The United States of America: The Real International Terrorists

On the 9th of December, the US Senate released a report into the interrogation techniques practiced by the CIA in the aftermath of 9/11 and through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Particular attention in the $40 million investigation was lavished on the secretive COBALT detention centre. The 'techniques' employed here range from unnecessary rectal feeding of detainees, leading to one sustaining 'anal fissures', to being forced to sit naked in cold concrete cells, with at least one confirmed death from hypothermia.

I will spare you any further details of the physical and mental torture that detainees of the COBALT prison - and others - were put through.  It makes for grim reading. Bear in mind, of course, that these people were suspects. Not one had been convicted of any crime, and many (the CIA puts a 'conservative estimate' at 22%) weren't even supposed to have been there according to the CIA's own guidelines. Yes - the guidelines of an organisation which sees waterboarding, enforced sleep deprivation and threats to kill detainees' wives and children as legitimate interrogation tactics. When even this lot think imprisoning someone is a step too far, but it happens anyway, we need to be very, very worried.

Discussion about the futility and the dangers of Bush and Blair's 'War on Terror' abounds - I've written on the subject myself. But these new revelations go beyond anything else we've seen. This report is set against the backdrop of the continued Western military presence in Middle Eastern and North African countries, the leviathan surveillance state and the still-extant Guantanamo Bay detention centre. We must open our eyes to the true lengths that the US and UK governments are willing to go to in their zealous crusade against the 'terror' they themselves created.

And yes, I say US and UK governments. The Senate report also shows quite clearly that - along with a number of other supposedly 'liberal' democracies - the UK has been fully co-operating with and assisting in the mass torture and systematic human rights abuses perpetrated by the CIA. Other culprits include Germany, Italy, Poland, Australia, Denmark... the list goes on. The CIA have now come clean - when will MI6 follow? 

Returning to the Americans, the CIA misled US government officials, lied to the White House and fed misinformation to the press. To date, not one CIA employee has been prosecuted or even reprimanded so far as we can tell.

The brutal irony of the situation is this: if another country were perpetrating human rights abuses on this scale, the USA would probably use them as grounds to justify an invasion.

The thing is, they'd have a better case against themselves than they ever did against Iraq.

The Failure of George Osborne's 'Economic Plan'

  The Tories say the economy is recovering, and they point to GDP growth statistics of 1.7% last year and a forecast of 2.7% for 2014. Labour, however, say that this doesn't matter, because the cost of living is still high and on the up. At first glance, this might seem absurd - how can a growing economy not lead to increased living standards? The reason is actually quite simple.

   By making significant real-terms public spending cuts, Osborne has stifled inflow of money from the Treasury into the wider economy. Keynesian economic theory holds that governments should use public spending to stimulate demand in times of recession, but Thatcher threw Keynes out of the window back in 1979 and Osborne has ramped up the neoliberal experimentation to the point where even Maggie would be disgusted.

  Lack of economic stimulus. has contributed heavily to wage repression - as this graph shows, wages have increased at below the rate of inflation in every quarter since the coalition came to power bar one. It is interesting to note that the brief pre-election recovery in real wages came only after two years of fiscal stimulus packages by the Brown ministry. His chosen method of stimulus, relying heavily on quantitative easing and the bank bailouts, was far from optimal - it injected money into the finance industry but neglected other sectors - but it did actually start to show some results by early 2010. Naturally, the Tories took swift steps to shut that nonsense down immediately upon assuming power.

  With average wages so far below inflation, it is easy to see why most people just aren't feeling the so-called 'recovery'. Abstract GDP growth figures, however promising on paper, just don't mean anything to ordinary people if the money in their pocket isn't there. But if the economy is growing, and yet it isn't making its way down to us, then where the hell is it?!

  That's an easy one too. It's in the pockets of CEOs and bankers, of company shareholders and major landowners. The combined wealth of the richest 1,000 UK households jumped 15% in 2013 and now stands at almost £520 billion, with the result that the UK now has more billionaires per head than any other country. The baseline for entry into this super-elite group is now £85 million - £5 million more than before the recession. So, while the UK as a whole has only just surpassed 2008 levels and the average person is still some considerable distance from that, the richest members of our society are actually much better off than they were six years ago. 

  Some people, then, have done very well out of the global economic crash and the suffering of millions. The rest of us, meanwhile, are a little more strapped for cash - and it doesn't look like it's getting any better anytime soon. With the Tories plotting a law which will make eliminating the budget deficit by 2018 a legal requirement, more cuts are on their way, which will lead to further wage depression and thus falling demand in the economy. The current trend towards underemployment, with more and more people disappearing from unemployment stats into false self-employment or abusive zero-hours contracts, will continue and the queues outside food banks and job centres will only grow. 

  Of course, that will push up the welfare bill, sending Daily Mail readers frothing at the mouth and baying for blood. Then the government will be 'forced' to slash social security further, driving more and more people - particularly young people - onto the scrapheap. Welcome to the age of austerity politics. It hasn't worked so far, but the elitist, neoliberal mainstream parties aren't about to let a silly little thing like that stop them! They have the lower orders to crush.