Anarchy in the USA

Even the mainstream media is now aware that there is something approaching an uprising going on in New York and other US cities right now. At least, if it were happening in an Arab country, our media would certainly be calling it an uprising, albeit a fairly peaceful one, if we overlook the copious violence coming from the police, as is usually the case, regardless of where in the world you are. I'm not going to offer any detailed analysis of this phenomenon. Instead, I leave you with a poem, the first version of which was written on the inauguration of President Obama in 2008. The basic message is in tune with those protesters occupying Wall Street today; that power must belong again to the people and that no leader can ever be trusted to deliver the people's will:

Occupy Wall Street

Anarchy in the USA

I woke up to a dream of hope:
the silent hordes who’d been asleep,
possessed for one ecstatic moment
of love before that love is spent.
For now, instead of begging bowls,
they raise their cups and think of schools,
clean water, liberty and rice,
in place of war and pestilence.
Who is the man who’d be a god,
and slake our thirst for more than blood?
But we have gorged ourselves on gods
and soaked our claws in sunny words,
and now we’re sick, too sick to swallow
the honeycomb promises of kings who borrow
magic from the myriad-headed hydra
(serpent slayer of the ancient Maya).

While Fear and Faith stand by the throne,
the world still wears a golden chain –
now will some god-king give the command
to throw all idols to the ground?
No. Hail the one, who would be chief –
he is you, and me, and a turning leaf.

9/11 Still Matters

Unseen Enemies, Hidden Agendas


Approaching the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US, the BBC and other elements of the corporate media served up a steady diet of tripe on that subject. The main purpose of this seems to be to remind us why we have to be in a constant state of war and why we must continue to give up ever more of our hard-won civil liberties for the sake of security from an unseen but still deadly enemy. Given all the wars, death, destruction, surveillance and curtailment of freedom that has followed from 9/11, it is surely surprising that no one has yet been tried in a court of law for the attacks, despite the supposed 'mastermind', Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, having been in US custody for 8 years (now in Guantanamo Bay), his 'confession' extracted by waterboarding - a technique well known for making victims tell the exact truth rather than whatever their interrogators want them to say.


One would at least expect there to be some irrefutable evidence in the public domain, connecting the 9/11 attacks and especially the hijackers, to the organisation referred to as Al-Qaeda and to Osama Bin Laden in particular. Unfortunately, there is none, which is perhaps why Bin Laden was never officially wanted by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks and why he himself denied responsibility for them. It was only long after the US invasion of Afghanistan that Al Jazeera were given (by whom?) a video tape (supposedly found in Jalalabad after it fell) in which a chubby fellow with a big beard (who might be Bin Laden) talks a lot about dreams and obliquely suggests he had some foreknowledge of 9/11 and may (just possibly) have had some connection to the hijackers, although it is never very clear. The authenticity of the tape is hotly disputed, even in academic circles, but even if we assume it to be genuine, it does not provide enough evidence to convict anyone in a court of law, let alone invade an entire country. The US and NATO did not need any evidence to start that war, in any case. Ten years on, perhaps we should remind ourselves of these inconvenient facts, which the corporate media appear to have forgotten. After all, there is no bigger conspiracy theory than the idea that a fiendish global terror network called Al-Qaeda is behind virtually every terrorist plot in the world today.

Sad Liberty: Photo (edited) from NWO Observer.

So, if there is virtually no evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, who was really responsible for those attacks? There is good evidence, albeit disputed, that Mahmud Ahmed, head of Pakistan's ISI (secret service) at the time had ordered $100,000 to be wired to one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta. Who, then, is the real unseen enemy? Surely, this is a question worthy of investigation. Unfortunately, merely asking that question can get you labelled as a 'conspiracy theorist', since it is now no longer deemed acceptable to question the truthfulness of official accounts in the corporate media. There was a time when things were different and even the BBC spoke truth to power:


In 1992, the BBC produced a three-part Timewatch documentary exposing Operation Gladio, a secret NATO network of agents connected to far-right organisations, which was created by the CIA after World War Two, which had strong connections to an Italian elite secret society called (in Italian) Propaganda Due (aka the P2 masonic lodge). As the documentary makes clear, Gladio was largely under the control of the CIA and was responsible for unleashing a wave of terrorist attacks in Europe (especially Italy) during the so-called 'years of lead' from 1968 to 1988. Many of the attacks were initially blamed on left-wing revolutionaries such as the Red Brigades, although it later transpired that most, if not all of them had been carried out by the Gladio network of far-right operatives with CIA approval. Hundreds of people were killed, including 85 in the infamous Bologna train bombing.


Most of these outrages are now acknowledged, with the benefit of hindsight and declassified information, to have been 'false flag' terror attacks, almost certainly sanctioned by official state intelligence or security agencies, for the purpose of discrediting the Italian Communist Party and maintaining a state of fear (the so-called 'strategy of tension') in which people would willingly trade freedom for security. No doubt, if anyone had suggested such a thing before 1990, they would have been ridiculed and labelled as a 'conspiracy theorist'. Could it be that some of today's 'conspiracy theories' will become tomorrow's declassified history? Gladio involved hundreds, if not thousands of operatives across Europe and was successfully kept secret for over 40 years. If nothing else, it shows the willingness of certain elements within governments and security services to murder their own countrymen for political gain. It also shows the extraordinary global reach of the CIA and its deep connections to numerous extremist groups as well as to other security services. Above all, it shows that we cannot take official government pronouncements about terrorism at face value.


In fact, a former chief of the Los Angeles FBI, Ted Gunderson, states plainly (in April 2011) that the CIA were behind numerous false flag terrorist attacks on US soil, including the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. Apparently, this is not a news story, although Gunderson seemed perfectly sane and as a former FBI chief, presumably knows more than your average BBC producer.


There are many reasons why 9/11 still matters. One of them is that history tends to repeat itself, so we must try to learn from the past. It seems we have still not yet made a serious attempt to understand 9/11 and therefore have learned nothing from it. Another reason is that it still casts a huge shadow over domestic and global politics. What is the real reason why our soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan? How many more of our civil liberties must we lose before we begin to question the whole premise of the War on Terror and its domestic consequences?


Conspiracies: Theory, Fact or Paranoid Fantasy?


To be sure, there are many outlandish, wild or utterly crazy ideas about 9/11 floating around and not just on the internet. These include the idea that the towers were destroyed with lasers or 'mini-nukes', that the hijacked jetliners were holograms or that 'the Jews' did it. These patently ridiculous notions make good straw-man fodder for self-styled 'debunkers' to tilt at on their internet forums and serve mainly as entertainment to distract us from the real issues. These bizarre straw-man theories are useful to the media, since the official theory is only marginally less strange and speculative itself. The official narrative is also a conspiracy theory, so whatever you believe, we are all conspiracy theorists now. In fact, to say that 'Al-Qaeda' did it is tantamount to saying 'the crazy Muslim extremists' did it, since 'Al-Qaeda' is far from being the precise notion that the media would have us believe.


There are also many interesting questions and hypotheses still waiting for good answers or objective appraisal. The corporate media tends to lump them all together, making no attempt to distinguish between valid questions and wild speculation, labelling all unconventional ideas as 'conspiracy theories', thereby absolving themselves of any need to think rationally or objectively about any of them. This is a dangerous state of affairs.


Last week, there was an article in the Guardian purporting to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories, together with  another insinuating that those who doubt the official narrative of 9/11 were mostly anti-semitic Holocaust deniers. These slurs do not stand up to scrutiny, since none of the most prominent advocates of serious alternative 9/11 narratives has ever denied the Holocaust or said anything anti-semitic. The most prominent members of the so-called 'Truth Movement' (which I prefer to describe as the  9/11 Sceptics Network) include eminent academics with impeccable humanitarian credentials, such as Prof David Ray Griffin (theologian), Prof Steven Jones (physicist), Prof Niels Harrit (chemist) and Richard Gage (AIA). The latter is a phlegmatic and affable practising architect of over 20 years experience, who has designed numerous steel-framed buildings and founded Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006, having been a die-hard Republican supporter up to that point. Gage's organisation continues to grow and now numbers over 1,500 verified professional engineers and architects who are calling for a proper independent investigation into the collapses of the three towers to fall on 9/11. The suggestion that most of these people are tinfoil-hat-wearing, irrational, gibbering loons is as laughable as it is offensive. Yet, that is exactly how the corporate media still attempt to stereotype them. This is nothing but the very crudest form of propaganda.


Even more offensive is the suggestion that the 9/11 sceptics are somehow dishonouring the memory of the victims and their families. Nothing could be further from the truth, since the Truth Movement began with the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, including the Jersey Girls (aka Jersey Widows) and their struggle for an independent investigation into the attacks, which was initially denied to them by the US government. They wanted answers to numerous legitimate questions about those attacks which killed their loved ones. Public pressure eventually forced the President to announce the setting up of the 9/11 Commission. The Commission was beset with controversy from the outset and its final report was widely considered a whitewash, containing numerous omissions and outright falsehoods. The victims' families were far from satisfied and commented that it did not even touch on most of their questions, let alone answer them satisfactorily. Their story is well told in the acclaimed documentary, Press for Truth. The victims' families, as well as survivors and rescue workers (e.g. Firefighters for 9/11 Truth) remain among the most active and prominent members of the Truth Movement today. Many of the rescue workers are now dying of cancers most likely caused by inhalation of dust and a lot of them have suspicions that the truth about 9/11 is being suppressed by their government, which is also denying them the compensation and medical care they need. Their perspective is covered in another award-winning documentary called The Elephant in the Room.

Film about the struggle of victims' families for answers to their questions

Hard Evidence and Unanswered Questions 1: The Collapse of Building 7


There is a huge amount of hard evidence contradicting the official account of what happened on 9/11; far too much to document in a single article, but I will attempt to draw attention to just two issues which I believe are sufficient to refute the official story and support a particular alternative hypothesis which can now be established beyond reasonable doubt.


I am an applied mathematician, with a PhD from an engineering department. My specialism is statistical modelling and machine learning, having published a number of papers in these areas as a post-doctoral researcher at Imperial College. I also have first degrees in physics and psychology. The rapidity of the towers' collapses had always surprised me, as had the fact that a third tower also collapsed on 9/11, apparently due to fire, despite not having been hit by any aeroplane. The collapse of the third tower has always been the most troublesome anomaly of 9/11; so much so that the 9/11 Commission Report did not even mention it at all, despite the fact that it remains the only case in history of a steel-framed skyscraper collapsing completely and symmetrically due to fire alone.

The only total collapse of a steel-framed skyscaper from fire in history

There are numerous examples of steel-framed buildings being utterly consumed by uncontrolled fires for many hours. Although it is normal for parts of those buildings to collapse, particularly the concrete floors, roof and walls, the bulk of their steel frames always remains intact, albeit often twisted and buckled. A good example is the Windsor Building in Madrid. Building fires (max. air temp 800 deg C) are never anywhere near hot enough to melt steel (melting point 1540 deg C) and the frame tends to act as a heat sink, so it is rare for structural elements to be weakened sufficiently to collapse. It is virtually impossible for a steel-framed building to undergo a sudden, global collapse due to fire. Steel does lose a lot of its strength at around 600 deg C but it is always fireproofed and rarely reaches this temperature in normal fires. Even the official reports agree that almost none of the steel in the towers would have come close to this temperature. In fact, 99% of the steel in each of the towers would have been totally unaffected, since the fires were isolated to a few floors. Even an aircraft impact should not cause more than localised damage. These buildings are designed to withstand far more destructive and energetic natural phenomena, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, compared to which the impact of an airliner would be no more than a pin-prick.


Until recently I had always assumed that there was a rational, non-conspiratorial explanation for these unprecedented events and that the official report on the third tower, World Trade Centre 7 (WTC 7), would clear up any lingering doubts. Most professional engineers would probably think the same. Without reading the official report, produced by NIST, they would just assume that it was a good, thorough piece of work and take its conclusions at face value. Those who actually take the trouble to read it, however, will see that it is methodologically unsound, factually inaccurate and contains astonishing omissions. It explains nothing, provokes further questions and looks very much like a deliberate cover-up, designed to pull the wool over the eyes of non-engineers, in the hope that real engineers will be too busy to bother reading it.


My doubts about the official report were first raised by watching an analysis of the dynamics of WTC 7's collapse by the physics teacher, David Chandler. This analysis blew a huge hole in NIST's draft report and forced NIST to revise its earlier assertion that the building did not descend in free fall (i.e. with no significant resistance whatsoever). NIST's final report was therefore forced to accept that WTC 7 was in free fall for over two seconds immediately after the onset of global collapse. Even half a second of free fall would be enormously significant and defies any explanation of fire-induced collapse. The reason is that even buckled columns must offer some resistance to the collapse (they retain roughly 25% of their strength) and that buildings are highly over-engineered in order to support loads far in excess of their own weight. The maximum rate of global collapse for a typical steel-framed skyscraper would therefore be no more than about half the acceleration due to gravity. The Twin Towers descended at around 64% of free fall acceleration. WTC 7 was 100% in free fall for over two seconds. This implies that all of its 82 steel columns must have been completely severed almost simultaneously, as they would be in a controlled demolition using explosives. Note: some 'debunkers' still claim that the building was never in free fall (since this is what NIST had originally said before they changed their story). This just proves that 'debunkers' rarely even know what the official account says and tend not to read primary sources.

Floor plan of WTC 7 showing positions of columns and beams. Coumns run the entire height of the building in both core and perimeter. From NIST NCSTAR 1-A official report on WTC 7.

NIST simply refused to acknowledge the significance of free fall for WTC 7. Instead, they proposed a 'new kind of progressive collapse' initiated by thermal expansion of a single beam by a few centimetres, which caused a single column to buckle, followed by all the others over a short period. Their explanation is based almost entirely on computer simulations and they even published a video explaining their theory, which is worth watching. They cut short the part of the video showing their computer simulation of progressive collapse, but the full version was previously available and can be compared to the actual collapse. Clearly, the NIST simulation bears absolutely no resemblance to the actual visually recorded collapse of WTC 7 and is therefore a work of fiction.

The single column failure supposed by NIST to have initiated a global collapse. Diagram from NIST NCSTAR 1-A official report on WTC 7

NIST refused to consider a hypothesis of explosive demolition, citing their opinion that explosives would have been very loud and audible up to a mile away. This was based solely on a consideration of one of the loudest available explosives (RDX) being used without any sound-proofing. Strangely, they asserted that there was no eyewitness testimony for explosions and that none were recorded. Both assertions are patently false, since there are numerous statements by fire-fighters (original source here) and survivors claiming to have heard multiple separate explosions at all three towers before and during their collapses. At WTC 7, the main witness is Barry Jennings, who is not mentioned at all in the official report, perhaps because his testimony completely contradicts that report. Some explosions were even caught on film. This is the kind of irrefutable evidence that 'debunkers' and official reports have the barefaced cheek to deny outright. Sadly, Barry Jennings is now presumed to have died just a few days before the publication of the official draft report, although no one appears to know where he is buried, what he died from or even the whereabouts of his family. He joins the legion of 9/11 witnesses and whistleblowers who have died in mysterious circumstances, although in Jennings' case it seems he has simply vanished without trace, having been airbrushed out of official history.


There can be very little doubt that WTC 7 was demolished using explosives. Not only is it more likely than the fire hypothesis on a priori grounds, all the known evidence and data also support the theory of controlled demolition. Even so, I was not fully convinced of this until I had read the official report and seen how thoroughly inadequate and mendacious it is. Therefore, I urge everyone to read it, with a critical and open mind, in the light of all the data. In case you think it outlandish to conclude that WTC 7 was destroyed in a controlled demolition, it should be remembered that from a purely scientific and engineering viewpoint, this is actually the mainstream interpretation of the data. It is the simplest, most conservative theory, not a maverick view at all. The consensus among engineers and architects has always been that steel-framed buildings cannot collapse completely and symmetrically at free fall due to the effects of fire. Such an event would be utterly unprecedented and would require extraordinary evidence to be believed. The burden of proof really should be on those who believe that WTC 7 was destroyed by some mechanism not involving explosives.


Controlled demolitions are big jobs. WTC 7 would be the tallest building ever demolished this way, beating the J L Hudson department store in 1998, although the Hudson building had a bigger footprint. These projects cannot possibly be carried out in one day. They require weeks of preparation, which implies foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. The evidence concerning the twin towers (also owned by the same man, Larry Silverstein) is less clear cut but still points towards (a much less conventional) controlled demolition, in which case they would be by far the largest buildings ever brought down this way. That would possibly have taken months of preparation, but it is perfectly feasible and there was a supposed elevator modernisation programme taking place in the buildings which could act as cover.


Hard Evidence and Unanswered Questions 2: Molten Iron and Explosives in the Dust


The official investigation never looked for evidence of explosives in the rubble piles and dust from 9/11. Indeed, the evidence was quickly destroyed, as the steel was carted away for recycling abroad before much of it could be analysed, in defiance of federal law. Nonetheless, some pieces of steel from the towers were examined in the first report by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). What they found was extraordinary and is documented in Appendix C of their report. The steel had undergone sulfidation and melting due to a high temperature corrosive attack, possibly from thermate or a similar incendiary. The report does not consider explosives or incendiaries but recognises the otherwise inexplicable nature of the attack on the steel and recommends further research. That further research never happened.


There is another inexplicable phenomenon to be found in every sample of dust from 9/11 which has ever been studied. In 2003, an insurance report by RJ Lee showed that nearly 6% of the dust consisted of microscopic elemental iron spheres. The report concludes that these spheres were formed from a molten state during or prior to the collapse of the towers, since the spheres are found in dust from all over Manhattan and elemental iron is very rare in the natural environment. Iron can be found in concrete, when mixed with so-called 'fly-ash' but largely in the form of oxides and not exclusively spherical. Elemental iron in such abundance is hard to explain, except by reference to very high temperatures during the collapses of the towers: temperatures far higher than those from office fires. Yet, this does not deter the self-appointed champions of the official narrative from claiming that elemental iron spheres are abundant everywhere. There is not much one can say about such ignorance, except that the only place one would expect to find iron spheres in their elemental form in great abundance would be volcanic ash or a meteorite. The history of metallurgy is an illuminating aside.


RJ Lee's report assumed that the iron spheres had come from fires within the towers, but they overlooked the fact that office fires cannot possibly burn hot enough to melt steel or release iron from its oxide. I imagine they simply did not want or need to offer a genuine explanation for the microspheres. That had to wait for a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in 2009 by Prof Niels Harrit's team of professional chemists, physicists and engineers. They found highly engineered microscopic red-grey chips in four independent dust samples. They first tested to see if the chips were from primer paint as painted onto the steel structure of the towers but rejected that idea conclusively, since the chips did not dissolve in MEK (an industrial solvent) and didn't contain the elements one would expect to see in paint. Nonetheless, you will often find detractors, such as (Conspiracy Files producer) Mike Rudin at the BBC, still claiming that what Harrit's team found was merely paint. This only goes to show that most of the critics have not even read, let alone understood, this paper. Another rather un-paint-like property of these nano-particle chips is that they ignite in a highly energetic explosive reaction at around 430 deg C, producing tiny elemental iron spheres, exactly like those found in the dust. This confirms that the chips are a form of unreacted nano-thermite: a high explosive which slices easily through steel. This is the kind of material only made in a handful of laboratories in Europe and the US.


The findings of Harrit's team have been independently replicated by a chemical engineer, Mark Basile. The mainstream academic community has remained strangely silent on this subject, although no one has offered any serious criticism of the paper's methodology or its findings in an academic context. Privately, when I speak to physicists or engineers about these matters, I find those who are familiar with the evidence tend to accept that the official story is probably wrong and that the explosive demolition hypothesis is the strongest theory, worthy of serious consideration. However, no one is willing to jeopardise their career for the sake of pursuing this line of research. When Prof Steven Jones started questioning the official narrative by drawing attention to strong contrary evidence, he was relieved of his academic position at Brigham Young University. Most of those (rather few) scientists or professional experts who actively support the official narrative are either paid consultants to government agencies or derive the bulk of their research grants from government or military sources. Another obstacle to independent research is the fact that access to primary evidence (e.g. most of the dust samples, video and photographic evidence, CCTV footage, black box flight data, building blueprints and data sheets) is controlled by government and security agencies who only allow it to those who can be trusted to draw acceptable conclusions. The odds are very much stacked in favour of those with a vested interest in promoting the official story. In spite of that, its supporters have offered very little by way of good explanations and even less by way of evidence.


Conclusions


The corporate media continues to ignore or trivialise the complex issues brought up by those who legitimately question the official account of 9/11. Often, media disinformation takes a particularly crass form which can even be self-defeating, such as the recent BBC 9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip programme. This was such transparently awful nonsense that I would recommend it to an impartial observer, just to confirm that the mainstream media has no interest at all in rational perspectives on 9/11 and would rather insult the intelligence of viewers by peddling pseudo-science - with the aid of lego and eggs! At one point, the programme attempted to show that ordinary thermite (not nano-thermite) was incapable of cutting through a steel beam, by staging a laughably incompetent demonstration. For those interested in a proper scientific demonstration of how to cut through steel using thermate (thermite plus sulphur), I refer you to this video by professional engineer, Jonathan Cole.


Clearly, that BBC pseudo-documentary was pure propaganda aimed at the gullible, as is virtually all coverage of so-called 'conspiracy theories' in the corporate media; even outlets I sometimes respect, such as the Guardian, New Statesman and so on. Crude stereotyping of anyone with a minority view is the order of the day. Of course, this has always been the case and extends well beyond those who pursue the truth about 9/11, as Muslims, immigrants, single mothers and the disabled can also testify. If an idea is truly absurd, why waste time, effort and money attacking it? On the other hand, large sections of the media do promote genuinely weak and harmful ideas such as climate change denial. The media war on truth is intensifying because, fortunately, we live in an age in which there is an explosion of information sources, some of which are more reliable than the traditional ones controlled by state and corporate interests. Let us turn the tables for a moment and enjoy this light-hearted pastiche of the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, which the media wants us to believe:

Never stop asking questions. Demand non-trivialising answers. Distrust authority. Beware of bullshit. We will never be free of tyranny until we first free our minds of illusion.

AV or not AV? That's not the question.

I'm a democratic, freedom-loving lefty and I know many others who share my values. It is therefore very perplexing that some of my dearest friends are currently likely to vote 'No' in the forthcoming referendum to change the voting system in British general elections. This Easter weekend I had a long conversation with one of these friends, during which I came to understand his objections to the change on offer, and I recognise some real problems with AV; however these are not sufficient to justify a 'No' vote, especially if you are a democratic, freedom-loving left-winger. If you are one of those, please let me explain why you should reconsider your decision to oppose this change:

It seems that the over-riding reason for opposing AV among lefties is that it is thought that it might lead to a more bland, centrist style of politics in which the Liberal Democrats will hold the balance of power, most of the time, if not forever. Owen Jones makes this case in his blog. A similar case is put forward in another Labour blog, here. Both offer well articulated arguments. However, I believe this is a grave misconception, which the 'No' campaign would dearly love us to accept. The first big clue that this is a misconception comes from the very composition of the 'No' campaign itself: a reactionary cocktail mixed from the Taxpayers' Alliance, the Tory right, the BNP and the hyper-authoritarian Blairite wing of the Labour party (John Reid, Margaret Beckett, et al). Still, this issue is too important to indulge in ad hominem arguments. Many on the left see the referendum as a chance to give Nick Clegg a well-deserved kicking. This is probably the best reason to vote 'No'; a reason with which I can thoroughly identify, but it's just not good enough when it comes to a fundamental matter of the mechanics of democracy. On the other hand, Labour supporters might also want to consider the fact that a 'Yes' vote would severely weaken David Cameron.

So, why is it a mistake to think that AV would lead to more bland, centrist politics? First, it could hardly have escaped anyone's notice that the current climate of political debate is already about as bland and centrist as it is possible to be. Why is that? Well, who decides elections, in practice? Left-wing voters in inner city ghettos? No. Elections under first-past-the-post (FPTP) are decided by a tiny number of floating voters in a small number of marginal constituencies; about 1.6% of the electorate. These people tend to read tabloid newspapers and watch the X-Factor. At present, if you want to win an election, you need to pander to them. No one else counts. Labour takes the inner-city vote for granted and the Tories can always rely on the country squires. This is why you can barely squeeze a blue Rizla between the two main parties on policy. They both accept the neo-liberal economic consensus, the need for cuts and the inviolable rights of banks to rip us all off, ad infinitum. None of this can ever possibly change under our current voting system. We are completely at the mercy of media pundits and the voters they manipulate.

The status quo is completely unacceptable, if you support progressive politics. There is no case for FPTP over AV when it comes to a consideration of fairness and democracy. Why should it take 10 times as many votes to elect a Liberal Democrat MP as a Conservative MP? This is indefensible, no matter how much you may hate Liberal Democrats. The reason is partly because the Lib Dem vote is more uniformly spread across the country. Why should the geographical concentration of support have such a huge effect on the way our democracy functions? Would you accept that fact if it were the Labour vote (or even Conservative vote) that were spread out, and the Lib Dem vote were more concentrated? In their hearts, even opponents of change understand that AV is marginally more democratic than FPTP. It is totally obvious that AV gives voters more power to influence elections, because it means fewer votes will be wasted. The argument is best summarised by a cartoon:

Cartoon by R. Douglas Johnson

It is also untrue that AV would disadvantage smaller parties, as has been claimed by the Socialist Party, among others. It has been pointed out that in Australia, the Greens got 11.8% of the vote but only 1 MP out of 150, under AV, whilst we have 1 Green MP in the UK with only 1% of the vote. The point to understand here is that AV leads to an increased vote for smaller parties, although it doesn't generally give them more MPs. That's because people are free to express their true opinions under AV, without wasting their vote. AV is not PR, but that 1 Australian Green MP would equate to 4 MPs in the 650 seat House of Commons, so AV does have the potential to benefit smaller parties, by increasing their vote, although minor parties are unlikely to win many more seats. The increased vote for minor parties also gives them a chance to influence the policies of other similar parties who might want to court transfer votes. On the other hand, AV makes it impossible to elect a candidate who is strongly opposed by a local majority: this will often be a BNP candidate, or perhaps even a Tory, which may explain their opposition to AV. It is most unlikely to affect the prospects of the Greens, who are not  widely reviled. They will still find it hard to win seats, but no more so than under FPTP.

But what of the alternative? The 'Yes' campaign has been guilty of grossly exaggerating the benefits of AV over FPTP. Whilst this has been as nothing compared to the outright lies peddled by the 'No' campaign, the truth is that AV is only a very small improvement over FPTP, in terms of democracy. The evidence is that it is only a very marginally more proportional system, most of the time, although it may increase the effect of a landslide. FPTP is almost as likely to lead to hung parliaments, and the Australian experience with AV suggests that coalitions are not going to be the norm. In any case, the evidence is very sketchy and based on a host of assumptions backed by very little firm data; it is 90% guesswork. It is important to understand that the outcome of elections depends crucially on the political landscape and context: this is true under any electoral system. Here is where AV offers real improvement: it promotes plurality because it gives voters the power to express their true preference, as Sunny Hundal argues on LibCon.

FPTP is designed for a two-party system. It simply doesn't make any sense in a multi-party democracy where voters feel increasingly disinclined to support the two main parties. I grew up during a time when the left-wing vote was split, most obviously in the 1983 election. This delivered a landslide victory for Margaret Thatcher's Tory party on 42% of the vote, despite the fact that most voters were clearly opposed to their policies. The splitting of the left-wing vote produced 17 years of extreme neo-liberal Tory government, until the Labour party finally learned to pander to those tabloid-reading floating voters in marginal seats. The result was a further 10 years of neo-liberal Thatcherism, but with the smiley face of Tony Blair on the poster - admittedly we did get more money for health and education but at the huge cost of foreign wars for oil, PFI scams, tuition fees, lower social mobility, deregulation, welfare for bankers and a vicious attack on our civil liberties.

A recent YouGov poll suggests that Labour would now be the main losers if AV were adopted in preference to FPTP. This is very much in contrast to what would have been the case for most of the past 30 years, including the 2010 election. A closer look at that poll reveals that Labour, with 42% of the vote, would still have an outright majority under both FPTP and AV. The only effect of AV would be to reduce the Labour majority by a mere 13 seats, which I consider to be a good thing, as it would reduce the power of the executive over the legislature. The Tories would have the same number of seats under either system, so the Lib Dems - as ever - would be the beneficiaries, although they would still have less than half as many seats as they have now, due to the collapse in their support - and yet they would still be under-represented! In short, the political landscape has changed, and that is why Labour is no longer necessarily the biggest loser from FPTP. It looks like it may now be the right-wing vote that is fragmented, for the very first time in history. The Tories are fighting for reactionary votes with UKIP, the BNP and the right-of-centre rump of the Lib Dems. This may well be a temporary state of affairs, though, bearing in mind the rising support for the Green party and the possibility that the Lib Dems may rediscover their principles and position themselves to the left of Labour, as they have done for the past 3 or 4 elections, to great effect.

None of this really matters. It would be foolish in the extreme to make a decision on electoral reform on the basis of narrow party political advantage as revealed by a snapshot of voting intentions from a single poll at a single moment in history. This momentary advantage of FPTP to the Labour party is not even that great (13 seats in an overall majority either way). Still, it seems that many Labour supporters, especially left-wing activists, have a gut feeling that anything which benefits the Lib Dems must be opposed. There is considerable tribalism in this feeling (often based on local antipathies), and its intellectual justification is a half-thought-out assumption that AV will lead to more centrist politics. I hope I've already shown that this assumption has no basis and that centrist politics is rather a consequence of FPTP.

In fact, there is a condsiderable body of voters and potential voters to the left of Labour, whose views are largely ignored and whose votes are taken for granted or considered surplus to requirements by the party. Many of them voted Lib Dem in 2010 and have since been attracted either to Ed Milliband's more leftish style of Labour politics, or to the revitalised Green party, which is well to the left of Labour on most issues, and far less authoritarian. Electoral reform at last holds out the possibility of galvanising a broad left majority capable of steering the Labour party away from the neo-liberal consensus of the past 30 years. We must not let this opportunity slip away. The centre is the ground already occupied by the two main parties; it makes no sense to 'reach out' to that ground, where there is no room for manoeuvre. AV would give Labour an incentive to reach out to the left instead - to the Greens, socialists and remaining left-wing Lib Dems - in pursuit of the transfer votes it will need to defeat the Tories who, at the same time, are likely to pursue transfers from parties to the right of them, like UKIP. This could well shake up the political consensus in a way that is desperately needed.

AV will not solve all the problems of our broken electoral system. It may well not solve any of them to a great extent. But a 'Yes' vote will send out a clear message that we cannot put up with this bland rubbish that passes for democracy any longer. We need to shift the electoral battleground away from a handful of floating voters in marginal constituencies. AV is only a small step in the right direction, but it is the start of a process of wider electoral reform, including reform of the House of Lords, which must not be sacrificed for the sake of nit-picking objections, tribal prejudices, short-term advantage or a misplaced nostalgia for the two-party politics of the 1950s. If there is a 'No' vote on 5th May, we can be sure that supporters of the status quo will use it to block all attempts at electoral reform for decades to come. This is exactly why the Taxpayer's Alliance and the Tory right want us to vote 'No', which is exactly why we should vote 'Yes' to AV.

I will end on a completely shameless ad hominem argument, which you should probably ignore. Here are the two chaps who most desperately need a 'No' vote on May 5th, and this is how they will look if you give it to them, because the current system serves their interests perfectly, even when they are not in power:

Addendum 26/4/11: Neal Lawson wrote a similar piece to mine on 15th April in Open Democracy, which is well worth reading and makes it perfectly clear that it is the forces of reaction, wealth and privilege which have the most to lose from a 'Yes' vote. In case you doubt this, note that the 'No' campaign is largely funded by big business and wealthy bankers such as Peter Cruddas (founder of derivatives dealers CMC Markets), Lord Sainsbury, Peter Hargreaves (head of Hargreaves Lansdown) and Lord Fink (head of Man Group), as confirmed by the bankers' propaganda sheet, CityAM in today's issue (page 10).

Ask yourself why these people, the Tories, the TPA and the BNP all desperately want a 'No' vote. Ask yourself that question and think hard about it over and over again from now until May 5th.

Democracy, Hypocrisy and the Arms Trade

Last week, David Cameron showed that he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'democracy', when he described Kuwait as being one. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised, since Cameron also wants to reduce the number of MPs in parliament by about 10%, thereby making every vote worth 10% less. If this is a good idea, then surely reducing the number of MPs by 100% would be ten times better? Still, the number of MPs is only one small factor in what determines the quality of a democracy. Merely having an elected parliament does not make a country 'democratic'.

The Economist Intelligence Unit produces a comprehensive report on the state of democracy around the world, in which every country is scored on numerous indices, grouped into five major categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties. It then produces an overall score and ranks countries by this, dividing them into four major groups: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. I must point out to Mr Cameron that Kuwait is, unsurprisingly, in the 4th division and designated as an authoritarian regime, according to the EIU, on a par with Morocco and Ethiopia, well below Russia and Pakistan (both in the 3rd division). On the plus side, Kuwait is doing quite well this season, in second place in the 4th division, so there is hope that it may some day get promoted to a 'hybrid regime'.

Cameron was trying to justify arms sales by saying that democratic countries were entitled to defend themselves. His extremely broad definition of 'democracy' makes it perfectly clear that we will, in fact, sell arms to absolutely anyone who wants them, for whatever purpose. Until a few weeks ago, we were still selling arms for internal repression to Bahrain and Libya. Bahrain is only 8 places below Kuwait and Libya is 10th from bottom of the world democracy league. Over the past three years, the UK has sold over £13 million worth of arms to Bahrain and £73 million worth to Libya.

We have also sold over over £1.85 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia over the same period, which is even below Libya in the league table. By the EIU's measure, there are only 7 countries in the entire world that are less democratic than Saudi Arabia, including the Central African Republic and rock bottom North Korea. If North Korea were to embrace capitalism and stop scaring its neighbours, we'd be selling arms to them too. The only reason we've temporarily stopped approving sales to Libya, Tunisia and Bahrain is that those countries are now in open revolt, which would make it a bit embarrassing. In short, they're all good friends and customers until their people rise up or they oppose our foreign policy interests, just as Saddam Hussein did. For more detail on these states and their reliance on Western arms sales, see this excellent blog post by Cafe Thawra.

What this illustrates is that there is absolutely no moral imperative when it comes to doing business. More importantly, there is no affinity whatsoever between capitalism and democracy. In fact, the two are often in conflict. If we want a thriving arms industry, we can have no moral qualms at all. Our foreign policy also has no ethical dimension and it has never had one, whatever self-righteous nonsense Tony Blair may have spouted about bringing democracy to Iraq. For the record, Iraq is still well short of being a democracy, and is now classed as a hybrid regime, bottom of the 3rd division, only two places above Kuwait: that's after a decade of occupation and a war costing countless lives. Things may be better than they were under Saddam, but not by all that much. Is Afghanistan doing any better? No. It's doing much worse: still classed as an authoritarian regime, one place above Sudan. It seems we're not very good at imposing democracy on the countries we destroy, which just confirms that spreading democracy has nothing to do with the reasons why we are there.

David Cameron's new-found enthusiasm for democracy in the Arab world is purely a response to media pressure and public opinion. It's all highly inconvenient, because until now we have been happily arming autocrats to the teeth. It's not that we don't have strict official guidelines for approving arms sales; it's just that we completely ignore them, in routine acts of nauseating hypocrisy.

Perhaps part of the problem is that Britain itself is not as democratic a country as it should be. The UK only just makes it into the 1st division of 'full democracies', with a score of 8.16 (the threshold is 8). If we are not careful, we will follow two other big arms exporters, France and Italy, down to the 2nd division of 'flawed democracies'. One of the reasons why the UK is slipping towards the relegation zone, according to the EIU report, is that there has been an erosion of civil liberties in recent years, partly as a consequence of the spurious 'War on Terror'. Only South Korea and the USA score worse than the UK on civil liberties in the top division: this is New Labour's legacy. Likewise, the 'Land of the Free' turns out to be nothing of the sort. The other reason for the UK's poor rating is our pitiful record of low turn-outs in general elections and generally low level of political participation, no doubt due in part to our appallingly undemocratic voting system, which no other full democracy uses, apart from Canada and the US, which also has a problem of low participation.

So, when British and US leaders claim to support democracy in the Arab world, the hypocrisies are multiple: they show a total lack of understanding of what democracy means in its broad sense, both at home and overseas. Support for liberation movements in Egypt and Libya cannot coexist with support for absolute autocracy in Saudi Arabia, bolstered by arms sales. Nor should the erosion of civil liberties in the UK be used to excuse the fact that Israel, officially a 'flawed democracy', has a civil liberties record worse than that of Uganda. Israel may still be the only democracy in the Middle East; but that is mainly thanks to the support Western leaders have shown for tyrants. Contemporary events serve to expose these hypocrisies and we can only hope that they will lead to greater democracy here, as well as in the Arab world.

Addendum: If you want another example of hypocrisy, consider the oft-repeated fear of many Western commentators that the Arab uprisings will lead to Islamic fundamentalism in those countries. Now, guess which Islamic country is the most fundamentalist theocracy in the entire world, by far? Here's a clue: it's the same state to which the UK has sold £1.85 billion of arms in the past three years. Yes, Saudi Arabia again. The Saudi authorities make the Taliban look like a bunch of liberal atheists. Indeed, the Taliban took inspiration from Saudi Wahhabism. The West really doesn't give a hoot about fundamentalist Islam. It does give a hoot about whether these countries will support them in the UN, buy their arms and, most importantly, allow their oil companies to exploit their natural resources.   

So long, Hosni. What now?

The regime is dead! Long live .. er .. the regime? There are scenes of great jubilation in Cairo and across Egypt today, as Hosni Mubarak, president for 30 years, finally accepted reality and stepped down. His earlier refusal to go had stunned everyone, as he seemed to be clinging to the hope - like a drunken imbecile chatting up his pretty ex-girlfriend in a bar - that Egypt might let him have his wicked way with her for at least a few more months. 

"It's over, Hosni, can't you see that?" she tells him, firmly.

"Oh, come aaaahhhhn, we were good together - hic!" he implores, sliding off his stool. "Juz gimme one more chance. I promise it'll be better this time. I'll give up the corruption, the torture, the deceit and all my foreign mistresses. Come on, whaddya say, huh?"

"Forget it, Hosni. You're all washed up. I've got a new boyfriend now. He's handsome and his name is Freedom. He also has a friend called Democracy and we're going to live together in a ménage-à-trois. I've had enough of your lies and your tyranny. We're through!"

Of course, there was no way Mubarak was going to stay. His bluff had been called two weeks ago, when he failed to quell the demonstrations in the beginning. Egypt's people finally got a little taste of freedom and found the regime powerless to stop them. There was no way they were just going to slink off back home after that. It's a heart-warming story and I extend my congratulations to the people of Egypt. I really hope that they can begin to live in genuine freedom, but without wanting to sound like a party pooper, I still have my doubts.

The army, as in most countries of the world, still holds all the cards. Nasser, Sadat and then Mubarak all came from the ranks of the army. There is no guarantee that the army will allow democracy to take root in Egypt; they could just install another dictator, under the guise of democratic reform. Nevertheless, it will be much harder for any future Egyptian leader to ignore the people's will and their demands for real freedom. That genie is now out of the bottle. If Egyptians are denied a multi-party pluralist democracy, they may take to the streets again, in the knowledge that they wield more power than they ever dared think. Dictators everywhere should quake at that thought.

However, there remains the danger of a brutal backlash. I am reminded of the student protests in China's Tiananmen Square, which were eventually crushed by military force. That way lies either an even harsher Western backed military dictatorship, or possibly a revolutionary theocracy, as in Iran. Western governments can help to ensure that doesn't happen, by maintaining strong pressure for democracy.

Western governments may find it difficult to champion democracy in Egypt, given their history of backing dictators, of course. Egypt only serves to highlight the utter hypocrisy of US policy in particular: whilst advocating 'regime change' in Iraq, the US bolstered tyrants across the Arab world and still does, whilst our media always dutifully reported Mubarak's phony 'election victories', as if he were a popular leader with a democratic mandate. Maybe it's about time we ditched supposed expediency in favour of the principles we pretend to espouse? Maybe that would actually be in everyone's long term interests.

They say 'cut back', we say 'fight back'

Last weekend, shoppers crowded the streets of austerity Britain in search of bargains in the January sales. Some prices were down, even though VAT was up, adding over 2% to the cost of most items. With inflation also running at over 3% but wages stagnant, it's now or never if you want a genuine bargain. On Friday I bagged one for myself: a new pair of shoes at half price. You see, I too am a consumer, not too socialist to wear shoes made by The Man – or more likely by some young girl in a sweatshop in some unspecified country. When I bought those shoes, I was in truth more concerned with their affordability than the ethics of their manufacture. Indeed, I was never confronted with any ethical decision, since the shoes did not announce where they were made or by whom; they were just a half price pair of shoes – a bargain. On Friday then, I was a good consumer.

On Saturday, I donned a different guise and became a subversive, an agitator, a protester, demonstrator, irritant, pain in the arse. That’s certainly how some shoppers and shop workers might have described me and the band of protesters known as UK Uncut, who mounted a series of demonstrations outside shops in Oxford Street that afternoon. We briefly closed down Vodafone, before moving on to BHS, Topshop and Boots. However, whilst some bargain hunters may have been slightly irked by our presence, many others stopped to listen to our message and voiced their agreement with it. That message was that corporate tax avoidance was largely responsible for the size of the budget deficit and that spending cuts plus the VAT increase are not a necessity but a political choice by this government, to favour big business and wealthy individuals whilst making the rest of us shoulder the burden of a crisis largely created by rich bankers.

UK Uncut Protesters outside BHS

As a mark of the egalitarian, democratic nature of our group, we took it in turns to speak through a megaphone, which was passed around among us, like some electrified conch. Sitting outside Vodafone, the first point to make was that Vodafone had been trying to avoid £6 billion worth of tax and that the Treasury had very generously let them off all but £1.25 billion of this. If you are self-employed and doing your tax return this month, I suggest you try striking a similar deal and see how far you get. We may all be ‘in it together’, but it seems that some of us are very much more in it than others. The amount of tax legally avoided or illegally evaded each year has been estimated at over £40 billion by the Treasury, although other sources suggest that the true figure is closer to £120 billion.

Much of that gap is due to corporate tax avoidance, using well-known loopholes which the government shows no interest in closing – instead they are reducing the number of tax inspectors. We informed the shoppers of Oxford Street that if corporations and the rich were made to pay all the taxes they owed, then there would be no so-called ‘structural deficit’ whatsoever, and no need for any spending cuts at all. The tuition fee rise, the VAT increase, rail fare increases, public sector job losses, library closures, welfare cuts: all these and more could be completely reversed at a single stroke. In addition to allowing corporations simply to avoid the taxes they owe, the government is also pushing ahead with a cut in the headline rate of corporation tax from 28% to 24% over the next 4 years, which will more than soften the blow of any bank levy they might impose. It also means that in effect, large corporations will be able to lower their tax bills to under 20% of their profits (Boots only paid 3% last year), which is less than the small business rate and the standard rate of income tax.

Does anyone still believe we're 'all in it together'? Just as most people are preparing to tighten their belts, bankers in the City are preparing to pop the champagne corks yet again, despite the fact that the banks are still receiving support from the taxpayer to the value of £512 billion, down from a peak of £1 trillion, in addition to about £115 billion in direct bail-outs. Bankers still think that they deserve to share a bonus pot of around £7 billion, which happens to be roughly the same amount which was cut from higher education spending, leading to the rise in student tuition fees. Given such figures, it is no wonder that our message was very well received by the great majority of passers by. The minor inconvenience we were causing to shoppers paled to nothing beside the inconvenience caused to us all by corporate venality in its various forms.

Our action was entirely peaceful, although there was just one moment when a scuffle threatened to break out. I was standing next to a fellow protester just outside Topshop when the police insisted that we move away from a doorway. My colleague wanted to discuss the legality of the matter, but the police were not in a chatty mood and decided to shove us back with considerable force. Had we reciprocated, we would have been arrested, of course, but we had no interest in provoking such a confrontation, which would only have detracted enormously from an otherwise successful and peaceful day of protest. The actions of those two police officers did remind us, though, that the police usually need very little provocation in order to escalate a situation from peaceful protest to violent confrontation. We had to exercise a degree of self-control not to take their bait, but always to steer a course just on the right side of the law, which in the last decade has become increasingly hostile to many of our democratic freedoms, including free expression and the right to protest.

Still, I do not want to characterise police officers as being all the same. I personally know some to be very decent people, and most of those we encountered were simply trying to do their jobs, cheerfully and dutifully, for which I thank them. Indeed, they are supposed to be public servants, and many of their jobs are under threat. We pointed out the irony that Sir Philip Green, the owner of Topshop and BHS, avoids paying income tax in the UK because he siphons his earnings through his Monaco-resident wife and therefore does not contribute his fair share to the wages of the police officers protecting his interests.

Sir Philip Green's tax avoidance assisted by his friends in government

In a further ironic twist, this fact has not dissuaded the government from employing Sir Philip (at taxpayers' expense) to advise it on making efficiency savings. Perhaps Sir Philip would be good enough to advise David Cameron that a great deal of money could be saved by closing tax loopholes which allow people like him and our Chancellor of the Exchequer to sequester most of their wealth and income in tax havens. Perhaps they think that taxes are just for ‘the little people’, like us? Well, the little people are serving notice that we are not going to take it lying down any more.

A friend of mine on the protest did manage to get herself banned from Topshop for 3 months, presumably for daring to challenge Sir Philip Green’s legal right, as a billionaire, to pay less tax than the rest of us. Happily, I can report that she is bearing up well under this terrible hardship, in the knowledge that she is now a martyr to our noble cause. One has to smile ruefully at the thought that the right to go shopping – and avoid paying your dues to society but only if you’re rich enough – now seems to be accorded greater respect than rights to such things as education, job opportunities, fair taxation and even free speech. We need to change that.