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The Northern Rock payoff represents at its worst capitalism and the way that capitalism ensures that it is risk free.
Northern Rock traded recklessly, has lost its shareholders essentially all their money, has been bailed out by the UK taxpayer, yet its former Chief Executive Officer - the man who was responsible for the debacle - Adam Applegarth,
walks away with £760,000, payable in twelve monthly instalments, and given nearly £350,000 to top up his pension fund, which now stands at over £2.5m. He also has a subsidised mortgage on his £2.5m home.Two points. It may be legal, but this yet again demonstrates that senior executives not only are paid vast sums of money but take no personal risks whatsoever. Their huge salaries are supposed to reflect not only their ability but also their part in what the private sector always trumpets as a risk taking enterprise, as opposed to the 'no risk' public sector. Secondly, yes it may be legal but it is certainly unethical and no person with any sense of honour would take this money when thousands of employees are losing their jobs and thousands their life savings as a result of his recklessness. Adam Applegarth may never get another job, but then he doesn't need to. Some of his former employees may never work again either, but they pay the price, having done years' worth of honest work, only to be let down by someone seduced by the greed of the financial industry. A greed which is now causing so much pain, but not to those in charge. As usual the little people, the people who actually create products, provide services, pay the price.
Michael Martin, Harriet Harman, Sir Stuart Bell, David Maclean, Theresa May and Nick Harvey. These are the people who have brought Parliament into disrepute by appealing to the High Court against the decision of the Information Commissioner
that MP's expenses be published. They are also responsible for spending upwards of £100,000 of taxpayers' money in the process and Michael Martin then stifles any debate in the House of Commons by declaring the matter sub judice. Any House of Commons debate might have resulted in the embarrassing situation of MPs disagreeing with the Commission.Perhaps we should retitle MPs, who are presently 'Honourable' or 'Right Honourable' to 'Honest', 'Really Honest' and 'Not Very Honest at all'.
"We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast. The terrorists and extremists step in, they fill vacuums, establish safe havens and use them to spread chaos and carnage."
So said George Bush yesterday. I'm not sure where he claims the Americans learned that, but it's the wrong lesson anyway. Terrorists moved in, filled the vacuum as a result of American troops invading and occupying Iraq. Saddam Hussein kept terrorists well away from Iraq: he needed to maintain his own authority.
The US is now saying that as a result of the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda is being 'defeated'. al-Qaeda was never in Iraq before, so the American invasion simply made it possible for al-Qaeda to infiltrate Iraq, thus wasting thousands of lives 'defeating' an enemy that they created in the first place.Also, sadly, it does not really matter when the American troops are withdrawn. Whilst they are there, they are not only a target, but also a reason/excuse for violent dissent and continuing instability - unless they go the whole hog and annex the country - all this would mean is an elongated timetable for eventual withdrawal as empires always falter. Once they leave, barring a quite remarkable ability of the Iraqi people as a whole to reconcile differences, old scores will be settled. Too many people have been killed, too many people know who has done the killing for any sober forecast to be anything but gloomy.
Let us compare it with Israel/Palestine. No-one expects, even with a peace settlement, that Israel and a new Palestinian state will live happily side by side in the foreseeable future. Yet far fewer people have been killed in Israel and the occupied terrirories than the number of Iraqis who have been killed by Iraqis.
A country can be kept in order by sheer brute force: the Americans have just about done that in Iraq. Maintaining a country without naked force is far more difficult and long term process. Even success in creating an effective Iraqi armed forces contains dangers. It simply leads to the possibility of the emergence of a dictatorship by whoever commands the loyalty of the armed forces.
I would love to see the emergence of a settled, stable, democratic Iraq. Sadly, this possibility runs a poor fourth behind breakup or the establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist state or a secular dictatorship. If the last happens then we are back to Saddam Hussein Mark 2.
Some small signs that the US and the EU are putting some pressure on Israel about even more illegal settlements.
"The EU reiterates that settlement building anywhere in the occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law" and Condoleezza Rice:
"The United States considers the expansion of settlement activity to be not consistent with Israeli obligations under the road map and we have made that very clear. I have also said that it is certainly not helpful for the peace process."Some small sign that Israel may be seeing the need for genuine negotiation: "To my great regret, we have not done what we should have done for a long time concerning the outpost settlements. We have to act as soon as possible. We will have to take decisions in one or two weeks. These decisions are difficult, but we will have to dismantle these outposts, at least some of them, because it troubles our relations with the United States. Everything damaging those relations impacts Israeli national security." Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon. However, the US is only talking about settlements after 2001. The illegal settlements have been going up since 1967. George Bush said some time ago that'events on the ground' need to be taken into account: this means turning a blind eye to decades of illegal activity. We aslo know that the word 'outposts' does not refer to settlements proper, only to those settled by Israelis beyond that sanctioned - illegal even so - by Israel. So I am not holding my breath for a breakthrough.
Over 130 Palestinians die in a few days. Thirteen Israelis die over the same period. No, this is not a point about proportionality. Each death was a waste, was unjustifiable: they do not lead to peace, they lead
rather to more violence. In this context I despair of such things as this: "We should pass a resolution or change the law if necessary so that the family of anyone who carries out an attack should have their residency permit immediately revoked and their homes destroyed."
Eli Yishai, Israeli Trade and Industry Minister. Such a law would contravene a principle underpinning any rule of law worthy of the name: only perpetrators are guilty and punishable. Collective punishment, whilst in fact carried out across the world by states, is not enshrined in law. It is the blind eye, the
official denials, which provide the fig leaf. For a politician of a so-called Western democracy to call for such a law shows how low Western democracy has sunk.The second point of despair, given the present situation is Ehud Olmert's announcement that up to 750 additional homes are to be built in the settlement of Givat Ze'ev in the West Bank. This, as has been remarked on before with similar actions, show utter contempt for the Palestinians and any peace process.
Israel once again pursues a narrow nationalist colonial agenda, contemptuous of her neighbours, the UN, Europe, Russia, the US and the world in general.
"We will use force to change the situation.": Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak about the operations in Gaza.
Can there be any more pathetic depressingly blinkered statement about the situation? 'Force' will not change the situation, other than make it worse and make the bitter aftermath more bitter and more long lasting.
Force solves nothing and for Israel, at such a high level, to persist in such declarations, means that Israel is not interested in peace, only in blaming the other. There is no doubt that the plight of those trapped in Gaza
continually gets worse. For some insight into this look at Rafah Today. I have provided a permanent link to this site on my Links page.
If a non-Jew had referred to Israel's threats to Gaza as being a shoah - the Hebrew word for holocaust - there would have been a furious reaction from Jews and Israelis.
Yet this word was used by the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai: "As the rocket fire grows, and the range increases – and they haven't yet said the last word on this – they are bringing upon themselves a greater Shoah because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in air strikes or on the ground."
Note also the phrase "they are bringing upon themselves a greater Shoah" and he also said Israel "had no choice". In other words it's all the fault of Hamas and the Palestinians. Such is the ethical bankruptcy of the Israeli government. There is always a choice.
Hamas has a choice to use terrorism or not, Israel to send in aircraft, tanks, or not. The West chose to invade Iraq. Ghandhi chose the path of non-violence. The most effective example I can think of to support the claim that there is always a choice is the example of a condemned man about to be executed.
No, he has no choice about whether he lives or dies. He has no choice about when he dies and the method used to kill him. He does have a choice about how he dies, a choice about the manner of his dying.Israel has a choice. At present Israel is exercising a choice to murder Palestinian civilians. According to AP today, 75 Gazans have been killed in three days, over half of them civilians. Thirteen Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets in the last seven years - thirteen too many, but against 75 Palestinians in three days, the disproportionate use of force is indefensible. It is not legitimate defence, it is collective punishment and rightly illegal in international law. The silence of world leaders is deafening.
Protesters demonstrate on the roof of the Houses of Parliament. All very embarrassing, but the aftermath reveals how far the British justice system has gone down the wrong road.
The protesters were arrested under the Serious and Organised Crimes Act. Carrying out a rooftop protest, with no violence, no damage - this is "serious"? Maybe there is a clause in the Act specifying Parliament, in which case it's another example of politicians saying
thet are different and special. We know they went through security, so no weapons or bombs could have been involved.Another example this week of this government's obsession with draconian, anti-justice measures. Not content with presuming that terrorist suspects are guilty without charge and locking them up indefinitely, the government now proposes that suspected drug dealers have their assets seized on arrest. The principle of 'innocent until proved guilty' is further eroded. The threat to drug users to stop benefits if they drop out of rehabilitation clinics is another example of how this government always reaches for the stick if anyone may be breaking the law. Whilst 'innocent' grandparents are to be encouraged to take care of the children of addicts, the 'naughty' addicts just face threats.
It is crude, simplistic, black and white thinking.
There has been little comment on the root cause of the Northern Rock saga. The authorities proclaim that trust is necessary in financial markets without taking the necessary steps to generate trust.
Trust has to be earned. If the public are to trust that their banks and financial institutions are sound - after all financial institutions earn their profits by using other peoples' money - then the grotesque gallop into unfettered capitalist competition has to be reversed.
Northern Rock failed because it took too many risks (with other peoples' money) in the pursuit of profit. What is needed is a return to regulatory measures to prevent the reckless use of other peoples' money. In other words, the requirement to lend only within the presribed ratio
of lending to assets etc. Financial institutions clearly will not regulate themselves responsibly. Governments must therefore do it.Whilst I have every sympathy with the employess of Northern Rock at the prospect of redundancy, this will be inevitable. The fault for this will not lie with the UK government. It lies with the reckless actions of Northern Rock management.
I missed this story when it happened and for some reason the BBC has returned to it, as it was documented at the time. I refer to the failure back in 2005 of the police to comply with
a UK magistrate's arrest warrant to detain the Israeli Major General Doron Almog on suspicion of war crimes in Gaza. Having been tipped off, the Major General simply stayed on the aircraft at Heathrow and was allowed to leave. The reason the police gave for not obeying the warrant
was a fear that there may be an armed confrontation. Jack Straw, the then Foreign Secretary, apologised to Israel for any ambarrassment caused.Question. What do you think the police action may have been in the event of a suspected Islamic terrorist sitting on an airplane at Heathrow; or Radko Mladic or Radovan Karadzic? There is no way that aircraft would have been allowed to leave. So this is another example of double standards. More than that, it makes a mockery of British justice. It may be that Major General Doron Almog had no charges to answer. It may be that the magistrate (the Chief London Magistrate) exceeded his powers. Whatever. The due legal process should have been followed and we know what the authorities do with aircraft on these occasions: move them to a remote part of the airport and wait/negotiate. Had it then been proved to be incorrect, that would have been the occasion for an apology to the individual and to Israel.
As with the posting on February 14th, one rule applies to the rich and powerful - Israel, Saudi Arabia, the US - and another to the poor and oppressed - the Palestinians in this case.
Further to the above. The police can shoot an innocent man, but whom they suspected of being a terrorist and of carrying a bomb, underground in a crowded train and
they are found not guilty by the IPCC of any misconduct. The same police force can fail to carry out an arrest warrant on a man - on his own apart from aircraft staff and possibly his own bodyguard - sitting in an aircraft some distance away from the general public and are found not guilty
of any misconduct: "The IPCC has concluded its investigation into a complaint arising from the failure by police to execute an arrest warrant for war crimes in respect of retired Israeli general, Doron Almog, on September 11, 2005.
The IPCC found no evidence of any police officers or member of police staff improperly disclosing information with regard to executing the warrant.
The IPCC was further satisfied that there was no breach of the Police Code of Conduct by officers failing to enter the aircraft to execute the warrant."
Conclusion? Whatever the police do is allright by the IPCC.
As predicted, the US Senate passes a law prohibiting the use of torture in the form of waterboarding and President Bush says he will veto it.
"The reason I'm vetoing the bill - first of all, we have said that whatever we do... will be legal. Secondly, they [the Senate] are imposing a set of standards on our intelligence communities in terms of interrogating
prisoners that our people [presumably the CIA] will think will be ineffective."What this appears to mean is that the US will act within its laws. The US Senate, as a US lawmaker, passes a law prohibiting waterboarding. In order to continue to act within the law, the President simply strikes out the law.
This is democracy? What is the difference between this and a dictatorship, in which the ruler can simply overturn decisions of the elected representatives? Yes, I know that a two thirds majority can still overturn a presidential veto but the whole process is open to the charge that an American president can say: "Pass whatever laws you wish, as long as I agree with them".
He goes on to say, in the same context: "It should send a signal that America is going to respect law." By that we can infer that 'law' here means Presidential decree, not the law that the representatives of the American people wished to see.
He also has his own position on the 'innocent until proved guilty' principle. On the Guantanamo detainess: "Take Guantanamo. Look, I'd like it to be empty. On the other hand, there's some people there that need to be tried. And there will be a trial. And they'll have their day in court. Unlike what they did to other people. Now, there's great concern about, you know, and I can understand this. That these people be given rights. The - what - they're not willing to grant the same rights to others. They'll murder. But, you gotta understand, they're getting rights." These people are clearly guilty in the President's mind and in the UK, maybe in the US criminal justice system (but the Guantanamo detainees are outside this system, so much for their 'rights') such a statement from such a source may be seen as so prejudicial to a fair trial that the trial is abandoned. Such issues are not niceties. Justice should not only be done but seen to be done. Cavalier statements from a head of state show contempt for the law, the same law that President Bush claims he upholds.
The UK government appears to be basing its case in defence of dropping the corruption investigation on the fear that Saudi Arabia would stop supplying intelligence and that
this would put British lives at risk and it was therefore in the public interest. What this implies is that the UK government believed or knew that Saudi Arabia would deliberately stop cooperating as a result of Saudi affairs being investigated.
Is this not the fear or actual knowledge of blackmail? Is it not the responsibility of Saudi Arabia to determine what reaction to take and the responsibility of the UK to determine how to run its criminal legal system?
Could not the UK government have allowed the investigation to proceed (thereby losing a valuable order - the likely real reason for the pull out) and then, if it went to trial, confronted the intelligence issue at that time, rather than
cravenly saying "Oh, all right then, we won't bother proceeding"? I do not take the threat to British lives lightly, but we compromise and compromise when it comes to business and powerful other states' interests.
Meanwhile we lock people like Lotfi Raissi up for five months without any evidence and then refuse him any compensation after releasing him. The connection? The British Crown Prosecution Service held Mr Raissi on behalf of the US.
Mr Raissi is an Algerian, a pilot and happened to be in the US when the 9/11 terrorists were thought to be training. On these facts he was dragged from his house naked and locked up for 23 hours a day in Belmarsh prison as a result of an extradition request by the US.
Even so, he was (relatively) lucky. The British Courts eventually refused extradition in 2002. Had he been arrested in 2003 he would have been extradited to the US immediately and probably ended up in Guantanamo Bay.
Another example of the craven way the UK behaves towards the powerful and how low the justice system has sunk - no, that is probably not fair on the judges - how low the criminal justice system as skewed by government laws has become.
The UK government is considering appealing, in the usual response to issues relating to ordinary people.
Another connection: the UK government is backing down on proposals to increase the tax on non-domiciles. Another example of rolling over on one's back and submitting when the rich and/or powerful are involved.
Whether or not the six people now to be brought before a military commission are guilty or not, there can be no justice here.
The US administration, via its various executive institutions, has violated so many laws and fundamental human rights. Extraordinary rendition in itself is illegal. Creating a category of person called an "enemy combatant"
is a legal fiction with no precedents and then neatly denying people in such a category rights they would have if civilians or military personnel takes away any fundamental human rights to humane or fair treatment - the 'rules'
such as they are being made up as time passes. Defining the whole process as a war as in "war on terror" is also a legal fiction. Those who carried out 9/11 are guilty of acts of international terrorism and as such are subject to the US criminal legal system.
Holding people at Guantanamo Bay under both harsh conditions in relation to visits, representation etc and also subjecting them to torture also are grounds for concluding that no trial could be fair. (The CIA still holds the view that waterboarding may be justifiable
in certain circumstances - if the US administration were in any way civilised it would simply ban this and any other forms of torture. As it is President Bush is threatening to veto any Bill to this effect. How does he square the use of torture with his sincere Christian belief?)
It simply a macabre farce to place these men on trial as if they were military personnel, they are not. Finally, and this is also a general comment on the US system of justice as a whole, requesting that the death penalty be considered, keeps the US in the 'uncivilised' category of nations.
I am aware that many nations still maintain the death penalty. That does not make the Chinas and Irans of this world right either.There was an American commentator yesterday using the phrase "take them out and kill them". Those people are present in every nation. Any nation which claims to be civilised needs to have a way of marginalising them. Killing people via a legal system is simply judicial murder and murder nonetheless. Following such a deeply flawed process there can be no justice for the accused and no justice for those surviving victims of 9/11.
Is it any wonder that people hold politicians and the political process in contempt? I quote from the report of the Electoral Commission on
Wendy Alexander's case of impermissable donations: "The Electoral Commission has also considered the possibility that criminal offences may have been committed in this case. Specifically:
Under section 56 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the offence of accepting and retaining a donation from anyone who is not registered on an electoral register in the UK at the time of the donation. It is also relevant to consider whether all reasonable steps were taken to avoid this" and
"In respect of a possible offence under section 56, the commission has concluded that, while Wendy Alexander did not take all reasonable steps in seeking to comply with the relevant legislation, she did take significant steps." and
"Having considered all the circumstances, the commission has decided that it is not appropriate or in the public interest to report this matter to the procurator fiscal."
So, the commission checked the 'reasonable steps' test, failed her on that, then invented the term 'significant steps' and cleared her on that. In criminal law, someone has to be found guilty 'beyond reasonable doubt', not 'beyond significant doubt'. If the 'Wendy Alexander' test were applied in the courts, lots of criminals would be found not guilty.
The other rather more important issue is that for the rest of us mere mortals the police would automatically be involved in an investigation when the police have reason to believe that the law has been broken. It may be that the police in this case, as in many cases, decide not to pursue an action. Even if they do, the prosecuting authority may decide not to proceed. These matters however should be strictly within the normal legal processes. Politicians should not be assessed in the first place by their own club. Doctors and surgeons for instance do not go through a professional filter before the police get involved in any possible criminal case. Doctors and surgeons are at least as honourable as politicians.
"The use of intercept evidence characterises a central dilemma that we face as a free society - that of preserving our liberties and the rule of law,
while at the same time keeping our nation safe and secure." Gordon Brown in Parliament today. It is nothing of the sort. The conditions that Gordon Brown insists on before allowing such evidence are all to do with the protection of the security
services and nothing to do with the rights/protection of the individual. In fact, he says nothing about "preserving our liberties": the security services are free to bug whomsoever they like. The conditions are to avoid the accused from accessing
the evidence obtained unless the security services agree and as long as it doesn't cost too much to provide. Justice therefore, yet again, is limited to a budget. These are the sort of conditions:Giving intercepting agencies the ability to retain control over whether their material was used in prosecutions
Ensuring that disclosure of material cannot be required against the wishes of the agency originating the material
Protecting the close cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies
Ensuring agencies cannot be required to transcribe or make notes of material beyond a standard of detail they deem necessary
Pretty well a full house in protecting the interests of the security agencies. They clearly own the information that they have obtained by spying on individuals and the individuals have no right either in it being gathered or how it is used.
Gordon Brown was honest in this respect: "These conditions relate to the most vital imperative of all, that of safeguarding our national security." In other words, security overides individual freedoms. Anything can be done in the name of national security and anything is being done. One day the citizens of the UK will wake up to the fact that all the apparatus of a police state has been built on that basis of 'national security'. An apparatus waiting to be exploited by the desperate or the ruthless. When it is too late.
It is not enough to believe 'it couldn't happen here'. The question should be 'can what is being done be misused if it happened here'. The framework for actually implementing a police state is largely in place already.
As with the limited enquiries over the Iraq war, the UK government persists in authorising only limited and therefore relatively useless enquiries
into matters of great public interest and concern. Jack Straw's enquiry into just the issue of whether or not conversations between Labour MP Sadiq Khan and Babar Ahmad were bugged is only relevant to the two individuals.
It will not reveal at all what level of surveillance is now carried out in Britain. It will not even reveal to what extent MPs are bugged, let alone to what extent supposedly confidential conversations between lawyers and their clients
are monitored. It is far more important that this rule of confidentiality is upheld, except in very unusual circumstances. Let us not forget that many such conversations involve people who at that time have not been found guilty of anything,
indeed may not even be the subject of charges. Unless there is an enquiry and future processes are agreed and made clear then the British public would have to draw the conclusion that any communication they enter into may be monitored by the
authorities for whatever reason (not, of course, disclosed) those authorities deem appropriate. Sadiq Khan apparently was (is?) regarded as 'subversive'. What sort of McCarthyist state are we living in? A state I think that regards anyone who
is concerned with the liberties of individuals as being subversive. Running this site presumably puts me into this category. Reading it places you into the same category. The UK government seems determined to get to know everything that
we say, write, communicate in any way, usually justified by the weasely terms 'war on terrorism' or 'state security'. In a supposedly free society we are governed by people who increasingly think and behave like dictators relying on the secret
police to control and curb those who hold views that do not toe the government line.
There is much wild talk about banning MPs from employing family members but surely that is unnecessary and unfair.
It seems to me there is a simple and reasonable solution. Any employee of an MP (for that is what, effectively, they are) should be expected to do what any other employee is expected to do: turn in the hours,
do the work, pay the tax, NI etc. All this to be documented as every business has to do. Appoint a small, independent firm of auditors authorised to carry out annual and spot checks on the payments, records of hours, work etc.
Any MP found to be breaking the rules ie paying a family member more than the hours/work warrants is out of Parliament and in court on a fraud charge.On a wider issue, it is clear that MPs regard themselves as above the law. Decisions to refer cases such as Peter Hain, Wendy Alexander, Harriet Harman and Derek Conway to the police should not depend on MPs, or MP's committees. If the police believe any other citizen of breaking the law, they investigate. Why should MPs be any different?
This is a shameful day for Israel and the Israeli judiciary. Three judges have ruled that it is lawful for Israel to reduce fuel and electricity supplies to Gaza as
a form of "economic warfare". The judges' position is that Hamas breaches international law by its use of terrorism. Fair enough. What is not fair enough is to wage "economic warfare" on the whole of a population, civilian as well as military/militant.
The Geneva Convention states: "Article. 59. If the whole or part of the population of an occupied territory is inadequately supplied, the Occupying Power shall agree to relief schemes on behalf of the said population, and shall facilitate them by all the means at its disposal."
Israel is doing the very opposite of this. The argument that Gaza is not "occupied" is specious: Gaza has no independent status and its relations with the outside world are totally dependent upon Israels' consent.So, the Israeli judiciary considers it right for economic warfare to be waged against the whole population of territory for which it is the occupying power. I cannot see how anyone can justify this under any code of law.
Everyone will have noticed the 'volatility' of the financial markets recently. What tends not to be commented upon is that many people/institutions will have gained substantially
during this period. This is the unethical heart of free market capitalism. At its simplest, a trader gambles on a downturn, just before others do, sells, then buys when the market has gone down, gambling that it will rise, taking the profit if and when it does.
When we come to such 'instruments' as derivatives, the essential nature of the activity is absolutely clear: gambling. Sums are effectively bet on the future price - little money actually put down. If the gamble comes off - large profits.
In order to reduce the possibility of the equivalent loss, the risk is spread around. Do it accurately and fast enough - little risk and fat profits, except someone's profit is someone else's loss. It has nothing to do with investment and the sums involved are far greater than the 'real' money in the world.
It does not add to the productive capacity of the world, rather it reduces the availability of funds for genuine investment, profits being frittered away on expensive lifestyles. Gambling is not illegal - in the West at least - but it is an essentially selfish activity:
gaining as a result of chance or skill at forecasting events in a particular area. It never should have a place in how money is made available for investment, investment which is for the production of goods and services, via which people obtain jobs in order to buy/use such
goods and services. International finance now has little to do with oiling the wheels of commerce and industry: rather it serves to channel vast sums of money into a few hands. Jerome Kerviel at Societe Generale would have escaped with barely a rapped knuckle had his gambles come off,
merely a reprimand that he did not follow procedure. Had Societe Generale made profits as a result of his unauthorised activity you can be sure there would have been no police investigation.
It is an incidental point maybe, but this "All they have to do is stop firing the rockets towards Sderot and other places in Israel, and immediately there will be no problem with the border crossing."
(Arye Mekel, an Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman, in relation to Gaza) is an example both of blaming Palestinians and downright lies. The present blockade of Gaza is no doubt to do with the rocket attacks, but to imply that before that there was a normal process by which people and goods passed between
Gaza and Israel is a lie. Palestinians in Gaza have been living in a prison for over 50 years. The recent blockade is simply a ruthless (as exemplified by Ehud Olmert's recent use of the phrase "without mercy") intensification of the inhumane conditions imposed on those imprisoned.The extraordinary reaction of the Palestinians to a small chance to break free, temporarily, from that prison, to have some freedom of movement, testifies to the horrors inflicted upon them over generations.
I am pessimistic however that the world will finally accept the real plight of the Palestinians and put real pressure on all parties, not just the Palestinians, to negotiate an honourable settlement. Maybe if the world's media stopped using the word 'prison' for Gaza and substituted the word 'ghetto' (my guess that Gaza is the largest single ghetto ever inflicted on a population), then not only might the people of the world put pressure on the politicians, more Israelis might see just what their country is doing.
"We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it. So we want to disconnect from it.
We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place.": Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai.
But Israel is responsible for Gaza, responsible for every man, woman and child in Gaza. This responsibility is not only neglected but the present blockade is excessively inhumane and against all common decency, let alone
international law. The massive outbreaks at the Rafah crossing are a powerful and poignant testimony to what Israel has been doing to the inhabitants of Gaza.If Israel wants reliquish responsibility for Gaza it has two options. Progress the peace process for a Palestinian state or set Gaza free separately in the meantime, thus allowing trade by sea, air and land. I say this to the Israelis who would reasonably say that this opens up the possibility of more terrorist attacks on Israel: Israel bears some responsibility for the build up of that terrorism and a free Gaza could be held accountable for its actions. At present the militants simply point to the oppression of the Palestinians and say "We have no option".
International law is quite straightforward: the occupying force is responsible for the occupied population. While the stranglehold on Gaza continues, Israel is responsible. Israelis also suffer from the inhumane treatment of Palestinians, from terrorism and the effects of being part of a society which is acting unlawfully and unethically. It really is in Israel's interests to settle the issue of a Palestinian state. The greatest single obstacle to peace is the power held in Israel by those wanting a 'greater Israel'. They should be persuaded or told to give their imperialistic dreams.
Firstly, apologies for the gap in posting and the fact that the site has been relatively inaccessible in January.
There have been some technical problems but these have been resolved and everything appears to be normal now.
UK readers might want to look up the BBC programme shown last night and Friday evening, Earth Pilgrim narrated by Satish Kumar.
It is a wonderful expression of non-violence, respect for nature and recognition that we are dependent upon nature and nature upon us. It is well worth watching.
"The vision of a Palestinian state is one of contiguous territory. Swiss cheese isn’t going to work when it comes to the territory of a state."
A remarkably enlightened statement by George Bush. On the other hand he also said, referring to Hamas that they "have delivered nothing but misery." Perhaps international sanctions, constant air attacks, cutting off fuel supplies etc etc, might just have something
do with the misery of those living in Gaza. Whatever, the aim of the US President, this late in his career, is his own legacy. If he had really been passionate about peace in the Middle East, this would not be his first visit to Israel and the West Bank in his eight years' of
his presidency.
Two connected items showing how percentages are well or badly used. Apparently in Sweden one principle of their criminal justice system is that prison sentences are avoided as much as possible
(UK government please note) and also that fines tend to be scaled according to the wealth of the perpetrator, ie effectively a percentage. This is fairer than set fines which for wealthy people are mere pinpricks and no deterrent.Meanwhile in the UK the government persists in applying percentages unfairly. The proposal to limit public sector pay to 1.9% would result in a nurse getting just £385 per year extra whilst an MP (before expenses and any additional responsibilities) would get £1,152 per year extra. A nurse and MP living in the same area have roughly similar extra demands upon their income as the cost of living goes up. As usual, the rich get (relatively) richer and the poorer get (relatively) poorer.
As this is the season for wishes, here's one I really wish would come true but winged pigs have not yet evolved.
That the human being behind the mask would emerge and engage with the other human beings behind their masks. Imagine a world where the occupant of the White House, as a human being, engages with the human being in the presidential palace in Tehran.
Similarly in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Iraq. India and Pakistan. Etc etc. For when human beings, being human rather than masks, really engage with other human beings, compassion for the other cannot help but emerge.
This compassion is two way and is the foundation and gateway to understanding, to peace, justice. Whilst it seems and is light years' away, it is really quite simple. There is nothing complicated about it. If we all were able to be just human, allow our
humanity to emerge, most of the conflicts, fears, hatreds, would melt away. No one political, religious or cultural set of principles has sole access to compassion. It is freely available to all.
All we have to do is reach out.
It seems to be a reasonable request by the Palestinians: no more new building of settlements whilst Israel and the Palestinians try to discuss a way forward.
Israel appeared to agree on December 27th, but as usual their words are not matched by their deeds. No new settlements, maybe, but meanwhile Israel intends to continue with the building of 307 new housing units in South East Jerusalem, Har Homa, in
Palestinian territory. This is akin to a car stealing gang saying; 'OK, no more thefts, but we keep what we have stolen, oh, and by the way, we finish off the planned thefts already in the planning stage.'
Let us not forget, everything that Israel does beyond the 1976 'borders' (to say nothing of the 1948 borders, the only ones with any legal status) is illegal: occupation, roads, settlements, wall, murders, forced evacuations etc. Everything.
This is the reality that the continual pro-Israel propaganda seeks to obscure and what is even more obscured is the real aim of Israel: the annexation of the whole of Palestine, the driving out of all Palestinians and the establishment of what is regarded as the true
extent of the promised land. That true extent is defined at the extreme as between the Nile and the Euphrates. I believe that many Israeli politicians aim to get as close to that extent as possible. In the light of this, it is entirely understandable that Israel continues to
build and extend, because it is not about security, it is about expansion, bit by bit, acre by acre. This Lebensraum programme will continue until the victims of this process, the Palestinians, have one or more powerful champions for the just parts of their cause.It will continue and the misery of the Palestinians will continue until the US publicly draws a line and says to Israel, no further.
At last, a glimmer of hope about global warming. The UK government's plans to add a carbon cost to all decisions affecting
transport, construction, housing, planning and energy is welcome. Apparently the cost to the environment has been set at £25.50 per carbon tonne for 2007 and will rise each year to £59.60 per tonne by 2050.
How (and whether) it will work is not clear, but if it means that projects which pollute more will be more difficult to justify, then that is good news. What is perhaps more significant for the future is that,
as far as I am aware, this is the first time that a government has accepted the concept of non-economic costs being factored into investment decisions.
OK, this is concerned with a political hot potato - climate change - but if it leads to other environmental effects being taken into account, rather than the purely economic factors, then it is a crucial first step.
It will be interesting to see if this just spin, or will really be carried through.
There is something of an argument over the Daily Mail's intepretation of what the Pope is to say about climate change.
I prefer to go to the primary source, but that is not yet available, so I will quote Ben Goldacre in The Guardian. The Pope is quoted as saying:
"Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man.
Rather, it means not selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests, for future generations also have the right to reap its benefits."
Ben Goldacre considers this to be "sensible", but it contains a fundamentalist Christian view that humanity was put on this earth to have 'dominion' over all other life forms and that the
main reason for not "selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests" is so that future generations of human beings can have their own crack at exploiting nature.
This is not an ecological argument and it shows a profound disrespect of the rest of creation: "Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole."
One thing the natural sciences have taught us is the inter-dependence of life forms. Continuing to regard humanity as different, superior and independent of the rest of nature is a fallacy which risks extermination of
both the human species and many other species. We are not superior, we are a part of a whole and need to consider carefully and rationally how we can play a constructive part in caring for the earth and all its life forms.
I wonder what African and other developing countries reactions are to the $50bn being provided by the central banks of the US, UK, Canada and Switzerland in the light of the
current economic turbulnce in the West. $50bn to help prop up already rich nations who have allowed debt to spiral out of control. $50bn to help the West maintain and increase its already lavish life style.
$50bn to the rich whilst women spend hours per day just walking to and fro to fetch unclean water. It is no use arguing that the $50bn will also help poorer countries.
When you have nothing, no changes in the world economy will affect you. The only way of alleviating poverty is through investment: in resources, technology, education etc. At present the West is declaring its priorities very clearly.
Maintaining the wealth of its citizens in the value of their houses and reductions in the cost of consumer goods is more important than reducing the inequality in the world.
Saddam Hussein said he had no WMD, 'intelligence' said he had. The West invaded Iraq with catastrophic results. Iraq had no WMD.
North Korea says they have WMD. 'Intelligence' agrees. The West does not invade North Korea. Iran says thay are not developing nuclear weapons. 'Intelligence' agrees. The West, especially Israel, still threaten to bomb Iran.
You can draw all sorts of conclusions from this mish mash. One however appears to be inescapable: 'intelligence' is only used when it suits the US and Israel's purposes. When it comes to major political decisions, especially when oil and Israel are
involved, the intelligence services are superfluous.The real tragedy though is that the West continues to see force or the threat of force as the first, if not only, way of getting what it wants. Is it any wonder that non-Western countries are less than enthusiastic about being 'civilised' by the West?
There is an argument against the belief that climate change is new, that the earth has warmed up and cooled down many times in its history.
A recent BBC programme incidentally dispensed with this argument. Yes, the earth has indeed been ice-free, in fact that is the norm, we are at present still in an ice age, but, if in the next 50 to 100 years the earth becomes essentially ice-free,
then that will be the first time it has happened in human history. Humanity and most other life forms have never experienced an ice free planet and if this happens within the forecast time frame (my own hunch is that it will happen within 50 years
unless we take drastic action) species will have too little time to adapt. Quite apart from the colossal reduction in habitable land - much of London and Florida for instance will disappear - whole species will become extinct. We know that ice is disappearing at an accelerating rate and
that the process is exponential. It really does not matter to what extent human activity makes it worse: it makes it worse. The sensible thing is to reduce humanity's effect as quickly as possible.
Anyone who has read anything other than this posting will know that I am pro-Arab and anti-Israeli, that I abhor violence and am tolerant of others' beliefs.
So in terms of my stance on Islam, I am positive rather than negative and my views on the 'war on terrorism' do not endear me to Western politicians. Nevertheless, I am disturbed by the popular or government-encouraged (it doesn't matter which)
violent protests against the sentence given to Gillian Gibbons in Sudan. If Islam were insulted, it was clearly accidental and careless: a 15 day term seems an appropriate token punishment, but I am more concerned with the protests.
The apparent hatred in the calls to 'kill her' hide another feeling, one of fear. There is a tendency to forget that 'phobia' as in islamophobia, homophobia, etc means fear. Fear can engender a violent response, sometimes out of all proportion to the fear itself.
So I wonder what lies behind the fear, a fear that causes people to call for the killing of an essentially innocent woman. Certainly, Western policies and actions give the Islamic world a cause to fear oppression of one sort or the other.
Yet there is no sense that the West wishes to crush Islam as a religion. I understand the fear that all non-Western cultures will be distorted, diminished and maybe destroyed by the imperiallly-imposed American culture and indeed share that fear but
is this a cause for violence? There is something else and I am unwilling to speculate, possibly wildly inaccurately, partly because some elements in the Islamic world are ulta sensitive. I have been accused, predictably, of being anti-semitic and
run the risk here of being accused of being against Islam. I believe I am neither, but there are reasons behind such extreme responses.
So, the Americans, the Israelis, the Fatah faction of the Palestinians, all say they want to pursue peace at the talks in Annapolis.Since October 28th Israel has been reducing supplies of fuel to Gaza and had planned to reduce electricity to Gaza from next Sunday. Israel's hight court has upheld the reductionsin fuel, whilst ordering a delay on reducing electricity.
So, the Americans, the Israelis, the Fatah faction of the Palestinians, all say they want to pursue peace at the talks in Annapolis? The Israelis choose a strange way of pursuing peace. Intimidation, oppression, semi-starvation. There are various terms to describe their strategy. None of them will work.
Oh dear, oh dear. "Even as we place strict local environmental limits on noise and air pollution and ensure that aviation pays its carbon costs,
we have to respond to a clear business imperative and increase capacity at our airports, particularly Heathrow. Our prosperity depends on it: Britain as a world financial centre must be readily accessible from around the world."
So says Gordon Brown to the CBI (Confederation of British Industry). This is in relation to the building of a third runway at Heathrow, supposedly still within a consultation process. Except we do not "ensure that aviation pays its carbon costs"
in that the aviation industry does not even pay its fair share of taxes on fuel. "Britain as a world financial centre must be readily accessible from around the world": really? There am I naively believing that business in the the financial system -
on a minute to minute, day to day basis - is done by computers and computer networks. Who would believe that financiers are substantially dependent upon meeting up and clinching the deal with a handshake?"New nuclear power stations potentially have a role to play in tackling climate change and improving energy security. Having concluded the full public consultation we will announce our final decision early in the New Year." As with Heathrow, the Prime Minister blatantly pre-empts a public consultation process, effectively announcing what the government is going to do: the "Having concluded" sentence openly indicates that having gone through this rather tiresome consultation process, we will then tell you what we will do.
There is one other telling phrase: "There will be no irresponsible relaxation of pay discipline". Interesting word, 'discipline'. The workers, for that read 'public sector workers' have to be disciplined or be disciplined in terms of having low pay settlements, historically below the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, wealthy financiers have a third runway built for them, are allowed to continue to pay low taxes, are allowed to gamble on the money markets without let or hindrance. And if such financial games go awry, not to worry, the government will fork out £25bn to rescue the situation, some of the £25bn being provided by those workers so much in need of 'discipline'.
One more quote: reforms will be introduced to "move claimants from passive recipients of welfare benefit to active job and skill seekers". Those people most in need, the chronically ill, the disabled are labelled "passive". The word contains a criticism, the assumption that everyone receiving benefits (some of whom have contributed mightily before becoming ill or disabled) is content just to receive, happy to be reliant on the state. It would be interesting too if, when asked, Gordon Brown would include injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan amongst those "passive recipients of welfare benefit".
Strange how the rich are looked after and the wage earners, the poor, the ill, the disabled are pilloried in the brave new world of New Labour.
Losing 25m records of highly confidential data is incompetence of the highest order, but what is more worrying is the fact that, after the event, no-one
appears to know what happened (or are not saying whilst a story is cobbled together). Quite rightly the head of Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) resigned.
Quite why the official resigned is unkown, unless he failed to follow procedure, which has not been stated. There is also something more than faintly ludicrous about
emails which say that, whilst the National Audit Office only wanted limited data, HMRC did not want to incur the cost of filtering the data. What cost? More than ten years' ago
I was involved in the private sector, using Excel (hardly expensive, cutting edge techonolgy), to provide tools for departments to download selective data from central databases.
Even then, desktop tools were available and every piece of database software has easy facilities for users to download just what they need and security checks to ensure they are allowed access to that data.
We are talking computing level 101 here. The fact that this is not the first time sensitive data has been couriered suggests it was custome and practice.The most worrying aspect however is the impression given that no-one knows what happened and why and therefore the country can be reassured or otherwise. Knowing the track record of Uk governments, whatever results from the inevitable enquiry will not be fully trusted: suspicions of cover up, spin, etc will remain.
I was listening to a radio programme yesterday about the intention of Kosovo to seek independence.
Whether or not this is good for the citizens, or whether Kosovo can be a viable state was not the focus. The focus, reflecting the sad state of political culture, was on the relative aims of
the major powers, in this case the US, Russia and to an extent the EU. The old 'sphere of influence' and only looking after the powerful nations' own interests is still the underlying philosophy.
Powerful states have a vested interest in a stable and peaceful world and surely have the right and duty to act in order to prevent violence, but do not have any right or duty to intervene/interfere in
order to protect their own interests, especially if such interference is carried out violently.Similarly, it is noted that the US has invited 40 nations to the forthcoming Middle East meeting. This meeting is about Israel and the occupied territories. Why not facilitate such meetings just for the immediate parties? Yes, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt etc etc have a legitimate interest in how the Israelis and Palestinians settle, or do not settle, their differences, but the primary parties have most to gain or lose. Why infantilise them by insisting on everyone else being involved? Everyone except the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people that is, who are conveniently labelled terrorists.
The powerful nations continue to dominate, like a bad parent spending money on themselves instead of their children, punishing their children for perceived errors, behaving selfishly instead of with love and compassion. The analogy contains within itself a fundamental error, deliberately so: the less powerful states are not children, the powerful states are not adults or parents, either benevolent or benign.
If those with power used it wisely for humankind, did not interfere except to maintain or restore peace and vested those peacemaking/keeping resources in an international body, the world would be a different and potentially better place.
Two reports today. The IPCC report gives the starkest warning yet about climate change and the effects on the earth and on humanity.
130 governments are represented on the IPCC. At the same time, back in the UK, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), responsible for action on climate change in the UK, announces
budget cuts of £300m.Is the UK government really serious about climate change? Is the UK government really serious?
"Commissioners have to be in post for enough time to drive long-term change. They have not previously widely been expected to resign over individual incidents, however grave.
There are great advantages in the creation of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Greater London Assembly and in some aspects of Health and Safety legislation.
However, they have changed the context of this post. Nevertheless, they do not change the basic nature of the Commissioner's task."Ian Blair on the findings of the Independent Police Complaints Commission's report which not only criticised the Metropolitan Police for a significant corporate failure but also criticised the Commissioner himself for delaying the start of the IPCC investigation. The IPCC report follows a vote of no confidence in the Commissioner by the Greater London Assembly and the Metropolitan Police being found guilty on a criminal charge relating to health and safety.
Yet, he does not believe he should resign on an individual incident, "however grave". Really? So Ian Blair could do anything, the Met could do anything, without resignation being an issue? I think not and I assume that his words are ill-chosen. The question is whether or not the botched job of following and then killing Jean Charles de Menezes is 'grave enough' to warrant resignation. We may have to wait until the inquest before Ian Blair is forced to resign.
Quite what he means by the IPCC, Greater London Assembly and health and safety legislation having "great advantages" but "they have changed the context of this post" but "they do not change the basic nature of the Commissioner's task" is debatable. A muddled statement, but it appears to say the same thing: whatever others say, my job stays the same. Arrogance of this sort (shown also in him challenging the Greater London Assembly to sack him, knowing they had no powers to do so)in a person holding such a post is dangerous for his force and for those who are policed by his force.
"If the Palestinians are losing hope, especially among the young, we have a great danger before us.
The prolonged experience of deprivation and humiliation can radicalize even normal people. We have all heard the stories and read the reports, but what is different now is the context.
My fear is that if Palestinian reformers can not deliver on the hope of an independent state then the moderate center could collapse forever. The next generation of Palestinians could become lost souls of unbridled extremism."
Condoleezza Rice.Two points. What kept her? This is not new. Everyone has known this for years, for decades. Only the effectiveness of the Israeli stranglehold has prevented "unbridled extremism" and ironically increases its possibility. Secondly the "Palestinian reformers" phrase. This presumably means the unelected West Bank Fatah personnel: the US refuses to talk to the party the Palestinians elected. Is it likely that any peace deal will last if those the Palestinians elected have no say? Further, it is always the Palestinians which have to deliver, never the Israelis. This point is underlined by the comment of Tzipi Livni, Israel's Foreign Minister: "The meaning is security to Israel first, and then the establishment of a Palestinian state." The order is always the same. The opppressed must first conform, the oppressors might then 'allow' a people their own state. What would have happened in the UK and Ireland had the UK government insisted on "security to the UK" before talking to the terrorists on both sides? Ireland and the UK would still be suffering the daily terrorist attacks, civilians would still be losing their lives.
Dialogue with all those who are party to the issues is the only way forward with realistic hopes for a lasting settlement. The sooner the US starts telling Israel that and acting itself in the same way, the better.
The world knows that the Palestinians have suffered immensely for decades and the Palestinians in Gaza especially.
Since Hamas won the democratically organised elections Israel, the US and the EU have imposed sanctions. Now, if that were not sufficient, Israel starts to starve the Gaza Strip of fuel. Only the intervention of the Israeli
Attorney General halted (or delayed) the cutting off of power supplies. The UN's senior official in Gaza, Karen Koning-Abu Zayd, has called Israel's intensification of the stranglehold on Gaza a violation of international law.
Yet the US, the EU, stand idly by whilst claiming to be working for peace. Inhumane, cynical hypocrisy. Israel knows that sanctions harden terrorists and increases support for their actions. So does the rest of the Western powers.
No wonder that the rocket attacks continue, no wonder that Islamic militants throughout the world find ready ears to listen to their views on the West. The generational oppression of the Palestinians certainly calls into question the West's claim to be civilised.
Here we go again. A re-run of WMD-type propoganda not based on accurate data. This time the badger population of the UK is due for a massive dose of
'shock and awe' following the proposal by the government's chief "scientist", Sir David King, to cull badgers in order to reduce TB in cattle. I write "scientist" as Sir David King's proposal is not based on previous scientific evidence.
Whilst the government was accused of 'sexing up' Iraqi WMD evidence, here the evidence actually goes the other way. The link between TB in cattle and badgers has been studied for ten years.
In 2006, Dr Woodroffe, a researcher at the University of California in Davis and a member of the UK government's Independent Scientific Group on cattle TB said:
"This research has two important conclusions. The first is that it shows for the first time that there is substantial transmission of TB from cattle to badgers (my emphasis), whereas in the past it's been assumed that didn't happen.
The second conclusion is that repeated culling increases the prevalence in badgers - each time you cull, it goes up and up." She also said: "In theory, if you could totally eliminate a badger population in an isolated area, you would eliminate one transmission route;
though whether this would be feasible or desirable is another matter, but improved cattle controls would have to be top of a policymaker's list; and culling - well, I'm not sure that would be on the priority list at all." So the government's own independent advisors conclude that cattle controls are the first priority, ie testing and vaccinating cattle and that culling badgers makes things worse (apparently with more space they roam further, thus being more susceptible to infection from cattle and infecting cattle). Faced with this, the government's chief scientic advisor recommends culling. Some science. Perhaps he is considering a Hitlerian 'final solution' - the extermination of every last badger in the UK? The tragedy of that would be the final proof that cattle TB would still occur, the tragedy of partial culling would be an increase in TB in both badgers and cattle.
Two final points. Economic considerations again take precedence over living with nature and respecting the natural world. I come from farming stock and am a meat eater, so I understand the farmers' concerns, but for me all creatures in nature have a right to live and our narrow economic priorities demean us. This sort of proposal is less than human in disregarding evidence and in being unconcerned about animal welfare. I will certainly join in any organised protest if this uncivilised, inhumane and misguided proposal is taken further.
There is anger over the 90 deaths of patients in the care of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and senior executives being allowed to resign with severance pay
and Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, threatens poorly performing trusts with being taken over by other trusts. Poorly performing trusts have money taken from them; fear of this drives some to distort their care provision in order to produce acceptable performance figures
These penalties simply punish the patients. One solution would be to amend the contracts of all staff so that, in the event of serious failures, a percentage of salary is deducted from all members of staff, leaving patient funds untouched. Staff directly responsible for
catastrophic failures should face the prospect of dismissal. The percentage 'fine' has the merit of affecting senior staff more than junior staff, which reflects in general terms the balance of responsibility.
The prospective temporary reduction in income would concentrate the mind wonderfully in providing a quality service in all respects rather than in just those areas which the government measure regularly.
There are two little details in the 'health and safety' prosecution of the police in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.
de Menezes first went to Brixton station but it was closed and boarded another bus to Stockwell, where he paused to buy a newspaper before going down to board a train. He was followed all this time by two police surveillance officers.
Now, a terrorist may be so cool as to cope with a change of plan and then to buy a newspaper but this is unlikely. Suicide bombers are almost certainly going to be keyed up, focussed on what they intend to be their last acts, either carrying out their
own plans to the letter or the plans of others. His actions were not those of a suicide bomber and the brutal pumping of seven dum dum type bullets into his head at point blank range whilst being held down - considering the police believe that one such bullet is intended to
kill instantly is cause for considerable concern in itself, even if his behaviour matched that of a suicide bomber.There is a wider point. In 2005, The Independent listed thirty people who were shot by police over a twelve year period. Just two police officers were prosecuted, none have been found guilty of either murder or manslaughter. For me, the worst case was that of James Ashley, with his girl friend, unarmed and naked, but shot dead by police. In this case there was a prosecution and a verdict of not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Can we believe that anyone other than a police officer would have been cleared of any crime?
The police do a difficult job and have to take decisions in the heat of the moment, but it does not encourage the general population to respect and cooperate with the police when they appear to be immune from all blame in all circumstances. It also encourages criminals to arm themselves - if unarmed citizens going about their lawful business but in doubtful circumstances get shot, criminals, who know they are in doubtful circumstances, are likely to take precautions to defend themselves/shoot first.
Apparent police immunity is unhealthy.
There is a great furore over the British Court's ruling that Al Gore's climate change documentary contains 8, 9, 11 errors (take your pick as to the number).
There is a lot of heat about children not being exposed to 'political' opinion, about 'balance'. I myself have reservations about the UK government actively distributing the DVD to schools - is this the job of government?
Nevertheless, unless a charge of deliberate falsehood could be proven, any documentary is likely to contain errors but the judge said the DVD "is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact". Yes, he went on to say that
"the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme", but this is not a party political programme, it is the most important issue facing us and in any case,
the sooner children are faced with political issues in ways in which they can start to sift opinions and form their own, the better.There is a lot made about human activity not being proven to create climate change. What does not seem to happen is for those of us who are concerned to insist that sceptics provide proof that human activity does not significantly accelerate the pace of climate change. I would be delighted if schools - and everyone else - had a similar DVD, "substantially founded upon scientific research and fact" as the judge ruled on An Inconvenient Truth arguing that climate change is either not happening or that human activity is not significant. We could then ponder the alternative positions and make our minds up. Meanwhile, my view is that humanity is currently acting like a parent watching a young child skipping around a main road - there is no proof that a vehicle will hit the child, but the odds are that it will and the risk is not worth it. We should act as if the world were that small child and exercise due responsibility. When the accident happens it is too late. Even as recently as a week ago the news about the opening up of the North West passage and a 23% reduction in Arctic pack ice in the last two years tells us that that 'accident' is going to happen. Only political action will stop it from happening, which is why all of us, including children, need to become political and politically active.
Apparently there is a competitive game going on between London and New York. Two measures of who is 'winning' this game are the rents per square foot for shops and how many buildings sell for more than $1bn.
London 'wins' the first round, New York the second. It is ironic that capitalism - which prides itself on providing the most for the least cost - throws up such comparisons.
More sickeningly is the belief that being the most expensive is 'best' in some way. At a time when most of the world is under nourished, 'competing' for the most expensive shop space and cost of buildings is just that, sick.
Yesterday's paragraph on telephone data was less than specific on why it is dangerous. It is dangerous for democracy and the maintenance of a free society because it inhibits if not curtails
the freedom to communicate, to associate, to combine, to group together. As we know from the 18th and 18th century Combination laws, governments, if they can get away with it, will seize the opportunity to deny people the right of association.
Why? Simple: an individual has very little power. This site has miniscule power, except the possibility of influencing enough people who, in some way together, act.
So governments fear the actual or potential power of those who find, by communicating with each other, that they have common beliefs and aims and seek jointly by further communication to act to further those beliefs and aims. Governments fear this process even if it is broadly in line with
their policies and fear it even more if it is not. When people's ability to communicate freely with each other is curtailed, the possibility of dissent, of cultural and political change, is weakened and the monolithic power of central government is strengthened.
Parliament is supposed to be the gatekeeper: limiting the power of the executive where it is too great and looking after the interests of the people. For the last ten years in the UK, parliament has been negligent, grossly negligent and the people have been ill-served, if not betrayed.
Our MPs have been serving power, instead of serving the people they are elected and paid to represent.
The UK continues to sleepwalk towards an Orwellian society and few know or care. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 appears to have given
the Home Secretary powers to sign a decree forcing companies to hold and reveal telephone and text data, all in the name of the 'war' against terrorism and crime. Now there is nothing wrong with that in principle.
What is unreasonable is the level of access allowed. Over 650 public bodies will be able to find out who you called/texted and when. These bodies include your local council, the Food Standards Agency, NHS Trusts etc etc.
In 2009, the UK government plans to have the same access to all our Internet traffic, not just telephone calls via the Internet, but all web sites visited.We have just witnessed what a totalitarian regime does with powers over communications facilities in Burma. It is not far-fetched to say that the UK government is acquiring such draconian powers over our freedoms, except here in the UK it is being done within the Parliamentary process. It is no use the government saying they will use such powers responsibly. Law is law: a future dictator would love to have such powers ready made. Many laws in the name of 'security' over the last ten years in the UK have brought the possibility of a dictatorship much closer. In extreme situations extreme measures tend to be reached for. The Labour government has created a host of such measures, all ready and waiting to be used.
There is a lot of noise about the protests in Burma and this process may end in tragic bloodshed. When the initial protests continued, the Burmese authorities decreed that no more than
five people could lawfully protest. Most Western onlookers would see this as unfair, undemocratic, authoritarian. Yet in the UK, no-one, not even a single person, can demonstrate within one kilometre of Parliament Square unless s/he or they get permission six days' in advance
or, exceptionally, 24 hours in advance. Individuals have been successfully prosecuted under this law (Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005)I am not saying the UK is like Burma, but it is salutary to note that the UK populace have restrictions placed upon them which they would deplore and decry in states considered to be 'rogue', 'undemocratic' or 'dictatorships'. Bad law is bad law, and especially so when passed by a parliamentary democracy. There are reports that Gordon Brown may repeal this part of the Act. Let us hope he does so soon.
Following the gradual revelations/leaks/disinformation etc about the Israeli raid on Syria, people seem to be obsessed about nuclear weapons, especially nuclear weapons being obtained by so-called 'rogue states'.
Americans especially appear to be paranoid about nuclear attacks - perhaps it's because the US is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons in war.
Acquisition of nuclear weapons isn't about using them. It's about power, influence and deterrence. Why does the UK and France persist in spending vast sums on nuclear weapons?
To retain a seat at the 'top table'. Has war between India and Pakistan been more or less likely since both acquired nuclear weapons? How likely is Israel to use nuclear weapons against Iran or Syria?
No, it is the growth of conventional weapons, epecially the unspeakable biological and chemical weapons which are the greater threat. The only purpose in threatening the Irans, Syrias and North Koreas of the world in order to stop them
developing nuclear weapons is to stop them having an effective deterrent against conventional attack - we need only to look at the accommodation the US made with Pakistan after 9/11, even though Pakistan's democratic credentials are doubtful and her response to terrorists in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan has been ambivalent.
Without nuclear weapons, countries can be bullied by the US and her allies. There is no evidence that any country is more likely than any other to
use nuclear weapons aggressively, as a weapon of first resort. The evidence is that countries reserve a 'nuclear response' capability to deter conventional attack.The only justification therefore for forceful prevention of the development of nuclear weapons is to retain influence/the ability to bully etc. There is some logic in that argument but no Western politician is honest enough to admit it.
"The objective is to weaken Hamas": Iraeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak on the declaration of Gaza as a "hostile entity".
"Additional restrictions will be imposed on the Hamas regime, limiting the transfer of goods to the Gaza Strip, cutting back fuel and electricity, and restricting the movement of people to and from the strip"We know and the Israelis know that the opposite will happen. Militants grow in strength under hardship and punitive measures. The only people who will suffer are the ordinary Palestinians through lack of food, power and water and the ordinary Israelis through rockets attacks from Gaza. The violence on both sides is futile. There is no leadership, seemingly anywhere on the world, who is on the side of peace and who is willing to act on the proven principle that conflicts are not resolved through miltary means, but diplomatically. How long must we wait for such leadership?
Reading Tim Robinson's book on Connemara reminds me of what we have, largely, lost. He gives an example of how scarce and precious pasture is shared out, with rules on the time on pasture and the number of animals allowed.
This is very much an exception to the current culture, whereby anything scarce and precious immediately attracts a high price and is promptly 'owned' by an individual who zealously bars anyone else from it, or charges high fees for access.
It may be a small example, but it shows how since the 1980's we have been travelling in the wrong direction, valuing competition and acquisitiveness over respect for our natural resources and sharing them.
Gordon Brown takes the usual line on pay in addressing the TUC: the coumtry cannot afford to pay you more than, indeed, even the same rate as, inflation.
So he expects workers to accept pay rises of less than 2.5%. Meanwhile, top executive pay in the UK has been rising at the rate of 37%. The arithmetic is simple.
The average top executive pay is £2,875,000 per year: another 37% on top of that would take it to £3,938,750 per year. The average UK wage is £26,400 per year: another 2.5% on top of that would take it to £27,060.
Put another way, a top executive pay rise is around forty times the annual actual wage the average person receives. At present a top exective receives 109 times the average, if this trend continues, as in the figures above, this factor will rise to 146 times.There are many responses to this. The worst - and possibly the most likely - is to echo Marie Antoinette, 'Let them eat cake'. The French revolution was the result of this attitude. No-one earns £3m a year. It is a combination of luck, ability, coupled with the inevitable 'valuation' of scarcity in a jungle-oriented capitalist economy. No-one needs £3m a year. Some, especially in the US, give much away; it is one of the most admirable aspects of US society, still pursued in spite of the culture of greed and competitevness. It is a result of the obsession with money being the only valid measure that creates these grotesque anomalies. Status is what is achieved and status is measured by wealth. What you do and who you are are poor runners up in this value-poor society. The irony is that the likelehood is that top executives rate themselves less on their 'earnings' than does society. I doubt that many, on their deathbeds, would express the most satisfaction with their lives in terms of how much money they received. It would be more likely to be their corporate achievements, personal achievements, family, friends.
It is possible to see through the mirage of 'loadsamoney', but it is still inequitable. It is still a source of justifiable unrest. It still a potential if not actual danger to society.
The UK government should be seeking ways to reduce the gap, not allowing it to get larger, citing helplessness (without using this word of course) in the face of globalisation.
I watched Natasha Kaplinsky tracing her family history yesterday and two points struck me.
Her father fled South Africa as a result of taking part in a student sit in as part of the anti-apartheid campaign. His family were not supportive: having fled Nazi persecution as Jews they were, seemingly, relieved that another race (the blacks and coloured) were the subject of persecution there
and they did not want to disturb their relatively privileged position. I know from my work that individuals who have suffered or witnessed serious emotional and psychological pain tend to be sensitive to pain suffered by others and avoid inflicting it, sometimes being pathologically averse to doing anything which might cause distress to others.
This did not seem to be the case here and it is noticeably absent in Israel's attitude to the known suffering of the Palestinians.The other aspect was the entirely appropriate pride in her family's participation as partisans during the second world war, resisting the Nazi occupation. The images of the underground living accommodation drew parallels with the Vietcong's struggle against the American invasion/occupation, but most people in the West would not see these actions as equivalent. It is back to the "those on 'our' side are freedom fighters/partisans, those on the 'other' side are insurgents/terrorists." We are all biased and it is difficult to be aware of the bias and take account of it.
Having been in the wilderness and pondering upon nature from that experience and other experiences it makes me realise just how balanced and self-adjusting nature is when left alone.
Yes, there are extinctions, plagues, etc, but when reindeer come up to you (so long as you are quiet) as they have no predators and no fear yet of humans another reality of Svalbard hits you: there is no indigenous population.
Svalbard was discovered comparatively recently, an untouched wilderness. Yes, we promptly set about destroying life, especially the great whales, but again nature reasserts itself.
Having been hunted almost to extinction in the Arctic, the humpback whale is returning and I was fortunate enough to see one at close quarters. The Northern Right whale has still to recover alas.
Think too of Africa, where the predators are balanced by the prey: the cheetah is not fast enough to catch antelope with ease; the antelope are not so fast as to always escape. Human beings use their intelligence foolishly in trying to dominate and control nature.
Just as diseases return in another form, so will the planet re-balance itself in the face of the relentless assault on it by humanity. What form this rebalancing will take no-one can know.
There is a growing movement which not only respects all living forms but acknowledges that we are part of a greater whole, not separate, not superior. I support this belief. A trawl on Google for 'deep ecology' will provide information.
I invite you to suspend your allegiance to the modern, materialistic, wasteful, foolish and arrogant world to explore an alternative view, with an alternative future.
I read an article in this Saturday's Guardian which made me think. A Palestinian lawyer, Raja Shehadeh, is committed to staying in the West Bank, determined not to give in to the ever-encroaching Israeli settlements.
He is certainly not pro-Israeli or resigned to losing large parts of the West Bank. Yet he can see and can write of the love for the land that Israeli settlers have as being equivalent to his own love for the land. (The West Bank is not his ancestral home either, his family fled Jaffa in 1948)
He can even muse on how neither love is paramount. It leads to a thought, probably anathema to both sides. The boundaries of a new Palestinian state to conform to those of 1976, Israeli settlers to have the choice of going back to Israel or staying, with a guarantee of security and political rights.
The new Palestinian state would be created as a multi-ethnic state, in stark contrast to Israel which was created as homeland for Jews (nothing wrong with that as such) but with a determination to create and maintain a Jewish majority by all means possible including violence.
A vision that probably will never happen but a vision that can be glimpsed, thanks to one man. Thank you, Raja Shehadeh.
George Bush compares Iraq with Vietnam, somewhat bizarrely in terms of saying it would have been better to have stayed in Vietnam.
There are two clear parallels however, that ensures 'victory' cannot be achieved by the US, no matter how long the campaign in Iraq. The people of Vietnam were fighting for their country.
So too are the Iraqis, together with thousands of others with rather wider aims. In Vietnam and Iraq, the US is trying to impose its political and economic systems on another country. This, too, is doomed to failure by means of force.
If (when) the US departs, there may be killing in Iraq on an unprecedented scale, but it is impossible to say whether earlier or later withdrawal would have reduced the human cost.
What is clear is that the presence of foreign troops is not helping: the British military are now admitting that in Basra, they are the main enemy and are now only involved in defending themselves.
When an occupying force whose stated aim is to help rebuild a country and reconcile conflicting factions becomes the main target then it's time to go and fast. You've failed.
My job entails helping people in emotional distress, people who have suffered from crimes, from abuse, from traumatic events.
I am therefore naturally understanding of people distressed by what they see as unfair. However, I suspect I am not in the majority when I say that the decision not to deport the murderer of Philip Lawrence is correct.
There is a body of opinion which seems to believe that criminals, especially those guilty of serious crimes, forfeit all rights that the ordinary citizen enjoys.
This is simply uncivilised and barbaric. Learco Chindamo has spent most of his life in the UK and his family is here. If he were British by birth, deportation would not be an option at all and after completing his sentence he would live within the community in the UK.
Apart from this, why should the UK believe that there is a "right" to dump those people deemed undesirable onto other nations? Italy certainly has no responsibility for Chindamo. What about the "rights" of the Italian people?
Judges can and do make mistakes, but I would back a judge any day to make decisions based on fairness and common sense than politicians, who have vested interests and axes to grind.
Learco Chindamo is the responsibility of the UK, to punish, rehabilitate, deal with in whatever way is most appropriate.
I have recently returned from a trip to Svalbard and the experience of wilderness is potentially life-changing, forcing a different perspective on human existence.
I find it heartening that the coal deposits were laid down millions of years' ago when Svalbard was in temperate climes; that plant seeds were brought thousands of miles by migrating birds and took root;
that Svalbard is currently 600 miles South East of the North Pole but in millions of years' time it will be East of the Pole; that the land, still 60% glacier, is still rebounding after the ice pressure of the last ice age.
This is heartening because it puts humanity in perspective. How insignificant we are, how arrogant in our partial knowledge, how it is impossible for us to destroy the earth.
We may destroy ourselves, we may destroy much of the natural world, but if and when we disappear, the earth will quietly go on evolving, creating new life forms to take the place of those destroyed by humans.
It is heartening that the British Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recommend talking to Hamas as a step towards peace in the Middle East.
At least some body involved in mainstream politics is willing to state the obvious: that sanctions against Hamas only strengthen the militants and terrorists. Everyone always says there has to be a political solution to disputes,
everyone says there can be no military solution. The politicians however seem to believe that military 'victory' should precede the political process. It merely delays it and people suffer and die in the meantime.
Have you noticed that when it comes to global warming the politicians seek all the time to find the causes, arguing that we need to know what the causes are before deciding upon the courses of action?
In contrast, regarding the "war on terror", the courses of action, primarily violent and military, are vigorously pursued whilst the causes are ignored. If the one logic is correct, why is it not followed in each case?
I have just put in a link to MAP: Medical Aid to Palestinians on the Links page.
I would urge you to look at the site. Today I received information from MAP about conditions in the Jordan valley around Jericho. As I cannot find this on the MAP site at present, let me quote just a few figures.
The Jordan valley is home to 47,000 Palestinians and 8,000 (illegal) Israeli settlers. The area comprises 2,400 square kilometres. The area allocated for Palestinians is just 45 square kilometres.
The 8,000 settlers have 1,655 square kilometres. 456 square kilometres form a closed military zone and the Palestinians are prohibited from accessing the 243 square kilometre area along the border with Jordan.In round terms this means that the 'native' Palestinians are crammed 1,000 people per square kilometre, whilst the illegal Israeli settlers are spread 5 per square kilometre. I say 'native' Palestinians. These people are of course a mix of people born here and those, and their descendants, who fled their homes when driven out of what became Israel.
This is so grotesque that it is incredible that the politicians who know these figures do not act. The general public are not aware of the extent of the Israeli occupation in terms of land alone. If this helps to make more people aware, surely some will act on this gross injustice. I would ask anyone who agrees that this situation is indefensible to let your local and national politicians know that you know what is happening and ask what they are prepared to do about it. Pressure from citizens is regrettably necessary to force those in power to act to remedy such gross injustice, outwith and in advance of a final settlement of the Israel/Palestinian issue. The Palestinians deserve better, much better, than the conditions meted out to them at present.
As Tony Blair's role in the Middle East has been clarified, we can draw some conclusions. Firstly that the US, as usual, insists on dominating any political process.
Secondly that Tony Blair's eagerness to grab a role on the world's stage blinded him to that reality and to believe that, in spite of his limited role being made clear from the start, he was arrogant enough to believe that he could change it.The other curious aspect - but then Tony Blair always has taken an odd course - is that, having been told that his role is purely focussed on the Palestinians and how to help build up their institutions, he sets off next week for the Middle East, not straight to the West Bank, but to Israel, to meet Ehud Olmert. Now there is nothing wrong with establishing ties with leaders in both Israel and the occupied territories, but it seems something like an insult to visit Israel first. No-one ever seems to regard the Palestinians as worthy of respect and worthy of the common courtesies offered to other peoples.
In this respect, the continuing boycott of Hamas, who won free and fair elections, is another example of how the Palestinian people are treated with contempt.
I will applaud Tony Blair if he does in the Middle East what he did in Ireland. In Ireland he talked to the IRA. His contacts with the Palestinians should also be comprehensive.
The more I think about the state of the world, the more I come to believe that it is men who are responsible for the state of society and the planet.
The aggression and competitive nature of men, together with the Cartesian view that non-human life forms are subservient means that humanity rips each other off and with this the rest of the natural world.
Compassion and respect are add-ons if there is time to indulge in them, rather than essential and natural ways of being. So-called primitive societies, more open to feminine influence, were capable of being more humane, both to each other and to the world in which they lived.
We have much to learn from the past - without going back to it - in terms of how to treat ourselves, each other and the world with respect and common decency. It is time man learned to listen to woman.
The police in the UK, or at least the president of the Association of Chief Police Ofiicers, have launched another pre-emptive strike in calling for indefinite detention of terror suspects.
No lessons have been learned. Indefinite detention - better known as internment - did not work in Ireland, it has brought odium on the US relating to Guantanamo Bay. It is counter-productive, producing martyrs and victims that others exploit for their own ends.
Most importantly though it strikes at the heart of a free society: the right to be charged and tried by due process of law for whatever crime is alleged to have taken place or has been planned - for let us not forget that it is possible under anti-terrorism laws to be found guilty of a crime before the crime has taken place.
If we continue to erode and throw away such rights - the hallmark of any civilised society - then we have lost the 'fight' (odious term) against those who wish to harm us.
No politician is willing to stand up and tell the truth, the awful truth: that terrorist atrocities are the price we pay, the price we have to pay, in order to maintain our values.
Yes, let us be efficient, effective, even ruthless in preventing terrorism and punishing those found guilty, but throwing away the rule of law is akin to proclaiming the sanctity of marriage whilst having affairs.
Justice is not divisble, it is absolute, and we should provide it to all, especially those whom as a society we deplore, even despise: terrorists, paedophiles, muggers of the elderly etc etc.
May I quote from the Quotations section of this site: Benjamin Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty."
This should be on every politicians's desk.
The Conservatives are right when they say that family stability is a key element in improving social cohesion and reducing harmful behaviour such as drug, gambling and alcohol addiction.
However, economic measures such as tax breaks are not the answer and it is depressing to see the continual obsession with money. The proposals apparently miss out stable families whose parents are not married and would also force the homemaker to work part-time when the youngest child is five and full-time when the youngest child is eleven.
I know that children now regard themselves as adults - and are treated as if they were - at an earlier age than heretofore, but at eleven they are still children and having a parent at home at least part-time could be a tremendous positive support.
I am aware of the role of peer pressure but children still, maybe quietly and secretly, regard parents who warrant respect with due respect. What is needed is rather more long term and little, in essence, to do with money. It is cultural change, a rolling back of the marketing-led consumer society which is needed. Society presently values the latest consumer product and children are the most vulnerable to this value system, creating upward pressure on parents to work harder and longer, thus reducing the time actually relating to their children. When as a society we value relationships with others as more important than the latest iPod or the 'in' trainers, then the sense of continual dissatisfaction will reduce and harmful behaviour with it. Whilst this is written from a UK perspective, it applies to all 'developed' nations and globalisation is exporting such marketing led values to the rest of the world. It could be argued that marketing - the deliberate creation of desire for goods and services that the population at large have not identified a wish for - is the biggest single cause of what the Conservatives call the 'broken society' and also is the biggest single cause of climate change.
The conventional view in the media is that Muslims are 'radicalised' because of the agenda of militants for Islamic domination.
The influence of the West's actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, the bias towards Israel, the threats on Iran are all dismissed as incidental. Whilst I believe they are not incidental, no-one mentions Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary renditions as incidental.
Indeed, these two interconnected areas are not mentioned in this context as they clearly are not incidental. There is no excuse for terrorism by Muslims (or by the US, UK and Israel for that matter) but the West persists in providing fertile ground for those busy radicalising young Muslims.
Furthermore, the West continues to debase the so-called gift to the world of Western democracy, for instance the US president commuting the sentence for political crimes by one of his political associates.
There may be no objection in principle for a president to have powers of clemency, but not when the criminal is a close associate. It is an insult to the whole principle of the rule of law but George Bush appears to have no sense of shame.
The Israeli/Palestinian issue is deep-seated and conventional politics, with its emphasis on power and fear, seems unable to make headway.
An unconventional approach might lead somewhere. The following is not a solution, rather a process which might shed light on what the communities want and indicate to the politicians what this is.
At random, a number of people - say six to eight - are chosen from each community: Israeli and Palestinian. In the case of the Palestinians the choice would be made from both the West Bank and Gaza, for the Israelis, residents of the settlements would be included in the randomising process.
The people are immediately flown to a neutral country - say India - and arrangements made for family care etc in their absence. Three neutral facilitators are appointed and the first, say, three days are spent with each group separately discussing and formulating what they want.
After such formulations are created, the groups meet under the third facilitator to share what they want and to explore to what extent each side's wishes are complementary and to what extent they are irreconcilable.
If appropriate a joint statement of aims is created and each group, with their individual facilitator, has the opportunity to modify their wishes as a result of the discussions. Following this process the two separate 'wish lists' and the joint statement, if any, are published to each community.
Both Israel and the Palestinian communities would be required or encouraged to seek the views of their populations at large eg. via some sort of referendum.
To the extent that the groups reach consensus and the communities endorse it, the politicians would find it difficult to prevaricate and perpetuate their lethal game playing. The process would be more effective to the extent that the groups included hard-line members from each side - militant settlers, militant Palestinians,
but this would be sheer chance.The process would cost peanuts in relation to what is being spent on perpetuating the violence and may of course lead absolutely nowhere, but involving the people in some way, free of immediate pressure from their communities and open to the wishes of ordinary people from the other community, might just provide a way forward. My belief is that the wishes of the people from each side would be less demanding for themselves and less demanding of the other side. Ordinary people are generally more tolerant and less confontational than politicians.
There may be some grounds for cautious optimism in the Supreme Court's decision to review whether or not detaines in Guantanamo Bay can access federal courts to contest the legitimacy of their detention.
Optimism that the judicial system in the US may not be subservient to the executive and that the main purpose of any judicial system - seeking justice - still has some meaning.I am rather more cynical about the decision to investigate BAE in relation to the arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Welcome as that decision is in terms of looking at what may be corruption on a large scale, politics is driving it rather more than justice, as politics drove the British decision not to pursue the enquiry.
How anyone can, given his history, consider Tony Blair to be a suitable mediator in the Middle East is beyond me.
True, he may do a good job, but his invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, stance against Iran, explicitly refusung to criticise Israel's destruction of Lebanon would not read well on the cv for a job application.
As far as the agenda of the parties to the Middle East situation, I can do no better than refer you to the following article: Finding lessons in Gaza's bloodshed.
Sooner or later the world will listen to those who see the US for what it is: an imperial power, creating untold misery in its quest to maintain and increase its dominance in the world. Tony Blair, his hubris flattered and massaged, is just another pawn
in this immoral and tragic game.
The US champions democracy throughout the world. The US encouraged the Palestinians to hold elections which Hamas won.
The elections were fair according to international observers. The Palestinians were duly punished via economic sanctions for choosing the 'wrong' party.
Hamas and Fatah (the faction supported by the US - though not when headed by Yassser Arafat) formed a government of national unity. Not good enough. Hamas then takes Gaza by force and Fatah creates a new government without elections,
ie undemocratically, no say in this by the Palestinians. This undemocratic process is approved of by the US and frozen funds are promptly unfozen. The US champions democracy throughout the world. Yes?
It is profoundly depressing to hear Gordon Brown saying "In future every single secondary school and primary school should have a business partner - and I invite you all to participate."
and "And we should also be willing to consider new proposals for: combined
all-through primary and secondary schools, employer-led skills academies
to transform the quality of vocational provision, and studio schools that
motivate dis-engaged pupils by allowing them to learn the curriculum alongside
a chance to work in and run a real business based in the school."
It is depressing, together with the statement that "I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st
century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps
even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created."
because Gordon Brown is embracing further the belief that globalisation is good for the world and that education is all about trainng children for the workplace.
He attacks 'protectionism' also. What this means in reality is that children are seen as fodder for business, that business - global business - is afforded an absolute priority, that the nation state is subservient to the power of the market and corporate power.
Most importantly it weakens fatally any chance of reducing or averting the effects of climate change, for it is those companies, it is the lack of checks on globalisation and the insatiable demand of companies for instant profits that are the main drivers of climate change.
Until nation states - and why should the UK not lead the way - reverse the process which gives unfettered power to unelected, unaccountable corporations, then climate change will not be reversed and the fate of humankind is put in jeopardy. Gordon Brown is following the old track, the path to disaster.
We will be fortunate indeed if the world only suffers a 1929/1930's depression when the bubble inevitably bursts and this just refers to the developed world. Meanwhile the underdeveloped world continues to suffer as corporations suck more money and resources from them and transfer them to the already affluent West.
Well, it's going according to the script. Mahmoud Abbas creates a new (unelected) government, receives a phone call in support from George Bush
and indications are that the punitive sanctions on the Occupied Territories (or at least in relation to the West Bank) will be lifted. One rule the rest of the world should note: beware of any leader who is approved of by the US andministration,
particularly if there is division in the leader's country. It usually means that the leader is willing to be an American puppet and the opposition has the welfare of the people at heart.
I see no reason to suppose that the Occupied Territories are an exception to the rule. It was interesting that the Observer ran an analysis yesterday, acknowledging that Hamas has looked after the Palestinians and also reporting that Hamas was purging Fatah
of corrupt officials and having done that is willing to cooperate with Fatah and continue within the elected government. However, I guess that the US will conveniently ignore any evidence to that effect and take the opportunity to support the most pliant representatives of the Palestinian people.
The fighting in Gaza is a tragedy for the Palestinians and largely their responsibility.
But, apart from the decades-long oppression and starvation of the Palestinians, remember just a few weeks' ago Israel was arresting 30 Hamas 'leaders' in the West Bank.
We now see signs of splitting Gaza and the West Bank. "The focus needs to be on ensuring that Hamas doesn't gain in the West Bank what it was able to gain within Gaza." (Dennis Ross, former U.S. Mideast envoy)
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, was forthright on the possibility of a multinational peacekeeping force in Gaza: "Those who are talking in terms of international forces have to understand that the meaning is not monitoring forces but forces that are willing to fight, to confront Hamas on the ground"
So Israel is prepared to let others do its dirty work in fighting Hamas, as if there hasn't been enough killing in Gaza already. It is Israel's dirty work - Gaza is not in any sense free: no access to the air, no access to the sea, no access to any other country except through stringent border controls (no wonder they build tunnels).
Gaza is still Israel's responsibility. That fact may be uncomfortable and inconvenient, but it is true nonetheless. So a possible future is for the US to support (bribe?) the Palestinian Fatah supporters in the West Bank and continue the policy of isolating Hamas, which now means the whole of the population of Gaza.
This will be presented as the fault of the Palestinians, whereas it is yet another example of US meddling in other peoples' affairs to suit its own agenda. The arrest of Hamas personnel in the West Bank could be seen as part of a deliberate policy, rather than a reaction to the events in Gaza.
Fatah did not look after its people. Hamas may be a terrorist organisation, but it won the elections partly on the basis that it does look after its people and I mean in terms of welfare, not by acts of violence - these do not serve the Palestinian people.
There is a cold logic here too: the US has a bad track record in subverting states or populations that are governed by people who have the welfare of the population at heart. The US prefers states to be governed by people who have the welfare of the US at heart.
The assumption that the defence of one's own country - which underpins in theory the enormous arms industry - is paramount can only be based logically on an external threat.
That is, there is a nation state or nation states that are powerful enough and hostile enough to attack us. These states are labelled 'evil' or some such thing. What is not examined is why a state should be hostile enough to attack us.
Examining this question inevitably brings up our own stance and actions which contribute to this hostility. In some cases our own state's actions may form the primary cause of the hostility.
Let's take Iran since the fall of the Shah. The new Isalamic state was cold-shouldered by the West. The West supported Iraq in attacking Iran militarily.
Even though Iran joined the coalition which invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 this was not enough for the West to offer friendship. Now Iran is faced with a formerly hostile neighbour, Iraq, teeming with Western troops and becoming more rather than less unstable.
Another neighbour, Saudi Arabia, is heaviliy militarised with Western armaments. Another neighbour, Israel, also heavily armed, has nuclear weapons to boot. There are reasons why Iran is nervous, defensive and hostile.You may say, why should Iran not just become a Westernized state, join the Western club, become 'democratic'? The answer is that this is not enough, not for states who have any political or economic potential. The only state which is acceptable to the US is a client state. One which does the bidding of the US, opens its markets to US corporate exploitaton, opens its territory to US military bases. Maybe for Iran this price is too high, but tragically the price of independence, of dissidence, may be higher still. The age of empire is not yet past, maybe it never will be. The US empire is governed by corporate power, but it is also backed by deadly military power.
It is indeed tragic that the acquisition of military power and the willingness to use it still form the basis of how the world is ordered. One day the world might grow out of its adolescent, testosterone-fuelled macho way of conducting international relations. One day, women, or men, may take over from the boys.
The subject of boycotting Israel has re-surfaced in the academic and journalistic fields.
These areas are not the most appropriate ones: academic and journalistic freedom is too precious to be squandered on partisan mass action.
Academics and journalists have opportunities as individuals to have their say and influence opinion.Where an institutional boycott would be effective is in sport. Excluding Israel's participation in the major sports would help Israel's dissidents and the Palestinian cause enormously. Beyond that, each one of us can do our bit: never knowingly buy anything grown, processed, made or assembled in Israel.
So, in spite of an apparent acceptance of the dangers of climate change, George Bush still refuses to countenance binding targets.
This is too big a subject to play politics with and the politics that the US is playing is the usual one: unless we are in charge, are seen to be in charge and everyone does what we say, we aren't playing.
This is literally saying: the planet is my ball and I won't play except on my terms. Apart from anything else, George Bush and the US administration ought to grow up and accept that other people have good ideas,
that cooperation yields dividends that force and bullying does not and that the issue is one of the future of humankind. Or are George Bush and his successors really happy that future visitors to this planet from space
see the evidence and conclude that the US was largely responsible for the extinction of humanity?