a split in the church, where progressive and social-justice-minded Christians rally for such policies, while conservative Christians rarely bring them up at all. 

Among fellow complementarians, I can’t help but think we fear any support for paid leave would be perceived an endorsement for mothers working outside of the home. 

Our discussions of women and work tend to focus (critically) on the woman advancing her career at the expense of her family, rather than the woman who has no choice but to work to support her family.

The Time To Act

Edzard Ernst writes: 

The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia recently published what might be the most thorough evaluation of homeopathy ever since it began 200 years ago. 

They assessed 176 individual clinical trials focused on 68 different conditions, and had two conclusions.

Firstly, that there is no evidence that homeopathy works better than placebo and, secondly, that patients may harm themselves if they use homeopathy instead of effective therapies.

I warned against homeopathy in 2002, and a range medical experts have been vocal about the dangers of homeopathy for many years now. 

Yet homeopaths around the world seemed shocked by the news of this study, and are now on the warpath to suppress it. Their reaction is ridiculous. 

As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1842, “[homeopathy is] a mingled mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and of artful misinterpretation, too often mingled in practice… with heartless and shameless imposition.” 

And yet, 174 years later, people still continue to believe. 

Homeopaths have claimed for the last 200 years that science was not yet able to explain how it works. In other words, they believe they're ahead of their time. 

However, scientists have always been perfectly able to affirm that there cannot be an explanation for homeopathy that does not fly in the face of science.  

“The proof is in the pudding”, homeopaths countered, “if patients benefit from homeopathy, it works regardless what the science tells us!” 

This argument too has long been shown to be based on little more than the delusion of homeopaths. 

Patients benefit from the therapeutic encounter, from the placebo-effect and from other phenomena that are unrelated to the sugar pills dished out by homeopaths. 

To convey such benefits to their patients, clinicians do not need placebos. 

Administering truly effective treatments with compassion will make them benefit from both the specific and the non-specific effects of the therapy in question. 

This means that just using placebos like homeopathics is unethical and amounts to cheating the patient. Given the overwhelming evidence against homeopathy it now seems like the time to act. 

There is no reason any longer for anyone to believe in homeopathy. Pretending there is room for a legitimate debate is merely misleading the public. 

There is no reason to have homeopathy on the NHS, to pay for homeopathic hospitals, or to invest into further research. 

After researching the subject for more than two decades, I am convinced that the only legitimate place for homeopathy is in the history books. 

Now Fighting Itself

Tim Black writes:

‘It’s very strange, and I cannot understand it’, said Ahmed Othman, the commander of the Furqa al-Sultan Murad battalion currently fighting Assad’s forces in Syria.

You can understand Othman’s confusion.

Why, he was wondering, was his US-backed group being attacked by another US-backed group, in this case the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)?

Furqa al-Sultan Murad is not alone.

The YPG, which receives weapons and support from the US as part of its war with ISIS, has also been fighting several other groups, including the Northern Division, Jaysh al-Mujahideen and a coalition called Jabhat al-Shamiya, all of whom are backed by the CIA against Assad. 

It seems that such is America’s multi-faceted immersion in the conflict in Syria and Iraq that it is now fighting itself. 

This story of America’s self-cannibalism, emerging at the same time as the latest partial and ‘provisional’ ‘cessation of hostilities’ in Syria is announced, captures something of the grisly irony of this US-brokered, Russia-sanctioned truce. 

That is, those currently posing as the solution to conflict, those like US secretary of state John Kerry, faces full of anguish, and mouths urgently spouting ‘we must do something’ platitudes before the mounting death toll, are the very same forces responsible for the unravelling of Syria and Iraq in the first place. They are desperately trying not to reap what they sowed. 

And make no mistake, they did sow the seeds of the current hydra-headed conflict. 

They backed militias against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the aftermath of the now abortive-looking Arab Spring, they anointed Assad’s successors in their various guises and they even did a bit of high-altitude bombs-away diplomacy, and then, as the wrong rebels, with the black-clad Islamists of ISIS to the fore, exploited the Western-urged crumbling of the old regimes, they backed new groups, new rebels and new constellations in the overlapping fight against the new enemy, and its apocalyptic visions of the Caliphate. 

Given this quagmire, in which Assad is both the West’s enemy and enemy of the West’s enemy, is it any wonder that the apparent truce, mooted weeks ago, seems riven with absurdity? 

It is meant to apply to those whom Russia and the US are supporting, from Assad to the YPG. But it doesn’t apply to the enemies of those whom Russia and the US are supporting.

And given who is an enemy to whom depends on whose side you’re on, it means that the truce has a rather limited and arbitrary application. It’s not a ceasefire, said Assad, and he’s not wrong. 

Sadly, many of the Western media seem to have very short memories when it comes to the Syrian conflict. 

The blame is now heaped on Assad for not giving up, and, more prominently, Russia, for driving regional instability, using the conflict to further its supposedly nefarious aims, including rattling NATO member Turkey’s cage and shoring up its ally Assad. 

And while the Russians and Assad are accused of bombing hospitals, the West, with the US leading the charge, appears as the balm on the wound, the bringer of stability, the stand-up, straight-ahead good guys. 

‘[The truce] might fail. But until it does, the US should do everything in our power to help it succeed’, declaimed the Washington Post. Really? Haven’t the US and the West done enough already? 

Just look at the record of Western intervention since the Arab Spring five years ago: the collapsed and unravelled states of Iraq, Libya and Yemen; the revived military dictatorship of Egypt; and, of course, the bombed-out Syria. 

Yes, there is now the attempt retrospectively to cast Russia-backed Assad and ISIS as the ruination of Syria, the former stubbornly entrenched and the latter ruthlessly risen. 

But it was today’s truce-brokers, the US and their Western cheerleaders, who were yesterday’s buffoonish warmongers in Syria – it was they who forced Assad to entrench himself; it was they who paved the way for ISIS’s ruthless rise. 

Think back to 2011, to those heady days when it seemed as if a popular uprising in Syria was going to, if not topple Assad, then certainly force him into political concessions. 

Something happened that turned the Syrian uprising into a brutal, region-defining war, something that prompted a swathe of Syrian army officers to betray Assad and rebrand themselves as the anti-government Free Syrian Army (FSA). 

And it wasn’t just the chance for power granted by the popular insurgency. 

No, they were also emboldened by Western states’ decision to abandon Assad, their one-time ally, to declare, as both US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and UK foreign secretary William Hague did, that Assad had lost legitimacy, and that they had ‘absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power’. 

We’re on your side, the West was telling the FSA. 

The West then proceeded to fund and arm the anti-Assad forces assembled under the FSA banner, give them shelter in Turkey, and, in cahoots with the FSA, anoint the next Syrian government, the Syrian National Council, in exile. 

And, in doing so, with Assad backed into a corner, an uprising became something else, something far more intractable: a civil war. 

There was another consequence to the West’s backing of anti-Assad rebels (many of whom are now fighting the US-backed Kurds), and its denouncing and delegitimising of the Syrian government: the rise of ISIS. 

Because it was in those areas the Western-backed rebel forces initially took in northern and eastern Syria that ISIS seized control. 

Not because of their military and political genius, but because the withdrawal of government control left a civic and political vacuum that the long-forgotten Syrian Opposition Coalition, and the rebel groups who looked to the West rather than to local peoples for support, proved utterly incapable of filling. 

It was into this organisational and administrative collapse that ISIS, with practical food-and-water-providing solutions at hand, drove their invariably US-supplied SUVs. 

That’s why it’s no coincidence that the de facto capital of the Islamic State is none other than the first city to fall to the anti-Assad rebels, the one-time ‘Bride of the Revolution’ no less: Raqqa.

And now, with ISIS and other equally backward groups still enjoying the fruits of the West’s opposition to Assad, and US-backed groups from one stage of the conflict fighting US-backed groups from another, we are meant to believe that Syria’s best chance at something approaching stability will be delivered by those who have done so much to remove it.

Not a chance. 

At every stage, the US and its allies have inflamed the Syrian conflict. They will not extinguish it.