Blinkered Justice

Climate change: Pine Island glacier

2012-03-01T15:13:00.001Z

The Wednesday ? - “Failed state”

2012-02-29T10:30:00.000Z

Aquick introduction into the Wednesday ?

Ipropose using the Wednesday ? on a trial basis over the next fewweeks. The purpose of it, unlike Questioning The Headlines, is tolook at specific words and/or phrases that are used, mainly by thosein power, as a means of short-cutting any criticism or independentthought.

Iwant to highlight these words and phrases, and promote public debate.This is where you come in. It would be fantastic if you could postyour own thoughts, so that we can de-construct some of the(inherent?) assumptions contained within them.

“Failedstate”

Lastweek's meeting on Somalia looked at the options available to theinternational community, in their endeavours to help the people ofthis conflict-ridden nation. Somalia has been described as the“world'smost failed state”.

TheFund For Peace (FFP) produces an annual index that ranks statesin terms of their “failures”. FFP do not provide a definition ofwhat constitutes a “failed state”, but list 12 indicators thatthey believe make up state failure.

A “failed state” is thought of onethat has lost control of their geo-political sphere, unable toprovide its citizens with the security (welfare, and law and order)that they need nationally and internationally.

Assumptionsof the “failed state”

A “failed state” does not necessarilyimply that it was once successful. The FFP index demonstrates thatfailure is relative to other states. The assumption here is that astate, much like an individual, is responsible for its plight. Is it?

Little is made of any outside influencethat may have contributed to a state's ability to provide for itscitizens. Outside influences may be other nation states meddling inthe socio-political dynamic, or multi-national corporations usingtheir economic resources to profit from the political status quo.

According to the FFP index, 14/20 of themost failing states are African. Many are former colonies, whoseborders were (re)-drawn prior to independence by their formermasters, who failed to take into adequate account the ethnic andtribal fissures that were already present. Consequently, localism hasto rule in some areas, as the state can not.

Failed States Index 2005-2010

“Failedstate”?

Whilst the FFP index ranks 177 countriesin terms of their relative failures, at what point, and who decides,which nation is officially a failed state? For instance, North Koreais ranked as the 22^nd most “failed state”. Given thatNorthKorea requires food aid to feed to chronically under-nourished,is it a “failed state”?

Geo-politically linked to Somalia, Kenyaand Ethiopia are rated as being more of a “failed state” thanNorth Korea. Equally they are seen as not having failed enough, asboth nations contribute to the Amisom forces fighting to oustal-Shabab from Somalia.

I am not disputing the fact that manystates, like Somalia, need help. I commend the FFP's reasons forcreating this list, but it is unclear as to who chose the factorsthat influence “failed states”, and how, or why, these particularfactors were chosen? Were others available but not used?

For example, the UK government producedits integrationstrategy last week deferring power, and control, to 'local'experts as a means of strengthening law and order amongst the peopleit considered “troublesome”. Does this move away from statecontrol to localism indicate that the UK state is moving closer to“failing”?

Around the same time, TheChildren's Society reported that asylum-seeking and migrantchildren are left homeless, hungry and destitute. The UK has a dutyto protect these children regardless of their immigration status. IsAfrican displacement and famine that far removed from Britishhomelessness and hunger?

When a state does nothing to protect themost vulnerable residing within its borders, despite having theframework and capacity in place to help, is this not a key indicatorof state failure? If not, why not? Because that for me is an essenceof a “failed state”.

Overto you.

The Wednesday ? - British values of tolerance

2012-02-22T17:05:00.001Z

Aquick introduction into the Wednesday ?

Ipropose using the Wednesday ? on a trial basis over the next fewweeks. The purpose of it, unlike Questioning The Headlines (which Iwill do again shortly), is to look at specific words and/or phrasesthat are used, mainly by those in power, as a means of short-cuttingany criticism or independent thought.

Iwant to highlight these words and phrases, and promote public debate.This is where you come in. It would be fantastic if you could postyour own thoughts to add to the discourse. By doing so, hopefully, wecan build on a cultural understanding of these terms, andde-construct some of the (inherent?) assumptions contained withinthem.

“Britishvalues of tolerance”

TheTelegraphreported yesterday that the coalition government would be publishingtheir new integration strategy for immigrants coming to make the UKtheir home. The article continued:

Theintegration strategy will state: “We believe in certain values andwill actively promote them: freedom of speech; freedom of worship;democracy and the rule of law. Long-standing Britishvalues of toleranceare the bedrock of our society. We will champion a united Britishidentity, across class, colour and creed.”

Icould have added the term “long-standing”, but this will bediscussed as part of my critique. Equally, I could have covered“British values” as a stand-alone subject, but I want to keepthis post shorter than my other analyses, and I would like you tostay awake.

Assumptionsof the “British values of tolerance”

Interms of what is being promoted, I would hazard a guess that thisphrase is being used to summon up that fuzzy feeling of “beingproud to be British”; we are a civilised people, who have welcomedpeoples of different race, creed, and religion to the UK. It assumesthat we do not just “put up with” people from differentbackgrounds, but that we were the first nation to promote a“tolerance” that advocates equal rights.

Theidea that it is traditionally British, embeds these values with beingwhite, middle/upper class, able-bodied, and more than likely, male.

The world in 1897 - British possessions coloured red

“Britishvalues of tolerance”?

Beyondthe rampant theft of resources in Africa and Asia as the BritishEmpire extended its power, another part of its expansion wasevangelical, which saw us trying to “civilise” other nations.This was not a tolerance, this was an imposition of our behaviouronto those who lived in different parts of the world.

Sincethe turn of the 20^thCentury, whilst the British have allowed peoples from other culturesto settle in the UK, it has come with ever increasing legislation andconsternation.

TheAliens Act of 1905 was the first act to introduce immigrationcontrols for the UK; it was designed to stop an increasing number ofJewish immigrants entering the UK. Ever since, the British havelegislated for other people to join them as a means to fill gaps inthe labour market (British Nationalist Act 1948), and then havepassed acts to stop them entering the UK (Commonwealth Immigrants Act1962) as a result of a public backlash.

Raciallymotivated riots over the last 60 years or so do not indicate that welive/have lived in a society that has promoted tolerance in the waythat the phrase indicates. Clearly, we welcome people into the UKwhen it fulfils British economic needs, but that we “put up” withthem living here. The notion that this British value of tolerance is“long-standing” is faulty.

Althoughthe term implies an equality of residential rights in the UK, itrests on the idea that immigrants are/were “lucky” to have comehere. It does not take into account whether people were well-educatedin their country of birth, nor that they took menial work and wage inthe UK, let alone whether they have been driven out of their homesbecause of war. Including those that Britain engages in.

Thereis also a denial of other nation's values of tolerance in this term.Societies around parts of Asia and Africa regularly welcomeforeigners, and strangers, into their homes, and treat them as familymembers or long-standing friends. Why is their value of tolerancesupposedly not as good as ours?

Supposedly,this integration strategy also promotes ideas of tolerance to hategroups in the UK. My fear is that this strategy only promotes thekind of toleration discussed above, and that we are pandering to anoutdated idea.

Aftera century of official multi-cultural living in the UK, it would be interestingto know what today's “British values of tolerance” mean now. Overto you.

London 2012: BP - sustainable partner?

2012-02-17T17:00:00.000Z

Deepwater Horizon drilling unit on fire

Further to my posts on London 2012, in particular this one about Locog's choice of sustainability partners, I am pleased to see that this open letter, by the the UK Tar Sands Network, has received national media coverage in today's Guardian. Blinkered Justice is happy to have played some small role in helping bring this issue to a wider audience.

If you wish to get involved in this campaign, please contact the UK Tar Sands Network at info@no-tar-sands.org.

Free music download: police and thieves – the police

2012-02-17T13:00:00.000Z

Robert Peel

Please see the post below for further background.

TheIndependent adds that SOCA'snotice on the closed RnBXclusive.com also stated:

"Socahas the capability to monitor and investigate you and can inform yourinternet service provider of these infringements. You may be liablefor prosecution and the fact that you have received this message doesnot preclude you from prosecution”.

The message is clear; individuals will beprosecuted even if you happen upon the website by accident. Will you?SOCA obviously see themselves as the guardian of online copyrightinfringement. Are they?

Althoughthe DigitalEconomy Act (DEA) 2010 that came into force in June 2010, allowsfor the criminalisation of individuals who consistentlydownload/share files illegally (paragraph 42), the onus initiallyfalls on ISPs to curb those who regularly fall foul of the Act.

Toset this in context, the DEA was rushed through parliament justbefore the UK national elections in 2010. Critics point to the roleof Lord Mandelson in pushing through the DEA without sufficientscrutiny, after the music industry lobbied him; there is evidencethat the BritishPhonographic Industry drafted part of the DEA. Although this parthas since been dropped, it reveals the extent to which commercialinterests can influence law and order.

Oneparticular bone of contention for ISPs is the aspect of 'technicalmeasures'. ISPs may be called on to restrict access of the internet,or even possibly remove access all together, from those customers whoregularly transgress. Ofcom, who oversee the DEA, can take actionagainst ISPs who fail to report these acts. Two of the largest ISPs,BT and TalkTalk, have appealedagainst the DEA.

Asmaller broadband provider, aaisp.net, have provided an analysis ofthe DEA from their perspective here.They highlight the seemingly incompatible roles that they have toplay.

Atthe same time as trying to grow their business and retain customers,they have to report on these same customers, resulting in a loss oftrust and the likely loss of this custom to alternative ISPs. Whencustomers transfer to a new ISPs, the history of the notices leviedagainst the customers disappear, meaning that the copyright holderhas to start again with any action. Nobody wins.

Infact, as TalkTalk point out in their Statementof Facts and Grounds, there are any number of ways thatindividuals can download music freely and, therefore, get round theDEA.

Whilst this document is obviouslyspecific to TalkTalk, and their particular grievances, it highlightsa number of concerns with the DEA that other less powerfulorganisations may not have had the finances to shed light on. Forthose interested, I would refer you to paragraphs 199-212, and theconcerns raised therein.

Giventhat many features of public life are now dealt with on the internetonly, including somegovernment services, the restriction/removal of internet accessseems a punitive measure. A denial of the right to participate as afull citizen of the UK is only going to further marginalise andexclude those who have less ability to participate as citizens in thefirst place.

Areportby the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) alsofound that there was an imbalance between copyright enforcement andinnovation. The report illustrates how the music industry might helpconsumers find the products that they are looking for legally, at areasonable price, and suggest that the music industry acknowledgethat file-sharing is not the only reason for the relative decline inCDs, vinyl etc.

Its authors suggest:

“Themusic industry and artists should innovate and actively reconnectwith their sharing fans rather than treat them ascriminals...Alternative sources of income generation for artistsshould be considered instead of actively monitoring the onlinebehaviour of UK citizens.”(Bert Cammaerts)

“theDEA has given too much consideration to the interests of copyrightholders, while ignoring other stakeholders such as users, ISPs, andnew players in the creative industry...”(Bingchun Meng)

Theclumsy use of SOCA as a Big Brother-type sentinel guarding thecopyright 'safe' also demonstrates how far(?) states have movedtowards finding ways of policing the internet.

Nationally,the UK still relies heavily on the authoritarian, Peelian force,albeit online, to deter, and warn its public of future, punitivesanctions. However, the internet is global. Any tech-savvy individualcould re-route their IP address, or anonymise it, to download freematerials, rendering geo-spatial boundaries meaningless, and theforces within them powerless.

Justas the LSE calls for innovation from the music industry to combat thealleged impact of file-sharing, perhaps it is time for the law andorder industry to look afresh at regulating cybercrime.

Free music downloads: police and thieves - the thieves

2012-02-16T15:30:00.000Z

Nipper hears His Masters Voice (c) NewYork1956

Using the term 'free music download' on www.google.co.uk,thisis what my search result revealed.

Onthe first page of results, amongst the odd service that I am awareof, such as Spotify and we7, were a host of others including mp3raid,WuZAM and beemp3. In fact, the latter named entities ranked higherthan the former services. Why?

Iam writing this post with reference to the newsthat the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) closed down a musicdownload website, RnBXclusive.com, on Tuesday. A man has beenarrested, and bailed, on fraud charges. This follows the recent highprofile arrestof Kim DotCom, who ran the music sharing website Megaupload.

SOCAhad posted a message up on the defunct website declaring:

"Asa result of illegal downloads, young, emerging artists may have hadtheir careers damaged. If you have illegally downloaded music, youwill have damaged the future of the music industry."

Whoare the “young, emerging artists” who have had their careersdamaged? Have they already signed a record deal? Is it with a majoror independent label? Are they unsigned? Without them, is there no“future of the music industry”? Do SOCA know something that themusic industry do not, because the music industry is unsure what the future holds.

Beyondthese words, the assumption is that the “future of the musicindustry” will look much the same as it does now. Moreover, thestatement presumes that illegal downloading, or more to the point,the availability of free musical content online is a bad thing. Isit?

Lady Gaga (c) pink_daisy

Thereis a coalition of artists who believe that the use of free music canbe a means to building an audience. The likes of LadyGaga gave away free music as part of her business model.

Thatdoes not mean that artists are happy at their works/copyright beingabused, but equally, they are coming to terms with illegaldownloading and file-sharing. Amusic industry think tank advocates artists giving their albumsaway for free, and discusses how artists might profit from it whilst simultaneously defeating theservices that provide free downloads of their material.

Eitherway, artists appear not to want to criminalise those who downloadtheir material for free. From well-knownartists in the UK, to smaller,independent artists in the U.S.A., they see state regulation ofthe internet as a bad thing for artists.

Recordingartists have long been dealt a raw deal. After years of recordcompanies offering a pittance to their artists for their work, theinternetappeared to offer salvation and a chance to control theirdestinies.

However,recording artists receive an even smallerportion of the pie when signing up with the new digital recordcompanies of today. The likes of Amazon,iTunes, Last.fm and Spotify pay their artists even less thantheir traditional counterparts. Just who is stealing from recordingartists?

Inthe case of RnBXclusive.com, SOCAhave decided that the thieves are largely males,aged 18-25, who have downloaded music from this site. However,as my search above demonstrates, there are a variety of sites wherepeople can supposedly download music 'legally' and 'for free'.

Theproblem is that many operate outside of the UK's borders. Somesupposedly operate legally within their own borders, but notnecessarily within the laws of the in-country hosting internet service providers (ISPs). Therefore,it is difficult, if not nigh on impossible, to ascertain whetherthese services are 'legal' or 'illegal'.

Furthermore,they all appear high in Google rankings. How does that happen?

Whilstit may be partly explained by the inbound links and keywords used bythe more nebulous sites, surely they can not be using any differentlinks and keywords to those used by Spotify or Last.fm. Could thehigher ranking of sites like mp3raid, WuZAM and beemp3 be explainedby advertising? Are Google, and other search engines, profiting from marketing 'illegal' downloads?

TheIndependent notes thatRnBXclusive.com was largely funded by advertising. Therefore, theowner was generating his 'fraudulent' income from those advertisingon his site. Surely then, just as individuals are supposed to beresponsible for checking the 'legality' of the site that they use,advertisers too must he held equally, if not, more accountable, giventhat they sustained this business.

Giventhat the 'legality' of downloading free music is unclear, and thatGoogle, a trusted means of sourcing information, promotes these sites aboveothers, it seems somewhat disproportionate that individuals can beheavily punished for transgressing a very blurred line. Especiallywhen those propping up these 'illegal' services financially do notappear to have been sought after in the same way.

Whilstthe official narrative runs that it is the artists who are thevictims, artists themselves are offering free music downloads tobuild up their followings. It is possible that 'illegal' downloadingmight also provide them with a means to take greater control of theirworks and their income streams.

If this be the case, then it is the record companies that are set to lose the ability to control themarket, and the profits generated from it, not the artists. Therefore, downloading music freely is not in the commercial interests of businesses that currently do very nicely from it.

Artistshave regularly been, and continue to be, victims of legal 'theft'. Itjust appears more culturally palatable to portray males, aged 18-25,as criminals, rather than the 'legitimate' enterprises making largesums of money from it.

Youmay ask yourself, well, how did we get here?...

Glencore, Africa, & the World Food Programme: Ill-gotten gains and food security (part 2)

2012-02-09T14:00:00.000Z

Faraah with her family (c) Oxfam East Africa

The Guardianpreviously reported that the World Food Programme (WFP) had paid £50million to Glencore for their wheat. They have since scaledback their earlier misgivings, but their earlier articlereveals:

Glencoreadmitted that it bet on a rising wheat price after drought in Russia,according to investment bank UBS. "[Glencore's] agriculturalteam received very timely reports from Russia farm assets thatgrowing conditions were deteriorating aggressively in the spring andsummer of 2010, as the Russian drought set in … This put it in aposition to make proprietary trades going long on wheat and corn,"UBS said in a report to potential investors, disclosed by theFinancial Times.

On3 August 2010 the head of Glencore's Russian grain business, YuryOgnev, urged Moscow to ban grain exports, according to the UBSreport.Two days later Russian authorities banned wheat exports, whichforced prices up by 15% in two days.

Glencoredispute what UBS report, claiming that it made no difference to theirbusiness. Maybe.

TheWFP state that hungerand starvation are caused by, amongst other things, war. In theirstrategicplan, 2008-2013, the WFP have five objectives, the finalone of which is 'Strengthen the capacities of countries to reducehunger, including through hand-over strategies and local purchase'.

One ofthe tools the WFP uses to achieve this objective is 'Advocacy', apoint which I will return to later, but worth bearing in mind as youread through the rest of this post:

Politicalawareness is the first step in the fight against hunger. WFP has longbeen confronted with this fact and has thus created a broad andsuccessful variety of instruments to disseminate information on,explain, and mobilize resources to fight global hunger. Advocacy willcontinue to play a prominent part in WFP’s activities at the field,regional and global levels, in order to reach the whole range ofactors in the fight against hunger. Furthermore, WFP will use theimpact of its advocacy in the pursuit of a variety of objectives –from fundraising for its operations to influence on broader policyissues, such as climate change – that are instrumental in affectingpositively the fight against hunger.

Glencoreproduces aluminium, a major material in the production of warmaterials, including guns and missiles. With partners UC Rusal, theyown 38% of the global market. Intheir newsletterof September/October 2007, Corporate Watch write that (UC) Rusal arethe main aluminium supplier to the Russian military.

Ethiopian national defence force soldier with AK-47 assault rifle

Russianmilitary hardware is widely availablefor sale in the markets of Somaliland and Somalia. In fact,AfricaFiles estimates that there are 100 million small arms incommission around Africa, the majority around the Horn of Africa. TheWFP bought the wheat from Glencore to feed the millions starvingin this region.

Evenif what UBS claims is untrue, that Russian authorities banned wheatexports for a couple of days in order to artificially inflate itsprice, and profit margins, then surely Glencore are making"ill-gotten gains" regardless. They are doing so byprofiting from war, and the substantial sales raised from their saleof aluminium to arms manufacturers, and by providing the wheat thatthe WFP buys to feed those displaced by a war that Glencore helpssustain.

Thiscynical, cyclical supply and demand business model reminds me of theway that the ItalianMafia made a mockery of EU waste management directives a decadeago. In short, mafia-related enterprises monpolised industrial wastemanagement contracts, and illegally dumped toxic residues around theItaly countryside. They then bid for, and won, provincial contractsto clean up the areas that they had polluted. Is this any differentto what Glencore are doing?

Sellingaluminium to arms manufacturers, and selling wheat to the WFP, is not'illegal'. Glencore are a 'legal' entity. However, if we consider itright to indict national leaders from Africa on charges of"ill-gotten gains", then equally we have to consider itright to charge leaders of multi-national companies, such as CEO,Ivan Glasenberg, for doing the same.

TheInternational Criminal Court (ICC) regularly seeks to prosecuteAfricans on war crimes charges, yet has not pursued one westernpolitical or military leader on similar grounds, despite the wealthof abuses suffered the world over. TheAfrican public are wary of the ICC, distrustful of what they seeas a white-man's version of justice.

Despitethese well-intentioned indictments, willAfrica come to see this case as reaffirmation of human rightscolonialism when we abjectly fail to charge the likes of Glencoreon the same grounds?

Afinal word on the WFP. If the WFP are not politically aware enough toknow that the likes of Glencore are heavily involved in the warmachinery, an act that the WFP consider leads to hunger andstarvation, or even know of their dealings in the U.N. Oil For Foodscandal, then they have little hope of ensuring that the futurenational governments in the Horn of Africa will reduce hunger.

Astrategy that benefits war profiteers only teaches future leaders toact as they already do.

Glencore, Africa, & the World Food Programme: Ill-gotten gains and food security (part 1)

2012-02-08T15:10:00.001Z

Everygun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket firedsignifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and arenot fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

FormerU.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 'TheChance for Peace',16 April 1953

President Teodoro Obiang

TheGuardian has reported that Frenchauthorities are impounding the assets of three serving Africanleaders and their families, in a case known as "ill-gottengains". Those accused include Omar Bongo and his son, Ali Bongofrom Gabon, the Congo-Brazzaville leader, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, andthe Equatorial Guinean President, Teodoro Obiang and his son,Teodorin Obiang.

Whenbalanced against their supposed state salaries, the assets that eachof these clans had accrued over their years in power leaves left manyquestions unanswered. Hence, this legal action, initiatedby anti-corruption NGOs. My initial reaction was one ofsatisfaction; the powerful should be held to account for theiractions.

The tail end of this piece notes that NGOs are unable to bringcorruption cases against African leaders in the UK, despite Londonallegedly being the "No. 1 destination for kelptocrats",according to Tim Daniel, a British Lawyer and anti-corruption expert. It is up to our authorities to do so.

Inthe UK, we have charged JamesIbori, a former governor from the Delta state of Nigeria, withcorruption. This region has a wealth of oil and natural reserves, andit has become synonymous with corruption, as money and powerintermingle in a tale of filthy lucre populated by sly "Lucans".

Intheir book,'Where vultures feast', Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas, wrote that theIMF could not account for 150,000 barrels of oil that was beingproduced daily, the implication being that former Nigerian dictator,General Sani Abacha, and his cohorts were siphoning off the proceeds.

Sixmonths later, Abacha completely redrew the allocation of crude oilcontracts, handing a third of future supplies to Glencore, who later gained greater control of the Nigerian crude industry.

Later in the Congo, TheAustralian reports:

Thebreakthrough came in 2005, when Elliott detectives discovered thattwo consignments of Congo oil had been loaded on to a vessel calledthe Nordic Hawk for sale to Glencore, a British company set up byMarc Rich, the Swiss-based trader.

Glencoreintended to sell the oil on to BP in what should have appeared as anormal industry transaction.

Kensingtonpromptly applied to the High Court in London for injunctions to seizethe proceeds of the Nordic Hawk consignments on the grounds that theywere fraudulently concealed sales by the Brazzaville Government...

...Somewherealong the way, millions of dollars went missing, and the judge notedthat an examination of the bank statements of one of Gokana'scompanies "reveals that there was virtually no connectionbetween the cash passing through its bank accounts and the sums itshould have received for the oil it sold".

Wherethe money went remains a mystery.

Glencore'swebsite reveals thatthey also have operations in Equitarial Guinea. As part of its E&Pportfolio, they have operated under the guise of NobleEnergy, along with other oil giants, with the agreement of, andhelp from, the U.S. government. Yesterday, Glencorewere due to merge with Xstrata to form one of the largestcompanies in the world.

Is it a coincidence that Abacha and Sassou-Nguesso were dealing with Glencore at about the same time that they were said to have been misappropriating resources and funds? Isit a coincidence that Glencore's name is linked to all the geographicalareas ruled by those charged in France?

Saddam Hussein on trial July 2004

Beyondthis, Glencore have a history of dubiouscorporate activity. It was reportedthat the CIA believed that Glencore did business with Saddam Husseinand that they received millions in illegal kickbacks during the U.N.Oil For Food programme. Reutersreferto human rights and environmental abuses in Colombia, andpollution-related health problems in Zambia. This does not includes anumber of other abuses that they have been associated with inAustralia, Colombia and Kazakhstan, as detailed by DonalO'Driscoll for Saving Iceland.

Furthermore,this behemoth has strong political ties. For example, Glencore owns8.75% of United Company (UC) Rusal Limited. Chaired by OlegDeripaska, through his En+ group, and co-chaired by NathanialRothschild, who runs Vallar which has a 40% stake in Glencore, bothare friendsof former EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, and UKChancellor, George Osborne. Wikileaksreveals that Deripaska has Vladimir Putin's ear.

Thisis what the 1% have and do. More than bonuses, more than tax breaks,they have the political and economic power to do as they please,harming whoever gets in their way.

A poetic social construction of crime

2012-02-03T17:06:00.002Z

Oscar Wilde and his lover, Alfred Douglas,
prior to his trial in 1894

As we each slink off to our weekends, I am publishing the poem below, written by Criminonymous. You can find another piece here, published on Anna Raccoon a few days ago. No need for me to add any more; the strength of the piece speaks for itself.

The only thing we have to blame is blame itself

Ifail to see what we gain from blaming the individual

Theworking class criminal whose education was minimal

Somesee their behaviour as indefensible

Thatthe casual accrual of wealth through unconventional or deviantmethods

Demeansthe tax-paying, hard-working and indebted

Ifit were only explained more clearly in schools

Thatit’s just a few tools

Whomonopolise the making and enforcement of rules

Whydo we assume that the criminal law is the best way to respond tothese issues?

Crimeis a social construction

Shouldhomosexuality be a crime?

Obviously,obviously not

Butsome countries still consider it as such

Doyou think that alcohol should be criminalised?

Thesethings vary over space and time

Itis wrong to assume that the laws as they stand

Arebased on rational calculations

Norshould it be assumed

Thatthe direction in which the criminal law is currently headed

Isnecessarily in the long-term interests of society as a whole

Somepeople see ‘criminals’ as totally different to them

Whenthey think about crime

Theyremember what they have seen in the media

Theyimmediately think about the most heinous of transgressions

Butthis is only a tiny fraction of what ‘crime’ really entails

Incidentally,many of these people are swing voters

Thecentral focus of modern-day locusts

Butwhen elections are based on fear

Thereis no incentive to ensure that our electorate is educated

Andthis lack of knowledge is perpetuated

Inreality, all are equally likely to be caught up in something thisforlorn

Becauseyou have no control over where or when you are born

Somepeople truly believe that they had immunity

Thinking:“They are not us, so they deserve no impunity”

Butwe were all born in the same world, without equality of opportunity

Substituteassumed fallacies for humanity

It’ssafe to say that we’re pretty lucky

Icould have been born in Kentucky

Hometo sixteen of the one hundred poorest counties in that country

Equally,the Queen is lucky not to be an Armenian from 1915

Gotany pre-teens?

Elsewherethey make green jeans for the armies

LikeAkala said, as hard as some of us have it

We’restill far better off than ninety per-cent of the planet

Itis totally understandable that in this environment of propaganda

Peoplemake false assumptions about crime and justice

Wedon’t get to decide what counts as a crime

Whenthe law should change its mind

Orwhere our priorities should lie

Norare these decisions made well for us

Soforget your anxiety regarding impropriety

Andconsider the long-term interests of our society

Criminonymous

Time to discuss U.S. state-sanctioned drone killings?

2012-02-02T18:33:00.001Z

MQM-107E drone (c) U.S. Air Force Photo by Master Sgt, Michael Ammons

Asreported by the BBC,President Obama's Google “hangout” revealed that the U.S.A. conducts drone strikes against suspect al-Qaeda andTaliban militants, mainly in Pakistan's Federally Administered TribalAreas (FATA).

Dronestrikes have increased significantly during Obama's administration,but it is difficult to verify the number of deaths as a result ofthese attacks. During this “hangout”, he said that the strikestargeted "people who areon a list of active terrorists,"and:

"al-Qaedasuspects who are up in very tough terrain along the border betweenAfghanistan and Pakistan"

"For us tobe able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot moreintrusive military action than the ones we're already engaging in."

CIAofficials claim that drone strikes killed 1400 suspectedmilitants and 30 civilians between July 2008 and June 2011, whereasin five years up to June 2011, the Conflict Monitoring Center, basedin Islamabad, estimates that 2052 people were killed, “mostlycivilians.”

InOctober, TheBureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) collatedtheir figures, which repudiate what the CIA admit to. If nothingelse, the droneattack in Waziristan in March 2011 highlights the CIA's inabilityto produce accurate figures for the numbers of civilians it haskilled.

Moreover,this latter attack illustrates Obama's contradictory language. Ifthis was not an “intrusive military action”, then what is? Ifhe means that because there are no armed personnel physicallyinvolved, that this action is any less “intrusive”, then what ofthe battle for the 'hearts and minds' (more later)? Do 'hearts andminds' exist outside of the corporeal body?

Barack Obama hope (c) Andrius Burlega

AmnestyInternational have registered their concerns with the U.S.government, and asked them to clarify the basis for these killings:

“TheUS authorities must give a detailed explanation of how these strikesare lawful and what is being done to monitor civilian casualties andensure proper accountability.

"What are the rules ofengagement? What proper legal justification exists for these attacks?While the President's confirmation of the use of drones in Pakistanis a welcome first step towards transparency, these and otherquestions need to be answered.”

Other than Amnesty's opposition to what is going on, there is little else beingreported on this issue. Rather than argue over the state-defined'legality' of these killings, there are a few points that I wish tohighlight.

Obamaspeaks of drone attacks killing “people who are on a list ofactive terrorists.” Whopossesses these lists?

Accordingto an excerptfrom Top Secret America: The Rise of the New AmericanSecurity State by Dana Priestand William M Arkin, there are three separate “kill lists.” TheNational Security Council (NSC) keeps one, the CIA does, and so doesthe military. Interestingly, the lists are not co-ordinated amongstthese agencies, one of the reasons being the 'legal' implicationsassociated with each individual hit.

If there is not consensual agreement across U.S. governmentdepartments, how can it 'legal' for the U.S. government as a whole tocarry out such attacks?

TheFBI have alist of wanted terrorists on their website. On this list, is one AnasAl-Liby. According to his summary, he has political asylum in the UK,and was known to be living here recently. Has anyone seen any dronesflying overhead?

Al-Liby may or may not be on any of the “hitlists” discussed above. He may or may not now reside in the UK. Butjust as the paradox of 'the body' and 'the mind' reveals thenon-compatible objectives of the 'war on terror', here we haveanother anomaly; the local and the transnational.

Anwar al-Awlaki (c) Muhammad ud-Deen

TheNew York Times partially coveredthis ambiguity in theirreport following a drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki. Thecrux of their commentaries centred on al-Awlaki's birth within theborders of the U.S.A., the assumption being that this is somehow moredisturbing that it happened to an American-born citizen.

Al-Qaedasuspects that threaten the national interests of the U.S.A. do notjust live in the FATA region of Pakistan. They live and walk amongst us all.

The U.S. government will not be deploying(non-intrusive?) drone strikes that target mosques in the U.S., atwhich suspected militant, jihadist Imams preach and their followerspray, because it is illegal. Whythen act as judge and jury just because al-Qaeda suspects liveelsewhere?

Ona day when TheGuardian reports that theU.S. 'no-fly' list of suspected terrorists has worryingly doubled ina year (including some 500 U.S. nationals), and on a day when a NATOreport indicates that the Taliban are winning the battle for the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan people, is it not time for theU.S. government to explain who they are targeting, and how this mightbe beneficial to national and global security?

Orare they afraid to do so because they will be acknowledging that theyare carrying out state-sponsored assassinations?

Crime mapping : revealing problem people and problem places?

2012-01-31T17:43:00.000Z

Home Secretary, Theresa May
(c) UK Home Office

It'sofficial, Whitehallis full of criminals.

Criminalactivity in the Whitehall area outstripped that of the riot centresof Tottenhamand Hackneyin December 2011. Over twice as many violent crimes took place inWhitehall, and possession, supply and production of drugs wasapproximately 5 times higher there, than in either Tottenham orHackney.

Timeto get more police out to regain control of the streets of Whitehall?Will residents, institutions and businesses in the area move out?Will parents choose to move in order to send their children to schoolelsewhere? Will it affect property prices? Will the area becomedisenfranchised and run down?

Ofcourse not. Exclusion and marginalisation is not for those who live,work and do business in this area.

Thereinlies the problem with ideas of crime mapping; spatially, it relies onnormative assumptions of crime to reaffirm 'problem people' and'problem places'.

Describedas “afeminist in kitten heels” by Amber Elliott, Theresa Maylaunched the new version of the UK's crime map. According to the BBC,the Home Secretary revealed thatthe new website would make the police more accountable:

"SinceOctober, the public have been able to use the police.uk website tosee how their force performs in a range of areas like crime rates,quality of service and victim satisfaction," ...

"[OnTuesday] we'll launch the next stage of crime mapping, in which we'llstart to map crimes to or near a range of public places.

"ByMay, crime maps will show the public what happens after a crime hasoccurred - what action the police took and what the criminal justiceoutcome was."

"Armedwith the information from those crime maps, people can attend theirlocal neighbourhood beat meeting and hold their local police toaccount for their performance," ...

"Thatwill help drive up local policing standards and help drive down localcrime."

The map will now cover 'crimes' committedin public places, such as nightclubs, subways, and parks.

As the statement above illustrates, theassumption is that people will view this map as a means to ascertainwhat crime is like in their (prospective) neighbourhood. Therefore,people will not be using this map to assess the likelihood of'crimes' close to where they work, thereby hiding other 'problemareas' and 'problem people'.

It also fails to address who victimsmight be and what recourse to help they have.

I do not know who the victims of thecrimes in Whitehall are. However, in amongst their number, I ampresuming that some will have been tourists, as this area contains anumber of well-known tourist sites.

Tourists consulting City of London map (c) David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA3.0

If this is a reasonable assumption tomake, then it seems that crime mapping has not been produced with themillions of tourist that visit our shores in mind, despite thefinancial benefits that they bring. How might they attend future meetings?Who are their local police force? How might they understand what ishappening with their case?

Whilst Theresa May asserts that crimemapping will drive up local policing standards and that local crimeswill be driven down, it is already being used, but it does not appearto have dramatically reduced the numbers of 'crimes' committed inWhitehall between December2010-December2011.

Perhaps more pertinently, given that thisis a critical criminology blog, is the fact that crime mapping usesnormative, state-defined notions of 'crime'. There are a whole hostof crimes that are not included on thismap. State, corporate and environmental crimes are most obviousin their absence.

Crime mapping does not include deathsin police custody, as internal inquiries reveal that no criminalaction need take place. It would not include the renditionof Libyan dissidents, because it is a civil case. Nor would itinclude thisfraud, as it too has been investigated internally, rather thancriminally. Let alone stateenvironmental contamination.

Although these 'crimes' took places inwhat might also considered public places, the latest crime mappingwebsite will exclude them as 'problem places'. In other words, wewill not see local police stations or financial institutionsidentified as 'criminal' on this map.

Moreover, normative, state-defined'crimes' include those UKrioters who have been criminalised following their involvement inthe UK riots; ordinarily, would they have been punished (thinkBullingdon club exploits)?

Some 'crimes' have dubious origins. Forexample, the constructionof anti-social behaviour orders, and their expansion from theiroriginal, intended use, have led to the prosecution of thousands ofyoung people.

The above demonstrates how the state,through its institutions such as the criminal justice system, has thepower to define and reconstruct what 'crime' is. By mapping the citythrough these definitions, certain places become identified as moreof a 'problem'.

Stigmatisation follows, as people andbusinesses move out, leading to a downturn in private investment inthe area, whilst government cuts hit welfare services that the moresocially and economically disadvantaged need. This is the real'crime'.

As my Whitehall example demonstrates,crime mapping in its present form is a nonsense.

Foreign Affairs Committee & The Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Human Rights Work 2010-2011

2012-01-27T11:31:00.000Z

Palace of Westminster at night (c) David Iliff

Acumbersome title, but by no means a cumbersome subject. I attendedthisdebate yesterday to ascertain how the Foreign and CommonwealthOffice (FCO) are promoting human rights across the world, and to seewhat concerns the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) have with theirwork.

Whatfollows below will more or less be a straight report of theproceedings, littered, here and there, with my initial thoughts andobservations. I will provide a more thorough analysis of this debate,and the FAC'sreport on the FCO's human rights work and the FCO'sresponse to it, in due course.

Tounderstand this debate, one needs to know that the term 'debate' doesnot adequately express what took place. There was no to-ing andfro-ing between the FAC and FCO; it was basically one long FACquestion session, answered by an FCO minister, Alistair Burt, at theend.

Thevarious cross-parliamentary FAC members raised their concerns, one byone, which Alistair Burt then answered in part via a written FCOstatement, before replying orally to some of the concerns raised inthe final few minutes. For those concerns that he could not answer,he will seek a written response from the Foreign Secretary.

Althoughallegedly annual, this was the first debate to take place on theFCO's human rights work in over 3 years. Some FAC members lamentedthe setting, and posited that it should have taken place in the Houseof Commons. Moreover, each of the FAC members expressed theirdispleasure that they had been allotted a total of 90 minutes only todebate this issue, in contrast to previous debates that had lasted180 minutes.

Humanrights records in Bahrain, Libya, Burma, Iran, China, Russia, SaudiArabia, Nigeria, Syria, Israel, Pakistan, Colombia and Sri Lanka wereall discussed in relation to the UK's diplomatic relationship withthem. Oddly, nobody debated the UK's relationship with the USA(Guantanamo, state-sponsored drone assassinations, the death penaltyetc.)

Ratherthan go through each of the members concerns, I will set out the mainconcerns below.

Arms

Why did the UK government sell arms to a number of regimes that, although were not using them against their own people at the time of sale, later went on to do so?
How did the UK government fail to consider the impact of these sales, and the potential human rights abuses, given the autocratic regimes (e.g. Bahrain) that they were selling to?
How could the UK government sanction an international arms fair at which (banned) cluster bombs were being exhibited?

Stop cluster bombs march (c) pxkls

Business

How does the UK use its burgeoning commercial relationship to engage China on human rights issues?
How does the Foreign Secretary “see trade and promotion of human rights as mutually reinforcing?” (quote taken from letter said to have been sent from Foreign Secretary to FAC Chair 25/01/2012)
How did the FCO omit Bahrain from their list of states that they had concerns over?

EuropeanCourt of Human Rights (ECHR)

Although in need of modernisation, why is the UK's rhetoric on the ECHR so openly dismissive?
Given this, how will the UK be able to do more than not downplay human rights issues in its discussions with other nations?

OtherFAC members called for the FCO to press Russia on Khodorkovskyand Magnitsky,China on its arrestsof pro-democracy demonstrators, and Sri Lanka to hold an independent tribunal looking at warcrimes committed during the civil war.

Amongstother points, Alistair Burt's response pointed to the help that theFCO had provided in reforming China's criminal justice system, theflexible approach the FCO had taken to revoking arms licenses duringthe Arab spring, and the human rights projects that the FCO continuedto fund across the globe. The FCO has also recently produced theseguidelines for overseas security and justice assistance.

BeforeI offer a short critique on this debate, it is important to note thatmany other citizens are not afforded the opportunity to see how theirgovernment works. In this respect, we are lucky to live in the UK.Equally, the role of the FAC, and other committees, institutions andorganisations, inside and outside, of parliament, demonstrate thedemocratic freedoms that we have.

However,these things on their own do not mean that all is well. The timeafforded this debate and the lack of one in the preceding 3 yearsillustrate a lack of concern for international human rights.

Alistair Burt (c) Sam Friedrich

Business-likein his performance, Alistair Burt offered little detail in hisresponses to the concerns that the FAC raised. It may be that the FCOhas done sterling human rights work on the Chinese criminal justicesystem, but that does not address why it imprisons its politicalcritics.

Whilstarms licences may have been revoked during the Arab spring, noexplanation was offered as to why we armed dubious regimes prior tothese demonstrations. The likes of Bahrainand SaudiArabia are not recognised as bastions of human rights. Just whowould we not sell arms to?

Myover-riding impression, which may admittedly be tainted by my ownexperiences of the FCO, was that this was a tick-box exercise. TheFCO provided generalised responses to show that it cares (to somedegree) about international human rights issues, without addressingcore concerns or the inherent contradictions and dichotomies of itsactions.

Ifthe FCO are to promote an UK vision of what constitutes human rightstoday, it needs to take a long hard look at what it, and othergovernment departments (e.g. UKTI) do, and change. We can notpossibly expect other nations to take us seriously on human rights,when we are only too willing to eschew them in return for financialgain.

Jay-Z and the (dis)empowering language of hip-hop

2012-01-20T16:05:00.001Z

Jay-Z (c) i am guilty

Thepost below will discuss how language is used in hip-hop. It willdiscuss words, lyrics and song titles that are not appropriate forthe workplace, or for a less mature audience. Please navigate awaynow if concerned.

Therapper Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce recently had a daughter, Blue Ivy Carter.The NMEreported that Jay-Z had written a poem indicating his unwillingnessto include the word “bitch” in his lyrics again.

Timepondered whether Jay-Z would be able to avoid using the term inhis public performances, given that it appeared in just over 50% ofhis previously recorded work. As it happens, Jay-Zhas denied that the poem is his, and so, there is no suggestionthat he will no longer use the term.

The Guardian published this article by Tricia Rose who writes from a feminist perspective on the harms associated withthe use of the word “bitch”, especially for black women. Thepiece raises issues that hold true of hip-hop and society at large,but it omits the way that female hip-hop artistes use the word“bitch.”

Lil'Kim is one such artiste who has widely used the word “bitch”in her music. Please note that I do not have access to Lil' Kim'sofficial lyrics, but her website referred me to the elyrics.net sitewhen I clicked on the 'lyrics' tab.

She has written tracks called “QueenBitch” and “It'sKim Bitches (Get That Money),” and has peppered other cuts suchas “SuckMy Dick” with the word. Take the chorus from the latter:

(Ayyo, come on here bitch)

Nigga FUCK YOU

(No, FUCK YOU BITCH)

Whoyou talking to?

(Why you actin' like a BITCH?)

Cause y'allniggas ain't shit

And if I was dude

I'd tell y'all to suck mydick

Lil' Kim (c) Emillio

Just as hip-hop has adopted the word “nigga,” remoulding it away from its original racist form. Lil' Kim is reconstituting the word “bitch,” through her use of vocabulary that is contextually relevant to her background and industry. I am not saying that I agree with her take on empowerment, but she is repossessing “bitch” within the sphere of hegemonic masculinity, thereby blunting the hostility associated with it.

Moreover, to portray hip-hop as onehomogenous genre responsible for sexism and a perceived hostility towoman is to ignore the many levels on which hip-hop is being playedout. It is of the social, the cultural, the historical, the local,and (increasingly) the global, because of the commercial.

In their paper, “Misogynyin Rap Music: A Content Analysis of Prevalence and Meanings,”Ronald Weitzer and Charles E. Kubrin (2009) note the difficultiesthat male artists have offering alternative takes on hip-hop. Theyrefer to a documentary, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes:

ByronHurt (2007) asks one aspiring rapper why rap artists focus onviolence and misogyny. The rapper freestyles a verse about whether hecould have been a doctor, a father, or police officer. He then says,‘‘That’s nice, but nobody wanna hear that right now. They don’taccept that shit.’’ When Hurt asks, ‘‘Who is ‘they’?’’the rapper answers, ‘‘The industry. They usually don’tgive us deals when we speak righteously.’’ (p.6, Weitzer and Kubrin, 2009)

This begs the question as to whether somehip-hop artists are 'for real'? Have they become actors playing apart? Do their lyrics genuinely portray their lives, or is it ascript given to them by their directors?

As hip-hop has become more mainstream, sohave the demands to meet a market that is more profitable than ever.It is the larger record companies that have the funds to perpetuatethese negative stereotypes, in their plugging and marketing of theirartists to mainstream commercial radio stations. As DJs haveset-lists that they have to adhere to, this means that the listeneris only listening to a narrow version of hip-hop culture.

In their analysis of misogyny in rap,Weitzer and Kubrin (2009) broke their findings down into 5 separatethemes. In the songs that they identified as misogynystic (22% of atotal of 403 tracks analysed), the use of the term “bitch” wascharacterised within 'naming and shaming'.

Beyonce Knowles (c) Asterio Tecson

Whilst 'naming and shaming' occurred in49% of those tunes found to be misogynystic, the 'sexualobjectification' of women appeared in 67% of them. This theme isrelevant to the whole of society, not just hip-hop, and contributesto hostility against women.

Jay-Z's wife, Beyonce, is a successfulmainstream pop/R&B artist. Within the music industry, she isconsidered influential. Have a look at herwebsite; I would argue that the sexual objectification here, andin her videos, is just as harmful to female equality as the overtlymasculine lyrics used in hip-hop.

Hip-hop is not to blame for hostilitytowards women. This existed long before hip-hop. True, hip-hop hasnot helped portray women in an equitable manner, but some females arecontesting and renegotiating this negativity, by taking ownership ofwords such as “bitch.”

In societies with an apparent abundanceof choice, equally it seems that we are constricted by it, left withlittle option but to consume what we are fed. Similarly, it appearsthat we try to narrow down our options when seeking to explain socialills, apportioning the blame to particular 'problem' people and/orcultures.

The roots of hostile and negativestereotyping of women are manifold; cultural, sexual objectificationand mainstream commercialism, amongst other issues not discussedhere. Furthermore, as consumers of it, we too are to blame.

Open secrets and the need to know

2012-01-19T08:59:00.001Z

Reprieve protest during visit by President George W. Bush (c) art makes me smile

Ona day when Wikipediaturned off its English language edition, in protest at the USStop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act(PIPA), it is somewhat ironic the the UKgovernment have pulled the plug on the Gibson inquiry.

Notthat the inquiry was ever likely to reveal all. Many critics,including human rights organisations and lawyers, were going toboycott the inquiry in protest at the government's decision to holdmuch of it in secret.

The investigation is now going to focus on documents that wererecently unearthed following the revolution in Libya. Would the UKgovernment have ditched the Gibson inquiry right now had these papersnot come to light? Following the investigation, is it really any morelikely that we will ascertain the truth(s) regarding the UK'scomplicity in rendition and torture?

Atevery turn the UK government appears to have been unwilling to revealthe extent of their knowledge of rendition and torture. The case ofBinyam Mohamed is especially relevant.

TheUK government tried to stopthe release of 'torture documents' that demonstrated theircomplicity in his torture, and when defeated in the High Court, theyappealed. And lost.

Allthis was done in the name of 'national security', yet all the Judgesdecided that any threat to 'national security' was not serious. Whichbegs the age old question: in whose name is 'national security' beingevoked?

Furthermore,the Judges ruled that there was overwhelming public interest indisclosing this material. Discourses of 'national security' and'public interest' are not that far removed from similar, concurrentdiscussions on UK libel laws.

Ian Hislop (c) Nikki Montefiore

Theselaws have been criticised for denying freedom of expression andfor permitting “libel tourism.”Anyone may be subject to legalaction by the rich and powerful, individuals and multi-nationalcorporations alike, if someone reads something critical of thisperson or organisation in the UK, regardless of where he, she, theyor it reside.

Assuch, UK libel laws can be perceived as forms of 'individualsecurity' and 'organisational security', protecting these privatemembers of the public and commercial operations from scurrilousrumour and/or genuine criticism. Indeed, many powerful, wealthyindividuals have used these laws to prevent stories being printedabout their private lives, on grounds that it is not in the publicinterest.

Interestingly,the UKgovernment is keen to change these laws as it is crushing freedomof expression in scientific and academic debate. The BBCreported that:

There will be a new requirement in the bill that a statement must have caused, or be likely to cause, substantial harm to someone's reputation, if it is to be considered defamatory.

Giventhe UK government's stance on renditions and torture, I find theirposition on libel laws quite hypocritical. As noted above, the UKgovernment has sought legal means of gagging those that havecriticised its means and methods of extracting information.

Aswith the wealthy, individual libel-seekers, these court cases costmoney. Unlike the wealthy, individual libel-seekers, these courtcases are paid for by the public. How much did it cost the UKgovernment in their legal actions against Binyam Mohamed?

Whilst the government is keen to raise the bar for those bringing libel cases against those that 'defame' them, the state will continue to act as Judge and Jury in its construction of public inquiries.Not only does it put an end to investigations when it chooses, as per Gibson, it also selects those that act as its arbiters.

Iam not questioning the integrity of those that conduct such reviews,but with their selection comes the kudos of having been chosen, andthe significant implications that this may have on a future careershould they find something unpalatable and detrimental to their'benefactor'. There are powerful, vested interests at stake here,something more than 'national security' and public interest.

Whilstsome secrets have become public, in equal measure they are beingsilenced by those that have the power to do so. The key to resuscitatingan open, truly democratic, UK is by opening up discussions on whatconstitutes public interest, so that we can then determine what'national security' might mean.

Forme, that interest means knowing what the UK has, or has not been,involved in, and acknowledging it. In knowing that we have nothing tohide, the UK government would actually make me feel more secure in mynation, and what it stands for.

Prediction for 2012: Dow, Anna Hazare and an Indian Summer

2011-12-24T12:54:00.003Z

Anna Hazare (c) Rajvaddhan

Republished in full from The Pryer.

As 2011 winds down and turns into 2012, my ‘mystic Mark’ crystal ball and I have been locked in deep, dark contemplation over where next for Time’s person of the year, The Protester. Next up, a move east and an Indian summer.

Many of you will be aware that the Olympics are due to take place in London next year. For India, Dow‘s sponsorship of the Olympic stadium prior to the games has been stirring up controversy and protest.

I have covered Dow’s suspect choice as London 2012 partners here, but their direct link to Union Carbide and the Bhopal disaster can not be underestimated in the current global context. Residents there continue to live with the effects of this disaster.

The tragic events in Bhopal have received international media attention and condemnation; more so recently, because of Dow’s sponsorship of the Olympics.

Dow’s international presence, and 'reputation', means that influential pressure groups are able to lobby governments and organisations in India and the UK, with greater effect. As such, the globalisation of Bhopal makes it a worthy focal point for the Indian public to register their discontent over a range of social malpractices regardless of caste or religion.

Ranjona Banerji lays the blame for the current protests against Dow at the feet of the politicians. Rather than evaluate her lacklustre criticism of Dow, she queries the whereabouts of monies received by government officials as compensation for families affected by Bhopal.

She also refers to the Lokpal bill. Authored by social activist Anna Hazare, this bill seeks to establish an independent authority with the powers to investigate politicians and government officials accused of corruption. Politicians are dragging their heels reaching a consensus on the bill, despite recent notable corruption scandals.

Lokpal bill protest (c) Pranav 21391

However, the lively and determined Hazare will not let things lie, and has gathered a young team around him to press regional governments to adopt it. Amongst the Indian people, he is recognised as a national icon in the fight against corruption. With legislative elections on the horizon, set against a backdrop of a predicted economic downturn, this makes Hazare a dangerous catalyst for protest.

Given India’s borders with the People Republic of China (PRC) and Pakistan, and the disputed regions around southern Kashmir, any protests may spark further regional uncertainty. This is especially important in light of the PRC government’s issues with the Uighur community in Xinjiang province, and reports of their deployment of troops to quell rebellions in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

So there we have it. A global protest movement, local social grievances and forthcoming elections, all filtered through a focus on the Olympics, with a charismatic campaigner ready to put his life at risk for his nation’s people.

An Arab spring will bloom into an Indian summer. Maybe.

Luis Suarez, racist language & punishment

2011-12-21T15:59:00.002Z

Luis Suarez (c) Ilya Khokhlov

FollowingLuizSuarez's punishment by the Football Association (F.A.) for using“insulting words”, which included references to the colour ofPatrice Evra, I am going to begin this post by setting out thefollowing quotes and statements on this issue:

Todayis a very difficult and painful day for both me and my family.

(LuizSuarez on Twitter, 20/12/2011)

Verydisappointed with today's verdict.

(Kenneth(Kenny) Dalglish on Twitter, 20/12/2011)

LiverpoolFootball Club is very surprised and disappointed with the decision ofthe Football Association Commission to find Luis Suarez guilty of thecharges against him...

(LiverpoolFC statement, 20/12/2011)

Suarez..toldmedia in Uruguay that he "called him [Evra] something histeam-mates at Manchester call him".

(BBCFootball post, 20/12/2011)

Itis quite an unbelievable statement and a harsh statement. Suarezcould be suspended for 20% of the season - it's devastating forLiverpool

(MarkLawrenson, BBC Football Sport Expert, 20/12/2011)

Fromwhat I understand from the likes of Liverpool-kop.com,the word Suarez used to abuse Patrica Evra was “negrita.” BBCSport's, TimVickery, has written a good post on the use of similar words andtheir context in Uruguayan, and South American, football and culture.

Thecontext of the use of “insulting words” appears to have been keyin this judgment. The incident that seems to be relevant, happenedwhen Suaraz and Evra were tussling for a ball towards the bye-lineand corner flag.

Fromthe TV cameras, it appears that Suarez was initially upset with Evrafor what he thought was a dive. The crowd appear to have agreed and were baying at Evra. The two players can then be seen exchanging words, withboth players appearing to be unhappy with each other.

Patrice Evra (c) Gordon Flood

Afterboth players were called to speak to the referee, Suarez put his handon the top of Evra's head. Evra took offence to this gesture andSuarez said something to him, which again woundd Evra up. Evrawas obviously upset, as he was then booked.

Above,Suarez reckons that Evra's team-mates call him something that mightbe the equivalent of “negrita.” Do they? Does Glen Johnson, theonly other black player I know of on Liverpool's first team getcalled “negrita” in training? If so, do Liverpool FC condonethis, and if so, why?

Whilstarguments are made for Suarez on grounds of the cultural differencesbetween English football and Uruguayan football, Suarez has beenplaying here since January 2011. Prior to this, he played for AjaxAmsterdam from 2007. The cultural differences between Holland and theUK are less wide.

Theresponse to this punishment by Suarez, Liverpool FC and notedpundits, however, is seriously lacking in understanding being a victim of racial abuse.

Suarezrefers to it being a tough day for him, and Liverpool FC and Dalglishare very disappointed. Was it a tough day for Evra too when he wasdisparaged? Was he disappointed at being slurred by Suarez? NeitherSuarez, nor Liverpool FC, have shown any dignity in their reactionsto this decision.

WhilstLiverpool FC claim that nobody heard the remarks other than Evra, itdoes not mean that they did not occur. As noted above, it was verynoisy in the area that these words appear to have been uttered.Besides Suarez admitted to Uruguayan media that he had saidsomething. Perhaps he can be brave to tell us what he saidto Evra.

Asfor Lawrenson's statement, it is nothing short of diabolical.Referring to the length of suspension, and the harm that it causesLiverpool FC in their vain quest to reach the dizzying heights offifth place, it demonstrates what he knows about the harmsassociated with racial abuse.

Moreerudite commentary on the F.A.'s punishment comes from the likes ofRuebenHazell and LesFerdinand, as players who have been on the receiving end of racismin football.

Itwas only last month that we were up in arms over the racistrant by a woman travelling on a London-Croydon tram. She hassince been to court over the incident; Suarez has not.What might be the cultural context of her rant, i.e. the socio-economic reasons as to whyshe chose to use the awful words that she did, will not be acceptedas a defence.

Whilstwe regard Premiership footballers, and clubs, as celebrities, and therefore beyond reproach, neither football, nor those within it, areseparate to society. Football reaches out to local communities and beyond; it is both in the community and of the community, in which we are all supposedly bound by the same laws, rules andregulations.

However,like major corporations and other powerful institutions, the FA hasspecial dispensation to punish the socialharms caused by their members, whilst ordinary members of the public have to face an inflexible criminal justice system.

Suarez and Liverpool FC should count themselves lucky.

Aidan Burley & the face of crime (part 2)

2011-12-19T09:33:00.001Z

Aidan Burley MP (c) altogetherfool

Further to my post on Margaret Moran and the inequalities inherent in criminal justice systems, it seems apposite to mention the (in)action of Aidan Burley, Conservative MP for Cannock Chase.

From what the papers say, the objective of those attending the party was:

"We are trying to intimidate as many people as possible. A lot have been quite offended, especially one guy who was both Jewish and gay."

Another member of the party allegedly toasted the ideology of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. This makes Burley an accessory to inciting to intimidation, and potentially hate crimes.

Returning to the UK riots, and those who incited them on Facebook, even though none occurred as a result of their actions, why is it that someone in political power is facing nothing more than an internal inquiry into his conduct into something that caused harm?

What took place in France is little different to what took place on the internet. The objective in both cases was to intimidate and incite. Whilst one might argue that these incidents took place in separate geographical locations (France and the UK), I would counter this.

The incitements to riot took place online. This is a space not confined to geographical boundaries, as Brown (2003) makes clear:

"Cyberspace can not be treated as a neutral space, or as a definitvely different space, but neither can it grasped by existing notions of crime and the law."

Besides, as Wall (2007) points out we have two separate ways of policing cyberspace. Distal (offline), as in traditonal, conventional policing and proximal (online) through the likes of internet service providers and community vigilante actions. Therefore, this space is different, in that it has different crimes, bound by more than just the UK's criminal justice system.

Buchenwald disabled Jews (c) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Moreover, who is to say that the crime has stopped? As a publicly elected official, I am assuming that Burley represents constituents from diverse backgrounds, with different needs. I wonder how the Jewish, homosexual, disabled communities in Cannock Chase feel about having an M.P. representing their interests, yet one who is willing to condone intolerance against their groups.

I understand that what happened in France is illegal, although not in the UK. Given our recent political spats, it is possible that Burley will criminal charges. If he were to, then beware the political and mainstream media fallout.

By recreating ideas of an 'us' and 'them' and a 'right' and 'wrong', we will no doubt hear that this incident was not really a crime, just because under UK law it is not. As such, he would have people in powerful positions distancing him from being constructed as a criminal.

Due to these unequal power relations in society, the notion of crime is no longer an adequate term for understanding the experience that victims suffer and face. Ideas of 'social harm' would seem to be more appropriate for determining what constitutes what we call a crime.

Because as things stand, this case is just another example of what the face of crime looks like.

Fighting freedom or freedom fighting: Newt Gingrich & Palestine

2011-12-18T01:08:00.000Z

Meagermind (c) DonkeyHotey

Originally published in full here on The Pryer.

Republican frontrunners vying for thePresidential nomination for next year's election, including Cain,Romney, Perry and Bachmann have all dined at the dunce's trough overthe last few months.

TheGuardian reportsthat Newt Gingrich referred to Palestinians as an “invented”people and “terrorists” last weekend.

Originally populated by Native Americans,then European colonists, the United States of America (USA) of todayhas been transformed by further migrations of peoples from LatinAmerica, Africa and elsewhere. Borders and boundaries have beenredrawn, so that what constitutes the USA now looks different to howit did 200 years ago.

Each nation, and the nationals within it, is/are invented. What Gingrich says is true, but it is theway that he uses this idea that bothers me. Would he also agree that terrorism and the 'war on terror' is invented too?

The notion ofa Palestinian homeland has been at the very heart of the 'war onterror' since 9/11. Osama Bin Laden refered to it in the secondof his fatwas.

Gingrich's use of an “invented”people, and his association with ideas of terrorism is somehowmeant to make the justification for a homeland less deserving.However, it is precisely this issue, still as yet unresolved, andrarely cited as an imperative for bringing the 'war on terror' toan end, that makes Gingrich an ignoramus.

The USA suffered a terrible loss on 9/11.This superpower and (self-appointed) arbiter of international justice sinceWorld War II, had an opportunity to reflect, re-imagine andre-construct itself and what it stood for in the 21^stCentury.

Why had this happened? Had the USA harmedanyone? If so who, and what steps should it take to get it right?What would be the best means of securing justice and a futuresecurity?

For many of us, it appears that the USAconcluded that that this was the deed of irrational terrorists solely intent on destroying the American freedom and its way oflife. The most effective means of dealing with this threat andeffecting justice, it seems, was to use its military power.

The 'war on terror' began. In truth,terror was merely being exported.

Montage War on Terror (c) poxnar/US Army/Navy

According to the latestreport from the National Counterrorism Center:

Over 11,500 terroristattacks occurred in 72 countries in 2010, resulting in approximately50,000 victims, including almost 13,200 deaths. Although the numberof attacks rose by almost 5 percent over the previous year, thenumber of deaths declined for a third consecutive year, dropping 12percent from 2009...
Attacks in Afghanistanand Iraq rose in 2010. Almost a quarter of worldwide attacks occurredin Iraq, a slight increase from 2009, although deaths fell for thefourth consecutive year...
Thefewest incidents in 2010 were reported in the Western Hemisphere,where both attacks and deaths declined byroughly 25 percent. Western Hemisphere attacks fell from 444 in 2009to 340 in 2010 and deaths fell from 377 in 2009 to 279 in 2010...
Muslims continued to bearthe brunt of terrorism based on the fact that most terrorist attacksoccurred in predominantly Muslim countries.

What is evident is that terrorist incidents are on the increase. By focusing its 'waron terrorism' in Afghanistan and Iraq, the USA has used itsmilitary power to enforce a transfer of terror on civilians whopreviously neither suffered from it, and are less able to withstandit.

They may have had less freedom, ifyou define freedom in its politico-democracy cloak, butequally, they have less freedom to walk around safely; theyhave less life security. A by-product of the 'war on terror' is that it has wrought more terror, not less.

Terrorism has not gone away, justbecause the US government has relocated it, and it will notnecessarily remain relocated. Current ideas of western citizenship comewith responsibilities, as well as rights. Gingrich's comments areirresponsible.

It is a shame that those in power talkabout freedom so vacantly as to mock those that those do not have it.If Islamic Jihadists hate us for our freedom and our way oflife, then Gingrich is adding fuel to the fire.

Margaret Moran & the face of crime

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000Z

Margaret Moran MP (c) Richard Lea Hair

Yesterday, TheGuardian reported thatformer Labour M.P. Margaret Moran, accused of falsely claiming£80,000 in expenses, and her legal team would be making anapplication for a “nolle” to the attorney general. This wouldallow the case against her to be discontinued on exceptional grounds.

Ifgranted, Moran would not stand trial. Instead, a jury would assessthe merits of the case in her absence at a trial of issue. JimSturman, her Q.C., stated:

"Theseproceedings are a continual threat to her life, not just to herliberty, and the experts agree that she is unfit to plead."

Threepyschiatric experts have evaluated Moran and all come to theconclusion that she is unfit to plead. Sturman himself talks of hisonly meeting with Moran, in which she cried during the wholeconference, and refers to a previous hearing at Westminstermagistrates court, in which she sobbed uncontrollably in the dock.

Iunderstand that it is considered more beneficial for defendants toattend their trial so that they can defend themselves moreadequately. However, with the team that she has on board, the publicdisplay of her illness, and people's general disdain for M.P.'sexpenses abuse, I wondered whether her absence would harm her case.

Ifnot, do others with less (financial/political?) clout have access tothe same recourse?

Kelly(2000), amongst others, has conducted research into links betweeninequality and crime. The Ministryof Justice report on the UK riots reveal the depth of the linksbetween social exclusion, inequality, poverty and transgressions ofthe law.

35%of adult rioters were claiming out of work benefit, almost threetimes the national average (12%)
64%of child rioters lived in the country's most social excluded areas
66%of child rioters were classified as having special education needs,again three times the national average (22%)

Socialexclusion, inequality and poverty are also linked to mentalhealth problems. Therefore, if we accept that the majority ofthose passing through our criminal justice system are from poorersocio-economic backgrounds, then we also have to accept that manywill pass through the system with similar issues to those of MargaretMoran.

Moranis using a Q.C. Q.C.s cost a lot more than less qualified barristers.By using a more prominent, and presumably, more knowledgeablebarrister, this will have enabled Moran to pursue this course ofaction.

Furthermore,Moran was examined by three psychiatrists over a period of two years.Again, this will have cost a lot of money. All this will be quitedifferent to the legal (aid?) access that those living in povertywill have recourse to.

Looted Sainsburys local, Chalk Farm (c) hughepaul

Lookingback at Sturman's statement regarding his client, it is difficult tofind any reason why Moran should receive better treatment than thechildren who have been criminalised as a result of their wrongdoingsduring the summer riots. There is a large gulf between the allegedcrimes of Moran and child rioters.

Notonly will these children have had emotional needs, not dissimilar toMoran's, but arguably this is a greater threat to their life, becausetheir criminalisation threatens their life chances; unemployment,poorer physical health, further mental health problems, and anearlier death.

Dueto her influence, Moran will be able to distance, and anonymiseherself, by her absence at her trial, yet children have losttheir right to anonymity in the UK criminal justice system. Thosein power want us to rememberwho 'criminals' are, regardless of their age and the protectionthat we should afford them.

Iam minded of Reiman's 'pyrrhic defeat theory'. This maintains thatthe way in which the criminal justice system, and criminal justicepolicy, works is to perpetuate the myth that 'criminal activities'are solely associated 'with the dangerous acts of the poor' (Reiman,1998).

Inother words, a burgeoning prison population, peopled by those frompoorer socio-economic backgrounds, is a loss leader for governments,because it diverts the public's attention away from crimes committedby the powerful.

Thiscase is just another example of what the face of crime looks like.

The Newburgh Four: labelling and terrorism in the U.S.A.

2011-12-13T17:45:00.000Z

Federal Bureau of Investigation Seal (c) United States Department of Justice

Iwrite this in the knowledge of an attackthat has just taken place in Belgium. Regardless of whether it betermed a terrorist incident, or for the reasons behind it, this postis even more relevant for it. My sympathies go to those affected bythe attack.

Inyesterday's Guardian,PaulHarris reported onthe NewburghFour who were convicted of a terrorist plot in June. According tothe report, the four men had been entrapped by an FBI informant whohad offered the men life-changing amounts of money in return forcarrying out the attack. Quite apart from the rather shady way thatthe FBI went about their “investigation”, there was littlesupporting evidence that these men would ordinarily have carried outthe attacks, had the FBI not acted as a catalyst for it. Judge Colleen McMahon is reported as saying:

"Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr Cromitie, a man whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope," she said in court. She added: "I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition."

Incriminological thought, entrapment, or to use a more law enforcementfriendly version of this term, stingsthat target problem people and problem places are associated withideas of repeat victimisation and the prevention of future crimes.Targeting problem people and problem places relies on knowing whothese people are and where they congregate. In this case, the stinginvolved targeting prospective “terrorists” who congregate inmosques. It might be a fair assumption to make that this type ofsting is an obvious means of deterring future “terrorist”attacks, based on what we read, see and hear in the mainstream media.However, to understand “terrorism”, we need to rewind.

Thedevastating and tragic events of 9/11 broadcast the idea that“terrorists” and “terrorism” are largely associated withextremists, notably Islamic extremists. Further attacks have takenplace in Indonesia, Spain and the UK. Every now and again, we arewarned of impending “terrorist” attacks. Hence, three distinctwords, Islam, extremism and terrorism, seem to be harnessed togetherto the extent that even aprospective President of the U.S.A. can't help but label Palestiniansas terrorists.

Mandela on Israeli Apartheid (c) Carlos Latuff

Considerthe term “convicted terrorist.” What do they look like? Comingfrom the UK, I am immediately minded of the once convicted, sinceproven innocent, Irish “terrorists” including the BirminghamSix and the GuildfordFour. In terms of the U.S.A., I think of JohnWalker Lindh, RichardReid and TimothyMcVeigh. Regardless of whether justice was enacted correctly, allwere tried in a court of law.

Infact, McVeigh is called an “American Terrorist” in the biographyof his life. Why the need to label him differently? What purpose doesit serve? Surely, it matters not whether he is American, andethnically white, yet it seems that the authors felt the need toqualify McVeigh to their audience; he is not any “terrorist”, heis different. Different to “others.”

TheU.S. government chose to kill Osama Bin Laden rather than try him. It has failed to try any ofthose it holds responsible for the “terrorism” committed on 9/11,choosing instead to detain inmates at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely,awaiting affirmation of their label. It is difficult to seehow we have come to one particular view of “terrorists” and“terrorism”, when those that have been convicted of “terrorist”attacks represent such diverse ethnic, cultural and economicbackgrounds.

Asstated above, entrapment/sting operations are associated with repeatvictimisation and crime prevention. Considering that the vastmajority of the 9/11 pilots came from Saudi Arabia, it makes littlesense in terms of repeat victimisation to target Muslim communitieswithin the U.S.A.. Meanwhile, Muslim communities in the U.S.A.continue to be labelled and perceived as “terrorists.” They haveto put up with being targeted in sting operations, and then losingfamily to long term prison sentences for dubiously constructed“crimes”.

Bytaking a hardline stance against these communities, based on littlefact, thegovernment threatens to create further division within the U.S.A.over its tactics. In turn, it may create extremist sympathiserswithin these communities that see the U.S.A. as Islamphobic. Far frompreventing crime and “terrorism”, the U.S.A. might be fuellinginternal “terrorist” acts of the future, thereby ensuring thatthe dominant idea of who “terrorists” are comes true.

Make it green: London 2012 and 'greenwashing'

2011-11-29T12:40:00.001Z

Think green (c) Melissa Goldstein

Afinal post on London 2012, this time on 'greenwashing'.For those unaware of this concept, it is similar to 'whitewashing'.Greenwashing tends to take place when an organisation/enterprisemakes a big deal of their green credentials, and promotes aparticular aspect of their ethical commitment to the environment.Simultaneously, many organisations and enterprises continue to damage it in other ways.

WhilstLOCOGand the Commissionfor a Sustainable London (CSL) 2012consider that LOCOG are well on their way to meeting theirsustainability objectives, these reports and reviews are somewhatbiased. CSL arepart funded by LOCOG, as well as others with a commercial interest inLondon 2012, and they report to the Chair of LOCOG, Lord Coe. Thismakes CSL's claim to independence a little far-fetched. Therefore, Iam going to use the concerns raised in my last post to guide this.

As London2012's Sustainability Plan: Towards a One Planet 2012 (hereaftercalled The Plan)evinces on page 23:

Theunique opportunity afforded by the Games is to inspire large numbersof people to participate and actively endeavour to be moresustainable...

...andour call for people and organisations to help us make the Games moresustainable by taking their own small steps to reduce their owncarbon footprint.

Thisis the rationale behind the Team Green Britain launched by EDFEnergy, a London 2012 Sustainability Partner, in July 2009...

EDFhave been advertising this project for a couple of years now. Theyhave made a particular point of projecting their green credentialsonto the British public by using a green Union Jack to symbolise itsassociation with us and to our environment. To embed the idea evenfurther, they offer prizesto schools that go green.

However,as MaxineNewlandspoints out in her well-written critique of London 2012 and its greencredentials:

However,this flag was already the logo of Ecotricity, an alternative energycompany providing electricity from renewables such as wind and wave.Since 1996 it had been using a green union jack to signal greenpower. The co-opting of an already established image opens EDF and,by proxy, the London Olympic Organising Committee (LOGOC) toaccusations of greenwashing. The logic of the accusation is asfollows: any organisation which borrows another’s icon may also bejust borrowing its values for the sake of a strong image.

MaxineNewlands also refers to EDF's decision to pull out of using a windturbine to power the games because of concerns over the financialbenefits of using wind power. A decision that she thinks led to theODA reducing their sustainability targets from 20% to 15%. in 2006.Perversely, given what happened next, the wind turbine contract wasgiven to Ecotricity.

BPembarked on greenwashing their image overa decade ago. Formerly, British Petroleum, now, Beyond Petroleum,with a nice change of logo, they adopted the words used by theenvironmental movement in their advertisements to showcase their moveinto environmental sustainability. Yet Greenpeacenoted that BP had only invested 6.8% of its funding on alternativeenergy sources in 2008, with 93% spent extracting oil, gas and otherfossil fuels. BP continue to contradict their green ethos, in theirefforts to dredge more of the earths's natural resources held in tarsands. The methods used in the extraction of crude oil fromthese sands is more harmful and dangerous to the environment thanconventional forms.

Ecomagination windmill birdsnest stadium (c) kafka4prez

Withoutany hint of irony, GEhave gone straight to the heart of environmental discourse ,entitling their PR/advertising campaign, “Ecomagination.” Alongwith printed press advertisements depicting green leaves emanatingfrom power plants, GE have even launched a separate ecomaginationwebsite. Yet, as the global executive director of advertising andbranding at GE, Judy Hu, remarkedto Brandweek (now Adweek) in 2006, just 1 year after the launch ofEcomagination:

“Greenis green as in the colour of money,”...

..“Itis a business opportunity, and we believe we can increase our revenuebehind these Ecomagination products and services.”

Theclear motive in this statement is money and profit. Not theenvironment.

In2009, TheWall Street Journal reported that on GE's relative successwith its Ecomagination products. However, the report noted that thedefinition of the 'green' products that it was selling as part of theEcomagination line was widening:

...Ortake nuclear power. Threeyears ago,none of GE’s reactors were part of the “ecomagination” energylineup; today both “Advanced Boiling Water Reactors” and“Economic Simplified Boiler Water Reactors” are part of themix...

Movingsuch products under a green platform is at the least misleading. Atits worst, it represents the co-opting of the nice, green,environmental ideas that you and I have for the good of the planet,but using them specifically to hide behind (Ecomagination) togenerate further profits for GE.

Aswell as their choice of partners, I am concerned that London 2012 is'greenwashing' from within. In their introduction to The Plan on page5, LOCOG write:

The London 2012 sustainability story is guided by the theme of ‘Towards a one planet Olympics’. Derived from the WWF/BioRegional concept of One Planet Living®1, this recognises that as a global society, we are living beyond the regenerative capacity of our planet.

Notethat London 2012's idea of sustainability is only derived fromthe WWF/Bioregional concept of One Planet Living. The themes thatLOCOG have chosen are used quite differently to those put forward in the WWF and Bioregional principles. LOCOGappear to be using them specifically in a local context, ignoring theglobal idea behind sustainability, that it ebbs and flow from thelocal to the global and back again. Whilst I accept that neither theWWF nor Bioregional are corporate partners, I find it odd thatneither they nor London 2012 feature much on each others sites, giventhe supposed importance of The Plan. There are no logos, no links,few headlines. Why not?

Sebastian Coe (c) Mohan

Justbecause you say that you are conforming to sustainable development,does not mean that you are. LOCOG's choice of sustainable partners,in particular EDF, BP and GE, is worrying given their histories ofabuse and their hijacking of environmental discourse. To make thegames sustainable, LOCOG should have chosen partners who genuinelypromote sustainable development. Equally, they should terminate thecontracts of those companies who are granted partner status, yetcontinue to abuse this (one) planet.

London 2012: sustainable partners?

2011-11-26T12:00:00.000Z

London 2012 (c) www.london2012.com -
the use of this image does not constitute
an endorsement of what follows

Following my recent post on London 2012 and Dow, I have decided to look at other partners that the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) are using. As LOCOG are using ideas of sustainability, this article will focus on their sustainability partners.

I am using London 2012's Sustainability Plan: Towards a One Planet 2012 (hereafter called The Plan) as the guiding framework for my analysis and comment. The plan was approved initially in June 2006 before receiving final approval in December 2009. LOCOG chose its six sustainability partners between July 2007 and November 2009 - i.e. when the plan was being finalised. As such, this makes it the most relevant document through which to assess London 2012's sustainability. The plan is based around 5 priority themes; climate change, waste, biodiversity, inclusion and healthy living.

The six sustainability partners that were chosen are BMW, BP, BT, Cisco, EDF and GE. EDF was chosen to be the first London 2012 partner. Page 22/23 of The Plan on climate change notes the importance of influencing change in behaviours:

...This is entirely in keeping with the London 2012 vision and our call for people and organisations to help us make the Games more sustainable by taking their own small steps to reduce their own carbon footprint...

EDF have recently been fined £1.3 million by a French court, and two of its employees have been sent to jail, after hiring a company called Kargus Consultants to spy on Greenpeace over several years. I wonder whether they measured the extra energy they used, and paid for the carbon emissions as part of this fine. Akin to the ongoing hacking case with News International, I also wonder whether more people within EDF knew of this 'crime'.

EDF are a major player in the nuclear industry. In 2009, they were accused of secretly dumping uranium in Siberia. EDF are due to build the next generation of nuclear power plants in the UK. The Guardian reported that thanks to their lobbying efforts, they have now been granted what amounts to a taxpayer's subsidy for the disposal of nuclear waste. Corporate Watch also note safety issues at the Areva EPR reactor in France. This reactor is similar to the proposed new generation of reactors to be built in the UK. Perhaps there is something to this, given the explosion at an EDF owned nuclear waste plant in France two months ago. EDF fall some way short of sustainability. climate change, waste and healthy living.

As for the most unreliable sustainable candidate and partner, BP surely has to take the biscuit. Besides their toxic mismanagement and cover-up of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP have have a long history of pollution. Prior to Deepwater, the last 2 major incidents took place at the Texas City Refinery in 2005 and Prudhoe Bay in 2006. In both cases, BP sought to deflect the blame and cover-up evidence, yet in both cases they were found to have been trying to minimise costs at the expense of human and animal life.

Along with other oil giants, BP have had to pay settlements to public water providers in the USA, because an additive that they used in their process contaminated the groundwater. The lawsuit alleged that BP, and others, would have known of the detrimental effects of this chemical.

Page 47 of The Plan states:

Inclusion underpins all other sustainability themes – poorer people and minority groups are the first to feel the effects of climate change and declining biodiversity – and has a particularly close link to health. Deprivation also remains a strong determinant of ill-health. It responds to the One Planet Living® principles of health and happiness, equity and fair trade, and culture and heritage.

Platform supply vessels battle the blazing remnants of the off
shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon (c) US Coast Guard

This being the case, and with BP's less than favourable sustainability history, how did they ever get the gig? Following Deepwater, why do they remain a sustainable partner? If anyone from LOCOG happens upon this article, could you please explain how BP were chosen as a sustainability partner, and why they continue to represent London 2012.

Polluting the earth's waterways has also been a problem for GE. Over a number of years, GE polluted the Hudson river, killing off a large number of fish in the river, although some have evolved. For humans, the primary health risk came from eating contaminated fish, as the pollutants are considered carcinogenic, and have been linked to other diseases and disorders. There have been problems with the clean up too, as GE have failed to follow U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines in removing sufficient volumes of the toxins.

Referring to Page 41 of The Plan:

Biodiversity is essential to the global economy, serving a vital function in climate change mitigation and adaptation, watershed management, provision of sustainable natural resources and enhancing the quality of life that we enjoy.

This ties in with ideas of healthy living. In 2008, The New York Times reported that workers employed by GE, involved in a joint venture with Xiamen Topstar Lighting in China, were unaware that they were working with mercury. Furthermore, the report by Policy Matters Ohio indicated that Chinese labour laws were being flouted; workers were working longer than the maximum allowed, they were not being paid overtime, they were not given salary slips and had to forego a month's wages if they chose to quit without permission. Again, why were GE chosen to represent London 2012?

Sourcewatch note that Cisco purchase their products from Tyco Electronics in China, who have also been accused of similar malpractices. BT have a partnership with Bezeq International who provide telecommunications to Israeli settlements and the West Bank. As for BMW, the last company to be granted the coveted sustainable partner status, I have found nothing that might suggest any wrongdoing on their part.

So what does all this tell us about London 2012, sustainability and the Olympics?

The core promise of the London 2012 Games – as expressed in the final bid presentation to the IOC in Singapore in 2005 – is to connect young people to sport and the Olympic and Paralympic values.

So write LOCOG on Page 77 of The Plan. The Olympic and Paralympic values are respect, excellence, friendship, courage, determination, inspiration and equality. Given that LOCOG chose EDF, BP and GE as sustainability partners, there is little to suggest that London 2012 fits in to the Olympic and Paralympic ideals of respect, friendship and equality. Nor would I call these partners excellent, courageous or inspirational, although I would acknowledge that they are determined. Determined to profit from loss, and determined to profit from London 2012.

British Human Rights abuses in Iraq

2011-11-24T11:59:00.001Z

Iraq war protest poster (c) Random McRandomhead

Reprinted in full from The Pryer

Over100 Iraqi civilians have won their case in the UK Court of Appealfor an public inquiry to be held into alleged abuses they suffered atthe hands of British military personnel. This follows an earlierdecision that a public hearing was not necessary because the UKgovernment had set up the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) tolook into these allegations. Today's ruling questions theindependence of IHAT. But more than this, we should be concerned withthe role of UK government, its tentacles of office and their effortsto bypass human rights legislation. In this case, the Ministry ofDefence (MoD) and G4S.

Backin June, the BBCreported that IHAT had conducted interviews with just one of thealleged victims in the first 7 months of its work. Furthermore, thecomplainants and those representing them claim that investigators arenot following agreed guidelines in gathering their evidence. Whilstthe independence of IHAT has rightly been questioned, given that someof the investigators had served with a military police unitresponsible for detaining Iraqi civilians, of the 83 members of staffin IHAT, 38 have been provided by G4S.

G4Shave a rather checkered history, including their handling of peopleof different ethnic origins. Re-branded several times over the lastdecade (Group 4, Group 4 Falck, Group 4 Securicor), an industrialtribunal upheld a racial discrimination claim against Group 4submitted by a job applicant. ThePrisons and Probations Ombudsman found evidence of several racistincidents involving employees of Group 4 Falck running the Yarls Wooddetention centre, including one assault that they had failed toinvestigate properly. Only last year, 3G4S employees were arrested in connection with the death of JimmyMubenga, an Angolan refugee, who was being escorted on a flight fromthe UK. A year before in Australia, a coronerfound that G4S security guards had contributed to the death of anAboriginal man who had been arrested for drink driving.

Someof the Iraqi complainants have alleged rape. Any interview wouldrequire an investigator to be compassionate and culturally sensitive- not characteristics associated with G4S. This begs the question asto why the UK government, and in this case, the MoD, would contractG4S in the commission of obtaining evidence from Iraqi nationals. Arethe MoD afraid of what a public inquiry might find out?

Ifthe public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa is anything to go by,then yes. In September, TheTelegraph reported:

Theinquiry, chaired by Sir William Gage, a retired judge, found theMinistry of Defence guilty of a “corporate failure” to upholdbasic standards by allowing rules to go “largely forgotten”.While clearing the soldiers’ unit, the 1st Bn Queen’s LancashireRegiment, of having an “entrenched culture of violence”, he saidit was clear the abuses were not a one-off.

Consequently,lawyers for families of victims may yet prosecute the 19 soldiersimplicated by the report, despite the fact that several had alreadybeen acquitted in military tribunals. This backs up the concernsraised in today's judgement regarding the independence of suchinvestigations.

I donot condone the actions of any military personnel who mayhave, or may not have, abused Iraqi civilians, but the MoD, and theUK government, should be held more accountable for these abuses. ThatSir William Gage found the MoD guilty of corporate failure to upholdbasic standards of engagement, implies that human rights abuses aretolerated institutionally. That being the case, and given thatsoldiers become institutionalised within a hierarchical atmosphere inwhich they have to follow the orders of their seniors, is it asurprise that some troops may have committed human right abuses? Morepertinently, if human rights abuses are tolerated institutionally, isit right that they stand alone accused of human rights abuses?

Thelegality of the UK government's intervention in Iraq is debatable.Although this is not the space for this argument, it has implicationsfor those who have suffered abuse and for those soldiers accused ofabuse. We should not forget that the MoDhas been found wanting in ensuring that troops got the resourcesthat they needed. For families of some UK soldiers who were killed inIraq, the MoDhas been found guilty of negligence. In other words, soldierswere fighting on behalf of an UK government who failed to supply themwith what they needed.

Fromfighting negligenceclaims by nuclear test veteranswho suffered ill health, including cancer, to contaminatingDalgety Bay,the MoD cares little for its troops or the British public. Perhapsthe final paragraph of TheTelegraph articleis most telling:

Despitethe criticism, Dr Fox rejected a key recommendation in the report fora blanket ban on so-called “harsh” questioning methods, warningthat lives could be put at risk unless the Forces could deploy all“necessary” techniques.

Whythen should soldiers stand alone accused of human rights abuses, whenthe UK government sponsors and tolerates abuse in the UK andelsewhere?

London 2012: Condoning corporate crime - update

2011-11-13T01:03:00.001Z

Wall painting outside Union Carbide site, Bhopal, India (c) Yann

Just a short update.

Although it should be visible, I am not sure whether my additional comment to the last post can be seen by all. Therefore, please see below:

Further to the above article, the Editor of CrimeTalk has sent me the following link to Pearce and Tombs' criminological reassessment of the Bhopal tragedy:

http://www.crimetalk.org.uk/library/section-list/38-frontpage-articles/469-bhopal-reassessment-part4.html

Amongst others, I have been in touch with Lorraine Close from www.bhopal.org, who has lodged an earlier petition on www.change.org re. Dow and the Olympics. Please click here to sign this petition in order so that we can co-ordinate a response. I am about to edit the link to my earlier post.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your weekend.

London 2012: Condoning corporate crime

2011-11-09T12:42:00.000Z

Bhopal-Union Carbide memorial (c) Luca Frediani

I was disgusted to read this story in The Independent the other day. Dow Chemical Company (Dow), the majority shareholder of Union Carbide who are allegedly culpable for the deaths of 25,000 people in Bhopal in 1984, have been awarded "exclusive marketing rights" to the Olympic stadium.

Whilst they bought the company in 2001, litigation is outstanding in India over the paltry payments made to the victims, and they have since failed to decontaminate the site properly. According to Amnesty, 100,000 people continue to suffer from health problems. There has never been a proper, full investigation into what caused the leak in Bhopal, and nobody has been brought to justice for the deaths, injuries and other harms associated with the leak.

Furthermore, Dow Agrosciences, a Dow subsidiary, have been blacklisted by the Indian government for bribing government officials in their quest to register three pesticides. This appears to relate to Dow's involvement in the GM food industry and something called the Codex Alimentarius Commission (yes?!). Robert Verkerk produced the following analysis on Ethical Consumer, snippets of which follow:

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is heavily influenced by some of the most powerful industries on the planet, including the food, agricultural, biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Codex’s stated purpose is to ensure that global trade is facilitated and trade barriers are removed, while also ensuring that consumers are adequately protected.

It is therefore no great surprise that Codex has seen fit to ‘green light’ many GM foods, food additives, pesticide residues, synthetic hormones and other intrinsically unhealthy food components. It also has substantially dumbed down organic standards, making them more accessible to large agricultural players. Consumer interests are often seemingly low on Codex’s list of priorities...

...With its huge scope and influence, there is one thing that Codex Alimentarius does not do, and that is look at the bigger picture. It does not begin to address the issue of how we will ensure that present and future generations are able to eat within the limits of the planet's resources. Food safety and food security, in this context, are worlds apart.

A report completed in 2008 following four years of research, carried out by over 400 world experts in agriculture, found that many of the risks associated with modern biotechnology are “as yet unknown”. It also specifically highlighted the problems relating to the proprietary nature of biotech products, and the potential for patented GM crops to “undermine local practices that enhance food security and economic sustainability”...

...The Codex Commission stands accused of being unduly influenced by corporate interests, represented by trade bodies with observer status. A peek behind the scenes indicates that this does deserve further scrutiny.

The International Life Sciences Institute (ISLI) is one such organisation. Its members, which are solely companies, include the Big Daddies of biotech, biofuels, and pharma: Cargill, Monsanto, Bayer, Dow Chemical, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. Food manufacturers include Mars, Kraft, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Tate & Lyle.

The ISLI's 2009 Annual Report states that 68% of its revenue for that year came from its members. Only 5% of this went to research, whilst a total of 81% was spent on General & Administrative, Meetings and Other Programme Expenses. Yet it has vigorously denied being a lobby group...

...The work of Codex Alimentarius is presented as being based on independent, objective science. Collaboration between the ISLI and one of Codex's most important scientific advisory bodies throws up some serious questions about just how objective this science is. That the ISLI's members indirectly funded this piece of work points towards an extremely cosy relationship.

In 2007 ISLI India hosted a conference on risk assessment that was attended by key Codex figures. Further collaboration between the ISLI and the FAO is apparent on the ISLI India website, notably a conference on “Next Generation Technologies for Healthy Foods”, in which they were in “technical collaboration”...

...At the Lancaster University Codex conference in March 2010, Ezzeddine Boutrif was quizzed by Dr. Erik Millstone, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex, about alleged systematic bias of Codex towards corporate interests. Boutrif acknowledged that there had been problems in the past but said that things had changed “dramatically” in the past 7 to 10 years...

...Boutrif also acknowledged that Codex Alimentarius was not orientated to the public and that more could be done to address this. Perhaps we can anticipate a time that Codex will come out of the shadows, and make more of an effort to communicate with the people it claims to protect: consumers.

Dow Chemical works, Kings Lynn (c) Ben Harris

One other final piece of information worth knowing is that the U.S. Environment & Protection Agency (USEPA) levied a $2.5 million fine on Dow for breaches of environmental regulations. These relate to violations at Dow's Midland facility, following inspections between 2005-2007.

Quite apart from the fact that Dow were aware of the dreadful legacy that they were buying into, they are aggressively pursuing their own GM agenda and continuing to pollute the environment. Lord Coe and Locog are responsible for granting Dow's contract after what Locog termed an "open and competitive process." This week, Lord Coe has failed to satisfy MPs at a Select Committee meeting that Dow meets the ethical vision for London 2012. He is due to attend another Select Committee meeting next week. The sooner we act, the more pressure there will be on the the Select Committee to scrutinise this decision in more detail.

Lorraine Close from www.bhopal.org has set up an online petition here that is attracting plenty of signatures. If nothing else, your signature will raise awareness of Bhopal and its victims, and raise the profile of Dow and it's "crimes".

The Olympics are supposed to be a celebration of what we, as humans, can aspire to and achieve. As the host of the Olympics, the UK has a responsibility to promote the Olympic ideals. As an UK national, I do not want to be tainted by Dow's crimes. I hope that you don't too. If so, please take action, sign the e-petition and pass on to whoever you can.

The security of UK borders and "others"

2011-11-07T10:30:00.001Z

The UK border at Heathrow airport (c) dannyman

Republished in full from The Pryer.

I can hear loud bangs outside … not sure what is going on … could it be guns … bombs …? Yes, the UK border force decided not to check the biometric passport details of hundreds of thousands of foreigners entering the UK … they could be criminals … or terrorists.

As we celebrate a night of fireworks in honour of an UK-born terrorist, and I climb off my sarcastically high horse, I find it apposite that the Daily Mail is referring to foreigners (“others”) in similar terms. If what they say about UK borders being relaxed is true, there are a couple of questions that need answering:

For which non-EU countries’ citizens were these checks relaxed?
Do citizens from these countries require visas to enter the UK?

Having practised immigration work myself, I know a little of the system and the back-office “administration” that takes place. The questions that I raise have important implications for the moral panic now engulfing British consciousness, and the supposed safety of British citizens.

If the answer to these questions is that biometrics checks were relaxed for countries that require visas, then this should not a big security issue. Firstly, the majority of these countries do not have biometric passports. In fact, the majority of nations do not have biometric issuing facilities yet (please see the graphic below, where dark green represents those countries where biometric passports are available to the public, and light green those who have announced that biometric passports will be made available). In the countries that do have a biometrics system, most have only been in operation in the last few years; many citizens will still be using their non-biometric passports.

Availability of biometric passports (c) Igor Alexandrov

Secondly, we issue visas to citizens from many non-EU countries. This means that the basic “security” checks are performed outside of the UK. After this, application forms are checked, people occasionally interviewed, and if successful, visas are issued. In fact, anyone entering the UK with a visa has faced far more risk assessment than citizens from countries, such as those in the EU, that do not require visas. Why, then, waste the time of an immigration officer, when the work has already been performed overseas by an entry clearance officer?

From what I can read into the situation, this is a political and ideological power struggle. Like other government departments, UKBA will be cutting a third of its staff by 2014. Whilst biometric passports appear to be the panacea that deters “foreign” threats, all they contain is the basic biographical details, and a photograph, of the person holding said passport. Moreover, the chips within these passports can be cloned and altered.

The technological security measures that states use are forever being tested and challenged. Although we think that we are safer, based on our understanding of technology and in this case, biology, this is a misconception. Surveillance mechanisms are designed by man, and rely on enculturated ideas along ethnic, gender and other divisions. In terms of passports, biometric chips are not objective. People have implanted these differences into the data that the chip collects. Therefore, we are sanctioning racialised, and group, differences in the name of security.

From being Jewish at the turn of the 20^th century, to being Irish in the 1970s, to being Muslim in the 21^st century, we have used immigration as a means of identifying so-called problem groups. Without the full details behind it, this story is nothing more than a ruse to sell “news”, and more dangerously, replants the seeds of fear and loathing of “others” during troubled times.

The family justice review review

2011-11-04T11:34:00.002Z

Yesterday, David Norgrove,wrote an article entitled, “Children’s welfare should not be trumped by parents’ rights” in The Guardian.This referred to the family justice review that he, and a panel, had conductedon the family justice system. Albeit in a blog post, I am going critique a partof the review that has drawn headlines, namely that divorced and separatedfathers will not get a legal right to a ‘meaningful relationship’ with theirchildren.

The overarching, and noteworthy,goal of this report was to ensure that any recommendations chimed with the ‘bestinterests of children.’ But what exactly are the ‘best interests of children?’

In paragraph 1 of hisexecutive summary, Norgrove writes:

We published our interim report in March. This is our final report, which reflects our conclusions following well over 600 responses to our consultation and input from meetings in many parts of the country.

For all the repeatedmentions of this notable aim, there is a distinct lack of evidence ofchildren’s views in the construction of this review. There are no supportingstatements that might demonstrate that children participated in this study. Therefore,what constitutes ‘best interests of children’ is left to more powerful voices.

The vast majority ofquotations come from the consultation responses provided by legal and academicexperts, and interested family organisations. Whilst children were provided with an opportunity to comment on the interim report, there is no evidence thatthey did so. How would interested children possibly get to know of such areport? CBeebies? T4? YouTube?

Whilst Norgrove has givenreasonable consideration to an Australian study on the implications of implementinga legal right to a ‘meaningful relationship’, equally, he has not drawn on any studiesthat have considered children’s responses to the effects of divorce and separation.Even with taking the Australian study at face value, and forgetting its notedproblems, no effort has been made to rebrand the term ‘meaningful relationship’;government services have rebranded ‘alternative dispute resolution’ to ‘disputeresolution services’. Surely, legal alternatives could be given further thought.

In paragraph 2.4 on thefamily justice system, reference is made to:

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child also makes explicit the importance of children’s rights being considered and upheld in the family justice system. Article 12 of the Convention makes it clear that children have the right to have their voices heard in decisions that affect their lives.

That being the case, whyis there so little evidence of their voices being heard in this report.

I have other issues withthis report, including the make-up of the independent panel members and theidea of an online hub that is supposedly accessible to all. However...

The major purpose forconducting the family justice review is to speed up the judicial process. Admittedly, this isalso designed for clearing up problems associated with the adoption process,but in terms of private law, it appears to be creating additional layers ofbureaucracy. As well as going through an online hub, parents would need to negotiate pre-application protocols, mediation, and a separated parents information programme.

Paragraph4.73 notes:

We note that the concerns about delay and the effect on the Private Law Programme apply equally to the Pre-Application Protocol, which is already in force. But our difference from the respondents quoted in the preceding paragraph rests in many ways on a different view of the proper role of courts. We would argue first that the extra time will be well spent if it results as we expect in fewer cases going to court, and secondly that the opportunity of the FHDRA will still be there.

“If…as we expect”…not, then, the most effusive of reasons to be taking this route.

Potentially, we have asystem that is perceived to exclude parents from having an automatic right to a‘meaningful relationship’, and then makes it harder to secure these rights. Wouldthe parent concerned be willing to spend the extra time going through thisprocess? How would the child feel not seeing the parent concerned whilst theprocess was ongoing?

There is a discursive linkbetween contact and maintenance that is discussed in the report. In a systemthat prioritises the rights to family life of one parent over another, would thisaffect maintenance payments? Would this be in the ‘best interests of children’?

Without going into thearguments for the rights of grandparents (which too should be looked at in moredepth), it is men in particular, who are the target audience for a review of private law. Fathers4Justice have long fought for the rights of men and theirright to a more equal family life. From a feminist perspective, I wonder howwomen perceive this review. Does it perpetuate astereotypical view of a patriarchal world in which women ‘naturally’ look afterchildren, thereby exacerbating the financial pressures associated with looking after a child as a single parent?

Given the government’s recent talk of a broken society following the riots, and of the need for parents to engage in their children’s education, the family justice review into private law needs further consideration before implementation. From the perspective of children, primarily, but also from anyone else who has been excluded in theprocess.

Confused homosexualities? Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe and the UK

2011-10-30T12:04:00.000Z

Republished in full from The Pryer.

In Africa,homosexuality is often talked about, and identified, as being un-African. Theother day, Morgan Tsvangirai claimed that he would support the inclusion of gayrights in the new Zimbabwean constitution. TheHerald quotes Tsvangirai thus:

“It’s a verycontroversial subject in my part of the world. “My attitude is that I hope the constitution willcome out with freedom of sexual orientation, for as long as it does notinterfere with anybody,” he told the BBC. “To me, it’s a human right,” he added.

Yet this alleged supportfor gay rights appears contrived. First off, this represents a u-turn forTsvangirai who has previously supported Mugabe’s staunchly hostile stance onhomosexuality. Tsvangirai has a history of changes of heart, including onrecent policy proposals for indigenisation and a negotiated constitution.

More telling is a press conferenceheld just two days later. When questioned on his defence of gay rights, Radio Vop Zimbabwe reports:

Tsvangiraidrew wild laughter from the house when he suggested, “perhaps I am speakinghere kuda mumwe musi mungangodai muringochani panapa (we may be talking whilesome of you may be gays here). What you do in your private sphere is your privateproblem.”

By mocking “gays” andtheir “problems”, he seems to be drawing on cultural 'attitudinal' norms tore-establish his credibility through the national media. These are not thewords of someone overtly in support of gay rights. Interestingly, his website contains no news on his recent pronouncements. Given his propensity toabout face, I doubt that this will be Tsvangirai’s final opinion on gay rights.

Lest I castigateTsvangirai too harshly, let us look at the UK’srole in current homosexual discourse in Zimbabwe. In his piece in New Zimbabwe, Dr. Munya Munochiveyitraces the history of homosexuality from the practices of ancient tribes ofAfrica, through to the rituals of warrior societies of Zimbabwe, to the colonialism of the Victorians and

Rhodesia

.He posits that homosexuality is not un-African, and that it only became acultural taboo, and norm, as a result of British colonial rule. Of course, theparadox of this is that the anti-colonial, anti-British Robert Mugabe espousesthe same homophobic attitude as the colonials he despised.

Coincidentally, The Independent claims that Foreign andCommonwealth Office (FCO) has instructed its Ambassadors not to fly the ‘gayflag’ as “it opens up too many potentially difficult and divisive questions”.This follows praise that three British Ambassadors had received from local gaycommunities for doing just that in support of local gay pride marches.

One of the FCO’s statedpriorities is to:

Strengthen the Commonwealth as a focus for promoting democraticvalues, human rights, climate resilient development, conflict prevention andtrade

On a week when Stuart Walker was allegedly killed for beinggay, and when it was reported that there has been an increase in homophobic hate crimes in the UK, the above does not strengthen the UK's human rights position.

Returning to Munochiveyi’s article in New Zimbabwe,it is noteworthy that the accompanying photograph features two white women; the press still seem uncomfortable with ideas of being African and homosexuality. Looking through the comments following the article, it appears that Zimbabwehas some way to go before it will accept homosexuality as being normal.

Theevangelical posturing of our colonial ancestors has left human rights scars allover Africa, and this is a further example ofit. As much as we would like to see a change in African attitudes, they would like to see a change in ours.

Surveillance society: visibility and accessibility

2011-10-26T11:40:00.002+01:00

I have published a post on the use of CCTV as a situation crime prevention mechanism on a new blog site, Blinkered Justice Xtra. I am using this site to muse on criminological theory and research, and to promote a sense of collaboration and partnership amongst those interested in criminology.

Please feel free to check out this new site and to join in the discourse.

Bystander Apathy 2.0 - Chinese edition - A reply

2011-10-23T11:52:00.000+01:00

The Global Sociology Blog published this post on the sad death of 2-year old Chinese girl, Wang Yue.

I have not watched the video, and so I can comment on the 'bystander apathy' referred to in the article. My argument is for a broader understanding of the cultural relativity in this particular crime. My comment, published on The Global Sociology Blog, is on the same page. I now see that The Guardian printed thispiece a few days ago.

Quite apart from my comments on the cultural contexts, there are flaws in the original Darley and Latane experiment and findings that gave birth to this term. The experiment lacked ecological validity; the victim was male, the victim was not murdered, the bystanders could not see the victim, or each other, are among the most obvious.

However, it is the social psychological elements that are missing from the study and findings that need to be taken into account for future research.

Putin and the stereotyping of Russia

2011-10-22T11:25:00.001+01:00

Kremlin Wall (c) Mark Gee

Latest article re-published from The Pryer.

The Hindustani Times reports that Russian Prime Minister,Vladimir Putin, has appeared on three national television stations refutingsuggestions that he is reviving the Soviet Union.Recent articles on the BBC and The Guardian have noted Putin’s designs onestablishing a Eurasian union from amongst former Soviet Union republics.

Notionsof a re-constructed ‘Soviet Union’ are evidentin the stories. Lazily, western critics have submitted to it and the negativestereotyping associated with it. Must we always refer to Putin as ‘former KGBagent’? For the west, ideas of a re-constructed Soviet Union represent a threat. Whereas the threat once emanated fromdiffuse ideological philosophies and nuclear war, now it comes from the west’sneed for energy to fuel its economy, and by default, its way of life.

ForPutin, the stereotyping has positive connotations. As my time in Russia drew to a close in 1998, many Russiansdecried the end of the Soviet Union;pensioners knew that they would receive their pensions, the general public knewthat they could afford food, even if they had to wait in line for severalyears, and crime, in its local context, was non-existent. For the Russianpeople, ideas of the Soviet Union representedstability and security, after the mid-90s free market chaos that formerPresident Boris Yeltsin and the oligarchs had wrought upon them. Consequently,they became disillusioned with perceptions of the west, and its way of life.Putin brought stability and order to their lives when he succeeded Yeltsin.

Atthe end of last month, Putin confirmed that he will be standing for thepresidential elections againin 2012. The recent announcements on the Eurasian union are the first that hehas made on foreign policy since declaring his intentions to run for president.Although the context of this succession is markedly different to the last, Ithink that the use of stereotyping works on two levels. There is the westernview, as highlighted above, that affects international affairs, and there isthe local stereotype, which I think that Putin is using in terms of nationalsecurity. More than that, I think that Putin is playing with this stereotype.His pre-empting of criticism of a ‘new’ Soviet Union was meant to concern us,as much as it is meant to reassure and order the Russian populace.

TheEurasian union is currently based around a customs agreement between Russia,Belarus and Kazakhstan, with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan expected to join shortlyafter. This is a far distant cry from the original formation of the SovietUnion. As the editor of Russian Global Affairs, Fyodor Lukyanov,points out:

"Thelogic behind it is primarily economic, and in this sense it is different fromprevious attempts, which were political or just decorative, to show Russianleadership."

Russia faces its own economic problems.Russian blogger, Alexey Navalny, believes that the current Russian politicalsystem is unsustainable and will collapse at some point in the future. Moreover, Putin has noted the Occupy Wall Street movement.Unlike his western counterparts, he will use public funds to maintain theRussian economy and internal security. Hence, his use of a ‘Soviet Union’ thatbrings order and stability, at least in the short-term.

Whilst the west fears afuture ‘Soviet Union’, modern Russia is a unique geopolitical space that wehave to learn to interact with on its own terms. Asthe western media remind us, there are civil and political humanrights concerns, but we have always prioritised these rights over economic,social and cultural rights that the likes of Russia and other countries putfirst. I am not dismissing these problems, but it would be contradictory not toengage with modern Russia, when we interact with other oppressive regimes with scant regard for the same issues.

Drugs possession: A shot in the arm for punishment

2011-10-20T23:04:00.001+01:00

Last week, the AdvisoryCouncil on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) advised the

government not to criminaliseindividuals caught with illegal drugs for their own personal use. Instead, theysuggested that offenders attend treatment and education programmes, and facealternative, viable sanctions, such as the confiscation of driving licenses. Thegovernment would then save money from not imprisoning someone, which isestimated to cost the British taxpayer about £45,000 a year, which in turn maylead to less repeat offending.

Despite the potentialbenefits, The Guardian reported thatthe Home Office had quickly rejected ACMD’s proposal. A Home Office spokesmanis quoted as saying:

"We have no intention of liberalising our drugs laws. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery to families and communities.

"Those caught in the cycle of dependency must be supported to live drug-free lives, but giving people a green light to possess drugs through decriminalisation is clearly not the answer.

"We are taking action through tough enforcement, both inland and abroad, alongside introducing temporary banning powers and robust treatment programmes that lead people into drug-free recovery."

I am shocked by the temerityof this statement. Pharmaceutical companies push legal prescription drugs ontothe market every bit as hard as criminals market their illegal products. Theylead to the same harms. Alcohol is freely available over the counter, and it is every bit as harmful, if not more harmful,than other drugs. The legality of cigarettes in the market place, and the largeprofit that the

carte….sorry, government, earns from it, has led to burgeoning competition from illegal tobacco traders.

Furthermore, in anydiscourse on drugs, one needs to consider addiction. We have an increasing number of people who are addicted to gambling, the majority of whom come frommore disadvantaged backgrounds. If we accept that recovering addicts attend thelikes of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous to rid themselves, theirfamilies and their communities of the associated harms of drink and drugs, thenwhy is the UK government actively promoting gambling? In a neo-liberal system designed to increasethe wealth and influence of those at the top, whilst inducing harm on thosebelow, to make bold statements such as that above is nothing short ofhypocritical.

Besides, the government doesnot appear to be basing their objections on any evidence that might suggestthat current policy is working. Portugaladopted a similar approach to their drug problems back in 2001, as that advocated by ACMD. The Cato Institute (2009) studied the effects of theimplementation of this policy and produced a white paper for creating fair andsuccessful drug policies. In terms of the study, whilst Time critiques the likelihood of any successful policy transfer tothe USA,it does not contest the findings of the report.

So why is the UK governmentfailing to respond to their experts’ advice and corroborating evidence? If itis a political imperative to maintain a strong, robust approach to law andorder that reassures the right of the Conservative party, then surely this canbe the only reason. Unless they think that this is what the British publicwants.

In their recent study,“Custody or community? Exploring the boundaries of public punitiveness in England and Wales”, Roberts and Hough (2011)found that the public were far less concerned with imposing custodial sentenceswhen mitigating factors were relayed to them. They found that a significantnumber of people would accept community penalties as retribution, even forfairly serious offences. The Transform Drugs Policy Foundation has links to anumber of opinion polls and studies that have been conducted on public researchin this field. Much of the evidence reveals that the public do not supportpunitive measures.

At a time when austerity measures are beginningto exert additional financial pressures on the public, and at a time whenindividuals, families and communities are expected to economise, the UK government’sdecision to reject this proposal out of hand is duplicitous. The government’sreasons for maintaining their stance lack clarity and honesty. The government arehappy to make cuts to public services, yet when it may save the Britishtaxpayer millions of pounds, they choose not to for their own superficial, politicalwhims. Not only are the government harming those whom they imprison, and theirfamilies, but equally, the government is harming you and me.

The reconstruction of education

2011-10-19T12:14:00.000+01:00

I was asked to write an article on education, and the problems posed in its reconstruction in post-conflict states with specific regard for Libya. This article has now been published in The Journal.

Feel free to post any comments here or on The Journal.

A load of rubbish: Oliver Letwin, surveillance and justice

2011-10-18T00:17:00.000+01:00

The news last week thatgovernment minister, Oliver Letwin MP, had been discarding official papers inthe dustbins of St James’ Park brought to mind notions of surveillance andjustice.

Ideas of surveillance arebased on the 18^th Century notion of the ‘panopticon’. Jeremy Benthamconsidered building a prison with a watchtower in the middle, where prisonguards could keep an eye on detainees in cells that surrounded it. The ideabeing that inmates would regulate their behaviours accordingly as if they werebeing watched, regardless of whether they were or not. Michel Foucault’s thoughts onpanopticism lead us to believe that in an increasingly surveilled society (e.g.CCTV) that we regulate ourselves more vigorously; we discipline ourselves sothat the state does not have to.

Power is prevalent in conceptsof surveillance. Those considered ‘risky’, including those from particularethnic and poorer socio-economic backgrounds, are subject to greater surveillance.We regularly see stories in the press that castigate ‘benefits cheats’. Atabout the same time last week, Jake Preston was secretly recorded winning aMotocross race. It is normally at the behest of state institutions that ‘risky’individuals are monitored.

In Letwin’s case, it wasthe Daily Mirror that uncovered his trashing of papers, although presumablythey found out from another source. Had the Daily Mirror, a reasonably powerfulmedia player, not reported this story, I wonder whether it would have surfacedhad a park attendant passed on the information directly to the police.

National security is the main focus of Letwin’sneglect. There were concerns that sensitive papers were amongst the documentsthat he disposed of, but it seems that none of the papers that he binned were thatsensitive. He acknowledges that he was replying to constituents’ letters in thepark and may have thrown these manuscripts away. Therefore, for hisconstituents, the papers may be sensitive.

The Information Commissioner’sOffice (ICO) is looking into whether Letwin breached the Data Protection Act(DPA). The ICO has a guide that de-clutters the legalese of the DPA.I understand that many letters were torn in half, but that some were not.Regardless, I am presuming that the name and address of the constituent isvisible. If that is correct, then Letwin is in breach of Principle 7 of the DPA,on several counts.

Following Foucault’s line,it appears that Letwin, who does not come from a disadvantaged background, hadno reason to believe that he too should be observed. For him, CCTV is somethingthat follows ‘others’. However, it seems that ‘others’ are also ignorant of theprevalence of surveillance. So has surveillance brought about a more equitablesystem of justice?

Those who believe that thepowerful face the same (synoptic) levels of surveillance miss the point. Thepowerful are rarely the target of surveillance operations. The state did notseek to stop Letwin causing harm because they do not track people like him. Thejustice system is still geared towards tracking the likes of ‘benefits cheats’, a term for which I have previously argued for a wider understanding.

Moreover, it remains to beseen how justice is to be administered in Letwin’s case. The harm that he hascaused is, at present, unknown. Harms such as identity theft can take timebefore an individual becomes aware that his/her details have been misappropriated.For the state, retribution is swift and punitive, because the harms that‘benefits cheats’ caused are already out there.

Power is implicit in surveillance and whilst it is mainly top-down, itcan be turned on its head and used to bring about the fall of the mighty.However, in a culture where surveillance is now omnipresent, from the CCTV onour streets to the YouTube on our personal computers, it appears to havesaturated itself, and diluted its own power to turn us into the model, self-disciplining citizens that it would have us become.

Sky's the limit

2011-10-14T20:58:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago,Liverpool FC Managing Director, Ian Ayre, stated that he only felt it fair that his club should have the right to negotiate its own overseas TV deals. Whilstthis is not usual fayre for a criminology blog, notions of social harm come tomind.

Ayre is concerned that hisclub, along with the other more powerful Premiership clubs, will struggle tocompete with their illustrious Spanish counterparts if they do not receive agreater share of overseas revenue. He contends that it is not the PremierLeague per se that attract overseas viewers, but the more well-known teams. Atpresent, the deal is that all 20 premiership clubs receive an equal share ofthe Premier League’s foreign rights TV deal.

Football finance expert, GeoffMesher, and Wigan Athletic Chairman, Dave Whelan, have pointed to the damage itcould cause to competition within the Premier League. Whelan suggested that it could lead to its demise, as very few clubs could challenge for the top honours.

Spain

,they say, is evidence of a league in which there are only two genuine titlecontenders.

Whilst it is very likelythat it would kill competition within England, it is equally likely thatit would have wider-ranging effects. In order to compete, these less glamorousclubs would have to find some means of increasing their revenues, such as throughincreased tickets prices.

Matchday ticket prices have soared by up to 1000% in the two decades since the inception of thePremier League. It has priced many traditional fans out of stadia. Many fansare local to the team that they follow, and to commit to following their teamalready requires a vast amount of money. If Ayre’s proposal were to go through,and the less glamorous clubs increased ticket prices, local supporters aregoing to be less likely to pay more money to watch games that are meaninglessin terms of winning honours.

Clubs now operatecompetitively in the commercial and sporting market places. Although modernfootball clubs are more commercially minded than they used to be, they are notcommercial businesses. The majority are not brands. They do not attract passingcustomers. They belong, and rely on, the support of their local communities. Ifcompetition is killed off on the field of play, it is equally likely to killoff financial health. Clubs may well end up going bankrupt.

And it is in the contextof competition that I am reminded of the effects that the closure of coal mineshad on their local communities. If these clubs were to go to the wall, it wouldhave a significant impact on local communities. Not just in terms of the passing of the hopes and dreams of fans, but in terms of loss of revenues and jobs for other local businesses that work in and around these clubs, and the community projects that clubs invest in. The social harm caused would be palpable.

Fortunately, this proposalis unlikely to go through the next time that foreign overseas television rightscome up for discussion. But that does not mean that it will never happen.

E-petition palaver

2011-09-30T03:51:00.001+01:00

The ideaof the e-petition is great. It allowsfools like myself to use the power of the internet to raise issues that wouldordinarily not be seen. In accordance with the notion of a free and openinternet, the e-petition website appears empowering and democratic.

When clicking on “How e-petitions work”, it becomes clear thatindividuals have to check the website to see if any other similar petitionshave been published. If there are similar petitions available, your proposal islikely to be rejected. But why?

I submitted this e-petition in August which was rejected a coupleof weeks later. I had checked the website and there appeared to be nothingsimilar. Even now, when I search ‘Trident’, there are no petitions that adhereto my wording. Furthermore, the search throws up a number of e-petitions thatbear little resemblance to my proposal. The search includes titles such as Tax CarMiles, Reduce Petrol Prices, No Road Tax, Banks and Risk Exposure of RetailCustomers and voting credentials. None refer to ‘Trident’. Even though myrejected e-petition indicates that “there is already an e-petition about thisissue”, there is no link to it. Is it even possible to verify whether a similarpetition exists?

Does it even really matter? Surely it is better for government to divide andconquer, and have people preferring one particular petition over a similaroption, thus reducing the chances of it being debated in the House of Commons.If we truly live in a free and open society, that subscribes to ideas ofchoice, what does it matter if people submit similar petitions. After all, themajority of us vote for political parties and leaders whose manifestos aresimilar and offer little in the way of choice.

I presented my e-petition, "Tackling gang culture", to the Home Office as the department responsible for dealingwith this issue, not the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Iwaited six weeks before it was finally published. In between time, I contactedDirectGov about its whereabouts. I did not receive a response, until theyconfirmed its publication. The e-petition website is rather nebulous about howone might contact them, or how one might complain. In the end, I used the 'feedback' option; feedback is not normally a word I would associate withcontact or complaint, but at least it worked.

A search for gang-related e-petitions also reveals a number that appearunrelated to mine. This database is only likely to grow. Of course, there arestill many people with no means to access the internet who are excluded fromthis democratic process, but if the public are expected to trawl throughthrough these petitions to ascertain whether another proposal is similar totheir own, then it is just as likely to deter some from actively participatingin democracy.

Whilst the concept of the e-petition suggests that democracy is fair andopen, appearances can be deceptive. Searches reveal little about one's chanceof success with a proposal. Instead, disembodied e-people decide whether aparticular contribution to democracy is worthwhile, without offering areasonable explanation as to why it might not be. One can not appeal or contactanyone to take the matter further. Moreover, nobody appears to be monitoringthe system to see whether it is working as it should, or to gauge whetherit is fair and democratic.

That said, I intendto continue government bothering in the interests of social justice.

E-petition success

2011-09-29T20:29:00.000+01:00

Back. Yes. Good.

After 6 weeks of querying the whereabouts of my e-petition, "Tackling gang culture", I finally received an email confirming that it has been published.

The e-petition will have lost some of its significance now, given that the context of its gestation were the UK riots and the fallout from it. Just as there was public clamour for punitive measures to be taken against the "gangs" that had looted town centres, and the government's decision to hire a US 'supercop' to tackle gang culture, this e-petition seeks to apply a wider, more equitable definition of "gang", to include large corporations who gang up on and loot consumers' pockets.

Feel free to click on the e-petition and sign if you so desire. The competition commission seem to be doing nothing about it, so why don't we. Another post to follow shortly.

5CU6Y7DFFCU9

Policing the UK riots?

2011-08-10T01:54:00.006+01:00

Earlier this evening I tweeted:

16,000 police being deployed in London tonight to quell #UKriots. Why not last night or night before? Police making a point about govt cuts?

Given that only 6,000 police were on the streets the night before, one has to wonder why has there suddenly been a sudden 267% increase on the number of police being deployed tonight.

Last night was night 3 of the disturbances. Whilst the major politicians were away on holiday, only returning to the UK today to address the situation, there were still people present, whom I am sure it is in their job description, that are supposed to step up and deal with situations like this. Tonight, the 16,000 strong police force appear to have extinguished the ardour of those seeking to set fire and loot. At what point, did those left to deal with the disturbances not think that it might be worthwhile having a more visible police presence on the street the last couple of nights?

One has to wonder whether the police were sending out a message to the public and the government. We know that recent government cuts are due to hit police forces all over the country over the next few months. We know that they claim that this is going to put the public at greater risk. Yet those in charge of police operations in London over the last couple of evenings have blatantly failed to safeguard the public. Nobody has come forward to explain why more police were not deployed earlier to protect the public.

For me, it seems that the police have only taken full ownership of the problem tonight. There does not appear to be a good reason why they did not so before, unless they had ulterior motives.

UK riots: who is responsible?

2011-08-10T00:26:00.001+01:00

2011 Tottenham riots on High Road (c) Victoria

Copycats, mindless thugs and disenfranchised youth are all terms that have been used to describe those who have taken part in the disturbances over the last few nights. But do any of these descriptions explain what, or, why it is taking place?

We know that the first riot that took place in Tottenham started largely as a result of the killing of Mark Duggan. However, this soon mutated from anger at the reaction of the police and IPCC, to one which focussed on looting local businesses. Looting seems to have been the primary objective for those rioting. It has been reported at any number of sites throughout London, and has since spread across Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, amongst other areas.

One might see these rioters simply as copycats. I am presuming that this term has been widely used in the media to denigrate those taking part in the riots, and to make them think that their actions are not as good as those that did it originally. However, this misses the point. They are not necessarily looting to look as “good” or as “hard” as their forebears. From Blackberry messages that have been made public (see Newsnight link), they appear to be looting to make some money. Is this the work of mindless thugs?

No. Everyone wants to make money. This is exactly what the capitalist society is about, but some people are less able to make money in this socially divided society in which we live. This is as ideological as it is economical.

At the same time, people see politicians, the police, bankers and multinational corporations loot the public purse to line their own. And whilst I agree that this is not an excuse to start rioting/looting, one has to consider whether this kind of “criminal” behaviour has a knock-on effect, given that we still live in a largely hierarchical society.

Tonight’s Newsnight has suggested that amongst those arrested for rioting/looting, are people from the traditional middle class backgrounds. Please check on the BBC iPlayer tomorrow for evidence of this report. If so, this hints at something more than the disenfranchised youth who live on council estates as being responsible for the riots.

For the purposes of this blog, I do not condone any of the actions taken by the rioters/looters over the past four nights. The riots are especially distressing for those that have been left frightened, and for those that have lost their livelihoods and property. I thoroughly understand their frustrations (please see my next post on this).

Whilst these actions are not justifiable, we need to understand why people are rioting/looting. We need to talk to them and we need to understand what it is they are saying on a personal and cultural level, so that we can try to avoid future disturbances.

My fear is that this is only going to lead to more punitive measures that target specific communities, and that it provides the coalition government with an excuse to make cuts in welfare services that negatively affect those self same people. This will not address the problems that we have in our society, namely that greed is good, but will serve to divide society more by stereotyping, and further excluding, those who are already marginalised by consumerism.

Hadzic in the dock

2011-07-28T02:45:00.000+01:00

Goran Hadzic 1992 (c) Christian Marechal

Many of you will have seen that Serbia extradited Goran Hadzic to The Hague last week. As the last of the ethnic Serbs wanted for war crimes by the U.N., what does his trial represent in terms of justice for those in the former Yugoslavia?

Reuters reported:

"Hadzic is charged with instigating the torture and murder of hundreds of Croat and non-Serb civilians, including 264 hospital patients in Vukovar in 1991, as well as mass detentions, forced labour and driving thousands from their homes.”

In the last couple of days, the BBC inform us that Hadzic has not entered a plea. Both the Reuters and BBC stories remark on Serbia’s quest for candidate status for membership of the European Union (EU) and its need to comply with the conditions for approval. Website crimesofwar.org commented thus on Radovan Karadzic’s extradition almost 3 years ago:

“Nevertheless opinion polls have shown consistently over the last few years, that while most Serbs do not regard Mr Karadzic or General Mladic as guilty, or at least any more guilty than any leading wartime figure amongst Croats, Bosniaks and Kosovo Albanians, they also do not have a passionate objection to their transfer to The Hague. There is a clear understanding that Serbia’s European future and hence their own, is directly related to the fates of these men. Serbs only have to look over the border, or go on holiday in Croatia, to see and understand that once it had in 2005 delivered its last indictee, General Ante Gotovina, a huge hurdle on the road to EU integration was removed. As a consequence Croatia is years ahead of Serbia now on the road to Brussels and, in part as a consequence of that, its people are also several times more prosperous than those of Serbia.”

This might explain why few Serbs are protesting at Hadzic’s departure, unlike the removal of Karadzic. However, it does not represent a victory for justice or ICTY. Rather than any sense of legal justice being seen to be done in its own right, the Serb people appear focused on ideas of economic integration and the benefits that might bring. Consequently, ICTY has failed to establish its independent juridical credentials.

Created hurriedly following the U.N.’s poor response to the atrocities being committed in the former Yugoslavia, the U.N. Security Council established ICTY in May 1993. Resolution 827 sets out its mandate, and refers to ‘the restoration and maintenance of peace’. From its annual report in 1994:

“The role of the Tribunal cannot be overemphasized. Far from being a vehicle for revenge, it is a tool for promoting reconciliation and restoring true peace."

In the absence of any Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY has to demonstrate justice for its victims to the highest level for any idea of reconciliation to work.

Memorial at the Vukovar hospital (c) Modzzak

In their report of 2010, the International Center for Transnational Justice examined local perceptions of ICTY in Bosnia. Although their interviewees wished to make it clear that they did not see the creation of ICTY as ill-advised, they considered that it had failed to deliver justice as they had originally perceived. Among the disappointments noted in this report were sentencing patterns (some war criminals were sentenced to 2 years imprisonment), guilty pleas (where the accused who pleaded guilty got a reduced sentence), and the length and complexity of proceedings.

In their study of witness testimony during the Krstic trial at ICTY, Dembour and Haslam (2004) found that victim-witnesses were effectively silenced in the pursuit of pertinent legal “facts”. Rather than being able to describe the acts that for them were essential to reconciliation, they were subject to those who have the power to question them.

In March 2005, the War Crimes Chamber (WCC) was established within the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Garbett, 2010). The WCC is both a national and international court that prosecutes persons responsible for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. For the victims, this hybrid court represents a local, transparent and more accessible means of achieving justice. Unlike ICTY, where there have been concerns regarding the way it goes about prosecuting charges of sexual violence, the WCC has prosecuted a high number of these cases.

In terms of Vukovar, it is worth noting the work of Hagan and Ivkovic (2006). From a sample of 282 people surveyed, they found that 52.1% of Croats in Vukovar believe that persons accused of war crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia should be tried in local courts where the crime was committed. Only 25.9% of 143 ethnic Serbs living in Vukovar believe the same. Support for ICTY dispensed justice was 28% amongst Croats and 47.6% amongst Serbs. Therefore, the majority of Croats would prefer to see justice dished out locally, rather than in The Hague. Along with the other evidence, this has implications for justice in the Hadzic trial

So whilst the U.N. celebrates the forthcoming prosecution of its last indictee, it has struggled to effect international justice for its victims at ICTY. It may be the flagship PR model for an international justice system as evinced by the west, but on the local grounds where these tragedies occur, it is seen as imperialist and a disappointment. If the international community want justice, then local concerns have to be addressed.

References

Dembour, M-B and Haslam, E. (2004), Silencing Hearings? Victim-Witnesses at War Crimes Trials, European Journal of International Law, Vol. 15 No. 1, 151–177

Garbett, C. (2010), Localising Criminal Justice: An Overview of National Prosecutions at the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 10:3, 558-568

Hagan, J. and Ivkovic, S.K. (2006), War Crimes, Democracy, and the Rule of Law in Belgrade, the Former Yugoslavia and Beyond, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 605Democracy, Crime and Justice (May, 2006), 130-151