Motor Racing And Gallery Motor

Here's the good news.

The company which represents everything that is wrong with globalisation has announced that it is closing 61 of its 84 stores in Australia.

It has also announced its first ever fall in quarterly profits.

Time to pop the champagne corks and light up the Montecristos?

Not quite. Starbuck's ultra-aggressive CEO, Howard Schultz has also announced that despite the growing evidence that the world has had enough of his wretched company, he still intends to open 150 new stores in airports and railway stations in Britain, Germany and France.

The sight of a Starbucks anywhere is depressing enough. But to see one in a French railway station? That would redefine the word 'tragic'. A Starbucks world is a sterile one, an ultra-boring, ultra-standardised globalised dystopia in which every town in every country in the world would look exactly the same.

Let's hope that Mr Schultz's aggressive expansion scheme backfires. And for that to happen all you have to do is what increasing numbers of people now seem to be doing- namely not set foot in one of his stores.

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The Daily Mail reports:

The parent company of British Gas today announced profits of £992m - just one day after customers were hit with a staggering 35 per cent rise in the cost of gas.

The astonishing thing about this news is that some people find it astonishing. Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, is a plc, and as such its first priority is not to the long-suffering British public struggling to make ends meet, but to make as much profit as possible for its shareholders. That's what plcs do.

Our anger should be directed not so much at Centrica, but our bovine political class who privatised our utilities in the first place, and who still reject the one step that would end the profiteering: taking our utilities back into public ownership.

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Here's the third, and concluding part of my American Conservative essay on the longer term implications of the 1968 Paris riots. For those who missed them, Part One can be read here, while here is a link to Part Two.

In 1968 the fault lines became clear: on the one side the sovereigntists—a coalition of conservatives like De Gaulle and traditional leftists—on the other the globalists, socially and economically liberal, bent on destroying the nation state, national culture, national identity, and any links with the past.

Although De Gaulle’s party won a resounding election victory in June 1968, the tragedy is that it’s Cohn-Bendit’s pernicious ideology that dominates today.

Tony Blair may have attacked the excesses of the 1960s social liberalism, under which : “a society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without any sense of responsibility to others," but in many ways the intellectual guru of “New Labour”—and the 21st Century “New Left” in general is Cohn-Bendit.

An obsessive hatred of conservatism- and conservatives- is a hallmark of both New Labour and Cohn-Bendit. “The one striking new paths in politics will always be accused of something: conservative thinking is always taking revenge“ he complained in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica earlier this year.

In a 1999 speech to his party’s conference, Tony Blair ferociously attacked “the forces of conservatism” a group that included everyone from fox hunters, hereditary peers, and the medical profession to left-wing supporters of nationalization and “those who yearn for yesteryear,” who stood in the way of the brave new globalist future.

New Labour severed Old Labour’s strong links with the indigenous and staunchly conservative working class and instead forged a new alliance with the global moneymen. It rejected the old left’s distrust of military adventurism and respect for the sovereignty of nations and instead embraced a militant interventionism, beginning with the illegal “humanitarian” attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, and culminating in the debacle of Iraq. “Old leftist friends of mine from the 1960s are now on Labour’s frontbench and staunchly defend the overthrow of Saddam Hussein,” boasted Christopher Hitchens.

New Labour and its imitators define their progressiveness not in terms of redistribution of wealth—the gap between rich and poor in Britain is now at its greatest for more than forty years—but in their support for gay marriages and other “liberalizing” social reforms. “From the cultural point of view, we won,” declares Cohn-Bendit today, and of course he’s right.

Cohn-Bendit’s militant ideology has infected not only the Left, but the Right too.

John McCain’s advocacy of a more liberal immigration policy and his championing of a “League of Democracies,” with the right to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states the world over, owes more to Red Dany than it does to Russell Kirk.

Forty years ago, Red Dany lost a battle. But the sad truth is that he won the war.

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This article of mine appears in The First Post.

"One of the worst men in the world, the Osama bin Laden of Europe, has been captured". That was the verdict of an ecstatic Richard Holbrooke, former US envoy to the Balkans, on the arrest of Radovan Karadzic (pictured above).

But no one should think that justice is done and dusted with Karadzic's capture.

While the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces was by far the most terrible single atrocity committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, other parties to the conflict were guilty of dreadful crimes too - crimes that have largely gone unpunished.

For the West, it seems that only crimes in which Serbs are the perpetrators are of interest. There was little media coverage of the killing of up to 1,000 Serbs by Bosnian forces led by Naser Oric, which preceded Srebrenica. 'Operation Storm', in which 200,000 Serbs were forcibly driven from their homes in Croatia, has also been airbrushed out of history.

And what of the prima facie evidence that Nato forces were guilty of war crimes – the bombing of a passenger train at Grdelica gorge and the RTS television studios in Belgrade, which together took the lives of 30 civilians in April 1999?

If the treatment of other Serbian defendants at The Hague is anything to go by, his chances of receiving a fair trial look remote. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic descended into farce as a succession of 'smoking gun' prosecution witnesses turned out to be damp squibs. After four years of proceedings, the prosecution palpably failed to land a blow - and it was a mighty relief for his accusers when Milosevic died in custody.

Many have claimed that Karadzic's arrest will lead to closure.

But 'justice' selectively applied to only one party in a conflict is only likely to increase Serbia's sense of victimhood - and prevent long-term reconciliation.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, despite the arrest of Karadzic, the bullying of Serbia continues.

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Former Labour Party leader Michael Foot celebrates his 95th birthday today. Michael is the longest lived leader of a British political party in history- and on top of that he's also the oldest currently registered football player in Britain (playing on the left-wing of course!)

You can read my piece on what might have happened had Michael Foot's Labour Party won the 1983 election here; while here is a link to my Guardian article of twelve months ago, arguing that 'golden oldies' like Michael are pensioned off far too early nowadays.

The case for gerontocracy is, I believe, a strong one, though I'm willing to make an exception as far as this man is concerned!

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This column of mine appears in today's Morning Star.

“The absurdity is that, precisely when the breakdown of the orthodoxy of deregulated markets, the small state and corporate privilege is plain for all to see, the main political parties are clinging to it ever more tightly“,

writes the socialist commentator Seumas Milne.



One example of Britain’s political elite clinging to discredited neo-liberal orthodoxy is the government’s shocking plans to hand over entire NHS hospitals to the private sector.



Another is the imminent privatisation of the Tote, the state-owned bookmaker. The Tote was set up in 1926 by that well-known communist revolutionary Winston Churchill: it shows you have far down the neoliberal road we have travelled when a state-run institution established by a Conservative government and which escaped the attentions even of the serial privatising Mrs Thatcher, is now to be flogged off.



None of the standard arguments wheeled out by the pro-privatisation brigade apply to the Tote. Inherently profitable, in its 82 years of existence, it has never taken a penny from the government in subsidy. Selling the Tote to another rival bookmaker will reduce, and not increase competition. “The selling off of the Tote would be a catastrophe- Armageddon for racing. There is no correlation between the Tote and any bookmaking firm, either in ideology, philosophy or reality” is the verdict of the renowned punter and racehorse owner Harry Findlay.



But while the Tote sale is rotten news for Britain’s millions of punters, its good news for some. Advising the government on the Tote sale are the US investment bank Goldman Sachs. The involvement of Goldman Sachs in the sell-off process has led some to raise the issue of a conflict of interest.



“Goldman Sachs, is acting for the Government. and it is reported that Gala Coral is the front-runner in the auction. It is also Goldman Sachs that acted as the chief advisor to Gala Coral last year during their own bid for the Tote. We all know that Goldman Sachs is the Government's favourite banker but surely it can't be that they are providing advice both to the bidder and to the Government?", asked Labour MP Greg Hands in a parliamentary debate on the future of the Tote in May.



In a recent article for the Sunday Telegraph, Jim O’Neill, Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs, claimed that globalisation was a ‘bonus’ for Britain. While there will be many people who will be sceptical over that claim, there’s one thing about which there can be no doubt : globalisation and its associated process of privatisation has certainly been a ‘bonus’ for Goldman Sachs.



FIGHT THE GREAT EU RAIL SELL-OFF



* The late humorist Auberon Waugh was a great fan of Belgian ticket inspectors. As a regular traveller on Belgium’s ultra-efficient, reliable and eminently affordable state-owned railway, I can understand why.



On my most recent journey on Belgian Railways I got into conversation with a ticket inspector on the subject of railway privatisation. The ticket inspector had visited Britain and been shocked by the sky-high walk-on rail fares, the complicated fare structure and the fragmentation of the network.



The system is a huge contrast from the consumer-friendly Belgian Railways, whose kilometer based pricing system means that fares are the same price regardless of when you book the ticket.



But sadly, it’s the privatised, consumer-unfriendly British model that neoliberal ideologues, backed by global capital, are trying to impose on Belgium and the rest of Europe. The EU’s ‘Third Rail Package’ to take effect from 2010, provides for the ’liberalisation’ of international rail traffic in Europe. And the European Commission will report on the next stage of 'liberalising' domestic rail services by 31 December 2012.



If such ‘liberalisation’ goes ahead it will mean the end of state-owned railways, like the excellent Belgian Railways.



The good news is that the fight back has already begun. In London last month, the European Conference of Rail Trade Unionists called for European wide demonstrations against rail liberalisation, and for Europe’s railway unions to work together to defeat the privatisation agenda. The Campaign for Public Ownership looks forward to working alongside the European Transport Workers Federation, the RMT and all other progressive bodies to prevent the privatisation of railways in Europe. We simply can’t let it happen.



FUELLING THE WAR MACHINE



* Wars, conflict, it’s all business’ sighs Monsieur Verdoux, Charlie Chaplin’s anti-hero in the 1947 film of the same name.



If Monsieur Verdoux were around today, I don’t think he’d be changing his mind.



Nine years ago, Yugoslavia was in the line of fire. Five years ago it was Iraq‘s turn for 'Shock and Awe'. And now it’s Iran turn to receive the threats and ultimatums.



Those three countries each had different political systems. Yugoslavia was a multi-party Socialist-led democracy. Iraq was a Baathist dictatorship. Iran is an Islamic theocracy.



But all three countries had one thing in common: the majority of their economy was in public ownership.



With the Serbian economy sold off en-masse to foreign capital and Iraq’s oil industry about to be privatised- is there anyone who still doubts that it’s the insatiable search for profits which is fuelling the war machine?

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Well, that was my reaction on hearing Gordon Brown's speech to The Knesset this afternoon. Brown talked not of Iran's nuclear energy programme, but its 'nuclear weapons' programme, even though there is no evidence whatsoever that such a programme exists.

Back in 2003, in the lead-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, the propagandists for war talked of Saddam's WMD as a matter of fact- even though, once again, there was no evidence of their existence. The 'Iranian nuclear threat' is simply Iraqi WMDs Mark 2. It beggars belief that those who used bogus claims to take us into a disastrous war five years ago are now trying to do exactly the same thing again.

UPDATE: There's a good piece from Jonathan Steele on Brown's 'nuclear weapons' claim on Comment is Free.

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