Jeremy Corbyn

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Policy of insecurity

JEREMY CORBYN on how Brown is trying to convince the world that he's following Blair's foreign policy.
ON Monday night, Gordon Brown donned his best bib and tucker and went to the Mansion House to convince the City that he was really following a pro-Washington foreign policy.
The speech had been so widely trailed that one wonders why he bothered to go at all.
Essentially, Brown wanted the world to know that his foreign policy is really the same as Blair's.
Did this represent some cunning plot to sow confusion by composing mood music for the White House while doing the opposite? If that is the case, it is extraordinarily well hidden.
Down the road, a thinly attended House of Commons was debating foreign affairs and defence as part of the debate on the Queen's speech.
Opening for the government, Foreign Secretary David Miliband attempted to be conciliatory by telling the House that we all understood the "honest differences" that existed in 2003 about Iraq, but that this had to be put behind us so that we could start to understand the successes that had happened in Iraq and look at the way forward. Really?
In preparing for the debate, I was thinking of the old magic of the Project for a New American Century.
Its website helpfully defines its strategy as "American leadership is good both for America and for the world and ... such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to principle."
Strangely, for such a vibrant and demanding organisation and one whose utterances have brought such chaos, its website has had nothing added since the end of 2006.
Miliband really started in the wrong place. He seemed unwilling to go back to 2001, which saw the fundamental mistake of going to Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, who was not mentioned in the whole debate, leading to the chaos that we see today, with drug production up to record levels, instability returning to Kabul and intense fighting in Helmand.
There are now three more places where the policies of the West are causing, at the very least, huge concern.
Last Saturday, thousands of Pakistanis descended on Whitehall to vent their anger and frustration at empty buildings over the state of emergency in their homeland and the West's apparent indifference to the assault on democracy by the Pakistani military.
I received an email from a friend in Islamabad who told me not to be confused. This is much worse that an executive order of emergency, it is martial law in all but name, he said.
He described the arrest of all human rights activists, judges, lawyers, journalists and civil society activists - anyone who does anything.
Dictator Pervez Musharraf continues in the ambiguous dual role as head of the army and president-elect while his legal judges are being expelled from office.
Unless he accepts very quickly the demand from the people for democratic rights, the danger of a bloodbath grows ever greater.
However, all this did not happen in a vacuum.
Pakistan has been bedevilled by military government for more than half its 60-year existence while, the West has supported it as being a bulwark against China, Russia or close relations between the former Soviet Union and India.
The arms have flowed and even the development of nuclear weapons there, along with India, has not led to any real sanctions or isolation.
Musharraf's co-operation in the "war on terror" bought him time, money and the dubious honour of a visit by Bush. But now the Pakistani leader has turned the tables and claimed that Muslim opposition to him has forced his hand, leaving him with no alternative but to become a military strong man.
Elections held without freedom of media, movement, activity or expression would be no more than a grotesque corruption of the notion of democracy.
The people of Pakistan deserve better than this. The problems of poverty, education and work will not be solved by any of Musharraf's measures, while his claim to be turning back the tide of extreme Islam is more likely to encourage it.
Throughout the debate in the House of Commons, successive MPs - not all of them Tory - kept calling for greater arms spending to bring "security" and more weaponry to be sold to boost the industry. They were parroting the new call by the British defence sector for a 50 per cent increase - another £14 billion - in defence spending.
This weird amalgamation of old imperialists, slick suits and arms dealers seem to be employing former Tory MP Winston Churchill to do their bidding.
In a debate with him last week, I asked the question: Is not security freedom from hunger, thirst and having access to education, health care and work?
The US project has brought us wars all across the Middle East, well over half a million dead and two million refugees.
Isn't it time, for the sake of humanity and our own real security, that we did something different?
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
En route for a 3-state 'solution'?
IN A short time, there will be another Palestine–Israel conference, this time in Annapolis, where the US will lead "the quartet" of Washington, the UN, EU and Russia to try to reach another settlement.
This time, the omens border on the farcical. Israel is still building its illegal wall, the people of Gaza are in prison and desperately poor, while, on the West Bank, you cannot move for military roads and checkpoints.
Aid is pouring into the administration in Ramallah, while limited support gets into Gaza if the Israelis allow it and nothing is reaching the elected Hamas government.
It looks increasingly like its agenda is a three-state solution.
Again, it is US foreign policy in the form of enormous financial and military support for Israel which is the heart of the issue.
The current situation gives security to nobody, wreaks death on innocent people and consigns yet another generation of Palestinians to a life of poverty, isolation and understandable anger.
Now, surely, is the time for a real united international demand for Israel to end the occupation and for recognition of the Palestinian people. There can be no peace while a people is without liberty.
It should be said that there are many people in Israel who recognise this and who bravely work to that end.
Maybe, when the mirage of Annapolis has been exposed, changes will follow.