Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has admitted that his army had illegally used the logo of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) during their high-profile operation to release 15 hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt. In a speech in Bogota Uribe apologized for misusing the logo, but international experts say that doing so is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions – to which Colombia is signed up.

The July 2nd military operation was carried out by Colombian military intelligence agents posing as humanitarian aid workers. A website set up as part of the operation also stole the registration number of a Spanish anti-poverty NGO, known as 'Global Humanitaria', which has caused further complaints.

Immediately following the operation Uribe and other senior Colombian officials categorically denied that the agents had impersonated ICRC staff. However, the US news network CNN later discovered video and photo evidence showing that at least one agent was in fact wearing an official ICRC bib.

Using the Red Cross symbol in a military operation violates the Geneva Convention because it could damage the relief group's neutrality in conflicts and could endanger medical personnel using the symbol.

According to Gustavo Gallon of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), if those who planned the operation "used a humanitarian mission as cover, that is perfidy, and a breach of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)" under the Geneva Conventions. "It's like using a white flag of truce to get close to an enemy and then killing him."

Gallon went on to point out that "humanitarian missions are protected, and cannot be used in any way, either for acts of war or for confrontations with the enemy. Their absolute inviolability is the grounds of their credibility."

David Cameron's ‘blaming the poor' speech in Glasgow may be more than just an attempt to placate the unreconstructed right of the Conservative party. It is not often recognised how far British public opinion has shifted towards a liberal individualist stance on social issues in recent years. In some ways we are more Thatcherite under New Labour than we ever were under the Conservatives.

Evidence from a range of attitude surveys points in the same direction. Sympathy for the poor, growing steadily stronger through the 1980s and early 1990s, has collapsed. By 2006 the situation was almost exactly reversed. The public is roughly twice as likely to attribute poverty to laziness or lack of will power now compared with a decade ago. The numbers thinking the government should spend more on the poor has steadily declined.

People are also much readier to accept the inequalities of the market. In 1997, slightly more people thought it unfair that those on high incomes could buy better health care or education than the rest of the population than took the opposite view. Now nearly twice as many think buying better health care or schooling is perfectly acceptable as don't.

Various factors contribute to explaining the shift to the right in social attitudes. Our recent qualitative work examined how people discuss fairness and government services. A strong theme across our interviews was the acceptance of inequalities. While the better off should be expected to contribute in the same way as everyone else does (and tax avoidance by the super-rich was seen as just as outrageous as benefit cheating by the poor), there was little support for redistributive taxation. Such attitudes are buttressed by a strong and widespread belief that opportunities to succeed, while not entirely equal, are open to those prepared to make the effort across society. Why fleece the better off when they pay in just as much as anyone else, and anyway we all stand a reasonable chance of getting there if only we try hard enough?

Opportunity for all and tolerance of income inequalities are strong themes in political discussions and in public opinion. Turning that round, sharply progressive tax and direct interventions to help the most vulnerable become unacceptable. When it pursues such policies, the government is careful to do so by stealth. Perhaps the success of those ideas is reflected in the lurch to the right of public opinion. Cameron's claim that ‘social problems are often the consequences of the choices people make' is the logical extension of this view.

Peter Taylor-Gooby is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent and author of ‘Reframing Social Citizenship' to be published shortly by Oxford University Press. This article appeared on Compass.

Rounding off a diplomatic tour of Europe that began with Tuesday’s controversial visit in Russia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez mended relations with the Spanish government, set up a bi-national commerce commission with Portugal, and eliminated visa requirements to facilitate bilateral accords with Belarus this week.

“Our friendship is with Spain and with all that Spain represents, the Spain that sings to the world, to peace, to brotherhood,” Chávez declared in a press conference after meeting with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Madrid Friday.

Chávez highlighted the gravity of the “epochal” food, energy, and financial crises currently affecting the world, concluding that “it is good to close old chapters and open new chapters in order to work together with Europe, with Latin America to face these issues that preoccupy all inhabitants of the planet.”

Zapatero commented that “between Venezuela and Spain there are commercial and investment relations and new camps to explore that could be of interest to citizens of both countries.”

This sentiment was echoed by the Venezuelan Ambassador to Spain, Alfredo Toro Hardy, who said Chávez’s visit “consolidates the re-launching of relations” between the two countries.

“Venezuela, an energy power, always has the capacity to lend a hand to Spain, which needs energy; Spain, a food power, always has the capacity to extend their hand to Venezuela,” said Hardy.

President Chávez also had his first meeting with King Juan Carlos I of Spain since the King told Chávez to “shut up” about Spanish fascism at an Iberian-American Summit in Chile last November.

During the one-hour visit in the Mallorca archipelago, the two leaders shook hands and symbolically normalized relations, and Chávez joked that because of the summer climate, “I feel as though I were in Cuba, Jamaica, or Margarita.”

Chávez was greeted warmly by Spanish student organizations, immigrant rights groups, and other civil society organizations that demonstrated their support for the political changes underway in Venezuela.

“The Venezuelan Revolution is a new liberation, it is the new liberation of the oppressed and of the peoples who are suffering under the yoke of imperialism,” said Spanish student union leader Juanjo López, one of the pro-Chávez demonstrators. “The principal fear of the capitalists and the multi-nationals is that the revolution will spread throughout Latin America, and that as a result Spain will also be affected.”

On Thursday, Chávez met with Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva to establish a bi-national economic commission. The commission will facilitate the accords signed by the two countries last May, which include the joint exploitation of oil in Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt, liquid gas and wind power projects, and imports of Portuguese food products.

Also, within days Venezuela will send its first shipment of oil to Portugal in an effort to diversify the destinations of Venezuelan oil. According to plans concretized last May, Venezuela will start by exporting 10,000 barrels, then steadily increase the amount to 96,000 barrels, nearly a third of Portugal’s national demand.

“We would like the flow of products from Portugal to Venezuela to grow,” said Chávez, emphasizing that, with a GDP that has nearly tripled in the last ten years from $90 billion to $250 billion, “Venezuela is a country amidst expansive growth and it is very opportune to increase commercial flow.”

The Venezuelan leader capped off the visit by granting credits worth 1.7 million bolivars ($790,000) to 344 Portuguese small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing and service sectors. It was the third of six such investments planned for this year, according to Portuguese officials.

Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa thanked Chávez for opening Venezuela to Portuguese capital, and said relations between the two countries “are not only political nor purely economic. It is a relationship between peoples, between persons who know each other, who esteem one another and have common interests.”

On Wednesday, Chávez made his third visit to the former Soviet-bloc nation of Belarus, where Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko awarded him a prize of friendship.

“Without the contribution of the esteemed President Hugo Chávez we would not have the results that we have so far,” said Lukashenko, referring to the economic accords signed by the two countries over the last two years. “The socialist idea blossoms again in the world.”

Chávez responded, “You and I struggle against the same enemies. Our peoples struggle against the same adversary: imperialism.”

When Lukashenko visited Venezuela last December, the two countries launched a mixed enterprise to exploit Venezuelan oil reserves and signed agreements to create joint factories to produce heavy-duty mining machinery, tractors, and automobile parts.

Also, 40 members of the Venezuelan armed forces, 32 men and 8 women, began a five year course in military technology at the Belarusian military academy last November as part of military cooperation agreements between the two countries.

“In hardly two years we have constructed a plan and a first floor of a strategic alliance. We will continue constructing a political, economic, social, scientific and technological alliance in order to walk into the future in freedom,” Chávez declared.

To facilitate their alliance, Belarus and Venezuela agreed to allow people participating in the joint projects to travel in each other’s country for 90 days without a pre-arranged visa.

James Suggett writes for Venezuela Analysis.

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that if he wins the August 10 recall vote on his presidency, "I'll have two and half years left." But if he loses the vote, "I’ll have to go back to the Chapare" to farm coca again. Though the recall vote is likely to favour Morales, it’s unclear if it will resolve many of the divided nation’s conflicts.

This upcoming recall vote on the president, vice president and eight of nine departmental governors is to take place at a time of historic change for the country. Half way through a five year term in office, Morales is applying social programs aimed at fighting poverty and inequality, and developing positive relationships with Latin America’s leftist leaders. At the same time, a series of regional disputes in Bolivia over departmental autonomy, the new constitution and wealth from the partially-nationalized gas industry continue to put the country’s stability at risk.

Since May 4, autonomy referendums have been approved by voters in the departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca. These votes were organized by the country’s right wing politicians and business elite to perpetuate neoliberal policies, resist the redistribution of land and natural gas wealth, and weaken the Morales government. Though the right points to these victories at the ballot box as proof of their mandate, the referendums are not legally recognized by the Bolivian Electoral Court, the Organization of American States, the European Union, President Morales or other major leaders throughout the region.

In addition, all of the referendums were marked by high levels of voter intimidation and abstention – Morales urged his supporters to abstain from voting. In Pando, for example, the combined number of "no" votes and abstentions was 16,303, while the "yes" votes totaled only 12,671. In other departments, Morales supporters were kidnapped, tortured and beaten by right wing thugs in an attempt to suppress the anti-autonomy vote.

In spite of the questionable legitimacy of these referendums, the votes illustrate the growing polarization in the country. In another setback to the Morales administration, opposition prefect Savina Cuéllar, was elected in Chuquisaca on June 29. She was running against MAS candidate Walter Valda in a vote that took place in tandem with a successful autonomy referendum. However, the opposition’s apparent momentum is likely to be put in check by the August 10 recall vote.

In an attempt to break up a political impasse in December 2007, and in response to demands from the opposition, Morales proposed the recall bill which was passed on May 8, 2008 by the opposition-controlled Senate. The recall bill states that if the president, vice president and governors do not receive both a higher percentage of votes, and actual number of votes, in the recall referendum than what they received in the 2005 election, they will lose their position. Therefore, it’s possible to win the necessary percentage of votes, but lose the necessary number of votes, thus losing the recall vote. If Morales and vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera lose, they have to hold new elections within 90-120 days, in which they themselves are likely to be strong candidates. If the governors lose, they are to be replaced by an interim governor of Morales’ choosing until the next election. The recall vote on the governors will take place in eight out of the nine provinces; Chuquisaca won’t participate as Cuéllar was just recently elected governor there.

The results of the recall vote could vary widely. Polls indicate that Morales and Linera will win; they will likely be bolstered by new voters in rural areas voting for the first time after a massive voter registration drive led by the government. Morales is also likely to benefit from the fact that many voters and social organizations, in spite of any criticisms they have of his administration, will likely back him in a vote in which the alternative is essentially the right wing. As an analysis article on the Bolivian news publication BolPress explained, "[V]arious popular organizations have initiated a campaign to ratify Morales and kick out the oppositional governors, not because they consider that the actual leader [Morales] is managing the government well, it’s because the oligarchy’s return to power would imply an end to the possibility of transformation within the socio-economic structures of the country."

Though the recall vote may invigorate Morales’ mandate, and perhaps weaken the right, it’s unlikely to resolve many of the disputes tearing the political landscape apart. The question of whether the executive and legislative powers will be based in Sucre or La Paz remains a regional controversy. The new draft of the constitution, passed in December 2007 by an assembly boycotted by opposition parties, still awaits approval in a national referendum which the opposition-controlled Senate is blocking.

Some opposition governors and their supporters will likely not respect the results of the recall vote, or even participate in it at all. Vice president Linera recently told reporters that "They will probably boycott some regions, those where they know will lose. I believe they are laying the grounds for some sort of boycott on August 10 to create conflicts." It is also not entirely clear if the recall vote will proceed at all. Magistrate Silvia Salame, the only judge on Bolivia’s Constitutional Tribunal Court, has called on the National Electoral Court to postpone the recall vote until challenges to the vote’s legality are considered. Government officials in the Morales administration said they would ignore her decision because the Tribunal requires three votes, not one, to make a decision. Salame is on the only judge serving on the court at this time. In response, Bolivian Electoral Court President José Luis Exeni stated the recall vote would proceed as planned.

While debates over the recall vote go on, controversy continues to surround how to best use Bolivia’s gas and oil wealth. Right wing governors and civic leaders in Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando are demanding more funding from the profits of the oil and gas industry, which was partially nationalized by the Morales administration on May 1, 2006. Opposition leaders denounce that the Morales government redirected $166 million dollars from oil and gas tax revenue into a new pension plan that currently gives $315 dollars per year to Bolivians over 60 years old. Right wing governors have threatened to go on a hunger strike on August 4 in protest of the policy. Yet what the opposition doesn’t acknowledge in their pleas is that their departments now receive many times more funding from the gas industry this year than they did in 2005 thanks to the Morales administration’s nationalization policies and renegotiations with private and foreign gas companies.

Meanwhile, Washington’s influence in the coca-producing Chapare region of Bolivia is waning, and Morales’ is strengthening his own relations with other Latin American leaders as he presses forward with progressive economic and development policies.

On June 24, Coca growers in Bolivia’s Chapare region decided to expel the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In the Chapare USAID has, among other activities, historically tried to weaken the impact and political power of coca unions. The Morales administration has also accused USAID of working to undermine the current government and strengthen the right wing opposition. On July 14, Morales, a former coca farmer himself, said, "USAID is managing a lot of money that’s being used to confuse the population, they want to divide and create problems..."

At the same time, regional support for the Morales administration’s policies is on the rise. Venezuela and Cuba have sent doctors and teachers to rural areas in Bolivia. Cuba is building dozens of hospitals in the country, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said his nation would continue to support the expansion of Bolivia’s gas industry: 73% of Bolivian gas now goes to Brazil. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced his government will give $883 million dollars in aid to improve and expand the output of Bolivia’s oil and gas industry. Thanks in part to increased revenue from the gas industry, Morales said that $1.8 million dollars would be contributed to the development of 21 potable water projects in Santa Cruz.

Lula and Chavez recently pledged to collectively contribute $530 million dollars to help with the development of highways linking La Paz, Beni and Pando. The collaboration supports Morales in his efforts against pro-autonomy governors. Chavez said of the highway plan, "We're against those who want to tear Bolivia apart."

Back in Sicaya, where Morales said he would return to coca farming if he lost the recall vote, the president stated that now, "the vote serves not only to name authorities, but also to revoke their mandate. We are talking about expanding democracy." Yet recent history shows that democracy in Bolivia can manifest itself in unpredictable ways.

This article first appeared on Upsidedown World. Benjamin Dangl is the author of "The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia", (AK Press, 2007). Email: Bendangl(at)gmail.com

What is the Iranian government up to? For once the imperial coalition, overstretched in Iraq and unpopular at home, is proposing jaw, not war. The UN Security Council’s offer was a good one: if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment programme, it would be entitled to legally guaranteed supplies of fuel for nuclear power, assistance in building a light water reactor, foreign aid, technology transfer and the beginning of the end of economic sanctions. The United States seems prepared, for the first time since the revolution, to open a diplomatic office in Tehran. But in Geneva ten days ago, the Iranians filibustered until the negotiations ended. On Saturday President Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has now doubled the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium. A fourth round of sanctions looks inevitable.

The unequivocal statements Barack Obama and Gordon Brown made in Israel last week about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme cannot yet be justified. Nor can the unequivocal statements by some anti-war campaigners that Iran does not intend to build the bomb. Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states, if it accepted the UN’s terms?

Those who maintain that Iran’s purposes are peaceful clutch at the National Intelligence Estimate published by the US government in November. While it judged that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, it saw the country’s civilian uranium programme as a means of developing “technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so.” The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile material has been diverted from Iran’s stocks, but raises grave questions about some of the documents it has found, which suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept Ahmadinejad’s claims of peaceful intent.

Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own representatives. The Security Council’s offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a “Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction”. But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of these weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn’t yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess.

This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. During a parliamentary debate in March the British defence minister Bob Ainsworth was asked whether he thought that Israel’s nuclear weapons are “a destabilising factor” in the Middle East. “My understanding,” he replied, “is that Israel does not acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons.” Does Mr Ainsworth really buy this nonsense? If so, can we have a new minister? If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened.

But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation treaty (NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which the United Kingdom is one, to work towards “general and complete disarmament”. On Friday the Guardian published the notes for a speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested that the decision to replace the UK’s nuclear missiles had already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny. Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made. They appear to have misled the House.

At the Geneva conference on disarmament in February, one delegate pointed out that the “chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably” if non-nuclear states can see “planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear disarmament by nuclear weapon states” like the UK. If the nuclear states “are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations”, other nations would use this as an excuse for maintaining their weapons. Who was this firebrand? Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence. A man of the same name is failing to fulfil our disarmament obligations.

Browne claims that Britain must maintain its arsenal because of proliferation elsewhere, just as those proliferating elsewhere say that they must develop their arsenals because the official nuclear nations aren’t disarming. With the exception of France, none of the other European states feels the need to deploy nukes. But the UK keeps preparing for the last war. Of course, no one is refusing to disarm; it’s just that the task keeps getting pushed into the indefinite future. Opponents of British nuclear weapons maintain that a new generation of warheads would survive until 2055.

The permanent members of the UN Security Council draw a distinction between their “responsible” ownership of nuclear weapons and that of the aspirant powers. But over the past six years, the UK, US, France and Russia have all announced that they are prepared to use their nukes pre-emptively against a presumed threat, even from states that do not possess nuclear weapons. In some ways the current nuclear stand-off is more dangerous than the tetchy détente of the Cold War.

The danger has been heightened by the US government’s current offensive. Condoleeza Rice, the secretary of state, is demanding that other countries accept her plans to destroy the last remaining incentive for states to abide by the NPT. The treaty grants countries which conform to it materials for nuclear power on favourable terms. It’s a flawed incentive - as the spread of civil nuclear programmes makes the proliferation of military material more likely - but an incentive nonetheless. Now Rice insists that India should have special access to US nuclear materials despite the fact that it has not signed the NPT and has illegally developed nuclear weapons.

If she is successful, this effort - and the concomitant US demand that India is recognised as an official nuclear power - will blow the NPT to kingdom come. The treaty which survived the Cold War, and which remains the most important of the wilting guarantees against global annihilation, is being nuked for the sake of a few billion dollars of export orders.

Here’s where it gets really depressing. The Bush administration’s proposal has been supported by both John McCain and Barack Obama. The contrast between Obama’s position on India and his statements on Iran could not be greater, or more destructive of the inflated hopes now vested in him.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insistence that Iran enriches its own fissile material, and the guessing game he is playing with Israel, the atomic energy agency and the UN Security Council is irresponsible and staggeringly dangerous. But if I were in his position I might be tempted to do the same.

This article first appeared in the Guardian newspaper on 28th July 2008. The article with full footnotes also appears on [Monbiot.com]

In the early hours of Monday morning, an electrical fire broke out at William Rust House, the East London office of the socialist newspaper the Morning Star. The fire, believed to have been caused by a malfunctioning air-conditioner, broke out at approximately 3am and caused considerable structural damage to both the interior of the Morning Star’s newsroom and the equipment within, knocking out both electrical power and phone lines.

As the paper’s staff arrived for work on what was to turn out to be a particularly unpleasant Monday morning, they were faced with a partially collapsed ceiling and a newsroom reeking of smoke and caked with ash. Furthermore, as a consequence of the fire, there was additional smoke and water damage to both floors of the building.

Morning Star journalists, together with the paper’s editorial and support staff, quickly sprang into action to ensure that not even a single edition of Britain’s only socialist daily newspaper would be prevented from reaching newsagents around the country. In order to keep the paper rolling off the presses, staff salvaged what equipment they could from the smoky and soot-coated office and set up emergency news and subs desks in the front rooms of properties in Bow and Hackney, managing to continue producing daily editions of the paper, albeit truncated ones.

No-one would disagree that this calamity is a setback for the paper and its supporters. The inside of William Rust House, named after the Morning Star’s first editor, needs to be cleaned and renovated. This task is expected to take at least two months, and it is thought that all the office computers are beyond repair. Although the equipment was insured, it will take a while for it all to be replaced.

Both the Morning Star and its staff have faced numerous setbacks since the paper’s inception back in January 1930. These obstacles have included a government-imposed ban on sale of the newspaper, a 12-year boycott by wholesalers, imprisonment of the newspaper’s staff, as well as damage from the bombing raids during the Blitz. However, such hurdles have only intensified the resolve of all who have worked at the Star to carry on producing a progressive newspaper that covers the news stories and raises issues that much of the rest of the mainstream media either overlook or choose to ignore.

The clean-up operation at William Rust House has already begun, with both the internet and phone lines having been brought back on line. By the time that Thursday’s edition was printed, the paper had recovered to a length of 12 pages.

Although the Morning Star will continue to keep the Red Flag flying high, now is a moment when the paper requires your support. Those wishing to donate to the paper’s Fighting Fund, at a time when financial support is needed as much as ever, can do so via the Morning Star website http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk.

With your help and support, the Miracle of Fleet Street, as the Morning Star has been described, will rise from the ashes and retake its place in the vanguard of the struggle for peace and socialism.