As I am breaking into power stations with my sister.
What’s going on in the world?
As a percent, how much of the UK economy is given over to:
- Financial services
- Manufacturing
- Retail
- Professional services eg lawyers, accountants etc
?
In the boom times, the tension between tax and spending was muted. The government made enough money from relatively modest taxes to fund increasingly elaborate spending plans (in the UK, forgetting that spending should be counter-cyclical – but that’s another matter), meaning that while the issue of taxation existed – as it always goes and always will – it was relatively easy for the government to fend off.
We’re not in the boom times any more, however, and thus the issue of tax optimisation has come up again. The less tax government spends, the less it can spend on services; but the more tax it takes, the less money there is in the real economy for people to spend, hitting jobs, wages, and ultimately taxes. Tax is the Jörmungandr upon which public policy is built, and the question of how much you can tax before the negative impact on the economy outweighs the spending benefit has sharpened over the last half-decade.
As a result, lots of different groups are looking at the question in different ways (as I write this, Andrew Neil is debating Laurie Penny on the retrospective merits of the Community Charge – aka the Poll Tax. It’s not going well for Brillo). And it’s not just the usual leftie malcontents; in America, the very rich – led by the world’s second-richest man, Warren Buffet – are themselves questioning the levels of tax levelled upon them: Buffet famously claimed to pay a lower rate of tax than his assistant.
Increasingly there are numbers to back the various positions up. Shortly before Christmas, a group of economists – Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Stefanie Stantcheva of MIT – put out a paper (pdf) detailing optimal rates of top-rate tax. The results are surprising.
Kevin Drum elaborates on the results, but in short, the paper asserts that top rates of tax can go as high as 76% without inflicting economic damage greater than the net benefit derived. The writers of the paper take a conservative view of behavioral elasticity, as well, so the risks of the rich “going Galt” and fleeing to tax havens is priced into that calculation. There is some historical evidence to support that, too. The UK’s top rate of tax, set at 50%, has made next to no difference to wealth creation since it was implemented a year and a half ago. Furthermore, Martin Feldstein of Harvard found that the 1986 cut in the US top rate of tax, from 50% to 28%, made no perceptible difference to the gross tax yield.
Feldstein does not conclude that taxes can be raised, however. His conclusion is that the tax based needs to be broadened by eliminating reductions. To be fair, the other paper makes a similar point. Have a high tax rate may not intrinsically undermine the economy, but it’s a wasted effort if you still allow people to find ways to avoid paying it. So the first task of tax reformers must be to minimise such opportunities by having a broader tax base, better enforcement and similar tax rates for different kinds of income.
And that’s the problem. Even in small countries – like Sweden – keeping the exchequer in order is a massive challenge. For countries like Britain and America, with a vastly diverse economy and an especially ornate system of financial services and products, any attempts to design a straightforward tax system run into a conflict between fairness and flexibility. Schemes such as that designed by the Deputy Prime Minister, to raise the income level at which tax is charged on the lower band, may be the most straightforward way to force the issue. Removing pressure at the bottom of the pile has to result in increasing it at the top, and if these reports are to be believed, then the top has plenty more to give.
Some obituaries
May 4th, 2011 | Posted by in General | History | Politics - Middle East | Politics - UK - (0 Comments)Was it right to have killed Osama bin Laden in cold blood?
Because that’s what the good men of SEAL Team Six did – they were given a kill order and they executed it, no pun intended.
It’s a complex question and gets tangled up in a lot of other problems, both emotional and intellectual. This post aims to unpick some of that.
Was it legal?
Many will hardly care whether it was legal or not, arguing that right and wrong are not always reflected in law. That’s a fair point, but legalities are still important, if only because they’re the difference between the subjective opinion of an individual and the agreed parameters established by a society.
On this issue the rules are actually very straightforward and relatively unambiguous: killing Osama bin Laden was inalienably legal under international law.
Under international humanitarian law, a member of an armed organised group can be killed as an enemy combatant, and as al Qaida was a recognised participant in the war in Afghanistan his death is an entirely justifiable act of war. The only strictures on such an action are the principles of distinction and proportionality, and the action in Abbotabad seems not to violate either of those restrictions.
Under international human rights law (a separate and oftentimes contradictory code), targeted killings are harder to justify but still not impossible. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 is the document that governs this code, and it states that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life” – meaning that assassination is legal so long as it can be justified. If he had attempted to surrender then the case would be sticker, but the White House claims that bin Laden resisted arrest and that is certainly consistent with his own pronouncements of the issue. Given that the White House holds video of the killing – which can be subpeona’d – we can probably assume that they are being truthful in this regard.
Was it morally justifiable?
The question of moral right or wrong breaks in two – ‘can it be coherently justified to others’ and ‘is it, at a fundamental level, consistent with the moral norms established in our society’. One can be critically examined; the other is conceptually much more woolly.
The question of whether the killing could be justified is straightforward. Yes; it is clearly possible to build a coherent and convincing argument asserting that killing bin Laden was morally preferable to taking him alive. Here’s how you do it:
- He was an enemy combatant, not a civilian. While taking him alive was an option, killing him was an equally viable one, and the question needs to be viewed in that light.
- There was no gain to be had from taking him alive, for the following reasons:
- He would not have given up information except under extreme torture, and the compulsion to use that torture would have been acute.
- Taking him alive would not have changed the ultimate outcome. He confessed to the crime, he only would have been tried in America, and he would have been put to death.
- The only difference is that taking him alive would have subjected the world to the spectacle of a court case, which would have had no real value. It would have been impossible to try him fairly, it would have been perceived to be a humiliating sham amongst our enemies (and many of our allies) overseas, regardless of how rigorous the trial actually was, and it would have given him one last prime-time podium from which to agitate for further slaughter. I accept that we should not be afraid to face extremist rhetoric, but that doesn’t mean we have to give it our network airtime.
- The key point in the above section is that it wouldn’t actually win us any friends. People don’t like that we assassinated him and that’s sad, but the shitstorm we would have faced for trying him would have been much worse. The Nuremburg trials would have been invoked, and probably not entirely unfairly. America’s own divisions would have come to the fore as everyone’s favourite bigots – Beck, O’Reilly, Palin, Trump – would have vied to be toughest on the terrorist. Even our allies in the region would have been forced into the position of defending Islam, and bin Laden by proxy, from the acid tongues of America’s most divisive assholes.
- Every day that he spends on TV in an orange boiler suit and shackles, his friends get more pissed off. That means reprisals, and not just against us – against anybody.
- The videotapes of bin Laden’s final hours would be passed from hand to hand like relics. It’s a short-cut to martyrdom.
- All of these would be equivocations from a moral imperative, though, were it not for one thing: he was an enemy soldier in a time of war. If he was a political leader, a civilian, then it would be a different matter, but he was a man whose life was war. Ultimately, this was the end he chose, and we shouldn’t let an obsession with abstract principles interfere with that.
So it’s certainly morally defensible. If the Dalai Lama can bring himself to recognise the justification then it seems bizarre to suggest otherwise.
Was it right?
If it’s legal and justifiable, then surely that shouldn’t be in question?
And yet. Outside of ground zero, away from the gates of the white house, many people – not just the airy-fairy left – are uneasy. The policy of whacking terrorist leaders is from an Israeli playbook that has a tendency to inspire revulsion, as Alan Dershowitz notes:
Among others, these critics include officials in Britain, France, Italy, Russia, the EU, Jordan, and the United Nations. [Jack Straw, the former British foreign secretary] once said, “The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called targeted assassinations of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive.” The French foreign ministry has declared “that extrajudicial executions contravene international law and are unacceptable.” The Italian Foreign Minister has said, “Italy, like the whole of the European Union, has always condemned the practice of targeted assassinations.” The Russians have asserted that “Russia has repeatedly stressed the unacceptability of extrajudicial settling of scores and ‘targeted killings.’” Javier Solana has noted that the “European Union has consistently condemned extrajudicial killings.” The Jordanians have said, “Jordan has always denounced this policy of assassination and its position on this has always been clear.” And Kofi Annan has declared “that extrajudicial killings are violations of international law.”
Yet none of these nations, groups or individuals have criticized the targeted killing of Osama Bin Laden by the US. The reason is obvious. All the condemnations against targeted killing was directed at one country. Guess which one? Israel, of course.
I disagree with Dershowitz’s conclusion – I think that bin Laden is a qualitatively different name from Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and politicians tend to be sensitive to the political sensitivities of condemning the killing of such a widely despised man. But nevertheless, a bad taste lingers. No-one is quite sure if they’ve passed through the looking glass.
Bin Laden wore no uniform. Is the argument that he was an armed combatant not a legal fudge? Yes, putting him on trial would be politically difficult. Isn’t that the kind of difficulty a strong society, with a sound ideological basis, should welcome? And aren’t the flag-waving crowds at ground zero… kinda crass?
And ultimately, those are justifiable concerns. I agree with the decision as it was made, but still, I am uneasy. It’s never comfortable to see an act of war feted on a widescreen TV.
Perhaps this moment will be a moment of closure, a final transgression that allows America to move past its dirty wars, to put Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay behind it, and to close the door on “enhanced interrogation” and extraordinary rendition. If that turns out to be the case then the moral qualms will have to be quashed, because it will have been worth it, this final destruction of the mirror that reflected America back upon itself. If not then America will continue to owe us a little more justification for this than it has yet been able to give, to quiet that tiny voice of conscience; but in that case, more and greater atrocities await.
Is Iran in the business of funding African coups?
November 23rd, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics - Middle East - (1 Comments)This morning brings the news that the Gambia has severed all relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two pariah states have a decent history of mutual declarations of support – developing nuclear power Iran once said that Gambia deserved support as it was under pressure from “bullying” powers, while human-rights-abusing Gambia has supported Iran’s right to atomic weapons – but the affair seems to be well and truly over:
[...] all government of the Gambia projects and programmes, which were implemented in co-operation with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been cancelled.
[...]
The Gambia government hereby requests all Iranian nationals representing the interest of the government of Iran in the Gambia to leave the country within 48 hours from the effective date stipulated through a notification issued to the government of Iran.
What’s interesting, though, is that ties between Nigeria and Iran were strained earlier this week when Nigeria intercepted a shipment of arms that the Iranian government was routing through their ports. Also long-term allies, the Nigerians stopped just short of freezing the relationship but demanded a full and frank accounting from the Iranian government. Under pressure, Iran claimed that the shipment was from a private company and was on its way to Gambia… No reason was given by Gambia for the suspension of ties but it doesn’t seem especially likely that the two incidents are unrelated.
Shipments of arms going to Africa without the knowledge of the African governments in question are rarely innocent. The question is: is Iran arguing factions in Gambia? Or is it throwing its relationship with Gambia under a bus to hide its real activities elsewhere – possibly in Nigeria itself?
I find media narratives strange at times.
Two years ago, Barack Obama was elected on a wave of enthusiasm at his message of hope and change. Was he? Or was he elected in a wave of rejection at the unusually unpopular George Bush?
At the same election, the Democrats entrenched their leads in both Houses of Congress. Did they get there on Obama’s coattails, or did they ride the same anti-Bush wave as he did?
Elections are made or lost on a hundred million micro-choices. Media narratives occasionally pick up on dominant trends but never tell the full story. All to often, however, their need to focus on narrative ignores the smaller stories of micro-choices and political realities. Today, the first obituaries for Barack Obama’s presidency are being written, despite the fact that his popularity is not abnormally low and that his involvement in campaigning was muted at best. Is it possible that this election was nothing to do with him at all?
The Republican party got handed an unholy beating in 2008, such that predictions were made that the party would be locked out of power “for a generation”. That can happen, from time to time; most notably, the Democrats held both houses of Congress for 13 consecutive terms, or 26 years (despite only holding the Presidency for twelve of those years in total) between 1955 and 1981 – astonishingly they continued to hold the House of Representatives until 1995, and unbroken run of 44 years. As the chart below shows, both Houses of Congress can be seen to be historically strongly Democrat.
The huge majorities that the Dems had after 2008, then, could safely be seen as presaging another long period of blue control on Capitol Hill, no? Well, not really. The 77-year average is interesting, but much more relevant is the last twenty or so. Since the Democrats lost control of both ends of the House in 1995 (from, it must be said, a 1993 peak that equalled their lead in 2008), the Republicans have controlled both houses non-stop until anti-Bush sentiment started to become acute in 2007. For many voters, the 110th Congress was the first in their adult lives that had enjoyed a Democratic majority in either Chamber, let alone both.
It was more fragile than it appeared, however, due that that aforementioned anti-Bush feeling. And this is the central thrust of my thesis: it’s actually pretty rare for a President’s popularity to affect the results of a Congressional election in a lasting or sustained manner. Carter was massively unpopular when he left office, but handed the Republicans only a weak, temporary control over the Senate and only an ephemeral boost to their minority standing in the House. The extent of Democratic control of Congress was virtually unaffected by either the unpopularity of Richard Nixon or the popularity (and untimely death) of JFK. Reagan made almost no headway on reducing the Democrat’s lock on either chamber, despite being widely popular across the spectrum.
Control of Congress changes at a macro level that, in many ways, cannot be understood through the results of a single election. Because they occur much more frequently, focus much more on local issues and are far more subject to manipulation through tactical spending, gerrymandering and the weird vagaries of political chance (would a Harry Ried figure really find himself against a Sharon Angle at the national level?) they are much more reliable indicators of the national political mood when taken as an aggregate over time. What recent history shows us is that, Congressionally speaking, we are living in a Republican era in this GOP control of both House and Senate may be considered the default mood of the country.
In other words: 2008 was a weird fluke, an ephemeral result brought about by the passage of an unpopular President. It was the equivalent to the GOP retaking the Senate in 1981. In all probability, Barack Obama could have done nothing to prevent it short of beating Osama bin Laden in a fist-fight underneath the Washington Monument. This result, in short, is an anti-indicator; it is simply political gravity reasserting itself. It could never last, and today’s result should not be taken in any other light.
“Rape by Deception” in Israel
July 27th, 2010 | Posted by in Feminism | General | Politics - Middle East - (1 Comments)A couple of days ago, a Palestinian man got convicted for rape by deception in Israel. The bare facts of the case are this. The man met an Israeli woman in a bar. The two got to talking, and during the course of the conversation the man directly claimed to be Israeli. The two spent the night together; explicit consent was given, and that consent was not made explicitly dependent on the man being an Israeli. Later, the woman discovered that the man was, in fact, an Arab, and prosecuted him for rape by deception.
This is a complex situation, clearly, and large sections of the internet have devoted considerable time to overreaching in search of hard conclusions. Mondoweiss, for example, which does this by raising false equivalences. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera calls it “the selective application of the law against Arabs” and “just plain racism.” Even Feministe concludes that “there are certain circumstances where rape by fraud is a legitimate claim” but “this… is not one of them, and opens the door to even greater abuses.”
One thing is clear: the crime of rape by deception is a legitimate complaint, and not in an abstract sense. Cases have been successfully prosecuted where the man has lied about his sexual health, passing HIV onto his partner; where a man posed as a senior official and promised increased social security payments in exchange for sex; and where a woman consented to sex with a man who she believed to be her boyfriend but was actually her boyfriend’s brother. The statute is not used for situations where a man, say, claimed to be 27 when he’s actually 25, or a woman who claims to be a supermodel in a bar.
For many, though, the overtly racist nature of the complaint seems to be the deciding factor. My own personal feeling is perhaps dangerously relativistic, but my gut tells me that racism needs to be viewed through a different prism when dealing with Israel and Palestine. From a western perspective, the explicitly racial justification for the suit can be nauseating; but then, racial issues – although by no means defused in Europe or America – are less of an immediate concern than they are in the Levant. It is impossible not to decry the institutional racism and xenophobic nationalist tribalism exhibited by both Israeli and Arab political and social elements.
But the heart of this case isn’t an abstract principle; it’s rooted in personal actions and responses. The woman felt genuinely and legitimately deceived and violated. That in itself isn’t enough to determine guilt of course. What is, however, is the fact that the man knew that the deception was of decisive magnitude and did it anyway. The problem here is that the man chose to tell a lie of sufficient magnitude to deny the woman the opportunity to give consent. That the woman’s objection to the deception was racist in nature is vile but to some extent beside the point.
In many ways, Israel and – to a lesser extent – the occupied territories (particularly the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip) are fundamentally racist. They are societies constructed on a nationalist ideal, defined by opposition to an alien “other”. Widespread societal changes are needed to prevent citizens of Israel from viewing non-Israeliness as a defining flaw. But the fact remains that, for now, it is a defining flaw, and that fact is a factor that must have been known to the defendant.
As much as it galls me, I have to accept that in this case the verdict was probably correct.
EDIT: For an interesting comparative, check out how rape is handled in the UAE.
The West: Torture, Kidnap and Terror
July 15th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - Middle East | Politics - UK | Politics - US - (2 Comments)How far should a government go in order to safeguard its citizens?
Two stories have emerged concurrently that cast the question into new light. While most citizens tend to be happy with the theoretical notion of covert defence, security agencies usually try to keep the visceral practicalities of that defence obscured, as support for their methods often vanishes like spit on a hot rock when exposed to the full scrutiny of public opinion.
Yesterday, I discussed the story of Shahram Amiri the Iranian who was kidnapped by / defected to the CIA in 2009. To my chagrin, the post was overtaken by events almost as soon as it was posted; Amiri was flown back to Iran and has started to talk about the events that led to his disappearance:
Speaking to Al Jazeera during a transit stop in Qatar, Shahram Amiri said he was interrogated for 14 months by US agents who refused to allow him contact with his family, but that he “never cracked” and had not revealed any secret information about Iran’s nuclear programme.
Washington has denied the claims, saying Amiri had lived freely in the US, had himself reached out to US officials, and was free to come and go.
[..]
“They gave me a shot which made me unconscious and then transferred me to the US onboard a military plane,” Amiri said in Tehran, before making allegations that he was tortured during interrogations in the US.
“Within the first two months, I was subjected to fierce mental and psychological torture by agents and interrogators from the US Central Intelligence Agency.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera during his journey back to Iran, Amiri said he had been forced by US authorities to say in a video released on the internet that he was enjoying life in the state of Arizona.
Although it seems unlikely that the US will receive the censure it deserves for this, it is still unquestionably a scandal of severe proportions. The US government kidnapped a man on a religious pilgrimage, held him against his will for over a year and subjected him to torture and coercion. The man in question was not a military target, nor even a political one. Both the US and Iran deny that he was involved in the country’s nuclear programme, so whatever paltry justification the CIA may have had has become noticeably thinner.
Meanwhile, this morning the Guardian is reporting that the UK has also been complicit in kidnapping and torture, this time of its own citizens. The Guardian has helpfully highlighted many of the key passages, but the entire document is worth reading.
A few thoughts emerge from this. Firstly, dragging these revelations into the light of day is hard and the organisations that have done so deserve to be praised. Iran will probably not receive any credit for this in the wider world, but by doggedly and tenaciously pursuing the fate of its citizen it exposed a cruel double-standard at the heart of America’s security apparatus. Here in the UK, civil liberties organisations such as Liberty and, in particular, Reprieve deserve a tremendous amount of credit for their lobbying and legal action in exposing the worst excesses of the government in the early days of the Global War on Terror. These organisations should be celebrated for their achievements and offered every support.
Secondly, citizens should not be content to give abstract permissions to government in any situation, let alone one as broad-ranging as security and defense. We have an obligation to understand exactly what is being done in our name, and if we don’t ensure that the government is acting in accordance with our wishes then we are complicit in whatever acts they undertake.
Third, it is distressing that this is so unsurprising.
What the deuce is going on here
July 14th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - Middle East | Politics - US - (2 Comments)
That’s Shahram Amiri.
Mr. Amiri is an Iranian who vanished while on hajj in 2009. What happened to him is a mystery. A video released by the Iranian government in June suggested that he was an Iranian nuclear scientist, that he had been kidnapped by the CIA and tortured, and that he was being held within the US against his will. In a concurrent video, a person who appears to be the same man explains that he wasn’t kidnapped – he moved to the US of his own volition, to complete his PhD. Further muddying the waters was this ABC report, which cited unnamed CIA officials, and which claimed that Amiri is a nuclear scientist, but that he defected to the CIA of his own free will.
That’s the straightforward bit.
Yesterday morning, both the Pakistani and Iranian governments claimed that he had taken refuge in Pakistan’s Washington embassy – which serves Iran’s interests in America in the absence of its own diplomatic mission – and was trying to get home. America flatly denied the claim, however, and Wired’s Danger Room blog has a repudiation from a spokesperson at the Pakistani embassy.
But a Pakistani embassy official tells Danger Room that the reports of Amiri turning up in the embassy are ”incorrect information” and “we have no one here” matching his description. That’s from an individual at the press office who didn’t identify herself and said she could not speak for the record. She added she couldn’t explain why a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in Islamabad told reporters that the scientist is at the embassy’s Iranian interest section, about two miles away from the main facility in D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood. But she also didn’t split hairs: “He’s not in the embassy at all.”
That said, the Iranian interest section is staffed by Iranians, not Pakistanis. A spokesman for the Iranian interest section, Ali Shahrazi, tells Danger Room, “When we arrived this morning, [Amiri] was here.” He dodged a question about whether the Pakistanis assisted in Amiri’s alleged arrival, saying that it was the job of Iranian staff to help Iranian nationals. But there are lots of questions remaining about Amiri’s true identity, to say nothing of his whereabouts.
What to make of this? Firstly, if you think that the CIA isn’t trying to abduct Iranian scientists and hold them against their will then you’re out of your mind. The only question is, would they do so so badly? If true, this shows a frightening lack of finesse, not least in allowing the captured scientist the liberty to broadcast his unexpurgated thoughts onto YouTube, and then permitting him to wander into Pakistan’s embassy unimpeded. Also, the still above – of Amiri’s pro-Merican-version video – is so obviously staged it hurts. The chess set? The globe, artfully set to show America on its visible face? The warm, structured lighting rig (note how the light illuminates Amiri on the face, despite the low, mood-lighting behind)? C’mon, you can almost see the camera crew and military escort just offstage.
On the other hand, this could quite easily be an Iranian stitch-up, although it would be hard to see the benefit to Iran to escalate the story to the level that it has unless it had something worth revealing.
One thing is for sure, though, and that is that you couldn’t pay me enough money to be an Iranian nuclear scientist. Wherever he is right now, I’m quite sure that Mr Amiri is wishing for nothing more than a quiet life.
EDIT: Looks like answers may be forthcoming, as he’s on his way home.
The Civil Liberties agenda in Britain
June 29th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics - UK - (2 Comments)The coalition government is making many of the right noises when it comes to civil liberties in the UK. Unpicking the authoritarian streak that Labour exhibited during its years in power is a worthwhile task that shouldn’t be trivialised, but the debate surrounding civil liberties is still defined by the rigid limits set out by those who enjoy many of the greatest privileges.
The list of areas to be targeted describes a largely positive direction of travel. ID cards and biometric passports are to be scrapped; the fingerprinting of children at schools is to be curtailed. Government databases are to be pruned back. FOI is to be extended; libel laws will be reviewed to protect freedom of speech; CCTV is to be regulated. A “Great Repeal Bill” promises to cut through swathes of redundant and obstructive legislation; in an email to his supporters, Nick Clegg suggested that the bill would
…roll back Labour’s surveillance state, scrapping ID cards, the children’s database and restoring civil liberties.
In areas like education, health and policing people are going to get much greater powers over the services in their area. And we are going to hand more powers to communities and councils.
All very fine and worthy. But the proposals are geared overwhelmingly towards a single section of society as beneficiaries. ID cards and CCTV are middle-class concerns. Freedoms of information and speech can be seen as a stimulus package for Britain’s already over-eager newspaper industries and will result in ever-more salacious stories for their largely middle-class audiences. The power to modify the services offered by schools, hospitals and local police forces are dogwhistle sops to Middle Britain. And while the exact form of the Great Repeal Bill is yet to be revealed, it seems unlikely to tackle such personal infringements as stop-and-search, the Dangerous Dogs Act, control orders, or ASBOs, which tend to target the poorer sections of society disproportionately.
But even the wild class disparity in the conversation is mild compared to the glaring hole that exists when talking about the most disadvantaged groups of all: political and economic migrants, and asylum seekers (the treatment of whom can be particularly inhumane). While the government’s commitment to reversing extended detention without trial is a big, and welcome, improvement, ASBOs in particular continue to be used as a method of suppressing dissent, as in this account from 2006:
Recently, at a demonstration outside Harmondsworth detention centre in solidarity with asylum seekers, I was hemmed in with 50 other protestors when the police used powers under section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to impose a blanket Asbo on anyone who tried to get near the buildings.
They then used powers under section 50 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which makes it an offence to refuse to give your name and address to a police officer who “reasonably suspects” that you have engaged in “anti-social behaviour”. A few people who refused were arrested.
This was no violent protest, and there was no threat to public order or anyone’s personal safety. But the demonstration gave the police an opportunity to use the laws to collect intelligence on “troublemakers”, without having to show that they had actually made any trouble.
This is particularly germane on the day in which the Parliament Square protestors lost their legal right to express their views – thanks to a decidedly illiberal misuse of existing powers.
The discussion on civil liberties in the UK remains too enmired in privilege. Part of this is because libertarians strongly tend to be middle class, white and male; their political preferences tend to reflect their (often unchallenged) social biases and privileges. Part of it, too, is because Labour have consistently chosen not to make social freedom a cause that they would fight for on behalf of the working classes, leaving it as a policy ground for the Lib Dems and the Tories – parties with their roots firmly in the middle classes – to scoop up.
But whatever the reason for the disparity, there is an opportunity now for the civil rights of all sections of society to be strengthened and extended. It requires that we not allow the discussion to be limited to those rights enjoyed by those who already enjoy entrenched rights and securities, whose political access is already entrenched. The work of organisations like Liberty needs greater support and needs to be extended to ensure that human dignity is respected at all levels of society. The rights enjoyed by well-off British citizens, while by no means complete, are some of the most extensive in the history of the world. It behoves us to extend those rights as far through our culture as is conceivably possible.
Bhopal and corporate responsibility
June 29th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics - (1 Comments)Nearly 26 years ago, the Bhopal plant of an Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide, a massive US corporation, suffered a catastrophic malfunction. The storage containers of the plant – which produced industrial pesticides – leaked highly toxic gas during the night, exposing over 500,000 people to the poisonous fumes. Estimates into the effects vary – the Indian government confirmed nearly two and a half thousand deaths immediately after the leak, and fatalities related to the incident have swelled to over 15,000 since then. The company continues to insist that the disaster was the result of sabotage, but successive studies have pointed to a wide array of internal processes that led to the leak, including a negligent approach to critical equipment and safety standards. Most shockingly, the plant has still not been entirely fixed – 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the UCIL plant continue to leak and pollute the groundwater in the region.
I’m not going to attempt to replicate the work of the many journalists and academics who have been working to uncover the truth of this case for nearly three decades. The Bhopal Post does outstanding work bringing the unfolding effects of the disaster to a wider audience, while Amnesty has consistently agitated for justice. Unfortunately, the Bhopal victims’ days in court so far have delivered anything but. Union Carbide has so far paid just $470 million in damages and compensation, a criminally small sum in the face of the $3 billion claimed. Those officials who were tried for criminal negligence received small sentences – 2 years each. Warren Anderson, the head of Union Carbide at the time and the figure most widely blamed for the incident, was allowed to escape trial for reasons that remain unclear.
The incident has exposed some measure of hypocrisy on behalf of the US government when it comes to corporate crime. Union Carbide paid $470 million to clean up its mess, compensate half a million victims and build hospitals in the region. By contrast, BP have pledged $20 billion to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill.
These two cases bring to mind a proposition, put forward by a British lawyer, that “ecocide” be considered a crime to be tried in the International Criminal Court, on a par with genocide and other crimes against humanity. As described, the suggestion seems whimsical at best:
The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.
Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.
But the idea of a system of corporate responsibility that can be prosecuted at an international level is an intriguing one. It would, sadly, almost certainly be opposed by the US, which would regard it as a hostile mechanism for attacking American corporate interests. Sadly, it’s hard to see how justice can be served to those still suffering in Bhopal.
What is ‘shock doctrine’?
June 23rd, 2010 | Posted by in Economics | General | Politics | Politics - UK | Politics - US - (2 Comments)In the run-up to yesterday’s UK budget, the left wing of the internet – a cocoon that I comfortably inhabit – made merry with its buzzphrase du jour. No shock doctrine for Britain! we hear from such twitterlectuals (and Green Party luminaries – many of the most vocal Green activists have been really going for the Lib Dems of late – but that’s another post) as Sian Berry and Adam Ramsay. Now, look; the budget was painful. We all got hosed, the poor proportionally more than the rich. And the government spin hasn’t been even remotely coherent; even the usually credible Lynne Featherstone came over all loyally dishonest.
But “shock doctrine” is one of those phrases that just annoys me. It annoys me all the more because it comes from the left – a space which I nominally occupy – but yet is such a deeply incoherent piece of intellectual padding.
It was popularised by Naomi Klein in her 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which she argued that free-market capitalists and their political backers have used, and occasionally manufactured, crises and disasters in order to inflict social change on populations that are unwilling to accept them but unable to resist, due to the aforementioned upheaval. The term gained traction on the left after the Haiti quake, when the US right-wing Heritage Foundation caused an uproar by suggesting that aid be tied to economic reforms. Here’s Adam Ramsay again:
News stories about Haiti are full of tales of looters. There’s less talk of a bigger scale plunder to come. In Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine‘ she maps the rise of “disaster capitalism”. She describes how, over 40 years, The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pentagon, and various mega-corporations have increasingly used (or created) disasters as an excuse to push through unpopular right wing economic policies, and asset strip vulnerable economies.
I was just finishing this book on Thursday as the scale of Haiti’s earthquake was becoming clear. My immediate fear was an obvious one. So I did what all young lefties do in a time of crisis. I set up a Facebook group: “No Shock Doctrine for Haiti”.
I plucked that quote a little bit selectively but it illustrates my first problem with the term and its use: shock doctrine is a methodology seeking application. Exponents of the theory tend to force this most fashionable of ideas onto situations rather than respond to the unique characteristics of an individual incidents. The book, for example, rests on the idea that the policies of free marketeers tend not to be very popular. For the most part this is unarguable – even Milton Friedman would concede as much – but in her zeal to apply her theory to every possible case Klein makes some dramatic reaches. Apparently, Hurricane Katrina led to the “privatisation” of New Orleans against the will of the population; however, the reforms imposed on New Orleans were structural and mostly welcomed by a population frustrated by lazy and corrupt local government. Haiti is another example of this; although tying catastrophe aid to any kind of condition would have been horrifically wrong, measures to curtail corruption and establish good governance in one of the world’s poorest countries would have enjoyed overwhelming local support. Klein’s depiction of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis as a conflict between grasping capitalists and honourable democrats shows a profound lack of historical understanding, and her claim that the protests crushed in Tiananmen Square were against further market freedom is based on pure ignorance. And those are just the cases that stretch credibility; the claims that Margaret Thatcher fabricated the Falklands War as a way of breaking the unions shatters it irrevocably.
The second problem is to do with the way that the argument is cased. At one level, the problem is that the issue is mischaracterised as being a tool used purely by the right wing to advance their corporatist goals. In truth, the technique of using a crisis to drive policy reform is as popular on the left as it is on the right. The New Deal in America was launched on an unwilling society as a result of the Great Depression; the great social reforms in the UK of the late forties and early fifties, which led to the formation of the NHS, arose off the back of the post-war slump; Barack Obama used the current economic collapse to the same ends. Blair and Brown spent much of their respective times in office extending the powers of the state, evoking the spectre of terrorism and war as justification.
But this gap masks a deeper problem with the argument, which is the assumption that governments should not use crises as a way of driving social change. It’s predicated on a somewhat condescending lack of faith in populations; it assumes that electorates, struck numb by catastrophe, are unable to resist the snake-oil of perfidious political salesmen. In fact, crises inspire rare moments of national unity; often these moments arise because the crisis in question has exposed a policy failing or fault that simply needs to be corrected, and the correction of which is obvious. Thatcher had to break the power of the unions; whether she needed to do so quite so thoroughly is an open question, but most even on the left now assume that the unions were too powerful, and that to persist in allowing them to run entire industries was a path to economic and social ruin. New Zealand, Chile and Brazil abandoned socialistic policies for freer markets because the former weren’t working well and induced economic crises.
There is some limited value to some of the ideas contained within the term “shock doctrine”. Attaching conditions to Haiti aid, for example, would clearly have been grossly wrong, and those who suggested it were rightly excoriated. The term itself, however, masks deep intellectual failings that continue to undermine the legitimacy of left-wing economic arguments. There is plenty to debate in the new UK budget; the rise in VAT, for example, will be economically and politically unpopular for some time to come. Branding it as “shock doctrine” is ludicrous and shrill, and will neither advance the debate nor grow the left-wing base in opposition.
Naomi Klein, meanwhile, remains an extremely poor role model for the left, and in an ideal world would join Michael Moore on the island of left-wing intellectual rejects. Honestly, we can be much better than this.
Intrigue, as the New York Times popped up this morning with a story about how Afghanistan is sitting on a trillion dollars worth of mineral wealth, including massive deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium.
There’s a few different aspects to this story. Michael Cohen is peeved by the somewhat cynical exploitation of the story by the Pentagon, and he has a point – there’s nothing new about this haul. The US found charts detailing the country’s mineral wealth in 2004, and even put the details online in 2007, but these charts had been drawn up during the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s. The reason why this story is in the paper today is because the Pentagon needs a good news cycle or two. There’s may be a little bit more to it than that; it may be that the US needs a way to strongarm co-operation out of the Karzai government in Kabul. But either way, this is pretty transparent.
Afghanistan has been a rough war almost since its inception, but the last few months have been particularly bad:
First, let’s talk about Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. Remember the chatter earlier this year about how he’d gone crazy, threatening to join the Taliban and all that? That discussion died down a little after Karzai checked all the right boxes during his May visit to Washington.
Then came the “peace jirga” — after which Karzai abruptly fired his intelligence and interior ministers, reputed to be two of the most competent members of his cabinet (technically, they resigned). The intelligence minister, Amrullah Saleh, told his side of the Friday in a jaw-dropping interview with the Times. According to Saleh, Karzai no longer believes the West can win the war and is looking to cast his lot with Pakistan and the Taliban, and an unnamed source told the paper that Karzai had suggested that the Americans had carried out a rocket attack on the peace jirga. Karzai has apparently also asked the United Nations to remove Mullah Omar from a key U.N. blacklist.
Next came revelations that Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI, is still deeply involved with the Afghan Taliban (yeah, blow me over with a feather) despite heated denials to the contrary.
Meanwhile, the drive for Kandahar looks to be stalled in the face of questionable local support for Karzai’s government, the Taliban is killing local authorities left and right, and the corruption situation has apparently gotten so bad that the U.S. intelligence community is now keeping tabs on which Afghan officials are stealing what.
So the article is a piece of empty puff, right? Well, yes, actually – the US can’t develop those resources now for the same reason that it hasn’t been able to for the last 6 years, and for much the same reasons as why Russia didn’t bother in the 1980s: there’s a war, there’s no infrastructure, and the local government is so corrupt that it would have next to no real economic effect. The worst-case outcome, as advanced by Cohen, is a situation analogous to Congo or Angola – both of which are resource-rich but economically poor. The best case seems to be that Afghanistan becomes a “Saudi Arabia of lithium”, which comes from a Pentagon memo that asserts the possibility like it’s a good thing. Personally, I’d prefer it if Saudi Arabia stopped being the Saudi Arabia of oil, rather than inspiring a glut of new Saudi Arabias for the rest of the periodic table.
It’s nice to hear that Afghanistan has an economic future, if it ever gets to the point where it has a government that is capable of managing it for the good of the country as a whole. But it’s pie-in-the-sky stuff, for now; I’d be amazed if it gets to that stage in our lifetimes, and it certainly won’t get to that point while American boots are still on the ground. Meanwhile, public opinion, both at home and in Afghanistan itself, won’t shift behind the occupiers until real, tangible benefits to their presence start being felt. The US military should be focusing on doing what it has to do rather than indulging in this kind flippancy.
The neo-colonial approach to poverty alleviation
June 12th, 2010 | Posted by in Economics | General | History | Politics - (1 Comments)
I’m posting this, an article about an economist with some unusual ideas about poor world economic alleviation, relatively uncritically.
The central conceit of the article is the work of Paul Romer, a Senior Fellow at Stanford and successful software entrepreneur. Mr. Romer wants to build a series of what he calls “charter cities” – cities run by rich-world governments on land loaned to them by poor-world countries. The article invokes two models – Hong Kong under the British and Lübeck under Henry III of Saxony. If you think that the idea sounds wacky, then you’re not alone. It is a decidedly odd proposition, but for all that it inspires a certain sense of moral abhorrence, it’s an interesting thought experiment, and deserves to be examined for its merits.
His solution may be unconventional, but his diagnosis is complex and mostly rings true. Although an awful lot of poverty can be traced back to underlying causes – corruption, a lack of resources, an unskilled workforce, rich world privilege or weak distribution networks – one feature that is common to almost all poor societies is weak governance.
To drive home the importance of good rules to economic growth, Romer sometimes shows a photograph of Guinean teenagers doing their homework under streetlights. The line of hunched, concentrating figures presents a mystery, Romer says; from the photo it is clear that the teens are not dirt poor, and youths like these generally own cell phones. Yet they evidently have no electric light at home, or they would not be studying by the curbside. “So here is the puzzle,” Romer declares: Why do these kids have access to a cutting-edge technology like the cell phone, but not to a 100-year-old technology for generating electric light in the home? The answer, in a word, is rules. Because of misguided price controls in the teenagers’ country, the local electricity utility has no incentive to connect their houses to the power grid. Their society lacks the rules that make technological advance meaningful.
The Atlantic’s article is subject to the usual sloppy editorialism – the reason why many poor-world homes lack access to electricity cannot solely be reduced to rules, as it will also have roots in infrastructural weakness, high energy generation costs and old-fashioned sleaze. But Romer’s charter cities are more nuanced than that; not only are they intended to provide governance models that will have a pervasive effect throughout localities, they are also intended to act as mediums through which richer countries can funnel defensive stability, money and expertise into a populace.
So the idea has some merit, to the extent that it attacks some of the problems that it sets out to solve in a way that traditional aid does not. Frustratingly, the Atlantic’s article is a puff-piece, and makes very little attempt to examine the further problems that it potentially raises:
- What country would willingly allow a project like this to take place on their land? Forget the problems implied by corruption – countries with poor governance tend to have poor governors, and western cities on the doorsteps of corrupt officials would cause unwanted scrutiny, provide a safe haven for anti-government sentiment and act as a drain on public purses intended for skimming. The colonial period demonstrated that local populations resent foreign dominance immensely. The anger and distrust that the example of Hong Kong engendered cannot be understated.
- So if willing assent can be discounted, can it be assumed that charter cities will be imposed by force? Hong Kong was seized; Lübeck was rescued from anonymity and anarchy in the troubled times preceding the rise of the Hanseatic League. Neither example is entirely happy. Even in troubled times, Henry III’s presumption made him no friends, and his possessions were eventually taken from him. Fondness for Britain in her former colonies is in short supply. Furthermore, these were both isolated incidents. At a time when America has earned the ill will of much of the Middle East, it can be seen that no power in the modern world has the capacity to hold several such properties against the will of local populations.
- The commitment for rich countries would be significant and long-term. This post assumes that the scheme would be undertaken as a philanthropic venture, and that the client cities would not be subject to rapacious profit-seeking – a long assumption at best, but the scheme is posited as philanthropic so that seems like the best basis upon which to judge it. Britain held Hong Kong for a hundred and fifty years and sunk huge amounts of its extensive resourced into it; by the time that Britain was a shrunken homunculus of a power. Would rich governments or populations be prepared to risk so much for such intangible rewards?
- There is evidence that Hong Kong was exceptional, and reasons why it was exceptional have not been fully examined. Hong Kong was the only part of the British Empire to such achieve gains under the British. The rest of the Empire had mixed results. The benefits conferred upon India are debatable; developmentally it garnered advantages, but the economic gains were weak and confined to a ruling class, deepening and entrenching inequalities already in place thanks to the local caste system. Southern Africa was left with an even more extreme inequality in the form of apartheid. Egypt was left almost entirely undeveloped as its domination was purely strategic; Britain wanted control of Suez. British presence in Mesopotamia led to the formation of the state of Israel; good for Israel, but the local population received fringe benefits at best. The West Indies… so on, so on. Hong Kong was made rich for strategic reasons; it was Britain’s entrepôt and the economic capital of the region. The circumstances in which it existed were unusual.
- Finally, there exists a problem with the fungibility of governance systems. A British system of patent, competition and bankruptcy laws, for example, may not be the most appropriate in all situations; some countries will respond, for reasons of existing legal traditions and social expectations, to a French of German system. However, this is a decision that will always be subject to political interference and historical influence.
So there are good reasons to discount the actual manifestation of the idea. But that shouldn’t be taken to undermine the perspective that it takes when considering the problems that traditional aid faces when addressing questions of global poverty. The idea exposes some real problems with the assumptions that we make when attempting to confront inequality and these problems deserve to be examined.
Full credit to Kevan for the link.
This isn’t an isolated incident. BP are genuinely terrible
June 10th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - US - (2 Comments)
Since 2005, BP has seen an explosition in a Texas refinary, a big leak in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, numerous allegations of price fixing, 19 employee fatalities in unrelated incidents and, of course, Deepwater Horizon. In 2000, the company was forced to pay a $10 million fine for its mismanagement of its US properties. According to PIRG, BP was responsible for 104 oil spills in just one year, and in 1991 the EPA cited it as the single company responsible for the largest output of US pollution.
BP is also leading the building of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Despite the fact that the pipleline crosses no fewer than fourteen active earthquake zones, it has not been earthquake engineered. Land required for the building of the pipeline has been seized under hastily dwarn-up eminent domain laws.
BP is a genuinely awful organisation, and I would suggest boycotting them if funnelling your money towards Exxon and Shell weren’t just as bad.
Israel has all of these guns, yet seems intent on mostly shooting itself in the foot
May 31st, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - Middle East - (0 Comments)The original title for this fine post, as seen under the banner “Israel’s biggest enemy is itself” on Liberal Conspiracy, was (marvellously) Self-Clowning Lunatics Strike Again. The money shot:
Shorter – there really is an urgent and perilous threat to Israel. It’s called “the Israeli government”.
A neat line, but that’s not really what this is about, and that’s the problem.
The Zionist argument has always been that certain ethical contortions have to be made to protect the state of Israel from its aggressors, and from the threats that imperil its very existence.
This argument resonates with those who were alive to remember the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria used Judaism’s holiest day to pour across the border and reclaim their lands, leading to a scramble for mobilisation in which the existence of the state of Israel itself looked, very briefly, to be genuinely imperilled. Israel rallied, and the US (who viewed Egypt as a Soviet proxy) shipped in emergency military assistance; the invading armies were thus pushed back, losing the land that they had reclaimed and more.
The argument hasn’t changed, but the truth is that the situation has. Israel is, up to a point, at peace with its neighbours. In the aftermath of Yom Kippur, Egypt fell out of the Soviet periphery and is now as much a client state of the US as Israel is. Even if that wasn’t the case, neither Egypt nor Syria have the hardware to mount a serious invasion of Israel that wouldn’t be immediately and brutally punished by the Jewish State’s comprehensive and well-equipped war machine.
In short, despite the protestations of those – from both the left and the right – who remember the day when it looked like the Jews were going to lose the only state they’ve ever had, Israel faces no real external threats today. Israeli commandos killed more people last night in international waters than Hamas has killed in Israel during a decade of resistance.
Israel is no longer defending itself.
What it is defending is the siege. It is defending the status quo in Gaza and it is defending its steady encroachment into the West Bank. But it is continuing to use the language of self-defence in order to do so, and that’s a huge problem. For those who remember Yom Kippur, it’s an emotive issue. But times have changed.
It’s no longer possible to argue that criticism of Israeli actions automatically implies a rejection of the legitimacy of that state, because it’s no longer the case that Israel is acting purely in self-defence. By continuing to assert otherwise, the Israeli government and the Zionist movement is perpetrating a deceit that cannot be upheld.
It is now the will of most people – even in the Arab states surrounding it – that Israel be allowed to live in peace. By clinging to a past version of the truth, which asserts that Israel is surrounded by enemies and in a state of constant peril, the Israeli government and its supporters risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israel will always have enemies, but by pursuing the politics of arbitrary cruelty it risks creating more.
America the Obstructive
May 19th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - Middle East | Politics - US - (0 Comments)This blog is not anti-American. While I may criticise the policies of that country’s Government and its many excesses, I feel that America’s stand on most issues is principled and right. The chief failing in America’s foreign policy is inconsistency; its governing motivation is driven by the aforementioned principle, but as a highly political culture it indulges in methods that are frequently tawdry, and too often the means overwhelm the end.
We’re seeing an example of that this week with the latest series of twists in the Iranian nuclear drama. For those who missed the background, Brazil and Turkey brokered a deal with Iran, similar to one agreed several months ago which Tehran reneiged upon, under which they would transport their raw uranium to Turkey in exchange of low-enriched fuel rods – suitable for fuel, but not suitable for weapons. I’ve blogged a little about Brazil’s foreign policy before, but this is the strongest and most visible piece of fruit it’s bourne yet.
The success of these negotiations – where previous bargains between Iran and Europe have failed – is a heavy endorsement of the growing clout of the so-called “emerging” powers. The success seems to have been predicated on the capability of Turkey and Brazil to resolve the most critical obstacle in the stand-off: the issue of trust. Both through the modalities of the new deal as well as by virtue of who they are, Turkey and Brazil have succeeded in filling the trust gap. The collapse of the previous deal hinged on this issue; they were unwilling to hand their nuclear assetts over to a West that had proven its capability to reverse its own agreements and seize Iranian property. But if the enrichment take place in Brazil, rather than Europe or Russia, then Iran can take a lot more on trust.
Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard and Middle East specialist, has a good overview of the deal and its implications. The key passages, though, are these:
Here’s why I think the United States should welcome the deal. The only feasible way out of the current box is via diplomacy, because military force won’t solve the problem for very long, could provoke a major Middle East war, and is more likely to strengthen the clerical regime and make the United States look like a bully with an inexhaustible appetite for attacking Muslim countries. (And having Israel try to do the job wouldn’t help, because we’d be blamed for it anyway). I think George Bush figured that out before he left office, and I think President Obama knows it too. So do sensible Israelis, though not the perennial hawks at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, who appear to have learned nothing from their shameful role cheerleading the debacle in Iraq back in 2002.
[...]
So what should the United States do? It should welcome the deal in principle, while making it clear that it will monitor implementation carefully and emphasizing that this particular agreement does not resolve the larger question of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Rejecting the deal would do nothing to advance broader U.S. objectives and would be an unnecessary slap in the face of Turkey and Brazil. Trying to scotch the deal would also allows Iran to blame Washington should the deal fall through, and it will only reinforce Iranian assertions that U.S. leaders are lying when they say they would like to improve relations.
So far, so sensible. It would be nice to think that America’s foreign policy establishment would manage to get to the end of that thought chain on their own; but, sadly, no.
There are a number of unanswered questions regarding the announcement coming from Tehran, and although we acknowledge the sincere efforts of both Turkey and Brazil to find a solution regarding Iran’s standoff with the international community over its nuclear program, the P-5+1, [...] are proceeding to rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran.
What is expected from Iran, if not this? Well, America’s stated desire is for Iran to give up all fuel enrichment, for civilian purposes as well as military, despite it having a inaliable legal right to produce fuel for power. But the truth is that America has other reasons for wanting this to fail. It had just finalised a tortuous agreement with Russia and China for further sanctions, and politics demanded that America take its bow on the world stage for that. Doubtless there was some desire to slap down the rising powers – and make no mistake, this is a diplomatic humiliation for Brazil and Turkey, who negotiated in good faith and secured a major breakthrough because of it. And its current Middle East policy is calibrated towards containment and demonisation of Iran. For all these reasons and more, the US Government was never likely to agree a deal that was anything short of Iranian capitulation.
In other words, politics overtook principles.
Equality and the House
May 18th, 2010 | Posted by in Feminism | General | Politics | Politics - UK - (0 Comments)
As painted by Monet in 1904.
Pippa Norris has a great analysis of the parlous state of female representation in Westminster. This election has clearly demonstrated that more needs to be done to encourage women to run for high office. This can’t be achieved just by instituting all-women shortlists; not only are they controversial and prone to generating ill will, they also don’t address the problem of a lack of women engaged in politics at the lower levels – councillors, party activists and political pundits. America has a generally more robust mechanism for this; the Democrat party and the leftwing have EMILY’s List, a political action group dedicated to increasing female representation at all levels; a British version sprang up in 1993 but appears defunct. There is a clear need for a similar UK body.
New Labour, Newer Danger
May 18th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - UK - (0 Comments)
So, the Labour leadership contest.
What on earth has happened to Labour? They’ve become a party of the spineless. The slimeball Milliband looks like being coroneted all but unopposed, the worst possible outcome in the circumstances. What’s worse is that the main candidates – the two Millibands and Ed Balls – are politically indistinguishable, belonging to the liberal, interventionist, statist school established by Blair, promulgated by Brown and rejected by the electorate two weeks ago. The differences between them are being talked up in the media – David the Ditherer, Ed the Equivocator, Balls the Bully – but their plausible manifestos, cabinets and policy priorities are more or less identical.
Labour needs to recover. It needs a proper, realigning leadership election between a wide range of candidates with competing visions. The Tory relaunch in 2005 was just that – a clash of ideas, between the traditional Conservativism of David Davies, the internationalism and fiscal prudence of Ken Clarke, the social conservativism of Liam Fox and the modernising, “compassionate” neo-conservativism of David Cameron. It’s not that the Labour party lacks these polarities – Alan Johnson represents the traditional left, a slice of the electorate under-represented over the last 30 years, and Hillary Benn, John Cruddas or Yvette Cooper would be modernisers who could pull the party back to the centre. There’s a huge intellectual gap in the opposition vacated by the Lib Dems when they joined the government; Labour could expand to fill that niche quite happily, but they’re choosing not to.
Part of the problem is that Labour has, over the last 13 years, been trained to value unity over intellectual dynamism. The final years of the Blair / Brown “dual government” were horrible; the lesson that Labour learned from them is that internal strife is a fast track to weakness and collapse. Thus Brown’s continued tenure, always keeping a grip on power as those who sought to topple him bottled their chances as quickly as they arose. But it was based on a false premise. Internal conflict can be destructive, but the essence of political renewal – as with any kind of intellectual discipline – lies in constructive debate, in the contest of ideas that are firmly held and passionately defended.
There is a leadership vacuum in Labour and I don’t think that any of the candidates can fill it. I hope that there’s another leadership election within Labour before 2015. Otherwise, the only outcome that seems plausible is that the Tories will find themselves with a much firmer grip on power.
More on the new Government
May 18th, 2010 | Posted by in General | Politics | Politics - UK - (0 Comments)I took a bit of a break from blogging after the excitment of last week. But for now let it be said that I am broadly happy with the outcome of the election, that the coalition document is mostly a delight to read (the civil liberties section gives me a special kind of glee, although the education and environment sections don’t go far enough), and that it’s a genuine thrill to see Lib Dem ministers in government at last. Theresa May grates, but she made the right noises for yesterday’s International Day Against Homophobia And Transphobia, and the awe-inspiring Lynne Featherstone – my constituency MP – is the minister with the actual responsibility for the Equalities portfolio. I don’t think that this government can make itself popular – it’s going to have to make some unpleasant policy decisions over the next five years if Britain is to survive – but the aims to which it aspires are promising.
The House of Commons at Westminster as drawn by Augustus Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson for Ackermann’s Microcosm of London (1808-11). The Commons chamber shown here was destroyed by fire in 1834. Sourced from Wimedia Commons.
Today sees the re-election of the Speaker. Traditionally this is waved through unopposed, but the Tory back benches are in rebellious mood, and Lib Dem grandee Ming Campbell has indicated that he would be interested in the role. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that will happen – I suspect that Bercow will sail through on a 500-30 vote. More to the point, I don’t think it should happen. Bercow has been a fine speaker so far – again, Lynne Featherstone has an interesting perspective on this (and while I’m rhapsodising, it’s so nice to have an MP who blogs) – and the fact that he inspired Nigel Farage to run against him, and won, is a big point in his favour. More to the point, the coalition doesn’t need a big humiliating defeat so soon out of the gate. I suspect that the whips won’t allow that to happen.
Interestingly enough, though, it does go to show how marginalised the Tory dinosaurs are feeling in the new Government. The rebellion is being lead by bluer-than-blue Nadine Dorries (she of the abortion limitation bill and the £25,000 second home allowance expenses claims). One of the more interesting ideas thrown up by the coalition document is that the extent to which the Lib Dem’s proposals were incorporated was inspired as much by Cameron’s desire to beat down his own right wing as it was to pacify the Lib Dems. Whether or not that’s true, certainly the right wing of the Tory party feels beaten down. The Tories could be in the midst of their own Clause 4 moment, which would be entertaining if they weren’t having it while simultaneously trying to govern.
Anyway, I like Ming, but I hope that Bercow keeps his job.
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