Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

Gordon Brown wants to reassure Bush at the Mansion House tonight that the ‘special relationship’ still lies at the heart of UK foreign policy. After a teeny-weeny bit of independence in beginning to withdraw British troops from Iraq, we have to genuflect again. The real question we should be asking is: are we seeking a closer relationship because we believe that US policies are broadly right or simply because that is where the power is?

There is of course no special relationship, almost by definition, since the essential tenet of the neo-con philosophy is unilateralism, Might is Right, and self-interest overrides everything whatever their ‘friends’ may say. We are no more likely to carry influence if we play the deferential courtier than if we play the critical friend. As we found out painfully throughout the Blair years, playing to the American tune unremittingly on every occasion gained not a singly demonstrable concession.

So are American policies right? Of course there is a considerable US-European consensus across a broad spectrum of policy which nobody seriously doubts. But there are some very important areas of discord where we have a responsibility to make our voice heard.

Iraq is a prime example, though far from the only one. It is becoming clear that the US intend a permanent military presence in Iraq as long as Saudi, Iraqi and Iranian oil lasts, amounting in total to more than half global oil reserves. For this purpose the US is strong-arming an oil law through the Iraqi Government which is virtually expropriating all future Iraqi oil revenues which on some official US estimates could reach the stupendous level of £30 trillions, 12 times the UK GNP! The Americans are now building five colossal military bases across Iraq to enforce their will. We should be telling them this is a recipe for an endless insurgency which is not only flagrantly illegal, but an unwinnable quagmire which can only erode the West’s position to the benefit of Iran, China and Russia.

Second, the US won the Cold War in 1989, but then blew it by passing up a priceless opportunity to win over Russia as a long-term ally. Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down, pulled the Red Army back inside its border, removed the Communist Party from absolute control, and embraced American-style capitalism. Putin went out of his way to aid American forces after 9/11 and did not use his Security Council veto to block the US invasion of Iraq. What has been his reward? The US, exploiting Russian weakness at every turn, moved NATO into Eastern Europe and then into the former Soviet republics. The US bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 despite Russian protests, and is now placing a missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic as well as unilaterally abrogating the ABM Treaty which has produced stability for 30 years. Is it any surprise that Putin is now so suspicious and uncooperative towards the West? This is fundamentally the wrong policy, and we should be saying that loud and clear to the US before we alienate yet further one of the great powers that should be our ally.

Third, instead of continually fudging his options over Iran, Gordon Brown should be making clear that whilst we support economic and diplomatic pressures to deter an Iranian nuclear bomb, we do not and will not support a military attack on Iran. It would have catastrophic consequences – setting the whole Middle East alight, provoking intensified Iranian intervention in Iraq, seriously disrupting the world oil supply a quarter of which passes daily through the straits of Hormuz, unleashing murderous retaliation maybe as far as Western capitals, All without being able ultimately to prevent an Iranian bomb, and indeed generating a national unity behind the mullahs when otherwise an unpopular regime might steadily unravel because of economic failure.

It is our duty to make clear to the Americans now our strong opposition to their perverse and counter-productive military threats towards Iran. Otherwise, the Cold War will be succeeded by another long term geo-political conflict, only conducted at much higher temperature.

Graphic: Project Gutenberg

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:39 PM | Permalink

It's a pity Gordon Brown has tarnished his escutcheon by trying to show he is tough on terror through doubling the pre-charge detention period from 28 to 56 days - particularly since he is also ignoring the second half of the couplet: tough on the causes of terror.

There are several strong reasons why 56 days (or anything over 28) would be ill-advised and counter-productive. Above all, the case for it has simply not been made out. Even John Reid when Home Secretary admitted that the police had not produced any evidence to warrant it. On 11 June I put down a PQ asking "on how many occasions since 25 July 2006 (when the 28-day period was introduced) have the police been obliged by the 28-day pre-charge detention period to release terrorist suspects whom they still wished to detain beyond that period; and what the date and circumstances were of each case? In answer the Home Secretary said: "The police do not centrally hold information on the circumstances of each terrorist case where a suspect is not charged within the 28 day pre-charge detention period". A blatantly evasive reply. I therefore put down a further PQ on 12 July asking if the Home Secretary will seek the information requested from each police force. It was answered on 23 July as follows: "As part of the consultation on forthcoming counter-terrorism legislation, we are looking, in conjunction with the police, at how the existing maximum period of pre-charge detention has operated in practice and whether there are any lessons to be learnt from that". It could not say it more clearly: we don't know, and have no intention of finding out because we fear there is no such evidence.

That is the really essential point: it is wrong to introduce any punitive legislation when there is no evidence-based case to warrant it - and when there is a strong case against it. Internment has never worked, in Northern Ireland or anywhere else, and since the flow of intelligence from the Muslim community to the police is far and away the most most effective means of countering terrorist activity, to shut it down (which detaining people for nearly 2 months without trial is very likely to do in its impact on Muslim opinion) is utterly counter-productive.

But there are other arguments too. 28 days already exceeds the pre-charge detention period in most other democracies, so why do we need twice that period here? And why aren't other anti-terrorist measures now proposed - particularly post-charge questioning and the use of intelligence intercepts in court - perfectly adequate for the purpose without gratuitously undermining Habeas Corpus even further?

And if the hard-line Right, in whichever party, are still not satisfied, maybe they should take a lesson from Winston Churchill who said in 1943 at the height of the Second World War: "The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law...is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government".

And while we're on our quotes from Conservative grandees, this (surprising) one deserves to be noted: "The failure of Messrs Bush and Blair and tghe neo-cons to understand Arab grievances has been translated into a 'clash of civilizations' and a threat to Western values 'by people determined to destroy our way of life', as the Prime Minister put it. But there is no clash of civilizations unless we are determined to create one. We are not going to live under a universal caliphate. Osama bin Laden and his gangsters have not the faintest chance of destroying our way of life, unless we do so ourselves....The misconceived 'war on terror' has made the world a much more dangerous place...America and Britain should leave Iraq as soon as possible. There are no other options...it is the American occupation of Iraq, like the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, that hs become the magnet for the international jihadis". Who said that? No other than Norman Lamont, former Tory Chancellor, in the Daily Telegraph on 10 November 2006. Gordon Brown, please note.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:26 AM | Permalink

How far is this attack on civil liberties going to go? It is still proposed, in the current consultation before new anti-terrorism legislation in the autumn, to keep open the option of extending the 28-day limit on detention without charge to 90 days, even though there is no evidence of a single case where the police wished to detain suspects beyond the pre-charge detention period already permitted. And behind this latest proposal lies a long list of previous draconian measures.

Already under the special advocate procedure foreign nationals suspected of terrorist offences are not even allowed to be told what is alleged against them so that they have a chance to refute it. Information obtained under torture is now admissible in the special tribunals created to legitimise the holding of foreign nationals. When the judges declared that these procedures discriminated against foreigners, the government responded by widening their powers so that British citizens can also be tried by specially appointed courts staffed by judges and lawyers "vetted" and approved by the government.

Now, to preserve the precedent set by Belmarsh high security prison and by control orders in the community, it is proposed to opt out altogether from the right against arbitrary detention contained in article 5 of the convention on human rights. Britain is the only country in Europe to do this.

Continue reading "An attack on civil liberties" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:04 PM | Permalink

There are 2 lessons to be learnt from the absconding of the 3 men held under control orders. One is simply that as a form of detention without trial, it is simply not working. The second, in the light of the first, is that the whole concept of control orders should be re-opened and significantly altered.

Current procedure is that after the initial hearing in open court, when the public facts alleged the suspects are disclosed, the case then proceeds to closed session, where the full evidence against the suspect is made know to a Special Advocate who acts for the suspect. But this Special Advocate is not allowed to communicate this to the suspect in order to check whether the suspect has an alibi or can refute the allegations.

In order to move away from the whole control order debacle, we should now implement different rules.

At present, it is the Security Services and the Home Secretary who determine that a suspect cannot be given a normal trial and that the Special Advocate procedure should be used instead. In effect, this makes them judge and jury in the same case. What we should now be doing is operating new rules which require that all the evidence is normally made available to the suspect, so that he has a chance to refute it unless a senior judge sitting in camera to whom the case is referred is convinced, on the basis of advice from the Security Services and the Home Secretary, that certain evidence cannot safely, on the grounds of national security, be made available to the suspect.

This would almost certainly reduce the applicability of the Special Advocate procedure and the use of control orders to a very small number of cases. And even where the judge is not persuaded, it would not prevent the Home Secretary, if they did not then wish to proceed, from withdrawing the application for the control order until at least more evidence was available and in the meantime to rely instead on the considerable range of surveillance techniques already available.

This would not only provide the fairest reconciliation of the need for national security with the rights of the individual. It would also minimise the fiasco which the use of control orders is in danger of descending into.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 12:54 PM | Permalink

Today's Guardian splash seems to be another step on the path of softening up public opinion for a potential attack on Iran. I can understand why American defence officials would want to see their allegations splashed across the front of the war sceptical Guardian. But this is essentially a rehash of a story that has been properly discredited already, when the Pentagon trotted it out last, in February.

These are eerily familiar claims that suit the political agenda of the US more than they suit the facts. Sources speaking on condition of anonymity last time have become “senior US officials.” The apparent threat now is against Bradley armoured vehicles rather than the more heavily protected Abrams tank. But the other claims, particularly about weapons and their sources are the same and were conveniently repeated by Tory defence spokesperson Patrick Mercer in a BBC R4 interview on the Today programme this morning- introduced by a summary of the Guardian article.

Just in case Iran is not bug bear enough, we are treated to claims of a link with al-Qaeda link up across the Sunni-Shiite divide and even more incredulously, that the shelling of the Shiite dominated Iraqi parliament was the work of Shiite militias closely allied to Iraqi Shiite political parties and indeed trained by them. Professor Juan Cole of Michigan University has more on this in his Informed Comment blog.

There is, however, a grain of truth in the report, where it says “General Petraeus’s report to the White House in early September will be pivotal and a decision to being troop withdrawal or continue the surge policy will hinge on the outcome.”

That explains why the story is being peddled by unnamed US sources, but not why the Guardian should choose to believe them.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 05:08 PM | Permalink

Michael Meacher urges Left to unite behind John McDonnell as candidate for Labour leadership

Michael Meacher has stood down in favour of John McDonnell in the contest for the Labour leadership.

Meacher and McDonnell met today in a bid to ensure there will be a challenge to Gordon Brown. After discussions it was decided that McDonnell had the greater number of nominations.

Meacher will stand down and give his support to McDonnell and is urging all his supporters to get behind the sole left candidate.

Meacher said:

“The left is standing on a clear platform in this leadership election. We must tackle the growing inequality between rich and poor; we need a major programme of building social housing; we must deal with poverty in retirement; we need an independent foreign policy; we should reverse privatisation in public services; and we have to restore British democracy and end the presidential style of government. Most importantly we simply have to tackle the single greatest threat facing mankind – climate change. That’s the agreed position for the left, it’s what John and I have been campaigning on for months and it’s the platform on which we stand united.

“John McDonnell has won more of the nominations. I am therefore happy to stand down on his behalf and I will be strongly urging my supporters to back the united left candidate.

“The really good news is that together the numbers of nominations are sufficient to get a candidate onto the ballot paper.

“John and I have both said there should be a debate and a contest, not a coronation. That is what the party and the public want and I encourage as many members of the Parliamentary Labour Party as possible to get behind John to ensure this happens.”

Posted by Michael Meacher at 05:48 PM | Permalink

From today's Times:

Politics is in a curiously disorientated state in Britain today. On one side, old-style Toryism was voted out in 1997, and has now been replaced by a soft veneer of environmentalism and family-centredness that contrasts sharply with the excesses of private equity capitalism. On the other, the persistent shifting to the right under new Labour has now blown itself out, as the polls indicate, leaving a large segment of political space occupied by mainstream Labour opinion and probably a majority of the electorate as a whole largely disenfranchised.

This key part of the spectrum urgently needs representation to give it fresh direction — not old Labour either, but a modern progressive politics addressing the big issues now being ducked and championing key groups now being marginalised.

First, we need a change of direction to heal the divisions that are increasingly straining the fabric of our society. The Government has made some progress in reducing poverty, but not nearly enough. Inequalities are actually increasing. The average pay of the chief executives of the top FTSE 100 companies is now £46,150 a week, 250 times the minimum wage and 500 times the state pension, while at the same time there are still 12.5 million people, including more than 2 million children, living in households below the Government’s poverty line. This matters because reducing inequality leads to less violence, better health, longer life expectancy, lower teenage birth rates and higher educational attainment.

We need a new approach to cutting crime if we genuinely believe in being as tough on the causes of crime as on crime itself. It’s not sensible to go on banging people up even faster than we can build new prisons without tackling much harder the causes of criminality, and putting much more emphasis on reducing recidivism. Despite unprecedented increase in the use of custody, reconviction rates have soared. The hardline policy isn’t working.

We must drastically reduce the prison population, confining it to violent and dangerous offenders. We should provide instead secure units in the community where lesser offenders are required to attend compulsory courses on anger control, money management and parenting, and also to receive education and skills training and treatment for drug addiction and mental health needs, and are made to do unpaid work to repay the community.

Probably the best crime reduction value for money comes from parenting programmes and youth inclusion panels, bringing together local services to focus support on 8 to 13-year-olds at highest risk. Of course there are increased costs involved in intensive rehabilitation, but if prison places and reoffending costs can be significantly reduced, there should be a substantial net saving in public expenditure.

We need too to arrest the overcentralisation of power in this country. Key decisions, such as the replacement of Trident and the restoration of nuclear energy, should not be taken without consultation of the Cabinet, Parliament and public opinion.

Indeed, the most direct way to win back public trust and reconnect with the electorate is for the Government to be seen as genuinely accountable, listening and being prepared to adjust in the face of strong public demand.

It also means Parliament reasserting its authority by taking the right to ratify (or not) nominations to the Cabinet made by the Prime Minister, by appointing committees of inquiry where the Government refuses to do so (as over rendition flights), by ending the Royal Prerogative whereby the Prime Minister can unilaterally declare war and authorise military action, and through its select committees tabling its own motions for debate and voting on the floor of the Commons. Giving the public the right to initiate legislation through referendums is another issue to explore.

We also need much more vigorously to tackle the greatest threat facing the world today: climate change. It must permeate every policy area of Government — not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy. It is not enough merely to talk of the end of oil dependence when our electricity generation from renewable energy is, at just 4 per cent, by far the lowest in Europe.

We need an overall plan to meet the scientists’ target of reducing carbon emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050. It is a colossal challenge, but a win-win-win-win scenario. It will increase energy efficiency hugely, create large savings for industry and some of our poorest households, protect our economy against sudden destabilising external shocks and safeguard us from climate catastrophe.

Finally, we must stop being subservient to the US. We can’t go on being America’s glove puppet, as we have been over Iraq and Lebanon, and, most worryingly, Iran. We need a foreign policy that robustly reasserts our own essential British interests and our commitment to the UN. The first demonstration of that should be strong opposition to any potential US or Israeli attack on Iran, and insistence that the nuclear impasse must be resolved by negotiation or by UN sanctions, not by violence.

We should take the advice not of the US but of British military commanders on the spot in speeding up our troop withdrawal from Iraq. And we should push for a wider international peace conference for a joint settlement of interconnected Middle East issues that cannot be solved one by one. The latest reports of a US change of heart about talking to Iran and Syria make this now a serious possibility.

It is because I believe that radical new policies of this kind would reenergise politics in this country that I am standing for the leadership of the Labour Party.

www.michaelmeacher.info

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:04 PM | Permalink

From

The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.

The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.

No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.

This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields.

This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields.

Now the plan is being revisited, or as much of it as can be salvaged after the fading of American power on the battlefield made enforced sell-off impossible. This revision of the original plan has been drafted by BearingPoint, a US consultancy firm, at the request of the US government. Significantly, it was checked first with Big Oil and the IMF and is only now being presented to the Iraqi parliament. But if accepted by the Iraqis under intense pressure, it will lock the country into weakness and dependence for decades. The neo-cons may have lost the war, but they are still manipulating to win the most substantial chunk of the peace when and if it ever comes.

It isn't difficult to see why. The super-giant oilfields of south-eastern Iraq, particularly the Majnoon and West Qurna, together with the East Baghdad field, are the largest concentration to be found anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50c per barrel compared with the current retail price of about $60 a barrel. Petroleum geologists have discovered 73 major fields and identified some 239 as having a high degree of certainty. Yet only 30 fields have been partially developed and only 12 are actually on stream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world. While most other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves, large parts of Iraq are still virgin.

This prize is cast in even greater relief by recent assessments of the looming imminence of global peak oil production. The International Energy Agency now estimates that world production outside Opec has already peaked and that world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. Optimists who project large reserves remaining of over 1 trillion barrels base their figures on three illusory premises - inclusion of heavy oil and tar sands whose exploitation would entail colossal economic and environmental costs, exaggeration by Opec countries lobbying for higher production quotas within the cartel, or new drilling technologies which may accelerate production but are unlikely to expand reserves. In contrast, the pessimists are steadily gaining ground, and against this background Iraq remains potentially the last remaining major breakthrough.

Nevertheless, on every count the latest US plan to get control of Iraqi oil at almost any cost is profoundly misconceived. Even from the point of view of America's own self-interest, its security is imperilled more by the failure to develop alternative energy options than by the lack of capabilities of its weapons systems. Yet the US government continues to spend about 20 times more R&D money on the latter problem than on the former. It is still the case that funding the import of oil represents about 40% of the current US trade deficit, yet no vigorous programme in renewable technologies is being supported.

As Senator Richard Lugar and James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, said prophetically in 1999 about growing US dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil, "our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonisingly through developing nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change - or through all of them".

Secondly, in neo-conservative eyes Iraq was also required as an alternative to Saudi Arabia to provide a military base for the US to police the whole of Gulf oil. It was no longer possible for the US to maintain troops in Saudi Arabia for that purpose without risking the collapse of the dictatorial Saudi regime and its giant oil assets falling into the hands of Islamic extremists. The removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia was the principal demand contained in Osama bin Laden's fatwa of 1996. This was why, shortly after invading Iraq, the US announced that it was pulling its combat troops out of Saudi Arabia, thereby meeting Bin Laden's principal pre-9/11 political demand. But unfortunately for the US, al-Qaida is now seeking the removal of US troops from Iraq as well.

Above all, the policy is flawed by its extreme short-sightedness. Even if the US were to win its war in Iraq, which now looks virtually impossible, its incremental gain before the oil runs out would be short-term, while its exposure to intensified and unending insurgency because of perceived US seizure of Iraqi oil rights, especially if extended to Iran, would be disproportionately enormous both in the Middle East and maybe also at home. It is diametrically the opposite of the policy to which the whole world will be forced ineluctably by the accelerating onset of climate change. Perhaps the single greatest gain of the west learning this lesson of weaning itself off its oil addiction is that it would end this interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries simply because they happen to have oil - the central cause of world conflict today.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:02 PM | Permalink

Michael's speech to the People's Assembly against the War, yesterday evening in Westminster.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 07:14 AM | Permalink

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:24 AM | Permalink

The consultation on Trident has been a sham. By fixing a vote in the House of Commons for next Wednesday, No 10 is bouncing us into a momentous decision years before expert opinion says it is necessary.

As leader, I would re-open this decision. I would arrange a full and proper consultation lasting at least six months, embracing all the relevant options and making sure public opinion is properly heard, followed by at least a two day debate in Parliament, ending with a fresh and much more authoritative vote.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 12:25 PM | Permalink

Meacher: why Spectator readers should vote for me

A leadership election opens up, uniquely, the opportunity to debate and decide on the future course of a government. I am standing because I believe there are several areas of policy where a fundamental change of direction is now needed. And though Spectator readers may initially be sceptical about the relevance of my policies to them, I believe that if they read on with an open mind, they'll find much that they agree with. I'm sure they'll agree, for instance, that New Labour and Tory policies have become similar, almost overlapping, which means that politics has become increasingly fixated on personalities, as though a blanket consensus on policy had been achieved. This is ridiculous. Old-style Toryism was rejected in 1997, and now New Labour - the continuing moving-right show - has clearly faded. It's time, not for Old Labour either, but for a mainstream Labour approach - which may well represent majority opinion within the electorate but has been suppressed for over a decade - to be reasserted as a modern progressive politics with new solutions to today's profound problems.

Continue reading "From the Spectator (3 March 2007)" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:09 AM | Permalink

From

There are three reasons why there should be an election for a new leader when Tony Blair finally goes. Only an election confers democratic legitimacy on the succession. Second, party members expect to have a choice about who should lead them. They have hardly been listened to for most of the last 13 years, and have every right to demand that their voice be listened to now. And third, there are major differences of view about the government's direction of travel which need to be understood, debated and voted on within the party. There are other, better alternatives.

New Labour has over-centralised power at the top, which has undermined democratic accountability at all levels. Its economy, driven exclusively by market forces, has played down intervention to secure a stronger manufacturing industry, a more balanced regional policy, and a lift out of its low pay, low skill, low productivity base. Its authoritarian civil society has eroded civil liberties across the board. Its deregulatory philosophy plays down environmental standards and labour rights.

Its indifference to, indeed embrace of, inequality -- "New Labour is relaxed about people getting filthy rich", as Peter Mandelson told us so charmingly -- has presided over a sharp increase in the gap between rich and poor. And its obsession with privatisation is leaching away the public service ideals which lie at the heart of a caring and committed society.

Because Labour and Tory policies are now so similar, politics has increasingly focused on personalities. But that is a fundamental misapprehension. A large part of the electorate on the centre-left, perhaps even a majority, has effectively been disenfranchised for the last three decades. Old-style Toryism was discarded by the voters in 1997, and now New Labour -- the continuing moving right show -- has clearly run its course. It's time, not for old Labour , but for a new implementation of core Labour values in a modern progressive politics addressing today's profound problems.

We need a new foreign policy which is based on fundamental British interests, not subservience to the US, particularly over the middle east. If our political status is to rise across the world, it is not sustainable to continue as America's glove puppet. We need a new social policy if the growing divisions within our society are to be healed. It is not sustainable for £9 billion of city bonuses to be doled out last year while 12.5 million people, a fifth of the population, remain in poverty.

We need a new penal policy if we are going to be genuinely as tough on the causes of crime as on crime itself. It is not sustainable to go on banging people up even faster than we can build prisons without trying to deal with the underlying causes of criminality and doing more to reduce recidivism. We need a new climate change and energy policy if we are not to become over-dependent on imported fossil fuels. It is not sustainable, let alone not legal, to go on fighting wars to grab control of the remaining reserves of Middle East oil when anyway the oil will soon run out.

So what should be done? To end the continuing horrendous carnage in Iraq, to complete our troop withdrawal and break the impasse over Palestine, we should use our political clout to initiate a wider international peace conference bringing together all the relevant actors for a joint settlement of the related middle east issues of contention which from experience cannot be resolved singly. That must include not only Iraq and Palestine within such a grand bargain, but above all a negotiated, not a military, settlement over Iran. If the US were to attack Iran, I would not put at risk a single British soldier or a single RAF pilot in support of such a crazed venture.

Domestically, the Unicef report marking Britain bottom of the table for children's experience shows how urgent it is to reverse the growing rich-poor divide. Less inequality leads to less violence, stronger community life, better health, longer life expectancy, lower teenage birth rates, as well as more social mobility and higher educational attainment. We should start by raising the national minimum wage (one of Labour's best achievements) quickly to £6 an hour, and then soon to £7 an hour. And recognising that wealth creation is not an individual but a team effort, we should move towards a system where there is no more than an acceptable ratio between top pay and bottom pay, so that pay rises at the top draw up the lower paid behind them too.

Globally we are at war against climate change. Business as usual, while relying on improved technology as a get-out card, is a fool's game. We need a profound change in every aspect of government and our way of life -- not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy, in order in every area to give absolute priority to combating climaten change. We need a crash programme, as we have done before in wartime, to develop renewable sources of energy, in which we are very well endowed, plus a massive programme to improve energy efficiency and energy conservation.

Peace, social justice, climate survival - those should be our top priorities. That is why the future lies with a centre-left agenda, and clearly there must be a centre-left candidate to lead this agenda forward who has the necessary nominations in the Parliamentary Labour Party to stand. I am fully confident I do have that necessary level of support, and that is why I am standing.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:39 PM | Permalink

Update 19February 2007: links to NPF reports added.

According to these reports from last weekend’s NPF, Des Browne was less than complimentary about the efforts of NPF members to consult with Labour Party members on the issue of renewing Trident.

Lest you assume that this indicates a reluctance to hear the views of Labour Party members, you might be relieved to hear that the party has produced a consultation process of its own, for MPs to poll their constituents. When you read the questions, you’ll probably be disappointed again.

The questionnaire opens with this neutrally phrased gem:

Do you agree that in an increasingly uncertain world the Government should maintain our independent nuclear deterrent?

It takes a very long time to build a submarine and with the current fleet of subs reaching its expiry date do you think that the Government needs to make this tough decision now?

In both cases, the questionnaire asks for a ‘yes/no’ response. This follows a long letter from the MP which sets out the MP’s position as being in favour of Trident renewal and that not renewing it will “be to take a gamble with the nation’s security”. It also makes the claim that not taking the decision now means “We would effectively be abandoning our deterrent.”

This is plainly not true. As the evidence of Dr Richard Garwin to the Defence Select Committee showed, building new submarines now is premature, as the life of Vanguard submarines (which carry the missiles) could be extended until the 2030s. Renewal of such systems is not unusual - B-52 bombers are still flying today, more than 30 years beyond their projected life span.

It seems that the Party apparatchiks have not learned from the fiasco of the questionnaire on 90 days detention, which was so unbalanced, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke had to apologise. Labour activists across the country are agreed on the need to renew the Labour Party. Fake or biased consultations like this are not going to help.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 01:54 PM | Permalink

What's the greatest problem facing the world today? It's not the war on terror, nor is it law enforcement. Yet the Queen's speech has just one sentence on climate change. The bill will anyway probably not include annual targets which is the one thing that would make the government's climate change programme much more effective - while terror and law enforcement have eight separate bills or projects.

Continue reading "The threat and the response" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

So Gordon Brown wants to extend the 28 day limit for holding terrorist suspects without charge - presumably to 90 days which Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner of Jean Charles de Menezes & Forest Gate fame has been asking for.

Continue reading "The 62 day gap" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:38 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Something very odd is happening. The suspect wanted by the police for ‘masterminding’ the 7/7 and 21/7 bombings, Haroon Rashid Aswat, has now been detained in the UK for seven months, but apparently not even been questioned about the bombings. Instead he is being held awaiting a decision by the Home Secretary to extradite him to the US on the grounds of setting up a terrorist training base in Oregon. This may however be explained by the sensational statement made on the US Fox Television network by the American terrorism expert, John Loftus, a former senior FBI prosecutor, that Aswat is in fact an agent of MI6 and has been under their protection for many years. In Loftus’ own words: “What’s really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the Government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him……He’s a double agent”.

Continue reading "Axis of Lies is spun to hide the truth" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:16 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The videotape of the suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan has switched the focus of the London bombings away from the establishment view of brainwashed, murderous individuals and highlighted a starker political reality. While there can be no justification for horrific killings of this kind, they need to be understood against the ferment of the last decade radicalising Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in Europe.

Continue reading "Britain now faces its own blowback" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Meacher courted much controversy with his 'difficult' questions about 9/11 and the war on terror, but, he tells Matthew Tempest, he is absolutely not a conspiracy theorist

Matthew Tempest
The Guardian

Since losing political office as Tony Blair's environment minister, Michael Meacher has been saying - and writing - some controversial things.

Not Robin Cook controversial ("the weapons inspectors should have been given more time"); not Clare Short controversial ("the post-war reconstruction was mishandled"); but really controversial: "why weren't F16 jets scrambled quicker on September 11? What is the truth about the mysterious MI6 unit Operation Rockingham which 'liaised' with UN weapons inspectors? What was the role of the Pakistani intelligence services in the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl?

These are not the sort of questions that are designed to aid one's ascent up the greasy pole of a political career. Quite the opposite. Not only are they difficult to answer, they burst the bubble of etiquette and respectability at Westminster and get one labelled with the career-suicide stamp of "conspiracy theorist".

Not surprisingly, this is the first thing the now backbench MP for Oldham West and Royston wants to get off his chest when I meet him in his south-London home.

"I am absolutely NOT a conspiracy theorist. I am anything but paranoid. I have an extremely rational belief in systematically collecting the evidence and seeing where the facts and the documents take you.

"However, conspiracies do occur, but that would be a last-resort explanation rather than a first. I am also a believer in the cock-up theory."

Since writing an article for the Guardian last September, detailing unanswered questions about the events of September 11 2001 and the predetermination of the US to go to war in Iraq, Meacher has faced a torrent of abuse and derision beyond that borne by most mainstream politicians.

The US embassy in London dismissed the article as "monstrously offensive" and Meacher as not being "serious or credible", while many journalists found his arguments unconvincing and even deranged.

Despite this, Meacher is unrepentant about airing his concerns. "That analysis has been confirmed. In the past nine months [his unanswered questions] have proved both logical and correct. I'm not aware of a word that has not been accepted.

"Indeed, some of it has been confirmed - for instance, Paul O'Neill's account of his time serving Bush, where he reveals that Iraq regime change was a priority from day one of the administration."

For the record, Meacher believes the biggest mysteries surrounding 9/11 were why more effort was not put into catching the hijackers beforehand, why fighter jets were not scrambled from US Andrews airforce base 10 miles from Washington until the Pentagon had already been hit, and why little or no effort was made to catch Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The Senate's Kean commission into 9/11 finds a confused chain of command on the day, but confirms that while the Pentagon was hit at 9.38am, planes from nearby Andrews were only scrambled at 10.38am, a few minutes after the vice-president, Dick Cheney, had authorised shooting down hostile planes. Planes from Langley airbase were already in the air, but had not received orders to shoot down hostile aircraft.

Curiously, for a man who seems out on a limb in British politics, Meacher hasn't yet seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which provides similar succour to his theories, especially concerning the US military's semi-detached efforts in and around Tora Bora, the al-Qaida stronghold in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.

"Oh I must see it!" he declares, when told that it backs him up on several counts.

Meacher says his postbag was "95% supportive" after his initial article in the Guardian. Probably as a result of its attendant publicity, he was asked to write the foreword to a new US book entitled: The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11.

He's quick to intervene: "Writing a foreword does NOT mean I agree with everything in it. It is an unconventional book which says things which deserved to be listened to and have an airing.

The book suggests that there may have been explosives inside the World Trade Centre before the attacks - does he believe that?

"Well, I'm not a technical expert and I have no idea and I just don't know.

"But it's a worthwhile thing for the Kean commission to examine even if it's just to disprove it. After all, there were two previous bomb plots against the Twin Towers, and bombs would alter the whole concept of what happened on 9/11, but that should have been up to Kean to look at."

More recently, Meacher wrote another high-profile piece in the Guardian demanding to know the truth about Operation Rockingham, an intelligence cell mentioned to the intelligence and security committee by weapons expert Dr David Kelly the day before his death.

Meacher alleged, on the basis of the evidence of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, that the previously unheard of unit was designed to spread misinformation about Iraqi WMD capabilities.

On page 90 of Lord Butler's inquiry into intelligence failures over Iraq is a five-paragraph explanation of Operation Rockingham, calling it a briefing and liaison unit for the Unscom inspections. Meacher believes the explanation is there as a result of his probing.

"It's a pedestrian few paragraphs, but I've seen it and I'm glad it's there and it shows that they've taken it [the article] on board. I believe it [Rockingham] had a key role in seeking to handle intelligence to provide the 'right' material for its political masters.

"Obviously that will be denied, and I'm not expecting Butler to prove it, but I suspect the reason that they felt the need to include it [the explanation] is because of the article."

In all of this, it's easy to forget that Meacher in fact voted for the war. As a minister at the time, the alternative would have been immediate resignation.

"I voted for it because I believed what the PM said. He reeled off weapons inventories, and I presumed that this must be reliable.

"In fact, I've long called for military interventions for humanitarian purposes [he wrote a pamphlet on the theme as far back as 1991], but there would have been no legal basis for that, and the 'humanitarian' reasons for the war have only been used retrospectively."

His high-profile and well-informed campaign against GM crops since being sacked from the environment post in 2003, as well as his difficult questions over 9/11 and the Bush administration have led some senior Green party officials to hope he could be persuaded to jump ship, and become the first ever Green MP in Britain.

"Never, never, never, never, never," he chides. "I respect the Greens. In fact, I respect the Lib Dems and I respect Respect, but there is no question of me switching.

"I've always been a mainstream politician, and I shall die Labour."

There doesn't, thankfully, seem much prospect of that yet, as Meacher boasts of having lost weight since losing office, and "feeling fitter and more energised than I have ever done".

No chance of this 64-year old quitting parliament at the next election, then?

"Not only shall I fight the next election, I could go on for another 10 years yet!"

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:39 PM | Permalink

From The Guardian

There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up?

Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much.

Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?

Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?

Another person who must know a great deal about what led up to 9/11 is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1 2003. A joint Senate-House intelligence select committee inquiry in July 2003 stated: "KSM appears to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of Bin Laden." According to the report, the clear implication was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities.

The report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, but neither agency apparently recognised the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the US and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there. Yet the New York Times has since noted that "American officials said that KSM, once al-Qaida's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information". Indeed, he may never be brought to trial.

A fourth witness is Sibel Edmonds. She is a 33-year-old Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. She has been quoted as saying: "My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ... and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up".

Furthermore, the trial in the US of Zacharias Moussaoui (allegedly the 20th hijacker) is in danger of collapse apparently because of "the CIA's reluctance to allow key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden to testify at the trial". Two of the alleged conspirators have already been set free in Germany for the same reason.

The FBI, illegally, continues to refuse the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence failures. And the US government still refuses to declassify 28 secret pages of a recent report on 9/11.

It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of." Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.

W ith CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a state, with staff and informers estimated by some at 150,000. It wields enormous power over all aspects of government. The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaida, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA.

Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence, has said: "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing ... by a sovereign foreign government." In that context, Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services, observed: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."

That might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger lists later on the day itself: "I was stunned ... that there were al-Qaida operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were al-Qaida." It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism at the FBI told him, the "CIA forgot to tell us about them".

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:36 PM | Permalink

Article from The Times

The seismic shift in British attitudes to the European Union inevitably draws our relationship with the United States into focus too. There are two reasons for continuing to hug America close. One is the belief, that Tony Blair shares, that European and British politics is downstream of Washington, so the best way to influence events is to keep as close as possible to whoever is president.

Second we are so dependent on the Americans for our strategic defence capability that we have no alternative but to stay close. It is widely believed that we cannot fire cruise missiles or use our nuclear weapons or even operate our ballistic missile submarines without US permission. Both claims need to be re-evaluated.

On the first, any cost-benefit examination of the “special relationship” exposes how one-sided it has always been. In 1982, the State Department declined to support Britain over the Falklands until President Reagan intervened, and successive US governments turned a blind eye to IRA fundraising. As a counter to the blind adherence to the US line over Afghanistan and Iraq, it is claimed that Mr Blair persuaded the US to return to the UN for a second resolution over Iraq, but that was only because American troop formations were not yet ready.

As for the second claim, do we need access to US technical military sophistication and strategic thinking? The problem here is that Britain’s dependence can only intensify as the US funnels mega sums into reinforcing its military dominance. The choice is between accepting that subservience indefinitely or paying a short-term, albeit significant, price to secure greater independence. The long-term balance of advantage strongly favours the latter.

The aim of US foreign and military policy is to preserve and strengthen unilateral American hegemony, while the aim of British foreign policy must be a stronger role for the United Nations in support of multilateralism and the rule of international law. Those goals clearly do not coincide, as we have recently seen most starkly over Iraq. Where they differ our bottom line must be British interests, not Washington interests. That requires that we keep open the option of supporting

UN or EU operations even if it conflicts with American goals, and therefore slowly but systematically develop a more independent technological base.

We should insist on significantly greater reciprocity. Despite Britain providing valued international support for the US in Iraq, the enormous contracts for rebuilding the economy have gone overwhelmingly to American companies, notably Halliburton. British territory is currently used exclusively for US purposes, whether at Fairford for the B52s or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, but without any obvious quid pro quo. British intelligence data, primarily from GCHQ at Cheltenham, is made fully available to the US communications intelligence agencies, but with limited traffic the other way. The CIA often sits on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, but MI6 does not sit on its top intelligence body. The Fylingdales radar station in Yorkshire remains an integral outpost of the Star Wars early warning system, and may well be upgraded to US specifications with little or no benefit to the UK. Most recently, Britain has agreed, shamefully, to extradite Britons to the US without even prima-facie evidence of guilt, yet the US refuses to extradite their citizens on that basis.

While negotiating the European constitution, Britain repeatedly, and rightly, asserted “red lines”. We should do the same in negotiating with the US over foreign and defence policy. We should be prepared to criticise the US more openly. That includes recent occasions when the US reneged on the Kyoto protocol, boycotted the International Criminal Court, refused to sign a nuclear test ban treaty, withdrew from the international bioweapons treaty and broke its promise at the Doha World Trade Organisation meeting to provide cheap drugs to counter epidemics in developing countries.

And we should determine the earliest point at which UK troops can be safely withdrawn from Iraq, not tamely accept US pressure to stay on to help to provide cover for the US occupation.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:32 PM | Permalink

The west is losing the war on terror on a global scale. Only if Britain takes an independent line can we protect our security

The Guardian

Despite the revelations of torture, the US-British policy is unchanged: see this historic struggle through to its conclusion for the sake of democracy and civilisation; apply overwhelming force against terrorists and extremists; and show unremitting resolve to root out resistance wherever it is found. Whether it is Americans in Iraq, Israelis in Palestine or the west against al-Qaida, the approach is the same: a policy proclaimed in the name of freedom, tolerance and a decent world order that, ironically, could hardly be better calculated to produce the opposite.

The policy is lethally flawed by its unwillingness to contemplate what lies behind the hatred: why scores of young people are prepared to blow themselves up, why 19 highly educated young men were ready to destroy themselves and thousands of others in the 9/11 hijackings, and why resistance is growing depsite the likelihood of insurgents being killed. To deal with this reality, we first have to understand it.

The appeal of Osama bin Laden lies in his capacity to radicalise and mobilise the world's Muslims. His denunciation of the US military occupation of the holy land of Saudi Arabia, his condemnation of repressive, corrupt Arab states - often seen as western inspired - his invective against US domination of the Middle East and protection of Israel, and his capacity to fight back have all resonated in the Arab street.

Continue reading "Playing Bin Laden's game" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 04:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Observer

Lord Hutton will report shortly on the 'circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly', but is likely to regard as beyond his remit such key questions as how the September 2002 dossier appears to include several dishonest claims and whether the country was falsely led into war. It is crucial, if Lord Hutton feels unable to tackle these central issues, that a separate judicial inquiry is now set up to establish beyond doubt what the truth really is and what the implications are for Britain's governance.

On 10 February last year, five weeks before the war started, the Government's Joint Intelligence Committee gave its assessment that there was no evidence that Iraq had provided chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda, though in the event of an imminent regime collapse 'there would be a risk of transfer of such material'; in other words an attack on Iraq would increase the risk of terrorism. Tony Blair did not disclose this briefing before the war, and it only became known when the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee released it on 11 September.

It is quite clear that throughout 2002 both Washington and London were actively seeking, contrary to intelligence assessments, evidence to justify the case for war. Four key items were deployed for this purpose. One was almost immediately exposed as plagiarised from a student thesis more than 10 years old. The other three were documents purporting to show that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium for nuclear bombs from Niger, the claim that Iraq was able to deploy WMDs within 45 minutes, and 'evidence' from a top-level Iraqi defector that Iraq had produced several tons of the deadly nerve agent VX.

Each of these raise worrying questions of credibility which require systematic investigation by an independent inquiry. However, enough of the facts are now known to draw some important conclusions.

Continue reading "The truth about WMD lies beyond Hutton" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 04:03 AM | Permalink

This article originally appeared in The Guardian

David Kelly referred obliquely to Operation Rockingham. What role did this mysterious cell play in justifying the Iraq war?

David Kelly, giving evidence to the prime minister's intelligence and security committee in closed session on July 16 - the day before his suicide - made a comment the significance of which has so far been missed. He said: "Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell." Unfortunately nobody on the committee followed up this lead, which is a pity because the Rockingham reference may turn out to be very important indeed.

What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war. He has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for Bush, but he distinguished himself in insisting before the Iraq war, and was almost alone in doing so, that almost all of Iraq's WMD had been destroyed as a result of inspections, and the rest either used or destroyed in the first Gulf war. In terms, therefore, of proven accuracy of judgment and weight of experience of the workings of western military intelligence, he is a highly reliable source.

Continue reading "The very secret service" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:30 AM | Permalink

This article was first published in The Guardian.

The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".

The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".

Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

Continue reading "This war on terrorism is bogus" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:02 AM | Permalink