Patrick Henry Press News

The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left | George Monbiot

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo". Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.

But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".

Lofgren complains that "the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".

The madness hasn't gone as far in the UK, but the effects of the Conservative appeal to stupidity are making themselves felt. This week the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threats from other people.

These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires' feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss man-made climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawson or thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.

But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness". They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It's turkeys all the way down.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot

George Monbiot

Australia's painful journey towards indigenous rights

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

The fracas that engulfed the country's prime minister during Aboriginal protests on Australia Day speaks volumes about a society still coming to terms with its past

In saying that I have conflicting views about the hustling of Julia Gillard, the prime minister, to her car through a cordon of Aboriginal demonstrators and police on Australia Day last month, I am merely reflecting a genuine confusion many of us feel. The protesters later said that their anger was directed at the opposition leader, muscular, all-surfing, all-bicycling, former Catholic seminarian (like me) neocon (unlike me) Tony Abbott. Yet I have to say Abbott's remarks about the determinedly ramshackle Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, founded 40 years ago, did not seem to me racist or wild.

I assert this though I am not an admirer of Abbott's. The idea of his winning the prime ministership from the unpopular Labor leader, Gillard, makes me fantasise about political asylum in Scunthorpe. But this is what Abbott said about the Tent Embassy: "I think a lot has changed for the better since then [the setting-up of the Embassy]. I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian … I think it probably is time to move on from that."

I don't utterly agree with him, but his is an arguable opinion. When the Tent Embassy was founded outside federal parliament in 1972, it was established by four Aboriginal leaders planting a beach umbrella in the turf. There they stood to protest the refusal of a conservative government then in power to recognise Aboriginal land rights claims. When that brave beach umbrella was raised, the obscene doctrine of terra nullius was still accepted as Australian common law; a legal fiction that Australia was land belonging to no one. This made seizure of Australia – and the continuing possession by settlers – utterly legal.

As it developed, the Tent Embassy served as a political awakening and education for many Aboriginal leaders. It resisted all government attempts to remove it, and all the complaints of those who considered it "an eyesore". It always claimed Aboriginal sovereignty over the Northern Territory and in a more general sense over Australia. But soon after it was set up, goes the good-faith argument of many Australians, including some Aborigines, things began to improve in small stages. The Labor government of Gough Whitlam recognised Aboriginal land rights on federal lands. Since then, state governments have legislated to "allow" such claims on unalienated land within their boundaries.

The most graphic and significant event for land rights followed a long legal fight waged by a heroic Torres Strait islander named Eddie Mabo. Mabo was a man appalled to discover that his ancestral garden on Murray Island was not his in law, but belonged to the crown. He fought his case through a number of courts until it reached the federal high court. He had died by the time, in 1991, that the high court recognised that not only his garden, but the whole of Australia, had belonged to Aboriginals and Torres Strait islanders all along. It ruled too that they had never ceded ownership, and that governments must now take account of these facts. The high court declared that though it might be legally unviable for Aboriginals to claim all privately owned land, they had a right to unalienated land and were the traditional owners of all of Australia. This decision did not bring an Aboriginal nirvana. There were still, for example, aggressive mining leases taken on Aboriginal land – but now royalty payments had to be paid.

In 1997, the Bringing Them Home report, concerning stolen generations of Aboriginal children, was tabled in parliament. The tale of such kidnappings was depicted for the world in that brilliant Doris Pilkington (Nugi Garimara) memoir and movie, Rabbit-Proof Fence. An Aboriginal opera singer I know, Deborah Cheetham, was given to an amiable white family who were told she had been found abandoned in a box. As an adult Deborah found her real mother, who described how officials had taken her by force and thwarted all attempts by her mother to find her. But now, more than 100 years of child-thefts were at an end.

The next advance was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to indigenous Australians in 2008 for "successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians". Nowadays, no civic event occurs without recognition of the traditional owners. In many cases an Aboriginal elder is invited to give a "welcome to country". Some are cynical about this, saying: "First obliterate them, then honour them." But the acknowledgement does often stand as a gesture of sincerity on the part of many officials and citizens aware of eons of Aboriginal occupation.

In the midst of any debate stands the "Federal Intervention" in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It began in 2007 as the result of a report entitled Little Children Are Sacred, which dealt with child abuse in fraught Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. Its co-author was an eloquent Aboriginal leader, Pat Anderson. Australia was surprised by the swiftness of the government intervention, the sudden arrival of troops, police and health workers in the communities. To some this seemed an election ploy by the then leader, John Howard. But it was seen by others as a necessary benign action in which the health and reconstruction wings of the armed forces would be engaged. Under the intervention, the federal government would take over management of Aboriginal land for five years and re-establish communities on orderly lines. To achieve this, the Racial Discrimination Act would be temporarily suspended. This would allow the federal government to regulate welfare payments and to ban liquor and pornography from communities.

The Little Children Are Sacred report was horrifying. At the time the intervention began, though, I thought it heavy-handed and a repeat of the failed paternalism of the past. Yet many Aboriginals in the communities involved welcomed it with unfeigned enthusiasm. Marcia Langton, an Aboriginal academic, condemned "the cynical view afoot that the intervention was a political ploy – to grab land, support mining companies and kick black heads". Many Aboriginals were concerned not with intervention itself, but with the lack of tact with which it sometimes proceeded.

Though debate still rages over the benefits and failures of the intervention, it is argued even by many Aboriginal leaders that the Tent Embassy is an anachronism, a structure bespeaking division rather than reconciliation. Many of the Ngunnawal people on whose land it stands want it removed. Warren Mundine, a Sydney Aboriginal elder who is a former president of the Australian Labor party, even quarrelled with Australian federal police's refusal to go ahead with arrests. "The full force of the law should be whacked on them," he said.

One Aboriginal leader I have had something to do with is the formidable Lowitja O'Donoghue. She is a former nurse who – on her merits and not on the basis of sentiment – would have been a frontrunner for president had we become a republic in the late 1990s. Her present programme is to do away by referendum with a clause in the Australian constitution she calls "potentially prejudicial" to Aboriginal rights. O'Donoghue seeks a 2013 referendum to eliminate it, to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples as original occupiers of the continent, and to express the duty of the commonwealth to attend to the advancement of indigenes. Sadly, shock-jocks, exploiting what happened on Australia Day, might defeat her dream.

Just as Abbott's remarks, though untactful, are defensible as free speech, there is an obvious case for the right of Aboriginal activists, wisely or not, to retain the Tent Embassy on the same basis. Even if it does not represent majority Aboriginal opinion, and even if it might annoy more people than it persuades, it stands for justifiable complaint.

Aboriginal deaths in custody are still not unknown. The death of Mulrunji Doomadgee on a cell floor in Palm Island in 2004 remains the focus of endless inquiry and racial bitterness in Queensland. Aboriginal life expectancy is still 20 years behind that of non-indigenous people. Nearly one out of two Aboriginal males is dead by the age of 65. Aboriginal people account for just under a quarter of jail inmates though they are only 2.5% of the population. In the past decade one-quarter of indigenes in the cities have completed high school, and fewer than one in 10 in remote Australia. Fewer than one in 10 urban Aborigines achieves a university degree, and fewer than 3% of those in remote Australia. The figures are improving but so far by small increments.

One of Gillard's aides has been sacked for allegedly tipping off protesters that Abbott would be at the event in Canberra where the fracas occurred. The incident has now transmuted itself into an argument over Labor "dirty tricks". Only a few voices have asked whether it might not be better, and less potentially provocative, to move the date of Australia Day. The Australia Day Council, led by the former Test cricketer Adam Gilchrist with considerable imagination and competence, emphasises immemorial Aboriginal occupation as one of the elements of the day. But this anniversary of the founding of the penal settlement in Sydney Cove, of modern Australia's extraordinary beginning as an Eden for pre-fallen and pre-condemned Adams and Eves, was also the beginning of what proved a tragic dispossession of Aboriginal peoples.

So nothing will finally allay hostility until Aboriginal equality is achieved by white goodwill and, above all, by indigenous education, political skill and leadership. Until then, the mourning and the howling continues.

Australians: Origins to Eureka by Thomas Keneally is published by Allen & Unwin, £16.99. To order a copy for £13.59 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

Thomas Keneally

Syrian embassy in US responds to US diplomatic withdrawal from Damascus - video

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

The Syrian embassy has responds to the withdrawal of the ambassador Robert Ford and the 17 staff from the US embassy in Damascus

Profits at Zaha Hadid Architects hit by Arab Spring disruptions

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Profits before tax slumped to £1.8m in the year to 30 April 2011 from £4.1m year before. Turnover fell to £43m from £44m

Profits at Zaha Hadid Architects more than halved last year as the Arab spring brought several major projects to a halt. A conference centre and a complex of offices and shops in Cairo were put on hold, as was a conference hall in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The fall in turnover and profits came during an otherwise highly successful period for the Baghdad-born architect, who has won the Stirling prize for two years running. In 2010 she was awarded the prestigious architecture prize for the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, and last October she won it for the Evelyn Grace Academy school in Brixton, south London, notable for the bright red sprint track that runs through the site.

However, Hadid, whose Aquatics Centre at the Olympic Park in London has attracted controversy after costing three times the original budget, also announced last week she would build the new Central Bank of Iraq headquarters in Baghdad – her first project back in her home country.

Hadid attended the opening of her glittering opera house in Guangzhou, China, with its grotto-like auditorium, last February, and completed the Riverside Museum, Glasgow's new transport museum on the banks of the Clyde – pictured – which opened in June.

However, the series of revolts that swept across north Africa and the Middle East last year took a toll on the financial position of her firm. Profits before tax slumped to £1.8m in the year to 30 April 2011 from £4.1m the year before. Turnover declined to £43m from £44m. Projects completed during that year include the 842m Sheikh Zayed bridge, the fourth bridge that links Abuh Dhabi to the mainland after nearly eight years of construction.

Initially, the firm took on more staff to work on projects in the Middle East and Asia, but when the Arab spring led to a number of projects being stopped it was forced to lay off 76 people. The company now has 288 employees.

The planned 85,000 square metre conference hall in Tripoli is on hold, as are the Stone Towers in Cairo – more than 600,000 sq metres of office, retail and hospitality space. The latter is under review and the firm said it looked forward to restarting the project "in the near future".

The Cairo Expo City project, a 193,000 sq metre development with a large exhibition hall and a conference centre, was also put on hold last spring but will now be going ahead.

One of Hadid's architects who was laid off last year said: "There are amazing amounts of energy. There is chaos, but something comes out of that chaos. When [the firm] does something, it does it well."

Julia Kollewe

Letter: Football and freedom

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Nick Spencer (Face to Faith, 4 February) has used the recent football stadium tragedy in Egypt as a vehicle for his dislike of sport in general and football in particular. He doesn't want to ban sport outright, he just wants supporters to lock themselves away in their front rooms! His utopian dream is a sport-free country where nobody can display their sporting abilities in public for fear of arousing passions. Poor Nick Spencer. Even the communists were proud of their football teams. Under which sort of political regime does he imagine a sport-free existence? I can think of a recent sport-free nation – Afghanistan – when run by the Taliban, who used the national sports stadium for executions and banned all sport. Football is enjoyed by countless millions worldwide and is usually a reflection of a free-thinking, free-acting society. Think of Iraq and Palestine. One politically motivated incident in a fragile country resulting in awful deaths should not be used as a measure or a guide.
Andrew Spacey
Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Letters: Why the west should avoid the drumbeats of war

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Simon Jenkins, in a timely article on the geopolitics of western interventionism, raises a number of issues that urgently require further analysis (Still Britain rattles sabres. Nothing has been learned, 3 February). In the context of the chaotic occupation and promised "expedited withdrawal" of Nato troops from Afghanistan, a number of key elements of western society are starkly revealed.

For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan symbolised the reassertion of an imperial mentality that was to be further deployed in the occupation of Iraq, and now seems likely to play a nefarious part in an attack on Iran, which would lead us into a war with potentially catastrophic results. How do we explain this unrelenting belligerence that threatens to take the world into an unpredictable conflagration?

One factor concerns the ethnocentric belief that the prowess of western arms, coupled with the ostensible superiority of western thought and practice, could turn an Afghanistan or an Iraq into reformed, pro-western democracies that would eventually take their place in the "international family of nations". Erased from this account are the stubborn facts of history and geopolitics, whereby the west has terminated democratic governments in the global south (eg Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973), while bankrolling dictatorships that violated human rights (eg Mobutu in Zaire and Pinochet in Chile).

Further, another aspect of the imperial mentality has been the belief that making unstable countries safe through occupation will in its turn make western societies more secure. The reality has been the exact opposite.

Many would situate these factors in the context of the western appropriation of developing world resources, which while being a key factor, nevertheless fails to take into account the psychology of the imperial relation and the fact that western societies continue to reproduce attitudes, values and frames of interpretation that subordinate the societies of the south. For Simon Jenkins, Britain and the US have "belligerence in their cultural genes". Perhaps what we need, as in the arena of race and racism, is a continuous challenging of the psychology of imperial reason.
Professor David Slater
Loughborough, Leicestershire

• How right was Simon Jenkins to criticise current western sabre rattling against Iran. While Iran's democracy may not be perfect, the flimsy set of dubious allegations about nuclear weapons development, terrorist plots or other ill-defined horrors hardly justify the present sanctions, let alone military action. It would surely be more sensible to try to build up diplomatic and trade links to the potential benefit of all the nations involved.
Neil Charman
Marple, Cheshire

• Whatever the rights and wrongs of the veto by Russia and China of a UN resolution critical of Syria (Report, 4 February), it is rich of the United States to complain about this. Using the veto to thwart UN criticism of its allies is standard practice by the US whenever Israel is criticised on any grounds at all. Since 1972 the US has used its veto to protect Israel on at least 40 occasions. The words "mote" and "beam" come to mind.
Karl Sabbagh
Newbold on Stour, Warwickshire

How £50m in UN food aid for starving went to buy wheat from Glencore

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

£50bn merger with Xstrata will be latest City coup for billionaires behind commodities trader

More than £50m of World Food Programme aid to feed the starving has ended up in the hands of a London-listed commodities trader run by billionaires, despite a pledge by the United Nations agency to buy food from "very poor farmers".

Glencore International, which buys up supplies from farmers and sells them on at a profit, was the biggest single supplier of wheat to the WFP over the last eight months, the Guardian can reveal.

Glencore, which was able to operate with secrecy from its base in Baar, Switzerland, until it floated on the London stock exchange last May, is expected on Tuesday to announce a merger with mining group Xstrata to become one of the 10 biggest FTSE 100 companies with a market value of more than £50bn.

Details of the dealings with Glencore, which controls 8% of the global wheat market, emerged a year after the head of the WFP committed to buying food from local farmers.

"Our new motto is to help people feed themselves," Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the WFP, told China's state news agency. "When we can, we purchase our food from the very poor farmers who suffer because they are not connected to local markets."

Raj Patel, an economist expert in the global food trade and former UN employee, said it was shocking how much food aid money was "funnelling to one of the largest commodity traders".

The rising price of wheat has squeezed the incomes of millions of the world's poorest people. Many have been forced to turn to the WFP, which last year fed more than 90 million people in 73 countries.

Over the last eight months Glencore has sold wheat worth $78m (£50m) to the WFP, according to details of contracts published on the agency's website.

In the biggest single deal, the WFP bought $22.5m of Glencore wheat in July last year to feed Ethiopians in one the worst famines in recent memory. The WFP also bought Glencore wheat, sorghum and yellow split peas for Kenya, Djibouti, Bangladesh, Sudan, North Korea and Palestine. Last month the WFP spent $10.8m on wheat for drought-stricken Djibouti.

In its latest half-year financial results Glencore, which previously attracted controversy for environmental breaches and accusations of dealing with rogue states, including Iraq under Saddam Hussein, reported that revenue from agricultural products doubled to $8.8bn. The company said its performance had been "driven by stronger profits in grains and oil seeds" for which "prices were substantially higher in H1 [the first half of] 2011 compared to H1 2010".

The company said: "There were increased geographic arbitrage opportunities [buying commodities cheaper in order to sell them on later at a higher price] available in wheat and edible oils." It said the average wheat price of a bushel [8 gallons] of wheat increased by 60% over the previous year to $778.

A spokeswoman for the WFP said: "As a humanitarian agency that depends entirely on voluntary donations we always aim to get the most competitive price when purchasing food on the open markets. Rising food prices do have an impact on our budget and they can be driven up by any number of factors, including speculation."

Glencore said it won the WFP tenders because "we were able to offer the commodities needed at the lowest possible price".

Rob Bailey, a senior research fellow in food security at Chatham House in London, said the WFP often buys from traders such as Glencore, Cargill and Viterra, because food donations are not available and local farmers cannot provide the quantities needed. "It is concerning that the World Food Programme is left at the whim of international markets precisely when prices are high," he said.

"Such crisis periods of high volatility are also when the big traders make the most money, because they have the best information on likely supply and demand and how markets are going to evolve, allowing them to take positions in the market to turn profits."

John Hilary, the executive director of the War on Want, said: "Glencore's self-confessed speculation on grain markets last year forced up prices at a time of world shortage, driving more people into extreme hunger. The WFP needs to rethink its priorities and support local markets rather than corporate giants such as Glencore."

Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System, said: "It's a shocking amount of money to be funnelling to one of the largest commodity traders. That financial entities are now making their presence felt – and Glencore is among the most powerful of these new corporations – points to the increasing financialisation of food in the 21st century."

Glencore admitted that it bet on a rising wheat price after drought in Russia, according to investment bank UBS. "[Glencore's] agricultural team received very timely reports from Russia farm assets that growing conditions were deteriorating aggressively in the spring and summer of 2010, as the Russian drought set in … This put it in a position to make proprietary trades going long on wheat and corn," UBS said in a report to potential investors, disclosed by the Financial Times.

On 3 August 2010 the head of Glencore's Russian grain business, Yury Ognev, urged Moscow to ban grain exports, according to the UBS report. Two days later Russian authorities banned wheat exports, which forced prices up by 15% in two days.

On Monday Glencore said UBS's account of its role in the Russian grain crisis was "simply untrue. In any case, the export ban did not help our business".

A spokesman said: "We share the view that financial speculation in agricultural products markets can be harmful. Our business is physical – we produce, buy, store and blend agricultural commodities.

"We bridge the gap between harvests that last for a couple of weeks and demand which is fairly constant throughout the year.

"Because we are physical holders, we are always net sellers in the agricultural products futures markets which actually has a downward effect on the prices of agricultural products futures."

Glencore's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, earned the moniker "the $10 billion man" when his stake was valued at £5.76bn at last May's flotation. Four other partners – Daniel Maté, Telis Mistakidis, Tor Peterson and Alex Beard – were also made paper billionaires. More than $3.6bn was given to the WFP last year, with the US contributing $1.2bn and the UK £144m.

Merger deal anticipated

Glencore is on Tuesday expected to announce plans to merge with mining group Xstrata to become one of the 10 biggest companies listed on the London stock market. It will be the latest move in Glencore's journey from secretive trading house founded by Marc Rich, a commodities traderwho was charged by US authorities with selling oil to Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis, to global powerhouse in the sale of commodities from copper and coal to sugar and wheat.

The largest shareholder in the combined company – dubbed Glenstrata – will be Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore's multibillionaire chief executive. But Glasenberg, who makes so much money he indirectly funded a generous Christmas tax break for the other residents of the Swiss village where he lives, is understood to be planning to step aside to become deputy to Mick "the miner" Davis, the head of Xstrata.

Davis, already one the highest paid executives in the FTSE 100, is likely to be offered a "golden handcuffs" deal to stay at the company. A change of control clause could also see Davis collect an additional £10.7m in long-term shares.

The deal is likely to see Glencore pay about an 8% premium to buy up the Xstrata shares it does not already own.

Sir John Bond, Xstrata's chairman and a former chair of HSBC and Vodafone, will lead the Glenstrata board, while Glencore's chairman Simon Murray, who has been attacked for his "unbelievably primitive" views on women in business, is likely to step aside.

Tony Hayward, the former boss of BP, is likely to be appointed the senior independent director of the combined company, which will have more than 120,000 staff across five continents.

Rupert Neate

Iran upholds death sentences for two men 'linked to British spy'

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Two men alleged to be Kurdish terrorists were found guilty of 'assassination' in Marivan at behest of UK intelligence

Iran's supreme court has upheld death sentences for two men convicted of killing three Sunnis with the help of a British spy, according to reports in Iran.

The semi-official Mehr news agency said the court had found the two men, believed to be terrorists, guilty of 'Moharebeh' – an Islamic term meaning "enmity with God", a capital crime that carries the death sentence.

"The men, members of the Komeleh Kurdish terrorist group, shot dead a son of Marivan's Friday prayer leader, along with two of his friends, in July 2009 with the support of the British intelligence service," the Mehr report said.

Like neighbouring Iraq and Turkey, Iran has a large Kurdish minority, mainly living in the west and north-west. Iran is a mainly Shia country while most Kurds are Sunnis.

According to Iran's state-run English Press TV, the men told a revolutionary court late last year that a British agent had offered them a significant sum of money, British residency permits and other incentives to carry out the assassination in a western city in Iran.

When lower courts impose a death sentence, the case goes to the supreme court to review the sentence. Britain has been a focus of Iranian anger in the past months over steps to tighten sanctions over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.

Protesters stormed and ransacked Britain's two diplomatic compounds in Tehran in December, after London imposed financial sanctions following a UN report suggesting Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons.

The embassy attack pushed ties between Tehran and London to their lowest ebb since Iran severed diplomatic relations in 1989 over the publication of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses.

The head of the BBC said on Sunday that Iranian authorities were increasingly arresting and threatening the families of BBC journalists working outside Iran to force them to quit its Persian news service.

In a separate report on Monday, Mehr said Iranian authorities had arrested several people who had cooperated with BBC's Persian-language service inside the country. The report did not make clear how many people had been arrested but said they had been active in collecting news and other tasks since 2009.

Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, has denounced what he said was "an attempt to put pressure on those who work for BBC Persian outside Iran, by targeting family members who still live inside the country".

Western countries suspect Iran's uranium enrichment activities have military aims. Tehran says they are for peaceful electricity generation.

Anonymous publishes trove of emails from Haditha marine law firm

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Law firm represented Frank Wuterich, who pled guilty to his part in the death of 24 Iraqi civilians, but served no jail time

Hackers associated with the Anonymous activist group have leaked a trove of emails hacked from the law firm representing staff sergeant Frank Wuterich, accused of leading a group of Marines responsible for the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians at Haditha.

The group has published files taken from Puckett & Faraj, the law firm that represented Wuterich on Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site popular with hackers, and published extracts on another site, Pastebin, although some of those postings now appear to have been removed.

Last month Wuterich plead guilty in a military court to dereliction of duty, telling the judge that he regretted ordering his men to "shoot first, ask questions later."

He was demoted to private and technically sentenced to 90 days confinement but, by the terms of the plea deal, he will not serve any time. The sentence means none of the marines accused in the incident will face time in prison.

In the emails, Neal Puckett, the law firm's founder and a former marine, writes to one of Wuterich's supporters: "Frank Wuterich represents the best this country has to offer and deserved nothing less. I was inspired by his insistence that he take responsibility for all that his Marines did or failed to do that day. He refused to have it any other way."

The website of Puckett & Faraj was unavailable Monday and the firm declined to comment about the alleged security breach.

In other emails released by Anonymous, members of the firm appear to worry that hack may "completely destroy the Law Firm."

The hack was the latest in high profile release by Anonymous members in less than a week. Last week the collective released an 18-minute recording of the FBI and British police discussing delays in court proceedings against two alleged members of the LulzSec hacking group.

Dominic Rushe

Disbelief as Greek politicians delay deal on €130bn rescue package

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

• Exasperated Angela Merkel warns 'time is of the essence'
• Portugal's PM says 'we will not allow it to happen here'

Greece appeared intent on taking make-or-break talks over a €130bn (£108bn) rescue programme for the debt-choked country down to the wire tonight as officials announced that the discussions would be delayed.

Confounding market expectation and European hopes, the government said agreement over the conditions attached to further aid could not be reached as a meeting between political chiefs and the prime minister, Lucas Papademos, had been deferred until today.

"All parties have basically accepted the deal," said a well-briefed source, referring to the three elements in Papademos's national unity coalition. "But it is felt that the details have to be fine-tuned. The leaders want to know what they are signing up to."

With Greece staring at the spectre of bankruptcy – barely six weeks before it has to make bond repayments worth €14.5bn – EU officials expressed disbelief that politicians could not finally put their name to an accord.

Unable to conceal her own exasperation, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said: "I honestly can't understand how additional days will help.

"Time is of the essence. A lot is at stake for the entire eurozone," she said after holding debt crisis talks in Paris with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Papademos, a technocrat who was appointed to the post with the express purpose of passing the measures to secure the bailout deal, originally told the leaders to conclude talks by midday.

But the deadline came and went. Infuriated, Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio, a spokesman for the European economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, said: "The truth is we are already beyond deadline … the ball is in the court of the Greek authorities."

Hours later, the prime minister's office announced that the meeting would take place in the "late afternoon". Rumours swirled that a deal was near, with headway made on the highly contentious issues of wage cuts in the private sector. In anticipation, the Athens stock market rallied.

By mid-afternoon, however, the meeting had been cancelled with officials saying Papademos would instead hold talks with visiting inspectors from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, the "troika" propping up the insolvent Greek economy.

The postponement confirmed that ahead of general elections in April the high-stake talks have also been turned into a high-stakes game of brinkmanship.

Acutely aware of the uproar that further austerity is bound to ignite among a populace that has endured unprecedented belt-tightening but seen little in return as Athens repeatedly misses fiscal targets, Greece's political class has worked furiously to disassociate itself from reforms increasingly seen as counter-productive.

Emerging from a marathon session of similar talks on Sunday, Giorgos Karatzaferis, the media-savvy leader of the populist Laos party, said: "I'm not going to contribute to the explosion of a revolution [by backing] a wretchedness that will then spread across Europe."

Racheting up the pressure on politicians, powerful unionists in both the public and private sector warned that the reaction to any agreement entailing further austerity would be "ferocious and possibly uncontrollable". A general strike was called for Tuesday with civil servants and workers saying they would step up action later in the week.

Ilias Iliopoulos, at the civil servants' union ADEDY, said: "We don't care if they feel forced to accept such measures. The fact is 500,000 families are not even earning a euro a week and another million only have work sporadically."

"Greek people can't take the burden of any more measures. If our politicians are foolish enough to agree to what our so-called saviours say, if they go ahead with yet more cuts and job losses, there will be an explosion. The reaction will be uncontrollable."

The deadlock immediately raised fears that three years into the crisis, Greece might finally be heading for the disorderly default international creditors, lead by Germany in the EU, have tried to avert.

But in Athens analysts insisted that the real threat to keeping bankruptcy at bay lay not so much in the negotiating arena as in a society seething with anger over the prospect of more austerity.

"The Greek side has no cards in its hand," said Theodore Pelagidis, professor of economics at Piraeus University. "This is not about not accepting the bailout but about politicians wanting to convince Greeks that they have not just submitted to the demands of foreign lenders but done their utmost to get the best deal. Yes, there are a lot of painful details that have to be discussed but all these delays are actually part of a show."

Eurozone finance ministers have told Greece that they want a blueprint of a basic deal to be approved by Wednesday's meeting in Brussels.

No longer willing to take any chances, Papademos on Monday ordered the finance ministry to outline what consequences bankruptcy might have on society and the economy. One Greek official said it would make Argentina "look like a picnic".

Papademos's plan is to present the findings to Greece's squabbling political leaders on Tuesday to ensure they sign off on the deal immediately.

As Greece failed to resolve its crisis, the Portuguese prime minister attempted to stave off speculation that his country would be the next to find itself in talks over a rescue package. Pedro Passos Coelho said Portugal's debts were under control and could be contained without the need of a fresh injection from the EU.

"We will not allow what happened in Greece to happen here," he said. "We hope that there will be the will to reach a new aid programme for Greece."

Coelho likened Portugal to Ireland, which he said had a debt structure that would delay the need for loan repayments until next year. "Our debt profile is very similar to Ireland's, both in absolute value and in debt to GDP terms," he said.

Phillip Inman

Helena Smith

Abu Qatada release: Home Office fury as judge frees 'Bin Laden aide'

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

Radical Islamist cleric will walk free from Long Lartin maximum security prison after more than six years without trial

The Home Office clashed openly with judges on Monday when it criticised a decision to free on bail within days the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, who is accused of posing a grave threat to British national security.

The decision by Mr Justice Mitting will see Abu Qatada, once described as Osama bin Laden's righthand man in Europe, walk out of Long Lartin maximum security prison in Worcestershire after more than six and a half years in detention without trial – the longest period in modern times.

The special immigration appeals commission (Siac) has imposed some of the most draconian bail conditions seen since 9/11, including a 22-hour curfew, but this did little to assuage the anger of the Home Office ministers or politicians from all parties at the decision.

The clash takes the battle between politicians and the judiciary into new territory as Abu Qatada is a major international terror suspect. He was first detained without trial in Britain under the quashed Belmarsh regime nearly a decade ago, in October 2002.

The decision taken by the high court judge at Siac follows the ruling by the European court of human rights that he could not be deported to Jordan because he would face a "flagrant denial of justice" – a retrial based on evidence obtained through torture. Abu Qatada had been detained under immigration laws for the past six and half years pending his deportation to Jordan.

A Home Office spokesperson said he should remain in detention: "This is the argument we made in court and we disagree with its decision. This is a dangerous man who we believe poses a real threat to our security and who has not changed in his views or attitude to the UK."

The Home Office said it will consider an appeal against the European court's ruling. It will also continue a fresh attempt to secure diplomatic assurances from Jordan that Abu Qatada will not face a trial based on torture-tainted evidence.

The British ambassador held two meetings last week with the Jordanian authorities to try to open talks on the issue.

But the decision angered both Labour and Conservative backbenchers. The former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said the decision had left the government facing a very real difficulty: "It is an unholy mess. We are left in the absurd position of not being able to remove a man even though everyone accepts he won't be tortured, not being able to keep him in prison because his human rights trump the protection of the British people, and a government that has watered down control orders so that they are more lax than was previously the case."

The Conservative backbencher Dominic Raab echoed Blunkett's anger: "This result is a direct result of the perverse ruling by the Strasbourg court. It makes a mockery of human rights law that a terrorist suspect deemed 'dangerous' by our courts can't be returned home, not for fear that he might be tortured, but because European judges don't trust the Jordanian justice system."

The bail conditions set down by Mr Justice Mitting are draconian, comprising a 22-hour curfew rather than the "overnight residence requirement" specified in the coalition's replacement for control orders. They include an electronic tag, MI5 vetting of all his visitors except for immediate family, and monitoring of his communications. The delay in his release is to allow the security services to check the proposed bail address and organise their surveillance operation.

In his ruling, the judge said that although the six and half years Abu Qatada had been detained under immigration powers was "unusually long", he agreed with the home secretary that it was also lawfully justified. However, he added: "The time will arrive quite soon when continuing detention or deprivation of liberty could not be justified." The Siac judge warned the home secretary, Theresa May, that Abu Qatada's "highly prescriptive" bail terms would be relaxed after three months if there is no "demonstrable progress" made with the Jordanians.

The bail conditions mirror those set in 2008 when he was released for six months before being returned to prison on unspecified national security grounds. The judge said the risks to national security and of absconding in the case had not significantly changed since then.

During the one-day bail hearing, Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Abu Qatada, argued that his detention had gone on too long to be reasonable and there was no prospect of the detention ending in any reasonable period. Even if new diplomatic assurances were secured it would only trigger a new round of litigation in the English courts."There comes a time when it's just too long, however grave the risks," said Fitzgerald.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said May had to explain urgently what action she was taking on the national security implications of the ruling. "Abu Qatada should face terror charges in Jordan, and the home secretary needs to urgently accelerate discussions with the Jordanian government to make that possible," she said. The home secretary also had to spell out the counter-terror safeguards that will be taken to lower the national security risk.

The security services have never disclosed the actual cost of mounting round-the-clock surveillance operations on terror suspects such as Abu Qatada but it does have serious implications for their resources.

Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Othman, 51, featured in hate sermons found on videos in the flat of one of the 9/11 bombers. Since his original detention in October 2002, every attempt to deport him to Jordan has been frustrated. The law lords ruled three years ago that he could be sent back but the Strasbourg decision overturned that ruling.

Alan Travis

Europe can't cut and grow | Sony Kapoor and Peter Bofinger

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:18 +0000

The EU needs a growth compact, not a fiscal one. Swift action on tax and jobs is the way out of the crisis

Overspending by governments, we have been told, triggered this crisis. The cure thus lies in immediate austerity, hence last month's German-led push for a eurozone fiscal compact and the UK's pursuit of similar policies.

But, as demonstrated by the experiences of Greece, Portugal and Spain, this course leads to biting, deep recessions and worsens public indebtedness. The IMF acknowledged as much last week. A focus on growth, not austerity, is the correct answer for Europe's ills.

The case for "growth-friendly austerity" relies on the argument that public cuts are compensated for by consumers and businesses spending more, and with greater efficiency. However, the collapse of confidence wherein everyone expects the economy to worsen before (if) it gets better, along with excessive levels of private indebtedness, means that consumers and firms are busy repaying debt or building rainy-day funds, not spending and investing.

When EU leaders next meet on 1 March, they must adopt a binding pledge to increase growth-enhancing public investments in the EU, outlining a firm strategy for funding these – in effect, a growth compact.

The axe of austerity falls first and foremost on public investment, as it is easier to cut than other forms of public expenditure. This undermines current growth by shrinking the level of economic activity, and also jeopardises the potential for future growth. Every euro of cuts today could result in many euros of lost growth.

Most important, the focus of efforts to reduce public indebtedness should be on raising tax revenue, not cutting spending. Increasing consumption or employment taxes may be counterproductive when consumer spending is depressed and unemployment high, but other taxes have a less negative effect on growth, even in the short term. The taxation of property, land, wealth, carbon emissions and the under-taxed financial sector needs to be increased across the EU. Dividing this revenue between public investment, deficit reduction and cutting income tax for low earners would boost both growth and employment.

EU states also need to redouble efforts to crack down on tax evasion and avoidance. Greece and Italy (which have large "black" economies) as well as France, Germany and the UK have enacted recent measures to increase compliance. The results are mixed, since domestic measures that have squeezed the tax avoidance balloon at one end have inflated it at the other. London, a haven for the rich rascals, is now adding southern Europeans to its mob, but Greek and Italian money is also flooding into Germany.

Sharing and implementing the most effective anti-tax avoidance/evasion strategies across all EU countries and an agreement to help other members enforce their domestic measures would multiply the revenue from such crackdowns. Urgently renegotiating the EU savings tax directive, that at present captures less than 1% in annual tax revenue on untaxed wealth transferred to other EU members, would also provide a big boost to revenues to fund public investments.

EU member states must use its status as the largest economic area in the world to aggressively negotiate under the banner of the EU and strike much better deals with tax havens so tax losses can be minimised and past, unpaid taxes clawed back.

The UK-Liechtenstein and German-Swiss bilateral deals, on the fate of untaxed UK and German money in these tax havens, have been rightly criticised as being very weak. The US has used its weight as the largest economy in the world to negotiate a much better deal for its tax collectors. This is what the EU must do. Also, the US, under its foreign account tax compliance act, obliges EU banks to share data on accounts held by US citizens. The EU must immediately push for reciprocal arrangements.

Doubling the capacity of the European Investment Bank, which has an excellent record of providing credit to the employment-intensive smaller business sector, would need less than €40bn of up-front cash, and generate investments of 10 times that amount.

Finally, the structural reforms in crisis countries must continue and the liberalisation of services in the single market must be accelerated. These policies will help boost future growth but work best in a growing, not shrinking, economy. Without a growth compact, the social and employment crises in Europe will only get worse. With it, we have a fighting chance to emerge stronger.

• Follow Comment is Free on Twitter @commentisfree

Sony Kapoor

Peter Bofinger

The investors’ case for more transparency in oil and mining deals

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:16 +0000

Paul Bugala, Senior Sustainability Analyst for Extractive Industries at Calvert Investments, explains why Wall Street and the developing world need mandatory oil and mining payment transparency. This piece is part of a larger blog series on transparency in the extractives industry. Stay tuned for more updates on this topic.

Imagine you had to make one decision that could change your community and livelihood dramatically. Wouldn’t you want to be 100 percent sure your decision created the best opportunities possible for you and your family?

On the flip side, what if that decision involved an investment of millions of dollars? You would want all the information you could find about the possible outcomes and risks of your decision, wouldn’t you?

Today, across the globe, citizens of resource-rich yet poor countries and investors in oil, gas and mining companies have a problem just like this. These odd couples both need to make very important decisions about natural resource projects and the companies that undertake them, but they don’t have enough information to make sure their choices are right.

Without the disclosures required by the Cardin-Lugar Amendment (Section 1504 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act), investors cannot put an accurate dollar amount on the risk to their investments caused by things like social or political conflict. In turn, citizens of countries where those investments are taking place don’t have the necessary information to hold their governments accountable for the cash windfalls from those resources, or to make informed decisions about whether natural resource development is the right choice for their communities.

The disclosures mandated by Cardin-Lugar also create broader benefits that local communities, investors, companies and consumers around the world can all share. The stability that happens when a country’s citizens feel they are getting a fair return on their natural resources lowers the risk of investing in companies that operate there. In addition, it also lowers a company’s cost of doing business and, in turn, may lower the costs of some of the commodities on which the entire world depends.

The support of ONE and its members is critical in making the case that these disclosures matter. You’re helping ensure that the world’s choices about natural resource development and investments are fully informed ones.

You can find out more about sustainable and responsible investing at www.calvert.com and follow Paul on Twitter at @paulbugala.

Poll: Conservatives Oppose Planned Parenthood Cancer Screenings

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:16 +0000

After cheering for letting a young man die during a GOP debate, and wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, perhaps this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but a new Daily Kos/PPP poll finds that a majority of conservatives have an “unfavorable” view of breast cancer screening services performed by Planned Parenthood. Just 25 percent have a positive view, compared to 51 percent with a negative one. The poll, of course, comes in the wake of the Susan G. Komen foundation’s decision to stop funding screening services at Planned Parenthood, but the results call in question what it means to be “pro-life,” as many conservatives identify themselves.

The poll also showed that Komen’s brand took a big hit in the controversy. A majority of all Americans, 53 percent, opposed Komen’s decision, while just 38 percent supported it. 49 percent said it made them less likely to support Komen financially in the future.

First Barbie, Now Homer Simpson: Iran Cracking Down On Western Culture

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:16 +0000

The Iranian government recently reinstituted its ban on the sale of Barbie dolls, which the regime considers “un-Islamic.” Police in Tehran last month confiscated Barbie dolls from toy shops, calling it a “new phase” of its crackdown on “manifestations of Western culture.” But now, the campaign has extended to The Simpsons. According to the AP, an Iranian official said any doll that had distinguishable adult genitals, or any dolls of adults at all, were banned “because these dolls are promoters of Western culture.” Apparently, Superman and Spider-man pass the test because “they help oppressed people and they have a positive stance.”