The Secret of the Seven Sisters

On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil.

Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.

The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.

The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.

The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".

The new automobile industry was developing fast, and the Ford T was selling by the million. The world was thirsty for oil, and companies were waging a merciless contest but the competition was making the market unstable.

That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.

Four others soon joined them, and they came to be known as the Seven Sisters - the biggest oil companies in the world.

EPISODE 1: DESERT STORMS

In the first episode, we travel across the Middle East, through both time and space.

We waged the Iran-Iraq war and I say we waged it, because one country had to be used to destroy the other.
- Xavier Houzel, an oil trader

Since that notorious meeting at Achnacarry Castle on August 28, 1928, they have never ceased to plot, to plan and to scheme.

Throughout the region's modern history, since the discovery of oil, the Seven Sisters have sought to control the balance of power.

They have supported monarchies in Iran and Saudi Arabia, opposed the creation of OPEC, profiting from the Iran-Iraq war, leading to the ultimate destruction of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

The Seven Sisters were always present, and almost always came out on top.

EPISODE 2: THE BLACK EL DORADO

At the end of the 1960s, the Seven Sisters, the major oil companies, controlled 85 percent of the world's oil reserves. Today, they control just 10 percent.

New hunting grounds are therefore required, and the Sisters have turned their gaze towards Africa. With peak oil, wars in the Middle East, and the rise in crude prices, Africa is the oil companies' new battleground.

Everybody thought there could be oil in Sudan but nobody knew anything. It was revealed through exploration by the American company Chevron, towards the end of the 70s. And that was the beginning of the second civil war, which went on until 2002. It lasted for 19 years and cost a million and a half lives and the oil business was at the heart of it.

- Gerard Prunier, a historian

But the real story, the secret story of oil, begins far from Africa.

In their bid to dominate Africa, the Sisters installed a king in Libya, a dictator in Gabon, fought the nationalisation of oil resources in Algeria, and through corruption, war and assassinations, brought Nigeria to its knees.

Oil may be flowing into the holds of huge tankers, but in Lagos, petrol shortages are chronic.

The country's four refineries are obsolete and the continent's main oil exporter is forced to import refined petrol - a paradox that reaps fortunes for a handful of oil companies.

Encouraged by the companies, corruption has become a system of government - some $50bn are estimated to have 'disappeared' out of the $350bn received since independence.

But new players have now joined the great oil game.

China, with its growing appetite for energy, has found new friends in Sudan, and the Chinese builders have moved in. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir is proud of his co-operation with China - a dam on the Nile, roads, and stadiums.

In order to export 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields in the South - China financed and built the Heglig pipeline connected to Port Sudan - now South Sudan's precious oil is shipped through North Sudan to Chinese ports.

In a bid to secure oil supplies out of Libya, the US, the UK and the Seven Sisters made peace with the once shunned Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, until he was killed during the Libyan uprising of 2011, but the flow of Libyan oil remains uninterrupted.

In need of funds for rebuilding, Libya is now back to pumping more than a million barrels of oil per day. And the Sisters are happy to oblige.

EPISODE 3: THE DANCING BEAR

In the Caucasus, the US and Russia are vying for control of the region. The great oil game is in full swing. Whoever controls the Caucasus and its roads, controls the transport of oil from the Caspian Sea.

Tbilisi, Erevan and Baku - the three capitals of the Caucasus. The oil from Baku in Azerbaijan is a strategic priority
for all the major companies.

From the fortunes of the Nobel family to the Russian revolution, to World War II, oil from the Caucasus and the Caspian has played a central role. Lenin fixated on conquering the Azeri capital Baku for its oil, as did Stalin and Hitler.

On his birthday in 1941, Adolf Hitler received a chocolate and cream birthday cake, representing a map. He chose the slice with Baku on it.

On June 22nd 1941, the armies of the Third Reich invaded Russia. The crucial battle of Stalingrad was the key to the road to the Caucasus and Baku’s oil, and would decide the outcome of the war.

Stalin told his troops: "Fighting for one’s oil is fighting for one’s freedom."

After World War II, President Nikita Krushchev would build the Soviet empire and its Red Army with revenues from the USSR’s new-found oil reserves.

Decades later, oil would bring that empire to its knees, when Saudi Arabia and the US would conspire to open up the oil taps, flood the markets, and bring the price of oil down to $13 per barrel. Russian oligarchs would take up the oil mantle, only to be put in their place by their president, Vladimir Putin, who knows that oil is power.

The US and Putin‘s Russia would prop up despots, and exploit regional conflicts to maintain a grip on the oil fields of the Caucusus and the Caspian.

But they would not have counted on the rise of a new, strong and hungry China, with an almost limitless appetite for oil and energy. Today, the US, Russia and China contest the control of the former USSR’s fossil fuel reserves, and the supply routes. A three-handed match, with the world as spectators, between three ferocious beasts – The American eagle, the Russian bear, and the Chinese dragon.

EPISODE 4: A TIME FOR LIES

Peak oil – the point in time at which the highest rate of oil extraction has been reached, and after which world production will start decline. Many geologists and the International Energy Agency say the world's crude oil output reached its peak in 2006.

But while there may be less oil coming out of the ground, the demand for it is definitely on the rise.

The final episode of this series explores what happens when oil becomes more and more inaccessible, while at the same time, new powers like China and India try to fulfill their growing energy needs.

And countries like Iran, while suffering international sanctions, have welcomed these new oil buyers, who put business ahead of lectures on human rights and nuclear ambitions.

At the same time, oil-producing countries have had enough with the Seven Sisters controlling their oil assets. Nationalisation of oil reserves around the world has ushered in a new generation of oil companies all vying for a slice of the oil pie.

These are the new Seven Sisters:

Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco, the largest and most sophisticated oil company in the world; Russia's Gazprom, a company that Russia's President Vladimir Putin wrested away from the oligarchs; The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which, along with its subsidiary, Petrochina, is the world's secnd largest company in terms of market value; The National Iranian Oil Company, which has a monopoly on exploration, extraction, transportation and exportation of crude oil in Iran – OPEC's second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; Venezuela's PDVSA, a company the late president Hugo Chavez dismantled and rebuilt into his country's economic engine and part of his diplomatic arsenal; Brazil's Petrobras, a leader in deep water oil production, that pumps out 2 million barrels of crude oil a day; and Malaysia's Petronas - Asia's most profitable company in 2012.

Mainly state-owned, the new Seven Sisters control a third of the world's oil and gas production, and more than a third of the world's reserves. The old Seven Sisters, by comparison, produce a tenth of the world's oil, and control only three percent of the reserves.

The balance has shifted.

Source: Al Jazeera

WORLD: An interview with Noam Chomsky — Nothing can justify torture

Professor Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was educated at the University of Philadelphia and at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He earned his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Philadelphia in 1955. He has spent the 57 years since then teaching at MIT. In addition to his academic work in linguistics, Professor Chomsky has been a noted political activist and philosopher, gaining national recognition in 1967 over his opposition to the Vietnam War and since then has regularly spoken out against US foreign and domestic policies and mainstream American mass media. Between his academic career and his work as a political activist and dissident, he has published over 100 books. Here with Eric Bailey and on the eve of the 2012 US presidential election, he discusses America’s human rights record under the administration of President Obama and the military intervention policies that have seen increased use during the Arab Spring. Prof. Chomsky recently communicated with Eric Bailey of Torture Magazine.

EB: The US presidential elections are almost upon us and the last four years have seen significant changes in American Federal policy in regards to human rights. One of the few examples of cooperation between the Democratic and Republican Parties over the last four years has been the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. This bill has given the United States military the power to arrest American citizens, indefinitely, without charge, trial, or any other form of due process of law and the Obama Administration has and continues to fight a legal battle in Federal Court to prevent that law from being declared unconstitutional. Obama authorized the assassination of three American citizens, including Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son, admittedly all members of Al Qaeda, – all without judicial review. Additionally, the Guantanamo Bay prison remains open, the Patriot Act has been extended, and the TSA has expanded at breakneck speeds. What is your take on America’s human rights record over the past four years and can you contrast Obama’s policies with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush?

NC: Obama’s policies have been approximately the same as Bush’s, though there have been some slight differences, but that’s not a great surprise. The Democrats supported Bush’s policies. There were some objections on mostly partisan grounds, but for the most part, they supported his policies and it’s not surprising that they have continued to do so. In some respects Obama has gone even beyond Bush. The NDAA, which you mentioned, was not initiated by Obama, (when it passed Congress, he said he didn’t approve of it and wouldn’t implement it) but he nevertheless did sign it into law and did not veto it. It was pushed through by hawks, including Joe Lieberman and others. In fact, there hasn’t been that much of a change. The worst part of the NDAA is that it codified – or put into law – what had already been a regular practice. The practices hadn’t been significantly different. The one part that received public attention is what you mentioned, the part that permits the indefinite detention of American citizens, but why permit the indefinite detention of anybody? It’s a gross violation of fundamental human rights and civil law, going all the way back to the Magna Carta in the 13th  Century, so it’s a very severe attack on elementary civil rights, both under Bush and under Obama. It’s bipartisan!

As for the killings, Obama has sharply increased the global assassination campaign. While it was initiated by Bush, it has expanded under Obama and it has included American citizens, again with bipartisan support and very little criticism other than some minor criticism because it was an American. But then again, why should you have the right to assassinate anybody? For example, suppose Iran was assassinating members of Congress who were calling for an attack on Iran. Would we think that’s fine? That would be much more justified, but of course we’d see that as an act of war. The real question is, why assassinate anyone? The government has made it very clear that the assassinations are personally approved by Obama and the criteria for assassination are very weak. If a group of men are seen somewhere by a drone who are, say, loading something into a truck, and there is some suspicion that maybe they are militants, then it’s fine to kill them and they are regarded as guilty unless, subsequently, they are shown to be innocent. That’s the wording that the United States used and it is such a gross violation of fundamental human rights that you can hardly talk about it.

The question of due process actually did arise, since the US does have a constitution and it says that no person shall be deprived of their rights without due process of law – again, this goes back to 13th Century England – so the question arose, “What about due process?” The Obama Justice Department’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, explained that there was due process in these cases because they are discussed first at the Executive Branch. That’s not even a bad joke! The British kings from the 13th Century would have applauded. “Sure, if we talk about it, that’s due process.” And that, again, passed without controversy.

In fact, we might ask the same question about the murder of Osama Bin Laden. Notice I use the term “murder”. When heavily armed elite troops capture a suspect, unarmed and defenseless, accompanied by his wives, and then shoot him, kill him, and dump his body into the ocean without an autopsy, that’s shear assassination. Also notice that I said “suspect”. The reason is because of another principle of law, that also goes back to the 13th Century – that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Before that, he’s a suspect. In the case of Osama Bin Laden, the United States had never formally charged him with 9/11 and part of the reason was that they didn’t know that he was responsible. In fact, eight months after 9/11 and after the most intensive inquiry in history, the FBI explained that it suspected that the 9/11 plot was hatched in Afghanistan, (didn’t mention Bin Laden) and was implemented in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and of course the United States. That’s eight months after the attack and there’s nothing substantive that they’ve learned since then that does more than increase the suspicion. My own assumption is that the suspicion is almost certainly correct, but there’s a big difference between having a very confident belief and showing someone to be guilty. And even if he’s guilty, he was supposed to be apprehended and brought before a court. That’s British and American law going back eight centuries. He’s not supposed to be murdered and have his body dumped without an autopsy, but support for this is very nearly universal. Actually, I wrote one of the few critical articles on it and my article was bitterly condemned by commentators across the spectrum, including the Left, because the assassination was so obviously just, since we suspected him of committing a crime against us. And that tells you something about the significant, I would say, “moral degeneration” running throughout the whole intellectual class. And yes, Obama has continued this and in some respects extended it, but it hardly comes as a surprise.
The rot is much deeper than that.

EB: It has been just over 10 years since the publication of the Bush Administration’s “Torture Memos”. These memos provided a legal justification for the torture of detainees held by the CIA in connection with the “War on Terror.” The contents of the memos are chilling and have created new debate on torture internationally. Despite all of the promises given by President Obama to close those illegal detention centers, it seems that “black site” activities still occur. What are your views on these detention centers and CIA torture? Also, what do you think about Obama’s promise of CIA reforms in 2008 and how has the reality of his presidency stacked up to those promises?

NC: There have been some presidential orders expressing disapproval of the most extreme forms of torture, but Bagram remains open and uninspected. That’s probably the worst in Afghanistan. Guantanamo is still open, but it’s unlikely that serious torture is going on at Guantanamo. There is just too much inspection. There are military lawyers present and evidence regularly coming out so I suspect that that’s not a torture chamber any more, but it still is an illegal detention chamber, and Bagram and who knows how many others are still functioning. Rendition doesn’t seem to be continuing at the level that it did, but it has been until very recently.

Rendition is just sending people abroad to be tortured. Actually, that’s barred as well by the Magna Carta – the foundation of Anglo-American law. It’s explicitly barred to send somebody across the seas to be punished and tortured. It’s not just done by the United States, either. It’s done all over Western Europe. Britain has participated in it. Sweden has participated. It’s one of the reasons for a lot of the concerns about extraditing Julian Assange to Sweden. Canada has been implicated as was Ireland, but to Ireland’s credit it was one of the few places where there was mass popular protests against allowing the Shannon Airport to be used for CIA rendition. In most countries there has been very little protest or not a word. I don’t know of any recent cases so maybe that policy is no longer being implemented, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was still in effect.

EB: Moving beyond the US, the Middle East has always been rife with human rights abuses, but the turmoil of the Arab Spring has intensified such abuses in many countries. While the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt were toppled without resorting to civil war, countries like Libya, Syria, and Yemen have seen heavy fighting. For America and NATO’s part, there has been yet another military intervention with the Libyan Civil War and only the stubbornness of Russia and China have prevented a similar  ntervention in Syria. In both cases, rebel forces have asked, even begged, for American and European help in their war efforts, but have proven to be absolutely uninterested in negotiated settlements with their dictatorial adversaries, even when outside help is not forthcoming. What is your take on military interventions, both the intervention that did occur in Libya and the one that is being called for in Syria?  Is it morally justifiable to send Texans and Louisianans into harm’s way to fight in the internal conflicts of Libyans and Syrians? Conversely, can refusing to intervene be justified when entire cities, such as Misrata, Benghazi, Aleppo, and Homs were or are being threatened with utter destruction and tens of thousands of civilians are being killed?

NC: Well, let’s start with Syria. The one thing I disagree with in what you said is that I doubt very much that Russia and China had anything to do with the lack of US or Western military intervention in Syria. In fact my strong suspicion is that the United States, Britain, and France welcomed the Russian veto because that gave them a pretext not to do anything. Now they can say, “How can we do anything? The Russians and the Chinese have vetoed it!” In fact, if they wanted to intervene, they wouldn’t have cared one way or the other about a Russian or Chinese veto. That’s perfectly obvious from history, but they didn’t want to intervene and they don’t want to intervene now. The military and intelligence strategic command centers are just strongly opposed to it. Some oppose it for technical, military, reasons and others because they don’t see anyone they can support in their interests. They don’t particularly like Assad, although he was more or less conformed to US and Israeli interests, but they don’t like the opposition either, especially their Islamist elements, so they just prefer to stay on the side lines. It’s kind of interesting that Israel doesn’t do anything. They wouldn’t have to do much. Israel could easily  obilize forces in the Golan Heights (Syrian territory that Israel illegally annexed). They could mobilize forces there, which are only about 40 miles from Damascus, which would compel Assad to send military forces to the border,  drawing them away from areas where the rebels are operating. So that would be direct  support for the rebels, but without firing a shot and without moving across the border.

But there is no talk of it and I think what that indicates is that Israel, the United States, and their allies just don’t want to take moves that will undermine the regime, just out of self-interest. There is no humanitarian interest involved.

As far as Libya is concerned, we have to be a little cautious, because there were two interventions in Libya. The first one was under the auspices of the United Nations. That’s UN Resolution 1973. That resolution called for a no-fly zone, a ceasefire, and the start of negotiations and diplomacy.

EB: That was the intervention for which the justification was claimed to be the prevention of the destruction of Benghazi?

NC: Well, we don’t know if Benghazi was going to be destroyed, but it was called to prevent a possible attack on Benghazi. You can debate how likely the attack was, but personally, I felt that was legitimate – to try to stop a possible atrocity. However, that intervention lasted about five minutes. Almost immediately, the NATO powers (France and Britain in the lead and the United States following) violated the resolution, radically, and became the air force of the rebels. Nothing in the resolution justified that. It did call for “all necessary steps” to protect civilians, but there’s a big difference between protecting civilians and being the air force for the rebels.

Maybe we should have been in favor of the rebelling forces. That’s a separate question, but this was pretty clearly in violation of the resolution. It certainly wasn’t done for a lack of alternative options. Gaddafi offered a ceasefire. Whether he meant it or not, nobody knows, because it was at once rejected.

Incidentally, this pact was strongly opposed by most of the world. There was virtually no support for it. The African Union (Libya is, after all, an African country) strongly opposed it, right away, called for a ceasefire, and even suggested the introduction of African Union forces to try and reduce the conflict.

The BRICS countries, the most important of the developing countries, (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) happened to be having a conference at the time and they strongly opposed the NATO intervention and called for moves towards diplomacy, negotiations, and a ceasefire. Egypt, next door, didn’t participate. Within NATO, Germany refused to participate. Italy refused too, in the beginning, though later they joined the intervention. Turkey held back. Later on they joined, but initially they opposed intervention. Generally speaking, it was almost unilateral. It was the traditional imperial powers (France, Britain, and the United States) which intervened.

In fact it did lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but it certainly led to that, especially in the end with the attacks on BaniWalid and Sirte, the last pro-Gadaffi holdouts. They are the main center of Libya’s largest tribe, the Warfalla tribe. Libya is a highly divided tribal society, they are a major tribe, and this was their home center. Many of them were pretty bitter about that. Could it have been resolved through diplomacy and negotiations the way the African Union and BRICS countries suggested? We don’t know.

It’s also worthy of note that the International Crisis Group, which is the main, non-state element that deals with continuing conflicts and crises throughout the world, and is very  highly respected, opposed intervention too. They strongly supported negotiations and diplomacy. However, the African Union and others’ positions were barely reported on in the West. Who cares what they say? In fact, if they were reported on at all, they were disparaged on the grounds that these countries had had close relations with Gaddafi. In fact, they did, but so did Britain and the United States, right to the end.

In any event, the intervention did take place and now one hopes for the best, but it’s not a very pretty picture. You can read an account of it in the current issue of the London Review of Books by Hugh Roberts, who was, at the time, the North African Director of the International Crisis Group and a specialist on the region. He opposed the intervention and described the outcome as pretty hopeless chaos that is undercutting the hopes for an eventual rise of a sort of sensible, democratic, nationalism.

So that wasn’t very pretty, but what about the other countries? Well, the countries that are most significant to the United States and the West, generally, are the oil dictatorships and they remain very stable. There were efforts to try and join the Arab Spring, but they were crushed, very harshly, with not a word from the Western powers. Sometimes it was quite violent, as in eastern Saudi Arabia and in Bahrain, which were Shiite areas, mostly, but it resulted in at most a tap on the wrist by the Western Powers. They clearly wanted the oil dictatorships to remain. That’s the center of their power.

In Tunisia, which had mostly French influence, the French supported the dictatorship until the very end. In fact, they were still supporting it after demonstrations were sweeping the country. Finally, at the last second, they conceded that their favorite dictator had to go. In Egypt, where the United States and Britain were the main influences, it was the same. Obama supported the dictator Mubarak until virtually the last minute – until the army turned against him. It became impossible to support him anymore so they urged him to leave and make a transition to a similar system.

All of that is quite routine. That’s the standard operating procedure for dealing with a situation where your favorite dictator is getting into trouble. There is case after case like that. What you do in that case is support the dictator to the very end, regardless of how vicious and bloody the he is. Then when it becomes impossible, say because the army or the business classes have turned against him, then ease him out somewhere, (sometimes with half the government’s treasury in his pocket) declare your love for democracy, and try to restore the old system. That’s pretty much what’s happening in Egypt.

Source: The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)

Congo Slips Into Chaos Again as Rebels Gain

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The lights are out in most of Goma. There is little water. The prison is an empty, garbage-strewn wasteland with its rusty front gate swinging wide open and a three-foot hole punched through the back wall, letting loose 1,200 killers, rapists, rogue soldiers and other criminals.

Now, rebel fighters are going house to house arresting people, many of whom have not been seen again by their families.

“You say the littlest thing and they disappear you,” said an unemployed man named Luke.

In the past week, the rebels have been unstoppable, steamrolling through one town after another, seizing this provincial capital, and eviscerating a dysfunctional Congolese Army whose drunken soldiers stumble around with rocket-propelled grenades and whose chief of staff was suspended for selling crates of ammunition to elephant poachers.

Riots are exploding across the country — in Bukavu, Butembo, Bunia, Kisangani and Kinshasa, the capital, a thousand miles away. Mobs are pouring into streets, burning down government buildings and demanding the ouster of Congo’s weak and widely despised president, Joseph Kabila.

Once again, chaos is courting Congo. And one pressing question is, why — after all the billions of dollars spent on peacekeepers, the recent legislation passed on Capitol Hill to cut the link between the illicit mineral trade and insurrection, and all the aid money and diplomatic capital — is this vast nation in the heart of Africa descending to where it was more than 10 years ago when foreign armies and marauding rebels carved it into fiefs?

“We haven’t really touched the root cause,” said Aloys Tegera, a director for the Pole Institute, a research institute in Goma.

He said Congo’s chronic instability is rooted in very local tensions over land, power and identity, especially along the Rwandan and Ugandan borders. “But no one wants to touch this because it’s too complicated,” he added.

The most realistic solution, said another Congo analyst, is not a formal peace process driven by diplomats but “a peace among all the dons, like Don Corleone imposed in New York.”

Congo’s problems have been festering for years, wounds that never quite scabbed over.

But last week there was new urgency after hundreds of rebel fighters, wearing rubber swamp boots and with belt-fed machine guns slung across their backs, marched into Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province and one of the country’s most important cities.

The rebels, called the M23, are a heavily armed paradox. On one hand, they are ruthless. Human rights groups have documented how they have slaughtered civilians, pulling confused villagers out of their huts in the middle of the night and shooting them in the head.

On the other hand, the M23 are able administrators — seemingly far better than the Congolese government, evidenced by a visit in recent days to their stronghold, Rutshuru, a small town about 45 miles from Goma.

In Rutshuru, there are none of those ubiquitous plastic bags twisted in the trees, like in so many other parts of Congo. The gravel roads have been swept clean and the government offices are spotless. Hand-painted signs read: “M23 Stop Corruption.” The rebels even have green thumbs, planting thousands of trees in recent months to fight soil erosion.

“We are not a rebellion,” said Benjamin Mbonimpa, an electrical engineer, a bush fighter and now a top rebel administrator. “We are a revolution.”

Their aims, he said, were to overthrow the government and set up a more equitable, decentralized political system. This is why the rebels have balked at negotiating with Mr. Kabila, though this weekend several rebels said that the pressure was increasing on them to compromise, especially coming from Western countries.

On Sunday, rebel forces and government troops were still squared off, just a few miles apart, down the road from Goma.

The M23 rebels are widely believed to be covertly supported by Rwanda, which has a long history of meddling in Congo, its neighbor blessed with gold, diamonds and other glittering mineral riches. The Rwandan government strenuously denies supplying weapons to the M23 or trying to annex eastern Congo. Rwanda has often denied any clandestine involvement in this country, only to have the denials later exposed as lies.

Many people in Goma don’t like the fact that the M23 is so closely linked to Rwanda, with Rwandan-speaking soldiers strutting around this city as if they own it — which they do right now. But the venom toward Joseph Kabila seems even greater.

The lights are now out in most of the city, the prison is empty, water is scarce and the rebels are going door to door arresting people.

“He treats us like street kids,” said Kalimbiro Kambere, a police officer who makes only $50 a month, despite 37 years in service. “No one wants to fight for him.”

Few countries in the world have been as disastrously ruled as Congo. Western interference has not helped — from the 1880s when King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into an enormous labor camp to produce as much rubber and ivory as possible, to the violence in the Goma area today, which may have been set into motion by a miscalculation on the part of Western ambassadors.

Last November, Mr. Kabila ran for re-election. He was widely unpopular, suspected of hoarding millions if not billions of dollars from mineral deals and leaving the bridges, roads, hospitals and schools a fiasco.

During the election, his agents were caught red-handed stuffing ballot boxes, and his soldiers gunned down opposition supporters who protested. But Western diplomats, though expressing unhappiness, did not press the case.

Several Congolese and Western rights advocates and analysts said that the diplomatic corps then urged Mr. Kabila to arrest Bosco Ntaganda, a Rwandan-speaking army general nicknamed the Terminator, who had been a commander in several brutal rebel groups and was wanted for years by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

“Kabila miscalculated,” Mr. Tegera said. “And so did the West. They pressured him.”

In March, as Mr. Kabila began to move against Mr. Ntaganda and threatened to dislodge the Rwandan-speaking rebels who had been incorporated into the national army, they mutinied. They were far more powerful than the government expected, and United Nations officials said the rebels quickly drew reinforcements from Rwanda. They seized town after town, culminating in Goma, where power lines were cut in the fighting, casting it into darkness. At each battle, the government army unraveled.

The bodies of government soldiers now litter the roads around Goma, someone’s father or son rotting in the bush, eye sockets and mouth sizzling with flies. Villagers trudge past, looking away. For them, misery is a familiar face.

On Friday, Alfonse Kiburura stood in front of his twig and tarp hut in a camp for displaced people. The rains are falling hard now, every day. His family curls up on a floor of cold, wet mud.

This was the second time this year that the Kibururas have had to pick up everything they own, throw it over their heads and dash down the road away from the combat. Mr. Kiburura said that as soon as his 5-year-old son, Destin, heard gunfire, the boy knew what to do.

“This isn’t the first time he’s heard gunshots,” he said. “He’s heard them many times before.”

Source: New York Times

If Blair were PM in 1986, would he have invaded SA?

The question of a humanitarian war is an interesting one. Can a war ever be fought on moral grounds? I don’t think so – not unless there’s something with which the world’s great defenders can grease their palms.

Tony Blair ducked, dived and denied all responsibility of any type of wrongdoing for his decision to back the USA of their invasion of Iraq. He justified it morally, saying that even if the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was false, Saddam Hussein was a bad man who did bad things to his own people and neighbouring nations.

He claims he was justified in picking up arms, putting British soldiers at risk and ridding the world of an evil, oppressive regime. His intentions were purely moral in his mind.

As I listened to the former British Prime Minster dance his way through not answering questions at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit held in Sandton, a couple of queries sprang to mind. There is one question in particular I would have asked if I had managed to get a mic in my hands.

If this were so, then how would he have reacted if he were in power in 1986 instead of Maggie Thatcher? What would his approach have been if the ANC had made the request for British to invade South Africa and rid us of the Apartheid menace that was oppressing black South Africans?

The Apartheid government was illegally occupying Namibia, had invaded Angola and was busy destabilising all its neighbours. It also had a banned programme of weapons of mass destruction that included nuclear devices and a chemical weapons programme it was prepared to use on its own population. Arrested journalists, banned newspapers, engaged torture, detention without trial and in political assignations – the list goes on.

It had also unleashed its security forces to crush brutally any form of popular uprising that threatened Apartheid, despite the fact that the system had been declared a crime against humanity.

I wonder if Blair the defender of human rights and democracy would have rallied to the aid of the oppressed in South Africa, or would he have opted for a more diplomatic evolutionary approach? Would he carry the courage of his convictions or duck, dive and divert any request from the ANC to help liberate black South Africans?

A cynic would suggest that it would not be enough to overthrow an oppressive government only because they were bad and horrible; that it would only be “necessary” to invade such a country if the government were bad, horrible… and happened to have extremely valuable resources that the great defender desperately needed (or just plain wanted). The jokes about gold lining South Africa’s pavements would not have been quite enough to stimulate such a high level of intervention. And besides, there would be no reason for any modern British government to invade the Apartheid state to liberate the oppressed in the eighties. Why would they, when they already did so in 1899, when they decided to liberate “uitlanders” from the oppressive regime of the Boer republics? And, of course, get their hands on the country’s tidy portion of mineral resources in the process.

There would be no reason for the British to embark on a “humanitarian” war in Apartheid South Africa, because there would be nothing to gain. Why would Blair help free black people when the Empire already helped liberate the country’s resources over a century ago?

If, on the other hand, South Africa had been ripe for the exploiting, we may have had a very different history. Both pre- and post-liberation. We may have been forced into democracy much earlier; on the other hand, there may have been so many more innocent lives lost. We may have had the much-deserved moral support of a major international power; we also may have lost our independence to that same power.

There is no way to tell whether a major military intervention would have helped or hindered South Africa. And even if such a war were helpful, there would be no way to predict whether it would not bring its own set of problems; its own set of moral dilemmas and its own lack of freedoms.

Because, sadly, there’s no such thing as a humanitarian war. There’s only a war where I help you – and then help myself to what you’ve got.

Source: Daily Maverick

First steps taken to ensure customers are treated fairly

As SA moves to overhaul its financial sector regulatory framework, a major part of the process will be moves to treat customers with due care. But woe betide firms that think this is going to be a woolly, soft-touch approach to how regulators will assess their conduct.

The treat customers fairly initiative, will form a major part of the shift towards what is known as a twin peaks approach, according to the head of the initiative at the Financial Services Board (FSB), Leanne Jackson. Under the system the state will regulate the industry through two so-called ‘peaks’. The first relates to macro-prudential governance, which will be regulated by the Reserve Bank. The second relates to market conduct, which will be regulated by a beefed up Financial Services Board. It is through these legislative and regulatory reforms that the retail banking sector will be regulated for market conduct for the first time.

Although the new framework will apply to the industry as a whole, other financial services forms such as long and short-term insurers, asset managers and financial managers have been regulated for market conduct by the FSB, under the provisions of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services act.

The treat customers fairly initiative is in line with similar shifts across the globe in the wake of the financial crisis.

The industry, although broadly supportive of the need for reform, has raised concerns that it will come with additional compliance burdens that will add to their costs. The extent to which regulators can intervene and regulate the type, and cost, of financial services products, and the impact this will have on areas like costs and innovation, is a question being asked in jurisdictions across the globe.

Appropriate products

The treat customers fairly approach is based on six outcomes, including that appropriate products and services are marketed, sold and targeted accordingly; customers are given clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during and after the time of contracting; customers are given suitable advice, appropriate to their circumstances; and customers do not face unreasonable post-sale barriers to change a product, switch a provider, submit a claim or make a complaint.

According to the Financial Services Board’s 2011 road map document on the initiative, enforceable rules and regulations are required “to ensure that firms clearly understand the regulatory expectations,” it said.

Peter Dempsey, deputy chief executive of the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa, said the advantages of the initiative were that it was in line with global trends and clarified rights and obligations for both customers and firms. But aside from cost implications for companies, there were other difficulties with implementing the changes.

This included the subjective nature of how firms were evaluated in meeting the objectives. This was perhaps reflected in a draft self-assessment pilot project report, which was released in December. The report revealed distinct differences in how firms viewed their ability to meet the six outcomes, and the risks the FSB identified in their responses.

A good deal of work remained in establishing the regulatory framework and aligning it with other aspects of the twin peaks process said Jackson. But the pilot project did reveal the extent to which firms were underestimating the “rigour that the treat customers fairly implementation would require”.

She said firms would be “unwise” to wait for the legislative process to be complete – which is broadly expected in 2014 – before assessing the strategic implications these principles would have across all levels of their operations.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Blair speaks amid protest

Amid the gathering of a "small" group of protesters outside the Sandton Convention Centre, former British prime minister Tony Blair said that the most successful countries in the world are those with open-minded people who accept innovation. "Those countries who are open to people who are different, those who are open to nations who are different, those who are open to ideas and innovation create successful economies and societies," he said at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg.

"This globalised world offers huge opportunities if people are open-minded. I feel that right now that it is very important in terms of leadership... you have to take responsibility for difficult and often profound long-term decisions." Blair joked about Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's decision to pull out of the summit in protest at his attendance. "It's amazing how nice people are to you when you stop being prime minister -- except archbishops of course," he said. "He [Tutu] is perfectly entitled to do what he wants to do. The essence of democracy is that sometimes you are faced with very difficult positions."

Tutu withdrew from the conference because of Blair's decision to back the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. Blair said removing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power had been difficult. "We are faced with the same types of decisions now with Syria. Do we intervene or not intervene? With Iran, do we allow them to get nuclear capability? Are we prepared to intervene and stop them?"

Tutu's office said earlier in the week that the summit had leadership as its theme, and this could not be separated from ideas of morality. Tutu believed Blair's support of the US's military invasion was morally indefensible. Blair fielded questions from the audience about his decision to invade Iraq. "I took the decision in good faith... I knew it was a highly controversial and difficult thing, but I believed it was right. "The one thing that I have learnt about leadership is that in the end, that is my responsibility. I have to stand by that [decision]. In the end that is what you will elect leaders to do. I will never regret removing a brutal dictatorship."

Blair, flanked by bodyguards, spoke about the attempts that had been made to place him under citizen's arrest for crimes against humanity. "Why don't they actually go protest against the people doing the killing and the bombing and the suicide attacks?" He said the threat of Islamic fundamentalism was still an important issue the world had to overcome.

"Extremism is still there, but we are not going to [see it end]... until we tackle it for what it is. It is based on a perversion of religion and it has to be stood up to," Blair said. "They [extremists] are funded and financed by people with a very warped view of the world and who will take away a lot of the freedoms that we have."

Protest

A member of the audience heckled Blair during his speech. "Thank you... a little bit of protest to make me feel at home," he said. The heckler was escorted out of the hall. He heckler told Talk Radio 702 he had said: "Tony Blair, you are a war criminal and I'd rather listen to Tutu". Meanwhile, outside the convention centre protesters gathered because of his role in the deployment of soldiers in Iraq in 2003. .

The Society of the Protection of our Constitution is seeking a warrant of arrest for Blair. The society's secretary Muhammed Vawda says they've filed a 'crimes against the state' complaint with the police, who've opened a docket. He says the case will now go to the National Director of Public Prosecutions for a decision. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal - an alternative to the International Criminal Court with no UN recognition or authority - found Blair and former US President George W. Bush guilty in absentia last year of crimes against humanity and genocide in the 2003 Iraq war.

Muslim political party Al Jama-ah earlier said it plans to affect a citizen’s arrest on Blair outside the convention centre. "We hope that Mr Blair will do the right thing and try and clear his name at the International Court of Justice in the Haque. However, our dossier indicates that there is overwhelming evidence that he is guilty of crimes against humanity," said party leader, Ganief Hendricks."

He said in spite of the heavy security at the conference - which led to the conference being delayed - the party had hoped that "one of the delegates will get to Mr Blair so he realizes the charges against him will never be buried and be top of mind until he has his day in court. When this happens, it is then up to the law enforcement authorities to take the matter forward."

The police had cornered off the area and closely monitoring the situation where protesters could be seen carrying poster that read "Tony u phony" and "Blair is a war criminal". Among them was the national secretary of the Young Communist league (YCL) Buti Manamela who also addressed the protestors. The protest was broken up shortly after Blair's address. VOC/AGENCIES

Source: The Voice of the Cape

Tutu withdraws from leadership summit

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has withdrawn from participating in a leadership summit in Johannesburg to protest the presence of Tony Blair.

Tutu's decision forms a protest against Blair's decision to back the United States war in Iraq.

"The archbishop has spent considerable time over the past few days wrestling with his conscience and taking counsel from trusted advisers with respect to his attendance at the event," the archbishop's office wrote to the event organisers on Tuesday.

"Ultimately, the archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair's decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible.

"The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit has leadership as its theme. Morality and leadership are indivisible. In this context, it would be inappropriate and untenable for the archbishop to share a platform with Mr Blair.

"The archbishop greatly regrets inconveniencing and disappointing the organisers and participants of the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit."

Following Tutu's decision, Blair released a statement.

"Obviously [Tony Blair] is sorry that the archbishop has decided to pull out now from an event that has been fixed for months and where he and the Archbishop were never actually sharing a platform.

"As far as Iraq is concerned they have always disagreed about removing Saddam by force – such disagreement is part of a healthy democracy.

"As for the morality of that decision we have recently had both the memorial of the Halabja massacre where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam's use of chemical weapons; and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million including many killed by chemical weapons.

"So these decisions are never easy morally or politically".

Anger grows

A group of Durban-based organisations want to arrest Blair on charges of war crimes when he arrives in South Africa.

"Various Muslim organisations are in talks about possible actions that will be carried out should Tony Blair visit South Africa," said Mustafa Darsot, a member of the South African Muslim Network executive committee.

"This includes protest marches outside the summit venue, possible sit-ins and legal action against Mr Blair. We have also asked various legal professionals to look at the feasibility of having a warrant of arrest issued against him."

Blair will join several big names, including chess master Garry Kasparov and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan at the annual event, which will take place in Sandton on August 30.

Darsot said the network and several other organisations had written to Discovery Group founder and chief executive officer Adrian Gore urging him to withdraw the invitation to Blair. They did not believe he was "fit to lecture on leadership" because of his key role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Mr Blair is complicit in the murder of thousands of people in Iraq and should be tried for war crimes," Darsot said. "He violated the trust and responsibility of his office and it was his cosy and illegitimate relationship with the [Rupert] Murdoch press that prevented much of the truth about his role in the invasion of Iraq and murder of its citizens from being revealed in the press."

Offence

But Iona Maclean, head of Discovery Life and Discovery Invest Marketing, said the invitation to Blair would not be withdrawn.

"The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit brings together a range of leaders to debate the challenges that face the world's economy, business, government and society," she said.

"The event is not intended to reflect a political view or cause offence. Discovery Invest selected the speakers based on their experience as leaders from various spheres of society and we will not be withdrawing our invitation to any of the speakers."

Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said there was no question that Blair could be prosecuted for a "crime of aggression".

"The website arrestblair.org spells out Blair's role in recent mass murder from the Middle East to Central Asia," he said.

"Since Pretoria politicians justifiably complain that the International Criminal Court mainly prosecutes African tyrants, leaving European and American war criminals to travel the world gathering huge speaking fees, some action by Foreign Minister Maite Nkoane-Mashabane would reduce the talk left, walk right accusation against South Africa. She might simply follow the recent lead of Malawian President Joyce Banda, who warned Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to stay away from Lilongwe on threat of arrest."

Bond said if Nkoane-Mashabane did not intervene, South Africans who viewed Blair as a war criminal could attempt a citizen's arrest.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Arms deal inquiry should subpoena Tony Blair

Terry Crawford-Browne sets out the questions that need to be put to the former British PM

PRESS STATEMENT

The Seriti Commission of Inquiry into the arms deal has today refused my request to disseminate the submission that I made on 13 June 2012. The reason it offers is that the Commission was established to investigate allegations made in my submission, and, anyway as I had advised, that the contents of my submission are already in the public domain. The response declares:

This begs the question: what is the point of disseminating what is already in the public domain? What purpose will be served thereby?

Since these issues are the subject of eight books already published on the arms deal scandal and thus in the public domain, I record the summary of my submission:

Summary: Three of the six provisions of the Commission's terms of reference refer to offsets. The essence of this submission is that offsets fail the requirements of section 217 (1) of the Constitution that government procurements must accord "with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective."

Advocate Geoff Budlender SC's legal opinion is submitted to support my contention that the arms deal was unconstitutional and illegal right from inception, and is therefore unfixable. Advocate Budlender further advises that the international remedy for fraud is to cancel the contracts, return the equipment and recover the monies.

The Department of Trade and Industry has conceded that the offsets were a fiasco. Amongst documents I submitted to the Constitutional Court are 160 pages of affidavits that detail why and how BAE paid bribes of £115 million (R1.5 billion) to secure its warplane contracts, to whom the bribes were paid, and into which bank accounts they were credited.

The 1996 Defence White Paper and 1998 Defence Review noted that there was no conceivable foreign military threat to South Africa, and that socio-economic upliftment was the national priority. In terms of the guarantee arrangements for the loan agreements, the financial consequences of cancellation of the contracts would be borne by British and German taxpayers, not South Africans.

To reiterate, my submission confirms that the arms deal was unconstitutional and illegal right from inception, and is therefore unfixable. The crux of the matter is how to take urgent remedial action to recover the monies so that they may be allocated to South Africa's desperately needed social upliftment. Such a decision does not require three years of further investigations but, given the priorities purportedly accorded to the eradication of corruption, simply political will.

In addition and separately, I have last week requested the Commission to subpoena the former British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. The questions I wish to pose to him include:

1. The pressure he applied on our government to buy BAE Hawk and BAE/Saab Gripen fighter aircraft despite rejection in 1997 of those proposals by the SA Air Force because these aircraft are both unsuited to South African requirements and too expensive,

2. The complicity of his government in BAE's payment of bribes of £115 million, and his placement of British officials to block investigations by the Auditor General and parliamentarians into the fraudulent offset contracts,

3. The default clauses of the 20 year Barclays Bank/ECGD loan agreements for the BAE contracts and (to cite legal counsel for Minister Trevor Manuel) "their potentially catastrophic consequences for South Africa,"

4. The role of the so-called "BAE/Al Yamamah slush fund" administered by the Bank of England, and its purpose to destabilise resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa. This question is particularly germane given the events last week at the British-owned Lonmin mine.

The request that Mr Blair be subpoenaed whilst he is in South Africa is still outstanding.

Statement issued by Terry Crawford-Browne, August 20 2012

Source: Politicsweb

Lonmin, the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'

The company that preceded Lonmin was once dubbed ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ by a British prime minister. Tiny Rowland, man who turned the company into an international colossus, wore the slur happily. In the aftermath of the Marikana shootings, it seems like not much has changed since his day. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

The deaths of dozens of people on August 16 has thrown South Africa into a frenzy of outrage, grief and soul searching.  President Jacob Zuma announced that the following week would be declared one of mourning. Over the weekend the situation had calmed down at Lonmin’s Marikana shaft, close where the shootings happened, but the dead had yet to be fully identified and a breakthrough to the deadly wildcat strike action had not been found yet.

On Sunday, Lonmin issued an ultimatum to its employees: if they did not return to work on Monday, they could be fired summarily.

“The final ultimatum provides RDOs [rock drill operators] with a last opportunity to return to work or face possible dismissal,” the company statement said. “Employees could therefore be dismissed if they fail to heed the final ultimatum.”

News reports out of Marikana said that the news was greeted with anger. The unsanctioned strike would continue unless the miners got the 300% pay hike they were demanding. The ultimatum came at a time when many friends and family of injured or dead miners were still trying to deal with the fallout of the shooting.

“London-based Lonmin accounts for 12% of global platinum output. It is already struggling with low prices, weak demand and may miss its annual production target of 750,000 ounces as the quarter to the end of September is typically its best,” Reuters said.

The ultimatum seems callous, and harkens back to the company’s unflattering roots on the continent.
Lonmin has always battled with unions in South Africa, but this particular incident is a nightmare on a scale that it will never have seen before.

Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland was a British man (born Walter Furhop in India to German parents) who came to southern Africa in the aftermath of World War II to escape the heavy tax regime in England and to enjoy the higher standard of living that European colonialists enjoyed in Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). He soon ingratiated himself well with African politicians.

The Independent said, “He became a pillar of the social circuit in Salisbury, southern Rhodesia – now Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe – earning his living as an upmarket car dealer. He soon discovered that his undoubted charm and dazzling smile worked well on African politicians eager for respectability and access to Western capital and know-how.”

In 1961 he was chosen to head the London and Rhodesian Mining Company (Lonrho) and quickly changed the way the company made money. He made the business depend heavily on his personal contacts and diversified swiftly. After that, he made some very risky calls on drawing up accounts, which spooked pension fund investors and lead to a commission of inquiry. The company then appointed non-executive directors to try to keep Rowland in check. The certain fight came when he tried to hide certain financial information from the board and the directors tried to get the company shareholders to jettison the volcanic chairman. The decision went the other way instead. It cemented Rowland’s reputation as something of an escape artist. The pension fund investors immediately dumped Lonrho’s shares.

The British prime minister at the time, Edward Heath, disgustedly labelled Lonrho an “unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism". Rowland famously replied that he didn’t want to be its acceptable face.

Lonrho’s dealings in Africa were often viewed with suspicion. He was often accused of helping out less-than-savoury regimes in various ways, especially at times when the thrust of global opinion was not particularly favourable.

“In the 1980s he was accused of helping the Marxist government of Mozambique manage its agricultural resources, and he increased Lonrho's South African holdings while sanctions against the Apartheid government were still in place,” the BBC said. “Then in 1992, Mr Rowland controversially sold a stake in some of Lonrho's hotels to the Libyan leader, Colonel Gadaffi, only three years after the Lockerbie bombing which was attributed to Libyan terrorists.”

The board was especially stung by the Gadaffi revelation, and unseated him as chairman in October 1995. He was removed from the board of the company he had turned into a vast conglomerate the next year, and died in 1998.

At the news of his death, the eulogies from African leaders were extremely flattering. “He made an enormous contribution, not only to South Africa, but to the whole of Africa," said former president Nelson Mandela, who had bestowed upon him the Order of Good Hope in 1996.

Two months before Rowland’s death, the company was split, and Lonrho Plc. was created to handle the non-African businesses and mining assets. In 1999 the company changed its name to Lonmin and narrowed its portfolio to the platinum metal group in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa.

The company struggled continuously with unions, both in its North West and Limpopo operations. In May last year, the company sacked more than 9,000 workers at its Karee mine near Rustenburg – then reinstated them afterwards. That particular call was made after a wildcat strike spurred by an internal union power struggle.

The company’s current CEO, Ian Farmer, was appointed in 2008. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company paid him £1,220,629 (R15,860,000) in 2011. His pay that year was 293 times more than what rock drill operators working at Lonmin’s Marikana mine earn.

The presidency issued a statement on Sunday saying that North West Premier Thandi Modise and the ministers of mineral resources Susan Shabangu, police Nathi Mthethwa, social development Bathabile Dlamini, co-operative governance Richard Baloyi, labour Mildred Oliphant, defence and military veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, health Aaron Motsoaledi, state security Siyabonga Cwele, and home affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma would be deployed to Marikana to coordinate and lead support to the families and relatives of the dead or injured miners.

At that point, Lonmin’s representatives still had not shown face at the Marikana squatter camp, where the majority of the strike action had been concentrated. And now Lonmin, the company that was at the centre of the great calamity, has issued new threats to the rock drillers. The fact that the dead and injured, more than hundred of them, are still not even identified, seems of little importance.

Unacceptable face of capitalism indeed, Lonmin.

Source: Daily Maverick
Informed people live longer

WikiLeaks slams UK's Ecuador embassy threat

WikiLeaks has condemned a British threat to raid the Ecuador embassy in London where its founder is holed up as a "hostile and extreme" assault on asylum-seekers.

"WikiLeaks condemns in the strongest possible terms the UK's resort to intimidation," it said in a statement.

"A threat of this nature is a hostile and extreme act, which is not proportionate to the circumstances, and an unprecedented assault on the rights of asylum-seekers worldwide."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian national, has been in the embassy since June in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over sex assault claims.

The Australian fears Stockholm will turn him over to the United States where he could face espionage and conspiracy charges over revelations by his website.

Ecuador Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino earlier said Britain had threatened to "storm our embassy if Ecuador does not hand over Julian Assange".

WikiLeaks said the embassy was currently surrounded by police "in a menacing show of force".

"Any transgression against the sanctity of the embassy is a unilateral and shameful act, and a violation of the Vienna Convention, which protects embassies worldwide," it said.

"This threat is designed to preempt Ecuador's imminent decision on whether it will grant Julian Assange political asylum, and to bully Ecuador into a decision that is agreeable to the United Kingdom and its allies.

"We remind the public that these extraordinary actions are being taken to detain a man who has not been charged with any crime in any country," it added.

A British Foreign Office spokesman has said police were ready to arrest Assange for breaching the terms of his bail granted in 2010.

"The UK has a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sexual offenses and we remain determined to fulfill this obligation," the spokesman said in London.

WikiLeaks noted that the tougher stance by London coincided with British Foreign Secretary William Hague standing in for Prime Minister David Cameron while he was on vacation.

It claimed Hague's department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had overseen the negotiations to date with Ecuador.

"If Mr Hague has, as would be expected, approved this decision, WikiLeaks calls for his immediate resignation," it said.

Assange's mother earlier Thursday claimed the United States was behind the British threat.

"What the US wants, the US gets from its allies, regardless of if it's legal or if it's ethical or in breach of human or legal rights," she told reporters in Australia.

Patino said Ecuador "has made a decision" on whether to grant Assange asylum and would announce it at 1200 GMT Thursday.

Source: Times Live

Ecuador grants asylum to Assange, angering Britain

Ecuador granted political asylum to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange on Thursday, a day after it said Britain had threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker. By Mohammed Abbas and Eduardo Garcia.

Britain has said it is determined to extradite him to Sweden, where he is accused of rape and sexual assault. Assange fears he will ultimately be sent to the United States which is furious that his WikiLeaks website has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables.

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his country feared for the safety of the Australian, who had lodged an asylum request with President Rafael Correa, a self-declared enemy of "corrupt" media and U.S. "imperialism".

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said that London would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country.

Patino told a news conference in Quito that Assange's extradition to a third country without proper guarantees was probable, and that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.

"This is a sovereign decision protected by international law. It makes no sense to surmise that this implies a breaking of relations (with Britain)," he said.

Even after Thursday's decision Assange's fate is still far from clear: Britain has said it could strip the Ecuadorean embassy of its diplomatic status, which would expose him to immediate arrest by the British authorities.

"The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum," Hague said. "There is no ... threat here to storm the embassy."

Hague said the impasse could go on for a considerable time.

Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London for eight weeks since he lost a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden.

WikiLeaks said Assange would give a live statement in front of the Ecuadorian embassy on Sunday, although it was unclear whether he would risk arrest by venturing out of the building or would simply appear at a window or by a video-link.

In a statement posted earlier by WikiLeaks on its Twitter page, Assange said Ecuador's decision was "a historic victory".

"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation."

EMBASSY PROTEST

Britain has said it could use a little-known piece of legislation from 1987, introduced in the wake of the shooting of a British police officer outside the Libyan embassy in London, to remove the Ecuador embassy's diplomatic status.

The Ecuadorean government has bristled at the warning: its foreign minister said Britain was threatening Ecuador with a "hostile and intolerable act", comparing the action to Iran's storming of Britain's Tehran embassy in 2011.

"I don't think they will dare to infringe international law ... Diplomatic headquarters cannot be broken into, we can't imagine that happening," Patino told the state-run news website El Ciudadano after the announcement.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington did not intend to get involved in whether Assange should receive asylum in Ecuador.

"This is an issue between the Ecuadoreans, the Brits, the Swedes," she said. Asked whether Assange faced persecution in the United States, she said: "With regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting him, I reject that completely."

Outside the Ecuadorean embassy, supporters relayed the announcement about his asylum request over a loudspeaker to cheers and clapping from protesters.

A Reuters reporter saw at least three protesters being dragged away by police after tussles with police before the decision was announced.

It was unclear how long Assange could stay in the small embassy - housed on the ground floor of an apartment block - which is under 24-hour surveillance by British police.

His mother, Christine Assange, told Reuters her son was "geared up for the fight". She said: "He knows that he's got justice and right on his side. He's done nothing wrong, nobody in the world has charged him."

Britain's threat to withdraw diplomatic status from the Ecuadorean embassy also drew criticism from one of its own former diplomats.

"If we live in a world where governments can arbitrarily revoke immunity and go into embassies, then the life of our diplomats and their ability to conduct normal business in places like Moscow where I was and North Korea becomes close to impossible," Britain's former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, told the BBC.

SEX CRIME ALLEGATIONS

Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks supporters in 2010 but have not yet charged him.

The lawyer for the two Swedish women who made the allegations said his clients deserved justice.

"It's an abuse of the asylum instrument, the purpose of which is to protect people from persecution and torture if sent back to one's country of origin," Claes Borgstrom told Reuters.

"It's not about that here. He doesn't risk being handed over to the United States for torture or the death penalty. He should be brought to justice in Sweden."

Assange says he fears Sweden could send him on to the United States. His supporters have said U.S. authorities want to punish him for publishing diplomatic cables which laid bare Washington's power-brokering across the globe.

"The reaction he has is that he wants to underline that this (asylum) is a measure that is aimed at the U.S. and not against Sweden," said Per E Samuelsson, one of Assange's lawyers.

"He has sought political asylum in order to eliminate the risk that he will spend the rest of his life in prison in the United States," he said.

Ecuador said it had tried to get assurances from Britain and Sweden that Assange could not be extradited to a third country but that no assurance was given. Under European law, neither Britain nor Sweden could extradite anyone to a country where they might face the death penalty.

Source: Daily Maverick

Widespread criminal practices by UK banks

Scandals emerging from the financial services industry on an almost daily basis point to the ongoing criminal practices of British banks. They expose the complicity of the regulators—the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Bank of England (BoE), who famously practice “light touch” regulation—and successive governments that function as the advocates and protectors of these financial gangsters.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has announced half-year losses of £1.5 billion—double that of the same period last year. It cited the cost of charges for the “mis-selling of financial products.” This loss is before any charge for RBS’s role in rigging the interbank lending rate, Libor.

RBS and other high street banks mis-sold expensive and useless payment protection insurance to more than 3 million people who did not need it. Now RBS is setting aside £850 million to compensate people who bought the payment protection insurance, taking the total charge over the last 18 months to £1.3 billion. Even this pales into insignificance besides Lloyds Banking Group, which has set aside another £700 million, bringing its total to £4.3 billion over the last 18 months. The total compensation across the banks could top £10 billion.

RBS is making a provision of £50 million for compensation to small businesses to which it mis-sold interest rate insurance. It is also setting aside £125 million to compensate its 13 million customers who were locked out of their accounts for at least 10 days when its computer crashed in June—a cost that could rise further.

RBS is one of 18 giant banks at the heart of the rigging of the Libor rate, the interbank lending rate linked to $800 trillion in financial transactions. Barclays has already been fined £290 million and RBS expects to be fined hundreds of millions of pounds and has sacked four people involved in the manipulation.

Between 2005 and 2009, the banks manipulated the rate upwards, robbing millions of people of billions of pounds in inflated loan costs, and downwards, depriving states, cities, pension funds and pensioners with fixed investments of billions in lost income from bond holdings. Documents that have been released implicate the Bank of England and show that neither the bank nor the government did anything to stop it. In its latter stages this was because reducing Libor after 2007 helped to conceal the depth and scale of the banking crisis and thus facilitated the bailout of the kleptocracy.

Stephen Hester, the chief executive of RBS, made it clear that this was not all, saying that there could be further problems as it turned over the “rocks” left by the previous CEO Fred Goodwin. It means that RBS will post its fifth year of losses since the bank’s bailout in 2008. It made losses of £2 billion in 2011, up from a loss of £1.1 billion in 2010.

When RBS, along with Lloyds Bank and HBOS, faced bankruptcy in October 2008, Alistair Darling, then Labour chancellor, organised a massive rescue. It came after secret talks over a weekend, with no strings attached, no discussion in Parliament, much less any public consultation, and was announced to the stock markets early on the Monday morning.

Despite this, there has been no proper examination of the banks’ activities in Britain. The one “report” into the collapse of RBS, which at first the FSA refused to publish, turned out to be just a series of memos and statements, concluding that no rules or statutes had been breached. This was despite cables released by WikiLeaks revealing that Lord Turner, the FSA chair, had been concerned about the directors’ mistakes. According to the cables, Turner had said, “Negligent boards of directors bore much of the responsibility for the crisis,” by “failing to provide oversight or check risky activity,” something that publicly he denied in the context of RBS. The cables show that no less a person than RBS’s new chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, flatly contradicted the FSA’s line, telling visiting congressmen that the former directors were in breach of their fiduciary responsibilities.

Later Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, revealed that the BoE had provided £36.6 billion in secret loans to RBS and the government had agreed to underwrite RBS’s debts should it default on its loans. This was in addition to the £45 billion the government paid the shareholders to acquire an 82 percent stake in the failed bank. As well as providing the ultimate backstop for the banks, the government is currently providing £512 billion of explicit public support, and hundreds of billions in guarantees.

Furthermore, with its “quantitative easing” (QE) programme—essentially printing money—the BoE has provided the banks with a further £375 billion of cash by buying up the banks’ assets—typically financial assets such as government and corporate bonds. While the declared aim was that the banks would to lend to businesses and thus boost the economy, business lending has fallen sharply.

A BoE report claims that the first round of QE had helped to increase gross domestic product by between 1.5 and 2 percent, which if true means that without it, GDP would have fallen by a catastrophic 6 percent since the financial crash.

Less has been said about the losers. RBS laid off 5,700 workers in the past year, bring the total since 2008 to 36,000. HBOS, another government-owned bank, has shed 45,000 jobs in the same period.

QE has led to a massive increase in company pension scheme deficits—to a record £312 billion. This is because the cost of paying pensions on final-salary schemes is based on the yield from government bonds, which have fallen, necessitating an increase in assets to generate the same level of pension income. At the same time, the fall in bond yields has driven down the annual income from any annuity bought with savings in the last two years, leading to a loss in income that will never be recouped.

The ongoing saga over accusations that Standard Chartered hid illegal Iran-linked transactions is beyond the scope of this article. But it should be noted that last month, HSBC, the world’s second largest banking group, was found by a senior US Senate Committee to have laundered billions of dollars in Mexican drug cartel money. This and other legal claims against HSBC could lead to fines of $1 billion.

HSBC is not alone. Six years ago, Barclays Private Bank, a subsidiary of Barclays, laundered drug money from Colombia through five accounts linked to the infamous Medellin cartel.

In March, Coutts, part of RBS, was issued with a final notice from the FSA to pay a penalty of £8.75 million for breach of its money-laundering code. This followed a review of 103 “high-risk customer files” and “deficiencies in 73 files” that showed a “failure to conduct appropriate ongoing monitoring” over three years.

Despite this record of illegality, recklessness and mismanagement, not a single top executive of a major UK bank has been charged with criminal wrongdoing. Neither has there been any substantive change in the regulation of the banking and financial services sector. The fines, so much loose change for the banks, have become part of the cost of the banking business and are simply passed on to customers in innumerable charges while the top executives walk away with massive bonuses.

Successive governments are linked by countless connections to the financial elite, from whom they recruit their advisors, regulators and even ministers. The present minister of state for trade and investment is Lord Green, a former HSBC chairman. Their record confirms that they are merely the puppets of criminals in London’s Square Mile.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

The death of co-operatives - and the birth of mass consumer debt

Last year's riots in London saw the burning down of 'Union Point', the symbolic heart of the English co-operative movement. One year on, Aaron Peters asks what the destruction of this building, provoked by the forces of mass consumption, reveals about the history of 'working class solidarity'.

Eighteenth-century dockers founded the first co-operative flour mills in Woolwich and Chatham, and the grain shortages of the Napoleonic wars helped to spread the idea. Forming a co-operative simply meant that the dockers each owned a share of the mill, and controlled it by an elected committee. The decisions, as well as the finances, were in the control of the consumers, and the middleman was left out.

Both as a method of undermining state power and of finding escape from the world of competition, the co-operative movement expanded from mills to shops. The surplus from such stores funded education and recreation. Women in particular pushed the co-operative movement forward. By 1914, the Women's Co-operative movement had 30,000 members. The English Co-operative Wholesale Society had sales amounting to £4.5 million in 1883.

By 1900, it was, taken as a whole, one of the larger companies in the world. The Socialist Co-operative Federation was running stores in Battersea, Chelsea and Tottenham; their supporters included William Morris who, at this time, as well as writing 'Socialism From The Root Up' and acting as treasurer of the Socialist League, penned 'The Dream of John Ball', his ode to the Peasant's Rising of 1381.

Alf Barnes MP thought the Great War had moved along co-operative societies everywhere, the war having, in his own words, 'burned down the painted transformation scenery of the pre-war political stage’. Economic and social relations had been thrown into the foreground of the political arena. Food prices were soaring in the post-war climate, with Co-operative Party members leading the way in taking the Conservative government head on. In the miners' strikes of the 1920s, co-operative societies up and down the country acted as the material and financial support for many strikers and their families, ultimately leading to over a million pounds of debt by the end of 1926 - debt owed by immiserated miners. A year before, the campaigning efforts of the Co-operative Party in politics had already fallen flat. Corporations holding the monopolies which were curbing co-operatively owned businesses' ability to thrive had been taken on - and soundly backed up in a Royal commission. Falling gold prices, the public were informed, were the reason for high bread prices, not monopolies.

However, as the Labour Representation Committee, building on the strike of '26, finally reached parliamentary victory in 1929, things were looking up for co-operative socialists and trade unionists alike. In celebration of the leaps and bounds the co-operative movement was taking, however crippled by debt, the head of the London Co-operative Society, Alf Barnes, oversaw the construction of a grand new headquarters for that organisation replete with a lavish co-operative department store in Tottenham, named 'Union Point'.

The construction of bravado was in vain. By 1933, the Labour Party, aware that the co-operative movement was weighing down its coat tails, introduced taxes on the bank's reserves. After the war, the Co-operative society slowly crumbled. While its newfound position as a bank gave it credibility to move into debt speculation, the retail arm dwindled. By the early 1960s, the London society faced an existential crisis. In the 1980s, the department stores closed down. By the early 1990s, the ground floor of the building was given over to the kind of monopolistic supply chains which the society had always railed against. Allied Carpets and Doors, and later Carpet Right, proudly blazoned their signage across Tottenham High Road.

In 2003, the upper floors of the building were bought out by the Metropolitan Housing Association, which had been founded in 1963 by the wife of the Governor of Jamaica to provide housing for the Windrush generation in Tottenham and Brixton. In 1988, it pioneered the new 'shared ownership’ schemes. The private finance schemes into which the housing associations had been thrust by Thatcher's administration were now put to the use of encouraging a further section of the working class into mortgage ownership. In 2009, the MHA became the National HomeBuy Agent, i.e. the overall manager of all shared ownership schemes - i.e. the national manager of 'social housing' debt.

On August 11th 2011, the Union Point building was burnt down. Thousands of residents of Tottenham and Edmonton charged through Tottenham High Street. Debt and deferred wages, combined with the lack of any state-resource to enforce austerity measures save for the single glorious mechanism of the police, were visited back upon the building which had for decades monitored the transformation of consumer co-operation into a mass consumer debt economy.

Did the Union Point building expect to be destroyed? The co-operative movement was a force of consumer ethics, running alongside the trade union movement, and running weakly. The co-operative movement proposed a mode of consumption based around working class identity and solidarity, counter-posed to a form of consumption which has come to be known simply as 'mass consumption', that is, consumption by the 'mass worker'. The conflict between different modes of consumption is tied up with methods of social reproduction in the destruction of this building. In 2011, this monument to working class consumption as a political act gave way to destructive technologies as old as - but no newer than - petroleum.

Source: Open Democracy

The euro bailouts and the crisis of democracy in Europe

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said Monday that Europe would fall apart “if governments are completely bound by the decisions of their parliaments.” Every government has “a duty to educate the parliament,” he added in an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel.

Monti’s statement amounts to an admission that the numerous bank bailouts organized to rescue the euro in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, and the austerity programs launched to make the working class pay for them, have strained European bourgeois democracy to the breaking point. The responsibility of the government to parliament, and parliament’s control over the government—which Monti is questioning—is a basic principle of parliamentary democracy.

Monti attacks parliament, but his real target is the working class. For the vast majority of the population, it has already become impossible to influence politics through the ballot box. Major political decisions are made ​​by the financial markets and their henchmen in Brussels, Berlin and the other European capitals.

In the recent elections in Greece and France, parties that appeared to promise an end to, or at least a moderation of, brutal social cuts received broad popular support. In France, the Socialist Party won the presidential election for the first time since 1988. In Greece, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) emerged as the second largest party. But nothing has changed.

The new French president, François Hollande, is continuing the anti-working class policies of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, offering no opposition to mass layoffs in the auto industry. In Greece, Syriza has assumed the role of loyal opposition, while the government coalition of the conservative New Democracy, social democratic PASOK and Democratic Left is imposing even more brutal austerity measures.

Monti gave his interview after a week in which anti-worker austerity measures were intensified throughout Europe. The Greek government has decided on further cuts of €11.5 billion, which will deepen the suffering of already devastated workers and pensioners. The Spanish government has increased its previous deficit-reduction target by 60 percent and now aims to cut the massive sum of €102 billion from the budget, throwing the country back to the poverty of the Franco era.

The European Central Bank has decided to support countries—through the purchase of government bonds—only if they have previously made an application to the European emergency aid fund and submitted to EU-dictated austerity measures.

This is provoking widespread opposition. In Spain, hundreds of thousands took to the streets against the government's austerity measures. The trade unions are finding it increasingly difficult to keep this anger under control. Neither in Spain nor Greece, nor in any other European country, are the workers willing to accept the destruction of all their gains without a fight.

Under these circumstances, Monti’s comment underscores the basic class agenda of the European bourgeoisie: to press ahead with the policies of the banks, whatever the outcome of elections or the size of street protests and strikes against austerity measures.

Monti knows well that the social counterrevolution demanded by the international financial markets is incompatible with democratic methods. He leads a government of technocrats that has no democratic legitimacy. Monti—an economics professor, advisor to Goldman Sachs and member of several conservative think tanks (Bruegel, Bilderberg Conference, Trilateral Commission)—is a trusted representative of international finance capital. At its behest, he succeeded the Berlusconi government last November without the holding of an election because Berlusconi had failed to cut the budget quickly and deeply enough.

Since then, the Monti government has systematically attacked the social gains and rights won by Italian workers since the fall of the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini at the end of World War II. It has reduced pensions, increased consumption taxes and eliminated legal protections against dismissal and other social rights.

Political conclusions must be drawn from Monti's statement that the break-up of Europe can be prevented only if governments repudiate democratic procedures. The working class cannot defend its rights and social gains within the reactionary framework of the European Union.

The views of Monti’s immediate opponents on European financial policy—German politicians who have criticized his remarks as an attempt to “weaken democratic legitimation,” in the words of Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle—are equally hypocritical and reactionary. Berlin has consistently sought to impose devastating cuts, notably on the Greek government, in total defiance of popular opinion in Greece and other European countries. It has, moreover, led the campaign to establish a de facto EU dictatorship over the fiscal policies of euro zone governments.

This underscores that the EU, as a whole, is an instrument for the subjugation of Europe to the dictatorship of competing cliques of finance capital. It can be neither reformed nor pushed to change course by protests and negotiations.

Only the independent mobilization of the working class based on the perspective of the United Socialist States of Europe can halt these attacks. The World Socialist Web Site calls for the abolition of the European Union and its institutions, and links this demand with an international socialist programme.

We fight for the unity of the European and international working class. The workers in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Britain must take up the struggle for the overthrow of Monti, Merkel, Hollande, Rajoy and Cameron and establish workers' governments to expropriate the wealth of the super-rich, the banks and big business and reorganize the economy to serve society as a whole, not the profit interests of the financial aristocracy.

World Socialist Web Site