Straw Wars: Full Spectrum Sycophancy
Jack Straw’s briefing with a response by Ken Coates
Socialist Renewal, new series, number 8, £3.00
‘Jack Straw’s briefing’ is a document, written by a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official, justifying UK support for the US ‘star wars’ missile defence system. Coates’ title comes from current US military ‘doctrine’, which is encapsulated in the phrase ‘full spectrum dominance’. As Coates has no difficulty showing in a paragraph by paragraph refutation, the entire briefing is baloney; a poorly argued rationale at best; forelock-tugging at worst. Indeed, the FCO briefing paper is so poor, just as today’s Labour Cabinet members make those of the Wilson-Callaghan generation seem like giants, I wonder if the quality of people going into the Foreign Office hasn’t also declined.
This pamphlet was published just before the September plane-bombs and there is one paragraph in the FCO briefing which now resonates more than it did before.
‘A suitcase bomb? Missile Defence would not work against the terrorist suitcase or car bomb. It is not designed to. The US already counters this threat – they spent about $11 billion last year on counter-terrorism efforts, about twice that spent on Missile Defence. the point is that missiles pose a much more visible and effective threat than a suitcase bomb.’
The so-called ‘star wars’ is a big step in the militarisation of space. This isn’t even disputed any more. At the end of his 39 page pamphlet Coates reproduces 16 pages of mission statement/PR spiel from US Space Command, its ‘Vision for 2020’. The Space Command brochure’s cover shows satellite weapons zapping missiles and planes on earth, not in space and its slogan is ‘US Space Command – dominating the space dimension of military operations’. Coates hardly needed to rubbish the pathetic FCO brief put out under Straw’s name, though it must have been fun doing it. He could just have published the US Space Command brochure.
The Captive Party: How Labour was taken over by Capital
Michael Barratt Brown
Socialist Renewal, new series, no. 2, £5.00
Very useful and clearly written, this is a 70 page, perfect (glue) bound pamphlet, part commentary on and part supplement to George Monbiot’s book The Captive State. It covers all the main agenda items: the Blair administration’s obsession with big business; PFI spreading throughout the public sector; the government’s Task Forces dominated by business personnel and the role of groups such as the European Business Round Table and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue. It is cheering to see the concerns of groups like European Corporate Observatory and individuals like Greg Palast, who pioneered much of this, working their way into the mainstream Labour left.
The Captive Local State
Peter Latham
Socialist Renewal, new series, no. 6, £2.00
As its title suggests this is the perspective in Barratt Brown’s pamphlet above applied to local government in Britain, focused on the implications of the Local Government Act 2000 and the formation and activities of the New Local Government Network, the alliance of local government politicians and business money which is seeking to extend the reach of the private sector into public services. This gives the leading names and some details of the on-going asset-stripping of the public sector at local level.
These Socialist Renewal publications are available from Russell House, Nottingham, NG6 0BT; or check the Website www.spokesman.books.com