New Labour's take on democracy
against the grain of what the government is actually doing. Karen Buck, (Regent's Park and Kensington North) Like most people I watch the war with a great deal of anxiety. I am OK about what's happened so far because there was justification for taking action in pursuit of Bin Laden. Most of us do not have the information which would enable us to say 'this particular tactic is wrong.' I think Paul (Marsden) is wrong to say this is a matter of conscience, not policy. It's reasonable to have different views, the question is, are you doing it in a way that puts it under proper scrutiny. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley): My position is the same as it was at the beginning. I couldn't see any action apart from the bombing, but I wanted the diplomatic and humanitarian action running in parallel with the Afghan borders open. As for Paul, people have always expressed their views and always been leaned on by the whips. He must have had a tape recorder - or a verbatim memory. Tom Watson (West Bromwich East): Mine's the view of the man in the street. I don't think we have much choice in the bombing, whatever people's personal views duty kicks in. I thought Paul was a bit silly giving out a transcript (of his talk with the chief whip). Tony Coleman (Putney) Like most Labour MPs I support the government and was annoyed when (critical) MPs who had spoken in the last two or three debates were called in the fourth debate too. As for the whips, it's up to MPs to decide what they wish to do, but the whips are there to note what individual MPs are saying and inform them of government policy. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): People are entitled to speak on these issues. It is counter productive and politically maladroit when you try to prevail upon people talking about something which they demonstrably feel strongly about as a matter of conscience. As it happens, I wholeheartedly support and conduct and stewardship of this crisis, and I think the prime minister has played a blinder. But I think a lack of a confirmatory vote in parliament before we send armed forces to war is a serious deficiency in our democracy and our unreformed parliament. Gerald Kaufman, ex-minister (Gorton): I support what the government is doing in Afghanistan and I support the chief whip. Anonymous minister: I got far worse tickings off from the whips when I was a backbencher. Hilary Armstrong couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,579092,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Conditions and the Taliban
Jim D. writes: 1) there was a unified -- and unifying -- state in Afghanistan before the Taliban. (It was also modernizing, educating women, etc., which stimulated the ire of the fundamentalist men.) This, of course, was destroyed in the Russo-Afghan war. = Slings and arrows and accusations of pedantry aside, I think it's important not to allow history to be glossed over by the use of misleading terms like Russo-Afghan war. Afghanistan was used as a proxy for the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, and it was the US, as emerging evidence makes clear, that stoked the flames in Afghanistan as part of the greater global US retrenchment/restructuring that took place throughout the 1970s. Brzezinski is really the author of the so-called Reagan Doctrine that promised US aid to and involvement in the struggles of anti-communists, the lovers of freedom (ha! The Contras? The Khmer Rouge? The Taliban?). The modernising regime in Afghanistan was destabilised as was that of Chile, indeed that of Argentina, around this period, and Soviet intervention was a response to this. That the USSR had its own less than admirable reasons for going in is absolutely true, but the civil war between different factions within the Afghan state (as was) was given a great push by the creation of an entirely new element -- the fundamentalist men you mention. These were the product of hitherto obscure madrassas located in remote parts of Northern Pakistan, whose own leadership had just been changed in a bloody coup bringing to power the not at all lovely General Zia, whose own ideas of women's status under Islamic law were very much in accordance with the general direction of what became Taliban thinking. Zia attempted to impose laws that would have rendered women's status in Pakistan exactly half that of a man (i.e. two women's votes = one man's vote). Among the Pakistani emigre population in Glasgow this was not at all popular. But Zia was our sonofabitch and was delighted to receive copious funding from the CIA and MI6 and lavish media attention from the Dan Rathers and Sandy Galls who dutifully reported on the glorious freedom fighters intent on destroying the rather more admirable government of Najibullah (by comparison, at least, with Zia's and with what was to come as a result of all that freedom fighting). He died in what is still called a mysterious plane crash. Meanwhile the regional power status that Zia attempted to construct remains a curse blighting the Pakistani ruling classes, which must reconcile the contradictory impulses to modernisation (secular elements in the military, civil service and business arena) and religious fidelity (until now growing elements of lower military ranks and political class) with those sub-imperialist aspirations. The US stands, once again, in the dock for having encouraged the delusion of Pakistani state power exerting itself beyond Pakistani borders, only to find that delusion becoming closer to reality as a result of its inconsistent and arrogant treatment of its erstwhile ally which was allowed to continue harbouring such ambitions. China also has a part in this, given its support of Pakistan's military as part of a regional containment strategy aimed at India. Thus the legacy of Richard Nixon, that bequeathed the world Pol Pot (supported throughout the 1980s by the US, UK and China) also gave us the very same Taliban and an utterly destabilised and now nuclear Pakistan. All of which is to say, there was no Russo-Afghan war. Michael K.
Whiteout, part 2
Russia in multi-million arms deal with Northern Alliance Moscow gives major backing to opposition forces Kevin O'Flynn Tuesday October 23, 2001 The Guardian Old Soviet tanks, helicopters and kalashnikovs are being supplied in a multi-million dollar arms deal between Russia and the Northern Alliance. Russia has long been a secret ally of the Northern Alliance, supplying guns and supplies to the ousted Afghan government since 1996, but the terror attacks in the US has pushed Russia's support out into the open. Russia's defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, has spelled out exactly what the Northern Alliance wants - familiar, old Soviet hardware that the Northern Alliance forces have used for years, first in the 1980s against the Soviet forces they had captured the arms from and then in the 1990s in the series of civil wars. The arms deal is estimated to be worth between $40-$70m. Russia was supplying all the time, said a defence analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer. But this is a major extra investment for the Northern Alliance to make a major offensive and sweep the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan. Old Soviet T-55 tanks, military helicopters, kalashnikovs, Igla and Shilka mobile anti-aircraft missile and armoured fighting missiles are reported to have been among the first deliveries to Afghanistan. Forty tanks and twelve military helicopters are still to be delivered, according to the Associated Press. Afghans who have been fighting for the 20 years, including Northern Alliance fighters, know the old military equipment better than many servicemen in the Russian armed forces, said Mr Ivanov earlier this month. The Northern Alliance needs simple and very reliable, tested equipment: T-55 tanks, ammunition and submachine guns, he added. If they get other submachine guns, they [Northern Alliance fighters] throw them away with indignation and demand only kalashnikovs, the minister said. The Northern Alliance, Ivanov said, needs ordinary artillery guns with shells and ordinary battle infantry vehicles and armoured personnel carriers. These are quite ordinary, simple but reliable weapons, withstanding fluctuations of temperature and humidity, he added. As well as military equipment and supplies some Russian defence experts have claimed that Russia has supplied technical specialists. Mr Felgenhauer, citing military sources, said that a number of Russian technical specialists are already in northern Afghanistan helping the rebels. Other experts, and Mr Ivanov, have said the equipment is simple enough to be operated without technical assistance. Russia is not keen on footing the bill for the expensive airlift operation. Mr Ivanov has asked the US for help and Andrei Belyaninov, the chief of Russia's chief defence exporter, Rosoboronexport, is said to have discussed the matter with the British defence minister, Geoff Hoon, when he was in Moscow earlier this month. Supplies began to flow into Afghanistan at the end of September. Ammunition and military hardware is being delivered to the Northern Alliance via pontoon bridges built by Russia's 201st division over the Pyandj river that divides Tajikistan and Afghanistan, Nezavismaya Gazeta reported. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,578954,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unimpeachable source
Former CIA chief: 'Iraq was involved in terror attacks' By Anne Usher, AP Writer 23 October 2001 Former CIA Director James Woolsey says Iraq likely was involved in the attacks of September 11 and that the United States will probably confront President Saddam Hussein as part of its ongoing campaign against terrorism. There are too many things, too many examples of stolen identities, of cleverly-crafted documentation, of coordination across continents and between states ... to stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here, he told the national convention of the American Jewish Congress on Monday. He also pointed to the perceived long-term planning and subsequent use of refined anthrax as evidence of state support in the attacks, noting to reporters later that the Iraqi intelligence service has been meeting with Islamic extremist terrorists, including some in al-Qa'ida, and that Saddam has spent years trying to cultivate these ties. While saying there is not yet enough evidence to convict Saddam for the attacks, he said there are enough indications that we should be highly suspicious, be very alert and should look under that rock as hard as we possibly can. An exiled Iraqi opposition group that wants to increase its intelligence activities inside Iraq said on Monday that it had held meetings with the ex-CIA chief and State Department officials. Iraqi National Congress officials met with Woolsey in London several weeks ago, group spokesman Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein said in Washington. Al Hussein, who sits on the INC leadership council, said he was not at the meeting and did not know what had been discussed. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported Saturday that the two sides talked about alleged links between the Iraqi government and the attacks. US officials have blamed the attacks the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida, saying they have no hard evidence of an Iraqi role. Woolsey said he visited the British capital and met with the US ambassador shortly after the attacks. He denied meeting with the INC in London, but said he has met with them on numerous occasions and that his law firm represents them. While declining to comment on reports that he has been asked by US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to look into whether Iraq played a role in the attacks, Woolsey acknowledged that he is currently serving on two government panels, one for the Navy and one for the CIA. They all have asked me for provide advice from time to time. I go looking for it if I don't have it, he said. Wolfowitz has called for fighting a broad, sustained campaign that includes strikes on Iraq. The INC, an umbrella organization of Iraqi opposition groups seeking to oust Saddam, wants the United States to fund its activities inside Iraq, including intelligence gathering, Al Hussein said. The INC claims Iraqi defectors say the government directly sponsors and trains terrorists. The United States has named Iraq among the nations that sponsor terrorism. The Bush administration recently boosted the intelligence community's covert operations with more than $1 billion of new funding. The INC, which received $6 million from the administration in June, wants an estimated $22 million annually from the United States. Al Hussein said he and other members met with State Department officials in recent days to discuss additional funding. There was no immediate State Department comment to al Hussein's claims. Woolsey said a state is probably involved in supply of anthrax through the mail because of the multiple attacks and use of finely grained powder. He said Iraq is the prime suspect based on its history of robust biological and chemical weapons programs. Creating this form of anthrax isn't easy. ... You need a sophisticated individual, sophisticated equipment or both, he said. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=101023 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Open government vs. capital shortage
Penners, Alas, it appears that my earlier speculations regarding the possible reorientation of New Labour's relationship with finance capital were forlorn, in that the promised restructuring is in fact going to deepen that relationship, rather than restore the older state sector financing rules. With the sudden flurry of media stories concerning the impending difficulties facing Gordon Brown as he attempts to hold fast to spending promises and deliver tangible improvements in the crumbling public infrastructure, the quick fix bought on the mortgaging of the long term (so long the target of Brown's criticisms when he was professing socialism and very much the focus of Will Hutton's continuing critiques of UK political economy) is, it appears, about to step up a gear. = Treasury to overhaul PPP rules to bring in more private sector funding By Saeed Shah The Independent, 22 October 2001 The Treasury is set to rewrite the rules governing its controversial Public Private Partnership in an attempt to encourage even greater private funding of public sector projects. The changes, due to be announced shortly, are likely to provoke a political storm and prompt accusations from critics that the Government is cooking the books in favour of the PPP in an effort to take private sector funding still deeper into areas such as health and education. Treasury officials are working on a fundamental revision of the Green Book, which sets the standards for accounting for public investments. Assumptions made in the Green Book are key to testing proposed PPP schemes to see if they pass the crucial value for money test. Under the present rules, PPP financing is only allowed if it can be demonstrated that the private sector efficiency gains achieved will outweigh the cheaper borrowing costs of financing a project in the public sector. The changes being planned will allow Whitehall departments to take into account for the first time factors such as cost overruns and delays in the public sector as well as the quality of service and design delivered by operators in the private sector. Opponents of the PPP have always charged that the system is biased in favour of the private sector ever since its forerunner, the Private Finance Initiative, was introduced by the former Tory Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in the early 1990s. However, the Treasury believes that, far from favouring the PPP, current public accounting standards discriminate against it. It now aims to fix that. The Treasury may get the National Audit Office to endorse the new methodology before publication. The Green Book is careful and conservative. But the quality and consistency that PPP has achieved is better than anything the public sector ever did. A new analysis must reflect that, said a source close to the Treasury. The Treasury and firms heavily involved in PPP schemes believe the way that the public sector comparator test is applied takes too generous a view of the capabilities and track record of the public sector and fails to acknowledge the proven advantages of the private sector. David Toplas, director of the Norwich Union PPP Fund, said: The PPP provides for Rolls-Royce because these are long-term projects and we recognise that spending more now will provide long-term value. Although features such as the quality of service delivered and superior design are difficult to quantify, the new Green Book will attempt to do so. Other aspects it will tackle are areas such as cost over-runs, which under current rules are assumed to be around 12 per cent in the public sector. Experts believe the reality is more like 40 per cent. It will also take into account the likelihood that a project will not be delivered as quickly in the public sector. The fact that the PPP will deliver the hospital two years ahead of the public sector is not currently in the analysis. We must get the argument away from emotion to the facts, said one PPP consultant. Supporters of the PPP believe its solid track record means that assumptions now need to be reworked. Since 1992, when PPP was first introduced, some 180 projects have been completed and are now operational. Of these, 73 projects have a capital value in excess of £15m. Together these projects amount to some £5.1bn in capital value and include eight roads, seven hospitals, six prisons, a number of schools and colleges and various training projects for the Ministry of Defence. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=100694 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Conditions and the Taliban
Jim D. writes: Michael K writes: Slings and arrows and accusations of pedantry aside, I think it's important not to allow history to be glossed over by the use of misleading terms like Russo-Afghan war. Afghanistan was used as a proxy for the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, and it was the US, as emerging evidence makes clear, that stoked the flames in Afghanistan sure, but there was a lot of home-grown Afghan fervor against the central government as part of the mix. Though the US played a big role -- no argument there -- it's a mistake to treat the Afghans as a dependent variable, as pawns. People in third world countries have consciousness and wills, too. They aren't pawns or puppets. = Sure, but Russo-Afghan war sounds like Russo-Japanese war, i.e., a war between two states, when in fact it was one state (Soviet) coming in to prop up another (Afghan) being undermined by yet another (US) soon to be joined by yet another (Pakistan) and all in a context where there had never been any democracy as such and where the very idea of an Afghan people was always subject to the careful mediation of successive regimes in Kabul. These regimes were legitimated on the basis of their careful attention to the balance of interests within the borders nominally governed by the Afghan state. It is wrong to treat any of the constituent parts of Afghanistan as pawns, but it was certainly in the interests of outside powers (particularly the US) to tilt the balance in a certain way, all with the express intention of giving the Soviets their own Vietnam. You continue: The modernising regime in Afghanistan was destabilised as was that of Chile, indeed that of Argentina, around this period, and Soviet intervention was a response to this. You should be careful with these analogies. Though I use analogies all the time -- that's what economic theory is about -- it's important to remember that no analogy is perfect, so they can fool you. For example, the modernizing regime in Afghanistan wasn't elected the way the Chilean one was. == Very true. Coming on the heels of Nestor's post re Argentina and the undoubted efforts of the US during the 1970s to stamp out nationalist modernisation agendas it was careless of me to give the impression that somehow Najibullah and Allende derived the same legitimacy, although you will be familiar with the endless pathetic hand-wringing and outright sophistry of rightwingers who justify support of Pinochet on the basis of the minority status of Allende's electoral support. That's no justification for what happened in Chile, it's not even an excuse. But Najibullah and Allende did head modernising regimes, both striving to be independent of the whims of US power, and both vulnerable to those very whims, as we know with hindsight. You continue: [Your earlier post] makes it sound as if people from obscure madrassas don't belong in politics, or that just because they were obscure, they remain that way without external intervention by the puppet-masters in Washington. But civil wars and foreign interventions normally disrupt the existing social situation, undermining established elites and creating new ones, often independent of what the superpowers want. (People make history, but not exactly as they please.) When you refer to the creation of an entirely new element, is that a reference to the US elite _wanting_ to create a bunch of fundamentalist no-nothings? or were they created by the situation, something that the US elite didn't really want? I think the US elite would have preferred bringing back the tame king from Rome, but didn't have the time/energy/resources to intervene in Afghanistan to fine-tune the situation to create the desired result. That's the key: the US elite isn't really -- and can't be -- a bunch of puppet-masters (just as the old Soviet elite didn't control everything). Thus, they get stuck with allies they don't like. = The finer points regarding the specifics of the Taliban can be debated, but I don't think there is any doubt that, such was the fervent anti-Communism of the US decision-makers, that any alternative was preferable. That the CIA and national security apparatus of the US bought and paid for the elevation of a hitherto obscure group/perspective is well known. This is not to deny the position of the obscure in politics. But Pakistani training camps and coordination financed and supervised by the US sounds an awful lot like Contra camps in Honduras during the 1980s. Were these legitimate expressions of Nicaraguan political perspectives? Here's something I dragged from the PEN-L archives on the subject of US financing of radical Islamism. There's also been stuff circulating of late regarding a 1998 interview given by Brzezinski concerning Afghanistan -- maybe someone can dig out the relevant pieces in that. My copy of the Grand Chessboard is at home so I'll have to look it up later. But this review, forwarded
Conditions and the Taliban
I wrote: That the USSR had its own less than admirable reasons for going in is absolutely true, Charles Brown: What were those less than admirable reasons ? Seemed like they were defending a government like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Dos Santos government in Angola from US backed ,terrorist contras, i.e. counter-revolutionaries. = Mark Jones has written somewhere about the Soviet Union's strategic desire for access to the Indian Ocean. As you might expect oil has something to do with the story. Unfortunately I can't locate the specific post where he said this, but I'm sure he can be prompted into elaborating on it. This does not mean that ALL the USSR's reasons were less than admirable, of course. But it is something to consider. And even if we can agree that the USSR's motives were spotless, there is another, finer point regarding the efforts of the Soviet military to impose Najibullah's regime upon the whole of Afghanistan, and how this could possibly work in practice. I don't see Najibullah's regime in the same way as, say, the Sandinistas, or even Dos Santos, but for different reasons in each case. Nevertheless I've tried to make clear that Najibullah's position was undermined by the US, which prompted the USSR to intervene in the first place. And I think that the vast majority of Afghans were better off under Najibullah than under the successive regimes that followed (hardly difficult to prove). More information regarding the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan and the nature of the Afghan revolution and corresponding counter-revolutionaries is required before I would feel comfortable with using such terminology. But there's no doubt in my mind about the crucial role of US imperialism in all of this, nor that Najibullah's regime was the one to support. Michael K.
Strategy of tension
Bill Rosenberg writes: None of the New Zealand alerts have proved to have any basis. = As didn't those in Britain, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania (!), etc. The sudden, supposedly spontaneous outbreak of hoaxes involving talcum powder, baby milk, etc., is probably a mixture of genuine hoaxes and state mischief (no prizes for guessing which state). So much attention was paid to the threat of bioterrorism PRIOR to the flurry of hoaxes: newspapers and television paraded a succession of experts who, with great clarity, described how simple it would be to inflict panic upon vulnerable populations. In other words, every moron and his pet parrot had the opportunity to muse over the fun to be enjoyed frightening the life out of vast numbers of people. Meanwhile postal services have been described as a new front line against terrorism, thus legitimating state monitoring and interception of mail. And while this is going on governments are rushing to pass punitive legislation which is aimed at the hoaxers, should any of these ever be caught. The public assents because of the outrageousness of the crime, while it is manipulated into further unease regarding an unseen enemy called terrorism and achieves temporary catharsis by watching live pictures of Afghanistan being blown to smithereens. BTW, while it is quite plausible that far right militias in the US have been involved in the genuine cases of anthrax attacks, I was careful to refer to a wider category which encompasses these groups: right wing conspirators. These would also include elements of the US state apparatus and those with connections to such. The kind of people not overly concerned to capture Eric Rudolph and/or Army of God types who can accomplish state goals without adhering to the niceties of bourgeois liberal formality. Rather like the mercenaries hired by the Pentagon to do Uncle Sam's dirty work in places like Colombia, related in sufficiently chilling detail by Chalmers Johnson. Michael K.
New Labour's take on history
Nazi jibe fuels Labour dissent Lucy Ward, political correspondent Monday October 22, 2001 The Guardian Labour's backbench critics of the bombing of Afghanistan warned last night of hardening opposition to the military action after ministers compared outspoken anti-war MPs to appeasers of the Nazis. The armed forces minister Adam Ingram likened the terrorist evil that is stalking the world to Nazism and fascism, and suggested anti-war voices were giving terrorists succour and support. Mr Ingram issued his condemnation after Paul Marsden, the Labour MP for Shrewsbury Atcham, published his account of a fierce dressing-down he received from the government chief whip, Hilary Armstrong, for his opposition to the military campaign. Last night the government's determination to clamp down on dissidents appeared to have strengthened the resolution of opponents of the war to continue to speak out, with several predicting the reaction would harden attitudes. Alan Simpson, leading a Labour against the bombing group at Westminster, compared the attempts to curb criticism to a McCarthyite witchhunt, and the anti-bombing MP George Galloway, summoned to a meeting with Ms Armstrong tomorrow, pledged he would not be silenced. However, despite Mr Ingram's comments, the Labour leadership yesterday resisted the temptation to discipline or condemn Mr Marsden, a little-known MP who hitherto had not been seen as a member of the so-called awkward squad. Sources made it clear that the party was unwilling to create a martyr for the anti-war faction, and had decided to take a low-key approach to the MP's breach of convention by publicising a conversation with a whip. However, there were indications yesterday that the rumour mill was being used to discredit Mr Marsden, with suggestions that he was unpopular with fellow MPs and close to a breakdown. The small number of outspoken critics of the war, who believe that many fellow Labour MPs share their concerns but have either not dared or not wanted to express them, took Mr Ingram's comments, on Sky's Adam Boulton programme, as evidence the gov ernment was panicking over growing backbench unease. One backbencher said: When there is a lack of evidence in their arguments, this is what the government resorts to. The MP forecast concern would come into the open this week, centred on the issue of getting aid into Afghanistan. Mr Simpson said: To some extent the government nervousness and the language being used reflects concern about growing unease across the country about whether uncritical support for the war in Afghanistan is wise. While ministers may still be confident that support among Labour backbenchers will hold, they have clearly been rattled by the rebels' resistance to requests to keep quiet. According to Mr Marsden's account of his meeting with Ms Armstrong, published in the Mail on Sunday, the chief whip compared him to the appeasers of Hitler in 1938, and insisted that it was not a matter of conscience and therefore not a subject for a free vote. Yesterday the MP stood by his decision to go public, saying: It is about time we took a stand against this pathetic whipping system and tried to do something to reinvigorate our failing democracy. Many people are now pretty disillusioned with politicians and do not have much faith in them. He was backed by the veteran Labour MP and father of the house Tam Dalyell, who said: The long and short of it is that that Paul Marsden should not be left on his own to hang out to dry. There are many active members of the Labour party in the country that share Paul Marsden's general view. The row could blow up afresh tomorrow, when MPs will debate a Conservative motion, as yet unpublished, relating to the email sent by spin doctor Jo Moore saying the occasion of the World Trade Centre attack was a good time to bury unfavourable stories. The prime minister's official spokesman declined to comment on discussions between Mr Marsden and the chief whip, but said: It is a democracy and people are entitled to express their views. That is one thing that distinguishes us from some other countries, notably the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Generally, when people question what we are doing ... they should look at the image of those two planes flying into the twin towers and remember the mobile phone messages, and focus on the al-Qaida terrorists broadcasting in the last week, saying that they were prepared to do it again. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,578480,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Britain/US split?
Spot the contradictions in this. How compatible are Straw's four key principles? Interesting development of the UK's efforts to keep the initiative as regards the coalition agenda. = West must help rebuild 'failed states', says Straw Matthew Tempest, political correspondent Monday October 22, 2001 The Guardian The west's abandonment of Afghanistan allowed it to be hijacked by terrorist warlords such as Osama bin Laden, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said today. At a speech at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Mr Straw outlined a vision for failed states such as Afghanistan - to prevent them falling prey to terrorist leaders. He said: Terrorists are strongest where states are weakest. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida found safe havens in places not just in Afghanistan but where government and society have collapsed. Mr Straw is going to Washington later this week to discuss the crisis-torn country's prospects with the US secretary of state, Colin Powell. In his speech, Mr Straw outlined four key principles: · The future of Afghanistan should above all be in the hands of the people of Afghanistan · A global coalition is needed to rebuild Afghanistan · The UN should take the lead · The international coalition has to make a long-term commitment. Mr Straw added: Military action is not in itself a lonng-term answer but an essential first step in achieving our campaign aims. We are not going to predict how long military action will take but in time we need to be working out a robust plan for the future of Afghanistan. Britain is doing just that under the lead of the UN, the US, neighbours of Afghanistan, the EU and other states such as Turkey, which he visited last week, he told the IISS. Mr Straw has talked his vision through with Lakdhar Brahimi, the UN special envoy who is in dialogue with the different ethnic tribes in the north of Afghanistan. There is a need not only to root out the terrorist network but also to increase security at home, Mr Straw was adding, pointing out that making Afghanistan secure will safeguard the security of other nations, including Britain. Long before September 11, Bin Laden and al-Qaida hijacked Afghanistan and brought chaos to the country - on September 11, that chaos brought mass murder to New York, Mr Straw told an invited audience of experts in geo-politics. The west looked away from Afghanistan 10 to 15 years ago, now it is paying a heavy price for doing so, he added. Mr Straw was speaking after a meeting in Downing Street of the war cabinet, and as expectation grew that UK ground troops would be sent into Afghanistan soon. Mr Straw said in answer to a question at a press conference today that he could not speculate about the timing of a possible deployment of ground troops. It was not usual to announce military dispositions in advance, he said, adding: Of course there are circumstances where obviously the air action has to be supplemented by ground forces. Meanwhile, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, said British troops were ready to go into action in Afghanistan at very short notice, but insisted that no decisions had yet been taken on whether or when to deploy them. We have always said that British ground troops are an option. No specific decisions have been taken but clearly we are exploring all of the possibilities, he said. I'm not going to put a time-scale on that. We always have troops ready to go at very short notice, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. He acknowledged that the anti-terrorist coalition still did not know Osama bin Laden's location but added that a great deal of pressure was being brought to bear both on terror group leader and Afghanistan's Taliban regime, and would eventually mean Bin Laden would have nowhere left to hide. I believe we are a lot closer than we were two weeks ago, Mr Hoon said. The areas in which he can freely move are now distinctly limited. I am confident that in due course, either we will find him or someone else will give him up. It was too early in the military operation to expect the Taliban regime to collapse, but progress towards its overthrow could be expected soon, he said. He said: After a short period of military action, we do not expect the Taliban to give up overnight. Nevertheless, we do expect that the kind of pressure that's being brought to bear from the air strikes will have some results and we anticipate these results will come sooner rather than later. Decisions on how to conduct the campaign during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and the Afghan winter would be taken on military grounds, he added. Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,578584,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New Labour's take on democracy
with people like you is that you are so clever with words that us up north can't argue back. PM: Do you mind? I am a Northerner myself. I was born in Cheshire. I spent four years at Teesside Polytechnic near where you come from. HA: You do realise that everything that is said in here is private and confidential, don't you? You cannot go out and tell the media. PM: I haven't got the media outside and I won't go to them. But if they come to me I will talk to them. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,578379,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: Three paragraphs which condense it all
Forwarded by Nestor to the Marxism list, reply to follow: On May 1st., 1974, Perón delivered his last Presidential address to the Chambers. During this speech, he established which were his goals and the objectives that he set to his third term in government (unfortunately he was to die in a couple of months). In the afternoon, his speech to the masses at Plaza de Mayo had to be radically changed in view of the petty bourgeois provocation led by the Montoneros, so that it has little material of interest for those interested in understanding the kernel of Peronism. But these three paragraphs, extracted from his most interesting address to the Chambers, explains why the 1976 coup took place, and why can, say, Fidel resort to foreign capital and market measures without abandoning revolution. This aging bourgeois General, whose Movement was melting beneath his feet, was still decades ahead of many self-appointed Marxists who still believed that there was no difference between Henry Ford IV and the repair shop around the corner because both exploit wage earners. These three paragraphs are all that globalisation is against. I have made a fast translation, so that some hue may be wrongly placed. But read them and you will see how simple the whole thing is... *** THE ROLE OF FOREIGN CAPITAL Argentina has always been an open country for foreign participation; so shall we remain, but it is indispensable to discipline such participation, establishing where it can exist, and the role that it will have to fulfill in our social, political and economic life. No country is really free if it does not fully exert its right to make decissions regarding the exploitation, use and marketing of its resources, and regarding the employment of its productive factors. This is why it is necessary to define the rules of the game for the participation of foreign capital. Once these have been defined, we must ensure their stability and, basically, make sure that they will be followed. Economic progress will depend on our own effort only; thus, foreign capital will have to be understood as complementary and not as a determining and irreplaceable factor in our development. Juan Perón to the Argentinean Chambers, May 1st. 1974 [The answer came on March 24, 1976. The above was unacceptable.] Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Three paragraphs which condense it all
Nestor wrote: But these three paragraphs, extracted from his most interesting address to the Chambers, explains why the 1976 coup took place, and why can, say, Fidel resort to foreign capital and market measures without abandoning revolution. Etc. = Nestor, thanks for this. The restructuring of the global political economy that was conducted by the US at this time is certainly all the clearer for the snippets of information such as this that appear from time to time. My own research in this area concerns the IMF's intervention in Britain, also in 1976. Mark Jones has referred, correctly, to the pre-revolutionary situation that was emerging in Britain at this time. Together with uppity (i.e. independently minded and non-deferential towards the US) leaders like Willi Brandt and Gough Whitlam, Harold Wilson and Juan Peron join the ranks of those deposed for the sake of ensuring the occupancy of the US as global hegemon. The IMF's intervention in Britain is very interesting if one considers the impending flow of North Sea oil, and the impossibility of Britain not meeting its balance of payments commitments (a perennial problem gifted to the UK by the US as part of a process beginning with lend-lease under Roosevelt and developing thereafter, as currency crises were employed to keep primarily Labour governments in their place). It was during this period that US Treasury Secretary William Simon cooked up a deal with the Saudis whereby they would recycle their petroleum receipts in the US, thus getting the US out of an economic hole. Furthermore, the Saudis were persuaded to conduct oil trade in US dollars, thus granting the US valuable rights of seignorage. And it was the withdrawal of Saudi money that precipitated the plunge of sterling (the second reserve currency up to that point) that led to the IMF's intervention. Why did the IMF impose so harsh a settlement on Britain, a key US ally? Despite the efforts of Callaghan and Helmut Schmidt, West German Chancellor, Simon and his allies forced upon Britain a forerunner of Thatcherism that *added* to the cuts already proposed by Denis Healey and denied the UK all possibility of a non-IMF solution (i.e. continuing run on the pound unless conditionality met). And, of course, once the conditions were accepted, the UK's position recovered, and the crisis was over, such that the loan was actually never taken up. And the idea that it would have been necessary is ridiculous anyway, given the UK's apparently stellar prospect of an oil bonanza that promised to wipe out its balance of payments deficit and set it on a new path of greater independence re economic development. But there lies the rub: independence, and the contrary intentions of the US. Thanks to IMF conditionality (according to Leo Panitch, the prototype structural adjustment program), the British economy was made to scream (reminiscent of Kissinger's efforts to destabilise Allende in Chile) and so Callaghan's government went down in ignominy in 1979, to be followed by Thatcher, whose first act was... the immediate privatisation of UK oil assets. The British National Oil Corporation, painstakingly set up by Tony Benn as Energy Secretary in the previous government, became Britoil plc (later swallowed by the equally privatised British Petroleum), while Enterprise Oil (exploration) was also sold off. Suddenly sterling's status as a petrocurrency was recognised and the UK got a massive deflation that strangled UK manufacturing and placed the City and its Wall Street parents more firmly in control than ever before. There is a lot of detail missing from this account which can be filled in later, but this is the gist of it and more work needs to be done, not only on making sense of the British episode and all of its political and economic ramifications, but also of the wider context in which it took place, and the connections between these apparently separate events in Britain, Germany, Australia, Argentina, Chile, etc., and how these all lead back to Washington DC and New York. Michael Keaney
UK political realignment?
Tories axe right-wing group over race issue By Nigel Morris Political Correspondent The Independent, 19 October 2001 The hard-right Monday Club was suspended from the Conservative Party last night and told it would only be readmitted if it abandoned campaigning on immigration. David Davis, the party chairman, announced the tougher than expected move after a tense 80-minute meeting with officers of the organisation. He ordered the group to review its constitution to include a promise not to promulgate or discuss policies relating to race. Mr Davis also told it to expel members who champion racist opinions. Speaking outside Conservative Central Office, he said: Until we're satisfied with their response, the Monday Club is suspended from any association with the Conservative Party. He said that if the group was not prepared to amend its rules to make it unconstitutional for them to promulgate any policies on the question of immigration and race, its suspension would be made permanent. The showdown came after Viscount Massereene and Ferrand, its president, Lord Sudeley, its chairman, and Denis Walker, and Denis Walker, a member of the executive, were summoned into Central Office. The order means that the organisation will no longer be able to describe itself as the Conservative Monday Club. The newly elected Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has been dogged by reports of links between his leadership campaign and far-right groups. Just six weeks ago, before his election, Mr Duncan Smith described the Monday Club as a viable organisation with the party and they are, in a sense what the party is about. However, in a swift about-turn, three Conservative MPs, Andrew Hunter, Andrew Rosindell and Angela Watkins, were earlier this month instructed by the new leadership to sever their links with the Monday Club. Mr Hunter had been its deputy chairman and associate editor of its Right Now! magazine, which described Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. The Monday Club, set up 40 years ago to oppose liberal policies within the Tory party, has pursued strong anti-immigration views and as recently as six weeks ago, its website was backing financial assistance for repatriation. The view has since been excised from its list of policies. Mr Davis told Radio 4's PM programme: The Monday Club had a number of things on its website which we didn't like and reflected badly We want to clear this up once and for all. The suspension will cause tension in the party, both among grass-roots members and right-wing MPs who fear that Mr Duncan Smith's decision was driven by political correctness. However, he was urged by several senior colleagues, including David Willetts and Tim Yeo, to take decisive action as a first step towards reaching out to the political centre-ground. A Tory spokesman said there were no plans to extend the action to any other right-wing organisation affiliated to the party. The Labour chairman, Charles Clarke, said: The reality is that the Tories have lurched further and further to the right in recent years. They will be judged on their record, not their rhetoric. The move came hours after two MPs resigned from Mr Duncan Smith's frontbench team, just a month after being awarded their posts. Nick Gibb stood down as a spokesman on Transport, Local Government and the Regions to take up a seat on the Public Accounts Committee, while James Cran gave up his post as deputy to Eric Forth, the shadow Commons Leader. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=100273 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Strategy of tension
Hoaxers blamed for spate of alarms across Britain By Jason Bennetto Crime Correspondent The Independent, 19 October 2001 Suspected anthrax hoaxers who have posted packages containing harmless white powder are being investigated by anti-terrorist officers. Scotland Yard disclosed yesterday that a number of false alarms involving suspect packages were deliberate. A package addressed to Tony Blair, which caused disruption to Birmingham's postal service on Wednesday, was found to be a hoax. Scientific examination of the package found its contents of white powder to be harmless but the incident forced 600 workers to be evacuated from the city's main sorting office in Aston shortly after 7pm. Staff were alerted to the problem after white powder was spotted leaking from the package. Fifteen people taken to hospital as a precautionary measure. Police believe an envelope containing a harmless white powder sent to the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday was also a deliberate hoax. The discovery resulted in part of the exchange being sealed off and 13 people being put through decontamination procedures and issued with antibiotics. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, warned on Wednesday that he wanted to increase the maximum penalty for anthrax hoaxers wasting police time from six months' to seven years' imprisonment. He said: The actions of hoaxers are causing distress and perpetuating fear in communities around the country ... Hoaxes cause considerable upset and disruption as well as wasting the valuable time of police and emergency services. Britain continued to be hit by a series of anthrax scares yesterday including a passenger ferry that was evacuated after crew members found white powder on board. Dozens of passengers were taken off the PO ferry SL Aquitaine when it docked at Calais during the early hours. The alarm was raised after a small quantity of white powder was found in a passenger lounge. A PO spokeswoman said: A steward found the substance, which he suspected was baby milk. The ship's captain told French police and the fire brigade about the find and it was decided to take action. Six newspaper reporters were placed in isolation after a suspect package was delivered to the North West Evening Mail in Barrow, Cumbria, at 9am yesterday. The newspaper's offices have been closed while emergency services investigate. Firefighters, wearing germ-proof suits, decontaminated the interior of a book club in Swindon, Wiltshire, after workers discovered white powder hidden inside a book. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=100297 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Strategy of tension
Anthrax scares hit postal centers in New Zealand and Australia Associated Press The Independent, 17 October 2001 Fresh anthrax alerts hit postal centers in New Zealand and Australia , forcing their closure after workers found mail carrying unidentified white powder. Staff at the South Auckland mail center in the city's Manukau suburb were evacuated when a worker noticed white powder on her hands. Ambulance spokesman Murray Bannister said the woman and one other person were taken to hospital for observation, and 30 workers were decontaminated in showers. The powder was being tested, he said. At the rural town of Linton, near an army camp and 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of the capital, Wellington, the post office was closed and secured by emergency services after a similar white powder alert. The two scares followed the closure Tuesday of a post office in the rural township of Eltham, with the discovery of a parcel containing a yellowish powder. Police said Wednesday the mail delivery center has reopened after initial analysis suggested anthrax was not contained in the mystery substance. Later Wednesday, police issued a nationwide public warning for people to use care when handling mail. Detective Superintendent Peter Marshall said there was no suggestion of a biochemical threat against New Zealand, but people needed to be careful in the current environment. Anyone may be exposed to a suspicious piece of mail at work or at home, Marshall said in a statement. In Australia, the main mail exchange in the southern city of Adelaide was evacuated overnight after a worker found white powder inside a mail bag. Metropolitan Fire Service spokesman Bill Dwyer said the Adelaide Exchange was evacuated and 73 workers were given nasal swabs as a precaution to check for anthrax contamination. The powder was removed for analysis. Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday promised tougher penalties of up to 10 years in jail for people behind the continuing spate of anthrax hoaxes that has forced building evacuations in several states. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/story.jsp?story=99932 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
A pattern emerges?
Government retreats from privatising Hackney schools Peter Hetherington and Rebecca Smithers Thursday October 18, 2001 The Guardian The government yesterday pulled back from privatising schools in the troubled London borough of Hackney and instead decided to hand over education to an independent non-profit trust in an attempt to improve standards. With Labour-run Hackney facing a takeover of other key services and under a deadline to produce a budget strategy by the end of November, the Department of Education has agreed with the authority to transfer its 70 schools to the trust by next August. With an independent chairperson and a board of officials from the borough, councillors, a headteacher, a chair of governors and other local stakeholders, it will assume a £106m annual budget and responsibility for 28,000 pupils. The move was made as Liverpool, once labelled England's most troubled council, claimed it was to begin the biggest schools building programme in the country under a £300m deal with the private sector. Liverpool said 15 schools would be built, and three others overhauled, under a deal with the firm Jarvis, covering the largest number of schools in any programme under the private finance initiative. Jarvis will also maintain and cater for the schools over a 30 year contract. The school standards minister, Stephen Timms, said the new education trust in Hackney, the first of its kind in the country, would maintain local accountability and work to improve standards. But he acknowledged a considerable amount of work had to be done in a short period. Last week the local government minister, Stephen Byers, invoked new powers warning the council that other services, from housing benefit to waste management and social care, faced a Whitehall takeover unless they improved. The council, poisoned by infighting and mismanagement during previous regimes, could face a deficit of between £12.8m and £21m by the end of the financial year, making it theoretically bankrupt unless action is taken. It may need government permission to borrow an extra £20m this year. Some of the borough's problems stem from a disastrous privatisation experiment when the council's housing benefit service was handed to a private contractor. It has been brought back in-house. Accumulated deficits in a benefits backlog and low council tax recovery run into tens of millions. The new trust will be self-standing, incorporated as a company, limited by guarantee, and contracted to Hackney council, which will have to pay for its services. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,576107,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Backtrack: view from the City
the Treasury, has inflicted huge damage on the government's relations with the City. The trust essential to good working between the two has been seriously compromised. The political risks in Britain are higher this week than in Uzbekistan, said one investment banker - and he was only half joking. As a result, the cost of raising equity and debt capital for entities dependent on government backing, or regulated by the state, will rise significantly. Public-private partnerships will continue, but they will be more expensive to fund, and private sector partners, already questioning the return on some projects, may be thinner on the ground. All this is a high price to establish a successor to Railtrack that seems no likelier than it to solve the chronic problems of the railway infrastructure. It will be a curious beast, a so-called company limited by guarantee sitting in the private sector but with no shareholders. All its profits will be ploughed back into the business and its board will be made up of stakeholders in the rail network, such as train operating companies, unions and passenger groups. It is a form of enterprise that is used to run housing trusts and is the kind of capitalism that appeals to liberal intellectuals with no real knowledge of how big business works. It hardly seems appropriate for a company of the size and complexity of Railtrack. The composition of its board seems a recipe for squabbling and inaction; and it is hard to see the bond market funding its activities, as the government wants, without explicit state guarantees. There is a case for Railtrack being renationalised, thanks to its dismal record, its constant harassing by regulators, and the fact that in this industry risk transfer from the public to private sector has ultimately been limited. But the government should have done so cleanly, not with this ill-conceived, underhand, disastrously executed mess. Full article at: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=Viewc=Articlecid=FT3VDX1BQSC live=trueuseoverridetemplate=FTD1OUN2DNCSectionTag=na/columnPageTag= 2comadiimgID=FTDI5SQBONC Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Backtrack: view from the City
at the beginning of the first New Labour term when in July 1997 Gordon Brown, the finance minister, abolished the tax relief enjoyed by pension funds on UK dividend income. The consequences of this were obscured by the developing stock-market bubble at the time. But now pension funds are grappling with the impact on their solvency of zero returns on UK equities (by far their biggest asset class) over the past three years. And the profitability of British companies (ignoring the North Sea oil producers benefiting from a high crude price) slipped in the second quarter of 2001 to the lowest level since the squeeze of the early 1990s. Private companies need to make profits and pay dividends to their shareholders. The Treasury still does not appear to understand this. The Railtrack collapse has the unfortunate effect of raising risk perception at a time when the cyclical dangers are already high. Stephen Byers's alternative New Railtrack, a not-for-profit enterprise limited by guarantee, but not apparently underwritten by the Treasury, fails to make any financial or commercial sense on a scale required to run a national rail network. Now the German bank WestLB has been tempted to step into the vacuum. An immediate consequence of the Railtrack fiasco is that the cost of capital for other utilities has risen. If these erratic policies are pursued it is not only Railtrack that will come off the rails. Full article at: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=Viewc=Articlecid=FT35PHM3QSC live=trueuseoverridetemplate=FTD1OUN2DNCSectionTag=na/columnPageTag= 2cobariimgID=FTDVQRKBONC Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Stiglitz
Penners While agreeing wholeheartedly with Mat Forstater that Stiglitz's textbook is a mess (and John Driffill's UK-adaptations are laden with inaccuracies, BTW), it is interesting to note how he is portrayed in the mainstream press. Here, for example, is the FT's pisspoor Observer diarist: OBSERVER: Economist is no diplomat Financial Times; Oct 11, 2001 The news that Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist, has been named joint winner of the Nobel prize for economics, will doubtless evoke some less-than-fond recollections at the International Monetary Fund and among former colleagues in the Clinton administration. Although none would question Stiglitz's brilliance as an economist or begrudge him the top honour, few among the policymaking establishment were left unscarred by the bruising campaigns of self-promotion he waged while holding high-profile roles in Washington at the end of the 1990s. As chief economist of the World Bank during the Asian financial crisis, he infuriated colleagues at the IMF and the US Treasury with his repeated attacks on IMF programmes and the entire culture of the institution. His attitude to the IMF was summed up when he was once asked about the value of the fund's Article IV consultations - economic reports on member countries carried out in consultation with the policymaking authorities that often have highly negative consequences for less developed countries. Most countries unfortunately don't have the facility that we in the US have when we receive the Article IV report, of picking it up, saying 'thank you very much' and dropping it straight in the garbage can, declared Stiglitz. Another time he criticised the IMF's handling of the Asian crisis, describing its policy prescriptions - including its push for higher interest rates - as bad psychology and worse economics. His opposite number at the IMF, Michael Mussa, returned the compliment in kind. Those who argue that monetary policy should have been eased rather than tightened are smoking something that is not entirely legal, snapped Mussa. == This isn't such a bad story, however: As chairman of President Bill Clinton's council of economic advisers, he once unofficially calculated the misery index - the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate - for the US during the term of every chairman of the CEA back to the 1960s. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he discovered that the index was at its lowest (minimum misery) during his own tenure in 1995-97. But his most important finding, to his evident glee, was that the index reached its peak (maximum misery) during the presidency of Gerald Ford - when the CEA was headed by none other than Alan Greenspan. Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
International civil society
Penners The post-presidential roles performed by ex-Finnish head of state Martti Ahtisaari have been discussed here before, mostly in connection with the International Crisis Group, co-headed up by ex-Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans. Another outfit Ahtisaari has got himself involved with on a collaborative leadership basis is the East West Institute, which exists to defuse tensions and conflicts which threaten geopolitical stability while promoting democracy, free enterprise and prosperity in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and other states of Eurasia. It was founded in 1981. Overlapping with the Trilateral Commission in terms of personnel and goals, among the superstars featured on its board of directors is John Edwin Mroz, President and Founder; Thorvald Stoltenberg (ex-UN Bosnia person and Trilateralist, as indeed were all UN Bosnia persons -- is he any relation to outgoing Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg?), Joseph Nye (Kennedy School of Government, see posts passim, and neoliberal international relations theorist), Jacques de Larosiere, Rita Süssmuth, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher. No doubt this forum will be stepping up a gear in the months to come. You can check out its site at http://www.iews.org./ Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Capitalism fails conservatives
Solid foundation is needed to withstand shaky times The Freedom Forum's strategy worked well in the bull market but has since suffered. Financial Times, Oct 4, 2001 By ROBERT CLOW The Freedom Forum, an Arlington, Virginia-based foundation, thought it was being pretty conservative putting most of its assets in Standard Poor's 500 stocks. For a while, the strategy worked well. The Freedom Forum has had a return of more than 10 per cent a year on its portfolio since it was founded in 1991. But earlier this week the foundation announced it was laying off staff and pulling back from its international commitments in London, Johannesburg, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. The reason was that the Freedom Forum's investment portfolio has declined in value from Dollars 1bn to Dollars 700m over the past two years. The foundation was not prepared for the US stock market to decline for two successive years, said Charles Overby, Freedom Forum's chairman. We were prepared for a 10 per cent drop and then coming back a bit, he said, adding that there had been only four back-to-back decreases in the whole of the 20th century. The Freedom Forum is an international foundation devoted to free speech and free press. It was founded by Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today and former chief executive officer of Gannett Co as the successor to a foundation formed in 1935 by the newspaper publisher Frank Gannett. Mr Overby is optimistic about the future of the Freedom Forum's finances. I am confident the market will come back, he said. But he said that one possible lesson of the Freedom Forum's setback for other foundations might be: Don't expect to operate at the peak of the stock market forever. Todd Petzel, chief investment officer of the Commonfund, a foundation and investment adviser to other foundations, puts things rather differently. I think when they are building their portfolio they should think about their downside, he argued. He said that some of the more sophisticated foundations ask themselves how many bonds should they buy to insure a steady income stream through four down years of equity returns. The Freedom Forum's problems point to two major lessons for foundations, Mr Petzel suggested. In the last two years what you saw was people who had thoughtfully put money aside in defensive strategies got a little bit of a cushion, he noted. The Commonfund and many other foundations invest in hedge funds, real estate and private equity as non-correlated assets that ought to provide a cushion against an equity market downturn. Of the Freedom Forum, Mr Petzel said: They just did not have any shock absorbers. The second lesson, he argued, was that foundations should rebalance their portfolios back to their original asset allocation. Many foundations saw equities swell as a proportion of their total assets as the stock market rose, while bonds and other investments fell by comparison. Those investors who made an effort to sell equities and buy more bonds as the bull market progressed will not have lost so much. Preserving and protecting a steady cash flow is all the more important if a foundation has long-term commitments, as the Freedom Forum did. The Forum could arguably have provided better for those operations by owning more bonds, which would have provided a steady income stream. Many of the foundations that took more defensive positions during the bull market are buying stocks now to take advantage of their low valuations, Mr Petzel said. Mr Overby said that the Forum's investment strategy would probably remain largely the same. There certainly is no single investment strategy that is a cure for all your investment needs, said Mr Petzel, but he still argued for a diversified approach. If (investors) have assumed that the market is going to bounce back, I think they have got to ask the question, what if it does not? Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 1004002133 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Shareholder value vs. corporate governance
Bondholders in US company try to block takeover Financial Times, Oct 3, 2001 By ROBERT CLOW Bondholders in a US packaging company have filed a suit to block its acquisition by a US rival in a case that could prove an important test of US bankruptcy law. Under the terms of Temple-Inland's Dollars 786m (Pounds 671m) offer for Gaylord Container, the target's equity holders would get Dollars 100m, but holders of its senior debt would get only 73.5 per cent of the face value. Bondholders argue that the deal could turn US companies' capital structure on its head. In a corporate insolvency, shareholders are normally paid nothing until bondholders have their obligations satisfied in full. This puts an equity holder at the top of the capital structure and senior debt at the bottom, said Wilbur Ross, the veteran bankruptcy specialist, who manages the two hedge funds which are suing Gaylord and Temple-Inland. State Street Bank Trust Company and Fleet National Bank are also named in the suit as trustees of Gaylord's debt. The legal tussle could have broader implications for US mergers and acquisitions advisers who have been looking for ways to buy companies without paying the full price for debt trading at below face value. Mr Ross said that the bonds had change of control provisions, obliging Gaylord to buy them back at more than par if the company was taken over. By putting Gaylord's equity holders ahead of its senior debtholders the deal threatens one of the cornerstones of US insolvency law. In US corporate insolvency, equity holders interests are always subordinated to holders of bank debt and subordinated notes. Mr Ross and other bondholders could block the deal simply by not tendering their notes. Temple-Inland's offer does not become effective unless 90 per cent of the notes are tendered. But, in that event, Gaylord has agreed to pay Temple-Inland a Dollars 20m break-up fee, as well as covering its expenses. Payment of that Dollars 20m fee would reduce the cash available to pay the company's bondholders. Mr Ross's funds are attempting to have that break-up fee set aside too, arguing that it is fraudulent for a company which has already been declared in default of its debt by Moody's Investor Service to agree to make that payment. Temple-Inland and Gaylord declined to comment. Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 1003001991 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New economy bull
. It is worth pointing out that UK pension funds often used peer group benchmarks, rather than market index ones, in the 1990s. This enabled them, as a group, to back away from an increasingly overpriced Wall Street. But they remained highly exposed to equity risk through their core equity holdings in the UK and continental Europe. Defining risk as short-term volatility against an index has proved to be a trap. The index providers, including MSCI, FTSE and Dow Jones Stoxx, have brought in measures to correct the free float distortions. But there is a basic flaw in the use of capitalisation-weighted indices to define risk: it attracts fund managers towards expensive stocks and encourages them to maintain low exposures to cheap ones. The control of absolute risk, and the establishment of strategies in the light of very long-run historical returns on different asset classes, would help to avoid similar upsets in the future. But then, the rationality of financial markets in the short term has always been suspect, whatever the modern Nobel prize-winning generation of market theorists has postulated. Full article at: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=Viewc=Articlecid=FT34WZHVESC live=trueuseoverridetemplate=IXL8L4VRRBCtagid=IXLUCLOJQBC Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Informed opinion?
Dove and hawk strategy to topple Taliban FRED HALLIDAY The Herald, 4 October 2001 MUCH is made of the record of the Afghans in fighting invading enemies, the British on three occasions in colonial times, the Russians in the 1980s. The terrain in Afghanistan is rugged, there are men prepared to fight and die, the intelligence available on the country is exiguous. But Afghanistan today is not the country it was two decades or a century ago: the society, and the tribal, ethnic, and religious structures that sustained past resistance, has been pulverised. The Taliban is a group of at most 40,000 armed men, with rudimentary weapons, which has been unable to prosecute the war against its Northern Alliance opponents. Its increased reliance on foreign volunteers explains some of its recent actions: the publicity stunt of blowing up the Buddhist statues (a response, it was claimed by some, to an international Buddhist conspiracy orchestrated by Japan to arm opposition groups inside Af-ghanistan); the increasing use of militants from Pakistan; the recent appointment of Juma Namangoni, the head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, as a senior commander of Taliban forces, with 9000 men under his control. By all accounts, Afghanistan is a society with little capacity to resist and where many people would be glad to see the end of the Taliban. A purely military action by the US would provoke resentment, and resistance. An initiative that combined military action against the Taliban forces, and its al Qaeda allies, with a humanitarian and political initiative, would stand much more chance of success. Many attempts to bring peace, and compromise, to Afghanistan have failed over the past 15 years: amidst the despair of the present situation, there may be a better chance. An opportunity for diplomatic action, linked to military intervention, may be present. The international authority, and framework, for such a solution already exists, in the resolutions of the UN Security Council which, in 1997, set up the 6+2 process: in this, the six neighbouring countries (Pakistan, Iran, Turmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China) plus Russia and the US have met to discuss the formation of a coalition government, the establishment of the context for a substantial international programme of humanitarian aid and reconstruction, the termination of the drugs trade, and the ending of arms flows into and out of Afghanistan. At one point, in Tashkent in July 1999, they even got the Taliban and the Northern Alliance to sit at the same table. The problems up to now have been twofold: one, the Taliban has refused to compromise with the Northern Alliance, the force that is still recognised by most of the world as the legitimate government of Afghanistan; two, the outside states have not found common ground - Pakistan has resisted any attempts to change its support for the Taliban, and the Americans and the Iranians have found that their other differences prevent any co-operation in the context of 6+2. The first of these obstacles may, in one way or another, cease to apply in the weeks or months ahead. While the Northern Alliance, under its new leader General Fahim, a more able politician than Ahmad Shah Masud, may be a significant military force in part of the country, it will need to find allies from other parts of the country to form a credible state that the outside world can assist. The second obstacle shows little sign of eroding: Washington seems to believe it can conduct whatever operations it envisages in Afghanistan, as against Iraq, without the help of Iran. The Iranians, as on so many issues, are divided. This is, however, an opportunity to get to the heart of the instability in West Asia that has its roots in Afghanistan and in the destructive rivalry of the states surrounding it. It is an opportunity that has not existed these two decades past, and may not easily recur. Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and the author of The World at 2000 Full article at: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/4-10-19101-1-4-26.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Very informed opinion
the banner of Iain Duncan Smith. How much simpler it would have been if Ken Clarke had won the leadership! The Tories could then have been pushed away from officially running the campaign. With all the top political brass on the Yes side, their opponents would plausibly look for the Danish effect: making the referendum a fight between the people and the politicians, which the people might win. Instead, it will be impossible to stop Mr Duncan Smith and his band of Europhobes and exiteers from personifying what it means to vote against the euro. The more fastidious No-folk will be chained to a leader they would prefer to have no part of. The referendum will no longer be about keeping the euro out of Britain but keeping Britain inside Europe, a question to which the people are unlikely to deny Mr Blair the answer he wants. This change in the politics is not conclusive. Oddly, it will focus more attention on the economics. The politics of entry are now so favourable that the famous five tests become a matter of more pressing interest than they were. It was always apparent, within the Blair-Brown jockeying, that the tests would be preceded by a political judgment as to which result the government wanted. They still will be. And the Treasury will not be alone in the laboratory: the prime minister will also be among the white coats. The recession, which President Bush himself has now authenticated, will cut both ways: perhaps good for currency convergence, less good for cyclical convergence, less good again for confidence. It remains a possibility that, though all the political factors are now aligned, a recession-hit public will not be ready for a big economic adventure. It's also possible that the anti-terror campaign will be slow to yield a spectacular result. The rhetorical ardour Mr Blair draws out of it, and would apply to every other problem that afflicts the world, may be forcibly tamed by events. Equally on the other side: if Bin Laden is yielded up, Washington's hawks may demand to press the military campaign too wide for the European, let alone the world, coalition to be sustained. There's much that could go wrong. Meanwhile, though, the prime minister this week led the British into thinking big. He sees the Taliban and its cruelties as an occasion for moral aggression and political advance. He urges us to look beyond the edges of our island, and consider how trifling, in the scheme of things, is the matter of the currency. This will make sense to more people, in these new times. Whatever else, we can say the pro-euro campaign has begun, out of the mouth of the man who saw his chance to make it start to sing. Full article at: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,562987,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The superiority of Western civilisation
Penners Fresh from helping Silvio Berlusconi win the Italian elections, and, indeed, helping Iain Duncan Smith win his election, our redoubtable leaderene once more steps into the breach, utterly unaware of the pronouncements of Colonel Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Yasser Arafat, Pervez Musharraf, etc., etc... Muslim leaders condemn Thatcher attack Rebecca Allison Thursday October 4, 2001 The Guardian Lady Thatcher yesterday made her first contribution to the debate on terrorism, criticising Muslim leaders for failing to speak out against the September 11 atrocities. Her comments immediately sparked outrage. On the day that the home secretary David Blunkett announced new measures to combat anti-Muslim hate crimes, which have risen in the wake of the attacks on America, the former Tory leader told the Times: The people who brought down those towers were Muslims and Muslims must stand up and say that is not the way of Islam. They must say that it is disgraceful. I have not heard enough condemnation from Muslim priests. Lady Thatcher's comments were described as inflammatory and ill-informed by members of the Muslim community in Britain. Sher Azam, president of the Bradford Council of Mosques, said: I am not aware of any Muslim leaders in Britain who did not condemn this attack. Many Muslim lives have been lost in America. It is very sad that Baroness Thatcher has made Muslims a target at a time when the home secretary has given us comfort by announcing legislation against religious hatred. British Muslims need her sympathies at such a time. Innocent people here are being verbally abused and physically attacked. Ministers have been alarmed by a sharp upsurge in the incidence of racist attacks on Muslims in Britain since September 11. Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parlia ment, said: I am very sad and surprised that she has said this sort of thing. Coming from a person like Baroness Thatcher it is very hurtful. People need to know that out of over 6,000 people who died in this terrible incident, over 1,500 of them were Muslims. The Muslim community has had to suffer twice - once when someone dear to them died, the second time when people say things like this. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,563083,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Die Neue Mitte
but are playing them very well. Diplomats pointed to the EU's offer on consultation over its new defence initiative as an example of the new climate producing an arrangement more favourable to Russia than had been envisaged before 11 September. Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said the offer of talks at least once a month with the EU's political and security committee was an important step towards creating a permanently functioning mechanism for the future. Dialogue, he added, would be across a broad range of issues including terrorism, drug trafficking, and organised crime as well as peace-keeping and emergency situations. The Russian President's contribution was generally welcomed by Nato officials. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=97632 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New economy bull
like to think that all their troubles stem from the tyranny of the inventory cycle. This year's lesson is twofold: escaping from it is harder than you think; and it may not do you much good, anyway. Just ask an airline boss. * Why Cisco Fell: Outsourcing and its Perils, by Lakenan, Boyd and Frey, Strategy Business, Q3 2001. www.strategy-business.com Full article at: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=Viewc=Articlecid=FT3PU0FJ0SC live=true Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Britain/US split
[was Very informed opinion] Carl Remick writes of Hugo Young: What a carnival of conflation this column is. It seems to me that it's the UK, not Europe, that feels such a desperate need to mean something ... to matter to itself. = It's merely a reflection of the carnival of conflation that is current British policy, given the tectonic shift that Blair and the permanent government are trying to accomplish. They have to overcome a sustained anti-European campaign which has been fostered by press barons like Murdoch, Black and Rothermere and overlaps with some fairly nasty nativist elements that are evermore prominent in the Conservative Party itself as punk Thatcherism takes hold. Then there is the messiah complex that has been gifted to Britain by Thatcher herself, who never ceased to tell us how she made Britain grate again (sic). Handbagging all and sundry to prove her point macho-style, her successors look wimpish by comparison if they don't adopt similarly grandstanding presentation techniques, and that wimpishness is ruthlessly exploited by the rightwing press. Hence Major's impossible position and the gradual collapse of the Conservative Party as was (beginning in 1985 with the Westland affair, but perhaps even pre-dating that with the departures of Ian Gilmour and Peter Carrington from the first Thatcher administration), which all stems from the problematic relationship that Britain has had with Europe. Blair wants to go into Europe wholescale, as do his permanent government backers, but if he is to do it all, then it must be in a position of leadership. Anything less would represent, and be portrayed as, a betrayal, a loss of national sovereignty, a humiliating capitulation to a bunch of foreign language speaking funny food eating barbarians who had to be saved twice in one century by the noble citizens of Blighty, etc. Pathetic it is, but utterly real nonetheless. But the mechanisms of Europe represent a chance for British leadership to be realised, as the French had proved up until 1995, effectively around the suicide of Pierre Beregovoy. The vacuum has been filled by an Anglo-German axis and some useful ad-hoccery in addition, such as tactical alliances between Blair and Aznar. The loss of Third Way Italy (D'Alema, Dini, et al) to Berlusconi propels Sweden into a frontline position in a triadic alliance that is attempting to steer European integration in a certain way, euphemistically called modernisation and mediated through official bodies such as the European Commission (headed up by another Italian Third Wayer, Romano Prodi, together with his deputy and Blair's predecessor as moderniser of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock). The French are utterly lost at the moment, as they no longer have control of Europe, and find that the roles have been reversed in the Franco-German relationship that once defined the whole enterprise. Meanwhile elements within the US have decided that European integration is actually too troublesome, given the EU's pull re trade and anti-trust, and even given a doctrinaire, if awfully simplistic, equation of European Third Wayism with socialism. Previous posts here have highlighted the support given to punk Thatcherites by outfits like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and even by Donald Rumsfeld himself, who met Iain Duncan Smith (when he was hardly heard of) before meeting his official British counterpart Geoff Hoon, thanks apparently to the machinations of Thatcher herself. So there's plenty at stake here, and what may appear to be conflation is in fact a very complex situation with differing degrees of determination that require careful analysis and some knowledge of the historical background. Hugo Young is certainly well-equipped in that respect, given his privileged position professionally and politically speaking. Many speculations forwarded here by me, Mark Jones and others have later seen the light of day in Young's columns or elsewhere in the Third Way Guardian, which is the main press instrument of the New Labour government as it seeks to steer Britain Europe-ward and *away* from its traditional subservient role vis a vis the United States. Chris Burford's repeated points about Foreign Office personnel's attitudes towards the US are similarly spot-on, and are reflected, for instance, in the longstanding problematic relationship that Britain enjoys with Israel, given the annoying habit that Foreign Office personnel have of raising the appalling conditions inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israeli occupying forces (e.g. David Mellor, Robin Cook and now Jack Straw), stemming in large part from Britain's former role as the colonial power there and the manner of its ejection. Michael K.
'globalisation' of beaks and peepers
Rob on a BBC experts panel: Globalisation they called this self-loathing self-butchering. Look how it's allowing those poor maligned Eurasians back in from the cold, they trumpeted. Suddenly they're trendy! Well, yeah, that's good, natch. But not even a hint of irony as Mr Brit Reporter, Ms Japanese beautician, and Mr American expert called it stuff like successful marketing in the age of globalisation. To none of them apparently, had it occurred that hordes of Caucasian nymphs are not lining up to have folds taken out of their eyelids and points taken off their noses ... = Is this not exactly the same sort of crap peddled by Thomas Friedman, NY Times super-pimp (copyright L. Proyect)? It's gonna be even more grist to the mill for a resurgent Japanese right. Michael K.
The Guardian and MI5
Jim D. reasonably asks: Michael, shouldn't it be basic that we should distrust all of the bourgeois media -- not just the GUARDIAN -- because they have clear bourgeois biases, including favoring the national security state, etc.? Even though the New York TIMES doesn't seem to be connected with the CIA, I am very careful with what I believe in their stories. = Yes, absolutely right. The UK press generally serves a much more unified market which can be segmented according to politics and again according to presumed degree of affluence/education, giving highbrow rightwing crap, middlebrow rightwing crap, lowbrow, etc. The Guardian has traditionally occupied the left, and has been put to use in various ways over the last 30 years, not least in helping to hobble Wilson/Callaghan/Foot Labour, supporting the breakaway Gaitskellite successor SDP, and ushering in the New Labour ascendancy. An analogous job to the dishing Labour from the left tactic is being accomplished now by the Daily Telegraph, which is more likely to complain of the Conservative Party selling out, and thus support every idiot punk Thatcherite who declares loyalty to the cause. A while back I deliberately inserted the mischievous little paragraph from Private Eye noting Telegraph editor Charles Moore's sighted exit from MI5 HQ. Given Britain's smaller size and historically more unified news media space, it's a very cosy club indeed. This means all newspapers are ripe for manipulation, overt and covert. It also means that information, however partial or distorted, can inadvertently leak out from time to time, especially when different branches of the secret state are conducting their own turf wars, as with the long tussle between MI5 and MI6, and even between different wings of MI5 itself. I suppose picking on the Guardian goes back to a point raised by Michael P. back in March/April or thereabouts, when he queried why it was that a significant proportion of forwarded news articles are from the Guardian. This got us into the merits of that specific paper, and on to Mark Jones' point about the historic relationship between the Guardian and the intelligence services, followed by Michael Pugliese's interventions, followed by my own research into the British state following the IMF UK 1976 episode, etc. There are people here who are on record as praising the reliability of the Guardian, and it maybe needs to be reiterated just how questionable that particular source really is, for all its housing of worthy social democrats over the years(e.g. Roy Hattersley), and even the odd radical (Paul Foot, Mark Steel - now at the Independent, Gary Younge, Seumas Milne). There are still plenty of Polly Toynbees, Jonathan Freedlands, Martin Kettles, Peter Prestons, Matthew Engels to keep the liberal intelligentsia happy. (But far better is the Tory Geoffrey Wheatcroft.) The image of the Guardian as hammer of the right is helped by its recent history of bringing down various Conservative Party Ministers, including Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken. But the related point made by Mark Jones regarding the realignment of the permanent government towards New Labour and away from the increasingly unstable and unpredictable Conservatives, riven with factions and infighting thanks to the punk Thatcherites, adds a different gloss to the apparently laudable conduct of the Guardian as a haven of campaigning journalism. The Guardian also got in on the stop Portillo campaign, playing a bit part to the major roles taken by both Telegraph titles, whose own contributions were so clearly orchestrated to produce a wholly predictable outcome (Thatcher denying all support for Portillo just prior to the crucial MPs' vote) show that security service mischief-making is far from over in the British news media. You continue: BTW, traditionally the CIA was the liberal spy agency in the US (compared to the FBI). Its agents were sophisticated Ivy League types who hobnobbed with (and corrupted) liberals, social democrats, and laborites. The CIA traditionally embraced a more long-term and enlightened perspective than the FBI. Is the MI5 the same way? If so, one can learn something from them (and their allies in the media) while being extremely careful not to believe everything they say. = There is no doubt that MI5 has housed some seriously reactionary types over the years, too extreme even for many colleagues. MI6 has its own horrible history, laid out in detail by Stephen Dorril in his recent book, but, yes, if one can make comparisons then MI6 would be analogous to your characterisation of the CIA. Particularly in Northern Ireland, MI6 comes out rather well compared to the ruthlessness which characterised MI5 operations there, and which contributed to many civilian deaths and subverted whatever minimal norms of bourgeois liberal democracy remained. As Peter Taylor revealed in his Brits series and book, it was via MI6 that Mrs Thatcher broke her vow and talked to
War on drugs
Penners More evidence of the need for concerted Western intervention in the former Soviet republics bordering Afghanistan, begging the question, how, if ever, will these countries rid themselves of US/NATO forces once these have arrived? Experts back startling heroin claims Alan Travis, home affairs editor Wednesday October 3, 2001 The Guardian The prime minister's startling claim yesterday that 90% of the heroin sold on British streets comes from Afghanistan was backed up last night by experts in the drug trade and radical law reformers. The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets, said Tony Blair. That is another part of their regime that we should seek to destroy. Afghanistan's world domination in the heroin trade stems from a record crop of 4,600 tons in 1999. All the information coming from intelligence sources and customs and excise suggest that it really is true, said Roger Howard, chief executive of the drug information charity, Drugscope. They had absolutely ideal growing conditions that year and the amount they produced was 75% of the entire world production for that year. A good 90% of the heroin in the UK comes from Afghanistan. It may be more, he said. Last year, a Taliban edict banned the growing of opium poppies and UN observers reported that by earlier this year the crop had been practically wiped out. In response, several western countries, including Britain, pledged aid to destitute Afghan farmers during the summer. But the Home Office said last night that large stockpiles of the 1999 crop ensured supplies to the British market and street prices have remained stable. It is officially estimated that there are some 270,000 heroin users in Britain consuming about 30 tons a year with a street value of £2.3bn. The Taliban is not the recipient of all this money, but it is an important link in the chain of production. The farmers sell to traders, believed to include Taliban leaders and commanders as well as Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani traders. Most of the crop production is centred around the Taliban controlled area of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, but there is also some also in areas controlled by the opposition Northern Alliance. A home Office spokesman said there were reports that the price of opium on the Afghan-Pakistan border has dropped by 80% in the last three weeks from £460 a kilo to £100 a kilo raising fears of a flood of heroin to the west. People who are stockpiling it are offloading their supplies probably in anticipation of the developments that are to take place and to raise money for arms supplies, he said. But we do not believe the UK is about to be flooded with cheap heroin because we have a steady supply and a steady street price. Tamara Makarenko, a Glamorgan University criminologist who has studied the world heroin trade, said that according to statistics from the UN drugs control programme, heroin production increased by 100% between 1988 and 1991 to 2,000 tons and then expanded to the bumper harvest of 4,600 tons in 1999. By the end of 1999 Afghanistan was said to produce 75% of the global supply of opium, from which 80% of global heroin was produced. This big stockpile drove the traffickers to find new routes and by the end of last year only 20%-30% was going to Europe by the usual Iranian-Turkish route. Last year some 40 Iranian border guards died trying to combat the Afghan drug trade. Ms Makarenko says the Afghan and Pakistani traders have found a new northern route through the old Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and through Russia. Roger Howard of Drugscope said this heroin had found a ready market in Britain where the age of first use is coming down as teenagers smoke the drug. It carries less of the junkie stigma that scared previous generations: teenagers are progressing to heroin much more quickly. Last night the home secretary, David Blunkett, talked down fears of British streets being flooded by cheap Afghan heroin being sold on the world market to raise funds for arms. He said the street price of heroin had not risen when the Taliban banned production and he did not believe that it would be in cheap supply if they now started actively selling off stocks. The government's efforts to tackle the Afghan drug trade include a five-year strategy to try to see that new entrants to the European Union have effect controls on their external borders. This policy is aimed principally at Turkey, traditionally the site of the heroin factories where raw opium is turned into heroin. But Tamara Makarenko's warnings that the traffickers have opened a new northern route through the old Soviet republics may mean a new strategy is called for. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,562238,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The superiority of Western civilisation
New law gets Berlusconi off the hook Crucial evidence in corruption case will be ruled inadmissible Philip Willan in Rome Wednesday October 3, 2001 The Guardian The Italian senate was expected to approve a bill last night which critics say is intended to protect the legal interests of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The law, which restricts the way international judiciaries speak to each other, will hamstring magistrates who are seeking financial information from the authorities in Switzerland, where Mr Berlusconi keeps bank accounts which are the subject of corruption investigations. Crucial prosecution evidence against the prime minister will now be unusable in court, opponents say. The law will also ensure Mr Berlusconi's acquittal on charges of corrupting magistrates. The opposition says the bill, which will have retroactive effect, has been rushed through to head off the embarrassing prospect of the prime minister being convicted. Mr Berlusconi is accused by Milan prosecutors of having bribed Rome judges in order to win civil cases giving him control over a food group and a publishing group. On the basis of financial evidence obtained from Switzerland, the prosecutors claim that Mr Berlusconi's lawyer Cesare Previti paid large sums of money to Renato Squillante to obtain favourable verdicts. Hundreds of billions of lire [hundreds of millions of pounds] were at stake and tens of billions were paid in bribes, said Giovanni Kessler, a former magistrate who is now a member of parliament for the Left Democrats. Mr Berlusconi and Mr Previti deny doing anything wrong and reject suggestions that the new law has been framed to serve their interests. Prosecutors are reported to have received evidence showing that nearly £300,000 was paid from a Swiss bank account belonging to Mr Berlusconi's Fininvest company in 1991 to another Swiss account belonging to Mr Previti, the sum finally ending up in a Swiss account controlled by Mr Squillante. A Fininvest director has admitted setting up the original account, according to a report in the Corriere della Sera. The new law would make that evidence inadmissible in court. Some of Mr Berlusconi's coalition allies have privately expressed disgust at the measures which critics claim have been drawn up to save Mr Berlusconi. Last week a number of government deputies voted with the opposition to approve amendments to the bill. The new law obliges magistrates, before they cooperate internationally, to certify the authenticity of all documents they send abroad, and to communicate via the justice ministry. This contradicts a trend in Europe to speed up and simplify cooperation procedures. But what most alarms many Italians is that the retroactive effect means that documents presented as evidence in thousands of current cases will be declared inadmissible and the procedures to obtain them will have to be repeated. Witness statements relating to the rejected documents will also be struck out. Hundreds of defendants accused of serious crimes could be released as a result, Mr Kessler said. He said the government's eagerness to rush through the bill and its retroactive effects were clear indications that the measure was aimed at getting Mr Berlusconi off the hook. Corrupting judges is a very shameful crime. It's a crime against justice and against the equality of citizens before the law, he said. Even a conviction at the first stage of the trial could have the effect of blocking Mr Berlusconi's political career. That's why they want to rush the law through so quickly. For years Mr Berlusconi has been accused of entering politics for the benefit of his £12bn business empire, which includes television stations and newspapers. He promised to resolve the issue within 100 days of taking office in June. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,562101,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
There you go again!
, but it could have Western troops and should be supported by surrounding Muslim nations - though, please God, not the Saudis - and able to restore roads, food supplies and telecommunications. There are still well-educated academics and civil servants inAfghanistan who could help to re-establish the infrastructure of government. In this context, the old king might just be a temporary symbol of unity before a genuinely inter-ethnic government could be created. But that's not what we're planning. More than 7,000 innocents have been murdered in the USA, and the two million Afghans who have been killed since 1980 don't amount to a hill of beans beside that. Whether or not we send in humanitarian aid, we're pouring more weapons into this starving land, to arm a bunch of gangsters in the hope they'll destroy the Taliban and let us grab bin Laden cost-free. I have a dark premonition about all this. The Northern Alliance will work for us. They'll die for us. And, while they're doing that, we'll try to split the Taliban and cut a deal with their less murderous cronies, offering them a seat in a future government alongside their Alliance enemies. The other Taliban - the guys who won't take the Queen's shilling or Mr Bush's dollar - will snipe at our men from the mountainside and shoot at our jets and threaten more attacks on the West, with or without bin Laden. And at some point - always supposing we've installed a puppet government to our liking in Kabul - the Alliance will fall apart and turn against its ethnic enemies or, if we should still be around, against us. Because the Alliance knows that we're not giving them money and guns because we love Afghanistan, or because we want to bring peace to the land, or because we are particularly interested in establishing democracy in south-west Asia. The West is demonstrating its largesse because it wants to destroy America's enemies. Just remember what happened in 1980 when we backed the brave, ruthless, cruel mujahedin against the Soviet Union. We gave them money and weapons and promised them political support once the Russians left. There was much talk, I recall, of loya jergas, and even a proposal that the then less elderly king might be trucked back to Afghanistan. And now this is exactly what we are offering once again. And, dare I ask, how many bin Ladens are serving now among our new and willing foot-soldiers? America's new war, indeed. Full article at: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=97281 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The return of nationalism
Chris B. wrote: I in fact generally agree with the arguments of Peter Preston. In a radically democratic and humane society our identities should not need to be secret. We should all have as much privacy as in a village. The class that would really be hit by that is the capitalist class, who need their private transactions in the means of production kept secret. = Enough, already! It's bad enough wading through Preston's habitual twaddle, padded with lots of human interest and staccato phrase-stylings to mask the lack of real content unless that content happens to suit the prerogatives of the Guardian's MI5 puppetmasters. But you compound all of this with an apparently serene naivete regarding current developments. In a radically democratic and humane society there would not *be* a capitalist class, period. The fact that there exists one now means that any identity cards or other forms of state monitoring and surveillance will not be employed to usher in socialist nirvana, but to further obstruct it. Elsewhere you refer, in connection with Will Hutton, to the emerging strategic goal of a New Democratic World Revolution. Whose goal is this? Which planet am I on? Am I really so out of touch with events that I simply do not understand what you are talking about? I started writing this yesterday, but gave up, thinking it wasn't worth it, but you and the Financial Times have changed my mind. I wrote: Chris Burford wrote: While left opportunist voices may have ridiculed talk of global governance, yesterday we saw a historic step from global governance to global government, in the unanimous vote in the UN Security Council for the statement against terrorism proposed by the USA just two weeks after the WTC bombing. Could you be more specific regarding the left opportunist voices you have in mind? I'm not aware of these. I think it more likely that left opportunists might be drawn, in the present circumstances, to making statements such as the following: Yes, perhaps arse first, a better world's in birth. I guess it depends upon what is left and what is opportunistic. I certainly don't see a better world aborning. Plenty of arse, though. But maybe that plays into the caricatured PEN-L bear image that is routinely flagged up as evidence of pathological pessimism on the part of Marxian and radical political economists and other apocalyptic doomsayers. Elsewhere you state, in response to Mark Jones: There is an international civil society... I doubt that even more than I doubt the existence of a unified internationale of capital. And right now the emphasis is going to be on *national* security, with the onus on governments to maintain and enforce stability and order. For civil liberties, we are already seeing the promised draconian responses, including the now unimpeded invasion of surveillance technologies into more and more aspects of our existence. These are being employed by or on behalf of state agencies in the interests of national security. Meanwhile, capital, already reeling from the double blow of low/no growth prospects in the North and diminishing returns to interventions in the South, will be happy for *national* governments to pick up the slack and revert to Keynesian mode, as with the airlines bail-out. Foreign policy wise, meanwhile, we are already witnessing the emergence of clearly distinct *national* agendas within the broadly, and, to an extent, superficially, unified front against terrorism, as the precariousness of the Middle East oil region sinks in on those who preside over political economies that depend upon oil and who, like Tony Blair especially, have no wish to see re-enacted last autumn's petrol protests by poujadist beneficiaries of the utterly unreal scenario of the great car-owning democracy of Margaret Thatcher. Large sections of the British people are completely unprepared, psychologically, for the upheavals pending because they bought into all the Thatcherite crap that was sold relentlessly via a pliant news media, promising them unlimited growth free of the dead hand of government and especially of the dreaded socialists. Blair is as much a prisoner of all that as anyone, which is why he treads such a careful line. But it also explains why he is attentive to the national interest, because that includes his own political survival. The same goes for Chirac/Jospin, Schröder/Fischer, Koizumi, Aznar, etc. In these circumstances, world government is a long way off. And if China starts to pull its weight in the supposed embryos of that government, you can bet that the US will abort. = And today... Elsewhere you look forward to the prosecution of the United States in a world criminal court. Not until US imperialism has suffered an absolutely devastating defeat, not until it is utterly on its knees, will the US power elite ever acquiesce to such a scenario. And the same goes for Britain and France, although they would capitulate before the US ever would.
Oil be darned
at Prudential Securities Research, says there is likely to be less partisanship about the issue amid increased awareness of the need to heighten the nation's energy infrastructure and develop more domestic sources of oil and natural gas. This probably increases the chance of opening a small portion of Alaska, he says. The fact is that we are short of natural gas, says Conoco's Mr Dunham. The US can choose to open Alaska further, he says, or rely increasingly on imports Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 0928001213 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Another blow to MI5
Test case allows 'right to know' on MI5 files Richard Norton-Taylor Tuesday October 2, 2001 The Guardian The government's blanket ban preventing anyone from knowing whether MI5 holds files on them is unlawful, it was ruled yesterday. In a landmark decision, a special panel of the new information tribunal quashed a claim by Jack Straw when he was home secretary that MI5 should never admit to holding files on an individual, even when the disclosure would not damage national security. The test case was brought by Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, who was involved in environmental groups in East Sussex in the 1980s. Last year he asked the security service if it held a file on him, and received a letter purporting to be from a serving MI5 officer signing himself The Mechanic. The letter told Mr Baker that his request had caused a crisis in MI5, which did indeed have a file on him. The agency had received information from Sussex police special branch, said the letter, which had a source in the South Downs Earth First group. The anonymous letter also claimed that Mr Baker's file listed him as a Greenpeace supporter. The file was closed in 1989 when he started work in the Liberal Democrats' whips office, regarded as off limits by MI5. Yesterday, the information tribunal said the evidence established a prime facie case that MI5 did process personal data on Mr Baker. But its task was limited to deciding whether Mr Straw's certificate - supporting MI5's neither confirm nor deny policy on personal files regardless of whether or not national security would be harmed - was reasonable. Its conclusion that the blanket policy - known as ncnd - was unreasonable could be the first step towards a spate of requests forcing MI5 to admit the existence of files on named individuals and reveal their contents. MI5 has an estimated 290,000 files on individuals it once considered subversive, including Jack Straw, Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary, and Harriet Harman, the solicitor general. However, anyone wishing to find out what MI5 has on them will still face procedural hurdles. David Blunkett, Mr Straw's successor, is likely to sign a more tightly drafted certificate. MI5 is still likely to insist on its ncnd policy. Such claims will then have to be challenged in court case by case. The decision was announced by Sir Anthony Evans, a retired judge who is president of the tribunal's national security panel. Mr Baker called it a victory for the individual against the state. He said the ruling was a recognition that it was improper and inappropriate to grant a blanket exemption to MI5. He fully supported the need for MI5 to maintain secrecy for national security reasons but every case had to be assessed on its merits. John Wadham, his lawyer and director of the civil rights group Liberty, said he hoped the ruling would allow innocent people to see files on them. He added: The blanket ban preventing this was ridiculous and unnecessary. The Data Protection Act still provides MI5 with more than adequate powers to prevent terrorists from seeing their files and to preserve national security. A Home Office spokesman said the government welcomed the decision, which would require careful consideration. The ruling did not directly affect the status of any information that may or may not be held by the security service. However, independent commentators said it would be increasingly difficult for MI5 to maintain blanket refusal of access to personal files or even say whether it had a file on someone. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,561513,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The superiority of Western civilization
An enemy of democracy Berlusconi has learned that it's more profitable to manipulate the parliamentary system than to overthrow it Paul Foot Tuesday October 2, 2001 The Guardian What did the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, mean when he said he was confident of the superiority of our civilisation over the Muslim world? A Guardian leader last week listed the three central features of Berlusconi's Italy that justify his confidence and his pride: fascists and racists in government, hideous corruption in business, monstrous media monopolies. To which I add: disgusting police brutality at Genoa, and crude official cover-up of that brutality. All these, it seems to me, can be grouped under a single heading - the determination of rich and powerful people to manipulate the democratic process. This was once the central aim of P2, perhaps the most influential secret society ever established in postwar Europe. P2 was ostensibly a harmless branch of the freemasons but there was nothing harmless about it. Its members included top bankers, business tycoons, media moguls, generals, judges and intelligence agents. They met in secret and plotted the gradual erosion of the hated system of democracy that from time to time threatened to exert some marginal control over Italian society. One of P2's most influential members was Roberto Calvi, boss of the doomed Ambrosiano bank. In June 1982, Calvi's corpse was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge. The City of London police concluded that the banker had committed suicide, though others were struck by the coincidences between the scene of his lurid death and certain well-known masonic symbols - a bridge, a ladder, some stones in the dead man's pocket, not to mention the frati neri (black friars), an ancient secret society from which P2 allegedly originated. At any rate, despite occasional successes, P2 never came near to overthrowing democracy, and not long after the death of Calvi, dissolved and vanished. One of its most prominent members - no 1168 - was Silvio Berlusconi, who was so rich and owned so many television stations that he was able to form an entirely new legal political alliance, unattached to the parties of the old Italian democracy, and, with the help of former fascists and racists, to get the alliance elected to government. Ever since, the Italian parliament has been absorbed with complicated financial legislation, much of which will make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to convict Silvio Berlusconi of corruption charges launched against him. The new legislation sailed through parliament until recently when proposed changes in the laws about foreign bank accounts were deemed to conflict with other laws necessary to counter terrorism and were, narrowly, defeated. All this goes to show, however, that if you are very rich and want to change the law to your advantage it is really much easier to work within the parliamentary system than to subvert it from outside. In a half-hearted apology to the Italian senate, Mr Berlusconi called on Italian citizens to hang me. Curiously, no one took him up on the offer. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,561651,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Guardian and MI5
? spat Bond. The rotating saw? The tank full of piranha fish? The laser gun directed at my testicles? Blofeld stroked his white cat and laughed again. Oh no, Mr Bond. I have something worse in mind. I am going to read you extracts from Stella Rimington's memoirs. You bastard, whimpered Bond as Blofeld produced a copy of the Guardian from behind his back and cleared his throat. The day I ordered more paper clips... = Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Privatisation Eye
Penners One of the best sources of current information regarding the Blair administration's efforts to privatise everything that can be nailed down is Private Eye, which has taken, with great gusto, to exposing the various networks and linkages connecting big business, academia, civil society and the government. The latest edition of the magazine has plenty more in this vein. In particular it seems to be targeting something called the New Local Government Network, chaired by University of Strathclyde Professor of Politics Gerry Stoker, and sponsored by various big companies including KPMG, whose consultancy talents are no doubt being fully utilised in this connection. Meanwhile, another report features some worrying developments in the NHS, as a predictable consequence of the effort to make the independently managed hospital trusts more entrepreneurial and income-generating: HP Sauce Private Eye, No. 1037 21 September - 4 October 2001 No MP speaks more ardently for the private finance initiative (PFI) and public/private partnership (PPP) than the incomparably loyal member for Swindon South, Julia Drown. She argues repeatedly that, thanks to PFI, her government has managed to build all sorts of new hospitals. But what about queue-jumping? Does she think people should get quicker treatment in NHS hospitals because their firms are paying for it? That seems to be the point behind a scheme announced recently by the Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust, which looks after a lot of Julia Drown's constituents. The trust is inviting companies to pay for the right of their staff to jump waiting lists for NHS treatment. By this device the trust hopes to raise an extra £400,000 a year. The trust's special manager for private practice, Sue Harvey, is quoted in the local paper as saying: The government is very keen for the NHS to market the health service through the public private partnership service. Yes, but what about the queue-jumping? Swindon Trades Council is not impressed and argues: This is as far as we are aware the first instance of a trust offering to organise queue-jumping for businesses for a financial contribution. Such a policy would mark the abandonment of one of the fundamental principles at the heart of the NHS. What does the MP think? She will have every chance to give her views soon, for she sits on the Commons health select committee which has just announced its first big inquiry of the new parliament: The role of the private sector in the NHS. = Meanwhile, for all those classical liberals utterly convinced of the separation between state and civil society, the following item from the same page should be of interest: Digby Jones, head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), recently complained that the department of trade and industry (DTI) wasn't close enough to business. Frankly, we do need much more championing of the business message within government, he told Radio Four. He had obviously forgotten that 112 members of staff at the DTI are not only on the side of businesses but actually employed by private firms. They are all inward secondees who work for the civil service for free while taking a salary from their old employer. The cabinet office told the Eye that the latest figures, for 1999-2000, show that there were 1,130 inward secondees working in the civil service as a whole for at least three months -- often for more than a year -- while being paid by their private employers. The interchange unit's guidance sells the scheme to business as a way of building up networks of contacts and developing a long term relationship. The DTI's privately funded staff included Alan Baldwin of BT, acting as a telecoms consultant to the civil service from July 1999 to April 2001. Paul Lazenby of Vodafone is to work in the DTI's communication industries section for the next two years; and Anna Lawson of Ericsson spent a year in the DTI as a technical adviser on issues relating to the mobile telecommunications industry. In an imaginative pairing Mark Jennings of British American Tobacco spent a year in the DTI as an export promoter -- selling fags to Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania -- while Roger Johnson of the British Association of Healthcare Industries worked for the DTI as an export promoter of healthcare. = Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
War on terrorism
Penners One way to show terrorists that theirs is the futile way is to be resolute and carry on as before. Consumers consume, stock market traders trade, arms dealers deal Arms Bizarre Private Eye, No. 1037 21 September - 4 October 2001 The time-honoured practice, exposed by the Scott Inquiry into arms for Iraq, of promoting British arms sales to countries that might use them against Britain or her allies continues under new Labour. In August foreign secretary Jack Straw named China, India, Syria and Pakistan as countries whose ballistic missile technology justified George Bush's son-of-Star-Wars scheme. Nevertheless, China and India were invited by the ministry of defence to the Defence Sales and Export International (DSEi) conference and arms fair in London's Docklands last week; and Syria and Pakistan were invited by the fair organiser, Spearhead, with the MoD's approval. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW, three of the main contractors on the Star Wars programme, all exhibited. So did British Aerospace, which hopes to pick up subcontracting work on the scheme. To complete the dotty picture, last July Lockheed was fined $13m by the US government for breaking arms export laws and selling rocket technology to China. Straw had picked out China, India, Pakistan and Syria (alongside four nations that weren't invited: Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea) in his briefing on National Missile Defence to the parliamentary Labour Party. He said they had or were moving towards acquiring intercontinental ballistic missiles ... It is difficult to see for what purpose these countries would want an intercontinental missile capability other than to threaten and deter the United States. The DSEi exhibition and conference, Europe's biggest arms fair, was opened by defence secretary Geoff Hoon, who then addressed the delegations from countries that the foreign secretary views as threats. Hoon's MoD wined and dined delegations from Bahrain, Brunei, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Delegates from these not altogether democratic countries were able to shop for tanks, guns, helicopters, jets, warships and electronic kit. Alongside the Star Wars contractors was a host of high tech firms offering gizmos related to missile and satellite systems, including Roke Manor Research, a British firm which recently announced a product which will detect that symbol of NATO power, the stealth bomber. According to Roke, a Hampshire-based subsidiary of Siemens, its new detection system means stealthy aircraft will be rendered useless. = Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
comments, please
Jim D. wrote: Mark was also asking, if I understand him correctly, how, in light of the 2d law of thermo., we could maintain anything like life as we know it. Yes, Mark puts a big emphasis on natural constraints: it seems that he believes that we're running out of oil and that this is inevitable... as long as we have capitalism. I really don't understand why capitalism _per se_ is so dependent on oil in his view (so that social relations are a fundamental part of the equation). I can imagine capitalism could use atomic power instead. Why not use solar power? It's not the power source that defines capitalism. Instead, it's surplus-value. Of course, there would be a serious crisis going from the current version of capitalism to solar-powered capitalism. But they'd likely figure out how to make workers and other dominated groups pay the cost. = Is this another variation on the technologically-based optimistic view, that, regardless of the problems, human ingenuity will come up trumps? If I understand the gist of Mark's points correctly, he is saying that current processes and trends are unsustainable. In other words, current consumption rates are too profligate. But it's not just about current rates, given capitalism's inexorable tendency towards growth. As Mark pointed out some time ago, China has adopted a particular mode of development that is petroleum-dependent, and has now joined the capitalist WTO. With all the implications that this entails, current rates of *growth* in oil consumption are especially unsustainable. Of course capitalists *could*, theoretically, switch to other forms of energy. But nuclear power was a no-no anyway after Three Mile Island, and the WTC bombers have helpfully pointed out other vulnerabilities of that solution. The only concrete proposal that would have spared nuclear power as a viable option was Larry Summers'/Lance Pritchett's World Bank memo, gleefully adopted by Putin and his Kremlin coterie. And this, more than anything, demonstrates the folly of that economically impeccable solution, because those same poor countries, according to economic logic just as impeccable as that which adorns Summers' grand designs, having been paid to take the waste, can sell it on again to those wishing to use whatever they can of it for less humanitarian purposes. Less humanitarian than dumping it on the poor, that is. Like dumping it on the rich. All the other solutions fly in the face of deeply entrenched vested interests, not only including the oil companies. So, capitalism, as it is currently configured, is not going to relinquish its dependency on oil so easily. The amount of capital investment necessary to achieve that, assuming that it could, is far greater than that proving so difficult for the governments of rich countries like Britain and the United States to stump up for the basic provision of infrastructure necessary for the smooth function of capitalism itself. In other words, Mark's analysis includes a hypothesis concerning capital shortage, which would counter your arguments about the probability/possibility of switching to alternative energy sources under the current configuration. I don't understand what exactly your disagreement with Mark is, but I don't think that he, of all people, needs to be reminded about the central importance of surplus value creation to capitalism. I hope that he resubs and that we can *develop* this discussion, rather than simply reiterate past points and get thoroughly frustrated and irritable in the process. And that, I promise, will be my last post for today. Michael K.
New Labour consolidation
New union's Labour bid ROY RODGERS The Herald, 1 October 2001 AMICUS, the one-million strong union being formed by a merger between the AEEU and MSF, is angling to increase influence over the Labour Party by becoming its landlord. In searching for a new central London HQ, the engineering union is hoping to accommodate Labour, although both organisations will retain other offices for the bulk of their back-up staff. The AEEU will probably keep its offices in Bromley, Kent, while Labour is set to move the bulk of its staff from Millbank Tower in Westminster to North Shields. If it comes off it will be seen as a considerable coup for the Labour-loyalist Amicus and would see the newly-named union firmly in the role traditionally held for many years by the rival TGWU which from 1926 until the late 70s housed the Labour Party hierarchy in Transport House in Smith Square. The blueprint for Amicus to house the Labour Party is already up and running in Scotland where the AEEU accommodates the Scottish Labour Party and the STUC in its extensively re-vamped Scottish HQ in Glasgow's West Regent Street. Full article at: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/1-10-19101-0-1-53.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Guardian state
trawl down the mean streets of Tooting. Answer: if they can't be trusted, do something about that lack of trust. Don't do nothing. So to the crunch and the caveats. There's a heartrending Iranian film called The Circle doing the arthouse rounds at the moment. It follows a succession of women fresh out of prison and lacking identity papers. They are the fearful, persecuted victims of a harsh bureaucracy. They can't get money for food, shelter or hospital treatment. And that's the precise rub here as Messrs Blair and Blunkett prepare to argue that you won't be able to get state help or medicine without a card. What happens when the first dozen illegal migrants die in agony for want of a doctor? Logic is no help here. We either approve of illegal immigration or we have to draw a line. But we also, I think, have to remember that London and Manchester aren't satellite cities of Tehran. Our bureaucracy is supposed to serve a caring, concerned democracy. It is supposed to offer efficiency with a human face. It is there, under political control, to strike a balance. That can be done - and Mr Blunkett, with some courage, will take a balancing step on Wednesday by announcing a scheme which allows and encourages immigrants who seek a better life (and not just asylum) to come here. One weasel bit of cowardice past removed. So, in its way, will be the creation of a Britain where cards are an instant affirmation of rights to live and work equally. But that will take more than a stroke of some ministerial pen. It will demand an efficiency that the chaos of current asylum seeking and the flatulence of port security gives no current hint of. It will demand more courage. What are these millions of fleeing Afghans seeking but asylum? It will demand a democratic monitoring which has a heart as well as a head. The card, in our fractured world, is only a beginning. The debate has indeed moved on - past whether and why to the hard rocks of how. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,561016,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
UK political realignment?
Conservative. The only prominent Tory party funders are single-issue Europhobes. Most businessmen who appear above the Tory parapet are driven by the same obsession. As a distinctive philosophy needing its own party, in other words, Conservatism may almost have ceased to be. As a distinctive party, entitled to its customary recognition as Britain's alternative government, the Tories must be perilously close to the end. A Labour catastrophe might save them. But only proportional representation, which they oppose with suicidal passion, gives them a solid chance of a permanent role. More than one Conservative professional has recently offered me the judgment that, if they suffer a third heavy electoral defeat, the party will break up. A gap is therefore appearing for an opposition party. But it seems to lie on the centre right. Can the Lib Dems locate themselves there? I don't think that needs to be the question. Bits of Lib Dem policy-groping could be said to be leading that way. The party's review of public services is being encouraged to flirt with user payments for health and education. In the larger frame it doesn't mean much. Whatever opportunism they use in local areas to get elected, the Lib Dems are at core a party of the centre left, and always will be. That needn't disqualify them from becoming the major party of opposition. Along with Labour's sweeping-in of the business vote, now forced to see the Tories as a cranky sect, go obvious signals of a party that will defend its own decade-deep version of conservatism. Labour stands for a capacious orthodoxy, the new normality. It has become, among other things, the party of business. It may have done some leftish things the Tories would never have contemplated: the minimum wage, Scottish devolution, welfare-to-work, the Human Rights Act. But these are over and done. Labour's radical years seem to be behind it. It's hard to think of any future Labour programme we've heard about that would offend mainstream conservative, as distinct from euro-driven sectarian Conservative, opinion. Political categories have become very fluid. Especially on the Labour and Liberal left, the familiar labels are dismissed as old hat. For the convenience of the great grey greasy centre, the grammar that made politics intelligible is being rewritten. There is no right and there is no left, say Charles Kennedy and Tony Blair. If this is so, it makes the centre-right v centre-left dilemma of rival Lib Dem strategists more academic than real. And to an extent, it really is so. Modern political leadership is less about weight of argument than lightness of feel, of which Mr Kennedy's own success is the persuasive recent example. At the June election, political allegiance had less to do with social class than it ever has before. The exit polls showed this clearly. The classic ingredient of the left-right divide is fading fast. But the categories haven't vanished, and current trends make it possible to believe in an official opposition of the centre-left. Labour takes a conservative position on most of the central questions. It presides over a public sector it has not been able radically to improve. It is anti-liberal on civil liberties. Its leadership clutches every fragment of power to itself, downgrading the normal institutions of democracy such as the cabinet and parliament. Whatever one thinks about these priorities, no one can deny they're the traits of a government that needs opposition from a party that disagrees with them, on behalf of an electorate that will become increasingly disenchanted. The Lib Dems have the credentials to make this analysis work. For the first time, their conference is not whingeing on the sidelines. They move, as Jo Grimond told them, towards the sound of gunfire. But first we must see what kind of war they have. Full article at: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/libdemconference2001/comment/0,1226,55766 8,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Guardian
of a new and highly competent set of managers. The two sides enjoyed working together and the rejuvenated paper went on to succeed editorially and commercially. In 1971, Hetherington was named Journalist of the Year in the National Press Awards. He rarely missed an opportunity to say how much of the paper's success depended on the Manchester Evening News, whose profits had for so long kept it afloat. Alastair Hetherington lived an ascetic life - plain food, no tobacco, alcohol only when to abstain might appear conspicuous, never a taxi for a mile or two if there was time to walk. He spent long days walking the Lake District and Scottish mountains, and long evenings making full notes of his political conversations, running into millions of words, to be circulated to senior staff. His Downing Street notes often included a tally of how much Harold Wilson had had to drink. These predilections, his academic upbringing, and his membership of the intellectual establishment evidently persuaded him that he didn't know much about ordinary people. Yet when the 60s burst open he showed no doubt about how the Guardian should respond to each new wave of liberty, licence or frivolity; he took it to be what people wanted and therefore, provided Lord Wolfenden's horses didn't mind, should have. He gave evidence for the defence at the Lady Chatterley trial and became the first editor to allow the word fuck into his paper. And so to his quirks. The clock in his office was on the wall opposite his desk; his eyes constantly flicked to it over the left shoulder of whoever was talking to him. He made a point of bounding upstairs to the third floor while others took the lift; he assumed that everyone else shared his enthusiasm for racing up hillsides. He refused cream at lunch because he was on duty that night and needed a clear head. He once tried to organise a London-Manchester meeting at Watford Gap on Boxing Day on the ground that those concerned had already had Christmas Eve off. He liked to have the last word in an argument. He found personal relations difficult and used hearty language to disguise that fact. But the irritants were far outweighed. Hetherington did not put people down. He never publicly issued a rebuke. He made suggestions rather than issued orders, and, although the effect was the same, there was room for discussion. He ran the paper as a corporate enterprise. He and his wife Miranda, whom he married in 1957, were generous hosts. The Guardian he left in 1975 had been relaxed and informal. Scottish television, he soon found, was very different, full of hierarchies and procedures. The thing he most enjoyed was learning new techniques and applying them. Two programmes which he was proud of promoting were a series about the deprived Lilybank area of Glasgow and another about walks on Scottish mountains, including those on Arran, where he eventually retired in 1989. But he fell foul, mainly about the permissible degree of devolution, both of the director-general, Charles Curran, and of his own predecessor, then managing director of BBC-TV, Alasdair Milne. The new DG, Ian Trethowan, reluctantly sacked him. Like a deposed Soviet minister, Hetherington was sent to be station manager for Highland Radio at Inverness. His last five working years were spent as research professor in media studies at Stirling University. He retained a close link with the Guardian through membership of the Scott Trust, of which he became chairman from 1984 until his retirement. He brought a new style to that office as a hands-on and interventionist chairman, giving critical support to his successor as editor, Peter Preston. He also played a substantial part in the appointment of his successor as chairman, Hugo Young. Hetherington's Guardian was the pioneer of the modern quality broadsheet. All of them - Times, Independent, FT, even Telegraph - owed a debt to him. He transformed the very worthy, very civilised, but, it must now seem, anachronistic Manchester Guardian into a type of paper new to English readers. But he knew how far he wanted to carry this revolution and where he wanted it to stop. He still liked a degree of decorum. His marriage to Miranda Oliver, with whom he had two sons and two daughters, was dissolved in 1978, and the following year he married Sheila Janet Cameron, with whom he inherited three step-children. * Hector Alastair Hetherington, journalist, born October 31 1919; died October 3 1999 Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3908911,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hallucinating
Valley 30 miles north of Kabul, the capital, and on the major front along the Oxus river line to the north west. Carpet-bombing Taliban positions with flights of vintage B52 bombers could turn the tide in the hard-pressed and outnumbered Northern Alliance's favour on both battlefields. A single sortie by three of the Vietnam-era warhorses can deliver 30 tonnes of bombs and tear up half a square mile of territory from a safe height of 30,000 feet in less than half a minute. Given that most of the Taliban's own 20,000 mujahideen and the 8000 mainly Arab and Chechen volunteers aiding their war effort have never had to endure the physical or psychological impact of such concentrated firepower, a relative handful of strikes could be militarily decisive. Full article at: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/27-9-19101-2-2-17.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If dumb hacks can figure it out...
Media warned that truthful reports could help enemies By Kim Sengupta The Independent, 27 September 2001 The British media has been warned to minimise speculation on forthcoming military activity for fear that some reports could be of use to the enemy. A letter sent by the D-Notice Committee, an independent body based at the Ministry of Defence, reflects the Government's concern about newspaper, television and radio reports of the various military options available. The MoD claimed that some of the reports could be of assistance to the enemy because they were so near the truth. Stories of the SAS being engaged in firefights, while untrue, were causing anxiety and distress to families of servicemen. Rear-Admiral Nick Wilkinson, the secretary to the committee, said in the letter: As the next phase of military and intelligence planning and action now gets under way, here and in other countries co-operating against this particular terrorism, informed speculation may become very close to the truth. It would be operationally very helpful therefore, and a reassurance to those who may be going into action in the coming days or months, if editors could now minimise such speculation, whether by their own journalists or by retired military people, and if even greater care could be exercised in considering information which could be of use to the terrorists and their supporters. The committee's note came after Downing Street urged the media yesterday to be responsible in reporting the current crisis and not to spread undue personal alarm. Rear-Admiral Wilkinson told The Independent: There has been a flood of stories and speculation very close to the truth. We are reaching a stage in time now when we have to be careful. I am not here to stop stories, just to ask people to be careful and to point out that the mechanism is in place to make checks if necessary. The MoD said news organisations should not think a D- Notice has been slapped on them. The Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (the formal title of the D-Notice Committee), which advises the media on national security, consists of 13 media representatives and four senior civil servants. It is based at the MoD building in Whitehall. A senior MoD source said: There has been all kinds of speculation, some of it wild, but some quite near the mark. There have also been stories which are utterly untrue at the weekend that British special forces had been involved in firefights with the Taliban inside Afghanistan. We have had lots of phone calls from worried family members over that. Senior military officers have been taken aback by the accuracy of some of the situations foreseen in the press. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=96292 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reaping what you sow
the genetics revolution out of the hands of the war planners. As a tool of mass destruction, genetic weaponry rivals nuclear weaponry, and it can be developed at a fraction of the cost. The revelation that Iraq had stockpiled massive amounts of germ warfare agents and was preparing to use them during the Gulf war renewed Pentagon interest in defensive research to counter the prospect of an escalating biological arms race. Saddam Hussein's government had prepared what it called the great equaliser, an arsenal of 25 missile warheads carrying more than 11,000lb of biological agents, including deadly botulism poison and anthrax germs. An additional 33,000lb of germ agents were placed in bombs to be dropped from military aircraft. Had the germ warfare agents been deployed, the results would have been as catastrophic as those visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A study conducted by the US government in 1993 found that the release of just 200lb of anthrax spores from a plane over Washington DC could kill as many as 3m people. Iraq is not alone in its interest in developing a new generation of biological weapons. In a 1995 study, the CIA reported that 17 countries were suspected of researching and stockpiling germ warfare agents, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Bulgaria, India, South Korea, South Africa, China and Russia. In the 20th century, modern science reached its apex with the splitting of the atom, followed shortly thereafter by the discovery of the DNA double helix. The first discovery led immediately to the development of the atomic bomb, leaving humanity to ponder, for the first time in history, the prospect of an end to its own future on Earth. Now, a growing number of military observers are wondering if the other great scientific breakthrough of our time will soon be used in a comparable manner, posing a similar threat to our very existence as a species. No laboratory, however contained and secure, is failsafe. Natural disasters such as floods and fires, and security breaches are possible. It is equally likely that terrorists will turn to the new genetic weapons. In November, 143 nations will assemble in Geneva to review the 1972 biological weapons convention, a treaty designed to prohibit the development, production and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons. Negotiators, including the US representatives to the talks, need to address the serious loophole in the existing treaty that allows governments to engage in defensive research when, in fact, much of that research is potentially convertible to offensive purposes. And the commercial concerns of US and other biotech companies around the world to protect trade secrets and other commercial information should not be allowed to derail protocols designed to verify and enforce the provisions of the biological weapons convention. It is time to get tough and do the right thing. One would think that the welfare of human civilisation would be more important than the parochial interests of a handful of life science companies. Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Biotech Century (Penguin, 1998) and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,558812,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Britain/US split?
I tried sending this, and a few other messages, yesterday, to no avail. I apologise if it pops up again later, but there are certainly technical issues concerning why the list should be so quiet just now. = Mark Jones wrote: US hegemony was built in the 20th century on European fragmentation and weakness and on the garrisoning of Europe with American troops. The Atlantic Alliance is the keystone in the structure of US hegemony. If that falls, the US will be reduced at once to the status of a regional power. = With all the talk of imperial overstretch that has emanated from conservative sources during the tenure of the Clinton administration, and the undoubted suspension (if not actual ditching) of the new economy and attendant hype long before 11 September, there was already a strong intellectual basis for the partial withdrawal of US power. In part this was driven by a desire among some that allies should now start pulling their weight (especially financially), thus the edging up the agenda of reforming Japan's constitution (following the pressure put upon it to pay for the Gulf War 10 years ago), and the encouragement of greater EU involvement in NATO operations. This, of course, has been seized upon by elements within these allied countries, as Koizumi appeals to the right in Japan and strikes a more nationalistic pose (one more truly reflective of the more anonymous bureaucracy -- see Bertell Ollman's recent fine NLR article), while Britain and France try to rein in German assertiveness by kick-starting the idea of a European rapid reaction force. The Germans, meanwhile, in the person of Joschka Fischer, are busily projecting themselves into the front line of whatever is going, whether in the Balkans (a leading role in Macedonia) or in the Middle East (Putin and Mubarak in Berlin). The US response to this has been contradictory. Much as unilateralists (not isolationists) like Rumsfeld and Cheney may wish their EU allies to pay, they are not psychologically prepared for the parallel increase of independent thought that fellow NATO members may now exercise, indeed do exercise. Thus Rumsfeld, having forewarned of US troop withdrawals from Europe and admonishing the Europeans to take more responsibility because they can afford it now, rushes to caution the EU not to get too far ahead of itself as the rapid reaction force takes shape. He is mollified when this RRF is sold as being an integral part of NATO, and, just to make sure he understands, Turkey is brought into the equation. Meanwhile Bush has struck a very different tone from the globalism of Summers et al, in prioritising the reactivation of his daddy's Free Trade Area of the Americas, a new variation on the Monroe Doctrine, and a consolidation of US power, rather than an extension. Via the incorporation of Latin America into the NAFTA ambit, whether through the employment of legal machinery (trade deals) or monetary policy (IMF-facilitated dollarisation), Latin America will be brought to heel as a priority. Of course, as Mark said now and I suggested to Jim D. a while back, there is only so much capital that these countries can export to the US, or anywhere else. Argentina is a classic example. It needs ever stronger doses of IMF-prescribed medicine to get over the shocks induced by the last ministrations, etc. And so on. But the process is subject to diminishing returns, hence O'Neill's thinking out loud about the suitability of Stanley Fischer-type IMF solutions. The trouble is that there is, as yet, no alternative, other than to pull the plug and open global markets to absolute chaos and risk everything, including the credibility of the much-vaunted American dream that is being sold to the underdeveloped as the justification for their suffering. So the status quo will prevail, only without anything near the conviction that characterised Bush's predecessors. This reluctant internationalism is an open door for US allies to start asserting themselves, as with Germany's modernisation under Schröder (Kohler at IMF, German troops here and there, high level diplomacy, etc.). Meanwhile Britain and France, as third rate imperialist powers with pretensions to rise again, will be looking to project their expertise in certain areas of former (and hopefully future) influence, as, in fact, France has tried to do in Africa throughout the neo- and post-colonial periods. Britain still has the Commonwealth. In the context of Europe, however, Britain and Germany share a common agenda of containing France, while each competes to lead the development of the EU. Britain will probably win in certain respects (language, foreign policy) while Germany will take the spoils in others (federal constitution, economy). France is in something approaching disarray concerning Europe, as its Cold War framework has shattered and it struggles to manage a resurgent Germany and a more constructively assertive Britain. The US might, under other circumstances, take
More CIA success
More from the curiously informed Herald: CIA paid Saudi to poison bin Laden IAN BRUCE The Herald, 25 September 2001 THE CIA paid a Saudi intelligence agent £140,000 to poison Osama bin Laden in 1998 after the failure of a missile attack on his Afghan bases in retaliation for the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But the world's most wanted man survived the assassination attempt by a hairsbreadth, suffering acute kidney failure in the process. He still walks with the aid of a stick and has not fully recovered. The man chosen for the task was Siddiq Ahmed, an agent working for Saudi Arabia's external intelligence agency who was already operating covertly on behalf of Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, the governor of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Roping the Saudis into the act circumvented the US congressional ban on state-sponsored assassinations. The money paid to Ahmed, posing as a mujahideen volunteer, was also ostensibly Saudi, although intelligence sources say Prince Salman was reimbursed from CIA black funds. Former President Bill Clinton admitted at the weekend that he had authorised a special forces' operation to seize or kill bin Laden the same year. This had been called off at the last minute by the State Department, the US Foreign Office equivalent, on the grounds that any attempt to storm the terrorist leader's mountain lair in the Hindu Kush would result in unacceptably heavy American casualties. The CIA was already under fire for alleged mis-targeting of a Sudanese factory it claimed was a front for chemical weapons' production on bin Laden's behalf. Determined to eliminate the growing threat of the millionaire dissident and recover from the public relations disaster of the Sudan attack, top executives met in the fusion room - the nerve centre of CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Calling in favours from the Saudis, they supplied the game plan and the funding. The Saudis provided the operational manpower, eager to be rid of one of their own nationals who might one day threaten their feudal rule. Apart from Pakistan, the Saudis are the regional power with the closest intelligence tabs on Afghanistan. Although the assasination attempt failed, the Saudis pulled off a major coup in obtaining details of financial transactions carried out by bin Laden's al Qaeda organisation worldwide. The information was supplied by Saed Taib Al-Madani, formerly al Qaeda's chief financial fixer. American sources say Al-Madani may have been a Saudi intelligence plant from the start. The other theory is that he was disillusioned by bin Laden's ruthless disregard for innocent victims of his holy war. Full article at: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/25-9-19101-1-4-59.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Britain/US split?
force it to play a fuller part on the international stage, senior Liberal Democrats said in Bournemouth yesterday. The outrage in America could have the positive effect of boosting transatlantic solidarity, pushing President Bush to sign international agreements, such as on global warming, they claimed. At a fringe meeting sponsored by The Independent, a panel of speakers expressed the hope that the barbaric acts in America would bring an end to the Republicans' go it alone stance. Baroness Williams of Crosby, a former Labour cabinet minister and the deputy Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords, said: The US now understands that it is part of a vulnerable suffering humanity. Nick Clegg, an MEP, expressed hope that the huge political and psychological shock on the body politic on 11 September would spark the belief in Washington that international organisations and global co-ordination is more necessary than before. Charles Kennedy, opening the meeting entitled Europe or America: Which way ahead for Britain, joined Baroness Williams to pay tribute to The Independent and the importance of a free press in a free society. Bob Kiley, the Commissioner for London Transport, spoke of his personal pain after the tragedy in New York, where he worked for 18 years. Mr Kiley, a former senior CIA officer who was a guest at the conference, said the attacks would make it hard for America to withdraw from the international community. He said: America for most of its history has been a country unto itself protected by oceans and its own preoccupations. This is a reminder that oceans are no longer a moat and the old tendencies are no longer germane. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=95915 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The NHS Modernisation Agency
Best hospitals win greater freedom Spin-off firms to capitalise on services planned to boost income John Carvel, social affairs editor Tuesday September 25, 2001 The Guardian The best performing hospitals are to be allowed to set up spin-off companies to sell catering and laundry to the private sector in an attempt to give NHS trusts greater freedom to run their affairs. As the first NHS league tables to identify hospitals as good, bad and indifferent are published today, Alan Milburn, the health secretary, will also offer about 25 of the best performing trusts in England the chance to exploit the commercial potential of inventions in their operating theatres and labs. An as yet undisclosed number of the worst performing hospitals will be named and shamed. Those without a clear strategy for improvement within months, not years will be given fresh management. This may include parachuting in teams of managers from the most successful hospitals. Ministers have abandoned plans to score hospitals according to a traffic light grading system, with green for the best and red for the worst. They do not want to frighten patients by putting a danger signal in front of any hospital. Instead hospitals will be graded with three, two, one or no stars. The three-star trusts will be rewarded with greater autonomy and the no-star will be put under tight control of the NHS Modernisation Agency. Mr Milburn told ministers: We know there is good and bad in the NHS. For the poor performers we will have to step in, but for for the best performers we should step back and set them free. The top doctors, nurses, scientists, cleaners and managers - the people really doing the business for NHS patients - have earned their autonomy from central control... I want to see a new spirit of public sector enterprise culture in the NHS capable of rivalling private sector enterprise. The three-star performers will get 10 new freedoms from central control, including less frequent inspections and permission to re-invest receipts from the sale of land or buildings without repayment to the Treasury. Ministers were furious to discover that a cancer scanner developed at the Royal Marsden hospital in south-west London made a healthy profit for commercial partners, but not a penny for the NHS. Three-star hospitals will be allowed to set up spin-off companies to exploit discoveries, or take shareholdings in other companies. The only condition will be that this cannot be used as a backdoor route to introduce charges for NHS patients. A Department of Health source said all hospitals would get extra money from an NHS performance fund, but the three-star hospitals would get more discretion how to spend it. This could include bonuses for the staff. The league tables to be published today will measure how well hospitals manage their waiting lists, budgets and services such as catering and cleaning. Although they are expected to include data on how many patients have to be re-admitted soon after discharge, they will not include death rates. Health ministers are admitting privately that the first league tables are not perfect science and may include an element of harsh justice in the rankings. But you will never get the science better unless you start doing the measuring, said one minister. Tesco knows when it has got a problem because customers stop coming through the doors. It is not the same for local hospitals, but we have to find a way of improving service to the patient. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,557621,00.html To find out more about the latest piece of utterly useless window-dressing siphoning off patient care resources, go to http://www.modernnhs.nhs.uk/ To get a good idea of where the priorities lie in this modernisation programme, check out http://www.modernnhs.nhs.uk/leadership.htm Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bombing Afghanistan...
Max Sawicky wrote: Check the State Dept reports on terrorism. I took a spin through them last night. The chief offenders, according to the reports, are Iran and Syria, mostly for hosting Palestinian-related groups. Both are particularly tough nuts, for different reasons. Iran because it's a huge country, Syria because it is deeply entwined in conflict with Israel. = Iran and Syria were once before in this frame, around the time of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and not long after the Lockerbie disaster. What got them off the hook was their (essential) support for/tolerance of the US-led coalition's aims re ejecting Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Gadaffi conveniently filled the breach. This time around Gadaffi seems to be supporting some kind of retaliation. Quite likely he, like a lot of other leaders, is concerned about the threat posed to state elites by the rise of a quite uncivil society. But he and others will have to perform very difficult balancing acts as they attempt to impose order upon their societies but still retain legitimacy. The diffuse nature of the target identified by Bush and his clan makes it likely that the non-Western segments of the coalition, and very possibly even some of the Western, will have only temporary membership. This is because of the apparently pathological attachment of key players in the Bush clan to outmoded foreign policy frameworks. Not content with fighting the Cold War, Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney seem set, with Samuel Huntington as their guide, to treat all Islam as one great opposing civilisation, and act accordingly. Thus they cannot conceive of the very profound differences between the Iranian leadership and the Taliban, for instance. Meanwhile Syria's regime, founded upon a secularist ideology and presided over by members of a small minority traditionally associated with more mystical elements of Islam (hence dangerously heretical to the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood and other elements, including the bin Laden adherents), is hardly likely to want to encourage such destabilising developments. Remember Hafez al-Assad's brutal subjugation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982? Unlike Pan-Am flight 103, the WTC/Pentagon attacks were probably the last things either Syria or Iran wanted to happen. However, the affront of Israeli atrocities in Palestine prohibits them from even coming close to saying so. We have been hearing a lot of late about how there is such a gaping hole as regards area intelligence. Apparently both Britain and the US lack sufficient expertise regarding the Middle East generally and Afghanistan specifically. This is a remarkable admission, considering all the money and munitions that have poured into the region during the last two decades alone, all the effort that was spent informing the citizens of both countries of the brave Afghan mujahideen fighters beating back the evil Commies, etc. One article I forwarded earlier cited US attitudes towards such people who did research the political economy of the region. These were frowned upon as inappropriate, at best, and dangerously suspicious, at worst, in an uncanny replay of the kind of McCarthyite cleansing that rid US universities of expertise in the Far East during the 1950s. This is detailed by Chalmers Johnson in his unsurpassably prescient Blowback, and cited as, in good measure, responsible for the subsequent debacle in Vietnam. Now we have our own era's equivalents of Edgar Snow being blackballed and dismissed as irrelevant or eccentric, only to decry their absence in our hour of need. The lesson of history is that we never learn the lesson of history. But with the apparent reluctance of the CIA's agents to embroil themselves in such an alien culture and forbidding landscape (years in the desert, no sex! well, no table dancing clubs) how much intelligence has been forwarded courtesy of Mossad, and taken at face value? Since Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya are all declared enemies of Israel, then of course they can be lumped together and treated as part of a dastardly homogenous anti-Zionist conspiracy of hate. If the BBC is prone to relaying Mossad PR, you can bet the desk jobbers at Langley are lapping it up. One really wonders how the experts in and around the White House ever achieved such status, given the catalogue of errors, faux pas and plain stupidity that has unfolded since 20 January this year. Say what you like about Larry Summers et al., but, whatever else they were and did, at least they were consistent and cognisant of their changed (vis a vis the Cold War) environment. Meanwhile I believe that Brzezinski refuses to admit any wrongdoing in having presided over the process that spawned our global Wanted poster pin-up boy. At least with Powell there is a sheen of competence that escaped his immediate predecessor, she who coined the phrase the indispensable nation. Now we know what happens when you stand just that little bit taller than everyone else. With so many experts so
Bombing Afghanistan..
Max Sawicky wrote: Check the State Dept reports on terrorism. I took a spin through them last night. The chief offenders, according to the reports, are Iran and Syria, mostly for hosting Palestinian-related groups. Both are particularly tough nuts, for different reasons. Iran because it's a huge country, Syria because it is deeply entwined in conflict with Israel. = Iran and Syria were once before in this frame, around the time of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and not long after the Lockerbie disaster. What got them off the hook was their (essential) support for/tolerance of the US-led coalition's aims re ejecting Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Gadaffi conveniently filled the breach. This time around Gadaffi seems to be supporting some kind of retaliation. Quite likely he, like a lot of other leaders, is concerned about the threat posed to state elites by the rise of a quite uncivil society. But he and others will have to perform very difficult balancing acts as they attempt to impose order upon their societies but still retain legitimacy. The diffuse nature of the target identified by Bush and his clan makes it likely that the non-Western segments of the coalition, and very possibly even some of the Western, will have only temporary membership. This is because of the apparently pathological attachment of key players in the Bush clan to outmoded foreign policy frameworks. Not content with fighting the Cold War, Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney seem set, with Samuel Huntington as their guide, to treat all Islam as one great opposing civilisation, and act accordingly. Thus they cannot conceive of the very profound differences between the Iranian leadership and the Taliban, for instance. Meanwhile Syria's regime, founded upon a secularist ideology and presided over by members of a small minority traditionally associated with more mystical elements of Islam (hence dangerously heretical to the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood and other elements, including the bin Laden adherents), is hardly likely to want to encourage such destabilising developments. Remember Hafez al-Assad's brutal subjugation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982? Unlike Pan-Am flight 103, the WTC/Pentagon attacks were probably the last things either Syria or Iran wanted to happen. However, the affront of Israeli atrocities in Palestine prohibits them from even coming close to saying so. We have been hearing a lot of late about how there is such a gaping hole as regards area intelligence. Apparently both Britain and the US lack sufficient expertise regarding the Middle East generally and Afghanistan specifically. This is a remarkable admission, considering all the money and munitions that have poured into the region during the last two decades alone, all the effort that was spent informing the citizens of both countries of the brave Afghan mujahideen fighters beating back the evil Commies, etc. One article I forwarded earlier cited US attitudes towards such people who did research the political economy of the region. These were frowned upon as inappropriate, at best, and dangerously suspicious, at worst, in an uncanny replay of the kind of McCarthyite cleansing that rid US universities of expertise in the Far East during the 1950s. This is detailed by Chalmers Johnson in his unsurpassably prescient Blowback, and cited as, in good measure, responsible for the subsequent debacle in Vietnam. Now we have our own era's equivalents of Edgar Snow being blackballed and dismissed as irrelevant or eccentric, only to decry their absence in our hour of need. The lesson of history is that we never learn the lesson of history. But with the apparent reluctance of the CIA's agents to embroil themselves in such an alien culture and forbidding landscape (years in the desert, no sex! well, no table dancing clubs) how much intelligence has been forwarded courtesy of Mossad, and taken at face value? Since Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya are all declared enemies of Israel, then of course they can be lumped together and treated as part of a dastardly homogenous anti-Zionist conspiracy of hate. If the BBC is prone to relaying Mossad PR, you can bet the desk jobbers at Langley are lapping it up. One really wonders how the experts in and around the White House ever achieved such status, given the catalogue of errors, faux pas and plain stupidity that has unfolded since 20 January this year. Say what you like about Larry Summers et al., but, whatever else they were and did, at least they were consistent and cognisant of their changed (vis a vis the Cold War) environment. Meanwhile I believe that Brzezinski refuses to admit any wrongdoing in having presided over the process that spawned our global Wanted poster pin-up boy. At least with Powell there is a sheen of competence that escaped his immediate predecessor, she who coined the phrase the indispensable nation. Now we know what happens when you stand just that little bit taller than everyone else. With so many experts so
Poacher turned gamekeeper
to take sides. We all have an interest in seeing terrorism defeated. The left should applaud loudest when it happens. Then we should continue with our mission to conquer world poverty and build international peace and a world based upon justice, equality and human rights. * Peter Hain is minister of state at the Foreign Office. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,557087,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Objectivity
BBC denies Israel influenced coverage of conflict By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem The Independent, 21 September 2001 A senior Israeli official publicly boasted yesterday that Israel has influenced the editorial policy of the BBC in its coverage of the Middle East conflict. The claims have caused anger at the BBC, which has been fending off allegations, first published by The Independent, that it was pressured by Israeli diplomats into softening its language towards Israel - notably by describing the assassinations by Israeli death squads of suspected Palestinian militants merely as targeted killings. One allegation is thatthe Israeli embassy in London, which has mounted a huge drive to influence the British media, has pressured the BBC to take a tougher line during interviews with Palestinians in the past year. The claims were made by David Schneeweis, the Israeli Embassy's press secretary, who has a wide range of contacts at the highest levels of the British media, during a taped interview with the Jerusalem Post's internet radio service. In it, he states that the BBC, of which he is scathingly critical, is a vast organisation, like the Coca-Cola corporation, and is very difficult to influence. But, he adds: London is a world centre of media and the embassy here works night and day to try to influence that media. And, in many subtle ways, I think we don't do a half-bad job, if I may say so ... We have newspapers that write consistently in a manner that supports and understands Israel's situation and its dilemmas and challenges. And we have had influence on the BBC as well. The rigour of the questioning of Palestinian interviewees is nowhere what it should be, but it is vastly improved over the past 12 months than what it was before. The claims were met with an angry rebuttal from the BBC. To suggest that either the Israelis or the Palestinians have had any influence on our rigorously independent coverage of events in the Middle East or that there has been any change in the way we cover events in the past 12 months is complete rubbish, a spokesman said. Yesterday, Mr Schneeweis wrote a letter to the BBC attacking two correspondents in Jerusalem, Orla Guerin and Barbara Plett, for saying on air that television footage of Palestinians celebrating after the US atrocities did not reflect the sentiments of most Palestinians. This interpretation was substantiated by many other correspondents in the region. But Mr Schneeweis said the reporting went to great lengths to put the pictures 'in context' and were blatant and apparently co-ordinated attempts to guide the British audience away from making its own judgements. He suggested the two BBC reporters had succumbed to Palestinian intimidation or had chosen to champion the Palestinian cause. His letter, which was leaked to the Jerusalem Post, caused fury at the BBC. Its Middle East editor in Jerusalem, Andrew Steele, has written a letter to the newspaper denying that its correspondents were either biased towards, or intimidated by, the Palestinians, and pointing out that it is a reporters' job to put events into context. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=95212 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
UN Resolution 1333
Ken Hanly tells Gene Coyle: Bush already gave us the answer to that. Those who harboured terrorists are also guilty and to be punished. = An Egyptian friend tells me that the sheikh responsible for issuing the fatwah against Anwar Sadat is now resident in a country notorious for harbouring international terrorists and criminals: the United States. Let the bombing commence. Michael K.
Skilled labour shortage
We need more expertise on Afghanistan The atrocity in New York should be a wake-up call to British universities, says Professor Anoush Ehteshami The Independent, 20 September 2001 It takes a tragedy of this magnitude to bring home how little we know about societies beyond our trading borders. For all the increases in air travel and international tourism, the average Western traveller has understood little about the forces that shape their favourite holiday destinations. But while the average traveller can be excused for that, the same cannot be said of Western decision-makers. They need a more developed understanding of the world. They should be foresighted enough to ensure that expertise about non-Western societies is nurtured in British universities. Alas, that is not the case. Where Afghanistan is concerned, it is difficult to identify one, let alone a group of experts, to guide policy in the United Kingdom. Before last week little was known about Osama bin Laden and his supporters. There is no one who follows the country closely in British higher education. The Foreign Office has its own experts, but there is no community of experts to take a differing view from the official government one. The Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce) has not invested in the subject. Just as we convinced ourselves that the world changed on 11 September, we need now to ask exactly how that change is to be manifested? If the world has changed, it is time we learned how poorly equipped we are to deal with the challenges ahead. For all the talk of our special relationship with the United States, Britain also has a special relationship with the Muslim world. It has either created many of its modern states, ruled over large parts of them, or developed close trade relationships with its key countries. The relationship is even more intimate in the Middle East, where until recently, Britain was one of two main outside influences. Yet there has been a real withering away of the well-grounded expertise in the key areas and countries of the Muslim world that had existed in Britain. Sadly, also, support for such trendy notions as the End of History, which was closely associated with the work of Francis Fukuyama after the Cold War, did not help. Some Western policy-makers came to believe his thesis - that the West's victory over the Soviet bloc had made the world a more uniform place, in which the rest have to follow the West - and began acting upon on it. In these circumstances, what need for studying the intricacies of such distant places as the Middle East? Tragically, the ghost of such armchair ideas was put to rest by the attacks in the United States. In future, there must be dialogue, in which all parties show an understanding of one another's culture. Britain has a unique role to play. While Middle Eastern and Islamic studies flourish in a handful of British universities, we don't have the expertise we should in the core issues and key Middle Eastern countries shaping today's agenda. Now is the time to revisit area studies, and ask the Government, the research councils, and Hefce to take more seriously the contribution that area-studies scholars and regional experts make. If the world has really changed, so should our response to it. The writer is director of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/education/story.jsp?story=94924 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jockeying for position
Iran, along with Turkey, as a stabilising influence in the Middle East. It also wants European solidarity to strengthen US-EU ties on a host of issues. But the crisis is seen as a chance to promote the national interest too, in Germany's case closer cooperation on intelligence sharing. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,554808,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Britain/US split?
Mandelson back as think-tank head Kamal Ahmed, political editor The Observer, 9 September 2001 The champagne corks at high-powered parties have not been popping with quite the same regularity for Peter Mandelson since he resigned from the Government. But the gentle rehabilitation of the former Northern Ireland Secretary will continue apace this week when he is announced as the chairman of one of the most high-powered, if little known, political networks in the country. Mandelson is to lead the Policy Network, the left-of-centre organisation which includes some of the most influential figures in Britain and continental Europe. The list of its backers reads like a Who's Who of the New Labour world. His new position was confirmed at a private dinner on Thursday night at the well-known Westminster watering hole Shepherds. Among the guests were Giuliano Amato, the former Italian Prime Minister, and Michael Barber, the head of the Downing Street delivery unit and one of Tony Blair's closest advisers. Mandelson has strongly denied that his movement back into the political limelight reveals any designs on a return to Government. But he has admitted he needs 'a full political role' after he lost his ministerial job. 'The Policy Network is not a way back into Government: it is part of the alternative to Government,' he told The Observer . 'In effect I am creating a new life for myself. This is mainly in my constituency and in Parliament but when you have been absorbed as a Minister you do need other things to fill your life. The Policy Network is one of those things.' Officials with the Network admit its list of backers would make most think-tanks 'green with envy'. Trustees include Lord Levy, Blair's envoy to the Middle East and chief fundraiser for the Labour Party; Philip Gould, Blair's personal pollster; and Anthony Giddens, the political theorist who Blair has said most influenced his thinking. Andrew Adonis, a senior figure in the Downing Street policy unit, is on the management board and the Network's journal is edited by Andrew Hood, special adviser to Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence. Sidney Blumenthal, former special adviser to Bill Clinton, is on the editorial board. Invitations to its drinks parties are becoming the must-have for anyone who wants to rub shoulders with some of the Left's biggest thinkers. 'If it decides to have a Christmas party that is one invitation you would drop anything for,' said one Labour Party figure connected to the Network. Writers in the first issue of the Network's highly cerebral 'journal' include Geoff Mulgan, the director of the performance and innovation unit in the Cabinet Office, who answers directly to Blair, Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, and Andrew Rotherham, Clinton's former education adviser. 'The Policy Network does not originate policy like a conventional think-tank,' Mandelson said. 'It enables policy makers to meet and debate and exchange ideas so that policy is strengthened in practice. 'The Network... needs to make more impact to exploit the full value of its work.' Mandelson said he would be using the Network's high profile platform to launch an attack on the policies of the anti-globalisation protesters. 'The social movement opposed to globalisation is heading up a whole number of cul de sacs,' he said. 'Nevertheless those of us on the Centre Left need to rise to a higher level of engagement. We cannot reduce important debate about serious matters to an issue of crowd control.' Mandelson has been slowly moving back into the political mainstream since his resignation over the Hinduja passport scandal earlier this year. Last week Blair used one of his first engagements on his return from holiday to make a high-profile visit to Hartlepool, Mandelson's constituency, where he was photographed with his close friend for the first time since he forced Mandelson to quit. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4253041,00.html Michael Keaney
spencer
Jim Gautama Devine writes: It would have been very useful if someone had critiqued the kind of RPE you refer to. Of course, that would be a hard nut to crack, since that kind of RPE is definitely heterogeneous. It also doesn't avoid any of the questions that Spencer accuses RPE of avoiding. It's also more productive than the narrowly-defined RPE of BG. = I agree with Jim that there is a conceit regarding what constitutes RPE among many of its most conscientiously prominent practitioners. Way back in 1973 there was an interesting collection of articles edited by James Weaver that featured chapters on selected topics from both orthodox and radical views (e.g. Galbraith's New Industrial State thesis was critiqued by both Scott Gordon for the NCs and Douglas Dowd for the radicals). Among the radical contributors were the Amherst crew, inc. Bowles and Gintis. Gintis is flagged up as having written one of the most remarkable and widely cited Ph.D. dissertations in living memory (or something like that). This, to me, is indicative of a differential weighting employed by some supposedly radical economists -- it is economist that comes first, radical a poor second, and progressively so, if BG's recent trajectory is anything to go by. The model of economist adopted is the technocratic one, and the same hierarchies of conventional academia are replicated in the supposedly radical discourse. The Weaver book is quite revealing of how things subsequently developed, given its near-manifesto status for the then emergent RPE paradigm. Reading the most recent URPE reader one finds traces of this conceit still, as at least one chapter divides the world into NC, classical Marxist and radical political economy categories. The latter, of course, refers to Bowles and Gintis. This is very misleading, because it ignores a vast swathe of work that is equally, if not more, radical in its political implications and far less obsessed with technique or academic respectability (which is not to be equated with robust intellectual work). And BTW, I'm not bashing technique per se. In the same reader Fred Moseley has an excellent chapter discussing the decline in the US rate of profit since 1945. It is a model of clarity and thoroughly unpretentious. So, too, is Buddha's paper on the cost of living index. If I remember correctly, the same Weaver collection also features contributions by David Gordon, who explains that he is getting out of academia and into organising work. Gordon seems to have been a rare example of someone whose technical prowess did not infringe upon his sociopolitical commitments (although maybe Mat has some views on that). Recently I dug out Paul Q. Hirst's Marxism and Historical Writing, and read his extended critique of E.P. Thompson's The Poverty of Theory. Hirst castigates Thompson for undervaluing the proliferation of Marxist and radical academic work during the 1970s. Hirst looks forward to the embedding and further development of a Marxian academia as its subject matter assumes greater academic respectability. From here it looks like Thompson was prescient, not Hirst. And if the leaders of RPE are anything to go by, we know why. Michael K.
Unidentified sources get to work
Chris Burford wrote: Once again this Scottish source is so good, it makes you wonder if it is being used to leak informed briefings into the British media. But why? Is it to keep the flag flying for Britain in the skirmishing with US intelligence services, but discretely through a Scottish rather than an English outlet? = There is a very murky para-world in journalism, featuring some very ambiguous links between the intelligence community and ex-Leftists (mostly CP), just as in academia, where some former die-hard opponents of capitalism have suddenly been rehabilitated as experts on economies in transition, etc. I believe that those journalists with democratic leanings who are not irredeemable like John Pilger, e.g., are, at the very least, used by liberal and other mischief-making intelligence officers for whatever ends they deem suitable. Liberal -- in the sense of pursuing a line distinct from my state, right or wrong a la George Kennedy Young; mischief-making -- in the sense of MI6 officers (e.g.) feeding information to the press in order to embarrass their MI5 rivals, such as with the recent revelations regarding the Home Office inquiry headed by David Spedding, former MI6 chief, into criminal intelligence gathering in the UK, effectively sidelining MI5's hitherto supposedly high-profile role. The fact that a chief of MI6 would be asked to head up such an inquiry by the Home Office at all is itself remarkable. Another reason why provincial newspapers may be privy to harder information is a variation on the old trick of surfacing, where sensitive information (factual, smear, whatever) is published in a relatively obscure outlet (possibly overseas) and allowed to filter back via the initiative (or manipulation) of hacks at home. The Herald is interesting, given its regular access to apparently strong sources. Proximity to Northern Ireland may explain some of that. Intelligence angst at potential Scottish separatism may also have a role to play. Michael K.
These guys we can trust w/our civil liberties?
Jim D. resolves: I'm going to have to stop wearing a turban... = Far more worrying has been your recent lurch into game theory. I liked you better when you were bopping to 'NSync. Michael K.
Declaring war against journalism
According to yesterday's Independent: Greg Dyke, the director general of the BBC, was wrong to apologise for last week's edition of Question Time, in which members of the studio audience said that the US ought to try to understand why it was so hated by some Muslims. = Good grief. I had missed this. Did he really do this? How far we have come since the heady days of 1982 when, railing against the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation Thatcher, Tebbit et al. set to work attacking the BBC from outside while plants like Rees-Mogg did the dirty inside. Brian Hanrahan was the BBC news reporter covering the Falklands campaign. Thatcher's people tried to engineer that he would report their 1983 election campaign (on to victory, none too subtly). BBC news managers put him on Michael Foot's trail instead, not that it did him much good, given the rest of the abuse heaped upon him by the establishment. Dyke saved TV-am at this time, effectively bailing out its original backer, Peter Jay, who is still, I believe, economics editor at the BBC. Jay was sidelined and the not at all lovely Bruce Gyngell was parachuted in to impose financial discipline, which included smashing the technicians' union, whose picket lines were breached regularly by the equally unlovely new presenters (Nick Owen and Ann Diamond, together with older toadies like David Frost -- whose ground-breaking and rehabilitatory interview with Richard Nixon in 1978 was produced by John Birt), while Dyke dismantled Jay's mission to explain structure (way too boring for comatose commuters) and gave the world Roland Rat instead. Dyke it was, as ITV controller some years later, who ended weekly coverage of professional wrestling (nothing like WWF, etc.) because it was too low-brow. There was little complaint when Rupert Murdoch started pumping out Hulk Hogan etc. via his Sky TV around this time. I've already pointed out the remarkably inter-twined nature of Dyke's career with that of John Birt, Blair's strategic policy supremo (see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001III/msg00752.html). It was Birt, of course, who cleared the way for the supine abeyance now, apparently, a matter of routine at Broadcasting House. Maybe Newsnight (actually an SDP mouthpiece for much of the 1980s) retains some semblance of independence and criticism, but for the rest of the world BBC World is a faithful mouthpiece disseminating state-sponsored propaganda and manipulation via a bunch of mostly unrecognisable teenagers who've all been thoroughly trained in the dreaded mission to explain ethos of making everything as simple, condescending and thoroughly patronising as possible. Meanwhile those few remaining stalwarts who've survived (and even thrived) during the Birt years, including Hanrahan, David Dimbleby, Philip Hayton and the syrupy John Simpson, have been joined by former ITN journalist and Ditchley Foundations governor Nik Gowing (see http://www.ditchley.co.uk/listings/index.htm) give necessary gravitas to what would otherwise be a distinctly underpowered affair. Among the most sickening aspects of the last week's coverage (and there has been a lot of competition) has been the spectacle of Diana Grief II, as hundreds spontaneously gathered in London to grieve the loss of life in New York. This was presented as a wonderful patriotic display, showing how loyal we Brits are when it comes to standing shoulder to shoulder with our wonderfully supportive and understanding ally. But when other Brits spontaneously question the rationale behind an indiscriminate and indeterminate war on terrorism, the man responsible for Roland Rat apologises. So much for the mission to explain. Michael K.
Mission to explain
Dyke: why I apologised Jessica Hodgson Tuesday September 18, 2001 The Guardian Greg Dyke, the BBC director general, sent an email to staff yesterday in a bid to quell a revolt over his decision to apologise publicly for remarks made during Question Time to the former US ambassador, Philip Lader. On Saturday I took the unusual step of publicly apologising for one of our programmes - last Thursday's edition of Question Time,Mr Dyke said in his email. I didn't do this without a great deal of thought and discussion with my senior colleagues and today I am sending this email to everyone who works for the BBC to explain why I took the action I did. When I joined the BBC I made it very clear that I believed that if we made a mistake we should say so and apologise. On Thursday we made a mistake so I apologised on behalf of the BBC. There will be no ramifications, no internal witch-hunt, no disciplinary action, no blame attached, said Mr Dyke. An error of judgment was made and it was unfortunate, but we all make errors of judgment at times. I didn't take this action because of the press reaction - much of which was misleading, he said. I did it partly because of the unprecedented number of complaints we received from viewers of the programme, but also because when I looked at the tape, I genuinely believed the programme was inappropriate coming just two days after such an appalling tragedy. Thousands of people lost mothers, father, husbands, wives, partners, children, friends and colleagues in the events of last Tuesday. Many of these were British and were no doubt amongst our viewers on Thursday evening. In these circumstances we failed to judge properly the mood of the moment. The programme had the wrong tone given the scale of the tragedy which had occurred so recently. The BBC received more than 600 complaints about the programme, in which the former US embassador was almost reduced to tears after one member of the audience explained why everyone hated the Americans. Mr Lader said he was astounded that such views were being expressed just 48 hours after the tragedy. But Mr Dyke's apology has also caused astonishment. The intervention of a director general is extremely rare and it is thought the last apology made by the head of the BBC was in 1996, when John Birt caved in to Tories who had complained about an interview Anna Ford had conducted on the Today programme with Kenneth Clarke. But Mr Dyke added that although the coming weeks would prove difficult, the BBC had a duty to question, even if it makes us unpopular. So please, he continued, don't confuse my apology on Saturday with any suggestion that we shouldn't remain strictly impartial or that we shouldn't ask difficult questions when appropriate. Greg. Mr Dyke was responding to criticism, both from within the BBC and from outside, of his decision to apologise to Mr Lader for what he called an unfortunate error of judgement. The apology came after the former ambassador came under verbal attack on the programme from sections of the audience. Mr Lader is reported to have been reduced to tears after accusations that Americans had brought the tragedy on themselves through their anti-Arab policies in the Middle East and elsewhere Full article at: http://media.guardian.co.uk/attack/story/0,1301,553821,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Feddler on the roof
According to the NYT: The smaller-than-expected losses in the stock market reflected a surge of buying by ordinary Americans, who were evidently convinced that it was patriotic to be bullish. = Is anyone asking awkward questions about the identities of those whose apparent lack of patriotism makes it necessary for already heavily indebted consumers to rush to the markets' rescue? Exactly who is being so unAmerican as to sell their stocks? Michael K.
Appointments procedure
Row set to erupt over BBC chairman Matt Wells, media correspondent Tuesday September 18, 2001 The Guardian The government appears to be heading for a political row over the appointment of a Labour-supporting economist as chairman of the BBC. Ministers are expected soon to confirm Gavyn Davies, chief economist with Goldman Sachs and deputy chairman of the BBC's board of governors, as successor to Sir Christopher Bland. Mr Davies's wife, Sue Nye, works in the office of the chancellor, Gordon Brown. Greg Dyke, the BBC director general, has supported Labour in the past. Such a combination would be politically sensitive. Tim Yeo, the shadow culture spokesman, expressed concern yesterday. I think this will cause problems for the BBC itself. They have got a director general who is known to be a strong supporter of Labour. I think it does create a problem if they have a chairman who is also a strong supporter of the Labour party. He said the Tories had not yet decided whether they would raise a formal objection. Privately, Mr Davies has argued that he would not have been so successful in his work in the City had he allowed politics to cloud his professional judgment. And in the years of Tory government, the political affiliation of BBC chairmen was never an issue. Most previous incumbents have had links with the Conservative party. If Mr Davies is successful, one of the leading contenders for vice-chairman to replace him will be Baroness Hogg, the head of John Major's policy unit between 1992 and 1995, who is married to the former Tory minister, Douglas Hogg. Her Tory affiliations would go some way to assuage concern, and Number 10 is likely to agree the appointment with the Conservatives. An independent panel interviewed candidates last week and has sent its report to Sir Nicholas Kroll, acting permanent secretary at the culture department. Mr Davies is thought to be the first choice, with Baroness Jay, the former leader of the House of Lords, second. The broadcaster David Dimbleby was on the shortlist but was not seen as being a sufficiently experienced administrator. The appointment of a panel was a means of opening up the procedure, hitherto agreed in private between the political parties, and for the first time the post was advertised. Nevertheless, Mr Davies was front runner from first to last: he is by far the most experienced candidate, having led the review resulting in an increase in the licence fee last year to fund the BBC's new digital services. Apart from his political connections, the only bar to his appointment is a perceived lack of charisma. Some observers say that, with Mr Dyke being the opposite, this is not a problem. Sir Nicholas will make his own recommendation to Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, who will in turn consult with Downing Street. Technically the appointment is made by the Queen, but she will have a single name to consider. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,553628,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Another take on oil
. The required migration rates for plant species are 10 times greater than at the end of the last Ice Age, according to a recent study by the Worldwide Fund for Nature. Many species, finding themselves blocked by seas, human development or simply unable to keep up with the pace of change, will simply go extinct. The result will be a series of mass extinctions and a dramatic fall in the planet's biodiversity, as well as its ability to support humankind. In short, global warming - caused largely by industrial society's addiction to oil - will destroy the capacity of the Earth's atmosphere to support life as we know it. The choices are stark. On one side lies war, insecurity and eventual ecological collapse. On the other lies a brighter future involving a reduction of poverty and global inequalities, ending western military dominance and achieving ecological sustainability. For other countries to follow the lead of the Bush administration, wedded as it is to both the oil industry and the American military-industrial complex, would set the scene for total disaster. But choosing the latter course would mean calling an end to the Oil Age. How many of us really have the courage to face up to this reality? * Mark Lynas is currently writing a book for HarperCollins on the human effects of climate change around the world. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,553884,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Racist responses by media and authorities
Michael Pugliese wrote: World Socialist Website of the ICFI? wsws. A really tiny Trot group, that is remnants of the Workers League of Tim Wohlforth, an acquaintance. Tim isn't a Trot anymore. The Workers League and the ICFI still believe that the US SWP was run by the FBI AND KGB. Not a bad trick, eh! See a long dossier, Security and the Fourth International. Used to have a copy but a party at my pad a long time ago got it soaked with beer. = How absorbing. Michael K.
SAS trained Mujahedin fighters in Scotland
Michael Pugliese reports: Scots link to US terror suspect = The links go deeper than that. In an apparent breach of the selectively draconian Official Secrets Act, former ITN journalist and co-honcho of the flagship News at Ten programme (with the Thatcherite Alistair Burnet) Sandy Gall detailed in his memoirs how he was hired by MI6, at the CIA's behest presumably, to keep the British public informed about the brave freedom fighters battling against Soviet tyranny. The intrepid Sandy made numerous visits to Afghanistan during this period, drumming up support by fund-raising for children's charities, etc., showing the oppportunities that lay ahead for the Afghans once they were free of communism and able to determine their own futures. His charity still functions, apparently: http://www.sandygallsafghanistanappeal.org/ As you might expect, John Pilger has covered this: In his auto-biography, News from the Front, the ITN correspondent and newscaster Sandy Gall boasted of his high government and MI6 contacts and the work he did for them. 'I received a call from a friend in British Intelligence,' he wrote, 'telling me that the Foreign Secretary remained particularly concerned about Afghanistan and was anxious to keep the war in front of the British public; how could this be done? Would I talk to someone from his office and give him, and Lord Carrington, the benefit of my advice? Feeling flattered, I agreed ...' Gall made Afghanistan his speciality. In the 1980s, he went on a number of trips with the mojahedin, the guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupiers. On the eve of one of these assignments, which began in Pakistan, he went to see the Pakistani dictator, General Zia, who clearly regarded Gall as an important ally. Both MI6 and the CIA were backing Zia as the ruler of a 'frontline' state in this important Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. As they strolled through his garden, the General, one of the world's nastiest fundamentalist tyrants, asked Gall if there was anything he wanted. ' Yes, [Gall] said, would it be possible to have some SAM 7s with us? Zia laughed. SAM 7s? I don't see why not. But why? ' We're likely to come under attack by Mi24 gunships, I suppose, and it would make some spectacular pictures if one of them were to be shot down. 'Zia laughed again, seeing the point. I'll see to it, he promised. You'll get your SAMs. ' Gall got his missile, which, he wrote, 'we fired', but it malfunctioned. Back in London, he was invited to lunch by the head of MI6. 'It was very informal,' wrote Gall, 'the cook was off, so we had cold meat and salad, with plenty of wine.' Britain's leading spymaster wanted information about Afghanistan from Gall who, once again, was 'flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms of first-hand knowledge'. Moreover, the man from ITN determined 'not to prise any information out of him in return', even though 'this is not normally how a journalist's mind works'. The reason for this journalistic reticence was that 'avuncularly charming' as the head of MI6 might be, 'he was far too experienced to let slip anything he did not wish to'. In 1992, an internal committee of the Central Intelligence Agency reported that the CIA now had excellent links with the media. 'We have relationships with reporters', it said, '[that] have helped us turn some intelligence failure stories into intelligence success stories. Some responses to the media can be handled in a one-shot phone call. Others, such as the BBC's six-part series, draw heavily on [CIA] sources.' See http://pilger.carlton.com/media/guardians10 Gall, at least until recently, has been plying his trade around conferences to do with Afghan politics, etc., so it's possible British viewers can look forward to expert musings from this source. His charity, as of January this year, remains on the UN's approved list of NGOs working in Afghanistan (see http://www.un.org/french/docs/sc/committees/Afghanistan/6994e.html). Michael K.
RE: Dead Metaphors Society
Tom Walker doubts: soft landing for the economy = One of the more interesting activities of an otherwise unremarkable weekend was catching up with the newspapers left unread owing to the extraordinary events of last week. This article seems very pertinent in light of the above, and, as with a lot else in recent times, seems to throw yet another traditional assumption of orthodox finance out of the window, thanks to the myopic obsession with shareholder value: Of bonds and disquiet: The corporate bond market today is a much riskier place than it was 20 years ago Financial Times, Sep 11, 2001 By PETER MARTIN In equity markets, the most dangerous words are: This time it's different. In bond markets, though, the most dangerous words may yet prove to be: This time it's the same. The bond market is a sober place. Its denizens will tell you that they are never carried away by the euphoria that infects their equity market cousins. The rating agencies provide reams of statistics on which bond buyers and analysts can draw to back up their view that just as good times inevitably turn bad, bad times can be relied upon to usher in renewed prosperity. But two things have happened in the past 20 years that make the corporate bond market a riskier place. First, the days when companies used to take pride in an iron-clad balance sheet have gone. The pressures to maximise shareholder returns have made it simply uncompetitive to have a triple-A rating any more. Shareholders expect finance directors to work the balance sheet harder. A few snapshots illustrate the trend: in the 1980s, of companies acquiring Standard Poor's bond ratings for the first time, an average of 10 per cent a year had triple-A ratings. In the 1990s, that figure was slightly more than 3 per cent. Downgrades have exceeded upgrades for 19 of the past 20 years. US corporate debt has risen from slightly more than half the annual corporate contribution to gross domestic product to more than 85 per cent of it. And SP's median rating for US companies has dropped a notch in two decades, from single-A to triple-B. Running a company on a higher debt/equity ratio delivers better returns to shareholders, in the short term at least. And it may well make sense in an era of economic stability, when the overall riskiness of the company's operations is lessened by steady growth. Still, if the era of stability is interrupted - as it seems to be this year - higher levels of debt make companies much more fragile. In the first half of this year, rated bond issuers defaulted on Dollars 51bn (Pounds 35bn) of debt, according to SP. And this was a period when the full impact of the slowdown had not yet had time to work its way through into companies' debt service. Default does not necessarily mean that the company is going under: it is perfectly possible for a business to restructure its debt or to conduct a fire sale of assets. But it is a good indicator that the company has taken on an unsustainable load of debt. Or started with it. Because the second trend is one that began with the junk-bond revolution of the 1980s: a much greater tendency for new companies deliberately to establish themselves with weak balance sheets. In 1998, the peak year of this cycle for the issue of speculative-grade debt, 24 per cent of new issues were rated at double-B, a category that has demonstrated a 16 per cent chance of default over 15 years. And 37 per cent were rated single-B, with a 15-year probability of default of 30 per cent. Those default numbers probably overstate the strength of the new arrivals, because the historical figures include fallen angels, companies once strongly capitalised that have fallen on hard times. Such businesses often have hidden strengths that can be revealed by a change of management. Newly launched, thinly capitalised companies are inherently more vulnerable. In other words, this time it is different - and worse. Do bond investors realise that they have been assuming risks on this scale? Up to a point: speculative bonds have fallen sharply as a proportion of the total issuance this year and issuers have had to pay much higher prices. But investment-grade bond issuance has exploded, as finance directors have taken advantage of the bull market in bonds triggered by US interest rate cuts. Bond risks are only some of the recent changes in the financial system of the developed economies. Managers are lavishly incentivised to push up the return on equity. Bond investors are assuming equity-like risks. Venture capital and private equity firms are pushing for much more rapid payback. Lending decisions are increasingly divorced from the long-term assumption of credit risk. For 10 years, the markets' attention was focused on the way that these changes helped push equity prices steadily upwards. But now that equities' irresistible rise is over, investors are starting to wake up to the structural changes that accompanied the bull market
Gadaffi speech
Ken Hanly forwards: US risks quagmire in Afghanistan - Gaddafi By Gilles Trequesser = Prior to last Tuesday's events Gadaffi's activities were a cause of some concern to State Dept officials and others, as this FT article relates: Libya pledge in Caribbean worries US: Poor islands are happy with Gadaffi offer to give cash and buy bananas but Washington is not, reports Canute James Financial Times, Sep 12, 2001 By CANUTE JAMES For small eastern Caribbean islands seeking escape from economic stagnation, anew and controversial source of help is promising much. The islands' governments have grabbed at a Libyan promise to allow them access to a Dollars 2bn (Pounds 1.2bn) development fund. Libya has also promised to purchase at high prices all the bananas on which some of the islands depend, and to give the countries Dollars 21m immediately. The promised aid, agreed during recent talks in Libya between three Caribbean prime ministers and Muammer Gadaffi, Libya's president, has caused concern among other Caribbean leaders. Libya's increasingly strong influence in the Caribbean is also causing concern in Washington, where US legislators recently voted for a five-year extension of economic sanctions against Tripoli. The US and some other countries imposed the sanctions because they believe the Libyan government has not taken responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died. Our co-operation with Libya is not based on ideology, said Pierre Charles, prime minister of Dominica, who visited Tripoli with his colleagues from St Vincent and Grenada. We want to get technical and economic assistance for our countries. We are not doing anything to antagonise the US. But the US would recognise that, as tiny countries, we have to find the ways and means of raising the living standards our of people, and dealing with the serious debt burden that we have. In deciding to visit Libya seeking aid, the region's leaders said they faced increasingly intractable problems. Their economies, based mainly on bananas and tourism, are threatened by the deregulation of preferred markets on which they have depended. Heavily indebted, they say aid for the Caribbean from the US last year totalled Dollars 120m, just over a half of the amount a decade ago, and Dollars 70m of it went to Haiti. Five prime ministers originally had agreed to visit Colonel Gadaffi. Denzil Douglas of St Kitts-Nevis and Lester Bird of Antigua pulled out of the mission. There is nothing wrong with the concept of visiting Libya, said Mr Bird. That is why initially I had agreed to it. However, in reviewing the decision, and in talks with my cabinet, it was pointed out that there was inadequate preparation for the trip. He said it was ludicrous to suggest that he pulled out because of objections by the US. Antigua is among the countries that will get some of the promised Dollars 21m. The US has no desire, and sees no need, to dictate to other countries how they should conduct their foreign affairs, a spokesman for the US State Department said yesterday. However, such official calm masks clear concerns. The Caribbean is strategically important to the US - it is economically important for shipping, said a US diplomat in the region. We will be worried if there is to be significant influence on the region's governments by elements that clearly have a poor and frightening record of doing anything to get their way. Libya's promise has also worried other Caribbean leaders. Basdeo Panday, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said he was concerned about the implications of his colleagues' visit to Libya when there were concerns about Libya's connections in the Caribbean. Saying he would not tell his colleagues how to conduct their business, Owen Arthur, prime minister of Barbados, said regional governments should be careful about agreements they were signing. He said, however, that some countries in the region needed financial assistance. It is very difficult to transform a banana economy in a small state. Government officials in the eastern Caribbean are guarded about the timing of their access to the promised aid. They said Libya would send a mission to the region shortly to discuss the details, and to examine the prospects for Libyan investments in resort hotels and the write-off of existing loans, including Dollars 6m owed by Grenada. The discussions will also deal with the sale of our bananas, and the prices we will get, as our fruit is now sold to the EU, although the future of the market is uncertain, said a St Vincent official. The region's leaders maintain that the economic pressures they are encountering cannot be resolved by awaiting increased assistance from the industrialised countries. Our economies are affected just like the economies of the developed countries, said Mr Charles. If the developed countries are saying that they are into a recession, then one can
Journal of Econ. Perspectives on the WTO
Michael P. asks: Has anybody looked at the recent issue? The symposium on trade seems especially weak to me. Am I alone on this? = Not having access to this I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts. I'd also appreciate a comment, if possible, on the following article: David A. Spencer (2000), The demise of radical political economics? An essay on the evolution of a theory of capitalist production, Cambridge Journal of Economics 24(5): 543-64 According to the ABI-Inform abstract, the article concerns the following: The paper traces the historical development of American radical economics. The focus is on the work of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis. The central aim is to examine the implications of their recent move towards neoclassical economics for the study of capitalist production in particular, and the future of American radical economics more generally. By embracing neoclassical concepts and methodology, radical economists have denied themselves the opportunity to elucidate both the bases of capitalist class conflict, and the nature of more complex social interactions at the point of production. American radical economics once provided a powerful critique of capitalism and its system of production, but it now struggles to provide more than a policy prescription for reduced levels of opportunism among individual workers. American radical economics cannot remain a distinctive voice in economics while it retains such close associations with neoclassicism. Michael K.
WTC Bombing
David Shemano writes: The majority of the comments are what I expected. Utter moral confusion. Futile attempts to fit the events into your preexisting world views. = The above statement tells us a lot about your own preexisting world views. And who wouldn't be morally confused in this situation? What I find disconcerting, to say the least, is the rush to bear weapons before the dead have even been buried. Here's a good example of utter moral confusion. Today is a national day of mourning in the US. Flags are flying at half mast here in Finland. At 1300 hrs there will be a three minute silence in honour of the victims. Yesterday there was an outpouring of grief in the streets of London (played for all it was worth by the BBC, a la Princess Diana), and we can expect more. What exactly are we saying to the many millions of people around the world about our priorities, about the value hierarchy that we employ when ascribing worth to human life? Clearly, there is at least a very large potential for many justifiably aggrieved people, who have experienced significant loss, hardship, suffering and injustice, to conclude that, for us in the rich North, their troubles merit absolutely no recognition whatsoever -- even when our governments and business leaders are directly responsible for them. Who cares about the appalling conditions inflicted upon the populations of, say, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Angola, Mozambique, Congo/Zaire, Rwanda, Russia, etc., etc. Who cares indeed. My moral confusion stems from a recognition of this situation, and a simultaneous acknowledgement of the awful gravity of Tuesday's events together with the extensive catalogue of actions and inactions that provided the rationale (however twisted) for the perpetrators to act accordingly. The truly morally confused are those who have been quickest to rattle sabres and threaten unmitigated doom to all who *might* be behind this act, whilst effectively ignoring the immediate tasks of grieving, comforting and taking stock of the situation. You continue: Conflict can exist, but there are lines. For instance, Americans understand the Beirut bombing in 1983, or the Cole bombing, and even embassy bombings. It seems strange to say, but those were within the lines, because they were military targets outside of the United States -- in other words, they were symbols of American imperialism and unwanted involvement in foreign affairs. = MK: I have been trying to compose a suitably worded riposte to this sophistry. But its bankruptcy should be self-evident, and others here have responded very eloquently to your original message, particularly Justin, in his defence of class analysis. All I can say is that, if Americans (and here I take it you mean US citizens) truly understood the Beirut bombing of 1983 or the Cole bombing, there would be a far greater public acknowledgement of the mess that is US foreign policy and the heavy responsibility borne by successive US administrations for having put the safety of US citizens at extreme risk. Never mind those of other countries. Exporting the problem yet again is merely symptomatic of the pathological inability of the US power elite (and those that buy its media-relayed explanations of events) to grasp the fundamental import of US hegemony and its consequences. Michael K.
US imperial decline?
Jim D. writes: Why is trying to exert control over wayward, actually and potentially, allies and other less committed types a symptom of US imperial decline? All empires always try to control as much as possible. If Finland were to be brought into the NATO fold, that would be a symptom of US imperial _rise_. = MK: It would be, simultaneously, a diminution of US power. The more NATO keeps expanding the more diffuse its bases of power become, and before long you end up with the United Nations again. The process is well understood by eurosceptics who press for EU enlargement because they know the mechanics of such a process will keep European institutions preoccupied and less focused on developing the dreaded superstate. With any luck it would also seriously weaken the single currency. The effectiveness of the instruments of US global hegemony lies in their exclusivity, whether with regard to membership (G7, G8, G22, OECD, British American Project, NATO, ANZUS, Echelon) or bankrolling/effective control (IMF, World Bank). The WTO might offer hope for the replication of textbook economic models of competition for dim-witted technocrats, but it has not proven to be such an effective instrument of US hegemony thanks largely to European rivalry. That process can be expected to be replicated wherever greater responsibility/sovereignty/authority is awarded to non-US actors. This logic has been clearly understood by the US traditionally, as with all hegemons. The fact that Bush I, in the aftermath of the Cold War, felt sufficiently constrained to construct a broad coalition against Iraq was the first sign of a process of relative decline that has gathered pace under Clinton and now, for the time being at least, reaches its apogee with Bush II which, if it has not already been accomplished, will likely oversee an absolute decline of US imperial power. In a sense this has been acknowledged with the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine and the junking (for now at least) of Larry Summers-type globalism. The notion of imperial decline is well understood by those most concerned to halt, if not reverse, the process, such as Samuel Huntington and Chalmers Johnson, and, to a certain extent at least, Edward Luttwak. Johnson in particular is acutely aware of the very Marxian point that the system (in this case US imperialism) is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. There is no sign whatsoever, in my view, to suggest that this is not the case even now. Indeed, the past few days suggest that the process is intensifying. To subscribe to the imperial state thesis does not mean I foresee a thousand year reich or anything of the sort. Perhaps too many on the Left have underestimated the weakness of the US imperial state and its rather more fragile condition than appearances might suggest. You continue in further response: But most -- or even all -- of the mounting costs are shouldered by the victims of the IMF programs. The rentiers haven't suffered (not due to the IMF). = MK: The law of diminishing returns may apply here. How much more capital can emerging markets export to the US? Or anywhere else? The costs are certainly being borne by the inhabitants of countries like Argentina and Turkey. But, and this is a big but, the rentiers' own criteria, especially given the dizzy heights of euphoria that only very recently characterised our new economy, mitigate against further bailout because there is progressively less in it for them. The IMF, at one level, is imposing its one capitalism fits all models upon unwilling and undeserving peoples but, at another level, is engaging in an ever more frenetic game of firefighting which, as underdevelopment renders emerging markets ever more peripheralised, becomes *apparently* less relevant to the functioning of the global system. I stress apparently because Tuesday's events show how mistaken it is for the hegemon to write off the periphery, however neolithic it may regard such. Thus either to continue as before or to cease entirely (the options apparently before O'Neill) will, in their own distinct ways, exacerbate the structural tensions and weaknesses that threaten to undermine further US hegemony. You continue later: Right now, military Keynesianism could prop up the US economy. It may sap the US industrial strength in the long run, but then the US elite can get others to pay the cost. = MK: Which brings me back to points made above. In the short term the US can probably extract more usurious rents from its allies/underlings, but that's going to grate after a while. For some it already does. It is also a clear signal of the US's inability to go it alone, further dispelling any notions of unassailable might. You conclude: BTW, it's important to distinguish between imperialism (the now world-wide system of capitalist socio-economic domination and exploitation) from the US role in that system (as hegemon). = MK: Absolutely. That's why a declining US
Enlightening lessons
2200 pupils sent home after electrical explosions IAIN WILSON The Herald, 14 September 2001 A teaching union demanded answers yesterday over safety when 2200 pupils were evacuated after a series of electrical explosions in a Glasgow school. Holyrood Secondary is one of the first schools to be refurbished under Glasgow's £1.2bn flagship private-public partnership. Work began last year and is not due to finish until next August. Pupils were led to the playing field and the fire brigade called after light bulbs exploded in two corridors, and smoke billowed from computers in the administration block, which includes classrooms. Pupils and staff were sent home early. Chaos surrounded the return of five Glasgow schools last month because health and safety certificates could not be issued until the night before reopening. At the time, the EIS teachers' union told of loose wiring at Shawlands Secondary and ceiling panels to cover wiring missing at Hillpark Secondary. Other schools were said to still resemble building sites. Willie Hart, EIS Glasgow secretary, said: We need to ask hard questions over safety and the quality of work in the refurbishment programme. We also want to know what lessons will be learned, and to receive assurances that upgrading is to the highest degree possible. Holyrood, on the south side, received health and safety clearances three days before the summer holidays came to an end. Glasgow City Council said it was irresponsible and alarmist of the union to try to drum up concern about the quality of work being done in our schools on the basis of one incident. One Holyrood teacher described the malfunctions as scary and worrying, adding: It was awful, and people were in a state of shock. We want to know what happened, could it happen again, and what measures will be put in place - especially when the school had been cleared to accept pupils. Electricians on site have yet to identify the problem, and an engineer from the design and installation firm is assisting. Council health and safety staff are also involved. The EIS and council have been at loggerheads since the decision was taken to close 10 secondary schools and rebuild or upgrade the remaining 29 via a partnership with 3ED, a consortium involving the Miller Group, Amey, Halifax, Mitel, Hewlett Packard, and Morse. The council said the Holyrood incident was the only one of its kind so far in a project running for over a year on more than 25 sites. A spokeswoman said: Our team monitors and certificates all new and refurbished work, ensuring it meets good industry practice, and all work has to meet our health and safety standards. The school will be open to pupils today. Full article at: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/14-9-19101-0-21-51.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Taking stock of the situation
BAE soars on sales hopes Most military budgets expected to rise David Gow Friday September 14, 2001 The Guardian Expectations of a substantial increase in military spending in the wake of the attacks in the US drove shares in BAE Systems, Britain's premier defence group, steeply higher yesterday. BAE's stock rose 12.5% to 348.75p as investors calculated that not only the US but European and other governments would approve significant rises in defence budgets to boost global security. Sir Dick Evans, BAE chairman, condemning Tuesday's attacks as assaults on the entire civilised world community, refused to speculate on likely gains for BAE. The world is simply not going to be the same place again. The group, hammered by a profits warning in January, announced first-half pretax earnings up 4% at £482m, partly driven by rising sales in its north American business, and a record order book of £45.4bn. Sir Dick and senior colleagues, who expect an even better outcome in the second half, said growth in the company's performance would resume next year as planned - despite scaling back likely deliveries of Airbus commercial aircraft this year and next. Senior executives believe the Bush administration will, on balance, proceed with both the controversial national missile defence system and the new joint strike fighter, potentially the world's most lucrative military contract. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are vying to win the JSF contract, worth up to $40bn with export sales, while BAE has links to both contenders. President Bush is expected to choose a prime contractor later this autumn. BAE's optimism even extends to Europe where the UK has said defence spending during the past year fell to £24.8bn, the equivalent of just 2.5% of GDP compared with 3.9% a decade ago. John Weston, chief executive, said the political will to spend more had not altered. But the group expects production and delivery of Airbus planes to fall to 330 this year and 350 to 370 next year. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,551659,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
the attack
Jim D. qualifies: Even if these aspirations aren't always legitimate, the US and its allies need to learn to treat other countries and people with respect, i.e., to realize that people who don't think in terms of the official Pentagon/State Department party line deserve to have aspirations. = Yes, Jim, I should be careful in my choice of words, since there is obviously no shortage of experts in Washington, D.C., Langley, VA, and London (among other sites) who are very confident in their ability to pronounce on what is legitimate or not. In my mind were the examples of Chile, Palestine and Cuba, to name only three cases where, IMHO, the legitimacy is without question. But respect for others and behaviour consistent with Dubya's pointed (but obviously now forgotten, or merely applicable only with comparison to Clinton) professions of humility are clearly essential, though, it increasingly seems, ever less likely. BBC World (aka the Voice of America) broadcast live Donald Rumsfeld's statement yesterday, until it was cut off in midstream owing to some apparent technical fault. What I saw was a chilling performance -- that in all of this carnage and suffering, in the midst of all this shock, his first and main point was that in the post Cold War era things have become too lax and that security needs to be stepped up, especially concerning the use of classified information. Those with access to classified information are therefore putting the lives of others at risk when they leak any of it to those not cleared for access. Given his past performance I'm not sure why I should be shocked at this ratcheting up of paranoia and invitation to a McCarthyite witch-hunt, but it was amazing all the same. One wonders just how timely that technical fault really was. You continue: right: US isolation has always been a myth. Back in the 1920s, while isolationism was the _official_ policy, the US intervened in Nicaragua, etc. Isolationism is the same as arrogant unilateralism, i.e., the unwillingness to cooperate with the other big (imperialist) powers concerning common interests. = Things are really stepping up several gears. A few days ago the following passage caught my eye: Some IMF officials were initially reluctant to challenge Japan further, hoping that the new reformist government would take action to re-examine the bad loan issue itself. But other IMF officials have recently become convinced that the institution needs to speak out, proactively, on the issue, not least because the IMF's earlier reticence about south-east Asia's economic problems is now blamed for fuelling the 1997 Asian crisis. --Gillian Tett, Tokyo feels pressure over bank debts, Financial Times, 7 September 2001 (not available on the website, apparently, and perhaps for good reason) I wanted to ask: is it really true that this is the official explanation now of what went wrong in Asia? If so, it's an open invitation for the IMF to intervene willy-nilly and impose US Treasury sanctioned solutions and innoculations regardless of the local situation. We may strongly suspect that this goes on anyway, but to be so brazen about it marks a new departure. Now we have the unprecedented invocation of article 5 of the NATO charter, in which all NATO members will be called upon to provide mandated but as yet unspecified support. This is consistent with Bush I's concern during the Gulf War that coalition members and others share in the burden of financing the military action. I recall Japan being particularly squeezed for cash. Now it's a legally mandated protection racket. Other potential rival imperialist powers are being forcibly trammelled into line behind Dubya and his legions, and the word is out that, for the inhabitants of freedom-loving democracies, dissent (i.e. free speech) is treachery. It seems that we have some way to go before the recognition of imperial decline sinks in. Until then we're going to be subject to ever-more frenetic efforts to impose the US power elite's sovereign will upon all and sundry. Michael K.
the attack
Rob writes: Item: From yesterday's Lehrer panelwank: If we're gonna do this right ... aircraft, a naval presence, and ground troops ... we're not talking surgical strikes ... 10 000 bin Laden terrorists in 50 countries ... . = In my earlier missive I neglected to mention another aspect of BBC World's supposedly impartial and objective news coverage (hey -- that's how they advertise it in the Financial Times Europe edition, but we know that this myth was officially dispelled on 1 August 1985 when all British TV journalists went on strike in protest at Thatcher/Leon Brittan leaning on the BBC for its Real Lives documentary on Martin McGuinness. Most of that journalistic cadre have either retired, moved on or been ejected by Birtian reforms). Every hour last night, prior to the top of the hour main bulletin, a video montage was shown, with pounding music in the background, beginning with Powell declaring this to be an act of war, cutting to various scenes of carnage and destruction, including of course the collapse of the towers, rescuers going through the rubble, grieving masses, then cutting to Bush declaring war on terrorism, then cutting to more images of Tuesday before ending with a dramatic musical flourish. Perhaps Greg Dyke believes young people will be more interested in news, and especially foreign news, if he not only gets his charges to compose trailers for the next Chuck Norris film, but arranges for us all to have a starring part. It is truly sickening watching the endless stream of disinformation and manipulation being pumped out of London. Ehud Barak was given unrestricted airtime to vent his views, more or less pre-empting Bush's call for an international effort against terrorism, and all that this entails. Yes, some more critical voices are getting through, including an interesting analyst from RAND Europe whose name I forget. Another more interesting panellist on Tuesday pointed out that on taking office in 1993, Clinton commissioned a committee headed up by Gore to look into air security. The report's security recommendations were implemented for international flights, while ignored for domestic flights after a sustained campaign by the airline companies protesting at the unnecessary costs and inconveniences these would impose. In this connection, the following piece by Michael Moore might be of interest: Death, Downtown Dear friends, I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City. My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade Center. I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live. It was a sick, horrible, frightening day. On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was timed to occur at the same moment.) I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live¼ a fluke, a mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the grace of¼ Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an x-ray machine, and I know all will be well. Here's a short list of my experiences lately with airport security: * At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just go ahead and get on -- without a ticket! * At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put the lunch I just bought at the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal detector, I hand the sack to the guard through the space between the detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him It's just a sandwich. He believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack has gone through neither security device. * At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one knowing what is in it. * Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the commuter plane. By the time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the passengers to the terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the tarmac, free to wander wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a pick-up truck and an airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal. * I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling
FW: fwd from l-i
-Original Message- From: Mark Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 13. syyskuuta 2001 17:02 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:17012] fwd from l-i At 13/09/2001 11:52, Stanwrote: Many of us participated in the Crashlist, where we gained a keen appreciation for the critical importance of oil as a strategic resource as it peeks in worldwide production and begins its inevitable dive over the unforgiving precipice of mathematics. Now there's talk of attacking multiple nations as terrorist harbors, and even letters to the editor of my local paper calling for the resiezure of all petroleum assets in the world. For all the logic we exercise in showing that the Star Wars halucination is inappropriate, it was never meant to be appropriate, but a cash cow for contracotrs and a method for blackmailing the entire world. Star Wars doesn't count to stop terrorism, but the tallk is not of stopping anything now. It's of revenge. People hereabouts are talking about nukes. And Dr. fucking Strangelove is the Secretary of Defense. It became increasingly clear to me during those crashlist discussions centring on the collapse of the world energy system, that my darkest fears were not dark enough, and that in any case it is almost impossible to convey to people the gravity of the crisis. Perhaps it is true that as a species we are simply maladapted by evolution to deal with crises beyond a certain order of magnitude. Faced with threats of large enough dimension, we are not capable of a rational collective response. We cannot succeed in visualising and representing to ourselves the scale of impending breakdown in psychologically-compelling ways, no matter how hard we try. Therefore we are unable to take avoiding action, even though in a general sense we may be very well aware of what is going wrong, and we even deluge ourselves with cultural representations (books, films etc) of the catastrophe which we are nonetheless incapable of responding to. Crises, seemingly, have to be scaled to lie within some vary starkly-demarcated existential boundary which maps straight onto to the envelope of everyday life and mass consciousness. Otherwise we are paralysed into inaction. This is an ominous indicator about the likely fate of homo sapiens. And the empirical evidence for pessimism is there in the historical record of previous, now disappeared, civilisations. Civilisations which do not develop political and social institutions capable of pushing out the envelope, capable that is of anticipating and pre-empting or resolving major step-changes (catastrophic, systemic crisis) are routinely destroyed. The growth of complexity (implying cultural richness, higher technology, more collective power of symbolic reasoning etc) does not necessarily help. In the absence of an equivalent institutional development, complexity, with its attendant entropic burden, seems only to accelerate crisis when it begins and then to deepen the post-crisis collapse. Great civilisations do not morph into lesser ones, but into totally devastated landscapes peopled by bands of roaming scavengers. This cyclical pattern of civilisational growth followed by abrupt collapse, of terminal crisis followed by periods of darkness lasting sometimes for centuries, is very evident in the historical record. Part of the problem of misrecognition of crisis is the familiar one of ruling class hubris, and the arrogance and self-absorption of the priesthood. But there is also the problem of lack of transparency. Crises are never direct, they are always socially-mediated, and this inevitably results in mass disorientation. Gaining clarity does require the absolute destruction of the priesthood and the overthrow of its core-beliefs, and that is certain to be a protracted and painful process. The energy crisis which has had the world by the throat pretty much since 1973 has rarely been directly manifest in everyday life. Shocks caused by dramatic changes in the world energy-system have not manifested directly but only indirectly, thru the geopolitical processes and discourses of power which define the institutional life of capitalist states and their economies. Each oil-shock (sharp price rise or fall) since 1973 has been followed or gone together with, a major war. The basic dynamic of modern capitalism is simple and is based on total dependence on fossil fuel: the rise of 20th century urban industrial civilisation, and the huge growth in the world population which accompanied it, happened only because of the discovery of enormous oil reserves, primarily in the Middle East. The extremely finite nature of petroleum reserves was always the Achilles heel of industrial capitalism, and even now it is the great blind spot, the great point of denial at the heart of the priesthood's theology of growth and accumulation. The bell curve of petroleum discovery and production
the attack
Jim If you read what you just wrote I think you end up answering your initial question. Winning a war in Afghanistan would be easy, true, but it's the occupation that will sap the energy, as will the inevitable police actions that must be taken as a direct consequence of any such effort. Mark's points re the tinder box that is the Middle East are unimpeachable, and for the US, of all actors, to weigh in full tilt is to invite unmitigated disaster. Yet that is what is quite likely to happen, given the truly mindless activity going on at the head of the US state apparatus. Rumsfeld's performance yesterday was the clearest signal of where the priorities of the Executive lie. Together with the impromptu singalong on Capitol Hill, and the cheerleading of the mainstream media, the task of stopping this drift to a war of mindless retribution becomes ever more daunting. I think it's already irreversible -- just like the decline and fall of the USA. If you haven't already had a look, have a read of Chalmers Johnson's Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Metropolitan Books, 2000). I think I've paraphrased enough of it already on PEN-L over the last few months, but, if you're interested, I can forward a more extensive review offlist. Michael K. ps Sorry for re-sending Mark's message. Keeping abreast of events is proving both difficult and distressing.
the attack
Jim D. wrote: The US industrial economy may be in decline, but its military and financial might are undimmed. The US/NATO as a whole is still pretty strong. The transnationals are running the world economy. Etc. = I think the revisionist official explanation for the Asian crisis, whose revisionism preceded this particular episode, is, nevertheless, all of a piece with the tangible increase in US efforts to exert control over wayward, actually and potentially, allies and other less committed types. [e.g., Finland's President, Tarja Halonen, has been, of late, under serious pressure to commit the country to joining NATO. So far she has refused. Sweden, meanwhile, is noticeably buckling, redefining its neutrality. We know, of course, that the Soviets had good reason to have submarines lurking around Swedish waters, hence the occasional and unfortunate beaching. In one of yesterday's papers here there was a large article concerning Olof Palme's original career as a spy -- it'll take a while for me to translate] The invocation of Article 5 of the NATO charter is part of this process. It's totally unprecedented alright, since, by the logic of that organisation, it has been ignored on at least two occasions involving foreign-inspired attacks on NATO members. Argentina's invasion of British sovereign territory in 1982, together with the terrorist bombing campaigns in Paris of recent years, spring to mind here. But it's not just that NATO should jump only when the US is in trouble. In truth NATO's role has been evolving very quickly in recent years, since, probably, around 1995 when clear distinctions were being made by Clinton's national security apparatus between NATO and the UN, with the latter having the ignominy of failure heaped upon it in order to legitimise the much more efficient and effective NATO, culminating in Lord (good grief) Robertson's strained efforts in July of this year to rationalise the projection of NATO power all the way into Kazakhstan and beyond. How timely that was, given current events. It's also a very important reminder that it's not the *Bush administration* that is being punished here, but a United States foreign policy that has strong continuities going all the way back to Reagan, at the very least, and probably much further than that (it's not actually so important a debating point right now). Meanwhile US financial might is under increasing pressure thanks to the instability it creates in the global economy. Successive IMF bail-outs have led some to bemoan the problem of moral hazard (master of tact Paul O'Neill), but that is a mask for the mounting costs of such operations. Similarly, the huff and puff about James Wolfensohn is a smokescreen covering the real issue of the diminishing returns of the World Bank's operations (from the point of view of capital) and impatience with the legitimising role that the WB plays in the service of the system now preparing to junk it. The demands being placed upon the US economy by its military and national security state continue to increase, and yet we are now, all of us, fully aware of the economic house of cards upon which expectations of endless surplus and stratospheric growth were based. The transnationals do not yet run the world economy, meanwhile. Their agents in the state are as subject to the famous agency problem as any, given the state's evolving quasi-autonomy and its duty to legislate for capital as a whole. I subscribe to the imperial state thesis put forward by the likes of Leo Panitch and James Petras in this instance, plus acknowledge the continuing importance of inter-state rivalry, as evidenced only recently by the rather bizarre efforts of Britain's MI5 to carve out a new consultancy role for itself in the ultimate public private partnership of the Blair era so far. I'm not a determinist, and agree that no historical process is irreversible *in principle*. But I think that the current micro-process (if it may be called that) is so far advanced that whatever has been set in train is past the point of no return. Meanwhile, the very same logic that is governing the current response is a microcosm of a more general rationale that has committed an ever-increasing proportion of resources to the construction, maintenance, augmentation and protection of US hegemony. In these circumstances it might be useful to dig out Norman Angell's The Great Illusion, published in 1910, and wholly pessimistic as regards the returns on imperialist investments, given the associated costs of acquisition, subjugation, governance and protection. The Cold War actually kept the US within a reasonably manageable set of boundaries. Now it is committed to being global supercop, a role that was way too expensive anyway, prior to Tuesday's events. Now it's running a long-inevitable gauntlet that threatens to precipitate events which will exacerbate the structural weaknesses of US political and economic imperialism, which include its
Pathological
From the Guardian's breaking news pages: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-1169377,00.html Tax Relief For Victims' Families Thursday September 13, 2001 4:50 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - Victims of the terrorist attacks and their families would get tax breaks previously reserved for foreign combat zones under a bill announced Thursday by House leaders. The victims' relief bill, which could pass the House as early as Thursday, would forgive income taxes for victims of the terrorist attacks and effectively cut in half any tax that applies to their estates. It would also make federal disaster aid tax-free and ensure that payments from airlines to families of passengers killed in the four crashes would be tax-free. Such tax breaks currently apply only to military personnel and civilians in foreign combat zones, said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Until these terrorist attacks, there had never been a need for such laws to respond to incidents inside U.S. borders. ``The package is self-evidently necessary,'' he said. ``It is a response to an attack that was tantamount to war.'' There was no immediate official estimate of the bill's cost to the government, but Thomas pegged it at ``perhaps tens of millions'' of dollars. ``It is not a large amount. But for those people directly involved, it is a positive and appropriate gesture,'' he said. House Republicans also began putting together a broader economic stimulus plan focused on cuts in the capital-gains tax on investments and business tax incentives. ``The most objective counterterrorism weapon we have in the long run is that there is no long-term setback to our economy, so that we can continue to grow and be strong,'' Thomas said. The larger economic stimulus package is expected to begin taking shape next week. Thomas said it could include cutting the top capital-gains tax rate from 20 percent to as low as 15 percent to spur investment and prop up the nation's equity markets. Business tax incentives could include increasing the amount of business costs smaller companies can write off and giving larger corporations investment tax credits, he said. The aim, Thomas said, it so ``make sure there's adequate stimulus in the economy so we can pick up where we left off a week ago.'' The Treasury Department is also working on administrative tax relief measures related to the terrorist attacks, including a two-week delay in transportation tax deposits made by airlines. Other steps affecting businesses and individuals could be announced as early as this week.
the attack
Andrew Hagen writes: I disagree. IMHO, the attack was cowardly. They attacked defenseless people. Only cowards do such things. There is an assumption that the tactic of secrecy was necessary. This softly implies that the attack itself was necessary. Not only would that statement be wrong, it would be a hideous lie. = With respect, comrade... Whatever else we might say of the now-dead perpetrators of this act, they were not cowards. Cowards do not put themselves in a position where they pay for consequences of their actions. Especially when those consequences include inevitable death. The question to ask here is what on earth would cause anyone to undertake such a course of action. Why is there so little official curiosity about the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers, for instance? [That's a rhetorical question, folks, as Dubya would say, and did, incredibly]. In this respect the hierarchy of the Echelon/CANZAB ruling class stands accused of monumental cowardice, given the vast catalogue of devastating acts, political and economic, perpetrated against the defenseless peoples of Palestine, El Salvador, Cuba, Vietnam, Mozambique, Guatemala, Cambodia, Anglola, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Sudan, Colombia, Nicaragua, Russia, South Africa, Laos, Okinawa, Libya, Grenada, Dominica, their own indigenous populations, etc., etc., ad nauseam, and all, until now, without repercussion. Well, today, that is no longer the case, and one hopes (however forlornly), in line with all the pointed professions of *humility* that President George W. Bush made when coming into office, that this will be one of the overriding lessons of yesterday's events: the United States and its allies cannot, with impunity, interfere with and overrule the legitimate aspirations of peoples worldwide in pursuit of its own geopolitical and economic goals. [Memo to Chris B.: the US has not been punished for its arrogant isolationism. Had it been isolationist to begin with there would not be this mess. It's the arrogant meddling and imposition of one capitalism fits all models that tend to grate]. Another lesson that should not be lost upon US citizens is this: the US power elite is guilty of putting the safety of US citizens at risk. Similar conclusions can be drawn with respect to the British permanent government and its successive figureheads, including the noted observer of the sanctity of human life, one Tony Blair, enthusiastic co-sponsor of the bombing of civilian targets in both Yugoslavia and Iraq. As for your second point, it is hardly a hideous lie to point out that the success of an operation such as this would depend upon secrecy. To point that out hardly qualifies anyone as a supporter of the action. You should disentangle your moral outrage from a necessarily objective analysis. Speaking of cowards, one of the most striking aspects of the media coverage over the last 24 hours has been the aggressive response of Bush, Powell, Sherman and Blair (and Putin) to events. Rather than grieve with the victims and their families, rather than reassure people that their governments will do everything possible to help, rather than take time to digest the enormity of what has happened, everyone has been straining at the leash promising retribution and vengeance. I sense a wide gulf between those at the top (who bear some measure of responsibility for this) and the rest whose lives have been affected one way or another. Media manipulation will aim to close that gap, but the haste with which punitive action has been promised (against an as yet unindentified enemy who, once identified, may or may not be actually behind the attack) reveals how completely out of control our political leaders have found themselves. There's a lot of conspiratorialism suggesting that in fact elements of the US power elite were behind this, etc., but that might have passed muster had there been only one downed jet on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. The precision targeting suggests a much more strategically informed hit against the dual pillars of US political economic hegemony: the Wall Street-Treasury complex and the military-industrial complex. That certain ruling class interests will be able to improvise and seize unforeseen opportunities now presenting themselves should not be taken automatically as evidence of a plot. Rather, it points to the need for vigilance and care among those who, to whatever extent, are active on the left. Meanwhile, it's about time that our moral majoritarians took to heart a lesson they are so keen to foist upon the victims of their policies: actions have consequences. It's tragic that ordinary workers -- cleaners, secretaries, administrators, emergency services -- once again bear the brunt (assuming that their lives are worth more than the value of stocks, the price of gold, oil futures, the dollar/euro exchange rate -- oh, how naive of me to think that). I will be sure to write a letter to David Blunkett
Interesting timing
Some Bradford Muslims 'act like colonists' Martin Wainwright Wednesday September 12, 2001 The Guardian A devastating appendix to Lord Ouseley's report on race relations in Bradford, which accuses some Muslims of behaving like colonists and welcoming Islamic ghettoes, is to be published after more than two months under wraps. Councillors in the city complained angrily yesterday that they had been kept in ignorance of the dossier, written by their own former senior race relations adviser, who also charges the authority with an ostrich approach to increasing segregation over 20 years. Lord Ouseley, former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, confirmed that the 10-page survey by Graham Mahony, and a number of other appendices commissioned from experts, had originally been intended for publication. Bradford's Conservative council leader, Margaret Eaton, blamed copyright and intellectual property law for the delay. Mr Mahony pulls few punches, particularly in criticising successive council leaderships - Labour, Conservative and hung - for refusing to criticise ethnic minority leaders, even when their actions were not in Bradford's overall interests. He castigates the council for failing to reach the stage where it can say to any member of the black or Asian community: 'Sorry, I think you are wrong' or 'It is your responsibility to do something'. The report goes on to charge some Muslim elders with welcoming self-segregation and turning a blind eye to criminal activities by a minority of their community's youth, out of concern to preserve Islam and their traditional way of life. This simply reflects their priorities - the commitment to Islam, the prohibition on drink, and the arranged marriage are more important. There is a parental fear that if they exert pressure in other areas, they will lose their sons' commitment in those three vital areas. The appendix adds: Immigrants ... can and often do maintain key elements of their culture for generations, but in many other ways they accept the dominant, host culture. Colonists do not. They come into a country to displace the existing culture and establish their own. From colonist to immigrant is the dominant pattern historically. However, this process seems to have been thrown into reverse in Bradford. The report says that many Muslims, including traders and business owners, are opposed to the colonist approach, and points to them and similar moderates as a source of hope. Bradford council's all-party executive agreed yesterday to press for publication of Mr Mahony's report by Bradford Vision, the public-private regeneration partnership which commissioned Lord Ouseley to examine the city's race relations. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/racism/Story/0,2763,550465,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Skilled labour shortage
, literature experts or social scientists might not be aware of each others' work. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550707,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GCG politics
Karl Carlile writes: Perhaps we can discuss the Global Communist Group's programme. Surely somone on the list has bothered to read and has a some view on it. = My conscience thereby pricked, and welcoming a change from the usual British state fare, I had a glance at the programme. Three thoughts came to mind: 1) The programme appears to be too focused on rehashing intra-Marxist/Marxian battles of years gone by. Ritual condemnation of the Second International and strenuous denial of Leninism and its alleged offshoots, Stalinism and Trotskyism, together with the claim to be taking inspiration from Marx but not *Marxist* but just communist ... these are distractions and take up valuable space that could have been used elaborating what you are for rather than differentiating yourselves from historical enemies. They also invite challenges for clarification that further distract from the business supposedly at hand. Instead of going through this unnecessary diversion, simply define communist, or what you mean by it. Meanwhile, determining the correctness of Stalin's Socialism in One Country policy should not be a part of any statement like this, let alone *launch* it. 2) The programmatic use of Marxish jargonese will not attract the masses who have been well warned off this sort of stuff, given the happy coincidence of capitalist propaganda aimed at discrediting such talk and the off-putting, verbiose posturing of leftists past (Marxism for the few, or, let 'em eat theory -- Doug Dowd, Monthly Review, Apr 82). Something a bit more accessible and a bit less dated in its attachment to workerist terminology would help. 3) Related to (2) is the complete absence of anything to do with ecology and the environment. If there is one single issue that can transcend class and nation it is the destruction of our planet and the inability of capitalism to reverse that process. A global communist group worthy of the name is going to have get down to some serious thinking about this, and get beyond an attachment to a Fordist model that's been in decline already for decades. Sorry if this sounds curmudgeonlike, but you did ask... Michael K.
Questions of Leadership
Michael Pugliese writes: One of my bad habits when there is too much e-mail to deal with but, I want to tell y'all of some interesting nibblet on the net. The title/subject line, was a quote from some intelligence spook on Harold Wilson. Who I really doubt is gay, btw. Peter Mandelson is, though! = All that email means you don't get a proper grasp of what's interesting, nibblet or otherwise. The queer will be dethroned was racist, anti-semitic and homophobic ex-Deputy Chief of MI6 George Kennedy Young's succinct and tasteless statement regarding his efforts to depose Edward Heath as Conservative Party leader. It had nothing to do with Harold Wilson, whose sexuality even MI5 was absolutely clear about. And Mandy's sexuality is not, nor ever should have been, a problem. This is one major piece of progress that has occurred over the last 30 years or so, where we can have openly gay government ministers, thus depriving the security services and others of the opportunity to blackmail, as was the case with Labour MP Tom Driberg. That Mandelson could even have been welcomed as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by the Ulster Unionists is truly remarkable. Unfortunately sexual inclination or membership of a minority, generally, is no guarantee of progressive politics, as Mandelson's interesting CV would attest. Michael K.
Questions of Leadership
[Was The Queer will be Dethroned] Chris Burford writes: http://www.merepseud.mcmail.com/Queer.htm An interesting clip, but Michael [Pugliese] gave no introduction. = MK: Yes, it would be helpful to know the purpose of this. = Despite the title, I do not think this has anything to say about the contradictory role of homophobia or homosexuality in the journey of the British Conservative Party from the main party of the bourgeoisie to an eccentric and marginal force. For example Harvey Proctor was a close ally of George Kennedy Young, according to this account, and this is not commented on at all. = MK: Proctor's sexuality became a public issue only in the mid-1980s, when, as the BBC reports it, he had to stand down after allegations of underage sex with rent boys, bequeathing his seat to the negligibly less resistible Teresa Gorman. While, no doubt, Proctor's sexuality would have caused great affront to many within the Establishment as was, his racism would have spared him, as would the great many others who preferred the company of men within that circle. Another close ally of Young was Gerald Howarth MP, whose mother was closely involved in Young's Monday Club entryism, and who was, with Neil Hamilton, the member of Maggie's Militant Tendency who successfully sued Alasdair Milne's BBC with Sir James Goldsmith's money and the connivance of BBC Deputy Chairman William Rees-Mogg. Howarth remains a staunch supporter of Hamilton, whose backers read like a who's who of Young's Unison Committee and other right-wing organisations like the Freedom Association, on whose council sits Gerald Howarth MP (alongside Patrick Minford and assorted punk Thatcherites: see http://www.tfa.net/organise.htm). The history of this dwindling clan cannot be fully written until Norris McWhirter passes away or the English libel laws are thoroughly revised. Sorry Norris, it has to be you, since, despite the near universal condemnation of this piece of statute, there seems to be no effort whatsoever to change it -- not unlike Chapman Pincher's constant flouting of the Official Secrets Act. One happy outcome of the IRA's assassination of Ross McWhirter is that historians of the period have been able to shed light on their political activities by referring solely to those of Ross, who is no longer able to prevent people from exercising their right to freedom of association and expression by taking out injunctions on them. = What Dorril does extremely well is to chart the detailed conspiratorial threads of Conservative micro-politics. It is not clear from this extract alone, whether he draws the bigger picture, about how the party gained lost the opportunity of setting the main agenda of a state that has, like all states, to appear to stand above classes and conflicts. Heath's importance was not in his sexuality but because he was the last champion of One Nation Conservatism, which drew heavily on Disraeli's willingness to make pragmatic popular reforms. = MK: The book is co-written with Robin Ramsay, Dorril's erstwhile partner at Lobster magazine. Some time after its publication they had a falling out and they produce rival versions of this publication. While Heath was derogatorily referred to as a queer, his sexuality was far less an issue than his reluctance to use the instruments of state at his disposal to blacken his supposed political enemies. In this respect he had ethics, and they cost him dear. Dorril and Ramsay, and David Leigh, discuss the various efforts to compromise Heath during the 1960s by MI5, which attempted to entrap him in flagrante delicto with Maurice Macmillan's wife. Heath was not interested, and, being a confirmed bachelor, was subsequently smeared. Heath was, like Harold Wilson and Harold Macmillan, a corporatist and therefore a more authentic *Tory* than the hardline liberals originally led by Enoch Powell and subsequently led by Margaret Thatcher. == The latest stage of the Conservative's struggle for leadership and identity will be announced on Wednesday, when they will probably again back a marginal right wing figure rather than a national unifier. Although Thatcher's abrasive politics were useful when Britain had to lose a large part of the social wage, to become internationally competitive again, it is a diversion for a modern bourgeois party to depart too far from the centre ground. = The machinations within the Conservative Party have been manipulated and helped along by a wonderful disinformation campaign orchestrated by the intelligence services via the British press. Way back on 16 May, Mark Jones wrote: the Guardian's greatest Intelligence exploits happened much later, during the Thatcher era. The Guardian was then given the role of dishing Old Labour from the left, which it did very well. This is precisely the job being accomplished by two of the remaining pillars of Conrad Black's shrinking media empire, the Daily and Sunday
Competitive Advantage of Nations
Penners In the context of the MI6 review of the secret state effectively sidelining MI5's role re criminal intelligence, and Mark Jones' repeated comments regarding the continuing existence and importance of inter-state rivalry (contra globaloney), to name but two subtexts, this is, to say the least, an interesting development. Once again it's the Independent that sheds light on otherwise murky waters. MI5 offers to spy for British firms By Steve Boggan 07 September 2001 MI5 has told some of Britain's biggest companies that it may be prepared to provide intelligence on their business partners and rivals abroad. For the first time, the security service this week openly invited representatives from industry and finance to its headquarters in Millbank, London, for a seminar called Secret Work in an Open Society. The Independent has learnt that in between coffee and a buffet lunch, those attending were given a talk by Sir Stephen Lander, MI5's director general, on What is the security service for?, during which he said companies ought to ask for help more often. Since the end of the Cold War, MI5 has been trying to evolve into a service more interested in catching criminals and terrorists than foreign spies. This week's move will be seen as another attempt to re-invent itself as a more user-friendly service. Among the companies invited to attend were BT, Rolls-Royce, HSBC, Allied Domecq, Consignia, BP, Ernst Young, Cadbury Schweppes and BAE Systems. Of the 64 executives invited, a high proportion were in market development, security or risk-assessment. Sir Stephen said he was sure that MI5 could help business more if only it were asked, said one delegate. In situations where we are working abroad, he said MI5 might have information on companies or individuals it could help us with if it did not involve breaching legislation on data protection or human rights. He made the point that, increasingly, organised crime, drugs and money laundering are our common enemy. When getting into deals abroad - particularly Eastern Europe at the moment - you can get into bed with the wrong people if you don't have good risk- assessment information on them. Basically, he was anxious that MI5 shouldn't be thought of solely as a domestic organisation ... In return, he said there might be occasions when we can pass information back. The list of delegates gives an insight into the sort of executive MI5 is trying to reach: Nigel Carpenter, BP's deputy head of group security in the eastern hemisphere; Mike McGinty, security director at BAE Systems; Mike Harris, information security manager for Consignia; Michael Weller, BT's head of government security; and John Smith, head of security for the Prudential Corporation. The seminar was organised in conjunction with the Whitehall and Industry Group, a body that aims to bridge the gap between business and government. Its patrons include Lord Haskins, chairman of Northern Foods and the Better Regulation task force in the Cabinet Office; Sir Andrew Turnbull, permanent secretary to the Treasury; Sir George Mathewson, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group; Sir Richard Wilson, Cabinet Secretary and head of the Home Civil Service; and Digby Jones, director general of the Confederation of British Industry. The practice of using the country's intelligence service to benefit companies is one performed in the United States for a number of years. There is evidence that it has used a communications eavesdropping system called Echelon to gather sensitive information on rivals in the European Union that has been passed on to US business. There is no suggestion that the British services intend to go that far, but this is thought to be the first time MI5 has brought in so many senior executives. Even though they were not explicitly asked to keep the meeting secret, none of the delegates approached by The Independent yesterday returned calls. In spite of a number of approaches, MI5 failed to comment. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=92810 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Alumni news
Policymakers ride economy's white water Financial Times, Sep 3, 2001 By GERARD BAKER As they have done for 25 years, much of the world's economic policymaking elite spent this late summer weekend conferring in the jagged shadow of the Grand Teton Mountains, exchanging friendly advice about interest rates, budget surpluses and golf swings. The subject of this year's monetary policy symposium of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank was economic policy for the information economy. As they listened to panels of distinguished academics and mingled with Wall Street economists, between bone-soaking raft trips and breath-sapping hikes, central bankers and government officials from the US, Europe, Asia and less developed countries tried to distinguish between the promising realities and the beguiling hype of the new economy. For the Washington policymakers and the Wall Street crowd, the topic was especially relevant this year. Most in the US policymaking establishment expressed continuing faith in the underlying improvement in US performance. But all acknowledged both that the scale of the change, and the probability that it would prove durable had slipped a little in the last year. Although Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, confined his public remarks to the relationship between recent capital gains and consumption, he remains confident that the paradigm shift he was among the first to spot remains intact. Privately, several Fed policymakers acknowledged prospects looked less rosy now than they did a year ago. But none believed the changes had been entirely illusory. John Taylor, the Treasury's chief international policymaker and one of the world's most distinguished monetary econo mists, said there was good cause for optimism despite the recent deceleration. Part of the productivity increase was cyclical - so the recent slowdown is not surprising. Trend productivity growth in the 2 to 2.5 percentage range is quite a reasonable assumption. Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and now president of Harvard University, said in a paper with Bradford de Long, an economist at Berkeley, that the scale of the productivity gains within the information technology sector, and the sector's growing importance, would ensure that overall productivity growth remained elevated. But some prominent new economy believers also confessed to a shadow of a doubt. Martin Baily, who, as chairman of the council of economic advisers under President Bill Clinton, produced some notably optimistic assessments, sounded a note of caution. The high tech sector is currently very weak. . . and we may not see a resumption of very high levels of investment for a while, he said. Productivity growth was only 1.4 per cent a year from 1973 to 1995 and a return to that level is not impossible. Alice Rivlin, a former vice-chair of the Fed and another Clinton appointee, called much of the new economy assumptions (including those of Mr Summers) hopes and hunches. Both, perhaps predictably, criticised President George W. Bush's recent tax cut as based on overly optimistic assumptions about future growth. Mr Taylor replied that the fiscal risks owed much more to too much public spending. Accepting the reality of the information economy as an accomplished fact, the participants spent much time on the policy implications. Andrei Shleifer of Harvard University traced how the explosion of financial information had led to a deterioration in its quality and had encouraged the production of deliberately misleading information for gullible investors. Mr Summers and Mr DeLong said the principal policy challenges the new economy posed were in the field of microeconomics. In particular, they argued that the economics of the information age meant powerful but unenduring monopolies were inevitable if profits were to be maximised - and challenged antitrust authorities to reconsider their approach to such monopolies. Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 0903001144 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
World Bank vs. markets
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Close the bank down and let capital markets do the job Financial Times, Sep 3, 2001 By DAVID WALL From Prof David Wall. Sir, Prof Josef Stiglitz (Letters, August 30) mentions the old World Bank and the new one. As someone who has worked as a consultant to the World Bank in each of the past five decades, I can remind him that the bank has seen many more metamorphoses than two. Remember the 1960s, when the bank used to push import substitution protectionism on the newly independent countries? And fluffy-ness is not new either; I am sure that I am not the only one to recall the intense debates in the bank about a basic needs approach in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This led to the unholy alliance with the definitely fluffy Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, resulting in the publication of the fluffies' bible, Redistribution with Growth, in 1974. Prof Stiglitz raises two old issues faced by the bank, to which he has never come up with any solution, even when he was senior vice-president for economics at the World Bank. He ends his letter by saying that the World Bank should present the options and countries should democratically decide what they want to do. The problem is that many of the bank's borrowers - including its current main client, China - are not democracies. Neither does being a democracy guarantee a solution to the other issue: corruption. Democratic elections do not ensure government free of corruption. In the 1980s I was asked by the bank to produce a report for the development assistant committee comparing the bank's lending experience in a selection of countries with project lending by private institutions. The expectation was that I would conclude that the bank was more effective and more efficient. I came to the opposite conclusion. The main reason was that even when the bank could be fairly confident that corruption was going to distort the implementation of a project, the lending would go ahead anyway. Get the money out was the main driving force at the bank in those days. The description among bank staff of conditions on lending that were supposed to ensure efficiency and effectiveness was Christmas tree decorations: they were just for show. After spending almost 40 years in the development business, usually in close contact with the World Bank, I have come to the conclusion that it is now time to close it down. Private capital markets could more effectively manage much of the bank's commercially based lending programme. The remaining soft aid programmes for poorer countries would be better managed by bilateral aid agencies, where they would be subject to the true democratic process of parliamentary scrutiny. David Wall, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 0903001189 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In defence of Wolfensohn 5
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Those attacking Wolfensohn hope to turn back the clock Financial Times, Sep 5, 2001 By CLAIRE SHORT From Claire Short MP. Sir, As the UK's governor of the World Bank, I would like to respond to recent critiques of the World Bank and its president, James Wolfensohn. Of course no institution is perfect but these critics ignore the considerable progress that has been made and are seeking to promote a narrow and reactionary agenda that could return the bank to the mistakes of the past. Over the past few years, there has been a fundamental and important shift in the World Bank's approach. It is now unequivocally committed to poverty reduction as the goal of all its operations and has firmly embraced the agreed international development targets. Many more country directors are based in the countries in which they operate and the bank has played a leading role in the heavily indebted poor countries initiative. One of the most important developments has been the launch of the poverty reduction strategy process. This represents a radical shift in the way development agencies approach low-income countries, strengthening the capacity of government systems so that management of the economy and provision of public services are improved in a way that promotes sustainable development and better services for all. This approach is also helping to address another of the main failings of past aid efforts: numerous unco-ordinated projects funded by different donors that impose a huge burden on the countries they are meant to help. Forward-thinking development agencies, including the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development, are now making a massive effort to improve co-ordination and to shift away from self-standing projects towards more flexible funding at the sector or national budget level. This is helping to create the conditions for the economic growth and improved public services essential to improve the lives of the poor. Many recent criticisms of the bank are about opposition to this new approach to development. By attacking Jim Wolfensohn, they hope to turn back the clock to old-style projects and excessive conditionality. I strongly agree with calls not to undermine the intellectual integrity of the bank. But I do not believe that economists sitting in Washington have all the answers. Governments of developing countries must take the lead in decisions about their own development, taking full account of the views of their citizens and building on national democratic processes. It is this change the critics so strongly oppose, as it removes power from their representatives in Washington. Reactionary forces are at work, wanting to undermine this paradigm shift in development practice. They cannot be allowed to succeed. Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 0905001364 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Corroding people
Research finds mobile phone cancer threat ALAN MacDERMID The Herald, 5 September, 2001 USING mobile phones more than doubles the risk of developing brain tumours over 10 years, according to new research. The evidence emerged from Sweden yesterday as the UK government's senior adviser on mobile phones called for the cost of calls to be raised to discourage over-use by children. Sir William Stewart, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, also attacked recent irresponsible marketing of mobile phones as a back-to-school accessory when he addressed the British Association's science festival at Glasgow University. The study by Lennart Hardell, Professor of Oncology at Obrero University in Sweden, is one of the most authoritative and damning on the subject to date. He compared the fate of 1617 patients diagnosed with brain tumours since 1997 with a control group of healthy subjects. Those who had used mobile telephones over a 10-year-period were two-and-a-half times more likely to have a brain tumour on the temporal area of the brain on the side where they had held the handset. The incidence of cancer of the auditory nerve, connecting the ear to the brain, was trebled. The research, not yet published, was based on use of analogue phones, but Professor Hardell said yesterday that digital phones could be worse, since they used pulsed microwaves and could boost their power 500-fold while dialling up. He added: It is too early to give advice on GSM digital phones. We will have to wait until about 2005 before we can see the effect of digital phones. Until then we would use the precautionary approach recommended by the Stewart report. Earlier, Sir William, told the science festival: Children's skulls are not fully developed. They are not thickened and they will be using the phones for longer. He said the available evidence was that radiation from phones did not represent a direct risk to the public, but there were still biological effects. We do not have evidence on what the long-term effects might be. Alasdair Philips, of the campaign group Powerwatch, told the science festival that a survey they carried out showed that 85% of children aged 10 to 15 had mobile phones, and 10% used them for more than 45 minutes a day. The phones were at their most powerful when they were dialling and searching for a base station, and he recommended using a hands-free kit or waiting until the number was connected before putting the phone up to your ear. He said 80% of the output of a phone went into the user's head, but this was reduced to three per cent with a hands-free kit. However, if a hands-free kit was used while the phone was clipped to the user's belt this only led to the emissions reaching the kidneys. He said the next generation of phones would require less powerful masts but more of them, which he regarded as an improvement. However, he said it was completely unethical for phone companies to provide contracts which would give children as much as 600 free minutes a month, which they would be sure to use up. Full article at: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/5-9-19101-0-23-25.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In defence of Wolfensohn 6
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Distorted view of bank's reform agenda Financial Times, Sep 5, 2001 By SHENGMAN ZHANG From Mr Shengman Zhang. Sir, Stephen Fidler (A world of complaint, August 28) presented a distorted view of the reform agenda at the World Bank. Nowhere did he mention that under the leadership of James Wolfensohn the World Bank has seen project quality and effectiveness rise to record levels; that overall client satisfaction has improved; that shareholders have expressed strong support for the bank's strategic directions and for the Comprehensive Development Framework, including unanimously approving a budget increase; or that anti-corruption is now on the bank's agenda for the first time. Nor did he give more than passing reference to the fact that Jim Wolfensohn and Michel Camdessus introduced the first international response to provide comprehensive debt relief to the world's poorest, most indebted countries, or that as a result of that initiative today 23 countries are receiving debt relief of Dollars 34bn over time - something believed far from possible even six years ago. These are hardly small oversights. Instead, Mr Fidler preferred to criticise Mr Wolfensohn for listening to advice and critics outside the bank, learning from the past and broadening the Bank's traditional economic approach. Whether we go forward with a modern, comprehensive approach to development or whether we go back to the economics of the 1980s is a debate we do not fear. Sadly, this article, with its one-sided view, offers no guidance to the interested reader. Shengman Zhang, Secretary of the Management Committee, World Bank Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 0905001459 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Spook book crooks
Publishers foil theft of MI5 chief's book Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday September 5, 2001 The Guardian The publishers of the forthcoming memoirs of Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, have foiled an attempt to steal a copy of the book. People posing as representatives of Random House publishers tried to procure a copy of the book from the printers. When the printers called Random House to check the veracity of what they had been told, the individuals fled. Extracts of Dame Stella's memoirs, Open Secret, will appear exclusively in the Guardian next week. The publication is fiercely opposed by the secret intelligence service, MI6, and by the Ministry of Defence. This year, a draft manuscript of the book was leaked to the Sun. It was sent to the newspaper in a taxi by a Whitehall official believed to be acting for special forces officers. The leak was seen as an attempt to undermine Dame Stella's reputation. SAS officers were among those who saw an early draft of the book for vetting purposes. They have attacked her for writing her memoirs, claiming it will sabotage their attempts to prevent more former special forces soldiers from going into print. Special branch police officers are investigating the leak. A call to the Random House printers, from someone calling himself Mark Anderson, was made from a public telephone box close to MI6 headquarters in central London. A Sunday Times journalist, apparently confident of obtaining a copy of the book, telephoned the office of Sir Stephen Lander, the head of MI5, saying the newspaper was getting a copy of the book and asked him to comment on it. The journalist later called back saying he had failed to get a copy. Lawyers for Random House have warned the Sunday Times about the consequences of breach of copyright. They referred to the attempt last Friday to steal a copy of Dame Stella's memoirs from Random House's printers. A Sunday Times spokesman said last night: None of our staff has had access to an early copy of Stella Rimington's book. He declined to comment as to whether they had tried to procure a copy. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,546985,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
British state turf wars
Where, exactly, was the First Division Association in 1974, when Permanent Secretary at the Department of Industry, Sir Anthony Part, proceeded to undermine the implementation of Labour Party policies, as agreed by conference and printed in the election manifesto, by Tony Benn? How things have changed, that branches of the permanent government should feel it necessary to enlist the support of the trade union movement in order to shore up their beleaguered position. It also reflects the continuing weakness in the position of the UK trade union movement, that it should buy into the rose-tinted image of an impartial civil service. Once again it is the Independent that leads the way with this stuff. = Top civil servants urge Blair to halt 'creeping politicisation' of Whitehall By Paul Waugh Deputy Political Editor The Independent, 05 September 2001 Tony Blair's use of spin-doctors will come under fresh criticism at the TUC conference this month when senior civil servants launch their strongest attack yet on the creeping politicisation of Whitehall. The First Division Association, which represents top government officials, is calling for a law to protect their independence. A strongly worded motion, sure to be backed by the whole union movement, will demand statutory protection from political interference and a limit on the number of special advisers to ministers. The association, which represents 11,000 officials in Whitehall and other government agencies, has decided to speak out after complaints over the role of political appointees. The number of special advisers, political appointments funded by the taxpayer, has soared since Labour came to power, costing £3.6m a year. Concern mounted this summer when Mr Blair stripped his nine private secretaries of their titles and renamed them policy advisers. The motion attacks the growing trend for the Government of the day to use senior civil servants as direct representatives on their behalf, in turn making it more difficult for civil servants to fulfil their role in offering independent and impartial advice. It also criticises ministers for ignoring recommendations of the Neill Committee on Standards in Public Life to initiate a debate in Parliament about the role of special advisers. A Civil Service Act should be enacted to establish clear principles, for this and future governments, which define the role of the Civil Service and clarify the boundaries between it and elected governments, the motion adds. The association said the principles that had underpinned the Civil Service for 150 years, including appointment and promotion on merit and political impartiality, should be enshrined. Mr Blair's decision to abolish the post of private secretary has caused particular concern, with mandarins worried that political appointees will now have unprecedented power to manage civil servants. Full article at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=92402 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In defence of Wolfensohn
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Better to have the new World Bank than the old one Financial Times, Aug 31, 2001 By JOSEPH STIGLITZ From Prof Joseph Stiglitz. Sir, After reading Stephen Fidler's article on the World Bank (A world of complaint, August 28) I still do not quite understand what his point is. Virtually everyone, even the people now complaining, agrees that the way the World Bank was doing business had to change. Would Mr Fidler really rather see a return to the bad old days when the bank spent much of its time funding big dams and bridges regardless of the effects on the environment? It may be that the bank has become too fluffy in some ways but the alternatives are far worse. Surely it is better for the World Bank to consult with non-governmental organisations then to rely only on the opinions of government officials who in many countries were not democratically elected and do not speak for the people they purportedly represent. Even if such consultation does not help development happen faster, talking to a range of groups about how they want their society to develop is the right thing to do. Even if it were not, pushing programmes that lack mass support simply does not work, as many studies have shown. Bankers and businessmen in the developed world would love to see structural adjustment programmes foisted on the people of the developing world. Of course Wall Street believes in capital market liberalisation. But there is little evidence that this really contributes to economic growth although the downside risk is enormous, as we saw in the 1997 Asian crisis. There is no sensible reason, ie one backed by solid research, to push these sorts of reforms even though financial types love to feel they are bringing market discipline to countries in trouble. Markets are the key to long-run success but creating a market-friendly environment entails more than mindless deregulation: it requires, for instance, competition policies, strong and well regulated financial institutions, an environment that is conducive to the transfer of new technologies, governments that are not corrupt - all issues that were ignored by the old World Bank but are central to the thinking of the new one. There is still a lot to be done. The allocation of voting rights to member countries is grossly unbalanced and the views represented in the bank are more closely aligned with finance ministries than with a broader swath of society. There is far less openness and transparency than there should be in a public institution. But no one said the World Bank could become perfect overnight. While the narrow focus of the old bank did not work, at least the more comprehensive approach of the new bank has raised the right issues. Transformations are always hard and mistakes are often made along the way. But Jim Wolfensohn should be given credit for trying. Blaming him for a drop-off in foreign direct investment as Sebastian Edwards, quoted in the article, seems to do, is simply ludicrous. There are many alternative views about how best to proceed with development. The World Bank should present the options and countries should democratically decide what they want to do. Joseph Stiglitz, Professor of economics, Columbia University Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=01 0831001446 Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
