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Month April 2009

Entries 10 Total

The war crims are running scared

Apr 30, ’09 9:42 PM

Check out this video of war crim­inal Con­doleezza Rice passing the buck when ques­tioned by some stu­dents about torture.

Stu­dent: Water­board­ing. Is water­board­ing torture?

War crim: Er, the Pres­id­ent instruc­ted us that noth­ing we would do would be out­side of our oblig­a­tions, legal oblig­a­tions, under the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture. So that’s … and by the way, I didn’t author­ise any­thing. I con­veyed the author­isa­tion of the admin­is­tra­tion to the agency, that they had policy author­isa­tion, sub­ject to the Justice Department’s clear­ance. That’s what I did.

So, first, denial but it gets bet­ter. I couldn’t quite get the next ques­tion but this is her answer:

War crim: … and, I just said, the United States was told, we were told, noth­ing that viol­ates our oblig­a­tions under the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture, and so by defin­i­tion, if it was author­ised by the pres­id­ent, it did not viol­ate our oblig­a­tions under the Con­ven­tion Against Torture.

That old chest­nut. “Well he told me to do it, and fur­ther­more, he’s above the law.” We’ll see Condi, we’ll see.

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Held hostage by the state, then they charge you for rent

Apr 29, ’09 8:44 AM

On 18 March 2009 Sean Hodg­son walked free after his con­vic­tion was quashed, hav­ing spent 27 years in prison.

… when com­pens­a­tion is finally paid out, the gov­ern­ment, unbe­liev­ably, docks room and board, or “saved liv­ing expenses” cal­cu­lated on the basis of what a frugal per­son might have spent on their own upkeep if they were free. “As if you vol­un­tar­ily popped into the local prison,” says Young, con­temp­tu­ously. “Yes, it would have cost them some­thing to live — but you’ve taken their liberty. If you can afford £50bn to bail out a bank you can afford to com­pensate someone for 27 years in prison.” McManus estim­ates that Hodg­son will pay a min­imum of £100,000 for the priv­ilege. The appeal was paid for by legal aid, but it does not cover the pro­cess of apply­ing for com­pens­a­tion. And so he will have to pay legal fees too.

“It’s like [the state is] pro­ject­ing some of the respons­ib­il­ity back on to the indi­vidual,” says Turn­bull. “As if he should have made a bet­ter job of prov­ing his own inno­cence and not allowed the sys­tem to make the mis­take it did. It’s like accus­ing a rape vic­tim of being pro­voc­at­ive, spread­ing the respons­ib­il­ity bey­ond those who should be tak­ing it. He should have been set free imme­di­ately, com­pensated mag­ni­fi­cently and put through a sys­tem to restore him to as near his nor­mal self as pos­sible, and yet none of things are happening.”

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Why the rules have changed on income equality

Apr 28, ’09 7:45 PM

What I find so great about the find­ings in The Spirit Level is that they com­pletely change the rules of the debate on income equality.

No longer does one need rely on grounds of fair­ness and justice, which fall on the deaf ears of a world suc­cumbed to the fal­la­cies of social Dar­win­ism, or “sur­vival of the fit­test,” and the idea of “wealth creators.”

Now, given the deluge of data, it’s a prac­tical ques­tion of whether you want to live in a soci­ety with low rates of social prob­lems or high rates of social prob­lems. A no-brainer as they say.

The Spirit Level has opened my eyes to a couple of things too. One is the import­ance of poor coun­tries to get richer. Wealth has a huge role to play in rais­ing liv­ing stand­ards in poor coun­tries. I used to think devel­op­ing coun­tries had some­thing we didn’t and that they would lose this some­thing as they became richer. What I now real­ise is that it’s not wealth that takes this some­thing away but inequality.

The other thing it’s opened my eyes to is the dif­fer­ent way in which some coun­tries have acheived greater income equal­ity. Sweden, for example, gets its greater equal­ity through redis­tri­bu­tion, through taxes and bene­fits, and pub­lic ser­vices provided by a big state. In con­trast, Japan has a greater equal­ity of incomes before redis­tri­bu­tion. Dif­fer­ences in Japan­ese earn­ings are smal­ler even before taxes and bene­fits. Check out the Equal­ity Trust’s ‘Rem­ed­ies’ webpage for more.

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U.S. finally comes in from the cold

Apr 28, ’09 8:14 AM

U.S. finally comes in from the cold, so to speak:

Clin­ton addressed the com­plaints of devel­op­ing coun­tries such as India and China that Amer­ica and the EU, by demand­ing bind­ing emis­sions cuts, want to saddle them with the bur­den of cli­mate change; they argue they did not cause the prob­lem and must pri­or­it­ise growth. She said the US recog­nised indus­tri­al­ised coun­tries bore a respons­ib­il­ity: “Some coun­tries like mine are respons­ible for past emis­sions.” She wanted China and India to grow their eco­nom­ies: “We want people to have a higher stand­ard of living.”

Obama had broken with eight years of denial under George Bush, Clin­ton said. “The United States is fully engaged and ready to lead and determ­ined to make up for lost time both at home and abroad … the US is no longer absent without leave.”

Bet­ter late than never.

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Shattering the myth of egalitarianism in Australia (and NZ)

Apr 26, ’09 12:56 PM

Boris Frankel in Melbourne’s The Age:

Here is some good news. Just as the Great Depres­sion inspired sig­ni­fic­ant social reforms, so the cur­rent “great world reces­sion” is pro­du­cing a spate of over­due reform pro­pos­als. Some of these pro­pos­als have emerged in Bri­tain, one of the most unequal soci­et­ies in the developed world. While Aus­tralia ranks as the fourth most unequal developed soci­ety after the US, Por­tugal and Bri­tain, there is wide­spread delu­sion among Aus­trali­ans that we are an egal­it­arian soci­ety. By con­trast, 80 per cent of people in Brit­ish sur­veys believe that class divi­sion — or birth not worth — determ­ines a child’s life chances.

I think there’s prob­ably wide­spread delu­sion among New Zeal­anders too when it comes to see­ing their soci­ety as egal­it­arian. It used to be for sure, but since the Labour and National party usered in free-market fun­da­ment­al­ism in the 80s New Zea­l­and, too, has become one of the most unequal developed soci­et­ies in the world. One more reason not to vote for Labour or National.

External links:

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UK police’s use of “kettling” to be legally challenged

Apr 26, ’09 11:12 AM

Bind­mans, a Lon­don law firm, is pre­par­ing to launch a legal chal­lenge against the UK police’s use of ket­tling:

Bind­mans is … pre­par­ing to launch a legal chal­lenge against the use of “ket­tling”, the police tac­tic used to pen in 5,000 people dur­ing the G20 protests and a strategy which led to pro­test­ers suf­fer­ing asthma and panic attacks. John Halford, a part­ner in Bind­mans, said that the firm had held talks with Cli­mate Camp legal advisers on Fri­day to pre­pare to launch a judi­cial review against the con­tain­ment of protesters.

Halford said that “ket­tling” is leg­ally jus­ti­fi­able only when there is no altern­at­ive to address actual or immin­ent viol­ence. He said: “There is much to sug­gest that ‘ket­tling’ was the first thing resor­ted to as a response to a peace­ful demon­stra­tion that was con­sidered a nuis­ance by the police. Worse, many pro­test­ers have repor­ted unpro­voked baton charges and other forms of intim­id­a­tion while they were penned in. We plan to ensure all of this is examined by the courts.”

I’ve exper­i­enced ket­tling before as part of a peace­ful demon­stra­tion in 2003 against the world’s largest arms trade fair, DSEi, held every other year at East London’s ExCeL Centre. I spent most of my time in the kettle try­ing to explain par­ti­cip­at­ory eco­nom­ics to the police. An enga­ging lot to be sure.

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“What is the difference between Zionism and racism?”

Apr 26, ’09 10:30 AM

Jeremy Pax­man: What is the dif­fer­ence between Zion­ism and racism?

Peter Gooder­ham: Well we see the two as being quite dis­tinct, um, Zion­ism is clearly a …

Jeremy Pax­man: Yeah what’s the difference?

Peter Gooder­ham: Well Zion­ism is a polit­ical move­ment, um, relat­ing to the establishment …

Jeremy Pax­man (queitly): So are some forms of racism.

Peter Gooder­ham: … of a home­land, a Jew­ish home­land, in the er…er, in in what is now Israel, um, and racism is some­thing else. I mean racism is, I think we all know it when we see it and it’s not, it’s not that, and we have fought long and hard at the United Nations to keep that, to main­tain that distinction.

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Nobody does money like New Labour

Apr 25, ’09 4:01 PM

Mar­ina Hyde on New Labour’s rela­tion­ship with money:

It is dif­fi­cult to think of a more per­fect test­a­ment to New Labour’s intel­lec­tual shal­lows. On the eve of the most deadly ser­i­ous budget in dec­ades, Gor­don Brown posts a You­Tube video in which he announces he has sched­uled some inquiry — pre-empting debate about MPs’ ­expenses. It might as well have been cap­tioned “I can haz bathplug?”.

MPs’ expenses are a cross-party blight, of course. But when his­tor­i­ans come to assess this edi­fy­ing period for our demo­cracy, they may well remark upon what a pity it was that cer­tain mem­bers who were so fas­ti­di­ous about their per­sonal out­go­ings were so prof­lig­ate and laissez-faire with the pub­lic purse. Olympic over­spends, a couple of wars – they waved through the lot while per­us­ing the John Lewis elec­tric­als catalogue.

New Labour just looked like … well, small-time crooks is the expres­sion … And in the end, it’s the small­ness of these people that you can’t get away from.

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Bill to make companies publish difference between their best and worst paid

Apr 24, ’09 8:34 PM

This Bill was to have its second read­ing in the UK’s House of Lords today. The Bill would make pubic com­pan­ies pub­lish the dif­fer­ence between top dir­ect­ors’ pay and the aver­age wages earned by the low­est paid 10% of their workers.

While a small step it’s laud­able when you con­sider the amount of dam­age income inequal­ity does to soci­ety and its people. It will be use­ful to know which com­pan­ies are doing the most dam­age and which aren’t. And, while it’s a small step, it’s an inter­est­ing Bill in that it makes any­one who opposes it look like a right prat, espe­cially in this eco­nomic climate.

Dick Tav­erne and Miles Tem­pleton dis­cussed the Bill on BBC Radio’s Today pro­gramme this morn­ing. You can listen to it here. Good to hear a House of Lords mem­ber pro­mot­ing income equality.

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The PR assault begins

Apr 23, ’09 7:36 AM

Doesn’t look like the UK police are going to get a clean up after­all. Instead what appears to be a pro­pa­ganda cam­paign begins, first up: how “aston­ish­ingly” good the G20 police actu­ally were. And all those videos of police run­ing amok, well they were just a few bad eggs, we’ll sort that out don’t worry.

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