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The UN reports:

"serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity."

Will 'liberal interventionists' and neocons be calling for the arrest and prosecution of Israel's leaders for war crimes, as they called for the arrest and prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and other leading Yugoslav figures in the 1990s?

Don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: A propos of the UN report, the website Aaronovitch Watch provides us with a timely reminder of the 'Euston Manifesto', bible of the pro-war faux-left.

We hold the fundamental human rights codified in the Universal Declaration to be precisely universal, and binding on all states and political movements, indeed on everyone. Violations of these rights are equally to be condemned whoever is responsible for them and regardless of cultural context.

They forgot to add 'except if these rights are violated by Israel'.

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So there you have it. A new poll, commissioned by the RMT union, shows that 70% of the British public would like to see the railways renationalised.

"This poll... shows that the Government are miles out of step with the voters when it comes to the crucial issue of who owns and runs our transport services", says RMT leader Bob Crow.

But it's not just the Government, Bob. It's HM Opposition and the Liberal Democrats too, neither of whom support bringing the railways back into public ownership.

Earlier this summer, our friend and regular commenter Olching commented on the depressingly uniform response to the question of renationalisation of the railways on an edition of the BBC’s Question Time.

The fact that none of our leading three parties supports a measure backed by 70% of the people shows what sort of ’democracy’ operates in Britain. A ‘democracy’ where all three of those parties represent the interests of capital and not the interests of ordinary members of the public.

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Earlier this summer I remarked on the unsporting behaviour of Serena Williams after she had won the womens' title at Wimbledon. But if Williams is arrogant in victory, when facing defeat she is totally obnoxious, as she showed in the semi-final of the US Open last night. I can't remember more appalling behaviour on a tennis court, and Williams' post-match attempts to try to gloss over what she had done only showed her in an even worse light.

By contrast, Belgium's Kim Clijsters is one of the nicest, and most sporting tennis players of recent years. It's great to see come back so successfully from retirement-and great to see her beat Williams in the semi-final.

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To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Robert H. Jackson, Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

As we mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two, we should ponder very carefully Robert Jackson's words.

I hate war, but I am not a pacifist. I would defend World War Two, and the military action taken against the Third Reich and its allies for the very same reasons that I opposed the Iraq war and the NATO attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Hitler had to be stopped not because he was a dictator, but because of the way he arrogantly over-rode the sovereignty of other European countries and his contempt for international law. But in 1999 it was the NATO powers who were the illegal aggressors against Yugoslavia, and in 2003 it was the US-led coalition which attacked Iraq.

Attacking and invading other countries is wrong. Period. In international affairs the true heirs of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis are the neocons who share the little man's arrogant disregard for national sovereignty and his utter contempt for international law. And in the same way that the Nazis were brought to book at Nuremburg for committing the 'supreme international crime', of launching a war of aggression, let's hope that one day the neocon warmongers- (who at this very moment are doing all they can to propagandise for yet more aggression- this time against Iran), are also held to account for their crimes.

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Our friend and much-valued regular commenter Jock McTrousers writes:

NEIL - OFF TOPIC BUT IMPORTANT - well, somebody mentioned a disabilities act earlier.

GREEN PAPER THREAT TO DLA

I'd like to draw your attention to this; I suspect you may not know about it, as scarcely anyone else seems to - I only just found out by accident, and I'm one of the people who would be effected (catastrophically) by the removal of DLA. I've suspected it was coming, but it seems to have started, in a typically sneaky New Labour way.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE draw the attention of your readers and all political and labour movement contacts to this. The following is an excerpt from an article on the ' Benefits and Work guides you can trust' website (there is a petition too):


" A government green paper has revealed plans to stop paying disability benefits and hand the cash over to social services instead. The consultation period for the green paper ends on 13 November. If there has been no significant outcry against the plans by then, it seems very likely that whichever party is in power after the next election will seize this opportunity to cut public spending by over a billion pounds a year. Although the actual changes may take years to be brought in, it is what happens between now and November 13th that is likely to seal the fate of disability benefits.

The Shaping the Future of Care Green Paper published by the DWP and the Department of Health on 14th July sets out government plans to get rid of attendance allowance and, depending on public reaction, also leaves the way clear to end the care component of disability living allowance. "

Full article and petition here.

http://tinyurl.com/nxe58r


Disgusting isn’t it? We’re told that public spending needs to be cut. But no talk from either of our two main parties about bringing British armed forces back from the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. Or, in reintroducing proper rates of income tax on the very wealthy. Or of introducing a new Wealth Tax. Instead, let’s find some savings by attacking the most vulnerable in our society.

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While Teddy Kennedy's disasters were vivid, his legislative triumphs, draped in this week's obituaries with respectful homage, were far less colourful. And they were actually devastating for the very constituencies – working people, organised labour –whose champion he claimed to be.

Though the obituarists have glowingly related Kennedy's 46-year stint in the US Senate and, as 'the last liberal', his mastery of the legislative process, they miss the fact that it was out of Kennedy's Senate office that came two momentous bits of legislation that signalled the onset of the neo-liberal era: deregulation of trucking and aviation. They were a disaster for organised labour and the working conditions and pay of people in those industries.

(Kennedy).. helped push through NAFTA, the "free trade" pact that was another body blow to American labour.
....because his mishaps were so dramatic, no one remembers quite how noxious his political triumphs were for those who now mourn him as their lost leader.

You can read the rest of Alexander Cockburn's brilliant piece on the late Teddy Kennedy- and why he was no champion of the working man- here.

UPDATE: Today's Morning Star editorial discusses Kennedy's mixed record on foreign policy issues:

A knee-jerk cold warrior, he initially backed the Vietnam war, supported the 2001 Afghanistan invasion and talked up the threat from Iran in 2002. Of his stance on Israel, we need only quote thuggish far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who called him "a great friend to Israel" who "stood by Israel's side in its most trying times."
But he recanted on Vietnam to become a fierce critic of the war, opposed the Iraq invasion and was honoured by Chile last year as one of the few prominent US politicians who stood firm against Reagan's murderous interventions in Latin America.

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This article of mine, on Britain's rip-off private bus companies, appears in the Morning Star. It's also crossed-posted on the Campaign For Public Ownership website.


They already have to try to make ends meet on the lowest state pension in the whole of the European Union. They have to live with the fear of having to sell their home if forced to go into care.

Now Britain's long-suffering pensioners face the prospect of a new humiliation - having their free bus travel means-tested.

A recent consultants' report commissioned by the Local Government Association criticised the current scheme for being "targeted too widely" and while both local authorities and the government insisted that they had no plans to introduce means testing in the near future, the economic climate means that free bus travel is likely to be under increasing pressure, especially - if as predicted - the Tories return to power next spring.

But there is one way that local authorities could save money on the scheme and free bus travel for Britain's elderly can be maintained. It's called public ownership.

The reason why the current scheme costs so much money - it cost local authorities £1 billion last year - is that bus travel in Britain is operated not by the local authorities themselves or by a state-owned national bus company but by profiteering private firms.

These companies will use every trick in the book to extract as much money as possible from the public purse.

A report in the Daily Mail quoted the words of one local authority official, who said of the private bus companies: "They are creaming us."
The Mail's Steve Doughty reported: "Many older people tell stories of using their bus passes for short journeys, but find that drivers log them as tickets to the end of the route."

My own next-door neighbour, who is a pensioner, told me he nearly always gets a ticket to the end of the route, even if he has only asked the driver for a stop less than a mile down the road.

Imagine this scam taking place every day up and down Britain and the huge cost of the scheme is no longer such a surprise.

Overall, Britain's private bus companies received a staggering £2.5 billion from the public purse last year. And the chief executive of one of them, Go Ahead's Keith Ludeman - who received a salary of £910,000 last year - has the nerve to say, in relation to the free bus scheme that "pensioners cannot be given a blank cheque."

It really doesn't have to be like this.

Bringing all bus travel back into public ownership would mean that the free bus scheme for Britain's old folk could be administered much more efficiently and at much less cost to taxpayers.

Having just one provider of bus services in a region would bring huge benefits.

At present, local authorities have to pay different bus companies each time a passenger changes buses. So authorities in towns like Preston, which is the main transport nexus in northern Lancashire, are adversely affected by the scheme.

And, as Morning Star reader Graham Hall pointed out in his letter on Tuesday, if the bus companies were municipally owned, the revenue would come back to the local authorities and not go to the pockets of private shareholders.

We don't have to look too far for an example of how things should be done.

Just across the North Sea in Belgium, public transport remains in public ownership. The advantages of having an integrated, state-owned system are immediately apparent to anyone travelling in the country.

Fares, which are calculated by distance and not by "market pricing" are reasonable, trains and buses run on time and the ticketing system is easy to understand.
And pensioners get a cracking deal too. Seniors over 65 - including visitors - pay only €4 (£3.45) for a return second-class trip anywhere in the country, except on weekends from mid-May to mid-September.

But even outside of this period, fares for the elderly are heavily discounted - costing less than a third of the standard fare.

On buses and trams, all transport is free for over-65s, while those aged from 60 to 65 are able to buy a special yearly pass, costing €182 in Flanders - that's €0.50 a day.

And of top of all this, Belgian pensioners receive a state pension that is around 60 per cent of the country's average earnings - compared to their counterparts in Britain whose pension is only 15 per cent.

If Belgium can run an integrated, publicly owned public transport system - and do the right thing by its old folk - why can't we?


Learning from our European neighbours

It's official. While Britain's "dynamic" and "flexible" privatised economy shrank by 0.8 per cent in the three months to June, the economy of those two European countries Thatcherite ideologues like to regard as "unreformed" dinosaurs - France and Germany - grew by 0.3 per cent.

The reason why France and Germany are officially out of recession while Britain still languishes in it is the sort of economy the countries run.

As The Guardian's Larry Elliot says, France and Germany "are less dependent on financial services, tend to have lower levels of consumer debt and have established long-term relationships between banks and companies which guarantee that credit lines are not pulled at the first sign of trouble."

France and Germany, while flirting with neoliberalism in recent years, have never embraced it as wholeheartedly as Britain's political elite.

The result is that both countries still maintain a manufacturing base and both still have vital services such as transport in public ownership.

Yet incredibly, despite the disastrous consequences "free-market" ideology has had for the British economy, neoliberals in the EU are still trying to impose their dogma on the rest of the continent, by trying to force European countries which haven't adopted Thatcherism to follow the flawed British path.

The fact is that it's Britain which should be learning from the rest of Europe - and not the other way round.

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