Yesterday’s I also carried another interesting piece on page 9 by Adam Forrest, which reported claims that Chuka Umunna split off from Labour for no better reason than frustrated personal ambition. The piece ran

The shadow International Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, has claimed that Chuka Umunna only helped to form The Independent Group because “he knew he could never be the leader of the Labour Party”.

Mr Gardiner accused Mr Umunna of being motivated by frustrated personal ambitions. “It was fairly clear to me that the reason he wanted to leave the Labour Party was he knew hye could never by the leader of the Labour Party,” he told Sky News.

Mr Gardiner also cast doubt on anti-Semitic abuse as a primary motivation for leaving the party. Several of the nine Labour MPs who quit last week cited the party’s failure to tackle the abuse as a reason for leaving.

Mr Gardiner said he was “deeply saddened” that one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, felt she had to leave over the harassment she suffered in her Liverpool Wavertree constituency.

“I have no time for the others at all, because actually their reasons are varied by different,” he said. “What I’m clear about is that I don’t believe that [anti-Semitism] is the sole focus of why they’ve left the Labour party.”

No, I don’t believe that they left solely because of anti-Semitism either. It’s more likely because, like Umunna, all of them are Blairite mediocrities. Umunna was asked by Sky News to name a Labour policy he disagreed with. He couldn’t. Or, as has been remarked, he daren’t because they’re all popular. As for Leslie, as I’ve said, in his interview with New Scientist he was against a 50 per cent tax rate, renationalisation of the utilities, and ending tuition fees. Angela Smith’s also for keeping the water industry private. And all of them don’t want to hold an inquiry into the Iraq invasion. And they were all, or nearly all, the subject of ‘no confidence’ votes or threatened with deselection. They were jumping before they were pushed. Six of the original eight were also members of Labour Friends of Israel. And by anti-Semitism, they almost certainly anti-Zionism, or simply criticism of Israel. They’re thus standard Blairite neoliberals and warmongers.

And I don’t doubt, that as Blairites, they’re getting money from Israel. Joan Ryan was caught by the undercover journo for al-Jazeera’s documentary, The Lobby, saying that she met Shai Masot, the disgraced official at the Israeli embassy, most days for discussions. And Blair himself was financed by the Israelis and the Israel lobby through Lord Levy, whom he met at a gathering at the Israeli embassy.

These are almost certainly the real reasons they left: an attempt to preserve Thatcherite capitalism, western, corporate driven imperialism, and the preservation of Israel from justifiable criticism. Everything else is simply lies and propaganda.

After the departure of the nine Labour splitters, Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labour party, is up to his old tricks again trying to undermine Corbyn. Watson to my mind looks like the American comedian Greg Proops, but without any of Proops’ wit, personality or charisma. He’s a Blairite, who is now trying to use the splitters’ departure to try to get his old chums back onto the front bench, develop a separate back bench power base, and then purge Corbyn’s supporters on the pretext that they’re anti-Semites.

Watson was on the Andrew Marr show to peddle his malign views on Sunday. He claimed that he had received 50 complaints of anti-Semitic abuse from MPs, and that he had passed them on to Corbyn. Now today I read in the Metro that he was demanding to be allowed to deal with allegations of anti-Semitism as well as the party secretary, Jenny Formby, because Formby allegedly wasn’t dealing with them quickly enough.

Yesterdays I, for Monday, 25th February 2019, quoted Watson as saying

‘I think he [Corbyn] needs to take a personal lead on examining those cases and, if necessary, recommend to our [ruling body]NEC what has to be done.

‘The test for him as a leader is to eradicate anti-Semitism. It is not Labour party members, who will be the judge of that, it is the British Jewish community.’

He also demanded a reshuffle of the front bench to represent a greater range of views, saying

‘If there isn’t one, I think I’d need to give a platform for my colleagues who want their ideas to be listened to by the current Shadow Cabinet’.

The I’s report about his intention to set up a back-bench group of MPs, ‘Splintering: Deputy leader to set up backbench group’, runs as follows

A new grouping of Labour MPs who are disillusioned with the party’s direction under Jeremy Corbyn is being set up by his deputy Tom Watson.

Its launch, which is expected within a fortnight, is aimed at preventing the trickle of defections of MPs to The Independent Group from becoming a flood.

But the faction will also inevitably be seen as a rival power based to Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. I understands that organisers hope to attract more than 100 backbenchers into the group, which will appoint spokespeople and work on policy initiatives.

Meetings will be held within days to gauge the level of support for the group.

‘We need to assert ourselves more than we have done in the last two years,’ said one MP.

Mr Watson said he wanted to ‘give a platform’ to Labour MPs who felt excluded by the leadership.

‘My central point is that the social democratic voice has to be heard, because that is the only way you keep the Labour party unified and prohibit other colleagues from potentially leaving the PLP_ [Parliamentary Labour Party]. The situation is serious,’ he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.

Of course, Watson denies he is rebelling. The previous article in the I quoted him as saying that he was ‘standing up for pluralism in the party’.

This is just lies and doubletalk. Watson and the 100 MPs he wants to recruit are obviously Blairites, indignant at being forced out of power. They’ve been intriguing against the Labour leader ever since he came to power. They’ve threatened to leave several times before, just as they’ve tried to oust him as leader. But Corbyn is genuinely popular with the Labour grassroots activists, and his policies are immensely popular with the public. Which puts Watson and his fellow plotters in an awkward position: no-one wants their shoddy, mouldy neoliberal economics any longer. People are sick and tired of Labour trying to copy to the Tories as Blair and his coterie did. And the Blairites themselves were a small minority within the party. They dominated it because they seized control of party bureaucracy, just as Stalin and his supporters were able to seize control of the Communist apparat in the former Soviet Union. These backbench MPs may claim to be defending a plurality of views, but they only views they’re interested in defending and promoting are their own. Not Corbyn’s, and not anyone else’s in the party.

As for claiming to be Social Democrats, this is a sick joke. The Social Democratic tendency in the Labour party was the creation of Anthony Crosland. Crosland didn’t want further nationalisation, because he felt it was unnecessary. Its benefits, he felt, could be obtained instead through progressive taxation, strong trade unions and social mobility. Well, thanks to Thatcherism, social mobility stopped under Blair. In fact, I think under the Tories it’s even been reversed, so that for the first time since the late 19th century Marx’s statement that the middle class are being forced down into the working class is true, at least as far as middle class poverty goes. Similarly, Blair, as a Thatcherite, hated the trade unions and passed legislation aimed at destroying their power. With their acquiescence, it should be said. As for progressive taxation, they’re against that as well. Aaron Bastani quoted an interview in last week’s New Scientist with Chris Leslie in his article on the corrupt, compromised policies of the Independent Group. Leslie had said that he was not in favour of a 50 per cent tax rate. This was the tax rate set by Gordon Brown. And I don’t doubt Leslie was alone. My guess is that a number of the Blairites, who still remain in the Labour party, have the same noxious views.

Watson and the other Blarites aren’t Social Democrats: they’re Red Tories, Thatcherites. Any other description of them is a lie.

As for the anti-Semitism allegations, my guess is that it’s just more smears of people supporting Corbyn and standing up for the Palestinians. And when Watson says that Labour will be judged by the Jewish community, he’s not talking about the Jewish community as a whole. He’s talking about the Tory, Zionist Jewish establishment. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is monstrously right-wing and which is an explicitly Zionist organisation. An organisation which is morally corrupt and deeply compromised. How else can you describe an organisation which issued nauseating, spurious justifications for the IDF shooting unarmed Gazans last year? Which excludes Orthodox and secular Jews? And which howled with rage when Corbyn spent a Pesach (Passover) seder with the socialists of Jewdas, and claimed this was an insult to the Jewish community?

And the same is to be said about the Chief Rabbinate. The former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, caused shock and outrage when he called Reform Jews ‘enemies of the faith’, like a medieval inquisitor about to launch an auto-da-fe against heretics and Jews. He also considered homosexuality to be a terrible sin and warned his congregation not to join a gay rights march, until he later changed his mind, that is. And he led a contingent of Jewish British thugs to Israel to join the March of the Flags. That’s the day when Israeli ultra-nationalists march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem vandalising their homes and businesses and threatening and intimidating them. I see no difference between it, and Tommy Robinson and his odious crew marching into British Muslim communities, or Mosley and the British Union of Fascists goose-stepping into the Jewish community in the East End in the 1930s. And when the Jewish community held their rallies last summer against Corbyn, organised by the Board and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, those attending including members and supporters of the Fascist organisations Kach, the Jewish Defence League, and the English Defence League Jewish Division.

Similarly, Watson’s declaration that he wants to assist in dealing with cases of anti-Semitism cases means that he’s unhappy with Formby’s handling of it for other reasons. He wants more Cobynites thrown out through the same spurious reasons that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism and that describing Israeli plotting to determine who should be in the cabinet as a ‘conspiracy’ is the same as reviving the smears on Jews as a whole of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Oh yes, and that showing a photoshopped image of a Jobcentre with the slogan ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ on it is another terrible anti-Semitic smear, rather than a justifiable description of the murderous policies of the DWP.

And his demand to decide these cases personally is the precise same tactic Stalin used when he gained power. Before Stalin became leader of the Soviet Communist party, the post of General Secretary was a relatively unimportant position. His comrades thought he was thick, and so gave him the job thinking that he would satisfied purging it of all the drunks and seducers. But as well as getting rid of them, he was also using it to purge his enemies’ supporters and fill it with his own. He’s supposed to have said of the power of elections, ‘It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes’.

Watson is a typical Blairite. He follows Blair and the others as a destructive neoliberal, who wants absolute obedience to a highly centralised, dictatorial party elite. It is not Corbyn and his supporters who should be thrown out, but him and his.

In parliament, Alan Duncan for the government has just rejected yesterday’s stunning result at the International Court of Justice, where British occupation of the Chagos Islands was found unlawful by a majority of 13 to 1, with all the judges from EU countries amongst those finding against the UK.

This represents a serious escalation in the UK’s rejection of multilateralism and international law and a move towards joining the US model of exceptionalism, standing outside the rule of international law. As such, it is arguably the most significant foreign policy development for generations. In the Iraq war, while Britain launched war without UN Security Council authority, it did so on a tenuous argument that it had Security Council authority from earlier resolutions. The UK was therefore not outright rejecting the international system. On Chagos it is now simply denying the authority of the International Court of Justice; this is utterly unprecedented.

Duncan put forward two arguments. Firstly that the ICJ opinion was “only” advisory to the General Assembly. Secondly, he argued that the ICJ had no jurisdiction as the case was a bilateral dispute with Mauritius (and thus could only go before the ICJ with UK consent, which is not given).

But here Duncan is – against all British precedent and past policy – defying a ruling of the ICJ. The British government argued strenuously in the present case against ICJ jurisdiction, on just the grounds Duncan cited. The ICJ considered the UK’s arguments, together with arguments from 32 other states and from the African Union. The ICJ ruled that it did have jurisdiction, because this was not a bilateral dispute but part of the UN ordained process of decolonisation.

The International Court of Justice’s ruling on this point is given at length in paras 83 to 91 of its Opinion. This is perhaps the key section:

88. The Court therefore concludes that the opinion has been requested on the matter of decolonization which is of particular concern to the United Nations. The issues raised by the request are located in the broader frame of reference of decolonization, including the General Assembly’s role therein, from which those issues are inseparable (Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1975, p. 26, para. 38; Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004 (I), p. 159, para. 50).
89. Moreover, the Court observes that there may be differences of views on legal questions in advisory proceedings (Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 24, para. 34). However, the fact that the Court may have to pronounce on legal issues on which divergent views have been expressed by Mauritius and the United Kingdom does not mean that, by replying to the request, the Court is dealing with a bilateral dispute.
90. In these circumstances, the Court does not consider that to give the opinion requested would have the effect of circumventing the principle of consent by a State to the judicial settlement of its dispute with another State. The Court therefore cannot, in the exercise of its discretion, decline to give the opinion on that ground.
91. In light of the foregoing, the Court concludes that there are no compelling reasons for it to decline to give the opinion requested by the General Assembly.

As stated at para 183, that the court did have jurisdiction was agreed unanimously, with even the US judge (the sole dissenter on the main question) in accord. For the British government to reject the ICJ’s unanimous ruling on jurisdiction, and quote that in parliament as the reason for not following the ICJ Opinion, is an astonishing abrogation of international law by the UK. It really is unprecedented. The repudiation of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention over Julian Assange pointed the direction the UK is drifting, but that body does not have the prestige of the International Court of Justice.

The International Court of Justice represents the absolute pinnacle of, and embodies the principle of, international law. In 176 decisions, such as Nigeria vs Cameroon or Malaysia vs Indonesia, potentially disastrous conflicts have been averted by the states’ agreement to abide by the rule of law. The UK’s current attack on the ICJ is a truly disastrous new development.

I have taken it for granted that you know that the reason the UK refuses to decolonise the Chagos Islands is to provide an airbase for the US military on Diego Garcia. If Brexit goes ahead, the Chagos Islands will also lead to a major foreign policy disagreement between the UK and US on one side, and the EU on the other. The EU will be truly shocked by British repudiation of the ICJ.

I have studied the entire and lengthy ICJ Opinion on the Chagos Islands, together with its associated papers, and I will write further on this shortly.

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The post UK Rejects International Court of Justice Opinion on the Chagos Islands appeared first on Craig Murray.

“Começamos a revolução política na campanha de 2016, e agora é hora de levar essa revolução adiante”, declarou Bernie Sanders na última semana, ao anunciar sua candidatura a presidente dos Estados Unidos. Vinte e quatro horas depois, ele já havia arrecadado impressionantes 6 milhões de dólares de mais de 200 mil colaboradores. E, segundo as últimas pesquisas, ele é o mais popular dos candidatos declarados.

Sanders saiu de azarão rebelde em 2016 para aparente favorito em 2020.

Sua idade, porém, ainda é uma questão relevante, e seria loucura fingir que não é o caso. “Desde 1828″, noticiou o site Axios na quarta-feira, “apenas 3 presidentes do Partido Democrata tinham mais de 60 anos ao tomar posse – e nenhum chegou perto de Sanders, que terá 79 se for eleito em 2020.”

Se ganhar a próxima eleição, o senador independente pelo estado de Vermont, que é cinco anos mais velho que Donald Trump, será o presidente mais velho da história dos Estados Unidos, seis anos mais velho que Ronald Reagan quando foi reeleito, em 1984. Já no que se refere às primárias dos Democratas, caso o ex-vice-presidente Joe Biden, de 77 anos, decida não concorrer, Sanders será o único candidato acima de 70 anos de idade, quando chegar a primeira rodada de debates presidenciais do partido, no meio do ano.

Então, como ele pode neutralizar essa questão?

Existe uma saída possível, embora pouco convencional: Sanders deveria prometer que só cumprirá um mandato na Casa Branca. Quatro anos, no máximo. Só as eleições de 2020, e acabou!

Um compromisso de mandato único não é uma ideia tão maluca assim. Como observou em 2015 Philip Bump, do Washington Post:

Três presidentes americanos assumiram – e mantiveram – compromissos de cumprir apenas um mandato, no máximo. Rutherford B. Hayes e James K. Polk assumiram compromissos de mandato único e cumpriram apenas um mandato cada um. William Henry Harrison, o segundo presidente mais velho dos EUA, de 68 anos de idade, também se comprometeu a assumir apenas um mandato, em consonância com seu partido, o Partido Whig, que se dissolveu em 1856. Seu compromisso, porém, acabou não importando: ele mal chegou a cumprir um mês de mandato antes de morrer.

Em tempos mais recentes, figuras de alto escalão (e idade mais avançada) em ambos os partidos consideraram seriamente essa ideia. John McCain, aos 70 anos, esteve “a poucos centímetros” de assumir um compromisso de mandato único quando anunciou que disputaria a indicação à presidência pelo Partido Republicano. Biden, então com 73, considerou a possibilidade em 2015, e pode fazê-lo novamente desta vez.

Pensem nisso: existem muitas vantagens claras na renúncia, por um candidato mais velho, a qualquer pretensão de assumir um segundo mandato presidencial. Para começar, embora Sanders e seus apoiadores possam conseguir defender a ideia de um presidente septuagenário, provavelmente terão dificuldade de convencer os eleitores de que ele ainda seria eficiente perto dos 90 (e ele teria 87 no final do segundo mandato).

Mas existem benefícios que vão além da idade de Sanders. Assumir esse compromisso seria uma jogada ousada e dramática, que poderia chacoalhar as primárias dos Democratas. Gostemos ou não, repórteres e comentaristas obcecados por disputas cabeça a cabeça adoram jogadas ousadas e dramáticas. Quanto menos convencionais, melhor. Sanders imediatamente se destacaria em meio a um campo Democrata superlotado, onde muitos adotaram suas ideias em praticamente tudo, da assistência de saúde ao ensino superior. Isso daria a impressão de que o senador por Vermont está interessado apenas nas questões de fato, em oposição às óbvias pretensões de alguns dos seus adversários mais jovens.

A bem da verdade, um dos grandes trunfos de Sanders sempre foi ser um independente correndo por fora. Um compromisso de mandato único reforçaria essa imagem iconoclasta e fomentaria seu encanto anti-establishment perante os milhões de americanos que desprezam a classe política de Washington.

Sua fundamentação para isso poderia ser simples e popular: como presidente, ele estaria livre das pressões exercidas pelas distrações ligadas à reeleição, o que lhe permitiria dedicar os quatro anos inteiramente a duas ou três questões principais: Medicare para Todos, o New Deal Ambientalista, e, talvez, universidade gratuita para todos, também.

Um compromisso de mandato único reforçaria essa imagem iconoclasta e fomentaria seu encanto anti-establishment.

Existe, é claro, o risco de que um presidente de mandado único possa ser considerado um “pato manco”, como um presidente em fim de mandato, e já sem poder efetivo. Talvez. Por outro lado, Sanders assumiria um mandato específico e urgente para fazer as coisas acontecerem. O compromisso dificultaria que os Republicanos no Senado bloqueassem sua pauta, uma vez que ele teria sido eleito para um mandato de apenas quatro anos, e não precisaria enfrentar, como eles, as pressões da reeleição. Em termos de legado, isso lhe permitiria escapar da maldição de segundo mandato que atingiu tantos presidentes anteriores.

Por fim, ao declarar que só cumpriria um mandato de quatro anos no cargo, Sanders poderia dar muito mais importância para a pessoa que escolher para concorrer ao seu lado. Surgiria aí a oportunidade de abordar uma das objeções à sua candidatura, a questão da “política identitária”, ou o que alguns chamam de “problema do velho cara branco“.

Esse é o conjunto mais diverso da história americana de pré-candidatos à presidência no Partido Democrata. Muitas pessoas da base do partido não desejam uma chapa presidencial inteiramente branca ou inteiramente masculina (e estão certas!), inclusive algumas fãs ardorosas do senador de Vermont e de seus posicionamentos políticos.

Então por que não indicar Stacey Abrams, a candidata Democrata a governadora do estado da Georgia em 2018 – e praticamente garantir a ela a candidatura presidencial pelo partido quando 2024 chegar? Ela é uma mulher (ponto para ela), negra (outro ponto), progressista (ponto), e une as diversas alas do Partido Democrata melhor do que qualquer outro político do país.

Ou quem sabe a senadora Kamala Harris? Será que a dupla Sanders-Harris 2020 pode ser a chapa de consenso que os Democratas vêm buscando? O judeu democrata socialista e a ex-promotora mestiça [a mãe de Kamala nasceu na Índia, e o pai, na Jamaica]? Tenho minhas ressalvas quanto ao seu controverso histórico “linha dura” como promotora e procuradora-geral na Califórnia, mas a verdade é que Harris é a Democrata com o histórico de votação mais progressista do Senado.

Que motivo uma pessoa com ambições políticas teria para se recusar a concorrer como vice em uma chapa presidencial cujo titular já anunciou que sairá de cena em quatro anos? (Pressupondo-se, é claro, que Sanders vença as primárias Democratas.)

Resumindo: caso Sanders assumisse um compromisso de mandato único, poderia encerrar o debate sobre sua idade, roubar atenção midiática de seus adversários, promover uma mulher progressista e não branca no processo, facilitar sua ascensão ao poder, e ainda aumentar sua própria efetividade como líder uma vez que esteja sentado diante da mesa do presidente, a folclórica “Resolute Desk”.

O que pode haver de ruim nisso?

Tradução: Deborah Leão

The post Bernie Sanders pode viabilizar sua ‘revolução’ se abrir mão da reeleição appeared first on The Intercept.