Category Archives: Society

Aid, Britain, Government, Politics, Society

Foreign aid spending hits public trust

FOREIGN AID

MINISTERS are undermining trust in foreign aid by failing to ensure it is spent on the world’s poorest, a committee of MP’s have warned.

Projects funded through the £14billion budget include schemes to boost China’s film industry and to improve its museums.

Britain is legally committed to spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid, but the Commons international development committee called for that money to be focused on poverty reduction.

MPs specifically singled out the £600million Prosperity Fund, a cross-Whitehall pot that is still used to pay for foreign aid schemes in countries like India and China.

They raised questions about how it was funding projects in China to reduce tobacco consumption by migrant workers and to lower the salt intake of children.

The MPs said many of the dubious ventures were being run by Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office (FCO).

“Among the FCO-administered Prosperity Fund projects, we found many weaker examples including projects to develop the Chinese film industry, improve the Chinese museum infrastructure and improve the credit bond rating system in China,” they said.

The committee said it was unclear “how these types of interventions will benefit the very poorest people”. It called for a review of existing programmes.

“We are concerned to have uncovered Prosperity Fund projects within middle-income countries which show inadequate, or negligible, targeting at improving the lives of the very poorest and most vulnerable communities in these countries,” the report said.

Whitehall departments were also condemned for not being open about how they are doling out the £14billion budget.

Although most of the foreign aid budget is used by the Department for International Development (Dfid), other Government departments are increasingly having to help to get the money out the door.

More than a quarter (27.5 per cent) of the £14billion aid budget was spent by departments other than Dfid last year.

The report said while Dfid was “respected worldwide as an accountable deliverer of aid”, there was a lack of transparency elsewhere in Whitehall.

The committee warned that other Government departments were being given aid money to spend without having to explain how they would make sure it was used properly.

The MPs said: “Given the level of spending involved, we are concerned that departments are not publishing fuller details of their… spending as this lack of clarity clouds the public’s ability to see good and bad spending.”

They highlighted the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), which redacts information and refuses to publish how it uses much of its money. The MPs added: “This lack of clarity undermines trust in the fund.”

A spokesperson for the Government said: “We have been clear, we must ensure that the aid budget is not just spent well but could not be spent better and standards are raised across Government to achieve value for taxpayers’ money.”

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Britain, Government, National Security, Society, United States

Spy chief speaks for the first time over unrepentant Snowden

NATIONAL SECURITY

BRITAIN’S ability to keep its citizens safe was compromised as a result of the intelligence leaks by US traitor Edward Snowden, a spy chief has revealed in an excoriating attack.

Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ, said the unrepentant former spy had caused “real and unnecessary damage” to the security of the UK and its allies.

In his first remarks on the devastating impact of the security breach five years ago, he said the American fugitive, who is now living in exile in Russia, needed to be held to account for his “illegal” actions. His comments came as Snowden said he had “no regrets” about revealing sensitive information via the pages of The Guardian newspaper.

In a rare statement given on the anniversary of the biggest leak of secret documents in its history, Mr Fleming said: “GCHQ’s mission is to help keep the UK safe. What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.”

Mr Fleming, who was deputy director general of MI5 until last year, also made clear that the agency was striving for greater transparency long before the leaks. In a pointed remark, he told The Guardian: “It’s important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency.”

His comments came as Snowden, 34, showed no remorse over leaking classified data from the US National Security Agency (NSA). Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.

“The Government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it, but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.” Asked if he had any regrets he said “no”, before adding: “If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii.”

Snowden was living in Hawaii while he worked as a security contractor for the NSA. It was there that he acquired the data he later leaked, including details of the precise methods used by the intelligence agencies to track terrorist plots. A year after the leaks – by which time Snowden had fled to Hong Kong before subsequently settling and given immunity in Russia – it was estimated that a quarter of the serious criminals being tracked by GCHQ had fallen off the radar because they had been alerted to the covert methods being used to track them.

Theresa May, then as Home Secretary, revealed how Britain’s ability to track terrorists and crime gangs was severely damaged because of the leaks. She said police and security services were finding it harder to monitor the electronic communications used by fanatics and master criminals.

The former head of GCHQ, Sir Iain Lobban, said in 2013 that terrorists were known to be “discussing how to avoid vulnerable communications methods.” And just last month, Bill Evanina, director of the US National Counter-intelligence and Security Centre, said Snowden’s leaks would continue to cause problems for years to come. He told a conference that only about 1 per cent of the documents taken by him had been released.

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Arts, History, Nuclear Weapons, Society

Short Essay: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

(1958)

MANY ORDINARY PEOPLE became very alarmed at the Cold War arms race. It looked as if the stockpiling of nuclear weapons could only lead to the outbreak of a catastrophic world war. In a meeting at Westminster’s Central Hall on 17 February 1958, British protestors formed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). It was created out of the National Council for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests, which was formed only the previous year but proved to be extremely popular, attracting thousands of people who wanted to see an end to nuclear bomb tests.

. See also Short Essay: The Start of The ‘Cold War’

The new CND was led by a steering committee consisting of the Labour MP Michael Foot, the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell, the author J B Priestly and the journalist James Cameron. It was given free office space in Fleet Street. Russell, who often spoke at protest rallies, introduced a distinctive logo for CND, a downward-pointing trident inside a circle. It was a very simple emblem, easy to draw and instantly recognisable. The CND marches also had a simple and effective slogan: ‘Ban the bomb!’

On 4 April 1958, 3,000 anti-nuclear protesters gathered in London to give a send-off to 600 ‘hard core’ marches who started a three-day march to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. They arrived to the sound of a skiffle group – music genre with jazz, blues, folk and American folk influences, usually using a combination of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments – playing When the Saints Go Marching In. Altogether, some 12,000 protesters rallied and assembled at the gates of the Establishment. There were speeches and a pledge was passed urging Britain, Russia and the United States to stop making, testing and storing nuclear weapons. A loudspeaker car intercepted the marches at one point, to tell them that they were ‘playing Khrushchev’s game’ (Nikita Khrushchev was a Russian revolutionary leader who ripped aside the propaganda image of the former dictator Joseph Stalin). The marches duly set about the van, but that was the only violence involved.

The demonstrations and the marches continued, year after year. In September 1958, the cleric Donald Soper, later Lord Soper, addressed the crowd at Aldermaston. In December of that year, violence broke out as the police clashed with demonstrators at the Swaffham missile base. 21 protesters were arrested.

In October 1960, Bertrand Russell resigned as leader of CND.

It is hard to tell what effect if any this campaign had on politicians. Certainly, all the politicians of the day appeared to be unaffected by it. The campaign itself seemed to run itself out of steam. Bertrand Russell was undoubtedly committed to it, but he was ageing fast and had to curtail his activities. In the late 1960s, the campaign was in danger of being overtaken by another campaign, the campaign to stop the war in Vietnam. Like CND, this was a pro-peace cause, but not related to nuclear weapons in any way.

But CND went on, its support undiminished. On 24 October 1981, a huge rally in Hyde Park was the biggest anti-nuclear rally in 20 years. Over 150,000 people protested at the siting of American Cruise missiles in Britain – not least because they automatically made Britain a target for Russian missiles. The procession of marchers walking to Hyde Park was so long that many reached the park long after the speeches by Michael Foot and Bruce Kent were over.

Similar large-scale demonstrations against nuclear weapons were mounted in other European cities. The campaign was now international in scale.

In March 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. This imposed new controls on the export of American nuclear technology. The idea was to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology to other countries. This was, though, a long way short of nuclear disarmament. That was not to materialise until the Gorbachev-Reagan era: then the issue was one of cost. The Soviet Union was not strong economically to maintain its nuclear weaponry. So, in the end the nuclear disarmament had no ethical or moral basis – only a financial one.

The campaign did have the positive effect of nudging politicians towards negotiating. One month after the huge rally in Hyde Park in 1981, the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries started talks in Geneva on limiting medium-range missiles. That, with hindsight, reputedly marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War?

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