Seumas Milne's Blog, page 10
April 23, 2014
This war on 'Islamism' only fuels hatred and violence | Seumas Milne
The neocons are back. That toxic blend of messianic warmongering abroad and McCarthyite witch-hunting at home which gave us Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and the London bombings is coursing through our public life again. Yesterday the liberal interventionists' hero, Tony Blair, was once more demanding military action against the "threat of radical Islam".
Reprising the theme that guided him and George Bush through the deceit and carnage of the "war on terror", the former prime minister took his crusade against "Islamism" on to a new plane. The west should, he demanded, make common cause with Russia and China to support those with a "modern" view against the tide of political Islam.
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April 16, 2014
Ed Miliband will fail if he gives in to the sirens of austerity | Seumas Milne
The Tory press are crowing that George Osborne is as good as home and dry. Now that wages have outstripped inflation for the first time in four years, the Sun claims Ed Miliband has "got nothing left to say". In fact, real wages are still falling, if you take out bonuses or include housing costs, following the longest drop in living standards since the 1870s.
Add to that the growing army of self-employed and part-time workers who want to work full-time for someone else, a zero-hours labour market slashing pay and security, and benefit cuts and sanctions that have driven over a million people to Britain's foodbanks and the idea that the chancellor is delivering the warm glow of recovery for the majority is just bizarre.
Continue reading...April 9, 2014
Venezuela shows that protest can be a defence of privilege | Seumas Milne
If we didn't know it before, the upsurge in global protest in the past couple of years has driven home the lesson that mass demonstrations can have entirely different social and political meanings. Just because they wear bandannas and build barricades and have genuine grievances doesn't automatically mean protesters are fighting for democracy or social justice.
From Ukraine to Thailand and Egypt to Venezuela, large-scale protests have aimed at, or succeeded in, ousting elected governments in the past year. In some countries, mass protests have been led by working class organisations, targeting austerity and corporate power. In others, predominantly middle class unrest has been the lever to restore ousted elites.
Continue reading...April 8, 2014
'Que queremos? Paz y amor,' dice Maduro el 'hippy'
Podría parecer una declaración sorprendente por parte del presidente de Venezuela después de semanas de violentas protestas en el país. Pero el corpulento y bigotudo antiguo conductor de autobuses se describe así mismo como "un poco hippy" y fan de las campañas de John Lennon por la paz y el amor.
Continue reading...Protesters: If police shoot rubber bullets we can't throw roses back
President Nicolás Maduro talks exclusively to the Guardian
On the streets of the well-heeled Chacao district of Caracas, student protesters are still in action at 10.30 at night. Barricades of burning rubbish block the roads, as small groups of masked demonstrators trade missiles with the local police.
As we arrive, the police tell us to go and watch on TV what has clearly become a routine, while the demonstrators hand out surgical face masks and cream as a protection against teargas. Soon, molotov cocktails explode near the police lines and teargas spreads in our direction, the canisters collected by protesters as mementos.
Continue reading...Whole lotta love: Maduro 'the hippy' reared on Led Zeppelin and Lennon
It might seem an unlikely claim for Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, to make after weeks of violent unrest in the country but the burly, moustachioed, former bus driver describes himself as a bit of a hippy and a fan of John Lennon's campaigns for peace and love.
Continue reading...Las protestas en Venezuela son una señal de que los Estados Unidos quieren nuestro petróleo, declara Nicolás Maduro
El presidente de Venezuela ha acusado a los Estados Unidos de usar una sucesión de protestas callejeras para orquestar un golpe "a cámara lenta" al estilo de Ucrania contra su gobierno y "ponerle la mano al petróleo venezolano".
Continue reading...Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro: 'We are all a little bit hippy, a little bohemian' video interview
Venezuela protests are sign that US wants our oil, says Nicolás Maduro
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Protesters: 'If police shoot, we can't throw roses back'
Whole lotta love: Maduro 'the hippy' reared on Led Zeppelin
Venezuela's president has accused the US of using continuing street protests to attempt a "slow-motion" Ukraine-style coup against his government and "get their hands on Venezuelan oil".
Continue reading...March 26, 2014
70 years of foreign troops? We should close the bases
It's almost never discussed in the political mainstream. But thousands of foreign troops have now been stationed in Britain for more than 70 years. There's been nothing like it since the Norman invasion. With the 15-month Dutch occupation of London in 1688-9 a distant competitor, there has been no precedent since 1066 for the presence of American forces in a string of military bases for the better part of a century.
They arrived in 1942 to fight Nazi Germany. But they didn't head home in 1945; instead, they stayed on for the 40-odd years of the cold war, supposedly to repel invasion from the Soviet Union. Nor did they leave when the cold war ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, but were invited to remain as the pivot of the anti-Soviet Nato alliance.
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