Responsibility and War Guilt

Responsibility and War Guilt
A Culture-Setting Intelligentsia
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Gabriel Matthew Schivone  


The Responsibility of Intellectuals

GMS: Addressing a community of mostly students during a public forum at
the steps of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1969, you
expressed: "This particular community is a very relevant one to consider
at a place like MIT because, of course, you're all free to enter this
community-in fact, you're invited and encouraged to enter it. The
community of technical intelligentsia, and weapons designers, and
counterinsurgency experts, and pragmatic planners of an American empire is one
that you have a great deal of inducement to become associated with. The
inducements, in fact, are very real; their rewards in power, and
affluence, and prestige and authority are quite significant." Let's start off
talking about the significance of these inducements, on both a
university and societal level. How crucial is it, in your view, that students
particularly consider and understand this, as you describe, highly
technocratic social order of the academic community and its function in
society, that is, comparably to the more directly associated professional
scholarship considering it?

CHOMSKY: How important it is, to an individual, depends on what that
individual's goals in life are. If the goals are to enrich yourself, gain
privilege, do technically interesting work-in brief, if the goals are
self-satisfaction-then these questions are of no particular relevance.
If you care about the consequences of your actions, what's happening in
the world, what the future will be like for your grandchildren and so
on, then they're very crucial. So, it's a question of what choices
people make.


GMS: What makes students a natural audience to speak to? And do you
think it's worth 'speaking truth' to the professional scholarship as well
or differently? Are there any short- or long-term possibilities here?

I'm always uneasy about the concept of "speaking truth," as if we
somehow know the truth and only have to enlighten others who have not risen
to our elevated level. The search for truth is a cooperative, unending
endeavor. We can, and should, engage in it to the extent we can and
encourage others to do so as well, seeking to free ourselves from
constraints imposed by coercive institutions, dogma, irrationality, excessive
conformity and lack of initiative and imagination, and numerous other
obstacles.

As for possibilities, they are limited only by will and choice.

Students are at a stage of their lives where these choices are most
urgent and compelling, and when they also enjoy unusual, if not unique,
freedom and opportunity to explore the choices available, to evaluate
them, and to pursue them.


GMS: In your view, what is it about the privileges within university
education and academic scholarship which, as you assert in some of the
things you've written, correlate with them a greater responsibility for
catastrophic atrocities such as the Vietnam War or those in the Middle
East in which the United States is now involved?

Well, there are really some moral truisms. One of them is that
opportunity confers responsibility. If you have very limited opportunities,
then you have limited responsibility for what you do. If you have
substantial opportunity you have greater responsibility for what you do. I
mean, that's kind of elementary, I don't know how it can be discussed.

And the people who we call 'intellectuals' are just those who happen to
have substantial opportunity. They have privilege, they have
resources, they have training. In our society, they have a high degree of
freedom-not a hundred percent, but quite a lot-and that gives them a range of
choices that they can pursue with a fair degree of freedom, and that
hence simply confers responsibility for the predictable consequences of
the choices they make.



The Rise of a Technical Intelligentsia


GMS: I think at this point it may do well for us to go over a bit the
beginnings and evolution of the ideological currents which now prevail
throughout modern social intellectual life in the U.S. Essentially, from
where may we trace the development of this strong coterie of technical
experts in the schools, and elsewhere, sometimes having been referred
to as a 'bought' or 'secular priesthood'?

Well, it really goes back to the latter-part of the nineteenth century,
when there was substantial discussion-not just in the United States
but in Europe, too-of what was then sometimes called 'a new class' of
scientific intellectuals. In that period of time there was a level of
knowledge and technical expertise accumulating that allowed a kind of
managerial class of educated, trained people to have a greater share in
decision-making and planning. It was thought that they were a new class
displacing the aristocracy, the owners, political leaders and so on, and
they could have a larger role-and of course they liked that idea.

Out of this group developed an ideology of technocratic planning. In
industry it was called 'scientific management'. It developed in
intellectual life with a concept of what was called a 'responsible class' of
technocratic, serious intellectuals who could solve the world's problems
rationally, and would have to be protected from the 'vulgar masses' who
might interfere with them. And it goes right up until the present.

Just how realistic this is, is another question, but for the class of
technical intellectuals, it's a very attractive conception that, 'We are
the rational, intelligent people, and management and decision-making
should be in our hands.'

Actually, as I've pointed out in some of the things I've written, it's
very close to Bolshevism. And, in fact, if you put side-by-side, say,
statements by people like Robert McNamara and V.I. Lenin, it's
strikingly similar. In both cases there's a conception of a vanguard of rational
planners who know the direction that society ought to go and can make
efficient decisions, and have to be allowed to do so without
interference from, what one of them, Walter Lippmann, called the 'meddlesome and
ignorant outsiders' , namely, the population, who just get in the way.

It's not an entirely new conception: it's just a new category of
people. Two hundred years ago you didn't have an easily identifiable class of
technical intellectuals, just generally educated people. But as
scientific and technical progress increased there were people who felt they
can appropriate it and become the proper managers of the society, in
every domain. That, as I said, goes from scientific management in
industry, to social and political control.

There are periods in history, for example, during the Kennedy years,
when these ideas really flourished. There were, as they called
themselves, 'the best and the brightest.' The 'smart guys' who could run
everything if only they were allowed to; who could do things scientifically
without people getting in their way.

It's a pretty constant strain, and understandable. And it underlies the
fear and dislike of democracy that runs through elite culture always,
and very dramatically right now. It often correlates closely with
posturing about love of democracy. As any reader of Orwell would expect,
these two things tend to correlate. The more you hate democracy, the more
you talk about how wonderful it is and how much you're dedicated to it.
It's one of the clearer expressions of the visceral fear and dislike
of democracy, and of allowing, again, going back to Lippmann, the
'ignorant and meddlesome outsiders' to get in our way. They have to be
distracted and marginalized somehow while we can take care of the serious
questions.

Now, that's the basic strain. And you find it all the time, but
increasingly in the modern period when, at least, claims to expertise become
somewhat more plausible. Whether they're authentic or not is, again, a
different question. But, the claims to expertise are very striking. So,
economists tell you, 'We know how to run the economy'; the political
scientists tell you, 'We know how to run the world, and you keep out of
it because you don't have special knowledge and training.'

When you look at it, the claims tend to erode pretty quickly. It's not
quantum physics; there is, at least, a pretense, and sometimes, some
justification for the claims. But what matters for human life is,
typically, well within the reach of the concerned person who is willing to
undertake some effort.


GMS: Given the, albeit, self-proclaimed notion that this new class is
entitled to decision-making, how close are they to actual policy, then?

My feeling is that they're nowhere near as powerful as they think they
are. So, when, say, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about the technocratic
elite which is taking over the running of society-or when McNamara
wrote about it, or others-there's a lot of illusion there. Meaning, they
can gain positions of authority and decision-making when they act in the
interests of those who really own and run the society. You can have
people that are just as competent, or more competent, and who have
conceptions of social and economic order that run counter to, say, corporate
power, and they're not going to be in the planning sectors. So, to get
into those planning sectors you first of all have to conform to the
interests of the real concentrations of power.

And, again, there are a lot of illusions about this-in the media, too.
Tom Wicker is a famous example, one of the 'left commentators' of the
New York Times. He would get very angry when critics would tell him he's
conforming to power interests and that he's keeping within the
doctrinal framework of the media, which goes back to their corporate structure
and so on. And he would answer, very angrily-and correctly-that nobody
tells him what to say. He writes anything he wants,-which is
absolutely true. But if he wasn't writing the things he did he wouldn't have a
column in the New York Times.

That's the kind of thing that is very hard to perceive. People do not
want-or often are not able-to perceive that they are conforming to
external authority. They feel themselves to be very free-and indeed they
are-as long as they conform. But power lies elsewhere. That's as old as
history in the modern period. It's often very explicit.

Adam Smith, for example, discussing England, quite interestingly
pointed out that the merchants and manufacturers-the economic forces of his
day-are the 'principal architects of policy', and they make sure that
their own interests are 'most peculiarly attended to', no matter how
grievous the effect on others, including the people in England. And that's
a good principle of statecraft, and social and economic planning, which
runs pretty much to the present. When you get people with management
and decision-making skills, they can enter into that system and they can
make the actual decisions-within a framework that's set within the
real concentrations of power. And now it's not the merchants and
manufacturers of Adam Smith's day, it's the multinational corporations,
financial institutions, and so on. But, stray too far beyond their concerns and
you won't be the decision-maker.

It's not a mechanical phenomenon, but it's overwhelmingly true that the
people who make it to decision-making positions (that is, what they
think of as decision-making positions) are those who conform to the basic
framework of the people who fundamentally own and run the society.
That's why you have a certain choice of technocratic managers and not some
other choice of people equally or better capable of carrying out
policies but have different ideas.


GMS: What about degrees of responsibility and shared burdens of guilt
on an individual level? What can we learn about how one views oneself
often in positions of power or authority?

You almost never find anyone, whether it's in a weapons plant, or
planning agency, or in corporate management, or almost anywhere, who says,
'I'm really a bad guy, and I just want to do things that benefit myself
and my friends.' Almost invariably you get noble rhetoric like: 'We're
working for the benefit of the people.' The corporate executive who is
slaving for the benefit of the workers and community; the friendly
banker who just wants to help everybody start their business; the political
leader who's trying to bring freedom and justice to the world-and they
probably all believe it. I'm not suggesting that they're lying.
There's an array of routine justifications for whatever you're doing. And
it's easy to believe them. It's very hard to look into the mirror and say,
'Yeah, that guy looking at me is a vicious criminal.' It's much easier
to say, 'That guy looking at me is really very benign,
self-sacrificing, and he has to do these things because it's for the benefit of
everyone.'

Or you get respected moralists like Reinhold Niebuhr, who was once
called 'the theologian of the establishment'. And the reason is because he
presented a framework which, essentially, justified just about anything
they wanted to do. His thesis is dressed up in long words and so on
(it's what you do if you're an intellectual). But what it came down to is
that, 'Even if you try to do good, evil's going to come out of it;
that's the paradox of grace'. -And that's wonderful for war criminals. 'We
try to do good but evil necessarily comes out of it.' And it's
influential. So, I don't think that people in decision-making positions are
lying when they describe themselves as benevolent. -Or people working on
more advanced nuclear weapons. Ask them what they're doing, they'll
say: 'We're trying to preserve the peace of the world.' People who are
devising military strategies that are massacring people, they'll say,
'Well, that's the cost you have to pay for freedom and justice', and so on.

But, we don't take those sentiments seriously when we hear them from
enemies, say, from Stalinist commissars. They'll give you the same
answers. But, we don't take that seriously because they can know what they're
doing if they choose to. If they choose not to, that's their choice.
If they choose to believe self-satisfying propaganda, that's their
choice. But it doesn't change the moral responsibility. We understand that
perfectly well with regard to others. It's very hard to apply the same
reasoning to ourselves.

In fact, one of the-maybe the most-elementary of moral principles is
that of universality, that is, If something's right for me, it's right
for you; if it's wrong for you, it's wrong for me. Any moral code that is
even worth looking at has that at its core somehow. But that principle
is overwhelmingly disregarded all the time. If you want to run through
examples we can easily do it. Take, say, George W. Bush, since he
happens to be president. If you apply the standards that we applied to Nazi
war criminals at Nuremberg, he'd be hanged. Is it an even conceivable
possibility? It's not even discussable. Because we don't apply to
ourselves the principles we apply to others.

There's a lot of talk about 'terror' and how awful it is. Whose terror?
Our terror against them? I mean, is that considered reprehensible? No,
it's considered highly moral; it's considered self-defense, and so on.
Now, their terror against us, that's awful, and terrible, and so on.

But, to try to rise to the level of becoming a minimal moral agent, and
just enter in the domain of moral discourse is very difficult. Because
that means accepting the principle of universality. And you can
experiment for yourself and see how often that's accepted, either in personal
or political life. Very rarely.



Looking at Nuremberg and the Culture of Torture


GMS: What about criminal responsibility and intellectuals? Nuremberg is
an interesting precedent.

The Nuremberg case is a very interesting precedent. First of all, the
Nuremberg trials-of all the tribunals that have taken place, from then
until today-it is, I think, the most serious by far. But, nevertheless,
it was very seriously flawed. And it was recognized to be. When Telford
Taylor, the chief prosecutor, wrote about it, he recognized that it
was flawed, and it was so for a number of fundamental reasons. For one
thing, the Nazi war criminals were being tried for crimes that had not
yet been declared to be crimes. So, it was ex post facto. 'We're now
declaring these things you did to be crimes.' That is already questionable.

Secondly, the choice of what was considered a crime was based on a very
explicit criterion, namely, denial of the principle of universality.
In other words, something was called a crime at Nuremberg if they did it
and we didn't do it.

So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered
a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on-those aren't
crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it's not a crime. In fact,
Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when
they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing
they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in
all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the
British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who
testified that, 'Yeah, that's the kind of thing we did.' And,
therefore, they weren't sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved. And
that's the way it ran through. Now, that's a very serious flaw.
Nevertheless, of all the tribunals, that's the most serious one.

When Chief Justice Jackson, chief counsel for the prosecution, spoke to
the tribunal and explained to them the importance of what they were
doing, he said, to paraphrase, that: 'We are handing these defendants a
poisoned chalice, and if we ever sip from it we must be subject to the
same punishments, otherwise this whole trial is a farce.' Well, you can
look at the history from then on, and we've sipped from the poisoned
chalice many times, but it's never been considered a crime. So, that
means we are saying that trial was a farce.

Interestingly, in Jackson's opening statement he claimed that the
defense did not wish to incriminate the whole German populace from whence
the defendants came, for the crimes they committed, but only the
"planners and designers" of those crimes, "the inciters and leaders without
whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged
with the violence and lawlessness.of this terrible war."

That's correct. And that's another principle which we flatly reject.
So, at Nuremberg, we weren't trying the people who threw Jews into
crematoria; we were trying the leaders. When we ever have a trial for crimes
it's of some low-level person-like a torturer from Abu Ghraib-not the
people who were setting up the framework from which they operate. And we
certainly don't try political leaders for the crime of aggression.
That's out of the question. The invasion of Iraq was about as clear-cut a
case of aggression than you can imagine. In fact, by the Nuremberg
principles, if you read them carefully, the U.S. war against Nicaragua was
a crime of aggression for which Ronald Reagan should have been tried.
But, it's inconceivable; you can't even mention it in the West. And the
reason is our radical denial of the most elementary moral truisms. We
just flatly reject them. We don't even think we reject them, and that's
even worse than rejecting them outright.

I mean, if we were able to say to ourselves, 'Look, we are totally
immoral, we don't accept elementary moral principles,' that would be a kind
of respectable position in a certain way. But, when we sink to the
level where we cannot even perceive that we're violating elementary moral
principles and international law, that's pretty bad. But that's the
nature of the intellectual culture-not just in the United States-but in
powerful societies everywhere.



GMS: You mentioned Doenitz escaping culpability for his crimes. Two who
didn't escape punishment and were among the most severely punished at
Nuremberg were Julius Streicher, an editor of a major newspaper,
and-also an interesting example-Dr. Wolfram Sievers of the Ahnenerbe
Society's Institute of Military Scientific Research, whose own crimes were
traced back to the University of Strasbourg. Not the typical people
prosecuted for international war crimes, it seems, given their civilian
professions.

Yeah; and there's a justification for that, namely, those defendants
could understand what they were doing. They could understand the
consequences of the work that they were carrying out. But, of course, if we
were to accept this awful principle of universality, that would have a
pretty long reach-to journalists, university researchers, and so on.


GMS: Let me quote for you the mission statement of the Army Research
Office. This "premier extramural" research agency of the Army is grounded
upon "developing and exploiting innovative advances to insure the
Nation's technological superiority." It executes this mission "through
conduct of an aggressive basic science research program on behalf of the
Army so that cutting-edge scientific discoveries and the general store of
scientific knowledge will be optimally used to develop and improve
weapons systems that establish land-force dominance."

This is a pentagon office, and they're doing their job. In our system,
the military is under civilian control. Civilians assign a certain task
to the military: their job is to obey, and carry the role out,
otherwise you quit. That's what it means to have a military under civilian
control. So, you can't really blame them for their mission statement.
They're doing what they're told to do by the civilian authorities. The
civilian authorities are the culpable ones. If we don't like those policies
(and I don't, and you don't), then we go back to those civilians who
designed the framework and gave the orders.

You can, as the Nuremberg precedents indicated, be charged with obeying
illegal orders, but that's often a stretch. If a person is in a
position of military command, they are sworn, in fact, to obey civilian
orders, even if they don't like them. If you say they're really just
criminal orders, then, yes, they can reject them, and get into trouble and so
on. But this is just carrying out the function that they're ordered to
carry out. So, we go straight back to the civilian authority and then
to the general intellectual culture, which regards this as proper and
legitimate. And now we're back to universities, newspapers, the centers
of the doctrinal system.


GMS: It's just the forthright honesty of the mission statement which is
also very striking, I think.

Well, it's like going to an armory and finding out they're making
better guns. That's what they're supposed to do. Their orders are, 'Make
this gun work better.', and so they're doing it. And, if they're honest,
they'll say, 'Yeah, that's what we're doing; that's what the civilian
authorities told us to do.'

At some point, people have to ask, 'Do I want to make a better gun?'
That's where the Nuremberg issues arise. But, you really can't blame
people very severely for carrying out the orders that they're told to carry
out when there's nothing in the culture that tells them there's
anything wrong with it. I mean, you have to be kind of like a moral hero to
perceive it, to break out of the cultural framework and say, 'Look, what
I'm doing is wrong.' Like somebody who deserts from the army because
they think the war is wrong. That's not the place to assign guilt, I
think. Just as at Nuremberg. As I said, they didn't try the SS guards who
threw people into crematoria, at Nuremberg. They might have been tried
elsewhere, but not at Nuremberg.


GMS: But, in this case, the results of the ARO's mission statement in
harvesting scholarly work for better weapons design, it's professors,
scholars, researchers, scientific designers, etc., who have these choices
to focus serious intellectual effort and to be so used for such ends,
and who aren't acting necessarily from direct orders but are acting
more out of freewill.

It's freewill, but don't forget that there's a general intellectual
culture that raises no objection to this.

Let's take the Iraq war. There's libraries of material arguing about
the war, debating it, asking 'What should we do?', this and that, and the
other thing. Now, try to find a sentence somewhere that says that
'carrying out a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, which
differs from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that
follows' (paraphrasing from Nuremberg). Try to find that somewhere. -I
mean, you can find it. I've written about it, and you can find a
couple other dozen people who have written about it in the world. But is it
part of the intellectual culture? Can you find it in a newspaper, or in
a journal; in Congress; any public discourse; anything that's part of
the general exchange of knowledge and ideas? I mean, do students study
it in school? Do they have courses where they teach students that 'to
carry out a war of aggression is the supreme international crime which
encompasses all the evil that follows'?

So, for example, if sectarian warfare is a horrible atrocity, as it is,
who's responsible? By the principles of Nuremberg, Bush, Rumsfeld,
Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice-they're responsible for sectarian warfare because
they carried out the supreme international crime which encompasses all
the evil that follows. Try and find somebody who points that out. You
can't. Because our dominant intellectual culture accepts as legitimate
our crushing anybody we like.

And take Iran. Both political parties-and practically the whole
press-accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honorable, that 'all options are
on the table', presumably including nuclear weapons, to quote Hilary
Clinton and everyone else. 'All options are on the table' means we
threaten war. Well, there's something called the U.N. Charter, which outlaws
'the threat or use of force' in international affairs. Does anybody
care? Actually, I saw one op-ed somewhere by Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist
close to the government, who pointed out that threats are serious
violations of international law. But that's so rare that when you find it
it's like finding a diamond in a pile of hay or something. It's not part
of the culture. We're allowed to threaten anyone we want-and to attack
anyone we want. And, when a person grows up and acts in a culture like
that, they're culpable in a sense, but the culpability is much
broader.

I was just reading a couple days ago a review of a new book by Steven
Miles, a medical doctor and bioethicist, who ran through 35,000 pages of
documents he got from the Freedom of Information Act on the torture in
Abu Ghraib. And the question that concerned him is, 'What were the
doctors doing during all of this?' All through those torture sessions
there were doctors, nurses, behavioral scientists and others who were
organizing them. What were they doing when this torture was going on? Well,
you go through the detailed record and it turns out that they were
designing and improving it. Just like Nazi doctors.

Robert Jay Lifton did a big study on Nazi doctors. He points out in
connection with the Nazi doctors that, in a way, it's not those individual
doctors who had the final guilt, it was a culture and a society which
accepted torture and criminal activities as legitimate. The same is
true with the tortures at Abu Ghraib. I mean, just to focus on them as if
they're somehow terrible people is just a serious mistake. They're
coming out of a culture that regards this as legitimate. Maybe there are
some excesses you don't really do but torture in interrogation is
considered legitimate.

There's a big debate now on, 'Who's an enemy combatant?'; a big
technical debate. Suppose we invade another country and we capture somebody
who's defending the country against our invasion: what do you mean to
call them an 'enemy combatant'? If some country invaded the United States
and let's say you were captured throwing a rock at one of the soldiers,
would it be legitimate to send you to the equivalent of Guantanamo,
and then have a debate about whether you're a 'lawful' or 'unlawful'
combatant? The whole discussion is kind of, like, off in outer space
somewhere. But, in a culture which accepts that we own and rule the world,
it's reasonable. But, also, we should go back to the roots of the
intellectual or moral culture, not just to the individuals directly involved.


GMS: As you mentioned before, whether students are taught serious moral
principles: At my school, the University of Arizona, there are courses
in bioethics-required ones, in fact, to hard scientific undergraduates
(I took one, out of interest)- which mostly just discuss scenarios in
terms of 'slippery slopes' and hypothetical questions within certain
bounds, and still none at all in the social sciences or humanities. Do
you think there should be? Would that be beneficial?

If they were honest, yes. If they're honest they'd be talking about
what we're talking about, and doing case studies. There's no point
pontificating about high minded principles. That's easy. Nazi doctors could do
that, too.

Let's take a look at the cases and ask how the principles apply-to
Vietnam; to El Salvador; to Iraq; to Palestine-just run through the cases
and see how the principles apply to our own actions. That's what is of
prime importance, and what is least discussed.


GMS: As a note to end on, there seems to be some very serious
aberrations and defects in our society and our level of culture. How, in your
view, might they be corrected and a new level of culture be established,
say, one in which torture isn't accepted? (After all, slavery and child
labor were each accepted for a long period of time and now are not.)

Your examples give the answer to the question, the only answer that has
ever been known. Slavery and child labor didn't become unacceptable by
magic. It took hard, dedicated, courageous work by lots of people. The
same is true of torture, which was once completely routine.

If I remember correctly, the renowned Norwegian criminologist Nils
Christie wrote somewhere that prisons began to proliferate in Norway in the
early 19th century. They weren't much needed before, when the
punishment for robbery could be driving a stake through the hand of the
accused. Now it's perhaps the most civilized country on earth.

There has been a gradual codification of constraints against torture,
and they have had some effect, though only limited, even before the Bush
regression to savagery. Alfred McCoy's work reviews that ugly history.
Still, there is improvement, and there can be more if enough people
are willing to undertake the efforts that led to large-scale rejection of
slavery and child labor-still far from complete.

An allergic reaction to 'fat cats' (Spiked Online)

The super-rich of the private equity sector are a symptom, not the problem with capitalism today. Anybody might be forgiven for thinking that there is a growing mood of anti-capitalism in British public life. Last month, in the normally staid and conservative House of Commons, MPs were warned by a top adviser to Gordon Brown that unless they reformed the taxation system, the widening gap between the new multi-millionaires of the private equity sector and the poor could lead to ‘Paris-style riots’. Just this week, the media headlined another warning from a leading figure about a possible popular backlash against the ‘New Capitalism’ of tax-privileged private equity. But that’s just familiar rhetoric from trade union leaders, isn’t it, and nobody listens to them these days, right? Except that those echoing the union arguments were hardly labour movement firebrands. The warning about riots was delivered to the Treasury committee of MPs by Sir Ronald Cohen, not only a major Labour Party donor but himself a private equity ‘fat cat’ reportedly worth more than £250million. And the headlines about a backlash against the ‘New Capitalism’ were made by none other than the director general of the Bank of England. So what’s behind the strange debate about the state of capitalism today? In Europe and America, the rise of private equity (PE) has been the economic phenomenon of the past few years, as groups of financiers borrow huge sums to take over established companies. In recent months, a growing campaign against the excesses of private equity has been led by Europe’s big unions, accusing PE chiefs of acting as asset-strippers and ‘locusts’, cutting jobs and wages to maximise profits at the companies they take over. On the other side, the small band of PE defenders claims it is a great British success story. The fact that, in a recent newspaper exchange, the case against PE was put by Labour crank and conspiracy theorist Michael Meacher, while the case in favour was entrusted to Tory crank John ‘Vulcan’ Redwood, suggests that we should be wary of taking either side in this false debate. In one sense the campaign against PE is only the latest incarnation of the longstanding crusade to find the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’ (a phrase first coined by a Tory prime minister). In the post-Enron age, when big business is falling over itself to show how socially responsible it is, the PE financiers have stood out by looking more like old-fashioned profit-hungry capitalists. The secretive way they operate, often using foreign capital, has made them an easy target for those in the rump of the old labour movement desperately looking to score some cheap and easy points. Seen in their proper context, however, it becomes clear that these fat cats are only a symptom of the current state of economic affairs rather than the problem. PE is not some sort of a septic boil on an otherwise healthy economic body, but rather a natural development of the way that the market economy works today, especially somewhere like the UK. Nobody needs to defend multi-millionaires. But the current attacks on PE have more to do with moralistic grandstanding by its opponents (increasingly met by self-conscious defensiveness from its supporters), than with any considered critique of modern-day capitalism. Make them pay more tax if you want, but let’s not kid ourselves that it will make any difference to the rest of us. Although it has been blown up into a big political issue, with the Brown government promising to review its tax breaks, private equity is really little more than another technical financial instrument. It has boomed as the latest way for financiers, consultants, accountants and lawyers in the City of London to make their millions. In 2006, global PE takeovers and deals were worth £380billion - five times more than in 2003. The USA and the UK are at the heart of this boom. In May, PE made its biggest-ever score in Europe with the buy-out of pharmacy chain Boots for more than £11billion. PE has been fuelled by the flow of cheap credit, particularly from the East. As Asia, and especially China, has become the new productive motor of the world economy, these countries have been building up their foreign exchange reserves, mostly invested in Western financial assets. This has provided the basis for the latest expansion of easy credit: billions of dollars slosh about the world looking for a home while central banks keep interest rates low by historical standards. In turn, this easy credit has financed and supported the take-off in private equity deals. These deals, however, do not represent productive investment in the creation of new wealth. Like much Western investment in recent times, they are speculative attempts to make short-term profit through taking over existing assets. PE groups take public companies private, load them with debt, and then use various financial instruments to maximise profits. That might sound like outrageous financial skulduggery, but it is typical of how successful Western and especially UK capitalism operates today. The days when Britain could claim to be the industrial workshop of the world or the largest empire on Earth are long gone. What British capitalism relies upon today is the City of London (now spreading into Canary Wharf), where the financial institutions make billions by servicing the movements of somebody else’s capital produced elsewhere in the world. British economic ingenuity is not about inventing steam engines or engineering feats, but about coming up with new financial instruments and mechanisms through which the City’s financial services can maximise its dividends and fees. Lately, critics of PE have tended to focus on the generous tax privileges it has been granted by the New Labour government. Much was made of the revelation at last month’s Commons committee hearings that some of the ‘fat cats’ pay lower tax rates then their cleaners. The key trick here is that PE millionaires are able to treat their income as capital gains on their investments and thus, through something called taper tax relief, end up paying only 10 per cent tax rather than the 40 per cent top UK rate. Those registered as non-domiciles for tax purposes - who include most of the biggest PE players in the UK - pay even less. A glance at this obvious discrimination in favour of private equity would no doubt have many agreeing with Meacher that ‘never have the super-rich been showered with such lucrative partiality by any government’. But the real question is, why does the government do it? It surely cannot be because Brown - the chancellor responsible for the tax concessions - feels natural sympathy for City ‘slickers’. The real reason New Labour is ‘soft’ on PE has little to do with a love of the super-rich, but simply because it recognises the reality that the British economy now depends upon the activities of the City. With the further withering away of British manufacturing and the massive expansion of international financial flows, the UK economy is more reliant than ever on financial services to support the state and society. Servicing and moving around other people’s money, rather than creating new wealth, is the British way of economic life in the twenty-first century. The UK is behind only the USA in the scale of its PE deals. In what other economic area can Britain claim to be second in the world today? Whether he likes it or not, Brown understands which side his bread is being buttered. Some PE takeovers, such as the buy-out of the Automobile Association, have certainly led to the loss of a lot of jobs, at least in the short term. But the allegation that they are always worse than ‘ordinary’ corporate buy-outs does not really seem to stand up. What private equity does to the firms it buys is not that different from the sort of restructuring seen in many industries since the Thatcher government launched a wave of privatisations in the 1980s. Indeed, much of the present PE restructuring seems to be financial re-engineering, using easy liquidity to add debt (’leverage’) to companies (which risk-averse banks are often more reluctant for publicly quoted companies to do) and does not impact much on the public activity of the company itself. In short, PE is the latest soft target for those who, in the age of TINA (There Is No Alternative), have had to accept that they cannot challenge capitalism directly. Union and other objections tend to be about the shady, foreign character of PE, playing on general resentment of the ‘super-rich’ rather than focusing on what PE actually does. The growing influence of the unions in this debate reflects the defensiveness of the capitalists rather than any real resurgence of a labour movement that is now largely an empty shell. Of course, if multi-millionaires have to pay a bit more tax, we need not shed any tears. But what difference would it make to the rest of us? Will it be distributed like charity, at the rate of a few pence each? If the unions are concerned about inequality, let them focus on demanding better pay and conditions for their members instead of PR stunts. The demand for more ‘fairness’ always seems to mean levelling people downwards rather than upwards - a miserabilist spirit that will benefit nobody. A culture of restraint and regulation rather than a wild free market is the biggest barrier to society’s economic advance today. As the examples I gave at the start illustrate, we are not dealing with rapacious cartoon capitalists, but with a cautious and defensive business class. Even the ‘fat cats’ get nervous and start worrying about riots and setting up CR (corporate responsibility) bodies when they come under pressure. We can expect more voluntary codes of conduct as PE tries to stave off state regulation. Who exactly will benefit from that is another matter. These ‘fat cat’ super-rich characters are hardly the solution to the troubles in the world economy, but they are not the big problem either. And inasmuch as the crusade against PE offers no alternative other than to re-enforce the culture of economic restraint, it will end up as part of the bigger problem. What we need are fewer cheap stunts and gestures, and more serious discussion of how society’s wealth is produced, used and distributed today. The public good is ill-served by singling out private equity or anything else as the unacceptable face of capitalism. Mick Hume is editor-at-large of spiked. Previously on spiked James Woudhuysen asked if the Red Dragon is a green threat. Phil Mullan reviewed Daniel Ben-Ami’s Cowardly Capitalism: The Myth of the Global Financial Casino. Daniel Ben-Ami said that JK Galbraith is the forefather of contemporary anti-capitalism, that growth is good and that there is no ‘paradox of prosperity’. Or read more at spiked issue Economy.Neil Davenport Bash the rich-bashers Why is everyone from Tatler to Toynbee (as in Polly) attacking the super-wealthy for their greed and spending habits?Printer-friendly version Email-a-friend RespondAttacking rich people for having tons of cash was once the domain of those pantomime anarchists, Class War. advertisementadvertise on spikedBack in the Eighties they would organise ‘Bash the Rich’ festivals and campaign against what they saw as the gentrification of old working-class communities, particularly in east London. In recent months, these whinging, anti-success sentiments have made a notable comeback. Only this time, it isn’t Special Brew-drinking, dogs-on-strings anarcho-types who are attacking the wealthy – it is rather more respectable opinion-makers and columnists. Slating London’s City traders, the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee says ‘it’s time to face them down, call their bluff and regulate their unjust advantage before their pernicious buccaneering destroys the culture of corporate social responsibility’ (1). What next? Will Toynbee be sporting a t-shirt showing a graveyard under the slogan: ‘We’ve found new homes for the rich’? Even more surprisingly, the defiantly right-wing Daily Mail, the London Evening Standard and even Tory magazine Tatler have indulged in the new anti-rich grandstanding. Tatler editor Geordie Greig ranted recently against the impact the super-rich have on dear old Blighty: ‘That old sense of living in a country where fair play and an honest day’s work led people to feel they could get what they strove for has been destroyed by dizzying extremes in wealth.’ (2) Blimey. Is all this rich-bashing, as one commentator claims, a healthy sign of a desire for a fairer, more equal society? Is it a belated questioning of Thatcherite money-grabbing, and therefore A Good Thing? No, it isn’t. On every level, today’s complaints about the ‘super-rich’ are spectacularly ill-informed and wrongheaded. For a start, complaining that millions in the bank is an ‘obscene amount of money’ is akin to looking through a telescope at the wrong end. Wouldn’t a £180 weekly wage packet, earned by some in the poorer sections of society, better be described as an ‘obscene amount of money?’ It’s coming to something when having little money is seen as being somehow more desirable than having a mountain of moolah. What kind of message does this popularise? That aspiring for higher living standards is the equivalent of dining with the devil? Attacking ‘rich bastards’ might sound righteous and radical, but it conveys the idea that all of us should settle for less. Indeed, five years ago, when London Underground workers went on strike, commentators complained that the RMT union’s pay demand was a sign of wanton ‘greed’. Incredibly, there were even complaints that the Tube drivers’ £32K salary was already ‘too high’! (3) In truth, that paltry sum would barely buy a broom cupboard in London these days, let alone a semi-detached house. Those stinging criticisms of ‘greedy’ Tube workers should have served as a warning of what happens when anti-materialist sentiments are allowed to flourish. The real consequence of anti-rich ideas, which have little impact on the rich themselves, is to constrain those of us who want more from life. Notice how the anti-wealthy opinion-makers berate the rich for what they do with their cash rather than for how they make it. There is rarely any mention of the fact that rich businesspeople make their fortunes on the backs of the badly-paid labour of the working classes. Instead, critics aim their fire at the rich for buying luxury goods and big houses, rather than for any exploitation they may preside over. One columnist reckons that the entrepreneurs on BBC 2’s Dragon’s Den probably drive tacky sports cars and therefore are a bunch of cocks (4). These are cheap moralistic shots rather than anything like a serious critique. It seems the workplace origins of wealth are of no real moment for these tax-the-rich complainers; they’re more interested in attacking the garish spending of the wealthy than in demanding a restructuring of wealth creation more broadly. As a result, the discussions about the rich tend to mystify social relations in society. Having millions of pounds in the bank is not an automatic source of social power. Rich entertainers, pop musicians and actors might have accumulated enormous amounts of money, but it doesn’t mean they have the ability to shape society and make decisions that impact on people’s lives (bar the misery inflicted on people whenever U2 release an album or their frontman Bono opens his sphincter-like mouth to pronounce on African poverty). Social power only comes about when the owners of society’s resources enter into an economic relationship with those who survive by selling their labour power to them. This monopoly of the means of survival endows such businessmen with the power to influence debates, set agendas and make decisions that have real consequences for people’s livelihoods. It follows, therefore, that calls for wealth redistribution don’t get to the heart of the problem of social inequality. Increasing taxes on the super-rich to give to the low-paid and the poor wouldn’t improve people’s living standards in any meaningful way, as previous welfare redistribution policies have shown. Perhaps our time would be better spent interrogating, and changing, the issue of who owns society’s resources. None of the rich-bashers (certainly not Tatler!) is suggesting that there should be collective ownership of society’s productive resources – that would mean allowing millions of people to have a genuine say in how society is organised. Instead, today’s attacks on the rich are driven by a rather patronising view of the masses as inert, passive dolts in need of a bit of altruistic charidee. The likes of Toynbee and Tatler are not in favour of creating a more democratic method of wealth-creation. Rather they seem to believe that the rest of us should be happy with a few crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table – though heaven forbid any of us should spend these handouts on foreign holidays, a decent car or on a trolley-dash around Tesco. How did moralising about money and materialism become mainstream? It strikes me that the origins of these sentiments lie in the Labour Party left during the 1980s. As their Alternative Economic Programme and welfare policies in the 1970s had proven an economic disaster, the Labour left quietly shelved their commitment to improving living standards altogether. Instead, they recast being left-wing as being all about moral-mindedness and a commitment to community, values and ethics. The then prime minister Margaret Thatcher seized the initiative by colonising social aspiration as being somehow the property of the New Right rather than the left, as it previously had been. So successful was Thatcher’s use of social aspiration as an ideological tool with which to defeat the left that, to this day, anyone who claims to be left wing will express his or her loathing for the politics of social aspiration. For them, anyone who wants more from life – a big house, cars, holidays, etc – has clearly capitulated to Thatcherism. Today, anti-materialist ideas are so mainstream that even the rich attack the rich. Right now, there is no bigger or louder anti-consumerist and anti-materialist than the very wealthy green proselytiser, Al Gore. When even the super-rich berate the, er, super-rich, it seems clear that there is nothing to be gained from joining in with the attacks on wealth and success. To do that would be to attack the very basis for changing society for the better. So long as people aspired to greater living standards, there was an audience for politics that aimed to revolutionise the way society is organised. Attacking those at the top of society is simply an indirect way of keeping everyone else in their place below. Neil Davenport is a writer and lecturer in London. Previously on spiked Daniel Ben-Ami reviewed Oliver James’ book Affluenza and interviewed Indur Goklany, author of The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet. Rob Lyons looked at poverty and politics. And Daniel Ben-Ami summed up why, if prosperity doesn’t make us happy, it’s still a good thing. Or read more at spiked-issue Economy.(1) ‘Stick it to these City Caesars - for the sake of the nation’, Polly Toynbee, Guardian, 19 June 2007 (2) Tatler, June 2007 (3) See Underground Fat Cats, by Neil Davenport (4) Last Night’s TV, Guardian, 4 August 2006 Digging up the roots of the IPCC by Tony Gilland

Law Lords to consider the legality of the control order scheme.


04 Jul 2007

A six-day hearing into the legality of the controversial control order scheme will begin in the House of Lords tomorrow. The Law Lords will consider if control orders, by which a suspect’s freedom is severely curtailed although he has not been charged or tried in open court, violates the right to liberty and a fair trial.

James Welch, Liberty’s Legal Director who led Liberty’s intervention in the case, said: “Punishing people and their families without trial makes a mockery of British justice. Labelling people as terrorists and leaving them in the community makes a mockery of security. Only charges, evidence and proof will protect our lives and our way of life in the long-term.” Liberty has called the control order scheme “unsafe” and “unfair” because seven of the 17 suspects on control orders have absconded and several lower court judges have deemed the scheme to be unlawful. As an alternative to control orders, Liberty suggests new measures which will make it easier for police and prosecutors to gather evidence to bring criminal prosecutions against terror suspects. These include allowing the use of intercept evidence in the criminal courts, making it a crime to withhold relevant encrypted computer data, allowing post-charge questioning and providing more resources for the intelligence and security community. Liberty’s intervention into the cases of suspects known as “E” and “S” argues that making a control order involves the determination of a criminal charge within the meaning of Article 6 of the Human Rights Act and that the standard of review, the "reasonable suspicion” standard of proof, the use of closed evidence and special advocates also violates the criminal and civil guarantees in Article 6 of the Act. If the Law Lords judgment, expected later this summer, finds that control orders violate Articles 5 and 6 of the Human Rights Act, the Government may have to issue new control orders which derogate from the European Convention on Human Rights or may have to consider new laws to replace the control order scheme altogether. Contact Jen Corlew on 0207 378 3656 or 0797 3 831 128

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. For a copy of Liberty’s intervention contact Jen Corlew on 0207 378 3656 or 0797 3 831 128

2. Control Orders were brought in by the Government under the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act after the Law Lords ruled that indefinite detention without charge for foreign terror suspects in Belmarsh prison violated their human rights. A control order severely restricts who a person can meet, where they can go and all cases have involved electronic tagging. Restrictions have included 14-hour curfews and bans on unauthorised visitors and internet access. Control orders can last indefinitely. The person does not have to be accused of any crime and does not have to be told why he is under suspicion.

3. Latest reports indicate that seven out of 17 individuals on control orders have absconded.

4. The Government’s argument that it is impossible to prosecute terror suspects is fast unravelling. Liberty has suggested that unnecessary hurdles to prosecuting terror suspects can be overcome in the following ways: - Remove the bar on intercept (phone tap) evidence in criminal trials because its inadmissibility is a major factor in being unable to bring charges. In the last year the former Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions and a former Head of MI5 have argued that it should be possible to use intercept evidence in court so that more terror suspects can be prosecuted. - Review the way in which people that have already been charged can be re-interviewed and recharged as further evidence is uncovered. The four Terror Acts brought into force since 2000 have created numerous new terror offences with which an individual can be charged. This will allow for a charge to be replaced with a more appropriate offence at a later stage. - Bring in existing powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) which enable a civil court to require an individual to hand over an encryption key (which unlocks data on seized computers). Anyone who fails to comply with such an order will be committing a serious criminal offence.

- Dismantle the controversial ID card scheme, estimated in May 2007 to cost £5.75 billion according to official Government figures, to provide more resources for police and intelligence services.

Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Ind Lab): I tabled this debate because I visited recently the Palestinian occupied territories with a delegation organised by War on Want. It consisted of War on Want staff, myself, and Rodney Bickerstaffe, the former general secretary of Unison. I am grateful for the opportunity to report on our findings, and I hope that the Minister will take account of them.

I have previously visited the west bank and Gaza on a number occasions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the time of the first intifada — a Palestinian uprising involving peaceful disobedience or, at worst, children throwing stones at soldiers. Despite the injuries inflicted on children by the Israeli army, the intifada was full of hope, and it led to the negotiation of the Oslo peace accord and the return of Yasser Arafat to Palestine. I was hopeful at that time that a two-state peace—Israel and Palestine—was possible, that the new Palestinian state would be based on 1967 boundaries with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that there would be a negotiated settlement on Palestinian right of return. Those are the three essential components of a negotiated peace. I was hopeful; but it is now impossible to believe that there will be such a peace. Instead, I fear that unless we change policy, we face the prospect of years and possibly decades of bloodshed and conflict. I have followed developments in the middle east carefully over many years, and I was well aware before my recent visit how bad things are for the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, I was deeply shocked by Israel's blatant, brutal and systematic annexation of land, demolition of Palestinian homes, and deliberate creation of an apartheid system by which the Palestinians are enclosed in four bantustans, surrounded by a wall, with massive checkpoints that control all Palestinian movements in and out of the ghettos. The Israelis are clearly and systematically attempting to take the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Palestinians. As things stand, Israel has taken 85 per cent. of historical Palestine, leaving the remaining 15 per cent. for Palestinian ghettos. More shocking than that is that the international community, including the UK and the EU, does nothing to require Israel to abide by international law, despite all the claims made about European support for human rights and international law. During its visit, the delegation spent a day with the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which is the agency responsible for humanitarian emergencies. It briefed us on the way in which the wall, the closures, the settlements and the separate system of settler roads were imprisoning the Palestinians. It published a map in the Financial Times to mark the 40th anniversary of the occupation, which is available for all to see. The delegation spent the second day of its visit with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, an organisation that I greatly admire. The committee took us on a tour of East Jerusalem and showed us how the combination of formal and informal settlements, and systematic house demolition, was encircling East Jerusalem and how that constrained, displaced and ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population. When we were with ICAHD, we witnessed a house demolition. A massive machine with "Volvo" emblazoned on its side destroyed a substantial house that was built by a Palestinian family on their own land and in territory that belongs to the Palestinians under international law—formally, it is occupied territory. Women relatives of the occupants quietly wept at the side of the road. Later, a young man was held back by his friends—he wanted to throw himself at the soldiers who were protecting the demolition, to do something about the destruction of his family home. The representative of ICAHD, a young Israeli, said that the demolition was, of course, a war crime. The point about that is that under the Geneva convention, an occupying power is not entitled to impose new laws or to settle in occupied territory. Houses are being demolished because Palestinians do not have permits to build, even on their own land. However, Israel is not entitled to introduce such a permit system. It never gives a permit to build a house, or after a house has been built. When Palestinian families expand, they must live somewhere, but Israel will never issue a permit because of its determination to drive Palestinians out of East Jerusalem. According to ICAHD, Israel has demolished 18,000 Palestinian homes in the way I described since 1967. Each demolition was a war crime. More shocking than that is the fact that no action is taken to force Israel to adhere to international law. Later, the delegation visited a family whose house had been demolished and rebuilt by volunteers from ICAHD—Israelis and Palestinians worked together to rebuild a home for a Palestinian family. ICAHD is committed to acts of peaceful civil disobedience in order that international law is upheld. The family said how grateful they were to once again have a home. A Palestinian who works for ICAHD said that his house had been demolished four times. He said that most Palestinian homes in Jerusalem were subject to demolition orders, so everyone lives with the fear and insecurity that when they arrive home, they might find that their home has been destroyed. He said that when the Israelis arrive to demolish a person's house, they give them 15 minutes in which to collect their family and belongings. Normally, people refuse to co-operate. The ICAHD worker told me that in such a situation, the demolition people use tear gas. He told me that he stood there, with his wife fainting and his children crying while their property was being thrown out of their house on to the ground. He said that it made him feel like a useless man who could not even protect his family in their home, and that three possible courses of action passed through his mind. First, full of hate and anger, he thought about obtaining a suicide vest and destroying his own life and that of others. Secondly, he thought about whether he could get out of Palestine and Jerusalem, being unable to bear the pressure being put on him and his family, but that would be to co-operate in the ethnic-cleansing that he opposed. Thirdly—he said that this kept him sane—he said he thought about working for ICAHD to rebuild the demolished homes in peaceful civil disobedience. I understand that ICAHD has given a pledge to rebuild all the demolished homes in this, the 40th year of the occupation, and that—poignantly—an American holocaust survivor is funding the work. I hope that all people of good will will support ICAHD financially and politically in that endeavour. Importantly, the organisation brings radical Israelis and Palestinians together and creates a space for hope in an otherwise hopeless situation. The delegation's third day was hosted by the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, which is War on Want's partner in Palestine. We were briefed about how the closures have destroyed the Palestinian economy—that has subsequently been underlined by a WorldBank report—and also how more and more Palestinians are forced to work for the Israeli settlements to produce agricultural products and other goods that are exported largely to the European market, to which trade agreements give Israel privileged access. Illegal settlements using Palestinians as cheap labour is another element of the new apartheid system in which the EU and the UK fully collude. The delegation went to visit the Jordan valley with a representative of the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. The situation there is truly terrible. All fertile land near the river has been confiscated by Israel, supposedly for security purposes under the Oslo peace accords. In the remaining territory, there are occasionally settlements, some of only one person, which lead to Palestinian families being removed from their land for security reasons. There are acres of plastic greenhouses that are organised and worked by settlers and which are strategically located over water sources. They grow organic herbs and other agricultural produce for the European market and yet, when we visited a totally impoverished nearby Palestinian village, we found that there was no school and, that day, no water—the one tap in the village gave no water. The impoverished Palestinians must buy water by the bucket from the settlers. We visited farming families whose relatives had lived on the land in the Jordan valley for generations to grow crops, herd sheep and goats, and to make cheese. They were being threatened and moved constantly as new settlements of only one or a few people brought in the army, which claimed that they had to move for security reasons. We stopped to talk to another family who had a compound at the side of the road. A house bought for their son and his family on their own land had been demolished, and their aubergine crop was rotting in a heap in front of the house because they could not get it to market. There is terrible poverty and abuse of human rights in the Jordan valley. The people there are being grossly neglected. I appeal to the Minister, the Department for International Development and all the humanitarian and non-governmental organisations to do more in the Jordan valley—it is in a terrible situation, and more could be done to bring instant relief. My conclusion is pessimistic, and the prospect of a two-state solution is being destroyed. Instead, we are allowing a new, brutal apartheid regime to be created with the Palestinians being confined to ghettoes and used as cheap labour by the settlers. The Hamas takeover in Gaza is not the cause of the problem, but the consequence of it. The refusal of the UK and the EU to provide aid to the Palestinian Authority following the Hamas election victory has helped to create the problem. The arming of Fatah by US and Israeli forces to enable it to fight Hamas in Gaza made the take over inevitable. Now it seems that efforts are to be made to offer money and inducements to President Abbas to accept the monstrous ghettoes as the promised Palestinian state. As Uri Avnery, the great Israeli peace campaigner, said, they want him to act as a quisling, and that will not bring peace. In conclusion, the situation in the Palestinian territories is deeply distressing and depressing, and the Government and the EU are colluding in that oppression and the building of a new apartheid regime. In particular, Israel has privileged access to the EU market under a trade treaty that, like all EU trade treaties, contains human rights conditions. I hope that the Minister will explain why those conditions are not invoked to insist on Israeli compliance with international law. That is a big lever, and Israel would be frightened of losing access to the EU market. I wish that we would make use of that for everyone's benefit. I fear continuing bloodshed and suffering, and further destabilisation of the middle east. The situation in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories is fuelling the anger of the Muslim world, which is acting as a recruiting sergeant for the ugly ideology of Osama bin Laden and those who advocate similar ideas. It is in the interests of the people of Israel, the Palestinians and the wider middle east that there should be a two-state solution to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that possibility is being thrown away by Israel, which is determined constantly to expand its borders in total breach of international law. The UK and the EU are, sadly, colluding in that, and the consequences are causing terrible suffering, and endangering the future. I truly hope that our new Prime Minister will reconsider that policy, and that the Opposition parties will reconsider and bring pressure to bear to bring the situation back from the brink and to ensure that the centrepiece of UK policy is a just peace and Israeli compliance with internationallaw.

The Minister for the Middle East (Dr. Kim Howells): I thank the righthon. Lady for initiating this debate and for her comments. I also thank her for her eye-witness account of the illegal activities of the Israeli defence forces and others in demolishing houses along the route of the wall, the barrier or fence, where it incorporates Palestinian land illegally. I agree entirely with the right hon. Lady that that not only breaks international law but generates huge resentment, not just in Palestine but throughout the region. We have constantly urged the Israelis not to do that, and it is ironic that lawyers in Israel have given Palestinians their redress only about the route of the wall. Sometimes that route has been altered as a consequence of legal action that Palestinians have taken, especially in and around Jerusalem. The right hon. Lady's point about generating sympathy for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is prescient, and we ignore such warnings at our peril. I take her message about the Jordan valley needing the attention of the Department for International Development. I, too, was shocked when I saw the extent to which so much of the Palestinian economy on the west bank has collapsed. I shall come to Gaza in a moment.This is one of those times in history when, from an appalling tragedy of Palestinians killing Palestinians in Gaza, one hopes that the Israelis and everyone else will take a real step forward, remove the barriers on the west bank, and allow people to trade properly. The right hon. Lady referred to a crop of aubergines that were rotting in the field, and we have heard such stories so many times. I understand, as I am sure can everyone, why Israel has built barriers, and I know why it has built the wall. On my last visit but one, I went to see some old lefties—I do not know how to describe them—in a kibbutz up on the old Jerusalem road. Very reluctantly, they told me that life had become easier since the barrier was built because they were not worried about their kids going out, as suicide bombers were finding it much harder to come in from Nablus and other towns. I tried to argue then, and I argue now, that they will find ways of getting in and killing innocent citizens, because resentment will continue to build up unless the core issue is tackled.

Clare Short: I simply want to say that, ugly and regrettable as the wall is, if it were on the 1967 boundary it would be one thing, but it is taking great swathes of Palestinian land and dividing communities from their land. That was found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice, and there is no excuse for it.

Dr. Howells: The right hon. Lady is absolutely correct. I was quite shocked even to discuss with Labour Ministers in Israel some time ago their unwillingness to build tunnels, for example, to join cantons together. It is hard to believe that a viable state, albeit small, could emerge from such a geographical configuration. It is difficultto see how it could work. We must keep pressing the Israelis. I do not agree with the right hon. Lady about sanctions— she did not refer to sanctions, but I have heard people talk about them. She referred to withdrawal of the preferential trade agreement with the EU. It is a fair subject for debate, although I am sceptical about making such moves, but that is my subjective assessment. It is a subject that should be discussed, and it is widely discussed throughout Europe. I tend to feel that there is already so much tension and there are so many difficulties that I am not sure that that would advance the cause of peace. If the right hon. Lady will allow me, I shall say something about Gaza, because we share her deep concern about what has happened there. It is a tragedy, and it underlines the urgent need to maintain international engagement and the current political processes. We are also concerned, as is the right hon. Lady, about the welfare of Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist, whose family must be going through the most dreadful time. We condemn the release of the latest video, which can only add further distress to his family and friends. We urge his captors, as I know does the right hon. Lady, to release him immediately. There should be a general release of captives on bothsides— Corporal Shalit, the soldiers who were kidnapped by Hezbollah, the councillors and elected parliamentary representatives of the Palestinian people. Now is the time to make such moves, and I hope that after the disaster in Gaza there will be a sense that this historic opportunity should not be missed, and that misery should not be heaped on the existing misery. I also extend our thanks to the Egyptian Government for initiating the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday between President Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan, whom I had the privilege of speaking with just last week. He brought to the situation a sharp series of observations, which the right hon. Lady complemented today, and he understands the gravity of the situation. If the west bank statelet—that group of cantons—fails, one wonders where the conflict will spread to next. Jordan, with its huge Palestinian population, would be in grave danger, and King Abdullah is well aware of that. He was at Sharm el-Sheikh, as were Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas. We welcome Prime Minister Olmert's statement that he will work, with President Abbas as a true partner, towards the establishment of a two-state solution and the implementation of the road map. There are some positive aspects, but I agree with the right hon. Lady that it is a pretty bleak picture. It is as bleak as I can ever remember it, but the decision by Prime Minister Olmert to transfer the withheld revenues is probably a positive step forward, and we look forward to the implementation of the commitments to increase freedom of movement and expand trade connections in the west bank. Such actions are not rocket science; they can easily be done and they could make a big difference, if only to that family about whom the right hon. Lady spoke, with their crop of aubergines. Such actions are vital to the Palestinian people, and they have helped to improve the humanitarian and economic situation, which is critical. We welcome Prime Minister Olmert's pledge to ensure the continued supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza. As the right hon. Lady knows, we have earmarked funding for that project. It does not address the central issue that she has raised today, but there is an immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which the international community must address. It is important that the international community works together to help all Palestinian people. President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad's Government have our full support, and we share their aim of restoring security and improving the economic and humanitarian situation. We continue to work with all people, including President Abbas, who are dedicated to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The right hon. Lady did not mention this point, because time is always limited in such debates, but President Abbas, among others, has said that there ought to be an international peacekeeping force in Gaza certainly, if not on the west bank. I can see the right hon. Lady shaking her head, and one cannot imagine who would donate the troops to such a force. They would have to fight their way in, there would be bloodshed and mayhem on a huge scale, and quite frankly, I cannot see the idea coming off. To reinforce what the right hon. Lady said, we must understand the gravity of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, address it and at the sametime, urge Israel as hard as we possibly can to think again about its policy of incorporating Palestinian villages and land within the confines of that wall. As she said, the Israelis have a perfect right to defend themselves, and if they want to build a wall, it is up to them, but it ought to be along the agreed frontier—such as it is—that was defined in 1967. It ought not to encroach on Palestinian territory. It is important that we receive such reports in the House. In so many ways, that is what such debates are for—so that we are reminded constantly of the reality of what can sometimes look like great, strategic trends and events on the world stage. However, for the family whom the right hon. Lady described so vividly, the reality is that their lives have been shattered. Many other families' lives have been, too. I have always considered myself to be a friend of the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. I was brought up in a home in which the dreams of everybody who was interested in the subject were about people living alongside each other peacefully, not even in separate states.I shall not apportion blame; I have been around too long for that. I have seen the successive invasions of Israel, and what the Israelis have done in an attempt to head off what they perceive as threats to the Israeli heartland, which has usually meant extending territory. My message to the Israelis is simple; if they are to live in peace side by side with their neighbours, the Israelis must help them become viable states with economies that can live in a competitive world. They need the education, skills, infrastructure and wherewithal to do all that, but most important, they need the self-respect and dignity that we enjoy as members of sovereign states.

Clare Short: May I press the Minister to reconsider his view on Israeli access to the EU market? If we invoked the human rights conditionality in that treaty, we would have a lever with which to press Israel to do what he calls for. Does not our failure to use that leverage mean that we are colluding in the breach of international law? Will he reconsider his position on that point?

Dr. Howells: I certainly do not believe that we are colluding in any shape or form. I was going to come to that point, but with respect to the right hon. Lady, "colluding" is certainly the wrong word to use. I know that she chose that word very carefully, but I do not think that it is the right one. I can speak only subjectively from my meeting with other European Ministers. She, too, met her counterparts from the EU and other nations many times. There is at one extreme a sense of hopelessness, which she also described today in a very grim analysis of the situation. I am at the other extreme. I keep telling myself that we have material to work with, and that it is a very small partof the world. What is Gaza? Ten miles wide, and at the most, 35 to 40 miles long. It has a wonderful beach on the Mediterranean, and I remember vividly the first time I ever walked on it, thinking, "Why is this a poor part of the world? Why haven't people here got any jobs?" It seemed mad to me. The right hon. Lady expressed the hope that my right hon. Friend the new Prime Minister would take the issue by the scruff of the neck and try to do something with it. She knows that he has been very interested for a very long time in trying to work with the Israelis and the Arab countries in the area to do something about that economy and that infrastructure. I disagree with her about the effect of that general sense of good will towards Israel and Palestine—the desire throughout Europe that there should be a good outcome, and peace and prosperity in the future. In the end, we disagree about whether applying a screw to the Israelis on the question of human rights compliance would achieve a great deal. We should at every possible opportunity engage the Israelis on human rights and on compliance with their undertakings, which, as a consequence, enable them to enjoy access to the European market. We should talk to them about that, but I have a feeling that there are already far too many strictures on all sides to add another one. It would just create more tension, and we should try to build on what we have, aim for the high ground and figure out how we can get there by engaging with both sides.

KEEPING ON A STEADY COURSE TO APARTHEID by Jeff Halper

For all the attention and hysteria the latest events in Gaza have
generated since the Hamas "takeover," for Israel they represent
nothing but a minor blip in its inexorable drive towards its own
unilateral "solution:" apartheid. Israel's end-game, explicit and
unruffled by the recent turmoil on the ground, is clear. It is laid
out in detail in the Convergence Plan" Olmert presented to a joint
session of the American Congress in May, 2006, based on Sharon's plan
of "cantonization." With minor adjustments, it constitutes the plan
Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is quietly advancing with the
help of Condoleezza Rice, and it is accepted in its entirety by Ehud
Barak, the newly-elected leader of the Labor Party, who played a key
role in its formulation. The Israeli plan for apartheid is as follows:



(1) Creating a truncated Palestinian "state" comprised of four
disconnected cantons, three in the West Bank and Gaza. By annexing its
major settlement blocs defined by the Wall, Israel thereby expands
onto 85% of the country, leaving the Palestinians confined to
impoverished enclaves on the remaining 15% of the land. In such a
"two-state solution" Israel would control the borders, external and
internal Palestinian movement, the "Greater" Jerusalem area, all the
water resources, the air space, the communications sphere and even the
Palestinian state's foreign policy. Such a Bantustan would have no
genuine sovereignty or viable economy – but would have to accept all
the traumatized and impoverished Palestinian refugees.



(2) If this fails, primarily because Israel cannot find the quisling
Palestinian leader who would sign off on a Bantustan, Plan B – the
Livni-Rice plan – calls for the unilateral declaration by the US of a
"provisional" Palestinian state with no fixed borders, no meaningful
sovereignty and no viable economy, squeezed between the Wall, Israel's
eastern "demographic" border incorporating the settlement blocs, and
the Jordan Valley, Israel's eastern "security" border. The
Palestinians would thus be left in the limbo of a "provisional" state
indefinitely – or until they agree to a Bantustan – all in conformity
to the parameters of the "Road Map."



Period. Regardless of the "peace initiative" of the moment – the Road
Map, the Saudi initiative, the summit at Sharm el-sheikh, the
appointment of a Middle East envoy – all these plans will have to
conform to one of these alternatives or be doomed to irrelevance.



What happens in Gaza, then (tellingly nicknamed "Hamastan," the
Palestinian cantons of the West Bank now dubbed "Fatahland"), is
therefore irrelevant to Israel, since Gaza represents nothing more
than a tiny part of the tiny Palestinian Bantustan (about 8%). Whether
Gaza would have been "quieted" after the Israeli disengagement as
Sharon had planned, exporting cheap labor into Israel and perhaps
enjoying limited economic growth, whether it was merely isolated and
impoverished due to US and Israeli sanctions after the Hamas election
victory or whether, as happened, it explodes, nothing will hamper
Israel's ceaseless process of consolidating its hold on the West Bank.
Sooner or later, in the Israeli-American plan, Gaza will fall into
place.



Not only are the Palestinians irrelevant, in Israel's view, but the
Hamas "takeover" is actually a positive development, since it furthers
the apartheid process. A key reason why Palestinians voted for Hamas
was the perception that it would resist pressures to accept a
Bantustan better than the weak, vacillating Fatah movement, which was
seen as little more than Israel's policeman in the Territories.
Israel, the US and a complicit Europe is thus seen as trying to
isolate precisely those who truly resist the Occupation while
"strengthening" Abbas and the "moderates" – "moderate" defined as
those willing to pacify the Palestinians without securing their
fundamental right to a sovereign and viable state of their own. The
American-sponsored program of arming Fatah against its own people,
complete with "lending" them an American general (Dayton), only
confirms these suspicions, especially if they make Abbas dependent
upon outside forces for his survival.



Israel and the US are doing in microcosm in Palestine what the US is
doing throughout the Muslim world, forcing the Palestinians to choose
between two unacceptable options: either the prospects of an apartheid
regime which is all the "moderates" can deliver or continued
resistance to occupation and apartheid under Hamas at the price of
international isolation and an unwanted process of Islamization. Where
are the true liberators who can deliver a viable Palestinian state
while recognizing – though standing up to – Israel? Where are the
progressive leaders who represent the wishes of the overwhelming
majority of the Palestinian people? Where are the "strong" leaders
that Bush claims are lacking on the Palestinian side? Either dead, the
victims of a 30-year campaign on the part of Israel to eliminate any
effective Palestinian leader, or languishing in refugee camps or in
exile, or in prison. If Marwan Bargouti and the prisoners of all the
factions who produced the Prisoners' Document, the only viable peace
plan that has any chance of success, were free and allowed to lead
their people, the Israel/Palestine conflict could be resolved
tomorrow.



What is lacking, of course, is good faith. The will among governments
to stand up for Palestinian rights and against Israeli apartheid is
totally lacking. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz (21.6.07) noted the
cynicism underlying the recent Olmert-Bush meeting. "Olmert reached an
understanding with…Bush during his visit to Washington that it is
necessary to support Abbas," a senior political source in Jerusalem
said. "The decision to aid Abbas was made despite skepticism about his
chances for success, in view of past experience. Olmert and Bush
agreed they must not allow the impression that Abbas failed because
Israel or the U.S. failed him."



Israel is not going to bolster Abbas – unless he becomes the
collaborator Israel is looking for, which he won't. Olmert has already
announced that there will be no final status negotiations in the
foreseeable future. So neither the Saudi Inititative nor the Sharm
meeting will lead to genuine negotiations. The US, with its moribund
Road Map, will not facilitate the establishment of a viable
Palestinian state and Europe will not act independently to do so, even
in its own interest. The Palestinians, for their part, are powerless
to achieve a viable state on their own and will continue to be beaten
and blamed for their own incareration and resistance.



Our governments have failed us. Unless we, the people worldwide, can
mobilize grassroots opposition to the Israeli-US-European Occupation,
a new apartheid regime,in the Holy Land no less, will soon emerge
before our very eyes. Its only when the people lead that our "leaders"
will even contemplate doing the right thing.

(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD) and a candidate, with the Palestinian peace
activist Ghassan Andoni, for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be
reached at .)

Iraq and the Human Rights Act - Baha Mousa judgment

Well done to Phil Shiner and PIL in winning this case before the House
of Lords
The Government is facing a damaging lawsuit and demands for a public
inquiry into its policy on torturing detainees in Iraq after a law lords
ruling today.
The UK's top judges ruled that the death of Baha Musa in British
military custody in Iraq fell under the remit of the Human Rights Act.
Musa, a hotel receptionist in Basra, died 48 hours after his arrest by
British soldiers. He was apparently beaten to death, suffering 93
separate injuries to his body.
Today's verdict by the UK's highest appeal court enables Mr Musa's
family not only to sue the Government in High Court - lawyers have already
said that they will be seeking exemplary damages - but to insist on a
public inquiry into his death.
Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the Musa family, reeled off a list of
questions he felt should now be answered by the Government.
He asked why it abandoned a ruling by Edward Heath's government in 1972
that outlawed the practice of hooding detainees, and of "stressing"
them by depriving them of food and water and bombarding them with noise
and abuse.
He also queried whether the right people had been charged with the
right offences over Mr Musa's death. He accused the government of
suppressing damning evidence from the court martial, including "a video showing
hooded and cuffed detaineees being verbally and physically abused as
they were man-handled into the UK's preferred stress position".
"When the head of army legal services blew the whistle on hooding and
stressing, he was told that the Attorney-General had advised that the
Human Rights Act did not apply, and so lower standards were applied,"
said Mr Shiner.
"It is imperative that the Government and the military face up to these
issues."
Speaking outside Parliament after the verdict was read out, Shami
Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the human rights campaign group, said
that today's ruling was "incredibly important" as it established the
principle that any detainee in British custody anywhere in the world was
entitled to the protection of the Human Rights Act.
"Our Law Lords have ensured that there can never be a British
Guantanamo Bay anywhere in the world in the future," said Ms Chakrabarti. "There
can be no British detention facility where the law does not apply."
She accused the Government of trying to pretend that the killing was
the result of rogue behaviour by a few bad apples rather than the result
of systemic failures in planning the aftermath of the war, and of a
secret change in policy to permit soldiers to use torture techniques.
"Individual soldiers and individual officers cannot be scapegoated and
left to carry the can for the failings of our Government," she said.
Colonel Daoud Musa, father of Baha, was said to be very pleased by this
morning’s judgment. On the phone from Basra he told his lawyer, Martyn
Day: "It means that I have not lost hope of getting justice for my son.
"I hope that as a result of this judgment the truth will come out and
that no other family should have to experience what me and my
grandchildren have gone through."
Expert View

The death of Baha Musa in British military custody was a disgraceful
episode for which only one soldier has so far been punished
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
More
Post a comment
Related Links
Comment: two questions remain over Musa murder
Full judgment: law lords on UK military and human rights
Torture: 10 claims against the Army
Mr Day, said: "From talking to not just Colonel Musa but also with some
of our other clients this morning they all feel this decision is a
major step forward in their fight for justice.
"The legal team have done an excellent job in ensuring that the British
Army will now always be held to account for their actions when people
are brought under their power. There will be no difference whether this
happens in Birmingham or Basra.
"Let us hope there is now a speedy agreement by the Ministry of Defence
that a public enquiry should be held into the terrible events of
September 2003. "
Colonel Jorge Mendonca MBE, the highest-ranking soldier in recent
history to face a court martial, was cleared of negligently failing to
prevent his men from mistreating Musa after a five-month trial at Bulford
army camp in Wiltshire.
Five other officers and soliders were also exonerated, but Corporal
Donald Payne, 36, who became Britain's first convicted war criminal when
he admitted a charge of inhuman treatment of civilians at the tribunal,
was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian
jail.
Today's ruling by the law lords however dismissed an appeal by the
families of five other Iraqi civilians killed by British soldiers on
patrol, on the grounds that they were not in detention and therefore not
protected either by UK domestic law or by the European Convention on Human
Rights.
After the ruling, Amnesty International called on the Government to set
up an expert, civilian-led body to take the place of the military
authorities in carrying out independent inquiries into allegations of human
rights violations at the hands of British armed forces personnel.
But Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence, said in a statement
afterwards that investigations should be carred out by the military. He
welcomed the ruling which he said provided "helpful clarification of
the precise legal framework under which UK forces operated overseas".
"As the Chief of General Staff has already said, Baha Musa died after
being held in UK custody and was subject to an unlawful conditioning
process," said Mr Browne.
"We have never argued that the treatment of Baha Musa was acceptable or
that his death should not have been investigated.
"Credible allegations of serious wrong-doing have to be, and are,
investigated. Where evidence is independently assessed as justifying a
prosecution, the application of a robust, fair system of military justice
must follow."
He went on: "Since 2003 we have reviewed our practices in relation to
detention, and where necessary made changes. This is a complex judgment,
some 60 pages long, and needs careful consideration. However if further
lessons or action needs to be taken on board as a result of this
judgement we will do so."
She accused the Government of trying to pretend that the killing was
the result of rogue behaviour by a few bad apples rather than the result
of systemic failures in planning the aftermath of the war, and of a
secret change in policy to permit soldiers to use torture techniques.
"Individual soldiers and individual officers cannot be scapegoated and
left to carry the can for the failings of our Government," she said.
Colonel Daoud Musa, father of Baha, was said to be very pleased by this
morning’s judgment. On the phone from Basra he told his lawyer, Martyn
Day: "It means that I have not lost hope of getting justice for my son.
"I hope that as a result of this judgment the truth will come out and
that no other family should have to experience what me and my
grandchildren have gone through."
Expert View

The death of Baha Musa in British military custody was a disgraceful
episode for which only one soldier has so far been punished
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
More
Post a comment
Related Links
Comment: two questions remain over Musa murder
Full judgment: law lords on UK military and human rights
Torture: 10 claims against the Army
Mr Day, said: "From talking to not just Colonel Musa but also with some
of our other clients this morning they all feel this decision is a
major step forward in their fight for justice.
"The legal team have done an excellent job in ensuring that the British
Army will now always be held to account for their actions when people
are brought under their power. There will be no difference whether this
happens in Birmingham or Basra.
"Let us hope there is now a speedy agreement by the Ministry of Defence
that a public enquiry should be held into the terrible events of
September 2003. "
Colonel Jorge Mendonca MBE, the highest-ranking soldier in recent
history to face a court martial, was cleared of negligently failing to
prevent his men from mistreating Musa after a five-month trial at Bulford
army camp in Wiltshire.
Five other officers and soliders were also exonerated, but Corporal
Donald Payne, 36, who became Britain's first convicted war criminal when
he admitted a charge of inhuman treatment of civilians at the tribunal,
was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian
jail.
Today's ruling by the law lords however dismissed an appeal by the
families of five other Iraqi civilians killed by British soldiers on
patrol, on the grounds that they were not in detention and therefore not
protected either by UK domestic law or by the European Convention on Human
Rights.
After the ruling, Amnesty International called on the Government to set
up an expert, civilian-led body to take the place of the military
authorities in carrying out independent inquiries into allegations of human
rights violations at the hands of British armed forces personnel.
But Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence, said in a statement
afterwards that investigations should be carred out by the military. He
welcomed the ruling which he said provided "helpful clarification of
the precise legal framework under which UK forces operated overseas".
"As the Chief of General Staff has already said, Baha Musa died after
being held in UK custody and was subject to an unlawful conditioning
process," said Mr Browne.
"We have never argued that the treatment of Baha Musa was acceptable or
that his death should not have been investigated.
"Credible allegations of serious wrong-doing have to be, and are,
investigated. Where evidence is independently assessed as justifying a
prosecution, the application of a robust, fair system of military justice
must follow."
He went on: "Since 2003 we have reviewed our practices in relation to
detention, and where necessary made changes. This is a complex judgment,
some 60 pages long, and needs careful consideration. However if further
lessons or action needs to be taken on board as a result of this
judgement we will do so."
She accused the Government of trying to pretend that the killing was
the result of rogue behaviour by a few bad apples rather than the result
of systemic failures in planning the aftermath of the war, and of a
secret change in policy to permit soldiers to use torture techniques.
"Individual soldiers and individual officers cannot be scapegoated and
left to carry the can for the failings of our Government," she said.
Colonel Daoud Musa, father of Baha, was said to be very pleased by this
morning’s judgment. On the phone from Basra he told his lawyer, Martyn
Day: "It means that I have not lost hope of getting justice for my son.
"I hope that as a result of this judgment the truth will come out and
that no other family should have to experience what me and my
grandchildren have gone through."
Expert View

The death of Baha Musa in British military custody was a disgraceful
episode for which only one soldier has so far been punished
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
More
Post a comment
Related Links
Comment: two questions remain over Musa murder
Full judgment: law lords on UK military and human rights
Torture: 10 claims against the Army
Mr Day, said: "From talking to not just Colonel Musa but also with some
of our other clients this morning they all feel this decision is a
major step forward in their fight for justice.
"The legal team have done an excellent job in ensuring that the British
Army will now always be held to account for their actions when people
are brought under their power. There will be no difference whether this
happens in Birmingham or Basra.
"Let us hope there is now a speedy agreement by the Ministry of Defence
that a public enquiry should be held into the terrible events of
September 2003. "
Colonel Jorge Mendonca MBE, the highest-ranking soldier in recent
history to face a court martial, was cleared of negligently failing to
prevent his men from mistreating Musa after a five-month trial at Bulford
army camp in Wiltshire.
Five other officers and soliders were also exonerated, but Corporal
Donald Payne, 36, who became Britain's first convicted war criminal when
he admitted a charge of inhuman treatment of civilians at the tribunal,
was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian
jail.
Today's ruling by the law lords however dismissed an appeal by the
families of five other Iraqi civilians killed by British soldiers on
patrol, on the grounds that they were not in detention and therefore not
protected either by UK domestic law or by the European Convention on Human
Rights.
After the ruling, Amnesty International called on the Government to set
up an expert, civilian-led body to take the place of the military
authorities in carrying out independent inquiries into allegations of human
rights violations at the hands of British armed forces personnel.
But Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence, said in a statement
afterwards that investigations should be carred out by the military. He
welcomed the ruling which he said provided "helpful clarification of
the precise legal framework under which UK forces operated overseas".
"As the Chief of General Staff has already said, Baha Musa died after
being held in UK custody and was subject to an unlawful conditioning
process," said Mr Browne.
"We have never argued that the treatment of Baha Musa was acceptable or
that his death should not have been investigated.
"Credible allegations of serious wrong-doing have to be, and are,
investigated. Where evidence is independently assessed as justifying a
prosecution, the application of a robust, fair system of military justice
must follow."
He went on: "Since 2003 we have reviewed our practices in relation to
detention, and where necessary made changes. This is a complex judgment,
some 60 pages long, and needs careful consideration. However if further
lessons or action needs to be taken on board as a result of this
judgement we will do so."