A Rocket Up You

The deluded dinosaurs of the right-wing Labour machine have stopped a Conference vote on Trident this week.

You fools, you would have won!

But most of next year's delegates will be people who joined or re-joined this summer or later, in support of Jeremy Corbyn.

Out To Lunch

Viewers of the BBC News Channel have been treated to a demand that the children of the working poor be starved.

That demand has been made by Jonathan Simons, who has never had a proper job, and who is morbidly obese.

The Stench of the Sty

Neil Clark lists six ways in which Piggate reveals the stench of the British Establishment's hypocrisy.

Here Come The Grown-Ups

Over to George Osborne, to produce a Nobel laureate who has ever even heard of him.

Jeremy Corbyn and the New World Order

David Osland writes:

I pity the poor sod the Conservatives have tasked with trawling through vast back files of the Morning Star, Labour Briefing and Campaign Group News in the hope of digging up incriminating quotes from Jeremy Corbyn.

You see, back in the 1980s and 1990s I not only used to stand outside tube stations and factory gates unsuccessfully attempting to sell publications generally fomenting the overthrow of capitalism to the perennially unheeding proletariat, but helped to write them as well.

And so I can confirm that a lively and sparkling prose style, laced with risqué witticisms and agile word play, was not among the major plus points of the radical press in the decades gone by.

I can just picture some hapless spotty Tory Boy sitting in Central Office right now, presumably comprehending little of the mind-numbingly dull analyses of the latest machinations of the bourgeoisie that were then the standard fare in such journals.

The initiation ritual for his Oxford secret society will have been a doddle by comparison.

But, hey, the first fruits of such efforts have already emerged, in the shape of the Daily Telegraph’s bid to paint Jeremy Corbyn as unfit to lead the Labour Party, by dint of alleged adherence to rightwing whackjob conspiracy theory.

The Mail has lifted the material, too.

Corbyn, it is hinted, is a 9/11 Truther who buys into the New World Order conspiracy theory.

OK, the Telegraph sticks in sufficient caveats to stay the right side of defamation law, but let’s cut to the chase here. That’s what it means.

Without seeing the original articles from which the remarks are extracted, it is impossible to ascertain context and decided whether or not the quotes are being used fairly.

But accurate or not, I suspect that they are being given a very different meaning from the one intended.

Take it from a guy who was there at the time, the only connection in which the term New World Order was used in far left circles was in reference to a speech by George Bush Sr to a joint session of Congress on the Persian Gulf crisis.  

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the expression achieved widespread use as a synonym for – to use more period jargon – a unipolar world.

Nor was it the exclusive property of leftist thinkers, either.

It was freely deployed by intellectuals across the spectrum, including conservatives such as Samuel Huntingdon in his widely-read book The Clash of Civilisations.

As for the Corbyn’s contention that 9/11 was ‘manipulated’ to provide casus belli in Afghanistan, well, it was, wasn’t it?

The wording Corbyn choses is admittedly clumsy, but on the standard methodological presumption that an opponent’s viewpoint should be evaluated in its strongest form, there can be little dispute that the US – and Britain under Blair – used those events as justification for an invasion for which they had other reasons.

As critics of the decision to attack argued at the time, little effort was made to explore alternative policies, most importantly the extradition of Bin Laden.

In retrospect, it is clear the war achieved little. 

Al Qa’eda’s operations were temporarily disrupted, but were rapidly able to regroup elsewhere, while Afghanistan was plunged into 14 years of bloody conflict, and counting.

So if the researcher at CCO is reading this, the message is, nice try.

But you really do need to raise your game next time.

Implicated

Vijay Prashad writes:

Saudi Arabia began its bombing of Yemen at the end of March. The assault continues. Every UN agency has lit the red light of caution – Yemen is a humanitarian catastrophe.

Firm numbers of dead and wounded are hard to come by. The UN estimates that over 2100 civilians have been killed. That every Yemeni is in danger of death is clear.

In the UN Human Rights Council, the Netherlands called for an official investigation of the bombing in Yemen. But Saudi Arabia, with US backing, has pre-empted the Dutch resolution.

The Saudis want the UN to provide technical assistance to the Yemeni authorities that they back. This is a deft manoeuvre to block any investigation of Saudi atrocities in Yemen.

The US has rearmed Saudi Arabia during the carnage. It is implicated in the civilian deaths. No wonder there will be no UN mission to Yemen.

While the negotiations in Geneva continued and while Yemen burned, two columns of Hajj pilgrims  ran into each other in Mina, Saudi Arabia, on the first day of the Id al-Adha.

The Saudi royal family, known as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, is responsible for the well-being of pilgrims who come on what has become the largest annual migration.

These columns ran into each other because the police blocked off key roads. These roads are intended to manage congestion. At least a thousand pilgrims died in the ensuing stampede.

Why were these roads blocked? Early indications suggest that the authorities had closed the roads to facilitate VIP pilgrims.

So much of Mecca, like Saudi Arabia in general, is designed for the VIP and the VVIP. The Custodian favours the powerful. It is they who go ahead in the queue.

Construction across Mecca, as Ziauddin Sardar shows in his powerful new book Mecca: The Sacred City, is geared toward the wealthy.

An “eruption of architectural bling” has inflicted the “barren valley” of Mecca. Corruption is rife, so is neglect.

In 1990, almost 1500 people were killed in a stampede near the very spot of this tragedy. The deaths came in a punctual fashion – 1994, 1998, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006.

A few weeks ago,  a crane fell into the Masjid al-Haram, killing over a hundred people.

Are these deaths a natural facet of massive pilgrimages or are they indications of systematic disdain for the lives of ordinary people?

The Saudis are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their futile war on Yemen. There is no political endgame and no sign of any military breakthrough.

The only thing that has occurred is the further impoverishment of the poorest country in the Arab world. The oil wealth is being squandered on ill-fated military and diplomatic adventures.

Far better perhaps to use that oil wealth on making the Hajj as safe as possible not for the VIPs alone, but for the millions who save money over decades to make this holiest journey to the place toward which they pray.

A Pearl To Be Recaptured

Robert Fisk writes:

Vladimir Putin hasn’t sent his soldiers to Syria just to show solidarity with Bashar al-Assad. Nor has he flown them into the Russian bases around Tartous to keep Assad in power. That goes without saying.

And Putin isn’t worried about losing the only warm water Mediterranean port still in Moscow’s hands. He wants a victory.

Syria’s army, the only institution upon which the regime – indeed, the entire state apparatus – depends is being re-armed and trained for a serious military offensive against Isis, one which is meant to have enormous symbolic value both in the Middle East and in the world.

Military plans always get delayed. And the moment the first artillery piece sends off a shell, the plans always go wrong.

In Syria, operational details change every day and every night. But I’ll wager a well-informed guess right now – and we’ll keep calling this a guess, if only for form’s sake – that the Syrian army is being primed to recapture the ancient Roman city of Palmyra from the Islamists.

New Russian fighter-bombers, new anti-armour missiles, perhaps even the new T-90 Russian tanks are being prepared for the desert terrain.

One of Syria’s most modern air force bases lies scarcely 50 miles from Palmyra – on the main road east to Homs – and the Syrian army has for months planned for an attack around the city.

Only weeks ago, they postponed an offensive for fear that Isis would destroy the rest of the Roman city.

But such concerns have now diminished. Isis has shown itself quite willing to destroy the Roman temples without a military assault on its forces.

Now a reminder. At this moment, I’m keeping to the “informed guess” that I mentioned above.

The regime has to hold onto Aleppo lest it collapses into Isis hands and is immediately declared the Caliphate’s Syrian capital.

The Syrian army has to keep open the road to Lebanon and the heights of Qalamoun along the Lebanese border. It cannot risk any more towns falling into Isis hands.

But Palmyra is top of the list for the doubtful privilege of “liberation” from Isis.

The date would be within the next three weeks, but – since all Middle East battles slide off the time chart – we could probably run up to early November, before the rains begin sweeping across the sands from Iraq.

Palmyra is a pearl to be recaptured because the world – with utter insensitivity, far more concerned about the fate of its imperial Roman ruins than its people – has registered the city’s loss to Isis last May as a major success for the “Caliphate”. 

But for Putin, an offensive would – or will – be an epic symbol of Russia’s new projection into the Middle East.

For Obama and Cameron and the rest of our Western leaders, who have fumbled around Syria for four years, neither dethroning Assad nor defeating Isis, a Russian-assisted recapture of Palmyra would be a humiliating lesson. 

Trusting in Moscow – and remember that Egyptian President al-Sissi was taking Putin to the Cairo opera only a few months ago – may look like a better bet for any Middle East leader than relying on Western support. 

Politically, of course, a post-victory Palmyra will leave Assad much more secure in his half of Syria.

Already the Americans and British are waffling about his “transitional” role in a future Syrian government – a “transition” which we all know could last for years.

Putin is not pouring Russian treasure into the Syrian death pit to allow his man in Damascus to be overthrown.

His Ukrainian president ran away. But Assad did not scarper off to Russia over these past four years. Nor has he remained in Damascus only to be pensioned off as a “transitional” president.

But what comes after Palmyra?

The recapture of much of Aleppo – a far more risky project – or a return to Idlib city or even an attempt to seize the Isis “capital” of Raqqa? Relief, certainly, for the surrounded regime garrison in the desert city of Deir Ezzour.

But a dark genie moves around the Syrian desert, awarding no prizes to the brave or the foolhardy.

If Russia and Syria have made their plans, be sure that Isis have other operations up their sleeve; a strike into central Damascus, for example, as the rebels tried three years ago.

Nor will Russia be able to shake off the ghosts of Afghanistan in Syria. You cannot “capture” deserts. Nor can a new Russian air fleet defeat Isis on its own.

At the very least, it must not tangle with Syria’s neighbours, which is almost certainly why Benjamin Netanyahu has just met Putin – to ensure that Israel does not misconstrue the meaning of Russian high altitude planes north-east of Golan.

And the restoration of regime control – even over Palmyra – will lead to no broad sunlit uplands. Putin and Assad are not planning for any parliamentary democracies on the road to Damascus.

But if Isis – along with its Putin-hating Chechen fighters – gets its wings clipped, then the US – and Nato – will have to negotiate with Moscow over the future of Syria.

All of which, of course, will read like a curse to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees bleeding away from their country on their great trek north through the Balkans.