Tributes to the late great boxer Muhammad Ali have been overflowing since the announcement of his passing earlier this month. John Wight has published an excellent two-part obituary to Ali in the pages of Morning Star. He explores the life and times of Ali, elaborating on how Ali defied the odds in the boxing ring, but also defied the mainstream political tide outside of it. Standing up for his principles, Ali sacrificed his heavyweight champion, lost three prime years of his career, and earned the enmity of the predominately white media and sporting power structures. Wight ends his extensive and moving obituary with the observation, “He truly was the lion that roared.”

The details of the formative and key events in Muhammad Ali’s life are well known – his upset victory over the fearsome heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston in 1964, his early conversion to the Nation of Islam and name change, his staunch opposition to the Vietnam war and refusal to be conscripted which cost him three prime years of his career and financial loss, his stirring comeback and famous victory over George Foreman in 1974. Let us focus today on the things that Ali stood for, and how he demonstrated that athletes and activism combine in powerful ways. As Richard Eskow put it in an article for Common Dreams magazine, Muhammad Ali’s life and principled stand spoke to the activist soul.

Eskow elaborates in his article that:

In the end, Muhammad Ali wasn’t just the most important athlete of his time. And he wasn’t just a world-changing activist. He was even more than those things: he was a unified human being. His occupation was inseparable from his aspirations, his spiritual ideals inseparable from his worldly activities.

Ali’s conversion to the Nation of Islam represented both a spiritual, and a political, awakening. In a time of strict racial segregation, where being black meant that you were a second-class citizen, Ali found a home within the Nation of Islam. The latter, an exclusively African American organisation, demanded self-respect and proudly displayed its pro-Africa spirit in all of its activities. Yes, that organisation taught its members that the white man was the blue-eyed devil. A hostile attitude, but understandable, given the horrendous violence visited by the white power structures upon the African American communities. From the day that Jack Johnson, the African American, became the first black man to win the heavyweight boxing championship, the media and sporting bodies put out the call for a white man to win back the prestigious championship for the white race. When Johnson succeeded in maintaining his grip on the sport, there were race riots across the country – reprisals by enraged whites against black communities.

Dave Zirin, the sports journalist and political writer explained in one of his articles;

The backlash against Johnson meant that it would be twenty years before the rise of another black heavyweight champ — Joe Louis, “the Brown Bomber.” Louis was quiet where Johnson was defiant. He was handled very carefully by a management team that had a set of rules Louis had to follow including, “never be photographed with a white woman, never go to a club by yourself and never speak unless spoken to.”

Johnson himself was hounded and jailed on the most dubious pretexts in order to maintain the colour line in sport.

Ostracised and vilified by white America, it is no wonder that Ali found a spiritual home in the separatist Nation of Islam organisation. As Ali himself explained it in April 1968, during his three year banishment from boxing; “We don’t hate white people – we know them too well”. When he was banned from boxing, Ali lost his main income stream, going from a wealthy status to borderline pauper. Okay, not exactly poverty-stricken, but in dire financial straits. The threat of incarceration hung over his head.

Ali demonstrated that the bridge from the anti-war movement of the 1960s, when he refused induction, and the civil rights movement, which demanded racial and economic equality, was not that large an obstacle to cross. During Ali’s time in boxing exile, he continued speaking out against the war in Vietnam, and he maintained his absolute commitment to civil rights. This in a time when civil rights leaders, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, were killed because of their principled commitment.

Ali-Frazier rivalry

One of the few boxers who helped Ali during his years of exile was Joe Frazier. The latter, the son of South Carolina sharecroppers, used and developed his athletic talents for boxing and emerged from obscurity, much like Ali. Frazier and Ali shared an intense boxing rivalry, one that spilled out of the ring. After Ali’s boxing license was reinstated in the early 1970s, Ali and Frazier fought three grueling matches. In their first encounter, in 1971, Frazier handed Ali a rare defeat, hitting Ali straight in the head with his fearsome left hook, sending Ali tumbling down to the canvass. Frazier won that fight through sheer determination and persistence.

Ali had characterised Frazier in the pre-match buildup as an ‘Uncle Tom’ character, a pawn of the white establishment. This was particularly unfair – Frazier’s background in poverty was typical of black America. Cruelly labeled a ‘sellout’, Frazier could never quite shake off that tag. This was unfortunate, and Frazier was nothing but an honest, talented fighter. He was definitely not an intellectual – but then neither was Ali. After fifteen bruising rounds, Frazier defeated Ali, and for that, the white sporting establishment were gleeful – the draft-dodging traitor, the uppity black Muslim was hit on his head, and knocked down on his butt.

After his victory, Frazier was invited to address both houses of the South Carolina legislature. Not because the white politicians were particularly interested in Frazier, but because he was the black man who had finally knocked down Muhammad Ali. The latter had berated Frazier at every opportunity as a sellout, the white man’s champion – an unfair characterisation. However, Frazier did stand in the South Carolina legislature, at the time still draped in Confederate flag of the former slave-owning state. Frazier was not an ‘Uncle Tom’, but he was naive in his belief that the white establishment respected him as a fighter. As the 1970s moved on, the taunts and insults to Frazier from Ali became less political and more personal. The verbal humiliations only added to Frazier’s anger, and in their fights, Frazier turned all that anger into furious energy, pummeling and battering Ali. We will come back to point later.

Frazier only generated interest insofar as he defeated Ali. Frazier, a heavyweight champion in his own right, was subsequently defeated by George Foreman. The South Carolina politicians quickly lost interest; the swooning media stopped following Frazier, and he was relegated to the status of just another fading ex-champion. As Dave Zirin explained in his article about Joe Frazier, written soon after the latter died of liver cancer in 2011:

This shouldn’t have been Joe Frazier’s fate: the convenient hero of everyone who wanted to see Ali punished for his politics. This shouldn’t have been Joe Frazier’s fate: internalizing and nursing every barb from “Gaseous Cassius” instead of letting it roll off his back. This shouldn’t have been Joe Frazier’s fate: rejected by the same establishment so quick to embrace him when it suited their needs. Smokin’ Joe deserved so much better.

The Seventies

In the 1970s, as the mood of the country changed and the Vietnam war was concluded, Ali was welcomed back into the fold. He continued to box, but also took the time to extend his political commitment – he visited a Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon, expressing his support for the cause of Palestinian self-determination. He visited and toured the former Soviet Union in 1978, where he was just as popular as in Africa, America and other parts of the world.

Ali had already visited a number of countries in Africa back in the 1960s, touring Ghana and meeting with then-president, the Pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah. Ali was welcomed as a hero, and he also visited Nigeria and Egypt. A continent that had been ignored by so many Americans, dismissed as an exotic jungle land full of savages, Ali took the time to understand its history and humanity, and the ravages visited upon it by foreign imperialism. Ali demonstrated a sharp political acuity, something quite rare in professional athletes. He gave courage to those who were struggling to find theirs.

After the famous fight with George Foreman – the rumble in the jungle, where Ali regained the heavyweight championship by defeating Foreman – his skills and health went into decline. For that fight, Ali used his now famous tactic, the rope-a-dope, where he waited, absorbing the powerful blows by Foreman, letting the latter exhaust himself. Ali waited, allowing the strong Foreman to pound away, round after round. By the middle of round five, Foreman was tired out. Note that prior to Ali’s banishment from boxing, he demonstrated his remarkable reflexes and footwork to avoid getting hit, while hitting his opponents. Now, he is getting hit – hit hard, and frequently. Foreman, Joe Frazier – these were only two of the hardest hitters in boxing at the time. Ali’s body is taking a barrage of punches – his kidneys, stomach, liver, rib cage, head – are all being battered repeatedly. He hurt himself in the fights of the 1970s. The physical decline had set in.

After Foreman, Ali had a number of fights; some were very strong encounters, some were ridiculously farcical bouts. The 1980 fight with Larry Holmes should never have happened; Holmes was an upcoming heavyweight contender, who had sparred with Ali in the 70s. Ali was in no condition to fight, and Holmes proceeded to batter a helpless Ali for ten rounds. As Thomas Hauser, a boxing writer and Ali biographer explained it:

Holmes, who was eight years younger than his opponent, dominated every minute of every round. It wasn’t an athletic contest; just a brutal beating that went on and on.

That was the night that Ali screamed in pain. After ten rounds, Ali’s corner threw in the towel. Although he won, Holmes was upset and depressed after that fight, and was reduced to tears because he had demolished his idol and hero.

The physical deterioration had set in, and Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1984. In his retirement years, Ali was feted as a sporting icon – there is no doubt that he was. However, his political courage was largely forgotten, as he was reduced to a sanitised sporting hero. Ali maintained his humanity in an otherwise barbaric sport. He exhibited not only physical courage, but grace and elegance, and was articulate at a time when boxers and super-star athletes were not known for any particular skills outside of their chosen profession.

There is so much more to Ali’s life that we could go into; however, other writers have covered that ground. Let us remember Ali as the powerfully articulate, gregarious and superb athlete-activist that he was. He was prepared to sacrifice his individual sporting success for his beliefs. He was not only shaped by the political and social context of his times, but actively shaped and contributed to it. It is a testament to his political vision that, even towards the end of his life, as he remained hobbled by Parkinson’s illness, he still showed political awareness and perspicacity.

In December 2015, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is not noted for his intellectual capacities, made a startling call for a complete ban on Muslim immigration to the United States. Muhammad Ali, who had left the Nation of Islam and joined the mainstream Sunni Islam in the mid-1970s, was asked for his comments. In fact, Ali had been gravitating towards the Sufi denomination of Islam since 2005, revealing his commitment to a spiritual quest. While not directly addressing Trump’s remarks, Ali, through his spokespeople, had the following to say:

We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda . . . I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world . . . True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.” “I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.

Rather than lashing out at the obnoxious, bombastic bigot, Ali chose to ignore the ignoramus, calmly and rationally addressed the issues at hand, explained his position, and rebuffed the ignorance and hatred at the core of Trump’s remarks. Ali demonstrated an understanding of the political and social hot-potato issues of our times – an understanding far superior to that of the cartoonish, racist buffoon masquerading as a politician.

Let us salute the lion that roared – his resistance to imperialist war overseas and racist power structures at home is a lesson from which we can all learn.

Sadiq Khan’s election as London mayor is a rejection of the politics of fear and Islamophobia, but let us not endorse his policies.

The election of Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London, made headline news in the English-speaking world. It is no surprise that Khan’s electoral victory made news here in Australia, given our longstanding economic, political and cultural ties to the United Kingdom. It is not intended to go into all the intricacies of British politics in this article, however, the victory of an openly Muslim candidate for a major political position in the UK has elicited various reactions, and these responses are illustrative of the kind of politics that passes for policy debate in the English-speaking countries.

Khan’s victory in London, the economic and political capital of the United Kingdom, was a stern rebuff to the scurrilous and vitriolic campaign of smears and lies perpetuated by the Tory party opponent, Zac Goldsmith. The latter, a product of the wealthy financial elite of Britain, waged a campaign of Islamophobic smears and distortions, attempting to associate Khan with extremism, advocacy of violence, and Islamist political terrorism. As Padraig Reidy states in his article, published in the CommonDreams online magazine, the Goldsmith campaign attempted to turn the electoral contest into a racial and religious divide, invoking xenophobic fears of multiculturalism. As Reidy explains:

The Goldsmith campaign didn’t stop there. In an attempt to exploit sectarian divisions between London’s Asian communities, fliers were sent to families with Hindu- and Sikh-sounding names. Khan, of Pakistani origin, was no friend of India, they were told. He had not attended a rally to greet the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited London. His party supported a “wealth tax” on family jewelry. Goldsmith, on the other hand, was always sure to celebrate Hindu festivals. (This proclamation of his love for the culture of India came unstuck in the days before the election, when video emerged of Goldsmith declaring his love for Bollywood films, but being unable to name a single Indian film or film star when asked).

It all culminated in a disastrous op-ed piece in the Mail On Sunday newspaper, where Goldsmith threw more accusations at Khan. The article was illustrated with an iconic image of a red bus that had been blown up by a suicide bomber in the 7/7 attack on the city. This felt a smear too far for many Londoners.

Goldsmith, following the best traditions of the Tory party, turned the electoral contest into a sectarian divide, not only invoking images of the July 7 bombings – and slyly linking Sadiq Khan with them – but also stirring up ethnic divisions, playing on the fears of the Hindu and Sikh communities of a politician with a Pakistani background.

Khan, in contrast, focused on the pressing policy issues confronting his city – housing, transport, the chaotic financial system – and promoted himself as the candidate for all Londoners, regardless of ethnic, racial or religious background. Khan was also cleverer than his opponent – anticipating the vitriolic attacks of his Conservative enemies, he turned the tables on Goldsmith, arguing that his background as a Muslim growing up in Britain gave him a unique insight into the experiences, problems and traumas of young British-Muslim people, finding their place in British society. Khan tapped into the multicultural diversity of London, and played that to his advantage. All the sly insinuations of Goldsmith’s campaign evaporated to nothing.

Khan’s victory is a direct repudiation of the politics of hatred and fear. Islamophobia is certainly not going to end completely with the installation of a Muslim mayor in a major European city. Let us not turn this into a Barack Obama moment – Obama’s electoral victory in the United States back in 2008 did not end racism, or usher in a post-racial America. Khan’s victory does not mean the end of the struggle. However, it is true to say that the underhanded and sleazy tactics of the Goldsmith campaign, seeking to stoke the fires of Islamophobic hated, backfired spectacularly. Khan scored an emphatic victory.

Speaking about Muslim mayors in European cities – this is nothing new or out of the ordinary. Professor Juan Cole, from the University of Michigan and expert commentator on Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs, points out that Europe has witnessed Muslim mayors for the last 1300 years. In an article published in Truthdig online magazine, Professor Cole elaborates that Europe was not always a Christian-majority continent. Indeed, for most of its inhabited history, Europe has seen pagan, secular, Islamic as well as Christian religions dominate various portions and countries within its range. As Cole explains in his essay:

Islam is a major European religion and is a nearly 1,300-year-old tradition there.

[Sitting elected Muslim mayors include Erion Veliaj of Tirana, Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam, and Shpend Ahmeti of Pristina. Muslim-majority Sarajevo elected Ivo Komšić, a Christian, in 2013.]

Going back into history, parts of Spain, and often quite a lot of it, were under Muslim rule 711 to 1492. So, for example, Abd al-Rahman I was proclaimed Emir of Cordoba in 756. We’re talking major Western European city here. In the 900s, Cordoba was the most populous city in the world.

The Arab Muslim emirate of Sicily lasted from 831 to 1072. For example, Jafar al-Kalbi (983–985) was emir of Sicily, and therefore mayor of Palermo, the capital.

Yes, the sitting mayor of Rotterdam, a major European city, is Ahmed Aboutaleb. He has been a staunch opponent of violence and extremism in all its forms.

The Ottoman Turkish empire, having conquered vast swathes of the Balkans, and all the way up to Budapest in Hungary, appointed Muslim mayors for the major European cities under its control. Let us not forget that Istanbul – Constantinople – is a major European city with 14 million residents, and a Muslim mayor.

Let us sound out a note of caution – Khan’s victory, while welcome, should not be used to draw a false finish line in the struggle for economic and social equality. Khan belongs to the Blairite wing of the Labour party, a more rightward faction inside the party at odds with current Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Indeed, Khan went out of his way – twice – to attack Corbyn, his own party leader, both during the campaign and in the immediate hours after he assumed office in London mayoralty. Khan publicly and clearly distanced himself from the more left-wing, Labour policies of Corbyn. Khan is a strong supporter of big business, and went to great lengths to reassure the financial elite that they had nothing to worry about in the wake of his electoral success.

Khan announced himself as a pro-business candidate, in a city that is the financial and political hub of the English ruling class oligarchy. He openly declared his intention to be the most pro-business mayor London has ever seen – something remarkable given that the previous mayor, Boris Johnson, was an out-and-out conservative who reinforced the privileges and wealth of the financial aristocracy. His record on British imperialism speaks for itself, having voted against the establishment of any inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War, a war enabled among others by his political hero, Tony Blair. Khan has supported the development of Trident, the British nuclear weapons programme, and opposes Britain’s withdrawal from NATO. He is a strong and calculating supporter of British imperialism.

Khan did announce his intention to fix the ongoing housing crisis in London. How? By bringing together an alliance of housing associations, local authorities and real estate developers. That is all very well and good, but that does ignore one major problem – successive British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have done their utmost to open up London to real estate development, expanding the application of private housing, closing down and pushing out social and public housing projects. As Danny Dorling describes in an article for The Guardian newspaper:

The housing situation in the UK is so bleak that the key reason increasing numbers of people are becoming homeless is that they are unable to pay extortionate private sector rents. In February 2016, the Financial Times described the help-to-buy scheme as “help to cry”, naming it “one of the most perversely named government policies ever”. Squatting is on the rise again despite being outlawed in 2012: when people’s only choice is criminalised, the legitimacy of the law itself is discredited.

The new London mayor can start to redress these problems by first confronting the tired, and recycled old myth that London’s housing problem is caused by mass immigration – a widespread slander that obscures the real reason for the housing crisis; the housing laws of the country that make it possible for extortionate private sector rents to be charged, the demolition of public housing by the government, and the absence of rental caps. The new mayor has to make a decision – to side with residents or with the developers. As activist Duncan Thomas wrote in an article published in the Socialist Worker magazine:

The London we live is not the same London that is inhabited by billionaires; Khan cannot be the mayor of both. Any attempt to serve these two cities will sooner or later have to deal with its contradictions–and at that point, it will become very much about “choosing sides.”

The attack on public housing as part of a generalised assault on the working conditions and living conditions of the British working population. The cutbacks to health care, education and transport are undermining the quality of life for millions of working people. Let us heed the warning of Harry Leslie Smith, a 91-year-old RAF veteran who, in 2014, wrote a powerful article about what life was like for working people like him prior to the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS). His article is entitled “Hunger, filth, fear and death”: remembering life before the NHS. Decisions that originate in the philosophy of austerity cutbacks and neoliberalism, result in the destruction of social services, and adversely impact the lives of ordinary people. Khan has to make a serious choice – to govern for the ultra-wealthy one percent, or for the rest of us.

The scandal is not the mass migration of refugees into Europe – the scandal is how the European Union is treating them.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reported in April 2016 that as many as 500 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, attempting to cross into Europe. Their boat, crammed with asylum seekers from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, the Sudan and other countries, sank off the coast of Libya. This mass fatality occurred a year after a similar mass drowning of refugees, the latter escaping war and desperate conditions in their home countries.

In April 2015, the corporate media broadcast images of fleeing refugees, each family with their story of survival against the odds. The body of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian Kurdish refugee boy who drowned while attempting to reach European territory with his family, became the main defining image of the plight of refugees, sacrificing their all to reach their dream – a better, peaceful and prosperous life in Europe.

Along with the images of the quiet sadness of the refugees, we are witnessing other images on our screens – the razor-wire fences, the militarised borders, the soldiers and police officers patrolling the territories where refugees have landed or been incarcerated by the authorities. The European Union is resurrecting its securitised borders, building a lethal fortress that is responding with force against the mass migration of people from the Middle East and Africa.

Back in 1989, European capitalist governments were tearing down walls, hailing the demolition of the Berlin Wall, and subsequent opening up of the former Eastern bloc, as a great triumph for the people of Europe. No longer would European people be divided by authoritarian regimes, but united with a common purpose in a liberal democratic fraternity. The foreign ministers of the two European states of Austria and Hungary staged a media event, whereby they cut a hole in the barbed wire fence that had symbolised the separation of Eastern and Western Europe.

Here we are in 2016, and the borders of capitalist Europe are being restored – not only to exclude refugees fleeing from terrorism and violence in their home countries, but also to abolish intra-European agreements, such as Schengen agreement, a formalised treaty that abolished border controls between member states of the European Union. In an article for Tuck magazine, Anant Mishra writes that the European Union is abandoning the abandoned; leaving the refugees to their fate, the Mediterranean is acting as a kind of geographical and increasingly militarised barrier, a huge and lethal obstacle for refugees to face if they decide to make the perilous journey to Europe. Thanks to the measures enacted by the European Union, the Mediterranean sea is the most dangerous sea route in the world. Mishra assembles an impressive array of statistics in his article, demonstrating that the Mediterranean has proven to be a lethal fence for fleeing migrants and refugees.

Make no mistake – the deaths of the refugees in the Mediterranean sea is not only a humanitarian tragedy, but a crime. It is a mass fatality for which the European authorities in Berlin, Paris, Brussels and other European capitals are responsible. As Richard Seymour explains in his article ‘Europe’s Lethal Fortress’, the refugees are fleeing from countries devastated by wars and violence, wars for regime change encouraged and sponsored by the European imperialist states. Not only have the European governments drastically ramped up their border controls and maritime surveillance, they have carried out predatory wars of conquest, disguised as humanitarian ‘regime change’ operations, that have left countries in a catastrophic state. The foreign policy objectives of the imperialist states have left a swathe of destruction and failed states in their wake. It is not entirely surprising that refugees are escaping from the fractured, lawless state of Libya, a country devastated by the NATO-driven 2011 bombing campaign. By whatever measures one uses, Libya is now a failed entity, divided into constantly warring regions and competing bands of armed militias that enforce their rule in the regions they occupy with terrifying violence.

As the writers for TeleSurTV observe, the imperialist powers bear directly responsibility for the crisis in Libya. Britain, France, Germany – aided and abetted by the United States and the United Kingdom – encouraged a war for regime change, toppling the previous government of Colonel Muammar Qadaffi, and turning it into a country where there is no single government, no security, oil revenues have declined, and the country is saturated with weapons and arms smuggling. The destruction of a functioning society, apart from being a case of sociocide, only results in the outflow of desperate refugees. Rather than admit their culpability, the political leaders of Europe – and the United States – have either tried to rationalise the Libya intervention as a chaotic transition to democracy, or as President Barrack Obama stated, a well-intentioned intervention that unfortunately became a mistake.

Veteran activist and anti-war campaigner Professor Noam Chomsky made the political connections between these factors of increased refugee outflow and European war-making in the Middle East when he stated:

“the US-UK invasion of Iraq … dealt a nearly lethal blow to a country that had already been devastated by a massive military attack twenty years earlier followed by virtually genocidal US-UK sanctions. The invasion displaced millions of people, many of whom fled and were absorbed in the neighboring countries, poor countries that are left to deal somehow with the detritus of our crimes. One outgrowth of the invasion is the ISIS/Daesh monstrosity, which is contributing to the horrifying Syrian catastrophe. Again, the neighboring countries have been absorbing the flow of refugees. The second sledgehammer blow destroyed Libya, now a chaos of warring groups, an ISIS base, a rich source of jihadis and weapons from West Africa to the Middle East, and a funnel for flow of refugees from Africa.”

That quote comes from a powerful article published in Common Dreams magazine by Rajesh Makwana entitled ‘The Global Refugee Crisis: Humanity’s last call for a culture of sharing and cooperation’. Makwana responds to a number of anti-refugee and anti-immigrant myths peddled by ultra-right parties in Europe regarding the mass movement of refugees. For instance, Makwana rebuts the oft-repeated claim, recycled by the corporate media, that Europe is facing a mass influx of refugees. Let us be clear about this – Europe is currently facing the largest mass migration of refugees since the end of World War Two. European governments have been confronted – throughout 2015 and 2016 – with the largest mass movement of displaced peoples since 1945. That much is true. However, there is a crucial point to bear out here – the largest burden of coping with refugees has fallen not on the European countries, but on other already-poor Middle Eastern states. Lebanon has already taken millions of Syrian refugees, and its hospitality is being stretched to the limit. As Makwana elaborates in his article:

The real emergency is taking place outside of Europe, where there is a desperate need for more assistance from the international community. For example, Turkey is now home to over 3 million refugees; Jordan hosts 2.7 million refugees – a staggering 41 percent of its population; and Lebanon has 1.5 million Syrian refugees who make up a third of its population. Unsurprisingly, social and economic systems are under severe strain in these and the other countries that host the majority of global refugees – especially since they are mainly based in developing countries with soaring unemployment rates, inadequate welfare systems and high levels of social unrest. In stark comparison (and with the notable exception of Germany), the 28 relatively prosperous EU member states have collectively pledged to resettle a mere 160,000 of the one million refugees that entered Europe in 2015. Not only does this amount to less than 0.25% of their combined population, governments have only relocated a few hundred have so far.

Europe is not facing a mass invasion of refugees and migrants, nor is it likely to be swamped or overwhelmed with demands on its economic and social systems. If public resources and facilities are being taxed to the limits of their capacities, it is not because of the refugee intake, but because of the severe austerity cutbacks implemented by various capitalist governments across Europe in the name of budgetary constraints and fiscal responsibility. Even august publications such as the Financial Times are compelled to admit that economic growth across the European Union remains sluggish and fragile.

One particular slanderously false allegation against the incoming refugees involves the spurious assertion that the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are taking advantage of the chaotic situation and smuggling themselves into Europe among the refugees. This falsity has been circulated in various guises around social media, and has contributed to a climate of fear and xenophobic hatred against the refugees. No less an authority than Europol – the European Union’s own law enforcement agency – has stated that while ISIS do plan attacks in Europe, none of those planned assaults involve sneaking in terrorists as refugees. In the wake of the Paris and Brussels bombings, politicians of various stripes have incited further hatred of refugees, conflating them with ISIS militants and stoking security fears of the outsider, the Islamic foreigner, that supposedly intends harm on the European (and by implication, Christian) way of life and culture.

Perhaps this is not the most scholarly way to address this issue, however, let us reiterate the words of an article by journalist Philip Kleinfeld in Vice magazine: “Calling Bullshit on the anti-refugee memes flooding the internet”. The bizarre tropes being recirculated and regurgitated on social media sites are astounding to witness – the fake photographs, lurid stories, pictures of bearded men holding guns, confronting images of hulking bodybuilder-types among the refugees seeking entry into Europe – who actually turn out to be hulking bodybuilders, and no more.

But let us give the benefit of the doubt to the anti-refugee parties. Suppose that ISIS militants are hiding among refugees, even though ISIS, with all its financial resources, can actually infiltrate Europe using fake legal documentation. Be that as it may, let us suppose for a moment that all refugee mass migration must be forcefully stopped because of the possibility that ISIS militants might be among them. This is guilt by association – so let’s take this to the next step. Investment and merchant banking, being a worldwide enterprise, certainly involves the possibility of money laundering. Investments from criminal proceeds can make their way into circulation, washing their way through the legal financial system. Tempted by the lure of extra cash, banking and financial officials can give in to the prospect of greater profits by engaging in money laundering, tax evasion and illegal financial activities, so the entire ability of capital to transfer across borders should be stopped immediately. Europol itself admits that money laundering, along with terrorism and drug trafficking, are the greatest security threats to Europe.

Is the above a far-fetched scenario? Perhaps – but it has happened. The Panama Papers – the one year investigation by a team of reporters into the criminalised finance system – reveals that the financial class, the merchant and investment speculators, lured by dizzying dreams of economic reward, have systematically rorted the system, establishing tax havens and using their connections to launder enormous sums of money for personal gain. The criminalisation of the banking-finance sector was laid bare for all to see, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If anything, the Panama papers reveal a system of institutionalised greed – and it demonstrates that capitalism is working very well. The obscenely-rich are doing rather well in this system, with tax havens and laundering money being an integral part of the capitalist system. Rather than demanding an immediate crackdown on the culprits and the building of borders or barriers to stop this global corruption, the corporate media are bragging about how efficiently the capitalist system is operating. In fact, the criminality of tax havens and money laundering is being openly denied, with the need to move large amounts of capital across borders being viewed as just another normal part of the global workings of the capitalist financial architecture. No strident condemnations of criminal behaviour here; no calls to crack down on money launderers and financial smuggling.

The European Union was always structured, modified and refined to serve the needs of big capital, not the needs of its human population. Europe, despite its universalistic declarations, was never an institution dedicated to improving the welfare of the common people, but a cross-national attempt by the ruling classes of Europe to subsume their own intra-European antagonisms and combine to fight off the challenges of American imperialism. After reabsorbing the Eastern bloc into its orbit, the European Union as an economic community changed its mission. Western Europe, being the seat of large western multinational corporations, sought to break into the Eastern bloc as a market. Having achieved that aim in 1989, the European Union set out on an optimistic crusade to maintain a facade of inter-European unity while facing external challenges from rival capitalist powers.

The European Union is disintegrating before our very eyes, with the rebuilding of walls, fences and military measures which had once been declared unnecessary. The Franco-German axis, the lynchpin of Western Europe remains solid, but the class and regional divisions that had been on the back-burner during the last twenty years have now risen to the surface. Inter-European rivalry has re-emerged in the wake of the failing health of the capitalist system. The naked force being used by the European ruling classes against the refugees is a reflection of the naked fear they are experiencing, as their financial system crumbles to pieces. As the spectre of capitalist failure haunts Europee, it is time to restructure the global economy to respond to human needs and social welfare, not as a conduit for corporate profits.

The title above is intended to be deliberately provocative, and it is not original either.

It is derived from an article published in the CommonDreams online magazine by Christian Christensen, professor of journalism studies at Stockholm University, entitled “Dear Media: Radovan Karadžić is a European Christian“. Radovan Karadzic was the leader of the breakaway statelet of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb republic that emerged during the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s. Karadzic and his military forces ethnically cleansed the Serb portions of the Bosnian republic, established an ‘ethnically pure’ state for Bosnian Serbs. The Srebrenica massacre, the most infamous mass killings of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) took place on the order of the political and military leadership of the Bosnian Serb republic – that is to say, on the orders of Karadzic.

Professor Christensen notes that Karadzic was convicted of ordering the Srebrenica killings, which amounted to genocide. Karadzic was sentenced to forty years in prison by the International Court of Justice based at The Hague, the Netherlands. While being cleared of charges relating to attacks and killings in other parts of Bosnia where Croatians and Bosnians were killed or driven out, there was no question of Karadzic’s guilt in relation to the Srebrenica killings. Christensen also makes a pointed observation about Karadzic, one that has implications for how we in the English-speaking countries conduct debates about war crimes and terrorism – Karadzic is a white, European Christian.

Karadzic defended himself and his role in the Bosnian conflict as a just, holy war. As Bosnian Muslims were systemically killed and driven out of their historic homes and villages, the forces of the Bosnian Serb statelet described their ethnic cleansing enterprise in terms that conjure up images of the Crusades – mosques destroyed, Muslim cemeteries desecrated. The Serbian Orthodox Church no less, organised a 1996 symposium where, among others, Karadzic made scholarly contributions about how the war for Republika Srpska was a holy war, a continuation of the centuries-old conflict between Christendom and Islam for the soul and territory of Europe. Yet, in the entirety of the conflict, the corporate media in the English-speaking world never described Karadzic as a Christian terrorist, or discussed the role of his religious beliefs in perpetuating the Yugoslav conflict.

The religious affiliations of terrorist offenders is always discussed at great length, with dozens of experts brought in for analysis, when the perpetrators are from Islamic background. Paris, Brussels – the attacks on European soil are discussed at saturation point by the major media, the suffering of the victims is described in minute detail, and the motivations of the attackers are usually ascribed to ‘something in Islam’. As Ruby Hamad states in her perceptive article:

Yes, the terror attacks by ISIS and similar Islamic extremist groups “have something to do with Islam” in so much as they are committed by groups claiming to act in the name of Islam, but it is deceitful to imply that only Muslims use religion to justify violence. In looking for answers to terrorism in Islam itself, we have already forgotten that Bosnian Serbs and Croatians fought the Balkans civil war with pictures of the Virgin Mary glued to their guns.

In the aftermath of these attacks, Islamic communities are vilified, badgered into denouncing terrorism in all its forms for the umpteenth time. Muslims living in the English-speaking countries are harassed yet again into condemning groups and an ideology with which they have nothing in common. As Professor Christensen points out in his article for Common Dreams:

Yet the European and US media, for the most part, did not (and do not) wish to define Karadžić in terms of his religious affiliation. Many of his victims, however, were certainly framed in that way — they were “Bosnian Muslims.” But the aggressors were usually identified by region and nationality, not religion. This allowed those who live in Europe, or the world, who are not Serbian or Bosnian Serbs to distance themselves. “That’s got nothing to do with me…” is the obvious reaction for those of us from another country or region.

What is wrong with defining Radovan Karadzic as a Christian terrorist? Christensen explains:

When, however, we define people such as Karadžić as “Christian” (and do so on a consistent basis) we enter into an entirely new realm of identity. Any notion of personal connection or collective responsibility moves from region or nation-state to a much broader disapora of peoples linked simply by their religious faith. Of course, a natural reaction on the part of Christians globally would be to distance themselves from Karadžić, and to claim that his actions have nothing to do with “real” Christians or Christianity.

In other words, Christians would get uncomfortable — or even offended — by the suggestion that they are in any way represented by a monster like Karadžić.

There is no suggestion that all Christians, and the immense diversity of theological and political viewpoints encompassed by Christendom, are in any way represented by Karadzic and his associates. There is no suggestion that Christian priests or practitioners of the faith be badgered to vociferously condemn the crimes of the Bosnian Serb leadership during the 1990s Yugoslav war. What is needed is logical consistency and clarity – the debate about terrorism and crimes against humanity is a distorted, perverse discussion centred on an ethnocentric view of the world.

The nature of political violence, its origins and continuation, needs to be understood as more than just the problem of one religion. The more that we obsessively focus on Islam as the source of the global violence, the less we are able to see that Muslims are also victims of terrorism, and we are less likely to see that Western powers – okay, let’s narrow that down to the United States and the United Kingdom – are themselves the perpetrators of terroristic violence on a global scale. There is an environment of hatred enveloping the UK and the United States, and it has its reflection in Australia. Islamophobic attacks and attitudes are on the rise in Australia, the product of a toxic culture merging fear of terrorism with cultural hostility towards anything Islamic.

There is a backward philosophy, a fundamentalist orthodoxy that is undermining and destroying Australian communities, but it is not Islamism. It is the ideology of free-market fundamentalism, a toxic brew of austerity, cutbacks to social services in the name of budgetary constraints, accompanied by the expansion of private capital into every area of cultural, social and economic life. Communities across Australia are experiencing the social consequences of the closure of factories, businesses and the erosion of social services. As the Australian ruling political and economic elite stumble from crisis to crisis, victims of their own incompetence and myopic Friedmanite vision, it is high time to examine our own economic trajectory as we toboggan towards another intense and shattering financial crisis.

Over at Salon magazine, Ben Norton, the politics writer for that magazine, has an article entitled “Over half of Yemenis — 14 million people and growing — face hunger amid brutal U.S.-backed Saudi war and blockade”. March 26 was the first anniversary of the Saudi-led US-supported attack on Yemen, launched with the intention of restoring the ousted Yemeni President, Mansur Hadi, an ally of Riyadh regime and Washington, into power. Norton described how the Saudi invasion of Yemen has resulted in the destruction of homes, hospitals, markets, wedding parties, schools – and currently the humanitarian situation in Yemen is catastrophic, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). 14.4 million Yemenis face food insecurity, and 2.5 million have been internally displaced, because of this war.

Saudi Arabia’s air force has routinely targeted civilian infrastructure, air strikes that not only violate international law, but which have produced the breakdown of one of the poorest economies in the Middle East. Xinhuanet, the Chinese news agency, reported that the Saudi war has pushed Yemen’s economy to the brink, with famine a real possibility in the country. Saudi Arabia, since the start of its Yemeni invasion, has imposed a complete air, naval and land blockade on Yemen, preventing the regular importation of food and medicine into the country. In the capital city of Sanaa, thousands of Yemenis took to the streets to voice their anger against the Saudi invasion. Denouncing what they called the tyrannical aggression of the Saudi regime, the protestors demanded an end to the war, and the leader of the Ansar Allah Houthi rebel movement,  Abdulmalik al-Houthi, announced on national TV that his movement and supporters were ready for negotiations with Riyadh. The Houthi party and Yemeni rebels still control vast swathes of the country, and it is difficult to see how Saudi Arabia can claim any military success in a war that has seen civilians bear the brunt of the suffering.

In the south of the country, the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) controls oil rich areas, such as the province of Hadramaut and its port city of Mukalla. While the former president Mansur Hadi has been reestablished in the important city of Aden by Saudi and Yemeni forces, his grip remains tenuous, and his authority does not extend beyond the realms of the city. Several of his ministers have been assassinated by AQAP, and some by Islamic State militants, the latter having established a presence in the country due to the chaos of the war. Saudi Arabia is currently looking for a political solution to end the Yemen campaign. While there has been an announcement of a ceasefire, reputedly to take effect in April, similar ceasefires in the past have been declared and soon collapsed.

American drone strikes and selective sympathy

In late March 2016, the United States reported that its drones had struck an Al-Qaeda training camp at a former government military base in the city of Mukalla, southern Yemen. The US government claimed it had killed 50 militants, though the identities of the deceased remains unconfirmed. While the United States has reportedly been attacking AQAP in Yemen since 2002, this attack was the first time that the US Department of Defence announced officially that it has carried out this air strike. This particular strike is a pointed response to the territorial gains made by AQAP over the last year, as it takes advantage of the instability fomented by the Saudi aggression. Interestingly, there is another force that has been fighting AQAP – the Houthi Shia movement, regarded as apostates by the Sunni fundamentalist AQAP, and politically allied with the Iranian regime.

Earlier in March 2016, the Saudi air force carried out their own air strike – hitting a marketplace in northwest Yemen, killing over 100 people. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that such air attacks occur with depressing regularity in Yemen, but they do not attract the kind of international sympathy and support that victims of say, more high profile terrorist attacks receive in Brussels, Paris or London. Hussein stated that Saudi Arabia is guilty of war crimes, and crimes against humanity. However, Yemen’s plight, and the victims of this war, have been swept aside, forgotten amidst the non-stop saturation coverage of every aspect of the latest terrorist bombing to hit Europe, this one in Brussels. Of course the Brussels bombing was an outrageous act of terrorism. However, the carnage and ongoing suffering of the victims of Western wars, in this case in Yemen, are quickly forgotten as ‘collateral damage’, devoid of any humanity or empathic emotion.

Since the start of the Saudi invasion of Yemen in March last year, 6200 civilians have been killed by Saudi Arabia’s air force, and civilian infrastructure has been deliberately targeted. A report published in The Guardian newspaper by Kareem Shaheen, details how cities, such as Aden and Taiz, have been reduced to rubble, and that unemployment and poverty are now rife in the country. Interestingly, in 2016, Deng Adut gave the Australian Day speech, in his capacity as a role model for achievement. Who is he? A former child soldier from South Sudan, he has turned his life around, becoming a lawyer and refugee advocate, and doing his community proud. However, as he gets on with his life, child soldiers are a common sight now in Yemen, with thousands fighting and dying in horrific numbers. Lured by the multiple motivations of money, finding a purpose and obtaining group identity and cohesion, Yemen is currently a breeding ground for child soldiers.

The complicity of the West

Let us be clear – this Saudi war on Yemen would not be possible without the constant and crucial support of the United States and Britain. Owen Jones, political writer for The Guardian, stated it plainly in one of his columns in January this year:

Britain is arming and aiding a fundamentalist dictatorship that’s bombing and killing civilians. This is an incontestable fact. The Saudi tyranny – gay-hating women-oppressors who kicked off the year with a mass beheading – has been waging war in Yemen for 10 months.

British and American military advisers are helping the Saudi military forces select targets, provide training and logistical support, and work together with Saudi military personnel to conduct this Yemeni war. Owen Jones further explains that:

Bombing raids have shredded the country’s healthcare system: 130 medical facilities have been targeted, including those run by Médecins Sans Frontières –“a total disregard for the rules of war”, as MSF says itself. The risk of famine looms: the UN believes more than 14 million people are food insecure, half of them severely so, while nearly one in 10 have been driven from their homes.

The complicity of the West in fomenting this humanitarian catastrophe is quite clear. But rather than condemn this war, or do anything to prevent it, the United States and British governments are doing all in their power to provide rationales and twisted justifications for this ongoing slaughter. American Secretary of State John Kerry explained that his government stands alongside its Saudi friends. British Prime Minister David Cameron has escalated the sales of armaments to the Saudi regime since he took office in 2010. Cameron’s government has licensed 6.7 billion pounds of armaments sales to the Saudi rulers since 2010, and this trade shows no signs of slowing down. US and British-supplied cluster munitions are making their way into the hands of the Saudi military, and are being used in Yemen. Cluster bombs are deliberately designed to spray lethal molten copper projectiles over a large swathe of territory, intended to destroy enemy tanks – and these bombs are being used in densely populated civilian areas in Yemen.

Time to stop selling arms

The above sub-heading is the title of an article by Diane Abbott, the Labour Party’s shadow international development secretary. She asks why this armaments industry continues to operate in the face of international law and civilian bloodshed. Abbott states that the British government, and its American counterpart, view human rights and international laws as secondary issues, subordinate to the maximisation of corporate profits in the armaments industry. The lawless behaviour and international gangsterism of the US and the UK are fueling a humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

When the United States and United Kingdom denounce the violation of international law, but continue to flout that very same law in their own international conduct, then the world becomes a quagmire of banditry where the civilians suffer the most. If war crimes and transgressions of international law occur with obscene regularity by those Western powers who profess commitment to international justice, then the criminals go unpunished and are unaccountable. This international disorder is a dystopian system, one that urgently requires replacement by the rule of law, where human rights, human dignity and the develop of human potential are the ultimate measures of a government’s conduct. The answer to such a dystopian vision is human solidarity and collective resistance.

The emerging details of the terrible water crisis afflicting the residents of Flint, Michigan state, indicates not only the enormously adverse impacts of this case of environmental pollution. It also reveals criminal extent to which the state-corporate authorities have tried to cover up and downplay the detrimental effects of the contaminated water on the community.

From April 2014 until October 2015, the source of water provided to the residents of Flint, Michigan was the Flint river, well known to be polluted with a cocktail of toxic substances. The city authorities of Flint decided to change over from their usual source of water, Lake Huron (which is managed by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department) over to Flint as a cost-cutting measure. This decision, undertaken by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his appointed emergency managers for Flint, was intended to save millions of dollars, and act at the first step towards the creeping privatisation of the DWSD. A desperate cost-cutting measure, this move placed financial gain above the safety of the public.

Residents of Flint began reporting to their respective county authorities, and to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, that their water was unusually malodorous, reddish-brown in colour, was causing medical problems to those who consumed it, and was unfit for human consumption. Residents began experiencing rashes, hair loss, and vomiting. The contaminated water was used for drinking and bathing. Despite complaints, the authorities assured Flint that the water did not contain any dangerous or toxic elements.

The pollutants from Flint River turned out to be highly corrosive, and leached quantities of lead from the lead-piping system in place in Flint. As the lead accumulated in the water, collected by the corrosive toxic chemicals in the water, this highly potent mix reached the water taps of Flint’s residents. They began consuming water with dangerously elevated levels of lead. Lead poisoning, a potentially lethal affliction that results in disorders of the nervous system and developmental delays, is of especial danger to children and the fetuses of pregnant women. Flint’s tap water had become toxic for the residents.

The United States has a serious and widespread problem with dilapidated infrastructure, and this problem extends far beyond the borders of Flint, Michigan. Chris Sellers, professor of history at Stony Brook University (The State University of New York) wrote an extensive article for The Conversation in which he details the historical legacy of lead piping that is in place in the underbelly of various American cities. Lead was used for the water piping for cities and towns throughout the United States from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the medical hazards of lead poisoning and the neurotoxicity of lead were not fully cognised at first.

While the lead industry grew rich and powerful, public health was adversely affected, with toxic consequences for the people who consumed lead-contaminated water. Federal laws were passed in the 1970s and 1980s banning the use of lead in manufacturing pipes, and laws regulating the quality of water were also enacted to safeguard public health and safety. It was the Reagan administration, a regime known for its strident advocacy of smaller government, that signed into law amendments to the safe drinking water laws that finally saw leaded piping completely banned.

Michigan governor Rick Snyder was made fully aware of the lead-contaminated water flowing through the city’s piping system by numerous emails in late 2014 and through 2015. Email communications released under the freedom of information provisions clearly establish that the governor, and the highest political authorities in Michigan, were fully informed about the extent of lead-poisoning. Yet in the interests of cost-cutting, nothing was done. Governor Snyder had the power to call a state of emergency in the area, and could have responded to the water contamination crisis with the urgency that it deserves. Yet he delayed and did nothing until a public outcry forced the authorities to act. Why is this the case?

Environmental racism

The poison is not just in the water; people in Flint are suffering from the toxic mix of austerity economics, privatisation, the undermining of democracy and the decrepitude of public infrastructure. There is a long and poisonous legacy of environmental racism running through the United States. In an article entitled ‘Flint isn’t the only place with racism in the water’, authors Danyelle Solomon and Tracey Ross, explain that the rise and development of American industrial-finance capitalism is heavily interlinked with environmental racism. Flint’s population is 56 percent African American, and the majority of Flint’s residents are in the low socioeconomic bracket – which means they live from paycheck to paycheck.

Flint, Michigan, the home town of General Motors and once a booming industrial city, has declined to the point where basic infrastructure – schools, public transportation, health care, and now the water system – have fallen into ruins. In the heyday of the motor industry, Flint – and the entire city of Detroit – were booming, and the residents had access to solid social services that kept the community going. However, not everything was rosy – in the 1960s, General Motors, with its plants around Flint, dumped millions of gallons of toxic waste into the Flint river. All this time, the majority residents of Flint were African American.

As Solomon and Ross elaborate in their article;

Environmental racism is entwined with the country’s industrial past. At the beginning of the 20th century, zoning ordinances emerged as a way to separate land uses in order to protect people from health hazards. Over time, however, city planning and zoning ordinances focused less on public health and more on creating idyllic communities, protecting property rights, and excluding “undesirables.” In other words: The least desirable communities were reserved for discarding waste and marginalized people alike. 

By the 1930s, federal leaders began to make large investments in creating stable, affluent, and white communities in the suburbs, while giving local governments the autonomy to neglect low-income communities and communities of color. New highways and waste facilities were constructed in marginalized communities, where they cut through businesses or homes and exposed residents to excessive pollution.

Black communities were left with the legacies of toxic waste and pollution. This reflects the reality of class power in the United States; Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University, Carl S. Taylor, explained that Flint represents a class and race issue – dumping pollutants and contaminants in the midst of communities that are poor and black is nothing new in the American capitalist experience. Lawrence Ware, professor of philosophy and diversity coordinator for Oklahoma State University Ethics Centre, explained that environmental racism – the disproportionate exposure of minority and poor communities to contaminated, polluted air water and soil – is occurring yet again in Flint, and combine that with the closing merging sectors of industrial developers with local political authorities, and the result is the legacy of pollution and contamination that Flint’s residents are struggling with today.

Private greed and public welfare

Professor Marc Edwards, an academic from Virginia Tech University, is an expert in environmental and water resources engineering. He had already exposed the high levels of lead toxicity in Washington DC’s drinking water back in 2003, and he was approached by Flint residents to examine the water supply in Flint. Sure enough, he found dangerously elevated levels of lead, which had been corroded from the city’s lead piping, by the pollutants in Flint River. Edwards and his team conducted extensive testing, and found that levels of lead in the water had reached 15 parts per billion (ppb), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends that a level of only 5 ppb be applied, even in high-risk homes.

Yet, as the Socialist Worker magazine’s Dorian Bon explained:

In April 2014, Flint’s emergency manager was instructed to reroute the city’s water supply to use the highly polluted Flint River as the source. The river water corroded pipes, causing lead to leach into the water that came out of residents’ faucets.

Multiple regional and state government bodies, including Snyder’s own office, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, proceeded to deny and distort the truth about the ensuing lead poisoning crisis that afflicted Flint children most of all. Meanwhile, state employees in Flint quietly received $4,200 in bottled water at the state office building in Flint, and the local General Motors plant stopped using the river water because of the damage it caused to engine parts.

The bodies that are charged with ensuring the quality of the water supply to Flint’s residents, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the state authorities in Michigan, failed in their duty. Why is this the case?

Professor Edwards, in an article for Common Dreams online magazine, explained that private greed has distorted and perverted science, and the latter no longer serves the public welfare. Edwards expressed concerns that in academia, perverse financial incentives are used to pursue fame, funding, build up a reputation, rather than serving the public good. If academic, working in conjunction with corporatised government entities, do not take responsibility for ensuring that vital social services are provided, then cases like the Flint environmental contamination and subsequent poisoning of the city’s children, will happen again. However, there is one entity that is doing very well in the midst of this crisis – General Motors. The company has posted record profits for 2015 – $9.7 billion.

Bruce Clark, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investment service, commented that General Motors’ strong fourth quarter profits reflect the current health of the American auto industry. Perhaps he should reflect on the health of the residents of Flint, Michigan – such as Nakiya Wakes, who was advised that Flint’s water supply was safe to drink. She ingested high levels of lead, like thousands of other Flint people. She lost both twins she was carrying after consuming the water that authorities insisted was safe. Two days after her second miscarriage, she received a letter from the state authorities advising her not to drink the water.

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In 1986, in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its consequent environmental pollution, serious questions were asked about the actions of the Soviet authorities in the Ukraine at the time. Did they react quickly enough? How efficiently did they handle this crisis? It took the Soviet government a full day to understand the enormity of the nuclear catastrophe, 50,000 people were evacuated, and for a full seven months, extensive decontamination efforts were taken to restore the affected areas. The fallout from that disaster still resonates until today. Serious questions were asked about the Gorbachev administration, and how he could have better handled this crisis. Be that as it may, Chernobyl still stands as a reminder of the consequences of environmental contamination.

What does it say today, about the state of American capitalism, that the home town of a large corporate empire, is unable or unwilling to fix a serious water contamination issue that affects the lives and health of thousands of residents, while the corporation that resides in that town continues to accumulate staggering profits? Not only should Flint’s problems be at the forefront of American political discussion in this election year, but the barbarism of neoliberal capitalist austerity should be under serious public scrutiny. After poisoning a city, and leaving its victims to their own devices, it is surely time to hold Governor Snyder – and the doctrine of capitalist austerity that he implements – accountable for criminal depredations.

Chess is not the top sports news item in the English-speaking countries, but it is a huge deal in Armenia.

This geographically small, land-locked country of three million, has had a history of adversity since gaining nominal independence in 1991. A former Soviet republic, in 1992-93, Armenia experienced a catastrophic decline in the economy and living standards, engulfed in an ethno-separatist war with neighbouring Azerbaijan, and residents shivered in the winter of 1992-93 as electricity supplies dwindled during a season where temperatures drop to 30 degrees below zero (Celsius). Government corruption was rife, as the elderly and the poor suffered. Turkey blockades the country (until today), the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict remains unresolved, and Armenia became reliant on the Russian economy for supplies. Armenia suffered heavily, like other post-Soviet states, in the breakdown of trade and the cessation of Soviet investment. Yet, there is one area where Armenia dominates the rest of the world – chess.

While the country’s best known export to the West are the putrid and egomaniacal Kardashians, it is in the sport of chess that Armenia has come to excel. The Armenian government made chess a compulsory subject in schools in 2011, and Armenia has been gripped by chess mania. Armenia’s education minister, Armen Ashotian, explained that making chess a mandatory subject was not only about producing chess prodigies, but also about instilling creative thinking. He elaborated in an interview with Al Jazeera chess is part of the overall educational development of school-children:

Chess develops various skills – leadership capacities, decision-making, strategic planning, logical thinking and responsibility,” Ashotyan said. “We are building these traits in our youngsters. The future of the world depends on such creative leaders who have the capacity to make the right decisions, as well as the character to take responsibility for wrong decisions.”

Teams of educational psychologists in Armenia, headed by Ruben Aghuzumstyan, having been studying the benefits of teaching chess to school-children from a young age, including developing personality traits such as comparative analysis, creative thinking, and resilience through difficulties. Interestingly, while the Armenian government reintroduced the capitalist system in 1991, corporate sponsorship of chess players is dwarfed by government support for the development of chess grandmasters. It is the state that systematically supports the chess establishment with financial aid, and so players do not spend time worrying about their next source of support. Indeed, the current president of Armenia, Serge Sargsyan, is president of the Chess Federation of Armenia.

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Armenia, like the other ex-Soviet republics, has a long history of national chess participation. The Soviet state emphasised the importance of chess, and heavily subsidised the promotion of the sport. Chess matches were broadcast on state television, games replicated for the benefit of the audience on a wall-sized chessboard, and commentators would spend hours examining various strategies in great detail. The USSR came to dominate the chess olympiads, and sent strong chess teams to the main Olympics, where they were the overwhelmingly dominant competitor in chess. Christopher Beam explained in an article for Slate magazine in 2009 that:

The Soviets also saw chess as embodying their revolutionary ideals. It was a game of skill, and the USSR prided itself on its intellectual talents. It was cheap, and anyone could play it. And to Soviet leaders, its back-and-forth dynamic reflected the dialectical concept of history espoused by Marxism. (Never mind the irony of playing with imperialist symbols like kings and queens.) The Russians developed a reputation for collective thinking when it came to chess. Soviet competitors were sometimes told to lose on purpose in tournaments in order to clear the way for better players. At the famous match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972, dozens of Soviet grandmasters would huddle during breaks and debate Spassky’s next move. Fischer, by contrast, brought one assistant.

The Soviet chess school churned out child prodigies every generation – and in the 1960s, Soviet Armenian chess player Tigran Petrosian became the grandmaster and World Chess Champion after defeating his rivals in 1963. His successes spurred interest in chess, and corresponding pride in the Armenian homeland. Anoosh Chakelian, deputy web editor for the New Statesman magazine, wrote an article in 2014 entitled “A checkered history: why Armenia dominates the chess world”, in which she explained that:

When grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, World Chess Champion from 1963-69, took the title for the first time, there were spontaneous celebrations throughout Armenia and he became a national hero.

Chakelian goes on to explain that the interest in chess transcends age groups and generational barriers:

The country’s obsession with chess transcends all age groups. You can see this in a 2009 BBC World Service report titled ‘Armenia: the cleverest nation on earth’, which notes “four generations” turning out to watch its champion Levon Aronian play a match in the Armenian mountains. It describes “young kids aged five, six, seven years old and grizzled old men in sunglasses.

The late great chess grandmaster Tigran Petrosian serves as an inspiration for generations of Armenian schoolchildren until today, and his portrait adorns the chess schools and classrooms in the country. Current Armenian chess champion, Levon Aronian, is a national hero in his country, the ‘David Beckham’ of the chess world. In 2015, the American travel journalism magazine Roads and Kingdoms published an extensive and engaging overview of chess in Armenia, detailing not only the life and achievements of Aronian, but also the systematic way in which chess is approached in that country. The authors of the review explain that:

The country’s president, Serzh Sargsyan, doubles as president of Armenia’s Chess Federation and the sport is a compulsory part of primary education. School children read colorful textbooks whose chess-inspired characters teach advanced game tactics. Television shows such as Chess 64, or, for younger viewers, Chess World, air on state TV, and magazines including Shakhmatayin Hayastan (literally, “Chess in Armenia”) are published on a weekly basis, keeping audiences and readers up to date on recent tournaments, tactics, and, bizarrely, the chess celebrity scene.

Aronian’s celebrity status traces back to the 1963 victory by Tigran Petrosian, and continues this trend of instilling national pride. Public places were named after Petrosian, commemorative stamps were issued in his honour, and books about his chess strategies were produced to pass on the accumulated wisdom, hopefully to be replicated by subsequent generations.

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Garry Kasparov, Azerbaijani born of Armenian heritage, is another former chess grandmaster and world champion. Now that Kasparov has come up in this discussion, and Bobby Fischer gained a mention earlier, it is important to establish a crucial observation at this juncture. It is possible to be clever and an idiot at the same time, an idiot savant if you will. The most famous and saddening example of a genius-idiot is (ironically) a former chess grandmaster and world champion, Bobby Fischer. Brilliant at the chess board, Fischer was consumed by conspiratorial paranoid thinking, utterly convinced that powerful, underhanded forces were working against him – firstly it was the Russians, then the Jews, the American government (frequently conflating the latter with the former), espousing vitriolic hatred against what he described as ‘world Jewry’ and its pernicious attempts to silence him.

In a similar way, former grandmaster Garry Kasparov fits the bill – a chess prodigy, who has written books denouncing what he sees are the enemies of freedom around the world. Who are these enemies? The Russian chess establishment, the World Chess Federation (FIDE), Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Soviet secret police, vacillating Western leaders like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder – his explanation can be found in his latest book. Like Fischer, Kasparov is at pains to denounce anyone (or any organisation) that does not recognise his undisputed genius. Like Fischer, Kasparov’s criticisms are not so much against a political party or system, but against what he sees as a life and career that did not go according to his expectations. He wishes to return to the simplistic certainties of the Cold War, with America the ‘good’ on one side, and Russia the ‘bad’ on the other. There are powerful political and economic forces in the world, and we all have to deal with our place in a system not of our own choosing.

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As Armenia remains mired in economic crisis and unresolved ethnic separatist conflict, it is heartening to see that in one area at least, Armenia has made its mark on the map.

Deborah Cheetham, associate Dean of music at the University of Melbourne, was offered the opportunity to sing the Australian national anthem at the opening of the October 2015 Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final. Having sung the national anthem on numerous prior occasions, she was offered the dream-job for every performer – to sing a rousing rendition of the national anthem in front of thousands of people at a major sporting event, and viewed by millions of television viewers. Singing the Australian national anthem at a popular sporting event like the AFL Grand Final is a regular, and normal part of the sporting fixture. What could be more indicative of pride in Australian history and culture than belting out the national anthem in front of thousands of spectators?

After consultations with the AFL, Professor Cheetham declined the offer. Why?

She stated that she could not, in good conscience, sing the words ‘for we are young and free’, lyrics which are in the first verse of the national anthem. She suggested to the AFL governing board a compromise – she would sing the words ‘in peace and harmony’ as a replacement, and stick to the rest of the words for the anthem. The AFL, after considering this request, refused to support this change of lyric. So Professor Cheetham refused to take the stand and sing the national anthem, and she was replaced by Kate Ceberano. Professor Cheetham explained her reasoning for her refusal in an article published in The Conversation magazine. Cheetham is of indigenous background, descended from the First Nations of Australia. She is one of the Stolen Generations, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their indigenous parents and handed over to white Australian families as part of Australian government policies designed to assimilate indigenous people. Cheetham was born to the Yorta Yorta people, a region that crosses over the Murray and Goulburn rivers in north-east Victoria.

The Yorta Yorta people have a proud history of resistance and defiance against their mistreatment at the hands of the Australian authorities. Back in the 1930s, the Yorta Yorta staged protests and walk-offs in response to their lack of control over their land, water resources and work output. Cheetham herself admits that she is one of the lucky ones, having forged a successful career as a musician, academic and soprano. She could have ignored this history of her people and considered her own career advancement prospects in singing the national anthem. Yet, she objected to the imperial, British and colonial-oriented view of Australian history upon which the national anthem is based, and following her conscience, refused to sing its original words.

As Cheetham explained, being asked to sing the national anthem is a great honour – that is not the problem. It is the silence around Indigenous culture that is the problem:

Over the past half-century Australians have come to realise much about the persistence, sophistication and success of Aboriginal Australia. The 1967 referendum, the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) and the Apology to the Stolen Generations (2008) have all caught the nation’s attention and raised awareness of our shared history.

But many people have remained content to leave it there, to settle for what little information they received during school years. For such people, most of Australia’s Indigenous cultures remain unwrapped, unacknowledged and unexplored.

Cheetham has written about the need for a new national anthem, one that acknowledges not only our multicultural makeup, but recognises the unique contribution, philosophy and cultures of the First Nations of Australia. As she elaborated:

Our national anthem tells us that we are young and free. Blindly, many Australians continue to accept this.

But it’s not true. Setting aside for a moment 70,000 years of Indigenous cultures, 114 years on from Federation and 227 years into colonisation, at the very least, those words don’t reflect who we are. As Australians, can we aspire to be young forever? If we are ever to mature we simply cannot cling to this desperate premise.

How much better would it be if were to finally acknowledge the nuanced and sophisticated society discovered by those who arrived 230 years ago was deliberately and systematically overlooked? What if the next person to sing the anthem at the AFL Grand Final were to reach beyond the Western imperial history and harness the power of 70,000 years of accumulated wisdom and knowledge?

When Australian historians began to dig deeper into the history of colonial Australia, how it was settled and how the Australian capitalist state took hold in this continent, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard described this effort as the “black armband” view of history. Borrowing this phrase from conservative Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey, this ‘black armband’ view of history supposedly downplayed the achievements and successes of European-settled Australian history. The history of Australia, settled through the use of coercion, torture, mass murder and racist exploitation, was too pessimistic a perspective.

The national anthem’s lyrics reflect this imperial history, and celebrate the colonisation of the Australian continent. No doubt the history wars will continue, however, there cannot be a full reckoning of Australia’s past without a full understanding and accounting of the First Nations of Australia. If we non-indigenous Australians continue to expunge the worst aspects of colonial settlement and the obscure the foundations of Australian capitalism, then there will never be a complete solution of the Indigenous issue in Australian politics. In May 2015, Peter Catt, Dean of the Anglican church’s St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane wrote in an article for the Sydney Morning Herald, the ‘black armband’ view of history is necessary for healing, because confronting the horrifying past of murder and land theft is essential, albeit painful, to achieve full comprehension of and justice for the First Nations of Australia.

Christine Nicholls, senior lecturer at Flinders University, authored a three-part article for The Conversation magazine about the Dreamtime and The Dreaming. This woefully inadequate English translation refers to the complex of meanings, creation stories, myths and legends that underlie the philosophy and ethics of the First Nations. While it is impossible to do justice to The Dreaming in one article, Nicholls summarises The Dreaming, in an impressive attempt to convey the intricate philosophy and creation-cosmology narratives that underpin indigenous communities and their relationship to the land. Nicholls quotes the words of Jeannie Herbert Nungarrayi, a teacher at a school in the Northern Territory and member of the Warlpiri nation. She explained that the Warlpiri have had – thousands of years before the Biblical stories in the Judeo-Christian tradition – a philosophy of origins, ethics and morality called Jukurrpa. What does that mean?

To get an insight into us – [the Warlpiri people of the Tanami Desert] – it is necessary to understand something about our major religious belief, the Jukurrpa. The Jukurrpa is an all-embracing concept that provides rules for living, a moral code, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment.

The philosophy behind it is holistic – the Jukurrpa provides for a total, integrated way of life. It is important to understand that, for Warlpiri and other Aboriginal people living in remote Aboriginal settlements, The Dreaming isn’t something that has been consigned to the past but is a lived daily reality. We, the Warlpiri people, believe in the Jukurrpa to this day.

When former Prime Minister Tony Abbott dismissively described the pre-1788 history of the Australian continent as ‘nothing there but bush’, he was not only denying the physical reality of the diverse Aboriginal nations. He and his supporters were also denying the existence of 250 language groups, the 600-800 known dialects, and the intricate philosophy and cosmology of The Dreaming. He was denying that the Indigenous nations were capable of organising their own societies, educating their children, advocating morality and ethics, living by a law code, and indeed, were capable of practicing forms of aqua- and agriculture. Rather than just living by hunter-gathering, indigenous nations practiced the forward-thinking and planning necessary for harvesting seed, building dams, irrigation and preserving agricultural surplus for future needs.

Professor Cheetham has offered an alternative national anthem, preserving the same tune, but changing the lyrics. Here is the first verse of her proposal:

Australia, celebrate as one, with peace and harmony.
Our precious water, soil and sun, grant life for you and me.
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts to love, respect and share,
And honouring the Dreaming, advance Australia fair.
With joyful hearts then let us sing, advance Australia fair.

You can read the whole thing here.

Let us conclude by listening to the words of Stan Grant, who has written a series of impressive articles for The Guardian newspaper about Aboriginal Australia and Indigenous issues. Grant wrote a thoughtful, stinging critique of white Australia’s continuing denial of Indigenous history in his article called “How can I feel Australian when this country has told me I don’t belong?” As he explains it:

Here goes. I am not an Australian or more precisely I don’t feel Australian. I am not alone among my people in feeling this way.

There is nothing in Australia’s myths that includes us. Our stories don’t form this country’s folklore. Clancy of the Overflow wasn’t black. The jolly swagman wasn’t black.

He goes on to explain that it is not for lack of trying that Indigenous nations feel excluded and isolated in their own land:

For most of this country’s history we were not citizens. Some of our people – my grandfather included – enlisted to fight in Australia’s wars but returned to a segregated country where they could not enter a pub to share a drink with the diggers they fought alongside.

We find our peoplehood in the ancient nations of this land. For me it is Wiradjuriand Kamilaroi, for others Bandjalang or Luritja or Arrernte or Ardnyamathanha or Yorta Yorta. There were many hundreds of nations here when Europeans came. Yet, we were conveniently bundled together as Aborigines – our identities extinguished along with our rights to our land.

Australian capitalism has its origins as a settler outpost of British colonial capitalist expansion in the late eighteenth century. Australia’s wealthy class began its ascent not only as a beneficiary of British colonial capitalism, but also by decimating the Indigenous nations and accumulating their land and resources. The first victims of this expansion were the First Nations of Australia, who were dispossessed of their land and their culture driven to the margins. It is time to face up to this history in order that together, we can achieve justice for the future.

The Washington Post published an article in November 2015 entitled ‘Yemen is turning into Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam’ by Hugh Naylor. The main thrust of the article is an examination of how Saudi Arabia, nearly nine months after it launched an invasion of its southern neighbour, is now bogged down in a prolonged, bitter and costly war that is straining its budget, stretching its military forces, exacerbating internal political divisions and worsening a declining economy. Saudi Arabia, the key US ally in the Gulf region, launched a full scale military offensive in March 2015 to dislodge the Shia Houthi rebel movement, and restore the government of Yemeni President Mansur Hadi. The Houthi militia, largely allied to Shia Iran, has been able to hang on to the capital Sana, and also retain control of vast swathes of Yemeni territory.

The conflict has dragged on not only because of the intransigent opposition and resilience of the Yemeni Houthi rebel group, but also largely because the Saudi Arabian military effort is fully supported by the United States and Britain. Indeed, it is fair to say that without the logistical, military and political support of the United States and Britain, the Saudi military machine would not have been able to mount such a prolonged and sustained military campaign. Britain has been, and continues to be, the silent partner of Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen. British-made jets, missiles and military equipment are regularly sold to the Saudi authorities, and these weapons enable the Saudi military to continue its war on the Yemeni population. The vast majority of Yemeni casualties in this conflict are civilians, and the Saudi authorities have boasted that during this offensive, they have been able to drop 1000 bombs in 125 air strikes per day.

The infrastructure of the already-struggling nation of Yemen has been devastated, and the population now faces the prospect of mass famine. The Saudi-led naval blockade of the country has interfered with the importation of food, and as of October 2015, half a million Yemeni children are vulnerable to malnutrition as a result. The humanitarian crisis, already serious in the early stages of the Saudi invasion, has worsened throughout 2015, with the BBC reporting that aid organisations are struggling to cope with the magnitude of the crisis. For instance, ordinary Yemenis are now compelled to rely on untreated water for drinking and washing, placing them at risk for water-borne communicable diseases. The Saudi blockade, having restricted the supply of fuel, means that the water and sewage systems – reliant as they are on functioning fuel pumps and working mechanical parts – has broken down. Children are bearing the brunt of these terrible privations.

Let us bear in mind that the Saudi Arabian military offensive is possible not only because of the unstinting support of the UK government, but also because of the full backing of the United States. Saudi Arabia, for decades a pillar of US foreign policy in the region, is able to count on the unwavering support of its American patrons. The United States provides intelligence and logistical support, sells military equipment, and provides mid-air refueling for Saudi jets in order to continue their military attacks. The Saudi air force, in October 2015, bombed the Medecines Sans Frontieres – Doctors Without Borders – MSF hospital in Yemen, even though the MSF had supplied the Saudi-led coalition with the GPS coordinates of their hospital. That attack only underlines the fact that the Saudi authorities, and their US-British backers, regard any infrastructure – roads, bridges, hospitals, electricity grids – as legitimate targets for destruction, thus destroying the ability of the society to sustain itself.

Iona Craig, writing in The Independent newspaper, states that:

More than 2.3 million Yemenis have been internally displaced by the war, many forcibly by the bombings, while more than 160,000 people have arrived in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Sudan to escape the conflict. The majority took the treacherous journey by boat across the Bab-el-Mandeb strait that separates Yemen from the Horn of Africa.

The Saudi war on Yemen has destroyed the community on the ground, with indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the ruination of civilian infrastructure. This carnage has been possible with the support of the United States military-political complex. The latter has directly assisted in the direction and targeting of Saudi air strikes in Yemen, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians. The bombs used by the Saudi air force are manufactured in the United States.

The details of this war, and the complicity of the United States and Britain, expose the enormous hypocrisies behind their recent declarations of support for the newly-formed Saudi Arabian-led Muslim anti-terror coalition. The latter, a grouping of 34 Muslim-majority nations, is intended to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and yet, for their proclamations against terrorism, Riyadh is employing terroristic tactics of its own in the war against the people of Yemen. Not surprisingly, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, declared his full support for this anti-terror coalition, all the while ignoring the culpability of Washington in Saudi Arabia’s criminal war against Yemen.

The toxic nature of the US-Saudi alliance, and Australia’s growing support for it, has to be questioned and re-evaluated. This strategic relationship, one that has been solidified over the years with increasing military and economic relations between the two states, is a toxic influence on the people of the Arab and Islamic countries. As Medea Benjamin wrote for an article in Common Dreams magazine:

The Yemen crisis should also serve as a prime moment for the U.S. to reconsider its alliance the Saudi regime, a regime that not only denies human rights to its own people but exports death and destruction abroad. An upcoming activist-based Saudi Summit, which will be held in Washington DC on March 5-6, is an effort to build a campaign to support challenge this toxic relationship.

November 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, a series of tribunals convened by the victorious Allied powers at the end of World War Two to prosecute the highest-ranking political and military leaders of the defeated Nazi German regime for war crimes. Hitler himself escaped punishment by committing suicide – a number of other highly-placed Nazi officials were by this time already dead by their own hand or killed while trying to escape the approaching Allied armies. Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front and organiser of slave labour, committed suicide rather than face his accusers.

However, the surviving elite of the Nazi party were rounded up and put on trial, the genocidal savagery of German imperialism laid bare for all the world to see. Hermann Goering, former head of the Luftwaffe was in the stand, along with the former deputy to the Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess. Julius Streicher, the rabidly racist editor of the German news Der Sturmer (The Attacker) was in the dock, facing trial for the vitrolic anti-Semitic commentary and images that he propagated through his newspaper. Streicher routinely advocated the extermination of the Jewish people in the pages of Der Sturmer, and this formed an important part of overall Nazi propaganda.

Hans Sauckel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel – these were the politicians and military officers who organised the murderous machinery of German imperial power, leading to the deaths of millions of victims. They were all now facing judgement – the prosecutors at Nuremberg organised the documents and files of the former Nazi German government to provide evidence of criminal activity and war crimes. Nuremberg established the principle of accountability – no single political and military leader could rely on their own national laws to legitimate their policies and practices. Now, international law was the standard against which the homicidal and racist politics of the German state was to be judged.

For the first time in history, the elite decision-makers of an imperial state were held to account for their actions. This is the historic significance of the Nuremberg tribunals. This is not to pretend that there were no problems with, or criticisms of, the Nuremberg trials at the time. The Soviets, sitting in as one of the presiding judges, had a long history of show trials in the late 1930s. Admiral Karl Doenitz, named by Hitler as his successor, was charged with attacking civilian maritime traffic during the war years in the Atlantic. While was found guilty of the crime of initiating a war of aggression, the charge of unrestrained maritime warfare was dropped. Why? US Admiral Chester Nimitz issued a statement admitting that the United States Navy carried out a practice of unrestrained submarine attacks and warfare against the Japanese enemy. The corresponding charges against Doenitz were cancelled. Not a single German commander was charged with carrying out aerial bombardment against civilian populations, because the latter tactic was a pillar of US and British policy towards Germany throughout the war years. Between December 1946 and April 1949, more tribunals were held, most importantly in Japan with regard to Tokyo’s war leaders and their crimes.

After overcoming the legal and procedural hurdles for proceeding with war crimes trials, the Nuremberg trials, taking place during the initial stages of the Cold War, were quietly forgotten as the former colonial powers began their plans for re-establishing control over their previous domains. France and Britain wanted to retain their glory days of empire, while the United States, fresh from its successful emergence as the leading economic and military power in the world at the end of the war, went on to expand its influence throughout the world. No charges for war crimes were ever brought against any American, British or French politician or military leader. There was an enormous problem of  ‘applying justice to ourselves’, as veteran Australian journalist John Pilger wrote when discussing the chances of bringing today’s crop of political leaders to account for their war crimes.

In 1998, while 160 countries met in Rome to establish a statute of an international criminal court, the way that the remit of the ICC has been applied in the ensuing years indicates an important feature regarding the current configuration of world power-politics. Every one of the 23 cases that are currently open at the ICC involves leaders and countries in Africa. Does that continent’s political leadership contain the majority of the world’s war criminals? Rather, this speaks to the selective and political motivated way in which criminal tribunals are applied to smaller countries, while the larger, greater purveyors of violence in the world continue to operate with impunity.

For instance, during the very year that the ICC was established – 1998 – then US President Bill Clinton carried out the premeditated and surprise bombing assault on Khartoum, the densely populated capital of the Sudan. The reason? The US offered the justification that the bombing targeted a chemical and biological weapons facility in the city, the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory. At the time, the Sudan was not at war with the United States, did not have any of its troops or military personnel stationed on US soil, or threaten the US in any way. There was no warning provided to Khartoum about the attack, the latter having a population of one million people. It is impossible to avoid civilian casualties when targeting a non-military facility – and indeed there were civilian casualties.

The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory had produced medicines for use by the people in the city. Sudanese and foreign experts involved with the factory had intimate first-hand knowledge that no chemical or biological weapons were being manufactured there. The factory had only opened in July 1997, and was largely self-reliant in producing medicines for the Sudanese residents of Khartoum. Did the US, which had diplomatic relations with the Sudanese government at the time, provide any warning about the attack, or issue any protest to the Khartoum regime? No they did not. Without adequate supplies of vital medicines, it is the ordinary people of Khartoum that have suffered diseases as a result of this attack. The various, shifting justifications offered by the United States government at the time – that Sudan was harbouring Al Qaeda agents, that the Al-Shifa factory was producing nerve agents – all turned out to be false.

After the 1998 bombing, the Sudanese government offered to allow the US, and any UN-sponsored team of experts, to travel to Khartoum to conduct chemical testing to see if any chemical or biological weapons had been produced. The United States government refused. The irony of the attack on this factory was that only a few months prior to the bombing, the US-dominated Sanctions Committee at the United Nations agreed to contracts with the one and only Al-Shifa factory to provide badly needed medicines to the country of Iraq, the latter suffering under the dead weight of US-imposed sanctions. The President of the Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, called the 1998 attacks a war crime and former US President Bill Clinton a war criminal – an accurate description…..

This is not an endorsement of the Sudanese regime, a government that tortures and kills its own citizens with impunity, that jails dissidents for years without trial, that is guilty of using unrestrained force on its own people. This is an exhortation to apply the international laws equally to all powers, great and small. The Nuremberg trials established a valid precedent for bringing political-military leaders to account, not just in the case of Germany, but also in the case of say, the crime of fracturing a nation, like the United States 2003 invasion of Iraq. Rather than honouring the senior US leaders who planned and carried out the invasion of Iraq (Cheney has just had a bust of himself unveiled in Capitol Hill), it is high time to prosecute the war criminals responsible for the barbaric assault on Iraq, the latter still struggling with the horrific humanitarian consequences of that war until today. What does it say about the character of US political culture when, after the Obama administration has retreated from its pledges to prosecute Bush-Cheney-era war criminals, it is now protecting and honouring them? Iraq’s decline into a state of bitter sectarian division is directly attributable to the policies and practices pursued by senior American ruling class officials.

No more excuses – that is the title of a new report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW), that elaborates the powerful legal case for pressing criminal charges against US military and civilian leaders for their culpability in the CIA programme of torture and illegal imprisonment. The report states that:

It is now well established that following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operated a global, state-sanctioned program in which it abducted scores of people throughout the world, held them in secret detention—sometimes for years—or “rendered” them to various countries, and tortured or otherwise ill-treated them. While the program officially ended in 2009, the cover-up of these crimes appears to be ongoing.

Many detainees were held by the CIA in pitch-dark windowless cells, chained to walls, naked or diapered, for weeks or months at a time. The CIA forced them into painful stress positions that made it impossible for them to lie down or sleep for days, to the point where many hallucinated or begged to be killed to end their misery. It used “waterboarding” and similar techniques to cause near suffocation or drowning, crammed detainees naked into tiny boxes, and prevented them from bathing, using toilets, or cutting their hair or nails for months. “We looked like monsters,” one detainee said of his appearance while in CIA custody.

The HRW report stands as a searing indictment of the depraved and sadistic practices of the CIA, and also condemns those officials who authorised such treatment. The CIA and military personnel were allowed to torture with impunity because of the general erosion of civil liberties and the incremental drift towards police-state measures in the United States. The capitalist class, dispensing with traditional forms of representative democracy, is now embarking on the militarisation of society, the expansion of the coercive powers of the state apparatus, and the simultaneous assault on workers’ living conditions across the board. We would do well to remember the words of the late great Dr Martin Luther King, that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence and militarism throughout the world. He correctly identified US militarism as not only a problem for its victims outside the United States, but also as part of a deeper malady inflicting his own society. Dr King accurately stated that while the US continued to spend millions recklessly and alarmingly on wars of aggression overseas, none of the social problems afflicting US society – racial and economic inequality, gun violence, social alienation, the breakdown of health and education, poverty – can be resolved.