The far right is the majority's worst enemy.

I feel a little uncomfortable writing this, am I simply emulating the worst of the right wing commentators by bandwagoning on a tragedy. Nonetheless I feel that such a tragedy as the bombing and shooting spree in Norway need to be looked at in wider terms than the narrow context of a lone mad man doing a bad thing that can be quickly ignored.

The far right are useful to economic elite and thus the mainstream media are not going to be asking probing questions about the nature and ideology of this attack. Take this analysis from the BBC and reflect on how it ends:

Following the attacks in Oslo and on Utoeya, it will be interesting to see whether many in the country develop a more sophisticated view of where the greatest threats are coming from, amid a growing realisation that extremism is deadly regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion.

Which marvellously combines an entreaty to support the status quo as much as possible with an equivocation that the Muslims are just as bad. No questioning of if the motives of a marginalised and victimised group in Europe's are any different from a comfortably off man who was a member of the accepted majority in one of the most pleasant places to live on Earth.

Fascists are useful to the elite for the simple reason of their not being Socialists. Socialists might tax them more heavily, ask questions about the distribution of wealth and so on. Fascists will target ethnic minorities and homosexuals which the majority of the elite aren't and those that are are rich enough to be well protected. Best of all Fascists will target Socialists and indeed all social and political movements the elite like least.

So we can expect plenty of condemnation of this particular act but there will be limited attempts to tie this into a wider context and at the same time this good looking white mass murderer gets his picture plastered everywhere, to encourage the others and you better bet the mainstream right will start to ask questions about whether our immigration and asylum policies are causing actual problems. I mean of course killing people is bad but maybe there is something to what he was talking about, we can't let the violence of his actions blind us to the real problems immigrants cause in society. etc etc.

We really do need to look into what kind of utterly corrosive ideology makes a comfortable and affluent man who faces no real threats kill nearly 100 people. We can over no grandiose excuses like Western Imperialism in the Middle East, nor the sociological and economic explanations of competition with immigrants for jobs driving working class whites towards the right wing. No this guy lived with his mum in an affluent part of Oslo, had enough money to set up an agricultural company, that admittedly may have been a front to buy fertilisers for bombs, and lived in Norway, one of the best damn places to live on Earth.

The malignancy of an ideology than even in the most comfortable circumstances can drive someone to commit such horrific crimes is something we in the West truly have to confront, in full force and quickly. However we simply cannot expect the political class to lead us in this regard. As I said before the elite have little to lose from supporting the far right. Indeed they are already doing so quite openly. Back in February of this year David Cameron just happened to give a speech attacking Multiculturalism hours before a big march by the EDL, the biggest Fascist group in the UK.

The EDL, an alliance of football hooligans and other extremely unpleasant groups in society was allegedly an inspiration for the Norwegian terrorist. The EDL has other friends beyond Norwegian Mass Murderers and the British Prime Minister though, The Daily Star, a less reputable tabloid than the Sun but with a decent circulation, also tested the waters for backing them earlier this year.

Also quite by chance while finding that story on the New Statesman website I stumbled on this article about how the architect of "Blue Labour" a plan to move New Labour even further to the right, which Ed Miliband was smiling upon, is at best a xenophobe and may well be a racist.

The political mainstream simply will not save us from Fascism. This atrocity in Norway must be a rallying cry for the majority to push against a growing Fascism in the western world, to defend values most people support and prevent the elite from having an army of remorseless thugs to keep them in power by attacking any positive political and social movements that may emerge from the current economic crisis. Make no mistake the elite will be doing everything they can to take advantage of this with fleet footed "well maybe he had a point" statements and articles.

"Anything but Socialism" has been the mantra of the Western elite for over a century and regardless of whether you are left wing or not it is imperative that we as a majority do not make supporting Fascism the path of least resistance for the elite.

Oh bugger, I meant to incorporate this article into the body of the text because it is very good and was the inspiration for this whole entry. I shall highlight it here instead, please read..

Also it had the best advert for a magazine I've ever seen:

Emmanuel Goldstein is dead Part 2.

Probably to your surprise I am doing a second posting about this today. To start off with I recommend two Alternet articles: This one lays out the more mainstream concerns of the aftermath of Bin Laden's death and this one gives a reasonable assessment of how OBL's death doesn't really improve the lives of most Americans one bit.

Now on to some more speculation.

4)I'm going to couch this in terms of TV but thats because I've been watching a lot of it today. The "death" of Osama Bin Laden, a figure who as aforementioned had been reduced to little more than occasional obscure audio messages of dubious provenance, could've been prompted for another reason. TV shows often have an arc across a season in which the protagonists of the show face a particularly dangerous foe. While some opponents last for longer its general a good idea to cycle through villains. When first introduced a villain has mystery and that leads them to be more scary and unpredictable, so an interesting and engaging character. Over time though a villain will often become well known and, well, familiarity breeds contempt. On top of that if a foe lingers for a long time the show can start to slow down and you have increasing difficulty explaining why your protagonists can't deal with them.

Can you see through my elaborate metaphors? Yes, Osama as a concept of evil, a rallying cry and justification for certain foreign policy decisions had really run its' course and was starting to make the American Empire look weak, with all those trillions of dollars spent on defence they couldn't kill one guy? Plus as has been pointed out Americans now care more about the economy than being afraid of brown bogey men. Obviously the old method of keeping Americans scared has run out and a new one rolled out. Otherwise they might start asking questions the elite don't want asked.


5) Following on from that a similar reason for wrapping up the threat of Bin Laden could well be due to extremely pressing foreign policy concerns elsewhere. After all the song and dance made about the danger he posed until he was dead it was really quite hard to shift foreign policy focus. That may well be why Obama was so focused on killing him, he has shown himself to be a traditional US Imperialist and likely wants to move away from the strange neo-con crusades of the W Bush White house.

With OBL dead there is plenty of excuse to shift to other concerns. The most likely new direction is probably South America. In the past decade it has shifted from being a subdued back yard for America, something it has long been, to a largely leftist region that is rapidly gaining regional solidarity and moving away from Washington's roadmap. Still as Honduras's Coup showed countries in the region can be realigned to US interests. I have no idea if other nations will be retaken so easily but I imagine the Obama Whitehouse strongly desires to regain control of the region and its' natural resources and having an excuse to shift focus to South America from the AFPAK region is mighty handy for them.

6)Of course, just because a course of action seems to be the best one from the outside doesn't mean that is the one that'll be pursued, maybe because of info outsiders aren't privy to or maybe because of regime politics. I have absolutely no inside track or real understanding of how Obama's government functions but I would say the appointment of General Petraeus to head the CIA shows Obama maybe doesn't have total control of the direction his regime takes (to be fair there are compelling arguments for why Obama would actively choose to appoint him but thats not what I want to focus on here.) Petraeus has been a booster for invading Iran for instance which in the US Empire's current weakened state would be tantamount to suicide.

Then again, W Bush's legacy is a wide variety of ways for the US Empire to commit suicide. Going back to the issue of Pakistan I raised in Part 1 while I said it gave the US carte blanche I think that should be clarified via the can should gap. Yes you can do a thing but that does not mean you should do a thing. There are broadly justifiable actions the US could in the near future take in Pakistan but they would be exceptionally unwise to do so. As aforementioned the US is not pleased Pakistan has overthrown their client dictator. This can be rectified, as happened in Honduras and many other places, by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in quite subtle ways that really don't place the US Empire under much threat even if they fail.

There are strong hints however that America is taking a much more dangerous path that OBL's death could justify ramping up. The drone bombings and incursions into Pakistan by ground troops are not subtle and are already having considerable blowback, ramping that up in a country with nuclear weapons and a large population that holds pretty fundamentalist views would be bad at any time, let alone in the midst of two ohther wars and maybe a third in Libya. Oh and of course lets not forget in the Kashmir region Pakistan shares a border with India AND China, spillover that brought those two countries into the mix could be absolutely catastrophic.

Lord knows what will actually happen.

Oh and now you've read all this heres a much more concise and better summary: http://www.explosm.net/comics/2409/ Thanks Jonny.

Emmanuel Goldstein is dead.

So Bin Laden is apparently dead. The vast majority of the media is going to take this story at face value so while they may be right to do so I'm going to look at the holes and questionable details in all this. To defend myself from the fact at least some of what I say here will look very silly in the coming months I will state this is my initial reaction to the news.

Firstly for several years the only evidence we've had that Bin Laden was alive was the odd taped audio message. Then after he was killed instead of recovering the body to put on show or at the very least have some nominally independent autopsy done his body is dumped at sea. We're almost certainly going to get pictures of the body released but creating photos of the body of someone who hardly anyone has seen for years is pretty doable for the US. More to the point if they had recovered the body so as to dump it at sea why not just hold on to it?

Secondly the timing is odd while it certainly wont hurt Obama in 2012 the election is a year and a half away, plenty of time for the right to trash and undermine the achievement or just plain focus on something else as the elation at Bin Laden's death fades away. On the other hand domestic dissent is growing, the Ryan plan is mobilising boomers' inherent selfishness and protests against austerity are ongoing across the US, most notably in Wisconsin. Now while this unrest was focused on the GOP business interests may well no want any dissent blossoming and so had a wonderfully patriotic distraction occuring. Heck protesters could be dismissed as anti-American for daring to protest at this time of national triumph.

Also a more outlandish point but one I feel worth making, we've had two big patriotic distractions that bolster the status quo and conservative entrenched interests in just a couple of days, first the Royal Wedding and now this. If one did want to distract against something pretty big happening that would upset people those would be pretty solid ways of doing it.

Thirdly this gives carte blanche for further incursions by NATO forces into Pakistan. Obama pointedly commented the attack on the compound was solely a US operation. Worse this compound was near a major Pakistani training base and in an area popular with retired members of the Pakistani military. Pakistani opposition to NATO ground incursions and Air Raids which killed multiple civilians has reached a fever pitch so some kind of justification was needed. Further though Pakistan has been very naughty recently, having the gall do things like charge CIA operative Raymond Davis with murder just because he killed a few Pakistani citizens, heck they've been very naughty for a while what with them overthrowing US puppet General Musharraf (who now lives in Britain with UK tax payer funded protection) and trying to act as a sovereign nation, using democracy to select leaders who might not favour US interests.

With the nature of the killing of Bin Laden in central Pakistan, just miles from the capital Islamabad the US is going to pretty much have a free hand to pursue regime change back to a client dictator.

There are other issues at stake but for now thats what springs to mind, I'll probably try and expand on this later in the day.

Why the right hates the TSA

Following up on a previous article which gained the ire of Glenn Greenwald Yasha Levine and Mark Ames now give a more in depth explanation of why the negative actions of the TSA suddenly became a conservative cause celebre last year.

I don't like what the TSA does but I do not labour under any illusion that right wingers care about civil liberty issues at all. They simply would prefer to return to privatised airport security at which point they would immediately become deeply concerned about the need to maintain security, even at the cost of civil liberties if necessary.

This is just another issue of shooting the messenger. The people who work for the TSA deserve decent working conditions just like everyone else. Yes they are the ones on the front line doing embarrassing and unpleasant things to everyday air travellers but they aren't the ones setting DHS policy or passing legislation that restricts civil liberties. If liberals and leftists were smart they'd direct their anger at the politicians and senior civil servants pushing these policies, not the low paid grunts on the front line.

So really do give the new article a read.

Monarchy isn't about freedom

If I'd been blogging a few months back I'd have probably highlighted that civil liberties experts in the UK believe the Royal wedding will be used as template for stifling protest as "austerity measures" begin to bite. Here is a summary of how counter terrorism laws are being used to protect the elite from any acts of dissent on their special day, all without a credible terror threat.

Nonetheless even with all this policing and denying of civil liberties I would not be surprised if a small group of "anarchists" do something bad that the media can focus on to demonise the growing protest movement and legitimise calls for further police powers.

The negative effects of the Royal Wedding don't just fall on the UK though, several nations within the Common still retain the Queen as their head of state including Canada and Australia. Australia, for the privilege of maintaining a hereditary dictator, albeit a relatively toothless one, as their head of state must trade away their right to free speech it appears. The awesome Chaser boys have been forbidden by the Royals to commentate on the royal wedding because

The broadcast agreement under which the ABC takes the wedding telecast forbids its use in "any drama, comedy, satirical or similar entertainment program or content."

Dissent isn't tolerated even if its on the other side of the world.

Queen's visit to Ireland a logistical nightmare

The absurd level of risk of a terror attack / assassination of the Queen does make you wonder if Cameron wants a major incident so as to give him free reign.

Or maybe its just organised by fucking idiots. Equally possible really.

Weekend Watch 07/01/11

The excuse this time is me getting into twitter but thats irrelevant, excuses aren't good enough.

So anyway, here is part 3 of the power of nightmares:

PATRIOT act used mostly to persecute minorities..

...but different ones from the ones you'd think! Turns out 69% of all sneak and peak warrants, a mechanism allowing law enforcement to search people's homes without knowledge or consent, were used against "drug dealers" (page 7 on the PDF). While Sneak and Peaks did exist before according to Senator Feingold the PATRIOT act "codified and expanded" the practice. Anti-Terror sneak and peaks accounted for 0.39% of the total, less than those used by the FDA.

Huffington Post expands on it here.

thanks jonny

Those who have nothing to hide in their homes and vehicles have nothing to fear

So those full body scans they're rolling out to airports? Yeah they've got roving versions of those vans that can scan vehicles and homes on any street.

Can't wait for the 5-4 / 6-3 (KAGAN HATE TERRORISMISTS!) decision on this kind of thing not requiring a warrant.

thanks jonny

EDIT: Actually turns out the supreme court have already ruled this kind of thing is a search under the fourth amendment (thus requiring a warrant) from the comments:

The Supreme Court already ruled on this issue in KYLLO V. UNITED STATES. It ruled that “…the use of a thermal-imaging device aimed at a private home from a public street to detect relative amounts of heat within the home constitutes a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” The ruling details may other relevant and obvious reasons this technology is illegal.

Read the ruling here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZO.html

Sadly, the agencies who invade our privacy will no doubt hide behind National Security to further erode what once made this nation free.

The commenter is of course right, this ruling will be ignored thanks to the War on Terror or what have you.

Norm Coleman never gives up!

Senator Al Franken's home was shot at while he and his wife were elsewhere. Likely just a good honest conservative wanting to defend freedom and democracy, if you don't kill anyone with an opposing point of view how can Republicans keep our country free?

thanks jonny

Trust no one, denounce everyone.

Sure that image gets broken out a lot by foreigners who like to deflect away from the erosion of their own civil liberties but in this case its hard to view this as anything but a portent of things to come.

The Association of Chief Police Officers have put out an advert that encourages you to denounce and report people for inoffensive actions that are not in any way illegal.

It is interesting given the article I linked yesterday that one of the warning signs is not using a credit card thus linking being poor to terrorism.

Listen here.

Greek Journalist investigating corruption killed by professional hit team.

BBC give details here. The odd thing is that US news sources are blaming anti-government terrorist group "Sect of Revolutionaries" see here and here whereas the BBC and other British news sources state the Police don't think terrorists were involved. It would be a bit strange for "Sect of Revolutionaries" to kill this journalist because their core aims are stated to be fighting corruption.

Oddly those two I linked seem to be from the same source (most published news these days is just slightly altered news agency releases) and were updated longer ago than the BBC release. Its odd if the US is trying to tar left wing groups so blatantly but still, something to ponder on.

Documents detailing British complicity in torture of its' citizens.

A series of documents have been released detailing clearly the Labour government's willing complicity in the torture and abuse of its' citizens. You can look at the bits of the documents that aren't "redacted" with annotations here.

As you know I am no fan of the concept of nationalism or the idea of countries but the sickening thing about this is that it is clear that one of the few positive elements of nationalism, that the nation state will protect all of its' citizens and ensure their equal rights to fair treatment and safety is a lie. Just as whites can't be terrorists it seems that brown and black people aren't citizens.

The heir apparent to the leadership of the labour party David Miliband is a former foreign secretary and has yet to change his position that no torture occurred with Britain's acquiescence.

Top UK Terror police fears theres not enough funds to profile every brown in the country.

With current funding levels the UK's anti-terrorism police have only failed to stop two attacks (1) (2) although in the case of the Glasgow airport attack perhaps high levels of funding magically caused the terrorists to be incompetent. So obviously in the face of funding cuts of 25% for nearly every government department Assistant Commissioner John Yates has turned to scaremongering to try and maintain his budget. The Home Secretary has, not unreasonably, pointed out that Yates is being alarmist for personal gain. Nonetheless a politician accusing someone else of being alarmist about terrorism can't help but seem a bit hypocritical.

What will a cut to the budget of our department dedicated to keeping us constantly afraid do? Will a plague of Brazilian electricians be unleashed upon us? Only time will tell.

Al Qaeda launches US website

Everyone is covering this but Jonny linked me this Yahoo article so why not eh? Their apparently buggy website features advice on how to build bombs that you likely can find all over the internet or with a modicum of chemistry education but because our enemy in the forever war has posted a website about it its big news.

I do query one element of the Yahoo article though:

The launch suggests that, as al-Qaida's core has been weakened by CIA drone airstrikes, the group hopes to broaden its reach inside the U.S., where officials have seen a spate of homegrown terrorists.

Yes, I too assume my enemy is weakening when they expand operations into my homeland and change up their methods. Why I'm sure that column of tanks moving at flank speed towards us is just coming to surrender to us as fast as they can.

Cameron sets terms of Whitewash.

Stealth PM David Cameron has set the terms for the process of absolving British Intelligence officers of complicity in the torture of "terror suspects". Given most of the rest of the world was aware of torture going on either MI5 and 6 were super incompetent or are lying. Intelligence services usally claim the former when they're caught out so lets just say its most likely the latter.

Still, the amount of hypocrisy, denial and attribution of a decency to Britain we don't possess is a funny read.