Suharto and the IMF – A Marriage of Convenience

The New Statesman’s Sholto Byrnes is wrong to suggest that all of General Suharto’s crimes “cannot take away from Suharto that he reduced Indonesia’s inflation rate from 650 per cent in 1966 to under 20 per cent within three years”. Suharto’s crimes were indeed horrific – from anti-communist purges to the death of at least 100,000 following the Indonesian invasion of East Timor – and he did succeed in reducing hyper-inflation, but it is historically inaccurate to divorce these two issues and see them as mutually exclusive. Indeed, it was only brutal authoritarianism which allowed Suharto to force through unpopular economic reforms.

Suharto’s predecessor – President Sukarno – attracted the scorn of the US because he focused on wealth redistribution and threw the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank out of Indonesia. From the off, Suharto was the CIA’s man in Indonesia. The CIA furnished him with lists of prominent leftists and Suharto used the army to cleanse the country of communists. As Kathy Kadane, former reporter at the Washington Post, noted, this was done with the explicit support of the CIA and the US Embassy received regular reports on their progress. The army’s cruelty was echoed by state-sponsored religious groups which swept the country massacring hundreds of thousands of left-wing sympathisers.

In exchange for supporting Suharto in the liquidation of leftist opposition, the United States expected certain economic favours. Suharto surrounded himself with graduates of the University of Berkeley who supported the liberalisation of the economy. According to the Shock Doctrine:

They passed laws allowing foreign companies to own 100 percent of resources, handed out “tax holidays,” and within two years, Indonesia’s natural wealth – copper, nickel, hardwood, rubber and oil – was being divided up among the largest mining and energy companies in the world.

Suharto’s subservience to the American economic agenda ensured more favourable treatment from international bodies such as the IMF and this allowed for the reduction in inflation – but it was only achieved through the violent suppression of opposition. This model of foreign intervention – combining support for fierce repression, populating sympathetic governments with economic acolytes and using supranational bodies to promote favourable domestic policy – continues to be replicated by America across the globe. Hence, Suharto’s “crimes” were an intrinsic part of reducing hyper-inflation.

Byrnes concedes that it was not Suharto’s human rights abuses which eventually brought his regime down but “his government’s catastrophic response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997”. However this conclusion is again misleading. A more satisfying explanation is that the alliance between Suharto and the IMF fragmented. From being the first country in the region to open its doors to unregulated foreign capital, Suharto became increasingly obstinate and unwilling to comply with IMF controls. One crucial trigger was the IMF’s insistence that Suharto raise the price of gasoline – he did and the Indonesians rose up and pushed him from power. The IMF’s marriage of convenience with Suharto had been terminated in a messy divorce.

Byrnes’ article urges us to use Asia as a model for what might happen in the Arab world following the fall of Gaddafi and Mubarak. He is right to seek historical parallels with the fall of autocratic regimes in Asia, but it is wrong to equate these with principles of freedom and liberation whilst ignoring the role of supranational bodies – such as the IMF and World Bank in Asia and NATO in Libya – in enforcing their agenda. What we can learn from the Indonesian experience is that these international bodies will support governments – either democratic or autocratic – when they acquiesce to selling natural resources – such as oil reserves or mineral wealth – to foreign corporations.

Let’s not kid ourselves that the West is concerned with liberation and national sovereignty. Our history is riddled with support for despots, dictators and murderers. Gaddafi and Mubarak are two prime examples of this. The British left-wing press shouldn’t be espousing what is, at best, historically inaccurate, or, at worst, cynical historical revisionism.

When is a revolution not a revolution?

Our national media has been falling over itself to congratulate the West for its role in the Libyan “revolution” and the “liberation” of the Libyan people. The Sun has spoken of “ecstatic crowds” of “freed Libyans” and the Metro has described how David Cameron was given a “heroes’ welcome” on his visit to Benghazi. It is, as the Times declared, “a revolution ... as revolutions used to be”.

Today’s newspapers were dominated with pictures of Cameron alongside fellow freedom fighter Nicolas Sarkhozy and Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Chair of the National Transitional Council, and part of the “new” Libyan leadership. Jalil – like a number of the National Transitional Council – previously served in Gaddafi’s government. Mahmoud Jibril was a keen advocate of liberalisation and privatisation during his time as head of the National Economic Development Board under Gaddafi whilst Jalil himself was Minister of Justice from 2007-2011. Numerous others were educated in Western countries such as France and America. The only difference is - where Gaddafi sought to deny external access to Libya’s natural resources and oil reserves - the Transitional Council will be far more sympathetic to Western economic interest.

And so, as racist violence sweeps Libya and corporate vultures circle Libya’s abundant natural wealth, it makes you wonder how deep and meaningful a revolution can be when key figures served as part of the overthrown administration and others were educated abroad? NATO prevented Gaddafi’s predicted genocide with a barrage of brutal airstrikes and terrors comparable to those of the Gaddafi regime. Perhaps this is a revolution that’s going full circle.

Eyes on Power's left-wing coup

So it turns out EoP has been voted 17th in the left-wing category of the Total Politics Blog Awards 2011. We are obviously delighted and would like to thank everyone who voted for us - and anyone who didn't vote for us but still reads this nonsense.

Big congratulations also to our very own Dan Smith who has been voted number 9 in the top left-wing bloggers category.

Well done to all the other blogs and bloggers too!

The Miami Five – 13 Years of Unjust Imprisonment

On this day 13 years ago, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González were arrested by the FBI in Miami while trying to stop right-wing groups carrying out terrorist attacks against the Cuban people. The five counter-terrorists – commonly known as the Miami Five – remain unfairly incarcerated within the US; their wives and family members are denied family visitation rights and they are often held in solitary confinement.

For over 50 years, right-wing exile groups within Miami have targeted Cuba killing nearly 3,500 people in terrorist attacks against the island. This has been done with the complicit support of the US government and the CIA.

To saves lives, Cuba sent five men to infiltrate and monitor these violent dissident groups. At the request of the American government, this information was passed to the FBI in 1998 but – instead of arresting the terrorists – the Bureau used the information to identify and arrest the Miami Five on 12 September 1998.

The Miami Five were sentenced to a total of 75 years imprisonment and remain interned within the US. Compare this to the terrorist and former CIA-operative Luis Posada Carriles who – although responsible for the blowing up of a Cuban airliner in 1973 which killed 73 people – remains at liberty in America.

The arrest, trial and sentencing of the Miami Five has enraged legal opinion, NGOs and human rights campaigners from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to Amnesty International.

In October 2010, Amnesty International released a report condemning the trial of the Miami Five and calling for a review of the case. Central to their criticism was the “underlying concern related to the fairness of holding the trial in Miami, given the pervasive hostility to the Cuban government in that area and media and other events before and during the trial . . . there was evidence to suggest that these factors made it impossible to ensure a wholly impartial jury”.

Amnesty raised serious concerns about the circumstances of the pre-trial detention of the five men which involved sporadic solitary confinement and limited access to attorneys and evidence. As the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared in May 2005, this “undermined the equal balance between the prosecution and the defence”.

Amnesty’s report followed a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals which, in August 2005, unanimously overturned the convictions of the Miami Five on the ground that “pervasive community prejudice in Miami against the Castro government merged with other factors to prejudice their right to a fair trial”. The decision was promptly quashed by the US government.

Furthermore, recent evidence obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act demonstrates that the American government directly funded Miami-based journalists to write and broadcast prejudicial articles and commentary before and during the trial. Despite overwhelming evidence, the Supreme Court has consistently refused to consider appeals on these grounds – even though similar cases have been granted a retrial.

Legal avenues in defence of the Miami Five have virtually been exhausted and only humanitarian intervention from President Barack Obama or the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can give justice to the five and their families. Public pressure to break the silence around this case is vital.

UK-based NGO the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the British trade union movement have been crucial in building the broadest possible alliance in support of family visitation rights and, ultimately, the release of the Miami Five.

Any potential solution lies with the American government and the British movement in support of the Miami Five has been working closely with US unions – including the United Service Workers, the United Steel Workers and the Teamsters – to lobby key stakeholders in the Obama administration.

In a recent meeting in support of the Miami Five in Los Angeles, former Unite the Union General Secretary Tony Woodley declared, “the Miami Five enjoy a great deal of support on the international level, but that is not the case inside the United States. Solidarity is absolutely crucial in this case and the political struggle will be decisive for the return of the Miami Five to Cuba”.

America’s duplicity with regard the Miami Five is laid bare by Cuba’s ongoing inclusion on the US State Department terror blacklist alongside Iran, Sudan and Syria. As the Cuban Foreign Ministry said recently, the US government “has absolutely no moral right to judge Cuba, which has an unblemished history in the fight against terrorism and has been consistently the victim of this scourge”. This allegation is vindicated by the grotesque treatment of the Miami Five and the inexplicable harbouring of Posada Carriles.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry accused the US of the “political manipulation” of the sensitive issue of terrorism and, similarly, the handling of the Miami Five must be seen as distinctly political.

The unjust treatment of the Miami Five typifies US foreign policy towards Cuba and – when contrasted to the United States’ promotion and funding of dissident groups in Cuba – highlights American hypocrisy. The freedom of the Miami Five will only be secured through collective political action across the broadest possible campaign. Until their release, the campaign will continue.

The Forgotten 9/11

“That 11 September, that lethal Tuesday morning, I awoke with dread to the sound of planes flying above my house,” wrote Ariel Dorfman in the New Statesman recently. “When, an hour later, I saw smoke billowing from the centre of the city, I knew that life had changed for me, for my country, forever”.

Dorfman – contrary to popular assumption – was not writing about New York in 2001. He was describing events 28 years earlier in Chile. Chile 1973 is the forgotten 9/11.

In April 1973, the CIA circulated a memo encouraging a military coup in Chile against Salvador Allende’s democratically elected socialist government. The memorandum called for the promotion of economic chaos, political tension and affirmed that “ideally it would succeed in inducing the military to take over the government completely”.

Five months later, the Chilean armed forces – strongly encouraged by the US – bombed the Presidential Palace and Allende shot himself. In the following days, over 13,500 people were arrested. The Pinochet dictatorship – aided and abated by the US – rolled out radical neo-liberal economic policy which required violent enforcement. In total, more than 3,200 people were disappeared or executed, 80,000 were imprisoned and 200,000 fled the country for political reasons. It was an alarming foreshadow of things to come.

The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein – in her monumental book The Shock Doctrine – frames modern history as the evolution of disaster capitalism. Klein debunks the myth that the rise of neo-liberal hegemony was achieved democratically and contends that free-market capitalism requires – and encourages – crises to force through a corporate agenda. In Klein’s view, this whole process started with the rise of Chicago School economics following Pinochet’s coup d’état in 1973.

The grandfather of the Chicago School, Milton Friedman, was the economic guru for both General Pinochet and President Bush. In 1982 he stated:

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Friedmanite economics have been applied throughout the world in response to crises since the 1970s – instigated by Pinochet’s Chile and intensified after 11 September 2001. Free-market reform – always serving American corporate interest – has required the shock therapy of torture, war and repression to subdue popular unrest and smash opposition. America’s support and advocacy of this terror has been unrelenting.

Parallels between the two 9/11s

Pinochet’s Chile was a laboratory for Chicago School economics: privatisation, deregulation and social spending cuts. In his first two years – with government companies auctioned off at a fraction of their value – unemployment increased from 3% to 20%. Inflation rose to a staggering 375% and 74% of the average household income was spent on bread. By the end of the 1980s, 45% of Chileans lived below the poverty line whilst, in contrast, the richest 10% had seen their income increase by 83%.

Whereas Pinochet’s Chile was an experiment in neo-liberalism, the War on Terror – free from the shackles of the Cold War – was private from the start. Everything – from homeland security to combat abroad – was for sale. By 2005, the homeland security industry – economically irrelevant before 9/11 – was worth $200 billion.

The function of government itself has become one of procurement. The number of security contracts handed out by the US increased from 3,512 in 2004 to 115,000 in 2006. Fighting wars abroad has become lucrative business for a variety of franchises and contractors. Iraq is not occupied by the American military, it is occupied by McDonalds in greenzones or by private security firms. This raises serious questions of accountability and transparency – not to mention government responsibility.

The US used the mass disorientation resulting from 9/11 to subdue opposition and facilitate the spread of the free market. Just as the Falklands War reignited Thatcher’s ailing Premiership, 9/11 was a panacea for Bush’s anaemic Presidency. Rapid economic growth echoed the Dotcom bubble but, to stop it bursting, the Whitehouse needed to create perpetual fear to fuel demand.

In pursuit of ubiquitous fear, the US amplified Pinochet’s brutality by employing extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques (ETIs), water-boarding, hooding and indefinite detention. Donald Rumsfeld ensured that prisoners captured in Afghanistan were not covered by the Geneva Convention because they were classed as “enemy combatants” rather than POWs. Furthermore, according to declassified documentation, Rumsfeld authorised a number of ETIs including “deprivation of light and auditory stimuli,” “the removal of clothing” and “using detainees’ individual phobias... to induce stress”.

President Bush declared that “freedom itself” had been attacked following al-Qaeda’s assault on the Twin Towers. He vowed to ensure that “freedom will be defended”. The tragic irony is that the defence of freedom – or the War on Terror – has more often been used to curb people’s freedom in the name of counter-terrorism. This – like the support of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship – highlights the depraved hypocrisy of a morally corrupt superpower. This is the 9/11 that shouldn’t be forgotten.

This is an extended version of an article written for Liberal Conspiracy

From Crackpot to Despot: Top 10 Nadine Dorries Quotes

Politics is a melting pot of colourful characters, oddballs and eccentrics. From the Posadists’ combination of Trotskyism and ufology to Lembit Opik’s obsession with apocalyptic Armageddon, it is the weird and the wonderful which make politics fascinating.

Problems arise, however, when the carnival of crackpots take over the asylum. The United States already has its fair share of mainstream nutters – from President George W. Bush to the horrifying Tea Party – but Britain is in hot pursuit. The current peculiar pin-up is Nadine Dorries – Sarah Palin’s bosom buddy and reactionary protégé – who has grabbed the headlines this week in her quest to restrict women’s access to abortion.

Dorries’ growing influence and exposure makes her a fearsome and frightening political beast. But don’t take my word for it; here are some of her most dubious, unfounded and reprehensible soundbites.

Dorries on God
“My faith tells me who I am. It tells me why I am here. It tells me who is with me while I am pursuing my goals. I sometimes think if I didn’t have my faith, who would I be? How would I live my life? My faith constantly gives me my reference point. I am not an MP for any reason other than because God wants me to be. There is nothing I did that got me here; it is what God did... I am just a conduit for God.” (War Cry, 2 June 2007)

Dorries on Pro-Life
“The public takes little notice of those who want to abolish abortion. They are dismissed as extremists. If I were to argue that all abortions should be banned, the ethical discussions would go round in circles.... My view is that the only way forward is to argue for a reduction in the time limit... saving some lives is better than saving no lives at all. I hope pro-lifers will come to share my view that some progress is better than no progress.” (War Cry, 2 June 2007)

Dorries on Abortion
“When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre... In the UK we are aborting babies just like this and older every single day.... Little Samuel made his case from within the womb in a way which none of the shrill late abortionists will ever manage.” (The Hand of Hope, Nadine Dorries’s blog, 19 March 2008)

Dorries on All-Women Shortlists
“Sometimes I feel sorry for some of the Labour women who were selected via all-women shortlists. Everyone knows who they are. They are constantly derided.” (Conservative Home, 21 October 2009)

Dorries on Cannabis
"They startled me when they told me that the cannabis that teenagers are smoking now... is actually 50 times more potent than it was even a year ago... It only takes the teenager one 'spliff' or one 'joint' or whatever they refer to it now to smoke and they will never reach their full academic potential, because it is so dangerous..." (Any Questions, BBC Radio 4, 3 June 2011)

Dorries on Twitter
“Do you know of anyone who has Tweeted more than 35,000 times in less than six months? If so, email my office and let me know. Or, better still, if it's someone you know is on benefits, contact the Department for Work and Pensions.” (Twitter Obsession, Nadine Dorries’ blog, 30 September 2010)

Dorries (via Twitter) on Burglars’ Human Rights
“When you break into someone’s house to do harm, you leave every right you have at the door.” (Nadine Dorries’ Twitter, 31 January 2010)

Dorries on Sex Education and Child Abuse
“If a stronger ‘just say no’ message was given to children in school, there might be an impact on sex abuse. A lot of girls, when abuse takes place, don’t realise until later that that was wrong because sex is so common in society... I don’t think people realise that if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in school, we would probably have less sex abuse” (The Vanessa Show, 16 May 2011)

Dorries on Sarah Palin
"I think Sarah Palin is amazing. I totally admire her." (New Statesman, 30 September 2010)

Dorries on Truth
"My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire. I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another." (The Guardian 21 October 2010)

So, by her own admission, Nadine Dorries is inclined to replace one fact with another. Or ‘lying’ as most people call it. 70% of what she says is fiction and 30% is fact. Judging by the quotes above, it’s also 100% bullshit. With the growing media attention she's receiving, it's also dangerous bullshit.