photo credit: Stewf

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that Iran has its own agenda in Afghanistan, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems to be cross about it anyway. From the Guardian:

It must have felt very uncomfortable for President Hamid Karzai to have his guest and “brother”, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, use a press conference in Kabul to attack Afghanistan’s main donor and ally, the United States. “They themselves created terrorists and now they’re saying that they are fighting terrorists,” said Ahmadinejad, accusing the US of playing a “double game” in Afghanistan.

Ahmadinejad was in fact returning a compliment by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who only hours earlier had accused Tehran of “playing a double game” of offering friendship to the Afghan government while at the same time giving “low-level support” and money to the Taliban.

Of course Iran is playing a double game, though as the article points out it’s not actually the Taliban that Iran are likely to be funding but instead anti-Taliban warlords. But in any event Iran shares a border with Afghanistan – a fact that someone should remind Robert Gates of – so obviously Iran are going to want to fund the various factions that might at some point take  control of the country, so that whatever the future holds for its government Iran has some influence over it. An even more obvious point is  that Iran are hardly going to ignore the fact that there are American soldiers prowling round the Iran-Afghahnistan border and since the relationship between Iran and America is not exactly tip-top, they’re probably going to want to make sure they have some connections in that area.

One lesson from this is that U.S. Defence Secretaries say silly things. The more  important point though is that so many of the clashes the U.S. has with Iran are a result of the deep fear and suspicion of what America has in store for it in terms of military intervention. If you’re going to sort out the relationship between the two countries, you’ve got to do something about that.

photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Glenn Beck  is a popular right-wing TV show host on America’s Fox News Network. Geert Wilders is an increasingly popular right-wing Dutch politician who’s been making waves in the UK recently. Beck should be praising Wilders, right? Wrong! Here’s what Beck said on his show the other day:

Also, you have far right Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders. Last year, he was banned from the U.K. They said his presence could threaten community  harmony and therefore public safety. Last week, not only was he allowed into England, he was at the House of Lords, where he screened a film on the Quran.

The right and left are growing again in Europe. The left — listen carefully — the left in Europe is communism. The right is fascism, in Europe.

What’s particularly strange about Beck attacking Wilders is that the controversy Beck is referring to has caused the Dutch M.P to become, in his eyes at least, a cause celebre for freedom of speech. And since part of Beck’s whole schtick is standing up for American freedom – government is bad etc – he should be all about free speech.

It would be easy to dismiss this as Beck being, well, Beck. This is after all a guy who boiled a frog alive on TV. But there’s a deeper point here, which is that American right-wing pundits like Beck really have a problem nailing down their belief system. Basially their dilemma is this: they hate  government, and so like to compare any government action to socialism. To make socialism even scarier it gets slandered with comparisons to the Nazis (National Socialism and all that). But the Nazis were also fascists. So, in Beck’s addled mind, any European who’s been labelled with the “fascist” title has to be criticised in order to support the whole “we don’t want America to become all scary socialist like Europe” theme.

Ideological incoherence at its very, very worst.

photo credit: martcatnoc

With the UK’s general election less than two months away, it’s looking pretty likely that the winning party won’t get an overall majority, which will result in a  “hung parliament”. Now the conventional wisdom on hung parliaments is that they lead to either a weak minority government or a weak coalition majority, which is bad for the country and leads to very scary things.

But putting aside the argument that Thatcher’s and Blair’s huge majorities haven’t exactly been a massive boon to the country, how do other nations with “weak”  government fare? The following are the some of the countries that are above the UK in terms of  GDP per capita, alongside the type of government they currently have:

• Denmark -  Three party coalition
• Sweden -  Four party coalition
• Norway – Three party coalition
• Canada- Minority government
• Austria – Two party coalition
• Ireland – Two party coalition
• Switzerland-  Four party coalition
• Netherlands – Three party coalition
• Belgium- Billion party coalition

Now, there are some problems with my use of “GDP per capita” as  a measurement of how well a country’s government is doing. But it does show that a hung parliament is not an inherently disastrous thing for a country. And the fact is that you can take almost any general measure of a country’s success – income equality, living standards, happiness levels, life expectancy – and almost all of the above countries would still give the UK a good thrashing.

But the conventional wisdom is that a hung parliament is a BAD thing, so, you know, whatever.

photo credit: bfraz

The Parliamentary Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport – a body in dire need of a good acronym- has just released its eagerly awaited (by me, anyway) report on the press. The report is making headlines for its conclusion that senior executives at the News of the World concealed  the truth over the paper’s illegal-phone-hacking scandal, something which  could spell serious trouble for Rupert Murdoch’s paper if a judicial inquiry is launched. But just as important,though not as sexy, is its condemnation of the Press Complaints Commission as “toothless”.

The PCC is the watchdog of the press, and it’s really not very good. It’s not very good because it’s a rare example of self-regulation. In other words, it’s funded by the press, staffed by the press and the code of behaviour with which it judges complaints is one the press voluntarily agrees to abide by. It has no legal powers to punish anyone, which doesn’t really matter anyway since with the amount of powerful paper editors it has on its various boards, it rarely makes a damning judgement on the press.

So it was no surprise when the PCC concluded back in November that, despite new evidence to the contrary produced by The Guardian over the summer, there had been no further phone hacking at the News of the World other than the “rotten apple” Clive Goodman, who was jailed back in 2007. The Select Committee  hammers the PCC for this report, calling its conclusions “simplistic and surprising” which is committee-speak for bloody useless. It would be nice to think that this will spur some action to give the watchdog a new set of teeth. The only way to do this is to scrap it and make it a  statutory body, like Ofcom or the BBC trust. Still independent, but with a functioning pair of cojones.

But the truth is that no-one wants to reform the Press Complaints Commission, so it won’t get reformed. The press don’t want to reform it because they don’t want a system that interferes with their ability to make as much money as possible. Parliament don’t want to reform it because they are terrified by the press. Both main party leaders have too much invested in their relationship with Rupert Murdoch to try and do anything about it.

See how it all works? Today’s report might make Murdoch take a hit, but it won’t do a thing to Britain’s worst watchdog.

(The full report can be found here.)

photo credit: fabbriciuse

David Davis, ex Conservative MP, was on the Andrew Marr Show this morning and had this to say about the Tories’ chances at the upcoming general election:

“If we’re coming up to the election and we don’t show a clear lead, the financial markets are going to respond. The pound will fall, people will talk about our credit rating… The biggest financial wake up call to the electorate you’re ever  likely to see.

The markets hate indecision. And it is said… I’m not in a position to judge… but it is said that they’ve already allowed for a tory victory in our credit rating. We wouldn’t have our credit rating if the markets didn’t think there was going to be a tory victory.”

Now, just like David Davis, I’m not in a position to judge the calculations of the bond markets, though I will say that this  idea that the people investing in our debt are a group of all-knowing political sages  ready to punish us if we commit to anything other than Tory-style severe  cuts is getting a little wearisome.

But it seems to me pretty obvious that this kind of thing is pretty offensive and not the kind of theory that you’d want to parade around too much. I mean, think about it. What Davis is essentially saying is that the public should base their vote not on the unemployment rate or the state of the economy or the respective parties’ manifestos but on the beliefs of a group of people  effectively holding a gun to the UK’s head. And let’s not forget that these are the same people (hedge funds etc) who until recently were busy helping to flush the global economy down the toilet.

When you’re being held hostage, it’s probably best not to gloat about it.

On Healthcare ( although this clip to be fair is on his radio show)

On President Obama:

Foreign Policy: ( With a head of state “in that area”)

On the rising “Oligarhy(sic)”

The run up to Copenhagen has begun and by all accounts it was a little more fiery than expected. I’m not referring to the Climate Camp in London, whose location was kept so secret, nor am I referring to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s remarkable comments that there are an increasing number of scientists who have doubts about Climate Change…really? This sounds a little like Sen Inhofe’s infamous list, many of whom were horrified to learn they were including on his list ( yes, he basically made it up). All of these are mere broadsides in the contemporary Climate Change debate.  The fire in this debate, which we’ve only seen glimmers on touches on the elephant in the room for environmentalists and even governments, Population control. India’s Environmental Minister Jairam Ramesh issued a response to efforts by the US to bring India’s population into the debate:

Speaking at a conference in the Indian capital, organised by Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment, Jairam Ramesh said there was a “move in western countries to bring population into climate change [negotiations]. Influential American think-tanks are asking why should we reward profligate reproductive behaviour? Why should we reward India which is adding 14 million people every year?”

For many environmentalists, population control is the issue not spoken of. Many are reluctant enough to talk about curbing our “excessive lifestyles”, reducing the number of cars, the size of our homes, waste and all the rest of it makes Environmentalists seem draconian enough and a ideology of gloom without adding the terrifying illiberal issue of population control to the mix. Yet for many, it remains the elephant in the room. Recently some scientists in environmental corners have whispered it out, what is the best thing I can do to to go green? hybrid car? recycling? Errr no, don’t procreate so much.

The maths is quite simple, if you stopped flying and etc etc you could probably reduce your average footprint from say a ball park of 25 down to 15, a big reduction to be sure but over your lifetime that would ( very simplistically) only take  800 tons difference. Here is what a child adds on average:

Under current conditions in the United States, for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.

But population control goes beyond Climate Change, in fact to some extent it dwarfs Climate Change as a problem. The world’s population is estimated to peak  around 2050, with  at over 9 billion people.  Over that period standards of living will rise for hundreds of millions of people which, without huge breakthroughs in food production and resource recycling will result in incredible strain on a planet already unable to sustain the current population. The new people rightly will expect higher standards of living than their forebears and governments will face acute problems as rising demands meets dwindling supply. Climate Change compounds the issue, reducing the earth;s resource capacity most critically in areas of food production and more gravely reducing it in the regions of the world with the fastest growing populations.

Africa and the Middle East, have among the fastest growing population and are also among the most water-poor areas in the world, with the former in historically dire straits its problems will almost certainly be gravely compounded lacking even the basic means  agricultural production.

The issue, is a uniquely human one,  all other animal species grow to the extent their environment can sustain them, reaching a natural equilibrium of sorts. Humans, differ and have expanded exponentially over their history. This century may prove more testing than others with Climate Change and economic growth heading towards a degree of inevitable conflict. You’ve already seen this problem, water resources in Sudan, oil wars in the Middle East, these problems aren’t solely due to population but population can create almost insurmountable structural pressure on politics to match demand.

But unlike other Climate Change problems which are about financing , economic growth, technology transfer and trade terms, population control hits home directly.  How many children will you or someone else be allowed? It’s a distinctly moral question, the biological essence of humanity is put into question and one of surely our most basic rights could be called into question. Deeper than that is that, it has more underlying undertones of power politics. Wealthy and ageing western populations trying to curb the fertility of China, India, Africa and the Middle East, touches on raw nerves of the balance of global power.

This isn’t the first time the issue has been raised. China, the only country to have enacted an all-encompassing population policy in its infamous “one child policy” has in the past noted that it has done more than many countries in the effort to control Climate Change through its one child policy,  which it estimates have kept several hundred million from existence and thus relieved enormous future amounts of strain from the world.

Going into Copenhagen population control is highly unlikely to feature, however its emergence into International dialogue has begun already and soon this taboo subject may well become centre stage, although I suspect a third-rail at first.

photo credit: the_repairman

What connects U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and your Grandma? The answer, if you’re a right-wing American, is that all three would be left to die if the NHS – Britain’s world famous universal health service – had its way.  Yes, that’s right, welcome to the madness that is the current debate in the US over health-care reform: a bizarre dumping ground for crazy that has now – thanks to self-serving Republican politicians and the loonier fringes of the right – set its cross-hairs on Britain’s health care.

Thus Kennedy, who is battling a brain tumour, was cited by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley last week as someone who would be denied treatment for his tumour if he had the rotten luck to find himself in England. Grassley is one of the leading Republican players in negotiating a health-care bill. Needless to say, his claim is a lie.  Then there’s the claims that the NHS has “death panels” that refuse costly treatment for old people, thus sentencing them to a premature death. Another lie.

And Stephen Hawking? According to a now legendary editorial by the Investor’s Business Daily, people such as Hawking  “wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” Unfortunately for the editors of this fine publication Hawking is, obviously, British and has lived in Britain, under the Nazi-like grip of the NHS, his whole life.  Oops. “I wouldn’t be alive were it not for the NHS” was his rather definitive response.

Naturally, these kind of accusations tend to focus the debate on the relative merits of the NHS . Defenders of British health-care can point to the incredible, mind-boggling cheapness of the system compared to America: according to OECD figures, in 2007 Britain spent a staggering $4000 dollars less on health-care per person than the U.S. And yes, there is rationing in the British model (a logical inevitability in a universal, free system) but the common sense, cost-effective decisions of NICE – the body that gives advice on the effectiveness of treatments – are much preferable to America’s idea of rationing which is, you know, leaving 45 million people without any form of health care. And considering how incredibly cheap it is, Britain’s health-care is not that far behind America in terms of patient outcomes and even ahead of it in many areas.  Moreover, despite its lower levels of health spending, Britain still manages to be second only to the US in terms of pharmaceutical innovation, which rather puts a sword to the lie that government health-care stagnates medical progress.

But all this is in danger of overlooking what is surely the most startling element of America’s health-care debate, which is that so much is being made of the merits of the NHS despite the complete absence of anything at all like it in any of the health-care reform proposals. This is a really crucial point, so I’ll say it again: Nothing remotely like the NHS is being considered, in even the smallest measure, in any of the health-care bills currently on the table.  The current debate, then, is like attempting to reform the rules of cricket and getting mired in a row over the merits of baseball. It’s just not relevant.

To understand quite how far off-kilter right-wing American critics are when they drag the NHS into the debate, we need to go back to (health-care) basics. The British system is an example of socialised medicine, where the government doesn’t just pay for your health-care but also owns everything involved with it – the doctors, the hospitals, the equipment. Nothing like this is in on the table in America. Nothing remotely like this is on the table. Indeed, the most liberal alternative present in the debate is a “single payer” system, in which a single body – i.e. the government – pays for everyone’s health-care. Just pays for it. Doesn’t own it. America already has a single-payer model for all those over 65; if you get to that ripe old age without your morbid obesity seeing you off, then the U.S. government covers your health-care from there on in. It’s called Medicare and is an immensely popular and by all accounts politically untouchable programme. Yet bizarrely even a single-payer system, which is the closest America is ever likely to come to the NHS,  is so far off the table it never got into the room in the first place, considered too radical to ever get the votes in Congress.

So what do the current plans envisage? They all share the same  general features, which is to say that the dominant system of health-care payment in America – private insurance – is getting a bit of a regulatory smack-down to ensure that American insurers no longer do  the disgusting things that everyone loves them for, such as refusing to cover people if they’re too sick or revoking your insurance once you get too sick . Other than that, if you’re covered through your employer – which the vast majority of insured Americans are – then you’ll see no change. None. If you have individual insurance or no insurance at all, then you’ll be able to choose between private insurers in a consumer friendly  “health-care exchange” , with generous government subsidies for those who can’t afford insurance. Note, in all of this, the emphasis on private insurers  – the vast majority of the bills’ provisions are centred on the private, not the public, sector.

The only real expansion of government contained in any of the bills is the presence of a controversial “public option” – government insurance that is meant to compete with the private insurers and thus keep their costs down. Liberals have set their store on the public option, partly because it’s seen as a stealth mechanism to introduce single payer – the idea being that faced with the government’s power to offer lower cost quality insurance, the private insurers will be put out of business  and suddenly America becomes Canada (but still not Britain). However, the public option will only  be available in the health exchange – which those insured by their employer (the vast majority) won’t have access to -  and according to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2019 only 27 million will have the choice of going for the public option, and only 13.5 million are likely to actually go for it . Out of a population of 300 million . Hardly a government takeover, is it?

So, to cut a long (and very wonkish) story short,  a mainly private sector overhaul of the health service – with the only sign of government intervention being a public insurance option open to a small minority  of Americans – is being treated as similar to a system where the government owns everything. The last time a public debate was so skewed from reality was, uh, well the last time Democrats tried to reform health-care, really.

This is all well and good I hear you cry, but apart from proving that the American right just makes stuff up, what’s the point to all this? Simply put, the point is this. It’s very clear that conservatives are, for the most part, forming their opposition to health-care reform based not on the actual content of the bills on the table but on a fictional narrative built to be scary, effective and loosely designed around a single messages: THE GOVERNMENT IS COMING FOR YOUR HEALTHCARE… RUN!!!!

Some Democrats have decided that the best response to this is to make big, up front concessions- like getting rid of the public option – in a bizarre attempt to placate the people who are basing their criticisms not on the bill at hand but on some mythical socialist tract. But this is stupid. Clearly, the real lesson Democrats should take from is that since  Republican opposition is based on a mythical bill, there’s no point in watering down the current bills in order to curry their favour. In other words,  Democrats are in a perfect position to hold their hands up and say: “these guys can’t be compromised with. They’re off in their own world, so we’re just going to go ahead and bring a final bill to a vote”. At which point healthcare-reform will surely be on the verge of becoming reality, since with a healthy majority in the House and a filibuster-proof 60 Democrats in the Senate, it would take a Senator from Obama’s own party to jeopardise the bill. Which, given that this would make them a pariah in Democratic circles, simply isn’t going to happen.

Is passing health-care reform really that easy? Well, no. Nothing is ever that simple in Washington. Democrats may still find some way to screw it up.  Given that an average family’s annual insurance premiums have almost trebled since 1996 to $17,000 and are set to rise to an unimaginably catastrophic $45,000 by 2040, this would be a very sad state of affairs. At which point Republicans may want to reflect that, thanks to their predictions of English-style health-care dooming the US, it turned out that the American economy was humbled instead by the status quo, private sector version.

Oh, the irony.

I toyed with Gordon Brown’s talk on communications creating a global conscience but….. this is more time out.

Actually, I’ll feel a little guilty if I keep copying and pasting in these links. De Botton is spot on, the meritocratic society has at its core an individualistic notion. That has as he points out, an obvious flaw, losers really are losers. Is it fair? Yes and no, certainly concrete barriers are less evident that before, but the problem with a meritocracy is that its a bit simplistic and all to perfect, unlike reality, so perhaps we should be a little less judgemental and focus a little more on public good… *cough* Denmark *cough*, ahem.