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      Why did we ignore the lessons of history in Afghanistan? We need a public inquiry | Jonathan Steele

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      OpinionAfghanistanWhy did we ignore the lessons of history in Afghanistan? We need a public inquiry Jonathan SteeleThe US and Britain’s dogged pursuit of reform and regime change made the return of the Taliban almost inevitable Wed 18 Aug 2021 12.30 EDTLast modified on Wed 18 Aug 2021 12.32 EDTWhen rising British casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq started to raise public doubts 15 years ago, a new mantra began to be heard: Iraq was a war of choice, Afghanistan a war of necessity. The argument was that the US and its faithful ally, Britain, had launched an invasion in Iraq that was unjustified as it was based on a false premise: the hollow claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.Fear of refugees must not shape the response to Afghanistan’s crisis | Daniel TrillingRead moreThe intervention in Afghanistan was different, it was said, even by many who opposed the Iraq war. Al-Qaida had organised the atrocities of 9/11 and its leader, Osama bin Laden, was based on Afghan soil. George W Bush was right to give the Taliban an ultimatum to hand him over or face invasion.But here, too, there was a false premise, or indeed several. Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership were as surprised to see the twin towers crash to the ground in New York as everyone else. They had never been consulted by Bin Laden on his strategy, let alone his targets. Anticipating US reprisals, Bin Laden and his large entourage of Arab fighters left Kandahar and hid in the Tora Bora mountains. Bush’s call on the Taliban to arrest him was unrealistic. So going after the Taliban was just as unnecessary as bringing regime change in Iraq.It was also equally dubious from the standpoint of international law. There was no UN security council resolution authorising the US assault on Afghanistan. It was clear that Bush would want to punish al-Qaida for 9/11, but international law does not permit armed force for revenge or retaliation. The US claimed that al-Qaida had declared war on the US and it was entitled to respond with force in self-defence. International law only allows this if an enemy attack is imminent. In the autumn of 2001, imminence was hardly a relevant concept. None of the 19 9/11 hijackers was Afghan and they had mainly trained in Germany and the US. It had taken two years to prepare the attack, so there was no way al-Qaida could have mounted another similar atrocity imminently.After 9/11, a few analysts argued that if the US was determined to use force it should have limited it to a search-and-destroy operation against al-Qaida in Tora Bora. Their view was ignored and Bush added a new war aim: the building of a modern democracy in Afghanistan. Joe Biden repudiated that in his speech on Monday when he stressed that US policy should be based on security from terrorism rather than any humanitarian reforms. His remarks are sparking a furious debate, but they are correct.Britain, too, needs to re-examine its Afghan policies. It should hold an inquiry along the same lines as the Chilcot report into Iraq (except that it should report much faster). The first item on its agenda must be whether the decision to go for regime change in 2001 was wise or foolish. The events of the past two decades, culminating in the triumphant return of the Taliban that we have just witnessed, flows from that decision.It is true that Kabul and other major Afghan cities have enjoyed 20 years of patchy progress. Women in particular have benefited and a generation of young people has grown up with the expectation of secure and free life choices. If the Taliban had not been ousted from power in 2001, none of this would have happened. But the country would have been spared the ravages and killing of the civil war that resumed in 2003 once the Taliban recovered from the shock of defeat. Like the Ashraf Ghani administration, it also just gave up in 2001 under the weight of US bombing with barely a shot fired. It was bound to seek ways to reverse it, however long it took.In the century since Afghanistan gained independence from Britain in 1919, the country’s tragedy has been the constantly repeated cycle of defeat for the minority of Afghan modernisers who have sought to break the hold of conservative rural patriarchy. It happened with the first post-independence leader, Amanullah Khan, who took power on a wave of popularity but lost it after he introduced co-educational schools and stopped women wearing hijab, let alone the full burqa. Conservatives marched on Kabul in 1929, the army deserted and Amanullah abdicated.Resistance to a new wave of reform arose again in the 1980s when Afghanistan’s communists, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), expanded education for girls and increased opportunities for women to work outside the home. When they took Soviet support, they opened the door for an alliance of religious and tribal leaders (helped by western governments at the height of the cold war) to rise up as mujahideen warriors and brand the PDPA as atheists and lackeys of the Kremlin. When Moscow withdrew its aid in 1992 (like Trump and Biden today), the modernising regime quickly fell. Now we are seeing a third turn of the wheel of conservatives ousting reformers.Observers wonder how the Taliban managed to achieve so sweeping a victory. The sad fact is that its patriarchal views are popular in rural and small-town Afghanistan and it could never have made its stunning military advances without local support. People had also lost faith in a corrupt central government and an army that the Pentagon was well aware was ineffective and unmotivated – as revealed in the “Afghanistan Papers”, hundreds of confidential interviews with US military and diplomatic leaders obtained by the Washington Post.Many Afghans felt the Taliban produced quicker and more honest justice in village disputes between families. The UK government should have known this. Surveys commissioned for the Department for International Development in Helmand in 2010 showed that people preferred Taliban courts to the Kabul-appointed ones, where they had to bribe prosecutors and judges.Afghans do not like invaders, whatever their motives, and the Taliban were able to exploit the narrative of patriotic resistance. Why did Britain ignore the lessons of history and follow the unhappy experience of the Soviet invasion and occupation? That must be the central issue in the public inquiry we need.
      Jonathan Steele is a former Guardian correspondent and author of Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground
      TopicsAfghanistanOpinionSouth and Central AsiaTalibanUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      How the Taliban took Afghanistan

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      The departure of US forces was followed by a rout of Afghan government forces. Now, after 20 years of western intervention, Afghanistan is back under the control of the Taliban

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      It began with a steady trickle of military defeats. First Afghan government control was ceded to the Taliban in provincial towns and cities. Then, as the lack of resistance became apparent, bigger cities and regional capitals began to fall. Finally on Sunday the Taliban entered Kabul as the western-backed government fled the country. The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison, tells Michael Safi that it marks a stunning reversal for the Afghan government, which had begun negotiating a deal with the Taliban in recent months. And as deeply flawed as the government in Kabul has been for the past 20 years, it has created space for the education of girls and a free press. All of that is now in grave doubt as Afghans wait to see whether their new Taliban rulers plan to carry on where they left off in 2001. We hear voices from inside Afghanistan including reporter Zahra Joya, who was a child when US forces invaded in 2001 and drove out the Taliban. She describes her fears for what will come next. More

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      Are you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate sceptics | Jonathan Freedland

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      OpinionCoronavirusAre you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate scepticsJonathan FreedlandTo accept the facts about climate science without changing the way we live is also to deny reality Fri 13 Aug 2021 11.55 EDTLast modified on Fri 13 Aug 2021 15.04 EDTIt’s easy to laugh at the anti-vaccine movement, and this week they made it easier still. Hundreds of protesters tried to storm Television Centre in west London, apparently unaware that they were not at the headquarters of the BBC or its news operation – which they blame for brainwashing the British public – but at a building vacated by the corporation eight years ago and which now consists of luxury flats and daytime TV studios. If only they’d done their own research.Anti-vax firebreather Piers Corbyn was there, of course, unabashed by the recent undercover sting that showed him happy to take £10,000 in cash from what he thought was an AstraZeneca shareholder, while agreeing that he would exempt their product from his rhetorical fire. (Corbyn has since said that the published video is misleading.) “We’ve got to take over these bastards,” he said during this week’s protest, while inside Loose Women were discussing the menopause.In Britain, the temptation is to snigger at the anti-vaxxers, but in the US it’s becoming ever clearer that the outright Covid deniers, vaccine opponents and anti-maskers – and the hold they have over the Republican party – are no joke. The Covid culture wars have escalated to such an extent that the Republican governors of two states, Florida and Texas, are now actively barring schools, colleges and local authorities from taking basic, common-sense measures against the disease.They are no longer allowed to require vaccines, proof of vaccination, a Covid test or masks. Any Florida school administrator who demands the wearing of masks could lose their pay. Texas is dropping the requirement that schools even notify parents when there’s a coronavirus case in class. Naturally, the Covid numbers in both states are through the roof. For all Joe Biden’s early success with vaccination, this level of resistance is posing a grave threat to the US’s ability to manage, let alone defeat, the pandemic.What explains this level of Covid denialism? In the US, the roots of a “don’t tread on me” libertarianism that regards any instruction from government as a step towards tyranny run deep. In the Trump era, it has become a matter of political identity: a refusal to believe Covid is real or that the measures against it are legitimate are increasingly conditions of membership of the right and of good standing as a true devotee of the former president. They are conditions of membership. Besides, Covid denialism offers the lure of all conspiracy theories: the promise of secret knowledge, the chance to see what the sheeple cannot see.For everyone else, it’s tempting to take pride in being untainted by such thinking. To dismiss the Covid deniers, whether in Florida or west London, as a group apart, irrational, if not downright stupid – refusing to take the steps that will provably protect them, their families and those around them. And yet, the distance between them and everyone else might not be as great as you think.Contempt for the unvaccinated is a temptation to be resisted | Dan BrooksRead moreOn the same day that Piers and the placard wavers were out in force in White City, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered its report on the state of our planet. It was its starkest warning yet. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called it a “code red for humanity”, adding that the “alarm bells are deafening”. The IPCC found that sea level is rising, the polar ice is melting, there are floods, droughts and heatwaves and that human activity is “unequivocally” the cause.Now, there are some who still deny this plain truth, the same way that some insist coronavirus is a “plandemic” hatched by Bill Gates or caused by 5G phone masts or aliens. Both those groups are guilty of cognitive denial, failing to update their beliefs in the light of the evidence.But there is another form of denial, what the philosopher Quassim Cassam calls “behavioural or practical denialism”. This is the mindset that accepts the science marshalled by the IPCC – it hears the alarm bell ringing – but still does not change its behaviour. It can operate at the level of governments: note the White House official who on Wednesday urged global oil producers to open up the taps and increase production, so that hard-pressed US motorists can buy gasoline more cheaply. And it lives in individuals, too, in the fatalism that says one person can do nothing to halt a planetary emergency, so you might as well shrug and move on. Which is “to act in the same way as if you were a climate change denier,” says Cassam. “The practical upshot is the same.”Whether it’s Covid or climate, there is a common defect at work here. It is wilful blindness, a deliberate closing of the eyes to a reality that is too hard to bear – and it afflicts far more than a hardcore of noisy sceptics and protesters. A US poll this week found that a summer of heatwaves, flooding and wildfires – evidence that the planet is both burning and drowning – has barely shifted attitudes to the climate issue. Many, even most, are looking the other way.Perhaps all this is worth bearing in mind as policymakers grappling with the twin crises try to cajole the wary towards action for both their own and the collective good. In both cases, it pays to peel the committed deniers away from those who are merely hesitant or apathetic, and therefore more persuadable. And, again in both cases, it’s wise to remember that the recalcitrant are driven by an impulse that is all too human: namely, fear.TopicsCoronavirusOpinionVaccines and immunisationHealthClimate changeUS politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on post-Covid recovery: powered by the state not the market | Editorial

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      OpinionCoronavirusThe Guardian view on post-Covid recovery: powered by the state not the marketEditorialThe Thatcherite wing of the Conservative party desires a restoration of ideas whose time has come and gone Mon 9 Aug 2021 14.02 EDTLast modified on Mon 9 Aug 2021 15.35 EDTThe Conservative party hooked British capitalism to the state’s life support system for the past 18 months. So it takes chutzpah to think, as business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng does, of putting the free market at the heart of a post-Covid recovery. Yet lengthening NHS waiting lists, hiking consumer energy bills and welfare cuts when poverty is rising all betray a mindset that regards the re-legitimation of state intervention as threatening a way of life rather than securing it.What the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative party desires is a restoration. For them this is an opportunity to go back to 1979 and use tried-and-tested ways to stabilise prices, crush labour and discipline poorer nations. These rightwingers yearn for higher interest rates, to prioritise financial returns on assets and the use of creditor power to squeeze the global south.Such ideologues are likely, in part, to be disappointed. The US president, Joe Biden, does not see the world their way, saying this April that “trickle-down economics”, associated with Ronald Reagan, didn’t work. The president aims to show that the state can do good, and the early results are promising. His Covid-related aid boost will push the share of Americans in poverty to the lowest level on record. Mr Biden’s treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, professes a “free market” scepticism. She has promoted the social benefits of running the economy “hot” by maximising the use of all available resources. Her inspiration is the economist Arthur Okun, who in 1973 argued that governments increasing employment would foster “a process of ladder climbing” in the job market that would reduce inequality and stimulate productivity growth. Ms Yellen has stuck to this playbook in office.Perhaps the greatest pushback against the return of laissez-faire dominance in economics comes from China. Beijing has surpassed the US in some key technologies. Mr Biden’s economic team is blunt about needing to use the state for more “targeted efforts to try to build domestic industrial strength … when we’re dealing with competitors like China that are not operating on market-based terms”.The state is, clearly, not powerless against global capital. During Covid it paid for millions of workers without breaking a sweat. Contrary to conventional thinking there was no threat from rising deficits to interest rates. Thatcherism was defined by Nigel Lawson as “increasing freedom for markets to work within a framework of firm monetary and fiscal discipline”. This saw the state put in service of business interests rather than mediating between labour and capital. It also left Britain woefully unprepared, and ill-equipped, for the pandemic. A Thatcherite approach will not produce a fairer distribution of growth. It will militate against support during downturns and plans to “level up” the regions. Ministers ought to outline a new role for the state rather than relying on failed ideas about what the market can do.TopicsCoronavirusOpinionConservativesMargaret ThatcherEconomicsJoe BidenUS politicsRonald ReaganeditorialsReuse this content More

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      UK media unite to urge visas for Afghan reporters at risk from Taliban

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      AfghanistanUK media unite to urge visas for Afghan reporters at risk from TalibanNewspapers and broadcasters send open letter to Boris Johnson raising safety fears about locals who did vital work for the west

      Open letter warns of brutal Taliban reprisals against Afghan reporters
      Emma Graham-HarrisonWed 4 Aug 2021 14.59 EDTFirst published on Wed 4 Aug 2021 12.10 EDTA coalition of British newspapers and broadcasters has appealed to the government to expand its refugee visa programme for Afghans, to include people who have worked for UK media over the past 20 years.In an open letter to the prime minister and foreign secretary, more than 20 outlets outlined the vital need for a route to safety for reporters whose work with British media could put them at risk of Taliban reprisals.“There is an urgent need to act quickly, as the threat to their lives is already acute and worsening,” the letter said.“If left behind, those Afghan journalists and media employees who have played such a vital role informing the British public by working for British media will be left at the risk of persecution, of physical harm, incarceration, torture, or death.US media came together to make a similar appeal last month, unifying outlets as diverse as Fox and the New York Times. The Biden administration has since expanded its visa programme for Afghanistan, to cover people with links to the US media, and US-funded aid projects.The signatories to the British letter represent an equally broad coalition. They include broadcasters Sky and ITN (which makes news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5) and all major British newspapers from the Guardian, the Times and the Financial Times to the Daily Mail and the Sun, and weekly magazine the Economist.The National Union of Journalists and press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders have also put their names to the demand for a path to safety for journalists with UK links, modelled on the visa route for military interpreters.The letter was sent to Boris Johnson and the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, who did not immediately respondThe Labour leader, Keir Starmer, promised his party’s backing for the effort to expand protection to Afghan journalists.“The Labour party strongly supports this campaign. These brave Afghans helped the British media report news of the war to the world. They stood up for media freedom and democracy, values that we rightly champion around the world,” Starmer said.“The UK must not abandon them. We urge the government to do the right thing and provide these Afghan journalists, support staff and their families sanctuary in the UK.”Afghans who worked as reporters, translators or “fixers” – multi-skilled journalists who do everything from research to driving for foreign correspondents from outside the country – have been vital to public understanding of a war that has claimed hundreds of British lives and cost billions of pounds.That work, and their links to the UK, also created unique security risks for them. Afghan reporters say their reporting is regularly cited in insurgent threats.The letter notes that the UK government’s own panel on press freedom “recommends a visa programme for journalists at risk in their home state”.The Taliban have for years targeted journalists in campaigns of assassinations and intimidation, which intensified last year, when a wave of attacks in urban areas picked off reporters along with human rights workers, moderate religious scholars and civil society activists, as they went about their daily lives.Helmand-based Elyas Dayee, a key contributor to much of the UK media coverage from the province where most British troops served, was killed in a bomb attack claimed by local Taliban commanders. Other victims included three women who worked for Enekass TV in eastern Afghanistan, gunned down on their commute.The threats have become even more urgent since the Taliban launched a military campaign in May that has swept through the country.They have seized more than half of rural Afghanistan and are threatening several major cities. The group have carried out targeted killings after taking control in some areas, and journalists fear they are likely to be on hitlists.The body of the Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Danish Siddiqui was multilated while in Taliban custody, after he was killed near the southern town of Kandahar last month.Underlining the gravity of the current security situation in Afghanistan, the US has started airlifting out former employees even before they finish their visa process, and UK military officials are appealing for a broader visa programme.TopicsAfghanistanTalibanSouth and Central AsiaUS politicsJournalist safetynewsReuse this content More

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      Bill Clinton fancied an Indian rather than tea with the Queen

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      Bill ClintonBill Clinton fancied an Indian rather than tea with the QueenThen US leader also turned down Chequers dinner because he wanted to ‘be a tourist’, archives show Caroline DaviesMon 19 Jul 2021 19.01 EDTLast modified on Tue 20 Jul 2021 00.09 EDTBill Clinton turned down tea with the Queen and dinner at Chequers because he wanted to “be a tourist” and try out an Indian restaurant during his first official visit to the UK with Tony Blair as prime minister, formerly classified documents reveal.Downing Street wanted to pull out all the stops for a visit seen as crucial to “establishing a good working relationship” between the new prime minister and the then US president. Buckingham Palace contacted No 10 to say “HM the Queen would be very pleased” to invite the Clintons to tea at 5pm on their brief one-day detour from summits in Paris and The Hague.But, though “very grateful for HM the Queen’s invitation”, the Clintons would “wish to decline politely”, recorded Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, nor was the White House “attracted to our suggestion of a dinner at Chequers”.Instead, Clinton wanted time to go shopping – “he has said that he wants to be a tourist” – and had “expressed an interest in trying Indian food”, according to a Downing Street briefing note released by the National Archives.A lot was riding on the visit, with the British and Americans agreeing it needed to “show the president and the prime minister to the wider world as young, dynamic and serious leaders”.The Americans were keen for a “fun” and “photogenic” outside event. Foreign Office suggestions – which all went nowhere – included a lunchtime jamming session “for the president (saxophone) and the prime minister (guitar) to play together briefly (with or without other musicians who might be at the lunch)”. Another was a “look in a pub (the Americans like them)”.No 10’s suggestions for a “stroll in Trafalgar Square” before visiting the Sports Cafe in Haymarket, where both men “could be shown how to play various sophisticated computer games by a group of children” were “firmly” rejected by the White House as “not serious enough”.In the event, the Clintons ended up with free time between a joint press conference and dinner. Rather than an Indian restaurant, dinner for the Blairs and Clintons was at the French restaurant Le Pont de la Tour near Tower Bridge, where the £298.86 invoice shows the two couples dined on grilled sole, halibut, wild salmon and rabbit.Ahead of the visit, there were concerns at the White House that the Clintons had recently sojourned in Barbados at a house belonging to Sir Anthony Bamford, “a well-known Conservative supporter”. There were fears “this might be misunderstood or misinterpreted in London”, the documents reveal. The White House said the president did not know Bamford at all. “But the property he owns happens to be particularly well situated from a security and other points of view.”During the 29 May 1997 visit, Clinton was to be shown around the Cabinet Room, prompting the then cabinet secretary, Robin Butler, to remind Blair’s principal private secretary, John Holmes, of the former US president Richard Nixon’s inauspicious visit to the cabinet room in 1969.As later recounted by Roy Jenkins, the chancellor at the time, as Nixon reached for milk for his coffee, he “mysteriously succeeded in picking up a crystal inkwell and pouring its contents over his hands, his papers and some part of the table”. As “horror” broke out on the British side, Sir Burke Trend – the then cabinet secretary – poured cream over his own trousers, “although it was not clear whether this was because he was so shocked or because he felt the president would feel less embarrassed if carelessness verging on slapstick appeared to be a Downing Street habit”, Jenkins later wrote. Nixon was led out to “nailbrushes and pumice stones”, which were “unavailing” and returned with hands still stained, “a real Lady Macbeth scene”, and his concentration “completely ruined”. In a handwritten note, Butler wrote: “I hope I will not be asked to emulate the sacrifice of my predecessor.”TopicsBill ClintonNational ArchivesTony BlairPolitics pastUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Government urged to ‘avoid criminalisation’ of EU care workers amid concerns over settlement scheme

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      The government has been urged to “avoid criminalisation” of EU care workers by scrapping the deadline for a post-Brexit settlement scheme or exempting this group.Organisations representing the sector claimed a “substantial number” of care workers were “still not fully aware” of the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS).EU citizens and their families have until 30 June to apply for the scheme if they want to keep living in the UK, with their current legal status and rights set to expire after this date due to Brexit.Charities urged the Home Office earlier this month to scrap the deadline for applications to avoid seeing tens of thousands becoming undocumented overnight.Now, five bodies representing the care sector have raised “serious concerns” over the impact of the scheme and its deadline – which is just over a week away.In a letter, the groups said there was a “clear lack of knowledge/awareness” among EU care workers and employers about what they need to do. They said this was mainly caused by “poor engagement and communication” from the Home Office, according to the signatories, which includes the CEOs of Care England, Scottish Care and the Institute of Health and Social Care Management.The groups said they were worried care workers who were unaware of the scheme or its deadline would not meet the government’s “reasonable groups” threshold for late applications.“Crucially, even in cases where the guidance provides a route back to status, this is not a solution to making people undocumented,” their letter to the prime minister said.“Loss of legal status, barriers to accessing services, liability to criminal penalties for continuing to work and exposure to potential detention and removal creates huge and potentially life-ruining risks.”The organisations from the care sector said: “We ask that the EUSS deadline must be lifted or at the very least an exemption for Care Workers must be put in place prior to the 30 June 2021 deadline.They added: “This would secure their settled status and avoid criminalisation of migrant EU workers as well as employers.”The group – which also includes the National Care Association’s executive chair and the head of the Care Workers’ Charity – also said EU care workers make up 12 per cent of the sector workforce.Caitlin Boswell from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said: “EU care workers and other key workers – the very people we have relied on over the past year – are in real danger of slipping through the cracks in the scheme.” She added: “Significant numbers of EU care workers falling out of status will devastate the care industry in the middle of a pandemic. It’s more urgent than ever that the government acts now to lift the EUSS deadline.”Succesful applicants to the EU settlement scheme will receive settled or pre-settled status, which carries the right to work, study, use the NHS and access public funds in the UK. MPs and peers warned last month thousands of EU citizens risked losing their legal status in the UK due to the scheme’s dadline, claiming a government outreach campaign has struggled to reach sufficient numbers. Also in late May, The Independent revealed there had been a surge in EU nationals and their families requesting help amid the EU settlement scheme’s looming deadline.A government spokesperson said: “International staff from across the world make an outstanding contribution to our health and social care sector and this has been especially true during the pandemic.”They added: “We have been clear we want international staff already working in the UK to stay and feel welcomed and encouraged to do so, and we’ve worked hard to promote the EU settlement scheme across the sector over the last two and a half years.” More

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      Is Biden’s appointment of a pioneering young lawyer bad news for big tech? | John Naughton

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      A flashback: it’s Wednesday 29 July 2020. I’m sitting glued to the US TV network C-Span, which is relaying – live – a hearing of the House of Representatives subcommittee on antitrust, commercial and administrative law. The hearing is being held following the publication of a sprawling report of a year-long investigation into the market dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.Arrayed on big screens before the members of the subcommittee are the four bosses of the aforementioned tech giants: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, then midway through his Star Trek makeover; Tim Cook of Apple, looking like the clean-living lad who never understood the locker-room jokes; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, wearing his trademark glued-on hairdo; and the Google boss, Sundar Pichai, every inch the scholarship boy who can’t understand why he’s been arrested by the Feds. And on the vast mahogany bench towering above these screened moguls sits David Cicilline, subcommittee chairman and the politician who has overseen the investigation.To be honest, I was watching out of duty and with low expectations. All the previous congressional interrogations of Zuckerberg and co had alternated between political grandstanding and farce. I expected much the same from this encounter. And then I noticed a young woman wearing a black mask standing behind Cicilline. She looked vaguely familiar, but it took me a few moments before I twigged that she was Lina Khan. At which point I sat up and started taking notes.I had been following her for years, ever since a paper she had published as a graduate student in the Yale Law Journal in January 2017. The title of the paper – Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox – signalled that there was something radical coming up, because since the mid-1970s US antitrust philosophy had been shaped by a landmark book by another lawyer, Robert Bork. Its title was The Antitrust Paradox and it argued that the prime focus of action against monopolies should not be corporate power, per se, but consumer harm as measured by unreasonably high prices. And since many of the products and services offered by the tech giants were “free” to their users they could hardly be accused of this; their wielding of monopoly power should not therefore be penalised by the state, for doing so would be tantamount to “penalising excellence”. Thus was shaped the legal doctrine that allowed a small number of tech companies to acquire immense power without being unduly troubled by legislators.This was the doctrine that Khan set out to demolish in her paper. She argued that Amazon was a dangerous monopoly that charged unsustainably low prices because the company knew that its shareholders would allow it to lose money for longer than its competitors. And it was also able to operate a “marketplace” that competed with the businesses that relied on it to reach customers, while amassing data on them that further entrenched its advantages. In other words, it wielded significant power for which there was no real redress.Khan’s paper lit a fuse that’s been fizzing ever since. It informed the Cicilline investigation and the subsequent report. And it’s what underpinned four of the five new bills that were unveiled last week, each one co-sponsored by Republican as well as Democratic politicians and each one targeted at monopolistic abuses identified in the report. The “Cicilline Salvo” is how the incomparable tech analyst Ben Thompson summarises them. The American innovation and choice online bill forbids platforms from giving advantages to their own products and services on marketplaces that they operate. The platform competition and opportunity bill outlaws pre-emptive acquisitions by tech giants of startups that might threaten their dominance (such as Facebook acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, for instance). The ending platform monopolies bill bans platforms from owning any product or service that rests on top of its platform and competes with third parties in any way. And the augmenting compatibility and competition by enabling service switching bill requires tech platforms to make it easy for users to switch platforms (and take their data and social graph with them); in other words, it imposes on platforms what many jurisdictions now enforce on mobile phone operators, energy companies and other businesses.Of course, there’s many a slip ’twixt drafting and the statute book, but these are very significant pieces of legislation that go some way towards bringing tech companies under democratic control. And, to cap it all, last week also saw the announcement that Khan was to become chair of the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that, along with the US Department of Justice, has the legal muscle to enforce compliance with whatever these new laws stipulate.Which leaves us with two reflections. One is, as David Runciman pointed out in The Confidence Trap, his landmark study of the recent history of democracy, that while democracies can take a long time to awaken from their slumbers, once aroused they can be very effective. The other is a confirmation of the power of ideas, even those of a young graduate student, to change history.What I’ve been readingSituation vacant On Algorithmic Communism is a long, thoughtful review by Ian Lorrie in the LA Review of Books of Nick Srnicek’s and Alex Williams’s book, Inventing the Future, about a world without work.What’s in a phrase?There Is Nothing so Deep as the Gleaming Surface of the Aphorism is a nice – aphoristic – essay by Noreen Masud.Net costsThe Cost of Cloud: A Trillion-Dollar Paradox is a perceptive piece by Sarah Wang and Martin Casado on the expensive technology on which our networked world now depends. More