21st Century Vision

Asylum – A place of Safety?

The scandals in the Home office (see blog May 22) cover many things.  Alongside the detention of those who have done nothing more than seek safety is the destitution of those who are refused safety here.  Many people refused asylum are actually unable to leave the UK because of acknowledged threat of torture or violence, yet once refused they are denied rights to housing, benefits, work and even health care.  These are a new group of people on our streets with nothing and no prospect of anything.

What sort of society have we become?  A hundred years ago there were no border controls.  As we have amassed wealth through the extraction of resources and the use of cheap labour around the world, we have become like misers sitting on their piles of gold.  We tell people in other countries, like Iran, China and Zimbabwe that their countries are bad, they do not respect human rights like we do.  But when they try to come here, we tell them no!

Last week the Church of England published a Faithful Cities report decrying the morality behind the current approach to asylum.  Asylum seekers are suffering "unacceptable" destitution because of government policies. The report said it was "unacceptable" to use destitution as a "tool of coercion" in the treatment of asylum seekers.  It also drew attention to the widening gap between rich and poor in the UK which mixed with the multicultural nature of many inner-city areas had given rise to racial intolerance and "fear of the stranger".

The issue of destitution is not simply moral.  Since 2004 people who have failed their asylum claims are not entitled to health care.  This means that pregnant women with HIV are being refused treatment; this means that the babies run a very increased risk of developing HIV.  This means the pool of HIV in society grows.  This has been condemned by health professionals and last week the Terence Higgins Trust  launched a campaign to Restore Free HIV Treatment for All  Follow the Link for further information or to sign up to the campaign.

Treating people whose claims for asylum have failed as having no rights leads to dehumanising people in ways that we have not seen in this country for over half a century.  A recent report from a Mersyside Refugee organisation tells the story:

Separation of Mothers from Babies - in line with section 9,  NIIA2004/5

“We've seen 3 recent cases of young mothers with children only weeks old, who have been told that they must leave Social Services Accommodation and have had their support withdrawn. All are failed Asylum Seekers and it seems that the local authority are trying to use section 9 of the treatment of claimants act to force them to leave their babies with Social Services whilst the mothers are made destitute.”

Surely we have an obligation to cloth, feed, house, to respect their families and give health care to people who have sought safety here, whilst they remain on our shores.

The picture above is taken from the Refugee Action web site. Follow the Link to read more.

Dear Diary

We moved house recently, and under the stairs was a torn page from an old diary ….

Thursday 30^th May 1996

It was nice to see Auntie Poppy, Uncle Jack and the Palmers Green cousins, but all that cynical carping about New Labour and clause IV!  Afterwards I went to sleep on the settee, and what a dream I had. It was 2006, and I was ten years older.

Labour had just won a third term!  And no wonder.  As the ice caps melted, Britain had taken the lead, with 2 cents on the top rate of income tax to invest in non-nuclear sustainable energy technology. Already we were selling surplus power by cable to our Eurozone partners, themselves less happily endowed with winds and tides.  Shakespeare, with his “fortress built by nature”, definitely had it the wrong way round.

Once people got the idea the government was serious, it seemed obvious that extremes of inequality were unacceptable. Companies realized that what mattered was the enthusiasm of their workers, not the value of executive stock options. Work, as the chancellor said in 1998, had to change. And it did change. The Management for Social Purpose Act meant enterprises had to publish annual evidenced social impact statements, agreed by unions, consumers and local authorities, as well as directors.

As temporary contracts virtually disappeared, family poverty began to fall. Parents could plan for the longer term, and magical solutions such as the lottery withered on the vine. Incomes didn’t rise overall, but debt sharply declined. Teachers reported new attitudes in schools. One from Ashby-de-la-Zouch summed it up: “the kids can see the future depends not on chance but on their intelligence and thoughtfulness”. As the boom in new energy technologies took hold, universities re-opened or expanded their physics and engineering departments, and the spin-off industries – often located in the windswept provinces – did wonders for depressed regions.

And those local areas! OK, some town halls (Barnet again!) bungled their new responsibilities for energy, schools and health services, but countrywide the creative buzz in the proportionally elected council chambers swept away most of the unproductive bipartisan posturing of the past.

Can one have mixed feelings in a dream? Mindless drinking and drug-fuelled violence declined. Had it ever truly been fun? Had football ever really been more than one game of athletic skill among others? 

When to universal acclaim Tony Blair succeeded Nelson Mandela (the dream is fading a bit) as UN Secretary General, the value of the example we had set seemed clear to everyone. Helped perhaps by Blair’s forthright repudiation of neoconservative aggression, President "Kyoto" Gore had defeated George Bush in 2004.  He rapidly agreed not only debt cancellation and big cuts in US farm subsidies but, at the suggestion of Burmese prime minister Aung San Suu Kyi, annual Security Council assessments of progress towards binding development goals. Member states were expected to contribute not 0.7 but 0.9% of GDP to development assistance and all (except I fancy it was Australia) had done so. An international community was emerging at last, one in which tyranny at home was as alien - and pointless - as imperialism abroad.

At Lord's China were 52 for 2 in reply to England’s first innings 205 all out.

Dear diary, as John Keats said when he was living up the road here in Enfield, "Do I wake or sleep?"

Tony Blair for UN General Secretary - really ....

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for the reform of the United Nations in a key foreign policy speech in the US. He said the UN secretary general should be given greater powers to improve the organisation's ability to react to international crises. Other institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund also needed to change and possibly merge - to enable them to react effectively to economic and humanitarian crises.

The UK prime minister said the current make-up of the UN Security Council - with no permanent seats for Germany, Japan or India - could no longer be considered legitimate in the modern world.

It also needed representation from Latin American and African countries, he said. Mr Blair also called for the creation of a UN environment organisation commensurate with the importance the issue had on the international agenda.

One Blog’s (Paxalles) response to this was

After listening to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's address to Georgetown University on C-Span, it would seem that he would, with his internationalist focus, be a great nominee for the next Secretary General of the United Nations.  He has the experience and the vision as well as a reasonable and realistic reform plan for the scandal riddled organization - and he is one of the most articulate politicians of his era.  Perhaps Gordon Brown and his supporters are already working on this one...

See Blog….

Iran Israel Peace Deal Was In The Offering

Inter Press Service Reposts that Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States. The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.

The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.

The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.

An Iranian threat to destroy Israel has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months. On Mar. 10, Bush said, "The Iranian president has stated his desire to destroy our ally, Israel. So when you start listening to what he has said to their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, then you begin to see an issue of grave national security concern."

Never mind the debt, cancel the IMF

Pro-business solutions have made the poor poorer

The IMF is facing a crisis of confidence amongst its debtors and calls for a new approach from its supporters.

The Washingon-based Fund has ruled the global economy for decades, doling out a one-size-fits-all medicine to its client countries. Their prescription of savage budget cuts, usually in the 'soft' social sectors, and wholesale privatisation of services has benefitted the multinational companies which have snapped up the right to provide water, gas or electricity at prices they can name for themselves, but has led to the poor becoming poorer - or, all too often, dead.

Now some of the IMF's largest clients are seeking to pay off their debts and escape the Fund's clutches forever. Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Uruguay and Turkey have all either already done so, or have started along that path. It could leave the Fund as no longer a viable institution. Other, poorer countries would like to follow, but cannot yet find the money to be able to escape - no wonder the IMF has been dragging its heels over debt forgiveness!

The top brass of the world economy assembled last month for the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, and a large part of their discussion centred on concerns about the future of the Fund. They came up with a 'new approach', which appears to consist of giving the IMF powers to convene mini-summits todiscuss the future of nations suffering economic problems. That doesn't sound very radical to me, and would doubtless end up as business as usual.

Instead, two leading economists have called for the IMF to be 'taken off life-support'. Walden Bello, Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, and Soren Ambrose, policy analyst at 50 Years Is Enough, contend that the only solution to the continuing crises in Africa and other impoverished parts of the world is a restoration of policy sovereignty to people and governments. Read their aticle here.

The real scandal at the Home Office

For the past three weeks we have been served a diet of media “scandals” at the Home Office. But what is its real shameful secret?

First Charles Clarke lost his job for misplacing hundreds of foreign national prisoners released at the end of their sentences without being considered for deportation. Few participants in the xenophobic media frenzy, from the Prime Minister down, paused to think of the prisoners as human beings, possibly long established in the UK with spouses and families who themselves had done no wrong. Fewer still raised the question of reform. Presumably the object of punishment is in part to help prisoners overcome their criminal past, to become better people.

The fact that our prison system so rarely achieves this is itself a scandal.

Then came the episode of the senior civil servant who, asked by a committee of MPs to put a figure on the number of illegal immigrants in the UK, replied that he “hadn’t the faintest idea”. Let us rephrase the question: “Please tell us what by definition you don’t know?” Pretty silly, of course, as even Mr Blair pointed out. But what neither he nor most of the press supplied was the context to think about the issue. How about the following findings last year from the Institute of Public Policy Research?

• Migrant labour contributes disproportionately to both GDP and public finances. Although the migrant workforce makes up 8.7% of the population, it contributes 10.2% of all the income tax collected

• Total revenue to the exchequer from migrants grew in real terms from £33.8bn in 1999-2000 to £41.2bn in 2003-04. This 22% increase compared favourably with a 6% rise over the same period in revenues from the British-born population

Indeed without immigrant labour (often illegal) there would be serious difficulties in industries from agriculture to building and the hotel trade. The scandal is the conditions under which these workers live or (in the case of the Chinese cockle pickers) die.

Finally we learn that the Home Office is employing allegedly undocumented Nigerian cleaners, while a senior immigration official is alleged to have offered an 18-year-old Zimbabwean rape victim favourable treatment of her asylum claim in return for sex. This shows both the dependency of central government itself on illegal (and therefore cheap) labour, and also the opportunity for exploitation by unscrupulous officials created by the scandalous vulnerability our asylum system imposes on people in the extremes of need.

But if the press really wants to shame the Home Office (and don't hold your breath) they need look no further than this.  The UK government currently detains more than 2,000 children, including babies, in immigration detention centres every year. That's equivalent to the number of pupils at a large inner-city secondary school. These children have committed no crime but are held behind locked doors and high barbed wire fences. Five years ago it was rare for families and children to be detained for immigration purposes. Now, members of the No Place for a Child coalition have documented detentions lasting anything from 7 to 268 days.

Now there’s a scandal.

Click here if you would like to take action on the detention of children

Iraq & London Terror

Below is an extract from Open Democracy by Paul Rogers where he questions the british Government’s continual refusal to consider any links between the invasion of Iraq and the terror in London on July 7^th.

On 7 July 2005, four suicide-bombers attacked the London transport system, killing fifty-two people and wounding 700 in a series of coordinated bomb blasts – three on underground trains and one on a bus. The attacks were not on the scale of Madrid, Bali, the Mombasa and Dar es Salaam embassy bombings or New York, but they had a considerable effect on public opinion in Britain. At the time the British government denied strongly that there was any connection between the motivation of the bombers and the war in Iraq, and it has maintained this view rigorously ever since.

In the past week, three reports about the attacks have been published. The most substantial was from the intelligence and security committee (ISC), a semi-independent cross-party select committee drawn from both houses of parliament. This was followed almost immediately by a document from the home office on the sequence of events before and after the attacks, coupled with some analysis of the background and motivations of the bombers. Finally, the government published a brief response to the ISC's report.

There are numerous people across the security and intelligence services in Britain who, at least in private, do not share the official line about the irrelevance of Iraq to the London attacks. But as long as the government persists in its refusal to accept any serious criticism of the conduct of the war on terror, it is not possible for government reports to offer realistic assessments of this issue. The home office's response to the ISC report is significant here. It contains a statement on its approaches to Islamic radicalisation, which include a number of programmes: empowering "mainstream Islam" among young British Muslims, engaging more effectively with influential Muslims and the international Islamic media, and undertaking intensive efforts to explain British foreign policy in Britain itself and across the Islamic world. But no consideration is given to the question of whether British foreign policy is even remotely a part of the problem.

See full article ……

UN Wants Guantanamo Closed!

The UN Committee Against Torture called on the United States on Friday to close its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of an effort to ‘eradicate’ torture by its personnel and expressed concern over reports of secret detention centres and the practice of sending terror suspects to countries with poor human rights records.

A committee report expressed concern over reports of torture by US military or civilian personnel in Iraqi and Afghan prisons.

The UN panel said the US should end all forms of torture, investigate allegations promptly and thoroughly, and prosecute those responsible.The panel of experts released a brief report from its headquarters in Geneva, and urged Washington to close any secret detention facilities holding suspected terrorists overseas.

The report, made available to journalists in New York, challenged the Bush administration’s practice of sending prisoners to countries where torture has been known to occur.

American officials told the investigators that the US did so only after receiving assurances that there would be no abuse, but the panel said that such pledges should only be accepted from countries, which have good records on human rights, and after an examination of details of an individual case. It made clear that the United States and the international community remained far apart on a wide range of issues, including whether the torture treaty’s protections applied to Guantanamo detainees.

The panel referred to reports that the US had been involved in ‘enforced disappearances’ and said that it considered American officials’ assertions ‘that such acts do not constitute acts of torture’ to be regrettable.

No power without responsibility?

The nuclear conundrum

What is it about nuclear fission that provokes such passions and so much disinformation?

On the weaponry side of things there is an easy explanation: the potential is there for massive destruction and the snuffing out of tens of thousands or even millions of lives. A nuclear war is almost unthinkable - and fortunately now relatively unlikely, though the potential still exists for a brief but disastrous exchange in the Middle East or on the Indian subcontinent - but one single bomb, perhaps in the hands of terrorists, would be bad enough.

So it's no wonder the USA and others are getting het up about the possibility that the unstable (= not under US control) regime in Tehran might be preparing to develop nuclear weapons. Or is it? They weren't bothered when Israel got them. They are only slightly bothered that India and Pakistan have them, except when relations deteriorate and a possible war looms. "It's against the nuclear non-proliferation treaty!", they cry - but that treaty also enjoins the existing nuclear powers to start decommissioning their weapons and not to acquire any new ones, yet the Blair government is intent on replacing Trident when it comes to the end of its life. Why? Who on earth would it be defending us against? Terrorists aren't going to be deterred by nuclear retaliation - there are no targets, and they would happily accept the martyrdom if there were. Meanwhile the US as always ploughs its own furrow (and anybody else's it feels like), ignoring or tearing up any treaty that is inconvenient. As is often the case, such selfish policy is probably counter-productive: Iran knows that the only way to be safe from America is the North Korean method: carry a big enough stick to make them think twice. They might not have developed nuclear weapons left to themselves, but they will now, as quickly as possible.

Then there's nuclear power. That's almost as confused and confusing. It's proponents argue that it is the only way to combat climate change, because it is carbon-free - but it's not. The production of uranium is an energy-intensive process that produces lots of carbon. My understanding is that, given high-grade ore, over the complete life-cycle nuclear power produces about one third as much carbon, Kwh for Kwh, as oil- or gas-based electricity, but there is only enough of such ores to last the world about four or five years if all energy production was nuclear. As lower-grade ores have to be brought into use the energy consumption for extraction goes up and the saving in CO2 vis-a-vis oil and gas goes dowm. Before long you get to the point that more energy is going into the extraction process than comes out the other end when the uranium is used as fuel.

So nuclear energy is at best a stop-gap while we scale up the renewables, and certainly not something where we can lead the world down the right path. It will need to be implemented fast too, relatively speaking, as the timescales for planning and building nuclear power stations are so long, otherwise the lights will start to go out. That means riding roughshod over planning laws and safety considerations. And even at speed they won't be ready in time to have an effect on climate change before it's too late.

Can we afford to go for both nuclear and renewables at the same time? Theoretically I imagine the answer is yes, but when it comes to practical politics the answer will surely be no. Money will be poured down the nuclear drain because the politicians - sorry, one politician, has staked his reputation on it, and renewables will get the crumbs they have always got.

Then of course there are those dratted terrorists again. A nuclear power station must be a tempting target for them, specially if they don't have to plan to get out alive. One successfully hijacked plane and bang goes Suffolk or Cumbria.

And I haven't even got to the problem of the waste yet....

Click here for a scholarly study of the comparative CO2 emissions and production costs of nuclear versus oil/gas.

Confused of Enfield

This morning I spoke to the family. “We must use less water, shorter showers, less energy, turn the lights off…”  The empty crunching of honey nut cornflakes and the soft chew of a banana met my concerns.  The only thing made in England here is my mug and breakfast bowl… Good old English clay.  The rest, even the wooden table, had all travelled many thousands of miles to get here.  Gazing at the long list of nutrients on the cornflakes packet and the labels on the non fair trade tea, I try to imagine there is a list of energy consumption, carbon emissions and person hours put into getting it to my table, perhaps the wage, the number of children the family could send to school and whether they could ever get to a hospital.

Teenagers, even those in the twenties, have a way of pointing out things; the need for shorter showers seemed trivial given every other abomination in our lifestyles

And then there is the war in Iraq.  Is this the greatest act of immorality?  Have 35,000 people or 150,000 people been killed in a horrible gut wrenching manner.  Am I supposed to be relieved that it is less than the quarter of a million who perished in Yugoslavia, the 3 million in the Congo or the 20 million in WW2.  And is Iraq a precursor to a war against Iran.  Is there anything I can do to stop it?  Are we on the steady slide to WW3?

Next on my list was the morning’s news that Tony B is exhorting the need for nuclear power to protect us from the insecurities of gas and oil.    And was it 10,000 or 50,000 people who died or will die, mainly from cancer, by and large a slow and horrible death, (is there a nice death?) from the Chernobyl disaster. What does he think is round the corner and where are we going to get our nuclear fuel from?  Not for the Trident warheads because the chances are they will be reused for the next generation of nuclear weapons being produced at Aldermaston.

And then there are the Millennium Development Goals, targets for the poorer countries to develop their education and health services.  Well, they are already slipping like the Alma Ata declaration in 1986 of Health for All by the year 2000 which faded away completely.  Whilst we demand ever better targets, no waiting for an operation for more than six weeks, some people are waiting more than sixty years for the hospital.

And then there are the failed asylum seekers, the new face of destitution on our streets.  It is over sixty years since we have had people with no rights to food, shelter or health care amongst us.  Many failing their asylum because of stringent Home Office rules, but coming from countries it is not safe to send them back to, or countries that don’t want them back.  And if they do succeed and become refugees where do they get housed?  Into badly run housing estates where the local white population feel neglected and forgotten, stirring up racial prejudices, promoting fascism.

But what to do about all this; stiff upper lip, denial and get on with it?  What political process will sort this out; the Euston manifesto of liberal democracy?  If not liberal democracy what then; illiberal autocracy?

Answers on the blog please ‘cos I don’t have them. In the meantime, have fewer showers, turn the power off when you can, use bicycles and public transport.  Press for a proper evaluation of the health impact of the war in Iraq.  Tell everyone that war against Iran would be madness.  Join the call for a long-term UN examination of the Chernobyl disaster and lobby for more renewable energy provision and against nuclear power.  Press for fairtrade and proper funding of a global health and education service. Demand that local councils look after their housing estates and that strangers placed there have proper inductions, language courses and mentoring.  Support asylum seekers until they leave and if they can’t, then surely they deserve asylum.

Above all, work out what would be a fair share of the resources for all the human beings on the globe and ask yourself, when is plenty enough?