The Harrogate Agenda – direct democracy, part IV Sunday 5 August 2012  Coming to another milestone on our journey of discovery, we reach yet another facet of direct democracy, the idea of Referism, the central tenet of which is the annual referendum on the budget. The deeper issue, though, is one of power at its most fundamental. Power is an indivisible part of sovereignty and, in modern governance, power is money. As long as government controls the purse-strings and can call off cash without democratic restraint, the people cannot be sovereign. When I first introduced the concept in May 2011, though, many people exposed to it reacted with horror. Some, manifestly, were opposed to the very idea that ordinary people should control decide on taxation and levels of government spending. Others were concerned that the majority would always vote for increased spending – despite thelimited evidence to the contrary. Still others expressed their worries that, if the people did vote against a budget, government would be left without essential funds – even though there could be transitional arrangements to ensure that spending commitments were honoured. In practical terms, there should be no problem in having a fixed date for a referendum well before the financial year for which each budget applied. If a budget was then rejected, there should be enough time for governments to resubmit, and again seek approval. If a budget was again rejected, and it was too late to resubmit before the start of a financial year, there could – for example – be a system where permitted income stood at eighty percent of the previous year's figure, with adjustments made once a budget was approved. All sorts of variations are then possible, with even a provision for mandatory resignation of any government which fails to gain approval of its budget after three attempts. As to the mechanics of budget referendums, it was our own Sandy Rham who suggested that the software on current lottery terminals could be adapted to allow their use as voting terminals. A system that handles £6.5 billion in annual sales could very easily handle 40 million or so votes. Add an online facility and you have a quick, cheap system of conducting referendums. Such a system is not only desirable but also necessary. If one looks the current situation, it is hard to accept that we have anything that approaches democracy. As it stands, both at local and central level, the politicians decide how much they are going to spend, and how much we are to pay them. We are never consulted, and have no means directly of affecting their decisions. The way the system is supposed to work is that, if we disagree with the decisions taken, we hold our elected representatives to account at elections – i.e., after the event. But can anyone really assert that the election process is any barrier to the ever-increasing government expenditure and control? Thus does Witterings from Witneyremind us that we need a form of restraint, a mechanism we can apply before the event. Slapping the politicians' wrists after they have wasted our money really isn't good enough. The key, though, is on that phrase "our money", and therein lies one of the most important aspects referism. The government does not have any money of its own. It spends our money. And, if it wants our money, it should tell us how much it needs and why it needs it. Then, not only should government (local and central) be required to ask for their money, we should have the ability to say "no". Anything short of that simply isn't democracy. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/08/2012 |
Eurocrash – theatre of the absurd Sunday 5 August 2012  For as long as I can remember, I have been warning that much of what is happening on the euro front is pure theatre, designed for effect rather than reflecting any particular version of reality. However, even when in recent times, it has become so very obvious that we were seeing theatricals, there has been a tendency for media and other commentators to take events at face value. For once, though, a newspaper is standing back from the fray and describing the current run of events as the "euro summer theatre". Needless to say, this is not a British newspaper, but Welt am Sonntag, which also identifies two "camps" of players in the ongoing drama. In the one camp, known as the "alarmists", the paper has IMF chief Christine Lagarde, euro group chief Jean-Claude Juncker, and ECB chief Mario Draghi. Alarmists, we are told, like to make dramatic warnings before major meetings, usually combined with a call for new billions to combat the crisis. The prime example is Mario Monti. Before the June EU Council, he warned that there must be easier access to bailout funds, otherwise "the euro would go to hell". In the opposing camp, according to Welt am Sonntag, are the "appeasers", Federal Reserve Chairman Jens Weidmann, Chancellor Angela Merkel and federal finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. This group is defined by its reluctance to spray funds around and for its emphasis on reform. Another way of looking at the split one between tranzies and nationals, the former very much talking up the "beneficial" crisis, while the latter have to deal with the consequences. It is thus no coincidence that the tranzies should be alarmists. There may also be other ways of defining the groups, especially if we pull in other players. But what is important about this piece is the recognition of the theatrical component to the crisis. Much of the analyses we read would be greatly improved if their authors realised that we were being played by a group of actors seeking to promote their agendas rather than convey information. We are in many ways dealing with the theatre of the absurd - the trick is to sort the truth from the drama. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/08/2012 |
UN: Hypocrisy Я Us Sunday 5 August 2012  The perpetrator is no less than UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, the man who carried the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony, alongside such champions of human rights as Daniel Barenboim and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty. Doubtless the last thing on his mind, says Booker, was the peculiar role being played by his own personal representative in Iraq, a German diplomat named Martin Kobler. But Mr Kobler stands accused of conspiring with Iran (chief backer of the murderous regime in Syria) to commit a violation of rights so flagrant that it has been condemned, not just by politicians around the world, but by the UN's own human rights committee. The victims of this betrayal are 3,000 Iranian dissidents who lived for 30 years in a neat little town they built in the Iraqi desert, known as Camp Ashraf, an issue Booker has visited before. This time, however, the Daily Mail has reported on the issue, giving a platform to David Amess, a Tory MP, and a member of the Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom. He is asking for Kobler to be replaced. The situation, Booker reminds us, stems from after 1979 when the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI) fled from their country's tyranny, subsequently coming to be regarded by the Tehran mullahs as their chief enemies. However, trusting in the good faith of the US government and assurances made to them about their safety, the PMOI surrendered their arms in 2003 and accepted the designated as "asylum seekers" under the Geneva Convention. After the US departure in 2009, though, the US assurances turned out to be hollow. Without any formal protest from the US State Department, Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, invited Iran's Revolutionary Guards to join him in laying siege to Ashraf, with the stated intention that its residents would be deported to Iran, to face imprisonment or execution. After a series of violent assaults on the town, in which 47 people were killed and hundreds injured, a deal was brokered last year by Kobler, acting for the Ban-Ki-Moon, whereby the residents would be transferred to a former US army base outside Baghdad, Camp Liberty. The declared plan was that the PMOI members would then be moved to safety in other countries, although the first 2,000 residents who arrived at Liberty now claim they are victims of a hideous trick. They were herded into what both the EU parliament and the UN's human rights committee have described as a concrete-walled prison, robbed of their belongings, deprived of water, food, electricity and medical supplies, and harassed night and day by armed Iraqi and Iranian guards. Perversely, the camp commandant was one Colonel Saddeq – indicted, in Spain, for his involvement in the earlier massacres at Ashraf. Furthermore, there is abundant evidence for the extraordinary role played in all this by Kobler. He has worked closely with the Iranians every step of the way, having personally told Struan Stevenson MEP, leader of the group on relations with Iraq in the European Parliament, that he wanted to see all the Ashraf residents housed in a Baghdad hotel, which turned out to be leased to the Iranian government. When, a few weeks ago, a group of 14 Iraqis unexpectedly arrived at the EU parliament to discuss Ashraf with Stevenson's group, among them was Col Saddeq – who, on Stevenson's insistence, was barred from entering the building. What is particularly odd about this story is that, on one side, the cause of the PMOI has won support from a remarkable array of public figures in Europe and the US, including a former head of the CIA; former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani; General David Phillips, former head of the US Military Police (who signed those personal guarantees to the Ashraf residents in 2003); and literally thousands of senators, MPs, MEPs and former ministers. Some of these, including Mr Stevenson, recently spoke on the betrayal of Ashraf to a rally of more than 100,000 Iranian exiles in Paris. On the other hand, the US State Department and our own Government continue to appease Tehran over the PMOI, as they have done for over a decade. Oddest of all is the part played in this tragedy by the personal representative of Ban Ki-moon, who is so happy to pose at the Olympic Stadium and elsewhere as a leading champion of human rights. But not only is he blind to the complicity of his own representative in murder, Moon's latest stunt is to demand that the remaining 1,200 Iranian refugees at Camp Ashraf should "follow orders" and allow themselves to be "resettled" in Camp Liberty. Iraqi National Security Adviser Faleh al-Fayadh has warned the group to move soon or his government will take matters into its own hands, yet the PMOI's offer to pay for improvements to pay for improvements at Camp Liberty have been rejected. The problem, says the group, is that the government of Iraq receives all of its orders on Ashraf from the Iranian regime which is, says Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based spokesman for the group, "planning for the third massacre in Ashraf". But never mind. That nice Mr Ban-Ki-Moon can keep his hands clean, prancing around the London Olympics more than a thousand miles distant from the murder he so carelessly allows his representative to sanction. A few more deaths to add to the account obviously doesn't matter. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/08/2012 |
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