In all honesty, hand on heart, do you seriously believe the main motivations of the US administration behind the occupation of Iraq were to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, overthrow a tyrant, combat terrorism or spread democracy? On these counts your mission has failed dismally. The world is still plagued by WMDs, terrorism and state repression. Gross violations of human rights and economic misery are still rife in Iraq. More important the so-called Coalition's notion of democracy is demonstrably an utter sham. Only compliant governments will be tolerated.
Can you seriously dismiss voluminous empirical evidence linking US foreign policy to direct or indirect control of the world's fossil fuel resources?
The timing of the US-led invasion of Iraq coincided with the key Peak Oil event. From now on oil will become scarcer. If only the US and UK governments had invested 120 billion US dollars in the development of renewable forms of energy and a transition to a more sustainable world with a much lower level of material consumption, you might have saved millions of lives.
Instead your verbal actions and utter mendacity have merely empowered a voracious global elite. As snippets of the truth emerge amid a fog of lies and deceit from the corporate and state media, your place in history will be set alongside the new century's greatest war criminals. By harking on about Saddam Hussein's crimes, you vainly hope we will forget yours. The fact remains that not only did Saddam Hussein enter politics as a CIA asset, not only did your corporate backers arm his regime back in the 1980s, but without the spectre of Saddam (as you like to call him), the invasion of Iraq could never have been justified. Let us remember that a permanent US-led occupation of the Middle East has long been the end game.
"The modern plague of overpopulation is solvable by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not the sufficient knowledge of the solution, but the universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem for billions of people who are its victims."Martin Luther King quoyte on population
Key Concepts
Consumption per capita:
(Max. sustainable total consumption / population) x efficiency factor
Carrying Capacity:
(Max. sustainable total consumption / consumption per capita) / maldistribution factor.
Max. sustainable population level
Tthe number of human being planet earth can support. The carrying capacity is reached when a sizable proportion of the population falls below the minimum requirements for food, water and shelter. Therefore more equitable distribution raises the carrying capacity.
Max. sustainable total consumption
Max. sustainable depletion rate of non-renewable resources + Max. sustainable regeneration rate of renewable resources
Efficiency factor
This accounts for the greater per capita availability of resources to the poorest through better and more equitable distribution, technological advancements and greater reliance on renewable energy and food supplies.
Maldistribution factor
This accounts for low carrying capacity as maldistribution of resources causes many of the poorest to fall below minimum sustenance levels (i.e. starve or die of easily curable diseases associated with poverty and crowded living conditions) long before theoretical mean levels of food and drinking water per capita falls below the minimum daily intake.
Environmental sustainability
Our ability to regenerate or to recycle resources essential for sustaining our aggregate rate of consumption over several generations without destabilising planet's earth fine environmental balance, on which agriculture depends.
The single biggest issue facing humanity is the availability, control and distribution of vital resources. All other issues pale into insignificance for the 5 billion individuals who do not live in one of the prosperous enclaves of the consumerist world. Even many of the 1 billion citizens of the wealthy world struggle to make ends meet in an interminable rat race. Goods considered luxuries in some of the poor regions such as cars, mobile phones, refrigerators etc. are viewed as necessities by most workers in Western Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia. Yet many anti-capitalists of the anarchist, ecologist and socialist traditions choose to downplay the importance of demographics, as overpopulation inevitably heralds an era of depopulation either by natural or planned means and would inevitably restrict reproductive and migratory freedoms.
Key Issues:
Availability of potable water
Availability of fossil fuels essential for transport, distribuition and high-yield farming
Availability of raw materials for machinery, vehicles, transport infrastructure, renewable power plants etc.
Rate of depletion of fertile soil due to high-yield farming
Capacity of technology to extend natural limitations
Various factors point towards a human overload. Little arable land is left unfarmed, little hospitable land is untouched, few accessible resources are untapped, other species are increasingly subservient to the human economy and their distribution and migratory patterns have been disrupted. Four to five decades of mass automobile use combined with rising demand for raw materials has led to recent predictions of manmade global warming. Even the great battle against disease has witnessed reversals as bacteriologists have shown how the overuse of antibiotics not only defeats the purpose of the drugs, but encourages virulent drug-resistant strains that may pose a greater risk to human health than older strains prevalent before the advent of antibacterial medications.
However, many of the same researchers depend on direct or indirect grants from multinationals, and are reluctant to challenge the profit motive head-on. In a world where human need and long term environmental planning were prioritised the pros, cons and long-term effects of antibiotics could be weighed rationally.
Antibiotics would be prescribed in life-threatening situations and in cases where their use would significantly reduce pain or limit the after-effects of debilitating bacterial diseases. They would not be prescribed for any viral diseases or transient bacterial diseases that the body's immune system could deal with. However, today while antibiotics may save millions of children who die of diseases such as Loma in many poor hot regions, their overuse or incorrect administration is triggering new drug resistant strands that only infect regular antibiotic users, but anyone who comes into contact with them. Wealthy medicine addicts may have other options, such as expensive new antibiotics and gene-therapy in a clinically clean environment. However, most human targets of superbugs have few such options available, able to afford only the cheap mass-produced drugs least likely to be efficacious against new virulent strains. Tuberculosis, malaria and cholera are back with a vengeance, as the West blames increased mortality solely on HIV.
Many economists such as Lester Thurrow an Michel Chossudovksy have highlighted the link between growing poverty, IMF and World Bank policies, the ever-expanding hegemony of transnational corporations and the withering self-sufficiency of most countries. However, when presented with data on the growing impact of 6 billion human beings on the world's environment, the radical anti-capitalist left views distribution as the only problem. Many internally deny the potential for a demographic crash for three other psychological and ethical reasons.
First the notion of overpopulation implies many people are superfluous and a depopulation program would inevitably affect the weakest first.
Second an unsustainable demographic burden implies we should stop migration to high-consumption areas, thereby condemning would-be economic migrants toa life of poverty in their homelands.
Third Marx claimed technological advances under capitalism will raise the earth's carrying capacity to meet human needs and as Malthus was a reactionary opposed to wealth redistribution his ideas will set back the struggle for a more equal society. Ironically as we shall see below the opposite may be true.
Let us assume an ideal world would allow all individuals to achieve their full potential, enjoy a prosperous and stable standard of living, practice a rewarding profession, lead a pleasant private life, participate in grassroots democracy whether at work, in the community or at a higher level, feel free of irrational prejudices, tolerate diverse lifestyles and have unhindered access to all information and views about society and science. The nearest approximation to such a utopia is probably found in upper middle class enclaves of North America and Western Europe, residential areas inhabited by high-income and high-consumption professionals actively involved in the local community. However, the social problems caused by our undeniable inequality often lead residents' associations to be bastions of reactionary thought when it comes to crime and antisocial behaviour associated with the lower classes. If everyone enjoyed the same high living standards, cultural diversity would be so much more tolerable. Lovers of open-air parties could move to communities where such practices were not only tolerated but enjoyed by most inhabitants. Lovers of quiet suburban life could move to quiet suburban neighbourhoods where everyone understood the importance of privacy.
How can we achieve such a world for everybody? i.e. How can we defeat poverty, ensure long-term prosperity for all and thus eliminate the root cause of hatred and wars? The one beautifully obvious answer is simply dismissed as heretic fantasy. But first let us consider one main objection to the solution. Are most people in the developing world so poor because we depend on their cheap labour, i.e. do 1 billion mass-consumers depend on 5 billion low-wage workers? If we're talking about Indonesian workers in a Nike factory, this statement is certainly true. Despite automation and computerisation, many goods are much cheaper because brand name companies can outsource from remote suppliers in low-wage economies. However, sadly poverty sinks to much lower levels than Nike workers earning $50 a month. Multinationals have no use whatsoever for severely malnourished Indian teenagers who are so weak they cannot operate machines and cannot be easily trained for other jobs. Severe malnutrition in early childhood condemns victims either to early death or a life of physical and mental disability, and the limited resources of many third world countries rule out any treatment that enables the disabled to live a partially rewarding life in more affluent countries. The bleak truth is most people in the world's poorest countries do not work at all or struggle to survive on primitive subsistence farming despite expanding deserts, polluted rivers, degraded soil and shrinking available arable land per person due to a rising population. What's more many third world countries fail to produce the staple foods their people have long relied on and can ill afford to import from food exporters. Through China and India grow and produce masses of food, it is almost exclusively for domestic consumption. Europe is nearly self-sufficient but heavily overfarmed. The only real bread-baskets with massive surpluses are the US, The Canadian Prairies and Australia. Zambia, sparsely populated by European standards, imports increasing amounts of foods from South Africa, so Zambians pay more to eat older fruit.
Another factor many have ignored is that technology is developing at such a fast rate that unskilled or even many semi-skilled manufacturing jobs will simply vanish. A fully automated toy factory with a handful of technicians may need more investment than an overcrowded sweatshop, but is entirely strike-proof, more efficient, more reliable and can be located closer to the target market.
The answer is of course planned depopulation. The fiercest advocates of this radical solution claim it's better than forced or natural depopulation. Why should libertarians and Marxists alike disagree with this proposition? Enforcing it would mean curtailing individual freedoms, libertarians and religious fanatics can both condemn forced sterilisation campaigns. Smallgroups of overpopulation activists concentrated in the United States, Canadaand Australia (i.e. the very countries least effected by the world's economicand environmental woes) such ZPG, NPG and the Sierra Club advocate simplisticsolutions like one child per family. The problem is they also advocate tougher immigration controls on the basis that new immigrants from low-consumption countries would consume more in the United States than back home. There is some truth in that, but it doesn't solve any of the immediate problems that afflict millionsof poor third world citizens. In its most reactionary form the depopulation lobby blames the victims - it's their fault for having too many kids.
Even a cursory knowledge of recent demographic history can dispel the myth that our environmental woes are caused by African overpopulation, though this situation would soon change if all Africans consumed as much as North Americans. Europe's population grew rapidly in 18th and 19th centuries, North America's skyrocketed in the same period. The original 13 states totalled just 3.9 million inhabitants in 1792. Just consider the British Isles.
The British ruling class needed a sizeable core of cultural Anglo-Saxons not only to man their industries and but to populate their colonies.
However, Europe's rising population was matched not only by increasing agricultural yields and industrialisation, but also by greater exploitation of colonial resources and eased by emigration. The rest of the world has been playing catch-up ever since, but with no new territories to conquer and exploit.
Asia's population grew rapidly from the turn of the 20th century,but has recently slowed significantly. China adopted its famous one-child policy, though it never applied to members of ethnic minorities. While India's birthrate has slowed, its infant mortality rate is still very high, poverty and chronic malnutrition rampant, but is still projected to top 1.2 billion by 2020 while farming yields per capita have actually started to decline. On the face of it, most of Africa is not overpopulated at all, 650 million inhabit an area nearly ten times larger than India with 1 billion citizens. If Africans had pioneered the era of industrialisation and colonialism, it could be the world's richest continent with immense natural resources, but if we exclude inhospitable deserts, semi-arid grasslands and mountains, the potentially arable area, even harnessing the most advanced technology, is much smaller. Outside North Africa, South Africa and Kenya very few Africans produce cheap goods for consumption in high-income countries, though African mineral and fossil resources are essential for the global economy, i.e. big business needs raw materials rather than human resources, except for a few travel guides and mineworkers. With widespread unemployment, a mass migration to the cities and dwindling traditional agriculture, hundreds of millions of Africans are superfluous to the globalised economy, too poor to consume or be retrained and lacking the infrastructure that attracts multinationals.
There are some anomalies. Zimbabwe has a plethora of articulate English-speaking high school graduates with requisite writing and typing skills who could easily be trained to work in call centres. £4 an hour may seem peanuts in British terms, but even a quarter of that rate would suit many Africans fine.
A little training and experience could soon help new Zimbabwean customer service managers cope with the incompatible British accents. However, not only in Zimbabwean telecommunications infrastructure appalling with standard calls to the UK costing 70p per minute, but the British call centre boom may itself be short-lived as technology progresses. Likewise some of the brightest programmers live in India.
Many software developers outsource the nitty gritty of code writing to third world programmers working for a fraction of wealthy world rates, but these programmers are a drop in an ocean of abject poverty. More Indians starve each day than receive pay checks from software firms every month.
Year
0 AD
1500
1750
1825
1900
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
Approx. Population in Millions
300
500
750
1000
1500
2500
3000
4000
4700
5300
6000
The notion of carrying capacity is inherently unfair in a consumerist world. The more we consume, the fewer people our environment can sustain. As wealth is distributed so unevenly, in its starkest terms that means the more the rich consume, the fewer poor people are likely to survive.
Before the industrial revolution Britain's carrying capacity was around 5 to 8 million. Otherwise the population would have naturally increased to fill the gap. One of the greatest myths of modern history is the idea Europeans discovered relatively underpopulated lands in the Americas and Australasia.
The area of North America currently occupied by the US and Canada could have easily accommodated 15-30 million Native Americans with the technology available to them before the European invasion. It is also wrongly assumed that the cultural and technological influence of a community is relative to their initial population.
Had the English Royal family not sent Italian navigator Cabot to claim a chunk of North America for the crown and had the industrial revolution started on mainland Europe, which it nearly did, the British Isles might well have played a very peripheral role in the world's subsequent cultural development. In 1750 mainland Britain was home to barely 7-8 million, less than 1% of the world population and English was spoken by only 6-7 million in various dialects. French, Italian, German and Spanish all had more native speakers at the time and arguably a richer literature. Latin and French were the main lingua francas. 250 years later around 380 million speak English as a first language, around 400 million more speak it proficiently as a second language and probably another 1200 million have learned school English to varying degrees of success (We should be very sceptical about statistics for non-native English speakers as proficiency is very hard to quantify, but that still leaves 4 billion with no knowledge at all of English).
From a collection of Anglo-Saxon dialects that had only just gained recognition as the official language of administration, English evolved into the de facto global tongue with few apparent rivals except on a regional level. Even standard Putonghua Chinese with over twice as many native speakers poses little immediate threat. Indeed we may liken the role of English today in much of Asia and Africa with the role of Norman French in England between 1066 and 1400, for it is viewed as the vehicle of technological progress. However, the speed of technological change and increasing interconnectivity of the global economy poses the greatest threat ever to cultural diversity.
Let's face it mass immigration to the wealthy regions of the world will not solve the world's demographic and environmental problems. However, calls to isolate Fortress Europe and Fortress North America from the outside world will backfire or require even tougher border controls and the denial of basic human rights to millions. We cannot exploit the resources of the whole world and only allow 1/6 to indulge in hedonism. On the one hand it makes little sense to overburden high-consumption regions and encourage a brain drain, on the other merely erecting walls around consumerist paradises will create a global apartheid in the rest of the world, while transnational corporations retain control of key resources in the developing world. However, immigration may be debated, because big business itself is divided
There are few better examples of governmental duplicity than the UK. Until Indian Independence in 1947 the British Empire covered 1/4 of the world's population. How many actually migrated to these shores? 1%, 2%, 3% maybe? No, just over 3 million, i.e. 0.5% of the 600 million plus inhabitants of the British Empire in 1947 and an even lower percentage of these countries' populations in the years of greatest immigration. Natural growth also means fewer than 3 million immigrated. More important the first immigrants were positively encouraged through advertising campaigns in the West Indies to fill low-wage jobs that native Britons no longer wanted. Despite low unemployment throughout the 1950s racism was rife and in 1960s the Labour government responded to growing racial tension by sidelining proponents of repatriation such as Enoch Powel and tightening immigration controls. However, there is a big dilemma as the powers that be are highly unlikely to redress the growing imbalance between the opulent and impoverished worlds. The problem is not just the demographic burden on the target countries, but the socio-economic instability that masses of poor immigrants would bring. The British establishment is well aware of these facts, but poses on the international stage as the champion of a tolerant multiethnic world in which new immigrants are welcomed with open arms. British Foreign policy has for three decades been to export emigration from its former colonies, first to Australia, Canada and the US, but more recently to mainland Europe. Britain and France absorbed large waves of immigration in the 1950s, 60s and early 70s,but over the last 20 years Germany and Austria have accommodated a higher percentage of first and second generation immigrants and Italy and Spain are quickly catching up. As the UK closed the floodgates in the 1980s and 90s, the migration burden shifted. Recent suggestions that the UK liberalise its immigration laws to allow more highly educated immigrants to make up for the shortage of British engineers, exemplify the real issue. The problem, as the government sees it, is not immigration per se, but poor immigrants. Since the late 1990s, immigration numbers have steadily increased with rising unemployment in Eastern Europe, civil wars raging in many corners of the globe and a shortage of skilled workers in the building, catering and care sectors in the South East of England. This trend has further exacerbated the housing crisis and alienated a large section of the native working class, whether of traditional Anglo-Saxon or Celtic stock or more recent Afro-Caribbean descent.
Some analysts talk of fortress Europe and Fortress America, while others talk of the globalisation of poverty - a future of wealthy enclaves intermingled with lower class districts and shanty towns. Post-apartheid South Africa epitomises this reality, but at what price? Wealthy families inhabit luxurious bungalows surrounded by 4 metre high walls, electric fences and rapid armed response, and drive their children to exclusive schools inaccessible to low and middle income families. Every niche of wealth represents a prosperous region with strict border controls, the only difference is proximity to unaided abject poverty. In today's globalised world the real distinctions are no longer white versus black, developed world versus developing world, but rich versus poor. Border controls merely afford greater security for the middle classes, while the upper echelons of the business class can always afford secluded residences.
As a result we will see a diversification in the distribution and density of the moneyed classes. Some regions will have tough border controls and some degree of social cohesion, i.e. a limited social safety net, education and health services available to all etc., while others will have laxer border controls, but limited government intervention to offset socio-economic imbalances. Britain is likely to retain some of the toughest immigration controls, other European countries will follow, but are less able to stem the tide as much of Eastern Europe evolves into a third world economy. Unable to challenge corporate power, the left has little choice but to weigh the social consequences of accommodating more economic migrants and the human consequences of denying the desperately poor masses the right to emigrate. In true duplicitous British style the onus will be on other countries to accept more immigrants. Over the last decade Austria, with a mere 7.7 million citizens, has taken on 1 million immigrants. How would the UK have coped with 7.5 million new immigrants in the 1950s? Austrian politicians wishing to emulate British immigration controls are branded Neo-Nazis by the Anglo-Saxon press, i.e. do as we advise not as we do!
In an ideal world people would not need to travel far and wide to ensure themselves a decent lifestyle, but some, probably a tiny minority, will always benefit not only themselves but the new community they adopt by migrating, however, such migration would be balanced and only be overtly unidirectional if environmental and technological changes allow it.
We take our consumerist lives for granted. A public relations executive earning 60K per annum doesn't stop to ponder the fact that she has never actually produced anything before she drives her 4WD off-roader to the supermarket to splash out on goodies. Instead we might consider who pays PR execs, account managers, lawyers specialised in corporate law and other seemingly superfluous tertiary sector workers? Why is one PR officer in the UK worth a hundred shop-floor workers in Indonesia? The answer is simple: to maintain not only the market share of a given company, but to secure corporate power.
In the unlikely hypothesis that a benign superpower imposed strict sanctions on the UK. We would need to change our diet probably with rations (tea, coffee, wine, citrus fruits, rice, olive oil etc. would be in very short supply) and rely on increasingly outdated equipment no longer manufactured in the UK, before oil from the North Sea runs out within 10 years and gas within 30 years. Our whole economy reliant on petroleum-based agriculture, transportation and power generation would grind to a halt. How many wind turbines would we need to build to replace the generating output of all fossil-fuel thermal power plants? Would we have the resources to make so many wind turbines? Where would we get the silicon needed to make solar panels and the masses of concrete, steel and plastic to build tidal power stations? How would a generation of Britons dependent on the service sector adapt to mundane tasks like farming and manufacturing essential goods?
For a foretaste of what the world could be like go to oil-rich Iraq, where basic infrastructure such as water pipelines has been bombed and strict sanctions imposed, in just 10 years over 500,000 children have died of otherwise easily curable diseases. Just imagine the consequences of sanctions against Zimbabwe, not the fictitious sanctions allegedly imposed during Ian Smith's rule between 1964 and 79 when the country was still called Rhodesia, the sanctions currently proposed by the US Zimbabwe bill. A country 1 1/2 times larger than the UK with a 11 million inhabitants and plenty of prime farming land could be reduced to a shadow of its former self, as wealthy white farmers leave, oil prices sore, new technology and investment fail to arrive and soil erosion spreads. More shockingly the US Census Bureau has already revised its forecast for Zimbabwe's 2050 population to 9.2 million, i.e. a decrease in a country where 50% of the population are under 15 means a very high death rate.
Can higher death rates caused by HIV/AIDS and other renascent diseases like malaria and tuberculosis explain such a significant drop? Do they know something we don't?
The increased efficiency of the globalised economy and our reliance of advanced technology also raises our dependence on transnational corporations and/or foreign governments. Freedom has always been a relative concept. Does it mean the freedom to partake in love fests on pristine beaches?
The freedom to indulge in narcotics? The freedom to drive Jaguar E-types onsemideserted 8-lane highways? The freedom to carry a gun? The freedom to walk the streets safe at night? The freedom to enjoy unpolluted tranquillity? The freedom to speak one's mind? The freedom to enjoy unprejudiced friendliness in a socially cohesive community? The freedom to watch Hollywood movies replete with gratuitous violence? The freedom to a local cultural identity and minority language rights? The freedom to access dissident views on the Internet? The freedom to enjoy a childhood free of commercialised sex? Inevitably freedoms conflict. Local democracy and globalised interdependence conflict, although you'd never believe that from the rhetoric of many politicians.
Assuming all other factors are equal: the more people the more we depend on technology controlled by transnational corporation and international trade and the less any given region or even countries the size of Britain have any independence at all.
Higher aggregate consumption:
Greater adverse effects on our environment and more dependence of advanced technology to solve short-term problems
Lower aggregate consumption:
Smaller adverse effects on our environment and longer-lasting sustainability
Bigger total population:
Higher demands on our environment relative to aggregate consumption
Smaller total population:
Lower demands on our environment relative toaggregate consumption
Greater sustainable consumption per capita
More arable and hospitable land per capita
Less reliance on large organisations for distribution of essential food and water supplies
Organisations can be held more accountable as local communities are more self-sufficient
Individuals can enjoy greater personal freedoms without restricting the freedoms or fundamental rights of others
Forced Depopulation Theories
One of the most potent arguments used against any conspiracy theory is to dismiss it as such. We should at least distinguish those based on irrational prejudices or religious conviction from those based on empirical evidence. The mendacity of politicians, corporate executives and military chiefs can lead us to some startling conclusions. If the CIA is behind narcotraffic in much of the world, is this not a case of planned populationcontrol? Why did Britain not only fight for free opium trade, while encouraging its consumption among the Chinese fully aware of its addictiveness?
Much of this site exposes the agenda of globalisers as control freaks intent on managing all resources and controlling all governments in an interdependent world and thereby reducing democracy to plebiscites over remote bureaucrats. Any humane alternative to the current world order can only build on solidarity with other peoples, gain inspiration from reciprocal cultural exchange and seek to redress the imbalances created by greedy colonialism.
A strain of conservative thought sees the world run by a shadow government, the Bilderbergers, with their own agenda to wrest control from national societies. Most followers of this sect tend to be deeply religious, Catholic and Protestant, but also some adherents of other creeds. Unsurprisingly they oppose abortion, contraception, homosexuality and extramarital sex because sexual intercourse evolved solely for procreation. Divine nature wants us to go forth and muliply with god-fearing offspring, while governments want to stop you having more kids. Overpopulation is, so they say, a myth perpetrated by the liberal intelligentsia. How do we explain growing poverty and the emergence of new drug resistant strains of infection diseases? Of course, it's all a plot by the New World Order to reduce the excess population and promote hedonistic consumerism.
At least this theory recognises the tangible problem. Others, chiefly journalists for establishment media outlets, dismiss the problem. The demographic growth rate is slowing and new technologies will help us increase the earth's carrying capacity, so we can all enjoy an environmentally friendly high standard of living.
Indeed we have already faced the stark alternative of genetically modified organisms or mass starvation, that's right accusing opponents and sceptics of profit-driven farming yield boosting techniques of being Luddites at best and mass murderers at worst. Some interesting population lobbies are countering scientific concerns about our growing impact on our environment, Marxists join ranks with free-marketers and Papists. Papists oppose population control because contraception and abortion are against their religion and they favour large families of faithful worshippers.
Free-marketers such as the CATO Institute oppose such measures because they limit freedom of choice. Marxists usually favour contraception and women's right to choose on abortion, but oppose neo-Malthusian analysis. They believe maldistribution and exploitation alone explain poverty, radical depopulation measures are inevitably reactionary and communism can guarantee plenty for all. However, we have conflicting models of communism. Is it a world government run by democratic centralism for the benefit of the masses or is it a commune run by all its members for their long-term survival and prosperity? The first vision leads inevitably to a state apparatus that seeks not only to control resources and technology, but also the populace as a whole. Dissenters are ritually accused of disrupting the established order and jeopardising the wellbeing of all. The power structure needed to manage a world-wide command economy does not actually differ very radically from corporatism.
If we had relied strictly on Adam Smith's vision of free trade, the world would be a very different place. Adam Smith would have allowed population to reach its ideal level within commercial and environmental constraints. The history of capitalism has shown that upholders of free trade tend to be market leaders, while protectionists are merely advocating the same tactics that enabled wealthy nations and powerful corporations to amass vast fortunes. A consistent "free-market" libertarian would have opposed colonialism, which grew from mercantilism, and all imperialist wars. If the British wanted Transvaal gold, they could have merely offered their technical expertise to local entrepreneurs and buy it at market value. Instead they fought two brutal wars against the Boer Republics, with hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. If the only justification is the alleged racism of the Boers, why did the British not treat black mineworkers as equals and let them prosper from the mineral treasure chest? No prizes for answering this question, the native population was treated as pawns in a game with the sole purpose of profit. Had Buddhist monks inhabited the area and refused to relinquish their territory, Lord Kitchener and Cecil Rhodes would have fought them too. Would Anglo-American capitalism be so dominant today, if the British had not had such a large empire and the United States had not pursued protectionist trade policies with high import tariffs and antidumping laws for so long?
19th century imperialism laid the foundations for modern globalism and let the world population rise six fold and aggregate consumption many times more. To maximise efficiency, we have had to renege on economic independence.
If we lack the self-determination to control the gathering, cultivation, production, distribution of vital resources in our own territory democracy is utterly meaningless.
First we have to assume no alternative economic system is likely to replace corporatism or the fusion of vested big business and superpower interests.
Production will continue to serve the profitability of transnational corporations and consumption and rely increasingly on surplus value generated by virtual products.. Information technology and automation will lower the demand for cheap unskilled labour in low-wage economies with a relative increase in the demand for skilled staff. Fewer bucks are spent on factory floor workers, and more on design, advertising, marketing, financial services etc. These jobs are inevitably assigned mainly to people educated and living in high-wage consumerist regions.
The growth rate of aggregate consumption has already begun to wane and oil extraction will peak in 2005, leading to a decrease in global consumption. While this may seem good news to environmentalists, the bad news is the wealthiest 12th of the world's population (the middle classes in prosperous countries and a few enclaves dotted around the globe, around 500 million, but excluding the lower working classes and underclasses) may actually consume more, while poverty spreads elsewhere slowing demographic growth. The wealthy benefit from new cleaner technologies and acquire surplus produce that the rest of world can no longer afford, while the poor lack the means to adapt, but cannot return to their forebears' way of life.
site with extensive analysis of the coming oil crisis. This is probably one of the most radical environmentalist, anti-government and anti-corporatist sites with an emphasis on survivalism in the post-oil world.
Study of the physical world and its manifestations through
empirical observation of natural phenomena and monitoring of systematic experimentation.
Technology
the study, development, and application of devices, machines, and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes
Technocracy
Power based on the control of technology in which scientists, engineers and technicians useful to the ruling class may enjoy high social standing and exert influence
Broadly speaking a better understanding of our physical environment, origin, capabilities and limitations helps us plan our future and learn from our mistakes. Science is applied to develop technology, but may also reveal its adverse effects. Technology may be beneficial or detrimental and have good or bad applications, while technocracy concentrates power in the hands of those who control technology. If we aim to build a fairer, more open and democratic society, scientific research is not just good but essential, while technology should be applied only if it enhances our enjoyment of life and benefits the long-term sustainability of society as a whole.
The short-term benefits of new technology may lead in the long term to conflicts over the distribution of resources, empower the masters of technological know-how and radically alter the fabric of society. Just consider the immense impacts of television and automobiles on wealthy countries over the last 60 or so years. Together they have discouraged communal transport and entertainment and encouraged mass consumption and the atomisation of communities and families. Many workers commute over 30 miles to benefit from lower property prices or safer neighbourhoods. Cultural life revolves around mass entertainment whether it's multichannel TV, radio, high-profile interactive web sites (which nearly always require a dedicated team of content managers), mass-marketed pop music, movies or pulp fiction. The tentacles of big business reach far and wide. Opponents of such developments are inevitably dismissed as luddites. Think of the benefits. TV educates, informs and shows parts of the world most viewers would never see. Cars broaden horizons beyond the parochial bounds of one's home village or town.
Supermarkets provide a variety of food products local grocers could never hope to match and at more competitive prices. Sooner or later even traditionalists are driving to church, watching soaps on TV and doing the weekly shopping at sparkling new supermarkets 10 miles away. While we're lulled into a false sense of freedom, we have inadvertently empowered an even tinier elite to run our lives. Without fossil fuels, electricity and potable tap water our lives would soon grind to a halt. While consumers use and admire the wonders of technology, few can either create or control it. Our governments fight wars over resources needed to sustain a lifestyle promoted by the mass media.
Common sense holds that technology should serve people and not the other way round. We need a more thorough application of science and less blind faith in technocracy.
In Vietnam the Americans are utilizing a new type of anti-personnel arm based on the following principle: a hollow metallic envelope into which are cast
certain projectiles such as ball-bearing-like pellets, needles, etc., numbering into the hundreds. These explode on the ground or in the air to fire the
projectiles in a sunburst pattern for many metres. The effects of the projectiles are insignificant on fixed installations. Two types of these weapons are
principally in use in Vietnam. The ‘pineappleÂ' bomb with {117} cylindrically symmetrical explosion: this weapon consists of a hollow metallic
envelope made of an alloy of copper and iron with traces of zinc, having a total weight of 800 grammes and a thickness of 7 millimetres. Into the envelope,
which resembles the shape of a pineapple, are cast 300 pellets of steel 6.3 millimetres in diameter. On the top of the bomblet are placed six ‘wingsÂ'
which are folded when the bomb is at rest and which snap up in flight by means of a spring at their base. These fins stabilize the fall of the bomb in the same manner as the feathers do a badminton shuttlecock. The lower part of the bomblet is closed with a metallic plate pierced by a hole through which penetrates the point of a spring-loaded firing pin. Upon impact - if the bomblet falls vertically, as it is supposed to - the spring releases and the percussive force causes
the explosion of 160 grammes of Cyclotol A3 which is composed of 91 per cent hexogene trimethylene-trinitramine and 9 per cent wax, an explosive three times more powerful than TNT. The explosion projects the pellets in a sun-burst pattern at an angle of about 20° with the horizontal to a distance of 15 metres; the pieces of the casing are propelled about 50 metres. Craters from these bomblets are small: 30 to 40 centimetres maximum diameter in loose soil and with a depth of 10 to 20 centimetres; their damage to structures is insignificant.
Method of employment: a pod containing 19 cylindrical tubes of a diameter slightly larger than the bomblets is fixed beneath an aircraftÂ's wings and parallel to them. Each tube contains 20 bomblets with the fins folded back. The aeroplane flies horizontally at an altitude of about 800 metres and fires the pineapples from the tubes by means of a directed explosion of several grammes of powder. The bomblets disperse in the same manner as a ‘stickÂ' of parachutists over an elliptical zone about 500 metres long by 250 metres wide. This weapon was first used, to the best of our knowledge, on 8 February 1965 against Le Thuy, in the province of Quang Binh.
From a purely military point of view, these weapons had two drawbacks: 1. there were numerous ‘dudsÂ' as the bomblet did not always fall
vertically as was necessary for proper detonation; 2. the horizontal, straight-and-level flight of the aircraft at the low level - no more than 1,000 metres -
necessary to assure maximum effective dispersal of the pineapple bomblets rendered the attacking {118} aircraft extremely vulnerable to ground-fire. For these reasons the pineapple anti-personnel weapon seems to have been largely superseded by the ‘guavaÂ' bomb with spherically symmetrical explosion. This weapon is round, resembling a conventional hand grenade, and has a total weight of 400 grammes. Like the pineapple, it consists of a hollow envelope 7 millimetres thick of the same alloy and is filled with 50 grammes of Cyclotol A3. Into the casing are cast 260 to 300 steel balls 5.56 millimetres in diameter.
Also cast into the casing in meridional direction are 4 small fins or ‘wingsÂ' which catch the wind and by friction set up a spinning motion along the polar axis. In the centre of the explosive filling a new type of detonator is located which operates by centrifugal force. This detonator consists of three small hammers which are cocked by the spinning of the bomblet and which are spring-loaded. If the spinning stops for any reason, the hammers fall, exploding
the bomblet, and firing the steel pellets into an isotropic distribution in a sun-burst pattern for a distance of about 15 metres.
It is the nature of the bomb that when it touches the ground or even if, while in flight, it glances off a roof, a wall, or a branch of a tree, thereby interrupting
or changing the axis of rotation away from the original polar axis, or, as shown by blast studies in Japan, if the axis changes spontaneously or the rate of
spinning slows, the bomblet explodes. Like the pineapple, the craters produced are small and the effect of the bomblet on structures is insignificant. Method
of employment: these bomblets are packed into a hollow #145;motherÂ' bomb casing about 2.1 metres long by 40 centimetres in diameter which holds roughly 640 guava bomblets. The mother bombs have a timing device which separates the container casing at an altitude of about 800 metres. The 640 guava bomblets are
flung out and follow a parabolic trajectory and are distributed over the objective in an elliptical pattern about one kilometre long by about 500 metres wide.
This weapon was used for the first time on about 18 April 1966, on the village of Moc Chan in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Because of the spherical symmetry of the explosion and the tendency for a percentage of the bomblets to explode as air-bursts, traditional trenches and open
individual shelters are rendered ineffective for cover; these weapons are therefore extremely {119} dangerous. They are usually employed in a three-stage raid: first comes observation, then bombardment with high explosives and/or napalm and then by CBUs (container bomb units) containing the guava steel pellet
bombs.
Our species has evolved a curious form of opportunistic altruism, in short the notion that we benefit by caring for one another, while each individual strives insofar as possible to enhance his or her own social status, personal security, wealth and power. Thus much political debate concerns the dichotomy between the common good and individual freedom. Idealism merely represents a set of beliefs in an optimal world, where individuals attain the greatest measure of happiness, satisfaction, affection, personal freedom, physical and material wellbeing. Propagandists like to pepper their speech with frequent references both to our aspirations and to the political ideals dear to our culture or doctrinal system. In much of the world today we have been conditioned to view abstract concepts such as democracy, freedom, antiracism, tolerance, crime-prevention, material wealth as ideals worth fighting for, often with scant regard to their feasibility and the immense contradictions and conflicts of interest that their rigorous enforcement may engender.
An idealist may simultaneously advocate greater economic growth, campaign for a cleaner environment and welcome migration from poorer to wealthier regions, as we all want to enjoy a higher material standard of living, surrounded by uncontaminated, but tamed wildlife and extending such privileges to an ever greater number of world citizens. An idealist can espouse tolerance for diverse lifestyles and intolerance for all kinds of prejudice, without considering whether one's lifestyle conflicts with rights and freedom of others.
Empiricism relies on the morally neutral application of the scientific method. Only ethics tell us that actions such as planting an incendiary device outside a busy restaurant or firing missiles at densely populated neighbourhoods from helicopter gunships are wrong. An empiricist is interested only in establishing the facts and in understanding the motivations of the perpetrators. An empiricist may want to estimate the Earth's long-term human carrying capacity, within verifiable physical technological restraints, regardless of the millions who may die if it proves significantly lower than world's current population. An empiricist may seek to establish whether cold fusion is both technically viable and safe irrespective of any ideological preconceptions or rigid interpretation of the theory of thermodynamics. More important an empiricist can change her or his view on the basis of new scientific data. For instance, if one could prove global oil reserves could last another 300 years without any adverse climate and/or ecological effects, one may need to revise one's view on sustainability of our current petroleum-driven economic model and seek alternative explanations for conflicts over oil supplies.
We spent the first few days in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, speaking to government leaders.... Then we went to Svay Rieng where, after meeting with the provincial governor, we were taken to the border at Bave - this is the border with South Vietnam. It was interesting to see that in Bave there was a
deliberate attempt on the part of the South Vietnamese puppet border guards to create an incident with the Cambodian officers accompanying us. At one stage, when a Cambodian photographer tried to photograph the border, the South Vietnamese puppet officers came to our side of the border with pistols cocked and
threatened military action unless the film was handed back to them. Fortunately an incident was prevented only by the tact displayed by the Cambodian officers on the Cambodian side of the border.
We were told that there was a Special Forces camp just across the border and that the Americans flew
in with helicopters, strafed Cambodian villages, and then took away villagers for interrogation. In the village of Soc Noc I spoke to a villager named Muy Tith, twenty-nine years old, who had been captured by the United States Special Forces. He told me that he was tortured and beaten by the South Vietnamese Special
Forces and also by the Americans, who then asked him whether there were any Viet Cong in his village. As the man could not speak any Vietnamese, he kept saying, ‘No, no, no!Â' until finally, after tying him up for two hours and beating him consistently, they released him and let him go back to his village. We
were also told that others had not been so lucky, and while we were in the village of Soc Noc there were {133} twelve villagers who had not been returned: no one knew what had happened to them...
After we had seen the villages which had been bombed by the United States, after we had seen the
destruction which had been caused by these attacks, and after we had met the victims of these attacks, we went back to Phnom Penh. After two days of talks with officials there, we went on the so-called Sihanouk and Ho Chi Minh Trails, which were long journeys. It was absolutely clear to us from the trails we visited
that it would have been impossible for any large force, whether it belonged to the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam or whether, as the United States claimed, it belonged to North Vietnamese divisions, to use those trails. It was impossible for any heavy trucks to go on those trails, and further on the river
could not be bridged. We saw the area where the United States said that there was an airport which landed North Vietnamese and NLF battalions when they were coming back or going to the South. It was very clear to us that this was in a clearing, but the rough nature of the ground and the fact that there had been bushes
growing on it for over the last two years, would have made it impossible for any plane to land. We also saw near the site of the so-called airport a lot of diamond mining going on, and they had large bamboo sticks sticking up into the sky, which the United States claimed were antennae for an underground radio station.
In any event, there was no doubt in our minds that neither the Sihanouk nor the Ho Chi Minh Trails could be used by the North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front forces, and that the United States was merely using this as an excuse to bomb and strafe Cambodian border villages. This
becomes increasingly significant when one learns that at the recent conference in Guam, it was suggested to President Johnson by Westmoreland and other military leaders that two Cambodian provinces be occupied and the war extended to Cambodia to stop the infiltration of North Vietnamese troops. In Cambodia we found
(and any other investigation teams that go to Cambodia will find the same) that there was no evidence whatsoever that there had been infiltration by the North Vietnamese forces.
Continuing our journey into the southern districts of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, we visited Ninh Binh
province {134} and spoke to the Roman Catholics there and saw for ourselves the churches which had been bombed. The churches were mainly isolated, with a couple of mud huts next to them.
But the most traumatic experience was in the province of Thanh Hoa. It was 29 January 1967.... We were told
that at 2.30 P.M. that afternoon we would be taken to the hospital in Thanh Hoa to meet and interview some of the victims of the air raids. But the same day, while we were having lunch, we heard the planes roaring overhead and making their way towards the town. Then we heard the bombing and the thuds which have become
a feature of life in North Vietnam today. We were told that the trip was off. A major said that they were bombing Thanh Hoa.
At 4.00 P.M. we visited the hospital, the first place on our itinerary. This was the hospital where we should have been at 2.30. At 3.00 P.M. it had been bombed and some
of the patients killed. While they were being removed from the hospital and taken to the first-aid station, there was another attack and the first-aid station had been completely destroyed. Incendiary bombs had been used and some houses were still burning. When we visited Thanh Hoa, it was on fire. There were embers
and flames everywhere. We saw a large crater caused by an American rocket. Anti-personnel weapons had been used.
Mrs Nguyen Thi Dinh had rushed out of her house just in time to save herself, but she saw her house and its contents burned to the ground. When I spoke to her, she was weeping
silently. She said, ‘Do you think I will ever forgive them for what they are doing to us? Never! Never! They must be made to pay for their crimes.Â'
Two hundred homes had been damaged or destroyed, and 125 families were homeless.
A hospital with Red Cross markings and a first-aid station had been singled out and destroyed. If the shelters provided by the authorities had not been so effective, the casualties would no doubt have been higher. Half of Thanh Hoa had been evacuated in advance as well, and this too was fortunate. I looked around for anything which could conceivably have been a military target in the town itself. There was no sign of any military object.
The part of the province which had been bombed almost without respite was Dinh Gia district, at its southern extremity. The {135} bombing was so heavy that no one had been taken there before for fear of
casualties. We travelled there during the night, crossed a few bridges, and reached Dinh Gia safely. The next day was the most depressing day I spent in Vietnam. I saw bombed schools and hospitals. They had been direct hits. There could be no doubt whatsoever that this was deliberate. In the village of Hai Nan, a coastal village not far from the 7th Fleet, almost every house had been destroyed. The attack which had destroyed the village had taken place four days earlier. The destruction was obviously fresh.
I spoke to Nguyen Thi Tuyen, a twelve-year-old girl who had lost a leg. She told me her story in the following words:
I had just returned from school and was about to have a bath when the aircraft came from the direction of the sea. They dived down and dropped lots of bombs. I grabbed my younger brother and rushed to the shelter, but it was too late. A bomb fragment hit my brother in the stomach and
killed him. Another fragment cut my leg off, as you can see for yourself. Our house was burned down. My uncle could not put the flames out in time. Now I live with some relatives. Will you please tell me why they are bombing us? ...
This was the story in almost every village I visited. These were no
military targets, and the United States could not but be aware of this fact. The schools in the district had been dispersed to avoid casualties. Some of them were in shelters. Hospitals had been dispersed. Hospitals which had been bombed previously were now under the ground. At this stage I think it is fair to point out that the Vietnamese doctors are the most impressive group of people I have met anywhere. They are dedicated, and they have seen more suffering than anyone else, but it has not affected their morale in the least. {136}/
The record shows that you have consistently supported the government on matters of war. In my humble opinion, all recent military interventions have directly inflicted death and destruction and sown the seeds of more interethnic violence. I doubt you have time to investigate the complex history of foreign involvement in civil wars still raging or simmering in Afghanistan and the Balkans, so let us consider the government's stated aims and its true motivations behind the recent invasion of Iraq, which you supported wholeheartedly.
So far, five reasons have been given to justify an expenditure of $120 billion, money - I hasten to add - that could work wonders if invested in sustainable development in the world's poorest countries. All prove fallacious under closer scrutiny.
The pre-invasion Iraqi regime had weapons of mass destruction. We now know it did not, but any chemical and biological weapons it might have had were remnants of stock supplied in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan's and George Bush Senior's administrations, under which many members of George W Bush's cabinet worked, had friendly relations with the Baathist Regime. Key evidence publicised by the mass media, in particular, the Sun and Daily Record read by many traditional Labour voters here in Scotland, proved to be based on false evidence.
Saddam Hussein collaborated with Al Qaeda. Utter nonsense, not a shred of evidence. The only real link between the two is that the US government supported them in previous guises in the 1980s.
We need to impose democracy on the region by overthrowing a brutal dictator. That Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator is beyond dispute. But he would never have gained power without US support. More important, by democracy the US administration clearly means compliance with the dictat of unaccountable multinationals. Most of Iraqi industry has already been privatised and the oil ministry will continue to work under the watchful guidance of US-based oil corporations and be required to pay off debts that date from the 1980s war with Iran.
By removing an inimical regime, the world will be a safer place. Clearly fallacious, no-one outside a small pro-US or pro-Israeli elite seriously believes Iraqis will have any effective control after the staged handover of power on 30th June. The newly appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi is a former CIA and MI6 asset (very much like Saddam Hussein).
Iraqis will benefit from greater economic prosperity. Actually, despite the war with Iran and despite the regime's undeniably repressive nature, the 1980s marked the heyday of the Iraqi economy as a sizeable proportion of oil revenue filtered back into the economy. The 1990s witnessed a collapse in oil exports (to less than 1/4 of the previous level) and a harsh sanctions regime, that both Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck have described as genocidal.
Yet while Labour MPs such as yourself fell victim to a campaign of deception, the world is experiencing another crisis, much bigger and more dramatic in scale than the threat posed by any dictator of a medium-sized nation. In one word, OIL. Our economy depends on material growth, which is rapidly outstripping supply. Recent price rises are but a foretaste of things to come. We'd need hundreds of thousands of wind turbines blighting our landscape to substitute a sizeable fraction of the energy we get from fossil fuels. Other alternatives such as nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, biodiesel etc. all have their limitations. Hydrogen is but a carrier requiring electricity for electrolysis from water or fossil fuels. Cold fusion is at best 30-40 years from the making and at worst a myth that contradicts the laws of thermodynamics.
In short control of the world's last plentiful and cheap supply of fossil fuels in Iraq and neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Iran plays a pivotal role in the continued supremacy of a world order centred around US multinationals. The evidence linking leading members of Bush regime to the oil industry is compelling. The Project for a New American Century urged the occupation of Iraq back in the mid 1990s. Indeed it has long been their intention to create a situation, in which the US could justify a permanent presence in the region. IN this context one understands much more lucidly the role played by the infamous Saddam Hussein. First they armed his regime, next they tricked him into invading Kuwait, then they imposed sanctions against his people while ensuring his regime stayed in intact and lastly they occupied his country less than two years after a terrorist attack on the US. Without Saddam Hussein none of this would have been possible.
It seems blatantly clear to me that the last thing the corporate powers behind Tony Blair's leadership want in Iraq is for the people of the Middle East to control their own destiny. Thanks to your vote, millions more will die in a long and protracted war that will dwarf the US misadventure in Vietnam. More to the point the real reasons for this war, greed and control, go against everything the Labour movement has ever stood for.
I invite you to justify your stance and debate the issue at a time and place of your choosing.
Our Tribunal was formed, on the initiative of Lord Bertrand Russell, to decide whether the accusations of ‘war crimesÂ' levelled against the government of the United States as well as against those of South Korea, New Zealand and Australia,
during the conflict in Vietnam, are justified.
During this inaugural session, the origin, function, aims and limits of the Tribunal must be clarified: the Tribunal means to explain itself, without sidetracking, on the question of what has been called its ‘legitimacyÂ'.
In 1945, something absolutely new in history appeared at Nuremberg with the first international Tribunal formed to pass judgement on crimes committed by
a belligerent power. Until then there had been a few international agreements, for instance the Briand-Kellogg pact, which were aimed at limiting the jus ad
bellum; but as no other body had been created to implement them, the relations between the powers continued to operate under the law of the jungle. It
could not be otherwise: the nations which had built their wealth upon the conquest of great colonial empires would not have tolerated being judged upon their
actions in Africa or Asia.
From 1939, the Hitlerian furies had endangered the world to such an extent that the horrified Allies decided,
since they were to be the victors, to judge and condemn the wars of aggression and conquest, the maltreatment of prisoners and the tortures, as well as the
racist practices known as ‘genocideÂ', unaware that they were condemning themselves, in this way, for their own actions in the colonies.
For this reason, that is to say because they were recognizing the Nazi crimes, and because, in the more universal sense, they were opening the way
to a real jurisdiction for the denunciation and {63} condemnation of war crimes wherever committed, and whoever the culprits, the Tribunal of Nuremberg is
still the manifestation of a change of capital importance: the substitution of jus ad bellum by jus contra bellum.
Unfortunately, as is wont to happen whenever a new force is created by historical exigencies, this Tribunal was not free from serious faults. It has been
said that it was a diktat of the victors to the vanquished and, which comes to the same thing, that it was not really being international: one group of
nations was judging another. Would it have been more worthwhile to have taken the judges from neutral countries? I cannot say. What is certain, however, is
that, although the decisions were perfectly just by ethical standards, they did not convince all Germans. The legitimacy of the magistrates and their sentences
is contested to this day. Also, it has been declared that, if the fortunes of war had been otherwise, a tribunal of the Axis could have condemned the Allies
for the bombing of Dresden or for that of Hiroshima.
Such a body would not have been difficult to set up. It would have sufficed that the body created for the judgement of the Nazis had continued after its original task, or that the United Nations, considering all the consequences of what had
just been achieved, would, by a vote of the General Assembly, have consolidated it into a permanent tribunal, empowered to investigate and to judge all
accusations of war crimes, even if the accused should be one of the countries that had been responsible for the sentencing at Nuremberg. In this way, the
implicit universality of the original intention would have been clearly defined. However, we know what did happen: hardly had the last guilty German been
sentenced than the Tribunal vanished and no one ever heard of it again.
Are we therefore so pure? Have there been no war crimes since 1945? Have we never had further resort to violence or to aggression? Have there been no more ‘genocidesÂ'? Has no large country ever tried to break by
force the sovereignty of a smaller one? Has there never been reason for denouncing more Oradours or Auschwitzes?
You know the truth: in the last twenty years, the great historical act has been the struggle of the underdeveloped nations for their freedom. The colonial empires have crumbled, and
in {64} their place independent nations have grown or have reclaimed ancient and traditional independence which had been eliminated by colonialism. All this
has happened in suffering, sweat and blood. A tribunal such as that of Nuremberg has become a permanent necessity. I have already said that, before the Nazi
trials, war was lawless. The Nuremberg Tribunal, an ambiguous reality, was created from the highest legal principles no doubt but, at the same time, it created
a precedent, the embryo of a tradition. Nobody can go back, stop what has already existed, nor, when a small and poor country is the object of aggression,
prevent one from thinking back to those trials and saying to oneself: it is this very same thing that was condemned then. In this way, the hasty and
incomplete measures taken and then abandoned by the Allies in 1945 have created a real gap in international affairs. We sadly lack an organization which has
been created and affirmed in its permanency and universality and which has irreversibly defined its rights and duties. It is a gap which must be filled
and yet which no one will fill.
There are, in fact, two sources of power for such a body. The first is the state and its institutions. However, in this period of violence most governments, if they took such an initiative, would fear that it might one day be used against them and that they
would find themselves in the dock with the accused.
And then, for many, the United States is a powerful ally: who would dare ask for the resurrection of a tribunal whose first action would be to demand an inquiry on the Vietnam conflict? The other source is the people, in a revolutionary period,
when institutions are changing. But, although the struggle is implacable, how could the masses, divided by frontiers, unite and impose on the various
governments an institution which would be a true Court of the People?
The Russell Tribunal was born of this doubly contradictory conclusion: the judgement of Nuremberg had necessitated the existence of an institution to inquire into war crimes and, if necessary, to sit in judgement;
today neither governments nor the masses are capable of forming one. We are perfectly aware that we have not been given a mandate by anyone; but we took the
initiative to meet, and we also know that nobody could have given us a mandate. It is true that our Tribunal is not an institution. But, {65} it is not
a substitute for any institution already in existence: it is, on the contrary, formed out of a void and for a real need. We were not recruited or invested with
real powers by governments: but, as we have just seen, the investiture at Nuremberg was not enough to give the jurists unquestioned legality. . . . The Russell
Tribunal believes, on the contrary, that its legality comes from both its absolute powerlessness and its universality.
We are powerless: that is the guarantee of our independence. There is nothing to help us except for the participation of the supporting committees which are, like ourselves,
meetings of private individuals. As we do not represent any government or party, we cannot receive orders. We will examine the facts ‘in our souls and our
consciencesÂ', as we say, or, if one prefers, in the full liberty of our spirits. None of us can state, today, how the discussions will turn out and
whether we answer yes or no to the accusations, or whether we will come to a conclusion at all, perhaps deciding that the evidence, though real, is
insufficiently proven. What is certain, in any case, is that our weakness, even if we are convinced by the proof brought before us, would not enable us to
condemn. What can even the lightest sentence mean if we do not have the means to put it into effect? We will therefore limit ourselves, should this arise, to
declaring that this or that act does in fact fall under the jurisdiction of Nuremberg, and that it is therefore a war crime and that, if the law were applied,
it would be appropriate for this or that sentence to be carried out. In this case, if possible, we will name the guilty. Thus, the Russell Tribunal will have
no other function in this inquiry and its conclusions, but to make everybody understand the necessity for international jurisdiction - which it has neither the
means nor the ambition to replace and the essence of which would be to resuscitate the jus contra bellum, stillborn at Nuremberg, and to substitute
legal, ethical laws for the law of the jungle.
From the very fact that we are simple citizens, we have been able, in coopting ourselves from all over the world, to give our Tribunal a more universal structure than that which prevailed at Nuremberg. I do not only mean that a larger number of
countries is represented; from this point of view there are still many gaps. But, most of all, whilst in 1945 the Germans were represented only in the dock, or
sometimes as witnesses, here {66} several members of the jury are from the USA. This means that they come from the country whose very policy is our subject and
that they have, therefore, their own ways of understanding it. Whatever may be their conclusions, the intimate relation with their own country and its
institutions and traditions will necessarily be reflected in this TribunalÂ's conclusions.
These last remarks reply to a critical comment made, without ill-feeling, in a Paris newspaper: ‘What a strange Tribunal: jurymen but no judge!Â' It is
true, we are only jurymen, we have no power to condemn, nor to acquit anyone. Therefore, we are not prosecutors. There will not even be a real accusation.
Maître Matarasso, President of the Legal Commission, will read you a statement of the charges registered. The jurists, at the end of the session, will
have to pronounce on these statements: are they justified or not? But judges exist everywhere. It is for the peoples of the world and, in particular, the
American people that we are working. {67}
The liberal media's reaction to reports of widespread abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees by US and UK military personnal marks a psychological turning point in the current phase in the sole superpower's war for total global domination.
Recent interventions have been justified in one way or another by our moral superiority, our more advanced, more humane form of civilisation, our crusade to spread democracy and liberal values. Whatever the crimes committed by high-tech weapons systems, whatever the abuses carried out at Guantanamo Bay, whatever the evidence of CIA-funding for the KLA or Al Qaeda, whatever the flaws in the allegations made against the former Yugoslav government, Britain - we were told - represented a beacon of justice and fairness.
No sooner had our brave service men and women liberated a new territory, the liberal media progressed to stage two, reconstruction via international bank loans and rehabilitation via NGOs. British experts would be sent all over the globe to teach our enlightened ways to people accustomed for so long to only dictatorships (with whom we used to do business). Thus for paid intellectuals like Johann Hari of the Independent or David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen of the Guardian, new military adventures provided a new opportunity to spread our values.
Wouldn't it just be wonderful if the whole world became a multi-hued mosaic of dominant post-1980s Anglo-American culture? Sure McDonalds would localise its burgers for the Mid East market, MTV would broadcast some Arabic rap, juicier scenes from Hollywood movies would be edited out and people would speak English with different accents and continue to learn local dialects for a couple more generations. But rest assured your Lonely Planet Guide to Iraq will feature an extensive list of gay nightclubs in downtown Baghdad. Okay Iraqis may have more traditional values now, but given time greater exposure to our benign media will usher in a new era of carefree hedonism.
US and UK crimes could easily be brushed aside by stressing the repressive nature of all local or nationalist alternatives. So pundits would opine that we need to stay the course in Iraq to stop Islamic extremists or Saddam Loyalists from (re)gaining power. Democracy has only one meaning: A pacified electorate happy to vote for responsible politicians who collaborate fully with the international community as defined by the Coalition.
To understand the chasm emerging within our ruling elite witness yesterday's Scottish Daily Record and UK Daily Express - not a word about US and UK crimes, just a page two article about Moqtaba Al-Sadr's threat to use captured female British soldiers as slaves. Then read the liberal press. The underlying message is Abu Ghraib represents a setback for the spread of our civilisation, very bad PR. Now the damage has been done, a section of the ruling elite, the same opinion-makers who campaigned passionately for humanitarian wars, want our troops out. But the die has already been cast. Withdrawal will leave the US in a significantly weaker position in the Middle East than it enjoyed in February 2003. Whether or not, US and UK armed forces retreat strategically, their dependence on near absolute control of the world's oil reserves is so great that they will just seek new and devious means.
It's time the left gatekeepers, as some call the likes of Greg Palast (who thinks the Beeb allows objective reporting), started challenging assumptions about our moral superiority and start publicly admitting rather than merely implying the real motivations for war. Torture and violence are not unAmerican any more than they are unChinese or unArabic. They are classic tools of conquest. As Madeleine Albright said "We will act multilaterally when we can, unilaterally when we must."
Let's paraphrase that: We will act by gentle persuasion where we can and by physical coercion and advanced brainwashing techniques where we must. What the liberal media is telling us is that the era of gentle persuasion is nearing its end.
As mainstream politicians justify acts of mass murder in the name of bogus democracy and US control of the world's oil supplies, Joan McAlpine ("Be wary when fascists try to hide behind racist poison" Herald 29/04/04) asks us to focus our attention on a relatively small group of isolationist anti-immigration rightwingers.
We already have clear laws forbidding harassment, assault or incitement to racial hatred. The true liberal tradition has always distinguished gratuitous offence and intimidation from reasoned arguments and radical thinking.
Why should we need to go one step further to curtail intellectual freedom? By raising false alarms about the alleged BNP threat, when the real danger to millions of dark and light-hued people around the world comes from the rightwing cabal behind George W Bush's presidency and the growing concentration of wealth and power in a handful of transnational corporations, Joan McAlpine would like us to set a precedent we may live to regret.
Indeed she correctly observes our government has already gagged an Islamic fundamentalist cleric, which begs the question: Where do we draw the line? Who defines unacceptable Neo-Nazism or Islamic fundamentalism? Who decides which orthodox historical accounts may be challenged? Who decides which arguments constitute hate speech? A commission set up by the state or the corporate media? If they could ban the BNP, would they seriously stop there? Would 9/11 sceptics be incarcerated? These are very serious questions as the new rulers of Baghdad close down newspapers and radio stations and even rebuke the Qatar government over the graphic nature of Aljazeera's coverage of the Iraqi war of resistance.
As Noam Chomsky said "It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers". Nearly six decades after the end of WW2, it comes as no surprise that today's authoritarians pose as anti-fascists. The German National Socialist Party did not rise rapidly in the early 1930s because they were afforded free speech, but because big business, including many foreign multinationals, bankrolled them. Today the same ruling elite supports Bush, Blair and Sharon.