British Ethics: A Dark Comedy

North Sea Oil Drilling by crawfish head

Yesterday, January 6th 2011, the UK Parliamentary committee appointed to look into whether the government should enact a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico-BP oil disaster, has ruled out the need for a halt to new projects before new regulations can be put in place.  In an absurd and stunning turn of logic, the report discusses the myriad of reasons why such a moratorium is necessary, particularly in the UK, before concluding that it is not necessary.  This freshman coalition government of the UK, by this report and an already long list of betrayals of the public interest, is demonstrating to statesmen and governments everywhere that constituents are not united in their willingness to defend their rights in the face of blatant misrepresentations and misallocations of public offices and resources.

The report makes light that any clean up of a spill in the North Sea, whose conditions are much less calm than in the Gulf of Mexico, would be infinitely more difficult.  The report suggests a number of regulations which should be enacted, both to safeguard against possible accidents as well as to prepare in the event of such accidents; also the report demonstrates how British law is murky as to who could be held legally accountable in the event of a spill.  However, without imposing a moratorium, there is little impetus for government and business to work together to put such regulations in place.  Companies such as BP and Chevron have been moving ahead with their projects in the North Sea with approvals and licences, furnished by Cameron's coalition government even while the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico was still hemorrhaging oil.

Indeed, a veritably horrifying dark comedy is unfolding in the UK, which makes a mockery of ethics, representative government, and makes plain the arrogance of power.  David Cameron's pledge to make the new coalition government the "greenest government ever" seems as conniving and opportunistic a statement as the installation on his home of a wind turbine, machines which he previously cynically referred to as "bird-blenders." 

BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Disaster, by US Coast Guard

First, there are the appointments made by the incoming "austerity" Prime Minister Cameron who came to office after the Gulf Oil disaster began.  Johann Hari reports that "The Prime Minister thought the best person to be his 'Cuts Tsar' was John Browne... he was the head of BP, until he was forced to resign in 2007 because he was shown to have lied in court testimony... Browne arrived at BP promising to do exactly what Cameron is promising to do to the British state... He said you could slice out great chunks of staff and provide the same standard of service.  The workers he sacked included BP's specialist engineers... As the investigative reporter Tom Bower has written: 'Hundreds were fired and replaced by subcontractors... Browne ditched BP's in-house expertise'...  The consequences were soon clear. BP's Texas City refinery blew up, killing 15 workers, and the official investigation found that BP 'tolerated serious deviations from safe operating practices, and apparent complacency toward serious safety process risks at each refinery.' Browne carried on cutting anyway, in a process Bower argues 'led directly to the current catastrophe' (Gulf spill)... the Prime Minister believes the best person to oversee his cuts agenda is an oilman whose last cuts destroyed the Gulf of Mexico... It's an inspiring model to apply to our schools, hospitals, and transport."

There is the appointment of oilman Tim Eggar as a government liaison to oil companies.  Eggar's recommendations helped shape budgetary and energy policy which, in spite of Cameron's public stance of fiscal restraint and green government, gave major tax breaks to oil companies and incentives to continued expansion of exploration and operations in the North Sea. 

Among other appointments, there is Conservative Cameron's appointment of Lib-Dem MP Vince Cable to 'Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills' as an ostensible gesture of unity in the formation of a coalition government between the Conservative and Lib-Dem parties.  Cable is a former Shell executive from back in the day when Shell was working with the Nigerian military to dispossess landholders and murder dissident leaders such as Ken Saro-Wiwa.  Recently he boldly stated to UK students that his Lib-Dems "didn't break a promise" in the wake of the trebling of their university fees, in spite of a Lib-Dem manifesto which plainly committed the Lib-Dems to explicitly opposing any changes to or increases of fees.  Cable's portfolio and ministry was directly responsible for the new fee structure, and while feeling the public heat before the vote on the matter he insinuated he might abstain from voting in parliament on the new fees - which itself would still have been a denial of his party's platform to oppose changes to the fee structure - he went ahead and voted in favor of raising tuitions anyway.  He is further chameleonic in his self re-branding as a left-wing politician, after years of supporting economic liberalisation in the form of proposals to privatise UK health insurance as well as Tony Blair's liberalisation of financial markets, which in turn helped to create bank failures and housing bubbles in the UK. 

Sherwood Forest, by Puptoes74

Perhaps bolder than all these political maneuverings is the decision by Cameron's government to put all of Britain's forests up for sale, a move that has already seen private interests move in to purchase and fence in forests previously accessible to the public.  Only a few regulatory changes stand in the way of these National treasures being razed to the ground for timber, development and a quick profit.  Indeed, there seems little other purpose than that to purchasing the land, which in its current form can provide no income for the purchasers to recoup their investment.  The irony of the famous Nottingham/Sherwood Forest being up for sale has not been lost on British journalists, who wonder aloud how Robin-Hood would react to having his hideout sold out from under him.

Those following Cameron's government more closely would point out further betrayals, not just of single promises, but of the cornerstones of his party's and supporter's political ethics:  Halting any increases to payments to the EU in a time of austerity; Protecting pensioners from increased costs of living; the list goes on.  He has baldly favored his political and business allies at the expense of his honor and credibility among the votership.  In spite of this, is it possible he believes he could win a second election?

English "Bird=blender" c. 1820, by Martin Pettitt

The actions of the coalition government in the UK have been a bold rejection of the fear of being held accountable.  They evidently know that they can say one thing plainly and just as plainly do the opposite.  They apparently believe that the public will accept the Orwellian truth that 2 + 2 = 5.  People of free will and democratic tendencies the world over have much to fear from David Cameron's government, who by example is, so far, demonstrating to the unscrupulous and unethical everywhere that people at large will mainly fail to defend themselves.  Or perhaps it was he who inherited this knowledge from George Bush?  Of course, lies and duplicity are nothing new to politics.  But is it possible that it is such the norm, that the votership, still engaged at rates around 50% in English speaking nations, not only accepts this reality, but are more and more willing to cooperate with it?  Those who are not can certainly tell it to the riot police in the streets.


Read more about

David Cameron's appointments and environmental policy:
http://www.johannhari.com/2010/07/15/now-david-cameron-shafts-the-environment

UK parliament's report on deepwater drilling:
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/8376186

UK forests up for sale:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-for-sale--camerons-green-credentials-2177929.html

Vince Cable:
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/09/mehdi-hasan

Drones, Torture, Rendition: Democratic Values?

A Huffington Post column by Johann Hari summarizes certain revelations stemming from the leaked USG diplomatic cables by Wikileaks.  The piece posits that Julian Assange's efforts have made the world safer and are a boon to US National Security, that a better educated public with proof of government wrongdoings can better bring its government to account.

Hari's column touches on a cable which proves the US Armed Forces were operating in Yemen while denying it publicly, and references an article which discusses 'Reaper' or 'Predator' drone attacks in Pakistan.  Drone attacks there are a very messy situation; Pakistani officials publicly deny their tacit approval of US drone attacks within their territory, rejecting them as a violation of their sovereignty and of dubious value and causing massive civilian casualties. According to Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit, drone attacks "are having long-term negative consequences.”  Indeed, the Pakistani and American governments likely will suffer "long-term negative consequences" from the resulting radicalization of Muslims when they employ drone tactics such as attacking a funeral procession; waiting for a time until villagers come out from cover after the attack in search for survivors and to pray for the newly slain; then attacking again.  Certainly they make bitter enemies of the villagers who lose their homes and family members in such wanton displays of imperial might; people who may have nothing left to do to support themselves except to take up arms, if it does not generally galvanize the entire population against them, to whom the notion that US forces are in the region to restore security and human rights must seem something of a Hitlerian joke.

The article also highlights pressure the US Government exerted on Germany to quash an investigation into the rendition of an innocent man, Khaled El-Masri, who was mistaken for an insurgent with a similar name. El-Masri was kidnapped from Europe and brought to the CIA's infamous 'Salt Pit', a secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan.  A Harper's Magazine article, The El-Masri Cable, describes the treatment he received: "Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan. At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he 'knew too much.'"  While this kidnapping, torture, sexual violation and starvation of an innocent man had already been revealed, the leaked cables show the US Government's expectation of impunity for its agents who execute these illegal actions in sovereign foreign nations; in this case, Germany's unwillingness to cooperate by dropping charges in the matter against 13 USG agents is met with threats from US diplomats.

Hari's article points to other abuses by Western governments and the lies they tell their people to cover it up.  He expresses outrage in the poignant observation that "There is a squalid little irony when you see people who are literally bombing innocent civilians every day feverishly accuse a man (Julian Assange) who has never touched a weapon in his life of being 'covered in blood.'"  He names Western governments as the prime threats to their own population's security, and suggests that the unmasking of this hypocrisy must lead to positive change, stability and security.  What will the view of the Muslim and 3rd world be, if Western 'democracies' fail to address the abuse of power by their governments?  Al Qaeda already names Western voters as sponsors of the military occupation of Palestine and the general misery of the third world, offering that ignorance is not an excuse for imperialism.  Many amongst the populations of the world's Muslim nations already view Westerners, especially Americans, as ignorant, militarist and corrupt materialists.  Now that Western tax-payers and voters cannot hide behind the veil of ignorance, how will the world view of Western 'democracies' change, should they fail to expel the ruling classes who have sown war, death, torture and poverty in their people's name?  What is the risk that Westerners come to be seen as knowingly complicit in the heinous crimes of their governments by their 'democratically' expressed unwillingness to stop these crimes, let alone rectify and bring their authors to justice?  Whatever blood Julian Assange and the American government have on them, it is more and more smeared onto each of us, here in Canada, in the US and in Europe.


Read the Johann Hari- Huffington Post article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/julian-assange-has-made-u_b_793504.html

More on Drones by Johann Hari and others:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann--hari-obamas-robot-wars-endanger-us-all-2106931.html
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/06/23/at-least-65-killed-as-us-drones-attack-south-waziristan-funeral-procession/
http://www.qatar-tribune.com/data/20101202/content.asp?section=pakistan1_3
http://geo.tv/6-24-2009/44711.htm

Harper's Magazine on El-Masri Rendition:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/11/hbc-90007831

BBC on American intervention in Yemen:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11918037

Wikileaks: Misanthropy and the Spectre of Scrutiny

Amid the bluster surrounding the public release of 278 of 251,287 secret and confidential USG diplomatic cables by Wikileaks as of Monday November 29th; more telling as to the behaviour and thinking of governments and vested interests is the current reaction in the world media and of public officials, than any information so far to be gleaned from these documents.  This author has read the majority of the 278 published cables, and perused the remainder, the greater share originating from embassies in Europe, the middle-east and central Asia, where the US armed forces are most active, and a smattering of cables from east-Asia, Africa and the Americas rounding out the balance.  Read in volume, they provide a fascinating glimpse as to the psychology and priorities of USG foreign policy.

The characterization by the Pentagon of Wikileaks being “reckless” in their release of the documents came in fact ahead of their release, as were Sunday’s headlines quoting the White House statement that their publication is “reckless and dangerous.”  If the documents so far released are dangerous at all, it is mostly to the continued perception by the American public that their government stands above other nations on a moral high-ground, and that USG foreign policies are in any tangible way amenable to and affected by democratic processes at home.  Wikileaks has in fact respected the danger that confidential informants and private citizens inside Iran, Afghanistan and Korea face by censoring their names, though the names of foreign diplomats, statesmen and US officials are rarely spared, as they are ostensibly publicly accountable.  Such statements from sources protected by Wikileaks’s self censorship are in any case usually the least revealing as to actual policy, and are interesting only in their insight as to what foreign insiders and parties want the USG to do or think.  

The statement by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs which has formed the leading paragraph in so many news outlet’s headlining stories: "To be clear -- such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government," is a falsehood, as the cables themselves demonstrate that the USG, with abandon, continues to support on a quid pro quo basis innumerable corrupt dictatorial regimes such as in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.  The notion that anyone anywhere is soliciting the USG in the aid of “promoting democracy and open government” is absurd in the light of these cables, which instead demonstrate foreign governments soliciting the USG for money, weapons and military action against their neighbours, or in the cases of Syria, Azerbaijan and Turkey, that the USG not continue to provoke the Iranian regime and desist from sponsoring terrorism, subterfuge and the foment of dissent within Iran’s borders, which they believe strengthens the Islamic leadership by providing it pretext for the further curtailing domestic freedoms of movement and expression, and which convinces the Iranian leadership that an attack by American forces is imminent and forestalled only by its current difficulties in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq.  The cables reveal that many representatives of middle-eastern nations believe that Iran’s operations and attempts to destabilise Iraq and Afghanistan stem from the Iranian government’s conviction that allowing a military success in Iraq or Afghanistan would precipitate a rather immediate invasion of Iran itself by Western forces. 

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has called Wikileaks a “Threat to democracy,” which seems understandable only if one extrapolates that the release of the cables will motivate people such as him to dispense with it.  For the moment, exactly how the exposure of secretive government workings to the public threatens that public’s right to rule itself (democracy), if it does not in fact do the opposite, remains unexplained.  Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon, called the leaks “deplorable” and reportedly continued that ‘leaks like this one do not serve anybody's national interests and may threaten national security.’

Hilary Clinton’s statement that the leaks are “An attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity," seems ironic in light of the continual proliferation of weapons and conflict on every continent and the ongoing global economic crisis; and thereby causing one to wonder about exactly whose security and economic prosperity she speaks, and to whom she is referring when she invokes the name “international community,” a rather ambiguous and ubiquitous term of late.   There are also the calls from News outlets such as Fox News and NY Rep. Congressman Peter King that Wikileaks be deemed a terrorist organisation, and that its assets be seized and donors be considered sponsors of terrorism, which is an obvious absurdity, inconsistent even with the USG’s loose definition of terrorism, and would define innumerable US citizens as terrorists.

One of the few reasonable reactions by any government to the scandal is from David Cameron’s Conservative UK government, who as very recent newcomers to power are perhaps not (yet?) a part of Secretary Clinton’s ‘international community’.  A spokesman for the UK government discussed the matter with reporters, stopping short of branding Wikileaks as a criminal or terrorist organisation, and relating simply that the released cables and a lack of confidentiality on matters “is inhibiting the conduct of governments.”  While an honest observation, the merit of the conduct of any government and which matters merit strict confidentiality is itself a matter which clearly requires debate.

Overall, the picture is one of public leaders worldwide closing ranks in face of what they view as a clear attack on their authority and mandate to continue the types of behaviours described in the cables, which it is.  They deplore the leaks as a threat to “national” security, mistaking themselves as the nation and not merely its representatives, and are weary of the possibility that an informed public may better understand their government’s duplicity and actions against the public welfare in favour of privately profitable wars and support for autocratic/oligarchic regimes abroad, causes which almost no citizens of western nations find virtue in.  A massive PR campaign is being mobilised in the mainstream media, beginning with a repetitious doublethink mantra which in its essence suggests to the public mind that to hold its leaders to task on matters most important is antithetical to their freedoms and democratic rule.  

Only 278 of the 251,287 cables obtained by Wikileaks have thus far been released.  The relative voracity of global leadership’s reaction to the publication of these cables, which have provided very little extra insight beyond information which is already publicly available, if not conveniently located in a single place from a single source, is perhaps indicative that the ruling echelon is convinced the most damning evidence of their self-interest and misappropriation of public trust is yet to come.