The Long Nightmare Of Thatcher And Blair Is Over

Whatever happens in the future, nothing will be the same again and Britain has set the way for the world to follow.

The Final Hours ?

A world convulsed by crises

From WSWS

Over the past month, the world has been gripped by a proliferation of crises—economic, geopolitical, social—erupting on a daily basis, interacting with each other, and raising the spectre of a global calamity.

On the economic front, international financial markets have swung wildly between massive gains and losses, as governments and central banks have sought desperately to counter the impact of a gathering slump in production and investment that threatens to topple the financial house of cards built up since the Wall Street crash of 2008.

The Chinese economy, world capitalism’s premier cheap-labor platform, which provided the bulk of economic growth after the financial crash, is foundering, along with a host of other so-called “emerging market economies.”

On the geopolitical front, tensions between the major capitalist powers are sharpening under the impact of social disasters produced by imperialist wars that have ravaged entire countries, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and large parts of Africa. The ruination of much of Central Asia and the Middle East by US imperialism and its European and Gulf allies has unleashed a flood of desperate refugees on a scale not seen since the end of World War II.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants pouring into Europe have exposed the chasm between the solidarity and support for the refugees felt by broad masses of people and the indifference and inhumanity of governments both inside and outside of Europe. The crisis has simultaneously intensified the conflicts that are tearing apart the European Union.

Washington has escalated its diplomatic and military pressure on Russia and China amid new calls for all-out war to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Around the world, the traditional parties of bourgeois rule, both right and “left,” are collapsing under the pressure of unprecedented levels of social inequality and mounting popular anger and discontent. The ruling elites cast about for new means to suppress the class struggle and preempt the development of an independent political movement of the working class. They increasingly rely on pseudo-left parties—Syriza, the German Left Party, the French New Anti-capitalist Party, the International Socialist Organization in the US—to politically disarm the working class and provide them time to impose their reactionary policies.

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Cameron Follows In Blair's Murderous Footsteps

UK Prime Minister Cameron calls for “hard military force” in Syria

By Robert Stevens of WSWS

The British government is in the advanced stages of preparing a military onslaught on Syria. The ultimate aim of these plans is “regime change” and the removal of the elected government of Bashar al-Assad.

On Wednesday, just two days after Prime Minister David Cameron revealed that Britain’s Royal Air Force had carried out the unprecedented, unlawful targeted assassinations of two UK citizens, Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin, in Syria, he declared that the government was ready to step up military action.

Cameron said the massive flow of refugees into Europe was happening, “because Assad has butchered his own people and because ISIL [ISIS] has, in its own way, butchered others, and millions have fled Syria.”

Britain had to be part of an international alliance based on the approach that “Assad has to go, ISIL has to go”, he said, and “that will require not just spending money, not just aid, not just diplomacy—it will, on occasion, require hard military force.” [emphasis added]

The Guardian reported that the plans being hatched by the Cameron government entailed a “renewed diplomatic push that could see Bashar al-Assad remain president for a transitional period of six months.”

Whatever the accuracy of this report, various sources indicate that Cameron could ask parliament to endorse military action in Syria within weeks, with early October being circulated as a possible start date for operations.

In August 2013, concern over public opposition to a British war against Syria, along with divisions in ruling circles as to the efficacy of an operation limited to air strikes, led to parliament voting down military intervention.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, speaking Wednesday before parliament’s foreign affairs select committee said, “At the moment we are attacking an enemy in Iraq and if we formed the judgment that this air-based campaign was more efficacious if we attacked ISIL in Syria, we would ask parliament.”

He continued, “The logic of extending our mandate to cover ISIL targets in Syria would be very clearly a logic in support of the mandate we have in Iraq for the collective defence of that country.”

Within this context, it is clear that the resort to extra-judicial murder by the ruling elite is part of the plans for a significant escalation of British intervention in the region and intimidating the inevitable opposition that this will cause—both abroad and at home.

This time, the refugee crisis created by the imperialist powers’ criminal actions to date in the Middle East and North Africa are to provide the “humanitarian” pretext for war.

Befitting a ruling elite that has broken with the very concept of democracy and the rule of law, Hammond stated in the manner of a colonial overlord, “We are not saying Assad and all his cronies have to go on day one.” He added, “The international community cannot … facilitate and oversee a set of elections in which somebody guilty of crimes on the scale that Assad has committed is able to run for office. That has to be clear. He cannot be part of Syria’s future.”

Just as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, what is intended is nothing less than the military conquest of Syria, to be followed by sham elections carried out under occupation and the installation of a puppet government subservient to the main imperialist powers.

The warmongering of Cameron and Hammond follows the speech Monday by French President François Hollande, in which he announced that France would start surveillance missions over Syria, under the guise of targeting ISIS, and called for the ouster of Assad.

The imperialist powers and their proxies have wrought untold death and destruction in the Middle East over the last 25 years, with Britain playing a leading role, in the face of mass public opposition.

Cameron can only now proceed with further military action in Syria due to the total complicity of Britain’s other parliamentary parties.

In Wednesday’s parliamentary debate, the prime minister’s admission that he had recently authorised the murder of two British citizens again passed without criticism. The only MP who even referred to it was Angus Robertson, the Scottish National Party’s leader at Westminster.

Robertson merely stated, “We learnt this week of a new UK policy of drone strikes against terrorist suspects in regions where there is not parliamentary approval for general military action” , without mentioning that the two were killed and they were British citizens.

A parliamentary vote on military action in Syria would require the votes of a section of the Labour Party, as it is expected that up to 20 Conservative MPs will not support it.

It has been claimed that the only reason Cameron has not yet called the vote, is because he is awaiting the announcement of the new Labour Party leader on Saturday. It is expected that the Labour “left” Jeremy Corbyn, who is on record as opposing military action in Syria, will win the contest.

No one should assume that a Corbyn-led party would automatically oppose intervention.

The “left” MP said nothing at all on Monday regarding the state-sanctioned execution of British citizens. Since then he has said only that he was “unclear as to the point of killing the individual by this drone attack” and that the prime minister “has some very difficult questions to answer about the legality of what he did.”

At any rate, the BBC’s Newsnight programme surveyed 14 Labour MPs who “would be willing to defy a Mr Corbyn-led party and instead vote with the Conservative leadership,” the broadcaster reported. This would be sufficient for the vote to pass.

It noted that “Conservative whips currently believe fewer than 20 Conservative MPs will rebel”, adding, “If the SNP, Lib Dems and Democratic Ulster Unionist MPs all join forces to oppose Conservative plans, that means 13 Labour MPs would be needed to see the vote passed.”

According to an article by George Eaton in the Labour-supporting New Statesman magazine, “Labour sources estimate that as many as 30 would vote for military action.” Eaton’s piece, headlined, “Will Labour’s hawks allow Cameron to overcome the Tory doves on Syria ?” cited the comment of one anonymous Labour MP who said, “Absolutely I’ll support it and many others will, too.” Of the vote in 2013, he added, “They feel completely ashamed by what we did two years ago.”

Such is the craven support of Britain’s media for the militarist agenda of the government that, with just a few exceptions, none have questioned the adoption of a policy of targeted assassination. In fact, for the most part, this alarming development was welcomed and even praised.

In keeping with this, there is little coverage of the advanced preparations for war against Syria and its implications.

This was despite Professor Christof Heyns, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, stating Wednesday that the drone attack on British citizens had created a dangerous precedent.

“An important threshold is being crossed”, he said. “[W]hat we have here is a targeted killing based on a very open ended justification—there is a continuing but not an imminent threat—and because there is no opportunity to arrest, deadly force is used.”

“If this is permissible in Syria”, he went on, “it must be permissible anywhere else—and for any government. This is the dangerous route of the global war on terror.”

Hans Corell, a former senior legal counsel at the UN told the Guardian, “The moment you start using drones outside a battlefield that is a problem. If you go outside a battlefield and identify a terrorist suspect and fire a missile to kill someone, I’m concerned that can be murder.”

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In Denial

Dodging Responsibility

Bourgeois Democracy Is Putrid

The “Great Charter” of 1215 set forth limits on the repressive powers of the state and asserted basic legal rights of citizens with its provision that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

The universal content of the Charter was to find political, intellectual and constitutional expression in the English Civil War (1642-1651), the Enlightenment, and the French and American revolutions of the 18th century. On the basis of immense social and political upheavals, the concept of the inherent “rights of man” against executive fiat was enshrined as the defining characteristic separating democratic governance from police-military dictatorship.

The end of democracy in Britain

Julie Hyland of WSWS

One would not normally suggest Hansard, the official record of British parliamentary proceedings, as recommended reading for every class-conscious worker and youth. But the transcript of Monday’s debate, under the title “Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism,” is an exception.

On that day, Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, stood to inform parliament that some months before he had authorised the extrajudicial murder of three British citizens in Syria.

Reyaad Khan, 21, Ruhul Amin, 26, and a third unnamed individual were killed in a drone attack carried out by the Royal Air Force in Raqqah on August 21. Three days later, another British national, Junaid Hussain, 21, was killed in a US drone strike, Cameron said.

The prime minister’s statement was unprecedented. For the first time in modern history, outside of war, the head of government not only admitted, but boasted, that he had authorised the murder of British citizens.

Yet his disclosure—sinister in all its legal and political ramifications—drew no response, much less protest, from those assembled.

Acting Labour Party leader Harriet Harman thanked the prime minister for briefing her earlier in the morning, asking only if he would “confirm that this is the first occasion in modern times on which that has been done?” and whether the attorney general’s legal advice sanctioning the attack would be published.

Cameron confirmed for the “Right hon. and learned lady” that the resort to state-sanctioned murder was, indeed, “a new departure,” and one “we would repeat...”

Not even that menacing answer solicited a response from the opposition benches. Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party) merely complained that the statement had not been “shared in advance,” while Caroline Lucas (Green Party) acted as if nothing worthy of note had occurred.

Likewise, the “left” Labour leadership contender, Jeremy Corbyn, studiously avoided any mention of the prime minister’s extraordinary admission. His silence is a thousand times more politically revealing than all his demagogic blather and makes clear that Corbyn is as much a part of the “deep state” as any of those he pretends to oppose.

The spectacle was made all the more grotesque by the fact that it took place during the 800th anniversary year of the Magna Carta, only recently the subject of a major commemorative exhibition at the British Library.

The “Great Charter” of 1215 set forth limits on the repressive powers of the state and asserted basic legal rights of citizens with its provision that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

The universal content of the Charter was to find political, intellectual and constitutional expression in the English Civil War (1642-1651), the Enlightenment, and the French and American revolutions of the 18th century. On the basis of immense social and political upheavals, the concept of the inherent “rights of man” against executive fiat was enshrined as the defining characteristic separating democratic governance from police-military dictatorship.

To be sure, the British bourgeoisie has frequently violated this principle. It has a long and bloody history, nowhere more so than in Ireland. But even there, its murderous policy was carried out covertly and always officially denied.

No longer. On Monday, Cameron staged the political equivalent of a smash-and-grab raid on the British Library and poured gasoline over the Charter, while his audience looked on in mute compliance.

The prime minister’s reference to “meticulous” planning in advance of the drone attack and awaiting the “optimum time” to strike refutes any claim that his actions were motivated by a desire to protect the British public against an imminent terror threat.

But even if the allegations against Khan and Amin were true, that would not alter the fact that the cold-blooded, extrajudicial executive murder of a citizen is an impeachable act, a “high crime and misdemeanour.”

The death penalty was abolished in the UK in 1965. If now anyone posing with a gun or propagandising against British policy can—without the presentation of charges, much less a court verdict upholding them—be placed on a “kill list” at the discretion of a handful of ministers and their spooks, what remains of due process? Who is next, and where? There is absolutely no reason to assume that government by murder will be carried out exclusively beyond the borders of the United Kingdom.

This is by no means a national phenomenon. The policy of targeted assassination, begun in Israel, is now part of an international trend in which governments compete for bragging rights over the frequency and efficiency of their “hits.” From the United States, to France and now Britain, executive responsibility has been redefined as the readiness to sanction state assassinations.

Under the guise of the “war on terror,” the doctrine of pre-emptive war has evolved into one of pre-emptive torture and now pre-emptive murder.

There is no wall separating the actions of the bourgeoisie overseas and what they will do at home. The assault on civil liberties in Britain, including pervasive state surveillance, has been accompanied by a “shoot-to-kill” policy that claimed the life of an innocent Brazilian worker, Jean Charles de Menezes, on a London subway in July 2005.

There is a 20th century historical parallel with this state of affairs—Hitler’s “Night of the Long Knives,” carried out between June 30 and July 2, 1934. The shocking character of these events was not just the readiness of the Nazi regime to openly murder its political opponents, but also the acceptance of such official criminality by the German political establishment. That bloody event formed the backdrop for Carl Schmitt, the “crown jurist” of the Third Reich, to proclaim the pseudo-legal concept of the “state of exception,” which freed the executive power from any legal restraint and made violence, torture and murder the norm.

Today, world capitalism is once again mired in economic crisis, and social inequality has reached malignant proportions. Just as in the 1930s, the bourgeoisie’s response to the political threat posed by an angry and restive working class is the turn to dictatorship.

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A Fantasy World

Cameron Turns Psychopath

Prime Minister Cameron confirms Royal Air Force killed two British citizens in Syria

By Robert Stevens of WSWS 

Prime Minister David Cameron used his Monday statement to Parliament, nominally on the refugee crisis in Europe, to announce that he authorised the assassination of two British citizens in Syria last month.

Reyaad Khan, 21, and Ruhul Amin, 26, died in Raqqah on August 21 in a drone attack carried out by the Royal Air Force (RAF), Cameron said.

The targeted killing of British citizens overseas on the say-so of the prime minister is unprecedented.

Cameron said the two--born in Wales and Scotland, respectively--were ISIL (Islamic State) fighters.

The extra-legal killings were carried out “after meticulous planning,” the prime minister said, and was a matter of national “self-defence.”

Although Cameron claimed the killings were solely the result of a British operation, the facts point to them having been carried out in concert with the US.

Cameron said the Obama administration had confirmed that another Briton, Junaid Hussain, 21, from Birmingham, was killed in a separate US air strike on August 24, also in Raqqah.

The killing of Khan and Amin has clear parallels with the extra-judicial drone murders of its own citizens carried out by the US government.

Cameron’s statement underscored the cynical manner in which Europe’s ruling elite are seeking to utilise the tragic plight of millions of refugees, forced to flee their countries as a result of imperialist interventions and intrigues, to prepare further wars of aggression and dispense with the rule of law.

With his usual insufferable hand-wringing, Cameron described the situation facing the refugees who are trying to make their way to Europe--many from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan--as “heart-breaking.”

But the prime minister would say only that the UK would take in a maximum of 20,000 refugees over the next five years. This paltry quota, which equates at most to 12 people per day, is in keeping with the ruling elite’s indifference to the catastrophe they have helped create in the Middle East.

The refugee crisis--the largest mass migration since the Second World War--was a mere footnote to Cameron’s real purpose: to prepare for a major escalation of the British military involvement in the region. The prime minister justified this on the grounds that the majority of refugees entering Europe are “fleeing the terror of Assad and ISIL.”

But it was Britain, along with the US, France and their Gulf State allies, that deliberately fomented the civil war in Syria as part of their regime-change operation against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and strengthened ISIL in the process.

Concern over public opposition to a British war against Syria, along with divisions as to the efficacy of an operation limited to air strikes, led to a vote in parliament against military intervention on August 30, 2013.

Far from halting British involvement, however, the ruling elite have gone behind the backs of the public, resorting to ever more criminal methods. In July it was revealed that British pilots have been carrying out air strikes in Syria alongside US forces, despite pledges from Cameron and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon that the government would seek parliamentary approval before such action.

Now it is confirmed that the RAF is summarily killing its own citizens.

Kat Craig, the legal director of the human rights organisation said the drone strikes now routinely carried out by the US were “being copied wholesale by the British government.” She recalled, “Ministers repeatedly promised parliament and the public that there would be no military operations in Syria without parliamentary approval. The fact that David Cameron has bypassed parliament to commit these covert strikes is deeply worrying--as is his refusal to share what legal advice he was given.”

Chris Cole, head of the campaign group Drone Wars, said, “This was the deliberate killing of a British citizen. It is shocking. We have not seen this before.”

Cameron claimed that the targeted assassinations did not require parliamentary debate, as he had told the Commons last year, “[I]t is important to reserve the right that if there were a critical British national interest at stake or there were the need to act to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, you could act immediately and explain to the House of Commons afterwards.”

But Cameron presented no evidence as to how Khan and Amin threatened the “British national interest,” or how their killings had prevented a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

He was, nevertheless, at pains to claim that his government had legal backing to kill the two, stating, “I am clear that the action we took was entirely lawful.” He added, “The Attorney General [Britain’s principal legal officer] was consulted and was clear there would be a clear legal basis for action in international law.”

Given that the attorney general also authorised the illegal war against Iraq, based on fabricated claims of “weapons of mass destruction,” this advice is not worth the paper it is written on.

Cameron also argued that the drone attack on the two was in line with the “UK’s inherent right to self-defence.” He declared, “There was clear evidence of the individuals in question planning and directing armed attacks against the UK.” But he declined to give any specifics, stating only that the alleged plans were “part of a series of actual and foiled attempts to attack the UK and our allies,” and included preparations “to attack high-profile public commemorations, including those taking place this summer.”

Not a word of what Cameron said can be taken at face value. Regarding the killing of Khan, he said there was “nothing to suggest” that he “would ever leave Syria or desist from his desire to murder us at home.” He continued, “So we had no way of preventing his planned attacks on our country without taking direct action.”

Cameron never bothered to explain how, if Khan never intended to leave Syria, he could take part in terrorist attacks in Britain. Nor precisely how, if he was really “directing” terror operations on British soil, his killing in Syria would foil such operations.

Even if these allegations were true, that would not alter the fact that the extra-judicial executive murder of a citizen is illegal, i.e., a criminal act. A police state method, it makes a mockery of democratic rights.

Cameron has made clear that he is in favour of British involvement in the bombing of Syria. He has said that he intends to hold a parliamentary vote on the issue in the next few weeks.

His parliamentary speech followed the announcement by President François Hollande that France would start reconnaissance flights over Syria in preparation for beginning air strikes.

Defence Minister Liam Fox has said that Britain should also carry out air strikes under the humanitarian pretext of setting up “safe havens” for refugees in Syria. Fox declared, “It is time that action was taken to deal with the root of the problem.” He warned, “The policy of attacking ISIS in Iraq but not in Syria is patently absurd, which not only makes us less effective militarily, but diminishes us in the eyes of other partners in the coalition.”

Others have not ruled out the use of ground forces. This, they calculate, could be carried out under the pretext of setting up United Nations-run “safe havens” guarded by troops. , the Conservative former international development secretary, told the BBC, “Ideally, Britain would not be involved in putting troops on the ground, but we should be willing to consider that.”

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Who is responsible for the refugee crisis in Europe?

From WSWS

The gut-wrenching images of a three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach, lying face-down in the sand, his lifeless body then cradled by a rescue worker, have brought home to people all over the world the desperate crisis that is unfolding on Europe’s borders.

The family of the toddler, Alan Kurdi, had come from Kobani, fleeing along with hundreds of thousands of others. A protracted siege by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and an intense US bombing campaign has left the northern Syrian city in ruins, its houses as well as water, electrical, sanitation and medical infrastructure destroyed. The boy was one of 12 who drowned in an attempt to reach Greece, including his mother and five-year-old brother. His distraught father, the family’s sole survivor, said he would return to Syria with their bodies, telling relatives that he hoped only to die and be buried alongside them.

There is plenty of blame to go around for these deaths, which are representative of many thousands more who have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean or suffocated after being stuffed like sardines into overheated vans.

Canada’s Conservative Party government ignored a request made in June by the boy’s aunt, who lives in British Columbia, to grant Alan’s family asylum.

The countries of the European Union have treated the surge in refugees as a matter of repression and deterrence, throwing up new fences, setting up concentration camps and deploying riot police in an effort to create a Fortress Europe that keeps desperate families like Alan’s at bay and condemns thousands upon thousands to death.

But what of the US? American politicians and the US media are deliberately silent on Washington’s central role in creating this unfolding tragedy on Europe’s borders.

The Washington Post, for example, published an editorial earlier this week stating that Europe “can’t be expected to solve on its own a problem that is originating in Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya and—above all—Syria.” The New York Times sounded a similar note, writing: “The roots of this catastrophe lie in crises the European Union cannot solve alone: war in Syria and Iraq, chaos in Libya…”

What, in turn, are the “roots” of the crises in these countries which have given rise to this “catastrophe”? The response to this question is only guilty silence.

Any serious consideration of what lies behind the surge of refugees into Europe leads to the inescapable conclusion that it constitutes not only a tragedy but a crime. More precisely, it is the tragic byproduct of a criminal policy of aggressive wars and regime change interventions pursued uninterruptedly by US imperialism, with the aid and complicity of its Western European allies, over the course of nearly a quarter century.

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The Consequence of the Obama/Cameron Wars

Photo of a young Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach. His family were refugees from the Obama/Cameron inspired war against Assad. I've changed this video so many times as governments try to censor it so have to make do with just a photograph now.

Maybe we should stop the flow of EU economic migrants from eastern Europe and take in Syrian refugees instead.