The former UN ambassador under George W Bush and a notorious hawk, Bolton has called for bombing Iran and North Kore.
The Guardian
John Bolton, the incoming national security adviser, will have the ear of Donald Trump at a perilously fraught moment in world affairs.
A notorious hawk who advocates the unilateral wielding of US might,
Bolton is dismissive of international diplomacy, and has called for the
bombing of both Iran and North Korea.
The departure of HR McMaster, who was credited by some as being a
moderating force on the president, and his replacement by one of the
most aggressive thinkers in the world of US foreign policy, will spread
fear in diplomatic circles that the Trump administration could be poised
to take a dramatic hawkish turn.
The shuffle comes as Washington is already bracing itself for the
potential of imminent face-to-face talks between Trump and the North
Korean leader Kim Jong-un over the regime’s development of nuclear
weapons.
Bolton, who will leave his post as a senior fellow at the rightwing
American Enterprise Institute to join the White House on 9 April, has
made clear his preference for how to deal with North Korea – bomb it.
Last month he wrote an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal in which he made a legal case for a pre-emptive strike.
“It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the
current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking
first,” he wrote.
The former ambassador, whose basic approach to diplomacy is summed up
in the title of his book Surrender is Not an Option, has made a
similarly combative case for Iran. He was scathing of Barack Obama’s
attempt to deal with Tehran’s nuclear program through negotiation,
writing in the New York Times in 2015 that only bombing by the US and Israel would take out Iran’s uranium-enrichment installations and prevent disaster.
The mustachioed Bolton has had a long, frequently controversial
career in government. He held senior positions in the administrations of
Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, where he led successful US
opposition to joining the international criminal court and made a
strident attempt to block the introduction of stronger global controls
on biological weapons.
He came to prominence as a household name under George W Bush who
appointed him to be the US ambassador to the UN in 2005, when the Iraq
war was still blazing. To put Bolton at the heart of the US relationship
with the community of nations was contentious, to say the least, as he
made little attempt to disguise his deep-seated contempt for the world
body.
He once noted if that if the 38-floor UN building in New York “lost
10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”. His other legendary
remark was that “there is no United Nations. There is an international
community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in
the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interests.”
Bolton’s arrival in the inner sanctum of the Trump presidency has been a long time coming. Michael Wolff revealed in his inside account of the White House, Fire and Fury, that Trump’s former senior counselor Steve Bannon had urged the president to hire Bolton.
So too did the late Fox News executive, Roger Ailes. “He’s a bomb
thrower,” Ailes said last year, according to Wolff. “And a strange
little fucker. But you need him.”
Trump seems now to have come round to that way of thinking.
Showing posts with label The Guardian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Guardian. Show all posts
Friday
To Protect Hillary Clinton, Democrats Wage War on Their Own Core Citizens United Argument
Source: The Intercept
FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court’s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — because Clinton supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke that very same reasoning.
The crux of the Citizens United ruling was that a legal ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures constituted a limit on political speech without sufficient justification, and thus violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. A primary argument of the Obama Justice Department and Democrats generally in order to uphold that campaign finance law was that corporate expenditures are so corrupting of the political process that limits are justified even if they infringe free speech. In rejecting that view, this was the key argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the five-judge conservative majority (emphasis added):
For the reasons explained above, we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.Does that sound familiar? It should. That key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money: “Expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” — at least when the candidate in question is Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, the Clinton argument actually goes well beyond the Court’s conservatives: In Citizens United, the right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of independent expenditures (i.e., ones not coordinated with the campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of direct campaign donations by large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid to an individual politician shortly before and after that person holds massive political power.
Another critical aspect of the right-wing majority argument in Citizens United was that actual corruption requires proof of a “quid pro quo” arrangement: meaning that the politician is paid to vote a certain way (which is, basically, bribery). Prior precedent, said the Citizens United majority, “was limited to quid pro quo corruption,” quoting a prior case as holding that “the hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. That, too, has become a core Clinton-supporting argument: Look, if you can’t prove that Hillary changed her vote in exchange for Goldman Sachs speaking fees or JPMorgan Chase donations (and just by the way, Elizabeth Warren believes she can prove that), then you can’t prove that these donations are corrupting. After all, argue Clinton supporters (echoing the Citizens United majority), “the hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors.”
Conversely, the once-beloved Citizens United dissent from the Court’s liberals, written by Justice Stevens, was emphatic in its key claim: that there are many other forms of corruption brought about by corporate campaign expenditures beyond such quid pro quo — i.e., bribery — transactions. Their argument was that large amounts of corporate cash are almost inevitably corrupting, and certainly undermine trust in the political system, because of the many different ways (well beyond overt quid pro quos) that corporations convert their expenditures into undue influence and access:
That core argument from the liberal Citizens United dissenters has been the central critique the Sanders campaign and its supporters have used to denounce Clinton’s massive corporate-based campaign (and personal) wealth. Incredibly, to defend their candidate against this critique, Clinton supporters have waged war on the crux of the liberal critique of Citizens United.
Oh no, Clinton supporters insist, the mere fact that a candidate is receiving millions upon millions of dollars — both politically and personally — from Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and large corporations is not remotely suggestive of corruption, and we’re actually offended at the suggestion that it is. They are explicitly channeling Antonin Scalia and Mitch McConnell in defending the integrity of politicians who accept massive corporate money. As campaign finance reformer Zephyr Teachout wrote about a 1999 Supreme Court opinion authored by Scalia that “set the table for Citizens United“: “The Court suggests that using money to influence power through gifts is both inevitable and not troubling” — i.e., the 2016 argument of Clinton supporters.
What’s most amazing about all of this is that Clinton defenders are going even further in defending the integrity of corporate cash expenditures than many defenders of Citizens United did. There were many reluctant defenders of that decision on free speech grounds — such as the ACLU, Eliot Spitzer, various unions, and myself — who argued that the solution to domination of corporate donations was not to vest the government with the power to restrict political speech (the case began when an advocacy group was barred from distributing an anti-Hillary film) but, instead, to institute a system of robust public financing to even the playing field, to disempower corporations by rendering their expenditures unnecessary. But those of us who defended the decision on free speech grounds nonetheless accepted, and indeed vehemently argued, that corporate expenditures are corrupting in the extreme. As I wrote after that decision, “Corporate influence over our political process is easily one of the top sicknesses afflicting our political culture.”
Incredibly, Clinton supporters, to defend their candidate, have resorted to denying what was once a core orthodoxy of Democratic politics: that big corporate donations (let alone being personally enriched by huge Wall Street speaking fees in between stints in public office) are corrupting. In doing so, these Democrats — just as they did when they instantly transformed from opponents to supporters of Guantánamo, drones, and spying once Obama stopped denouncing those things and started doing them — have spent the 2016 campaign vehemently renouncing the crux of the argument in favor of campaign finance reform. About this incredibly cynical and destructive ploy, Adam Johnson wrote yesterday:
Precisely. To make a similar point yesterday, I posted this Twitter poll:
If you’re a Clinton supporter, how do you answer that question? What had been the only possible answer — of course it’s not ideal that Clinton relies on huge amounts of corporate cash, but she has no choice if she wants to raise the amounts needed to be competitive — has been decisively disproven by the Sanders campaign. And, either way, none of that justifies jettisoning what has, for many years, been at the heart of the liberal critique of the political system: that massive corporate donations corrupt. But as establishment Democrats have repeatedly proven, there is literally no principle, no belief, immune from being dispensed with the minute they think doing so helps empower their leaders.
Sunday
Pope says he is not a Marxist, but defends criticism of capitalism
Pope Francis says trickle-down economics do not help the poor, in a wide-ranging interview with Italian daily La Stampa
Lizzy Davies in Rome The Guardian
Lizzy Davies in Rome The Guardian
Pope Francis
has rejected accusations from rightwing Americans that his teaching is
Marxist, defending his criticisms of the capitalist system and urging
more attention be given to the poor in a wide-ranging interview.
In remarks to the Italian daily La Stampa, the Argentinian pontiff said the views he had espoused in his first apostolic exhortation last month – which the rightwing US radio host Rush Limbaugh attacked as "dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong" – were simply those of the church's social doctrine. Limbaugh described the pope's economics as "pure Marxism".
"The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don't feel offended," Francis was quoted as saying.
Defending his criticism of the "trickle-down" theory of economics, he added:
"There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it's full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor ... I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist."
In the 95-minute interview, conducted last Tuesday by the newspaper's Vatican correspondent, Andrea Tornielli, but published on Sunday, Francis touched on many of the issues that have dominated his first nine months as head of the Catholic church, such as the suffering of the poor and his reform agenda.
He also took the opportunity to knock down speculation that he was considering taking the radical step of creating a female cardinal, saying he had no idea where the suggestion had come from. "Women in the church must be valued, not 'clericalised'," he said. "Those thinking about women cardinals are suffering a bit from clericalism."
Francis, who was elected as the Catholic church's first Latin American pope in March, turns 77 on Tuesday, and will soon be celebrating his first Christmas as pontiff. He said that his thoughts during that time went above all to Christians living in the Holy Land, where he is expected to go next year.
He said he would like to mark the 50th anniversary of Paul VI's pioneering visit in 1964 – the first papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the first time a reigning pontiff had flown on a plane – along with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian church.
He added that violence targeted at Christians in some parts of the world was forming the basis of what he called a new ecumenism of blood. "In some countries they kill Christians because they wear a cross or have a Bible, and before killing them they don't ask them if they're Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic or Orthodox," he said.
"Those who kill Christians don't ask you for an identity card in order to know what church you were baptised in. We must take this reality into account."
Christmas, said Francis, was a time of hope and tenderness that should shake people from indifference when they are confronted with suffering in the world.
Railing against food wastage, he said that at a recent general audience he had seen a mother with a hungry baby who was crying and had told her to feed the child in spite of being in front of the pope. "She was modest," he said. "She did not want to breast-feed him in public while the pope was passing by … I would like to repeat what I said to that woman, to humanity: feed those who are hungry! May the hope and tenderness of Christmas shake us from indifference."
Francis, who has made no secret of his desire to change the way the Vatican is run, said the Council of Cardinals – the eight advisers he picked to suggest ways of implementing change – was at the stage of concrete proposals and would be raising their suggestions at their next meeting with him in February. "I am always present at the meetings … but I do not speak, I just listen, and this does me good," Francis told La Stampa.
Speaking of the scandal-plagued Institute for Religious Works (IOR), known as the Vatican bank, the pope said the mission to make it more transparent "was on the right road" but left a question mark hanging over what its future role would be. "Regarding the future of the IOR, we will see," he said. "The Vatican central bank, for example, is supposed to be Apsa [the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the papacy's assets]. The IOR was established to help with works of religion, missions and the poor churches. Then it became what it is now."
Last week Moneyval, the Council of Europe's body monitoring safeguards against money laundering and terrorist funding, gave the Vatican a mixed report, welcoming efforts to clean up its financial institutions but expressing surprise that the Holy See's regulators had not carried out more inspections of the Vatican bank or of Apsa.
Asked about speculation that he may change the rules that bar remarried divorcees from receiving communion, Francis said: "The exclusion from communion of divorcees in a second marriage is not a punishment. It's good to remember that. But [contrary to speculation] I did not speak of this in the exhortation." The pope said marriage as a whole would be discussed in the coming months and many things would be examined in more detail and clarified.
The interview with La Stampa is not the first time Francis has chosen to speak to the media. In September, he talked extensively to Antonio Spadaro of La Civiltà Cattolica, an Italian Jesuit journal, while the newspaper La Repubblica published what it described as an interview with him in early October. The article was later taken down from the Vatican's website, with a spokesman, Federico Lombardi, saying: "The information in the interview is reliable on a general level, but not on the level of each individual point analysed."
The journalist, Eugenio Scalfari, later said he had neither recorded the interview nor taken notes but had tried to relay the pope's thoughts faithfully after their meetings. Tornielli, in a video on La Stampa's website, said he had recorded his papal interview.
In remarks to the Italian daily La Stampa, the Argentinian pontiff said the views he had espoused in his first apostolic exhortation last month – which the rightwing US radio host Rush Limbaugh attacked as "dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong" – were simply those of the church's social doctrine. Limbaugh described the pope's economics as "pure Marxism".
"The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don't feel offended," Francis was quoted as saying.
Defending his criticism of the "trickle-down" theory of economics, he added:
"There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it's full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor ... I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist."
In the 95-minute interview, conducted last Tuesday by the newspaper's Vatican correspondent, Andrea Tornielli, but published on Sunday, Francis touched on many of the issues that have dominated his first nine months as head of the Catholic church, such as the suffering of the poor and his reform agenda.
He also took the opportunity to knock down speculation that he was considering taking the radical step of creating a female cardinal, saying he had no idea where the suggestion had come from. "Women in the church must be valued, not 'clericalised'," he said. "Those thinking about women cardinals are suffering a bit from clericalism."
Francis, who was elected as the Catholic church's first Latin American pope in March, turns 77 on Tuesday, and will soon be celebrating his first Christmas as pontiff. He said that his thoughts during that time went above all to Christians living in the Holy Land, where he is expected to go next year.
He said he would like to mark the 50th anniversary of Paul VI's pioneering visit in 1964 – the first papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the first time a reigning pontiff had flown on a plane – along with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian church.
He added that violence targeted at Christians in some parts of the world was forming the basis of what he called a new ecumenism of blood. "In some countries they kill Christians because they wear a cross or have a Bible, and before killing them they don't ask them if they're Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic or Orthodox," he said.
"Those who kill Christians don't ask you for an identity card in order to know what church you were baptised in. We must take this reality into account."
Christmas, said Francis, was a time of hope and tenderness that should shake people from indifference when they are confronted with suffering in the world.
Railing against food wastage, he said that at a recent general audience he had seen a mother with a hungry baby who was crying and had told her to feed the child in spite of being in front of the pope. "She was modest," he said. "She did not want to breast-feed him in public while the pope was passing by … I would like to repeat what I said to that woman, to humanity: feed those who are hungry! May the hope and tenderness of Christmas shake us from indifference."
Francis, who has made no secret of his desire to change the way the Vatican is run, said the Council of Cardinals – the eight advisers he picked to suggest ways of implementing change – was at the stage of concrete proposals and would be raising their suggestions at their next meeting with him in February. "I am always present at the meetings … but I do not speak, I just listen, and this does me good," Francis told La Stampa.
Speaking of the scandal-plagued Institute for Religious Works (IOR), known as the Vatican bank, the pope said the mission to make it more transparent "was on the right road" but left a question mark hanging over what its future role would be. "Regarding the future of the IOR, we will see," he said. "The Vatican central bank, for example, is supposed to be Apsa [the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the papacy's assets]. The IOR was established to help with works of religion, missions and the poor churches. Then it became what it is now."
Last week Moneyval, the Council of Europe's body monitoring safeguards against money laundering and terrorist funding, gave the Vatican a mixed report, welcoming efforts to clean up its financial institutions but expressing surprise that the Holy See's regulators had not carried out more inspections of the Vatican bank or of Apsa.
Asked about speculation that he may change the rules that bar remarried divorcees from receiving communion, Francis said: "The exclusion from communion of divorcees in a second marriage is not a punishment. It's good to remember that. But [contrary to speculation] I did not speak of this in the exhortation." The pope said marriage as a whole would be discussed in the coming months and many things would be examined in more detail and clarified.
The interview with La Stampa is not the first time Francis has chosen to speak to the media. In September, he talked extensively to Antonio Spadaro of La Civiltà Cattolica, an Italian Jesuit journal, while the newspaper La Repubblica published what it described as an interview with him in early October. The article was later taken down from the Vatican's website, with a spokesman, Federico Lombardi, saying: "The information in the interview is reliable on a general level, but not on the level of each individual point analysed."
The journalist, Eugenio Scalfari, later said he had neither recorded the interview nor taken notes but had tried to relay the pope's thoughts faithfully after their meetings. Tornielli, in a video on La Stampa's website, said he had recorded his papal interview.
We risk disaster if drugs giants don't invest in research
With bacteria increasingly resistant to antibiotics, it's absurd that multinationals are halting the creation of new cures.
Will Hutton
Source:The Guardian
Will Hutton
Source:The Guardian
We could now be entering an alarming "post-antibiotic era", warned the World Health Organisation last week.
The relief that humanity has won through antibiotics that fight off
attacks on our health seems to be running out, as bacteria are
developing ever better defence mechanisms. We thought the era of
infectious diseases lay behind us; instead, is it coming back?
Already 25,000 people die every year in the European Union from diseases of the blood and urinary tract, from pneumonia, TB and diarrhoea, all of which could have been treated by effective antibiotics. And this is in a region where there is widespread vaccination against infections and where public health is strong.
The bugs behind TB or gonorrhoea now routinely fight off antibiotics ever faster, and these mutating bugs travel globally. Everywhere people are having to stay in hospital for longer and face a growing risk of infection by others. Death rates are beginning to rise rather than fall.
Nor is the situation likely to get any better. Part of the problem is that people are too casual over how antibiotics are prescribed and used so the bugs aren't eliminated, but instead develop better defence mechanisms. On top, over the past 30 years the drug companies have developed no new major antibiotic types. The last one was carbapenem – a so-called last resort antibiotic – back in 1980. Now more than half the cases of K pneumoniae that used to be treatable by carbapenem drugs no longer respond. Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director general for health security, spelled out the danger: "Without urgent, co-ordinated action by many stakeholders," he said, "common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill."
The impact is felt across all of medicine. The effectiveness of drugs is interdependent. Cancer patients undergoing expensive chemotherapy need cheap antibiotics to handle the otherwise potentially fatal side effects as their immune systems reel from the impact of the poison to kill the cancer.
We are used to the notion that medical science is getting better; there is no need to fear an infected finger, let alone the diseases that traumatised earlier generations. Now it seems science is losing the battle we are accustomed to it winning.
But the crisis is much less in science than it is in the ways it is directed and organised. It is no accident that the failure to develop any major new antibiotics over the past 30 years has coincided with the roll back of the state and the accompanying collapse in self-confidence in public initiatives or in the beneficial affects of public spending.
Drug discovery, and with it the evolution of the entire complex medical ecosystem along with the science that supports it, has been driven by profit signals in the commercial marketplace. Because the easy to find antibiotic chemical compounds have been discovered, new research is complex and expensive – yet antibiotics are priced as low-margin commodity drugs. Worse, regulators – especially the FDA in the US which, as the gatekeeper to the richest drugs market in the world, is of pivotal importance – only license antibiotics for particular rather than generalised uses.
For a profit-maximising drug company such as Pfizer, there is an obvious conclusion. Don't waste valuable R&D on low-margin antibiotics that are never going to become super-profitable blockbusters. Instead, develop, say, Viagra (as it has), which is a high-margin, global money spinner. Exploit your financial muscle by avoiding as much tax as possible – other mutts can fund the infrastructure from which you directly benefit – and try to buy up other drug companies, such as AstraZeneca, which has been foolish enough to invest in drugs that are more integral to the entire medical ecosystem. You can harvest the results of their efforts, pocket your vast meta-bonus and buy an island in the Pacific. You may even be lucky enough to encounter a misguided, weak government – like the UK's – that believes this is the way to do business.
In the 19th century, one of the biggest catalysts to end laissez-faire was the lived experience of infectious diseases, lack of sewers, dirty air, contaminated food and unregulated quack medicine. The upper middle class built their pavilions on the windward west of English cities to try to limit their exposure not just to the stink but the risk of infection: is it no accident that the working class lived downwind on the east of cities?
But infectious disease does not respect the boundaries of class and wealth. Beginning with the 1840 Vaccination Act, the Victorians decided that public health had to come before individual freedom, and launched the interlocking efforts to build sewers, vaccinate infants and marshal ever better science to support their efforts. Anti-vaccination movements protesting against the extension of the state – the equivalent of today's Ukip – had to drop their resistance before the health need and weight of the evidence.
The WHO is invoking that same spirit today. Antibiotics are precious and the gains to public health precarious. Our culture does not respect these life-giving drugs enough; we use them like aspirin, not completing the courses we are prescribed or even giving unused drugs to friends or family for whom they were not diagnosed.
Nature is wreaking its revenge. Now we need a new collective effort to respond. It begins with each individual recognising and treasuring the miracle of antibiotics, but it also means that new antibiotics have to be developed faster and more effectively. We need smarter, more open forms of research collaboration between a multiplicity of drug companies around health strategies that understand that drugs are global public health goods, and that the medical ecosystem stands and falls as a whole. Antibiotics are as important as drug blockbusters to our health, if not to drug companies' profits.
Governments need to reset the incentives and drug companies their priorities. The best scientists and universities know this and want their science to be deployed in that way.
Britain could take a lead but over the next few weeks we are to be robbed of one of our major pharmaceutical assets, AstraZeneca, which will probably be taken over by Pfizer, one of whose prime strategic objectives is tax avoidance. The WHO must call for changes in not just how antibiotics are used, but how they are researched and produced if the world is not to confront devastating consequences. Dangerous bacteria even infect the ideologues in Number 10 so anxious to sell out to US interests, and the AstraZeneca shareholders who declare no loyalty except to the highest, short-term share price. Our health demands a new seriousness of intent, and a recognition that it is a public good not a private plaything. Saying no to Pfizer would be a wake-up call for everyone.
Already 25,000 people die every year in the European Union from diseases of the blood and urinary tract, from pneumonia, TB and diarrhoea, all of which could have been treated by effective antibiotics. And this is in a region where there is widespread vaccination against infections and where public health is strong.
The bugs behind TB or gonorrhoea now routinely fight off antibiotics ever faster, and these mutating bugs travel globally. Everywhere people are having to stay in hospital for longer and face a growing risk of infection by others. Death rates are beginning to rise rather than fall.
Nor is the situation likely to get any better. Part of the problem is that people are too casual over how antibiotics are prescribed and used so the bugs aren't eliminated, but instead develop better defence mechanisms. On top, over the past 30 years the drug companies have developed no new major antibiotic types. The last one was carbapenem – a so-called last resort antibiotic – back in 1980. Now more than half the cases of K pneumoniae that used to be treatable by carbapenem drugs no longer respond. Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director general for health security, spelled out the danger: "Without urgent, co-ordinated action by many stakeholders," he said, "common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill."
The impact is felt across all of medicine. The effectiveness of drugs is interdependent. Cancer patients undergoing expensive chemotherapy need cheap antibiotics to handle the otherwise potentially fatal side effects as their immune systems reel from the impact of the poison to kill the cancer.
We are used to the notion that medical science is getting better; there is no need to fear an infected finger, let alone the diseases that traumatised earlier generations. Now it seems science is losing the battle we are accustomed to it winning.
But the crisis is much less in science than it is in the ways it is directed and organised. It is no accident that the failure to develop any major new antibiotics over the past 30 years has coincided with the roll back of the state and the accompanying collapse in self-confidence in public initiatives or in the beneficial affects of public spending.
Drug discovery, and with it the evolution of the entire complex medical ecosystem along with the science that supports it, has been driven by profit signals in the commercial marketplace. Because the easy to find antibiotic chemical compounds have been discovered, new research is complex and expensive – yet antibiotics are priced as low-margin commodity drugs. Worse, regulators – especially the FDA in the US which, as the gatekeeper to the richest drugs market in the world, is of pivotal importance – only license antibiotics for particular rather than generalised uses.
For a profit-maximising drug company such as Pfizer, there is an obvious conclusion. Don't waste valuable R&D on low-margin antibiotics that are never going to become super-profitable blockbusters. Instead, develop, say, Viagra (as it has), which is a high-margin, global money spinner. Exploit your financial muscle by avoiding as much tax as possible – other mutts can fund the infrastructure from which you directly benefit – and try to buy up other drug companies, such as AstraZeneca, which has been foolish enough to invest in drugs that are more integral to the entire medical ecosystem. You can harvest the results of their efforts, pocket your vast meta-bonus and buy an island in the Pacific. You may even be lucky enough to encounter a misguided, weak government – like the UK's – that believes this is the way to do business.
In the 19th century, one of the biggest catalysts to end laissez-faire was the lived experience of infectious diseases, lack of sewers, dirty air, contaminated food and unregulated quack medicine. The upper middle class built their pavilions on the windward west of English cities to try to limit their exposure not just to the stink but the risk of infection: is it no accident that the working class lived downwind on the east of cities?
But infectious disease does not respect the boundaries of class and wealth. Beginning with the 1840 Vaccination Act, the Victorians decided that public health had to come before individual freedom, and launched the interlocking efforts to build sewers, vaccinate infants and marshal ever better science to support their efforts. Anti-vaccination movements protesting against the extension of the state – the equivalent of today's Ukip – had to drop their resistance before the health need and weight of the evidence.
The WHO is invoking that same spirit today. Antibiotics are precious and the gains to public health precarious. Our culture does not respect these life-giving drugs enough; we use them like aspirin, not completing the courses we are prescribed or even giving unused drugs to friends or family for whom they were not diagnosed.
Nature is wreaking its revenge. Now we need a new collective effort to respond. It begins with each individual recognising and treasuring the miracle of antibiotics, but it also means that new antibiotics have to be developed faster and more effectively. We need smarter, more open forms of research collaboration between a multiplicity of drug companies around health strategies that understand that drugs are global public health goods, and that the medical ecosystem stands and falls as a whole. Antibiotics are as important as drug blockbusters to our health, if not to drug companies' profits.
Governments need to reset the incentives and drug companies their priorities. The best scientists and universities know this and want their science to be deployed in that way.
Britain could take a lead but over the next few weeks we are to be robbed of one of our major pharmaceutical assets, AstraZeneca, which will probably be taken over by Pfizer, one of whose prime strategic objectives is tax avoidance. The WHO must call for changes in not just how antibiotics are used, but how they are researched and produced if the world is not to confront devastating consequences. Dangerous bacteria even infect the ideologues in Number 10 so anxious to sell out to US interests, and the AstraZeneca shareholders who declare no loyalty except to the highest, short-term share price. Our health demands a new seriousness of intent, and a recognition that it is a public good not a private plaything. Saying no to Pfizer would be a wake-up call for everyone.
Thursday
House Republican unveils sweeping tax reform with focus on Wall Street
Plan introduces tough Wall Street levies and aims to simplify personal income tax code in overhaul that could divide parties
Dan Roberts
Source: The Guardian
A Republican tax reformer in Congress has proposed sweeping new levies on Wall Street as part of an unexpectedly radical plan for overhauling the US tax code that could divide both parties.
Under draft legislation unveiled on Tuesday by Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House ways and means committee, larger banks would have to pay a penalty for receiving government bailouts, and would face a new tax on their worldwide assets.
Wall Street’s private equity barons would also be hit hard by a proposal to end the controversial ‘carried interest’ rule which lets them avoid income tax by paying themselves through profits treated as capital gains and taxed under lower rates than those to which income is typically subject.
Together with new taxes on insurers, Camp said the increased revenue from Wall Street would help pay for a cut in US corporate tax rates, from 35% to 25%, and would ensure that the overall package of personal and business taxes he announced was revenue neutral.
His explicit attack on bailed-out banks has more in common with recent criticism of the Dodd-Frank bank reforms levelled by left-wing Democrats such as senator Elizabeth Warren than traditional thinking by either Republican or Democratic leadership, which have both shied away from confronting Wall Street in such ways.
“By declaring Systemically Important Financial Institutions to be ‘too big to fail’, Dodd-Frank allows these big banks and financial institutions to pay lower borrowing costs, with the difference left to be made up by the American taxpayer,” said an explanatory report by Camp’s committee staff.
“While tax reform cannot undo Dodd-Frank, it can and should ensure that Wall Street reimburses the American taxpayer for a portion of the subsidy it receives.”
The proposal has alarmed Washington business lobbyists, which may complicate the already difficult task of moving the legislation through Congress.
House speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, both Republicans, have indicated that their party may wish to wait until after November’s mid-term elections before attempting tax reform, while many Democrats are big recipients of campaign contributions from Wall Street. Camp’s aides pointed out, however, that the White House has in the past supported the idea of reforming corporate taxes.
If passed, Camp’s package of proposals would be the first major simplification of the tax code since 1986.
Under Camp’s plan, the number of personal income tax brackets would be slashed from the current seven to just two, 10% and 25%, though there would also be a 10% surtax on most people with incomes over about $450,000. Two-hundred and twenty-eight tax breaks would also be repealed.
Camp said the changes would not change the overall distribution of personal tax burdens, and claimed that the overall boost to the economy from the simplification measures would eventually total $3.4tn and create 2 million new jobs over the next decade.
Despite the lack of high-profile Democratic support following the departure of Camp’s Senate partner Max Baucus, who left office to become ambassador to China, Camp insisted in a press conference that his plan retained bipartisan backing.
“This legislation does not reflect ideas solely advanced by Democrats or by Republicans, nor is it limited to the halls of Congress,” he said.
“Instead this is a comprehensive plan that reflects input and ideas championed by Congress, the administration and most importantly the American people.”
Privately, Republican opponents of the bill said it stood little chance of making progress through the House given that many of its measures would give Democrats a chance to make political attacks on the GOP.
“Why would we give Democrats a list of pay-fors to use against us over the next 10 months?” asked one House staffer.
Dan Roberts
Source: The Guardian
A Republican tax reformer in Congress has proposed sweeping new levies on Wall Street as part of an unexpectedly radical plan for overhauling the US tax code that could divide both parties.
Under draft legislation unveiled on Tuesday by Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House ways and means committee, larger banks would have to pay a penalty for receiving government bailouts, and would face a new tax on their worldwide assets.
Wall Street’s private equity barons would also be hit hard by a proposal to end the controversial ‘carried interest’ rule which lets them avoid income tax by paying themselves through profits treated as capital gains and taxed under lower rates than those to which income is typically subject.
Together with new taxes on insurers, Camp said the increased revenue from Wall Street would help pay for a cut in US corporate tax rates, from 35% to 25%, and would ensure that the overall package of personal and business taxes he announced was revenue neutral.
His explicit attack on bailed-out banks has more in common with recent criticism of the Dodd-Frank bank reforms levelled by left-wing Democrats such as senator Elizabeth Warren than traditional thinking by either Republican or Democratic leadership, which have both shied away from confronting Wall Street in such ways.
“By declaring Systemically Important Financial Institutions to be ‘too big to fail’, Dodd-Frank allows these big banks and financial institutions to pay lower borrowing costs, with the difference left to be made up by the American taxpayer,” said an explanatory report by Camp’s committee staff.
“While tax reform cannot undo Dodd-Frank, it can and should ensure that Wall Street reimburses the American taxpayer for a portion of the subsidy it receives.”
The proposal has alarmed Washington business lobbyists, which may complicate the already difficult task of moving the legislation through Congress.
House speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, both Republicans, have indicated that their party may wish to wait until after November’s mid-term elections before attempting tax reform, while many Democrats are big recipients of campaign contributions from Wall Street. Camp’s aides pointed out, however, that the White House has in the past supported the idea of reforming corporate taxes.
If passed, Camp’s package of proposals would be the first major simplification of the tax code since 1986.
Under Camp’s plan, the number of personal income tax brackets would be slashed from the current seven to just two, 10% and 25%, though there would also be a 10% surtax on most people with incomes over about $450,000. Two-hundred and twenty-eight tax breaks would also be repealed.
Camp said the changes would not change the overall distribution of personal tax burdens, and claimed that the overall boost to the economy from the simplification measures would eventually total $3.4tn and create 2 million new jobs over the next decade.
Despite the lack of high-profile Democratic support following the departure of Camp’s Senate partner Max Baucus, who left office to become ambassador to China, Camp insisted in a press conference that his plan retained bipartisan backing.
“This legislation does not reflect ideas solely advanced by Democrats or by Republicans, nor is it limited to the halls of Congress,” he said.
“Instead this is a comprehensive plan that reflects input and ideas championed by Congress, the administration and most importantly the American people.”
Privately, Republican opponents of the bill said it stood little chance of making progress through the House given that many of its measures would give Democrats a chance to make political attacks on the GOP.
“Why would we give Democrats a list of pay-fors to use against us over the next 10 months?” asked one House staffer.
Tuesday
How do you get politicians to care about privacy?
Film maker Cullen Hoback explains how he has used his anti-surveillance
documentary - and two NSA whistleblowers - to push for policy reform in
Washington
Cullen Hoback at The Guardian
Beneath the US Capitol building there is one of the swankiest theatres in which I’ve screened my film, Terms and Conditions May Apply, to date.
The space is usually reserved for tours during the daytime, but at night if you have the magic key - a Congressman- movie magic can happen for Capitol Hill’s elite.
Our magic key was Congressman Justin Amash, a second-term representative from Michigan who made a splash this summer with his stance on government surveillance. He introduced a narrowly defeated amendment (205-217) that would have defunded the mass data collection that Section 215 of the FISA Amendments authorises. It has since become known as the Amash Amendment, and it was the first beacon of hope that Washington might reform the Patriot Act.
While introducing the film, the Congressman laid out a somewhat bleak view regarding his leadership role in the field of privacy, “Civil liberties have been my focus in Congress, maybe in some ways unintentionally, I wish there were more people who cared about civil liberties here.”
So how do you get Congressmen to care about privacy?
One way might be to show them a film that clearly lays out the stakes, then bring out a panel of NSA whistleblowers to let them know that when it comes to the surveillance state, we are very much all in this together.
So that’s what we did.
Russ Tice and Thomas Drake, two whistleblowers that used to work for the NSA, took to the stage after the credits rolled. It turns out the intelligence community doesn’t take kindly to those who shine a light on their behavior. While Edward Snowden was forced to take hiding in Russia, Drake now spends his days working at an Apple store.
I asked them point blank “whether or not members of Congress are being spied on by the NSA?”
Tice responded: "Back in 2004, 2005, the first hard target that the NSA was going after was Secretary Colin Powell and they were doing that with space systems at the time. When I got together with my friends that were working the terrestrial side, and that means fibre optics [...] they were mainly members on the intel committees, the armed services committees, and all of the senior leadership [...] NSA was wiretapping all of those individuals in Congress."
You can imagine the chilling effect this had as it fell on the ears of members of Congress and their staffers. Having been in DC meetings where the phrase ‘off the record’ isn’t used lightly, I can tell you that there’s no better way to scare a Congressman than letting them know they’re being spied on too.
I also can’t help but think that the effects of this conversation reverberated through the Congressional halls in its wake. Just this week, Rep. Bernie Sanders repeated my question to General Alexander: “Are you spying on members of Congress?”
Alexander’s response was “Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons.”
That’s comforting.
While I am deeply concerned for the rights of the average citizen - my film shows case after case of perfectly innocent people and protestors having their lives upended by these spy systems - I’m far more concerned about spying on members of Congress. Ask any Congressman what the value of a secret is. Unsavoury and unethical secrets can topple legacies, and a secret found by looking at phone conversations, emails, web history, and GPS data - even taken out of context - can be used to leverage and blackmail.
Heck, blackmail and leverage are the bedrock of every plot in House of Cards, a show about political ambition and how to accomplish things in Washington (people in DC love this show). Obama even joked that he wished he had a majority whip like the character Kevin Spacey plays in the show because he’s “getting a lot of things done". Or ask any journalist who is trying to protect a source, a source who allows us to know that corruption exists.
What is the relationship between the NSA and Congress?
During the discussion, Russ Tice named Congresswoman Dianne Feinstein directly as someone he knows the NSA was spying on as far back at 2004-2005. I have no hard evidence that this is true. The man is a whistleblower, and you have to decide for yourself if you want to believe him; unfortunately he didn’t leave with 10,000 pages of classified proof. But remember, bureaucracies don’t go down without a fight.
Why might the NSA have a particular interest in Dianne Feinstein? Well, she is the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. If you’re part of this privileged group, you’re granted access to highly classified information surrounding the NSA’s activities. And when an agency operates outside the parameters of the Constitution, as Thomas Drake, the other whistleblower that day put it, “there’s an extraordinary temptation to spy on even those who have oversight over you, spy on those who would pass legislation that would affect you.”
What these whistleblowers made clear is that Congress is being spied on: what and how that information is being used is the only thing that’s up for debate.
And the power needed to capture a vote from a politician is the very same power that can be used to catch a source leaking to a journalist. We know this has already happened with The Associated Press and Al Jazeera. In other words, the NSA has the power to spy on the systems that are supposed to check and balance them.
Interestingly, on the same day we screened Terms and Conditions May Apply, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner introduced his own bill called The USA Freedom Act. If you’re unfamiliar, not only does this bill provide sweeping reform and oversight of the NSA, but it has over 70 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, including our host Congressman Amash, and it is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union. And the most jaw-dropping part is that Rep. Sensenbrenner is the same guy who fathered The Patriot Act!
If the man who helped pen The Patriot Act wants to reform it, why isn’t everyone who voted for it on board?
It was a powerful and paradoxical moment, screening Terms and Conditions May Apply under the US Capitol. On the one hand, democracy may well be facing its greatest threat in a generation. On the other hand, we were able to openly discuss these problems with two NSA whistleblowers in front of legislators.
But many of those legislators might be “pwned” - that is, owned by a spy bureaucracy three times the size of the CIA. The same could be true for judges and any number of government officials. This is why the Fourth Amendment exists in America; because secrets do matter.
And if you have the ability to know a secret about a powerful person, that power becomes yours. This is a great temptation, a temptation no civil servant should have at their fingertips.
Cullen Hoback at The Guardian
Beneath the US Capitol building there is one of the swankiest theatres in which I’ve screened my film, Terms and Conditions May Apply, to date.
The space is usually reserved for tours during the daytime, but at night if you have the magic key - a Congressman- movie magic can happen for Capitol Hill’s elite.
Our magic key was Congressman Justin Amash, a second-term representative from Michigan who made a splash this summer with his stance on government surveillance. He introduced a narrowly defeated amendment (205-217) that would have defunded the mass data collection that Section 215 of the FISA Amendments authorises. It has since become known as the Amash Amendment, and it was the first beacon of hope that Washington might reform the Patriot Act.
While introducing the film, the Congressman laid out a somewhat bleak view regarding his leadership role in the field of privacy, “Civil liberties have been my focus in Congress, maybe in some ways unintentionally, I wish there were more people who cared about civil liberties here.”
So how do you get Congressmen to care about privacy?
One way might be to show them a film that clearly lays out the stakes, then bring out a panel of NSA whistleblowers to let them know that when it comes to the surveillance state, we are very much all in this together.
So that’s what we did.
Russ Tice and Thomas Drake, two whistleblowers that used to work for the NSA, took to the stage after the credits rolled. It turns out the intelligence community doesn’t take kindly to those who shine a light on their behavior. While Edward Snowden was forced to take hiding in Russia, Drake now spends his days working at an Apple store.
I asked them point blank “whether or not members of Congress are being spied on by the NSA?”
Tice responded: "Back in 2004, 2005, the first hard target that the NSA was going after was Secretary Colin Powell and they were doing that with space systems at the time. When I got together with my friends that were working the terrestrial side, and that means fibre optics [...] they were mainly members on the intel committees, the armed services committees, and all of the senior leadership [...] NSA was wiretapping all of those individuals in Congress."
You can imagine the chilling effect this had as it fell on the ears of members of Congress and their staffers. Having been in DC meetings where the phrase ‘off the record’ isn’t used lightly, I can tell you that there’s no better way to scare a Congressman than letting them know they’re being spied on too.
I also can’t help but think that the effects of this conversation reverberated through the Congressional halls in its wake. Just this week, Rep. Bernie Sanders repeated my question to General Alexander: “Are you spying on members of Congress?”
Alexander’s response was “Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons.”
That’s comforting.
While I am deeply concerned for the rights of the average citizen - my film shows case after case of perfectly innocent people and protestors having their lives upended by these spy systems - I’m far more concerned about spying on members of Congress. Ask any Congressman what the value of a secret is. Unsavoury and unethical secrets can topple legacies, and a secret found by looking at phone conversations, emails, web history, and GPS data - even taken out of context - can be used to leverage and blackmail.
Heck, blackmail and leverage are the bedrock of every plot in House of Cards, a show about political ambition and how to accomplish things in Washington (people in DC love this show). Obama even joked that he wished he had a majority whip like the character Kevin Spacey plays in the show because he’s “getting a lot of things done". Or ask any journalist who is trying to protect a source, a source who allows us to know that corruption exists.
What is the relationship between the NSA and Congress?
During the discussion, Russ Tice named Congresswoman Dianne Feinstein directly as someone he knows the NSA was spying on as far back at 2004-2005. I have no hard evidence that this is true. The man is a whistleblower, and you have to decide for yourself if you want to believe him; unfortunately he didn’t leave with 10,000 pages of classified proof. But remember, bureaucracies don’t go down without a fight.
Why might the NSA have a particular interest in Dianne Feinstein? Well, she is the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. If you’re part of this privileged group, you’re granted access to highly classified information surrounding the NSA’s activities. And when an agency operates outside the parameters of the Constitution, as Thomas Drake, the other whistleblower that day put it, “there’s an extraordinary temptation to spy on even those who have oversight over you, spy on those who would pass legislation that would affect you.”
What these whistleblowers made clear is that Congress is being spied on: what and how that information is being used is the only thing that’s up for debate.
And the power needed to capture a vote from a politician is the very same power that can be used to catch a source leaking to a journalist. We know this has already happened with The Associated Press and Al Jazeera. In other words, the NSA has the power to spy on the systems that are supposed to check and balance them.
Interestingly, on the same day we screened Terms and Conditions May Apply, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner introduced his own bill called The USA Freedom Act. If you’re unfamiliar, not only does this bill provide sweeping reform and oversight of the NSA, but it has over 70 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, including our host Congressman Amash, and it is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union. And the most jaw-dropping part is that Rep. Sensenbrenner is the same guy who fathered The Patriot Act!
If the man who helped pen The Patriot Act wants to reform it, why isn’t everyone who voted for it on board?
It was a powerful and paradoxical moment, screening Terms and Conditions May Apply under the US Capitol. On the one hand, democracy may well be facing its greatest threat in a generation. On the other hand, we were able to openly discuss these problems with two NSA whistleblowers in front of legislators.
But many of those legislators might be “pwned” - that is, owned by a spy bureaucracy three times the size of the CIA. The same could be true for judges and any number of government officials. This is why the Fourth Amendment exists in America; because secrets do matter.
And if you have the ability to know a secret about a powerful person, that power becomes yours. This is a great temptation, a temptation no civil servant should have at their fingertips.
Thursday
Friday
Edward Snowden: MEPs vote to invite ex-NSA contractor to testify
Opposition from conservatives fails to derail vote on inviting Snowden to hearing, which could take place as early as January
Source: The Guardian
The European parliament has voted to formally invite Edward Snowden to give testimony on NSA spying, despite opposition from conservative MEPs. If the US whistleblower provides answers to the questions compiled by parliamentarians in time, a hearing via video link could take place in early January.
It had looked on Wednesday as if European conservatives were trying to kick the hearing into the long grass. The European People's party (EPP), the alliance of centre-right parties, had raised a number of concerns about inviting Snowden for a hearing, noting that it could endanger the transatlantic trade agreement with the US.
But on Thursday morning, the leaders of the main political groupings in the European parliament voted to invite Snowden. In the coming weeks, questions will be compiled and then forwarded to the former NSA contractor's lawyer, with roughly two questions coming from each political group.
Labour MEP Claude Moraes, the lead rapporteur for the European parliament inquiry on the mass surveillance of EU citizens, welcomed the outcome of the vote and promised that questioning would be "rigorous and fair".
"Amongst the questions I will ask Mr Snowden," Moraes said, "will be why he decided to reveal the information and the consequences and implications of his actions; questions around his current situation in Russia; questions around his opinion on the impact of his revelations on security, the intelligence services, and 'the right to know'; questions around his opinions of where his revelations and allegations take the area of mass surveillance in the future."
The European parliament hopes to create an interactive situation for the hearing, where MEPs can interview Snowden in real time. However, as there are some concerns that a live linkup might allow the NSA to pinpoint Snowden's location, answers may end up having to be pre-recorded.
The British Conservative party, which is not part of the EPP, had clearly stated its opposition to inviting Snowden at the end of last week.
Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope had described the invitation as "a provocative act" which would "endanger public security around Europe and beyond".
Source: The Guardian
The European parliament has voted to formally invite Edward Snowden to give testimony on NSA spying, despite opposition from conservative MEPs. If the US whistleblower provides answers to the questions compiled by parliamentarians in time, a hearing via video link could take place in early January.
It had looked on Wednesday as if European conservatives were trying to kick the hearing into the long grass. The European People's party (EPP), the alliance of centre-right parties, had raised a number of concerns about inviting Snowden for a hearing, noting that it could endanger the transatlantic trade agreement with the US.
But on Thursday morning, the leaders of the main political groupings in the European parliament voted to invite Snowden. In the coming weeks, questions will be compiled and then forwarded to the former NSA contractor's lawyer, with roughly two questions coming from each political group.
Labour MEP Claude Moraes, the lead rapporteur for the European parliament inquiry on the mass surveillance of EU citizens, welcomed the outcome of the vote and promised that questioning would be "rigorous and fair".
"Amongst the questions I will ask Mr Snowden," Moraes said, "will be why he decided to reveal the information and the consequences and implications of his actions; questions around his current situation in Russia; questions around his opinion on the impact of his revelations on security, the intelligence services, and 'the right to know'; questions around his opinions of where his revelations and allegations take the area of mass surveillance in the future."
The European parliament hopes to create an interactive situation for the hearing, where MEPs can interview Snowden in real time. However, as there are some concerns that a live linkup might allow the NSA to pinpoint Snowden's location, answers may end up having to be pre-recorded.
The British Conservative party, which is not part of the EPP, had clearly stated its opposition to inviting Snowden at the end of last week.
Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope had described the invitation as "a provocative act" which would "endanger public security around Europe and beyond".
Thursday
Are the poor getting poorer?
Source: The Guardian
Robert Joyce
Are the poor better or worse off than they used to be? It's a divisive question for the public and an even clearer fault line for British politicians. We take a look at three sets of numbers to find out
Whether they're saying the economy is coming out of recession or going into recovery, British politicians know how important it is to show that the benefits are getting spread around. That's why 'the poor' often come up in policy, finger pointing and the press.
There are basically two camps. In the (metaphorical) red corner, are those that claim the poor are getting poorer either because income is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few or because standards of living are getting worse for those with the least money - or both.
In total contradiction, there are those that say the poor are getting richer because we live in a country where income doesn't just go to the richest. One reader, Ed Woods, got in touch with Reality Check and asked "can you tell us who is telling fibs?"
Is there a right or wrong answer here or is the data just open to interpretation? We look at three different indicators of poverty to see what we find.
Chart 1: Real incomes
Most people have seen their incomes rise. But not everyone - some of the poorest people have seen them fall. This chart is a bit tricky to understand at first but use these quick tips and you should be able to see the trends for yourself.
First, imagine taking everyone in the UK, finding out how much they earn and then splitting them up into one hundred different groups. The group with the lowest income would be but in the first 'percentile', the group with the second lowest incomes would be in the second percentile and so on all the way up to the 99th percentile - they're the group that earns the most.
This chart shows how income for each of those 100 groups changed between 1980 and 2012. So, at the far left, you can see what has happened to incomes for the poorest 1% of the UK population (their incomes have fallen by about 1%) and at the far right, you can see that incomes for the richest 1% of the UK population have risen by about 3%.
But you can also see how circumstances matter. Even the poorest pensioners have seen their real incomes rise since 1978 - but the same isn't true for others who have seen the biggest drop in their incomes. Since pensioners as a group make up a far smaller fraction of the population than families or childless individuals, that drop in income for the poor is particularly important.
Graph: The Institute for Fiscal Studies
Conclusion 1: The poorest have got poorer
Chart 2: Standards of living
There is more to poverty than just income. But the UK is a developed country so it doesn't make sense to use things like hunger as a measure of how the lives of the poorest are changing.
The UK government (along with most others in the EU) monitors something called 'severe material deprivation' which is when someone can't afford at least four of the basics shown in the chart below - and as the chart shows, more people are unable to afford things like heating and mortgage payments.
Conclusion 2: Fewer poor people can afford the basics
Chart 3: Policy change
If this article is supposed to say anything about the impact of the coalition, it doesn't say much since some of the data stretches far back and it ends around 2011. So how are the changes to tax and benefit reforms likely to affect the poor?
Remember those one hundred groups mentioned above? Now put them back together again and split up the population into ten groups instead. Now you'll see that the poorest 10% of the UK stand to lose around 4.3% of their income as a direct consequence of the direct tax and benefit reforms either already introduced or planned between April 2012 and April 2015. The richest 20% of the UK will see their incomes rise by 1%.
Graph: The Institute for Fiscal Studies
Conclusion 3: The poor are likely to get poorer
An inconvenient truth?
When Charlie Elphicke MP wrote a passionate article in the Telegraph titled 'An inconvenient truth for Ed: the poor are getting richer' he used data too. And his evidence does point to the poorest individuals in society receiving the largest boost in income. Does that mean that our conclusions so far are wrong?
Robert Joyce
Are the poor better or worse off than they used to be? It's a divisive question for the public and an even clearer fault line for British politicians. We take a look at three sets of numbers to find out
Whether they're saying the economy is coming out of recession or going into recovery, British politicians know how important it is to show that the benefits are getting spread around. That's why 'the poor' often come up in policy, finger pointing and the press.
There are basically two camps. In the (metaphorical) red corner, are those that claim the poor are getting poorer either because income is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few or because standards of living are getting worse for those with the least money - or both.
In total contradiction, there are those that say the poor are getting richer because we live in a country where income doesn't just go to the richest. One reader, Ed Woods, got in touch with Reality Check and asked "can you tell us who is telling fibs?"
Is there a right or wrong answer here or is the data just open to interpretation? We look at three different indicators of poverty to see what we find.
Chart 1: Real incomes
Most people have seen their incomes rise. But not everyone - some of the poorest people have seen them fall. This chart is a bit tricky to understand at first but use these quick tips and you should be able to see the trends for yourself.
First, imagine taking everyone in the UK, finding out how much they earn and then splitting them up into one hundred different groups. The group with the lowest income would be but in the first 'percentile', the group with the second lowest incomes would be in the second percentile and so on all the way up to the 99th percentile - they're the group that earns the most.
This chart shows how income for each of those 100 groups changed between 1980 and 2012. So, at the far left, you can see what has happened to incomes for the poorest 1% of the UK population (their incomes have fallen by about 1%) and at the far right, you can see that incomes for the richest 1% of the UK population have risen by about 3%.
But you can also see how circumstances matter. Even the poorest pensioners have seen their real incomes rise since 1978 - but the same isn't true for others who have seen the biggest drop in their incomes. Since pensioners as a group make up a far smaller fraction of the population than families or childless individuals, that drop in income for the poor is particularly important.
Conclusion 1: The poorest have got poorer
Chart 2: Standards of living
There is more to poverty than just income. But the UK is a developed country so it doesn't make sense to use things like hunger as a measure of how the lives of the poorest are changing.
The UK government (along with most others in the EU) monitors something called 'severe material deprivation' which is when someone can't afford at least four of the basics shown in the chart below - and as the chart shows, more people are unable to afford things like heating and mortgage payments.
Conclusion 2: Fewer poor people can afford the basics
Chart 3: Policy change
If this article is supposed to say anything about the impact of the coalition, it doesn't say much since some of the data stretches far back and it ends around 2011. So how are the changes to tax and benefit reforms likely to affect the poor?
Remember those one hundred groups mentioned above? Now put them back together again and split up the population into ten groups instead. Now you'll see that the poorest 10% of the UK stand to lose around 4.3% of their income as a direct consequence of the direct tax and benefit reforms either already introduced or planned between April 2012 and April 2015. The richest 20% of the UK will see their incomes rise by 1%.
Graph: The Institute for Fiscal Studies
Conclusion 3: The poor are likely to get poorer
An inconvenient truth?
When Charlie Elphicke MP wrote a passionate article in the Telegraph titled 'An inconvenient truth for Ed: the poor are getting richer' he used data too. And his evidence does point to the poorest individuals in society receiving the largest boost in income. Does that mean that our conclusions so far are wrong?
Tuesday
State surveillance of personal data: what is the society we wish to protect?
Source:The Guardian
What in principle would justify the scope of the surveillance
revealed by the Snowden leak? Would it be enough, for example, if it
could be shown that a specific potential act of terrorism had been
prevented by, and could only have been prevented by, the full breadth
and depth of what we now have learned is the playing field of the
security services?
We should hesitate before we stray off the touchline. The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.
Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. Flying would be safer if airport security demanded body searches with no exceptions and the examination of every item in every piece of luggage. On the matter of surveillance in general we have, without much discussion, learned to live with almost blanket surveillance by CCTV in our towns and cities. As a result thousand of crimes, including murder, have been solved and perhaps many more prevented. But how many more would there have been if we doubled the number of cameras, or increased them tenfold, a hundredfold?
Between that and the surveillance we are now talking about there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative difference which hardly needs pointing out. The cameras are in public places, they are not in our houses or our cars or even in our gardens. By contrast, the world of surveillance operated by the people we pay to guard us exceeds the fevered dreams of the Stasi.
Even so, let's go carefully here. The Stasi were not dealing with a global threat of murderous malignity. The constituency of everything to be feared has also been altered dreadfully by a technology which vastly underwrites a capacity for evil as it does the capacity for the social good. As for our spooks, I know what I want from them. I want them to eavesdrop on the phones, the emails, on every tap of the keyboard of anybody who comes under suspicion. Somebody somewhere has the responsibility, indeed the necessary duty, of identifying those who bear us ill. I would like there to be secret cameras in their houses. I would applaud the technological means to survey and interpret every breath they take. However, metaphors for the expansion from this selflimiting scope beggar the imagination. If the world of secrets is its own universe, here we have an expansion of the universe which brings to mind something cosmological.
It had to happen. When all that possibility of expansion became available the spooks were going to avail themselves of it as naturally as night follows day.
Imagine that some law enforcement agency received reliable information that a drug lord or a suicide bomber or a murderer on the run was at this moment hiding out in … let's say Beaconsfield. Should we have a problem with the idea that for the next few days there was going to be blanket electronic surveillance on every message or metadatum flowing in and out of Beaconsfield? Would I get worked up about that? Not much. How about Swindon? Manchester? You can see where this is going. At some point in the expansion there is a phase transition our attitude will undergo. Something that seemed OK no longer seems OK.
The impulse we are now experiencing goes back as long as we have been living in groups. How much do we owe each other? How much of our very self, our individuality, our privacy, our subjective and autonomous freedom to live as utterly unique human beings, is up for grabs on the say so of whoever is making the rules for the group, not withstanding that the rulemakers have been validated by all of us?
It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society. But it appears to me that our masters are in the grip of the delusionary nightmare of completeness: the complete annihilation of every rogue bacillus. It's as if there is a belief that in the end the virus has no riposte, that there cannot be and will not be a means to evade blanket security if it is blanket enough.
What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance? Not that anybody asked us. It takes a brave newspaper to have forced the question into the open.
We should hesitate before we stray off the touchline. The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.
Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. Flying would be safer if airport security demanded body searches with no exceptions and the examination of every item in every piece of luggage. On the matter of surveillance in general we have, without much discussion, learned to live with almost blanket surveillance by CCTV in our towns and cities. As a result thousand of crimes, including murder, have been solved and perhaps many more prevented. But how many more would there have been if we doubled the number of cameras, or increased them tenfold, a hundredfold?
Between that and the surveillance we are now talking about there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative difference which hardly needs pointing out. The cameras are in public places, they are not in our houses or our cars or even in our gardens. By contrast, the world of surveillance operated by the people we pay to guard us exceeds the fevered dreams of the Stasi.
Even so, let's go carefully here. The Stasi were not dealing with a global threat of murderous malignity. The constituency of everything to be feared has also been altered dreadfully by a technology which vastly underwrites a capacity for evil as it does the capacity for the social good. As for our spooks, I know what I want from them. I want them to eavesdrop on the phones, the emails, on every tap of the keyboard of anybody who comes under suspicion. Somebody somewhere has the responsibility, indeed the necessary duty, of identifying those who bear us ill. I would like there to be secret cameras in their houses. I would applaud the technological means to survey and interpret every breath they take. However, metaphors for the expansion from this selflimiting scope beggar the imagination. If the world of secrets is its own universe, here we have an expansion of the universe which brings to mind something cosmological.
It had to happen. When all that possibility of expansion became available the spooks were going to avail themselves of it as naturally as night follows day.
Imagine that some law enforcement agency received reliable information that a drug lord or a suicide bomber or a murderer on the run was at this moment hiding out in … let's say Beaconsfield. Should we have a problem with the idea that for the next few days there was going to be blanket electronic surveillance on every message or metadatum flowing in and out of Beaconsfield? Would I get worked up about that? Not much. How about Swindon? Manchester? You can see where this is going. At some point in the expansion there is a phase transition our attitude will undergo. Something that seemed OK no longer seems OK.
The impulse we are now experiencing goes back as long as we have been living in groups. How much do we owe each other? How much of our very self, our individuality, our privacy, our subjective and autonomous freedom to live as utterly unique human beings, is up for grabs on the say so of whoever is making the rules for the group, not withstanding that the rulemakers have been validated by all of us?
It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society. But it appears to me that our masters are in the grip of the delusionary nightmare of completeness: the complete annihilation of every rogue bacillus. It's as if there is a belief that in the end the virus has no riposte, that there cannot be and will not be a means to evade blanket security if it is blanket enough.
What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance? Not that anybody asked us. It takes a brave newspaper to have forced the question into the open.
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