Burma's sham election: What can the world do?

Burma is ruled by an authoritarian military dictatorship which is about to hold a rigged election. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy is boycotting the election in protest, and parties that do stand face massive fees for standing (not unlike Britain's election deposit), have their election posters torn down, and the secret police follow opposition candidates.

It is a sham election.

Dictatorships are a threat to human rights and a threat to peace. Iraq has shown that violent intervention to depose dictators causes more problems than it solves. But what is the alternative? At present, the UN has only the Security Council with the authority to take action, but within the Security Council there is always one powerful member who will block any call for sanctions, because of their trade or diplomatic relations with the dictator. In the case of Burma, China is sponsor of the Burmese brute.

Some would have a hands-off, laissez faire approach towards foreign policy. "Self-determination" is the weasel word, and I have even heard it said that people choose to live in a dictatorship.
This is false.
Dictators choose dictatorships. We live in one shared world, in a system of interrelated parts, and the idea that we can cut ourselves off from the plight of other populations in the name of "self determination" is as wrong as the Daily Mail idea that we should ignore what is going on in other parts of the world on the grounds that they are foreign and nothing to do with us.

So we must, in the name of humanity, work to help free the people of Burma, and all the other peoples who are oppressed by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Since force does not work, the UNSC does not work, what is to be done?

Clearly, there needs to be a framework of rules within the UN that sets out incentives to better governance and disincentives to worse governance.

In 2008, the Green Party published a report on the Global Index of Human Rights. It was co-written and presented by the excellent Peter Tatchell, and set out the proposition that the human rights actions of every government should be published annually by the UN, as an easily read ranked table. Notably, it has a section directly aimed at addressing the problem of Burma. I have pasted  this section below.

Every dictatorship is different, but there are common, easily recognised steps that they take. Burma is doing one now they are holding rigged elections. Each specific step, once confirmed in a court of law, should have a specified sanction applied to it. This is sound psychology, because learning comes about when we discover that our actions have specific consequences.

New ideas, especially if they are big, take time to get acceptance. Bureaucracies, even in organisations with excellent aims, tend to reject unfamiliar ideas. Amnesty International UK and the Burma Campaign have both refused to step out of their single-issue box and support systemic change embodied in the Index. To its credit, the Green Party in England and Wales, Europe, and even the Global Greens have taken on board the Index. The next step is to take on board this specific approach to dealing with dictators.

From the Index Report:

Dealing effectively with dictators

[Note: this section has not yet been adopted by the Conference of the Green Party in England and Wales]

The Global Human Rights Index (GloHRI) will provide an annual review of
governments’ progress or regress, but what of specific crimes committed by dictators
that enter the news and trouble the conscience of the international community? How
can these be addressed?

The actions of dictators repeatedly come into the media spotlight, with reports of their abuses of the human rights and welfare of their citizens. Burma, Zimbabwe, and China, Uzbekistan and Sudan have all given cause for concern recently in this role. The world’s media respond with harrowing news stories and pictures of human suffering caused by the regime’s unwillingness to protect the rights and welfare of their people. The world’s leaders respond with speeches condemning the actions of the dictators, and the case may be referred to the UNSC. There the case is discussed, and effective, timely action is usually delayed or blocked because one or other of the permanent members on the Security Council regards the dictator in question as a useful ally or trading partner.

Even if there is agreement that some action must be taken, it takes a great deal of time
to get a sanctions programme in place.

The problem lies in the fact that each case of abuse is addressed on an ad hoc basis, and action in the UN takes place at the end of a long and uncertain political process. We need therefore to move to a framework of international rules of governance that will help all dictators, indeed all rulers, to learn that certain courses of actions will certainly lead to unwanted effects on their own freedom to act for their own personal advancement. Specified forms of misconduct will be matched with a tariff of penalties which are applied in a measured, stepwise and consistent basis, in order to avoid the
protection that they often obtain from allies in the UNSC.

There are a number of identifiable steps on the road to dictatorship. For example:
• Banning critical newspapers and media
• Banning opposition parties
• Ignoring the result of a democratic election (e.g. Burma and Zimbabwe)
• Intimidation at the polling booths
• Lavish expenditure on palaces for the dictator
• Disproportionate spending on arms

Each of these steps, and others not mentioned here, can be legally defined, and each could have a sanction attached to it. For instance,
• Banning critical newspapers and media could be countered by sanctions on the import of the materials the Government itself needs to print its newspapers.
• Banning opposition parties could lead to financial support to opposition parties whose aims are judged to be helpful to the welfare of the people of the country.
• Ignoring the result of a democratic election could result in a ban in foreign travel for members of the regime.
• Intimidation at the polling booths could result in the regime being denied eligibility to serve on appropriate UN councils, for example, the Human Rights Council .
• Lavish expenditure on palaces for the dictator could result in freezing of appropriate assets of the regime.

If the regime takes action to retrace its steps, the sanctions will be promptly withdrawn.

This is based on sound psychology. It is well established that the best way to modify unwanted behaviour is to set a consistent and fair framework of punishments for unwanted behaviour and rewards for appropriate behaviour.

Note that the specific measures set out above are in outline form only, to give an idea of the kind of measures available. They must be refined by specialists in international law. Note also that these are not "Sanctions" as commonly understood, the kind of sanctions that caused such hardship to the people of Iraq. They are measures targeted specifically on the ruling clique.

Chernobyl deaths estimated at somewhere between 56 and 1,000,000.

I spent yesterday evening watching Channel 4 "What the Green Movement Got Wrong". As an experience, it was less unpleasant than scratching my eyeballs with a Brillo pad, but only slightly so, mainly because I am not used to doing the Brillo pad thing, whereas I am only too familiar with seeing the green movement misrepresented on telly.

The programme was a reprise of Ch4s "Great Global Warming Swindle", only this time they stuck a studio debate onto the back end to try to forestall complaints. There was no attempt at balance in the film itself : it was an all-out attack on the green movement by a handful of alienated ex-activists like Mark Lynas.

Luckily the debate had FoE, Greenpeace and George Monbiot on to rebalance the outrageous bias of the programme. They did very well.

The programme was basically a paean of uncritical praise for nuclear power and GM food, both of which are necessary to save the world.

As part of the case, they claimed that the damage from Chernobyl was over-hyped. They quoted a UN report, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency, concluding that only a 64 deaths are attributable to Chernobyl.

So that's all right then. Or is it?

John Vidal has a useful survey of estimates of Chernobyl related cancer and deaths. Here we go:


Agency                                              Deaths so far    Cancers predicted           Deaths predicted

UN/IAEA/WHO Report                               56                                                  4,000

UN International Agency for
Research on Cancer                                                                                         16,000

Russian Academy of Sciences              200,000

Belarus National Academy of Sciences   93,000                 270,000

Ukrainian National Commission
for Radiation Protection                       500,000

Assuming there is no double-counting, that brings the number of deaths in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine up to 793,000. This figure is reinforced by a book  "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment," by Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus, who examined over 5,000 scientific papers.

They challenge the UN/WHO figures on the 56 deaths among "liquidators" who went in physically extinguish the fire and clean up the Chernobyl reactor.


"The book finds that by 2005, between 112,000 and 125,000 liquidators had died."

Yablokov was a contributor to the Greenpeace review on this link.

In summary, we have a bit of a discrepancy here.

Chernobyl related deaths lie somewhere between 64 and 1,000,000.  

What is the explanation?


Part of the explanation is that the UN studies only included papers in written in English in peer-reviewed literature. Peer-review is OK, can't argue with that since we require it for climate science, but in English? Since when has it been that knowledge is only valid if it is written in English? This is an outrageous, blatantly political attempt to exclude unwanted data.

I am aware that I am beginning to sound like a climate change denier here. This is an interesting role reversal: in the case of climate science, the sceptics are in denial; in the case of radiation science, the deniers have got their hands on the levers of power.

The fact is that radiation medicine is very highly politicised, which is affecting how people view the facts.

There are doubts throughout the science, beginning with the estimation of the effects of radiation arising from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki experiments. Prof Chris Busby shows that there are two distinct modalities, one from external radiation like gamma, and another from internal irradiation, where a particle is lodged in the tissues and irradiates its environs with repeated doses of alpha. This means that the orthodox view of dose is unfounded. He likens it to the difference between warming yourself at a fire and eating a piece of coal. Chris Busby also posits a Second Event theory to explain the how the biological effects of internal radiation are underestimated by the orthodox paradigm.

There has been no methodical data collection over Chernobyl. The IAEA/UN report suggests that we will never know. Basically, it is not in the interests of the IAEA that we should. The truth is not in them. Their sole raison d'etre is that nuclear power should forge ahead, come what may. To this end, it seems very likely that they have co-opted and corrupted the WHO and other UN agencies.

Mark Lynas may say that in taking this view, I am being unrealistic.

If accepting IAEA lies and distortion, and starring in propaganda films is the way ahead for the NewGreens, then I prefer to remain an old Green, thanks Mark.

Free-Market Fundamentalists against FairTrade

It's funny how the news often comes in matched pairs. Today, the BBC apologises to Band Aid for reporting wrongly that Band Aid money was diverted into military use. Today also there is a report from a free-market think group that Fair Trade is not much good.

First, the BBC. Band Aid, and the aid movement generally, took a knock to its reputation from the BBC report which implanted the idea that Band Aid money went to insurgent groups. Clearly the apology, as is the way with these things, had less impact on the public mind than the original report. Restorative justice demands that the BBC should run a few documentaries on the work of Band Aid in order to make reparations. I hope Bob Geldof will press for this.

Now, FairTrade. The report came from the Institute for Economic Affairs. It is their second pop at FairTrade, the first being in 2007. The Guardian report, by Simon Bowers, does go as far as to mention that they are a free-market think tank. But the damage is done by the headlines:
Guardian "Fairtrade Foundation accused of failing coffee farmers". 
Mail: "Unfair trade: Ethical food ‘is not lifting Third World farmers out of poverty’"
Telegraph: "Fair Trade does not help the poorest, report says"

FairTrade carry a rebuttal here. 

Noteworthy is the fact that the$1570 registration cost, widely reported in the newspapers, relates to groups of 50 farmers, not to each individual farmer. 

They also rebut the suggestion that only middle income countries benefit. FairTrade says "We work with raisin farmers in Afghanistan, coffee growers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania and cocoa farmers in Cote d’Ivoire to name just a few."

In fact, the IEA report is not totally critical, much as they would like to be. They say:

• Fair Trade brings certain benefits to producers, such as guaranteed prices, a social premium and the enforcement of particular labour conditions.
• Criticisms of Fair Trade are also exaggerated. At its current
  level of penetration it is likely to do little harm in terms of
  distorting markets.

Deep in the report are references to slave labour, (excluded by FairTrade, obvs). They complain about exclusion of child labour: "A prohibition on child labour may be damaging for families – and also for children who may be forced into other dangerous occupations." 

In the end, free-marketeers are ideologues and fundamentalists, steadfast believers in the dogma that the free market delivers the best of all possible worlds, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

What I find interesting is that free-marketeers are often also Christian fundamentalists, who believe in Original Sin. The question for them is this:

 

How come that sinful men, competing against each other for money, the love of which is the root of all evil, produces the best of all possible worlds?

The damage has been done. The headlines are out there, and the mainstream media will not dig deeper into the issue, because the mainstream media deals in impressions, not facts.

US Mid-term elections: The Small State turkeys have voted for Thanksgiving.

^Cartoon HT to the ever-excellent Marc Roberts
So the US in its wisdom has voted for Small Government. What does Small Government mean?

Before we can answer that, we have to ask, what is Government for?

The purpose of Government is to protect the citizens from harm, to protect the vulnerable from being hurt and exploited by the strong. It is a pooling of the power of individual citizens into a common good. It is an insurance policy. Some will get more out of it than they put in, and vice versa. That's the deal.

In more detail, this means:

1. Protection from hostile states. Which requires a defence strategy and international agreements to prevent war.
2. Protection against murder, rape, violence, robbery, and fraud. Which requires a police force.
3. Protection against hunger, thirst, cold and disease. Which requires a sustainable food, water, shelter, energy and sewerage systems, and guidance to the market so that we move to a sustainable economy, away from the cliff of Peak Oil, and Peak Everything.
4. Protection against poverty for those unable to work, or unable to find work. Which requires social security.
5. Protection against illness. Which requires a health service.
6. Protection against ignorance. Which requires an education service, and a healthy, diverse news media.

These are the basic, irreducible functions of  Government. 

There are two main threats to good government:

1. The powerful will tend to try to capture Government for their own interests, and not those of the people.
2. The institutions of Government will tend to become sclerotic, hardened, inefficient and useless.

The inefficiency problem should be dealt with by a policy of continual bottom-up reform, whereby workers can put forward suggestions for better ways of working, which will be adopted and promulgated if shown to be valid.

Democracy exists to prevent or ameliorate the tendency of any one Government to stay too long in office, which otherwise leads to complacency, selfishness and megalomania, as happens  in dictatorships. This addresses to some extent the "capture" threat, but there is another threat of capture, from institutions that are outside of Government, and have influence and powerful over Government.

Which is where the Small Government idea comes in.

In essence, it is an antithetical reaction to the Total State of Marxist-Leninist/Maoist/NationalSocialist ideation, where the State controls every aspect of people's lives, including production and trade.

Against the Absolute State, the Small Staters propose the Absolute Market, where individuals are free to band together into companies in order to make money by trade with zero constraint, able to do whatever they can get away with (within the law, which they can bend by using their wealth to buy powerful lawyers  who can bend the law to their own ends). They are Fundamentalists: Free Market Fundamentalists.

It is very clear that this Small Statism is the ideology of powerful interests intent on capturing and dominating the Government. They do this by giving donations to political parties, and by lobbying Government Ministers and officials. They have also captured the democratic process, by controlling the media. The Sun, Mail, Telegraph, Express and Times have a combined readership of 18 million, which is 10 (ten) times the combined readership of the Guardian and the Independent.

In the case of the Tea Party movement, the corporations have acted by "astroturfing" - providing money to facilitate a false grass roots movement, as George Monbiot has shown. The powerful have captured the democratic process in order to capture government. Clever.

So in a nutshell, the US Tea Party movement are useful idiots, tools of the powerful corporations. They have been brainwashed by the propagandists of Murdoch's empire, notably the hysterics who anchor Fox "news" programmes.  Instead of voting for reform, efficiency and sustainability in Government so that it protects them from present and future harm, they have voted to empower the plutocrats whose only interests is to suck ever more wealth to themselves.


The turkeys have, in essence, voted for Thanksgiving.

It's not just me saying this: Here's Ralph Nader on The Road to Corporate Serfdom, with some very arresting quotes from great US leaders.

In fact, they're so arresting, I'mgoing to nick them:

Thomas Jefferson—“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Abraham Lincoln in 1864—“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. …corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” (1864)

Theodore Roosevelt—“The citizens of the United States must control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves call into being.”

Woodrow Wilson—“Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt—“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

Camelford Poisoning: Scientists preferred scholastic to scientific method.

The Lowermoor poisoning incident is back in the news:"Water staff told 'keep quiet' over Camelford poisoning".

This is what I wrote back in 2006, slightly edited, in the context of an essay about the difference between the scientific method and authority statements made by scientists:

On the 6th of July 1988, 20 tonnes of concentrat ed aluminium sulphate solution were discharged into the treated water reservoir at Lowermoor, Cornwall, which serves the town of Camelford. Local residents and holidaymakers who drank the water experienced a variety of acute effects, and a lesser number also remained ill for a long time there after.

Six months later a committee ("Group") was set up under Dame Barbara Clayton to provide independent expert advice to the Secretary of State for Health.

The group noted that this incident was unique in the history of pollution; there was no previous experience of humans taking in this particular cocktail of ionic lead, zinc, copper, aluminium, and sul phate. They noted that the symptoms of the people was also unique.

They had wide ranging problems, with sore/dry mouth, felt unwell and tired, had stomach aches, were very thirsty, had nausea and vomiting, itching, sore eyes, and mouth ulcers. The persistent effects noted by the group were aches and joint pains, memory loss, poor concentration, speech problems, depression and behavioural problems in children, hypersensitivity, rashes and mouth ulcers, and gastrointestinal disorders. These symptoms do not fit into any recognised diagnostic category.

So the observation is a unique toxic insult, and a unique resultant syndrome.

The reasonable hypothesis here is  that the toxins caused the illness.

Surprisingly, instead of testing this hypothesis by advising on necessary medical and scientific studies, the group opened their textbooks, and looked up the known effects of each of the ions, taken in isolation.

In each case they found that the ion in those concentrations were incapable of causing those effects.

On this evidence, which was book-based scholastic theory that did not relate to mixtures of ions, they con cluded that the cocktail was incapable of causing the observed ill ness. There was specific scientific evidence of deposition of aluminium in the bones of one affected case. The group specifically advised against following up this lead.

The group concluded that their book-learning could not account for the illness and that ergo, the symptoms were due to "anxiety". There was no psychiatrist in the group to advise on this point. As a result of the public outcry that followed, the Clayton Group was reconvened, and came to the conclusion that they had been quite right in the first place.

Years later, the affected citizens were given out-of-court settlements in compensation for their suffering.

This incident occurred when South West Water was being prepared for privatisation. Which would explain why staff were told to keep quiet, in the BBC report above.

We can conclude from this that the statements of scientists, especially those working at the behest of Government, are not necessarily "scientific" but statements based on their authority as eminent and respectable scientists. In the Lowermor case, the scientists did not use the scientific method, but the scholastic method, the same line that the Church used to discredit Galileo.

As Galileo might have said "Quel puzzi"



I tried to express this at the time, wrote to the newpapers, but you try talking to a journalist about scholastic method and watch his eyes glaze over. Thank the gods for the blogosphere, where we can discuss complex ideas.

Haiti: why are people still in tents?

Hurricane Tomas is slowly heading towards Haiti.

Last I heard, it is weakening slightly, and is due to hit Haiti on Friday.

Apparently, hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tents, whose fabric has deteriorated in the sun. Tomas is going to shred those tents.

This is difficult to believe, given that total aid given is $1.6 billion.

I do not know much about Haiti. I have recently come across the tweets of an amazing doctor, Megan Coffee, who is treating TB patients there, who alerted me to the tent problem.

I have also found AFACeAFACe, which seems pretty good source of info.

Despite my ignorance of details, I think it is totally wrong that people are still in tents when 95% of the rubble left by the earthquake is still lying where it fell.

There is a failure of the aid model here. The rubble should be used to make the foundations and lower walls of new, robust, earthquake and windproof houses, using volunteer community labour, people making what they need from what is available. The French have a word for it: bricolage.

They need hacksaws (to cut the ties in reinforced concrete), gloves, and hand carts.
They collect the rubble, which will mainly be flat concrete and brick slabs, and they transport them on hand carts to the site where the new building is to go up. They prepare an accurately flat area, and start laying the slabs, using the biggest at the foot, and smaller ones higher up to bring it up to about 1 metre above ground. So we have a dry wall construction, and interstices are filled with mud, mortar, or cement, as available. Walls and roofing will be of floor joists rescued from the rubble, or from bamboo or virgin timber brought in. Concrete pillars will be rescued to make struts for the houses, using triangulation principles.

Here is video of an example of this kind of construction in nearby states.

These houses will be wind resistant, and to some extent earthquake resistant, since the slabs can move on each other, tolerating the lateral movement of the earthquake. They will crumble in bigger earthquake, so facing of boards or nets should be applied to the inner surfaces of the house to stop them falling inwards onto the occupants.

I admit I am writing from ignorance of the situation on the ground, and it may be that better programmes are in process. I very much hope so.

However I suspect that the "aid" in the main has been transmogrified into grand plans to rebuild a new, concrete Port au Prince along best town planning lines, and while waiting for these plans to materialise, the people are left idle, in fragile, doomed tents, while the material for homes lies in a heap where it fell 10 months ago.


Il scent mal.

How do we close the tax avoidance loopholes?

Following on from yesterday's post here, which argues that tax avoidance must be addressed on a global basis, I would like to add a bit more detail today.

First, the dreaded deficit - the gap between the UK Government's annual income and expenditure. Here it is:

• 2011-14      £39 bn p.a.
• 2014-18      £45bn p.a.

It amounts to between 3-4% of our GDP. It is a serious problem, that needs to be addressed, not least  because a lot of it is wasted in paying off ancient debts (some there are that do say we are still paying the ransom of Richard the Lionheart, though I have been unable to confirm this).

Any fule kno that George  Osborne's plans to cut Government spending are an ideologically driven attack on the poor, and will exacerbate the recession that we are about to experience.

A definitive response to the budget deficit can be found here, Compass' "In Place of cuts". They show how tax restructure designed to bear more heavily on those most able to  afford tax increases could raise £45 bn a year, enough to neutralise the deficit and pay for a Green New Deal, which would create a million jobs in energy conservation and sustainable energy production - a pre-eminently sensible investment in jobs, energy security and climatic security.

Part of Compass' plan is to raise £10 billion through blocking tax avoidance. This is pretty modest - figure of up to £100 bn are quoted as the cost of tax avoidance to the UK. I will try to source them later.

The stock response to closing tax avoidance loopholes is "Companies will take their business out of the UK, so we will be even worse off". There is some evidence for this, as a recent Radio4 piece showed, with companies "relocating" to a tin post box in a tiny  Swiss village to avoid paying tax. (Listen here - 40 mins)

So we are driven back to the necessity of doing the tax haven thing globally and multilaterally. Which is not to say that there is nothing that the UK can do, because it, along with the USA, has pretty lax tax packs. Germany and France are much tougher. The Cleggeron is the monster holding back EU tax reform.

Still, insofar as global action is needed to close down the tax havens, the problem is that to a great extent, power has passed beyond democratically elected Governments to multinational/transnational corporations. It is going to take real political will, exerted at the highest level, places like the OECD, IMF, and UN for co-ordinated change to come about.

This is not to say that we should give up. There was a groundswell of popular sympathy  for our Vodafone demonstrations yesterday, and this sympathy is going to increase as the cuts begin to hurt, and a recession begins to rub salt into them.

We must keep on keeping on, get the people, the police and the Army on our side.

Here are some useful links:
OFFSHORE WATCH: EXPOSING GLOBAL CORRUPTION
Richard Murphy's Tax Research blog
Tax Justice Network