Layer 376 . . . Human Rights, Truth, Torture, Bush, China, Waterboarding, and Lessons to be Learned

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"Truth is the first casualty of war."  -  Aeschylus

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There are another 100 million people throughout the world living in poverty since the great banking crisis took place. Western-style so-called democracy and capitalism do not, and have never, guaranteed prosperity. Various countries in Scandinavia, South America and Asia have long ago woken up to the fact that capitalism needs regulation, that societies benefit from greater fairness and equality, that poverty is intolerable where it is avoidable, and that a free press in itself is no guarantee of better public information, understanding and enlightenment.

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Cameron in China: What does Beijing think of us? Let's start with hypocrisy

Alleged British war crimes in Iraq and George Bush's comments on waterboarding have weakened David Cameron's hand 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/10/cameron-china-beijing-hyprocrisy

As David Cameron vowed to raise human rights as a topic of discussion in Beijing, it became the subject of two other international news stories.

One was a report that British troops may face trials for war crimes in Iraq. The other was the insistence by George Bush – who enjoyed British support throughout his "war on terror" – that waterboarding is not torture.

Despite Downing Street's dismissal of the former president's claim, the conjunction is likely to feed the perceptions of some in China that western concern about human rights is at best selective and at worst downright hypocritical.

Beijing has embraced such ideas. In its annual riposte to the US state department's country reports on human rights, official news agency Xinhua wrote this spring: "The reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory."

"There is no better example than Guantánamo Bay of abuses committed by governments that say they uphold rights both at home and abroad," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. "But if we sat around and waited for a government that had a pristine record to raise other governments' rights records, we would be standing by watching gross abuses take place on a significant scale."

Campaigners also point to Beijing's deliberate elision of foreign governments and other foreign entities – portraying activists or critical media as part of a coalition of hostile forces intent not on reforming China, but containing or even destroying it. In this view, expression of concern for human rights is not just hypocritical but a ruse.

"The Nobel peace prize … is part of a concerto supplemented by various NGOs, economic identities and international organisations orchestrated by the developed countries. They hope to harass China's growth, and press China to surrender more economic interests. They even hope that China will one day collapse under the west's ideological crusade," the People's Daily article said.

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Waterboarding is no basis for truth

George Bush's defence of torture relies on a belief in information that our intelligence agencies treat with deep scepticism

by Richard Norton-Taylor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/nov/09/george-bush-waterboarding-torture

Bush cannot be allowed to get away with making these kind of claims about information based on torture, information that Britain's security and intelligence agencies treat with deep scepticism and – as far as the supposed links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq are concerned – incredulity.

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George Bush's torture admission is a dismal moment for democracy

When again will the US be able to direct others to meet their human rights standards?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/george-bush-torture-admission-democracy

by Philippe Sands

Although it comes as no surprise, George Bush's straight admission that he personally authorised waterboarding – an act of torture and a crime under US and international law – marks a dismal moment for western democracies and the rule of law. When again will the US be able to direct others to meet their human rights standards? Certainly not before it takes steps to bring its own house in order.

Unlike the UK's coalition government, which has announced a judicial inquiry on allegations of British involvement in torture, Barack Obama's administration has apparently ended the practice – but has done nothing to investigate the circumstances in which it was used by the Bush administration.

Bush claims that the use of waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah "saved lives", including British ones. There is not a shred of evidence to support that claim, one that falls into the same category as the bogus intelligence relied on to justify war in Iraq.

Indeed, waterboarding and Iraq appear to be interconnected, as torture-induced information was relied upon to justify the invasion. Torture may produce information, but it doesn't produce reliable information, as every experienced interrogator I have spoken with repeatedly tells me – on both sides of the Atlantic. It produces the information that the subject believes the interrogator wants to hear.

What is accurate – up to a point – is Bush's claim to have acted on legal advice.

Bush fails to mention that the advice prepared by Yoo and Bybee – which did not go through the normal inter-departmental consultations – has been subject to devastating criticism. The DOJ's own office of professional responsibility concluded that Yoo "put his desire to accommodate the client above his obligation to provide thorough, objective and candid legal advice and … therefore committed intentional professional misconduct".

It found that Bybee had acted in "reckless disregard" of his professional obligations. Both men escaped sanctions only because an associate deputy general counsel, David Margolis, later concluded that both men had exercised "poor judgment" but did not knowingly provide false advice. Margolis nevertheless concluded that Yoo's "loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client".

This is the dismal, bogus legal advice on which Bush relied, and the fact that he continues to invoke it today says much about his judgment. He would do better to take on board those with first-hand experience of what the embrace of torture might mean for Americans abroad, who recognise that its use by the US will justify its use against the US.

When Bush first authorised waterboarding, says former US Centcom commander General Joseph Hoar, "he sent America down the wrong road, battering our alliances, damaging counterinsurgency efforts, and increasing threats to our soldiers". So much for saving lives.

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No charges over destruction of CIA interrogation tapes

Videos showed harsh interrogation techniques used on two al-Qaida suspects at secret CIA detention centre after 9/11 attacks

by Ewen MacAskill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/no-charges-destruction-cia-interrogation-tapes

The US justice department announced today that there is to be no prosecution of CIA officers who destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two alleged terrorists, both subjected to waterboarding.

The 92 tapes covered the interrogations of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was accused of being the al-Qaida mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and Abu Zubaydah, who the US claimed was a senior al-Qaida operative involved in the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The interrogations took place at one of the CIA's "black sites", a secret detention centre, in Thailand. The tapes were ordered to be destroyed in 2005 during the Bush administration by the head of CIA clandestine operations, José Rodriguez, but it is not known if he was acting on his own initiative or on orders from higher up. The tapes had been held in a safe at the CIA station in Thailand.

The justice department offered no explanation today why no prosecution case would be forthcoming or why the tapes were destroyed.

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Servicemen at 'UK's Abu Ghraib' may be guilty of war crimes, court hears

Evidence of alleged systematic mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at JFIT facility near Basra submitted to court

by Ian Cobain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/08/servicemen-uk-abu-ghraib-court-iraq

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British military interrogators may be charged as war criminals

Videos produced in court appear to show Iraqi detainees being abused at secret prison

by Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/10/iraq-prisoners-abuse-british-military

The Ministry of Defence is at the centre of a new crisis over the abuse of prisoners after it was disclosed yesterday that a number of British military interrogators may be charged as war criminals.

The development comes after videos submitted as evidence to a high court case appeared to show members of a military intelligence unit threatening, abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at a secret prison near Basra.

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British troops may face Iraq war crimes trial

Interrogators at secret jail dubbed 'UK's Abu Ghraib' referred to chief military prosecutor

by Ian Cobain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/09/british-military-iraq-war-crimes

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War crimes charges against military interrogators would put MoD on trial

Human rights lawyer in high court action that aims to force an inquiry into 'systematic abuse' of detainees in Iraq

by Ian Cobain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/09/war-crimes-charges-military-interrogators-iraq

The revelation that a number of members of a secretive British military intelligence unit could face war crimes charges threatens to put the Ministry of Defence's entire interrogation regime on trial.

The high court heard today that the cases of three men have been referred to the Director of Service Prosecutions, who has been asked to consider war crimes charges under the 2001 International Criminal Court Act. Possible charges, the court heard, included "committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" – a war crime under article 8 of the act.

But as the Guardian reported last month, men and women who undergo training as interrogators at the Intelligence Corps headquarters in Chicksands, Bedfordshire, are instructed to do just this. Among the training material upon which last month's report was based are PowerPoint slides and training manuals telling trainee interrogators that they should aim to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear. The material also suggests how this can be achieved.

One aid, created in September 2005, tells trainees that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned. "Get them naked," it says. "Keep them naked if they do not follow commands." Another manual, prepared around the same time, advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.

A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that "Cpers" – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It also urges enforced nakedness. Prisoners should be "conditioned" before questioning, the material says, with conditioning defined as the combined effects of self-induced pressure and "system-induced pressure". Harsh questioning – or "harshing" – in which an interrogator puts his face close to the prisoner, screaming, swearing and making threats, is recommended as a means to provoke "anxiety/fear". Other useful methods include "insecurity", "disorientation" and "humiliation".

This material was created for the instruction of "tactical questioners", who conduct initial interrogations of prisoners of war, as well as for the instruction of servicemen and women from all three branches of the armed forces who conduct "interrogation in depth".

The material suggests not only that British military interrogators have employed techniques that may be in breach of the International Criminal Court Act, but that the MoD has spent a considerable amount of time and money training them to do just that.

Subsequently, hundreds of men who were prisoners of JFIT between 2003 and the end of 2008 alleged that they were subjected to mistreatment, including sleep deprivation, starvation, beatings, sensory deprivation, threats and humiliation.

Phil Shiner, a Birmingham human rights lawyer, has brought proceedings at the high court aimed at forcing the MoD to concede a public inquiry into the men's allegations.

Many of the former inmates complain that they were severely beaten when arrested, usually at their homes. Many allege they were again beaten in transit, in the backs of trucks or aboard helicopters.

On arrival at a British base, most of the former inmates say they were photographed and examined by a military doctor who would take no interest in their injuries. Many say they were forced to kneel upright for long periods on arrival. Many also say they were hooded or blindfolded and forced to run in zig-zags before interrogation.

For reasons that remain unclear, the interrogators filmed themselves while conducting these interrogations, and 1,253 of their recordings have now been seized by military police investigators. Those recording are expected to be central to any prosecutions.

The former inmates say the most severe mistreatment was meted out while they were not being filmed, however. In all, Shiner's team has documented 59 allegations of detainees being hooded, 11 of electric shocks, 122 of sound deprivation through the use of earmuffs, 52 of sleep deprivation, 160 of sight deprivation, including 117 using blackened goggles, 132 of the use of stress positions, 39 of enforced nakedness, and 18 allegations that detainees were kept awake by pornographic DVDs played on laptops.

In bringing proceedings on behalf of 222 former prisoners, Shiner's team argued that a public inquiry was needed to examine the systemic issues and the lessons to be learned. Anything less, they said, would fail to meet the UK's obligations under the European convention on human rights.

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Layer 115 War Crimes, Ditching Trident, Indiscriminate Slaughter, Civil Servants, Uncivilised Conduct and Progressive Values.

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Reported on Radio 4 this morning:

The United Nations Relief Agency has for the first time used the term ‘War Crimes’ when referring to Israeli actions in Gaza.

Reported in the Guardian yesterday:

“Trident is a waste of money, say ex-military leaders.”

Britain's nuclear submarines are "completely useless" against modern warfare, and the £20bn spent on renewing them is a waste of money, retired senior military officers said yesterday.

The former head of the armed forces Field Marshal Lord Bramall, backed by two senior generals, argued that the huge sums being spent on replacing the delapidated submarines that carry the Trident ballistic missiles could be better used to buy conventional weapons which are badly needed by the armed forces.

"Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism," the group said in a letter to the Times. "Our independent deterrent has become ­virtually irrelevant, except in the context of domestic politics."

Retired army general Lord Ramsbotham, one of the signatories, said he wanted to restart the debate over the renewal of ­Trident, which was approved by the House of Commons in March 2007, despite a large rebellion by Labour MPs.

Ramsbotham told BBC2's Newsnight programme: "We argue that it is conventional weapons we now need. Their pinpoint accuracy, their ability to help our forces in the sort of conflicts that are taking place is something which means you have to question the huge expense of Trident, which is limiting what we can do."

The fact is that Trident is an inappropriate weapons system. You can't see Trident being used against something like nuclear blackmail by international terrorism. It is a cold war weapon. It is not a weapon for the situation where we are now."

Ramsbotham said he was "quite certain" that some serving members of the military shared his doubts. He added that the government's decision to renew ­Trident was driven more by political considerations than by the true requirements of national defence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/16/trident-is-20bn-waste-say-generals

Also in the Guardian:

Simon Jenkins has a wonderfully radical and visionary column, headed ‘Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished’, in which he proposes that the world should declare air-launched bombs and long-distance shells to be illegal under the 1983 Geneva convention. Extracts:

The tragedy in Gaza surely marks the time when the world declares air-launched bombs and long-distance shells to be illegal under the 1983 Geneva convention. They should be on a par with chemical munitions, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and delayed-action land mines. They pose a threat to non-combatants that should be intolerable even in the miserable context of war.

If gas, landmines, chemical weapons and cluster munitions are now banned - a ban broadly obeyed by most civilised armies - why not aerial bombardment? Instead, bombing is becoming ever more prevalent.

The Israelis have responded to the Hamas bombardment of their towns with a far heavier bombardment of Gaza. Both endanger civilians to a degree that cannot be other than criminal. That human shield tactics may be involved is no excuse: the law does not permit the killing of innocents in the hope of reaching the guilty. The bombing of urban infrastructure is an act of terror.

In an extraordinary article on these pages yesterday, David Miliband declared the title "war on terror" to be "misleading and mistaken".

Did Miliband protest when Tony Blair reportedly pleaded with George Bush to be the first to bomb Kabul in 2001? Is this the same Miliband who sat silent as a member of the government that supported "shock and awe"?

The truth is that the war Miliband is still waging against militant Islam has been conducted largely by weapons of terror, namely bombs and long-distance artillery shells. They have killed untold thousands of non-combatants since the "war" began in 2001 - a violence far more devastating than the Israelis have inflicted on Gaza - destroying unimaginable numbers of homes.

In Afghanistan the American commander, David Petraeus, is said to regard his own side's bombing of villages and wedding parties as utterly counterproductive. Yet once forces are deployed, with ground and air in partnership, they seem beyond all command and control. They illustrate Liddell Hart's comment on military technology, that "the progress of weapons has outstripped the minds of those who wield them".

In the complex politics of war, these weapons are like torture. They numb moral sensibility and do harm beyond all justification of victory. They should be abolished. If we wish to kill other people for whatever reason, we should use only weapons that kill the right ones.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/gaza-aerial-bombing-david-miliband

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A Progressive Shock-Doctrine?

Digby Jones has apparently said that half of those employed in the civil service are a waste of space and should be sacked. It’s a pity he didn’t moderate his eye-catching phrases and limit himself to saying that he’s not talking about the thousands of hard-working people in the lower ranks. He only came into contact with the upper reaches when he was a junior minister, and he’d almost certainly be justified in saying that hundreds of those upper ranks are over-paid, time-serving, dull, vision-free, toadying creeps who traipse from meeting to meeting and spend all their time talking round in circles, contributing nothing to the national well-being.

The topmost ranks surround themselves with over-paid and useless yes-men and women, covering their backs and making sure they offload tasks, and outsource the blame when things go wrong. The problem is we don’t have politicians with sufficient calibre and determination to change this state of affairs. What we have is toadying politicians who surround themselves with ‘bright’ young advisers whose main interest is in playing the system that exists for their own comfort and benefit.

There’s probably no way out of this. Our national culture is fragmented and encourages self-promotion and self-interest. There’s no national consensus towards agreed ideals and goals. There’s still a war, and there will continue to be a war, between Thatcherites and the social democratic Left, between neo-conservatives and progressives, between people with money and property and those without, between Mail readers and Guardian readers, between BBC lovers and Sky/Fox lovers, between haves and have-nots, between the stupid and the enlightened.

Since 1979 the Stupid Party and its values has been in the ascendant in this country, thanks to Thatch and NuLabour (Thatch-lite). Which is why our society is increasingly unequal, unfair, violent, exploitative, over-stressed, spiritually barren and unhappy. Its economy is fucked.

I’m almost at the point of being past caring, but not quite. Not quite yet. The next four years are make or break for decency, genuine democracy and enlightened values. Either the Left uses this opportunity to develop a kind of reverse shock-doctrine, or we can all just forget about peace, justice and harmony. At least in Britain.

But then who cares about Britain? Why waste our time trying to fight against the power of the wealthy and the ignorant and the Establishment in a place where the entire national culture is geared towards the stupid values of quiz shows, celebrity, flash, bling, glamour, greed, property, soaps, football, show-biz and fame. Grumpy old man? Moi?

The point is, it’s not quite like this in the rest of the world. And it’s to these other places that progressives need to look for sustenance, hope and optimism. Countries that run decent education systems for the benefit of their pupils, countries with decent public services run by highly motivated professionals, countries with top civil servants whose promotion is due to merit and their proven ability to make a positive difference, countries with sustainable and competently-run economies, financial systems and governments. Countries that haven’t dumbed down to the extent that this one has, thanks to its ignorant media, its shameless politicians, and its brainwashed and grasping, spiritless and soulless citizens.

Thank goodness that standards have continued to rise and enlightenment is still on the agenda in places like Denmark, Finland, Japan, Germany and France, none of which supported the ‘war on terror’, squandered their national budgets pursuing such nonsense, or fell into the orbit of the neo-conservative ascendancy that’s continued to grip the USA and the UK, amongst plenty of other places.

We’re talking here about countries that don’t equate ‘attainment’ in academic timed tests with genuine education, that didn’t allow their financiers to fuck their economies, that don’t squander money on illegal wars, that don’t allow an elite minority to become obscenely wealthy at the expense of an increasingly-impoverished majority.

Thank goodness such countries still exist and form the core of a civilised international community. Thank goodness we can still look elsewhere for models of progressive social-democratic civilised life.

Democratic socialists, social democrats and other pacifist progressives throughout the world must now seize the moment and act collectively to alter the balance of power, nullify the neo-conservative hegemony, take back proper democratic control of our financial, commercial and industrial systems, redistribute wealth, restore peace and order to international relations, and promote enlightened values. We now have every possible reason to do it, so let’s just do it. If not now, when?

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As for the Heathrow expansion - let’s not go there.

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Ken Livingston has on his LBC programme this morning some lunatic right-wing member of the London Assembly, Brian Coleman, who’s a full-time councillor in Barnet, much admired by West London taxi drivers, it seems, who actually says he admires George Bush and his administration and would vote for another four years of Bush and neo-conservatism if he could. See what I mean? Fucked.

This twat also defended what the Israeli forces have been doing in Gaza, and tried to use the usual bullshit about “Well what would you do if Hamas was firing missiles at London?” Thankfully Ken was ready for that and immediately retorted that we DID have the IRA bombing London but we didn’t attack them in their hiding places in Belfast and Derry with Apache gunships, missile-firing drones, F16s, tanks and long-range artillery. We’re not THAT uncivilised. Yet.

Back to the war crimes.

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A good friend sent me this today:

Interesting quotes from Gerald Kaufman this week:

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town . . . a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.”

Kaufman compared the Hamas militants in Gaza to Jewish resistance fighters during the Second World War, saying: "The spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians. The total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that '500 of them were militants’. That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

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There were some more good letters in the Guardian yesterday. Read them at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/16/gaza-israel-petitions

Extract:

Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides... against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

This is signed by over 300 people, mainly academics.
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Layer 113 Equality, Social Mobility, Education, Harman’s Law and War Crimes.

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Social mobility and inequality seem to be the buzz words this week. And about time too. Lots of talk about why very bright working class kids with decent exam results who still fail to get into the best jobs or enter the professions.

The Observer’s editorial on social mobility said this,

A [government] review of barriers to working-class entry into the professions, revealed in this week's paper, will examine - alongside a forthcoming white paper into social mobility - some of the more insidious factors behind inequality, particularly those that encourage and sustain cosy networks. Increasingly, the first step in building a career - from the law to the theatre - is to secure work experience, often via placements that go unadvertised. These hidden ladders are more likely to be seized by the children of the professional classes, kept informed through friends and contacts of their parents.

[And if they do find a placement]would [they] have the requisite presentational skills to best exploit the stint? For even the straight-A pupil might find herself left behind by her better-connected and more articulate peer. Schools with large working-class intakes are to be encouraged to develop pupils' self-esteem, confidence and articulacy.

While all the social skills in the world are not going to propel bright children into the professions if they do not have the necessary qualifications - the poorest children remain three times less likely than their wealthier contemporaries to secure good GCSEs - this seems a positive idea.

What’s so shameful about our society and our school system is that it’s taken till now for our newspaper and political elite to start seeing the need to “develop pupils' self-esteem, confidence and articulacy”. This is so appalling, it’s hard to know where to begin.

From the mid-sixties there was an effort by the teaching profession to educate children in Primary schools in a way that allowed them to develop all of their intelligences - personal, social, emotional and spiritual, and become people who had high degrees of self-confidence, and well-developed powers of self-expression, creativity and imagination..

That movement slowed down dramatically when the National Curriculum was introduced, and those on the right of the political spectrum (politicians and teachers, Labour and Tory) began a largely successful campaign to denigrate the innovations of Plowden and the ‘progressives’, and return schools to Victorian methodology, with a disintegrated curriculum and didactic rote-learning.

The so-called ‘child-centred’ movement ground to a complete halt when SATs and league tables were introduced, along with a punitive inspection regime. A few schools stood firm and fought hard to maintain their focus on the actual personal wellbeing and learning needs of their children, but there were virtually no new schools joining the movement towards a more enlightened education system.

And no wonder. ‘Standards’ were now all that mattered, which meant focusing all of a school’s efforts on cramming and preparing children for tests, if you wanted to cover your back and remain in the profession, i.e. not be sacked, especially if you practiced your profession in a working class community with large numbers of disadvantaged children who struggled in Primary school to cope with the demands of meaningless, decontextualised and demotivating test preparation.

So now there are voices suggesting that these working class children should be allowed and encouraged to develop “self-esteem, confidence and articulacy”. I hope one day all the bastards who have colluded in preventing them for all these years from developing those crucial psychological strengths and intelligences, those key factors in the development of resilience and enjoyment of life, will be held to account.

But we know they won’t, don’t we? We know they’ll do whatever they’re told to do; they’ll go whichever way the wind blows, and claim that they were only obeying orders, and so cover their backs. Such clever bastards.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/11/labour-social-mobility-education

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What’s also shocking is that commentators and politicians are advocating more emphasis on PHSE (knowing that Alexander and Rose are about to publish these recommendations in their Primary reviews) because it will help more working class kids to compete for entry into the professions. What about the rest of them? What about those who prefer entry into walks of life that are ‘non-professional’? Don’t they also need and benefit from having all of their intelligences and competencies developed to high levels? Or don’t they matter, as usual?

The Observer’s editorial was headed, “At last, in idea that encourages upward mobility”. Leaving aside the fact that such ideas have been around for a very long time, and the ‘at last’ only applies to New Labour, it’s sickening that their only interest in such ideas is that they might benefit the aspirational few that might wish to enter the professions and become ‘upwardly mobile’. It’s not enough, you see, for anyone to be content with being a member of the ‘working classes’, to be a plumber, a secretary or a mere classroom assistant, for example, even though we live in an age when even ‘professionals’ are mere wage slaves, working to targets and production quotas set by the bosses, using production methods (‘The Literacy Strategy’, ‘Grammar for Writing’, didactic teaching) that are prescribed and demanded by the elites in Whitehall and the Palace of Westminster.

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As far as those elites are concerned, anyone who wishes to remain a member of the working classes and chooses to live in a working class community must be a moron. Their idea of success in life, as far as kids in working class communities are concerned, is for kids to get a fistful of exam passes and migrate to the middle class suburbs where they can live a life of glorious isolation within a nuclear family.

They have no idea of communities where kinship and neighbourliness are part of an everyday reality. They have no idea about, let alone respect for, working class solidarity, mutual support and friendship.

Last December 19th, Lynsey Hanley, author of ‘Estates: An Intimate History’, wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian, under the heading, “A better life shouldn’t mean leaving your peers”. I agree with that key idea, though the piece itself is somewhat muddled and confusing. Nevertheless, she has some valid thoughts, and it’s worth reading her piece. Here’s an extract:

This week's Cabinet Office publication on raising aspirations among young people living in deprived areas rightly made a connection between their desire to stay on at school after 16 and the strength of their social bonds. If entire peer groups show no inclination to stay on, individuals within those groups find it extraordinarily difficult to go against the grain. No one wants "a shit life", which is how I heard one such man describe it, but getting out of one requires resources that the group to which they've gravitated lacks: self-confidence, skills and a lack of loyalty. The creed of "us" against "them" remains powerful.

The service economy, reliant on strong communication skills and consensus-building, favours the feminine. By contrast, as researchers from Cardiff University found, many young men growing up in former industrial areas cannot stand the humiliation of such work and prefer to stay unemployed.

Yet they must either stay unemployed for life, or cave in to minimum-wage work, if they are to stay within the community that raised and which supports them. To find better work they must leave, whether by going to university or by moving, effectively, to the south-east. This is why the northern cities highlighted in the Cabinet Office paper are still leeching people to the south.
But if young people are encouraged to develop aspirations to attend university, to broaden their horizons and to have new experiences, they will almost certainly have to leave their neighbourhoods in order to do so. In areas of strong social bonds - where everyone does the same thing and where there is no threat to the collective sense of what "people like us" are able or unable to do - leaving will cause a rupture. They have to be able to manage the often passive, sometimes forceful, rejection it entails.

What I am saying is that social mobility is painful. If inducements to move "upwards" are delivered from the top down to individuals, rather than generated within communities, those who leave behind their peers may never again feel entirely comfortable in any social group. The old group will express its hurt at "how you've changed"; the new one will seem blithe and over-entitled. No one wants to waste their life. No one wants their lives to be petty and aimless. Everyone wants, in some way, to be productive. The goal of the Cabinet Office team must be that no one pays over the odds for the privilege.

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What we need to keep in mind is that our governing and managing elites see leaving your peers as essential, if you’re to have a ‘better life’, join the rat race, etc. Which is why their only model for educational success has been the getting of the GCSEs and A Levels (to the exclusion of all else) that will put young people on some escalator to higher education and the professions, banking, big business, etc, thereby earning the salary levels that will enable them to migrate to the soulless suburbs, commuter towns and elite neighbourhoods. All else is failure and a ‘shit life’.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/19/social-mobility-young-people

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Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Minister for the Cabinet Office, is in the spotlight. Crazy job description, crazy guy. Readers of this blog will be aware that Oxzen is no fan of NuLabour, to say the least, but Byrne seems an interesting guy, and a good speaker. He went to an Essex comprehensive school that suffered badly in the days when Thatcher systematically under-invested in education, and state schools were under-staffed, shabby places. He has two children who are in Primary school.

This week Mr Byrne has been popping up everywhere, from Radio 4 to Newsnight, talking about the need to invest lots more in Nursery and Early Years education, in apprenticeships, and in measures (see above) that will give the children of working class families better access to the professions.

He’s also taking about ensuring that more jobs are created that have skills training attached.

All of which is very welcome, but should have been tackled by NuLabour a decade ago.

http://www.liambyrne.co.uk/aboutliam.asp

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Harman’s Law?

On Tuesday this week Polly Toynbee’s column in the Guardian was one of the most positive and uplifting I’ve read in weeks, if not months. Please read it. Obama’s election was the last time I felt so positive.

In it she’s commenting on the social mobility White Paper, and says,

Here comes startling news. The social mobility white paper published today will propose legislation of extraordinary radicalism - simple, fundamental and profound. It should have been Labour's guiding light for the last 11 years - but better late than never.

The government will create a new over-arching law creating a duty on the whole public sector to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. This single legal duty will stand as the main frame from which all other equality legislation flows. Race, gender and disability injustices are all subsets of the one great inequality - class. It trumps them all. The gap between rich and poor in Britain is greater than in almost all rich nations, putting the UK with the United States among the most unequal.

This new duty to narrow the gap would permeate every aspect of government policy. Its possible ramifications are mind-bogglingly immense - as astonishing as Tony Blair's promise to abolish child poverty: it will make that pledge more achievable by 2020.

Harriet Harman, the head of the government's equality office, is the architect of the new law and will outline its meaning and importance in a speech to the Fabian Society's annual conference on Saturday. Business secretary Peter Mandelson will speak at the Fabian event too, which should be interesting. Harman fought a long and successful battle for cabinet support, with virtually all agreeing with enthusiasm to its inclusion in today's white paper, though with some notable opposition. The only bill it could be included in is the imminent equalities bill, making equality itself the prime objective. One cabinet member described it with relish as "socialism in one clause".

Harman's law will be considerably more significant than the new social mobility review chaired by the resurrected Alan Milburn. Trying to get more people from poor backgrounds into the top professions is a reasonable endeavour: the army, medicine, the law, politics, media and most professions are dominated by the privately educated. Finding ways to get bright pupils from poor families into internships and work experience to reach top occupations will no doubt help to slightly rebalance the odds for a few. Geoffrey Vos QC, former head of the Bar Association, who sits on the Milburn review, chairs the Social Mobility Foundation which helps high-flying pupils on free school meals into top-rank professions.

But the evidence, globally, is that little progress can be made until the country as a whole is more equal. Inequality is the root cause of social immobility. However, politicians of all parties are happiest talking about "opportunity", pulling the ablest up the ladders - without too many questions asked about why the ladders are so steep, and why the distance is so great from bottom to top. It is a great deal less controversial than talk of narrowing the gap itself.

Harman's law gets to the root of the question. Only by making the whole country fundamentally fairer will equal opportunities follow. What might it mean? All will depend on the legal detail. Will it be an aspiration or will it have legal teeth? It will certainly mean every public authority will have to ensure that how it spends money and how it fixes its priorities sets a course towards narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Poor children might need to have much more spent on their education per head than the better-off do. Sure Start toddlers might need more funds than older children. It might mean local lotteries to see that all children get equal access to the best schools. Poor parts of a borough might attract more services to pull them up to the standards of richer areas.

Imagine how this law might bite on central government - what might it require of the Treasury? Tax credits and benefits would rise to lift families over the poverty threshold. The Low Pay Commission would set the minimum wage at a level that narrowed the pay gap, instead of falling behind. Public sector pay would rise for the lowest grades, all the cleaners, carers, dinner ladies, porters and clerks earning less than a living wage. "It is our task in government to play our part in fashioning a new social order with fairness and equality at its heart," Harriet Harman will say on Saturday. "We want to do more than just provide 'escape routes' out of poverty for a talented few. We want to tackle the class divide."

If not now, when? Custodians of the citadels of wealth have wrecked the economy, their folly damaging the chances of poor school leavers - while their own offspring will be unscathed. There is no better time to embark on Harman's "new social order".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/13/polly-toynbee-harriet-harman-social-mobility

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Gaza Again

It seemed incredible when it started, that Israel was prepared to slaughter 300 Palestinians and destroy large amounts of property and infrastructure in revenge for largely ineffectual rocket attacks. But we’re now up to more than 1,000 killed, a great many of whom are women and children, with schools and homes shelled and hit with missiles whenever the army decided there might be members of Hamas sheltering within them.

This week I heard an Israeli spokesman say to a radio interviewer, “What would you do if London was hit by rockets?” Such a pity that the interviewer didn’t have the wit to say, “Look mate, London was hit hard by IRA bombs, but we didn’t see fit to shell and rocket Catholic communities and kill innocent men, women and children in revenge”. And we didn’t imagine we could defeat the IRA by killing all of them, even if we did try to imprison them all in H blocks.

Peace is only achievable, in situations where people have genuine grievances, through the use of restraint, dialogue and compromise, predicated on a spirit of non-violence and reconciliation.

There’s now widespread talk about how the international community can deal with Israel’s war crimes and breaches of humanitarian law. The Guardian had a front page column, headed, “Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation”. Please read it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/13/gaza-israel-war-crimes

Monday’s Guardian had 3 excellent letters, from Edward John, David Freeman and Miles Halpin. Please read them as well:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/12/gaza-palestine-territories-sanctions

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Obama

Monday's paper also had the following, in its editorial about the presidential transition:

Mr Obama intends to flood the world with diplomats rather than pilotless drones. But here too he will have to be selective. The search for peace in Palestine must come higher up his agenda. After what has happened in Gaza in the past fortnight, saying that Israel has the right to defend itself is not enough. The US has to reset the parameters within which the next Israeli prime minister, probably a Likud one, operates. Washington can do this. It provides the smart bombs, the X-band radar and the spare parts of the F-16s that Israel uses. Israel should be told: if you use our weapons, you play by our rules.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/12/obama-transition

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Lasantha Wickrematunga

There was an incredible piece in Tuesday’s Guardian by a Sri Lankan newspaper editor who lived and died in the service of truth. You must read it.

This extraordinary article by the editor of the Sri Lankan Sunday Leader was published three days after he was shot dead in Colombo.

“But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/13/wickrematunga-final-editorial-final-editorial

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Andrew Marr

Just when I was convinced that Andrew Marr is one our best and brightest journalists and commentators, he says this (in a programme on 'kindness'):

"Sexuality is profoundly selfish and self-centred."

Duh! Is this man a mere onanist?

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Prince Harry

I can’t be bothered writing anything about Prince Harry. It can’t be easy growing up a Prince, in a barmy Royal family, within a racist, bigoted and ignorant group of peers. Even Prince Siddartha had to leave home and go wandering alone in the world in order to find enlightenment and Buddhahood.
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