Category Archives: Society

Europe, European Union, Germany, Government, History, Poland, Society

The billions that Poland is demanding from Germany in wartime reparations 

ESSAY

Poland

The devastation and destruction of Warsaw in 1945 following the Nazi occupation of Poland.

FOR many in Britain, World War II is a story of unparalleled heroism, and there are many stirring films such as the new blockbuster Dunkirk. For the people of Poland, however, the war was a nightmare so black and so bloodstained, that no film could even remotely capture the depths of its horror.

Consider the incident in a German town called Gleiwitz close to the Polish border. On the night of August 31, 1939, a small group of Nazi intelligence agents, dressed in Polish uniforms, burst into a radio station. They then broadcast anti-German messages in Polish before dumping the bodies of prisoners they had just hauled out of the Dachau concentration camp, who had been made to resemble Polish saboteurs then shot and mutilated to make identification impossible.

A few hours later, Adolf Hitler rose in the Reichstag and proclaimed that the Gleiwitz incident was the final straw. He deceitfully blamed the incident on anti-German saboteurs.

By the summer of 1945, some six million Polish citizens, one in five of the pre-war population, had been killed. The great cities of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin were in smoking ruins. Millions of books had been ruined; hundreds of libraries, schools, museums and laboratories had been destroyed.

In effect, the Germans had done their best to eradicate an entire nation, erasing its culture, murdering its middle-classes and reducing the rest to slavery. And though the Nazis were defeated, the Polish people’s ordeal was far from over. Following Hitler’s tyranny, Poland was then occupied by Stalin’s Red Army, who turned it into a brutalised Soviet satellite.

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Aid, Britain, Government, Politics, Society

The UK gave £2bn a year in foreign aid to nations with the worst human rights

UK FOREIGN AID

BRITAIN ploughs almost £2billion of aid each year into countries with dire human rights records.

The Foreign Office has put 30 countries on its human rights watch-list for overseeing rape, torture and extrajudicial killings.

But despite this, it can be revealed the UK’s aid department last year funnelled development cash into more than half of these countries.

It means hundreds of millions of pounds are being poured into 17 of the worst human rights offenders, such as Zimbabwe, Burma and the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Shockingly, the total amount spent in these countries increased by 7 per cent in one year to £1.87billion in 2016/17.

The findings will raise further questions about how effective the £13billion a year that goes on international aid really is – as well as the wisdom of keeping David Cameron’s target of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.

It comes after a recent report by the National Audit Office said aid cash was being dispatched overseas in a last-minute frenzy each year to meet spending targets.

The Department for International Development pointed out that British taxpayers’ money does not necessarily go to foreign governments themselves, but often goes to charities and other organisations.

Critics, however, have hit out at the farce of the Foreign Office warning about countries’ human rights records while DFID was pouring cash into them.

Conservative MP Peter Bone, said: ‘It seems extraordinary that we would be giving money to countries whose regimes we regard as failing on human rights. I would have thought we would be concentrating our aid on countries where the government is trying to … improve matters.’

A 2015 report by the Independent Commission on Aid Impact warned ministers risked bring the aid budget ‘into disrepute’ by spending millions on training the police forces of regimes with poor human rights records. In 2015/16, DFID sent £1.74billion to 17 nations on the Foreign Office’s ‘human rights priority’ list – rising to £1.87billion a year later.

This included £417million to Pakistan, up from £328million the year before. This is despite the Foreign Office warning it was concerned about serious violations of women’s rights.

The Foreign Office also warned that the lack of recognition of women’s rights in Afghanistan had left girls ‘susceptible to violence, poverty and exploitation’.

Nevertheless, DFID sent £168million to the war-torn country in 2016/17 – up from £120million.

A Government spokesperson responded by saying: ‘The UK speaks candidly and frankly to all countries in which we work, and firmly holds governments to account on issues of human rights. We will not hesitate to use UN resolutions and sanctions to focus international attention and action on any country where we have concerns.’

DFID says it works closely with the Foreign Office to raise concerns with governments. An official said: ‘UK aid is spent where it is most needed and is subject to rigorous internal and external checks and scrutiny at all stages to ensure it helps those who need it and delivers value for money.’

The Foreign Office said the 30 countries named were not necessarily the worst human rights abusers, but were ones where the UK felt it could have some influence on regimes’ conduct.

Some of the shocking abuses by regimes the UK helps to fund:

. Afghanistan – The country has been accused of a lack of democracy, with many child casualties and women and girls susceptible to violence, poverty and exploitation.

Aid: £168million

. Bangladesh – Concerns over the treatment of women and allegations of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and enforced disappearances.

Aid: £158million

. Burma – Claims civilians have been shelled, as well as allegations of torture, extrajudicial killing, arson and mass rape by security forces.

Aid: £90million

. Democratic Republic of The Congo – A shocking 80,000 are said to be trapped in modern slavery, state attacks on freedom of speech and extrajudicial killings.

Aid: £138million

. Pakistan – Allegations of serious violations of women’s and children’s rights and of freedom of religion, as well as modern slavery. Movement of aid charities is restricted.

Aid: £417million

. Somalia – Serious violations and abuses are perpetrated by state and non-state actors and sexual violence is endemic. Somalia has also seen a rise in child soldiers.

Aid: £166million

. South Sudan – Serious human rights violations carried out by the state, with government forces perpetrating unlawful killings and arbitrary arrests on basis of ethnicity.

Aid: £171million

. Syria – Human rights systematically denied – including torture – largely by Assad regime.

Aid: £217million

. Yemen – Vast number of human rights abuses, with women and children particularly affected. Minorities also face discrimination.

Aid: £110million

. Zimbabwe – Reports of intimidation, rape and vote buying by the ruling party have marred two elections.

Aid: £96million

Foreign Aid Expenditure: How Britain Compares

14A_AID BUDGET TABLE.1

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Business, Government, Society, Technology

Empowering humanity comes through technological advance

TECHNOLOGY & HUMANITY

Technology Empowerment

Technology firms must adapt by making people’s goals their own priorities. Only then will they significantly add to the growth of society and to the economy.

The empowerment of the individual has radically changed through how we access and utilise technology. Consider, for instance, just the way and how we now watch television. The broader picture of technological development is no longer a take-it-or-leave-it template, but a bespoke service tailored to the individual.

Earlier television broadcasts were carefully scripted and delivered to present a highly curated programme, forcing us not to only share the same worldview, but also to watch on the terms being offered by the programme makers’.

The evolution of video fundamentally changed both our view of the world and how we interact with it. In less than a century, we’ve moved to an online and digital world with billions of viewpoints, coming from governments and businesses and more importantly from people. Everyone offers a unique perspective; and, we now have a truly live culture where technologies like Periscope and Facebook Live mean that anyone can broadcast what they want and tune in when they want – on their own terms.

This illustrates that the way we use technology today is to bend it to our own needs. Change may be endemic, but the key point is that the individual is now in control. It’s no longer the case that people are adapting to technology – rather, the technology is continuing to evolve and adapt to us.

The situation now is that every time an experience is personalised, or where technology anticipates our needs and wants, we are being thrusted forefront to realise or satisfy those needs. In terms of digital evolution, this is the age of human empowerment and it matters to business. With technology that truly responds to people, based on what they want, firms can evolve from being a supplier to one of being their customers’ partner.

IntelligentX, a London-based Brewing Company, has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system to continuously collect and incorporate customer feedback. It utilises this information by incorporating it into its thinking to brew new versions of the company’s beers. The firm provides feedback into its algorithms: with people’s tastes changing faster than ever before, AI seems a logical and perfect way to respond.

This is how businesses will grow their role in people’s lives, and by establishing a place in the future of society. They need to become more than just a provider of products and services.

We might like to refer to it as the hyper-personalisation of technology. It is likely to drive commercial success at the scale of entire industries, not just at the individual or micro level. The digital leaders of the world, proactive as always, are making big calls in response.

Consider Electronics giant Philips. It is looking to transform healthcare into one that becomes connected, with a comprehensive experience that’s both intertwined and accessible throughout people’s lives. Through the development of new apps and connected devices that integrate into our lives, it will become possible for health professionals to live alongside each patient. This will allow them to build a closer, more personal relationship, and an opportunity to provide comprehensive – not just reactive – care packages.

Paradoxically, for patients, connected healthcare isn’t an improvement because of the technology itself. The draw is the empowerment it gives individuals over their own health – you only need to consider how wearable technologies are driving a tailored approach to personal fitness programmes.

Company conglomerates like Philips have the leading edge because their technological strategies focuses on the needs of the individual patient, and on their terms.

If any business is to become a true partner to people that process must start with technology. No doubt, the path ahead will have its challenges. But the foundations are built on matters of trust.

Yet, barely one in two members of the public say they trust businesses to do what’s right. Even fewer look on business leaders as credible sources of information. If people are to value these new partnerships, companies must work hard to gain and by keeping that trust.

One of the best ways of doing this is by putting the power in the hands of the customers. That can be achieved by designing technology that works for them. This will mean an end to technology tools whose power is only unleashed when customers adapt to or in learning how to use them.

Technology’s great new strength lies in its growing humanity. Tools that interact with people – structured in such a way that they learn from those exchanges – should be able to adapt for any future interaction that makes the experience of using them all the more human.

To put these new adaptive technologies to use, businesses must adopt people’s goals as their own. Technology is now crucially the agent of change and it should be enabled to empower people in an interactive and collaborative way.

When companies are aligned to people’s individual goals and aspirations, only then will they be contributing to the growth of society and the economy.

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