The Media: Railroading the Electorate

The Guardian correspondent, Jonathan Steele, continues to plug the insane Guardian line of opposing the UK referendum decision to leave the EU. He goes so far as to say the Labour Party manifesto should declare that an incoming Labour government would abort the negotiations immediately. There will be no Brexit and no talks about how to achieve one!

Steele and his paymaster, the Guardian, seem to think it makes sense to defy a democratic decision, taken by 52% of the electorate, to pander to the 48% who did not get the result to remain in the EU that they wanted. He backs this up by saying over 60% of Labour supporters voted to remain, and are now "in despair", he claims. That is, of course, utter rubbish. Even if it were originally true, many of those Labour remainers are now pig sick of the LibDems and Greens harping on in defiance of a decision we have already taken--TO LEAVE!

Moreover the "two thirds of labour supporters" actually includes mostly urban liberals tempted to Labour by the Liberal Labour focus-group mentality of the Blairite years when winning the election was more important than having socialist policies. Traditional Labour Party members were already asking, "what is the point of winning then implementing Tory policies?". Quite! And the result was an erosion of faith in Labour and consequently loss of support in successive elections until we were conned into the unelected ConDem coalition of 2010 that led to our present sorry state (and the deserved collapse of the Liberal Democrats!).

Steele and the Guardian will be glad to see the present continuous false emphasis on Brexit and the perpetual attacks on Corbyn confusing the electorate to the extent that they achieve a similar collapse of Labour. We need to remember that most of the traditional Labour areas outside the metropolitan zone are the very areas (and some LibDem areas) that voted to leave, and the reason is plain--it is because the neoliberal policies of all the main parties for more than 50 years neglected the concerns of the voters in those deprived places--the "rust belt" of the UK--abandoned since Thatcher to decay with no prospects for their futures.

Labour must campaign vigourously for the votes of those neglected working people, and to persuade them that the Party is not backward looking, as the media are trying to persuade the young, but has a policy of "back to the future" to restore all that was good that Labour brought in after WWII and that successive right wing governments have been eroding ever since, and especially in the last 7 years.

The media and the present government in power are doing their utmost to persuade people that Corbyn is an ineffective leader, but that is not true. He has put forward a prospective programme that would benefit us all (except the over rich!), none more than the young! What is true is that the media are refusing to cover what Labour is offering, so the policies that everyone agrees are what are needed are not being associated with the Labour leader and his party in the minds of the electorate. Instead only negative associations are being propagated.

It is quite deliberate. One lesson that is always difficult to get over is that the media are not, and never have been fair. They offer biased views constantly, one of which is, of course, that they are actually fair, and it would be undemocratic to change the situation. The hacking scandal and the Leveson enquiry prove otherwise. An important question we should always ask when considering potential bias is, "who benefits from this opinion being accepted as true?" (Cui Bono? in Latin). In other words, in this case is the beneficiary of the view or the policy the rich or the poor? If it is not beneficial to poor people, or if it is vastly more beneficial to the rich, then there is cause for doubting it as a fair viewpoint. Why? Because the newspapers are owned by a handful of very rich people who run them for the benefit of their own kind--the very rich! Note, the VERY rich, not the slightly richer than the rest!

The Morning Star is the only daily paper in the UK to be biased toward the ordinary people, and the Peoples World is the equivalent in the USA. Yes, they are biased too, but they are biased against the rich. But an unbalance can only be corrected by an opposite force. If you must read media like the Guardian, then the opposite pan in the scales should be equally weighted by reading the Morning Star (or Peoples World) to get a balance.

The media are trying to railroad the electorate into a dead end by bad mouthing the Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, though the failures of Labour are the failures of Corbyn's predecessors like Tony Blair (who always has a platform in the anti-Corbyn media). Corbyn, like the late Tony Benn, does not engage in slagging matches. That is not a sign of weakness but of strength. Anyone dismayed by Corbyn's fairness and politeness has the answer, as did Benn, in his policies, in the issues. Corbyn's policies address the issues important to working people, May and the Tories aggravate them because they aim to benefit the rich, and that they do at the expense of the poor!

Jewish Protest Letter to The London Guardian: “Who Is The Terrorist?”

As Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights, we have once again watched in horror as Israel escalates its lethal bombardment of the civilian population of Gaza. Numerous people, including children, are being killed or wounded. Israeli casualties came only after Israel, having started the slaughter by killing a 13 year old boy in Gaza on 8 November, shattered a truce by assassinating the military leader who had negotiated it. So who is the terrorist and who wants peace?

Israel’s political-military leaders cynically escalate the conflict, trying to justify their blockade of Gaza and acting tough in the run up to government elections. Having turned Gaza into an open-air prison, they again punish the Palestinians for electing leaders who attempt to resist the illegal occupation.

Too many of our media collude with the official Israeli version—that the attacks are “targeted” retaliation for rockets launched from Gaza. Despite hand-wringing by some western governments, they encourage Israeli belligerence by labeling Hamas a terrorist organization, supporting the Gaza siege and denying Palestinian rights, both within and outside Israel. We support the peaceful campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) designed to help achieve those rights.

Signed:
Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle, Mike Marqusee, Seymour Alexander, Jo Bird, Haim Bresheeth, Elizabeth Carola, Ruth Conlock, Mike Cushman, Nancy Elan, Susan Elan, Pia G Feig, Deborah Fink, Sonya Fraser, Claire Glasman, Tony Greenstein, Ruth Hall, Abe Hayeem, Rosamine Hayeem, Selma James, Michael Kalmanovitz, Berry Kreel, Leah Levane, Rachel Lever, Les Levidow, Moshe Machover, Martine Miel, Simon Natas, Diana Neslen, Juliet Peston, Renate Prince, Frances Rifkin, Larry Sanders, Vanessa Stilwell, Sam Weinstein, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Devra Wiseman

What Have We Learned From Guernica?

As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust in a Kindertransport 74 years ago and who voluntarily joined the British army to help fight the evil of Nazism, I utterly condemn the disproportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks. I am dismayed that both the British and American governments have given Israel carte blanche for these acts of barbarity in Gaza. Has the world learned nothing since Guernica?

Emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent
London

The Ultra-rich—Intelligent? Talented? No, Lucky and Brutal

The ultra-rich 1% claim that they have unique qualities that explains why they are where they are—among the ultra rich. They credit themselves with success for which they were not responsible. Many got certain richly rewarded jobs by a ruthless greed or by being born to the right parents, talents that they would rather not boast about, so they claim it is intelligence, creativity, hard work, enterprise or acumen, much more acceptable talents.

In findings that have been widely replicated, psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, studied for eight years the results of 25 wealth advisers. Their average performance was zero, but, when their results were above average, they got bonuses. Traders and fund managers across Wall Street had their massive compensation for success hardly or no better than random. Doubtless they got bonuses even when they did badly because everyone is allowed to have a bit of bad luck! Surprise, surprise, the city slickers did not want to hear Kahneman's findings.

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgement, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In another study “Crime and Law”, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon psychologically tested 39 senior managers and CEOs of leading British businesses, then performed the same tests on patients at Broadmoor hospital, a mental hospital for convicted criminals too insane for prison. On certain criteria, the manager’s scores matched or exceeded those of the criminally insane patients, beating even some psychopathic patients. These criteria are just those which closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for in managers. Some are:

• their skill in flattering powerful people to manipulate them
• egocentricity
• a strong sense of entitlement
• a readiness to exploit others
• a lack of empathy and conscience.

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare also point out in their book Snakes in Suits, that psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded in modern management. So, while those with psychopathic tendencies born to a poor family are likely to go to prison, those with psychopathic tendencies born to a rich family are likely to end up as top managers. CEOs now take from their businesses “rewards” disproportionate to the work they do or the value they generate. Business has been rewarding the wrong skills.

The über-rich are called the wealth creators, but they have preyed upon the earth’s natural wealth and workers’ labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are actually wealth destroyers. In the US:

• between 1947 and 1979, productivity rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%
• between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80% , while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%
• in roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK:

• the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%
• The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009

The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

George Monbiot

George Monbiot writes, usually excellently penetrative articles, in The Guardian and on his own website. In the article above, his latest (8 November) essay is summarized in slightly edited form. See the originals at the link given here, or at The Guardian.

Bonuses and Distribution of Wealth in the UK

UK society, like the US, is skewed horribly in favour of the rich and against the poor. Some 53 of the UK’s richest 1,000 are billionaires. The wealth of these 1000 people has increased from £98.99 billion in 1997 to £335.5 billion today. Over the past 12 months, they got richer by an incredible 29 per cent. Despite the worsening economic situation, this is the largest annual increase in the wealth of this rich minority. What these figures show is an increasingly unequal society that has enriched the already megarich at our expense. The amount of gross domestic product (GDP, annual national production) dedicated to wages and salaries has declined over the past three decades. There is no way that such a distribution of wealth can be said to favour the common good.

The injustice of wealth distribution is in need of urgent debate. Why is the argument for higher taxation on the highest earners continually rejected out of hand? If the country wants better services then they have to be paid for. It is not possible to have something for nothing. And those who earn the most—and usually have got most out of the system—should pay more tax. Justice should be applied to the economic system by restoring higher levels of tax on those most able to pay. If they want to leave the country, then the country can put an even higher tax on any wealth they propose to take with them? Then we can say good riddance to bad rubbish, and let our youth have the chances they are now being denied.

In 1976, wages and salaries accounted for 65.1 per cent of GDP, this had reduced to 52.6 per cent by 1996, a time when the wealth of the richest 1,000 increased threefold. But society took a fairer proportion of that wealth increase. Levels of taxation were far higher on the rich. Tax rates above 80 per cent on those earning the most were not uncommon. Society was more equal and cohesive as a result. Reagan’s pandering to the megarich demands for tax cutting spread to his lapbitch, Margaret Thatcher, then to Bush’s lapbitch, Tony Blair, leading to today’s gross inequality and unfairness, in imitation of the USA.

Top FTSE 100 chief executives earned 47 times median earnings in 2000 and 88 times in 2010. In the public sector the ratio is far lower, more like 12 to one. Even so, the top 1% of public officials earned an average of £120,000. Why does a senior executive need a financial incentive, when every other worker does not get them and makes do with an agree wage? Would executives refuse to work? Would a hospital director let people die if not awarded a bonus?

The Big Society is an austerity program. The coalition government cynically chants its slogan “we’re all in it together” in reducing the deficit. Yet the policy implemented cuts public services, freezes public sector workers pay, cuts jobs and reduces pension rights, while inviting billionaires from everywhere to live here untaxed! When we discover that 1,000 people in Britain now have over £300 million each, we should be seriously complaining that the entire cost of deficit reduction is falling on the poor 65 million of us. At present it is the poorest who continue to pay for the deficit while the megarich grow ever wealthier. This cannot be right.

It has been suggested that there would be no deficit at all, if the treasury recooped some of the wealth the rich have robbed us of in the last thirty of forty years. MP Austin Mitchell thinks this 1,000 people with the most wealth could yield 25 per cent of it for the sake of the economy upon which the rich depend for future wealth. It would clear £84 billion from the deficit. Another suggestion was that the top 1 percent of the richest people, about 650,000 in the UK, could give up 20 percent of their accumulated wealth, clearing the deficit all together. Note that these megarich people would still be megarich under either scheme. They would still have 75 to 80 percent of their amassed riches.

The proposals are all the more attractive because of the neglible tax that most of these people pay and have ever paid, through their use of corporate lawyers to exploit taxation loopholes, and simply defraud the exchequer. Strict taxation on the rich is a basic justice that should be implemented now. The complaint of ordinary middle class people in the late Roman empire was that their megarich paid no taxes, or simply increased rents to cover any they had to pay. Soon after, the western empire collapsed. The people preferred barbarians to their own rulers.

A recent government inquiry considered that there should be a maximum pay ratio of 20:1 between top and bottom. It was meant to be only in the public sector, but, if it was considered just, why not overall? It was a hostage to fortune even to suggest it, so it disappeared in the final report. Instead, it recommended bonuses as being fair! CEOs should have a marginal element of their pay “at risk”, subject to meeting agreed objectives. Then public services would not be offering rewards for failure.

No research has shown that bonuses improve performance, nor do firms paying them do better. Paying students to get better passes did not work. The ones who did well, did it because they enjoyed what they were doing. The same should be applied to bankers and CEOs. If they don’t like it, then let them quit and join the oridnary Joes who have to like it or survive in frugality on benefits. In any case, who would judge the CEO’s performance? A team of bureaucrats?

Schemes like this are bogus, even where performance can be measured. Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS was awarded a discretionary £16m pension pot, while he wrecked the biggest bank in the world. The package was approved by the bank’s remunerators and non-executives, his friends and associates. Directors rip off shareholders with the collusion of institutions, so they get bonuses whether good or useless. Bankers’ bonuses are the biggest because the City is a massive gang of monkeys scratching each others’ backs furiously.

Bonuses are not incentives. They are measures of greed and selfishness, and are possible because corporate leadership is no longer properly accountable. Such schemes were thought up in the 1980s to let top earners take ever larger sums of money from their companies. It was unfair, dishonest, and, for the banks, disastrous. Top executives are paid above the average to work harder and more successfully than the rest of us. If they fail, they should be fired, with no golden handshakes.

Pay should be fixed and pay scales fairly flat. The bonus anyone should get is acclaim by peers and the public for doing a good job.

Reporting from the UK Morning Star and the UK Guardian.

A Judge’s View on the Law and How to Protect It

Lord Bingham, until he recently retired, the most senior British judge was interviewed for The Guardian by Stephen Moss in connexion with the publication of his recent book, The Rule of Law. Bingham’s last three jobs were Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice, and senior Law Lord. One imagines he is a man who knows the law. He unequivocally condemns the Iraq war of 2003 as illegal:

I took the view which Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wilmshurst [legal advisers to the Foreign Office in 2003] took—that it simply wasn’t authorized. The whole of the Foreign Office thought this… It is not at all clear to me what, if any, legal justification of its action the US government relied on… If I am right and the invasion of Iraq… was unauthorized by the security council, there was a serious violation of international law and the rule of law… It is, as has been said, “the difference between the role of world policeman and world vigilante”.

Yet Jack Straw told the Chilcot inquiry he often ignored the legal advice his law officers at the Home Office as well as the Foreign Office gave him!

Michael Wood drew attention to the fact that the ministerial code obliges ministers to act in accordance with national and international law, so it isn’t really good enough to say I don’t take the advice of law officers.

Can anyone tell me how these New Labour ministers, from Tony Blair onwards and downwards, manage to get away with such cavalier disregard for the law, and centuries old British parliamentary and ministerial convention that is meant to save us from fascists. Isn’t it plain that it does not do what it is supposed to do, because a bunch of crypto fascist neoconservatives have taken over Labour as New Labour, and have done just as they wanted in office. And no one is raising a stink about it.

It is one thing to enjoy parliamentary privilege, which is the right to be able to say in Parliament anything an MP thinks has to be said without fear of libel actions or jail—something irrelevant to the fiddling of expenses—but it is another to march roughshod over the country’s hard earned laws and customs, meant to protect us, the people, from becoming subjects and not citizens. New Labour’s thirteen years of legal flatulence has made us subjects again—subjects of any undemocratic authoritarian government, one that has put in place every requirement for a fascist putsch. Why is no one outraged at the unknown number of super injunctions that stop us from knowing what is going on? Why are students not incensed, especially now that Labour is hitting them and their universities harder than ever while continuing to feed the country’s wealth to the bankers? Why are there no lawyers willing to risk being jailed to protect the sanctity of the law?

Lord Justice Bingham notes that the government is using the threat of terrorism to erode our basic freedoms. He approves of Benjamin Franklin’s dictum:

He who would put security before liberty deserves neither.

Precisely, and that is where we are! Bingham believes we are getting the delicate balance between liberty and security wrong:

Liberty is losing out at the moment. Extraordinary inroads are being made into principles that would once have been regarded as completely inviolate, such as the growing practice of putting material [evidence] before some decision-making tribunal or judge that the defendant never sees. When I talk to the young, I’m struck by how, even when they have impeccably liberal instincts on things like torture and the death penalty, they tend to make an exception for terrorists. They’ve grown up in a world post-9/11 in which terrorism has been seen as this colossally potent threat.

The danger of terrorism is no more serious than it was in the seventies and eighties, probably less so, but the threat to hard won liberties is indeed real! Thus Bingham’s Belmarsh ruling in 2004 was that indefinite detention without trial of foreign terrorist suspects was incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights. He is proud of it because he felt “the stakes were quite high”. Plainly there are. They put anyone at risk of the same treatment. What can ever be just about jailing, without trial or evidence and possibly forever, someone who is merely a suspect? That is now British law!

Someone thinks someone else might commit a crime so they are confined for an indefinite time. It is the Inquisition. It is witch hunting. It most certainly has nothing to do with any concept of justice. Yet who is bothering. Lord Bingham seems to believe there is nothing to be done to defend good law other than through the ballot box. But no UK party is promising to remove all the bad law New Labour has brought in, and they are all complicit in the neoconservative terrorism myth. So the ballot box can solve nothing. What then? Bingham says, if that fails, we should turn to revolution!

Supposing a government came into power that wanted to introduce a whole lot of measures borrowed from the statute book of Nazi Germany, we would be justified in rebelling, just as we were against Charles I.

So what are the British people, and particularly the youth who have most to lose, doing about it? They have not even noticed. They are too busy having fun, watching reality TV, reading the gutter press, getting pissed, and, like half wits, pretending they are all celebrities.

Do not Submit British Law to Zionism

Dr M D Magee—You can add me to this list (below)! The neo-Nazi, pro-Zionist, New Labour party has added so many oppressive laws to the British Statute Book, that we have lost count, and will only remember them when they start being used against us, as all such laws eventually are. Here the aim is to let the Zionist ministers of the elitist, racist, neo-Nazi state of Israel, like Tzipi Livni, enter the UK without molestation from court orders drawing attention to her involvement in state terror and war crimes in Gaza, which might have led to her justified incarceration in a British jail.

This Labour Party leadership is devoid of any principle except self aggrandizement. Each of them expects to be repaid, just as Blair was, for involving us, against our will, in unjust and illegal warfare.

They bowed to the wishes of Zionist mogul, Rupert Murdoch, to get his support to win a series of elections in the nineties and the so-called noughties, but Murdoch has abandoned New Labour, so they want to suck up to the Israeli state directly.

We must all abandon New Labour, if we haven't already done so, and decide to support individual candidates of principle. The party system itself is bent and bankrupt.

The Labour MPs listed below evidently have some principles left, but the New Labour party as a whole is such a disgrace, it wants tipping down the drain. We must do so, and instead support individual candidates who will change the first past the post electoral system that has led us into mess after mess since the 1970s, and will also erase all the fascist Acts of Parliament Blair and Brown have legislated.

Letter to the Guardian

“We are shocked at suggestions by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister Ivan Lewis and foreign secretary David Miliband that Britain may consider changing its laws to avoid any future attempts to prosecute suspected war criminals, Israeli or otherwise. The UK must not renege on its international treaty obligations, particularly those under the fourth Geneva convention to seek out and prosecute persons suspected of war crimes wherever and whoever they are, whatever their status, rank or influence, against whom good prima facie evidence has been laid. We reject any attempt to undermine the judiciary's independence and integrity. A judge who finds sufficient evidence of a war crime must have power to order the arrest of a suspect, subject to the usual rights to bail and appeal.

The power to arrest individuals reasonably suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world should they set foot on UK soil is an efficient and necessary resource in the struggle against war crimes, and must not be interfered with (Report, 6 January). Nor should the government succumb to pressure from any foreign power to alter this crucial aspect of the judicial process. We urge the government to state clearly that it will not alter the law on universal jurisdiction and will continue to allow victims of war crimes to seek justice in British courts.”

John Austin MP, Katy Clark MP, Frank Cook MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Ann Cryer MP, Paul Flynn MP, Neil Gerrard MP, John Hemming MP, Paul Holmes MP, Kelvin HopkinsMP, Brian Iddon MP, Lynne Jones MP, Tom Levitt MP, Martin Linton MP, Bob Marshall-Andrews MP, Gordon Prentice MP, Linda Riordan MP, Terry Rooney MP, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Baroness Lindsay Northover, Bob Russell MP, Clare Short MP, Phyllis Starkey MP, Sir David Steel, Sandra White MSP, Derek Wyatt MP, Tayab Ali, Partner, Irvine Thanvi Natas Solicitors, Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Richard Burgon, solicitor, Daniel Carey, Public Interest Lawyers, Ian Cross, solicitor, Jim Duffy, Public Interest Lawyers, Shauna Gillan, barrister, 1 Pump Court, Andrew Gray, solicitor, Tessa Gregory, Public Interest Lawyers, Beth Handly, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors, Michael Hagan, solicitor, Michelle Harris, barrister, 1 Pump Court, Susan Harris, solicitor, Jane Hickman, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors, Sam Jacobs, Public Interest Lawyers, Salma Karmi-Ayyoub, barrister, Paul Kaufman, solicitor, Aonghus Kelly, Public Interest Lawyers, Daniel Machover, Chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Michael Mansfield QC, Anna Mazzola, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors, Sarah McSherry, Partner, Christian Khan solicitors, Clare Mellor, solicitor, Karen Mitchell, solicitor, Simon Natas, Partner, Irvine Thanvi Natas solicitors, Sophie Naftalin, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Human Rights Legal Aid Fund, Henrietta Phillips, solicitor, William Seymour, solicitor, Navya Shekhar, solicitor, Phil Shiner, Public Interest Lawyers, David Thompson, solicitor, Paul Troop, barrister, Mohammed Abdul-Bari, Secretary-General, Muslim Council of Britain, Anas Altikriti, British Muslim Initiative, Lindsey German, Stop the War Campaign, John Hilary, Director, War on Want, Kate Hudson, Chair, CND, Betty Hunter, General Secretary, PalestineSolidarity Campaign, Dan Judelson, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Hugh Lanning, PCS Deputy General Secretary, John McHugo, Chair, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, Gerry Morrissey, General Secretary, BECTU, Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary, UNITE, Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK, Jackie Alsaid LLM, Rachel Bowles, Prof Haim Bresheeth, Dale Egee, Sarah El-Guindi, Deborah Fink, David Halpin, Sharif Hamadeh, Samira Hassassian, Professor Ted Honderich, Victor Kattan, Asad Khan, Miriam Margolyes, Professor Nur Masalha, Professor Steven Rose, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, Andrew Sanger, Dr Aisha Sarwar, Tareq Shrouru…