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The Horror, the horror, the horror- the Leveson Hearing exposes the damage caused by the “unleashed animal"

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

27 Nov 2011. Lancashire.

 Living in the UK, I have had an advantage not easily available to most Americans.  I watch the Leveson Hearing live each day on BBC. I have for several days. 

 For those who have not had the opportunity to stay up with this story, the Leveson hearing is a quasi judicial investigation into press ethics in the UK.  The Prime Minister called for this investigation in response to the shocking (and during the summer, daily) revelations concerning hacking by the News of the World hacking headlines. However, the inquiry is not confined in scope to the actions of News of the World.  Nor is it a criminal or civil prosecution of the perpetrator of any misconduct.  Rather it is an investigation into the culture of the Media, with particular emphasis (as it turns out) on the "red tops."  

 The red tops are tabloids, loosely similar to the sort of tabloid available in the US at grocery check out counters, the ones with headlines about alien abduction, sex, lies, and video tape. Celebrity scandal is their natural turf, but they have branched out into shock crimes and politics.  In the UK politicians "reached out" to (courted) the publishers of both broad tops (the classic "serious" press) and red tops.   Rupert Murdoch was and is a publisher of both. In the past Rupert Murdoch and his stable of writers/editors have enjoyed the active friendship of both Labour and Tory politicians, even if, famously, it hasn't always been through the front door.

The hearings grew out of the UK's shock and anger at the begrudging unfolding over 8 years of the News of the World's use of private investigators. These private investigators hacked phones, paid police and others in positions of trust for private information, and, it is alleged, also hacked email accounts.  I use the term, alleged, as to the last because the parallel criminal process has not yet led to prosecutions much less convictions.  To date, police have recently arrested one unidentified person (although much has been made of the allegations in the media). 

Allegations expand well beyond phone hacking by NOTW

Additionally, the allegations explored in the Leveson hearing have expanded well beyond those pertaining to phone hacking conducted on behalf of the News of the World.  The allegations now encompass not only other newspapers in the Murdoch "family" but also other UK red tops. At the present time these red tops deny the allegations, which, the hearings reveal, may in some cases also the subject of criminal investigations.

Those involved in presenting the hearing have been circumspect about the who, what, when, where of those allegations although the witnesses have felt free to name the names of the red tops involved and allege generally the practices. Indeed some of the more shocking charges aired at the hearing relate to the conduct of News of the World's rivals.

Inconceivable Murdoch unaware of his papers' ruthless practices and the consequences  

 Listening to the Leveson hearing testimony and focusing on the Murdoch newspapers, it is inconceivable to me that the man who famously advocated government "unleash the animal" of business was unaware of his papers’ ruthless practices.  Or that he ignored their incredibly painful consequences, vividly portrayed in both the earlier testimony of the Dowler family and today's virtually gothic revelations concerning the McCanns.  Nor is it conceivable that these practices were confined to the UK.   But that is not yet proven.  Time and further investigation will either establish these points or fail to do so.

Thanksgiving 2011

How not to do public diplomacy in Laos or Any Where Else - Hip-Hop, Hippity Hop, Hop, Er Flop

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Update:  See Addendum below.

When Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State and criticized for the State Department’s lack-luster handling of America's image abroad, she exuberantly claimed that “we all do public diplomacy now.”   Suddenly Foreign Service Officers who had never before spoken in public and had other pressing responsibilities – like adjudicating visas (you wonder why appointment times for visa interviews take so long?) or helping American citizens in distress - were suddenly fanned out throughout whatever country they were assigned to on public diplomacy gigs.  Meanwhile, 30% of the public diplomacy positions were left vacant. (Aerial Poto left of the Mekong in Laos by PHKushlis 2009)

It’s unclear to me whether an increase in State Department hiring a year or so ago made a dent in the high public diplomacy vacancy rate but I do know that too many American public diplomacy positions abroad are being filled by officers who are not public diplomacy specialists and do not have the requisite skills to perform the job adequately while those that supposedly do are assigned to other specialties or a few – likely more than when USIA was a separate agency – are moving up the hierarchy into Deputy Chief of Mission and Ambassadorial positions. 

Although a look at the promotion statistics from a year or so ago, suggests that these higher level opportunities for public diplomacy officers are far fewer, than let’s say, for almost any other State Department Foreign Service specialty.

Meeting-the-public is part of Ambassadorial job requirements

Now Ambassadors do, in fact, have a meet-the-public component in their job descriptions.  The best ones know the country to which they are assigned, speak the language fluently or at least passably well and are able to make the case privately and publicly for US foreign policy as it pertains to the country and region in which they serve.

If they don’t have those attributes – as I saw particularly in the case of a variety of political appointees over the years– those with common sense and a modicum of smarts take the advice of the embassy’s public affairs officer as well as the career diplomat (the DCM) who is charged with making the embassy run smoothly and, as importantly, keeping the ambassador from becoming a public embarrassment for the United States.  The advice is usually to keep a low profile and let someone who does know something talk with the media especially about substantive issues.  And, not-so-by-the-way, to refrain from making a public spectacle of himself or herself thereby introducing an unnecessary irritant into relations between the two countries.

There are, of course, also a few political appointees who are immensely popular in ways difficult for a career Ambassador to emulate.  They include both of President Obama’s appointments to China: former Ambassador John Huntsman and the current Ambassador Gary Locke as well as years ago the late Senator Mike Mansfield to Japan where he became almost a permanent fixture (1977-1988) regardless of administration because the Japanese liked and respected him so much.

But that’s not the issue here.

 

If you have not had the opportunity to view a couple of recent videos of Karen Stewart, US Ambassador to Laos, attempting to perform hip-hop at a public concert, may I suggest you let your fingers run, not do the walking to Youtube. Or just click on the video above.  The second one is below the fold. These questionable exhibitions of hubris are blissfully short and, at least for a while, the least offensive one (above) can also be found on the US Embassy Vientiane’s webpage.  My guess is it won’t last there all that long – but something posted on You-Tube as well as in the Lao electronic media as these are – can seemingly last forever.

 Tone Deaf and judgment poor?

Sadly, Ms. Stewart is a career senior Foreign Service Officer and she may well have had – and continue to have a terrific career. But I wonder.

The Tory Right undermines the Coalition in its Hours of Triumph

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent 

18 Nov 2011.  Lancashire. It came to me this morning as I read the steady stream of Twitter traffic.  The UK Coalition will fall. Perhaps as soon as this summer.  But not because of bad economic policy but because its right wing cannot control its obsession with Europe, hatred toward kindness, and compulsion to play English Bulldog within and without the Conservative Party. It will, with Shakespearean inevitability, turn on the Prime Minister who led them to power within the framework of the Coalition, ignoring the basic rules of politics in the media age.  

I no longer feel a need to prove the economic policy is bad. The bad news that manifestly documents the failure of Coalition (and indeed Eurozone) economic policies has quickened from monthly to weekly to daily to now hourly.    

But the polls reflect only 1 or 2 percent changes forth and back over the past six months.  However much the electorate should question the judgment of neo-liberal neo-classical economists and the “City” subservient political leadership, the electorate, like much of the media, appears convinced there are no other options.  No need to dwell on the disagreement I and a large number of respected economists have with this approach. The point is, if the Coalition goes it will not be because the electorate sees its policies are bad. At least, not any time soon. 

The Right's Issues with the Prime Minister

You would think the right wing could sit back and enjoy the ride.  But they have issues with the Prime Minister who led them into Coalition and office.  Stories surface weekly that illustrate how the right chafes under the Prime Minister's compromises with the Liberal Democrats, his unwillingness to drag the UK out of the European Union’s requirements UK follow EU law on a variety of issues.   

The Right's natural inclinations can be seen in the daily headlines concerning benefits.  Last night it was that benefit recipients will not receive the usual cost of living increase.  

This morning it was the Chancellor's proposal that the government replace the loss of revenue from axing a scheduled motor fuel tax increase as a result of cross party pressure through cuts to benefits. In days past it has been the employment and performance of a firm called Atos, which has decimated the ranks of those receiving disability benefits through questionable “screenings” of work capability coupled with the merciless and relentless “naming and shaming” of “scroungers,” spun to characterize almost all recipients of benefits under the heading “benefits culture.”

It can also be seen in the Right’s reaction to Cameron’s flagship “Big Society Programme.”  Reminiscent of George Bush Sr.’s 1000 points of light, the “it” of the Programme has not made clear for 2 years. Critics on both the Right and Left criticize its assumptions. If those who support benefits cuts do not want their taxes going for benefits, why would they give their money to charities when they did not have to do so? Why would those who do not want their taxes invested in social programmes invest their privately controlled funds? 

One can point to examples of big names who do so, but they usually support taxes as well.  There is always the PR explanation. That was suggested with President Bush’s programme too. But if it is PR, the Right Wing of the Tory Party has not be let in on the joke, and the Big Society does not make them happy campers. This undercurrent of Right Wing dissatisfaction with their leader’s “kinder, gentler” tendencies surfaces in coded statements. For example, “economic liberalism requires social conservatism.” 

Germany and the neo-Nazis - will the Germans finally rid themselves of their troubled past?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In Monday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kulish reported on a more than decade long outbreak of suspected violent neo-Nazism that has stalked Germany from Rostock on the Baltic to Munich and Nuremburg in Bavaria since at least 1998.  According to Kulish, the lengthy crime wave is likely connected to a loosely organized group calling itself the National Socialist Underground.

The story came to light on November 4 following an explosion and fire that gutted an apartment in Zwickau in eastern Germany where several members of the group had been living – two of whom are now dead in an apparent double suicide. A third turned herself into police.  A fourth was arrested separately.     

Members of the Underground have apparently murdered at least ten people, committed a minimum of 14 bank robberies and set off a bombing in Cologne in 2004.  Several other bombings – including one in Saarbrucken in 1999 and another in Berlin in 2002 may also turn out to be the work of this same group.  The scope and types of their actions are reminiscent of the left-wing urban guerrilla Baader-Meinhof Gang otherwise known as the Red Army Faction that operated in the 1967s and 1970s - except that their political leanings and targets are not.

The times are also very different.   

Whereas Baader-Meinhof targeted the German elite and US military personnel at the height of the Cold War, today’s National Socialist Underground has seemingly concentrated on murdering Turkish street vendors and small shopkeepers although one bombing – in a Jewish cemetery in Berlin – could be another piece of their handiwork.

The members of the left wing Baader-Meinhof Group turned out to be children of the middle class.   How large is the National Socialist Underground and how does it operate?  Who are these people and what motivated them to engage in militant acts? What is its relationship to German political parties, movements and even the security services?

Right wing extremists in Germany have been under surveillance and largely kept under the carpet ever since the end of World War II.   After the Berlin Wall’s fall and the incorporation of East Germany into the Federal Republic, German right wing militant extremism erupted with a vengeance in the East where it continues to receive its greatest support.  When the Communist lid came off in 1989, the neo-Nazis popped up like toadstools after a rain.

Glaring economic discrepancies and far higher unemployment in the East compared with the prosperous West likely helped trigger the initial extremist reaction especially among minimally educated young men disillusioned with life under Communism but unfit to compete in the West.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has the ability to declare radical groups illegal – and it does so.  This keeps them out of the government but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist – some in shadowy forms – lurking beneath the surface. The National Democratic Party – the extreme right’s closest legal representative – competes in elections.  It currently has seats in two of Germany’s state parliaments – Saxony and Mecklenburg - but none at the federal level.  Its members number 7,000 down from a couple of years ago.

An effort in 2003 on the part of both houses of the German parliament to declare the party illegal failed when it was learned that a number of the NPD's inner circle were undercover agents or informants of the German secret services.  But what does that mean?  And why did it take an explosion, a gutted apartment, joint suicides and a hunted woman turning herself in to the police for the group to be exposed to the public?  

A dream of former times than never existed   

Eurozone plays wag the dog while Rome burns

 By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

 In the Eurozone, the perverse incentive of bailouts in an unregulated financial market have resulted in financial markets that regulate governments and threaten to loot the Eurozone of its assets to boot.   

10 Nov 2011. London.  James Murdoch, recalled to Parliament to explain discrepancies between his testimony and that of his lawyer Thomas Crone and News of the World editor Colin Myler, insisted on his innocence and accused Crone and Myler of misleading the committee.  The committee grilled Murdoch for more than two and one half hours, occupying almost all the attention of BBC.   

But another major headline surfaced the same day. Its significance is at least as great.

EU Growth Forecast Downgraded

The European Union Commission downgraded its growth forecast for Europe from 1.8% to .5%.  The Commission warned of imminent recession.   In a speech here at home Prime Minister David Cameron warned of similar dire consequences for the UK.   

But neither the Commission, nor Prime Minister Cameron, nor the BBC questioned the Eurozone's current policy for dealing with the crisis.  Their take appears to be that despite the imminence of the risk, European leaders dither in the creation of a “big bazooka” bailout fund and the imposition of austerity measures.

Are the measures themselves the “risk?”

I ask, along with Paul Krugman and others, whether the risk isn't "because" of the measures they advocate.   

I ask whether we have paid close enough attention to the (possibly) unintended consequences that have flowed from the process. 

First, the Eurozone, the G20, the IMF, and UK's leadership have created a perverse incentive - one which allows private financiers to extort 1) further bailouts and greater sovereign debt to be bailed out (through ever higher interest rates) and 2) the looting of public assets.   

Second, these forces have created a perverse mechanism for regime change and centralization diametrically the opposite of the desires of the electorate the democratically elected regimes represented.  

Third, instead of delivering prosperity and return to growth, growth and investment have basically flat lined in the UK, the USA, and the Eurozone.  Recession is imminent in Europe and not off the table in the US. Is this really any surprise?  The money to buy has diminished. The confidence to buy has crashed. And why should business, especially business outside these economies, invest in them if their own leaders will not? 

Since the bailouts of 2007, the numerous attempts by the leaders of European governments to please the markets by underwriting government debt have created a perverse incentive to the financial sector to use credit rating downgrades, increased interest rates, and the consequent increases in debt beyond the repayable to extort 1) ever larger bailouts and 2) a centralized European fiscal policy sycophantic in its regard for market mood.    

A de facto - whether or not intended - mechanism is now well formed.   Interest rates rise, credit ratings are downgraded by private rating firms, and sovereign debt rises as a proportion of Gross Domestic Income.   Press releases and analyses fly, interpreting these dynamics to require ever increasing bailout funds, commitments to austerity, and the centralization of power. These taken together become the only options to save the European (and indeed the world) economy.   
 

Things are still going that way despite 4 years of failure.

The UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, one after the other, saw regime change as a direct consequence of this perverse combination. Only Iceland has thus far held out.  As I write, France is now being subjected to the same mechanism.   

Sarcozy quickly complied, delivering up more austerity cuts.   While the French bailout fund has not yet risen to meet the full desire of the markets, it has risen significantly, and the leadership uniformly and publicly affirms a need to do so, although the leaders squabble amongst themselves over how. The morning of the announcement of the EU’s downgrade in growth forecast no one in the government or the media questioned the mechanism.  They were, instead, questioning why the political leadership dithers and doesn't immediately comply with what the markets want. 

In fact, the result has not been the promised stability and economic growth. The result has been the looting of public assets, the degrading of the living standards of the average man, the creation of government by market mood as interpreted by the oligarchs of the anonymous “markets,” and the centralization of power in a Eurozone dancing to the tune of “the markets.”   

The tail is wagging the dog.  

Deregulation of finance has not been corrected. Finance instead regulates government.  Entrepreneurs loot the public of its assets.  The people suffer.   The economy isn't getting better. The West is being held hostage to the imposition of a new socio-economic order imposed by unelected oligarchs of the market.   
 

It is time for governments to return to their proper role as regulator of the market rather than remain as its servant.  Governments need to call a halt to the perverse mechanism of ever increasing interest rates by placing controls on interest rates.

Governments need to eliminate the perverse incentive created by the assurance of bailouts, which includes governments considering substituting controlled defaults (with safeguards for pension funds) for the golden lure of bailouts. Governments need to instead use their resources to invest the substantial public funds at their disposal into reinvigorating their economies, while protecting national assets to the extent possible.     

If the Eurozone does not change course in this way it will eventually find itself, like the business victim of a loan shark, looted of its assets, utterly bankrupt and unable to rebuild. 

“To Our Friends, We Are Here” Anarchists in Occupy Oakland

By Wendi Maxwell, Guest Contributor

(Wendi Maxwell looks behind the two-dimensional news stories to find the real motivations of the California Bay Area's radicals. Maxwell is a former policy maker for California adult literacy projects.)

“Anarchists have a reputation for running the red lights of history – a practice that can get you where you’re going faster, but can also get you killed.” (Rolling Thunder magazine - An Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living, fall 2009)  Revolutionary action can take many forms, from street fighting to sabotage to long term infrastructure projects and accountability processes.  We may think the black clad kids smashing Wells Fargo’s windows are simple hooligans; sometimes they’re knowledgeable, philosophically-driven anarchists.

Wait – there’s anarchists?

Local media equates anarchism with chaos, but listen to some Oakland anarchists and you will find they are anything but chaotic. An anarchists’ non-hierarchical decision-making process requiring 90 percent agreement takes lots of talking. And the Oakland anarchists do a lot more than talk and take to the streets. As one person posted online:

“We’ve been helping the poor and homeless in Downtown Oakland for over 10 years. An anarchist was serving the people food and clothing. Anarchists fought to stop the closing of Oakland libraries. Anarchists are teachers, gardeners, and community organizers… Our contributions to OO include direct democracy through the General Assembly (GA), the consensus process, facilitation, most of the proposals we all vote on in the GA, Food not Bombs kitchen, communalism, infrastructure, a rejection of state authority, taking to the streets without a permit, taking the OO space, policing the occupied space ourselves, providing protest medics, security training, safer spaces…”

Part of the current Oakland controversy is the role of Black Bloc which some anarchists employ. Demonstrators using Black Bloc tactics wear unlabelled black clothing and scarves or ski masks to conceal their faces and prevent their identification. A group of protestors “blocked up” appears as one large solid spooky black mass.

Wikipedia notes: “Tactics of a black bloc can include vandalism, rioting and street fighting, demonstrating without a permit, misleading the authorities, assisting in the escape of people arrested by the police, administering first aid to persons affected by tear gas in areas where protesters are barred from entering, building barricades, and resisting the police. Property destruction carried out by black blocs tends to have symbolic significance: common targets include banks, institutional buildings, outlets for multinational corporations, gasoline stations, and video-surveillance cameras.” (Photo left top: anarchist tearing down Wells Fargo sign, November 2011)

Black Bloc participants make a conscious decision to engage in confrontational protest. They have little vested interest in the status quo, and no apparent interest in becoming vested. They practice marching, determine exit strategies ahead of time, and are prepared for conflict and possible arrest. They are the street soldiers of the rebellion. As one protestor noted, “When the cops stop playing around and get real aggressive, I would thank my lucky stars to have the Black Bloc and other aggressive demonstrators at my back. We can't all be Gandhi.” (Photo left of Black Bloc in Oakland Generat Strike by  K. Snicklefritz, November 2011)

The Continuing Greek Saga in which Politics Trumps Economics - November in Greece

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Is this a 21^st century version of Nero fiddling while Rome burns?  And if so, is the modern day Nero the Greek politicians, various players in the Eurozone from Angela Merkel and Nikolas Sarkozy to the leaders of the European Central Bank, the IMF, or all of them put together?  (Photo top left: Greek parliament, by PHKushlis, September 2006).  

In Greece where a tragedy of Herculean proportions plays out on the pavement in and around Constitution Square as well as at the President’s palace, the economic crisis has not only turned into a full blown domestic political crisis but also one which could take down the Eurozone and more with it.  It could and should be contained – but that’s dependent upon the Greeks getting their political house in order and the Europeans with Germany at the helm doing what needs to be done – not just half-way measures – to stave off Armageddon for yet another day.    

In reality, the Greek economy is tiny and composes just 2% of that of the Eurozone but it is still the 32^nd largest in the world. As a result of its dire economic straits, the country’s manufacturing sector declined by over 8% between March 2010 and 2011 and what began as a good year for tourism – a chief money earner – will likely have suffered because of strikes and public demonstrations representing popular discontent.  Moreover, in the first quarter of 2010, youth unemployment had reached over 36%.   

There’s also something amiss when a government is forced to borrow at ever higher interest rates to satisfy its creditors. Greece is locked out of international bond markets because of sky-high interest rates and must rely on its EU partners to avoid default.  A sovereign debt problem that could have been managed early on has turned into a death spiral in and of itself.     

If the Eurozone monetary union had been better conceived and implemented, Greece’s economic weaknesses simply wouldn’t matter that much.  But that didn’t happen. How the Europeans allowed the country’s debt to mushroom to this degree is beyond my expertise but The New York Times November 6, 2011 Business Section report “The Denials that Trapped Greece,” is, I understand, right on the money.

When push comes to shove, Greek politics and economics are usually intertwined.  Politics, as much as economics, is at the heart of this crisis.  

Normally, political parties in healthy democracies keep each other honest.  The watch-dog role of opposition parties is at the heart of democratic governance.  Lord knows, the Greeks invented democracy centuries ago on those very stones in Athens – or at least ones close by – where today’s Greeks have become mired in such a deep sovereign debt crisis that one would think the problem would bring its feuding politicians together to save the country from economic and political ruin.

Apparently not yet.   

The sandbox bickering between former Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras, the country’s two major party leaders – once roommates at Amherst College in Massachusetts and later bitter enemies – continued unabated throughout the weekend.  To make matters worse, throw in the shrill fight over leadership between Papandreou and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos - within PASOK itself, the country’s majority party.

The country’s president Karolos Papoulias finally stepped in. Papandreou resigned Sunday and the two political leaders have been told to meet on Monday to determine who will next lead the country and serve in the interim cabinet.  The date for new elections will also need to be set.  This is part of the ongoing discussion between officials representing both parties according to AP.

PASOK and ND both culprits

Certainly major mistakes were made along the way – but the country does not have only PASOK to blame.  The previous New Democracy government overspent and over-borrowed in the good times. Then it hid the size of the country’s financial deficit when the global recession hit.  The extent of the problem only came to light when PASOK won the elections in 2009, examined the books and rang the alarm bells.

Promises, promises . . .

What PASOK did not do subsequently was make the unpopular and substantial structural changes needed to reverse course: the wealthy continue to find ways to avoid the tax collector, and the clientage system is simply too strong and deeply entrenched in the political system to be easily shaken off. Moreover, ND, the chief opposition party – although its leadership changed from Karamanlis to Samaras in the interim – thought playing party politics more important than calling for a bipartisan coalition capable of dealing with a country in shock.  It’s still not clear that Samaras really understands that message but one can hope.

In the meantime, both ND and PASOK are perhaps only finally recognizing what 52% of the public apparently already realizes - that the situation has deteriorated so much that neither major party alone can resolve the crisis but that together they might have a chance.