Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose – Me & Bobby McGee (Kristoffer “Kris” Kristofferson)

It is probably a little confusing that a blog that purports to be a commentary on the news has failed to mention that ‘winds of change’ that appear to be sweeping the Middle East with many commentators hoping and even predicting it shifting into sub-Saharan Africa.  As Western politicians from all over the world fall over themselves to turn their backs on the leaders of these troubled countries, forgive me for not being impressed.  Many of these same people where hugging and shaking hands with these ‘dictators’ for years.  I have learnt or know about many ‘revolutions’ in the past and despite the sacrifices of the ordinary man and woman and child, for many, change, real change to their lives, remains elusive.  One tyrant is replaced by another and yet by another – and any pretence of democracy is applauded by the West despite the contrary practises on the ground.

Whilst I applaud those who have courage to stand up to tyranny, I will wait to see just who the string pullers were and how honourable their intentions.  Just call me cynical.

As company after company fall over themselves to distance themselves from the controvencial wikileaks website, either in self-censorship or due to backroom arm twisting and the subsequent criminal and spying accusations and manhunt for its owner, I wonder how many people see the scary ramifications of this matter.

First of all, we have proof that a lot of stuff goes on that our own governments do not want us, their ultimate employers, from knowing.  We find that the suspicions some of us had of deceit and corruption are actually true and that we are ultimately responsible for things we, on a personal basis, may consider unethical and unacceptable.  How accountable do we want our Governments to be, should they be able to hide and deceive us ‘for the better good’?  Should we trust those same people to determine what the better good on our behalf is?  The ‘Not In Our Name’ anti-war campaign seems not to have been wide ranging enough.

The second scary fact is that once caught out, how quickly the powers find it possible to try and discredit and close now the avenues available to anyone who ‘rages against the machine’.  Multi-national companies we regard as powerful as Governments quickly bend to the will of some pipe piper whoever or whatever that happens to be.  What we do know it is not us and some of us may suspect it is not our Governments that are financed by the same large corporations.  I predict anyone’s contribution to wikileaks still stuck in the Swiss bank account or PayPal’s and Visa’s systems are unlikely to have it returned at any point in the future and expect no sympathy from the system.

Whether or not the leaks should have been released, whether or not they are as damaging or dangerous as they are made up to be, this affair should be sounding alarm bells with anyone who cares about the state of democracy worldwide.

Some Links

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website-cables-servers-amazon
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11938320
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks

I am one of those people who kind of pay attention when a lone voice cries out for attention continuously.  Recently I became aware that one the Telegraph’s commentators, Christopher Booker, has been trying to draw attention to the danger of the Social Workers’ powers in the UK to remove and force the adoption of children in a system that does not appear to have enough check and balances to ensure injustice does not happen.

Forced Adoption Website

His latest article drew my attention to the Forced Adoption website – http://www.forced-adoption.com/ run by an ex-councillor Ian Josephs which attempts to assist parents fight against this system.  In the article, ‘Forced adoptions get no sympathy from the ministry’, Mr Booker points to the fact that the Ministry refutes there is an issue saying less than 10% of cases result in erroneous conclusion.  Ten percent!  Even five percent is scary; these are people who are being wrongly accused of changes against their own children.  Of the 8,000 cases brought to the courts each year, only 800 are rejected by the courts – a success rate that suggests that some rubber stamping may be the order of the day.

Schools, particularly in the inner cities, are very aware of this power and use the threat of social services to get parents, who are fully aware of the danger of entering this system, into line.  Messrs Booker and Josephs are highlighting a very dangerous situation were abuses are likely to occur especially when targets are having to be met.  Hopefully, someone will start to listen, power like this should not be concentrated without any checks or balances – otherwise it will end in tears.

Call me an old cynic but the riots against the United Nations peace-keepers in Haiti make me smell a rat.  With elections just round the corner I have my money on the fact that someone does not want too much outside scrutiny of the elections.

Echoes of similar situations in other parts of the world are probably the reason for my dubious acceptance that the Haitians actually want the UN peace keeping force out.  There were the AIDS accusations in Libya, I think it was and I can’t remember, but something else in the Northern Nigeria to do with vaccinations.

One cannot but feel for the Haitians living in one of the poorest nations on the planet, suffering a devastating earthquake and the threat of a full scale hurricane just recently and then a cholera outbreak that has already killed over 1,000 people.  On top of that you have foreigners running around with guns, all looking well fed and watered and nothing much looking like it’s being done.  So easy for someone to manipulate barely educated people that all their troubles stem from the foreign devils (some truth in that) and that they use their modern ju-ju to kill innocent Haitians.

Time will tell whether in fact my hunch proves correct.  Watch this space.

Links

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11783269
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/18/haiti-crisis-un-troops

Sayings like ‘one law for them and another for us’ and ‘only the little people pay taxes’ are sentiments that come out of a system that is basically unjust.  Many will say we should be thankful that we live in a society where we can say things like that and not be thrown into prison or worse still shot.  Really?  Just because that is true does not make it right and nor does it mean one should just put up and shut up.

The recent goings on at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the UK is a case in point.  There has been a story doing the rounds that HMRC have decided that the original £6bn tax bill for our biggest mobile phone carrier should be reduced, after discussions, to a mere £1bn one payable in instalments.  Obviously Vodafone will be delighted with this but felt it necessary with the innuendos doing the rounds to justify the taxman’s decision.  The tax bill relates to some transaction done off-shore via a tax haven.

British Virgin Islands

If you are buying the Government’s rhetoric of ‘we are all in this together’ you are in for a nasty shock.  Any help and support you have come to expect for your country is likely to dry up in the next few years, they are not coming back even if we end up in positive cash flow.  Don’t believe me?  Pop into your local tax office and try negotiating a reduction or even an extended payment plan.  PAYE was created especially for the likes of you.

We will soon just have to be grateful for what we can get and cut each other’s throats getting for the crumbs that fall from the table.  Some of us have even convinced ourselves that we doing OK and wish to keep more of our money to ourselves but that is an illusion.  You wait until you have to pay for your schools, your universities, your hospitals and your old age home costs – you might then realise they don’t really care about you.

Links

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/vodafone-tax-evasion-revenue-customs
• http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1275
• http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/10/23/vodafones-tax-case-leaves-a-sour-taste/
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11749085

Oil Platform

I will declare a vested interest in the subject of this post.  I have a fairly substantial, by my standards anyway, investment in an alternative fuel, bio-diesel to be specific, project in one of the landlocked states of Africa.  Though fraught with issues that opening a business in Africa entails, I was originally convinced that this states would soon realise that there is an alternative to paying for the use of ports and transportation systems to import oil which then is expensive and hinders the development of their countries.  Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi amongst others which had included Uganda, until their recent find, all have to import oil via their coastal neighbours.  Now that some of them including those same coastal neighbours are finding oil locally, it makes sense to purchase from them which should translate into lower oil costs for these countries.  So why bother with alternative fuels?

Here is where I am clutching at straws.  Both oil and non-oil producing African nations need to think more long term.  Currently the demand for oil is strong with the mighty industrialising nations of India and China increasing consumption strongly.  These and all the other oil guzzling nations are willing to pay top dollar or at least market rates for oil.  If you can produce alternatives cheaper locally, it makes economic sense to sell the higher priced black gold to the international market and stimulate your economy with both that income and lower production and distribution costs from the alternative fuel.  Brazil uses its ethanol production effectively in this way especially for personal transportation. Non-oil producing nations avoid the costly and often troublesome importation issues.

Oil Spill in The Nigerian Oil Delta

Africa’s potential to produce low cost alternative fuel is massive.  The under-utilised coastal areas for wind and wave electricity as well as the sea-weed bio-diesel production.  Acres and acres of marginal growing land where plants like Jatropha would at least make the land productive and just recently a UK company obtained a patent to detoxify the usually poisonous plant into animal feed.  To top it all off, solar electricity generation should be the order of the day in Africa.

Will they do it?  I am not so sure which does not bode well for my investments.  Oil in Africa has the terrifying track record of not making things better for the ordinary African , an in the street, or should I say bush.  Some will get rich but for most, oil will be a ‘curse in disguise’.

This is an old story but it has been sitting in my drafts for a while.

Recently one of the police forces in the UK used twitter to demonstrate the kind of work they were doing over a 24 hour period and let me say, it was fascinating.  So fascinating it probably robbed many businesses of man hours, I know it certainly distracted me until I got a grip.  By the end of the 24 hour period the police had received 3,205 calls and made 341 arrests.

I am not sure that all the incidents were called in on the emergency number but having been there previously, isn’t there a case for a national non-emergency number for the police that is routed to you nearest call centre?  The technology exists to make this happen.  Most people do not know their local cop shop number and some people in a fluster will ring the 999/911/112 number simply because of that.  We always hear about inappropriate users of the emergency numbers which in some reports are as high as 50%.  I really do not want this calls clogging up the system when I need the 999 facility!

Shall we start a campaign?  Other countries could follow suit and we could have say 1111 as the local non-emergency number all over the world.

Links

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11549279
• http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/68ff568654153da6802577bd001fd68a.htm
• http://www.heraldscotland.com/police-urge-non-emergency-number-as-false-999-calls-soar-1.866000
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/6959765.stm

I have touched on this subject before in my post entitled ‘Brazil’s Battle with Racism & History‘ and felt the need to elaborate.

Working class life in Victorian Wetherby, West Yorkshire, UK.

I have an English working class friend who likens being working class in previous centuries to slavery and to explain some colonial behaviour by referring back to what was happening in England at the time.  Many early British colonialists were working class trying to escape the oppression of the class system back home.  This might explain the earlier more cordial race relations (usually after initial conflict) with colonial subjects and the taking up of local women.  Class and race based discrimination came with the middle and upper classes that followed the trailblazers as settlers.

The higher class settlers came with the same commercial and social structures form the home countries and proceeded to follow the usual routine of acquiring property and power in the same way.  The locals became the working class of this new social arrangement but now race became the determiner of social status rather than accent or family background to a point.  Class structures shifted up one in the colonies with many of the working class people from the home countries finding themselves in a lower middle class tier just above the mixed race population, the imported labour and the indigenous natives.  The sheer potential of riches meant that where the indigenous population was in short supply, such as in South America where old world diseases decimated local populations, or where the indigenous people where un-co-operative or unskilled as in the Cape,  the colonial masters would import labour from other parts of the empire to oil the wheels of wealth.  These imported peoples would then fit in just under the working class colonialists with the indigenous population at the bottom.

When seen like this, it is easier to image that within the middle ranks in Europe some shifting around happened as families fell in and out favour with those who held the power and wealth particularly royalty.  Each class probably had few people that shifted a class but many would remain for centuries at the bottom of the pile.  This is so ingrained in the psyche that many working class people would die of embarrassment if called middle class despite the fact that they would be in other poorer societies.  Even immigration from ex-colonies has failed to shift the status with the new non-skilled immigrants competing with the working class resulting in racial tensions at that end of the social scale.

The end result of all this was that wealth and power, as is the case up to today, is concentrated in the hands of those whose families have always been wealthy and powerful.  The bigger middle classes in the Western world Europe and the growing one in developing nations are in place to maintain this status quo.  I will not elaborate on this observation in this post.

Ghana Independence Day Celebrations

Communism and socialism were the systems that were supposed to right the wrong of this world order.  Unfortunately, these systems seem to have failed and they did so with immense pressure from the capitalist system.  Seemed to?  Yes, because there are still remnants of socialism left in many societies, particularly Europe.  Unfortunately Europe’s older political and economic system is hard to change.  For developing countries though the potential to tackle the social inequalities is much greater due to the fact that there is a much smaller middle class.  In many ex-colonies, race is still being used as the determination of class and so the indigenisation policy of South Africa, the land redistribution in Zimbabwe, Namibia and even Brazil has a racial face.  It is about wealth more than it is about race as Zimbabwe’s experience shows us.

In Europe, the use of race in “positive discrimination” ignores the plight of the working class in which the non-skilled immigrants compete.  Positive discrimination at the bottom of the social ladder promotes racial disharmony.  Whilst the working class are busy with that, they pose no threat in demanding a change to the status quo that their compatriots in developing nations are.

We cannot underestimate the enormity of the task of fixing this.  Wherever they has been concerted attempts to tackle social inequalities such as land redistribution, nationalisations and other socialism mechanisms in developing countries, there have been howls of protest, many channelled through middle class structures, with leaders being vilified and in some cases “removed” for trying to make millions of lives better.  Some tolerance of changes that will increase the middle classes is evident but those who are truly powerful and rich would rather see many of us and our descendants remain working class.  Many believe that capitalism cannot work without any poor people.

Am I advocating communism or socialism?  No I am not. Maybe what I am advocating does not have a name yet, but I have some hope that with some of the things going on in South America and slowly in Africa, it will continue to develop into something better than what we do have.  I cannot accept that in a civilised country or in the world today that not everyone can have a basic comfortable standard of living if they so wish and that the playing field can be levelled in terms of access to opportunity, just being born into power and wealth is wrong.  That is what needs to be fixed.

The Brazilians share a trait with the Americans in that they do not like outsiders telling them what is wrong with their country.  They might know it, discuss it and moan about it but as soon as an outsider says the same thing, they close ranks and defend the system and so it is with racism and Brazil.

Brazil - Rio - Copacabana Beach

A sizeable number of Brazilians will not accept their society is racist even though there are institutions such as the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) stating that ‘despite improvements in the past decade, the racial gap in Brazil remains considerably wide’ (Roundup: Racial inequality persists in Brazil).  However, I feel with the Brazilians as most of the accusations do indeed originate from outsiders, even those who live in Brazil.

What appears to be the problem is that many people mix class with race as in many cases these do in fact correspond, but not always.   For example in this article -Who’s Black? – there is a number of examples of people changing race suggests they actually changed class based on their wealth.  Unlike many other societies, class appears to be a dynamic social construct in Brazil.

The scenario described by the author of Black and White: Marveling at a Brazil Where Racial Rules Are Learned Early in Life is one that is recognisable by anyone who has lived or lived in Southern Africa for example.  The scene happens all over Southern Africa with middle class Africans and African servants, in some countries the scene might have been a little bit less cordial, for example, the owner’s children would never be allowed in the servants’ quarters. The place that that little girl understands is class not race – in Brazil that is, unfortunately, nearly always equated to skin colour.

Historically, the white/European was the land and slave owner and therefore his descendants have already got an advantage in life.  Reversing the benefits of ‘old’ money is difficult, for instance, there are generations of (white) working class people in the UK that cannot see their way out of their circumstances.  For centuries, miners begat miners, blacksmiths begat blacksmiths etc. This issue goes very deep.  President Robert Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, attempted (ignoring the manner in which it was done) to reverse this status quo with the redistribution of land, an issue Brazil itself is facing in the West and one that Namibia is attempting to address and one that South Africa will face in the very near future.

Brazil - Rio - Copacabana Beach

This argument of class versus race can be applied to quite a number of ex-colony non-European countries, especially where power remains in ‘white’ hands.  That is not to say that those societies do not have any racism – all humans have prejudices but it does more harm to claim racism in areas where little or none exists.

Poverty is difficult to reverse and that it is why it is the duty of the state to provide the opportunities to allow those who wish to change their social status the opportunity to do so.

Feel free to disagree in the comments

Links

• It’s our class, not our colour, that screws us up
• Anthropologist Schwarcz discusses race in Brazil
• Racism in my Brazil
• Black and White: Marveling at a Brazil Where Racial Rules Are Learned Early in Life
• Who’s Black?
• Roundup: Racial inequality persists in Brazil

“The current financial crisis could bring about a change in the international economic order with countries like China and India becoming the dominant global economic powers.   The Chief Economist of one of the world’s biggest banks, HSBC, believes Asia’s rise poses a threat to prosperity in the West.”

via BBC News – Hardtalk – Will a rich China make the west poorer?.

Really? Who would have guessed?  Be nice if he could tell us something we don’t know.