dictator

postscript to notes on libya

Submitted by antarchi on September 15, 2011 - 23:00

Postscript to the child's homework. The child decided that our motives in going in to Libya were not as we had stated, but that it had been worth going in anyway - and the intervention was justified.

Further questions to the child:

1. Is it important whether the new govt is likely to be better than the old, given what we know about them. Mustafa Abdul Jalil who now heads the Libyan interim government [National Transition Council] recently said in a public gathering, "We will not accept any extremist ideology, on the right or the left. We are Muslim people, for a moderate Islam, and will stay on this road. We strive for a state of the law, for a state of prosperity, for a state that will have Islamic Sharia law the basis of legislation."

2. The 'rebels' (now the govt) have engaged in large scale looting of weapons. Since many of those who supported the rebel movement were islamic radicals, it's likely these will be used against 'the west' in other wars. This is exactly what happened in Afghanistan: we armed and trained Bin Laden's men to get the Russians out (in the 80s) and this is now being used against us.

3.The 'coalition' (UK, US, France etc) have broken international law in supporting the rebels and in pursuing regime change. What message does it send to the world if some people are allowed to remove leaders they don't like (but not those they do), and others aren't. Imagine Iran or China or Russia sending in the bombs to support a movement to depose a leader and how we would react to that. The law only works if everyone - including those at the top - respect it, and are brought to justice when they fail to do so.

corporate welfare for the arms industry

Submitted by antarchi on February 12, 2011 - 22:58

Amy Goodman: ...when we say tens of billions of dollars has been given to the regime, one of the highest recipients of foreign aid in the world, behind Israel, actually that money doesn’t necessarily go to Egypt, right? It goes to U.S. military contractors.

WILLIAM HARTUNG: It’s a form of corporate welfare for companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, because it goes to Egypt, then it comes back for F-16 aircraft, for M1 tanks, for aircraft engines, for all kinds of missiles, for guns, for tear gas canisters, as was discussed, a company called Combined Systems International, which actually has its name on the side of the canisters that have been found on the streets there. So these companies—for example, Lockheed Martin has been the leader in deals worth $3.8 billion over that period of the last 10 years; General Dynamics, $2.5 billion for tanks; Boeing, $1.7 billion for missiles, for helicopters; Raytheon for all manner of missiles for the armed forces. So, basically, this is a key element in propping up the regime, but a lot of the money, as you said and Juan Cole mentioned on this program, is basically recycled. Taxpayers could just as easily be giving it directly to Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics.

— William Hartung

Interview with Democracy Now

reagan's splendid achievements

Submitted by antarchi on January 2, 2011 - 14:11

Nicaragua

For eight terribly long years the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Ronald Reagan's proxy army, the Contras. It was all-out war from Washington, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the Sandinista government — burning down schools and medical clinics, mining harbors, bombing and strafing, raping and torturing. These Contras were the charming gentlemen Reagan called "freedom fighters" and the "moral equivalent of our founding fathers".

El Salvador

Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with US support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protestors and strikers. When the dissidents took to the gun and civil war, the Carter administration and then even more so, the Reagan administration, responded with unlimited money, military aid, and training in support of the government and its death squads and torture, the latter with the help of CIA torture manuals. US military and CIA personnel played an active role on a continuous basis. The result was 75,000 civilian deaths; meaningful social change thwarted; a handful of the wealthy still owned the country; the poor remained as ever; dissidents still had to fear right-wing death squads; there was to be no profound social change in El Salvador while Ronnie sat in the White House with Nancy.

Guatemala

In 1954, a CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling more than 200,000 victims — indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century. For eight of those years the Reagan administration played a major role.

— Bill Blum

The Anti-Empire Report

Henry VIII clauses - a pernicious habit

Submitted by antarchi on July 18, 2010 - 16:55

Some extracts below from the Lord Chief Justice's Mansion House speech (emphasis mine). It turns out that our proud constitutionless democracy is less of a democracy than even I had thought (though just as proud).

...my deepest concern at the moment is directed to the increased use of what are described as Henry VIII clauses...

Henry VIII was a dangerous tyrant. The Reformation Parliament made him Supreme Head of the Church, the representative of the Almighty on earth – hardly an encouragement to humility: it altered the succession at his will: it changed the religion backwards and forwards, at his will: they were a malleable manageable lot. And there is a public belief that the Statute of Proclamations of 1539 was the ultimate in supineness. The Act itself was repealed within less than 10 years, immediately after his death in 1547. But it had allowed the King’s proclamations to have the same force as Acts of Parliament. That is a Henry VIII clause...

Consider the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 enacted in the hurricane of the banking crisis. It granted the Treasury, presumably the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, the power to make:

“(a) such supplementary, incidental or consequential provision, or
(b) such transitory, transitional or saving provision, as they consider appropriate for the general purposes, or any particular purposes, of this Act…”

But the power goes further. It expressly provided that an order may

“(a) disapply (to such extent as is specified) any specified statutory provision or rule of law;
(b) provide for any specified statutory provision to apply (whether or not it would otherwise apply) with specified modification.”

So we have an Act of Parliament which expressly grants to the Treasury power to disapply any other relevant statute bearing on the provisions of the 2008 Act or indeed any rule of law.

The same process is at work with section 51 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. This enables any Minister of the Crown, by order to make such provision as he or she considers appropriate in relation to any provision of the Act. The Act, as it says, relates to our constitutional affairs. The order may:

“(a) amend, repeal or revoke any existing statutory provision,
(b) include supplementary, incidental, transitional, transitory or saving provision.”

So the new constitutional arrangements can be revisited by ministerial order, directed not merely to amendment repeal or revocation of any provisions in the Act itself, but directed at any of our existing statutory provisions.

...

I have tried to pursue this question and recently read two letters from the Ministry of Justice on this topic. And it made alarming reading. First, it is clear that there is no routine method for collecting information about Henry VIII clauses. Doing the best the Ministry could, during the parliamentary session up to 10 November 2009 there were I quote “around 70 such powers contained within the legislation enacted so far”. The information is that at least 10 of them were not new, but were re-enactments, and 15 of them contained provisions allowing consequential amendments. Between 10 November and the end of the parliamentary session for 2008-09 there were some 53 additional such clauses, of which 10 were provisions allowing for consequential amendments, and 5 enabled the proper functioning of pilot schemes. So we are talking of over 120 Henry VIII clauses in one parliamentary session. Does this surprise you? It certainly astonishes me.

nigeria's foreign debt

Submitted by antarchi on May 18, 2009 - 20:01

In 2002 Nigeria was producing around 2 million barrels of oil a day. Crude oil accounted for 80% of government revenue and 90% of foreign exchange earnings. The approximate $11 billion earnings from oil sales, shared equally, would give each Nigerian about 27 cents a day. But Nigeria racked up financial debts of $5.6 billion at market rates under its military dictators. Just servicing its debts in 1999 and 2000 cost Nigeria $1.4 billion each year. Several mainstream banks, including Barclays, HSBC and Merill Lunch were censured by City regulators for flouting anti-money laundering rules in relation to accounts linked to Nigerian dictator General Abacha. He stole an estimated $4 billion from his country...

Nigeria, however, still has to keep paying [the debt] with the revenue from its oil.

— Andrew Simms

Ecological Debt

british support for suharto

Submitted by antarchi on February 10, 2008 - 14:30

In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament reported that “at least 200,000” had died under Indonesia’s occupation: almost a third of the population...

For three decades, the Australian, US and British governments worked tirelessly to minimise the crimes of Suharto’s gestapo, known as Kopassus, who were trained by the Australian SAS and the British army and who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler and Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica “riot control” vehicles.

— John Pilger

Suharto, the model killer, and his friends in high places (January 2008)

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