Democracy in black, white and grey

More debate on www.OpenDemocracy.net. Matt quotes me

Democracy is based on the idea that sovereign
power derives from the will of the people

.

MM: That's certainly one view.
RL: I would suggest the one and only view, the basic philosophical principle, the ideal which is never attained, and towards which all self-styled democracies should strive towards.

I agree with your criticism of the limitations of representative democracy, and agree that more intense local direct democractic systems are desirable. One of the failures in Iraq has been that the approach to creating a new democratic Iraq is based on top-down, rather than bottom up democracy.

However, we have to go with what we have. "Adopt, adapt and improve", as John Cleese's armed robber used to say.

My point was that if the UN adopt the Green Party's approach and should set up an Index of Human Rights to measure all states' performance in matters of torture, political imprisonment, free elections &c. there would be a constant upward pressure pushing regimes towards more democratic structures.

What is the difference between a fundamentalist?

I find that a thread I began on www.OpenDemocracy.net entitled How should we respond to Osama bin Laden? has acquired 85 posts while my back was turned. Mostly a trio of known suspects, thought to be supporters of the war on terror, but
ILJAY sets an interesting problem: find the similarities between an Islamic fundamentalist and a Christian fundamentalist.

IJ: When was the last time a Christian fundamentalist flew a plane into the building?
RL: With suicidal and political intent, never, so far as I know. I am sure a christian fundamentalist must have flown his plane into a building by accident at least once in the last 100 years, but that is not the point.

Suicidal bombings do not form part of christian culture, as opposed to being so totally unwilling to give way on a matter of principle that they get martyred by the opposition. Which I, for one, respect, and has had a good effect in many instances.

Unfortunately, however, modern christian fundamentalism delegates the job of bombing buildings containing civilians to the Air Force. And of course, the killings are accidental, ("collateral") not deliberate as in the case of terrorists. We never bomb civilian targets deliberately, neither do we deliberately choose important civilian targets such as unfriendly newspapers and TV stations.

So in short IlJay, the answer is never, and you have one point.

IJ: Blew himself up on a packed commuter train?
RL: Same again. No culture of suicide.

However, I remember reading the headline "CHRISTIAN GUNMAN KILLS NINE IN BEIRUT" and thinking to myself,
"I don't think so".

IJ: Insisted that women should be treated as second class citizens and beaten but only lightly?
RL: The christian fundamentalists I grew up with insisted that women should cover their heads as a token of submission to the man, who was head of the household. There was no official policy on beatings to my knowledge, but I am sure that domestic abuse took place.

IJ: Called to kill infidels?
RL: Well, Pat Robertson called for the death of Hugo Chavez. Not AFAIK because he was an infidel, because christian fundamentalists do not use that term, but Chavez is an "unbeliever" in Robertson's terms. I confess that I do not know why Robertson wanted Chavez dead. Do you?

IJ: When was the last time a group of Christian fundamentalists massacred a group of tourists admiring the sites including a young mother and her baby?
RL: Christians never knowingly kill tourists AFAIK because it would obviously be bad for the tourist industry. However the Vietnam war certainly put the dampeners on the Vietnamese tourist industry for a few decades.

IJ: Cut another human beings head off on TV?
RL: Not since the 16th or 17th century.

IJ: Called for another country to be wiped off the map?
RL: Reagan joked that he was going to bomb Russia off the map, but that was just a joke, and he wasn't a christian fundamentalist AFAIK. More seriously though, the Catholics in Northern Ireland wanted to wipe the British province of Northern Ireland off the map, while some of the Protestant denominations would like to wipe Eire (and, indeed, the Vatican) off the map. So the equivalent sentiment is there.

IJ: This is a very poor attempt at moral equivalence indeed.
RL: [i]Eppur si muove.[/i] The instances you give of Islamic fundamentalists demonstrate their direct, 6th century AD approach to warfare, which translates as car bomb and the suicide bomber operating at ground level - highly cost effective warfare, it must be said, but utterly horrible in the civilain carnage that it causes. We in the christian West carry out our warfare primarily by bombing from a great height - highly expensive, but then we can afford it, but still utterly horrible in the civilain carnage that it causes.

Yes, IJ, there is a difference. Unlike terrorists who intend to hit civilian targets, our bombs (we are told) are not intended to kill civilians, they are aimed (so we are told) at military targets, and the civilians are just collateral damage. Most regrettable &c. BUT - we have killed much more of their civilians than they have. They killed 3000 on 9/11. How many have we killed in Afghanistan and Iraq? Ten times that number would be a very conservative estimate. And as a proportion of the population, the discrepancy is even greater.

Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms have different approaches to warfare, but let us not fool ourselves into thinking that one is good and one is bad. Fundamentalism, by persuading its adherents that their case is absolutely right because they are following an infallible sacred text, is a cause of absolute social and ideological division that has in the past, is in the present and will in the future, cause people to want to kill each other.

Fundamentalists will always be with us. The thing to do is not to fight them with bombs, but to hunt and arrest them (the police have arrested more known terrorists than the Army - although, come to think of it, we just do not know how many terrorists the Army has killed. More importantly we should sideline them by focussing on the real challenge facing mankind - learning how to develop economic sustainability and social and international equity.

Legal note: none of the above is intended to glorify, nor to excuse terrorism, which I define as violence enacted against civilians with the intention of creating terror, shock and awe in order to bring about political aims. I abhor all violence, and believe that it is a singularly wasteful and inefficient way of attaining political settlements.

Nuclear Power Not Dog's Best Friend?

DEATH OF PET DOGS LEADS TO RADIATION FEARS AT HINKLEY
Western Daily Press
01 November 2005
(See my comment at the foot of this column - RL
An inquiry has been launched into a claim that high radiation levels were found near Hinkley Point nuclear site, the Western Daily Press can reveal today. The Geiger counter readings were taken at Kilve Beach, on the Bristol Channel, by a man whose two dogs died from stomach cancer after regularly being walked in the area.

Yesterday, the Environment Agency confirmed it is investigating the claim and checking whether any discharges may have come from the atomic site, though it currently has "no evidence to suppose so".

The nuclear complex near Bridgwater is home to the decommissioned Hinkley A nuclear power station and the still-functioning Hinkley B plant.

Operators at the sites said last night all readings from their carefully-monitored works were well within safe limits and they were co-operating with the investig ation.

Both British Nuclear Group, which is responsible for Hinkley A, and British Energy, which runs Hinkley B, yesterday said monitoring had picked up no unusual readings.

The unnamed pet owner, who has an engineering background, decided to take a Geiger counter to Kilve on August 20 after his pets died and allegedly discovered "elevated" radiation levels.

Although he has chosen not to speak publicly about it, the man reported his findings to the Environment Agency, which invited him to revisit the site in mid-September with its contractors, who regularly monitor the beach.

Although the dog owner pointed out the areas where he had taken his own counter checks, neither he nor the contractors could reproduce his findings.

"He has concluded that the readings are due to loose material rather than fixed natural activity in the rocks, " said the Environment Agency yesterday in a statement.

"We are looking to see if there is any potential for the phenomenon reported by the member of the public to be associated with discharges of radioactive liquid effluent from the Hinkley Point nuclear sites near to Kilve beach.

"At this time we have no evidence to suppose so but are doing extra environmental monitoring in the area to check.

"We will also be taking extra samples of the liquid effluents discharged from the nuclear sites to look for anything unusual.

"We are also checking with the operators of the Hinkley Point sites that the plant that they have in place to minimise environmental impacts from liquid discharges is operating as it should."

ACCORDING to Jim Duffy, of campaign group Stop Hinkley, the man discovered a 20 sq metres area where the radiation levels were 40 to 50 times higher than would be normally expected.

Compared with a background radiation level of two to four "clicks" a second on the counter, there were between 80 and 100 clicks, said Mr Duffy.

He said the unidentified pet owner had previous expertise working with Geiger counters and had a military background, including working on submarines.

Theman has loaned one of his three radiation-check instruments to antinuclear campaigner Mr Duffy, who lives nearby and will be making further visits to the site to check levels.

Mr Duffy believes the radiation may have been lower on the second occasion because the contaminating material was washed away during the weeks between site visits.

"If there is radiation washing up on any of the local beaches then it is going to contaminate people using it, " he said.

"Dogs are probably going to be the first to be affected - they scratch and run about, and drink water.

"Pet owners might be concerned about it, but children use the beach as well. In the summertime Kilve beach is a very popular beach.

They are going to be playing football and generally mucking about." He said radioactive particles could be dangerous if breathed in or ingested, and criticised the Environment Agency for not checking out the readings more quickly after they were reported.

But the agency yesterday denied it had been sluggish to respond and said it had taken time to arrange a date for both parties to revisit Kilve.

The radiation claims were discussed at a recent meeting of Hinkley's Site Stakeholder Group, which allows residents, councillors and groups such as Stop Hinkley to meet with nuclear energy chiefs and watchdogs.

Group chairman Mike Short, who lives in Fiddington, near Hinkley, said stakeholders "took reassurance" from the actions of the Environment Agency and the stations, and added that the matter should not be sensationalised.

A spokesman for British Nuclear Group said last night: "All the discharges from Hinkley Point A, which is of course a decommissioned site, are monitored daily and are well within the legal and safe limit set down by the regulator.

"We have co-operated fully with the Environment Agency since the issue was raised and they have been to the site to inspect our liquid effluent procedures and controls, and have found nothing untoward." John McNamara, media relations manager at British Energy, said: "Monitoring of the environment around the station is done on a regular basis by both the station and its regulators - the Environment Agency, Food Standards Agency and Health Protection Agency - to ensure we continue to meet our high standards of environmental protection."

Debate on safety still rages after 40 years

A quiet corner of shoreline on the Bristol Channel changed into one of the West's biggest electricity production points when Hinkley Point was selected to go nuclear.

The original two Magnox reactors, now known as Hinkley A, opened in 1965 and formed one of the UK's first atomic power stations. It was joined in 1976 by a twin advanced gas-cooled reactor, now known as Hinkley B.

Residents have accused the nuclear power station of being responsible for clusters of childhood leukaemia and high rates of breast cancer in the area.

A 2001 survey by outspoken green campaigner Dr Chris Busby caused controversy when it claimed there was a significant leukaemia cluster among children living near Oldbury Power Station on the banks of the Severn.

That study said children aged under four in Chepstow were 11 times more likely to get leukaemia than the national average. It also said there was evidence of excess cervix and kidney cancers.

The suggestion the power station is unsafe has been repeatedly dismissed by official reports. In June, the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (Comare) gave nuclear power the all-clear after a study of childhood cancers, but local campaigners dismissed it as a whitewash.

This year Dr Busby, who works closely with Stop Hinkley campaign group, said there were 439 cancer cases in the Somerset town over the 13year period till 2002, compared with an expected 364.

Stop Hinkley believes if the figures were broken down into individual wards for Burnham then there would be an even more noticeable cancer cluster.

This is strongly refuted by British Energy, which runs Hinkley B power station.

The company denies there is a link to the disease and says the station is safe.


http://www.westpress.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=145809&command=displayContent&sourceNode
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RL Comment: This calls for an immediate approach on the part of the local (?Somerset Coast?) Primary Care Organisation, to the local vets, to survey the incidence of neoplastic (="cancerous") disease in local dogs.

At the same time, there should be regular checks, together with Environmental Health office of Somerset Council, ideally daily, but at least weekly, of radiation levels in jetsam - especially sticks and seaweed - from Klive, and other, beaches. The radiation tests should include checks for radionuclides and alpha-emissions on the jetsam.

I suggest that the cost of these investigations should come , at arm's length, from Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station as a gesture of good will to the local community.

Relative Democracy

OpenDemocracy is discussing the threat that democracy might slip out of our fingers.

Having read all the postings of Hilton, Barnett, Scruton, Dunn and Leiwen, and the discussion here, I feel that we need to bring the discussion down to earth.

Democracy is based on the idea that sovereign power derives from the will of the people. That is an ideal, and none of the 36 or so designated democracies in the world approach that absolute ideal - they are just more democratic relative to other states. Our own system in the UK falls sadly short of the ideal.

Humans are, unfortunately, derived from chimpanzees, and we have inherited their hierarchical social structure. History shows us that if a single person, usually a male, dominates a hierarchy for more than a few years, he loses his psychological and social bearings, and becomes corrupted by power. There is an arrogance that comes to us when our wishes are untested and unopposed. Evidence for this is widespread, from god-emperors of ancient times through the dictators who project personality cults to the second term difficulties of American Presidents of which George W Bush is the latest example.

In practical terms therefore, democracy is a way of providing the hierarchical system with effective feedback from those at the receiving end of decisions of the president or prime minister.

Democracy is not the only form of such feedback. The UN needs to develop another form of peer-based feedback, to bring pressure for better standards of governance at the international level.

To manage anything we need first to be able to measure it. It is possible to measure governance through a variety of proxies. Free elections, political imprisonment, torture, position of women, freedom of the press can all be measured. Each single measurement might be approximate, but in combination, they could form a reasonably accurate picture of what is going on in a country. In this way, we could find the democratic standing of any state, with respect to its own past performance, and with respect to the community of nations. Such an Index of Human Rights could be a useful tool in bringing continuous pressure against regimes whose democratic credentials are in doubt.