This is another interesting piece of global pop I found on YouTube. It’s of the indigenous Australian pop Yothu Yindi, performing their track ‘Treaty’. It’s a a sharp criticism of the failure of Australia’s mainstream politicians way back in 1988 to formulate a treaty with the continent’s indigenous peoples despite promises to give them a better deal and goodwill visits to indigenous communities. At least, that’s how it appears to me from the lyrics and the clips of White Ozzies visiting indigenous communities and participating in displays of indigenous culture.
I can remember reading about the emergence of indigenous Australian pop bands way back in the 1980s in one of the Sunday supplements. This mentioned a punk, or a punk-influenced band, but this song appears more or less straight pop-rock, so it may not have been Yothu Yindi. The article said that the bands had the support of young White pop-pickers, and campaigned for indigenous rights. Part of this was tribal sovereignty over their lands, so that people, who weren’t indigenous Australians, had to obtain the proper passports before entering their communities, which were closed off to the outside world.
I really don’t know much about the political situation in Australia regarding the indigenous peoples, except that there’s still much prejudice against them, and that they still suffer from massive poverty, cultural dislocation, alcoholism and unemployment, as well as the continuing effects of White Australia Policy and the mixed-race children, who were stolen from their indigenous parents to give to Whites.
The video’s clearly a protest song about the poverty, injustice and broken promises indigenous Australians face. Here it is.
I’ve already put one piece up, commenting on how Boris ran from the chamber when Emily Thornberry rose to ask for the government’s comment about the Gaza massacre. Just as he also ran away from her in February, when she terrified him with a question about Northern Ireland. And in this short video from RT, she lays into Johnson again, over the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Mike reported last week that the Iranians had added yet another trumped up charge to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s list of spurious crimes, and increased her sentence. This time she has been charged with spreading propaganda. It’s sheer nonsense, of course, but it shows the arbitrary, despotic nature of the regime.
However, this woman’s plight has been compounded by the sheer, hamfisted incompetence of the current Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson. The Iranian government claimed that she was really spying, and had been teaching journalism during her stay in the country. She hadn’t. She’d actually been taking her daughter, Gabrielle, to meet her Iranian family. Boris, however, decided to leap in with both feet, and claimed in a TV interview that she had indeed been teaching journalism, thus apparently confirming the Iranians’ charges.
There was naturally an outcry against Boris for so ignorantly making the situation worse. So Michael Gove decided to exercise his minuscule intellect, and appeared on television to defend BoJo. And he made matters worse, by stating in an interview that ‘we don’t know what she’s doing’. In fact, the government knew perfectly well what she was doing, and BoJo and Gove only had to look at the briefing papers. Neither of them appear to have bothered. This wouldn’t have surprised Ken Livingstone, who said that Boris often didn’t read them.
Mike in his article about the issue raised the obvious question of why Boris Johnson is still Foreign Secretary, considering all he’s done is make matters worse. He concluded that he is only there, because someone wants him there, not because he has any talent.
In the video, Thornberry turns her attention to Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case, and asks how many times more times must Boris this happen? How many more times must he insult our international partners and damage our international relations, and imperil British nationals abroad, before Tweezer sacks him? And if she doesn’t, because she doesn’t have the strength or authority perhaps Boris himself should show a bit of personal authority that this job, where words have gravity and actions have consequences, is not for him.
BoJo then bounces up and starts blustering, stating that it is unfair to attack the Foreign Office, that have been working day and night so secure Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. To which Thornberry simply mouthes ‘Just you’, pointing to the fatuous buffoon. He then goes on to claim that her comments are a distraction from the people, who are really responsible for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation.
This then provokes heated remarks from both sides, with the Deputy Speaker crying for order.
Boris is right that the people really responsible for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment are the Iranians. But they’ve been assisted in this by Boris’ massive incompetence. It’s also very clear to me that they’re holding her as a political bargaining chip. When they first imprisoned her, Boris ended flying out to Tehran, and Britain mysteriously unlocked about £250 million of Iranian funds, that had previously been frozen in banks over here. Both sides claimed that this was unrelated to Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment, but it looks far too much that it was very much connected for the excuse that it was all coincidence to be at all convincing. The problem is that the Iranians have learned that all they have to do is retain Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and add a few more years to her sentence, and the government will automatically try anything to secure her release. Try and fail, because she’s too big an asset for them to throw away now.
And I think that the fresh charges they’ve drummed up against Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe are not unrelated to the current crisis in American-Iranian relations. America has imposed sanctions on Iran, and has blocked them from using the dollar as their currency of international trade. Even third party companies, who are not American, are prevented from trading with Iran in dollars, if they wish to do business in America. This is intended to make it difficult for the Iranians to trade oil, as the Americans have made the dollar the international trade currency for it. This has the benefit, for the Americans, of boosting their economy. If the world stopped using the petrodollar, and switched to another currency, the American economy would be devastated. Hence one possible motive for the Americans’ overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi was because the Libyan dictator was planning to ditch the dollar, and set up the dinar as an alternative trade currency. Venezuela was also planning to ditch the dollar. And the Russians and Chinese have also made similar plans.
And the Iranians have gone through with theirs, and replaced the dollar with the euro. This has resulted in Trump and his colleagues going berserk, and threatening all kinds of reprisals against Iran and Europe.
Also, while many Iranians are probably quietly in favour of better relations with the West, official Iranian ideology demonises both America and Britain. America is ‘the great Satan’, while Britain is ‘the little Satan’. And there is much popular suspicion and hatred of Britain as the country’s former colonial master. The country was never formally incorporated into the British Empire, but we owned their oil industry and interfered many times in their politics from the 19th century onwards. The Qajar shahs were overthrown and replaced with the Pahlavis because they took out loans with us for modernisation, which they could not repay. And we overthrew their last, democratically elected president, Mossadeq, because he nationalised the Iranian oil industry. The Iranians therefore have a saying, ‘If there’s a pebble in your path, it was put there by a Brit.’
The Iranian dissident, Shirin Ebadi, has said that so great is this popular hatred of Britain, America and the West, that it is actually harmful for them to support Iranian dissident movements. When that is done, the Iranian authorities try to undermine them by claiming that these are subversive movements working against Iran with the country’s colonial enemies.
It therefore seems clear to me that the Iranians are keeping Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a possible bargaining chip in case of further confrontations with America over their switch from the petrodollar to euro. As well as Trump withdrawing from the nuclear treaty Obama signed with the Iranians. And the Iranian authorities are probably also keen to exploit the propaganda value of continuing Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment, while Britain impotently pleads for her release.
Boris is right that the real villains in this are the Iranians. But they’ve been assisted by his and Gove’s massive incompetence. Thornberry is right. It’s long past time Johnson was sacked. Not just because of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but because of all the other stupid mistakes he’s made, which have threatened our international relations, business interests and the welfare of our citizens abroad.
But Mike’s right. May won’t sack him, because he’s too dangerous to her outside the cabinet. So he will continue in his post as foreign secretary for as long as she’s in power.
Which means that, if we want to do something to improve diplomatic relations and free Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, they’ll both have to go.
Here’s another Tory politician, who should by rights be firmly ejected from the House, or at least barred from any position of governmental responsibility: Boris Johnson. BoJo would just love to be prime minister, and so has tried to scheme his way there, joining the Leave campaign after he initially backed the ‘Stay’ group, and then stabbed the former Tory leader, David Cameron, and his fellow Tory, Michael Gove, in the back.
As the Tories have complained, he’s trying to drive government policy over Brexit from the backseat. On Saturday, Mike put up an article reporting how the Tories’ Blond Ambition had laid down a set of four conditions that need to be met for a good Brexit deal. One of the experts on politics, who commented about it on Twitter, Ian Dunt, immediately demolished all of them.
It’s not hard to see parallels with the Kippers in this. UKIP are rapidly falling into obscurity. They were a single issue party, pressing for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. And now that’s happening, they’ve lost their entire raison d’etre. So they tried a few months ago to lay down their conditions for Britain’s negotiations over Brexit with the EU. Almost needless to say, they were also rubbish and nobody took any notice of them either.
But it gets worse. For some reason, BoJo the Clown is Britain’s Foreign Secretary, a position for which he is entirely unsuited, for all he likes to boast that his Turkish grandfather was the last vizier of Ottoman Turkey, who was hanged by his outraged people in protest at one of the treaties breaking up Europe in the aftermath of the Great War.
Diplomacy, as part of international relations, requires and prizes very careful, guarded speech in order to prevent avoidable offence, offence which can easily rapidly escalate into disastrous breakdowns in international relations. And in serious cases, war. We talk about ‘tact and diplomacy’, and when describing actions or comments that may cause serious offence, often say, ‘Wars have been fought for less’. BoJo, like Trump, seems to possess none of these qualities.
Covering his official visit to the Shwedagon temple, the holiest Buddhist shrine in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, Channel 4 showed the tousled twat start to recite the opening line from Kipling’s The Road to Mandalay, about the temple bells calling back an English soldier to the Burmese girl he kissed. Britain ruled Myanmar, then called Burma, from 1824 to 1948. And it’s fair odds that its people just might be somewhat sensitive about our occupation of their country. You can easily understand why reciting a poem by a writer renowned as one of the poets of British imperialism, in the country’s most sacred temple, might just be taken as a slight. The documentary, which included the incident, was shown last night on Channel 4. Fortunately, the British ambassador, Andrew Jenkins, was on hand to stop Johnson. The clip shows Johnson asking him why, to which Jenkins simply answers ‘It’s not appropriate’.
It says much about Boris’ complete lack of sensitivity and self-awareness, that he had to ask Jenkins why he shouldn’t recite it. He clearly saw nothing wrong in it, an attitude that could easily be interpreted by his Burmese hosts as imperial arrogance.
This isn’t the first time the Tories have said or done something, that has sparked an international row. I vaguely remember that BoJo managed to upset the Russians, when he went on a diplomatic visit to the Baltic states a year or so ago. And it wasn’t that long ago that Modi’s India accused Britain of colonialist condescension.
If Boris did, by some horrendous mistake of history, get into 10 Downing Street, then it’s clear that within a very short period his lack of tact would have torn the Commonwealth apart, having insulted and alienated as many of its members states as possible, and joined Trump in ramping up international tensions with Russia, Iran, North Korea or whoever into a full-blown shooting war.
Brexit is likely to seriously damage the British economy. True, Boris wasn’t responsible for the Leave campaign, but he did add his weight to it for no good reason than his own, over-vaulting ambition. And now his utter unsuitability for any kind of role in the Foreign Office is amply demonstrated yet again.
Get this oaf, and the other Tories, out of office as quickly as possible.
The dispossession for the indigenous people in North Dakota, and the brutalisation of the water protectors and protesters from Americans of all ethnic groups for the profit of big oil continues. In this short video from The Young Turks, their reporter Jordan Cheriton shows how militarised police are building a razor wire fence around a Native burial ground, so that the local indigenous people cannot visit or pray at the graves of their ancestors. There was an attempt by the NODAPL protestors to reach the island earlier in canoes, but they were beaten off by the police. The abandoned canoes were left on the island’s shore, where they are shown being hauled away and broken up by the rozzers.
Cheriton intervenes one of the water protectors, Mr Akicita Tokahe, who is a former US army veteran. Mr Tokahe was one of the US squaddies sent to Panama. He describes how the saw the local people there regard him and his army buddies with a mixture of fear and joy in their eyes. Now, he says, he’s experiencing what it’s like to be on the other side of an armed force.
The video ends with a young woman’s voice chanting a song about not giving up the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
This is just one disgraceful episode in a long line of instances of police brutality, official injustice, greed and intimidation. It shows the overwhelming power of the oil industry in America, the way they’ve been able to ride roughshod over laws and treaties protecting indigenous land, and the absolute contempt they have for the Native people of America.
The pipeline was due to go through, or past, the town of Bismarck. However, as this would have posed a threat to the water quality of White, suburban community, the people complained and the decision was made to send it straight through the land of the Sioux people. And this is very much treaty land. Cheriton, or one of the others from The Turks, talked to a Black protestor, who had worked as one of the environmental teams researching and presenting evidence on whether oil pipelines could be legally constructed in particular areas. America has legislation, which should prevent oil, or other potentially dangerous or polluting engineering projects, being situated in poor, Black or otherwise disadvantages neighbourhoods. The oil company deliberately falsified evidence to claim wrongly that the land through which the pipeline was going to be laid was not Native American. They did so by counting only the indigenous Americans resident on Federal land, ignoring the greater amount of reservation land which the pipeline will run through. And as Cheriton points out here, the oil company shouldn’t be on that small island either. It belongs to the American military, and by law the only people allowed on that land should be the US armed forces.
So far, we’ve seen instances where the cops have done their best to prevent peaceful protests and prayers at the state capital. They’ve used mace against the protestors, physically attacked them, including with dogs. Indigenous protectors, including women, have been hauled off to be kept in dog kennels. They have been shot with rubber bullets, and the other day a White young woman, Sophia Wilansky, had her lower arm blow off when one of these goons shot her directly with a stun grenade. This is illegal, but they did it anyway and are now lying about it. The protestors have made it very clear that they’re putting this in the perspective of the long-term dispossession of the Native people of America by Whites. I don’t think you can fairly argue against this. A desire for the wealth of natural resources and agricultural land was behind the continuing seizure of Indian land and relocation of the Amerindians themselves during the 19th century. Despite the fact that this land is protected by the Fort Laramie treaty of 1863, if I’m not mistaken, the whole affair shows that the authorities are still willing to violate treaties and seize indigenous land, just as their 19th century predecessors did, when it suits them.
There is indeed a real danger that the pipeline will foul the area’s drinking water and damage its ecology. One of the statistics cited is that there already been 300 odd oil spills across America, which aren’t reported. And the authorities in America seem to have absolutely no interest in protecting the water quality of their citizens. The people of Flint, Michigan, have had their drinking water poisoned with lead by the local water company, but so far little, if any, action seems to have been taken to clean up the mess and punish those responsible. Communities have also seen their water contaminated by fracking, again with the absolute complicity of the local politicos.
There’s a lesson for us over here. The same companies that are fouling the American environment are keen to start fracking over here, and local authorities and the Tory party are all too eager to let them do it. So we can also expect communities harmed by poisoned drinking water, what the politicos take the bucks handed to them by fossil fuel companies completely indifferent to the suffering and damage they’ve caused.
As an archaeologist, I’m also left astonished and disgusted by the desecration of the tribe’s burial grounds. The respectful treatment of human remains excavated through engineering works, archaeological investigation or preserved in museums is a serious issue. It naturally arouses concern by people that their dead ancestors should be treated with dignity. And the issue is particularly strong, when the remains are those of peoples that have suffered from persecution. For example, a few years ago human remains were uncovered during building work for a new supermarket in one of the northern English towns. It was established that these were Jewish burials, including some of the victims of one of the terrible pogroms unleashed against them during the Middle Ages. Their excavation and removal to another site was, obviously, a delicate matter involving careful negotiation between the authorities, developers, archaeologists and the Jewish community.
Similarly, I was told by a Canadian archaeologist friend that the American archaeologists conducting an investigation of Native burials had to participate and observe certain ritual requirements, including being anointed with buffalo grease, while conducting the excavation. And rightly so, as they were on indigenous territory, interfering with their ancestors’ burials and remains, and so it was only correct that they should have to observe indigenous customs governing the sanctity of the dead.
And you can probably think of other, more prosaic examples of similar concern in White communities, when the dead there have been disturbed due to redevelopment. Yet the police and the oil company there have shown no such sensitivity to the feelings of the local people, or respect for their dead.
This is an absolute disgrace. And I’m very sure we can expect the same callous attitudes and casual brutality over here in Blighty when fracking starts.
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