Coroner critical of MI5, but clears them of blame as families of 7/7 bombing victims call for overhaul of security services Families of the victims of the 7 July attacks have called on the government to overhaul Britain’s security services after the inquest coroner yesterday described their handling of a critical piece of intelligence as “dreadful” and suggested another failure could have had “dire consequences”. Returning verdicts of unlawful killing on each of the 52 victims of the attacks, Lady Justice Hallett also expressed concerns about MI5′s recordkeeping and about “confusion” in its system of assessing targets at the time of the attacks. But, crucially, she exonerated the domestic intelligence service of any blame in failing to prevent the 2005 bombings, stressing that the evidence she had heard over 75 days at the high court in London “does not justify the conclusion that any failings on the part of any organisation or individual caused or contributed to any of the deaths”. The coroner also found that the emergency services’ response to the bombings, which has been heavily criticised for being too slow at several of the sites, had not contributed to any of the deaths. “I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that each of [the victims] would have died whenever the emergency services reached them,” she said. She saw no grounds for any future public inquiry, she indicated. “I am not aware of our having left any reasonable stone unturned,” she said. “One would hope, therefore, that these proceedings will be an end to the investigation of what happened on 7/7.” Speaking after the verdicts, however, Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed in the Edgware Road bombing, said the inquest “causes a lot more questions to be asked than it answers”. “It really must compel [the Home Secretary] Theresa May to review the whole operation of the security services in the UK, not just MI5.” He called for an independent inquiry into the killings, with a broader remit than the tightly constrained inquest. At an emotional press conference after the verdicts were returned, Ros Morley, widow of Edgware Road victim Colin Morley, called for an apology from MI5, saying: “In any other organisation, if huge mistakes were made and lives were lost, people feel there’s a duty to look into that, to have a degree of humility, which I feel has been lost.” June Taylor, the mother of Carrie Taylor, who died at Aldgate, was overcome by emotion and collapsed at the press conference after declaring that the family “still have no positive answers”. But other family members said they felt the conclusion of the inquest, which opened in October, should represent the end of the investigation into the events of 7 July, when four suicide bombers detonated devices on the London transport network. Grahame Russell, whose son Philip died in the bus bombing at Tavistock Square, said: “There are still issues. The problem I have is that if I continue to hold concerns about issues, then my life would become very bitter.” The coroner’s recommendations “can help people in the future, one would hope,” he said. “But they help me not at all. They do not bring my son back.” The coroner made nine recommendations which she believed could help prevent future deaths, encompassing improvements in training and communication for paramedics and other emergency responders, and a suggestion that Transport for London look at putting first aid equipment on underground trains. Two of the recommendations related directly to the security services. Hallett said MI5 must review its procedures on showing photographs to informants after poorly edited images of two of the bombers — “they were dreadful” — were shown by intelligence officers to a key Islamist informant in US custody. “Given the confusion that reigned within the Security Service about these photographs,” she added, “it was not clear to me what records were kept of the procedure.” Similarly, she was troubled, she said, that the MI5 spokesman Witness G gave evidence that it was not normal practice to revisit photographs when new sources became available. So poor were the records from the time of the investigation, she said, “Witness G himself had to visit retired desk officers at their homes to discover as best he could what they had done, and why.” She instructed the MI5 director general Sir Jonathan Evans to investigate the service’s documentary procedures, “given the possibly dire consequences of a flawed decision which cannot be properly supervised”. The coroner also expressed concern about MI5′s failure to investigate the 7 July ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan in detail after undercover teams observed him repeatedly meeting the fertiliser bomb plot mastermind Omar Khyam more than a year before the atrocities. “I am concerned about the fact that the Security Service’s other commitments prevented a more intense investigation of a possible terrorist, who made long and suspicious journeys to meet known terrorists at a time when they were obviously planning an attack.” The coroner also identified weaknesses involving the Intelligence and Security Committee of MPs and peers, which was shown to have been misled, albeit “inadvertently”, by MI5. She repeatedly emphasised there was no evidence that the attacks could have been prevented. Even the badly cropped photo, in the end, had “played no causative part in the failure to identify Khan or [Shehzad] Tanweer”. In a statement, the home secretary, Theresa May, said the inquest process had been “vitally important” and said she would “carefully consider” its recommendations. “I am pleased that the coroner has made clear there is simply no evidence that the Security Service knew of, and therefore failed to prevent, the bombings on 7/7.” The government and security services were “always looking to learn lessons”, she said. “This includes learning from the 7 July attacks and from other incidents, and there have been a considerable number of improvements put in place since 2005.” Her Labour opposite number, Yvette Cooper, said the ongoing terrorist threat that Britain faced “makes the lessons from the past even more important”. 7 July London attacks Richard Norton-Taylor Esther Addley guardian.co.uk
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• Lib Dems wounded as UK votes to maintain first-past-the-post • No campaign establishes unassailable lead of 69% to 31% Supporters and opponents alike have acknowledged that the alternative vote would never be introduced for Westminster elections after the proposal received a thumping defeat in the national referendum. With three-quarters of the votes counted, the no campaign had established an unassailable lead of 69% to 31%, another wounding blow to Nick Clegg, whose Liberal Democrats had secured a referendum as one of their cherished prizes in negotiations with the Conservatives when they formed the coalition last year. Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem energy secretary and prominent campaigner for a yes vote, accepted that there would be no further attempt to introduce voting reform during this parliament and that it was “over” for the alternative vote. But he suggested he thought another question on electoral reform might one day be put to the electorate. “I think it is very clear that the people have spoken, that the alternative vote is not a runner and we must respect that decision.” But voters had not expressed an opinion on proportional representation, he said. “The question on the ballot paper was ‘Do you support AV?’ and we must respect that.” The former Labour cabinet minister Lord Reid, a no vote campaigner, said the public had delivered a resounding rejection of AV and warned the Liberal Democrats not to look for any “backdoor” introduction of voting reform. “Anyone who now wants to find some sort of backdoor method to bring something in that is not first past the post will be seen to have snubbed the clear wishes of the electorate,” he said. “The British constitution is not some bauble to be handed out as a consolation prize. It would be an outrage if such a resounding vote was to be ignored by the Liberal Democrats.” Nick Clegg called on fellow electoral reformers to “get up, dust ourselves down and move on” as he and David Cameron, a partner in coalition government but an opponent during the campaign, absorbed the result of the referendum that had become so central to the government in its first year in office. The Electoral Commission said a total of 18.6 million votes were cast across Great Britain, giving a provisional turnout of 41.8%, higher than many had predicted. Only a smattering of 440 voting areas came out with a majority for a yes vote, including Cambridge, Glasgow Kelvin, and the London boroughs of Camden, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth and Southwark. London, as predicted, had a relatively low turnout in a year where there were no other elections. But in Scotland, where voters were also electing members of the Scottish parliament, turnout reached 50.7%. A spokesman for the yes campaign said: “Clearly it is a very disappointing day for us. We’re very proud of the campaign we ran but we acknowledge that the overarching political circumstances of the country meant we couldn’t get the message across. it is difficult to sell a solution when the British people don’t see a problem.” There is an assessment that being associated with the Lib Dems was toxic and as soon as Cameron got involved, it was game over for the yes campaign. Some campaign managers have tried to ease unhappiness in the team by saying that it was a credit to them that Cameron felt he had to get involved. But they described the prime minister as a “game changer”. Labour’s Lord Mandelson, a keen supporter of electoral reform, said: “I think that’s very disappointing, but I’m equally entirely unsurprised by it. Nobody could have foreseen the extent to which the whole vote over the last 24 hours has become a referendum on the Liberal Democrats in general and Nick Clegg in particular. “We paid a big price for combining the AV referendum with the first elections to be held after the general election last year.” He was critical of how the yes campaign had been run. “The groundwork was not done for this referendum. I think that the public felt the thing had come out of the blue as the result of some arrangement between the coalition partners and they didn’t see why AV was such a big deal. “I don’t think they felt AV was the solution to many of the problems they feel are in our political system.” Results at a glance 323 of 440 districts declared Yes 31.6% 3,905,343 votes No 68.3% 8,427,622 Scottish parliament (seats) SNP 69 (+23) Labour 37 (- 7) Conservative 15 (+ 5) LibDem 5 (- 12) Other 3 (+ 1) Welsh assembly Labour 30 (+4) Conservative 14 (+2) Plaid Cymru 11 (– 4) LibDem 5 (– 1) Other 0 (– 1) English councils With 238 of the 279 councils declared, results so far are: Conservative 131 councils (+5) 4,015 councillors (+56) Labour 54 councils (+24) 2,130 councillors (+711) LibDem 8 councils (– 9) 898 councillors (– 599) Alternative vote Electoral reform Chris Huhne Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk
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enlarge ( Click here for larger image .) In a nationally televised address to the American people on March 4, 1987, President Ronald Reagan admitted he had traded arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scanda l and declared, “This happened on my watch.” Sadly, that may have been the last time a Republican leader took ownership of a disaster by simply acknowledging the calendar. After all, according to the Republicans’ ever-malleable timelines, the Clinton economic boom came thanks to Ronald Reagan, President Bush inherited a recession and 9/11 from his Democratic predecessor, and the financial collapse in 2008 was the “Obama Bear Market.” And now, the GOP’s new math dictates , George W. Bush deserves the credit for killing Osama Bin Laden. No doubt, the elimination of the Al Qaeda chieftain was the culmination of years of intelligence work and military asset building that spanned the Bush and Obama administrations. But while President Bush diverted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, shuttered the CIA’s Bin Laden unit and cancelled a 2005 U.S. special operations raid into Pakistan, it was Barack Obama who as promised tripled U.S. troop strength and repeatedly declared that “that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.” That’s a far cry from President Bush declaration on March 13, 2002 – just six months after the carnage of 9/11 – that in the wake of the failure to capture Bin Laden in Tora Bora, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” Nevertheless, according to the latest Republican revisionist history , George W. Bush did everything but pull the trigger on Sunday. (More ironic still, Bush’s supporters accused President Obama of taking a “ victory lap ” after the death of Bin Laden, which occurred exactly 8 years to the day after Dubya appeared in a flight suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.) Despite virtually no evidence to support the claim, GOP torture enthusiasts like Peter King (R-NY) trumpeted that “We obtained that information through waterboarding.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was just one of a legion of conservatives explaining that credit had one degree of separation, announcing “I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing bin Laden to justice.” While Sarah Palin refused to even utter Obama’s name in crediting President Bush, right-wing billionaire sugar daddy David Koch complained that Obama “just made the decision, it was obvious where the guy is.” Donald Rumsfeld similarly praised his former boss: “All of this was made possible by the relentless, sustained pressure on al Qaeda that the Bush administration initiated after 9/11 and that the Obama administration has wisely chosen to continue.” But if Republican mythology states that George W. Bush is responsible for apprehending the mastermind of 9/11, the attacks ten years ago were all Bill Clinton’s fault. That’s an interesting charge, given President Bush’s response to the CIA presenter of the infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” That would be the same PDB about which Condoleezza Rice explained to the 9/11 Commission , “I believe the title was, ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” And while National Security Advisor Rice protested in 2002 that “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would…try to use an airplane as a missile,” counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke had anticipated exactly that. As it turned out, the plan he presented to Rice in January 2001 only became the subject of a national security “principals meeting” in the days just before September 11. (Bush, you’ll recall, spent the previous month at his Crawford, Texas ranch agonizing about his policy on stem cell research which his adviser Karen Hughes described at the time as “the most important decision of your presidency.”) It’s no wonder Sandy Berger told Rice during the transition that “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.” Nevertheless, conservative theology required that the 9/11 attacks which occurred eight months into the Bush presidency were entirely Bill Clinton’s fault. Then die-hard conservative Andrew Sullivan summed up the tried but untrue talking point , claiming “[Clinton] was more responsible than anyone for the gaping holes in national security and intelligence that made Sept. 11 possible. The buck must stop with him.” A national security disaster that spanned both administrations, in the telling of Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft to the 9/11 Commission in April 2004, belonged solely to one man: “But the simple fact of September 11 is this: we did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies. Our agents were isolated by government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions, and starved for basic information technology. The old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail.” According to Republican calculus, Bill Clinton was also responsible for every calamity which befell the economy under George W. Bush. Given that Clinton presided over the creation of 23 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in decades, robust economic growth and a balanced budget, that might seem like a dubious claim. Dubious, that it, until conservatives clarify that the Clinton boom of the late 1990′s was the result of the invisible hand of Ronald Reagan . “Clinton was served up a booming economy on a silver platter,” as one Townhall columnist put it, “thanks to former President Reagan and entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison of Oracle.” But it was Reagan bath-water drinkers Lawrence Kudlow and Stephen Moore who offered the GOP’s revisionist history in its purest form on February 1, 2000. Almost 19 years after the supply-side tax cuts of 1981, Moore and Kudlow argued “it’s the Reagan economy, stupid.” While the chattering heads in Washington are claiming that this expansion is sweet vindication for Clintonomics, they are wrong. Dead wrong. The politician most responsible for laying the groundwork for this prosperous era is not Bill Clinton, but Ronald Reagan… It was Reagan’s supply side economic ideas — the policy of marginal rate tax cuts, a strong dollar, trade globalization (the Gipper started NAFTA with a U.S.-Canadian free trade agreement), deregulation of key industries like energy, financial services and transportation, and a re-armed military — all of which unleashed a great wave of entrepreneurial-technological innovation that transformed and restructured the economy, resulting in a long boom prosperity that continues to throw off economic benefits to this day. (Sadly for Reagan’s hagiographers, the data suggest otherwise. As the historical record shows, from GDP growth and job creation to stock market performance and almost every indicator of the health of American capitalism that matters, the U.S. economy almost always does better under Democratic presidents .) If Ronald Reagan gets the credit for Bill Clinton’s economic successes, Clinton got the blame for George W. Bush’s economic failures. In March 2009, President Barack Obama rightly noted that, “by any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.” Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer quickly protested Obama’s “response to that trend [in his approval numbers] is to turn up the blame on George Bush and everything that came before him.” That would be the same Ari Fleischer who just two days earlier defended his boss to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, describing “the recession of 2001, which we inherited.” Sadly for Fleischer and the other mythmakers of the Republican amen corner, President Bush did not inherit a recession from Bill Clinton. ( He did , however, inherit a 4.2% unemployment rate and a federal budget surplus.) As I noted in January, the same National Bureau of Economic Research (NEBR) which officially declared the current recession began in December 2007 also concluded the previous downturn commenced during Bush’s watch in March 2001. By the more traditional definition – two straight quarters of GDP decline – at no point was the economy in recession during the last year of the Clinton presidency. Undeterred, the Republican Party and its echo chamber have for years continued to perpetuate the myth that President Bush “inherited a recession” from Bill Clinton. As Media Matters detailed, the sound bite was introduced before George W, Bush even took the oath of office. On December 3, 2000, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert “I think so” when asked if “we’re on the front edge of a recession.” Within days, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (“the Bush-Cheney administration should be planning on having inherited a recession as the farewell gift from Clinton”) and House Majority Leader Dick Armey (“this new president may inherit a recession”) followed suit. By August 2002, Mitch Daniels, Bush’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, announced on Fox News: “He [Bush] inherited that recession from the previous administration. Case is closed.” Predictably, the drumbeat from the Bush team was reproduced with zero distortion from the always reliable media. While Fox News’ Sean Hannity made the argument during the November 2002 mid-term election “this president — you know and I know and everybody knows — inherited a recession,” CNN made the case for him two months earlier. On September 18th, 2002, CNN’s John King announced, “That’s why the president, in almost every speech, tries to remind voters he inherited a recession.” Five days later, his colleague Suzanne Malveaux regurgitated the same line, reporting, “[Bush] took up that very issue earlier today, saying — reminding voters that the administration inherited the recession.” To be sure, the Republican propaganda effort worked its magic. In 2004 , pollster Geoff Garin showed that 62% of Americans believed the demonstrably false claim that an “economic recession actually began during Bill Clinton’s administration, before George W. Bush took office.” As we fast forward to 2009, George W. Bush and his echo chamber continue to perpetuate the same myth. During his final press conference , President Bush sidestepped the fact he had presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in modern presidential history, insisting, “In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.” And on Thursday , his faithful flack Ari Fleischer regurgitated the same talking point: “We’ve never in this country had 55 straight months of job creation. We had that under President Bush before the bank failures of September…You know, I think he came in with a recession, he left with a recession.” Months before Barack Obama was even elected President, conservative mouthpieces began propagating the “Obama Bear Market” myth , claiming that his supposed “socialism” would “tank the market.” Now, with the Dow around 12,800, a gain of well over 50% since Obama took the oath of office, Republicans are predictably silent. The first installment of the Republicans’ “previsionist” history unsurprisingly came from CNBC host and former Reagan advisor Larry Kudlow . That right-wing water carrier, who in April 2008 compared the deepening recession to an enema (calling it “an economic cleansing” and crowing that ” recessions are therapeutic “), blamed a one-day 242-point drop on the Democratic Convention: “Are the Denver Dems downing the stock market today? The Dow is off 230 points, starting right from the get-go. So-called market analysts are blaming financials and the credit crunch as they always do. But there’s more. Obama and Biden gave us plenty of class warfare in their Springfield, Ill., get together on Saturday. Tax the rich. Redistribute income and wealth. Go after all those corporate meanies. Trade protection… …With the Denver Dems strutting their stuff, this could be a bumpy week for stocks. Did anyone say free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity?” With Obama’s election on November 4th , that warning shot turned into a barrage. Within 48 hours, the mullahs of right-wingistan didn’t merely blame Obama for two days of market declines; they traveled back in time to lay the entire Bush recession at his feet. Echoing CNBC’s Kudlow, Dick Morris claimed the markets will “continue to tank…not just because he’s a radical, not just because he’s a Democrat, but because he’s going to raise the capital gains tax. While Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson announced, “there’s a lot of feeling in the market not reacting very well to the election of Barack Obama,” Fred Barnes proclaimed, “There is great uncertainty out there about [Obama's] policies.” And that Thursday, the always execrable Rush Limbaugh on November 6, 2008 laid it all at Obama’s feet: “The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn’t done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street… …The market’s down today because of the jobless numbers. That’s how the Drive-Bys see it. Uhhhhh, we have the largest market plunge after an election in history. Thank you, man-child Barack Obama.” As the Dow Jones continued its slide below 7,000 in March, 2009, the conservative catcalls become a chorus. CNN’s Lou Dobbs , the self-proclaimed “Mr. Independent,” announced on March 9, 2009, “This is now the Obama bear market.” That same day, the Wall Street Journal declared, “The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.” House Minority Leader John Boehner was among the Republican leaders bemoaning “the Obama economy” and insisted that since Obama’s inauguration six weeks earlier, “Certainly the stock market hasn’t acted very well.” Later that month, the Journal’s Daniel Henninger blasted Obama’s “radical presidency”: “A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti- Main Street.” The drumbeat hardly ended there . On March 8, 2009, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked an uncomfortable John McCain, “Can this now fairly be called the Obama bear market?” That propaganda only echoed the Republican talking points regurgitated two days earlier by Bloomberg in article titled, “‘Obama Bear Market’ Punishes Investors as Dow Slumps” and the Wall Street Journal rant, “Obama’s Radicalism is Killing the Dow.” On March 6th, Sean Hannity was nearly orgasmic as he trumpeted the declines on Wall Street: And our headline this Friday night: Welcome to Day Number 46 of “Obama’s Bear Market.” Now, that’s what some news organizations are calling it tonight as the Dow Jones industrial average actually finished up about 30 points today at the end of a disastrous week. According to Bloomberg News, the Dow has now dropped faster during the first six weeks of the Obama administration than any other administration in at least 90 years. But is that a surprise after weeks of talking down the economy? But then a funny thing happened on the way to the Obama poor house: the stock market started its steady, upward swing. But for the conservative commentariat, of course, credit for that progress did not go to President Obama. On April 18, 2009 , Fox News displayed an on-screen caption proclaiming, “Stocks Rally as ‘Tea Party’ Rallies Take Nation by Storm. Host Brenda Buttner described the surge on Wall Street as ” a Tea Party rally .” As Media Matters recounted: Buttner later asked Bulls & Bears commentator Gary B. Smith: “[P]art of the tea party was having voices heard. For so long, all we were hearing about was nationalizing banks and socialism and all that. Just having this out there, does that help Wall Street? Does that help the bulls?” Smith responded: “Absolutely, Brenda. You know, first of all, you heard for so many weeks and months that, you know, the whole country, you know, Obama won overwhelmingly, and it looked like, you know, we were going to go lockstep down this, you know, this socialist path.” He continued: “And then we started having these tea parties,” which, according to Smith, “shows that … the normal, average American is just kind of sick of all the, you know, the tax-and-spend culture.” He concluded: “So, I think it’s all a good thing, and I think that it’s helped the rally.” But it was Neil Cavuto of the Fox Business Channel who takes the cake for trying to claim that, well, black is white. As the Dow soared past 10,000 last October , Cavuto asked: What was once the Bush recession is now the Bush recovery? And it hardly ends there. On his March 18, 2010 show, Larry Kudlow asked CNBC’s Jim Cramer about his belief that “Obamacare will topple the stock market.” Since then, the Dow has jumped another 2.1%. But with George W. Bush in the White House in April 2007 , Kudlow expressed a different view of what the Wall Street’s performance said about presidential leadership on the economy. Paul Krugman helpfully recalled Kudlow’s words: “I have long believed that stock markets are the best barometer of the health, wealth and security of a nation. And today’s stock market message is an unmistakable vote of confidence for the president.” Unless, of course , the President is a Democrat . And so it goes. With their magical calendar, Republicans turn Democratic triumphs into victories for the GOP and conservative fiascos into liberal ones. But the tendency to appropriate credit and deflect blame may go deeper. After all, in the wake of his Bay of Pigs disaster, John F. Kennedy addressed the nation to make clear the fault was his alone. “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan,” Kennedy said, adding, “I am the responsible officer of the government.” Asked 43 years later in the wake of his WMD debacle in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib scandal if he could name a single mistake he had made, Bin Laden’s supposed killer George W. Bush responded : “I’m sure something will pop into my head here…maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.” Bush need not have worried. As his supporters are only too happy to claim, according to the Republicans’ magic calendar, any mistake that occurred during his term was doubtless the fault of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
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A report says a third of Africans are now middle class. Their interests coincide with the interests of the poor and should help to bring about change One in three Africans are middle class. Or are they? A new report from the African Development Bank says: 34%, or 313 million Africans are now middle class (living on $2-$20 a day), after several decades without any change, a jump from 27% in 2000. A similar report by the Asia Development Bank (pdf) last year found something similar in the data and noted that 56% of people in developing Asia lived at the $2-$20 a day level (all figures purchasing power parity ). This is all good news. However, is someone living on just over $2 a day “middle class”? Two dollars is the average poverty line for developing countries, meaning you’re poor or middle class – but what about in between? There are various definitions of middle class in what is a burgeoning area of interest for poverty reduction research – stimulated perhaps by ideas about the middle classes as change-makers or catalysts. Think about the middle classes who voted with the poor for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president in Brazil, or the vibrant civil society of India that brings together the poor and middle-class activists (or possibly even the middle classes who are the protesters in the Middle East). There are at least five reasons why the middle classes (variously defined) might matter for poverty reduction. First, as small business owners their potential to hire employees. Second, their higher disposable income, a share of which could be saved and invested domestically. Third, their higher demand has potential to drive economic growth and attracts private investment. Fourth, their investment in human capital for children potentially leads to higher participation in education and a larger pool of skilled labour. And fifth, they’re more likely to hold the government accountable for decisions. In terms of evidence, development economist William Easterly (pdf) finds empirical evidence linking the middle classes and economic growth, and E Sridharan , from the University of Pennsylvania, outlines the role of the Indian middle class in promoting reform. The World Bank’s Martin Ravallion (pdf) also provides evidence that empirically links a middle class to growth and poverty reduction. He notes: “Countries starting out with a small middle class judged by developing country rather than western standards [$2-$13 a day per capita] face a handicap in promoting growth and poverty reduction, though this too is largely accountable to differences in the incidence of poverty.” This means – taking this definition of poor and middle class (there is no in-between) – at any given mean consumption, the countries with lower poverty will have a large middle class and see higher subsequent rates of both growth and poverty reduction. In the middle-class work there are a range of definitions: some relative – the middle class as the middle 60% of consumption expenditure; and some absolute – the middle classes as those living on a range of scales between $2-$100 a day, (a global middle class). More fundamentally, any definition of the middle class needs to be clear about the extent to which the middle class “starts” at the point where poverty “ends”, or whether there is an implicit distance between the characteristics of the poor and the middle class that would suggest a rather clearer demarcation. But at what point does saving start? At what point does consumption of non-essentials, such as mobile phones, start? MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo point out, the middle classes are: likely to be less connected to agriculture; more likely to be engaged in small business activities; and benefit from formal sector employment, with a weekly or monthly salary, which enables them to adopt a longer-term perspective towards their finances. However, in contrast to the rather idealised image of the middle class as “risk-taking entrepreneurs”, Banerjee and Duflo highlight empirical evidence showing that many businesses operate at low profits or fail to experience significant growth. What about the idea of a catalytic class ? This is the idea: the catalytic class is a group, whose expansion triggers internally driven, self-sustaining, political and economic change, a group whose exertion of pressure for better governance and economic reform leads to change when the class hits a certain size (in population or economic or tax revenue size). The interests of this class coincide with the interests of the poor. As noted in the Globe and Mail , the catalyst class (a) has an interest in accountability because they pay more taxes; (b) probably don’t work for the state and thus don’t see their loyalty and interests tied to the status quo; (c) have parents who led quite different consumption lifestyles to them; (d) probably have internet (cafe) access and cell phones; and (e) want “open business conditions, fair and honourable contracts, and a route to employment unclotted by corruption”. That sounds more like the middle class to me. Andy Sumner Nancy Birdsall guardian.co.uk
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enlarge This is something I couldn’t quite put my finger on until I read this , and it explains a lot. Rank-and-file Democrats simply do not indoctrinate themselves with liberal ideology the way the conservative base does with wingnut wisdom. That makes them distinctly more susceptible to the whole “split the difference” mentality so beloved of our bipartisan-loving Democratic leadership, and it puts progressives at a distinct disadvantage. So what are we going to do about it? Matthew Yglesias flags the latest Pew survey , which attempts to provide a political typology to describe the different ideological groups that reside in each party. Looking at the extent to which Democrats are divided on social issues and immigration, Yglesias notes the ideological asymmetry between Democrats and Republicans: This is a big contrast from the structure of opinion among Republican loyalists, who are pretty uniformly rightwing. A Republican politician starts with a base of conservatives, and then needs to add some less conservative people. By contrast, while some Democrats have a base of “solid liberals” many don’t. And nationwide, the solid liberals aren’t just a minority of the country, they’re a minority of the Democratic Party base vote. What’s more, it’s not just that the Republican Party contains more conservatives than the Democratic Party contains liberals but that “solid liberals” are less intense in their preferences than their conservative equivalences . If you compare Pew’s typology groups on “Politics & Elections” and particularly, “support for compromise,” you’ll find that 70 percent of solid liberals like elected officials who “compromise with those they disagree with.” By contrast, only 17 percent of “staunch conservatives” agree. The rest — or at least, 79 percent — prefer elected officials who stick to their positions.
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First black man to stand for office in Russia leaves pro-Kremlin party claiming its policies are acting as a brake on democracy His business as a watermelon farmer and his promise to “toil like a negro” played to the worst stereotypes, but the man nicknamed Russia’s Barack Obama seemed to offer a breath of fresh air when he ran for office on a pro-Kremlin ticket two years ago. Now, Joaquim Crima has dealt a blow to the image of Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party by resigning from it with a scathing letter to the Russian prime minister, saying that the party is ” acting as a brake on our country’s road to democratisation “. Crima, 38, originally from Guinea Bissau, was the first black man in Russia to stand for public office when he put himself forward in district elections in Srednyaya Akhtuba, in the southern Volgograd region. At the time, he praised Putin as an “excellent person, and a serious figure on the world stage” and said he wanted to follow the premier’s example and go into politics with United Russia. Crima, known locally as Vasily Ivanovich, came a disappointing third in the local poll in 2009, but his progressive electoral promises and his skin colour won him the Obama nickname and extensive coverage in the nationwide press. Putin met him last year and praised him for repairing a village road. In a letter to the premier published online yesterday, however, the businessman said he was quitting United Russia because it had failed to raise state salaries or cut food prices and was “turning more and more into a party of bureaucrats”. The announcement came at a particularly embarrassing time for Putin, who arrived in Volgograd today to chair a United Russia conference. Crima told Putin he was particularly disappointed that party bosses had refused last summer to help him send 20 tons of free watermelons to people in villages near Moscow that had been damaged by fire. “In the end they just rotted,” he wrote. To make matters worse, Crima has defected to Fair Russia, a political party set up by the Kremlin that has shown occasional signs of slipping its leash. Russia Europe Vladimir Putin Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s ultimatum widens rift between leaders and increases pressure on president An unprecedented power struggle at the heart of the Iranian regime has intensified after it emerged that the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had given an ultimatum to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to accept his intervention in a cabinet appointment or resign. A member of the Iranian parliament, Morteza Agha-Tehrani – who is described as “Ahmadinejad’s moral adviser” – told a gathering of his supporters on Friday that a meeting between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei had recently taken place, in which the president was given a deadline to resign or to accept the decision of the ayatollah. The extraordinary confrontation came to light after Ahmadinejad declined to officially support Khamenei’s reinstatement of a minister whom the president had initially asked to resign. The rift between the two men grew when the president staged an 11-day walkout in an apparent protest at Khamenei’s decision. In the first cabinet meeting since ending his protest, the intelligence minister at the centre of the row, Heydar Moslehi, was absent and in the second one on Wednesday, he was reportedly asked by Ahmadinejad to leave. In a video released on Iranian websites, Agha-Tehrani quotes Ahmadinejad as saying: “[Khamenei] gave me a deadline to make up my mind. I would either accept [the reinstatement] or resign.” Although Khamenei is not constitutionally allowed to intervene in cabinet appointments, an unwritten law requires all officials to always abide by the supreme leader without showing any opposition. Clerics close to Khamenei have launched a campaign to highlight his role in Iranian politics, saying that to disobey him is equal to apostasy, as he is “God’s representative on earth”. Meanwhile, the president was reportedly absent from religious ceremonies this week at Khamenei’s house, where he was publicly criticised by close allies of the ayatollah. Iranian officials are traditionally required to participate in such ceremonies in order to cover up any political rift that might compromise Khamenei’s power. Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Thursday that several members of parliament had revived a bid to summon Ahmadinejad for questioning over “the recent events”. It said 90 MPs had signed the petition, up from only 12 last week. Under Iranian law, at least 85 more signatures are required for a possible impeachment of the president. Supporters of Khamenei say that Ahmadinejad is surrounded by “deviants” in his inner circle, including his controversial chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei , who wants to undermine the involvement of clerics in Iran’s politics. Mashaei and his allies have recently been accused of using supernatural powers and invoking djinns (spirits) in pursuing the government’s policies. On Thursday, the commander of the powerful revolutionary guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying: “People [close to Khamenei] are not relying on djinns, fairies and demons … and they will not stand any deviation [of the government in this regime].” Iran’s elite revolutionary guards, who played an important role in securing Ahmadinejad a second term in Iran’s 2009 “rigged” elections, have distanced themselves from Ahmadinejad in recent months as Mashaei’s “secular” views have become more pronounced. In the face of these recent confrontation with Khamenei, Ahmadinejad has been left isolated, with only a handful of serious supporters.Iran’s opposition, exhausted by the brutal crackdown of the green movement and the placing of its leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi under house arrest in the past 80 days, has found itself watching these recent developments and wondering what will happen next. Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Middle East Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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EU to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions on Syrian officials involved in operation which has killed 500 people The EU agreed on Friday to impose sanctions on Syria next week to step up pressure on the regime as it persisted with its violent crackdown on protesters, killing at least 16 during a “day of defiance”. European countries will formally announce the sanctions on Monday, imposing asset freezes and travel restrictions on top Syrian officials involved in a seven-week crackdown that has killed more than 500 by some estimates. The crackdown has tested the courage of protesters and some in the movement had warned that it might even break their resolve. But many thousands turned out in 65 towns and cities across the country on Friday, according to activists. Video footage from several cities showed large crowds chanting “the people want to topple the regime” and “the martyr is loved by God”. Perhaps the biggest protest was reported in the south, in the town of Jassem, close to the troubled city of Deraa. One video purportedly from the town showed thousands gathering and calling out “He who kills his people is a traitor” and “We sacrifice our blood and souls for you Deraa”. State media have reported that the army is ending its military operation in Deraa, but the city is still shut off. A 15-member delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross was allowed rare access to the city on Thursday. The UN said it had persuaded Syria to allow its teams to check on humanitarian conditions after the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, personally called the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Death tolls have been hard to quantify. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least six people had been shot dead after security forces opened fire in Homs and Hama. The National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria put the toll at 16 people nationwide. Syrian state television said an army officer and four policemen were shot dead by a “criminal gang” in Homs. The regime also moved to round up prominent activists. Dissident and former political prisoner Riad Seif was arrested in the Damascus area of Midan, where protests broke out for the third week in a row. “My father was shoved into a bus with other protesters who were detained during the demonstration near the al-Hassan mosque,” his daughter Jumana told Reuters. As long as no member state objects, the EU’s decision to impose asset freezes and travel bans will go into effect next week. Like the US sanctions imposed last week they do not target Assad himself. Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist living in Damascus Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East European Union Europe Katherine Marsh guardian.co.uk
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White House says US is being ‘extremely vigilant’ after al-Qaida declares Bin Laden’s death a curse on the US Al-Qaida has vowed to carry out revenge attacks on the US and its allies over the killing of Osama bin Laden, warning that celebrations in the west would be replaced by sorrow and blood. The statement on a jihadist website was the first by al-Qaida since Bin Laden’s death, which it said would become “a curse that hunts the Americans and their collaborators, and chases them outside and inside their country”. The 11-paragraph statement, dated Tuesday, confirmed that Bin Laden was dead, damping down conspiracy theorists who refuse to believe he has been killed. The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said of the al-Qaida statement: “We are aware of it. What it does, obviously, is acknowledge the obvious, which is that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday night by US forces. “We’re being extremely vigilant. We’re quite aware of the potential for activity and are highly vigilant on that matter for that reason. “US security, both at home and at embassies and bases overseas, has been on high alert since Sunday.” The department of homeland security (DHS) has warned US train operators to be especially careful after officials said that among computers, hard discs and other material taken from the Abbottabad compound they found a vague plan to attack the US rail network on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. One proposal was to demolish part of a rail track so that a train would fall into a river or valley, according to US officials. The White House spokesman said: “One of the things we saw, I think, was the notice that DHS put out with regard to the information collected about the consideration at least of a terrorist plot against American railways back in February of 2010. The fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist might have been considering further terror plots against the United States is not a surprise, but it reminds us, of course, that we need to remain ever vigilant.” Carney was accompanying Barack Obama on a trip to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of fast-response special operations teams, where he was to meet the men who carried out the Abbottabad raid. Carney was guarded on the details of what the White House said would be a private meeting. “What I can say is that he is meeting with special operators, some special operators who were involved in that. But that is all I can say.” In its statement, al-Qaida said: “We stress that the blood of the holy warrior sheikh Osama bin Laden, God bless him, is precious to us and to all Muslims and will not go in vain. We will remain, God willing, a curse chasing the Americans and their agents, following them outside and inside their countries. “Soon, God willing, their happiness will turn to sadness their blood will be mingled with their tears.” It said Bin Laden’s death would not deflect al-Qaida from its war against the US and its allies, who include the Pakistan government. It called on Pakistan to rise up against the “traitors”. The discovery of Bin Laden’s hideaway so close to the capital, Islamabad, has strained relations between the US and Pakistan. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate armed services committee and a Democrat, ordered an investigation into whether the Pakistan government and intelligence services knew of his whereabouts. “We need these questions about whether or not the top level of the Pakistan government knew or was told by the ISI, their intelligence service, about anything about this suspicious activity for years in a very, very centralised place,” Levin said. Levin, who is usually guarded in his public statements, hinted that he believed some senior figures in Pakistani intelligence knew where Bin Laden was hiding – comments that will further inflame the Pakistan government. “I think at high levels – high levels being the intelligence service – they knew it,” Levin said. “I can’t prove it. I just think it’s counter-intuitive not to.” He raised doubts about continuing the billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan, which requires congressional approval. The Obama administration so far has been reluctant to criticise the Pakistani government and has opted instead to stress the positive aspects of their ties. The strategy seems to be to try to use Pakistan’s embarrassment to prise out other al-Qaida or Taliban figures who may be living in Pakistan, such as the Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. United Nations human rights investigators have called on Washington to disclose whether there had been any plan to capture Bin Laden. While they acknowledged the difficulties involved in such terrorist-related missions, they raised questions about the legality of the killing. The UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, and the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, said the US “should disclose the supporting facts to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards”. “For instance, it will be particularly important to know if the planning of the mission allowed an effort to capture Bin Laden.” There has been relatively little debate in the US so far about the legality of the raid. Osama bin Laden al-Qaida Obama administration Global terrorism Barack Obama United States US politics Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Credit: Think Progress [Photo via Judd Legum at ThinkProgress ] Seems there was a very good reason Tim Pawlenty decided not to show up for that pre-debate Tea Party rally in Greenville, S.C., last night: It was being run by some of the wingnuttiest, far-right elements in America : According to [its] official program, the pre-debate “Freedom Rally” is sponsored by several extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers militia group and the radical anti-communist John Birch Society. You can see a picture of the program here . And the speakers were straight out of casting central for rattle-eyed nutcases — right along side GOP stalwarts like their new governor: The rally also featured a cadre of high profile speakers, including Judge Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who lost his job after refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, and Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first female governor. Yep, that would be the same Roy Moore who flirted with a presidential bid under the banner of the militia-friendly/far-right Constitution Party. And while the local press reported that Haley “fired up” the Tea Partiers while mostly sticking to “policy issues” in her speech , she couldn’t help brushing up against the nutcases everywhere she turned: She followed John Birch Society president John McManus, who equated neo-conservatives with socialists, and Greenville Republican activist Dan Herren, who urged the tea party to try to work within the GOP to make it more conservative. On top of that, she spoke with that huge Oath Keepers banner right behind her. That’s one of the rally’s chief sponsors — and it’s one of the most bizarre, paranoid and extreme — not to mention potentially dangerous — of the Tea Party factions. After all, let’s recall the 10 points that Oath Keepers proclaim as their oath: 1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people. 2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people. 3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal. 4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state. 5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty. 6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps. 7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext. 8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.” 9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies. 10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances. As Mark Potok of the SPLC told Bill O’Reilly : But the reality about the group is that what it’s really about is the fear that martial law is about to be imposed, that Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps, that foreign troops are going to be put down on American soil. The Oath Keepers says specifically, we will not obey these orders, we will refuse orders to put Americans into concentration camps. Now, is that dangerous? It seems to me the danger is that these are men and women, in the case of police officers, who are given a real power over the rest of us, sometimes the power of life and death. They make very important decisions. And if these men and women are animated by the idea that, you know, foreign forces are about to come into this country and put us under martial law and throw us all into concentration camps, I think there is a certain danger associated with that. … They’re operating on the basis on crazy theories that may cause one of them to draw a gun one day. The Oath Keepers are also extensively involved in the Tea Party movement , having helped co-sponsor their national convention in Tennessee last year, as well as a host of local Tea Party gatherings, such as that full-bore Patriot gathering I attended in Montana. Then there’s the John Birch Society — whose paranoiac fantasies spun over many long decades have given birth to many of the paranoid fears trotted out by folks like the Oath Keepers and Alex Jones: they’re the true godfathers of American right-wing extremism, and the true godfathers of the Tea Party movement as well. Rachel Maddow exposed them a little while back and they didn’t like it one bit. That’s too bad: after all, the Tea Partiers often betray their true Bircher lineage in polls, as well as in the overt agenda of their movement leaders. Indeed, movement icons like Glenn Beck promote Bircherite conspiracy theories on Fox News. In the past year, it seems, they’ve become mainstream Republican again. Which tells you just how insane the Right really has become.
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