Saudi Government Facilitating Child Sex Trafficking

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Cable Viewer

This from Wikileaks. Click link above for full US diplomatic cable from its embassy in Yemen.

ROYG officials and independent experts 
repeatedly express frustration with the lack of Saudi 
cooperation on trafficking-in-persons issues, including 
children smuggled to Saudi Arabia for work and Saudi "sex 
tourists" who frequent underage prostitutes in Yemen.  They 
allege that the Saudi government has significantly stalled 
bilateral efforts to combat trafficking.  Without 
higher-level Saudi commitment, it will continue to be 
difficult for impecunious Yemen to fight this cross-border 
problem alone.

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John Hutton, Russian Gas, Georgia and Wiikileaks

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Confidential US State Department cable 08LONDON2384 , published by Wikileaks, contains the following quote relating to the Russian invasion of Georgia's Abkhazia region in August 2008. 

At a meeting in September 2008 between US Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffery Kupfer and the then British Business Secretary John Hutton, discussion turned to Russia's growing dominance of the European gas market. The discussion is summarised as follows:

Hutton stated that the EU is never going to speak with one voice on

energy security, pointing out that each country has dealt with supply

issues independently. He pointed to the growing European dependence on

Russian gas, and the fact that much of Gazprom's board was former

Federal Security Service (FSB). These factors, Hutton said,

contributed to the EU's feeble response to the Russian invasion of Georgia.

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Police Reality TV Programmes: Low Cost PR?

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The growth in the number of reality TV shows that feature police officers has been noticeable in recent years. At the last count I spotted seven different series on British television - Police, Camera, Action!, Cops with Cameras, Traffic Cops, Police Interceptors, Cops, Road Wars and Sky Cops. A few thoughts:

1. The shows are much cheaper to produce than TV crime dramas. There are no paid actors, no sets, no stunt men, no equipment, props lighting or make up. Fixed costs are a camera, an editing suite and some background admin. 

2. The programmes show no breaches in police regulations. No police officers on these "reality" programmes ever receive bribes, leak information to the press or beat up suspects. Although 400 people have died following police contact in the last ten years, no policeman has ever been convicted of murder or manslaughter for such a death in the UK. The shows are, therefore, effective PR for the various forces represented. I don't deny the police the right to present themselves in the best possible light, but it is worth asking what measures the media are taking to present the full range of police reality through television. 

3. Members of the public are routinely filmed over a range of alleged and actual misdemeanours, and then have these acts broadcast to millions. On occasion when members of the public challenge the film crews, the police routinely state that the cameras are operating within the law, since the events filmed are taking police in public, and that there is freedom to film in public. On some occasions, it seems that the camera's role is close to that of incitement. 

4. Members of the public should feel free to film police officers in the course of their duty, as long as they are not interfering with a police officer as s/he carries out their role. It would be quite unacceptable for the police to object to this, in my view.

 

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The Vision of E.F. Schumacher

The Vision of E.F. Schumacher | Daily News | NCRegister.com

Fascinating article on the theological roots of Schumacher's economics:

It is, in fact, ironic that the modern environmental or “green” movement derives its weltanschauung not from any New Age philosophy or neo-pagan “religion,” but from the expertise and wisdom of a world-renowned economist who found inspiration from the social doctrine of the Church.

In practical terms, Schumacher counteracted the idolatry of giantism with the beauty of smallness. People, he argued, could only feel at home in human-scale environments, of which the family was the archetype. His insistence that the question of scale in economic life should not — and, indeed, morally speaking, could not — be separated from the overriding dignity of the human person shifted the whole focus of economic thought away from impersonal market forces and back to the dignity of human life.

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Divide and Conquer: Who Benefits from the UK Riots?

After the fires, the looting and the deaths, now the backlash begins.

More than 175,000 people (at the time of writing) have put their name to the following on the government's official e-petition website:   

"Any persons convicted of criminal acts during the current London riots should have all financial benefits removed. No tax payer should have to contribute to those who have destroyed property, stolen from their community and shown a disregard for the country that provides for them."

Apart from the obvious difficulties in implementing such a proposal, and ignoring the social consequences were it implemented fully, the petition reveals one of the legacies of the recent riots. Working people are being divided from one another, this in-fighting taking the place of united political action against the consolidation of economic power by those at the top of the social system.

On any other quiet news day in the middle of the summer silly season, the revelation from The High Pay Commisson that FTSE 100 directors in the UK received pensions of up to 29 times the rest of the workforce would have become the day's top news story. The BBC story, buried on its web site among the wall to wall coverage of last weekend's looting, notes that the Commission's report

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"comes at a time when many employee pension schemes are being closed or becoming less generous. The HPC said about 97% of FTSE 350 firms have kept open company-sponsored schemes for directors, but only one-third have stayed open for workers."

The HPC's report is simply another illustration of the reality of vast economic and social inequality in Britain. Consider the following highlights of a 2010 report based on statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions:

• the richest 10% of the UK population have seen their incomes increase by 37% in the preceding decade
• the poorest 10% have experienced a decline in their incomes by 12% in the same time period
• four-fifths of income increase over the last ten years has gone to those with above-average incomes (two-fifths has gone to the richest tenth) 
• the richest tenth earn 31% of total UK income (the poorest tenth earn 1%)
• Inner London is the most economically divided region of the UK

Against this economic backdrop, the site of workers (or unemployed) destroying their own communities and targeting fellow workers by stealing from them is a classic example of the alienation of labour, defined as "the estrangement of people from their humanity." 

The rising anger among these same communities is being turned , understandably,  towards the looters, with increasingly extreme voices calling for punitive action beyond the due process in the courts.

Meanwhile, the millionaire politicians and their billionaire financial backers remain largely unaffected  by the recent riots. Just 7 per cent of the public interviewed for a Channel 4 survey thought that the chaos was triggered by social inequality and 5 per cent blamed Government cuts.

It is likely that the cuts agenda will survive the rioting, albeit with some modification around police funding. Beyond that, the government's position will remain intact, with the in-fighting taking place among those currently bearing the largest burden of the current crisis in developed capitalism.

Other beneficiaries of the riots include the police. It will now be politically impossible to follow through on cuts to the police, despite the fact that one of its officers pulled the trigger on Marc Duggan, though he had not fired a shot - the spark which set off the initial protest in Tottenham.

Less tangibly, the large-scale calls from working people for retribution against the looters is creating a climate in which the call for "strong law and order" will increasingly be heard. This climate will benefit those seeking "stronger leadership" in government. Historically, when such sentiments take root in a nation, they can often pave the way for the emergence of extreme parties who promise to end the lawlessness. 

Which is why, one of the best responses working people can do in the aftermath of the riots, is continue to work and campaign for greater fairness in society, and for structural changes that will reduce the unacceptable levels of economic inequality that have emerged in the UK in recent years.  

 






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