Wednesday 18 December 2013

Against drones - a riposte to Philip Hammond

In an article published in the Guardian on 18 December, UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond outlined his case for the use of drones in the war on terror. Hammond claims that contrary to the belief of what he calls "drone activists", drones are in fact a sensible and totally legal way of reducing casualties in warfare, and it is a "myth" that drones indiscriminately kill civilians.

Hammond begins by arguing that the word "drone" is misleading, giving connotations of a machine out of a science fiction story beyond human control. In fact, we are told, drones are manoevered by highly qualified people, applying the ultimate precision to avoid casualties. Mr Hammond concedes that he is aware of one terrible case in which a drone strike killed four Afghan civilians by mistake, but it's "hardly the picture of devastation so often painted by activists who so vociferously oppose their use." Other than this one exception, Hammond would have us believe, drones help to save "the lives of our personnel, our Afghan allies and Afghan civilians on a daily basis."

While insisting that his defence of drones is based "on the fundamental facts", Hammond's only recognition of civilian casulties is the aforementioned incident in Afghanistan. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strikes carried out by the CIA in Pakistan between 2004 and 2013 killed between 2534 to 3642 people. Meanwhile a report carried out by Al Jazeera found that drone strikes on Yemen have killed nearly 800 people, mostly civilians since 2002. Drones have killed more civilians than 9/11. This goes to show that the high precision technology is hardly impressive. Despite rejecting the idea that drone warfare is shrouded in secrecy, Hammond has no inclination to recognise or explain the civilian death toll.

The legal justification for drone warfare relies on the conflict being defined as between two state entities. But Al Qaeda isn't a state. British and American drones are terrorising civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Hammond's talk of "saving lives" applies more to British troops than to innocents on the ground, who continue to be viewed as "collateral damage".

Barack Obama has claimed that in order for a drone strike to be authorised there must be a "near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." And yet time and again "military intelligence" has proved incapable of distinguishing villages from training camps, leading to carnage, such as the killing of 45 women and children in Yemen in 2009. As Simon Jenkins points out, ground troops would face severe punishment for an atrocity such as this but "air forces enjoy such prestige that civilian deaths are excused as a price worth paying for not jeopardising pilots' lives."

US Congressman Alan Grayson quoted an American official based in Yemen as saying "every drone death yields 50 to 60 new recruits for Al Qaeda." Drone attacks are the worst possible PR for Britain and America, and a gift to extremist groups seeking to recruit volunteers. Eliminating terrorist leaders is useless if the attack inspires many more to take their places.

It is difficult to point to any progress achieved by Philip Hammond and his drones since he became Defence Secretary in 2011. The war on terror continues and drones have not yielded any reduction in Al Qaeda attacks. Beyond this, drone warfare has jeopardised Western relations with both the Afghan and Pakistani governments, who have both condemned the use of drone strikes. Meanwhile as Tom Engelhardt observes, the supposedly invaluable data gathered by spy drones has not given the US or Britain the upper hand.

Antagonising governments and civilian populations in countries around the world does not make us safer. Flouting international law only further erodes our moral credibility. Philip Hammond's defence of drones continues the long tradition of prioritising the safety of our troops and pilots over the lives of foreign civilians. This flawed logic will only serve to unnecessarily prolong the war on terror.



















Tuesday 19 November 2013

Debunking the myths around Swiss bank secrecy

It is widely thought that Swiss bank secrecy was established in the 1930s, in order to enable Jews and other victims of the Nazis to hide their money from the regime. In his fascinating 2011 book Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson exposes this hypothesis as a myth, and gives an insight into the vast offshore empire used by companies and the super-rich to hide their money from the taxman.

Swiss bank secrecy is far more than 80 years old - it dates back centuries. In the 18th century, the Catholic monarchy of France borrowed money from Swiss banks - secrecy was crucial, as it would have been a scandal if it had been revealed that the monarchy was taking money from Protestant moneylenders. Bank secrecy and neutrality were the two crucial elements to Switzerland's international policy for centuries.

Whenever dirty money is traced to Switzerland and they comes under fire, Swiss banks always roll out the same World War Two story: if it had not been for Swiss bank secrecy, the Jews would have had nowhere to hide their money from the Nazis. In reality, it took decades after WWII for Swiss banks to release assets held by the victims.

The first investigation after WWII conducted by the Swiss Bankers' Association identified a miserly 482 000 francs held by victims of the Nazi regime. Thousands of relatives of account holders were turned away by Swiss banks demanding to see death certificates, something which concentration camps obviously didn't provide.

Further assets were released by Swiss banks in dribs and drabs, but it took until 1998 for a full pay out of $1.25 billion. So much for Swiss banks being the noble assistants of the victims of the Holocaust.

But beyond this, justifying secrecy jurisdictions on the basis that they enable people to hide their hard earned money from tyrannical regimes is absurd. As Shaxson points out, "Who uses secrecy jurisdictions to protect their money and bolster their positions? The human rights activist screaming in the torturers' dungeon? The brave investigative journalist?...Or the brutal kleptocratic tyrant oppressing them all? We all know the answer."

In 2007, Swiss banks held $3.1 trillion in offshore assets. But this is only a fraction of the money kept and transferred through offshore havens. Bank secrecy and tax havens have enabled dictators such Mubarak, Mobutu and Abacha to siphon billions of dollars from the coffers of their own treasuries. While organisations such as Transparency International condemn governments in developing countries for their corruption, it is partly the banking laws and secrecy in countries such as Switzerland which facilitate it.

An in-depth discussion of the arguments against tax havens can be found here. One of Shaxson's key points is that while people generally think of Switzerland and Caribbean islands such as the Caymans when they hear "tax haven", many offshore havens are in fact under American or British jurisdiction.

We can only speculate at how much money is hidden in tax havens - in 2012 a study arrived at an estimate of $21 trillion and $32 trillion. While it is depressing that such a vast web of international tax evasion and corruption exists, the still small but increasing interest, awareness and media attention given to this issue is encouraging.

Finally, the obscene amount of wealth hidden offshore makes a mockery of the argument for austerity. It shows that cuts in public services and living standards for the majority are not inevitable. Just think how much progress could be made in improving school and hospital facilities, reviving the economy and combating climate change if some of those trillions were taxed at a reasonable rate.


Tuesday 12 November 2013

The most under-reported country in the world?

In March this year, a military coup took place in the Central African Republic which plunged the country into chaos. A group of rebels calling themselves the Seleka ousted former president Francois Bozize. Since then it is estimated that 1.5 million people have been displaced, and there have been reports of massacres of civilians, the burning of villages and widespread rape. While shedding some light on the situation in the CAR, the minimal news coverage there has been shows just how pitifully little we know.

As its unimaginative name suggests, the CAR lies in the middle of the African continent, bordering Chad and Sudan to the north, South Sudan to the East, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo to the south, and Cameroon to the west. The CAR was
colonised by the French, and prior to this the region had been ravaged by the Arab slave trade. Since independence in 1960, the CAR has suffered from bad governance, instability and chronic poverty, and it remains one of the ten poorest countries in the world to this day. Three times the size of the UK but with only 4.6 million inhabitants, the CAR is a vast territory about which we know next to nothing. Even before the outbreak of violence last year, neither the IMF nor the World Bank had any staff on the ground, and few NGOs are active in the CAR despite the desperate need.

While it is difficult and dangerous to get information out of a war-zone such as Syria, amazingly, there are still scheduled flights, and as a high interest story, there are channels for the media to get into the country. In stark contrast, the CAR is less extensively mapped today than Britain in the year 1800. While tarmac roads connect the capital city, Bangui, with some of the other principle towns, dirt tracks are the norm, and these can become impassable after the rains. According to the Wikipedia page, there are "over 1800 motor vehicles on the road." Before last year's coup, there was one flight from Paris to Bangui per week.

The main route to the outside world should be the Oubangui river, which connects to the Congo and the Atlantic Ocean. But continued conflict in the DRC has made this route impassable. Sudan and South Sudan have recently been at war, and the Chad is politically unstable. As a result, CAR's main route to the outside world is through Cameroon, and this road is in very poor condition due to the damage caused by heavily laden trucks.

Deposed President Bozize himself came to power through a military coup in 2003, after a five year period in which there had been numerous attempts by different military groups to seize the capital. The only means of social mobility in the country is the army, and except for Bozize's predecessor Patasse, all of the country's leaders since 1960 have been military men. While political commentators are now discussing whether the CAR is in danger of becoming a failed state, no government has ever been able to control the whole country.

As is often the case in international affairs, Aljazeera has given the CAR much more coverage than the western media, although there have been reports on the latest conflict in the Independent and the Guardian. The Seleka rebels marched into Bangui on March 24, and their leader, Michel Djotodia, declared himself president. But while "Seleka" means "alliance", it quickly became clear that the rebels were far from united. Djotodia has even tried to disband the Seleka, amid continued fighting among the rebels. Djotodia has admitted that he can't control the rebels, stating, "it is difficult for me because I don't know who they are."

Last week Aljazeera has reported that another armed group, calling itself Anti-balika, has attacked Seleka rebels, displacing a further 200 000 civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes and are taking refuge in the forests, or gathering in make-shift refugee camps. Evidence of a massacre in which 18 people were killed has been found, but it is likely that this is only a tiny fraction of the violence unfolding in the country.

But the international response has been pathetic: Britain has pledged £5 million in aid, a laughable amount which will make barely any difference. The African Union hopes to have a force of 1100 soldiers in the country in 2014. What exactly they are expected to achieve remains unclear.

The CAR briefly made the headlines during the Kony 2012 phenomenon, and Joseph Kony was thought to be hiding in the east of the country. Commentators interviewed in an Aljazeera programme claimed that armed groups as diverse as the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army, the Janjaweed from Sudan, and the Nigerian Boko Haram may have spilled over the borders into the CAR. But the the striking fact is that we simply don't know. Statements from the French government stressing the danger that the CAR could become a failed state and a safehaven for terrorists give the illusion of some sort of command and understanding of the situation.

In reality, to talk of the CAR's "borders" is meaningless. Most of the borders are unmarked and unprotected areas of jungle. While the CAR would make an effective hiding place for Kony, it seems unlikely that Boko Haram would want to take refuge or try to recruit here. The crisis in the CAR is the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of the country. Framing it in terms of terrorism makes little sense and only serves to disguise our ignorance of what is really going on.

Portraying the conflict in the CAR as a threat to our security may raise some foreign interest. However, the grim truth of the matter is that the vast majority of us are not affected by the events in the CAR. In a civilised world that shouldn't be a reason not to care.


























Friday 8 November 2013

75 years after Kristallnacht Germany deserves admiration for the way it has dealt with its past

75 years ago today was Kristallnacht, the terrible pogrom against the Jews in Germany which foreshadowed the Holocaust. The BBC covered of the anniversary with an article by Stephan Evans, posing the question: "how strong is anti-semitism in Germany?"

By implication, this headline suggests that anti-semitism is still a negative force to be reckoned with in Germany today. Evans acknowledges that the Holocaust is taught in schools, "but how much anti-semitism lingers despite the knowledge of what happened?" The answer to this question is said to be a "complex picture."

Evans quotes a study conducted in 2011 which apparently showed that anti-semitism was strongest in Poland and Hungary, but that also in Germany, "anti-semitism is significantly more prominent than in the other western European countries." The evidence for this is shaky at best. Nearly half of respondents in Germany agreed with the statement: "Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era", compared with 22% in the UK and 32% in France. With no exact figures or information regarding the phrasing of the questions, there is no proof that these responses are representative, nor that the answers themselves are anti-semitic.

But the refusal to believe that Germany has come to terms with its past is also reflected in Germany itself. Evans refers to a study carried out by the German parliament in 2012 which found that 20% of Germans hold at least "latent anti-semitism." Anetta Kahane of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation claims that "anti-semitism is acceptable again". Moreover, the AAF found that in 2011 there were 811 attacks on Jews in Germany, of which 16 were violent. On the basis that this increased to 865 in 2012 and 27 acts of violence, the AAF infers that anti-semitism is on the rise. The other 838 attacks are not defined, and there is no indication whether the 27 violent attacks were racially motivated.

These figures show that the extent of anti-semitism in Germany today is not a "complex picture" at all. To say that anti-semitism  has become "acceptable" is obscene. Even the extreme far-right neo-Nazi NPD party, while openly hostile to the Roma and Sinti, doesn't dare to even mention the Jews. Rather than ban NPD posters inciting racial hatred, the German government tolerated them, safe in the knowledge that hardly anybody would be persuaded by them. The recent elections proved them right, with the NPD failing to secure one single MP.

At an open-air karaoke event I attended in Berlin several months ago, a drunk blundered on to the stage and began telling an anti-semitic joke. A chorus of hundreds of voices from the crowd booed him off stage. While anecdotes such as these do not conclusive proof, they are indicative of attitudes in Germany today.

To claim that 27 violent attacks is evidence of mounting anti-semitism is a gross distortion of reality, and trivialises the attacks on thousands of Jews that took place on Kristallnacht. The real headline ought to have been that 75 years after that terrible night in 1938, anti-semitism in Germany is negligible. Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the Holocaust has been taught in German schools for decades. Berlin is full of memorials, museums and exhibitions about  the Holocaust and in 2011, 58 000 Germans visited Auschwitz.

Germany deserves admiration for the way in which it has come to terms with its past, something which Britain, still clinging to its "one world cup and two world wars" mantra would do well to follow.

Thursday 31 October 2013

The End of Poverty in our time?

The contemporary debate on aid to the third world is polarised, with advocates and opponents arguing whether or not aid has failed. Discussing the merits of "aid" in this way conceals some amazing advances in development across some of the poorest countries in the world. Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee's 2011 book Poor Economics expands on the ideas laid out in Duflo's TED talk, and brings to light some major advances in the war on poverty which too often go unnoticed.


Between 1999 and 2006, primary school enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 54% to 70%. In East Asia, the same seven year period saw the proportion of children in primary education rise from 77% to 88%. Despite rapid population growth in the world's poorest countries, the number of children of primary school age who did not attend fell from 103 million in 1999, to 73 million in 2006.

Of course, this leaves much to be done, and it is a scandal that there is still so much poverty amidst an abundance of wealth. Admittedly, the quality of teaching in primary schools is low in many countries, and millions of children go back to work in the fields at the age of 12, with no access to secondary education.

But there has been progress here too. Research conducted by Duflo and Banerjee shows that between 1995, enrollment in secondary schools increased from 25% to 34%  in sub-Saharan Africa, 44% to 51% in South Asia, and 64% to 74% in East Asia. These are major, positive changes which have happened in my lifetime. These developments are a reason to be optimistic about the future, and people should be aware of them.

As Paul Collier argues in his book The Bottom Billion, the number of people living in extreme poverty across the world is falling. " For forty years the development challenge has been a rich world of one billion facing a poor world of five billion people." Today, 80% of the world's poor live in countries which are on the up, while one billion are languishing in countries stuck at the bottom. Quoting UN figures in his book The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley states that there has been a greater reduction in world poverty over the last 50 years than in the past 500. In a recent TED talk, economist Charles Robertson argues that Africa is now at the stage Mexico and Turkey were at 30 years ago, and a boom is coming.

For various reasons, this progress, although ostensibly the goal of NGOs, is widely ignored in the aid industry. Some are concerned that donations from the public would decrease if they knew that poverty was falling. But progress such as this, for example in the field of education, is a powerful reason to step up the war on poverty. For this progress shows that change is possible, and worth fighting for. On a practical level, these successes allow us to analyse which developmental and economic policies have been successful, and which have not, paving the way to a better approach towards tackling poverty in future. Suppressing success stories only reinforces pessimism and cynicism that development in the poorest countries is even possible under capitalism.

The fact that tens of millions more children across the world now have access to education is something that should be recognised and celebrated. News such as this belongs in the national curriculum. Positive change of this sort is a testament to human achievement and ingenuity. As Duflo and Banerjee conclude, "poverty has been with us for many thousands of years; if we have to wait another fifty or hundred years for the end of poverty, so be it."








Friday 11 October 2013

Tangier: a forgotten episode of the British Empire

As an ex-world power, Britain sometimes seems to be wishing it had its empire back. When cuts in the defence budget were introduced in 2012 even the BBC seemed to be lamenting the fact that the army is now smaller than it was in 1900, and that Britain could now no longer fight more than one war at the same time. While few people today still believe in white superiority or Britain's duty to "civilise", many myths surrounding the British Empire remain intact. Linda Colley's 2002 book Captives challenges the conventional narrative by focusing on a largely neglected aspect of the Empire: British slaves.

Events such as the recent stand-off with Spain over Gibraltar illustrate the impact that the British Empire still exerts over the world map today. But as Colley points out, Gibraltar was only acquired after a disastrous and perhaps deliberately forgotten chapter of the British Empire. After the English civil war and Oliver Cromwell's republic, King Charles II took the throne and married Catherine of Braganza, whose dowry included the city of Tangier. Located on what is today the Moroccan coast, Tangier seemed an ideal strategic outpost with its position at the gateway to the Mediterranean.

Colley argues that the British Empire at this stage was far more fragile than is often thought. As from 1662 the English monarchy poured resources into the Tangier project, an average of £75 000 per year - more than was spent on all home garrisons put together. In theory, Tangier was to be defended by 4000 soldiers, but in practice there were often no more than 1500. But this is perhaps not surprising given that the population of England at the time was approximately 3 million. The empire was overstretched in terms of both finance and manpower.

Nor was the force in Tangier homogenous or unified. The soldiers were a mix of English, Scots, Welsh and Irishmen although this was before the Act of Union in 1707. Despite the threat of harsh punishment, defection was common. Many soldiers had fought on Cromwell's side in the civil war and felt no loyalty towards the king. Compared to Cromwell's New Model Army, pay was low and irregular. On one occasion, Irish soldiers were defending Tangier against English defectors, and communicated in Gaelic so as not to be understood. 

At this time piracy in both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic was rife. The so-called Barbary Pirates, who operated from ports on the North African coast, captured hundreds of ships and took those on board as slaves. Colley estimates that at least 20 000 English men and women were enslaved in this period. In addition to this, one of the punishments for defection from the English army was slavery. Despite the grand words of Rule Britannia, the English were enslaving their own kind.

But the greatest threat to Tangier was in fact the sea. Hugely expensive efforts to build a harbour wall to protect the port were thwarted time and again by the strong Atlantic currents and waves. In 1684, the Tangier project was finally abandoned and the port was demolished. The story of Tangier is an embarrassing defeat for the British Empire and has therefore been quietly forgotten. By reviving it, Linda Colley shows the British Empire in a different light.


 

Thursday 19 September 2013

Oliver Stone vs Steven Pinker

"The US must, can and will lead in this new century. The third world war that many feared never came. And many millions were lifted out of poverty, and exercised their human rights for the first time. These were the benefits of a global architecture forged over many years by American leaders of both political parties."
Hillary Clinton

Oliver Stone's 10 part documentary "The untold history of the United States" is a bold attempt to challenge the conventional version of post-World War II history.

Stone fought in Vietnam as an infantry soldier, and was shocked by the misrepresentation of the war when he returned to the US. But more importantly, when Stone had children, he was struck by the way in which pupils are still taught a simplistic story of good guys and bad guys at school today. This provided the motivation to produce "The untold history of the United States." 

The documentary begins with an overview of the Second World War. Stone charges that the American post-war period has been greatly shaped by two "founding myths:" that the US won the war, and that it was necessary to use the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the US played an important role, but 80% of the German forces were focused on the Eastern Front. Approximately 400 000 Americans were killed in the war, compared to at least 22 million people in the Soviet Union, and possibly up to 30 million. 

The key role that the Soviet Union played in the Second World War remains largely ignored in American and British education. Stone alleges that this would not fit in with the conventional Cold War narrative, of freedom-loving Americans versus totalitarian Soviet communists.

Stone goes on to argue that contrary to popular belief, it was not necessary to use the bomb. 700 000 Soviet troops were pushing back the Japanese in Manchuria, and Japan was already heading for defeat. In addition to this, the number of lives saved through ending the war earlier has been revised upwards again and again. Stone sees Hiroshima as the moment the US lost its moral authority. As he puts it, "because we win, we are right, and because we are right, we are therefore good. There is no morality but our own."

The two founding myths led to the Cold War, and the frantic fight against communism both at home, and in proxy wars abroad. Millions of civilians were to die in the wars of Korea and Vietnam, while American history books continue to focus on the deaths of American soldiers, reveering them as dying to defend peace and democracy. The fear of communism was used to justify toppling democratically elected governments from Guatemala in 1954 to Chile in 1973, and some of the most despotic regimes were tolerated provided they were anti-communist. 

The documentary continues up to the present day, with 9/11 and the launching of the "war on terror" based on the same principle of "you're with us or you're against us" as the Cold War. Nor does it let Obama off the hook, berating him for his expansion of drone warfare. In 2011, the US sold 78% of the world's arms, and had military bases in 151 countries. Meanwhile, the US navy proclaims itself as a "global force for good" and statements such as Hillary Clinton's above continue to proliferate. Stone invites the viewer to consider whether the people of Hiroshima, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba and many other countries, might see the US in a different light. 

While Stone's documentary provides much food for thought, it is pretty depressing and whether intentionally or not, gives the impression that America's policing of the globe is making the world an ever more violent place. This is a notion which is very widespread - in a recent article on Syria in the Guardian, Nick Cohen claimed that the "world of tyranny and atrocity is no different now than it was 70 years ago", at the time of the Holocaust. 

Steven Pinker's book "The better angels of our nature" and related TED talk, although not written as a riposte to "The untold history of the United States" offers a fascinating counter-argument to Nick Cohen's statement. Pinker certainly doesn't set out to defend American policy. His argument is that we currently live in the most peaceful era that humanity has ever known, and that violence has been consistently decreasing for the past 500 years. 

He provides some fascinating statistics. The 20th century is commonly thought of as the most violent in human history. But while it is true that it was the century with the most violent deaths, this is due to the fact that the human population was at its highest. We have to look at the proportion of people who died in conflict to gauge the level of violence. In the 20th century, approximately 1% of the population was killed in war. In hunter gatherer societies of the past and present on the other hand, this figure ranges from 15% up to 60%. Pinker goes on to list the world's worst atrocities in terms of the proportion of the global population killed. Top of the list is the An Lushan revolt in 8th century China, in which 36 million people, 15% of the world's population at the time, were killed, the equivalent of 469 million people today.

Pinker is no American triumphalist, but his book challenges the pessimistic outlook of Stone's documentary. Totalitarian regimes were responsible for 138 million deaths in the 20th century, while democracies killed 2 million. Despite so many atrocities, the faults of the US simply cannot be put on par with those of Stalin and Mao. In 1950, the average conflict killed 65 000 people. By 2000, this figure had fallen to 2000 people. Parallels drawn between Iraq and Vietnam are false and unfair - dropping napalm is no longer an option.

None of this is to excuse the wars carried out by the US under the banner of fighting for freedom and democracy. Stone is right to criticize the standard rhetoric surrounding US history. But we should also recognise the decline in violence that has taken place, and refrain from regurgitating the pessmistic mantra that history just repeats itself, or that violence is getting worse. Instead we should embrace Pinker's conclusion that while there is still far too much war, the world we live has never been more peaceful, and this peace is likely to last and spread in the future. 

Monday 16 September 2013

How can the example of a babysitting co-op help us understand the financial crisis?

Economist Paul Krugman's latest book "End this Depression now!" is a passionate and well-argued call to action. He challenges the conventional understanding of the financial crisis and claims that "we have both the knowledge and the tools to end this suffering."

Krugman lambasts the proponents of austerity in both the Republican and Democrat parties. "They think of the US economy as if it were a family fallen on hard times, its income reduced by forces beyond its control, burdened with a debt too large for its income." Krugman's thesis is that on the contrary, the financial woes on both sides of the Atlantic persist because we are not spending enough to stimulate growth and demand. So if the metaphor of an indebted household is misleading and inaccurate, how should we understand the financial crisis?

Krugman proposes a story about a babysitting co-op which first appeared in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking in 1977. The story involves 150 couples who group together to share babysitting. Each couple is given 20 coupons which can be traded to pay for a babysitter. This way, each couple has reciprocate for the babysitting it desires and the hours balance out.

But the co-op hit difficulties when there weren't enough coupons in the system. Couples became worried about running out of coupons, so they kept a supply of them in reserve. This meant that the total amount of babysitting slumped, as there were less hours available. As Krugman puts it, the key message from this is that "your spending is my income, and my spending is your income." Saving coupons, cutting spending or "tightening our belts", whatever we call it, hurts the economy around us. Everyone in the co-op was going out less because of the shortage of coupons. The only way to get the co-op going again is to increase the number of coupons.

The cause of the babysitting co-op's difficulties was not  that members were abusing the system. They weren't bad parents and they didn't lack babysitting experience. The issue was simply a lack of supply. The same thing goes for the financial situation in the USA and the crisis in the Eurozone. It has nothing to do with government overspending, overgenerous benefits or a glut of "shirkers" as Labour minister Liam Byrne put it.

Historically, recessions such as the Great Depression before World War II or the recession of 1979-1982 have been overcome by spending our way out of them. Massive government borrowing to invest in industry and infrastructure create jobs, enabling people to buy products from others, thereby stimulating the economy as a whole.

Despite the fact that Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008, governments continue to ignore his advice, at an extraordinary cost to the economy and the population. Essentially, the economy of the US is not using its resources. In 2011 there approximately 24 million people unemployed in the US. This is sometimes been blamed on a lack of skills in the workforce, but Krugman points out that unemployment has affected people across the board, regardless of qualifications. When MacDonalds advertised 50 000 vacancies in 2011 it received one million applications.

Between 2006 and 2010, the number of cars bought in the US dropped from 16.5 million to 11.6 million, and the number of houses built fell from 1.8 million to 585 000. Krugman claims "the US economy is operating at 7% below its potential," leading to a loss of one trillion dollars of value per year. And "what makes this disaster so terrible - what should make you angry - is that none of this need be happening."

It's high time governments in the US and Europe thought about the recession in terms of a babysitting co-op.



Thursday 12 September 2013

The anniversary of 9/12

Yesterday marked the anniversary of 9/11. In the tragic events of that fateful day nearly 3000 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks that struck the United States. But the planes that flew into the Twin Towers needn't have changed the course of history. The so-called 'war on terror' was unleashed by the misguided response of the Bush administration beginning on 9/12.

By mischaracterising 9/11 as an act of war the Bush administration justified its invasion of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden claimed that Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, and he had been given support by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. But 9/11 was not an attack orchestrated by the Afghan government. Nevertheless, the US responded by overthrowing the Taliban regime which the US and Saudi Arabia had funded and enabled to come to power, back when they were the "good guys" fighting the Soviets. 12 years on with several thousand soldiers dead and unknown tens of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties, the war continues with no end in sight.

But it was the identification of an "axis of evil" - namely Iraq, Iran and North Korea - which took the war on terror to its next stage. With the logic that the "axis of evil" were supporting terrorism, the Bush administration invaded Iraq, a country which had no connection with 9/11 whatsoever. The war was based on false and doctored information, flouted international law, killing several hundred thousand Iraqis and displacing millions.

When George W. Bush declared "every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists" he ushered in the absurd labelling of "good" and "evil" and the blanket term "Al Qaeda" for any terrorist attack, which continues to this day. This has allowed governments around the world from Russia and Israel to Indonesia and the Philippines to declare their support for the war on terror, thereby conveniently being able to label opposition movements as "terrorism." In Bush's framework, Hamas or Chechen rebels can simply be declared to be "linked to Al Qaeda," immediately qualifying them as "baddies," and by definition the governments fighting them the "goodies", regardless of the regime's democratic credentials. Thus the unsavoury regimes of Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Chad have managed to end up on the "good" side.

Perhaps the most disappointing episode of the war on terror has been Barack Obama's embrace of the policy begun on 9/12. Rather than embarking on a new course, the Obama administration has continued the war in Afghanistan, and has expanded the war on terror with the use of drones, most notably in Pakistan and Yemen. Drone attacks have killed more people than 3000 people in Pakistan alone - more than the total death toll of 9/11.

9/11 continues to be seen as Osama bin Laden's winning strike against the US. But as Bobby Ghosh argues in his powerful TED talk, 9/11 in fact marked the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda. Despite the sickening celebrations which took place in some extremist circles, the overwhelming reaction of people across the Islamic world was the same horror and revulsion as in the West. Al Qaeda completely failed to unite Muslims in a holy war on western civilization. Once again it was the reaction of the Bush administration beginning on 9/12 that did much more to aggravate anti-western sentiment.

As Phyllis Bennis wrote on Aljazeera in 2011, Bush could have responded to the attacks of 9/11 with the following words:

Our people have been the victims of a horrific crime, a crime against humanity.
We recognise even at the beginning of this crisis that we cannot answer this crime alone. This was not an act of war, carried out by a country, and we will not turn to war against any country. That will not find the perpetrators or bring them to justice, nor will it prevent future such crimes from occurring. Instead, we need a legal framework that is international in scope and that relies on international law and the United Nations Charter for its legitimacy.

We approach this crime internationally because we know that the only sustainable justice is international justice. And justice - not war and not vengeance - is our goal. We will seek the perpetrators and bring them to trial in a legitimate and fair court... 

It would be fascinating to know how events would have panned out if this had really happened.


Wednesday 11 September 2013

Who stands to benefit from a war with Syria?

In the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, who could possibly be in favour of a war with Syria? Of course there are members of the public and political elite who feel that we should attack or even oust the Assad regime out of sympathy for the Syrian population. I have tried to outline in previous blogs why I think this would in fact do more harm than good. The Iraq war was routinely condemned for being fought over oil, and similarly there are accusations of economic and geopolitical interests behind intervention in Syria. The aim of this blog post is not to put forward a conspiracy theory. It is inevitable that changes in world politics have winners and losers. This is an overview of the various different groups who stand to lose or gain in the event of a military intervention in Syria.

Although the US is the main backer of military intervention with Syria, the interests at stake are highly ambiguous. Although Barack Obama can't run again for election in 2016, he still wants his place in the history books and it is in his interests that he is succeeded by a Democrat. Despite his tough talk of a "red line" being crossed with the alleged use of chemical weapons and his threat of military intervention, Obama acknowledged in his address to the nation that war with Syria is not popular among the American public. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, nearly 60% of Americans oppose war with Syria. Of course, a short and successful war such as the Falkland Islands for Thatcher or Grenada for Reagan can be very popular and even win elections. But with the spectre of Iraq and Afghanistan in the background and the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, Obama knows war with Syria is difficult to sell to the public. 

In an article on Aljazeera entitled "will Syria's chemical weapons take down Assad - or Obama?", Mark Levine claims that Washington doesn't want with Syria at all, and has pushed itself into a corner through its own ineptitude. When Obama stated that he would put a vote on military intervention in Syria to Congress, it seemed like he was looking for a get out of jail free card. Secretary of State John Kerry clarified that Obama could still order a military intervention without Congress' approval, but a no-vote would also have made it easier for Obama to justify holding off.

But while Obama fears that Syria could become his Iraq, there are also other interests at stake in Washington. In her book "Empire of Capital" Ellen Wood points out that the US' superpower status depends increasingly on its military capacity. Economically the US is falling behind - the EU together is now a bigger economy, China is catching up fast, the Euro and Yuan are rivalling the once all-powerful Dollar and the US is heavily in debt. It is only in the military sphere that the US reigns supreme. Wood argues that interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now potentially Syria are necessary for the US to demonstrate its influence and maintain its superpower status. 

Hawks in Washington may believe that a show of force in Syria would show the Iranians that the US means business, thereby discouraging them from pursuing nuclear weapons. Of course, intervention in Syria could also make Iran feel more vulnerable, making it more resolved than ever to acquire nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia has been one of the main backers of the Free Syria Army, the rebel movement fighting against the Assad regime. Predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran have long been the two rival great powers in the Middle East. Intervention in Syria is an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to show its value as an ally to the US, and potentially to secure a fellow Sunni government in Syria, thereby striking a blow against  Iran.

In an article in the Asia Times Pepe Escobar claims that intervention in Syria "is all about control of natural resources and channels of distribution." This may sound somewhat hyperbolic, but it is clear that there are energy interests at stake. The biggest supplier of natural gas to the West is currently Russia, but Putin's government has been known to exert political pressure by increasing gas prices. It would therefore be beneficial to Western countries to reduce their dependency on Russian gas and to find another source. Qatar has enormous reserves of natural gas, but the question is how to access it. A pipeline from the Persian Gulf to Europe would need to cross either Israel, Lebanon or Syria in order to get to the Mediterranean. A friendly government in Damascus would be helpful. Of course, a military intervention that plunges Syria further into civil war and instability for the next decade would be counterproductive in achieving this goal. 

Syria's key ally at the UN has been Russia. Russia has had good relations with the Assad regime for many years, as Syria allows the Russian navy to use the port of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea. Assad has been able to rely on support from Russia as he knows the military strategic interests which are at stake. Russia would veto a UN resolution to intervene in Syria and Putin has questioned the credibility of the claims that chemical weapons have been used, but at the same time Russia doesn't want to be seen to be supporting dictatorships around the world. The Russian brokered plan to put Syria's chemical weapons under UN control has therefore been a masterstroke of diplomacy, steering clear of war, protecting Assad and coming across as far more reasonable and peace-loving than the belligerent looking Obama administration. 

Just 36 hours ago a military strike on with Syria seemed imminent - today it looks like war may be averted. Yesterday civilians in Damascus thought that within weeks American bombs could be falling on them. They still can't rule out the possibility but now it seems less likely. None of the geopolitical interests which I have mentioned can explain the change in the stance of the Obama administration on their own, but it is clear that there are various agendas being played out behind the scenes. It is horrifying that in the 21st century human lives, in this case of the Syrian people, can still be treated with such indifference.  















The similarities between Syria's chemical weapons and Iraq's WMDs

So now it looks like Barack Obama has stepped back from war with Syria. In his address to the nation which only days ago had been intended to try to sell a war with Syria to the American public, Obama instead confirmed that he would pursue the Russian brokered peace plan. Diplomatic rather than military options are to be used to try to put Syria's chemical weapons under UN control. Nevertheless the possibility of war has not been ruled out - Obama stated that the US military would "maintain its current posture," and once again invoked the death of 1400 people in a chemical weaponsattack in a suburb of Damascus as a justification. But how sure can we be that the Assad regime really is guilty of killing civilians with chemical weapons?

In an article in the Asia Times, historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy Gareth Porter argues that the "intelligence" behind the chemical weapons claim is highly questionable. Obama's case for military intervention in Syria hinges on the widely circulated allegation that "1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children''. Porter states that there is no source for this figure. The number of casualties is also several times higher than estimates held by British and French intelligence.


So what is the source of information behind the chemical weapons allegation? According to Portas, "the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration's policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn't." The key document in question entitled "Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013'' was in fact released by the White House press secretary rather than the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. 


The title of the document speaks volumes - is this a government report or an intelligence report? Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Greg Thielmann asked "if it's an intelligence assessment why didn't they label it as such?" DNI James Clapper has refused to endorse the report. It sounds like yet another "dodgy dossier" and Iraq all over again. Another war with a Middle Eastern dictatorship based on doctored "intelligence."


And the similarities with Iraq don't end there. The Obama administration has made it clear that it would be prepared to intervene without a UN resolution. Once again an American government is prepared to start a war with a country which poses no threat to its own security, to flout international law and to ignore the lack of support both at home and abroad. The BRICS group of emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa voiced their opposition to military intervention without UN approval at a G20 summit last week. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton's comment on recent developments was "if the [Syrian] regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control as was suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians, that would be an important step. But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction." In other words, war can't be ruled out even if the Assad regime complies fully with the UN in giving up its chemical weapons stockpiles. 


Once again an American government is prepared to go to war based on a dubious claim to be upholding international human rights. As John Pilger points out in the Guardian today, Obama's condemnation of Assad reeks of hypocrisy and historical amnesia given the US usage of napalm in Vietnam, white phosphorous in Iraq and drones today. Meanwhile the fact that Saudi Arabia is a key backer of the Syrian rebels and would-be partner in a war on Assad shows that Washington is still happy to work with highly unsavoury regimes to further its own agendas. 


Obama has stressed war with Syria "would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan." But who exactly are the members of the Free Syria Army? Secretary of State John Kerry estimates that "hardcore Islamist fighters account for only some 15% of the rebel army." The removal of Assad's regime would likely plunge Syria into civil war, with various extremist factions fighting for power. In other words, it could well be Iraq or Afghanistan all over again. As Slavoj Zizek put it, "will the US repeat their Afghanistan mistake of arming the future al-Qaida and Taliban cadres?"


We can only hope that the plan to put Syria's chemical weapons under UN control succeeds, and that Syria's similarities with Iraq and Afghanistan end before a military intervention takes place. But even if there is no war with Syria, it is terrifying that the Obama administration has come this close. 






Monday 9 September 2013

Guest Post by Ben Ridley: Britain does look weak from abroad….on internet freedoms, not Syria

Did you know the collective term for a group of spies is a treachery?

Well, imagine if every day an almighty treachery of spooks left GCHQ to wander about your bank, your post office, your job – basically anywhere you might have private data stored or communicated through. Imagine that these spooks could – without a warrant or indeed any suspicions about you personally – rifle through your personal data and communications. Imagine they were doing this merely on the off-chance that they might, maybe, if they keep at it, find something sufficiently incriminating.  Imagine that they did this to the tune of 10, 800, 000, 000, 000* documents, each and every day. 

Would we consider this army of snoopers a proportionate response to supposed threats to our nation? Would we consider it an appropriate allocation of resources? Would we accept the alleged security it supposedly provides as a fair trade-off for the intrusion?

One might think that such a thing would ruffle a few feathers, no? Inspire a few questions in parliament? A few principled resignations? Public outrage? Because this is happening – in the form of Tempora in the UK – it’s just that it’s not flesh-and-blood spooks doing the searching but rather clandestine hardware and software (See here and here for an overview). I’m hoping the fact that the latter are less tangible, more ephemeral, explains why Edward Snowden’s revelations haven’t created more of a storm about Tempora in the UK specifically.

Maybe not - maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe people don’t care? If not, why not? And how much has the pitiful coverage contributed to this lack of reaction? I’m not currently based in the UK and I get my news from home via RSS and podcasts mainly, but I was surprised I wasn’t hearing more about this. Turns out, there was a reason: a D-Notice – an official but not legally binding request to keep quiet - was issued by the MoD in relation to reports about Tempora and PRISM. Even if you think Tempora and its ilk are okay – and I’ll see if I can convince you otherwise below - surely the act of leaning on outlets to silence debate, and the fact that those outlets appear to have gone along with it, is an equally worrying and separate issue? The BBC, for example, appears to be denying the D-notice’s existence, and argues it has given the story “the appropriate level of coverage”.    

So why should you care?

If you are innocent you have nothing to worry about, apparently. There seems to be two sides to this trope, one technical and the other more concerned with legality and morality. 1) The search techniques use “sophisticated filters” to remove uninteresting content and data, and most UK-UK traffic is removed anyway. Given that much UK-UK traffic will exit and re-enter via the ‘intercepted’ fibre-optics, it’s not clear how such traffic can be reliably differentiated from the general flow. 2) Only the guilty need be fearful. This trope requires that we accept that the terms of the ‘filters’ are set up in a way we would be happy with, and that any oversight in place is effective. Without debate or transparency, can we be sure about this? If the operation at the NSA is any clue, the agency decides what to share with its overseers. And GCHQ is apparently an attractive prospect as a partner in this kind of data gathering precisely because of its “light oversight regime compared with the US”. Even supposing the technology could do what is claimed, and the oversight was well-motivated and effective, are we really happy that any government organ has this power?

People roll their eyes at the “what if it’s abused in the future” argument, but governments and the times do change. Are you sure something like state-sponsored homophobia - as in Russia – couldn’t happen in your country? Even if that’s not a hot-button issue for you, take whatever group or set of beliefs you feel to be contrary to your own political perspective, your own take on what is and isn’t in the interests of your society. Are you certain that none of your data or online activities could become incriminating if their priorities and beliefs had unfettered dominion over the scope of those ‘sophisticated filters’, and had the right to decide what counts as ‘suspicious’?  

But it’s all legal, right? Reassured by the Intelligence and Security Committee’s whitewash? Note that what they concluded was that the law, such as it is, wasn’t broken. They did not rule on the appropriacy of the laws, nor whether they were fit for purpose. Also, who’s to say they have the full picture?  Worth remembering that the pattern of official responses to each new leak has been to argue that, basically, we should be happy the next worst thing isn’t being done to us.  Except, as time goes on it increasingly seems it actually is. NSA doesn’t monitor its own citizen’s data without a warrant? Yes they do. Government backdoors in programs and services we all use are a conspiracy nut’s fever dream? Apparently not

Would I prefer terrorist plots succeeded? This argument relies on the idea that the system is at least effective at what it was set up for – stopping terrorists – and that it is better than other methods. That’s certainly the claim of government on both sides of the Atlantic. Given the clandestine nature of the pursued and the pursuers it’s hard to verify this claim one way or another. However, it’s interesting that in the American context two senators who have served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have publically contested the claim that Tempora-style spying has prevented ‘dozens’ of terrorist attacks. You can read about that here, in addition to research suggesting that most attacks have been thwarted due to routine police methods. If this is representative of the UK experience, one might question if the programme is even cost effective: a billion pound budget for results that could been achieved by less blanket methods?   

Okay, it’s bad but the information shouldn’t have been leaked this way. You think a challenge “within the system” would have been better? Thomas Drake, William Benny, J. Kirk Wiebe and Ed Loomis tried that in relation to the Trailblazer project - and were first ignored, then harassed, then prosecuted for their troubles.

But what can we do about it? Well, there are some tech and service choices you could make to reduce your data ‘shadow’ and potentially reduce your exposure to surveillance (see here, here and here). But given the resources of the organisations you’d be trying to thwart, and the cooperation – voluntary or not – of many tech companies’ means that for the average person tech fixes to this can’t be the whole solution. There needs to be parallel political pressure for there to be any movement on this. You could sign the petitions calling for an inquiry, here and here.  You could find, and then write to your MP and MEP. You can even write to GCHQ. You can contact the any of the news media you consume and ask why they haven’t been covering this issue appropriately (for the BBC look here). If you are outside the UK or the US, remember you are likely affected by this too ( such as this, this, this, this, this, this, or this), and it’s in your interests also to be pressuring your own representatives about these issues.

This isn’t about thoughtlessly bashing the countries involved or the intelligence services en masse. It’s not about denying the legitimacy of appropriately warranted and targeted surveillance of targets for which there is a basis for suspicion. It’s intended to spell out the contempt for the public evident in the attempt to avoid and stifle debate. It’s an attempt to argue that programs like  Tempora and the ways they’re being applied are more dangerous to the values of our society than the alleged benefit they deliver to law enforcement or the ‘war on terror’. It’s shocking and infuriating – precisely because of the high regard I have for my nation and its people.

*based on the 21.6 petabytes per day GCHQ potentially has access to via its cable intercepts – as reported here and here – divided by the 2 kilobytes that this and this say is the equivalent of a page of text. By the way, this is related to the information flowing through the fibre optic cables based in the UK. This figure doesn’t take into the account the other ways that recent revelations have suggested you online activities could run afoul of the NSA, GCHQ or other agencies and countries.   


Friday 6 September 2013

What are NGOs for?

In March this year I attended an NGO training weekend organised by the BMZ, the German ministry for international development. The objective was to learn how to apply for government funding, which conditions have to be fulfilled, and which documentation is required to prove how the money has been spent. I was representing a small NGO in Berlin called Schulbausteine fur Gando which funds the building of schools in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The training session taught me both how government funding works, and why the NGO sector is not for me.

What struck and disturbed me straight away was that the German government defines NGOs based in Germany as "project carriers". If an NGO's application for government funding is successful, the government funnels over the money. At this point, the role of the NGO is simply to find a "project partner" in some country deemed worthy of assistance, and hand the money over to them. In fact, the government stipulates that there must be a distinction between the project carrier and partner. My NGO had very close contacts with our project partner, (which you would think ought to be a plus), and this could potentially have jeopardised our eligibility for funding. In other words, the NGO in Germany is simply a fundraising mechanism shovelling money from A to B, completely distanced from the people it is ostensibly trying to help.

This is the root of many of the problems in international development today. Firstly, as David Damberger points out in his impassioned TED talk, it creates a lack of accountability. Despite any number of systemic flaws, a government is ultimately accountable to its electorate, and a private company to its customers or shareholders. But an NGO is not accountable to the supposed beneficiaries of development projects. On the contrary, the NGO is accountable to the donors. The NGO simply hands over the money to a project partner - if some of the money goes missing, or is used to build a school which collapses after two years, the people affected have no come back. The NGO will simply make a note not to use the same project partner next time. The NGO in Germany doesn't even necessarily know who they are helping - they are busy chasing donors.

But this state of affairs also leads to dishonesty towards donors. Any number of glamorous NGO websites talk about what "we" do and "our projects". Of course, some NGOs do great work and deserve credit for their efforts. But for a standard project carrier to talk about "our achievements" is deceit. They are simply fundraising organisations - they don't actually carry out any projects themselves, and can provide no guarantees as to the quality or durability of the development work. As Paul Collier says in his book "The Bottom Billion," most NGOs don't even have an office in the countries where they claim to be active, particularly in the poorest countries which don't appeal to staff or are deemed too dangerous.

Even in NGOs active in the field the prioritisation of donor over beneficiary often leads to shoddy projects. David Damberger recounts his experiences with Engineers without Borders, installing water points in Malawi. Returning to the sites 18 months later, he found that 80% of the taps were not working. Donors are happy to provide money for building schools, hospitals or water points, but maintenance is not as sexy. The result is that many projects don't last, and therefore many of the pictures on NGO websites of happy children running their hands under a new tap are lies: the tap has rusted and fallen into disrepair by the time the donor sees the photo.

Many of the people working in the NGO sector work tirelessly for their causes, and some NGOs achieve great things. But if the role of the NGO is merely to raise money it would make more sense for the government to send the money and bypass NGOs altogether. The NGO sector is in desperate need of a radical shake-up but its already poor reputation will probably have to worsen further before anything major is achieved. The amount of poverty in the world is decreasing but is still shameful, and therefore there is a need for international aid. Sadly in its current form the NGO sector is incapable of being much use.

Monday 2 September 2013

Intervention in Syria would only further erode the credibility of the West

As David Cameron is reeling after his defeat in the House of Commons, Nick Clegg has accused Labour of not respecting the gravity of the situation in Syria. But the issue is not whether or not the situation is serious - everyone agrees that Syria is a disaster. The question is whether an intervention would improve the situation.

As Simon Jenkins has pointed out in the Guardian, it is unclear what the objective of a miltary intervention in Syria would be. Obama's plan which Cameron failed to sell to House of Commons seems to be "punish" the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons with a bombing campaign which would inevitably hurt the Syrian population far more than the government. Jenkins believes the West doesn't have the political will to try to topple Assad, in which case the intervention would do nothing but inevitably kill dozens or perhaps hundreds of civilians. Aerial bombardment would be futile.

But Jenkins also seems to imply that toppling Assad would be a better option, concluding, "if the west really wants to "save Syria" it should go in and save it. Otherwise shut up." At least there would be a clear objective, but as in the case of Iraq the it is far from clear who would take over.

A ground invasion of troops could rapidly take Damascus and oust the Assad regime, although they wouldn't be seen as "liberators" by the considerable proportion of the population who still support him. Christians make up about 10% of the Syrian population and many continue to back Assad out of fear that an Islamic government would persecute them. The Free Syria Army remains fragmented, rudderless and guilty of its own atrocities and abuses. A bombing campaign would achieve little, but a full scale intervention would be far more problematic, with troops potentially bogged down for years and the country descending further into civil war. Attacking Assad's forces and arming the opposition would only make sense if there is a coherent group ready to take power. This simply is not the case in Syria.

The Obama administration claims that the Assad regime has crossed a "red line" in its usage of chemical warfare. But as Murtaza Hussain has observed on Aljazeera, there have already been 14 recorded uses of chemical weapons and more than 100 000 Syrians have been killed - why is Washington suddenly so interested in this one attack? By talking tough about a "red line" Obama has pushed himself into a corner - it would look weak not to act now. The proposal to intervene in Syria has more to do with saving face than principles of democracy or human rights.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has questioned the "proof" that chemical weapons have been used. Given that the WMDs in Iraq never showed up it is reasonable to be sceptical. After all, in the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden the Obama administration has shown a total disregard of true information supposedly on the grounds of national security. And now we're supposed to believe that information regarding usage of chemical weapons hasn't been fabricated to further its national interests.

A military intervention in Syria would do nothing to improve the situation and would only further weaken Washington's international standing and credibility. Meanwhile China is playing the long game, keeping out of the conflict and watching Obama adminsitration expose its double standards.











Friday 23 August 2013

The financial crisis wasn't caused by government overspending

At the 2009 Conservative Party conference David Cameron said, "why is our economy broken? Not just because Labour wrongly thought they'd abolished boom and bust. But because government got too big, spent too much and doubled the national debt."

This remains the dominant narrative of the coalition government, it is also largely accepted by the Labour Party, and few in the media question it. The case for austerity measures and cuts in public services is based on several assumptions: that the level of British government debt is unprecedentedly high, that our debt repayments are unsustainable, and that cutting public spending will get us out of the crisis.

But is there are any statistical basis for austerity? In a powerful presentation in 2011, Dr Saville Kushner showed that our debt is not only manageable, but in fact lower than it has been for much of the 20th century. In 2011, British government debt was 64.6% of GDP, compared with 72% in Germany, 95% in the USA and 200% in Japan. During the Second World War, British government debt peaked at 250% of GDP, and only fell below 100% in the mid 1960s. In this time, the British economy was growing, the welfare state and the NHS were founded and large scale infrastructural projects were underway. Our debt is not abnormally high compared to other countries, nor compared to our historical record, and debt is not the evil it is made out to be.

National debt is not like personal debt - it is never paid off, and it is not an impediment to the economy. Dr Kushner compares national debt to a house - a mortgage can be paid off, but the new buyer will take out a new one. No government is striving to eradicate national debt. The EU Maastricht Treaty stipulates that government debt shouldn't exceed 60% of GDP. In other words, our debt is only just above the threshhold - hardly a "debt crisis."

Kushner goes on to debunk the myth that our debt repayments are too high. In 2011, the cost of servicing our national debt was £120 million per day. That sounds like a horrifying figure until you put it in perspective. In 1981, we were paying the equivalent of £174 million per day. As a proportion of our GDP, the cost of our debt is lower than under the Thatcher government. Most of our debt is low interest and long term - we have 13 years to pay it back.

In their report entitled "A brighter future for the British economy," Michael Burke, George Irvin and John Weeks argue that at the last election, the Conservative Party "launched a propaganda campaign to convince the public that it was the irresponsible fiscal policy of the outgoing Labour government that was the true culprit." They argue that in reality, the recession was caused by the private sector and long term structural issues in the economy. As they put it, "the cause of the surge in public borrowing is the refusal of private companies to borrow for investment."

Now, in the words of MP Jon Trickett, "right-wing politicians and academics want two contradictory things at the same time: rapid deep cuts and expanding demand to achieve private sector growth." This simply cannot work. In a paper entitled "The £100 billion gamble," George Irvin, Howard Reed and Zoe Gannon argue that "trimming the proverbial fat is virtually impossible when you are faced with public services that are already lean and under-resourced." For years we have been fed the idea that we can solve our economic problems by cutting waste. But the logic doesn't work. As Burke, Irvin and Weeks say, "falling demand results in falling output, which in turn results in falling private employment. To reverse this process it is necessary to replace the falling private demand with public sector demand. But the Tory-led government wants the opposite."

Government cuts damage the economy by reducing demand. Axing jobs and laying off staff creates unemployment and a slump in demand. Cutting benefits only hurts the most vulnerable and will not solve our economic problems. Cuts actually make the economy less competitive as they lead to the deterioration of infrastructure and the skills the workforce can offer. Rather than introducing a new round of cuts, we should endeavour to expand government revenue and stimulate demand. This can be achieved by government borrowing, and targeted investment into the economy.

Once the myths surrounding our debt and its causes have been exposed, all sorts of things become possible.
The two papers I have mentioned above propose a wide range of options. Why not increase our national debt to 80% or even 100% as the USA has done, in order to invest in infrastructure? We could embark on a large scale housing programme and build a high speed rail network, which would create thousands of jobs, increase the government's tax intake thereby reducing the deficit. We could introduce a land tax and a financial transactions tax to boost government revenue, which would enable us to pay the higher costs in pensions and care for the elderly which we will soon have to face.

The financial crisis was not caused by government overspending and cuts will not get us out of it. The real crisis that Britain faces is the lack of imagination and ideas among both the coalition government and the opposition. All manner of reforms and alternatives are feasible if we challenge the myths surrounding the economy.


Thursday 22 August 2013

A tale of two embassies

Guess which embassy in Berlin is the only one to have closed a public road in front of it? Despite the turmoil in the Middle East and in the wake of the multiple US embassy closures, you can still walk right past the Syrian, Egyptian, Israeli and American embassies. The embassy with the highest level of security in Berlin is the British.

British Embassy, Berlin
The move to close Wilhelmstrasse, the road leading past the British embassy, came in November 2003, after an attack on the British consulate in Istanbul left 32 dead. The British ambassador to Germany at the time, Sir Peter Torry, claimed "the level of threat is now so high that we have to take the risk of a car bomb extremely seriously." Initially the road was completely closed off with 27 blocks of concrete. Since then the concrete has been replaced with bollards and a permanent presence of security guards so that pedestrians and cyclists can get through, but no cars.

The British embassy has a very central location, just around the corner from the Brandenburg Gate. Wilhelmstrasse is a wide road, and used to be a main axis route for traffic, and its closure understandably rankles the locals - a survey showed 90% of Berliners think the road should be reopened. The German embassy in London is on Belgrave Square - imagine the reaction if the German government insisted that the road outside be blocked off.

Even if there had been a terrorist attack in Berlin, permanently closing a major road would be an extreme response. But the road closure was a reaction to an attack in Istanbul. Presumably the reasoning for raising the level of security in Berlin rather than anywhere else was due to the large Turkish diaspora in Germany. Leaving aside the problematic assumption that the Turkish population in Berlin constituted a real threat, you would think that once everything had gone back to normal in Istanbul, Wilhelmstrasse could be reopened. After all, the road outside the British consulate in Istanbul is open to cars! It just goes to show that since 9/11, so-called "security threats" can so easily be manipulated to justify the most absurd decisions and policies, and there is often no logical consistency. The recent closure of 22 US embassies was just the latest example.

Nordic Embassies, Berlin
The most paranoid embassy in Berlin is the British. At the other end of the spectrum are the Nordic embassies. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland have sensibly decided to club together in one building, and it operates as an open house. One of the headings on their website is "canteen." Monday to Friday between 11am and 3pm, the canteen is open to the public, and offers a three course meal for under 10 Euros. You can see the menu online and you can plan your visit accordingly - today you have the choice of beef roulade, prawn skewers or stuffed mushrooms. At the canteen's long tables you might well find yourself sitting next to diplomats and ambassadors. You might think that this would only be possible with strict security checks. But there are no security scanners, no requirement to leave bags outside, and not even a basic ID check at the entrance.

Of course, the Nordic countries haven't become embroiled in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps Britain is at a greater risk of terrorism than the Scandinavian countries - there has been no equivalent of 7/7 in Stockholm. Except that last year Norway suffered its worst atrocity in decades when Anders Breivik killed 77 on a shooting spree. And across the road from the nordic embassies is the Syrian embassy, arguably a potential target for extremist opponents of Assad's regime. Isn't there a potential risk of a car bomb targeting the Syrian embassy?

The British embassy in Berlin faces no greater threat than the nordic embassies and there is no legitimate justification for maintaining the closure of Wilhelmstrasse. Terrorist attacks are incredibly rare - as Dan Gardner points out in his book Risk, the death toll due to international terrorism in the whole of Western Europe between 1968 and 2007 was 1233. To put this in context, in 2012 1754 people died in road accidents in Britain alone.

The risk of a terrorist attack is incredibly low, but it does exist - the question is how we react. As Phyllis Bennis put it in an article on Aljazeera, 9/11 needn't have changed the world - it was 9/12 that did. Closing Wilhelmstrasse simply gives Britain a bad international reputation. Every day, the thousands of people who walk past are given the impression of a country which is paralysed by fear as the union jack flies above above the bollards and police patrols. The nordic embassies demonstrate a much healthier response which Britain would do well to learn from.




Wednesday 21 August 2013

David Goodhart is far more dangerous than Nick Griffin

On 1 July David Goodhart, director of the think-tank Demos, and Guardian columnist Zoe Williams locked horns in a debate on immigration. You can watch a five minute excerpt of it here. Goodhart, who has also written a book entitled "The British Dream: successes and failures of post-war immigration" presented the 'respectable' face of the anti-immigration lobby. Zoe Williams challenged some of his arguments but let him off the hook in many ways. While Nick Griffin and British National Party are known for their demonisation of all things non-British, they remain a marginal fringe group and have never had an MP elected. But the views of David Goodhart are far more widespread and are therefore far more dangerous if they are left unchallenged.

Goodhart opens by stating that he takes issue with what he calls "the standard liberal account of immigration." The reality he claims, is that high levels of immigration have a negative influence on income and unemployment, and that in terms of education and employment, lots of people from minorities are doing better than the white population.

Zoe Williams retorts that the mainstream account of immigration both in the media and the political elite is far from liberal. On the contrary, we are constantly fed the myth that immigrants are to blame for the housing crisis and put a terrible strain on welfare and the NHS. According to statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions, only 5% of non-British EU citizens are on benefits compared with an average of 13% for Britons. A recent report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research stated "we find no association between migrant and inflows and claimant unemployment." And figures from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development show that immigration creates a net gain for the British economy.

The recent Home Office anti-immigration stunt to scare immigrants with mobile billboards proclaiming "In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest" reveal the true nature of the contemporary outlook on immigration. In the prime ministerial debates before the last election, all three candidates did their best to plug their anti-immigration credentials. The widespread anti-immigration sentiment is by no means confined to the Murdoch press - a quick glance at the comments beneath the video of the debate shows that plenty of "Guardianistas" are persuaded by Goodhart's argument.

Goodhart goes on to claim that "there are legitimate complaints about rapid social change." He maintains that nobody complains about moderate levels of immigration, but that it is perfectly reasonable to oppose the "large-scale" immigration we have today. Granted, the video is an excerpt but at no point does Williams challenge Goodhart to provide any statistics. According to research done by Fullfact net migration to Britain in 2012 was 153 000. In other words, immigration led to 0.3% increase in the population. Of course, immigration unevenly spread, but to talk of "large-scale immigration" is absurd.

The true level of net migration, which is in fact falling, shows up Goodhart's argument for what it is: scare-mongering based on no statistical evidence. Are we really supposed to believe that a 0.3% increase in the population is capable of paralysing our public services? Britain's housing shortage, infrastructural failings and budget deficit are caused by the financial crisis, a lack of investment and directionless government policies. The effects of immigration are negligible. Goodhart's economic argument against immigration has no statistical grounding whatsoever.

Which brings us to Goodhart's social argument. Net immigration figures conceal the fact that a total of approximately 500 000 immigrants come to Britain each year, and Goodhart believes that this is irrevocably changing British society. He refers to data from the 2011 census to back up his case. Apparently it showed that 620 000 white people had moved out of London, a rate three times higher than in the 2001 census. Goodhart calls it a "flight of familiarity" - white people moving out in droves because they no longer recognise their neighbourhoods.

There are several problems with this argument. First of all, he makes no mention of where the 620 000 people moved to. 347 000 people emigrated from the UK in 2012, most of them leaving for Australia, the USA, France and Spain. Once again offering no evidence, Goodhart simply assumes that people moving out of London did so due to the pace of social change. This may be a factor, but so are house prices, and emigrants heading to Australia or France clearly aren't too scared of social change. Secondly, it is ludicrous to blame social change entirely on immigration. Social change has equally been driven by urbanisation, globalisation, technology and the internet. Goodhart panders to the myth that without immigrants, the good old traditional way of life would be alive and well. Finally, Goodhart takes it for granted that rapid social change is a bad thing. But social change has also been a driver of female emancipation, workers' rights and the movement against racism, and one could make the argument that its pace hasn't been fast enough.

David Goodhart is certainly no racist and he portrays his case as a thoroughly reasonable one. This is what makes his ideas so much more appealing than those of the British National Party. But his argument is baseless and contributes to the widespread scapegoating of immigrants in Britain today. The likes of Goodhart have a much stronger influence on public opinion and government policy than Nick Griffin. Zoe Williams made some good points but she didn't win the debate. It is high time that the case against immigration is attacked with the facts.