How much more of this can we take?

Dodging decisions, coddling the rich, Enda seeks his rightful place in history, writes Gene Kerrigan

Illustration by Tom Halliday

You'd almost feel sorry for Enda Kenny. There he is, securing his place in the history of this great little nation, and right in front of him Fine Gael is interviewing candidates for his job.

He's on the phone to Angela Merkel and in come Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney, measuring the office curtains and arguing about which of them gets to choose the new carpet.

"Don't mind us, Taoiseach, we'll be out of your hair in a minute", and they trying to keep the chuckles out of their voices.

Since the general election in February, we've been living in a political fantasy land, designed by and built in honour of Mr Kenny. We could have a stable government, albeit a reactionary one, but that would be against the long-term interests of the major parties.

In 2011, Fine Gael got the votes of those disgusted by Fianna Fail, their banker friends and their builder buddies.

In 2016, disgusted by the endless austerity, the more desperate of such voters went back to Fianna Fail, most went all over the place.

Some to Sinn Fein, some to the left-wing parties, many to Independents.

The arithmetic of the election results was simple. Only a coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail could provide a stable government. It would be a grim right-wing government, but that's what the arithmetic said, and there was no unbridgeable gap in policy.

The two parties, though, insist on maintaining the old civil war enmities. Besides, Enda Kenny desperately wanted to be Taoiseach again, the first Fine Gael Taoiseach to be re-elected at the head of a Fine Gael-led government.

There was an even more pressing reason to avoid a straightforward coalition. Throughout the history of the State, the division has been between two right-wing parties. Each might embrace populist policies, lurch to the centre occasionally, but mostly it was about who would best manage the same policies.

If FF and FG joined in formal coalition, sitting on the same side of the Dail, the future choice would be between them and an opposition on their left.

Such a coalition would be a stable government, but at the price of having to abandon the old mock fights. It would risk conceding credibility to Sinn Fein and the left-wing parties.

Desperate to avoid this, Kenny cobbled together a makeshift, unstable coalition with Independents to form a minority government. Fianna Fail is a semi-detached part of that coalition, while still dominating the opposition benches.

So, we get an unstable government that might collapse at any time.

And a cabinet that last week bought itself time by ditching the principle of collective responsibility, and to hell with the Constitution.

Enda keeps inventing mechanisms to put off decisions until this collapsible government is in office long enough not to look like a historical joke - at which point he can credibly quit.

FF denounces the government, then votes with it - even when it's voting down something that was a redline issue a few months back.

Daily, the air is filled with anguished cries as John Halligan wrestles with his conscience. (Small tip, John: do one thing, or the other. Don't tell us about your anguish. It's embarrassing.)

I wish I could read journalist Shane Ross making mincemeat of Minister Shane Ross.

Meanwhile, Enda last week appointed James Reilly deputy leader of Fine Gael, because he felt a bit guilty about the way he'd treated him. James says he's delighted, because he gets to travel around the country, talking to Fine Gaelers.

Jesus, lads, deputy leader of Fine Gael - you have no idea the number of backsides most of us would kiss, the number of kittens we'd strangle, to get out of being saddled with such a terrible fate.

Katherine Zappone - well, words fail me.

And Frances Fitzgerald last week referred to Joe Biden as "my counterpart". It seems that as Tanaiste she's vice-president to Enda Obama.

From time to time, there's a crack in the facade and we get a glimpse of the fantasy world in which these people see themselves.

All of this is facilitated by a political press gang that cannot imagine change that goes beyond the political Lego kit made of FF, FG, Labour and Others. In the months during which Enda was putting together his collapsible government, the political media tried to envisage something new, and failed, falling into reveries about the fictional Borgen. Politics as a TV box set.

Outside the Dail, Joe O'Toole was appointed to head the body designed to delay a decision on the water charges scandal. He promptly mouthed off, attacking those against water charges. Simon Coveney, who appointed him, accused O'Toole of being - get this - "overly forthright".

Simon seems to believe that being forthright -meaning, frank, honest, sincere - has no place in Irish politics.

O'Toole noted that his job was "a political exercise" designed to "resolve a problem which has emerged from the democratic process".

Admirably frank, Joe.

Joe explained said that "people voted a certain way", (against water charges). And "Leinster House is not prepared to grasp that particular nettle, so we (his commission) have to find a solution that will have enough sugar on it to make the medicine go down easily".

Sweeten the water charges nettle to get the mugs to swallow it. A lovely image, Joe.

O'Toole's words came from his understanding of the job, as conveyed to him by Simon Coveney. I wonder how Simon explained the job to Joe's replacement, Kevin Duffy?

So, the Government spins in circles until Enda figures he's been Taoiseach long enough to make his record bid legit. All the while hoping that it doesn't collapse, by accident or design.

The net effect of Enda's period in office will be assessed when he goes, but the raw materials for that assessment are coming together.

In the last couple of years, hospital waiting lists have gone up by 26pc. And, according to Journal.ie's FactCheck outfit, in the two years to May inpatient waiting lists have risen by 56pc.

House building fell drastically since the crash of 2008, as might be expected. Since Fine Gael and Labour - and now Fine Gael and Fianna Fail (plus Others) came into office, house building has been in freefall.

And local authority house building has been virtually stamped out of existence.

Homelessness is not an accident. Under Fianna Fail, playing chicken with the economy, it was inevitable. Under Enda, Leo and Simon (and vice-president Fitzgerald) it's been a policy.

Last Tuesday evening in the Dail, Sinn Fein raised measures to tackle zero-hour contracts, which exploit the very hardworking low paid. Fine Gael wanted to immediately shoot down reform.

Fianna Fail supported this, then made a pitch for the trade union vote by postponing the issue (until the cows come home).

As they keep the poor in place, their policies coddle the rich.

Last week, Stephen Donnelly and Richard Boyd Barrett both alerted the Dail to the effects of government support for vulture funds. Donnelly spoke of one outfit that will get a return of €400m on an €80m investment.

Of course, they have to pay tax. Donnelly explained one aspect of that: "Interest income minus the interest costs for the year come to €4,559,904. Astoundingly, the figure for administrative expenses against that is €4,558,904, leaving exactly €1,000 in taxable profit."

So neat, so well done, it makes me feel like cheering. Or screaming.

Original article: Gene Kerrigan Irish Independent, July 10, 2016

From Churchill to Blair: How British Leaders Have Destroyed Iraq for Over a Century

 

After seven years, the Chilcot report has delivered a damning verdict on Tony Blair’s role in the war on Iraq, but British Prime Ministers playing a destructive role in Iraq is a centuries old practice.

Britain has used its military might and commercial prowess to subjugate Iraq and control its oil resources for over one hundred years.

Churchill invented Iraq. The end of World War I left Britain and France in command of the Middle East and the allies carved up the region as the defeated Ottoman Empire fell apart. Winston Churchill convened the 1912 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British Middle Eastern mandate. After giving Jordan to Prince Abdullah, Churchill, gave Prince Abdullah’s brother Faisal an arbitrary patch of desert that became Iraq.

Historian Michael R. Burch recalls how the huge zigzag in Jordan’s eastern border with Saudi Arabia has been called “Winston’s Hiccup” or “Churchill’s Sneeze” because Churchill carelessly drew the expansive boundary after a generous lunch.

Churchill’s imperial foreign policy has caused a century of instability in Iraq by arbitrarily locking together three warring ethnic groups that have been bleeding heavily ever since. In Iraq, Churchill bundled together the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra that was predominantly Shiite, Baghdad that was Sunni, and Mosul that was mainly Kurd.

Britain set up a colonial regime in Iraq. British oppression in Iraq intensified and an uprising in May 1920 united Sunni and Shia against the British. Winston Churchill, the responsible cabinet minister, took almost a decade to brutally quash the uprising leaving 9,000 Iraqis dead.

Churchill ordered punitive village burning expeditions and air attacks to shock and awe the population. The British air force bombed not only military targets but civilian areas as well. British government policy was to kill and wound women and children so as to intimidate the population into submission.

Churchill also authorized the use of chemical weapons on innocent Iraqis.

In 1919 Churchill remarked, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes… It will cause great inconvenience and spread a lively terror”.

Churchill, saw Iraq as an experiment in aerial technological colonial control as a cheaper way to patrol the over-extended empire. Almost one hundred years since Churchill sought the use of aerial technology to cling onto influence over a restive Iraq, Blair’s government began flying deadly drones over Baghdad and Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

To Britain’s imperial Prime Ministers, aviation has always promised to be the trump card, the guaranteed way of keeping native peoples and their resources under control. Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who was to lead the aerial bombardment of Germany 20 years after bombing Iraq, boasted that he had taught Iraqis “that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or wounded”.

The British Royal Air Force maintained its military control over Iraq until World War II, even after Iraqi independence in 1932. Despite formal independence, British political and economic influence in Iraq barely receded.

Britain’s relationship with Iraq has always revolved around the issue of oil. Churchill viewed Iraq as an important gateway to Britain’s Indian colony and oil as the lifeblood for Britain’s Imperial Navy.

Britain established the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) as the vehicle through which Iraqi oil would be exploited. British Petroleum (BP), or the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as it was known back then, was also heavily involved in plundering Iraqi oil.

British oilmen benefited incalculably from Iraq’s puppet regime until the Iraqi masses rose up against British influence. This led to the Iraq revolution of 1958 and the rise and eventual Presidency of Saddam Hussein.

British and US intelligence helped Saddam’s Ba`ath Party seize power for the first time in 1963. Ample new evidence shows that Saddam was on the CIA payroll as early as 1959, when he was part of a failed assassination attempt against Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qassem. During the 1980s, the United States and Britain backed Saddam in the war against Iran, providing Iraq with weapons, funding, intelligence, and even biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

In 2003 the Guardian reported that a chemical plant, which the United States said was a key component in Iraq’s chemical warfare arsenal, was secretly built by Britain in 1985 behind the backs of the Americans. Documents show British ministers knew at the time that the $14 million dollar British taxpayer funded plant, called Falluja 2, was likely to be used for mustard and nerve gas production.

British relations with Saddam Hussein only began to sour when Hussein nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1972. As a result of Iraq’s oil revenues finally flowing directly into the Iraqi Treasury, the nation experienced a massive windfall when oil prices quadrupled in 1973.

The Iraqi nation grew increasingly wealthy, as oil revenues rose from $500 million in 1972 to over $26 billion in 1980, an increase of almost 50 times in nominal terms.

During the 1990’s, Britain supported severe economic sanctions against Iraq because of Saddam’s increasing resource nationalism. The United Nations estimated that 1.7 million Iraqis died as a result of the sanctions. Five hundred thousand of these victims were children.

The British and American sanctions on Iraq killed more civilians than the entirety of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons used in human history.

Glaring similarities between Britain’s 1917 occupation of Iraq and the modern military debacle in Iraq are too salient to dismiss or to ignore.

They told us that Iraq was a nuclear threat; Iraq was a terrorist state; Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda. It all amounted to nothing. Since the 2003 invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and over a million have been displaced because of this lie.

Prior to 2003, Iraq had zero recorded suicide bombings. Since 2003, over a thousand suicide bombs have killed 12,000 innocent Iraqis.

Tony Blair recently admitted to CNN that the 2003 invasion of Iraq played a part in the rise of the Islamic State militant group, and apologized for some mistakes in planning the war.

It is important to note that Al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist prior to the British-American invasion and that terror organization eventually became ISIS.

Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally an American computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

Blair’s legacy in Iraq is ISIS. Blair has recently called ISIS the “greatest threat” faced by Britain.

Shortly after British general Stanley Maude’s troops captured Baghdad in 1917, he announced, “our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”

Almost a century later in 2003 Tony Blair said, “Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors. They will not stay a day longer than is necessary”.

History has a habit of repeating itself, albeit with slightly different characters and different nuances. Iraq may well go down in history as Britain’s greatest longstanding foreign policy failure.

Original article: Garikai Chengu, Counterpunch, July 8, 2016