Muck Spreading

This comment seems typical of the ones I've read today about the BBC's (and Robert Peston's in particular) response to the news that George Osbourne may have been more interested than he should have been in receiving donations for the Conservative Party from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

I am more than a little dismayed at the public's response. To me it seems important that all politicians are investigated for their probity, especially if they are seeking to become Chancellor of the Exchequor, as George Osbourne is. However, what dismays me most of all is the idea that the BBC is launching its own campaign to smear George Osbourne because they are naturally left-wing.

It seems to me that the BBC is quite right in pursuing the direction that they are. The BBC has shown that it is not adverse to making life difficult for the government. Many heavyweight Labour politicians have had to resign because of investigations by the press (Peter Mandelson twice); nor did the BBC show any favour towards the government over decisions to invade Iraq, much to its own cost.

And now, people are saying that the BBC is biased towards the government because it dares to suggest that George Osbourne has some very serious questions to answer.

It is important to recognise this as a sign that there may be something in these accusations after all. Rubbishing the reporter of a piece of news is a good way to suggest that the news has no substance without having to prove it. Hopefully the BBC will re-double its efforts to show one way or another whether George Osbourne has a serious case to answer.

Well, he does. At the very least, George Osbourne has shown a huge error of judgement. It is clear that he has seriously annoyed Nat Rothschild, who is not known as a supporter of New Labour and who, therefore, must have his own reasons for wanting to accuse George Osbourne. According to Robert Peston, it is because he feels that George Osbourne took advantage of his (Nat's) hospitality by encouraging newspaper reports that embarrass two other of Nat's friends, Oleg Deripaska and Peter Mandelson. In other words, George Osbourne has politicked amongst friends and has been rebuked in a very public forum.

Bizarrely, most people seem to blame Peter Mandelson for this. It seems that Peter can be blamed for everything.

It should be noted that George Osbourne is not immune from making unfounded accusations of his own.

Maybe George Osbourne has simply been naïve. The Tories maybe need to learn that they cannot continually throw mud at the government without two things happening: firstly, people will get fed up with the amount of mud that sticks to politicians - and not just Labour ones; and secondly, some of the mud will splatter themselves too. What's more, for those of us who are not affiliated with the right or the left, the Tories' constant barrage of some founded and some unfounded criticisms of Gordon Brown undermine the very good points that they do occasionally make, such as that the government borrowed too much when times were good; and that they allowed debt levels to get too high. (The one thing I do not believe is that the Tories would have been any different, since it was under Thatcherism that the seed of unregulated credit markets was sown, and further regulating markets is not a Tory policy).

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Can humanity be redeemed?

I have changed.

In the very heart of my being, I am a different person.

The way I define myself; the way I define humanity: it is all changed utterly; but there is no beauty sufficient to redeem humanity for me. I can see no hope for humanity.

Yesterday on the radio I heard the account of Zawadi Mongane, a young woman from the Congo, who was forced to hang her own baby by rebel soldiers after watching them butcher other villagers, including her brother and her two oldest children.

No person living or dead can do enough to assuage that crime. I feel guilt and utter shame that fellow human beings could perpetrate such a crime.

Reckless, thoughtless selfishness seems to be the norm for people. I have known this for a long time. Never before now have I understood the depths of depravity that human beings can sink to. Despite the vast works of art, literature and history that exist dedicated to the holocaust, it somehow never quite struck home. Maybe because it was an historical act - an act outside my lifetime - and also maybe because of the political manipulation that so often goes hand-in-hand with holocaust accounts; and maybe also because the descendants of the victims of that holocaust are intent on becoming aggressors and criminals in their own right in the way they treat the Palestinian people inside and outside Israel. For them, it was not a crime against humanity, but a crime against Judaism.

Can anything redeem humanity from this crime against Zawadi Mongane? It seems to me that if every human being alive and yet to come were to do nothing but good, selfless acts for all eternity, it would be insufficient.

We are men of filth.

Economic Meltdown

The last few weeks have tested the greatest economic minds to their limits. What chance my feeble one to make any sense of it all?

I am beginning to come to a few conclusions, however. Firstly, it is hard to see how even the most right-wing, laissez-faire economics advocate can maintain such a position given recent happenings in world economics. George Bush's government is having to spend what might end up being a trillion dollars of taxpayers' money to shore up the US economy, on which the world relies. Henry Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, that is to say, arch-capitalist extraordinaire, is the architect of the plan.

If you were to suggest giving away $3,000 per head of US population to rich bankers, paid for by taxation, people would say you were mad. But that is exactly what Henry Paulson is suggesting. Not only is the US government planning to take on all of the Toxic Debt, they are planning on doing so in such a way that is highly favourable to the owners of that debt. So favourable, in fact, that it is in the interest of a bank that has dealings in the US to have such debt, since they will make a profit on it.

The only justification (and it is a scant one, in my opinion) for large profits for banks and bankers is the level of risk. Risk that they could lose all of their capital. But where is the risk if the US government bails out the banks? Where is the risk to the bankers' personal wealth?

If I were a US taxpayer, I would want to know where my $3,000 is going, how it will help me, and how it can be used to my benefit. I would also want to know how the money was going to be clawed back from rich bankers who are destroying the world economy by their greed.

I would want to know what mechanisms are going to be put in place to ensure that large financial institutions become incapable of making vast profits from what is essentially defrauding Joe Public.

I would want to know how the government was going to chase those who made immoral cash from the financial system to ensure that no-one profited personally from this debacle.

I, for one, will never be able to look at an investment banker again without scorn and hatred. No-one has a right to be rich. No-one deserves to be rich. Capitalism is not meritocratic. The rich are rich at the cost to the poor.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-capitalist; but neither do I believe capitalism is self-justifying; nor that those who are at the heart of it are the most worthy of the wealth that is generated.

Google Chrome

So, Google have released their own browser. The headlines are:

1. It's fast! Much faster for JavaScript-heavy sites like Google Mail.
2. It uses process partitioning for security between browser tabs. This also helps with speed issues, since each tab has its own execution threads. The JavaScript in one tab cannot hog the processor and prevent another tab from becoming responsive.
3. It takes some of the best ideas from browsers like Opera and Firefox to create a nice user experience.

The main reason for Google releasing their own browser is to promote the use of the web applications that Google itself creates. The browser is not just a way of looking at online content: it is also a way of delivering critical applications that we use everyday, such as email, word processing and spreadsheets. By making the browser more stable, they've made the delivery of web applications for critical tasks a more palatable proposition.

By promoting Google Gears (which seems to be behind the new browser), Google are also moving towards an offline web application world. If you use Google Docs and you don't have internet access, you can still use Google Docs! The server where Google Docs is hosted is essentially just a central repository that the web application can be updated from and can (if required) store documents on; but it is not required to be available to use Google Docs, since documents you create can also be stored locally.

When you add Google's Chrome browser, the facilities that Google Gears provides and the speed gains in JavaScript execution together, what you get is a very attractive platform on which to write Rich Internet Applications, without needing the Flash or Java plugins.

I haven't had time to play with Google's GWT. The idea is a very cool one to a Java / web developer like me: write Java code and deploy it on the browser. The key, though, is development and design tools. If Google want to compete in the RIA world, they need to provide a simple, intuitive development environment, like Flex Builder (but hopefully better). The would give Google the upper hand over Microsoft, Adobe and Java in terms of delivering applications via the browser.

They've got a long way to go yet!

Wealth and Poverty

Two things have prompted me to write this blog entry.

Firstly, a recent programme on the BBC which showed a handful of British twenty-somethings who were interested in or involved in the clothing industry being taken to India to learn about the clothes trade there. They were all of them very middle class and well off, even by British standards. The short series showed them working firstly in an high-end factory which makes clothes for some of the expensive labels on the high street. They all, except one, found the sewing work too difficult, either because it was beyond them technically or because they were too slow (despite the arrogance of the men who initially thought the work too easy). They found the conditions very difficult - most notably due to the discipline: no talking, no walking around; just concentrating on the work at hand to ensure a profitable throughput of work. These middle-class youngsters couldn't bare normal factory working conditions. The group was taken to work at other locations too: picking cotton from the fields (very low paid, back-breaking work - and the programme didn't discuss the high levels of cancer-causing pesticide used); working in a cotton processing plant; and, finally, working in slum conditions in a back-street factory where they were expected to sleep in the same room they were working in. The programee was a real eye-opener in terms of showing the conditions Indian workers suffer in order to provide us with cheap clothing.

The second is the state of the world and British economies. The British economy has had low inflation for the last ten years. It appears that this is in large partly due to cheap imports from India and China. Clothes are no more expensive now than they were 10 years ago. This has helped keep inflation down, enabling the Bank of England to keep interest rates low, which stimulates growth in the economy. When clothes manufacturing jobs moved from Britain to India, it was thought that it was good in terms of developing a third world economy. Britain would get cheap imports and India would be able to provide a living for more of its most poor. The manufacturing jobs lost in Britain would be replaced by higher-paid, more specialised jobs (call centres, for example).

That was the theory. In terms of the British economy, it has worked for the last ten years. But at what cost? Our supermarkets have squeezed suppliers until the poorest paid workers in India are poorer still. Capital is squeezing labour across international boundaries - and what comeback has the Indian worker to British supermarkets? The UK government does not represent Indian workers. Democracy is toothless across country boundaries.

With the economy becoming more challenging, what will be the outcome for the poorest in our global economy? To what extent can we squeeze more labour for less expenditure when food prices are rising globally and the poorest are worst hit by this? It seems to me that the wealth sinks of our economy will be the first to suffer: house prices, car sales, electronic gadgets; and along with these, the poorest too, causing hunger, suffering, disease without ability to pay for basic healthcare or clean water.

I will leave it to the reader to decide who suffers most.

Syria 'had covert nuclear scheme'

Thus goes the headline for a news article available here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7364269.stm.

The polarisation in the world of pro- and anti-American stances brings with it an asymmetric outlook on defense which, in my opinion, is the single biggest threat to global stability. One need only consider Russia's complaints against the USA's anti-missile defense system. Russia is worried that an unassailable USA could bring with it an abuse of power leading to an anti-democratic world system in which a minority of people (i.e. the people of the USA) get to dictate to the rest of the world how it should be run. To be fair, those are my words, not Russia's; but the fear is the same: of an over-powerful USA dictating to the world from on high.

It is common knowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel neither confirms nor denies possession of nuclear weapons, but Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by Israeli agents in 1986 and taken to Israel, where he was convicted of treason for revealing to the British press the details of the Israeli nuclear weapons programme. Presumably Israel would not have taken this drastic action if they did not actually possess nuclear weapons.

It is also known that Israel is expansionist: the occupied Palestinian territories. Nor are they pacifist, having had wars with nearly all of its neighbours since 1948. Nor yet are they modest in their dealings with other countries: Israel has a fierce spy machine in Mossad which does not shy away from political assassinations in foreign territories. No wonder, then, that its neighbours are worried. The area is dominated by Israel and its brutal treatment of the Palestinians in order to safeguard land and a high standard of living for its own citizens. Just as the USA has, for over a century, put pressure on its neighbours, particularly in Central and South America, to maintain a USA- and capitalist-friendly attitude (even where that meant overthrowing a democratically elected government in favour of a right-wing dictatorship), one could easily imagine Israel developing a similar policy towards its neighbours.

That brings us nicely to Syria. There is a tendency for anyone in any country to think that their own security is the most important. You might say that the psychology of a country is akin to the psychology of an individual. No-one can feel at ease when there is someone sitting next to them with hostile intent who is also much more powerful. Pride and self-preservation might urge such a person to work out, take self-defense classes and maybe even invest in weaponry - all for the sake of defending oneself and one's family. It may even be that that menacing person is not so menacing, after all - it is the perceived level of menace that is important. Similarly, Syria may want to defend itself. It is important for people in the West to realise that Syria does not think of itself as a failed, evil State (nor does any country). It is a country with an ancient heritage - it makes European culture look positively modern. It is a heritage it is likely to want to defend; and with an aggressive, highly powerful neighbour in Israel, it has to do a lot of working out and invest in a lot of hardware in order to feel more secure. Since Israel has weapons of mass destruction in the form of nuclear weapons, it is unlikely that Syria will feel secure until it has the equivalent 'deterrent'.

As with Syria, so with Iran.

When the USA-led Western coalition starts to respect the sovereignty of other nations and their need to feel secure, then there might be the hope of a more peaceful co-existence. Once again, the asymmetric American foreign policy is to blame.

US funds Israel

Someone I know (that I shall call Libby), who is highly intelligent and whom I respect greatly, was recently on a trip to Israel to attend a wedding of an old school friend. She had never been to Israel before and, before going, had preconceptions, imagining that she would be entering a war zone - not surprising given that outside of Israel we tend to hear only about the bombings. She was pleasantly surprised to find a country which she described as 'first world', in stark contrast to Jordan, where she had been earlier, which seemed to lack efficiency or motivation (two things that matter greatly to Libby). She continued that Israel had been fought for by the Jews for a long time; that they had been ejected from Israel by the diaspora of the 2nd century AD; and concluded that they deserved the land that is now Israel given that they had made such a success of it and had fought so hard for it, whereas neighbouring states were not so successful and were probably jealous of Israel's success.

On the face of it, this may seem like a decent enough argument; except that it leaves out some crucial facts. Firstly, the human cost of Israel has been left out. Had Libby visited the refugee camps in Palestine to see the conditions that those displaced by Israelis now lived in, she may have had a more balanced opinion. In terms of Israel's success as a first world country, she might have included in her own musings the fact that the USA has funded Israel since 1949 to the tune of about $100bn to date. The influx of Jews into Israel has attracted some highly educated people - people who were initially educated outside Israel in USA, Europe and Russia. Israel was therefore re-created with a highly educated, motivated population - there is no doubting the existence of the hard-working, highly-intelligent and extremely talented Jew. It must be taken into consideration that Israel was constructed using an already-educated population.

The concept that worried me most, however, was the idea that the Jews 'deserved' Israel because they had fought and worked so hard for it. If fighting hard is the greatest reason for occupying a portion of land, presumably the Palestinians simply have to fight harder than the Israelis to deserve it more? That, certainly, is what everyone in the area seems to think.

So, where does that leave the human race? It seems to me that violence is the least reason for owning something, not the greatest. Admittedly, you cannot fight against blind violence with words and logic; but morally speaking, surely it is the basest reason of all?

The greatest problem I see in the world is the arbitrary attributing of loyalty to something we are born into. If you are born Jewish, you think that Jews are the chosen people. If you are born British, you may think that the British Empire was the greatest force for educating the world there has ever been and put the 'Great' into 'Great Britain'. If you are American, you might imagine that the asymmetric foreign policy that the USA has implemented for the last 50 years is right and just for the simple reason that America is the 'leader' of the 'free world' - which is a spin greatly to be wished for by any government. If you are a Muslim, you might think that the Islamic faith is the entire world, and everything else a creation of the devil that must be extinguished.

Where we are born is arbitrary. That my consciousness is in this body was not chosen by me - I had no free will in it. I had no free will in being born Welsh - nor do I think that I am in any way special for being Welsh. I do not believe in Welsh nationalism (although I am always excited when we beat England in the Six Nations). Being British is more important to me than being Welsh - but it comes at the price of a shame of the British Empire and its arrogance - the remnants of which we still see in our foreign policy. Being European is more important to me still, but only because I love European culture and hope that a united Europe will create peace in a continent that only 60 years ago was ravaged with fierce fighting which we do not want to see again. To fight for some arbitrary grouping seems to me pointless - and these are arbitrary groupings even if they seem so important to those who are members of them. Belief is little more than custom - and to put too great a store on it is to misunderstand the nature of belief.

What is my conclusion? That to put any arbitrary grouping (nationality, religion, profession, skin colour) before the fact of a living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being standing in front of you, is the basest, most violent thing of all. Not physically violent, but morally violent. A violence which offends all humanity because it denies a member of that humanity. If you have an arbitrary reason for hating someone (because they are Jewish or Muslim or American or Russian) then they might have an equally arbitrary reason for hating you or your sister or your mother and father. Although there may be much passion - there is no reason in it. Does Israel deserve the land? 'Israel' is a concept created by the arbitrary grouping tendency of the human mind (as is every country); since people are dying for this concept, the answer has to be 'no'.