Sim-O

via Liberal Conspiracy

Well, it’s only day two of the Copenhagen Climate Conference, and already it all seems to be going wrong, a leaked draft treaty that concentrates power in the hands of the rich nations! Could you make this up?

It seems that the world leaders are failing us in a big way, but this is hardly unsurprising. In the last blog, I highlighted the fact that there are too many vested interests that stand to lose large amounts of money, and this is borne out by the attempt to push through a deal that will mean the developing world has to bear the brunt of emission reductions. Of course, this is the only logical thing to do for western big business, as it is obvious that their profits simply cannot exist alongside business practices that treat the climate with respect. Capitalism and the natural environment are simply not compatible.

The question is, where do we go from here? Just yesterday, we heard the conference chairperson, in the opening speach, telling us that this is the last best chance to make an agreement on cutting emissions, yet a day later the only agreement on the table will merely protect the profits of a tiny minority. That the fate of mankind is left in the hands of those who apparently represent us is a farce… We don’t just need disobedience, as Naomi Klein has called for, we need something that will revolutionise the way that we run the world economy…

Two students, one a great friend of mine,  from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands are cycling from the Hague to Copenhagen, raising awareness of the threat of climate change along the way. To make it more difficult, they are doing it on dutch granny bikes! They are relying on locals putting them up on the way, and are doing it on a shoe-string budget.

Follow them and send the messages of support!!

Their aim is to get to Copenhagen to for the demonstrations at the farce that is to be the latest Climate Change summit.

The UK send off demonstration is Saturday December 5th in London, meeting in Grovesnor Square at 12pm, to encircle Parliament later in the afternoon. We need to urge our governments to do more, but unfortunately it seems as though they are unable to fight the interests of the oil companies and big business.

This is unlikely to happen within the current economic system. The threat of reduced profits means that rich nations are unable to reach an agreement with the developing world on reducing emissions. Markets need to be protected, companies need to remain ‘competitive’, profits rates upheld, and the system needs to grow. And grow, and grow.

However, even the planet has limits – it cannot support limitless growth, but the system is unable to function without it, so we keep heading down the path of environmental destruction full speed ahead. We know how to stop it, but are we strong enough to put on the brakes?

Just a quicky about a couple of tweets from Nadine Dorries.

From the surrounding tweets, Nadine is arguing against the governments drugs policy, and how effective it is. I don’t know the exact argument but you don’t need to here as the statements made by Nadine are absolutely ridiculous and even I could do better.

http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6168531952

Lamb made the point that based on statistics, alcohol is more serious than drugs. I’ve never seen anyone selling booze at a school gate.

Can you guess the reason Nadine has never seen anyone selling booze at a school gate? Could it be something to do with shops and pubs? Kids aren’t stupid, why would they be risk getting into trouble by buying booze from a dodgy bloke outside school in full view of the authorities (teachers and other people that will report them) when they can just as easily get lashed on drink bought by themselves or their older looking mates from an off-licence?

http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6168961615

I’ve never heard of anyone stabbing or murdering someone or trafficking for a drink and our Prisons aren’t full of alcoholics.

The MP for Mid-Beds has never heard of drink dealers stabbing and murdering each other because the criminal element has been taken out of the system. The business of selling alcohol has been put into the hands of proper, licenced business men. The role of contraband booze has been left with the the small guy that does a booze cruise and sells to his mates or the big criminal gangs that make counterfiet vodka. The role of the nasty vicous bastards you get in the middle of the drugs trade is non-existant because you either need lots of equipment and time and an investment and the demand for hooky booze is negligible and so not enough money in it. Drugs are easy money.
Prisons also may not be bursting at the seams with alcoholics, but you can’t walk around a prison for very long with out bumping in someone with a problem…

Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of (a) the number and (b) the proportion of prisoners diagnosed with alcohol problems in each prison in England and Wales, in each of the last 10 years. [265702]

Mr. Hanson: A number of studies have provided a picture of the alcohol-related problems experienced by those entering prisons:

Research(1) carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 1997 stated that 63 per cent. of sentenced males and 39 per cent. of sentenced females reported a hazardous drinking pattern in the year before coming into prison. This figure rises to 70 per cent. in the case of young adult offenders. The numbers who are physically dependent on alcohol, which can be defined as those who need alcohol detoxification (Tiers 3 and 4 of Models of Care for Alcohol Misusers (MoCAM)), are much lower at around 8 per cent. of females and 7 per cent. of males.

The Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SCPR) study(2), a large national longitudinal survey of newly sentenced adult prisoners, reported in 2008 that 36 per cent. of the sample could be classified as heavy drinkers. However, heavy drinking—defined as drinking more than twice the recommended sensible daily limits—is not directly comparable to the hazardous drinking category used in the ONS report.

http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6169016126

Off licences don’t control housing estates and publicans don’t run brothels, control child prostitutes and fund trafficking from booze.

Would drug dealers be able to control housing estates and fund people trafficking from drugs if drugs were legal like booze? I strongly doubt they would.
I also doubt that drugs fund people trafficking and prostitution to as greater extent that is usually portrayed.
Criminals are in drugs and prostitution for the money. That’s why there isn’t a black market for alcohol as there is for drugs. Think about it. Why would you break the law for lots of work, lots of hassle and no reward? Are criminals using prostitution as a loss-leader, like Tesco does with milk? Of course not.

The points above are supposed to be argueing in favour of stricter, harsher drug laws. They fail completely.

Mid-Beds, this is your MP. Please learn from your mistake at the next election.

Oh, and drugs are bad, mmkay?

Update:
Two more posts on the same set of Dorries tweets, the first from JDC325 who has more detail on the figures and stuff, and the second (via JDC325) from Mark Reckons which contains this nugget of comedy…

[Nadine tweets:] When I visited a womens prison, 100% of inmates were in for drugs related offences. 100%

As El_Cuevro tweeted, HM Prison Service says that 33% of female prisoners are in for drug offences. Nadine’s figure of 100% can only be because she must have visited a drug offenders institution.

In a recent debate at Kings College on the future of capitalism, Martin Wolf, one of the main proponents of global capitalism, and principal economic spokesperson for the City, argued that we can not easily change the nature of global wealth inequality, as people in the developed world would not be prepared to give up what they already have. In a defence of capitalism, and in response to one of the questions from the floor, he challenged the audience as to whether they would all be prepared to give up half of everything they owned for redistribution to poorer countries.

http://www.youtube.com/user/adycousins#p/u/7/hYpHLnlUrFg

The argument that in order to achieve any kind of large structural change to the economy there must be a trade off against current standards of living is one that is very popular in capitalist circles, and often repeated, yet it hides the real structural factors that prevent any meaningful change. This type of argument is even used by those who see capitalism as merely a least worst system, but who cannot envisage any other way of challenging the status quo than ‘sharing’ the costs.

In the example of global poverty, we  (the general population) are asked to give up our current (modest) living standards to help others. However, this hides the real causes of global inequalities, such as  the production of goods based on profit rather than human need, the resources wasted on illegal and immoral wars and the reification of the financial sector over the productive sector.

Within developed countries like the US and UK, income inequality is already increasing, so the cuts are already happening to some extent:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/08/tax-system-reform-weath-inequality

Although not everywhere:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/21/executive-pay-bonuses-goldmansachs

The cuts that need to be made are not in the living standards of the population and public services (which compromise the social wage), but in the income of the wealthy, the bonuses of the bankers, nuclear weapons and war, and corporate profits. We need production to be realigned to meet human needs, and we need to stop pretending that gambling on stocks and shares contributes anything to society as a whole. We have the greatest productive capacity in the history of mankind, yet we are still unable to feed, clothe and shelter the world. We don’t need cuts in wages, jobs and production to help the capitalists cope with the financial crisis, we need them to accept cuts in their profits and their wages.

The same argument is seen with regards to climate change. We are told that we need to ‘reduce or energy consumption’, or pay higher prices if we don’t in order to cut global emissions.  We need to fly less, drive our cars less, use less power at home.

These mechanisms barely touch the tip of the iceberg, but are an ideological drip to prepare us for the higher prices and ‘trade-offs’ we will be forced to make in the future. Of course, when they say ‘we’ need to fly less , they don’t mean everyone. As fuel prices rise in the future, the poorest will suffer first.

But this trade-off, the acceptance that we must expect lower standards of living if we are to save the environment also hides the real structural factors that need to be tackled. Firstly, we need huge investment in green energy. We have the technology, but this would cut the profits of the current global energy companies, who will only invest in clean alternatives once they have squeezed every ounce of profit out of coal, gas and oil reserves.  As somebody once said, we need to make sure the shit doesn’t get into the pipe, not try and sieve it out once it has got into the water. We need to produce energy clean, not focus on just using less of it.

Secondly, we need cuts in the amount of SUV’s and oil guzzling over sized cars, in the number of cars in city centres, and of  government subsidies for car manufacturing industries. We need investment in public transport systems designed to fulfill the needs of the people, not the profits of the transport companies.  We need cuts in rail and bus fares,  not increases. We need to get rid of intellectual property rights and patents that prevent the spread and sharing of beneficial technology, and to renew commitments to global climate change agreements, and not worry if these cut into the profits of the minority.

We need cuts, but not the sort the City and Government have in mind!

I was a little surprised to find this paragraph in the Times…

The concentration of THC, the active compound, is much higher than in the past. But since no one has ever overdosed on marijuana, it’s difficult to say why that matters. Yes, if someone has a history of mental illness, it’s not that smart to experiment with the cannabinoid receptors in the brain. But it isn’t smart for such people to take any drugs — or too much alcohol — for that matter. For most people, stronger pot merely translates into a need for less of it to get the same effect. Too much and you’ll likely nod off — and wake up later with no hangover. If pubs served pot rather than beer, crime rates would plummet.

A newspaper, a Murdoch owned, big circulation newspaper writing some sense about cannabis. No scare story, no exageration, and it’s not a quote from some stoner, either. The reporter, Andrew Sullivan put those words together.

Lets see more of it, please.

BBC…

The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies.

Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C.

He accused ministers of devaluing and distorting evidence and said drugs classification was being politicised.

The home secretary said he had “lost confidence” in his advice and asked him to step down.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is the UK’s official drugs advisory body.

Following his sacking, Prof Nutt told the BBC he stood by his claim that cannabis should not be a Class B drug, based on its effects.

He described his sacking as a “serious challenge to the value of science in relation to the government”.

Problem solved.

There’s a report out today that shows how important grandmothers are in the early lives of children. I’m not sure about you, but it sounds complete bollox to me…

The importance of grandmothers in the lives of their grandchildren is underlined in a study published today.

But the research showed that it was only granddaughters who were likely to do better with their paternal grandmothers involved in their early lives. In contrast, the presence of paternal grandmothers had a detrimental effect on the survival of their grandsons.

The discovery supports the idea that grandmothers have played an important role in human evolution and could explain why human females – alone among the animal kingdom – live well beyond their reproductive age.

See what I mean? Just in that first bit there are a couple of things that raises suspicions.

1. The presence of a certain person that has no physical connection to a baby girl has a positive affect on the baby girl
2. The same person with the same relationship to a baby boy has exactly the opposite effect. Not just no effect, but the opposite.
3. The results differed concerning paternal and maternal grandmothers (this is the only mention of maternal grandparents in the Indepedents’ article).

How can this be? The researchers don’t know…

“We’ve only looked at infant mortality, and the mechanism itself remains mysterious. Other studies have given evidence against conscious favouritism towards one grandchild or another,”

They don’t know why, but grannies are either a help or a hinderence. It couldn’t be some other factor that they, implicitly admit, don’t know about?

The study looked at birth and death rates from populations in Africa, North America, Europe and Asia, a total of seven populations in all, and also going back to the seventeenth century. Now stop me if I’m wrong, but I would imagine that the birth and deaths recording, at least in some of the chosen study areas, in the 1600s’ would be limited and maybe not entirely accurate enough to be used in a study of this type.

Another thing to be taken into consideration is what about when the paternal grandmother is not geneolically related to the baby, due to sperm donation or plain old extra marital affairs? Is the supposed grandmother still a help/hinderance? Is this kink in the grandmother/baby relationship going to be known from records 400 years old?

It is common knowledge (common knowledge doesn’t neccerssarily make it true) that babies babies from large extended families do better because of the extra care and energy that is able to be committed to the baby. Who that care comes from, does it really make a difference?

I’m not a scientist, but I’ve read enough of Ben Goldacre, the Lay Scientist and the Canard Noir, to know that this…

The presence of a paternal grandmother in all seven of the populations had a harmful effect on grandsons because her presence was linked with an increase in mortality,” Ms Fox said.

“Meanwhile, in six out of seven populations, the paternal grandmother’s presence in her granddaughter’s early life had a beneficial effect in terms of the risk of mortality. This difference between paternal grandsons and granddaughters would explain a lot of the inconsistencies in previous studies, where the sex of the grandchild was not considered,” Ms Fox said.

is rubbish. The presence of A doesn’t mean it is the cause of B. There may be more detail in the report itself that the Independent isn’t telling us but from the quotes, I doubt it very much.

It is normally assumed that all grandchildren share about 25 per cent of their DNA with each of their four grandparents but Ms Fox, a doctoral student in Cambridge’s department of biological anthropology, pointed out that the female “X” sex chromosome of grandmothers is not inherited equally between their grandchildren, which could explain why some do better than others with each grandmother.

Ah, that would explain a lot, wouldn’t it. The older boys get the more immune they are to the girl chromosome. As a baby, the boys immune system is weak and so the X-germ is dangerous. At about the age of 6+ the X-germ merely smells and before the end of puberty, the lads immune system is fully protected and can now safely turn his parents into grandparents. What do you reckon? Sounds just as plausible as the dangerous granny thing, doesn’t it?

Another thing the Independent says is…

The study, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, could help to explain the evolution of female longevity: grandmothers live beyond their menopause to help bring up their grandchildren.

It is widely believed that the reason human females live well beyond the menopause is so that grandmothers can invest their energy in raising their children’s children rather than risking further pregnancies of their own.

The “grandmother hypothesis” suggests that all grandchildren benefit from having either of their grandmothers involved in their early upbringing. But studies have so far failed to support the hypothesis with consistent evidence.

If this study helps to show that females live beyond menopause to help with the upbringing of their grandchildren, why have they evolved to be a danger to boy babies? It doesn’t. It just adds to the inconsistent evidence.

In my view: Grannies, give grandson a big hug. You won’t harm him and you’ll both love it.

The Guardian has had a legal sock stuff in their mouth by those champions of justice Carter-Fuck on behalf of Trafigura…

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations

I am absolutely staggered that a court would give such an order.

Alex Massie in the Spectator reckons he knows what the question is and the gagging order is to try and suppress this report.

This gagging order may not go right to the heart of Parliamentary privilige, which alllows an MP to speak in the house without fear of being prosecution or legal action, but it punctures a lung of an open parliament.

It may be the case that groups and individuals may be barred from being named, granted anonymity, in the reporting of parliament for reasons of national security, but to have that applied purely for commercial reasons is disgusting.

An open, freely reported parliament is essential for a smoothly run and corruption-free (as far as possible) democracy.

Something has gone very, very wrong.

I also found this at Sweeney* Maddison, the judge that approved/passed/whatever-it’s-called the order needs his arse kicking about this, too.

Yesterday the Guardian revealed the sheer magnitude of the sums of money spent by Lobbyists on both sides in the great healthcare debate in the US:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/01/lobbyists-millions-obama-healthcare-reform

Lobbyists representing the commercial interests of those who are opposed to the introduction of public health insurance have spent a grand total of $380 million on advertising campaigns, lobbying and direct political contributions, whilst those supportive of the bill, such as the Pharmaceutical companies, have stumped up $150 million.

These methods of lobbying have been described as ‘morally suspect’, rather an understatement of the situation, and indeed cast yet another dark cloud over the mechanisms of democracy, and the brand of democracy that the US are attempting to export all over the world.

What this shows us, alongside yet another damnation of the current democratic system, is that the Capitalist system is so wasteful and incapable of satisfying even the most basic of human needs. Anne Kruger, a famous neoliberal and pro-capitalist academic, wrote about ‘rent seeking’ in the 1990’s, arguing that rent-seeking, defined as the quest for access to  ‘super profits’ (profits gained over and above the profits one would expect to receive in a perfectly competitive market), is wasteful to the economy, as Firms compete for these super profits at the expense of investment. Kruegers’ original model was used to criticise certain countries in the Developing world for the non-market policies that they implemented. Supporters of the efficiency of the market would yet again hold up this model, and argue that the public medical insurance scheme proposed by Obama is government intervention is anti-market, which in a sense it is. The $430 million spent by the Firms in competing for the super profits could have been used more productively if it were invested.

So far so good, Ms Krueger, you almost have us convinced that Obamas’ proposed reforms have actually contributed to a reduction in the efficiency of the market. If you are arguing that this sum could have been invested in the  public healthcare system, not made it’s way into the pockets of the already super -rich that inhabit Capital Hill, sorry, Capitol Hill, then that is very admirable of you.

However, this kind of argument is consistently used to hide that basic fact that the market is simply defunct as a system that can fulfill even the most basic of human needs.  Another finding of Kruegers’ model is that the amount that Firms are willing to spend on competing for the super profits will eventually equal the amount of super profits available to them. As the legislation has not been passed yet, and we do not know how much more will be spent, what we can say is that there is at least $380 million in super profits up for grabs.

We can also say that without the proposed legislation, these $380 million worth of profits implicitly coexist,  and rely on the fact that an estimated 46 million of the poorest Americans are excluded from the healthcare system as they are unable to afford either the private medical insurance or the fees.  To put it bluntly, the ‘efficient’ market outcome trades off $380 million in profits against the healthcare needs of the poorest 15% of the US population. This is what ‘efficiency’ means in real terms, and is characteristic of the market outcomes that we see all over the world. It is one of the starkest examples of how the capitalist system places profit above human need.