Harlequin

There is always the danger of converts, and not just religious converts, becoming, as was the graphic case with Malcolm Muggeridge, more Papist than the Pope; and more pious and holier than thou – in the rigid, dogmatic, intolerant, an almost neo-medievalist form of Catholicism that he espoused, where there was plenty of faith and hope, but not a great deal of charity.

Some white converts, or converts from other ethnic and religious groups, to Islam, have adopted an extremist, almost caricature version of Islam, markedly different from that practised by the decent, law abiding majority of that faith. And a number have even become terrorists. Witness the ‘Shoe-Bomber’, Richard Reid; who tried, in a thankfully unsuccessful suicide mission, to bring down a passenger plane over the Atlantic. Or Germaine Lindsey, the Jamaican born convert, whose part in the London Bombings on the 7th of July, 2005, claimed twenty seven lives, as well as serious injuries.

On the political scene, people who go from the left to the right, like Paul Johnson, usually go to the far right, Thatcherite extreme of that spectrum.  And of course there was the earlier case of Mussolini, who started out on the far left, then ended up as the founder of Fascism. Pierre Laval, a left-wing pacifist in World War One, made his subsequent journey to the political centre – where he ended up as Premier and Foreign Minister of France (and even got his picture on the cover of Time Magazine) – then to the far right, where he finished up as Hitler’s notorious collaborator, in the Vichy government. Then, after his trial, in liberated France, he went on to face the firing squad.

And it is odd, how many former Trotskyites, in America – but not exclusively there – have gravitated from the far left of the political spectrum to the far right? Many a Neo-Con ideologue, or believer – and many top level people in the Reagan government, and that of George Bush junior – were former Trotskyites. It seems that former Trotskyites, after losing their original political faith, tend to gravitate to some other, equally extreme position. As Neo-Cons, or even Romantic conservatives; or, in the case of Lyndon Larouche, ending up as a rather dotty neo-Fascist, peddling all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories, including one surreal notion that Queen Elisabeth was actually an international drugs runner. You can hardly imagine a former Trotskyite becoming a liberal, or finding a happy and contented home in the centre ground of politics. It’s as if they still demand the drama of some extreme stance, where they can still strike dramatic poses and indulge in heady rhetoric, wherever that may end up taking them, or whatever disastrous course it may make them pursue.

Though if someone ditches entirely their earlier beliefs, and goes from one end of the political or religious spectrum to another, and passionately advocates an ideology or religious faith, that is the total contradiction of what they argued for earlier, one is entitled to have at least a residuum of scepticism concerning their current position. For if they could ditch one stance, entirely, to take up quite another, why should that prove to be a lasting political or religious stance.

Indeed there is something rather strange, even perhaps disturbing, at least in psychological terms, about someone who has an ideological conversion to a political position that is a total contradiction of what they had earlier believed in. This is more than just moving on, or developing or changing your views in certain directions. Most people, who aren’t totally dogmatic and rigidly minded, do that. In the words of the former deputy head of the NUM, Mick Magahey, a party should be a movement and not a monument. Just as changing circumstances also affect how people react to them. For people who have had a total conversion, it’s as if they are rebelling against their earlier selves, even punishing themselves for holding such tainted and sacrilegious views, in much the same way that it is said that the younger generation always rebel against the older generation. Though that intriguing phrase by an Irish writer that ‘you become what you hate’, may help to explain some of those seemingly bizarre conversions.

There is the old saying that people tend to go to the right as they get older. No doubt many a student radical ends up as a crusty conservative; decrying others for holding beliefs that he had passionately espoused in an earlier incarnation. Look at the bizarre ideological journey that Eldrige Cleaver made from being a Black Panther to a complacent, establishment Republican.

Indeed some have jumped a few ships to get where they finally ended up. Winston Churchill went from being a Tory to a Liberal, then back to being a Tory again. (Though that latter move was probably dictated by the fact that the Liberal Party almost disappeared, as a mainstream party, following the First World War). He later joked that he didn’t just rat, but re-rated, in his political career. And look how Sir Oswald Mosley went from being a Tory MP, to a Labour Cabinet Minister, to being the notorious founder of the British Union of Fascists.

Of course one shouldn’t generalise too far. Not all converts end up as raving fanatics, with an intolerant, ultra-purist mind-set. Some converts can be moderate, middle of the road types. Though there is a tendency, with a significant number, to go to extremes.

There is a certain sex appeal in extremism, of the right or the left; or in the adoption of some strident and intolerant religious fundamentalism. Just as simplistic and reductivist arguments, that allow for no compromises or shades of grey, can have more popular appeal, than more subtle and nuanced ones that more fully reflect the complex nature of reality.

Christopher Hitchens, who tragically died, only a few weeks ago, from cancer of the oesophagus, has rightly been praised as a brilliant and articulate political writer and polemicist, as well as being a rather colourful character. Though to many observers his polemical career did witness a strange contradiction in its latter years, with his fulsome and enthusiastic support for the aggressive foreign policy of the Bush Junior administration – and in particular the unilateral exercise in regime change in Iraq – that seemed in some ways to contradict his previous left-wing and anti-Establishment views. And of course this was a war which outraged the overwhelming majority of people on the left; and indeed was even criticised by some on the right. Indeed witness the way that his brother, and journalist, Peter Hitchens, who has strong conservative opinions, took a polar opposite view, on that whole foreign policy adventure; resolutely criticising the same war and occupation that Christopher Hitchens supported, and who saw it as an unmitigated disaster.

Like Professor Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens was a militant atheist, who saw the established religions as sources of ignorance, obscurantism and repression, that must be opposed and fought against; and yet he sided with the aggressive interventionist foreign policy of a President, in the shape of George W. Bush, who was almost as fanatical in his militant, evangelistic, Born Again faith, as the extremist Jihadist zealots he locked horns with in the various, disastrous wars of regime change he undertook.

Indeed the President said in one interview that it was God who persuaded him to take the militaristic course he did, and we know that in reports regularly sent to him about the situation in occupied Iraq, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, would deliberately include quotations from the Bible, as if to assure Bush that, despite setbacks, all was going according to some higher, more providential plan. (Though it struck many others, as being absurd and risible; and yet a further indication of a regime that wasn’t fully, or perhaps even remotely, engaged with reality). And I don’t think Christopher Hitchens great hero, George Orwell, who could see through ideological cant, would have approved of that curious ideological summersault he appeared to perform, in giving his intellectual backing to the reckless foreign policy adventures of that regime.

It’s odd, and paradoxical, that such a vocal and militant opponent of religion, as Christopher Hitchens (to the extent of writing an entire book on the subject of his hostility to it) should, in opposing one form of religious fundamentalism, have literally signed up with people who were openly and gleefully pursing yet another form of that very religious fundamentalism, of which he so strongly disapproved. And however hard or passionately he tried to justify his stance, it was an intellectual circle he was never able to square.

Perhaps his almost visceral hatred of religion warped his judgement to the extent of his giving his whole hearted support for those dangerous and radical foreign policy interventions, which, according to many commentators, have strengthened the very, radical religious forces he made such a show of opposing. Indeed, however nasty and repressive the Saddam regime in Iraq was, it was also one of the most secular regimes in the Arab World. It had some of the highest educational standards, particularly for women, in the Arab world. And women were allowed to pursue any careers they wished. Unlike in neighbouring, conservative Saudi Arabia, where they can’t even drive cars. Saddam, for all his faults, had no truck with militant fundamentalists, such as Al Qaeda. And they only got into that country, to wreak their damage – which is still on-going today, as we hear on the news bulletins – via the American occupation. Whatever the sins and evils of that regime, fostering militant Islam wasn’t one of them. In giving his whole hearted support to this cack-handed and disastrous war and occupation, Christopher Hitchens was fighting the wrong war against the wrong enemy.

When one considers the articulate, eloquent and passionate manner in which he denounced Henry Kissinger as a war monger – during his time in charge of foreign affairs during the Nixon government, and for his role in the Vietnam War, and the bombing of Cambodia – it makes his relationship with the Bush Junior regime even stranger and more inexplicable. (Though of course Mr Hitchens even had a go at the saintly Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in some of his earlier diatribes). One can’t help feeling that the Bush Junior regime, and its NeoCon allies, got far more out of that relationship than Christopher Hitchens did. Some regard his relationship with that regime as a stain on his copy book, or at least a perplexing, unexplained anomaly, for someone who came from the radical leftist wing of the political spectrum. The NeoCons, on the other hand, must have been delighted, as well as pleasantly surprised, at the way he leant the eloquence of his pen, and his voice, to give his imprimatur of approval to their singular crusade. It’s hardly surprising he literally became Bush’s favourite Trotskyite, and a darling of the Neo-Con right.

Being a rumbustious contrarian, these strange contradictions in his argument didn’t appear to bother him; but they were glaringly noticeable to other people, particularly on the left – and not just to George Galloway – who took a diametrically opposite stance on the Iraq War and occupation, and the aggressive and interventionist foreign policy of the Bush Junior regime. As the Daily Mail journalist Stephen Glover wrote in a recent article: ‘In a strange way the old leftist Christopher Hitchens turned into a well-meaning neo-colonialist’. One can’t help feeling that if Al Gore had won the election against Bush Junior (and he did come within a whisker of doing it) – and had events in the Middle East taken an entirely different course – Mr Hitchens reputation would be even higher today than it is now.

Some of the Republican candidates for the forthcoming American Presidential Election, are a scarifying bunch. One of them advocated shutting down three entire government departments (though I don’t think he’d have got many votes from the thousands of people who work in them), but couldn’t even remember the name of one of those departments in a live debate on TV.  Another candidate, Rick Santorium – a former senator for Pennsylvania; noted for his hard-line right-wing views, and moralising religious convictions – came out with the utterly ludicrous statement, that: ‘The sun didn’t set on the British Empire. They lost heart and faith in themselves and their mission, who they were and what values they wanted to spread around the world.’ And in an admittedly very fleeting interview, on the campaign trail, with a BBC reporter, he said that the creation of the National Health Service was a significant factor in Britain losing its empire.

The idea that the British Empire collapsed, after World War Two, because of Labour’s welfare state and the creation of the National Health Service, is preposterous rubbish. This crass and idiotic reflection has more to do with hysteria than history. I don’t know if the former senator ever noted the fact that it wasn’t just the British Empire that ended, following World War Two, but all the other Western empires as well. Even where Western powers sought to use military force to crush resistance and maintain their rule over their restive empires – as the French did in Vietnam and Algeria, the Portuguese in Mozambique, and the Belgians in the Congo – it merely delayed, by a mere handful of years, the end of those empires and the emergence of independent states in their stead; though at the price of much needless bloodshed and human suffering. In contrast with those desperate and futile rear-guard actions against the flow of history, most historians commend the Post War British governments for the relatively peaceful way, with a few regrettable glitches here and there, that they disposed of the empire. (And perhaps because of that we now have that useful international association known as ‘The Commonwealth’). Even though Winston Churchill, in not at all his finest hour, was furious with the Labour Government for granting independence to India in 1947.

Britain couldn’t have held onto its empire, even if it wanted to; and even if it had used military force to try and do so. It may have delayed things for a few years, though at a terrible price, in terms of bloodshed and the country’s moral reputation, but it wouldn’t have stopped the process. By the way, one of the few Post War attempts that were made to reverse the process – namely the Suez campaign; where Britain, under the Eden government, along with France, used military force to take possession of the Suez Canal, following its nationalisation by the Nasser Government – was ended, by the American Republican President, Eisenhower, when he threatened Britain with dire economic sanctions, if it didn’t pull out its forces and end the campaign. In the light of that threat, there was a humiliating withdrawal of forces, Egypt kept possession of the Canal, and Eden resigned under a cloud, with his political career ended, only a year or so after becoming Prime Minister.

The Post War rise of nationalism in the Third World, and the emergence of mass movements pressing for independence and national liberation,  made it impossible for the Western colonial powers to hold onto their empires, whether they were building welfare states at home, or not.  The ‘Winds of Change’, to use that famous phrase by the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, couldn’t be resisted. And only some political or ideological fantasist could imagine it otherwise.

Mr Santorium’s views, on the Empire, in the Post War era, are light years away from reality. Though he’s clearly one of those people who won’t let inconvenient things like the truth get in the way of a useful ideological argument.

Empires aren’t always that easy to build, and restive ones aren’t that easy to maintain; as George W. Bush himself found out, in the sands if Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. And it is probably to the profound relief of most Americans that they have pulled out of Iraq, after their long and costly involvement there.

Though of course on the Republican far right, imperialism isn’t looked on in a negative light. The notorious Neocon ‘Project for a new American Century’, had a strong imperial tinge to it. Though attempts to carry that ambitious scenario out, by Bush Junior and his incompetent crew, were disastrous.

Perhaps Mr Santorium thinks that a continuation of imperialism and colonial rule, over much of the Third World, would be a good thing. Though I don’t think the people of India would subscribe to that. Indeed, if you go back even further, his own country, America, was once a part of the British Empire. If he’s that keen on empire, perhaps he thinks that the mass armed rebellion, led by Washington and others, to throw off the yoke of colonial rule, and establish America as an independent state, was a regrettable thing.

This nonsensical statement of his doesn’t tell us anything about history. As a reflection on Britain and its empire, its total codswallop. But it does perhaps tell us a something about the febrile, fevered, hysterical, fictitious world that right-wing extremists and ideologues like Mr Santorium live in.

Doctor Who is supposed to be a Time Lord, with the ability – through the Tardis – to travel in space, or back and forwards in time. He is hundreds of years old. He comes from the distant world of Gallifrey. He has been all around the universe, in different time zones and epochs, in various worlds. He has battled against Daleks, Cyber Men, Ice Warriors, and other assorted villains, megalomaniacs, warlords and mad scientists. He has even crossed words with that fellow, though corrupt, Time Lord, the Master. And yet he’s now played by someone who looks as if he’s just come out of prep school. If succeeding Doctor Who’s’ get any younger, on this progression, they’ll soon be played by kids in short trousers. Matt Smith, the current incarnation of the doctor, is a fine actor; but whether he is right for this particular role, is very debatable.

Doctor Who should be played by someone who looks as though he’s been around the block a few times. Someone with gravitas, and experience. Which is as it was in the past, when it was middle aged, or even elderly actors, who took the role, such as William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton; and John Pertwee, who was, to many fans, the best and most convincing of the doctors.  To use a Jungian analogy; Doctor Who should be an archetypal, Magus figure; a wise old man, or middle aged man, rather like Merlin, with a background and a provenance. Not some young whippersnapper; no matter how talented and promising he might be as an actor.

This is just further evidence of our ubiquitous, and ageist, youth cult. Indeed, even the current embodiment of Sherlock Holmes, on TV – Benedict Cumberbatch, though an excellent and versatile actor – is himself perhaps too young for that part; which was played in the past by more mature figures, more in keeping with the age of the character that Conan Doyle created, such as Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing and Jeremy Brett. So now we have the strange paradox that while people are living longer, familiar fictional characters seem to get younger and more immature with each successive incarnation.

Pakistan has announced the closure of an American air base on their soil, and has blocked, at least temporarily, border crossing points, where American and NATO supplies are transported from Pakistan to the landlocked nation of Afghanistan.  Indeed any lengthy severance of those vital supply conduits would endanger, and even render impossible, the entire Western military mission in Afghanistan. In the event of such a scenario America and its western allies, would be reliant on precarious supply routes through Russia, and the Central Asian Republics. Which might themselves at times be subject to sabotage and terrorist attacks. There has even been the suggestion from the Pakistani government that they might levy a tax on these convoys of supplies, that have to pass through their country to get to Afghanistan.

Drone attacks on Pakistan seem to have become even more intense, under the Obama regime, despite the Nobel Peace Prize which the President recently picked up, than they were under the Bush Junior administration. These attacks, supposedly to target known militants, have killed and injured far more innocent civilians (indeed the number now runs into the thousands); which has only inflamed Pakistani domestic opinion in a more militant, anti-American direction. They are viewed as extra-judicial killings, as well as violations of national sovereignty (indeed you could describe it almost as an undeclared war) – and though they may have taken out a few Jihadists – they have probably succeeded in recruiting even more people to the militants cause. And even the elimination of the chief bogeyman himself, Bin Laden, has had little or no effect on the on-going war in Afghanistan, or the situation in Pakistan. Indeed, through the use of those methods America is losing hearts and minds, and alienating the government of Pakistan. So much so that there are distinct signs that Pakistan, which was an ally of America right through the Cold War years, is slowly slipping out of the American orbit and is now beginning to ally itself with some of the regional powers, the main one of which is of course China. Whether a victory, on the West’s terms, in Afghanistan, is possible, is a very debatable topic. But there is now the distinct probability that America will lose Pakistan as a regional ally, as a consequence of that war.

And of course the recent drone attack that killed twenty four Pakistani soldiers, near the Afghanistan border, has become almost the last straw as far as the Pakistani government, and domestic population, are concerned. And the American refusal to issue a full apology, or give compensation to the families of these killed, has only further served to sour and poison relationships between the two nations.

What also is an irksome factor in the relationship is the failure of America and the West to acknowledge the large number of fatalities and casualties there have been – both of the security forces and the civilian population – in the struggle that Pakistan has waged against the domestic Taliban, and related extremists, particularly to the West of the country, and those areas that adjoin Afghanistan. Indeed they have been on a far greater scale than those suffered by America and its NATO allies, in Afghanistan itself. Indeed a nation that sees itself being attacked by domestic extremists – in part because of its alliance with America – and then witnesses itself being subject to attacks by the America military, because of the activities of those extremists – must begin, at some point, to question the need, use or purpose of that alliance. And especially now that America has cut back on its military subsidies to Pakistan. Just as America lost a previous ally, namely Iran – through backing to the hilt, the Shah, though he was universally hated by the vast majority of the population – they are in danger of losing Pakistan, by the continuance of a war, that to many commentators, seems futile and unwinnable.

The economist E.F. Schumacher wrote a book entitled ‘Small is Beautiful’, which advocated a more human, flexible, smaller scale and localized economic system – that would meet actual needs, and be far less ecologically damaging, than the vast, remote and increasingly centralised economic systems, that we have at present.

In contrast to that hopeful scenario the motto of our modern capitalist system may as well be: ‘Big is Best’.  Indeed this can be borne out by that phrase which became almost ubiquitous following the recent, disastrous banking crash, that some of the cyclopean banking and finance institutions were ‘Too Big to fail.’ Though some economists and commentators, of a more sceptical disposition, thought that they were ‘Too Big to save.’ One can’t help thinking that if commercial organisations are both too big to fail and too big to save, at one and the same time, then perhaps they were just too big to have been created in the first place. Indeed when the fall of one vast financial enterprise can almost wreck the entire world economy, then perhaps that enterprise shouldn’t have existed at all.

There was once a notion, particularly in vogue during the Cold War years, that it was the ‘Big State’ that was the real enemy of, and threat to, initiative, enterprise, innovation and thriving market forces. There may well have been some truth in this, especially when you looked at some of the closed communist countries. But what is all too clear now, especially in the wake of the monumental banking cash, is that untrammelled, unrestrained and unregulated corporate capitalism is now the real enemy of enterprise, initiative and market forces. We are now in the commercial era of the big battalions, not the little platoons.  The corporate monopolies have taken over from the old state monopolies; but they can be, and freqently are just as negative and asphyxiating – particularly where small and medium scale local businesses and enterprises are concerned – than ever were the big state machines.

Following Margaret Thatcher’s deregulation of the Market, and the Demutualisation of the building societies  (the so called Big Bang) we had the term Merger-Mania, to describe the plethora of successful takeover bids, whereby larger companies, especially in the financial sector (though not exclusively there), swallowed up  weaker rivals, to create huge, monolithic companies. With many of the small and regional banks, and building societies, that had been household names for generations, disappearing from the high streets altogether.  This gave greater power and influence to the larger structures that emerged, and to the City of London, though it made the whole system less competitive and healthy than it was before; and with fewer actual choices to the consumer as to where he could put his money.

This was also accompanied by the new ambitious executives that emerged, awarding themselves huge salaries, with lucrative share options and golden handcuffs (and handshakes) thrown in for good measure. As well as a succession of vain glorious and reckless decision making, and botched takeovers, that almost wrecked banks such as RBS; and certainly would have done, but for the unacknowledged generosity of the hard-pressed taxpayers.

And look how the powerful supermarket cartel has virtually stitched up the retail market in the UK, to its own advantage – with virtual price fixing, and a stranglehold over the farming sector. And with the negative, knock on effect of many small shops and businesses, in the streets and centres of towns and cities, having to cope with declining trade, or even close down, in the face of such unfair competition.

Indeed the supermarkets have become so powerful that they could openly break the law, some years ago, by opening on Sundays. Though smaller businesses, had they done that, would have been brought before the courts and prosecuted. Of course, rather than any such thing happening, Parliament hastily passed legislation that allowed commercial trading on Sundays, to the fury of the Lord’s Day Observance Society. And with now, of course, following similar supportive legislation, around the clock, twenty four hour shopping; so that the supermarkets virtually never close. Indeed, in the UK, we have just heard that some supermarkets are hiring Muslim staff so that they can be open on Christmas.

When powerful commercial interests virtually dictate the nature of legislation in a society, you know who really is in control. And it certainly isn’t the ordinary voter.  And of course New Labour was just as amenable and susceptible to the blandishments of the corporate sector – in a mirror image of the Republican-Democrat duopoly in the US – as the Tories. Even to the extent of having a supermarket boss in Tony Blair’s cabinet.

Indeed witness the political, as well as commercial power, of the huge agro-business, Monsanto, which gets virtually everything it wants from the political class, even though it often works against the real interests of farmers and consumers.

When the corporate sector becomes so fat, bloated, powerful and monopolistic (and anti-competitive) – so that, in some cases, it can be both too big to fail and too big to save – it can also become so big and cumbersome, that no one is actually in real control; not even Chairmen and Chief Executives. So that they can become not just too big to save, but too big to control. It’s  small wonder that we have had huge corporate scandals, with widespread corruption and criminal malpractices, at companies like Enron, or that entire financial institutions like Lehman’s, have crashed out of existence.

The huge, intimidating dimensions of the great commercial leviathans  – making them in many ways commercial caricatures of the massive state bureaucracies and departments, so loudly decried by the pro-Corporate lobby – not only makes them anti-competitive, but puts them beyond the scope of effective democratic scrutiny and oversight. On the contrary, their huge commercial power gives them an undue influence over the entire political process, by passing that of the ordinary voter or even the grassroots party activist altogether.

A recent report in the UK has concluded that the Inland Revenue has been so accommodating to big business, that it is now suspected that has much as thirty billion, that should have been paid by that sector in tax revenues to the state, has gone uncollected. While at the same time small and medium sized businesses, which haven’t at all been shown this same spirit of accommodation by the Inland Revenue, have been squeezed, or even gone bankrupt altogether. It seems that it is one law for the superrich, and another one for the rest.

Lord Acton coined the famous quote that: ‘Power tends to corrupt: and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ This maxim it seems is as true for businesses, as for nations; for high flying commercial executives, as it is for over ambition political leaders and despots. Capitalism needs to be brought down to earth, to be democratised, if it, and the people it purportedly serves, are to have a future.  The huge commercial monopolies need to be broken up, into more manageable and accountable units, so that actual competition – and real choices to the consumers – replace the cosy cartels and commercial stitch ups we have at present. Though whether our supine politicians have the courage, independence and imagination to do this, is another matter altogether. Indeed there is every sign that the people have lost faith in the politicians, as they have in the corporate economy. And it’s no small wonder that the political initiative has now gone from parliaments, assemblies and party machines to the streets, squares and plazas of major towns and cities, around the world.

To many critics and commentators, it wasn’t to protect British sovereignty, and the wider interests of the British people, that Cameron dramatically vetoed a deal at the recent EU summit in Brussels – and then walked out of the conference chamber – but to protect the interest of the big bankers, and to placate the right-wing of his own Tory Party. He complained that any attempt by the EU, to regulate the banking system – and in particular, to introduce a Transaction Tax, that would at least require the banks to pay something back for the mess they have made – would have a negative effect on the City of London. Though as President Sarkozy has pointed out, it was precisely the deregulated banking system that landed us in this frightful economic mess, in the first place. Indeed you can see the Euro Crisis, and Sovereign Debt, as being just the latest manifestations of that banking debacle. It is clear that to Cameron and Osborne it as business as usual as far as the banking system is concerned. No lessons have been learned; though it is the ordinary taxpayer who has had to foot the bill, for the follies of an out of control banking sector. There is an old saying that if you don’t learn from errors of the past, you are doomed to repeat them. A banking behemoth that continues, unreformed, as if nothing has happened, could just shore up further disasters in the future. Synthetic outrage, from Cameron, at the stupendous banking blunders that landed the world in such an economic mess – and hollow words of censure and criticism, without effective measures to back them up – are just so much flimflam and kidology. And of course, for all its drama, this gesture, of exercising the veto, only isolates Britain, from the decision-making process in Europe, engenders hostility, and could have negative knock on effects for the nation; seeing how crucial Europe is to us as a trading partner.

Indeed you can see that quixotic gesture, as a cynical publicity stunt on the part of Cameron, to put him in a good light with the right-wing press and the anti-European wing of his own party. And considering that Cameron was a professional PR man before entering politics, it’s not at all a far-fetched scenario.

Aside from his professional PR background, there is also the banking background of Cameron’s family. A letter to the Mail, gave an interesting quote that Cameron made during a speech to a conference of bankers. He said: ‘My great grandfather was a banker, my granddad was a banker, my father was an investment banker. I will never hurt bankers, because banking runs in my blood.’ As the letter writer stated: ‘That says it all.’

Cameron will be the toast of the Mail and the Telegraph for a few weeks or months to come. And he has earned some words of praise from the Euro-sceptic right-wing of the Tory Party. Though if he thinks that he can placate the Tory right by acting in this way, he’s living in a fool’s paradise. The more concessions he makes to them, the higher will be their subsequent demands. They won’t be satisfied with that gesture, on its own. To people like Bill Cash, that is just the first, preliminary step. They want repatriation of powers, from Europe. A referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. And of course their ultimate, indeed their main, objective, is for Britain to pull out of the EU altogether. Something that isn’t at all in our national interests.

The Nineteenth Century American essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, coined the memorable phrase, that: ‘Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.’ That phrase, no doubt directed at contemporary circumstances of his age and time, just about sums up the state of much of the Western world at the present, as we face disastrous, unfolding, economic catastrophes, seemingly beyond the capacity of politicians, technocrats and bankers, to control. We have assertive, strident statements from leaders and ministers, that measures are being taken to deal with the crisis, that are shot to pieces by the next run on the stock exchange, or the disappearance or downsizing of industries. Look at how many crisis summits of EU leaders and finance ministers we have had, to deal with the implosion of the Euro – or the endless meetings between Merkel and Sarkozy, where bold new measures are announced, to shore up that stricken currency – only for the next day’s headlines to totally contradict the bland agreements and proposals that were declared. And in America there is the seemingly continuous standoff between the Republicans and Democrats, on how to deal with their economic travails. Rarely have politicians in the Western world seemed so irrelevant, so helpless, and side-lined, than in today’s globalised economic crisis. Though some more critical commentators might see them as being part of the problem, rather than the solution. Events are in control, and dictating the agenda, while politicians are reduced to mouthing soothing sound bites, anodyne clichés and hollow assurances, to try and calm an increasingly worried, restive and angry populace. We have seen entire governments swept aside, by this economic tsunami, as with Berlusconi – after a lengthy term of office as Prime Minister of Italy – and Papandreou in Greece – to be replaced by faceless, unelected technocrats, hardly anyone had heard about before. Indeed while whole economies are imploding, and entire nations are going bankrupt, even the process of voting governments in and out of power, seems to be of rather shallow consequence, or even inherently absurd, as successive governments and leaders will in all likelihood be as passive and impotent in the face of events, as the leaderships and regimes they replaced. One is sometimes reminded of that gibe about rearranging the deckchairs on the deck of the Titanic. It’s no wonder that we have had riots, demonstrations, occupations and strikes, across the Western World of late, as publics begin to realise the frightful impasse into which politicians and plutocrats have, wittingly or not, led them.

Of course this frightful scenario of doom and gloom isn’t replicated across the entire world. The so called BRICS economies – from Brazil to China – seemed to have weathered these economic storms better than America and the West. Perhaps because they didn’t put too much reliance on ambitious financial whiz kids and empire building banking executives, and instead concentrated on such basic matters as manufacturing, industry, commodities, agriculture and trade. On tangible, quantifiable entities, rather than the enticing mysteries of Futures and Derivatives. They acted as pragmatists rather than ideologues – with the emphasis on practicalities rather than abstract doctrines and esoteric theories – with the fortunate results that they have achieved, in contrast to the dire straits the Western world is now in.

The unregulated free market economy, without adequate oversights, and checks and balances – and particularly in the financial sector – has become a Frankenstein Monster, cut loose and out of control, even on the part of those who created and nurtured it. Indeed, rather like that sinister giant in the painting by Goya, skulking across a dark, brooding landscape, while tiny, terrified humans try to flee out of his way.

No wonder people are increasingly seeing our leaders as hollowed out individuals; not up to the task. As so many charlatans, mountebanks, conmen and poseurs; if not outright puppets and marionettes of the Corporate economy. People who are acting the part of statesmen, without being them. If disillusion with the system goes even further – if the crisis becomes even more critical, with no viable solution in sight – then the rot will really set in. And we have seen, in the Arab World, what actually happens to leaders and regimes that lose all popular support and moral legitimacy.

It used to be said by some Tory politicians and right leaning newspapers, during the Cold War years, that there was a Kremlin lobby in the Labour Party, willing to do the bidding of Moscow. Seeing that it was the Labour Party that gave the go ahead, during the austerity and rationing of the immediate Post War years,  for our independent nuclear deterrent, and even upgraded it during the Callaghan administration – and that it has been said by some that the redoubtable Labour Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevan, practically created NATO, or at least had a large hand in its formation – it has always seemed to be a fantastical and ludicrous claim to me, that flew in the face of reality. We even participated, under the Post War Labour Government, in the Korean War, against the Communist forces. That was hardly being a patsy of the Kremlin. Of course, these wild allegations made a useful, if disingenuous propaganda line, to scare the electorate with, by the Tory Party spin merchants of the time. And the activities of colourful mavericks like Tony Benn, were eagerly highlighted, particularly by the tabloid press, as if they were indicative of the party as a whole. Though as the saying goes, why let the facts get in the way of a good story. What is evidently clear, however, is that there has been a strong and ongoing Pentagon lobby in British politics, over the years, not just in the Tory Party, but in the Labour Party as well, which has had a real, and not just apparent, impact on our politics. Indeed with New Labour the so called Special  Relationship with the United States, and the willingness to go where ever the White House and State Department wanted us to go (even if we ended up in Basra and Helmand Province), served as a crucial plank, one might say the central determinant, of their foreign policy.

       We have already heard, following the resignation of our former Defence Minister, Liam Fox, that his mysterious unofficial adviser and best mate, Mr Werrity, was being funded by all kinds of shady and sinister Neocon groups, and pro-Zionist organisations, with their own political agendas, and perhaps in an attempt to gain even further influence over British Defence and Foreign Policy.

       An article in the Mail on November the third claimed Britain was already drawing up plans to militarily participate in offensive operations against Iran, should the Americans decide on such a course. If this is true then it shows that Cameron really is the ‘heir to Blair’, and that we have learned absolutely nothing from our previous, disastrous military interventions alongside America, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that indeed, in military matters, we can no longer be considered as an independent nation, but just a satellite state. A hired gun that can be called on at any time it is convenient.

       There has been the recent report by the Atomic Energy Commission that Iran could start to build a nuclear bomb. Though as a former CIA officer, Phillip Giraldi, has recently said on RT, the report is extremely vague and unspecific, full of ifs and maybes, and reliant on long range photographs, and second hand reports  from other sources, that he suggests could be supplied by America and Israel, in order to go along with their own aggressive agenda. Indeed, when some international report is music to the ears of Washington  and the Israeli government, one should perhaps be profoundly sceptical of it. Though of course, we have been here before. Recall all the solemn claims that were made, on the floor of the United Nations, by Colin Powell, and made elsewhere by other figures in the Bush and Blair administrations, that Saddam Hussein had possession of weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate and dire threat to the West. Long range photos were produced that were claimed to conclusively reveal his weapons labs and bases. There was talk of unimpeachable intelligence sources, to back all this up. It was said to be an incontrovertible and watertight case. In the words of the CIA Boss, at the time, it was a ‘slam-dunk case.’ But it was all a pack of outrageous lies and porkies; a cynical and cold blooded exercise in news manipulation, indeed news manufacture, to try and soften up domestic populations for the Iraq War and occupation. It was the use of the ‘Big Lie’, to facilitate desired political and military objectives. The so called Weapons of Mass Destruction were non-existent entities, fantastical mirages in the desert – conjured into existence by the political spin machines – but the aggressive intentions of the belligerent parties, who wanted war, come hell or high water, were all too real and apparent.

       Some years ago, prior to the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran, a more moderate government in Tehran (by the standards of that nation) sought to open a rapprochement and understanding with the Bush Junior regime; but that olive branch was rejected out of hand by Bush and the rightwing hawks in his government. A stupid, self defeating gesture that closed off a positive diplomatic option and only strengthened the hands of the radicals and fundamentalists in Iran. The Bush Junior regime, a government where ideological fictions were always more important than facts on the ground, had already fixed up Iran as one of the so called ‘Axis of Evil’, along with Iraq and North Korea. And nothing was going to alter that predetermined scenario. Indeed the Iranian government has stated that it wants neighbouring Russia to reprocess all the waste from its nuclear industry, which would in effect take away the very material that would need to be utilised to manufacture nuclear armaments in the first place. Yet despite all this, governents, in America and elsewhere in the West – and not just rightwing governments, but so called leftist ones as well – keep banging on about the alleged Iranian nuclear threat. At the very same time, of course, as ignoring, and thus in effect condoning, the growing stockpiles of nuclear armaments actually possessed by Israel. What we have is an exercise in bad faith and disinformation. A campaign of propaganda to give some spurious exuse or rationale for future potential wars in that region. Something that a cash strapped and economically imploding world needs like a hole in the head.

       During a period of economic travail – with restive and unhappy populations, with protests on the streets, and huge disillusionment with the existing systems – it might be a cynical temptation for any government, whether it be an actual dictatorship or a so called democracy, to whip up scares and alarms and launch military adventures overseas, to try and deflect their peoples’ minds from pressing domestic problems, and the frightful failure of their social and economic policies.

       I would guess that if you asked most ordinary people in the United States, or Western Europe, what they thought the main priorities of their nations should be, the prospect of bombing, or making War on Iran, wouldn’t even appear at the very bottom of their list of priorities. So that if we ever do, God forbid, have some kind of military conflict with Iran, it will be a politicians’ war, not a peoples war. Indeed it would be an ideological war, just as Bush Junior’s disastrous regime-change exercise in Iraq was.

       President Medvedev has said that an attack on Iran, by Israel, or the West, would be a catastrophic disaster for the region, and for the rest of the planet, with dangerous, and unforeseen consequences, that may be easy to unleash but might prove all too difficult, if nigh impossible, to control.

       Israel, and the hawkish Netanyahu government, have been pressing for a pre-emptive attack against Iran. Though such an attack would only further isolate Israel, and endanger its security, in that increasingly volatile part of the world, as well as giving a boost to terrorist forces and anti-Western sentiments in the Islamic world. 

       After the horrendous disaster of the Iraq war – while conflict in Afghanistan is still on going after all these years, with mounting deaths and injuries; and while we are seeing Sharia Law being introduced into post-Gaddafi Libya, and Al Qeada flags raised above public buildings – to launch a fourth war in such a combustible and unstable part of the world would be stark raving bonkers. And those who carried such a scenario out should be considered as war criminals and the enemies of world peace.

There is something like a revolutionary upsurge in America, with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, also known as the Ninety Nine Percenters, being replicated in cities and states across America, and indeed in other cities and nations around the world. But there are also signs that the counter-revolution has started. The big, established corporations, the great media machines, and the political elites, aren’t going to look on with complacent indifference as this tidal wave of protest and legitimate anger grows across the nation. They’re going to fight back, using the resources at their disposal, to defend their privileged positions. Already commentators on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News network, and pundits on other media networks and papers, are seeking to rubbish, malign and badmouth the protestors. They’ve been dismissed as ideological, leftist activists, and rentacrowd militants, with their own narrow, doctrinaire agendas. Indeed one Republican candidate for the forthcoming Presidential election has already branded them as anti-American, for daring to challenge the bastions of corporate power. Cleary their strategy is to discredit the cause by maligning the people who advocate it. An old, tried and tested, political dodge, used by people to try to avoid an open political debate, where genuine issues of public concern can be discussed. If you arbitrarily dismiss people beforehand as unreasonable, extremist, or even anti-American, then you don’t have to bother even debating with them or answering their actual arguments.

     And it isn’t just a war of words that is now going on. In some parts of America the police have used pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, stun grenades and smoke bombs, to try and get the protestors off the streets. Indeed in one police action, in Oakland, an Iraqi War veteran was seriously injured, and is now under medical treatment. Despite all that the protest campaigners have been good humoured, organised and peaceful. In some cases they’ve even improvised kitchens to cook meals to distribute to their compatriots. The protests have been non-violent, you might even say, Gandhian in character. Just as they have avoided using inflammatory and provocative language. It hasn’t been motivated, contrary to the claims of critics, by some narrow ideological agenda. So those who are pinning labels on it are making it up. Just as the people involved in it are drawn from all classes and backgrounds. They want a more fair, just and open society, than the one they have now. Perhaps one more in line with the original principles of the American Republic, than the welfare state for the corporate sector that exists at present.

     Yet Fox News in particular, which is going in for this current bout of character assassination, was the same media network that elevated the Tea Party Movement – with its scare tactics, emotional blackmail, aggressive rhetoric, and extreme rightwing (and pro-Corporate) agenda – as some mission of national salvation; with its studios readily available for their members, and sympathisers, to pump out their scarifying propaganda. Though of course Fox News – like the mega-banks and the other powerful, commercial interest groups – is part of the very Corporatocracy, or Oligopoly, that the protestors are campaigning against. The one percent at the top that has really benefited from the system. Indeed since the time of Reaganonics it has been a beano for the fat cats at the expense of the great mass of the populace. The bonfire of regulations that followed, in practice disconnected the  economic system from effective political and social oversight, created a huge democratic deficit in society, and issued in the world of crony capitalism and rigged markets that we have today.

     However this large and growing protest movement pans out – and no one can predict the future, in such fluid and turbulent times as we are living through – this extraordinary and dynamic, popular movement, may, hopefully, widen the all too narrow parameters of the political debate in America, so that political life may come to reflect more fully the wider social and economic life of the nation, and its myriad urgent needs and requirements, rather than just working in the interests of the banks, corporations, special interests groups, the military-industrial complex, and the lobbyists. Then perhaps what goes on inside the Washington Beltway might reflect what goes on outside it.