Navalny ally vows to press for his freedom despite crackdown

by DARIA LITVINOVA January 26, 2021 AP NEWS

MOSCOW (AP) — A top ally of Alexei Navalny vowed Tuesday to keep up the fight to free the jailed Russian opposition leader and his battle to influence this year’s parliamentary election despite a government crackdown on nationwide protests and its attempts to create a climate of fear.

U.S. officials said President Joe Biden raised concerns about Navalny’s arrest in his call Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the G7 foreign ministers also criticized the jailing of Navalny and the demonstrators demanding his release.

Lawyer and politician Lyubov Sobol told a news conference that Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his team’s regional offices will continue to operate even amid the “arrests of our followers and allies, open criminal probes (and) criminal probes that are yet to come.”

Sobol, herself under investigation on criminal charges of trespassing that she insists are bogus, said she is not afraid of being arrested and doesn’t plan to leave the country.

“It would be hard to say that I’m prepared for it, but silence, fear and indifference are more dangerous,” she told reporters.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, was arrested and jailed earlier this month after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had spent nearly five months recovering from a poisoning with a deadly nerve agent that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny the accusations.

The politician faces a prison term, with authorities accusing him of violating the terms of a 2014 conviction for fraud, a prosecution that he says was politically motivated.

On Saturday, nearly 4,000 people were detained across Russia during nationwide protests that drew tens of thousands demanding Navalny’s release, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group that monitors political arrests.

Authorities launched 20 criminal investigations in different regions in the aftermath of the protests, mostly on the charges of violence against police, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.

Dozens of Navalny associates in various cities were detained before the protests, including Sobol, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh and longtime ally Georgy Alburov. Sobol was released within hours and ordered to pay a fine, while Yarmysh and Alburov were jailed for nine and 10 days each.

“Putin is trying to stop people from protesting and fighting for their rights through fear and criminal probes,” Sobol said. “We can only continue our work in these circumstance"

The crackdown continued to bring international outrage. The top diplomats of the United States, Britain, Canada, France Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the high representative of the European Union, condemned the “politically motivated arrest and detention” of Navalny and said they were “deeply concerned by the detention of thousands of peaceful protesters and journalists.”

The Kremlin had earlier dismissed Western criticism as interfering with Russia’s internal affairs.

Navalny’s team has called for more demonstrations on Jan. 31 and Feb. 2, when a court is scheduled to consider motions to convert his suspended sentence into a real prison term.

Even if he is sent to prison, his supporters won’t be deterred, Sobol said, citing the political goals of stopping the Kremlin’s party, United Russia, in the upcoming parliamentary balloting.

“There are lots of plans and tasks for the nearest future, (as well as) midterm and longterm (ones), and everyone understands what needs to be done both tomorrow, and a month from now, and half a year from now,” Sobol said. “One of the main goals is to ... destroy the monopoly of United Russia in the parliamentary election that will take place this September.”

Navalny has launched a campaign known as “Smart Voting” that is designed to promote candidates who are most likely to defeat those from the dominant ruling party.

In 2019, the project helped candidates backed by Navalny win 20 of 45 seats on the Moscow city council, and regional elections last year saw United Russia lose its majority in legislatures in three cities.

Analysts believe Navalny is capable of influencing the parliamentary vote, a key for the Kremlin as it will determine who controls the State Duma in 2024. That’s when Putin’s current term expires and he is expected to seek reelection, thanks to constitutional reforms last year.

On Thursday, a court is scheduled to hear an appeal on the ruling to jail Navalny. When asked about a possible outcome, Sobol said that “we do live in an unpredictable country; what will happen next and tomorrow is literally unknown.”

She cited an example of police officers unexpectedly showing up at her home 10 minutes before the news conference.

Almost proving her point, an official interrupted the event minutes later, trying to serve a subpoena to a Navalny ally who wasn’t there.

“I (didn’t do it) on purpose, they come on their own,” Sobol said with a chuckle.

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Brexit: Gibraltar & UK-Spain deal for open border

SPAIN has reached a deal with the UK to maintain free movement to and from Gibraltar once the UK formally leaves the EU on Friday.

To avoid a hard border, Gibraltar will join the EU's Schengen zone and follow other EU rules, while remaining a British Overseas Territory.

The deal was announced by Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya, just hours before the UK exits the EU.

The Rock voted Remain in 2016 and about 15,000 Spanish workers go there daily.*

"With this [agreement], the fence is removed, Schengen is applied to Gibraltar... it allows for the lifting of controls between Gibraltar and Spain," said Ms González Laya.

The Gibraltar deal will mean the EU sending Frontex border guards to facilitate free movement to and from Gibraltar. Their role is planned to last four years.

Gibraltarians are British citizens. They elect their own representatives to the territory's House of Assembly, while the British monarch appoints a governor.

The territory - home to a British military garrison and naval base - is self-governing in all areas except defence and foreign policy.

Ms González Laya did not say whether Spanish border guards would eventually be posted at Gibraltar's airport and/or seaport which, under the deal, will be de facto part of the EU's external border.

The Gibraltar deal would also mean the territory complying with EU fair competition rules in areas such as financial policy, the environment and the labour market, Ms González Laya said.

Twenty-two EU states are in the passport-free Schengen zone, as are Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, but the UK has never been in it.

Once Gibraltar joins it, EU citizens arriving from Spain or another Schengen country will avoid passport checks, while arrivals from the UK will have to go through passport control, as is already the case.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called Thursday's deal a "political framework" to form the basis of a separate treaty with the EU regarding Gibraltar.

The deal does not address the thorny issue of sovereignty. Spain has long disputed British sovereignty over the Rock which was ceded to Britain in 1713 and which is now home to about 34,000 people. The Remain vote there was an overwhelming 96% in the 2016 EU referendum.

The plan is to have a six-month transition period and then formalise the new arrangements with a treaty.

Under the current tight Covid rules, there are restrictions on UK citizens arriving via Gibraltar's airport, the UK Foreign Office says.

Dominic Raab said "all sides are committed to mitigating the effects of the end of the [Brexit] Transition Period on Gibraltar, and in particular ensure border fluidity, which is clearly in the best interests of the people living on both sides.

"We remain steadfast in our support for Gibraltar, and its sovereignty is safeguarded."

* There has been a history of Spaniards providing labour on the Rock going back to the Treaty of Utrect in 1713. Hence, any Spanish tightening of controls at Gibraltar’s land border would have also hurt about 10,000 workers like Mr. Moya who commute there daily, mostly from nearby towns that form an economically depressed area known as the Campo de Gibraltar.

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Navigating 'Hell' in troubling times!

CHRIS DRAPER reviewing the English film 'THE ROAD TO HELL' which he claims was the 'first socialist film' writes:

'Premiered in London on Friday 28 July 1933, Lansbury himself attended the show and a couple of months later introduced the film to delegates attending the Labour Party’s annual conference in the White Rock Pavilion, Hastings. Although the film was generally well received where shown it proved impossible to secure a general release. Cinemas were dominated by Hollywood and ultimately controlled by local authority licensing committees eager to ban Socialist Film Council films as did Birmingham Council in 1935.'

This film fills a very narrow canvas much of it filmed in George Lansbury's home portraying the impact of the then National Government's Means Test on a family in a city, London. Most of the domestic scenes were filmed in George Lansbury’s 39, Bow Road home making it, as Chris Draper himself says: 'an accomplished though economical production.' It shows the struggles of an urban lower middle-class family dealing with the difficulties of the economic depression.

It is tempting now to compare this film with the European film Kameradschaft produced in 1931 shortly before 'THE ROAD TO HELL'. Kameradschaft is also based on a real life disaster, perhaps one of the worst industrial accidents in history; the Courrières mine disaster in 1906 in Courrières, France, where rescue efforts after a coal dust explosion were hampered by the lack of trained mine rescuers. Expert teams from Paris and miners from the Westphalia region of Germany came to the assistance of the French miners. There were 1,099 fatalities.

Kameradschaft (English: Comradeship, known in France asLa Tragédie de la mine) is a 1931 dramatic film directed by Austrian director G. W. Pabst. The French-German co-production drama is noted for combining expressionism and realism. It reflects the spirit of European internationalism, while the English film is much more parochial.

It would be hard to find an better example of the Little Englander phenomena of an island people contrasting so vividly with the concept of continental co-operation as in these two films.

The plot of the European film Kameradschaft is as follows:

'Two boys, one French and the other German, are playing marbles near the border. When the game is over, both boys claim to have won, and complain that the other is trying to steal their marbles. Their fathers, border guards, come and separate the boys.

'In 1919, at the end of World War I the border changes, and an underground mine is divided, with a gate dividing the two sections. An economic downturn and rising unemployment adds to tension, as German workers seek employment in France but are turned away, since there are hardly enough jobs for French workers. In the French part of the mine fires break out, which they try to contain by building brick walls, with the bricklayers wearing breathing apparatus. The Germans continue to work in their section, but start to feel the heat from the French fires.

'The fire gets out of control, igniting gas and causing roof collapses that traps many French miners. In response, the German miner, Wittkopp, appeals successfully to his bosses to send a rescue team. As the German rescue team leave in two lorries, its leader explains to his wife that the French are men with women and children and he would hope that they would come to his aid in similar circumstances. In the mine itself, a trio of German miners breaks through the grille on the border between the two countries. On the French side, an old retired miner sneaks into the shaft hoping to rescue his young grandson. The Germans rescue the French miners, not without difficulties. After all the survivors are rescued, there is a big party with speeches about friendship between the French and Germans. French and German officials then reinstall the underground border grille and things return to the way they were before.'

It is very apt that these reviews are appearing now as the EU and the UK are arguing over rights to fishing.

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Half of UK working adults don't earn enough to pay income tax

Sir Keith Joseph

Averages conceal wide variations. The median annual UK income for 2019 is said to be £29,588. Yet, according to figures from HMRC, nearly half of all Working adults in the UK, pay no income tax because they earn less than £12,500 per annum, the figure where income becomes taxable.  

Many of the very wealthy avoid paying UK tax by becoming 'Non Dom' or pay themselves 'dividends' instead of 'incomes' which attract less tax. In the last 40 years, people in emerging economies and the world's richest people have seen the fastest growth in income. Wages in Western economies have grown more slowly.

Before we joined the E.C. (now the E.U.) in January 1973, Britain was known as the 'sick man of Europe' because its economy lagged behind countries such as France and Germany. In June 1974, seventeen months after we joined the EU, Sir Keith Joseph said this, in a speech at Upminster:

 "Compare our position today with that of our neighbours in Germany, Sweden, Holland, France. They are no more talented than we are. Yet, compared to them, we have the longest working hours, the lowest pay and the lowest production per head. We have the highest taxes and the lowest investment. We have the least prosperity, the most poor, and the lowest pensions."

Not much changes folks. And who did Sir Keith blame for all this? No, it wasn't the E.U.- he said it was all the fault of Labour and socialism. Since the onset of Thatcher and Regan, the world's richest, have seen their wealth soar into the stratosphere. That was what the Conservative revolution was all about.

According to a government report, Brexit is likely to lead to Britain becoming worse off.

Oborne calls on Britons to 'swallow their pride' and think again about Brexit!

In 2016, the right-wing Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne, was an ardent Brexiter along with the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the E.U. in the referendum of June 2016. But in a 4,000 word article that was written for Open Democracy in April 2019, he called on Britons to think again and swallow their pride.

In the article Oborne argued that Brexit had paralysed the system and had turned Britain into a laughing stock. He asserts that Brexit is certain to make us poorer and to lead to lower incomes and lost jobs and says that Brexit, has led to the collapse of investment-led growth and the announcement of job losses at Nissan, Sony and Honda. Oborne points out that few of the 40 trade agreements that Liam Fox vowed to sign by March 2019, have been agreed and that prominent British backers of the Leave Campaign like James Dyson and Jim Ratcliffe, have already moved assets abroad.

Last year, that most prominent of Brexiteer's, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group (ERG), who advocates a clean break with the E.U., was forced to answer embarrassing questions about why the city investment firm 'Somerset Capital Management' (SCM), a firm in which he is a partner (but does not make investment decisions), had relocated part of its business to Dublin. The firm's prospectus had warned that Brexit was a 'risk' that may cause 'considerable uncertainty.'

Much of what Oborne says about the economic consequences of Brexit have been borne out by even government analysis. Last November (2018), a government report stated that the UK would be poorer economically under any form of Brexit, compared with staying in the E.U. 'Operation Yellowhammer' the government's own assessment of what could happen if Britain left the E.U. without a deal, warned of fresh food supplies decreasing, key ingredients being in short supply, and prices increasing which could impact vulnerable groups, because of problems caused by disruption and the inability to trade efficiently.

The problem with the referendum vote in June 2016 was that people were given two choices i.e. leave or remain, but they were never told what Brexit meant or what it might entail. A majority of MP's in the British parliament do not want to leave the E.U. because they think it is folly and will be economically ruinous. In short,  Brexit means different things to different people.  Although I believe people were sold a pup with Brexit and that its not a simple right/left issue, I nevertheless,  believe it is essentially a right-wing project. For neo-liberal free-market types like Gove, Raab and Johnson, leaving the E.U. will be an opportunity to get shut of a host of regulatory powers and to bin such things as environmental and consumer protections along with workers rights, to give Britain a competitive edge against our European neighbours - a kind of race to the bottom to attract inward investment.

As Oborne points out in this video, Brexit is also likely to lead to the break-up of the Union. If Brexit ultimately leads to the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland and the demise of the Tory Party, then in my view Brexit might have been worthwhile. A recent poll in Northern Ireland found that a majority of people who live in the region did not consider themselves either Unionists or Nationalists and 51% said they were in favour of reunification. This figure is likely to increase now Northern Ireland has been annexed by the Johnson Tory government. No wonder Sein Fein like Boris Johnson's Brexit Deal.

Hidden in Plain Sight

by Les May

NORTHERN VOICES does not have a ‘party line’ in spite of some people thinking it should adopt theirs.  But there are some discernible themes; a belief in Orwell’s dictum ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’, a reluctance to spray around like so much confetti words like, nazi, fascist, racist, sexist, anti-semite, islamophobe, homophobe etc and an unwillingness to inflate the importance of Tommy Robinson and his ilk.

Recent events have shown that it is not the streetwise rabble rousers like Robinson that we need to fear will move us along the road to a far right politics. It’s the respectable schemers who have managed to get themselves into 10 Downing Street and are working on ways of keeping themselves there in perpetuity, we should have been keeping a close eye on.

In this context it’s interesting to note the different reasons cited by MPs who have left the Tory party in the recent past and those who have left the Labour party. In a joint letter Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston described how the leadership had allowed a ‘hard-line anti-EU awkward squad’ to take over the Tory party. In other words their reasons for leaving were political differences about the EU.   In sharp contrast the MPs who have left the Labour party have claimed it to be ‘racist’ and ‘anti-semitic’, two vague and infinitely elastic notions. It seems that the Tory dissenters have been far more aware of where the real danger lies than some who claim to be ‘of the Left’.

During the weeks immediately prior to Johnson sliding into the position of Prime Minister, having first been crowned by Tory party membership,  I watched, three Labour MPs who at different times were contributors to BBC2’s ‘Politics Live’, launch their on attack Johnson by saying he was ‘racist’.  It was the Tory ‘grandee’ Chris Patten, last governor of Hong Kong, who launched his attack on Johnson by saying he as a ‘liar’, before saying a lot of other uncomplimentary about him.

Calling Johnson a racist on the slender evidence of remarks he has made is lazy. We should be able to expect some deeper political insights from our MPs.  One only had to listen to the MPs who are backing him to realise they were single mindedly determined to take the UK on their own terms. And behind them are a few Tory MPs who would not serve in his administration to make sure he does not waver and leave the EU with ‘a deal’.  Is he going to end up as their puppet?

The shape of things to come if Johnson wins the next election can be seen already.   Sajid Javid is said to be unhappy with Johnson’s spending pledges.  After he is safely in Number 10 these could be quietly dropped.  Bullying has become the order of the day.  According to The Times, Dominic Cummings who has been imported as Johnson’s enforcer told a meeting of special advisers, ‘If you don't like how I run things, there's the door. Fuck off.’ Johnson is threatening to withdraw the whip from Tory MPs who do not back him.

If we do end up leaving the EU without a deal and Johnson does win the next election, I hope the Labour MPs who have worked so assiduously to undermine Jeremy Corbyn are proud of themselves.

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Review of 'How Will Capitalism End?'

‘How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System’ by Wolfgang Streeck

(Verso, 2016) – book reviewed by Andrew Wallace,

Capitalism and Entropy

This is an intriguingly titled volume of essays, only the first of which is however devoted to the subject of the book’s title, namely a discussion concerning various scenarios in which we might contemplate the mortality of an ‘improbable social formation, full of conflicts and contradictions,...  unstable and influx and highly conditional on historically contingent and precarious supportive and well as constraining events and institutions’.

Streek takes his cue from what he considers a seminal text co-authored 3 years earlier by 5 distinctive thinkers.  Streek’s titular essay then is very much a dialogue and assimilation of this work:-

Does Capitalism Have a Future? (2013) – Wallerstein, Collins, Mann, Derluguian, Calhoun.

The crisis scenarios under discussion are a distillation of Marxist, Keynesian and heterodox economists who remain critical of the key axioms of the so called free market, especially in the wake of the Great Recession (2008). The old spectres of market disequilibrium by overproduction or underconsumption are of course very much in contention, as is Marxist crises of profitability and the problems of modernity by obsolesce and the finite limits of land and labour. Weber and Schumpeter also introduced wider socio-economic themes inherent with bureaucratic sclerosis.

Streek suggests that various crisis scenarios from these 5 writers could be ‘aggregated into a diagnosis of multi-morbidity in which different disorders coexist and, more often than not, reinforce each other.’

No revolutionary alternative is required

A nice little irony at the centre of Streek’s thinking unfolds here. With capitalism in its contemporaneous super-turbo charged  'neoliberal' platform, having so successfully vanquished all would be alternatives (which have typically rescued the system in revitalised form at various critical points in our past history) via its bleak credo of there is no alternative ‘capital realism’ – easier to imagine the end of the world than capitalism, now at the zenith of its apparent impenetrable hegemony, because it has exhausted the possibilities of renewal from reformist quarters, it now be forced kicking and screaming into a prolonged period of entropy.

We are hearing from many thinkers how automation, information technology and electronicisation will have profound implications for the middle classes in much the same way in which mechanisation did for the manual working class.  With alarming implications for unemployment and ongoing secular stagnation or dramatic declines, this will add to the ongoing crisis of underconsumption and demand gap.

Streek has a nice line in irony as he notes our divided identities, located within our consumerist lifestyles, as voracious consumers of cheap clothes and electronic gadgets and household goods, we also put direct pressure on ourselves as producers, ‘accelerating the move of production abroad and thereby undermining (our) own wages, working conditions and employment.’

Neoliberalism has overextended itself, having cannibalised a lot of the soft underbelly, social capital and infrastructure vital to maintaining confidence and stability in the normative capitalist context.

Useful contribution to our Post-Liberal era

The other essays in the book discuss the nature in the shift of post war Keynesian democracy to the post democratic ordoliberalism of thinkers like Hayek, given the move to depoliticisation in many domestic spheres and of course international governance from the EU.

This is an interesting short volume of essays although some of the later offerings may come across as a little dry and technical.  Streek is certainly making a very interesting contribution to ongoing discussions concerning the distinct post-liberal phase we seem to be entering with the marked rise of anti-globalisation sentiments.  And whilst the political atrophy of the left continues, it is important to note that wider structural shifts in the nature of capitalism may mean that other practicalities apart from mere politics may force the hand of history.