Chris Draper's Answer to 'What did the EU do for Manchester?'

WONDERFUL!

Let's have more examples of how governments are really good for us on this allegedly anarchist website!

Or perhaps readers might instead consider a few facts, for example this list illustrating how the EU helps corporations transfer production to where the workers come cheapest!

Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.  Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.  Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with

EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds. Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to

Slovakia with EU grant.

British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.

Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.  Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.  M&S manufacturing gone to Far East with EU loan.  Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with

the patents all with with EU grants.

Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.  Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.  Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.  Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam  plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.

Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.  ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.

JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.

UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.  Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.

Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.  The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the

costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online. 

Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which

they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.  39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

The EU was designed and exists to coordinate STATE legal power to compel with the predatory power of corporations to exploit. The varied court-jesters (Union Bosses, Labour Politicians, Green Apologists etc) who take money from the EU and see a good career in toadying are predicatbly lining up to sing the praises of their erstwhile masters.  I would expect anarchists to look beneath such exhortations and examine the underlying power relationships. The EU is fundamentally designed to oil the wheels of globalisation, why on earth do you think it is so keen to covertly tie up TTIP?

Of course there is a window dressing of concern for the environment, workers rights etc but if you were mugged and your assailant handed you back a tanner for a cup of tea would you be grateful?

Don't vote for any politicians ever and for anarchy's sake don't endorse the EURO SUPER STATE but DO VOTE "LEAVE"!

Putin's PR Disaster!

BONHAN Ratycz of the Association of Ukrainians in the UK told me last night that he thought President Putin had suffered 'a serious pubic relation disaster' as a result of the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 plane last week.  Mr. Ratycz also told Northern Voices that he thought that it was likely that the plane had been accidentally shot down by the separatists in eastern Ukraine.  But he questioned the figure of 50 mercenaries given in the International New York Times (see previous post: 'Ukraine & Spain, is it the same?') as he said 'there is evidence that many more Russian mercenaries have crossed the boarder'.  It is probable that the figure of '50' given in the International New York Times refers only to those mercenaries in the city of Luhansk, and not all those across eastern Ukraine.   

Mr. Ratycz pondered the extraordinary attitude of the Russians and said 'it's as if they belong on another planet they just want to destabilise the Ukraine'.  Jim Pinkerton, a northern anarchist who had studied Russian in the 1970s, often told me that the Russians had many good points but their history had not been much influenced by the sprite of Greek civilisation that allows for individual integrity in society.   

Today's editorial in the International New York Times states: 

'The facts about the shooting down of the plane must be established by trusted, international experts.  The most likely finding, for which American and other Western officials say there is strong evidence, is that the jetliner was brought down by rockets fired from rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine. That would require not only ground-to-air missiles but also the expertise and equipment to guide them, raising the possibility of assistance from Russia itself.  Russia has denied any such role, and its military officials have pushed a compelling scenario, inculpating Ukraine.'   

Furthermore, also according to today's International New York Times editorial: 

'In that same statement, Mr. Putin also sought to transfer blame to Ukraine, saying the tragedy would not have happened if Kiev had maintained a cease-fire.'   

Some of this may prejudge the issue, but where the editor of the New York Times writes of ‘the most likely finding…’ ,  the speculation seems to make sense.  It is just important to remember that it is simply speculation until more facts are known.  

Ukraine & Spain, is it the same?

Does the Civil War in east Ukraine resemble the Spanish War?

LAST Thursday, Sabrina Tavernise in the International New York Times wrote a report of an incident that reminded me of my experiences in Spain under Franco in the early 1960s, Albania, Hungary, and former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.  She was in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine at a checkpoint held by a 'pro-Russian rebel with bad teeth and aviator sunglasses [who] was trying to help (her)'.  These rebels had been fighting Ukrainian regular troops but they were protective towards her an America journalist as they waited for orders from 'a higher-up'.  Later a brown Lada with tinted windows screeched to a halt at the check-point and a man got out wearing a maroon beret and black leather fingerless gloves.  He had little time for the men who were chatting to Sabrina and wouldn't give them his contact details, he merely indicated that she should get into the back of the Lada.   

The Ukrainian rebel insisted she write down her telephone number and other details before getting into the car 'just in case', and he said 'Don't be afraid  they're just going to check you out.'  The man in the sunglasses and 'arms slathered in tattoos' drove off with Sabrina into 'a strange slide into a Wonderland world, were fact was hard to tell from fiction and reality and absurdity came in equal portions.'  They ended up at his girl friend's flat in a 'dingy one room apartment', and he told her that his name was Denis and that he was head of an intelligence group in Luhansk.  He said he was tired and didn't want to be bothered checking her documents at the office.  A woman who introduced herself as Tamara Vladimirovna exclaimed at the pleasure of having such a lovely guest and shook Sabrina's hand warmly.   

These kind of incidents often happened to me in such situations in other countries in Europe:  people who one may expect to be hostile such as the Civil Guards in the mountains in Segovia in the summer of 1963, when I was returning from a trip to the Asturias where the miners were on strike, who detained me while the authorities did checks on my papers in Alicante, surprised me and I ended up being treated to Sunday dinner by the wives of the Civil Guards together with wine and Sherry; I don't recall them offering me a Cognac with my coffee though!  Something similar happened to me in Belgrade in December 2000 after the fall of Slobodan Milošević, in 1989 in Visigrad, Hungary  before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Sarranda in Albania at the time of the rioting and civil unrest over the Pyramid Sales scandal there.  The thing is to avoid the political rhetoric, the stereotype thinking and to realise that when you get involved politics and journalism in places like the Ukraine now, and Spain under General Franco you can't operate according to any political, ideological or a priori guide book; circumstances force you to think on your feet and if you don't do that you really could end up dead..  Sabrina Tavernise made a journalistic judgement and she was well treated well, and George Orwell made similar judgements in the Spanish Civil War but in his case he and his wife only just escaped in one piece.   

The story of  Sabrina Tavernise's experience was published the day before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by persons unknown.  Sabrina's 'interrogator' Denis introduced himself as 'a mercenary from Russia' and he said 'I don't give a damn about any of this.'  Denis did not say who paid him but said that his group formed the heart of the rebel forces and that most of the 'insurgents here – about 80% in his words -  were were scrappy locals:  taxi drivers and coal miners who had never seen a battle'  He added:  '20% were better because they had fought in Afghanistan.'   

Reading Sabrina's account the involvement of Denis and what he says are 'about 50 Russians... being paid to fight against Ukraine's government' one could be forgiven for making a mental comparison between Denis and his Russian mercenary mates and the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.  The International Brigaders too were accused of being mercenaries in the 1930s, and they too saw the Spanish republican fighters militias as inferior and even racially less able:  there is plenty of documentation to demonstrate this attitude in the archives.  On the news today even the defenders of the Muslims fighting in Syria, are arguing that they are only like George Orwell who fought in Spain and wrote 'Homage to Catalonia'.  The truth is that the rebels argue that the Kiev government was installed as a result of a coup and the Spanish republican government in 1936 was threatened by military sedition which in some ways superficially represented a similar situation.  There is, however, a vast ideological difference between the participants in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and the Russian mercenaries in Luhansk, Slovyansk and Donetsk: in the case of the Russian mercenaries in east Ukraine – take Mr. Strelkov, a native Muscovite whose real name is Igor Girkin, who made a public appearance earlier this month at a news conference; Mr. Strelkov is described by the journalist Noah Sneider as having 'ideological rigidity [that] precedes any connections he has to Russia's security services, stretching back at least to at least to his days at the Moscow State Institute for History & Archives... [t]here Mr. Strelkov obsessed over military history and joined a small but vocal group of students who advocated a return to monarchism.'   

If Noah Sneider is to be believed it seems that under Mr. Putin people like Mr. Strelkov (or Mr. Girkin) are coming to the fore.  Mr. Sneider writes: 

'An ultra-nationalist and reactionary Mr. Strelkov fits an increasingly familiar profile in Russia, one that has emerged strongly with the re-election of President Vladimir V. Putin.  Messianic and militaristic, such figures combine a deep belief in Russia's historic destiny with a contempt for for the “decadent” West, while yearning for the re-establishment of a czarist empire.'   

Strangely (or perhaps predictably) in the West we have some people who are on the left who find themselves defending the Russian strategy and argue that poor Mr. Putin and Russia are in danger of encirclement by the ideas of wicked western liberal democracies.   Better a reactionary Russia or even an oriental despotism, than a decadent liberal USA or European Union.   

What ought we to do now that 298 passengers have died?   

Ought we to have more severe sanctions against Russia as a consequence of the plane that was shot down?  Ought the US or the EU to intervene to support the Kiev government?   

When America, France and the U.K. failed to intervene on the side of the Spanish republican government in the Spanish Civil War there was much criticism of them on the left.  And when, Orson Wells asked President Roosevelt in 1939 if he had any regrets, Roosevelt said 'Yes, my failure to support the Spanish republic in 1936.'