Is Obama giving American private security contractors immunity from prosecution just like Bush did – Who will protect Iraqi civilians from them?

The US under both Bush and Obama has used more mercenaries than even Gaddafi could afford - and they have allowed them to be just as above the law. There's no sign that the formal withdrawal from Iraq will change this as 5,000 'civilian' 'private security contractors' (actually armed mercenaries) stay under the command of the US State Department

Widespread US use of mercenaries (many being former US forces) for ‘plausible deniability’ of involvement and to make operations using them allow them immunity from prosecution led to the US demand that UN resolution 1970 on Libya should include a specific clause (clause 6) exempting nationals of states not party to the ICC (International Criminal Court) from prosecution except by their own state. This made both most of Gaddafi’s African mercenaries and former US special forces hired as ‘private contractors’ and operating in Libya, immune to prosecution by the ICC (1).

This was due to the US and other NATO governments sending former members of their special forces into Libya hired as ‘private security contractors’ (2).

Private military contractors in Iraq like Blackwater (renamed ‘Xe’ in the Obama era) and Dyncorp have been proven to be involved in numerous shootings of civilians there, many seemingly almost random  (3).

The US mission in Iraq is now to be headed by the State Department rather than the US military, but private military contractors working for the State Department have an immunity from prosecution that is even more complete than the almost total immunity of those working for the Pentagon (4).

The total withdrawal of US troops seems to be the result of the Iraqi government refusing to accept Obama administration conditions that they would have immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts.

The Washington Post reported that ‘Iraqi leaders said last week that they want a small contingent of U.S. military trainers to remain, but without immunity from local prosecution, a condition the Obama administration has said it cannot accept. The administration has been planning to keep 3,000 to 5,000 military trainers in the country if the two sides can hammer out an agreement.’(5)

The Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraqi governments negotiated in 2008 (and which came into force in 2009) supposedly ended immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for private security contractors (or mercenaries) operating in the country (6).

However the UN working group on mercenaries reported in June this year that ‘It is not clear, however, whether this removal of immunity covers all contractors employed by the United States Government and whether it is fully applied in Iraqi courts’ (7).

This leaves the possibility of the kind of immunity from prosecution for mercenaries employed by the US State Department in Iraq that led to American employees of the US private security firm Dyncorp, employed by the State Department in Bosnia in the 1990s, to get off entirely unpunished after kidnapping 12 to 15 year old Bosnian girls and repeatedly raping them and buying and selling them as slaves (8) – (13).

This did not result in any prosecution of anyone involved in any court, nor has it ever stopped the British and US governments from continuing to employ Dyncorp in wars around the world (14) - (15).

It was as bad as anything the Serbs were alleged to have done in justifications given for war being necessary to stop such abuses.

The justification given for immunity from prosecution is to ‘protect American citizens’ from unfair convictions. Who will protect civilians from being shot by people placed above the law though? Who will protect young girls from American citizens in other countries when they’re placed above the law and turn out to be paedophiles and rapists?

(1) = IB Times 27 Feb 2011 ‘Full Text of UN Resolution imposing sanctions on Libya’,http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/116663/20110227/un-resolution-libya-sanctions-original-text-un-resolution-1970-2011.htm

(2) = Guardian 31 Mar 2011 ‘Libya: SAS veterans helping Nato identify Gaddafi targets in Misrata’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/31/libya-sas-veterans-misrata-rebels ; Former SAS soldiers and other western employees of private security companies are helping Nato identify targets in the Libyan port city of Misrata, the scene of heavy fighting between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels, well-placed sources have told the Guardian.

(3) = Independent 14 Dec 2011  ‘Security firms involved in 200 shootings in Iraq’ , http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/security-firms-involved-in-200-shootings-in-iraq-6276688.html

(4) = Washington Post 08 Oct 2011 ‘State Department readies Iraq operation, its biggest since Marshall Plan’,http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/state-department-readies-iraq-operation-its-biggest-since-marshall-plan/2011/10/05/gIQAzRruTL_story.html , ‘The State Department is racing against an end-of-year deadline to take over Iraq operations from the U.S. military, throwing together buildings and marshaling contractors...an estimated 16,000 civilians under the American ambassador — the size of an Army division…To do so, the department is contracting about 5,000 security personnel.’

(5) = Washington Post 08 Oct 2011 ‘State Department readies Iraq operation, its biggest since Marshall Plan’,http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/state-department-readies-iraq-operation-its-biggest-since-marshall-plan/2011/10/05/gIQAzRruTL_story.html ; ‘Iraqi leaders said last week that they want a small contingent of U.S. military trainers to remain, but without immunity from local prosecution, a condition the Obama administration has said it cannot accept. The administration has been planning to keep 3,000 to 5,000 military trainers in the country if the two sides can hammer out an agreement.’

(6) = Independent 10 Jul 2008 ‘Security firms lose immunity in Iraq deal’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/security-firms-lose-immunity-in-iraq-deal-863931.html

(7) = UN News Centre 16 Jun 2011 ‘ Iraq should keep regulating private military and security firms, say UN experts’, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38735&Cr=iraq&Cr1=  , ‘The Group welcomed the fact that the 2009 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the US contains a provision removing the immunity of some private foreign security contractors in Iraq. “It is not clear, however, whether this removal of immunity covers all contractors employed by the United States Government and whether it is fully applied in Iraqi courts,” they said. Among its recommendations, the experts urged the Iraqi Government to prioritize the adoption of legislation regulating security companies that has been pending since 2008.’

(8) = Kathryn Bolkovac & Carin Lynn (2011) ‘The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice’, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

(9) = Human Rights Watch Nov 2002 ‘HOPES BETRAYED : TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS TO POST-CONFLICT BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA FOR FORCED PROSTITUTION ’, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/bosnia/ ; see especially ‘XI. SFOR CONTRACTOR INVOLVEMENT’, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/bosnia/Bosnia1102-11.htm#P1160_252276(covers involvement of Dyncorp employees contracted by the US State Department)

 (10) = BBC News 28 Jan 2011 ‘Hard Talk - Kathryn Bolkovac, Whistleblower’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y26qv

(11) = BBC News 27 Jan 2011 ‘Bolkovac: Male colleagues purchased girls in Bosnia’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9377841.stm

(12) = Observer 29 Jul 2010 ‘British firm accused in UN 'sex scandal'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jul/29/unitednations , ‘A former United Nations police officer is suing a British security firm over claims that it covered up the involvement of her fellow officers in sex crimes and prostitution rackets in the Balkans….Kathryn Bolkovac, an American policewoman, was hired by DynCorp Aerospace in Aldershot for a UN post aimed at cracking down on sexual abuse and forced prostitution in Bosnia….She claims she was 'appalled' to find that many of her fellow officers were involved. She was fired by the British company after amassing evidence that UN police were taking part in the trafficking of young women from eastern Europe as sex slaves.’

 (13) = Salon 06 Aug 2002 ‘Sex-slave whistle-blowers vindicated’, http://www.salon.com/2002/08/06/dyncorp/ , ‘Two former employees of DynCorp, the government contracting powerhouse, have won legal victories after charging that the $2 billion-a-year firm fired them when they complained that co-workers were involved in a Bosnia sex-slave trade.’

(14) = HRW 25 Nov 2002 ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina: Traffickers Walk Free’, http://www.hrw.org/news/2002/11/25/bosnia-and-herzegovina-traffickers-walk-free

(15) = Guardian 29 Nov 2002 ‘American firm in Bosnia sex trade row poised to win MoD contract’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/nov/29/military.politics ; ‘The American defence contractor forced to pay compensation to a UN police officer unfairly dismissed for reporting colleagues involved in the Bosnian sex trade is poised to be awarded its first contract by the British government, the Guardian has learned. …DynCorp, which was ordered to pay the sacked UN investigator Kathryn Bolkovac £110,000 by an employment tribunal on Tuesday, is part of a consortium that is set to be awarded preferred bidder status by the Ministry of Defence to supply support services for military firing ranges…..Mr Johnston's case included allegations of men having sex with girls as young as 12. His claims also concerned a nightclub in Bosnia frequented by DynCorp employees, where young women were sold "hourly, daily or permanently".

The formal US withdrawal from Iraq is deceptive ; and war on Iran on the same dodgy grounds remains on the table

There’s been a lot of fanfare over the US withdrawal from Iraq, but in fact the US will keep 5,000 armed men in Iraq – many of them former US special forces – they just won’t be called US troops ; and they’ll be accompanied by CIA agents over-seeing US trained El Salvador style Iraqi death squads.

CNN reports that

‘Hundreds of nonmilitary U.S. personnel will remain in Iraq, including 1,700 diplomats, law enforcement officers and economic, agriculture and other professionals and experts, according to the State Department.

In addition, 5,000 security contractors will protect U.S. diplomats and another 4,500 contractors will serve other roles, such as helping provide food and medical services, until they can be done locally.’ (1)

These ‘private security contractors’ (a euphemism for mercenaries), working for companies like Dyncorp will include many former members of the US and British militaries and Special Forces, just as they have up until now. They have been responsible for some of the worst cases of random shootings of civilians in Iraq and the transfer of command of them from the Pentagon to the State Department will shift them from almost total immunity from prosecution to total immunity from prosecution.

They may become as immune to prosecution as the Dyncorp employees contracted by the US State Department in Bosnia who kidnapped young girls, raped them and used them as forced sex slaves, selling them to human traffickers (for details and sources on this click this link).

The reason that no US troops are being left turns out to be that the Iraqi government would not grant them immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts.

The Washington Post reported that ‘Iraqi leaders said last week that they want a small contingent of U.S. military trainers to remain, but without immunity from local prosecution, a condition the Obama administration has said it cannot accept. The administration has been planning to keep 3,000 to 5,000 military trainers in the country if the two sides can hammer out an agreement.’(2). (for more details on the immunity issue click this link)

The US military also spent the last 8 years training up El Salvador style Iraqi 'police commandos' and 'special forces' in Iraq under both Bush and Obama - units responsible for the same torture and murder that the Salvadoran military carried out against rebels and civilians alike in the 1980s (3) – (5).

Some of the ‘diplomats’ operating from the vast US embassy in Baghdad, which is bigger than the Vatican and cost over $1 billion to build, will undoubtedly be CIA agents, as every major power uses embassies and diplomatic immunity as cover for intelligence operatives (6). Some of these will be CIA ‘handlers’ overseeing Iraqi death squads, just as in the past in Vietnam and countries across Latin and Central America.

So the Obama administration doesn't have much of a leg to stand on in demanding that no country 'destabilises' or 'interferes' in Iraq, unless by 'de-stabilises' they mean 'threatens to replace our puppet government with a different one' (7).

Obama may not use the phrase ‘war on terror’ any more, that doesn’t mean the death squads or the ‘extra-ordinary rendition’ for torture are over.

It doesn’t mean the calls for a re-run of the Iraq war,  this time against Iran, is off either. The supposed justification is even identical– that the Iranian government and military would commit collective national suicide by using WMDs or nuclear weapons on nuclear armed states such as the US or Israel or their allies; or would commit national suicide by proxy by giving nuclear materials to terrorists.

This is despite the fact that Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Republican Guard showed in 1988 that they preferred an inglorious peace that allowed them to survive in power to glorious national martyrdom, just as Saddam showed the same during the 1991 Iraq war (when he did have chemical warheads for his scuds) by only using conventional warheads in scud missile attacks on Kuwait and Israel; and despite Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld and former US General John Abizaid saying we can live with a nuclear Iran, which, if it develops nuclear weapons, will want them for the same reason as the US and Israel – as a deterrent against attacks on it by others (8) – (9). Creveld also points out that US or Israeli intelligence have been claiming Iran was on the verge of building nuclear weapons for at least 20 years (10).

(1) = CNN 13 Dec 2011 ‘Obama says U.S. goal is successful Iraq’, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/12/politics/obama-maliki/index.html

(2) = Washington Post 08 Oct 2011 ‘State Department readies Iraq operation, its biggest since Marshall Plan’,http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/state-department-readies-iraq-operation-its-biggest-since-marshall-plan/2011/10/05/gIQAzRruTL_story.html ; ‘Iraqi leaders said last week that they want a small contingent of U.S. military trainers to remain, but without immunity from local prosecution, a condition the Obama administration has said it cannot accept. The administration has been planning to keep 3,000 to 5,000 military trainers in the country if the two sides can hammer out an agreement.’

(3) = New York Times Magazine 01 May 2005 ‘The Way of the Commandos’, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ARMY.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

(4) = Shane Bauer ‘Iraq’s new death squad’ in The Nation 6th June 2009, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/bauer

(5) = See the blogpost linked below – the part under the sub-heading ‘Killing and torturing Iraqis’ and sources 16 to 41 on it http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-iraqis-better-off-as-result-of-2003.html

(6) = Mother Jones 11 Jun 2011 ‘How Not to Withdraw from Iraq’http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/withdrawal-iraq-american-embassy-size

(7) =  White House Office of the Press Secretary 12 Dec 2011 ‘Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq in a Joint Press Conference’, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/12/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-al-maliki-iraq-joint-press-co

(8) = Forward 24 Sep 2007 ‘The World Can Live With a Nuclear Iran’, http://www.forward.com/articles/11673/

(9) = CNN 18 Sep 2007 ‘Retired general: U.S. can live with a nuclear Iran’, http://articles.cnn.com/2007-09-18/world/france.iran_1_nuclear-weapon-nuclear-program-nuclear-fuel?_s=PM:WORLD

(10) = NYT 21 Aug 2004 ‘Sharon on the warpath : Is Israel planning to attack Iran?’, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/opinion/21iht-edcreveld_ed3_.html

Fracking Insane - scientific evidence shows fracking causes illness by contaminating water and air with methane gas and toxic chemicals

The only reports saying it doesn’t are funded by the companies involved in fracking

Fracking or ‘hydraulic fracturing’ for shale gas has been being carried out for decades in the US and has now been approved by the British Coalition government (including Lib Dem minister Chris Hune) in Lancashire, including near Blackpool and by the Scottish SNP government in Scotland near Dumfries – with plans for more elsewhere (1) – (2).

 This is either a major mistake due to governments being taken in by propaganda and supposedly objective scientific studies funded by the companies involved; or else they are selling out the people they're meant to represent.

Oil companies who want to carry out ‘fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing) for gas are constantly claiming that there is ‘no evidence’ that fracking causes pollution of ground water or drinking water and no evidence it causes illnesses due to chemical and methane gas poisoning.

That claim is completely false. There’s lots of evidence of methane gas pollution of drinking water and ground water caused by fracking, found over decades, right up to the present ; and some recent evidence of chemicals used in fracking polluting water supplies.

The Evidence that Fracking causes air and water pollution with methane gas and fracking chemicals and serious illness

There’s a 1987 US environmental Protection Agency report on methane pollution of water supplies due to fracking in the mid-1980s in the US (3).

Those details of that report were not publicised by the EPA at the time for the same reason that most investigations of the effects of fracking are withheld for decades in the US - because big companies involved in fracking threatened people with law suits and legal bills they couldn’t afford if they continued to mention it ; and offered massive pay outs for ‘sealed court’ settlements on the other hand.

There are also recent scientific studies of dozens of fracking operations which found that ‘In aquifers overlying the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, we document systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction.’ (4)

There are also studies from 1999 to the present showing levels of methane in well water in areas where fracking has taken place being vastly greater than in other areas – often high enough to cause explosions (5) – (7).

The US EPA has also recently found evidence of pollution of water in Wyoming with chemicals used in fracking there (8).

The documentary film ‘gasland’, which showed people made seriously ill by air and water pollution and tapwater which could be set on fire as a result of fracking, is constantly attacked as ‘propaganda’ and ‘unscientific’ by the oil and gas companies and their lawyers. In fact it is supported by all of the above scientific evidence; and the main critics of Gasland have been revealed as industry front groups – especially Energy in Depth, whose funders are all companies involved in fracking (9) – (10).

BBC reports from Pennsylvania show the same problem – tapwater so full of methane and other chemicals that it can be set on fire – as the Gasland documentary did , as well as the same serious illnesses among residents within days of fracking beginning, including barium poisoning (11).

Many of the supposedly objective scientific studies of fracking which claim there’s no evidence it pollutes water supplies are directly or indirectly funded by the oil and gas companies involved in fracking.

Even one of these studies (by the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh) admits that ‘Air pollution is another factor that must be taken into consideration. Near the end of the well development, there is a practice called flaring that is used to get rid of the waste gas that is not able to be used. The excess gas is essentially set ablaze, leaving flames spewing far into the sky, burning for days on end, and emitting a significant amount of noxious gases.’ (12)

The Swanson study quotes it’s ‘additional resources’ as including  another supposedly objective academic study ‘The Economic Impacts of the Marcellus Shale: Implications for New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia’ which was a study funded by the ‘Marcellus Shale Coalition’, which factcheck.org found is in fact a trade association of companies involved in fracking for gas in the US (13) – (15).

A look at the full members of the Marcellus Shale Coalition and the funders of Energy in Depth shows they are the same companies (16) – (17).

Reports by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette found the Universities of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania are among those who refuse to provide details on what departments and studies were funded by private companies, let alone which private companies; and that campus associations and other proxy groups of these universities are taking money from the oil and gas companies for fracking operations on land owned by the universities, giving their studies of fracking another source of bias and conflict of interest (18) – (19).

Unsurprisingly the Swanson report  ends with the standard (and false) industry line that ‘It is important to note that not one case of pollution due to hydraulic fracturing has ever been recorded, though there have been occurrences due to other stages of the drilling process’ (my emphasis) (20)

The second part of the sentence seems to be making a distinction which in practice reveals how dishonest the first part of the sentence is. It’s just a semantic trick - playing with words by pretending that the stage of the fracking process which causes methane gas or chemical pollution of water supplies makes any difference.

The costs of fracking vastly outweigh the benefits

What will the costs be in terms of polluting farmland and drinking water supplies if fracking is allowed to continue? What will the cost be to the NHS and in lives of making large numbers of people ill , requiring treatment and unable to work, from methane and chemical pollution of drinking water and air due to fracking? What will be the cost in lives as people start dying due to fracking pollution of air and water supplies? How can jobs for some justify illness and death for far more people?

Is the plan perhaps that the number of people who die will reduce the unemployment statistics in the long run and that any who become too ill to work in the meantime will be classed as disabled rather than unemployed?

Any local council or national government giving permission for fracking is failing to protect the health and lives of it’s own people and is opening itself up to legal action and massive costs in the future, plus the responsibility for allowing the illness and death of large numbers of people and pollution that may last long after any jobs provided by fracking are gone. We have other industries we can create jobs and provide energy with – wind power, wave power and tidal power.

The economic benefit of the jobs created will be cancelled out by the bill in illness, death and increased food costs as polluting ground water will also reduce food production by killing crops and animals.

With climate change increasing droughts and the spread of desert and water use draining acquifers and rivers to the point they can’t recover across the world from California to the Middle East, water may be the ‘blue gold’ of the twenty first century (21) – (23). Permanently polluting it for gas supplies that may last only a few decades is not wise either.

What You Can Do

In Scotland:

Email First Minister Alec Salmond on this address -  Alex.Salmond.msp@scottish.parliament.uk and the Scottish cabinet scottish.ministers@scotland.gsi.gov.uk citing the scientific evidence from the US that fracking causes air and water pollution and serious illnesses and asking them to ban fracking in Scotlandon those grounds .

Please also forward this email,  or send an email with a link to this blog post to everyone you know who might sign.

In Wales:

Email the First Minister carwyn.jones@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Please also forward this email,  or send an email with a link to this blog post to everyone you know who might sign.

In England or anywhere in the UK

Sign the  UK government e-peitition calling for total ban on fracking in the UK, and/or the petition for a moratorium until further study .

You can email Prime Minister David Cameron on this link or write to him by post on the address on this link.

You can email UK Energy Minister Chris Huhne at this address ps.chris.huhne@decc.gsi.gov.uk.

To contact your local councillor, MP, MSP or member of the London, Welsh or Northern Ireland Assemblies go to this link.

Support the campaign to get 38 degrees to start a campaign against fracking in Scotland, England and Wales – add a comment and give 3 votes to the suggestion (this is not vote rigging – 38 degrees allows people 7 votes on what campaign suggestions it should take up at any time).

Please also forward this email, or send an email with a link to this blog post, to everyone you know who might sign.

In the US

You can contact your elected representatives at any level of government through the contact details on this website , refer them to the studies showing fracking causes air and water pollution and serious illnesses and ask them to call for a ban on it.

There are also petitions you can sign up to including Save the Water Table’s petition to ban fracking.

Please also forward this email, or send an email with a link to this blog post, to everyone you know who might sign.

Sources

(1) = Guardian.co.uk 02 Nov 2011 ‘Fracking 'probable' cause of Lancashire quakes’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/02/fracking-cause-lancashire-quakes

(2) = Scotland on Sunday 05 Nov 2011 ‘Fracking’ for gas given the green light’,  http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sunday/scotland/fracking_for_gas_given_the_green_light_1_1950654

(3) = US Environmental Protection Agency 1987 ‘Report to Congress – Management of Wastes from the Exploration, Development and Production of Crude Oil, Natural Gas and Geothermal Energy – Volume 1 of 3 – Oil and Gas’,http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/drilling-down-documents-7.html

(4) = Osborn, Stephen G et al (2011) ‘Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing’in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 17, 2011 vol. 108 no. 20 8172-8176http://www.pnas.org/content/108/20/8172.short

(5) = Holzman, DC (2011) ‘Methane Found in Well Water Near Fracking Sites’ in Environ Health Perspectives 119 (01 Jul 1999),http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.119-a289

(6) = AP 5/9/2011 ‘Methane in water near gas drilling sites, study finds’,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42964307/ns/us_news-environment/t/methane-water-near-gas-drilling-sites-study-finds/#.TuPXPHpU2uI

(7) = CNN money 10 May 2011 ‘Tainted drinking water found near gas wells’, http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/09/news/economy/natural_gas_fracking_duke/index.htm

(8) = Bloomberg 12 Dec 2011 ‘Wyoming’s Tainted Water Puts Pressure on EPA to Act on Gas Fracking’,http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-12/wyoming-s-tainted-water-pressures-epa-on-to-act-on-gas-fracking.html

(9) = http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

(10) = The Independent Petroleum Association of America 05 Jun 2009 ‘Hydraulic Fracturing under attack’,http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/HFUnderFire.pdf , ‘The "Energy In Depth" project would not be possible without the early financial commitments of: El Paso Corporation, XTO Energy, Occidental Petroleum, BP, Anadarko, Marathon, EnCana, Chevron, Talisman, Shell, API, IPAA, Halliburton, Schlumberger and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.’

(11) = BBC news 28 Nov 2011 ‘How fracking affects a community in Pennsylvania’,  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-15919248

(12) = Korey A. Kirker & Ryan N. Burger (2011) ‘JUST THE FRACKING FACTS’, Swanson School of Engineering 9 April 20011, University of Pittsburgh , Eleventh Annual Freshman Conference, http://region8water.colostate.edu/PDFs/1267.pdf

(13) = see (10) above)

(14) = Condisine, Timothy J et al (2011) ‘The Pennsylvania Marcellus Natural Gas Industry: Status, Economic Impacts, and Future Potential’, Pennsylvania State University College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering http://marcelluscoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Final-2011-PA-Marcellus-Economic-Impacts.pdf , p ii ‘Acknowledgements The authors of this study acknowledge that the Marcellus Shale Coalition provided the funding for this study.’

(15) = Factcheck.org 14 Oct 2011 ‘Just the Fracking Facts’, http://www.factcheck.org/2011/10/just-the-fracking-facts/

(16) = Marcellus Shale Coalition – Full Members, http://marcelluscoalition.org/about/full-members/

(17) = See (10) above

(18) = Pittsburgh Post Gazette 07 Nov 2011 ‘Corporate funding of Marcellus Shale studies at universities raises alarms’http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11311/1188150-503.stm#ixzz1gApAdRyG  (details companies involved in fracking funding studies of fracking at American universities, some of whom refuse to provide details of who funds research – including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Pittsburgh)

(19) = Pittsburg Post Gazette 06 Nov 2011 ‘Drilling on Campus: Marcellus Shale boom puts colleges at crossroads’, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11310/1187594-113.stm#ixzz1gB2BK1jO (details how students associations and campus groups in Pennsylvania university are selling drilling rights for fracking operations to companies on campus)

(20) = See (12) above

(21) = Reuters 14 Dec 2009 ‘California aquifers seen rapidly losing water’, http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/12/15/us-water-california-idUSTRE5BE0FP20091215

(22) = US geological survey ‘Groundwater depletion’, http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

(23) = BBC News 06 Oct 2009 ‘Jordan faces up to water crisis’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8292228.stm

Not everyone working in finance or banking is to blame; but we're not all equally responsible for the financial crisis either

Some of my posts might give the impression I blame all London financial workers for the financial crisis and think any employment in that sector is morally wrong. That’s not the case of course.

The top management of banks are responsible; anyone involved in futures trading in food and then buying up food supplies to drive up the price is doing something immoral; and futures trading and currency trading for profit should be banned.

Anyone taking commissions or fees to get people to take out mortgages they couldn’t afford was doing something wrong. So was anyone taking payments to buy or sell ‘collateral debt obligations’ or other dodgy financial instruments.

There are plenty of people employed in banks or as financial advisers who weren’t involved in any of this though and should not be blamed for the actions of others.

I don’t accept the argument that everyone is equally responsible for the financial crisis, or that only governments were responsible for de-regulating.

A bank manager or mortgage broker will usually be better educated and have far more inside knowledge to judge whether a mortgage or loan can be repaid than desperate people trying to get their own home or a loan to tide them over. Many of the former also took commission payments or fees on these transactions, so they knew they would benefit personally from it no matter what happened in the long run.

The top management of the banks and hedge funds and others – and their lobbyists- lobbied for deregulation and then used it to committ fraud on a massive scale; and they’ve not stopped lobbying against re-regulation.

However responsibly advising people on investments is not immoral; nor is organising loans on reasonable interest rates to people or businesses, nor working as a cashier in a bank.

The average figures for city of London financial sector pay and bonuses almost certainly hide big gaps between people at the top and bottom of many banks and other institutions too.

A sense of entitlement doesn’t mean wanting a job and a pension , Sir Roger Carr, it means unlimited greed at the expense of others

Many of the same people who are paying themselves  salaries from several hundred thousands to millions every year, plus the same again in bonuses, are condemning public sector employees for their ‘sense of entitlement’ in wanting jobs and pensions; and the unemployed for wanting to have enough money to eat. One of them is Sir Roger Carr, the head of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry).

Last month the Independent reported Sir Roger telling a conference sponsored by Barclays bank’s corporate division that

 “Most of us... have grown up in the West with a sense of entitlement – to jobs, opportunity, wealth,” he said. “What's happening all around us is a cultural cold shower, a move from entitlement, a recognition that things have changed, nothing is by right: we have to earn our place in a vigorously competitive world as individuals and as nations.”

adding that  “We need to encourage all those in positions of authority – government, opposition, regulators and commentators – to stop the demonisation of industry: banking, energy or defence.” (1)

Because of course it’s “demonisation” to place the blame for the crisis on the people who actually caused it, who demanded deregulation, got it and used it to commit fraud on a massive scale – often by buying and selling worthless ‘assets’ like collateral debt obligations and demanding a commission on each sale.

In Carr’s world, if regulators so much as criticise these industries now, never mind actually regulate them (little sign of that) that’s ‘demonisation’.

Demonising energy industry executives’ sense of entitlement

Since 2004 Sir Roger has been chairman of Centrica, which owns British Gas, of which Scottish Gas is a subsidiary.

According to Centrica’s website, Carr’s salary in 2010 was £470,000, up from £450,000 in 2009,  while in 2011 there was an average fall of 4.5% for everyone employed in the UK(far more for those made unemployed). Carr earned an absolute amount 18 times higher than median earnings in the UK of around £26,000 for most people in 2010 and 2011(2) – (4).

That’s only the pay for one of his four paid jobs, which, according to the CBI website, also include ‘deputy chairman & senior independent director of the Court of the Bank of England... senior advisor to KKR - the world's largest private equity company’ and ‘visiting fellow of Said Business School, University of Oxford’.

The Bank of England jobs seem to pay at least £150,000 a year based on the bank’s annual report, bringing Carr’s annual income to a minimum of £620,000 in 2010, or 23 times median earnings, without including his pay from KKR or the University of Oxford (5) .

Sam Laidlaw, the Chief Executive of Centrica, had a basic salary of £2 million in 2010. He also had shares and pension payments worth between £2 millionand £8million. That makes Laidlaw’s pay somewhere between 76 and 380 times median earnings in the UK (6) – (7).

I’d be surprised at his lack of self-consciousness in accusing the majority of people of ‘a sense of entitlement’ in these circumstances, but as the late American economist J.K Galbraith often pointed out, people making huge amounts of money often convince themselves this must be due to their own genius rather than to any unfairness or fault in the system they work in – and that anyone who has far less must have less due to their moral failings.

British Gas is one of the ‘big six’ British energy companies found to have continually increased it’s prices above rises in it’s costs, to have maintained price increases permanently after short term increases in the price of buying gas wholesale and to have failed to pass on anything like the full reduction in wholesale costs when prices fell.

A study by Manchester University found that‘In the first six months of 2004, retail electricity prices were on average £1.93 per 100 kilowatt hour higher than the wholesale measure. By 2010 this gap had more than doubled, to over £4. It narrowed in 2011 as a result of well-publicised cost increases in the wholesale market, but averaged £2.73 in summer – even before the price rises passed on to householders by the big six this autumn….. around 80% of the winter price spike was passed to the consumer price, but when wholesale markets fell in summer, retail prices moved far less – only around 50% of the amount… The data also shows that when wholesale prices suddenly spike – as they did in 2009 – consumer prices rapidly follow suit. However, prices fall back more slowly and to a lesser degree after the wholesale price spike abates.’ (8)

In short, profiteering on gas prices when the majority are suffering pay cuts in real terms and the poorest and pensioners are having to choose whether to heat their homes or eat.

Not only that, but an estimated 2,700 people in Britain will die this winter due to cold – due to being unable to afford to heat their homes(9).

That makes Sir Roger’s condemnation of the ‘sense of entitlement’ of others ring very hollow. In fact it makes it sound like the massive arrogance and smugness of someone who feels entitled to profit at everyone else’s expense – much like the hedge fund managers and the bank chief executives and government ministers.

It also makes his claim that the regulators are demonising the energy industry sound pretty far fetched ; and difficult to understand why a government which claims “we’re all in it together” thought he deserved to be given a knighthood in January this year.

Demonising the Defence Industry

Now I find myself itching at the fingertips to demonise the defence industry some, partly because it’s just so easy.

It has been arming murdering dictatorships like Saddam Hussein’s (in the 1970s and 1980s) and the Saudis (today).  If the dictators fail to pay then the Arms Export Credit Guaranteesystem means the taxpayer in the UK pays the bill, as they did after the 1991 war with Saddam.

Until well into the Arab Spring  British arms companies were also arming the dictatorships shooting protesters across the Arab world, with the approval of the Cameron government (10).

The defence industry gets government subsidies on a scale which most civilian manufacturing companies can only dream of – including the continuation of the construction of two of the largest aircraft carriers ever built by BAEsystems.

The excuse given by David Cameron is that the last government supposedly drafted the contracts in a way that would make cancellation more expensive than paying for both to be completed. Yet when the National Audit Office questioned this and requested documents on the cost and the terms of the contract, Cameron refused to let  them see any of them. When the NAO got hold of some documents, they found the cost has increased from £3.65 billion in 2007 to £6 billion today and probably £10 billion in the end. One will be ‘left in a state of “extended readiness”(i.e left to rust) when it’s finished in 2016, while the other won’t have any planes till 2020, when it’ll have just 6, then 12 in 2023(11) – (14).

That’s just one example of how the MoD subsidises arms companies for billions at taxpayers’ expense every year, using money that could provide services, fund research and development of new technologies and medicines, or provide loans to civilian industries that provide far more jobs.

Here are a couple of others.

The senior management of the banking, financial, energy and defence industries seem to think it’s clever to try to turn accusations of a ‘sense of entitlement’ back onto the majority. It lacks any credibility.

(1) = Independent 22 Nov 2011 ‘CBI president attacks 'sense of entitlement' ’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cbi-president-attacks-sense-of-entitlement-6265921.html

(2) = Centrica Annual Report and Accounts 2010 – Financials – Summary Reports -Directors' emoluments, pension benefits and interests in shares’ , http://www.centrica.com/files/reports/2010ar/index.asp?pageid=49

(3) = Guardian.co.uk 23 Nov 2011 ‘UK incomes fall 3.5% in real terms, ONS reveals’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/23/uk-household-earnings-fall?commentpage=last#end-of-comments(including people in part-time jobs, fall is 4.5% including inflation – a 0.5% rise minus 4.5% inflation)

(4) = Office for National Statistics ‘2011 Annual Survey of Hours and Earning -Median full-time gross annual earnings’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/ashe-results-2011/ashe-statistical-bulletin-2011.html#tab-Annual-earnings

(5) = Bank of England Annual Report 2010 - Remuneration of Governors, Directors and MPC members, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/annualreport/2010/renumeration2010.pdf (page 40 under sub-heading ‘Other senior executives’)

(6) = See (2) above

(7) = Centrica – Governance - Aligning rewards with results  - Remuneration mix', http://www.centrica.com/files/reports/2010ar/index.asp?pageid=54 (shows salary makes up only about 20% of executives total annual payments)

(8) = guardian.co.uk 02 Dec 2011 ‘Big six energy firms face fresh accusations of profiteering’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/02/energy-firms-accusations-profiteering-electricity

(9) = guardian.co.uk 19 Oct 2011 ‘Fuel poverty 'will claim 2,700 victims this winter'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/oct/19/fuel-poverty-2700-victims-winter

(10) = guardian.co.uk 21 Jul 2011 ‘MP attacks Hague over review of arms sales to Arab regimes’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/21/uk-arms-sales-middle-east , ‘Senior MPs have delivered a severe rebuke to the government over its approval of the sale of a wide range of arms, including sniper rifles, machine guns and "crowd control goods" to countries in the Middle East and north Africa……….Britain supplied the weapons despite official guidelines stating that exports of equipment that could be used for internal repression must be blocked. In a damning report earlier this year, the Commons arms export controls committees demanded an urgent review of exports to "authoritarian regimes worldwide"………..They referred specifically to the Mubarak and Gaddafi regimes in Egypt and Libya, to Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Observers said military trucks sent by the Saudis to help suppress demonstrations in Bahrain were British.’

(11) = Guardian 07 Jul 2011 ‘National Audit Office challenges £6bn project to build aircraft carriers’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/07/nao-report-aircraft-carriers-navy

(12) = guardian.co.uk  11 Jul 2011 ‘David Cameron 'prevented independent watchdog seeing aircraft carrier papers'’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/11/david-cameron-aircraft-carriers

(13) = Channel 4 News 07 Jul 2011 ‘Guardian 07 Jul 2011 ‘Full fact check : the real cost of cancelling aircraft carriers’http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-the-real-cost-of-cancelling-aircraft-carriers/7210; ‘In 2007, the Labour government decided to build two 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers at an estimated cost of £3.65bn….But since then, costs have spiralled dramatically, with the projected outlay now thought to be £6.24bn for just one fully operational carrier, the Queen Elizabeth…..The second ship – the Prince of Wales – will be built, but left in a state of “extended readiness”, meaning that fighter planes won’t be able to launch from or land on its deck…..It gets worse: the NAOnow thinks the eventual bill for the programme “will significantly exceed £10 billion”.’

(14) = Guardian 29 Nov 2011 ‘MPs warn Royal Navy's carriers will be costly, late, and of limited use’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/29/royal-navy-carriers-impaired-use-public-accounts-committee ; government admits one carrier to be mothballed on construction in 2016, one to have no planes on it till 2020, when it will have only 6, raised to 12 in 2023

If you’re blaming public sector employees, the unemployed or immigrants, you’re being divided and conquered by the real culprits

While the majority of people in employment in the UK have had pay rises below inflation,  effective cuts of an average of 4.5% ; the average city (i.e London financial sector) employee has seen their pay increase by 12% in the last six months, while managing directors have had a 21% increase (1) – (2). That’s equivalent to 19% and 37% rises in a year, after inflation. So the real division on pay and conditions is not public vs private sector, but ‘the city’ and top bank executives versus everyone else.

The endless rhetoric about supposedly ‘privileged’ public sector workers and unemployed ‘scroungers’ (while there are at least 6 people unemployed for every job vacancy) is just crude divide and conquer tactics.

The average London financial sector employee will get paid £83,000 plus a £20,000 bonus – or £103,000, compared to a median wage of £26,000 for the UK as a whole (3) – (4).

Around 710,000 public sector workers have either lost their job or are about to lose it, along with many people in the private sector  who’ve lost their jobs due to the knock on effects of a fall in consumer demand caused by the reduced income of the now unemployed public sector workers, or because banks have refused their business routine bridging loans.

It’s not so good either, if you are on a low income and live in socially rented housing, with the government having capped housing benefit and allowed rents in the social sector to rise to 80% of private sector rates, which are also rising as less people can afford to buy their own house, resulting in more renting (5) – (7). In fact many people who relied on social housing are being made homeless – and in the case of the others taxpayers are being forced to pay more to support them by the lifting of the cap on how much landlords in the ‘social’ sector can charge.

So the Coalition’s policies are good for a small minority – mostly in the markets or the city, advertising, public relations and media ownership, at the expense of the vast majority. It talks about the need to ‘protect’ the city and ‘maintain market confidence’, rewarding the people who caused the crisis, while punishing people who do jobs that benefit other people (8).

That’s why it’s been vital for the political success of the Conservative party (and their allies in the ‘city’ or ‘markets’ and banks) that the majority who are suffering should be divided from one another to eliminate the risk of the majority uniting against the small minority in whose interests the Conservatives are acting.

The unemployed as ‘scroungers’ – even though there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all of them

Decades of propaganda from tabloids owned by billionaires and from a Conservative party (and sometimes a New Labour party) largely funded by billionaires and multi-millionaires has been devoted to creating scapegoats – targets to divert blame away from the people who have the actual power and wealth.

One target has been the unemployed – supposedly all parasites who don’t want to work, despite the fact that the figures show there have never been enough jobs for all the unemployed during economic booms never mind during the worst recession since the 1930s.

The Office for National Statistics figures for July to October 2011 show that there were 462,000 job vacancies,  compared to 2.62 million people unemployed – around 6 people unemployed for every job  (and due to many methods of fiddling the figures developed by governments over the years, that is almost certainly an underestimate of the number of people unemployed) (9) – (10).

It’s undoubtedly true that a minority don’t want to work. If there are no jobs available for them even if they did want to, that’s pretty academic though.

The Daily Mail was outraged that Chancellor George Osborne increased benefits in line with inflation – by 5.2%, talking about this as a ‘big rise’ – it’s not. It only stops them being reduced by inflation – in practice they stay at the same level – about £60 a week – rather than being cut.

The propaganda seems to work as intended though, dividing the employed from the unemployed and even getting some of each to vote entirely against their own interests in and in the interests of billionaires and big multinational companies, on the assumption that any ‘benefit reforms’ will target only the undeserving, lazy unemployed and not them.

Which is more of a parasite? Someone on unemployment benefit getting £60 a week? Or a large company, a primary PFI contractor, which gets taxpayers to pay it dozens of times the amount they would pay in interest on a loan to fund construction of a new hospital or school? There’s no doubt the latter get a lot more public money for nothing.

Immigrants and the EU

Then there are immigrants – who don’t get any benefits unless granted refugee status – and then get benefits well below those given to British citizens. They, like the EU, are foreign – and so an easy target to deflect blame on to. The city traders who helped cause the crisis are British; and so supposedly on our side, even after causing the entire problem and being grossly over-paid for jobs many of which harm the majority of people.

Public sector Vs Private Sector

Finally there are the supposedly ‘cushy’ jobs held by public sector workers with ‘gold plated’ pensions. Osborne talks about public sector workers being ‘paid for’ by workers in the private sector, as if public sector workers aren’t doing vital jobs looking after NHS patients, saving people from fires, arresting criminals, teaching children; and as if public sector workers don’t pay tax at the same rate as private sector employees.

While Cameron and Osborne sack hundreds of thousands of these people to keep ‘the markets; who caused the crisis happy, Cameron has pledged to protect ‘the city’ against any EU actions that might reduce their profits.

There are some private sector workers who do vital jobs – there are a lot who fit the description ‘parasite’ very well though – the hedge fund managers trading in food futures traders in  ‘the city’ who effectively spend their time betting that the price of food will rise, then buying up food to ensure it does, causing starvation for many of the poorest people in the world and hunger even for some of the poorest here.

What I don’t understand is how so many people are so easily conned over and over again? How long will they continue to fall for such obvious divide and conquer tactics and be diverted into pointless arguments between the middle class and the working class, between the employed and the unemployed, between public sector workers and private sector workers?

(New Labour government ministers who were on a pay of over £100,000 a year and many of them – including Tony Blair – formerly lawyers – also played the ‘middle class’ vs ‘working class’ divide and conquer card, pretending that lawyers turned MPs and government ministers were working class heroes.)

The vast majority of people working in the public and private sectors, even up to the managers of small and medium sized businesses, are doing work that does benefit society as a whole and are paid a fraction of what the bank and hedge fund managers get.

Yet while bank managers and the heads of the biggest firms are paying themselves between millions and tens of millions a year, plus the same again in bonuses, often at taxpayers’ expense in bailed out banks, the Conservatives’ tactics of divide and rule ensure many peoples’ anger is directed not at the real parasites, but at other people who are also their victims.

 (1) = Astbury Marsden Compensation Survey 2011 – Banking Infrastructure London,http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tN8-iJkGpa8J:www.astburymarsden.com/documents/Astbury%2520Marsden%2520Compensation%2520Survey%25202011_Banking%2520Infrastructure%2520London%2520small.pdf+Astbury+Marsden+report+city+pay&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjCp35WxasQC0uKU6hyPufcF3PKQgqywr0k1qNAEGK_4wMSeFBhohPhKrGo7oTiY4RLukF4E51KGYTxH6kmRfhX-1zs80hIKdv6Ckao6ZzZxFrjD6HI5anmt52lZR3QiNTc0ttx&sig=AHIEtbS9vlPCGJzgvi4HFde7s45wAlnw_w

(2) = guardian.co.uk 23 Nov 2011 ‘UK incomes fall 3.5% in real terms, ONS reveals’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/23/uk-household-earnings-fall?commentpage=last#end-of-comments(including people in part-time jobs, fall is 4.5% including inflation – a 0.5% rise minus 4.5% inflation)

(3) = Guardian 28 Nov 2011 ‘Banks under fresh pressure to curb bonus and dividend payouts’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/28/banks-curb-bonuses-dividends

(4) = Office for National Statistics ‘2011 Annual Survey of Hours and Earning -Median full-time gross annual earnings’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/ashe-results-2011/ashe-statistical-bulletin-2011.html#tab-Annual-earnings

(5) = BBC News 27 Oct 2010 ‘No change to housing benefit plan – Cameron’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11633163

(6) = guardian.co.uk 22 Nov 2011 ‘Housing strategy prices people out of homes’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/22/housing-strategy-prices-people-homes

(7) = guardian.co.uk 16 Sep 2011 ‘UK rents rise by record amount in August’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/16/rents-rise-record-amount-august

(8) = Guardian 07 Dec 2011 ‘David Cameron threatens veto if EU treaty fails to protect City of London’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/cameron-threatens-veto-eu-treaty

(9) =  Office for National Statistics ‘Labour Market Statistics, November 2011’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2011/index.html

(10) = Labour market statistics: 16 Nov 2011 – Vacancies - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2011/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Vacancies

Neither Cameron’s concern for the City of London financial traders who caused the crisis nor Eurozone balanced budgets will solve the real problems

It’s hard to know which is worse between David Cameron’s concern for regulations that might harm the ‘City of London’  - i.e the stock market traders, hedge fund managers and bank executives who caused the crisis - at the expense of everyone else; or the Eurozone governments’ fantasy that balanced budgets will solve everything.

Both ignore the actual causes of the crisis – deregulation of the financial sector leading to massive fraud causing a crisis when it was discovered and global recession.

In addition the Eurozone ‘fiscal unity’ plan ignores the fact that trade between countries with stronger and weaker economies will inevitably lead to trade imbalances and so deficits in the governments of the weaker economies unless there is major redistribution from wealthier to poorer economies, invested in development.

The Franco-German plan at least recognises that re-regulation of the financial sector is necessary to avoid another crisis, even if it doesn’t go far enough in re-regulating.

Balanced budgets will do nothing to prevent another banking crisis, because it doesn’t prevent debts being run up by the banks and other ‘financial institutions’ in the private sector again, nor does it stop them developing and fraudulently trading new ‘financial instruments’.

A balanced budget does nothing to guarantee a strong economy either. In fact it may prevent borrowing to invest in developing new technologies and infrastructure that would lead to development in the future; and it prevents governments ending recessions through stimulus packages.

Why would any national government give up control of how much it taxes and borrows to the Euro-zone?

Even states of the US in a federal system don't give up that power (though extreme free market ideology has led many of them to practically abolish taxes, leading to bankruptcy at the state level in California and elsewhere).

There is pretty much no chance of the Greek, Spanish, Portugese or Italian public approving of the fiscal unity plan in referenda even if it gets through their parliaments; and even the French are intensely nationalistic and unlikely to give up that much sovereignty.

Some French and German politicians have already suggested Greece might wish to leave the euro - so perhaps the fiscal unity plan is intended to force the weaker economies out of the euro-zone, leaving it with maybe France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Why is there a focus solely on levels of debt when Germany's debt as a percentage of GDP in 2011 is expected to be 81.1% of GDP according to German government projections (1). So how can it lecture Greece or Italy on debt? Like other European countries, it's debt only became a critical problem due to the recession which resulted from the financial crisis.

So I don’t blame Cameron for refusing to sign up to the fiscal unity deal – I blame him for only defending the interests of city traders who have retained incomes including bonuses averaging over £100,000 a year , including a 12% average pay increase in the last six months (equivalent to 19% in the last year when 5% inflation is taken into account), while he sacks hundreds of thousands of public sector employees on a fifth or less of that wage who provide healthcare, education, policing and emergency services while many city traders profit from the suffering of others and are grossly over-paid for jobs that do more harm than good to other people (2) - (3).

City of London financial traders are the last people who need protected from ‘bureaucracy’ – they need reined in hard, with regulators coming down on them like a ton of bricks to prevent them causing another crisis - and if the government really want to tax the 'haves' and not the 'have nots', they'd be better raising taxes on city traders rather then sacking teachers and nurses.

(1) = Wall Street Journal 28Oct 2011 ‘German Government Now Sees '11 Debt-To-GDP Ratio At 81.1%-Spokesman’, http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111028-713887.html

(2) = Astbury Marsden Compensation Survey 2011 – Banking Infrastructure London,http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tN8-iJkGpa8J:www.astburymarsden.com/documents/Astbury%2520Marsden%2520Compensation%2520Survey%25202011_Banking%2520Infrastructure%2520London%2520small.pdf+Astbury+Marsden+report+city+pay&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjCp35WxasQC0uKU6hyPufcF3PKQgqywr0k1qNAEGK_4wMSeFBhohPhKrGo7oTiY4RLukF4E51KGYTxH6kmRfhX-1zs80hIKdv6Ckao6ZzZxFrjD6HI5anmt52lZR3QiNTc0ttx&sig=AHIEtbS9vlPCGJzgvi4HFde7s45wAlnw_w

(3) = Guardian 28 Nov 2011 ‘Banks under fresh pressure to curb bonus and dividend payouts’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/28/banks-curb-bonuses-dividends

We shouldn't listen to the markets who caused the crisis - time the markets were forced to listen to the majority

Chancellor George Osborne says his economic policy is aimed at maintaining market confidence – and even his political opponents debate on his terms of “what the markets want”. If “the markets” – an impersonal sounding euphemism for stock market traders, hedge funds and bank executives - could be trusted to make the right decisions, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.

They caused it by demanding deregulation, getting it from governments ideologically driven to “listen to the markets”; and using it to create fraudulent “assets” like collateral debt obligations (a name designed to hide the fact that they were many bad debts packaged together and dressed up as good ones), then selling them to others or buying them and treating them as assets.

Most of them were euphorically confident that this was unprecedented genius that couldn't go wrong and would lead to everlasting and ever accelerating economic growth - right up until the crash - and this wasn't the first time - most of "the markets" believe this every time, never learning from experience. The minority who questioned these practices were laughed at or accused of maliciously trying to destroy others' incomes

No government has made any serious attempt to re-regulate the banks or financial sector since. They’re still out of control and still driven by short term greed, irrational swings between euphoria and panic; and now a selfish determination that everyone else should pay for the hole in their accounts created when everyone realised that marvellous new “financial products” or “financial instruments” like CDOs were worthless frauds.

“The markets” have no idea what policies will benefit the majority in the long term and no interest in the effects on the majority, they only care about how much profit or loss they might make right now. Getting a vote of confidence from a market 'rally' is like getting praise from a drug addict for securing them another hit. It means nothing in terms of the long term, the real problems or the real economy.

That’s why they tell us that we’re supposedly all equally to blame, that “we’re all in it together” and that “market confidence must be maintained”. Bank chief executives continue to award themselves annual incomes of millions a year topped off with millions in bonuses while accusing nurses, teachers and doctors of a “sense of entitlement” for wanting to keep their jobs and pensions.

The solution is to stop listening to “the markets”, start repudiating the debts we supposedly owe them; and demand interest payments on the bail-outs, plus repayment of capital. Governments can loan directly to businesses rather than subsidising banks to do it through quantitative easing.

Keeping on giving in to the people who caused the problem is dangerous and brings no benefits.

The Spanish government agreed to the markets’ demand for austerity measures including sacking public sector employees to avoid having their credit rating cut, then private credit rating agencies cut Spain’s credit rating anyway, citing unemployment as one of the reasons. The private credit rating agencies have a conflict of interest too – as many of them receive payments from the creditors for reports on creditworthiness.

Allowing uncontrolled and unlimited greed is not good, it does not benefit everyone. It brought us the Great Depression and the current crisis, just as it brought the South Sea Island Bubble and Tulipomania in the 18th century long before there was any real government regulation or intervention in the economy , any significant number of people employed in the public sector (other than police, soldiers and tax collectors).

The only period of economic stability (at least for the developed world) was between the end of World War Two when the markets were put under stricter government regulation and the 1970s – when it ended due to fuel price rises caused by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the subsequent OPEC oil price rises on the one hand – and deregulation like British Prime Minister Edward Heath’s scrapping of controls on capital transfers to and from the UK.

The only way to stop one crisis keeeping on turning into another - from financial crisis to recession to euro zone crisis and on and on - is to stop listening to "the markets" and start telling them what government and society will tolerate them doing and what they'll be jailed for

Saif Al Gaddafi & Megrahi Vs Moussa Koussa - Patsies vs Real Criminal aided and abetted by the US government?

(the latter a proven torturer and Gaddafi’s intelligence chief at the time of the Lockerbie bombing but “free to travel to and from the UK as he wishes”)

The propagandists tell us that Saif Al Gaddafi is a war criminal who must be brought to justice for the torture and killing of civilians. Yet Gaddafi’s torturer in chief Moussa Koussa, who has been identified by survivors as having personally tortured them himself, faces no ICC charges after he defected from the Gaddafi regime once he realised the writing was on the wall for it. British government spokespeople told the BBC that Koussa is “a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes” and allowed him to go into exile in Qatar, another US allied dictatorship which refuses to extradite him (1) – (3).

Koussa had a parallel in Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s Vice President and torturer in chief, who was the favoured candidate of the US government and it’s allies to take over from Mubarak. He, like Koussa, was one of the people that the CIA and MI6 contract out to for torture of prisoners kidnapped illegally under “extra-ordinary rendition” procedures (really just a vaguely legalistic sounding term to cover up illegal kidnapping and torture).

Muammar Gaddafi was certainly guilty of ordering massacres of civilians and torture, but the brutal, sickening, way he was killed did not suggest those who replace him will be any better. The Libyan rebels respond that ‘Gaddafi was a monster’.

Well, if you’re looking for a definition of a monster, a sadist who stabs an unarmed prisoner in the anus with a knife or metal rod to torture them before killing them, as one of the men who captured Gaddafi did, is a pretty good definition. One monster behaving like a monster to another is not justice, it’s just another atrocity (4).

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirm that the rebels have already been involved in torturing and killing prisoners and suspected Gaddafi supporters, though so far not nearly as many as were killed or tortured by Gaddafi’s forces. The way Gaddafi was treated does not suggest this will become a smaller problem (5).

If Saif Al Gaddafi is tortured and is not given a fair trial it will be another sign to the world that the Libyan rebels are at least as bad as Gaddafi’s killers were – and if at the same time Koussa, who co-operated with the US and its allies in torturing people based on mere suspicion is allowed to go free, the US government and it’s allies will look like total hypocrites with no moral standing, desperate to have people like Saif, who might reveal it’s involvement in these crimes, silenced, not for his crimes, but to cover up theirs and Koussa’s.

There are plenty of people who knew Saif who say he was attempting to make reforms which his father and hardliners in the regime refused to implement (6).

Then he was forced to make a choice between turning on his own father and helping people who were trying to kill him, or else backing a dictatorship that was killing it’s own people. Can anyone pretend that that would be an easy choice to make if they were put in the same position?

If there is evidence that Saif was involved in ordering torture and murders of civilians then by all means give him a fair trial with witnesses for the defence and prosecution and if he’s found guilty, jail him for it.

Incidentally Koussa, who claims Gaddafi ordered Lockerbie, was Gaddafi’s head of intelligence at the time of Lockerbie – so if the US and British governments believe him, why are they letting him go free, since he would be guilty of that atrocity? Too many people are tripping over their own lies here.

There are many reasons to doubt that another US and British scapegoat – Abdul Baset Al Megrahi – was ever involved in the Lockerbie bombing. His trial was a sham with bribed witnesses, no jury and evidence tampered with according to Scots Law Professor Robert Black, UN Observer Dr. Hans Koechler and Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing.

Is Saif a real war criminal or just another patsy set up by the US and it’s allies?  Unless he gets a fair trial, I’d have to suspect it could be the latter.

(1) = BBC News 26 Oct 2011 ‘Gaddafi spy chief Koussa 'tortured' Libya prisoners’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15415793

(2) = BBC News 13 Apr 2011 ‘Moussa Koussa, ex-Gaddafi aide, leaves for Doha talks’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13049308 ‘The most high-profile minister to flee Libya, Moussa Koussa, has left the UK for Qatar, the Foreign Office has said. The former foreign minister had been staying at an undisclosed location in the UK after travelling from Tunisia.

An FCO spokesman said it was understood he would meet the Qatari government and a range of other Libyan representatives in the capital city Doha. A spokesman said Moussa Koussa was "a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes".’

(3) = BBC News 23 Oct 2011 ‘Libyan spy chief tracked to Qatar’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15417947

(4) = ‘Libyan rebels 'guilty of torture' says Amnesty’ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libyan-rebels-guilty-of-torture-says-amnesty-2353988.html , ‘Rebels fighting to topple Muammar Gaddafi carried out unlawful killings and torture, human rights group Amnesty International has said….A report based on three months of investigation in Libya, said the crimes of Gaddafi loyalists were far worse than those of the former rebels, who now hold power in Tripoli:….But it said the crimes of the rebels were not insignificant…."Members and supporters of the opposition, loosely structured under the leadership of the National Transitional Council (NTC) ... have also committed human rights abuses, in some cases amounting to war crimes, albeit on a smaller scale," the Amnesty report said.’

(5) = Channel 4 News 25 Oct 2011 ‘Gaddafi buried at dawn in ‘secret’ location’, http://www.channel4.com/news/gaddafi-buried-at-dawn-in-secret-location (scroll down to video and then see under sub-heading ‘Concerns over human rights abuses)

(6) = Time 19 Nov 2011 ‘The Capture of Gaddafi's Son: The Reformer Who Refused to Reform’, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099890,00.html?xid=gonewsedit , ‘Sawani, who has a political-science doctorate from the University of Canterbury, had been hired by Saif in 2007 to oversee sweeping political reforms in Libya — changes that Saif has long claimed were blocked by his father's hard-liners. In interviews in February 2010 and in March this year, Saif told me that his strong efforts to bring democracy to Libya had been stymied by the Gaddafi regime.’