Monthly Archives: October 2013

Arts, Culture, History, Society

Nobel Peace, at what price?

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Despite being shortlisted five times, Dame Beryl Bainbridge never won the Booker Prize, a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Mahatma Gandhi, neither, despite his pre-eminence, won the Nobel Peace Prize, though he had been nominated on five separate occasions between 1937 and 1948. In 1948 Gandhi was assassinated and no prize was awarded, a decree given that there was ‘no suitable living candidate’. It is, of course, up to the Norwegian Nobel Committee to ultimately choose whoever it sees fit to hold the prestigious award. The Norwegian parliament appoints the committee because, when Alfred Nobel died, Norway had been ruled by the same king as its Scandinavian neighbour, Sweden, since the war between the two nations in 1814. It is becoming increasingly difficult, though, to ignore the committee’s aberrant selections.

Two weeks into his first term as President, Barack Obama was nominated for the prize, simply on the basis that the committee had heard his speech in Cairo in which he delivered, at times, perplexing and enigmatic statements. Conjecture such as… ‘Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance’ [as seen] in ‘Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition’ was a presumptuous viewpoint based on little evidence.

The first U.S. presidential laureate had been Theodore Roosevelt, an award that surprised many because Roosevelt had led his own irregular cavalry in an invasion of Cuba. Other implausible laureates followed: Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and Al Gore among them.

And what of this year’s award? Those in favour of chemical weapons are likely to be displeased with the choice of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Yet, of more concern, is the smoke-screen that has thickened in search of those chemical weapons that has created unabated slaughter in Syria’s ruthless and bloody civil war.

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Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, United States

Why has the U.S. taken this long to cut aid to Egypt?

U.S. AID TO EGYPT

Washington’s decision to suspend some of its military aid to Egypt is long overdue. By all accounts it should have happened months ago following the military style coup in Egypt that led to the fall of President Mohamed Morsi. America’s decision, however, is still only a symbolic gesture, one that the Obama administration acknowledges will have scant impact on either the regime’s crackdown on the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood or the pace of returning Cairo to democracy. Some commentators may view it as a carefully calibrated balancing act between the need to preserve US interests in the region and the desire to uphold the democratic principles it purports to value.

Had Washington’s decision come three months ago, immediately after the ousting of Mr Morsi, it might have carried some weight. Instead, the American administration refused to use the word coup, and has continued to do so even as it unveiled belated sanctions against the country. At the same time, Egypt’s military-backed regime has moved at its own pace, unhindered and unrestricted in its approach. Yet, whilst measures are being drawn up for a return of normal government – which are likely to be approved in a forthcoming referendum – most of the Brotherhood leadership are behind bars and Islamic media outlets are shut down. Such measures are likely to amount to very little.

Following Washington’s belated reprimand, Cairo announced almost at once Mr Morsi’s trial and declared that Egypt ‘will not surrender to American pressure’.

The US move may even actually boost the regime’s popularity, reducing what many see as a humiliating foreign dependency. Neither will it greatly affect the security balance in the region. Israel is agonised because such a cut in U.S. aid might jeopardise the 1979 treaty upon which its subsequent ‘cold peace’ with Egypt has rested.

The referendum may give the United States a pretext in resuming full military assistance to Cairo, a proviso Washington appears to be calling for. However, this temporary interruption in aid will not only end up pleasing no one, but will demonstrate once and for all how little influence the US wields in the most populous Arab country. To have had any real impact, America should have made its decision months ago.

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Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

How is it ‘socialism’ to say that market failure beckons on a grand scale?

CONSERVATIVE PARTY ETHOS?

Thatcher’s revolution of the 1980s led to politicians of all persuasions putting their faith in a new economic paradigm – a guarantee of prosperity for the majority, which has lasted decades. Today, however, following the ‘Great Contraction’ of 2008-2009, political parties can no longer offer that guarantee with the same level of confidence. Whilst economic growth in Britain has returned following three years of stagnation it is forecast that real wages will not increase until 2015 and will not return to their pre-crash levels until 2023. A fractious and defective energy market, in which just six companies control 98 per cent of supply, has left more than 4.5 million in ‘fuel poverty’. Extortionate rents within the inner cities have forced millions to rely on housing benefit. By any measure, this must amount to market failure on a grand scale.

The crisis in living standards is a challenge for all political parties but no more so than for the Conservatives, the natural defenders of capitalism. After Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, pledged to freeze energy prices until 2017 – and to build 200,000 homes a year by 2020 – the Conservative Party had a chance to offer its own solutions. Alas, as we witnessed from the conference in Manchester, it retreated to its comfort zone. Aided by an ever more right-wing press, speaker after speaker derided Mr Miliband as a ‘socialist’ and ‘Marxist’, as if concern at deteriorating wages were comparable to a belief in world revolution.

The Conservative Party conference failed to recognise that when Margaret Thatcher assailed her left-wing opponents in the 1980s, she did so in the confidence that her free-market policies retained popular support. David Cameron does not enjoy that luxury: polls show that some two-thirds of voters support a 50p top rate of income tax, a mansion tax, stronger workers’ rights, a living wage that is more consummate with actual day living, and the renationalisation of the railways and the privatised utilities. If Mr Miliband is a socialist, so must the public be if these polls are anything to go by.

George Osborne rebuked the Labour leader for suggesting that ‘the cost of living was somehow detached from the performance of the economy’. But this was a remark that betrayed Mr Osborne’s failure to appreciate that the crisis is not merely cyclical (a problem most certainly exasperated through his austerity programme), but structural. It was in 2003, way before the crash, that wages for 11 million earners started to stagnate.

Other than a pledge to freeze fuel duty until 2015, what else did the Tories have to say on the question of living standards? The most important announcements were the earlier than intended introduction of the Help to Buy scheme and Mr Osborne’s commitment to achieve a Budget Surplus by the end of the next parliament, both of which risk further depressing incomes. By inflating demand without addressing the fundamental problem of supply, Help to Buy will make housing less affordable, while the Chancellor’s promise of a balanced Budget is likely to be met by imposing even greater cuts to benefits and services for the poorest in our society. Osborne’s ideological fixation with the public finances, particularly in relation to interest payments on the government’s debt, ignores the greater crisis in people’s finances.

On the fringes of the party, though, there was some positive thinking. The Conservative campaign group Renewal, which aims to broaden the party’s appeal among northern, working-class and ethnic minority voters, published a strategy for the building of a million new homes over the course of the next parliament, a significant increase in the minimum wage, a ‘cost of living test’ for all Acts of Parliament, and for action to be taken against ‘rip-off companies’. Yet, there is little sign that the Conservative leadership is prepared to embrace the kind of reformist, centrist agenda that secured the re-election of Angela Merkel in Germany.

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